Language is everything.

In the hyper-fast world of electronic media, terms and definitions have their meanings altered and distorted as the need arises.

To whit:

200 people are blown up in a building in Basra during an air strike. That's a hell of a lot of people, too many to just deny as accidental, "collateral" deaths. The US makes up a really amazing story about 200 members of a "terrorist death squad" meeting in a building in Basra to "plan attacks upon coalition forces." Acting upon timely "intelligence," fighters and bombers leap to the air and drop tons of ordnance on the building, demolishing it and killing everyone inside.

Hurrah!

Terrorist Death Squad Members Are Dismembered!

That was a few days ago.

Today, the British government, whose forces are largely in control of the areas surrounding Basra, has re-characterized those inside the building as "Baath Party Members," now dismembered, of course. A blow for the old empire, to be certain.

Language is everything.

If those men killed were officers in the military, or even civil servants, then the Brits will be telling the truth in the strict reductionist sense, as all of them would have been members, now dismembered, of the Baath Party. When they mutated from being dismembered members of a Terrorist Death Squad to bog standard members (dismembered) of the ruling Baath Party, we shall never know.

In fact, language continues to take a very odd turn in Iraq and the airwaves carrying the war to the rest of us.

It seems there are very few civilians in Iraq at all, judging by the pictures and the commentary. Tanks, planes, and many many explosions, but very few civilians, and then only when they are dead, and them only if they are proven to be dead by hands other than our own. That Baghdad marketplace remains a shining example of how odd things can become. In the minutes following the breaking of that story, officials at CENTCOM had already floated a story that Iraq had done it to themselves, even though a near continuous bombing and missile campaign had been going on at the time. Later, when they'd had a bit of time to think, they floated a new rendition of the same story, claiming that some sort of mysterious Iraqi missile had misfired and fallen back to earth. Except there were multiple craters in the street there, so several missiles simultaneously misfired, fell back to earth, and killed civilians.

A few points can be awarded for sheer chutzpah, as those same officials at CENTCOM took a cursory look at a grainy videotape of the blasted market and strewn (and yes, dismembered) bodies and declared with shiny confidence that the bomb craters were "inconsistent with US munitions." Are you fucking kidding me?

Language is everything.

There is no Iraqi military left, except for those who surrender when we tell them to.

The rest have all been relegated to a whole host of new categories, churned out again by those boys at CENTCOM. I suppose they have little else to do - they don't fight themselves, they don't release any real, factual information to the press, and their self-importance can be contained for only so long. Any man with a gun and not in full Iraqi uniformed regalia is called, at the very least, an "irregular." In some cases, this might be true. Men might have been run off their land by the bombs or advancing troops, or terrified of the coming invasion of their homeland, brutal dictator or not. They may well be Iraqi soldiers whose uniforms have worn out or no longer fit, and for which there are no replacements. Sounds hilarious, but it is likely true. Think Confederate soldiers in America - no two dressed anything alike, because what little resources they had went to guns and food.

Then there are the "paramilitaries". These were mostly "irregulars" in the first week of the war, but "paramilitaries" is a more loaded term, denoting a kind of lawlessness or shifting loyalty. This is applied in order to cut them off from any association with the nation of Iraq. If they are not true soldiers of the country, then they are one step closer to terrorists, and much easier to kill, or torture, etc.

Last, we have my favorite, "Terrorist Death Squad."

This is also a loose term, highly loaded, with a shifting and ever-broadening definition. If the war does not end in a few more days or so, everyone in Iraq who is obviously not a combatant will be a member (potentially dismembered) of a "Terrorist Death Squad." Under the current definition, these people were called the Fedayeen until two or three days ago, when CENTCOM, they of the spiffy clean uniforms, came up with their new moniker. The new name came right when legitimate doubts about the war were springing up, and there is nothing like the word "terrorist" to cloud the issue and reset the American jaw.

Fedayeen, as I understand it, means "devoted to a cause" or "to die for a cause." These soldiers are sworn to Saddam Hussein himself, a grave error in judgment in my view. I understand them to be a fanatical personal military guard. They are not bound by military commanders in the field but by Hussein himself. This is neither shocking nor all that unusual, nor does it rise to "terrorist" as the word has come to be popularly defined in the West after the events of September 11, 2001. Thus far, they have been accused of all manner of crimes by the US military, but there is no evidence whatsoever for any of it, and a military command that will stretch reality to avoid taking responsibility for civilian deaths while bombing a city full of them is the least likely source of truthful information. The media that reports the war here relies entirely upon that military command structure and its political masters for information, so they also disqualify themselves. Point being, all of the horrors attributed to the Fedayeen (who are pretty small in number - they must run really fast to get all over the country to perform that much mayhem) or some or none of them may turn out to be true - but our government has gone right ahead and behaved in its usual irresponsible way and applied the appellation "Terrorist Death Squad" to them, dehumanizing them, making it easier to kill them. Thus, "liberation."

