WomenPowerPeace

While you were out...

While you were in Iraq -- breaking things and killing people; securing oil and enriching Halliburton; creating a training ground for terrorists and not catching bin Laden -- other countries were busy doing other things.

For example, says Thom Friedman:

China did not build the magnificent $43 billion infrastructure for these games, or put on the unparalleled opening and closing ceremonies, simply by the dumb luck of discovering oil. No, it was the culmination of seven years of national investment, planning, concentrated state power, national mobilization and hard work.

Seven years ... Seven years ... Oh, that’s right. China was awarded these Olympic Games on July 13, 2001 — just two months before 9/11.

As I sat in my seat at the Bird’s Nest, watching thousands of Chinese dancers, drummers, singers and acrobats on stilts perform their magic at the closing ceremony, I couldn’t help but reflect on how China and America have spent the last seven years: China has been preparing for the Olympics; we’ve been preparing for Al Qaeda. They’ve been building better stadiums, subways, airports, roads and parks. And we’ve been building better metal detectors, armored Humvees and pilotless drones.

The difference is starting to show. Just compare arriving at La Guardia’s dumpy terminal in New York City and driving through the crumbling infrastructure into Manhattan with arriving at Shanghai’s sleek airport and taking the 220-mile-per-hour magnetic levitation train, which uses electromagnetic propulsion instead of steel wheels and tracks, to get to town in a blink.

Your tax dollars... at... work?

What can you buy for $85 billion?

Well, one choice would be: 34,208,306 People with Health Care for One Year.

Or, we could kiss it goodbye and send it to wealthy contractors who are making egregious profits on the Iraq war.

The US government paid out 85 billion dollars in four years to contractors providing services to various government agencies in support of the Iraq war and reconstruction, a survey showed Tuesday.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report said the administration of US President George W. Bush awarded 85-billion-dollars in contracts between 2003 and 2007, or over 21 billion dollars annually.

CBO researchers found that the funds paid out to government contractors, including security, transportation and engineering contractors and administration specialists among others, accounted for almost 20 percent of the total funding for Washington's operations in Iraq during this period.

The other moment I cried at the movies

Well, Peter Berg is da bomb. "Friday Night Lights" is AWESOME. "Hancock" is the most fun I've had at the movies in, like, years. His women kick ass; they're interesting and smart and strong, and not all barbie dolls.

And then there's "The Kingdom." Which I enjoyed -- tense, smart, good action (things blow up real good).

And then there's the last line of the movie. Which blew the lid off the whole damn thing.

We see the parallel stories of two people who've lost loved ones to violence in the "war on terror" -- one in the U.S. and one in Saudi Arabia. One American, one Muslim. And in the wake of that loss, that sorrow, that violence, someone has whispered something to them that stopped their crying. And we find out what it was. After the terrorist attack, then the American military response. Love? Comfort?

"We will kill them all."

Damn.

When I cried at the movies this summer

Your standards get mighty low when you're seeking an hour and a half of passive entertainment for your kids. Just an hour and a half when you don't have to cook chatter craft coax ... engage.

So we see 'em all, every damn thing that shows up at a movie theater anywhere that's not rated R or full of adult sadness...

And you know how they are - you go to the movies. You can nap through half, laugh out loud a few times, enjoy the surety of the happy ending, wait for the song during the credits...

So there I am watching "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants - 2" (BTW, the first one traumatized one of my kids by NOT delivering the happy ending) -- and the gorgeous first world young women are trying to grapple with their gorgeous first world problems -- and all of a sudden I'm in tears.

The beautiful Iranian actress Shohreh Aghdashloo mutters a few words about having lost loved ones in "this bloody war," and it slices through the movie like a knife.

I'm stunned every day by how profoundly we do not feel the reality of what that administration has done. Here, certainly; but in Iraq, especially. I'm baffled by this. People get outraged when gas costs $4 a gallon, but shrug when we drop bombs on innocents.

I dunno. It makes me sad. Then I take the girls to "Shrek 83," and all's well again...

Can we possibly get out of Iraq without making things worse?

We sure need to figure it out, and pronto. Fortunately, some smart folks are dedicating some time and energy to asking the hard questions and coming up with some good answers.

Task Force for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq Report here | New York Times editorial here
A report from our friends at Commonwealth Institute.
We need to leave; but how do we do so without creating a huge mess? As the NYT says: "two new reports... are asking those far more complicated questions. They have differences, especially on the timing of withdrawal, but they point the debate in the right direction."

