Let's take a moment to recall Reagan's response to the terrorist bombings in Beirut:

I have asked Secretary of Defense Weinberger to present to me a plan for redeployment of the Marines from Beirut airport to their ships offshore. This redeployment will begin shortly and proceed in stages. U.S. military personnel will remain on the ground in Lebanon for training and equipping the Lebanese Army and protecting the remaining personnel. These are traditional functions that U.S. personnel perform in many friendly countries.

Interestingly, this response, as disgustingly Spanish as it appears in hindsight, didn't unleash a hellish cesspit of death on the American Homeland. I guess the terrorists who killed 241 Marines in 1983 just weren't as bloodthirsty as Mohammed Atta. After all, the underlying presumption behind a war of necessity is that without such a war, peace is not the alternative. The alternative is Hell. But there was neither war nor hell after Beirut. Which leads me to the conclusion that terrorism doesn't always necessitate war. Which is weird. Because that's obviously not true. Otherwise we wouldn't be at war against people who aren't terrorist because we really think they are terrorist that can only be appeased at the cost of, well...hell. Which we are.

I moved at my office this week from one cubical to another one. One without as much storage space. If they take my red stapler, I'm going to set the building on fire.

I've also been giddy with pleasure since the arrival this week of my 15" Powerbook. Like my penis, I can't stop touching it.

And with so much going on -- the Bush/Cheney -- ahem -- "testimony", the Robert Wilson book coming out, the feverish pace with which the Kerry campaign is seeking a running mate, stations refusing to air Nightline's special broadcast tonight -- I should be posting.

So to apologize:

I read this story a long time ago and loved it. And now here it is, stumbled upon in a Slashdot post:

They're made of meat

Enjoy.

The military records of Kerry and Bush have been the focus of a lot of attention. However, there has been little serious analysis on how the differing wartime experiences of these two men have effected their styles of leadership. Clearly the GOP has tried to frame this issue in the most simplistic terms imaginable: equivocating (Kerry) or standing firm (Bush). The issue of Kerry's protest activities notwithstanding, it is uncontested that he led his men in battle not only with valor and bravery, but also with honesty, integrity, and the earned trust of his men. Although how Bush would have behaved in similar circumstances is unknowable, his style of executive leadership would suggest that were he faced with the difficult task of uniting rough men in a common cause among jungle rot, threat of death, and the thousands of subhuman hallmarks of war, he would have done rather poorly. Men like him always do. Historical examples abound of guerrilla leaders who are intellectually dim, religiously pious, and determinedly myopic. The Hutus of the National Liberation Front (NLF), for example, were exceedingly pious:

...the 'genocidal attackers,' - ...that priest whom they forced to eat his own penis before they crucified him... those babies buried alive... those children impaled, sprinkled with gas and burned, in their school, by the principal himself... – are also excellent Christians, generally of the Adventist persuasion, who don't smoke, don't drink, arrive in the villages singing hymns at the top of their voices, and they consider Saturday a sacred day, devoted to prayer on which one must above all not shed blood. [Source]

Children of war usually are soldiers themselves, unable to comprehend political concepts beyond hazy notions of 'freedom'; but from what? War is the bailiwick of ignorance. And how deeply must one be committed to their cause, how driven to 'stay the course' must a person be, to train (or to be) a woman like this in Sri Lanka:

They taught the women who, like me, were not virgins to spend a day with a grenade in our vagina. They put replicas of the suicide-vest on our backs – those big heavy vests, stuffed with dynamite, with a detonator, a cable, and steel balls, which the Leader himself had conceived of after seeing them at the cinema in a Rambo movie. We had to live like that. We had to prepare ourselves for the day when we would throw ourselves on a target, pin them to the ground, and then we would activate the detonator and explode it.

