The Dick



Iraq got a keg, a band and is charging everybody 10 bucks at the door. We’ve decided to walk into the backyard, beat the shit out of Iraq and only let our friends fill their cups. What will the rest of the world do? Individually speak out against us? Yeah right…we’ll fuck shit up. All get together and beat the shit out of us? Nope—most of them don’t like each other anyway. So what would you do to a bully that is taking what isn’t theirs, a bully who is too big to defeat alone, a bully who must understand the repercussions of being a douchebag?



You key his car.



Perfect analogy. You can't compete in direct warfare against a rogue superpower, so how do you strike back? In a way that's cheap, stealthy, difficult to prevent, and as painfully as possible.

A haiku I wrote a few years ago:

when you hear voices
you'll see how fucking funny
it really is then.

Saturday, Melinda and I picked up some fast food and drove out to Battle Creek, just to see someplace new. I have this bad habit of sticking my wallet on the seat between my legs after pulling away from a drive-through window or a drive-up ATM. So after 2 hours driving around, I forgot about my wallet being there. We got out at a mall, and luckily I happened to step around to Melinda's side of the car for a minute. If we had walked up to the building too quickly, I wouldn't have heard the ten year old boy saying, "Did somebody lose a wallet? Is this your wallet?"

I thanked him and tried to laugh it off. Didn't feel like much of a Bad Mother Fucker after that, in spite of what my wallet says.

In some articles on zmag.org, people refer to the official name of the war as "Operation Iraqi Freedom (sic)".

Been using this blog as a place to keep track of quotes I might want to remember for later arguments about the war, or just collections of strangely worded statements like these...

Free Delivery!
Brigadier-General Vince Brooks said, "Fire was indeed delivered from coalition forces, it was lethal fire and some Iraqis were killed as a result, we think the number is in the order of seven and we think there were some wounded as well," he said. US marines and special forces soldiers fired at demonstrators on Tuesday after they came under attack from people shooting guns and throwing rocks.

From "US admits Mosul killings", BBC News.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2951789.stm

Why are we at war?
From an article titled "Kids & the Television War" in the April 12-18, 2003 TV Guide (NY Metro edition), director of psychiatric education at Children's Hospital Boston Dr. Stuart Goldman suggests telling children something along these lines: "When a country or the rulers of the country break big rules and hurt a lot of people and won't stop, even though other people try to get them to stop, sometimes a country will send their soldiers in to force those bad people to follow the rules. Nobody wants to do it, but sometimes it's needed to make the world safe for everybody."

It doesn't say how to respond if your child asks, "Who makes the rules?" or "Who watches the watchmen?"

For the record, I think we made another attempt on 4/12/03, but Melinda's sleep schedule has not aligned with mine since then. In fact, she woke me up in the middle of the night on 4/12/03. Never thought I'd complain about being awakened for that, but have some damn consideration!

Attempts at impregnation, at least 75% intentional, commenced on 9 April 2003 and continued on 10 April 2003. I don't think we've done it two nights in a row since before the turn of the millenium. Will keep you posted. Wish us luck and send us money or hand-me-down baby clothes.

Noticed a strange trend today. If you've been following American media outlets since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Bagdad (or at least the fall of some of his statues in Bagdad), you'll hear that a large concern is looting in those parts of Iraq under US occupation. The worst thing they could press on Rumsfeld today during his press conference was the looting. Does the US have things under control? How long before they can restore order? Should they have brought more of a police-type force in sooner to prevent looting? etc.

In the middle of an illegal invasion, the important thing to focus on is property crimes. Did you see the clip of a car driving away from Iraqi government offices with two huge vases stuffed in the trunk? This is what's important to show. Not the ubiquitous photo of that kid with its head split apart. Only a week or two into the war we already have this generation's equivalent of Kim Phuc, the Vietnamese napalm victim that changed public opinion about the war. This time, you only see it on the web or on Arabic tv channels. And even if the American public saw it, they would write it off as a tragic necessity in order to liberate the rest of Iraq.

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged." - Noam Chomsky.
http://monkeyfist.com/ChomskyArchive/misc/nuremberg_html

Speaking with considerably more authority on the subject of war than George Bush will ever have, Eisenhower observed: "All of us have heard this term 'preventive war' since the earliest days of Hitler. I recall that is about the first time I heard it. In this day and time . . . I don't believe there is such a thing; and frankly, I wouldn't even listen to anyone seriously that came in and talked about such a thing" (The Nation, March 3, 2003).
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0321-01.htm

"What do they take us, Arabs, for? Have they fossilized in their minds an old image of the servile natives that we once were? Do they really think that an Iraqi father or mother who has lost his/her baby to diarrhea or cancer because of their sanctions, their bombs or their depleted uranium, can be bought with a sack of flour and a case of mineral water?"

from "Raid and Aid Charade" by Omar Barghouti
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=3381

Here's what Melinda wrote on a Pacifica msg board where people were debating the firing of Peter Arnett for giving his opinions to Iraqi TV:

:Begin uneducated asinine rant:
Peter Arnett is from New Zealand. Many people from that country are against this war. You can become a citizen of New Zealand if you are in a same sex relationship with a resident. They filmed Lord Of the Rings in New Zealand. Summation, Peter Arnett must be cool.
:End Uneducated asinine rant: