I don’t know what it is that is a Community Watchdog. Categories are a little funny that way. Should I start watch-dogging my community for the sake of getting my peg correct, or do I look over the list, see that none of them fit, and shrug it off?

Nay. I didn’t come here for that question. I came here because I noticed a blog-entry from an incoming link, which brings us to a ‘heroes’ list of sorts: In no particular order, and with varying levels of love and respect, here are our very favorite Veterans who didn’t let the abomination of war or the regimen of subjugation diminish their humanity or lessen their contribution to our troubled species.

Pat Tilman Paul Riekhoff John Kerry, circa 1971
Jimmy Carter, post 1980 Howard Zinn
Max Cleland Kurt Vonnegut
Ron Kovic Norman Mailer
Smedley Butler Wesley Clark Edward D. Wood Jr.
John McCain Elvis Presley Jackie Robinson
John F. Kennedy Dr. Mary Walker

Hm. Bounces around from the pacifist Howard Zinn (Dear Mr. Zinn: so, in the end, I can’t escape this question with your histories: is there any escape?) to the hawk John McCain (endorsed by the Weekly Standard, lest I remind you). I suppose John McCain’s hawkishness can be tempered with the appreciation that he knows you don’t torture the enemy. The caveats to Jimmy Carter and John Kerry “post 1980” and “circa 1971” are telling — what are the over-bearing influences that strike when a person, presumably motivated by the highest of ideals, actually attains high office? I continue to wonder whether Max Cleland’s high standing in the mind of the Liberal American Democrat isn’t a little… conflated.

I’ve mused over the story of Pat Tillman story before. He turned out to be a propaganda miscue for the Pentagon, a fabricated embellished story of his bravery on the field followed by the revelation that… he was a Noam Chomsky fan. Both Ted Rall and Ann Coulter had to do a mind-contortion when that was uncovered, Ann Coulter’s reaction being simply to deny the duality of such a concept. (It destroys not only the stereotype of the happy warrior, but of a professional jock, which is to say part of the propaganda effort had to do with a sort of conflation of the faux-warrior spirit of the NFL with the real war, and ther personality type that gravitates therein: “a real man” who “is the true American”.) Go figure.

Regarding the Ohio Senate Primary between Sherrod Brown and Paul Hackett … Mother Jones Magazine tossing out a large cover feature on and more or less endorsing Paul Hackett, which In These Times seemed to repond almost directly by doing the same for Sherrod Brown. But the American Prospect asks this question about the race, and the “blogosphere” in general: Given their prospective track-records and the image had of the blogosphere as a pack of ideologues, Why does the ‘liberal blogosphere’ support Paul Hackett over Sherrod Brown, when Sherrod Brown is undoubtedly the more liberal of the two?:

Moreover, Hackett is a friend of the blogs. In our conversation, he told me, “I just like them. I’m not afraid.” It’s a sentiment that may explain blogger Lindsay Beyerstein’s oft-quoted argument for Hackett: “When you get down to brass tacks, Hackett is an invaluable ally — he loves the blogosphere, understands how to harness the power of the blogosphere, and perhaps most importantly, he owes the blogosphere.”

Lindsay, in fact, may be voicing the most rational blogcentric argument for Hackett. The netroots are behaving as an interest group of sorts, supporting not the candidate with the most ideological overlap but the candidate most likely to give them a key to the congressional washroom. And that’s fine. But the question remains, assuming they can help elect Hackett and others like him, what will they demand in return? It’s all well and good to have your calls answered, but is the point really just to chat?

It probably is. That’s all the blogosphere really wants. The Blogging Revolution will end with a Congress, and eventually a president, who spends an inordinate amount of time sitting by a computer, typing out blog-entries at a whim pieced together by, sending out comments to their colleagues’ blogs acting as a mutual admiration society — “What a Great Post, Senator Wyden!”…, and engaging in endless flame-wars across the partisan divide. (Don’t take Reprsentative Schmidt’s bait.)

