Vacation

We're going on vacation for a while. We wish everyone a happy Independence Day.
The 'Statue of Liberty' in Lawton, Oklahoma [click picture to enlarge]
At this web-site, you can download a flyer with quotations for the 4th of July. They suggest distributing these flyers at Independence Day celebrations:

May these quotes serve to remind us all of the ideals and values upon which the United States was founded.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Christians in Iraq

Here's a story you won't find in the SCLM nor the webpages of the 101st fighting keyboarders: The Iraq hand-over is close, Christians ready [Mission Network News]:

This pastor put a sign on the church that reads, 'Jesus is the light of the world.' According to Brewer the local Muslims put a sign over it saying, 'Mohammad is the light of the world.' He says that didn't stop this pastor from ministering to them in love by providing medicines and other needed items. He also asked them some questions. "He asked them if they respected the Bible as Muslims and they said yes. And, he asked them if they believed Jesus was a prophet and they said yes. So, he turned in the New Testament to John 8:12 where Jesus says, 'I am the light of the world.' And, amazingly these militant Muslims apologized. They said, 'we're sorry, we respect you, we want to be your friends.' It was a God moment."

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Sovereignty

Amitai Etzioni has a few things to say about Iraq's sovereignty:

Here we go again. The United States is about to fall prey to its own propaganda.

President Bush has repeatedly said we will grant "full and complete sovereignty" to Iraq on June 30. We've said we'll turn over Saddam Hussein for trial and punishment and that the occupation will finally be replaced by Iraqi self-rule. But these grand promises are as unbelievable as they are unattainable.

Read more here: "A 'Sovereign' Iraq? Don’t You Believe It"

Here's a listing of research and publications by Stephen Krasner, author of Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy [mentioned by Mr. Etzioni in his post.] And here's a link to an interview with Stephen Krasner. Very interesting. Dissertation on the coffee trade? Hmmmm.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

President Clinton

Via Atrios: The Bill Clinton interview in The Mail and Guardian [South African newspaper]. Here is the story Atrios featured:

We ask him about the red and blue crocheted band around his right wrist -- an incongruous clash with the statesman attire. For the first time in the interview he becomes emotional, the voice catching and his eyes redening. "I've worn it for two years. I went there [to Colombia] and met these unbelievable kids from a village on the edge of the rainforest where the narco-traffickers are dominant," he says. "They sang and danced for peace and I fell in love with these kids. I asked them to perform at the White House one Christmas. They came with the culture minister, a magnificently attractive woman called Consuelo. The bad guys hated these kids because they made them look like what they are. The guerillas couldn't kill these children, so they murdered her ... I can still hardly talk about this.

"Two years ago they asked me back and I said, 'I'll come, but you've got to bring those kids to see me.' So I turn up -- and the children greeted me at the airport, along with the new culture minister -- the niece of the murdered woman. And they gave me this bracelet, which I've never taken off."

Here, Mr. Clinton talks about how he learned to forgive his enemies:

We ask whether, as a Christian himself, he had been able to forgive Starr. "I couldn't have done it without two people, both in Africa," he says. "One was a Rwandan woman, a survivor of the slaughter. She lived next to a Hutu couple. Their children played together for 10 years. The couple rat 'em out. They come and crack her across the back with a machete and she's left for dead. She wakes up in a pool of blood and looks around and her husband and her six children are dead. She's the only survivor. And she said, 'I screamed at God for letting me live with all them dead and then I realised I must have been spared for some purpose. It could not be something as mean as vengeance.'

"What was the lesson for me? What I went through was a tea party compared to that woman. I lost nothing compared to what she did. You know, I had my reputation in tatters, I was bankrupted, I was enraged because other people were persecuted who were completely innocent. It was nothing.

"The other person who helped me was Nelson Mandela. He told me he forgave his oppressors because if he didn't they would have destroyed him. He said: 'You know, they already took everything. They took the best years of my life, I didn't get to see my children grow up. They destroyed my marriage. They abused me physically and mentally. They could take everything except my mind and heart. Those things I would have to give away and I decided not to give them away.'

