Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Thanks David...Gazor..you just have to assume that the effects are
gruesome, and worse than Vietnam in that the puppet forces (pardon my
lingo) are both less reliable--barely trained--totally vulnerable to
attack by the insurgents and when they aren't, almost always suspect.
We don't hear about this much from Iraq where the few reporters left
are embedded with US troops but there was a story in NYTimes a few
weeks ago Dexter Filkins with troops)where they came upon a group of
Iraqi National Guard in Fallujah with the red and white tape on
uniforms as required of loyal troops, who opened fire on the Americans.
I mentioned this way back, but it has the ring of the typical, and
bears repeating.
But actually we are much more in the dark with Iraq than VN. Pix in
papers are almost always US soldiers standing with huge weapons..same
pix, little action.. Never a dead American (pretty true in VN too) and
few dead Iraqis.... You don't see the war happening on the tube like
you did 35 years ago. The coverage is almost totally filtered by the
Pentagon who work thru bureau chiefs in DC), when in VN the Pentagon
was stuck with the five o clock follies. You do better figuring it out
in print, I think, and following news in British papers. 
  

    

Just an aside, Carol, but check this out -- it's a little blog article
about finding photos by soldiers in Iraq via the web:
<http://www.thebishop.net/geodog/archives/2004/10/08/late_night_thoughts_on_bro
wsing_the_iraq_tag_on_flickr.html>

If you try surfing the Iraq tag at Flick right now, you see demonstrations
on the first page, but shots from iraq just a page back.  (It will change
all the time, since it's based on how people choose to describe their 
own pictures.) Like I said, an aside, but an interesting idea of how
information may be able to bypass the old kinds of controls as we get
deeper and deeper into this.
  

    
yes, like that rack of pictures of Navy Seals with Iraqi prisoners in
May 2003 that was posted on the web by a navy wife from her husband's
camera, and made its way to the papers today.
  

    
Exactly.
  

    
it all comes out, or much of it one way or another, but how do you
begin to get on top of it and show the war for what it is? Like maybe
start with Fallujah, and say the city of 250,000 was just bombed to
smithereens to remove an obstacle to the January 30 Elections? 
  

    
If all the doomsayers are right, no-one will require the opposition to
make the case in few years. A genuine national disaster for the United
States in Iraq is going to be very hard to disguise, dissemble or spin.
  

    
what form do you think it might take?
  

    
Quagmire in the mid-east and mounting death toll without any national
policy objectives actually progressing towards accomplishment.
  

    
The other problem I see is that the price of imperial pretentions is
going to be paid in the difficulty we will encounter maintaining a
Western coalition in the coming decades as China emerges as the most
militarized member of the U.N.  Security Council.
  

    
But the huge problem is there's no opposition capable of standing up
to the historic enormity of this collapse, announcing it, so to speak,
and pointing to another direction. Everybody takes bites out of pieces
of the pie--today soldiers grilling Rumsfeld over inadequate armor,
which has never happened before, and Senator Byrd pointing out that the
new 300 page Intelligence bill had 24 hours for the Senate to
consider--and noone grasps the whole thing.  
  

    

> soldiers grilling Rumsfeld over inadequate armor, which has never happened
> before

The right-wing echo chamber is playing that as a "setup" by an evil minion of
the liberal media.
  

    
>soldiers grilling Rumsfeld over inadequate armor

That's quite a metaphor :-)
  

    
But it happened David, and that interview is getting covered
everywhere from London's Financial Times to national newspapers, and is
still being covered--for it contains a real story. US soldiers have
taken their queries to the SecDef, and you know that thanks to email,
troops have grown aware of the suits against the Pentagon's stop/loss
program, the grumbling over economic issues, the awol reports from
Canada, even the story about the 200,000 homeless vets, which now
include some from Iraq. That last has not reached the international
press but it sure reached me. 
  

    
Regarding that question posed to Rumsfeld about the armor, someone
told me something interesting. He said the full tape of the sequence
shows that in between the question and the answer there's a huge roar
of approval from the crowd of soldiers -- they were showing support for
the question, in other words. But we didn't hear the crowd noise in
any of the news reports in the U.S.

If I am remembering right, my friend said he learned this from one of
the British newspapers, perhaps the Guardian. I have no other support
for the story other than his comments. I'd love to know for sure if
it's true. 
  

    

> we didn't hear the crowd noise in any of the news reports in the U.S.

We heard a bit of it in the clip they showed on "The Daily Show."
  

    
Ah. Past my bedtime.
  

    

7am rerun!

Or is it 10 am on regular cable?  Next morning.
  

    
On this page: 
http://www.comedycentral.com/tv_shows/thedailyshowwithjonstewart/videos_headli
nes.jhtml

it's in the video called "F'd Troop".

Someone smarter than me can probably provide a direct link.
  

    
And yes, it's beautiful to see the troops cheer the question.
  

    
(Actually, I heard it on NPR!)
  

    
And did you hear about the reporter who urged the soldier to ask the
question? As if only a reporter could come up with something like that,
never somebody out there fighting.. That cheer said it all.
  

    
So, the next time Rumsfeld talked to the troops he answered a question
planted by his own people.
  

    
No, as it turns out the reporter just gave the soldier some wording.
That question was on everybody's lips, and was as old as the war.
  

    
I agree, with respect to the question about armor for the HMMMVs.
On his surprise Christmas trip (what a treat for the troops!) he
answered much more friendly questions.  Was that fortuitous or
was it arranged?
  

    
I didn't catch that, but it sounds like a set-up.