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Saturday, July 31, 2004

Mike Tyson's humbling defeat to a relatively obscure boxer last night means that his career is probably over. This is not a good situation for anybody. Iron Mike is a very strong, very violent man who is now millions of dollars in debt and out of a job. Do we want to release him onto the streets?

If I were Osama bin Laden, I would do my best to recruit Mike Tyson. He's desperate for cash, angry at society, and he allegedly adopted Islam while in prison. He's a ready-made sleeper agent.

If I were Vince McMahon (of World Wrestling Entertainment fame) I would re-hire Tyson as a benevolent act towards all mankind. Tyson, as you may recall, did a few WWE appearances back in 1998 to hype the Shawn Michaels - Steve Austin match at Wrestlemania. It's about time that Vinny Mac, ever the rugged capitalist, took advantage of the earnings potential of a Mike Tyson - WWE collaboration.

Friday, July 30, 2004

MY OPEN LETTER TO SENATOR KERRY

Dear Sen. Kerry,

Of the many points you made in your speech of July 29 in accepting the Democratic nomination for president, one offends me far more than the others which I take question with. In your speech, you accused President Bush of not having an energy policy and insinuated that you would have one if you were president. I find that remark to be both mendacious and hypocritical.

It is my recollection that President Bush twice challenged Congress to pass an energy bill, based on the recommendations made by Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001. In both cases, Senate Democrats, yourself included, blocked these measures.

After reviewing the energy policies of this administration, the highest praise should be heaped on Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham (and to a lesser extent, President Bush) for encouraging renewed development of nuclear energy resources. During the eight years of the Clinton administration, the national energy policy was held hostage by fringe environmentalists who blocked development of breeder reactors and the Yucca Mountain waste storage site. If the United States is serious about cutting emissions, it will have to embrace nuclear power as the only reliable, energy-dense source of power that is free from greenhouse gases.

Instead of trying to work together in a civil, bipartisan way to pass a compromise energy bill, Congressional Democrats have branded America's energy suppliers as "big polluters" and tried to insinuate wrongdoing by the Vice President's task force because it included the now-collapsed energy giant, Enron. There should be no doubt why Vice President Cheney refuses to release the proceedings of his task force's meetings, as you and your fellow Democrats will attack him and his energy policy for "being in bed with big polluters" rather than the reality of working out a realistic near-term plan for utilizing energy resources.

Futher, you have personally called for the energy independence of this nation, yet you pin this hope on Hydrogen technology and infrastructure that is decades away. You have flatly rejected near-term alternatives, such as clean coal technology and arctic drilling. Essentially, you are trying to take a far-term solution and apply it to the near term, which is unfeasible and unrealistic.

If you do become president, I hope that you will approach this nation's energy policy in a way that is both realistic and bipartisan. I pray that you will be advised by upstanding citizens with sound judgement and a scientific background, and that you will not be lead astray by the junk science peddled by fringe environmentalists.

Respectfully,
The Impossible Scissors

Wednesday, July 28, 2004

If you lived in the Chicago area and had your TV on last night, it was impossible to miss the Barack Obama love-fest. Not only were shows pre-empted to play his speech to the DNC, but he got mega-attention on the news shows afterwards.

In all fairness, state sen. Obama is one of the greatest orators of his generation. He comes across as optimistic, and genuine at first glance. Yet some of the things he said were disturbing, and went unchallenged by the media.

Obama started the speech with his story of growing up from humble roots and rising to success. Yet he credits government programs (the GI bill in particular) for the opportunities he has received. Doesn't personal ambition have anything to do with it? He repeats the Democrat mantra of "Bush lied, people died," and predictably leaves out anything about Blair's "lies" or Clinton's "lies."

Obama had the audacity to say that President Bush uses religion to divide people. Huh? If anything, blame the Islamic militants who want to kill us for using religion to divide. At least George Bush stood up in defense of decent Muslims after we were attacked on September 11. Obama went on to say that Arab-American families were held in detention without access to lawyers. Again, I'm confused as to what he's talking about. Does he mean the people who were detained after 911 on immigration violations, and eventually deported? Does he think we should have allowed these illegal immigrants to stay in the country in the aftermath of attacks that were caused in part by illegal immigrants from Arab countries?