The issue of war is an important one in the current campaign because it lets us see how our candidates act under enormous pressure in a terrain stripped of meaning; pressure that more often than not brings out the worst in people. In many ways, America's experience in Vietnam is quite similar to what's been happening in Burundi, Angola, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Columbia – all infernos of perpetual carnage. John Kerry, like few other exceptional men in the Senate (John McCain, Bob Kerry), has survived the kiln of war and been changed by it. He has learned from it. Bush, conversely, avoided war and relied on his connections and a collegiate conviviality to "lead". As a result, Bush is much more willing to not only settle geopolitical grievances via interposed populations, but to use such populations (mostly the helpless and the poor) to further abstract political ambitions. I agree completely that Bush is a leader. I agree with his Christian principles and quest for universal freedom and human rights. I disagree that his style of leadership is in any fundamental way different from that of a drug-wracked Mafioso in a banana republic: egotistical, unreflective, dogmatic, deeply religious, single-minded, simple, and entirely dependent on the institutions which protect him to assert a moral authority he himself does not possess. The accusation that John Kerry is a man who constantly changes is mind, and is therefore not fit to lead, reminded me of this passage I read recently about what a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote while he was recovering from being shot in the chest at Balls Bluff during the Civil War:

He had found that he did not require a religious faith. Uncertainty – "I am able to take a leap in the dark" – turned out to be all the certainty he needed. The assurance that he had done his duty was a wholly adequate consolation.

At the end of these reflections, he adds a note. "It is curious how rapidly the mind adjust itself under some circumstances to entirely new relations -," he writes. "I thought for awhile that I was dying, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world – The moment the hope of life returned it seemed abhorrent to nature as ever that I should die -." "How rapidly the mind adjusts itself": the test of a belief is not immutability, but adaptability. Our reason for needing reasons is always changing.

Perhaps being shot at can open your eyes in ways that owning a professional baseball franchise can't. Perhaps it depends on what kind of man you are to begin with.

I guess Dubya likes rubbing bald heads.

Old news & stupid, but it made me feel better: Slap the Raver.

UPDATE: For those who take this stuff too far.

I'm not very smart and I don't know a lot about the world, so I tend to look to people who are smart to help me understand the world. The smart people seem to think that we need to lower taxes and increase military funding. Some advocate the weaponization of space. But what with medicine and health insurance getting more expensive, it sure does seem to me that maybe a national health care system would also be something to invest in. But like I said, I'm not very smart. If I were smart, I'd have thought up the Walrus. What a great idea! The little brown people in the tropics can stop working on widening the Panama Canal. Once our mighty fleet of blimps is in the stratosphere, there will be no need for canals, airports, spy planes, or even the slightest trace of humility. America will be waaay beyond Thunderdome baby!

Ah well...what do I care. I'll be drunk.

ITEM: Earlier this month, WorldNetDaily, an otherwise useless right-wing "news" outfit, gave us this outstanding headline:

Retarded Christian teen's desecration of Quran reportedly incites attack.

How true. How very true in many, many ways.

Jason Burke is doing a little Al Qaeda Myth-busting in Foreign Policy.

Islamic militants' main objective is not conquest, but to beat back what they perceive as an aggressive West that is supposedly trying to complete the project begun during the Crusades and colonial periods of denigrating, dividing, and humiliating Islam. The militants' secondary goal is the establishment of the caliphate, or single Islamic state, in the lands roughly corresponding to the furthest extent of the Islamic empire of the late first and early second centuries. Today, this state would encompass the Middle East, the Maghreb (North Africa bordering the Mediterranean), Andalusia in southern Spain, Central Asia, parts of the Balkans, and possibly some Islamic territories in the Far East. Precisely how this utopian caliphate would function is vague. The militants believe that if all Muslims act according to a literal interpretation of the Islamic holy texts, an almost mystical transformation to a just and perfect society will follow.

Well, that just doesn't jive with what I'm hearing from the folks who ought to know. I keep hearing about how Islamic terrorists want to "destroy our way of life", are "enemies of Freedom", and would "kill us all if they had the means". Heck. What am I supposed to believe!? The bigwigs in D.C. are also telling me that we are "winning the War on Terror". But this fella over yonder at Foreign Policy seems to contract that (a la Flip-Floppin' John Kerry):

...if countries are to win the war on terror, they must eradicate enemies without creating new ones. They also need to deny those militants with whom negotiation is impossible the support of local populations. Such support assists and, in the minds of the militants, morally legitimizes their actions. If Western countries are to succeed, they must marry the hard component of military force to the soft component of cultural appeal. There is nothing weak about this approach. As any senior military officer with experience in counterinsurgency warfare will tell you, it makes good sense. The invasion of Iraq, though entirely justifiable from a humanitarian perspective, has made this task more pressing.

