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The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld

April 3, 2003 at 1:07 am
Contributed by:

Bizarre…and ominous. This guy gets more like Dr.
Strangelove every day.

I
assume you all remember John Ashcroft’s inspirational songs as well?

Who
knew they were poets?

–C

http://slate.msn.com/id/2081042

The Poetry of D.H.
Rumsfeld
Recent works by the secretary of
defense.
By Hart Seely
Posted
Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at 10:03 AM PT

Rumsfeld’s free-speaking verse

Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is an accomplished man. Not only is he guiding the
war in Iraq, he has been a pilot, a congressman, an ambassador, a businessman,
and a civil servant. But few Americans know that he is also a poet.

Until now, the secretary’s poetry has found only a small and skeptical
audience: the Pentagon press corps. Every day, Rumsfeld regales reporters with
his jazzy, impromptu riffs. Few of them seem to appreciate it.

But
we should all be listening. Rumsfeld’s poetry is paradoxical: It uses playful
language to address the most somber subjects: war, terrorism, mortality. Much of
it is about indirection and evasion: He never faces his subjects head on but
weaves away, letting inversions and repetitions confuse and beguile. His work,
with its dedication to the fractured rhythms of the plainspoken vernacular, is
reminiscent of William Carlos Williams’. Some readers may find that Rumsfeld’s
gift for offhand, quotidian pronouncements is as entrancing as Frank O’Hara’s.

And so Slate has compiled a collection of
Rumsfeld’s poems, bringing them to a wider public for the first time. The poems
that follow are the exact words of the defense secretary, as taken from the
official transcripts on the Defense Department Web site.

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.

There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known
unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not
know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We
don’t know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Glass Box
You know, it’s the old glass
box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you’re using those little things

Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can’t find it.
It’s—

And it’s all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping
it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—

Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,

But—

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.

—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

A Confession
Once in a while,
I’m standing here, doing
something.
And I think,
“What in the world am I doing here?”
It’s a big
surprise.

—May 16, 2001, interview with the New York Times

Happenings
You’re going to be told lots of things.

You get told things every day that don’t happen.

It doesn’t seem to bother people, they don’t—
It’s printed in the press.

The world thinks all these things happen.
They never happened.

Everyone’s so eager to get the story
Before in fact the story’s there

That the world is constantly being fed
Things that haven’t happened.

All I can tell you is,
It hasn’t happened.
It’s going to happen.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense briefing

The Digital Revolution
Oh my goodness gracious,
What
you can buy off the Internet
In terms of overhead photography!

A trained ape can know an awful lot
Of what is going on in this world,

Just by punching on his mouse
For a relatively modest cost!

—June 9, 2001, following European trip

The Situation
Things will not be necessarily continuous.

The fact that they are something other than perfectly continuous
Ought
not to be characterized as a pause.
There will be some things that people
will see.
There will be some things that people won’t see.
And life goes
on.

—Oct. 12, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing

Clarity
I think what you’ll find,
I think what you’ll
find is,
Whatever it is we do substantively,
There will be near-perfect
clarity
As
to what it is.

And it will be known,
And it will be known to the Congress,
And it
will be known to you,
Probably before we decide it,

But it will be known.

—Feb. 28, 2003, Department of Defense
briefing

Hart Seely writes for
the Syracuse Post-Standard newspaper. He is co-author
of 2007-Eleven and Other American Comedies.

Photograph of Donald
Rumsfeld by Kevin
Lamarque/Reuters.

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House Panel Backs Bush Plan to Drill in ANWR

April 2, 2003 at 9:17 pm
Contributed by:

Folks,

Here’s an interesting article; it’s about more than the plan to drill in ANWR, it’s actually about the whole range of energy policy & legislation being worked out in Congress. There is, surprisingly, some good news in here for renewables and alternative transport; though I’m a bit puzzled about the apparent battle between the House and Senate over some of the details. Anybody else have a finger on that?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=584&e=1&cid=584&u=/nm/20030403/pl_nm/energy_congress_dc

–C

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Belgium amends law to avoid war crimes lawsuit against Bush

April 2, 2003 at 9:04 pm
Contributed by:

Folks,

This is certainly interesting.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20030326/wl_mideast_afp/iraq_us_belgium_law_1

–C

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And now, a word from Wall Street

April 2, 2003 at 9:42 am
Contributed by:

Folks,

For a change of pace, I thought you would enjoy today’s piece from Aaron
Task of TheStreet.com. It’s well researched and brings in some interesting
perspectives on the war.