Thirty years ago it was "pacification."

Language is everything.

And on the subject of war crimes.

Enough already. The Red Cross has determined that both the US and the Iraqis violated the terms of the Geneva Convention in filming and airing films of captured prisoners. As for the repeated fairy tales of US soldiers who were first captured and them executed - it has not been shown to be true, and likely it is not. The Brits had made the same accusation about two of their own, which has since been withdrawn by British military command, though not Tony Blair. Disgusting, really, that he would use two families' pain for propaganda purposes. Not bad enough they were killed in war, no, they had to be led to believe there loved ones had been captured, tortured, and executed. Tony really has become a little follow-along lapdog for the Shrub, hasn't he?

The final hilarity, in the most morbid of senses, to all of this war crimes talk, is His Shrubness threatening to try anyone else filming American POWs as war criminals. My question would have to be: In what venue? The US pulled out of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, set up specifically to deal with war crimes and other major issues between nations. No doubt he'll label everyone who pisses him off an "unlawful combatant dismembered member of a terrorist pretzel squad" and relegate them to a purgatory of listening to him read aloud every evening.

Pearls And Swine

Richard Perle has resigned from his position as head of a panel advising the Pentagon on national security matters. Perle, one of the largest chickenhawks in the barnyard, was a principal author of the doctrine that put American in Iraq. He was also working for the criminal enterprise popularly known as Global Crossing, advising it how to profitably sell itself to Chinese or Singaporean investors. A government panel will ultimately have to approve the sale, and the current Secretary of Offense, the ever-pithy Donald Rumsfeld, sits upon that panel.

In Right wing circles of logic, this situation is known as "an appearance of impropriety," as opposed to actual impropriety, an occurrence never seen in such classes. The remedy is simple, easy, and ridiculously effective: Mr. Perle resigns from leading the panel, but remains a member of it, where he can retain control; declares that no illegal or unethical behavior took place; Mr. Rumsfeld seconds the motion, and all is well. This is known as "pre-emption," a doctrine recently established in conservative classes in the wake of Enron and, oh yes, Global Crossing. Being a new doctrine, few have learned to adopt it in timely manner, allowing scandals to fester in the press and public eye, giving the notion that businessmen and government officials, oftentimes one and the very same, do not behave in ethical or legal ways at all times. Shocking notions, we understand, but what do you expect from "the little people?"

To Mr. Perle's credit, he saw the coming difficulties and applied the proper cosmetic therapies. He's so clever that he has solemnly vowed to donate all monies he has made from his association with Global Crossing and its business before the US government to the families of the servicemen slaughtered in the war of his own conception. Were I of those families, I'd hold Mr. Perle down on the ground and force him to eat every last dirty dollar and beg my forgiveness.

====================

In 1991 there were half a million US fighting men and women in the Persian Gulf to expel Iraqi military forces from Kuwait, then a Kingdom, now a ...kingdom, yeah.

In 2003 there were just over 200,000 US troops to invade and conquer all of Iraq, overthrow its dictator, and install a stable democracy for the future.

Hmmmm.

In the run up to war many American officials and former officials went on TV to talk about the coming invasion "if it happens." Voices ringing with confidence they told us our troops would prevail, that Iraqi troops would surrender in droves or put up no more than a token fight, and the people across Iraq would rejoice at our coming. These words came from high American military officials (they of all people ought to know better than to shoot off their mouths like that), former officials friendly to the Shrubites, and the Shrubites themselves, all the way up to and including none other than the person of the Vice Resident himself. Speaking on Meet The Press, which ought to be renamed Licking Administration Ass, Father Cheney gave class and intoned The Word, and received wisdom became that this would go quickly, that the people of Iraq wanted us to invade and save them from Hussein, that, in the final analysis, this war would not be about weapons of mass destruction (there aren't any of consequence), or UN resolutions (the US is highly selective about which ones to enforce), or oil (oh no, not oil, never. If not, then why is Cheney's old company, Halliburton, now reaping a billion dollar contract in Iraq before the war has even ended?); but about the liberation of the Iraqi people.

And it would be easy. Over and over Cheney directly implied that it would be easy, as did many others in power, those who would actually be in position to send young Americans to die. They were lying, all of them, and they knew it.

Political support for the war would not hold forever without any actual fighting.