Bin Laden is a propagandist, directing his efforts at attracting those Muslims who have hitherto shunned his extremist message. He knows that only through mass participation in his project will he have any chance of success. His worldview is receiving immeasurably more support around the globe than it was two years ago, let alone 15 years ago when he began serious campaigning. The objective of Western countries is to eliminate the threat of terror, or at least to manage it in a way that does not seriously impinge on the daily lives of its citizens. Bin Laden's aim is to radicalize and mobilize. He is closer to achieving his goals than the West is to deterring him.

Screw that. I trust the President. He's a truth talker. They're evil doers. God Bless America.

Not all that insightful. Not even completed yet. However, that's one long-ass URL.

Do you drink coffee and live in the Chicago area (including suburbs)? Then read on.

As you probably know by now, I'm a busy, over-achieving student at the Illinois Institute of Art, and I currently have a 4.0. Hooray for me.

But this quarter, I'm up against my most formidable academic foe yet: a class called Package Design. Our project is to name and design the packaging for a line of coffee and coffee accessories. Our assignment for this week is to survey 5 to 10 people in the Chicago area of varying demographics about their coffee drinking behaviors.

I said to myself, 5 to 10? How helpful could that possibly be? So I told my teacher that I could have 50 survey responses. She giggled a little bit, and then she said, "Go for it."

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE help me flabbergast my teacher. If you drink coffee (and I'm almost positive that you do at least occassionally), take 10 minutes to fill out my little survey. I've made it easier utilizing the magic of the Interweb:

Arlo's Coffee Survey

With the exception of 2 questions, it's all multiple choice. And it's completely anonymous.

And please tell your friends and family. I really want 50 responses, and if I can get more, even better.

Thank you very much. I'm deeply in your debt.

If any of you are going to turn 22 soon, you may need to learn how to convince the Selective Service System (whose use of stock photography, especially the B-boy at the end, is questionable) that you are a conscientious objector. I've emphasized the naughty bits:

A man can only be reclassified as a conscientious objector if he demonstrates that his opposition to war is based on moral, ethical or religious beliefs, not on political beliefs. The man must be opposed to all war, not only the specific war at hand.

There are a number of ways for a man to persuade the board of his beliefs. First of all, he would have to explain his convictions, and how these feelings affect his life, in a detailed written statement. When he appeared before the board, he would answer any questions they might have. Most likely, he would ask several friends or acquaintances to report their impressions of him, either in person or in writing. He could also present historical evidence of his beliefs, such as membership in an anti-war organization or church dedicated to peace. Ideally, he would show that he had held these beliefs before he received a notice of induction.

If the board members were convinced of his sincerity, they would reclassify him, and the SSS or military would assign him to appropriate duty. If the board decided not to reclassify him, they would notify him of their reasons for denial. At this point, he may have the opportunity to appeal the decision, based on the board's direction.

Why bring this up? Don't look at me, I didn't bring it up. Senators Chuck Hagel (R) and Joe Biden (D) did:

"I am not proposing a draft, but I think some kind of mandatory service for this country for all our citizens, for the privileged, the rich, all those who have a lot, should be something we take seriously here,'' Hagel said.

"Our military is not large enough. Our standing Army is not large enough,'' Biden added.

The last time someone brought up the draft, it was Represenative Charles Rangel, and he did it as an act of protest. Now Hagel and Biden, who voted for the use of force in Iraq, are saying the same. Of course, they're using the same argument as Rangel -- get some rich kids on the battlefield. Yeah, that'll work. Look at all of the great war stories our president has. Oh....

Sure, part of me wants the draft. A draft is a one-way ticket for Bush to leave office, for anti-war sentiment to filter into all parts of society, to increase the scale at which questions about how the War on Terror is being fought.

On the other hand, I have a 20-year-old brother.

That it has come to this -- serious talk of conscription -- means the US is in way over it's head. I wish there was something to pray to.

Big dumb mouth-porking Clinton thought he could dip his legacy in pure gold by making the Israelis and the Palestinians toss each others salad on the White House lawn. Such foolishness! If only he had recognized that the road to peace in the Middle East runs straight through Vietraq. I guess ol' Bubba thought that how peace was accomplished mattered. Dick's view, according to Bob Woodward, is a bit more ethically blunt: "...it doesn't matter how long the aftermath is...What matters is the ultimate outcome". Ah, the wafting petrol-scented pheromones of leadership! All we need to do now is "stay the course". Easy. If we all act manly enough, for long enough, all will turn out okay in the end. What about the ongoing insurgent violence? Well, The President has used his world-famous rhetorical wit to slice through the Gordian Knot (if you will) of just this kind of squirrelly phantom menace (exaggerated by the "elitist" media no doubt):

The Iraqis need to be very much involved. They were the people that was brutalized by this man.