"And then he said: 'Neither should you.' And he said when he was finally set free he felt all that anger welling up again and he said, 'They've already had me for 27 years ... I had to let it go'. You do this not for other people but for yourself. If you don't let go it continues to eat at you."

[emphasis added]

The article also includes several interesting excerpts from President Clinton's book, including a list of the books that helped Mr. Clinton get through the scandal involving Monica Lewinsky:

• The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis (classic Christian text that deals with pride, suffering, self-centredness, materialism and anxiety).
• The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius (putting Stoicism into practise as a means of coping with adversity).
• Seventy Times Seven[re-titled version Why Forgive? available as free e-book on this page] by Johann Christoph Arnold (reflection on the stories of "real people" who have dealt with injuries from crime and betrayal and abuse, that stresses forgiveness as the only way of surviving life's deepest hurts).
• John 8:7 ("If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.")

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

An Eye for an Eye, and the Whole World Goes Blind

When our allies do this, is this any cause for rejoicing? From The New York Times > International > Asia Pacific > Afghans Behead 4 Taliban:

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, June 22 (Reuters) ?4 Afghan soldiers have beheaded four Taliban fighters in retaliation for the Taliban's beheading of an Afghan soldier and an Afghan interpreter for American-led forces, a government commander said Tuesday.

The soldier and the interpreter were beheaded after becoming separated from a patrol of Afghan and American-led foreign troops in the Arghandab district of the southern province of Zabul on Monday night, Namatullah Tokhi, commander of the government's 27th Division in the province, said in an interview.

He said government troops later captured and killed four Taliban guerrillas in the same way.

'They cut off their heads with a knife,' he said of the Taliban action, 'so when our forces arrested four Taliban, we cut off their heads too.'

And here is another TV station truck. KFDX broadcasts from Wichita Falls, Texas.  Here is a link to KFDX's coverage of the demonstration:

MILITARY HOLDS HEARING FOR DESERTER
Wednesday, June 23, 2004

A hearing for a military deserter drew a crowd of nearly 30 protestors outside the Fort Sill gates today. The protestors were there in support of Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia. Mejia was convicted of desertion in May after he failed to return to his National Guard unit after a two week leave. Mejia argued today that his experiences in Iraq changed his perception of the war, which is why he`s asking for a conscientious objection. Alyssa Burgin with Texans for Peace Says, "Much of what he said about the particular prison where he was working has been exposed in terms of Abu Ghraib, so there seems to be little question that what he said was true."

A military representative says regardless of Mejia`s personal feelings, he should have returned after his leave and at that point, filed his objection. Instead Mejia went missing for nearly two months.

[Although October to March is more than two months. Mejia has already been imprisoned for two months; maybe the reporter got his or her notes mixed up.]

My son Tim snapped this picture of the News9 truck. You can see the demonstrators in the background to the right of the truck.  News9 and the Daily Oklahoman (also known as the 'Daily Disappointment') co-operate in the newsOK.com. Here is a link to some of their coverage [registration required]
Another story from the Oklahoman [also from the newsOK.com site] Notice how these articles consistently end with quotes critical of Mejia:

Lt. Col. Ron Tittle, a Florida National Guard spokesman, is not sympathetic of Mejia's current problems. They are problems Tittle says Mejia could have avoided through legal military channels, or even by talking to an Army chaplain.

"We have had five Florida guardsmen killed in Iraq, and more than 100 who have been injured," Tittle said. "Our troops have served with honor and distinction. I suppose it kind of digs into the heart when one leaves and deserts his comrades."

I suppose it also digs into our hearts when our government betrays our highest ideals...

Today's peace vigil for Camilo Mejia on Fort Sill Boulevard in Lawton, Oklahoma. My son Tim took this picture as we drove by. Unfortunately, we did not have time to talk to the demonstrators, since we had to get back to Duncan. 