The 2004 campaign season is not far off, and the Shrubites don't want to be running for re-election with hostilities still in progress.

This time the Iraqi military, much depleted after the Iran-Iraq war, the Gulf war, and twelve years of sanctions, would be on its home territory, fighting for its life, its homes and families, its pride. This is the "X" factor, so to speak, that must be accounted for, and which Americans may not well understand since our country has not seen foreign forces on the ground in nearly 200 years. So our leaders sold the war as being an easy thing, a cakewalk, a fucking video game, abandoning recent American military doctrine of overwhelming force, which, if you are getting into fighting and killing in the first place, makes a certain sense.

So now over 100,000 new troops are on their way to the area in what has been euphemistically tagged a "reallocation," carefully avoiding the term "reinforcements," as if there were something wrong with that idea. Perhaps the Shrubites ought to have handled the diplomacy with better care, getting more countries with actual forces to contribute on board, instead of this laughable "coalition," where countries most cannot locate on a map lend their name in return for "considerations." Perhaps Turkey could have been dealt with differently, and all of those troop that were supposed to be available from the start would be in country now and not in airplanes on their way over from the states.

Best of all would be to end this foolishness and support the troops by bringing them home where they belong.

By the way, the popular canard today is if you are anti-war you must be pro-Saddam.

By those lights, if you are pro-war, you are anti-peace...

Good news, we didn't get blown away by a tornado - cloud cover socked in early, so with a single boom of thunder, we had lashing winds and rain all night long.

There go all of the pretty blossoms on the trees and half of the topsoil in my yard.

*sigh*

Here is a lovely lovely story that outlines the incestuousness of Neo-conservative politics, the very engine driving this administration and its wars both foreign and domestic.

whup whup whup whup whup whup whup...

"Saigon."

"Shhhhiiiiiit."

This is the end

Beautiful friend...



I was cleaning out some assorted MP3's today and came across the opening track of Apocalypse Now, that haunting rendition of The Door's The End that begins with the sound of helicopter blades whup-whup-whupping by. Accidental, but appropriate. That film, with all of its warts and problems, does illustrate in stark manner the euphemistic vocabulary that the Pentagon has crafted and put into play to describe the daily horros of war. "Pacification" in Vietnam meant nothing of the kind, and the now infamous but still popular "collateral damage" was created to explain in meaningless terms that B-52's dropping tons of bombs through the clouds in the general vicinity of a transponder might not actually know the difference between "charlie" and "friendlies." For the most part, the Pentagon cared little either way.

So it goes today. Turns out that Tomohawk cruise missiles travelling at 500 miles per hour aren't always as "precise" as the War Planners and Propagandists would have us believe. Bombs loosed from their moorings on aircraft sometimes do not respond to their guidance systems and crash through the rooves of homes, exploding and killing civilians. More to the point, the overall targeting strategy, contrary to Bush administration claims, involves widespread heavy bombing of large parts of Baghdad, which is filled with civilians. By definition, they are targets, even if the bombs don't actually have their individual names painted on them. The US media and the Pentagon are not even speculating on the numbers of Iraqi caualties thus far, military or civilian, claiming that "the Iraqi government has not released such figures." Of course, the Iraqi government has released such figures, sometimes branded as estimates, and while they do occasionally get mentioned, they are followed by an official US denial of their accuracy. Then, we start all over again. US officials have their own military estimates for Iraqi deaths, but they sit on them, and the media for the most part will not report them in any serious or useful way - it is considered to be "bad for morale." That type of decision, in and of itself, disqualifies anyone taking it from being a journalist or news organization and relegates them to propagandist. Himmler and Goebbels would be proud.

Sad to say, the best TV reporting so far is coming through C-SPAN, which has been running news shows from Canada, Lebanon, and the BBC. To be sure, this is still not saying much, but how revealing it is that the BBC's coverage covers so much more ground than the US coverage, even though they have far fewer people in the field and fewer resources to draw from. Watching the Beeb's reporting and then US TV reporting, one might almost forget the Brits are involved in the war...

But they are. Shame on Tony Blair.

A further note on the deaths in the Baghdad marketplace, caused by an errant missile or three. US officials began floating the story immediately after the explosion that the missile was Iraqi in origin. They had zero evidence to support this claim, and still have no basis for it, but continue to make it. These are the same officials that are constantly telling reporters to "watch what they say," blah blah blah.

Now we know why.