In short, Barack Obama is all flash and no substance. He has mastered what I call the "positive attack," and the Democrats will reward him royally. After he wins the IL senate seat (which is all but guaranteed,) you can expect him to serve for some time and eventually get consideration for the presidency or a cabinet position.


In other DNC news, Michael Moore has revealed that his next film is "Sickos," an anti-HMO "documentary." Perhaps our favorite "Stupid White Man" would like to tell audiences about how my HMO completely covered my 1997 hospitalization, which probably approached the $100,000 mark. Yeah, I didn't think it would happen.

Monday, July 26, 2004

ADVENTURES
A new lizard joined our family yesterday.  Sister wanted to get a female and name her "Marge" to go along with Hungry Hungry Homer.  I picked out what looked like the healthiest female at the pet shop.  My self-righteous "she's a female" at the shop turned to doubt when we took the lizard home.  Still, "she" ate three crickets for us.  I'm still not entirely certain, but I think the new lizard is female.  Dad wanted to return to the shop and get the sickly looking female I saw earlier, and I do feel guilty about not being able to provide a home to that poor little lizard.  However, there's the problem of that lizard's odds of survival when we take her home, as well as the possibility of negative competition with the other lizards.

My mistakes continue to haunt me.  My family forced me to go to breakfast with them yesterday.  In the restraunt, I saw a family who's matriarch resembled the lady I collided with several months ago.  I can't make a positive ID for sure, but it brought back chilling memories and reminders of my idiocy.  Later in the afternoon I punctured a window screen when I was trying to get a bike off the hooks in the garage ceiling.

 
RANT
The Democratic National Convention is underway, fellow political junkies.  John Kerry will try to allow voters to get to know him personally.  The move is potentially suicidal, as to know Kerry is to loathe him.  Of course, the irony is that the convention's acronym, DNC, is a homophone for an abortion method.

One of the featured speakers is IL state senator (and probable US Senator, come November) Barack Obama.  He is a rising star in the party.  I predict he will be the next "Slick Willy," and possibly a presidential candidate in the future.  At a recent press conference, Obama "pulled a Democrat" by claiming to be a "moderate" instead of a "liberal."  He invoked the name of our elusive, demonized vice president, saying that being to the left of Dick Cheney doesn't make him a liberal.  That may be true (I would call myself 'left of Cheney,' but not by too much) but his ideas about things such as government tuition assistance show him to be a liberal with socialist tendencies.

John Kerry showed up in Cape Canaveral today to put down George W. Bush as "anti-science," a label that has stuck and which Karl Rove has done little to change.  Kerry misrepresented the Bush policy on stem cells (from my capitalist perspective, such research should be funded from the private sector anyway, regardless of one's views on the morality of embryonic stem cells) and painted himself as a pro-science candidate.  The problem is that Kerry opposes the president's Vision for Space Exploration on funding grounds and argues that NASA should do more biology research onboard the woefully incomplete and increasingly unreliable space station.  Kerry's vision will doom us to the "business as usual" approach of shuttle and space station, which limits us to sizable financial investments with diminishing returns.

Friday, July 23, 2004

Now that the 911 commission has done its work and issued its report, America's leaders must thoroughly sift through it and determine what needs to be done as we protect the nation from future terrorist attacks.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
It must be said first that the commission, though seemingly bipartisan, is made up of ten people who had ten different agendas.  For Richard Ben Veneste, his job was to make President Bush look as bad as possible.  Jaime Gorelick sought to cover her own worthless ass for pushing the FBI and CIA farther apart.  Bob Kerrey used his time to lecture Condi Rice about the current strategy in Iraq.  Jim Thompson kept quiet and tried to avoid reminding people that he was the worst governor in Illinois history.

Recent commissions have been very harsh on leaders and managers for things that were beyond their control.  The Downing Commission on Khobar Towers faulted the base commander, even though it was the Saudi government who rejected the commander's demands to move a security wall farther away from the towers.  Hal Gehman's commissions blamed the captain of the USS Cole for not shooting at the suicide boats and NASA management for the destruction of Columbia.  Somebody forgot to tell him that suicide boats aren't easily deterred by gunfire, or that the space shuttle was a poorly-designed system prone to failure.  The 911 commission is no different.