Paul Hackett may be a unique case study. The Democratic Party didn’t look twice at his race initially: it’s a hopeless cause, write it off to Jean Schmidt and be done with it… he gets no money. Enter the blogs, and by blogs I probably mean daily kos with an echo chamber surrounding it, and that’s who’s financing his campaign. And then… and he nearly wins it. Though, the key word here just might be ‘nearly’, which is to say … he doesn’t quite hurdle over the long odds, and it’s difficult to see him managing to with a second chance.

Second point is that the liberal blogosphere clicks to the idea of squaring round pegs, or getting a Democrat elected in heavily Republican areas. I note something I’ll surmise exists with every frustrated Republican district: “we need to find a Paul Hackett / Brian Schweitzer” — everything would be solved in the 60 – 40 district if only we could bus in either Paul Hackett or Brian Schweitzer, or perferably both.

Paul Hackett, for his part, is doing a bit of political shape-shifting once jumping onto a state-wide race. I spot a bit of political wind-shifting in his stance on the war in Iraq: he’s running statewide in Ohio, he’s for a withdrawal of some sort or other. He wasn’t when running in his uber-Republican district. And thus we get Paul Hackett saying of Schmidt’s attack on John Murtha, derided by most everyone: It’s the Jean Schmidt we’ve seen and heard for many years and obviously 52 percent of the people in the 2nd District like that. And a statement, made initially when Sherrod Brown decided to run, that Ohio isn’t likely to elect someone as liberal as Brown.
…………..
I guess Howard Dean is the original Blog-creation. Okay… watch this carefully:

JEREMY SCAHILL: Governor Dean, why did you say in March 2003 that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction? Governor Dean? Why did you say —

HOWARD DEAN: Maybe. I don’t know. Probably not the best time to talk about it.

Jermey Scahill has recently come back to that conversation in penning this qualm on the current war debate:

During the New Hampshire primary in January 2004, which I covered for Democracy Now!, I confronted Dean about that statement. I asked him on what intelligence he based that allegation. “Talks with people who were knowledgeable,” Dean told me. “Including a series of folks that work in the Clinton administration.”

How does that jibe with the official Democratic line that they were misled by the Bush administration? Sounds like Howard Dean, head of the Democratic Party, was misled by….the Democrats. Dean’s candor offers us a rare glimpse into the painful truth of the matter. As unpopular as this is to say, when President Bush accuses the Democrats of “rewriting history” on Iraq, he is right.

Sure, Bush is partly right, and there is a whole heck of a lot of political shape-shifting going on. (But, in defense of political hackneying: that is our only hope of moving forward in a decent direction, so sometimes if you can guage a politician’s future intentions correctly, you just kind of have to look the other way and wink and nod.) But the idea that the Bush Administration lied us into war based on cooked up intelligence and the idea that the official line on the threat of Saddam Hussein’s “WMD” program amongst “everybody that mattered” was wrong are not mutually exclusive. Quotation number one in my personal arsenal, Colin Powell with: “But it turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and in some cases,deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed and I regret it.” (I have previously misquoted him as saying “intentionally misleading”, which is why when you google that phrase with Colin Powell, a Skull/ Bones blog entry is the only item that pops up.)

But now take a look at the Democracy Now! transcript, and you will see why… I liked Howard Dean. John Kerry looks horrible in answering the question. John Edwards moved away from the issue, because he was initially outflanking Kerry on being pro-Iraq War due to his sense of inadequency of foreign policy credentials (Kerry was going to rely heavily on his Vietnam War experience), but he eventually had to move to a reliance on a sort of populist domestic message. Never mind Lieberman, who you will remember said this upon placing fifth in the New Hampshire Primary:

Based on the returns that we’ve seen tonight, thanks to the people of New Hampshire, we are in a three-way split decision for third place.