I agrees. So why are thems towel-headers still chanting "Elif air ab dinich"!? Must be Clinton's fault.

From the President's recent farce of a press conference:

QUESTION: ...Mr. President, April is turning into the deadliest month in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad, and some people are comparing Iraq to Vietnam and talking about a quagmire. Polls show that support for your policy is declining and that fewer than half of Americans now support it.

What does that say to you? And how do you answer the Vietnam comparison?

BUSH: I think the analogy is false. I also happen to think that analogy sends the wrong message to our troops and sends the wrong message to the enemy.

Look, this is hard work. It's hard to advance freedom in a country that has been strangled by tyranny. And yet we must stay the course because the end result is in our nation's interest.

"Staying the course" didn't work for Johnson or Nixon, so the Vietnam analogy seems apt.

Oh, but we're insulting the troops. Okay, Mr. President. Perhaps you can have Condi brief you on two pieces of history that are, perhaps, less insulting:

France in Algiers. The gist:

An urban war of attrition was raging in Algiers, especially after the French defeated the National Liberation Front on the open battlefield in 1958. There were occasional terrorist attacks, following by interim periods of exhaustion, and there was a sense that everything was pointless. In Vietnam, there was an external withdrawal region and a regular army, which was being supplied with modern weapons, not just from the north, but also from the Soviet Union and China. There was a prolonged guerilla war with many victims.

Honestly, I don't know much about the conflict in Algiers, though by reading that paragraph in an article forwarded to me by Stigmutha, I know more about it than the Prez. Here's a wiki.

Oh, but maybe that's a poor choice. After all, as far as the neocons are concerned, the French are just champagne-sipping, cigarette-smoking, surrendering faggots. Fine. How's about this one:

Britain in Iraq after WWI. To wit:

What happened in Iraq last week so closely resembles the events of 1920 that only a historical ignoramus could be surprised. It began in May, just after the announcement that Iraq would henceforth be a League of Nations "mandate" under British trusteeship. (Nota bene, if you think a handover to the UN would solve everything.) Anti-British demonstrations began in Baghdad mosques, spread to the Shi'ite holy centre of Karbala, swept on through Rumaytha and Samawa - where British forces were besieged - and reached as far as Kirkuk.

Contrary to British expectations, Sunnis, Shi'ites and even Kurds acted together. Stories abounded of mutilated British bodies. By August the situation was so desperate that the British commander appealed to London for poison gas bombs or shells (though these turned out not to be available). By the time order had been restored in December - with a combination of aerial bombardment and punitive village-burning expeditions - British forces had sustained over 2,000 casualties and the financial cost of the operation was being denounced in Parliament. In the aftermath of the revolt, the British were forced to accelerate the transfer of power to a nominally independent Iraqi government, albeit one modelled on their own form of constitutional monarchy.

There's more examples than this, surely. Imperialism nearly always takes the form of "we're going to improve your lives." The Romans built roads and aqueducts. They also destroyed ways of life. Give an inch, take a mile.

Note that the Romans were overrun by Mongols, a decentralized but highly efficient army. Think about it. We should learn from the Romans mistakes before our "crusade" on Iraq pushes stability further out of reach.

The Bush administration is Bizarro Quinn jumping up and down screaming, "I'm helping! I'm helping! I'm helping!" (What, you don't watch Sealab 2021?)

Both Atrios and Wonkette couldn't help themselves but to repeat this:

At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, "As I was telling my husb--" and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, "As I was telling President Bush."

So I repeated it, too, okay?

And why should we care? After all, I accidentally called my second grade teacher "Mom" once. And my girlfriend has called me by her brother's name on a few occassions (and, no, it was not during an act of intimacy). We stumble sometimes -- we aren't perfect. There's two reasons to take note of this gossipy note:

1) I have a mom. My girlfriend has a brother. Condi does not have a husband.
2) Imagine if, say, Madeline Albright* had referred to President Clinton as her husband. Field day.

As much as I believe the best way to fight evil is with the truth -- it takes longer but makes victory sweeter -- sometimes a taste of their own medicine is a worthwhile (and fun) spoon to hold.

*Or worse yet, Janet Reno.