One of the commission's observations is the failure to retailiate after the USS Cole was bombed.  Blame is assigned to both Presidents Clinton and Bush.  Surely Bill Clinton is to blame, as the incident occurred on his watch.  Bill Clinton has admitted that he could have struck back with a missile strike on bin Laden's Kandahar compound, but he was afraid of killing civilians.  But a more sinister motive may be behind Clinton's failure to act: Al Gore's election campaign.  Not only should George W. Bush have used this act of weakness to attack Gore, but he should have followed through on it.  I remember back to the summer of 2001, talking to a friend about the urgency of killing Osama bin Laden.  I was still seething over the USS Cole bombing.  But my friend understood the gravity of the situation better, and felt that merely taking out bin Laden would be insufficient, because our enemy is an entire Islamic militant ideology.

WHAT THE REPORT GETS RIGHT
The most reassuring thing to come out during the public hearings was Bob Kerrey's endorsement of the preemption doctrine.  As vigilant as we try to be, we cannot prevent every act of terrorism from coming to our soil.  When our intelligence is good, we must strike terrorists first.

The commission also did a thorough job checking into the Iranian connection to 911.  Their findings cement Iran's place in the axis of evil and should firm up our position as we deal with that country's Islamofascist government.

A national intelligence czar, the committee's central recommendation, could be a good idea if it is implemented correctly.  It might give us a better way to coordinate the efforts of the CIA, FBI, NSA, NRO, and DIA in fighting terorrism.  The national intelligence czar would be able to see the big picture, rather than the Phoenix FBI memo about terrorists in flight schools being ignored by the FBI bureaucracy.  Of course, the extra bureaucracy created for the new czar could waste taxpayer money and stymie investigations of terrorists.

WHAT THE REPORT GOT WRONG
The report establishes that a 20th hijacker, a Saudi named Mohammed al Qatani, was stopped by customs at Orlando International Airport.  The significance of this is lost on the commission.  Although chairman Thomas Kean believes the attacks could have been prevented, the deportation of the 20th hijacker shows how difficult it is to unravel such a redundant plan at such a late stage in the game.  This should only reinforce our need for better spying and using preemption to fight terorrists. 

Zacharias Moussaoui and his terror plot have not been fully investigated.  Moussaoui would have been a pilot during a second round of hijackings, planned for sometime around March 2002.  His arrest and the invasion of Afghanistan (which put the al Qaeda leadership into disarray) stopped the attacks.  But what became of the other hijackers who may have been inside the US?  Knowing answers to this question might save us in the future. 

al Qaeda's motivation, seeing the US flee from Somalia and Lebanon, did not get much attention.  Yet we know that Somali militiamen were trained by bin Laden's organization, and al Qaeda was directly bolstered by their ability to inflict American casualties and get the Americans to quickly cave in to their wishes.

The 911 commission also lacked access to information that may have impacted its findings.  It's now been established that Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton's National Security Adviser, took classified documents out of a secure room and discarded some of them.  Was this gross carelessness or malicious obstructiuon of justice?  Was there anything in those documents that was unknown to the commission?  These questions must be answered before we can have full faith in the commission's findings. 

We also learned from commissioner John Lehman that the commission was denied certain pieces of evidence linking Iraq to al Qaeda.  Iraq's involvement with al Qaeda was glossed over.  The commission acknowledged that Iraq offered money and safe haven to al Qaeda's leadership, but downplayed its significance because bin Laden apparently never accepted (although Abu Musab al Zarqawi fatefully did.)  The commission did not learn until after the public hearings that an Iraqi national who helped plan the 911 attacks may have been a member of the Fedayeen Saddam.  This connection must still be investigated before we can characterize the nature of al Qaeda's relationship with the Iraqi government.

Most importantly, the commission missed the central recommendation of the Senate report on Iraq intel failures.  The CIA and other agencies have become too reliant on satellites, foreign intelligence reports, and unreliable defectors.  What we need is the ability to spy again.  As Bill Gertz pointed out in his book "Breakdown," John Walker was born in America but was able to travel to southwest asia, join the Taliban, and meet with bin Laden.  Agents of our intelligence community should be able to do the same thing.  Before we point the finger at George Bush for failing us on 911, we should ask how any president can be reasonably asked to protect the country when his intelligence agencies have been deaf and blind for years.