Vigil in support of Camilo Mejia

From my e-mail in-box: On June 23, a vigil will be held in Lawton, Oklahoma, for Camilo Mejia:

Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia served in Iraq from March - October, 2003. He returned home in October, 2003 and refused to return to Iraq to fight in an illegal and immoral war. He turned himself in to the U.S. military in March, 2004 along with a 55-page Conscientious Objector application. He was charged with desertion, and convicted in May, 2004. He is now serving a one-year prison term at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.

He also received a Bad Conduct discharge and was reduced in rank to 'private.' I am sure that conscientious objector status is very difficult for active-duty soldiers to get--how can one suddenly claim that one is opposed to participation in war after being in the armed forces for a long time? Mejia has served about 8 years in the Army and Army Reserve. Surely he knew what he was getting into, right? He must have had a profound change of heart while serving in Iraq. But it appears that he went AWOL from October 2003 to March 2004. That can't be good for his case. The hearing to consider his Conscientious Objector application will be held at Fort Sill while the vigil goes on outside:

Testifying at this hearing will be Bishop Thomas Gumbleton from the Archdiocese of Detroit, Daniel Ellsberg, Lewis Randa (Conscientious Objector from the Vietnam Era; founder of the Peace Abbey in Massachusetts); Fernando Suarez del Solar (MFSO member and father of one of the first Marines to be killed in Iraq); and Nancy Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out.

I am not very optimistic about his chances of getting Conscientious Objector status. Even members of the historic peace churches (Mennonite and Quaker) have to have a documented record of consistent opposition to participation in the armed forces. A wishy-washy position that allows individual soldiers to decide which wars to participate in would (and should) fail to meet the test of consistency. I support his decision, if it is a consistent one. You can read more about Camilo's case in these posts by Oklahoman, Green Party member, peace activist and Mennonite J. M. Branum: here and here.


I will be in Lawton tomorrow, but work will prevent me from staying too long at the vigil. We'll see!

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Bitter herbs

Recently, veterinarian Ben Hart gave a talk at the 41st Animal Behavior Society meeting, in Oaxaca, Mexico, describing how some animals use herbal medicine and theorizing how humans came to use herbs medicinally. Nature Science Update reports--Bitterness illuminates plant lore: Use of herbal medicines may have arisen by accident. Here is a taste of Hart's theory:

The animals cannot know exactly what they are doing, Hart argues. With instances of illness few and far between, and plants that vary in speed and effectiveness, it would be impossible for animals to link cause and effect.

This means that the use of herbs as medicines may have been encouraged by natural selection rather than conscious learning, Hart suggests. Animals that eat pain-relieving plants, for instance, would be better able to forage or look after young during a bout of illness.

But how could this habit arise unconsciously, Hart wondered. He searched the records of medical trials of 25 herbal supplements that have proved to be effective in humans. Some 78% of them came from plants that have a bitter or astringent taste.

Animals that happened, by chance, to develop a penchant for bitter plants when feeling off-colour would therefore be less vulnerable to sickness, Hart says. And if they passed that preference on to their offspring, the habit would become a tradition, or an evolved trait.

Emphasis added. The highlighted sentence is misleading. It seems to promote the bogus 'inheritance of acquired characteristics' theory. If the preference for bitter tastes is coded in the genes, then it is not a developed penchant, and it is not by chance that the animals are selected for. The chance aspect of evolution involves the mutations that occur in the genetic code, not in how well the individual organism adapts to the environment.

Now how will this theory be tested? I am not sure what they mean by 'herbal medicine may have arose by accident.' What accident?

Yet more testing of the template

Style sheet tinkering.

This is Headline 1

This is Headline 2

This is Headline 3

This is Headline 4

This is Headline 6

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Kicking the tires, checking the mirrors

Will the box extend too far to the right now?

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Template Tinkering

Following the advice found here, Ghost Town Orange is being spiffed up a little. Excuse the mess.