(Updated to correct some spelling.)

Next week is TV-Turnoff Week.

According to hundreds of responses to our TV-Turnoff Week follow-up surveys, 90 percent of responding participants reduced their TV-viewing as a result of participating.

I'm not sure I buy that statistic. You see, "responding participants" means participants who peeled their eyes from the television long enough to answer the survey.

It doesn't mean I shouldn't try it. I have DVDs from Netflix that I haven't watched yet...for two months. Not because I'm too busy; it's because I can't bring myself to get up from the recliner. Next week, I'm should be purchasing my long-overdue Powerbook, and all I can think of is, "Cool, I get to work while sitting on the recliner." Seriously, how much work am I really going to get done if I'm sitting in front of the damn TV?

So why not? I hereby challenge myself (and if you, if you're so inclined) to not watch television for seven days starting Monday. No Daily Show, no Simpsons, no O'Reilly Factor, no late-night Cinemax.

No matter how much I scream, do not open this door.

Posted on Thursday, April 15, 2004. From the Media Reference Guide, a laminated card listing approved responses to journalists' questions, issued by the Pentagon to American soldiers in Afghanistan:

Command Messages

United by the memory of Sept. 11's heroes and victims, we are a nation determined to win the war against terrorism.

To defend against future attacks, the best defense against the nexus of anti-American regimes, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorist organizations is a strong offense.

The best way to honor the memory of those who died on Sept. 11 is to be doing what we were sent here to do . . . take the fight to the enemy in the field and hunt down the terrorists.

We will be here until the job is done.

Our coalition partners are doing an outstanding job and are an integral part of CJTF180 operations.

The Afghan people have suffered for decades under several regimes and near constant warfare. We are helping the Afghan people help themselves to develop a safe and stable environment so that they can rebuild their country.

Points to Remember When Being Interviewed

Be confident, relaxed, and professional.

Be concise; formulate your answer BEFORE you speak.

Protect the record. Correct "facts" if you know them to be incorrect.

Above all, PORTRAY A POSITIVE IMAGE.

All work and school makes Arlo a bad blogger. Yeah, I've been absent from here, and not much in the foreseeable future is going to rectify that. Kelly has kept you company, I'm sure.

The press conference last night was notable. The speech it self was eloquent. Sure, a load of horseshit, but well-spoken for the President. He reiterated the scope of the war on "terra" by listing off notable terrorist of the last two decades -- none of which Iraq had anything to do with. Let's laugh at his one gaffe in the speech, shall we?:

Secretary of State Powell and Secretary of State Rumsfeld

Yes, he said that.

It was the Q&As, however, that feature the best stuff:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. To move to the 9/11 Commission. You, yourself, have acknowledged that Osama bin Laden was not a central focus of the administration in the months before September 11th. "I was not on point," you told the journalist, Bob Woodward, "I didn't feel that sense of urgency." Two-and-a-half years later, do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?

THE PRESIDENT: Let me put that quote to Woodward in context. He had asked me if I was -- something about killing bin Laden. That's what the question was. And I said, compared to how I felt at the time, after the attack, I didn't have that -- I also went on to say, my blood wasn't boiling, I think is what the quote said. I didn't see -- I mean, I didn't have that great sense of outrage that I felt on September the 11th. I was -- on that day I was angry and sad: angry that al Qaeda had -- well, at the time, thought al Qaeda, found out shortly thereafter it was al Qaeda -- had unleashed this attack; sad for those who lost their life.

What?

And a free Iraq is going to be a major blow for terrorism.

I guess in the same way Jenna Jameson would give a major blow to Ron Jeremy, or that a drug dealer would give some major blow to Robert Downey, Jr.

Maybe I can best put it this way, why I feel so strongly about this historic moment. I was having dinner with Prime Minister Koizumi, and we were talking about North Korea, about how we can work together to deal with the threat. The North Korea leader is a threat. And here are two friends now discussing what strategy to employ to prevent him from further developing and deploying a nuclear weapon. And it dawned on me that had we blown the peace in World War II, that perhaps this conversation would not have been taking place. It also dawned on me then that when we get it right in Iraq, at some point in time an American President will be sitting down with a duly-elected Iraqi leader talking about how to bring security to what has been a troubled part of the world.

