this just in | Anna Nicole Smith

Sources close to the Anna Nicole Smith case say the remains of the deceased woman will be dismembered (possibly in a televised procedure) and distributed among the claimants for final disposition.

All this amid rumors that Ms Smith's daughter and heir Daniellyn will be placed with monks of unknown provenance and raised in the ancient ways to be a defender of the dispossesed (or possibly an assassin or prescription drug addict or both).

Asked to elaborate on the distribution plan, a courthouse spokesperson would only confirm that Ms Smith's heart had been removed to an undisclosed location for safekeeping.

the weapons trade, for what it's worth

Today ends the IDEX 07 armament show in Abu Dhabi. The Associated Press reports an estimated 900 weapons manufacturers and security firms came anticipating over two billion dollars in contracts; with helicopters and electronic warning sensors expected to do particularly well.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953

was this war in Iraq a mistake? a letter to Congress

Was this war in Iraq a mistake? Or was it just plain wrong? I believe we'll be splitting hairs over incompetence and wrongheadedness for a long time.

Meanwhile the Administration apppears to be conducting a slow bleed offensive against the obvious. If the White House or Congress could present a substantive reason to believe the President's surge will be saving lives and creating stability a week after US forces leave Baghdad and Anbar, we might be more resolute about sending additional young men and women, underfunded and lacking training and equipment (and facing an ineffective and hostile bureaucracy should they return home wounded) -- but none of us believes there is any such evidence. Everyone knows the game changes the moment the door closes behind us.

I don't believe there is a decent solution to this bloody conundrum. At this point all the solutions appear indecent. It's going to be relentlessly bad no matter what. The only question is, What kind of bad? The US government and the citizens it represents will be making amends for decades to come.

Our nation failed in this adventure. Whether through foolishness or hubris or overreaching or yet-to-be-revealed moral turpitude or some combination of all these (seasoned with ambition, tunnel vision, ass-covering and God knows what), will take time to sort out. We are lost in the woods. Look it in the face. Retrace your steps. Find your way back. Deal with it now.

TODAY, we call on you, our elected officials, to pursue the hard work of cleaning up as well as you can; ending further loss of life insofar as it is in your control; seeking genuine reconciliation among the parties insofar as that is in your control; voting across party lines wherever that is necessary to promote policies that tend to restore equilibrium and a return to sanity.

Do this as if your next campaign depended on it for it almost certainly does.

narrowing the religion gap

The February 18 New York Times Magazine includes this from Gary Rosen:

Try a quick political thought experiment. First, form a mental picture of the Democratic front-runners for president — Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Now do the same for the leading Republican contenders — John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Next (and this is the key step), imagine each of them in church, sitting in a pew, head bowed, or better still, at the pulpit, delivering a homily or leading the congregation in worship.

Strange, no? It’s not hard to envision Clinton and Obama among the faithful. She is a lifelong Methodist and self-described “praying person,” and he belongs to a church where some years ago he found himself (in his own words) “kneeling beneath that cross” in submission “to His will.” Both slip easily into the earnest, humble-of-the-earth mode of liberal God talk.

But McCain and Giuliani? You somehow imagine them fidgeting during the hymns and checking their watches. The senator is an Episcopalian, the former mayor a Catholic, but neither man, you have to think, would be caught dead in a Bible-study group or could possibly declare, à la George W. Bush, that his favorite philosopher is “Christ, because he changed my heart.” In the piety primary, the Democrats win hands down.

It's a twist on America's political road that would have been difficult to imagine at the turn of the century. Political conservatives may now find themselves splitting hairs about the private faith of their candidates as supporters of John Kerry and Al Gore did so recently.

Is it too much to hope for a broader, more substantive, less doctrinaire and demonizing conversation about governance than we've had in recent election cycles?

Barack the Vote

Before you've heard too many people dissect and spin bits and bites and of the announcement, take 20 minutes to watch the unedited video of Barack Obama's declaration that he is a candidate for US President. I found it quite remarkable.

If you would prefer to read Senator Obama's speech (or follow along while you watch the video) here's the text.

Camp Pendleton Crossing

Northbound Surfliner,
Upper deck.
Rain on sprouting field
Separates track from sea.
Attack helicopter traces the shore,
Churning,
Climbing.
Guy across from me dozes, beer wedged between his thighs;
Half past ten;
Doesn't mean he won't be thirsty
When he wakes.
A girl talks loud on her phone:
"Are you gonna get kicked out?"
Landing craft takes a run at the beach, flanked by rubber Zodiacs.
Dark copter edging away,
Toward something I cannot see.
"I'm sorry you're sad," the girl says to her phone.

what's wrong with this picture: no. 3,084

Marge: Revenge never solved anything.

Homer: Then what are we doing in Iraq?

— The Simpsons, January 28, 2007

in Iraq, the later it gets, the later it gets

in response to a calling in a debt at the White House prioritizewisely said...

unfortunately, jim, when we pull out, and massive slaughters occur and baghdad becomes a militaristic haven breeding ground for evil, it will not only rest on bush's conscience, but also yours, for you champion the withdrawal, you sicko. why not let the military, who signed up to do this, and bush the instigator, and freer of the people of iraq, follow through with their promises to the iraqis. Yes, america is hurting a little, but iraq needs us more, you selfish sicko. You should be writing childrens poems or something, where your propaganda can do less harm.

