Odds and Ends

Donald Rumsfeld speaking to the troops in Baghdad proudly announced he has stopped reading newspapers. I don’t believe him. Unlike uncurious George I think Rummy devours print media and forms entirely personal reactions to his “press” so I wonder how his digestion is faring in light of Seymour Hersh’s latest column.

Hersh writes that the order to expand a highly-secretive operation that encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners came from Donald himself. According to the senior C.I.A. official Hersh quotes and claims confirmed this account last week, “the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.”

This brought to mind articles that appeared last year and one in particular that mentioned “snowflakes” or “Rummygrams”, “literally thousands” of memos on foreign policy emanating from the defense secretary that were a symptom of what many viewed alarmingly as Rumsfeld’s relentless power grabbing.

Memories stirred of Rummy defending his installation of close aide Stephen Cambone as undersecretary of defense for intelligence and denying that his role would in any way compete with that of the C.I.A.’s.

I was also reminded of Rummy’s attempts during that period to “repeal over 100 reporting and notification requirements, including essential and widely utilized reports on cost overruns, technical failures and schedule delays.” If it isn’t bad enough that Donald Rumsfeld & Co. have imposed their faulty intelligence and gathering of it in such a way it has removed any lingering doubts that Americans are potentially a fair and just people, he has always intended to hide the cost of these enormous blunders from the taxpayers and their alleged representatives.

These lawmakers on Friday, May 7, 2004 claimed they would not again give George money for Iraq without reserving oversight. I don’t believe them. Whatever Bush & Co. finally decide should be on this latest ransom note Congress will grant unconditionally. They are the worst liars and least effective legislators ever to reside on Capitol Hill.

A friend informs me that The Corporation is a must see. According to him last night’s preview at Rice University Media Centre happened in order to “whip up” protest of Halliburton’s Shareholders Meeting in Houston on Wednesday, May 19. It will be released to wider audiences in the U.S. in June.

In my humble opinion, Pepe Escobar’s article The new beat generation about poetry happenings in San Francisco is more interesting than the poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti that he links. On the other hand I was awed by the poem roberto rios by Neil Raymond Ricco for Ishmael Reed which can be found by going here and accessing Poetry listed under the latest issue.

And if you plan to tune-in to C-Span’s Booknotes today featuring John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience or Book TV‘s From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East by Bernard Lewis, consider reading this first.