Author: Carol Watson

From The Daily Star (Lebanon), a verbal tour of a city’s hopes and fears:

Each dawn, Baghdadis discover the helpless victims of the city’s nightly battles: its walls, scarred by a ferocious war of words. In a city where graffiti was once punishable by death, there’s barely a surface that doesn’t shout a political position…

But for the most part, the Arabic script that crisscrosses every wall in this city is like American talk radio writ large: obscene, inaccurate and often hilarious political abuse. Like shock jocks, Baghdad’s hundreds of anonymous new pundits even interrupt each other: Every night, warring scribes scratch out each other’s manifestos and superimpose their own, turning Baghdad’s kilometers of gray concrete walls into a cacophony of public opinion.

“This is a very dangerous matter, this matter of the writing,” says Amir Nayef Toma, 52. “Because through it, you can understand the entire feelings of a people ­ their suffering, their feelings and even their hopes.” Toma is the Virgil of Baghdad’s graffiti inferno. A retired army officer and full-time scholar of the word, he wanders through the city transcribing the city’s nocturnal tirades and translating them into English. For the price of a cup of tea, he’ll take you on a guided tour of the raucous new souk of ideas.

… read more

From Thomas M. DeFrank, Washington Bureau Chief, New York Daily News:

WASHINGTON – Condoleezza Rice is supposed to be a slam dunk for secretary of state in a second Bush administration. But she may do the unthinkable and just say no. Friends and colleagues of the national security adviser report that the 49-year-old Rice is exhausted, approaching burnout and aching to return to her idyllic previous life as a tenured professor at Stanford.

“I would be surprised if she stays in government at all,” one well-placed source told the Daily News. “From a personal standpoint, she wants her life back.”

Rice’s departure would be a personal as well as professional blow to the President. She spends more time with him than any other subordinate, including frequent weekends at Camp David, where she and Bush play tennis and work out in the gym. … read more

The question that comes to mind is: If Condi jumps ship now, will it be in time to absolve her of blame for this preemptive war against Iraq and the lies which the Bush administration used to lead America into it? I surely hope not! If I had my druthers, they would all spend the rest of their natural lives basking in the striped sunshine shimmering through the bars of their cells.

In his opinion column for the Toronto Sun, Eric Margolis, although admitting that this is not necessarily a reliable nor scientific method of assessment, shares his observations on the changing tenor of his incoming mail which may be a harbinger of real changes in American attitudes toward Bush and the war.

I’ve received a huge e-mail response from around the globe in reply to my last Sunday Sun column. In it, I contended that George Bush’s fabricated war against Iraq was a far worse crime than Watergate, and said the president and his men were either liars or unbelievably inept.

These messages do not represent a reliable cross-section of U.S. public opinion, of course. They are simply what was known as a “convenience sample” when I worked in market research. But they reveal much about the changing mood in America.

Most were well-written messages from intelligent, educated people appalled by what their government had done.

I was stunned by the volume of bitterly anti-Bush mail from his home state, Texas.

In response to last week’s shocking admission by Bush’s arms hunter, David Kay, that “We were all wrong,” a Chicago reader wrote: “No, David. You were wrong. Do not include me in your idiocy.”

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War planners not only are rethinking the unthinkable — how and when to use nuclear weapons — they’re discussing it. Out loud. Over drinks and cheese balls…

William M. Adler begins his frightening commentary with the opening night reception of Strategic Space 2003, a three-day national security conference held in Omaha, Nebraska this past September.

Three months after the 9/11 attacks (although clearly in preparation much earlier), the Bush administration delivered its “Nuclear Posture Review” to Congress. The Pentagon-authored text is couched in recommendations, but its tone and direction are unmistakable. It buries alive all those quaint Cold War holdovers — diplomacy, arms-control treaties, test bans — in some figurative fallout shelter, never to be heard from again. In their stead, war planners bellow and yearn for a doctrine that strikes first and evades questions later. “The need is clear,” the posture review states, “for a revitalized nuclear weapons complex that will be able … if directed, to design, develop, manufacture, and certify new warheads in response to new national requirements

“The world of nuclear weapons policy is kind of Alice in Wonderland,” says Jay Coghlan, director of Nuclear Watch of New Mexico. “In many ways, the lower the yield of the weapon, the more dangerous the weapon, because it is more likely to be used.” That’s where mininukes come in. A one-kiloton mininuke (a kiloton equals 1,000 tons of TNT) may sound cuddly — and it is relatively low-yield: about one-13th the force of the Hiroshima bomb. But a one-kiloton warhead would generate a crater roughly the size of the Ground Zero site where the World Trade Center used to stand, and would spew a million cubic feet of radioactive fallout, estimates Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the nonprofit Arms Control Association

In one respect, however, the posture review is unambiguous: It considers the new generation of nukes potential weapons of first resort. Not only does that lower the threshold for using them, it blurs the line between nuclear and conventional weapons. And it vaporizes the international principle, based on nearly 60 years of diplomacy, law, practicality, and morality, that nuclear weapons are exponentially more lethal… … read more

Of further interest, in Mr. Adler’s article one of the main sites named for a new nuclear factory is Pantex, near Amarillo, Texas. This particular facility has been in the news recently because of safety concerns. read: Contractor faulted after workers tape together warhead explosives

Does America really need “warrior” presidents, and what does that say about our country and its citizens. Why is a military background so important in candidates for the presidency, and would we be better off as a nation without that qualification? In this commentary, The Costs of Tough Talk, these topics are discussed.

It might be that the American public is being confused by the issue of military service and its value in the presidency, and intentionally so. Certainly, any person having served on active duty would have a notion of what the prospect of sending troops into battle might mean, but so would anyone with a modicum of respect for one’s fellow human beings…

What is lost in all the punditry on military experience or attitudes is a simple truism: the people we elect to office reflect our own fears and ambitions. As long as we make military experience an essential requisite for office or think militarism a valuable asset in a president, or believe that our corporations deserve military intervention for their benefit, we’ll continue to have a government which is fundamentally militaristic, either in its foreign policy or its apportionment of our national resources, or both. Some in this country revel in military exploits (especially those not investing their lives in such), and right now, it seems they dominate the political process.

We, as a people, continue to mistake offense for defense, and continue to threaten the rest of the world by the money we spend on defense, and by the political choices we make in voting for hawks, or chickenhawks. We continue to believe that we are well served by a military budget far in excess of that spent by dozens of countries, and are protected by tough talk and by wars of opportunity……… read more

Cpl Jamie Brendan Murphy, 26, died in Afghanistan just a week before he was scheduled to return home.

Military personnel knocked on the Murphy family’s door at 5 a.m. to tell them their son had been killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan. Hours later, members of the Murphy family gathered at their parents’ home in Conception Harbour, a town of 900 in eastern Newfoundland.

“It’s like we’re talking about somebody else,” said Rosemary Ryan, one of Jamie Murphy’s three siblings. “We just can’t believe this is our brother. It’s hard to believe.” His sister Norma Murphy called him “the perfect brother” and questioned the Canadian mission that led to his death. “They’re over there trying to keep peace for people who don’t want it,” she said during an emotional interview with CBC Newsworld. “I don’t think it’s fair. I didn’t want him over there in the first place.” — Read more