The story that seven US servicemen who were killed and their bodies moved and videotaped were in fact executed continues to be bandied about by all the major media, high US government officials, and the military. This is the attack wherein five other servicemen were taken prisoner and videotpaed while being interviewed, sparking a show of outrage from same said officials. I have not seen the dreaded tapes, nor have I read or seen anything that even hints that those killed did not die as a result of combat. If anyone has anything, lemme know.

Til then, I'm gonna batten down the hatches and keep the National Weather service site up. :)

This is tornado country, and we've already had a few earlier this month. Seems like the atmospheric stew is brewing again today. Yesterday, it reached 66 degrees here and was extremely dry, so dry there was an extreme fire danger advisory for the entire state of Oklahoma, still in effect this morning. By dawn it was near freezing but now, at just past noon, it is 73 degrees with a 30mph south wind, and the humidity is climbing - I can feel it down the back of my neck. As the day continues to heat, the possibility of severe weather increases, and out here on the Southern Plains the thunderstorms are immense, powerful and scary - just ask my cats. Their fur gets all ruffled and they run around the house searching for safety and accepting no comfort.

It has been reported this morning that a stray missile strike of one or more missiles hit a non military target in the city of Baghdad, killing 15 civilians.

The Washington Post article reporting this incident characterizes it as "the first major incident in nearly a week of war in which civilians died as a result of a U.S. airstrike error." If that is the case, then earlier incidents in which houses were blown to smithereens (is it smaller than a smither?) along with their occupants must have qualified as "targets of opportunity."

A brief note on this Coalition Of The Willing thing.

Official Whining

It is said in America "nobody likes a whiner."

I'm thinking I could not possibly agree more.

Having spent the many months since September 11 crafting a framework to justify an invasion of Iraq, then using and discarding every accepted standard of international behavior to get other nations to sign on (and failing miserably), the Bush administration pushed ahead with its war. The opening salvos were so bold, ingenious, exciting, and made for good TV. No one seemed to be getting killed on either side at first, and for an America so casualty-averse, what else could be better? Alas, it did not last. The inevitable accidents began taking lives, then soldiers were actually killed by an enemy thought and said to be hapless and helpless in the face of American technology and know-how. Next thing we as a nation know there are prisoners of war appearing on TV stations that our giant media conglomerates don't own, so we can't make them stop running the tapes. Gruesome images are allegedly shown - dead bodies in American military uniforms - immediately said to have been "executed," later discovered to have been killed in battle. The prisoners have cuts and bruises and appear shaken.

No shit.

And the whining begins. First the Iraqis are berated for violating the Geneva Conventions by filming prisoners of war and showing them on TV. The US attempts to use the same Conventions they went through so many bizarre legal contortions to avoid in taking prisoners in Afghanistan and elsewhere purely for propaganda purposes. Too bad, so sad. I remember the pictures of those prisoners on their knees, hands cuffed behind their backs, eyes covered, gagged, out in the sun. Maybe they were bad folks, maybe not. The treatment they were getting at Guantanamo violated the Geneva Conventions then and now, so quit fucking whining.

An additional note about this subject: there are still over 650 people being held at Guantanamo, some of them for well over a year. It is also worth noting that in the larger "War On Terror" (or "Tara" as our Fearless Leader would say), the government has stripped USA citizens of their citizenship rights in order to advance its own agenda, arresting and detaining them. In one case, blowing one up in the back seat of a car without so much as an apology later.

That, my friends, is summary execution without a trial.

More Whining:

They Don't All Wear Uniforms

Apparently some Iraqi soldiers are not wearing uniforms, which CENTCOM seems to think is patently unfair. How dare they deviate from the script? Not only have they failed to wear the appropriate costume, but they have also gone so far off the rails that they refuse to stand in front of the oncoming tanks and get flattened or simply surrender in droves and on cue. Shocking, I say. No, some have chosen to get out of harm's way as the mechanized divisions race across the desert, then ambush supply trucks, hampering the American forces as much as they can. While it will only delay the inevitable, from the crying coming out of CENTCOM and duly repeated in the lapdog media, one would think that these ragtag bunches of fighters had summoned big bad Satan hisself to repel the invaders, rather than applying the time honored tactics of a vastly overmatched force. The Russians did this sort of thing during the Wehrmacht drive to Moscow and it worked to some extent. Other forces have done the same thing.

Oh, yeah, I seem to recall how put out the British military once was when Americans refused to stand in picket lines and fire their weapons.

Quit fucking whining.

Go see my friend Chris.
Very cool guy, an enduring friend to me, and the only person I've met in life that even begins to fulfill the true definition of the term "renaissance man." He's interested in everything, and can do all sorts of things.

Check him out.

Oscars Finally Get Interesting:

Finally.