UPDATE 10:53 am

Ghost Town Orange has been successfully tinkered with! The improvements:

• Revised permanent link code and implemented post pages
• Updated page title code
• Inserted 'Recent posts at Ghost Town Orange" code at the foot of the main page
• Fixed Javascript for Random Quotes.
• Removed the odd link-to-nowhere that followed post titles

UPDATE 2--June 20, 2004 6:25 pm

I have tried viewing Ghost Town Orange with another browser (Mozilla) and it's a mess. I realize that I need to make my blog a little more standards-compliant. (Internet Explorer is too forgiving of bad code.) So major changes are coming to Ghost Town Orange.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Pentagon seeks OK to spy on Americans

From the Christian Science Monitor--New bill would allow Pentagon to gather intelligence on US residents without their knowledge. : Newsweek reports that the US Department of Defense is looking for the right to gather information from, and about, Americans, without having to tell them that they are doing so. "Without a public hearing or debate," the news magazine reports, "Defense officials recently slipped a provision into a bill before Congress that could vastly expand the Pentagon's ability to gather intelligence inside the United States, including recruiting citizens as informants."
Currently all military intelligence organizations must comply with the Privacy Act. The act is a Watergate-era law that requires that any government official who is seeking information from a resident of the US disclose who they are and why they are seeking the information. But Newsweek reports that last month the Senate Intelligence Committee, in closed session, added the provision that would exempt the Pentagon from this restriction. The bill is S.2386, in specific Sec.502 [link to PDF - Defense intelligence exemption from certain Privacy Act requirements. There is much more food for thought [and links to explore] in Tom Regan's article regarding the struggle for control of intelligence within the US government.

It's more than just 6 or 7 bad apples

It's a rotten barrel.

picture found at freewayblogger;  
For more examples of the top-down nature of the torture problem in Iraq, read these articles by Mark Danner from the New York Review of Books:

1st: Torture and Truth

2nd: The Logic of Torture

Read these before they become pay-per-view!

Financial Times calls Bush a liar--LEADER: Bush has misled Americans on Iraq. I do not know how long the link will last before it rots so I'll quote the whole thing:

Financial Times; Jun 18, 2004

The congressional commission investigating the September 11, 2001 attacks on the US has concluded that there is no evidence to support the Bush administration's thesis that Saddam Hussein helped Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation carry them out. This conclusion, emerging from a strong tradition of congressional oversight, could be taken further.

The evidence the administration produced to demonstrate the link was, at best, spurious, at worst, fabricated. This is not a small matter, especially in the context of the Bush team's case for its war of choice against Iraq.

The first public justification for the war was that the Iraqi dictator possessed weapons of mass destruction with which he could dominate his neighbours and threaten the west. This was always an exaggeration. There was some reason to believe he had residual chemical and biological weapons, but none whatsoever to suggest he had reconstituted a nuclear arms programme. As we now know, no WMD of any description have been found; not one US assertion to the United Nations Security Council by Colin Powell, secretary of state, in February last year, has been substantiated.

The second public justification - which was wheeled on stage to distract the audience from the embarrassing absence of WMD - was that the war was about freeing Iraqis and, indeed, the Middle East from tyranny. After Falluja and Abu Ghraib, however, 92 per cent of Iraqis regard US troops as occupiers, while 2 per cent see them as liberators, according to a Coalition Provisional Authority poll.

Yet there was nothing intrinsically absurd about the WMD fears, or ignoble about opposition to Saddam's tyranny - however late Washington developed this. The purported link between Baghdad and al-Qaeda, by contrast, was never believed by anyone who knows Iraq and the region. It was and is nonsense, the sort of "intelligence" true believers in the Bush camp lapped up from clever charlatans they sponsored such as the now disgraced Ahmad Chalabi. Yet, even this week, vice-president Dick Cheney continues to assert Saddam had "long-established ties with al-Qaeda".

No wonder that, until recently, polls regularly showed more than half of Americans believed Iraq was behind the attack on New York's twin towers.

Whether the Osama and Saddam thesis was more the result of self-delusion or cynical manipulation, it - along with Washington's mismanagement of the whole Iraqi adventure - has been enormously damaging.