*************************************************************************************

OTHER STUFF
I tried to run on Wednesday against my better judgement.  Shortly after I started, I was caught in the hardest rain I had seen in quite some time.  I was lucky to get back as quickly as I did because I could barely see a thing.

John Kerry sat down for an interview with Tom Brokaw that aired Wednesday and Thursday.  Overall, I thought he sounded evasive although he avoided being negative for the most part.  The most telling part of the interview was when Brokaw asked Kerry about whether he would send more soldiers to Iraq if the interim government requested them.  Kerry replied that he would only do so only if other countries also agreed.  Brokaw then suggested to Kerry that countries have a reluctancyto join in, and that feeling cannot be entirely attributed to President Bush.  John Kerry chimed in with the traditional Democratic response of "Everything will be okay if we 'provide leadership.'"  I wonder when Hanoi John will learn that leadership often includes setting the example when nobody else will follow.

Monday, July 19, 2004

ADVENTURES
I'm still grappling with the rat fink from eBay who tricks people with deceptive statements like "looks like all the parts are there, but sold as-is."  When you get the item, parts are obviously missing.  Getting this rat fink to cough up the money for replacement parts is like pulling teeth, particularly when his greed outweighs his integrity.
 
Going to Home Depot yesterday was a little more interesting.  There was a sparrow flapping around among the rafters.  Maybe it has made a nest in there.
 
I will be reaching that magic birthday on Saturday.  I'm going to be barbecueing with manly men, not girly men.  In defense of Arnold Schwarzenegger, have we become so thin-skinned that we can't call somebody a "girly man" anymore?  Being gay and being a "girly man" should not be synonomous with each other.  That's not to say that being girly is bad, either--as long as you are a girl. 
 
RANTS
Charles Smith, newsmax.com's defense "expert," was on Art Bell last night talking about China.  The scary situation, in his assessment, is the inevitable invasion of Taiwan and China's plans to nuke us should we interfere.  Smith pointed lots of fingers at American companies who exported missile guidance technology to China during the Clinton years.  He also explained that if we were to be nuked by China, the best strategy would be limited retaliation against China's leadership and command infrastructure.  He also had an interesting take on the Iraq war.  Charles Smith thought that war with Iraq was inevitable, so it was better to get it over with and free up the airpower and seapower assets that were tied up in containing Iraq for twelve years.  He admitted that our army is stretched thin, but he feels that the training of Iraqi security forces will eventually lighten the load.

There are some encouraging developments on the "armed Arab militia" front.  Palestinian gunmen are threatening the "corrupt" Palestinian Chairman, Yasser Arafat.  Perhaps Arafat will be ousted and a new Palestinian leader who actually cares about peace and security with Israel (instead of his own well-being) comes to power.  The flip side is that these gunmen might impose their own pro-Hamas government and establish the West Bank as an anti-Israeli terrorist state.  Also, a Shiite militia has also threatened terror mastermind Abu Musab al Zarqawi.  Hopefully this is a sign that Iraqis will be united in freeing their country from insurgents.  However, it also makes me fearful that Sunni militiamen will retaliate against the Shiite militia and spark off a civil war within Iraq.  It's also possible that the Iranians are behind this anti-Zarqawi militia.  The Iranian theocrats have a vested interest in making the new Iraq into their own image.
 
The Iran front gets more chaotic on a daily basis.  The Iranian-backed guerrilla group Hezbollah may be aiding Abu Musab Zarqawi.  The Iranian government is probably giving aid to al Sadr's al Mahdi army.  At least eight of the 911 hijackers passed through Iran and got the government to not stamp their passports.  And Iran also courted al Qaeda after the USS Cole bombing.  Essentially, all of Iraq's sins (support of terrorism, missile acquisition, and nuclear weapon development) are ten times worse in Iran.  Yet it makes more sense to invade Iraq, because Iraq was militarily weaker.  With Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is in a vice.  The neocon logic is that a secular, Shiite-dominated Iraq will plunge Iran into revolution.  Hopefully, we will get Iraq and Iran for the price of one.
 