It already weighs on my conscience. Somewhere near 35,000 Iraqi dead in 2006 . . . over 600,000 excess Iraqi deaths since the Shock and Awe campaign in 2003. Shock and Awe . . . you tell me who the propagandists are . . . about 50,000 Iraqis displaced every month . . . Nearly every session of the Iraqi Parliment since November adjourned for lack of a quorum . . . former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi no longer in Iraq, reportedly splitting his time betwen Amman and London . . . Adnan Pachachi said to be living in Abu Dhabi . . .

I'm sick that I failed to mobilize fellow Americans stop our part of this madness before it began.

I'm frustrated that I failed to moblize enough voters in 2004 to put the brakes on The Bush Doctrine.

I lament that others reap what my elected representatives have sown by action and inaction.

Mr or Ms Prioritizewisely, Baghdad is presently the 'militaristic haven breeding ground for evil' you fear because evildoers fill the vacuum created by Mr Bush's misadventure. A bad thing is today much worse because we as a people failed in our duty. I am horrrified to be a part of that.

The harm is done, friend, with more to follow no matter what.

I'm convinced we need to swallow hard and engage every stakeholder in the region to make the best of what is just godawful in every dimension. Shia, Sunni, Iraqis, Turks, Saudis, Iranians, Jordanians, Syrians, Kuwaitis . . . the whole lot.

The most strident get out now advocates I've heard, acknowledge that disengagement will take months — force protection alone guarantees that. It's time to break our engagement in this Lose/Lose scenario and get on with what the American president likes to refer to as hard choices. The later it gets, the later it gets.

calling in a debt at the White House

Dear Mr President,

The question before us is, "Can another 20 thousand US troops secure the safety of Baghdad's citizens beyond the day those US Soldiers and Marines leave?"

I find no reason to believe they can.

Mr President, I'm afraid "you broke it, you bought it" includes living with the consequences of your failed policy.

I don't believe the debt you owe can be paid under the terms you've outlined.

The 109th Congress should have taken care of this but they didn't. That's why we elected the 110th Congress.

So, sorry, but we're cutting you off.

I find myself resisting the urge to quote the Bible at you here . . . You'll have to find another way to make the best of this wretched mess . . .

Godspeed,

Jim Hancock

what goes around comes around in Iraq

I noted recently that Bush National Intelligence Agency Chief (and now Assistant Secretary of State nominee) John Negroponte was present in the 1972 meeting at which Henry Kissinger told Chinese prime minister Chou that the US would accept a communist government in Vietnam.

Now in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof cites Bob Edgar recalling that as a young congressman in April 1975, he encountered a presidential call for a surge of troops similar to the one set in motion by President Bush. On that occasion of course it was President Gerald Ford calling for more U.S. forces to stabilize Saigon.

In that context, Kristof writes, a White House photo capture Ford conferring with two of the architects of that request: senior Ford administration officials Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

And so what goes around comes around.

peace with honor . . .

In May 2006 a transcript of the June 20, 1972 meeting between Dr Henry Kissinger and Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-lai to discuss disengagement of American troops from Vietnam was declassified and released under the Freedom of Information Act. It's interesting to note that John Negroponte was present at the meeting. Prime Minister Chou would be the go-between with the Hanoi government. On page 37, Dr Kissinger said:

If we could talk to them the way we talk to you, Mr. Prime Minister -- I don't mean in words but in attitude -- I think we could settle the war. As a practical matter, we think the quickest way to end it now is on the basis of ceasefire, withdrawal, and return of prisoners. That's the least complicated and leaves the future open. We are prepared in addition to declare our neutrality in any political contest that develops and in terms of foreign policy we are prepared to see South Vietnam adopt a neutral foreign policy.

We can also go back to our proposal the President made last January 25 and which was formally presented on January 27, and perhaps modify this or that provision and that involved political discussions also. But in practice, political discussions take forever. And the practical consequence of any political solution is either it will confirm the existing government in Saigon, which is unacceptable to Hanoi, or it will overthrow the existing government in Saigon, which is unacceptable to us. And it is almost impossible to think of a possible compromise between these two.

So we should find a way to end the war, to stop it from being an international situation, and then permit a situation to develop in which the future of Indochina can be returned to the Indochinese people. And I can assure you that this is the only object we have in Indochina, and I do not believe this can be so different from yours. Se want nothing for ourselves there. And while we can not bring a communist government to power, if, as a result of historical evolution it should happen over a period of time, if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.

. . . if we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.

Nearly 700 Americans -- and I have idea how many others -- died between the time Dr Kissinger told Prime Minister Chou the US would accept a communist government in Vietnam and the time the last Marine, 19 year-old Judge Darwin Lee of Iowa, died there.

There was of course no mention of Dr Kissinger's concession in President Nixon's Peace with Honor speech on January 23, 1973.

+ + + + +

I thought the most unusual thing about President Bush's New Way Forward in Iraq address last night was that he gave it at all. That as much as anything, I suspect, signals the end. We will be making up for this misadventure for a long time. Best we get started.

conservative summit | Colbert meets O'Reilly

Liberals should be forced to listen to Fox, and delvelop an ear for why it works. But it does remind me of the Loud Family, with every segment ending in a group-shout. They all seem to know when to settle for the toss to commercial.
— David Wagner upon hearing that Stephen Colbert and Bill O'Reilly will . . . trade pulpits? . . . on January 18.