The Bush administration has misled the American people. It has isolated the US, as American diplomats and commanders pointed out this week. And its bungling in Iraq has given new and terrifying life to the cult of death sponsored by Osama bin Laden. Above all, it inspires little confidence it is capable of defeating the spreading al-Qaeda franchise, which always was the clear and present danger.

Copyright The Financial Times Ltd

Hmmm. The Financial Times must be a left-wing rag...how else can they criticize our dear leader? This is an example of the divisive and irresponsible criticism Sean Hannity would like to silence.

We're back!

Our internet connection was broken for most of Wednesday and Thursday. [A switching problem at Southwestern Bell, according to our local internet provider.] And Friday I was busy on other things [A visit to the Fort Sill museum and Geronimo's grave, the start of a sewing project.]
I intended to post on Bloom's Day on Bloom's Day (June 16). You can download a copy of James Joyce's Ulysses from Project Gutenberg. Or you can read a web-page a day for the next two years here! [RSS feed available]

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

On Pacifism

Hugo Schwyzer [check out the comments to Hugo's post for a classic fallacious either/or argument against pacifism.] recommends this post: 'Beach houses, protest posters, and peace-making according to me' by Christy:

Being anti-war is easy. Peace-making is hard. I suck at it sometimes, but I'm pretty sure I would be much worse at it if I wasn't even trying. There is no peace without justice, so peace-making has to be about trying to create spaces where both I and the structures around me are treating people with the respect that all image-bearers of God deserve.

I believe that the means are the ends, so I can't build something good based on anger or fear or disrespect or trying to shove a particular political platform down anybody's throat. Most of us have come to our particular opinions through our lived experience, not logical arguments, so talking myself hoarse probably won't change anybody's mind.

Here's a digression that I may flesh out soon:

Christy's post reminds me of the use of the phrase city on a hill at President Reagan's funeral. This is how a city on a hill exerts its influence--by being a good example, not by threatening and attacking. I hate the way that phrase is misused. The city on a hill is the church--God's people, not a particular nation. Governor John Winthrop was hoping that the good example of the Massachusetts Bay Company would purify the Church of England. He certainly didn't envision anything like the United States as it is today pretending to be God's city on a hill.

The day was drawing to a close, and the twelve came to him and said, "Send the crowd away, so that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, to lodge and get provisions; for we are here in a deserted place." But he said to them, "You give them something to eat." They said, "We have no more than five loaves and two fish--unless we are to go and buy food for all these people." For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, "Make them sit down in groups of about fifty each." They did so and made them all sit down. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and were filled. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.--Luke 9:12-17 (from today's Sacred Space.

Doggie language

From Nature Science Update--Old dog learns new tricks: Mutt's memory feats aid studies of language development.:

A German border collie has surprised scientists with his 200-word vocabulary and uncanny knack for learning new words, shedding light on the evolution of language.

Nine-year-old Rico knows the names of each toy in his hundred-strong collection and can retrieve items called out to him with over 90% accuracy. He can also learn and remember the names of unfamiliar toys after just one encounter, putting him on a par with a three-year-old child.

Of course, not every dog has this ability. Our dog Curlie Sue confuses her name Curlie with our cat's nickname Duney. So when I call for Duney, Curlie comes running. I think she responds to my tone of voice; Curlie recognizes that I speak in a certain way when I'm talking to pets.

Here's the concluding paragraph of the Nature Science update:

Whether Rico's accomplishments are the result of an exceptional mind or exceptional training is not known. But some of his talent may be down to good breeding: border collies are working dogs, evolutionarily selected to obey human instructions.

A quibble: selective breeding is not evolution, unless you call evolution by unnatural selection evolution.