… if he felt he could get away with it, he would be on the newsmax bandwagon proclaiming both that we had uncovered mass quantities of weapons of mass destruction as well as they had all been moved to Syria and buried just moments before Coalition troops marched into Baghdad.

And Howard Dean’s answer… comes out cleanly. Further, it suggests a fundamental facet of the war with Iraq: the relatively paltry amounts of wmds that might be in Iraq (and, based on my reading I never thought Saddam had much… I also point to a cover-article in the pro-war New Republic in 2002 with a title of “Why Nuclear Weapons are the only WMDs that Matter” — and I myself never thought Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program — basically because the IAEA told me he didn’t.) — it’s still not worth a war in the eyes of Howard Dean. (Or, if you want to be a cynic, that’s a tenuable political position to spot yourself at.) Thus… beyond the war itself… a judgement call is made, and it is the right judgement. Limited by the conventions of the Establishment though he is stuck in.

Okay?

“You say you want a Revolution, we all want to change the world.”
“NO. You have that wrong. It’s ‘We don’t want to change the world.”

I was surprised that my brother said that. “No. It is definitely ‘we all want to change the world’. But with some caveats that he gets to later. ‘When you talk about destruction — don’t you know you can count me out?’ and the other one is, with the song’s protaganist getting annoyed at the would-be revolutionary ‘I’m not following Mao!'”

The Beatles have three ‘Revolution’ titles. There’s this Revolution, Revolution #1, which is the same as Revolution only with a bunch of “doo-wops” tossed in, and the infamous “Revolution #9”.

“Number Nine. Number Nine. Number Nine.”
Or, as the Be-Sharps have it, “Number Eight. [Burp] Number Eight. [Burp.]”
……………..

There was a thread on Free Republic a few years ago, where the anti-revolutionaries compiled a list of the Great “Anti-Protest Songs”. Revolution was chief among them. I don’t know whether they grooved to the idea that it was denouncing the percieved excesses of the 60s Counterculture — Mao and Violence in the name of anti-violence, or if they made the mistake of thinking the lyrics were “We don’t want to change the world.” Never mind. The Freepers don’t get to claim this song. Stick to “Bush Is Right” and “The Angry American”
…………………

The BBC’s Zaffar Abbas in Islamabad says it is a bizarre episode which has left education officials short of explanations.

The education ministry said it would remove the poem from the textbook and discipline the person responsible for including it.

THE LEADER by anonymous

Patient and steady with all he must bear,
Ready to meet every challenge with care,
Easy in manner, yet solid as steel,
Strong in his faith, refreshingly real.
Isn’t afraid to propose what is bold,
Doesn’t conform to the usual mould,
Eyes that have foresight, for hindsight won’t do,
Never backs down when he sees what is true,
Tells it all straight, and means it all too.
Going forward and knowing he’s right,
Even when doubted for why he would fight,
Over and over he makes his case clear,
Reaching to touch the ones who won’t hear.
Growing in strength he won’t be unnerved,
Ever assuring he’ll stand by his word.
Wanting the world to join his firm stand,
Bracing for war, but praying for peace,
Using his power so evil will cease,
So much a leader and worthy of trust,
Here stands a man who will do what he must.
……………..

A triumph for the Bush-loving section of the blogosphere (and by blogosphere, I will sneak in any possibility that it came from a website not technically a “blog”). Or maybe a triumph for the CIA and their agents within the Packistani Ministry of Education. I don’t know.

The challenge, then, is to get a poem of “BUSHLIED” or “GEORGEWBUSHSUCKS” into the next edition of the Packistani textbook.

Naturally:

I see that I myself mentioned the esteemed former Republican Senator from the great state of Connecticut October 10, 2005; March 15, 2005; and March 1, 2005. See if you spot the October 10th burst upward… the blog entry surrounded the ripple-news that Joseph Lieberman was invited and attended the National Review celebration to the great William Buckley. Weicker was not the main topic, but he was dragged alongside Lieberman. Undoubtedly if you were to graph Lieberman, his ‘q’ rating for the day would pop upward by the same percentage as Weicker, but on a larger scale.

