...but this from Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo makes interesting reading, if you find prognostication interesting, that is.
One of the nasty ironies of the current situation is how bad news for Team Bush can't unfortunately feel like good news for the rest of us. There ought to be some pleasure to be had in the fact that Cheney's assurances to his boss -- viz., that Saddam would fold faster than Superman on laundry day* -- are not being borne out tidily by events.
But, of course, no unmasking of the arrogance and folly of the administration's war fever is worth more people on both sides dying. As was recently said over on MetaFilter, "sometimes there is more to be held onto than well-worn schadenfreude." The failure of the hawks' grand design would, now, it appears, have effects worse than that long-term damage which would accompany its unqualified success. Not to mention the small fact that every day of this war, simply put, kills people.
Kee-rist.
*phrase per B. Simpson.
Some of you may remember the quizly disaster that ensued when I posted a misspelled word with classical originas origins and asked for its meaning. Wombats don't look any better with egg on their faces than do other creatures; hence it is with trepidation that I return to the lexical field for this week's quiz.
And yet, return I shall. The word which is the subject of today's brain-loosener is more than extremely apt, since it so aptly describes at least one aspect of this venue and your humble editor here. Therefore, after a careful check of source and spelling, without further a-do:
If one is said to be (either generally or in a particular moment) "ultra-crepidarian," what does this mean?
**A note to those taking the etymological approach: the usage of the word we seek is drawn from, but not equivalent to, its literal translation from the language of origin.**
First correct answer posted to comments wins a copy of Hamlet II: Ophelia's Revenge. No Googling, of course, and keep those cheatin' hands away from the OED. You may post as many comments as you like, but only one guess per comment, please.
Wrenching accounts such as this (from Britain's Independent) of the recent destruction of a marketplace in northern Baghdad are hard enough to read; possibly more unpleasant is the concern that it will be tough to get a straight answer out of the U.S. commanders: was it a misdirected American missile which incinerated a bunch of the people we are supposedly liberating?
General Vincent Brooks's answer was not heartening. The Times reports his response as follows:
"We don't know that they were ours. We can't say that we had anything to do with that." He acknowledged that "mistakes can occur," but said that it was too early to know whether an American strike had hit the wrong target. "Right now, we simply don't know," he said.
The counterpoint, General Brooks suggested, was also true — that nobody could be sure that the explosions had not been set off by Iraqis assigned by Mr. Hussein to plant a bomb in a public place and blame the United States for it.
I don't put much past Hussein, but the fact that the General would reflexively trot this out as a balancing possibility is frustrating, if only because it seems so much more likely that, out of the dozens of air strikes on Baghdad carried out in the past days, we'd screw one up. But it's also worrisome, because it suggests a strategy for controlling the narrative about how the war unfolds that could carry into the future. How open and thorough will the process of investigating this event be? Will the Bush administration be willing to own up to the truth, whatever it might be?
Considering that the administration is now rolling back the declassification of documents from a quarter-century ago, and has managed to be so aggressive with regard to secrecy that the response to this move by critics seems to be "well, we were expecting worse," I'm particularly unconfident that we'll get Team Bush to admit to any specific mistakes that lead to civilian deaths.
What game was brought into existence by Lincoln's beard? (via MeFi)
Paul Krugman on the corporate support behind recent "grass roots" anti-anti-war rallies.
(More on Clear Channel here.)
I thought a bit about canceling today's quiz. It seems strange to flutter over our usual nonsense, that the dogs of war have been unleashed and are chomping away.
However, our governor and our mayor suggest we "go about our business," and as nonsense, trivia, ephemera, and misleading detail taken out of context is the business of this weblog, carry on we must. Here, then, is this week's -- appropriately martial -- quiz question.
Iran has a bunch, although Iraq doesn't seem to have any. India has 18, Turkey 15, Greece 10, Egypt 8, Libya 6 and Pakistan 6. North Korea has 25 of these babies. Mostly, they get them from Germany, although some of them come from France and some from China. There are reports that Sweden is trying to sell at least one to Malaysia.
What are they?
The first correct answer posted to comments wins a packet of Oasis brand "Quality you can taste" Hot Sauce. Googling for the answer is a violation of security council resolutions. One guess per comment, although you may comment as often as you like.
THe sounds of the anti-aircarft artillery is still louder than the booms and bangs which means that they are still far from where we live, but the images we saw on Al Arabia news channel showed a building burning near one of my aunts house.... we have two safe rooms one with "international media" and the other with the Iraqi TV on. every body is waitingwaitingwaiting...
--Reporting by Salam Pax of Where is Raed?
It has been heartening to see, at least, passionate debate in Britain's parliament about the coming invasion. The very lack of congressional interest in mounting ANY serious opposition to the Go-It-Alone philosophy of the Bush Administration has been dispiriting, and indeed has felt like a kind of overriding symptom of representative government's weakness in this country, the way a certain kind of ache in the bones suggests flu.
The current thinking among many Democrats on being the party of the loyal opposition? Apparently it's "We might not be co-operating enough."
Officials in both parties say the image of high-profile Democrats challenging President Bush's war policy right up through his address to the nation on Monday — and, in fact, beyond the speech, as was clear here today — could reinforce a perception that Republicans are better suited to deal with threats from abroad.
Should that happen, Democrats say, it could pose a serious obstacle for the party if the White House and Congressional contests in 2004 — unlike the contests of 1992, 1996 and 2000 — are fought out on issues of national security and foreign policy.