More Lies Exposed

The Bush Administration says that the war on terror has been a smashing success. In 2003, the number of terrorist incidents were down--proof the war on terror is working . . . er... Nevermind.[The Guardian online.] And here's a link to the Department of State confession. I notice that Congressman Henry Waxman has been holding the liars accountable:

STATEMENT BY RICHARD BOUCHER, SPOKESMAN

Correction to Global Patterns of Terrorism Will be Issued

After learning of possible discrepancies in the first week of May, the Department of State and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center initiated a review of the data published in the 2003 edition of "Patterns of Global Terrorism." A May 17th letter from Congressman {Henry] Waxman [Democrat, California] added impetus to our efforts.

The data in the report was compiled by the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, which was established in January 2003 and includes elements from the CIA, FBI and Departments of Homeland Security and Defense. Based on our review, we have determined that the data in the report is incomplete and in some cases incorrect. Here at the Department of State, we did not check and verify the data sufficiently.

At our request, the Terrorist Threat Integration Center is revising the statistics for calendar year 2003. While we are still checking data for accuracy and completeness, we can say that our preliminary results indicate that the figures for the number of attacks and casualties will be up sharply from what was published. As soon as we are in a position to, we will issue corrected numbers, a revised analysis, and revisions to the report.

[Emphasis added.] Also note that the Department of State passed the buck about responsibility for the errors: It wasn't us, it was elements from the CIA, FBI and Departments of Homeland Security and Defense.The Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 Report was issued in April 2004. I decided to read the chapter on the Middle East; I wanted to see which attacks in Iraq qualify as terrorism. (Roadside bombings by Iraqi insurgents--probably yes. Bombings of wedding parties--probably not.) But alas, Iraq is dismissed with this:

the regime of Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein was ousted from power by a US-led Coalition conducting Operation Iraqi Freedom, marking an important advance for the global war on terrorism.

Iraq rates another mention as one of the state sponsors of terrorism in another section of the report. [It is odd that this section is not at the globalsecurity.org website. Or am I not seeing the link on the index page?] So I search for Iraq's paragraph:

Iraq

(Note: Most of the attacks that have occurred during Operation Iraqi Freedom do not meet the longstanding US definition of international terrorism because they were directed at combatants, that is, American and Coalition forces on duty.

Attacks against civilians and against military personnel who at the time of the incident were unarmed and/or not on duty are judged as terrorist attacks.)

On 7 May 2003, President Bush suspended, with respect to Iraq, all sanctions applicable to state sponsors of terrorism, which had the practical effect of putting Iraq on a par with nonterrorist states. Although Iraq is still technically a designated state sponsor of terrorism, its name can be removed from the state sponsors list when the Secretary of State determines that it has fulfilled applicable statutory requirements, which include having a government in place that pledges not to support acts of terrorism in the future.

In 2003, Operation Iraqi Freedom removed Saddam Hussein and his Ba'athist regime from power and liberated Iraq. Since then, however, Iraq has become a central battleground in the global war on terrorism. Former regime elements, who have been conducting insurgent attacks against Coalition forces, have increasingly allied themselves tactically and operationally with foreign fighters and Islamic extremists, including some linked to Ansar al-Islam, al-Qaida, and Abu Mus'ab al-Zarqawi. The line between insurgency and terrorism has become increasingly blurred as attacks on civilian targets have become more common. By end of the year, Coalition forces had detained more than 300 suspected foreign fighters.

Extremists associated with al-Qaida claimed credit for several suicide car bombings, including attacks in October against the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross and three Baghdad police stations and an attack in November against an Italian military police base in Nasiriyah. Al-Qaida associate Abu Mus'ab al- Zarqawi -- accused of working with Ansar al-Islam -- emerged as a key suspect in the deadly bombing of Jordan's Baghdad embassy in August.

After Coalition strikes destroyed Ansar al-Islam's base in northern Iraq in late March, Ansar al-Islam members fled across the border and regrouped in Iran. Counterterrorist operations suggest many of those fi ghters have since reentered Iraq and are active in anti-Coalition activities. In September, suspected members of Ansar al-Islam were arrested in Kirkuk carrying 1,200 kilograms of TNT.

In November, Coalition forces killed two unidentified, high-ranking members of Ansar al-Islam during a raid on a terrorist hideout in Baghdad.