I think that the point is not whether Weicker can pull it off but rather that he has started the ball rolling and that at this point what is realistic is up for grabs. That is, Joe is seen as unbeatable and so no politician wants to take him on. While principled Weicker is a politician who likes to win so he thinks that he has some chance. And by hinting at a run makes this a live political issue. Following from this several scenarios could develop. But first there will be a detour. Bush will appoint Joe to a cabinet post for several reasons. Governor Rell will pardon John Rowland and appoint him to the Senate. Just kidding of course but this is Connecticut. She’ll appoint herself and that would be a good political move.
In any event by the time November rolls around we’ll look back and see
that Senator Weicker has let the genie out of the bottle.

I had to link to the wikipedia article on Rowland to clue people in on the joke.

But anyway… thus Joseph Lieberman becomes a figure of the Bush Administration, instead of a “key Democratic Leader” — or, the thought crept in when hearing what was in Bush’s speech yesterday: the new Judith Miller. (Where Dick Cheney could go on Meet the Press and say ‘Look what’s on the Front Page of the New York Times’, Bush can now say “Look what Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman said!”

It probably a better place for Mr. Lieberman to be, both for him and what he believes (I cannot say that he is any better or worse than Rumsfeld), and for the sake of a Democratic Party (one can only hope) uniting behind the scheduling of a withdrawal from Iraq, so that there may be some hope that the following calculi bear out:

#1: Nationalistic Insurgents see that the Americans aren’t occupying them, stop. (Here is the rub that Mr. Lieberman and Mr. Bush does not understand: there is not an exaustable supply of insurgents — a group they rename “terrorists”. Thus, as long as we’re there, we will be dying.)
#2: The al Qaeda contingent no longer has the support of these nationalistic insurgents, and we find out quickly, as suggested by various military top-brass on various talking head programs, that they are not natural allies.

See, Mr. Bush… I still have an optimistic bone in my mind that things might turn out okay in Iraq. I don’t know that the Tourism business will be booming in Iraq anytime soon, as suggested by his speech, but… maybe that project can be settled when tensions between the Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds settle down in the mid-term.

Getting back to the Weicker challenge: thus Lieberman can be brought out of office before 2006, so that a Democrat can challenge and win the Senate seat instead of a Republican governor appointing a Republican Senator.

And thus, the question “who owns Weicker” (he has ties with the WWE, so I guess you can expect kickbacks to Vince McMahn buried in an omnibus package when he becomes Senator) becomes moot. Weicker’s statement of interest in the Senate seat is begrudging… which is to say, he does not want to serve in the Senate, he just wants a serious anti-war challenger to bring the heat on Lieberman, and if it must be him — it must be him… but he hopes it’s someone else. Or so the statement that has caused the buzz for Weicker goes.

Ah well. I was going to thrust up a list of supposed “Endorsements” — the “Skull and Bones Baker’s Dozen”.

Two rumours have resurfaced. One: Joseph Lieberman is being tapped to replace Rumsfeld for Defense Secretary. Two: Lowell Weicker, former Independent governor of Connecticut, former Liberal Republican Senator who lost his seat to a National Review-backed Democratic challenger by the name of Joseph Lieberman, and a man who endorsed Howard Dean in the last Democratic primary, will run against Joseph Lieberman. (As for Joseph Lieberman’s “bi-partisan war cabinet” — HARDY HAR HAR. That would be what? The Jon Kyl — Joseph Lieberman “Committee on Present Danger Take Three” form of bipartisanship??? I am… wary of calls for “bi-partisanship”, which often is just a call to “SHUT UP!”, as with Joseph Lieberman saying:)

It’s time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he’ll be commander-in-chief for three more years. We undermine the president’s credibility at our nation’s peril.

