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Danny |
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As
a result of all the goings-on in Washington and Baghdad about how well
the war is going or not going, or whether we knew enough before we went
to war, or when this nightmare will end, I strolled down to my local
bookseller to try to find something to explain it all to me.
Of course this being Southern California, I didn’t actually
stroll, I drove. And also,
this being the megalopolis, what we actually have are those concrete
bunkers called malls anchored by those huge chain stores and nationally
known bookstores, so I was unable to find an independent local
bookseller. What
I did find was the section with those yellow and black covered “For Dummies” books- -you know- -Weight
Lifting For Dummies, Nose
Picking For Dummies, Jell-O
Molds For Dummies, TV Remotes For Dummies, Gargling For Dummies, Toenail Clipping For
Dummies, and of course, Ventriloquism
For Dummies.
I was looking for the one the White House has been using- -Intelligence
For Dummies. That’s
the one where they don’t have to bother the CIA or other government
agencies whose sole job it is to provide the White House with salient
information, also known as intelligence. I
couldn’t find it. Almost
every day for weeks now, new pronouncements are made about the progress
in Iraq and how all is going so well.
Yet almost every day for weeks and weeks- -months actually- -we
have a new casualty or two reported.
More Americans have now been killed and wounded since the
“Mission Accomplished” Fly-Boy photo-op aboard the USS Lincoln back
in May when Space Commander Bush did the “macho strut” to the podium
in his G I Joe Halloween costume to proclaim “Reelect me”- -or
rather, “We won”, to a national television audience as the sun set
on the azure blue Pacific, than were killed during the so-called war. And azure surely aware by now, the Lincoln was circling just
off shore so it could be in position to give America those fabulous
campaign, or rather, victory photos of a president crowing about himself
and his “mission accomplished”.
Better than kissing babies.
Except for one thing: the
mission is not accomplished, and at the rate things are going, it may
never be. New
reports from Britain, France, Germany, Spain and other countries, as
well as the US, indicate that the Muslim “Angry Young Man” is headed
for Iraq the way hippies went to San Francisco for the “Summer of
Love” in the 60s. Or the
way Young Urban Professionals- -yuppies- -migrate from New York to
London to Los Angeles or Tokyo, depending on where the hip
place-of-the-moment is. Of
course intelligence sources that pontificate on such matters are never
identified. One New
York Times story cites “intelligence officials” or a “senior
British official” or “senior American officials” and the like-
-always without any way of knowing how much of this is all smoke and
mirrors. Well, we’ve “senior” act.
And what we’ve seen is highly sophisticated attacks in Baghdad
and elsewhere. A
recent story in the Times by
Douglas Jehl states: “Saddam
Hussein may be playing a significant role in coordinating and directing
attacks by his loyalists against American forces in Iraq, senior
American officials said Thursday.
The officials cited recent
intelligence reports indicating that Mr. Hussein is acting as a
catalyst or even a leader in the armed opposition, probably from a base
of operations near Tikrit, his hometown and stronghold. A leadership
role by Mr. Hussein would go far beyond anything previously acknowledged
by the Bush administration, which has sought in its public remarks to
portray the former Iraqi leader as being on the run and irrelevant.
Officials acknowledged that
the reports of a significant role by Mr. Hussein could not be
corroborated, and one senior official cautioned that recent intelligence
reports contained conflicting assessments.” (Italics mine.) So
what does this really mean? Perhaps
we could best sum up by saying “We don’t know spit about what’s
going on. We are clueless. We
are operating in the dark.” Make
up your own analogy. The
CIA has been cut out of the loop by the White House, which has gone
elsewhere overseas to collect intelligence.
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s ranking Democrat Jay
Rockefeller (D-WV) has indicated that after looking at tens of thousands
of pages of intelligence documents, it seems the CIA was responsible for
pre-war judgements that were “unfounded, thinly sourced or lacked
adequate caveats”. Senator
Rockefeller said it appears the administration has been collecting
intelligence “without the knowledge of the Central Intelligence
Agency, the State Department or anybody else” in the intelligence
community. The
former Governor of New Jersey, Republican Thomas H Kean, heads a federal
commission looking into the terrorist attacks of 9-11.
He said recently that he is being stonewalled by the White House
in his attempt to collect intelligence documents for the commission’s
investigation. He said also
that he will take the White House to court to get the material he needs
for his investigation. What
we have here, as Strother Martin so aptly put it, “is failure to
communicate”. The White House has just cut out everybody in an attempt to
have their war their way and the rest of us can take a hike- -oh, except
for paying for it. Hike this! Well,
it’s Halloween party season, and as David Letterman so aptly put it,
“George Bush is going dressed as a one-term president.”
For the sake of us all, let’s hope so.
If we continue to “stay the course” he will bankrupt us with
his blood feud to avenge Poppy, alienate the civilized world against us
and lead us into the “valley of the shadow of death”.
Maybe not that bad, but it sure won’t be easy to recover. Okay, I’ve got to go pick out my costume. I think I’ll go dressed as a Wolf-a-Witch.
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