The disappearance of Marine corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun gets stranger by the day.  When he first disappeared, the military thought he was trying to defect to Lebanon.  Some doubt around that theory is swirled up by the al Jazeera images of him wearing his Marine uniform and carrying his military ID.  Although his captors claimed to be from the group "Islamic Response," the message of his beheading came from the group "Ansar al Sunna Army."  Shortly after news of his beheading was posted, the real Ansar al Sunna Army denied holding Hassoun or making the statement.  Now Hassoun is safe and free, still claiming he was kidnapped by insurgents.  There's too much unverifiable information to sort out here.  Maybe he truly was seduced by an Arab woman and lured over to his captors, as the original decapitation message claimed.  It's also possible that he tried to fake his murder so he could easily desert the Marines.  In this case, the "kidnappers" screwed up by by changing the name of their group to that of another insurgent group.  I will be very interested to hear the truth if anybody gets to the bottom of this.  I hope for his sake that he is a loyal Marine, Semper Fidelis.

Sunday, July 18, 2004

ADVENTURES
Chipmunk number 15 made me work hard.  When his trap snapped, he flew several feet under the deck.  By now, the chipmunk population has dwindled to the point where we only catch one every few days.  Further, the ants have been eating the nasty Aldi's "Fruit Rings" cereal that I've been using for bait.
 
I've been up on the ladders the past few days to paint.  I'm starting to gain a sense of bravery and accomplishment from working on this screen porch.
 
Yesterday I stunned a fly by smacking him with a pair of metal tongs.  Then I impaled him on a cedar spinter.  I thought the entire episode was fairly funny.  The fly was alive for at least an hour after the impaling. 
 
By now, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Ed Asner are probably condemning me and saying that my cruelty towards flies and chipmunks is a precursor of my future violence against humans.  I will continue to watch my back.
 
 
RANT
Some Americans are going to Canada to get cheap drugs.  In my mind, these people are despicable freeloaders.  After all, Canadians pay their taxes so their socialist-sympathizing government will subsidize the drug companies.  If the drug companies wanted to open this subsidized drug market up to Americans, they would obviously need bigger subsidies.  I don't know if the American freeloaders are stealing from the drug companies or from the people of Canada (based on my admitted ignorance of how Canadians compute their subsidies,) but I still feel the need to condemn these theives.

Friday, July 16, 2004

I can't help but look at the newly-opened "Millennium Park" and think to myself, "What a waste."  I'm disgusted to think of how much money was spent on that stupid metallic "bean."
 
My trip past Peoria was rather scenic and I met some interesting people.  It was, however, tainted by some of the people I already knew, who either misunderstood their directions, made life miserable through complaining, or merely by acting like ritalin-popping idiots.
 
Sometimes I wonder if there are children who are uncontrollable, in spite of the quality of parenting.  Maybe their brains are hard-wired so they reject logic and act like idiots.  Then we give them ritalin in hopes of controlling them, but it rarely solves the problem.
 
Martha Stewart is getting jail time, and I almost feel sorry for her.  I know the reason why she's been prosecuted has much to do with the fact she gives oodles of money to the Democrats.  Yet she's also a lying liar, and there must be consequences for that.  At the same time, I don't think that taxpayer dollars should be wasted on incarcerating non-violent criminals.

Monday, July 12, 2004

July 12, 1957 saw the birth of two young men whose lives would mirror each other and equally change the world around them for the better.

Michael Scott Speicher (born as "Gregory") was born in Kansas and adopted by a family member, Wallace Speicher. In time he would become a naval aviator like his father was during World War II. He met his wife in college (Florida State) and started a family, fathering a girl and a boy. While off duty, he served as a Sunday school teacher at his church, spreading the Lord's message to the future of our nation.

On January 16, 1991, Operation Desert Storm began. Scott Speicher was not scheduled to fly in the initial strikes, but he insisted on going. Being the skilled pilot he was, Scott Speicher's request was granted. The mission would be his last. His plane was shot down and he disappeared. It was assumed he was killed, although later evidence gave the impression that he was captured. Today, his fate remains just as mysterious as it was in 1991.