No, we didn't blow the peace with Japan. Actually, we blew the bejeesus out of two cities. We didn't create peace with Japan; we bitch slapped them to their knees. Sure, it's old news, water under the bridge now, but that has more to do with our desire for Hondas and Sonys. The relationship between the US and Japan is not the result of two nuclear bombs that killed over 100,000 people and ushered in the Cold War. For all intents and purposes, the Japanese should hate us still. (I'm glad they don't -- my next car will be a Toyota hybrid.)

Moving on...

Q Mr. President, why are you and the Vice President insisting on appearing together before the 9/11 Commission? And, Mr. President, who will you be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?

THE PRESIDENT: We will find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing; he's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over. And, secondly, because the 9/11 Commission wants to ask us questions, that's why we're meeting. And I look forward to meeting with them and answering their questions.

Q I was asking why you're appearing together, rather than separately, which was their request.

THE PRESIDENT: Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 Commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.

Awwww, SNAP! I am so totally NOT going to answer your question! Sit down, bitch!

...prior to 9/11 the country really wasn't on a war footing

Really?

Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens -- I don't.

Oh, so that's why we don't see images of caskets returning to the United States -- Bush doesn't like to see them.

Even a big plasma screen television made by our friends in Japan couldn't fit all of those caskets anyway.

And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. We have an obligation to help feed the hungry. I think the American people find it interesting that we're providing food for the North Korea people who starve. We have an obligation to lead the fight on AIDS, on Africa. And we have an obligation to work toward a more free world.

From The Nation: "Rather than support existing and proven international programs to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, the Bush plan has undercut and circumvented them at nearly every turn. It has reduced funding for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria from $550 million appropriated by Congress for 2004 to $200 million for 2005, a 64 percent reduction at a time when the fund desperately needs resources to make its fourth round of grants."

Last but not least, I don't think this one needs any editorializing:

Don, if I tried to fine-tune my messages based upon polls, I think I'd be pretty ineffective.

A recent Salon.com article notes the following:

Lieberman noted that both Bush and Kerry have vowed that the United States will not "cut and run" from Iraq. And in the end, it is that vow -- that commonality of policy positions -- that keeps Kerry from striking out more clearly on Iraq. Kerry voted to give Bush the authority to go to war, and he agrees that troops need to stay in Iraq until the country is made stable again. With 44 percent of the American public now wanting to bring U.S. troops home "as soon as possible" -- as opposed to keeping them there until a stable government is formed -- Kerry is hamstrung, both politically and on a policy level, from reaching out to those voters by making an unequivocal stand on Iraq.

The infuriating thing about this kind of analysis is that it depends upon the same kind of anti-intellectualism that characterizes the Bush crowd; i.e., only an obnoxiously blunt policy can be viable because a nimble and intrinsic understanding of the details will be viewed as "equivocating". The unfortunate fact underlying the political challenges that the U.S. is facing in Iraq is that, irrespective of reality, our occupation is seen (internationally as well as domestically) as a George W. Bush operation. To a large extent, Bush is right when he pontificates about his "leadership" in the Iraq war. While Kerry would have pursued military action were he faced with similar circumstances, he would have led the nation (and the world) with infinitely more tact and intelligence. This is the point. The hard political reality is that the world (including Iraq) would be far more accepting of the U.S. occupation if it were continued under a Kerry presidency. Whether Bush was right or wrong about initiating this struggle, he is simply too politically tainted to continue to lead it. Oil ties, familial ties, and a cavalcade of clumsy blunders have sparked protests and dissent; such dissent has indeed (so some extent) given Iraqi insurgents hope for their cause. If the groundswell of opposition to Bush is funneled into a successful effort to replace him with someone who will steadfastly continue our military commitment in Iraq, the subsequent benefits will be " full spectrum" (to steal a phrase) and overwhelming.

I've been listening nervously to Air America lately. The biggest surprise that should have come as no surprise is, of course, Janeane Garofalo. A longtime favorite whipping-post for right-wingers, she is what Republicans love to hate: a liberal celebrity female activist! Personally, I'm growing ever more fond of her. Unlike her shrill, hateful, monstrous, gay-magnet predecessor, Garofalo is smart, witty, measured, and self-aware. Unfortunately, Air America is also staffed by some Liberal Limbaughs: bloviating liars, whinny malcontents, and ignorant fools. Liberals are fighting an important rhetorical battle against those on the right who are intent upon labeling Liberalism as anti-American. It will only make things worse if we prop up voices that are, in fact, bluntly hostile to American values.