No, Mr. Lieberman, Bush undermines the credibility of our nation. I acknowledge that Bush will be, barring a Nixonian or Lincoln-esque conclusion to his presidency, will be president — and thus “commander-in-chief” (and I’ve heard right-wingers use that phrase as a sort of defense-mechanism to stop any attacks coming at him) for three more years. And I prefer the Theodore Roosevelt bit on the matter of war opponents and critics to the Abe Lincoln answer.

With Joseph Lieberman, it both is and isn’t about the war. (Same thing with Howard Dean, actually, and I think I’ll get to a pro-Dean post that acknowledges his limitations in a later post). With Joseph Lieberman, it is about where that quotation came from — a darkly fascistic place. Which is to say: When Joseph Lieberman was tapped for Al Gore’s running mate (in large part to turn out Florida’s Jewish population, but sometimes I suspect a more sinister hand at work beyond everybody’s sight), I simply did not want to vote for that ticket. He validated Ralph Nader’s attack on the Republican-Democratic Duoplocy. His vote for the Iraq War Resolution and unwavering vote toward every line of torture and every John Bolton and everything that the Military Industrial Complex and the Neoconservative Military Honchos demand is simply an unsurprising and logical continuation of Joseph Liberman’s career.

It goes beyond his voting record, which is — for good or ill — mainline Democratic. (Deceptively so at times and with a corporatist tinge to the deception, as he recently voted against the Bankruptcy Reform Bill after voting it out of committee — thus able to satisfy his corporate coffers at the same time as getting the right vote for the liberal voting ratings to coalesce.) And even his unwavering and completely not hidden from view 200% supportive record for the Military Industrial Complex simply sits him with the cadre of conservative (red-state) Democrats.

Nay. It is how he carries himself into the media. How he moves the “center” of debate on the matter of war and peace to the most militaristic — and how this frames the debate. He speaks, it is recorded, and he supposedly speaks for a party, or how a party should be behaving if it were “sensible”. “Manufacturing Consent” to use the title of a Noam Chomsky book I’ve never read — and the classic Skull and Bones canard: limit the range of “acceptable” opinions a person may have to the point where it is “Stand Behind the Leader”. Recently Sean Hannity, praising Joseph Lieberman for a typical Wall Street Journal editorial, promised that he would help Lieberman raise campaign money. George Bush has cited him in a number of speeches as a “Democratic Leader” who “gets it”. These are simply continuations of his old William Buckley support. And another key to understanding Lieberman: he is extremely comfortable hob-nobbing with Sean Hannity, enjoying his positioning as a “sensible Democrat moderator”, against the “rabid Democratic attack Dogs”. (Remember, John Murtha has thrown himself into the “Michael Moore wing of the Democratic Party”, nevermind that John Murtha largely acts as a sort of conduit for the Pentagon, nevermind that his position is pretty damned near that of the majority of Americans at the moment, and nevermind that John Murtha’s position doesn’t actually end the war in Iraq — it simply situates American military to nearby stand-by so that we can attack terrorists by the air when believed necessary and let nationalist insurgents believe that we are not there to occupy their nation.) It is that John Murtha’s opinion is nearly that of the majority of Americans at the moment that the powers that be need Joseph Lieberman.

So that’s Lieberman. Now, who the heck is this Weicker guy? I note that two messages crept into my comments box in an old entry on the man who would be dethroning Lieberman:

Congratulations to Sen. Weicker for recognizing how disgraceful the behaviour of Joe Lieberman has been. As a registered democrat I am sick of his pandering to this discredited, corrupt and ineffective administration. Lowell- please run againsthim .I and most of my fellow democrats are behind you.

AND

2-6-05

Sincerely
Joe Pendleton

Yes, but realistically: Can Weicker pull it off? I don’t know the answer to that question. I will say this: If he is serious, he has to have Bill Hillsman serving on the campaign… Bill Hillsman having torpoeded Paul Wellstone’s first Senate campaign and Jesse Ventura’s gubernatorial campaign.