Rick Douglas Husband also came into the world that day. He was born in Amarillo, Texas. Rick wanted to be an astronaut since he was four years old. During high school, he took the first step of learning to fly. Rick also met his future wife there, although they did not find love until both of them attended Texas Tech. Rick went through Air Force ROTC, earned his commission and wings, and graduated from Test Pilots School. Rick Husband tried four times before NASA finally accepted him, but during that time he learned that loving his Lord and loving his family was far more important than becoming an astronaut. Rick grew in his faith, became more active in his church, and served as a model of faith for his daughter and son.

Rick Husband's second space mission, STS-107, lifted off on January 16, 2003. He flew as commander, which is a rarity because he had only flown one mission as pilot. His command over the mission in addition to the flawless teamwork of his crew were a testament to his ability to lead. Yet on February 1, the mission came to a premature end, sixteen minutes from landing.

One can only guess what the world would be like if we still had men like Scott Speicher and Rick Husband to lead us. I recently read "High Calling," the Rick Husband biography written by his widow. The story was both sad and beautiful. If I can muster even a portion of Rick Husband's character, I know I could be a much better person.


We buried Frisky Molly yesterday. We lost a lot of time Saturday at my uncle's high school graduation party, but when we came home that night I went all-out for Frisky. I made her a small casket and a headstone, on which father burned her name with a soldering iron. The burial was Sunday morning after church. It was a sad occurrence, but also a time to relive all of the good memories we had of her. I think that Frisky deserved the most dignified burial we could give her. I also thought about my sadness over losing Frisky Molly, and what Evelyn Husband must have felt when Rick died. I have no clue how much deeper sadness can run, but someday I will find out, and only the Lord will be able to help me through it. If Evelyn Husband can recover from her grief enough to write a beautiful book like "High Calling," I know that my God can do the same for all of us.

Thursday, July 08, 2004

Frisky Molly died this morning. In spite of being such a little lizard, she left a gaping hole in my heart when she left this world. When we first got her she was scrawny and not much older than the baby anoles we had. After much food and tender loving care, she blossomed into our oldest lizard. She was there when I was a senior in high school, and she was there when I would come home for holidays and summer in college. Frisky Molly was quite sickly for most of her life, yet she always found a way to keep on fighting. I will be forever haunted with questions of whether I hastened her death, particularly because of the large dose of antibiotics I gave her on Friday. Yet Dad and I did our darndest to help her out during her last days. Godspeed, Frisky Molly, and may we meet again someday.

Monday, July 05, 2004

ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK
My grandfather landed himself in the hospital again on Friday with congestive heart failure. This has happened so many times over the past three years that I've lost count. I'm equal parts worried and sad for him, and every time I see him like this I resolve to eat a better diet and avoid his situation. My father, however, refuses to learn a lesson from this ordeal. The other lifestyle change I can recommend to people predisposed to heart disease is to not get too attached to anyone so that there will be few mourners when your heart finally gives out.

My family went as guests to the cottage in Michigan for the holiday, but I opted to stay home to care for my ailing pet lizard, Frisky Molly. It's tough to see her as sick as she is. Then again, we've had her for nearly four years (since July 13, 2000) and she's been our longest-lived lizard. She was probably around two years old when we got her, so she's lived quite a long time for such a little lizard. We grow attached to our animals and will make tremendous sacrifices for them. Frisky is no different. I will keep the faith in the coming days and will do whatever I can for her, but it will be up to her will if she is to pull out of this sickness.

The neighborhood children were setting off fireworks all of last week, well before Independence Day. I wanted to grab one of the kids, jam firecrackers down his rear end, and light them off. You can't go an hour in this neighborhood without hearing the whizz-pop of a firecracker. Such is the problem when parents spoil their children to the point of brathood and do not teach them responsibility.

I feel very guilty for allowing somebody to rip our house off. On Sunday afternoon, Dad noticed that over $30 worth of beer and pop were missing from the garage. I can only assume that they were stolen when I opened the garage, either to paint or on Thursday when I mowed the lawn. We suspect that our neigbor's lawn care service might be behind the heist, and if so, may the ill-gotten beer be a curse on their heads. I guess the loss isn't that bad, as neither pop nor beer is very good for any of us. I just hope that nothing else was yoinked from our garage.