Well, I think I'll be okay, but I'm not sure about Kelly.

A study of animals across the world has confirmed what many men have long suspected - a large penis can be a recipe for success in the mating game.

Oh, and despite the attractive alliteration, the expression is no longer "hung like a horse." From now on, it's "well-endowed like a walrus":

Walruses (Odobenus), however, which live in the frozen Arctic, weigh less, at up to 1,700 kilograms, but have a baculum that can reach up to 60 centimetres in length - one of the largest members of any mammal in both absolute and relative terms.

Like a great, clean blast of flatulence, John O'Sullivan has done us all a great service by throwing back the curtain to reveal the core of Repulican foreign policy. Turn away – lest ye be blinded by the truth:

…the problem in Iraq is that our Iraqi enemies are not sufficiently afraid of us.

This is a splendid column and a must-read. The nakedness of Republican bloodlust is herein laid bare.

Thankee Yglesias.

10 years ago today, I was a Sophomore at Virginia Tech studying theatre. And no, you've never known anyone famous from Virginia Tech's theatre department.

Anyway, the previous evening I had been on quite the bender, had rehearsal that morning. So when I returned to my garden apartment, I immediately fell asleep on the futon.

As the sun was falling, I was awoken by the phone ringing. I let the answering machine pick it up, and that's when my friend Wendy's voice came through the machine's speaker. I'll never forget it:

"Arlo, I don't know if you've heard yet, but Kurt Cobain is dead. I thought you should know."

There were five messages from other friends informing me of the same news.

In 1989, I was a sophomore in high school, awkward but cocky (not much has changed). Much of my social interaction was with a youth group at church. The only real music choices I had made were U2 and R.E.M. I had been wearing out a dub of a dub of a dub of Never Mind the Bollocks secretly hidden from my parents. Nevertheless, I was never into music growing up since I was never really allowed around much of it.

One friend in my church youth group, a high school senior, had the most coveted job of any minor -- he worked at a record store. And he always had a tape of some band I had never heard of. The Replacements, Screaming Blue Messiahs, XTC (the song "Dear God" was mindblowing), Guadalcanal Diary -- it seemed forbidden, and I ate all of it up.

Then on one trip with the youth choir, he presented me with a dubbed tape, telling me it was the best thing he'd heard come into the store in a long time and that I had to have a copy. It was Nirvana's Bleach.

I listened to nothing but that tape for three months until it broke. That album was the most ferocious thing I had heard up until that point. It was ferocious in the way I was ferocious. Bubbling anger, spurting through sludge.

I had no idea how angry I was until I listed to Nirvana.

Two years after that tape broke and I was unable to replace it because Virginia Beach wasn't exactly the sort of town where you could find independent music, I was in my bedroom watching 120 Minutes on MTV with the sound turned way down. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" premiered. I bought the CD that week, and everything changed.

Nirvana is the reason I bought my first guitar. Nirvana is the reason I became so enamored of music. Nirvana is the reason I awoke from the coma my Christian upbringing slipped me into. Nirvana was the catalyst though which I began to think for myself, to see the world through eyes that were more critical and yet more tolerant.

As for how Kurt's death affected me, it's almost too personal to talk about here. Let's just say that it was harder to learn from Kurt's mistakes than it was to learn from his successes. Perhaps sometime when you're in the mood for a sad story, you can buy me a beer.

10 years later, the entire Nirvana catalog is in my iTunes rotation. When I dust off my guitar, I often warm up with "Aneurysm." While I read Journals, I felt naughty and actually regret reading them.

Like any other tragic, dramatic death, there are plenty of folks out there looking to profit with their conspiracy theories. Just like any other conspiracy theory, if there was hard evidence, someone would have been arrested, but anything can be spun into circumstance. As much as I'd like to think Courtney Love is a heartless whore, I can't blame her. I'd prefer to let Kurt rest in peace.

Kurt, I don't put much belief in an afterlife, but if there is one, perhaps you're Googling your name today and have happened upon this lowly blog. You never wanted to be an icon or a rock star, so I'll let today's newspapers thank you for that. I want to thank you for waking me up.

In the ...like you really care... tradition, moment of silence for Kurt Cobain.

While sorting through old e-mails, I came across a little dazzler from Mr. Lubow that I simply couldn't throw away without sharing. So let's all take a moment for a little Woo Woo!