So, says the Times, the debate among Democrats is "whether it is appropriate even to criticize Mr. Bush's Iraq policy with the nation almost at war." But given that we've been at various stages of alert and embroiled in a "crisis" with Iraq for months, when would be the time?
But now that sexy pictures of bombs and tanks are filling the news pages, even I'm succumbing to the sense of inevitability. As noxious as that is, I grudgingly admit to having to move on to the question of what's next -- of what we'll do with our new colony, what we'll do to repair the damage to international co-operation, how we'll fight insane tax policy and the infringement on civil rights in the name of security. And all the other junk we have to do.
Somewhere in there we have to figure out how to temper the power that's been assumed by these people who believe that government by fiat is their right.
Yeah. All that stuff.
A break from history, this week --
In the swampland of central Florida, there's a place called "Jumbolair." Well, it's not much of a place yet, but the developer Terri Jones has a dream to take this remote location and make it the primary "fly-in" community for America's jet set. The fabulously wealthy, you see, can land at Jumbolair's extra-long runway and taxi right to their private driveway. There have been several high-end buyers who have purchased lots, but the only new home constructed so far, according to Fortune magazine, has been built by "the only private citizen in the U.S. to own and operate a Boeing 707."
Who is this aviationally unique individual?
First correct answer posted to comments wins a copy of Scott "Bonobo" Williams' personal drink-recipe file. People who Google for the answer ruin the fun for everyone and make the baby Jesus cry tears of befuddled exasperation. One guess per comment, but comment as often as you'd like.
There's an odd trend that's been increasingly visible now for some time, on the covers of all sorts of fiction aimed at women.
The legs-n-feet-no-face conceit is flexible, it would seem, in tone. It's not always particularly racy: sometimes it's just a way to show a gal kicking up her heels or standing firm. Occasionally, there's a memorable twist on an otherwise unremarkable trend. Just the teasing anonymity of the figures persists.
Of course, sometimes the tease is rather more pronounced. I don't know whether you'd say Jennifer Weiner's last hit or her new book has the more attention-getting cover image (neither, of course, competes with this for visual sauciness, nor with Jennifer Belle's two books for a synergy of title with image).
Given that this must be pretty tired for me to be taking note, I think literature should act fast and adopt a new body part trend.
Whiskey Rebellion ahoy! It's another excursion into the rip-roarin' history of the go-it-alone and damn-the-torpedoes Yew Ess of Ay as we move into Year Two of the Wombat File quiz.
Shortly after his father died, he ran away from home in Tenessee and lived with Cherokee tribe members (though he was not one), taking the name Black Raven. He got mixed up in a number of military actions and uprisings, including at least one famous one, and wound up in the end a U.S. Senator for thirteen years -- which he might well have considered a kind of step down from a previously held position.
Who was this curious character?
The first correct answer posted to comments wins a vintage 1917 "Shush" Uncle Sam postcard, a memento of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt museum in Poughkeepsie, New York. No Googling allowed, and no collaborating. One guess per comment, but comment as often as you'd like.
While it is true that (see below) I seem to have little to say these days, I have, happily, been provided with a nice cache of other people's words to get me through the drought. Nothing too back-breaking in the way of ideas and prose style -- all of it suitable for a somewhat sleepy subway ride to work or back, or as an accompaniment to a Saturday morning's coffee and toast.
The only problem: which to finish first? I could continue plowing through a book I picked up quite by accident -- Robert Littell's strangely involving Cold War espionage epic The Company, but after about 400 pages and the transition from brooding, heavy-drinking spooks during the Eisenhower years to cynical, utterly power-mongering conspirators during the Kennedy period, I'm ready for a break (sort of like the emotional exhaustion I felt after James Ellroy's version of the same historical territory.
I'll probably put Littell and his grim Spies-vs.-Spies on hold, because I just got hold of a copy of Alexandra Fuller's Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight. A painfully interesting life, set down with near-perfect pitch. But it's a fast read and I'll be done soon. And though her brief bibliography on African writing reminds me that I want to read this, I've got a backlog right here. Back to the CIA?
Maybe not. After all, this much-ballyhooed piece of historical fiction has been lying around on my desk for months. I've read the first chapter twice, now, and I just can't seem to get into it. Still, I feel I should finish it, right? So...but...
Today I laid hands on an advance copy of this forthcoming book. If you read McManus's riveting hand-by-hand reporting of the World Series of Poker in Harpers', this is the book you've been waiting for. I already cracked it open on the way home from work. Now, how do I make myself go back to the others? God, but I am a faithless tramp of a reader.
A half-strength brain sometimes means a no-content Wombat File, and I apologize to all who've wondered just how a person can get some, you know, service around here. But hey, some fields must be left fallow, that there be renewal in the next planting season. Not that pre-scientific agricultural practices have much to do with my current lack of anything at all to say here, but the lame attempt at metaphor did bring me one sentence closer to something like a post, a small construction of (dare I say it? Yes, I dare) meta-content to tide you over until the more satisfying fare of not-so-meta-content can once again be provided by this closed kitchen, which contains a half-loaf of stale sourdough, a wilted salad in a Tupperware container, five packets of low-sodium soy sauce, and a prematurely opened bottle of tonic water, now gone flat. The cook is dozing in a chair, his head propped absurdly against the empty spice rack.
Come back tomorrow, and I make you something nice, OK?