MSN Hotmail reset my e-mail account or something, so my messages dating back to 1999 are all gone. What a shame. The e-mail service providers have a way of jerking you around, in addition to the "enlarge your manhood" and "enlarge your breasts" offers that slip though their junk filters. If I accepted both the manhood and the breast enlargement, I might blend in with the locals if I take a trip to San Francisco.

Chipmunk #13 died on Saturday as Dad and I were working on the screen porch. I watched as his hind legs wriggled frantically in a futile attempt to escape. The flies came by and ate the bread from his mouth. It was a sad sight and a reminder why I should not be a chipmunk hunter.

RANT
As much as the media Bush-haters repeat the mantra "no weapons of mass destruction," I sense that there is far more to the story than they want to believe. On June 27, the Financial Times reported that British, French, and Italian intelligence still believe that Iraq tried to get uranium from Niger during 1999-2001. Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, best known as Iraq's information minister, was the Iraqi negotiator in trade negotiations with Niger. What's confusing is why Iraq would want unenriched uranium if it didn't have centrifuges to enrich it (which the media assumes to be true.) It may be possible that Iraq wanted to build a radiological "dirty" bomb for terrorist uses. What frustrates me is that so many of Iraq's secrets may never be known.

Here's a secret that is known to Iraqi insurgents but not to most American voters: Iraq posessed cyclosarin warheads, and some may still be at large and dangerous within the country. The Poles found two of these weapons, by far the most deadly WMD found in Iraq since the war started. The kicker is that insurgents wanted to buy these warheads for $5000 a piece. I wondered why Team Bush isn't playing up the discovery of these pre-1991 chemical weapons in Iraq. Is this a case of public relations incompetence by Karl Rove, or a deliberate attempt by Team Bush to keep these weapons hidden from insurgents? Such is the consequence of toppling a regime to destroy its hidden weapons: the weapons actually become more likely to fall into terrorist hands.

I'm seeing shadows of Somalia in Iraq right now: urban warfare, a xenophobic enemy who finds success by firing small arms and RPG's wildly, and US troops without sufficient armored vehicles for their safety. In 1993, defense secretary Les Aspen fell on his sword and quit after "Black Hawk Down." Should Donald Rumsfeld do the same? It would seem fair, but there's an important difference between the two situations. The US had decided to abandon Somalia as Aspen was resigning. We cannot abandon Iraq, for the same reason we should have stayed in Somalia: a terrorist victory there will encourage more attacks against the US homeland. Rumsfeld should serve out the rest of his term, if for no other reason than to tell the troops we have faith in their leaders and their mission.

Thursday, July 01, 2004

ADVENTURES OF THE WEEK
My task this week is to rearrange my class schedule for the fall. Sometimes life throws me a lemon, and I am forced to make lemonade.

The chipmunk tally is up to twelve. Number eleven was the first I've seen that was caught in the afternoon. They've infested the area under the deck, and they continue to kill my flowers.

RANT
The battle for the Chicago teachers union presidency is nothing if not amusing. A new president is elected, the election is thrown out due to fraud, and the newly-elected president tries to get into union headquarters after the outgoing president has the locks changed. It seems to me like the newly-elected prez is being shafted, but her reaction seems a bit immature.

The White Sox traded catcher Miguel Olivo for pitcher Freddy Garcia. The Sox's new fifth starter looked okay during his first start, and I hope he works out well for the team. If not, the Sox wasted a perfectly good young catcher in Olivo.

The Iraqi "dirty dozen," including Saddam Hussein, Tariq Aziz, and Ali Hasan al-Majid are being charged with war crimes. I hope people realize that these monsters aren't supposed to receive a fair trial. The purpose of these legal proceedings is to let Iraqis air their grievances against their old "leadership" and then kill them in a judicial fashion. Hopefully this will bring healing to the country.

The supreme court is undermining our war against Islamic militants. It seems that only justice Clarence Thomas concurs with me (as he usually does) that somebody captured by the US military in a combat zone is not subject to the US legal system and does not deserve a lawyer to challenge his detention. These terrorists are "illegal combatants" under the Geneva convention and as such do not deserve POW treatment. As the United States, the standard-bearer for human rights throughout the world, we should come up with reasonable and fair standards for detaining, trying, and punishing these terrorists. We should not, however, treat them in the same fashion as the common criminal.

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