I sit here, not having a vote in Connecticut and not exactly ripping off any campaign funds to the Weicker campaign, saying: “I’m game.”

Thomas Esposito’s campaign for the Legislature seemed to be following the usual pattern. The longtime Democratic mayor issued press releases, raised money and bought newspaper ads. Signs bearing his name popped up in yards around rural Logan County.

The real reason surfaced only later: The FBI had planted Esposito among the field of candidates to help find evidence of vote-buying in southern West Virginia.

The quest I have now is to find Thomas Esposito’s old campaign website. What was he running on? Was he pretending to be a “New Democrat” or a member of the “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party”? (Come to think of it, the pretending to be one or the other or something else entirely makes him no different from the “real” candidates for office.) If he were on the ballot and his positions looked better than the other candidate, would it still be worth voting for him?

And to ponder whether this is worth it. What if Thomas Esposito had won? Who is to say that the entire Congress isn’t composed of FBI plants? I think Joseph Lieberman is a plant for some agenda or other.

The people who stuck up Thomas Esposito signs in their yard — are they disappointed?

Maybe the Tennessee Titans were plants — is the purpose of this struggling team simply so that in Week 13 of the NFL season they could dog a game and allow the Indianapolis Colts to continue their undefeated season?

My faith in the system is completely and utterly and irrevocably destroyed.

Meanwhile, back in 1698:

The Puritans who emigrated to Massachusetts to build a new life had several reason for disliking Christmas. First of all, it reminded them of the Church of England and the old-world customs, which they were trying to escape. Secondly, they didn’t consider the holiday a truly religious day. December 25th wasn’t selected as the birth date of Christ until several centuries after his death. Thirdly, the holiday celebration usually included drinking, feasting, and playing games – all things which the Puritans frowned upon. One such tradition, “wassailing” occasionally turned violent. The older custom entailed people of a lower economic class visiting wealthier community members and begging, or demanding, food and drink in return for toasts to their hosts’ health. If a host refused, there was the threat of retribution. Although rare, there were cases of wassailing in early New England. Finally, the British had been applying pressure on the Puritans for a while to conform to English customs. The ban was probably as much political as it was religious for many.

The ban was revoked in 1681 by an English-appointed governor Sir Edmund Andros, who also revoked a Puritan ban against festivities on Saturday night. But even after the ban was lifted, the majority of colonists still abstained from celebrations. Samuel Sewell, whose diary of life in Massachusetts Bay Colony was later published, made a habit of watching the holiday – specifically how it was observed – each year. “Carts came to town and Shops open as is usual. Some, somehow, observe the day; but are vexed, I believe, that the Body of the People profane it, – and, blessed be God! no Authority yet to compel them to keep it,” Sewell wrote in 1685.

But this is Massachusetts. Deepest blue Massachusetts. They be heathens up there. (Just ask Rick Santorum, or for that matter the ever more unpopular governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, who’s presidential aspirations have him bashing his home-state.) [The Puritans don’t be Secularist Humanist Liberals funded by George Soros though, do they?)

Actually, I like the lines of the first Christmas: Some celebrated; others did not. What a Concept! It appears to me that the Fox News crew today clamours to somehow Enforce Christmas, and the various famously Christmasy yet unChristmasy thongs that go along with it. (As George W Bush suggested we do after 9/11: “Go shopping.” — the spiritual deadening of a nation.) Charitably, I am to take the Fox News crew as believing I, funded by George Soros as I am, want to ban Christmas. The conflict that emenates from early American history continues in ever curious forms, for the consumption of the frothy mouths.

Looking over the list of tracks for Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from the Hermit Kingdom, I stop myself at “Numbers Games” listing. Given the reviews I’ve read, I assume this is a track devoted to transmissions of “number stations”, which typically presents voices (eerie voices, I might add) reciting code numbers — broadcasting, I assume, for an audience of one James Bond-dude in another part of the globe. Whether North Korean number stations are any different from any other nation’s number stations, I do not know. I don’t know that it makes any difference to the average lay-person listening in. (Then again, any person listening in on a short-wave radio is not an “average lay-person”.)