In the spirit of constructive dialogue and reasoned debate, I submit that it is occasionally necessary to put our difference aside and vigorously, yes vigorously, Shake That Ass!

The United States apparently has settled on a definitive response to the recent events in Fallujah:

'Coalition forces will respond,' the U.S. army's deputy director of operations Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told a news conference. 'They are coming back and they are going to hunt down the people responsible for this bestial act.

'It will be at a time and a place of our choosing. It will be methodical, it will be precise and it will be overwhelming.'

Very manly indeed. But it recalled to mind a passage I came across in James Thomas Flexner's biography of George Washington, which seemed to support a more measured approach (in 1777) to dealing with civilian resistance:

The Commander in Chief [George Washington] ruled that citizens of New Jersey, who had, under stress, sworn allegiance to the Crown, could be uncontaminated by the single act of swearing allegiance to the United States. Those who refused to do so, or who had conspicuously cooperated with the British, should not be punished, but merely escorted to the enemy lines. The wives and children of exiles could stay in their homes "if their behavior warrants." And refugees could take with them any personal possessions that would not strengthen the enemy.

The New Jersey radicals were furious that possible miscreants should get off so easily. However, time was to prove that Washington's lenient measures were not only kind but also the smartest possible politics. Waverers who were persecuted would glow with hate, while forgiven waverers were grateful. And the convinced Tories who were sent to New York were put in the most effective possible reformatory. Under the domination of military aristocrats who despised Colonials and equated their own desires with military necessity, the Tory refugees suffered from an oppression more extreme than any that the British had been accused of by the most violent patriot orators. Since Tories gathered there from all over the continent to be disillusioned, it could be argued that the British lost the Revolutionary War within the walls of their New York stronghold.

Nevertheless, a year earlier General Washington's reaction to a kind of watered down 'American Fallujah' would indicate that he was deeply sympathetic to an aggressive and violent public rejection of colonial rule:

General George Washington seems to have approved mob persecution of the Tories. In 1776 General Israel Putnam, one of Washington's generals, met a procession of the Sons of Liberty parading a number of Tories on rails up and down the streets of New York and he attempted to halt this inhuman proceeding. On hearing this, Washington reprimanded General Putnam, stating that 'to discourage such proceedings was to injure the cause of liberty in which they were engaged, and that nobody would attempt it but an enemy of his country.'

While it may not be altogether fitting to draw direct comparisons between America in the 1770's and present-day Iraq, it is certainly worth reexamining the birth of our own nation, the role of leaders like Washington, and the importance of civilian support as we subsidize a professional army of occupation in a land of swift-footed hit-&-run rebels groping their way towards unity. Perhaps kicking ass as hard as we possibly can isn't always the best policy. But what would I know. I'm just a limp-wristed pussy liberal who cries like a schoolgirl at the first hint of a slapfight.

CLARIFICATION: The examples of Gen. Washington’s tactics above are in no way contradictory, and it was not my intention to imply that they were. Washington, when the responsibility for the enforcement of discipline fell to him, always demonstrated restraint & humanity.

The White House is blocking the 9/11 commission access to countless documents... from the Clinton administration. Kos:

Fact is, the Clinton administration got anti-al Qaida religion in Clinton's second term. They tried to get the incoming Bush administration to understand the importance of this work. But Bush and Rice were concerned about the "threats of tomorrow" -- defense against intercontinental balistic missile attack. Terrorism, despite the Clinton people's best efforts, barely registered on their screens on the morning of 9-11.

ThinkGeek is famous for posting fake items every April 1. The PC EZ-Bake Oven is possible, though anyone with an overclocked Athlon should already be able to cook with their computer. The RC Gastron Hunger Elimator surely has doctors wondering why they didn't think of it first. However, CaffeDerm® -- now that's a brilliant idea. Someone should make this now.

What the H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks is wrong with the DNC? The fake press release stunt was just stupid. As much as I'd love to see that many debates, who at the DNC thought it would be a good idea to give the neocons some cannon fodder?

On the other hand, perhaps it's a brilliant move. It'll start discussion about how many debates Bush and Kerry will have. And Lord knows Bush will (most likely) have his ass pounded in debates. By putting this five-debates nonsense in the political ether, it may make Bush look foolish for not agreeing to as many.

It's all so silly, isn't it? And yes, so serious.

My vote for Song of the Year.