I'm sick of all that self-congratulatory garbage dressed up in nauseating pomp and circumstance. This year, two things came together to make the Academy Awards worth more than a cursory glance.

The first was the decision to have Steve Martin host. His acerbic wit and biting jokes about Hollywood and the critters that populate it were welcome in my house, where a flag-waving, praise-god-and-america ceremony would have been an affront. I think few in the audience were entirely aware of just how cutting his comments were, though after one particularly nasty jibe the camera caught Diane Lane with a hand to her mouth saying "Oh my God."

Yup.

And there was Michael Moore, who refused to play the "somber and serious" game in the Hollywood vein, choosing instead to use the forum to open his mouth and say exactly what was on his mind. Having won an oscar for his brilliant film "Bowling For Columbine," he took the stage with all of the other nominess joining him, and gave these remarks:

"On behalf of our producers Kathleen Glynn and Michael Donovan from Canada, I'd like to thank the Academy for this.

I have invited my fellow documentary nominees on the stage with us, and we would like to — they're here in solidarity with me because we like nonfiction.

We like nonfiction and we live in fictitious times.

We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elects a fictitious president.

We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.

Whether it's the fictition of duct tape or fictition of orange alerts we are against this war, Mr. Bush.

Shame on you, Mr. Bush, shame on you.

And any time you got the Pope and the Dixie Chicks against you, your time is up.

Thank you very much. "

--------

Bravo, Michael, for defying Ari Fleischer and reminding all of us to keep questioning, keep speaking up for the truth.

Bloggus Interruptus:

Though this little rantspace is just getting going, I'll be interrupting myself to go into the hospital on the 31st of March.

I have the pleasure of being an epileptic, and as yet, medication therapy has been just shy of useless. Add in the expense and the lovely side effects, and it falls well below the threshold of stunningly useless.

So, I shall be hooked up to an EEG, microphone, and video surveillance cameras for five straight days without pause, locked in a tiny room with myself as the meds are with held in an attempt to provoke seizures to better understand their origin. The concept is to use this information to formulate a basis for a more aggressive treatment.

Yes, that includes brain surgery, so to speak. I shall be lobotomized and reduced to the role of play-friend for Georgie W.

NewsSpews

An unidentified correspondent for one of the CableSpews networks, in conversation with the anchor during the so-called "shock and awe" bombing of Baghdad:

"It's like an adventure movie, but it's real!"



NetworkSpews slogan:

"When news of the war breaks out, we'll break in."

- Dan Rather, CBS News.

3/21/03

So I'm watching Star Search, of all things, on CBS. Rachel (my fiance) likes it and it's refreshing to see talented people do their thing without ego baggage. Arsenio Hall remains one of the most annoying people ever born, but in an endearingly, fungus-like way. 

Then Dan Rather appears on my screen, telling me air raid sirens have gone off in Baghdad. Nothing happens, a live picture is put up, which shows a stunted cityscape from a low rooftop. I could hear, then see the occasional car go by near the bottom of the screen. Dan must not have been paying too much attention, as he was talking about seeing lights in the sky as reported by David Chater from SkyNews, perhaps anti-aircraft fire, then another little van goes by on the screen, and Dan says, "what's that noise?" and

"BANG!"

There's this unholy explosion and Dan can be heard in the roaring backwash saying "Holy..." to himself before recovering long enough to echo what I had just spoken aloud in my living room: "That's incoming."

So we're off.

The bit about the initial strike being a target of opportunity to take out Hussein is bunk - it's part of the get-out-of-town-in-48-hours-or-else mentality, just to show we weren't kidding. It also was a good way to get the TV part of the war started. The simultaneous operation in Afghanistan? My cynical side says it is also PR related, a way to prove that the Bushies can chase terroristas and take on big bad Saddam at the same time. CSPAN picked up the BBC, which had a brilliant piece late last night about the effect of the Iran/Iraq war, the Gulf beating, and twelve years of sanctions and isolation on Iraq's ability to maintain a working military. They haven't much with which to defend themselves, which, given that it has come to the inevitable violence, is a good thing. The quicker it ends, hopefully, the fewer lives are lost.

The NCAA tournament started today. CBS has gone to 24 hour a day war slaughter coverage so the games have been moved to ESPN. I take pleasure in this orgy of basketball each year, and have vowed to limit myself to no more than two minutes of TV coverage of the illegal invasion every two hours, and very little on the Web. There won't be much real information to digest, and all of the military hardware fetishism displayed on TV fails to give me the hardon it is designed to, and the Web news is mostly all variations on exactly the same small crumbs. I can't do the September 11 overload again - I feel quite sick already.