The dark truth about Skittles and Freedom. Chocolate and Oil.

So many things I don't understand. Chief among em: why do kids prefer Skittles to dark chocolate? And why do Americans fail to understand why we went to war in Iraq?

Okay, we're good people and all: patriots! citizens! We love our country, we love our leaders, we love our troops. So we want to believe in it all! We want to respect our president and believe the rhetoric about freedom and only put our young men and women in danger for a good cause.

But really. Skittles? Freedom? Is it that they deliver the sugar so fast and so intensely that you get no room for doubt?

The truth is emerging slowly but surely... that we went to war for the dark stuff... Bill Moyers weighs in today...

The Iraq War Was About Oil, All Along

No wonder American troops only guarded the Ministries of Oil and the Interior in Baghdad, even as looters pillaged museums of their priceless antiquities. They were making sure no one could get at the oil except ... guess who?

Here's a recent headline in The New York Times: "Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back." Read on: "Four western companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concession to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power."

There you have it. After a long exile, Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP are back in Iraq. And on the wings of no-bid contracts -- that's right, sweetheart deals like those given Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater. The kind of deals you get only if you have friends in high places. And these war profiteers have friends in very high places.

When in doubt, revert to frat pranks

He doesn't want moms who've lost their kids in the Iraq war to see him playing golf.

But apparently they won't mind seeing him bump chests with other soldiers who are about to become cannon fodder.

Or, you know, tap dancing; bike riding; giggling...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2050467/George-W-Bush-bumps-chests-with-graduate.html

John Bolton's mustache makes more sense than he does

The BBC interviewed him today (~9am on the east coast). Sheesh. Remember when we put up a fuss when W nominated him for the UN? I didn't realize, at the time, that he was quite such a nitwit.

The Iraq war, he says, is a success. Why? Because Saddam Hussein is dead. Ah. So THAT was that was about. And if you don't agree, you're a "neo-fascist." Ah. Excellent debate.

So the intrepid BBC woman pursued for a bit, saying (among other things, like 4000 soldiers dead) "people are afraid to go to the shops." And he said -- seriously -- "you want to be able to go to the shops but live in a dictatorship?"

Oh, silly people. You want food before freedom? You want not to watch your children get blown up, malnourished, uneducated rather than watch them exercise free speech?

It would all be easier to swallow, this blather about liberty and freedom and liberty and freedom, if the major mouthpieces were not rich white old men who have gotten richer (and older and whiter?) as a DIRECT RESULT OF THIS WAR.

BTW, if your kids have ever had head lice (I extend my sympathy), you know just how tiny nits are. And how much you come to dislike their tenacity and their bloodsucking. And THAT is why Bolton is called a nitwit.

I swear I am not making this up

In case you don't believe that W understands what it means to lose a loved one in a war, there's this.

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Bush said in a White House interview with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

In related news, he gave up luxury yachting in solidarity with the dead children in China's earthquake region; and skydiving for the homeless in Myanmar.

However, he's still willing to keep sending these signals: tap dancing at a press conference, and taking the most vacation days of any American President. Ever.

See "The Vacation President":

President Bush famously, if unjustifiably, casts himself as Ronald Reagan's disciple. But in at least one way, he has surpassed his master.

According to the meticulous records kept by CBS Radio White House correspondent Mark Knoller, Bush on Monday (March 2008) lodged his 879th day spent in whole or in part at Camp David or his sprawling estate in Crawford, Tex.

By comparison, the 40th president only -- only! -- spent all or part of 866 days at Camp David or his ranch in California during his eight years in office, according to the Reagan Library. (By my count, Bush actually beat Reagan's mark on Dec. 30, during his Christmas vacation in Crawford.)

It's true: More troops are effective. Martial law is effective. SO?

OF COURSE violence decreased as the number of troops increased. Wouldn't it have been absolutely bizarre if not?

Martial law is quite effective at squashing street crime. If troops/police are crawling all over the streets, it is more difficult to make trouble.

So -- how does that get us in a better position to draw down those troops? Has anything ELSE changed? Things have gotten worse, I guess that's a change.

So -- we'll just stay. and stay. and stay.

And since this works, let's start drafting all young men and women, and make a dandy standing police force that can hold the whole world together.