I once had an “Introduction to Asian Studies” course. Our group from the class were sitting in the study room, pondering North Korea. Someone asked “Can’t we transmit ‘Radio Free Korea’ or something?” A Korean student shook his head, in a manner suggesting just how absurd the question was.

Actually, Kim Jong Il’s government blocks the entire radio band on all radios in his nation so that all radios are turned to… Radio Pyong-yang. So thwat that.

The American Prospect’s review of this cd suggests that the way to listen to the cd is to watch where various culture’s influences sneak through, the cracks of a Japanese “Hello Kitty” telling us where it sneaks into North Korea’s closed totalitarian state at large. (Hence the name “Commie Funk”, in reference to the question mark at the end of track #7.)

It’s not the sort of thing you might throw on for casual listening…

I don’t know. I have a tape consisting of recordings of Marshal Applewhite speeches and Jim Jones preachings (thank you, Clyde Lewis). I’ve… occasionally tossed it in, and had it on as… background noise. Or to drone on in falling asleep with. I don’t remember what’s on the other side of the tape, but I think it may be an REM album.

[additional edit: Actually, the tape with Marshal Applewhite and Jim Jones is interspersed with the long-ish Queen song “The Prophet’s Song”, the David Byrne song from The Forest with the kid singing, and Stephen Hawking musing, oddly enough considering how he made an about-face a year back, on how scientists oughta be able to make an about-face if it comes to that. Which makes it not such an odd thing to listen to casually.

“New Model Army” sounds like a Devo track, but it probably is. Mark Mothersbaugh had something in mind for a future dystopia.

THIS looks like a good blog entry to basically swipe whole-sale. (Memes are good.)

May 2003

October 2005

Decemeber 2005

The truth of De-evolution: We Are All Devo!! At least with this administration.

Actually, march forward to the comments section, and this standard-bearer:
I was just wondering, how many terrorist attacks have occurred on the US mainland since 9/11 and the beginning of the war on terror?

You know, this is a controversial thing to say, and I know I should fall down on the line about “And when another terrorist attack occurs, what’s your line going to be then?” (and I know it’ll be “Now is the time to stand UNITED behind the President.”)… but I have a slightly different tact:

The United States is not Israel, which is a physical land mass a group of religious extremists desire badly, and thus throw attacks at on a frequent basis)*. Major terrorist Attacks are rare here. They don’t happen very often. They happen years apart from each other. In the end, the United States of America land-mass is not, nor has ever been, the, quote-in-quote “central front” of al queda’s “War for a Pan-Islamic World”. Notice the following reprisal:

Notice I didn’t bring up 1993. The ultimate attack happened in 2001.

The “ultimate” attack? Sounds like the most generic of action novels. A nation at peace. You need know nothing before this time period on what the nation at peace does internally, externally, or what external forces have done internally or externally with the nation at peace. Suddenly, we get the “Ultimate” attack. We then do the “Ultimate” Response. That the story gets a bit convoluted is the point here: we now have a mission accomplished, followed by a strategy for victory, and then a plan for victory. The problem is the simple plot for the generic action novel is tangled in with a number of other novel’s plots. To successfully navigate our way through the debris, we need to keep in mind that there are things happening outside this frame that are complicating our storyline.

I don’t even know what “ultimate” is supposed to mean. 1993’s semi-successful semi-failed attack was chump change? Would the 2000 attacks, a failed set of attacks, “ultimate”? For what it’s worth, my guess is an “ultimate” attack would look more like this:

(Apologies to Basil Wolverton. I think his son, the man who I believe actually owns the copyright to that image, is a Republican, so perhaps doubly-apologies. Review purposes? I like Basil Wolverton.)

……………………………….
*Ugh. Let’s face it. Three groups of religious extremists.