[Emphasis added.] So, it appears that neither insurgent attacks on Coalition forces nor Coalition attacks on civilians are classified as terrorism.

Updated 11 June 2004 7:50 am CDT

Blackbox Voting: The Diebold Variations

(c)2004 Rand Careaga/salamander.epsClick the image for a larger version.
For more Diebold Variations, visit this page.
I quote Rand Careaga's disclaimer:

This page and these images are no way no how affiliated with Diebold Inc., and the statements in the "ads" (let's call them parodies, which might let me off the hook for the appropriation of the Diebold name and chop under "fair use") are not necessarily representative of the opinions of Diebold's executives, shareholders or worker bees, no, not even in their dark malignant hearts, and did I mention that I hold the legal profession in the highest regard? Diebold is a registered trademark of Diebold Corporation. Any other marks are the property of their respective owners.

Father, let me dedicate All this year to you
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.
--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)

Ghost Town Orange's Reagan Memorial Post

Turner Classic Movies is showing many of Ronald Reagan's movies on Thursday June 10 and Thursday June 24. I don't remember watching any of them, so I will be programming the VCR to tape a bunch of them; I especially want to see Kings Row. This movie provided the title for Reagan's autobiography: "Where's the rest of me?"


"King's Row"
Ann Sheridan, Ronald Reagan
1942
Warner Bros.Photo source: Mptv.

President Reagan certainly could deliver a speech; I have a vivid memory of his address to the nation after the space shuttle Challenger disaster:

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God."

[Reagan was quoting from the poem High Flight by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., an American pilot serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. Magee died in a plane crash in England just a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.]

Here's a list of highlights from the Reagan presidency which I will use to teach my sons about President Reagan (modified from 66 Things to Think About When Flying Into Reagan National Airport by David Corn, [The Nation, March 2, 1998]):

the firing of the air traffic controllers

winnable nuclear war

recallable nuclear missiles

trees that cause pollution

Elliott Abrams lying to Congress

ketchup as a vegetable

colluding with Guatemalan thugs

pardons for F.B.I. lawbreakers

voodoo economics

budget deficits

toasts to Ferdinand Marcos

public housing cutbacks

redbaiting the nuclear freeze movement

James Watt

Getting cozy with Argentine fascist generals

tax credits for segregated schools

disinformation campaigns

"homeless by choice"

Manuel Noriega

falling wages

the HUD scandal

air raids on Libya

"constructive engagement" with apartheid South Africa

United States Information Agency blacklists of liberal speakers

attacks on OSHA and workplace safety

the invasion of Grenada

assassination manuals

Nancy's astrologer

Drug tests

lie detector tests

Fawn Hall

female appointees (8 percent)

mining harbors

the S&L scandal [remember that President Reagan said "All in all, I think we hit the jackpot" when signing legislation that directly led to the failure of the S&Ls.

239 dead U.S. troops in Beirut

Al Haig "in control"

silence on AIDS

food-stamp reductions

Debategate

White House shredding

Jonas Savimbi

tax cuts for the rich

"mistakes were made"

Michael Deaver's conviction for influence peddling

Lyn Nofziger's conviction for influence peddling

Caspar Weinberger's five-count indictment

Ed Meese ("You don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime")

Donald Regan (women don't "understand throw-weights")

education cuts

massacres in El Salvador

"The bombing begins in five minutes"

$640 Pentagon toilet seats

African- American judicial appointees (1.9 percent)

Reader's Digest [this entry stumps me. what is this about?-GTO]

C.I.A.-sponsored car-bombing in Lebanon (more than eighty civilians killed)

200 officials accused of wrongdoing

William Casey

Iran/contra

"Facts are stupid things"

three-by-five cards

the MX missile

Bitburg

S.D.I.

Robert Bork

naps

Teflon

Protect me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the LORD, "You are my Lord;
I have no good apart from you."

The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.

I bless the LORD who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
I keep the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
--Psalm 16: 1-2,5,7-8,11
June 9 is the feast day of St.Colmcille