More to come,

–C

The Taskmaster – TSC
Terror Could Trip the Postwar Market
By Aaron L. Task
Senior Writer
04/02/2003 06:57 AM EST

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\"George\’s little antics\" – Observations on Bush from a Canadian expatriate

April 1, 2003 at 4:39 pm
Contributed by:

Folks,

I think this will be the last GetRealList post
for today.

Even having watched it all happen, it’s hard to
believe that we’ve gone from such highs to such lows, so quickly, at the hands
of this unfit idiot.

–C
George’s little antics

If you stayed up late enough to watch the announcement of
the start of the war in Iraq, you might have caught a glimpse of something very
unsettling. In an apparent error, the BBC aired coverage of pre-speech
preparations, live from the satellite feed coming from the Oval Office.

The fact that the BBC has “profusely and
repeatedly apologised” to the White House and that the administration has
removed control of feeds from the networks and put it in their own hands as a
result of the blunder, should indicate the seriousness of what you were not
supposed to see. Ditto the absolute absence of any media coverage of the
incident.

The footage was the most disturbing thing on
television in some time. There was US President George W Bush, being prepped for
his televised declaration of war. It was not the combing of his hair, the only
aspect of the coverage reported by any American media outlet (the Washington
Post in this case), which was cause for embarrassment; everyone expects that.
Rather, it was the demeanour – I would say antics – of the president himself.

Bush, the so-called leader of the free world, was
sitting behind his desk going over his speech, as we would expect. But then it
got weird. I felt like I was looking behind the curtain, and it was uglier than
I ever imagined.

Like some class clown trying to get attention from
the back of the room, he started mugging for his handlers. His eyes darted back
and forth impishly as he cracked faces at others around him. He pumped a fist
and self-consciously muttered, “feel good,” which was interestingly sanitised
into the more mature and assertive, “I’m feeling good” by the same Washington
Post.

He was goofing around, and there’s only one way to
interpret that kind of behaviour just seconds before announcing war on Iraq: the
man is an idiot.

Most Europeans and many others around the world
have assumed this for some time. To have it actually confirmed – beyond a
reasonable doubt – on live television, is perhaps a little too harsh to
reconcile with our wish to believe we live in a fair, democratic world of which
benevolent forces are mostly in charge. I felt sick.

What Americans don’t understand is that Europeans
have known this about Bush since he was Governor of Texas. They’ve always known
it, because it is so absolutely obvious, that the man who dodged military
service, who laughs at death penalty pleas for mercy, who didn’t know where Iraq
was two years ago, is less than a fit leader.

And they cannot understand how Americans have been
led to the brink of disaster by this talentless scion, this lackadaisical
lily-dipper. This idiot.

How can you have respect for a nation that follows
such a man? How can you sit by while he and his cronies decimate the
constitution, rape the economy, declare real war on an enemy of dubious threat
and declare diplomatic war on your best friends?

How do you let his administration systematically
disparage and even arrest any dissenters, thereby ensuring they are forever
marked for special treatment by the machinations of “homeland security?”

Yes, it’s complicated. You’re at war, we know,
even though this “war on terror” might have been better handled as a special
operation rather than a public display of hysteria. Bush has supposedly
intelligent people around him to help make the tough decisions, even if they’re
always attributed to him as if he were some sort of deity.

We are constantly told: “The President will decide
that at the appropriate time” or “The President is very concerned about that”.
Yes, I’m sure he is. But there was no escaping the fact that on Wednesday night,
it was a Yosemite Sam impersonator who declared war on a sovereign country and
who now calls the shots for all of us.

Slate called him the closest we’ve ever been to a
world dictator in a long time, probably since Caesar.

Sometimes, maybe it really is better to pay no
attention to the man behind the curtain.

Kevin
Lowe is a Canadian expatriate living in
Amsterdam.

http://www.expatica.com/index.asp?pad=34,368,&item_id=29857

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Iraq war propoganda, censorship, and more shenanigans…

April 1, 2003 at 3:17 pm
Contributed by:

Folks,

This
one was pretty unpleasant to read. The U.S. war propoganda, the backroom
jockeying for position in post-war Iraq, the
censorship…oy!

–C

‘You didn’t
fire a warning shot soon enough!’

A journalist’s account of the killing of a car full of Iraqi civilians by US
soldiers differs widely from the official military version, says Brian
Whitaker

Brian
Whitaker
Guardian
Unlimited

A
journalist’s account of the killing of a car full of Iraqi civilians by US
soldiers differs widely from the official military version, says Brian Whitaker

Tuesday April 1, 2003

The invasion forces
suffered another self-inflicted disaster in the battle for hearts and minds
yesterday when soldiers from the US 3rd infantry division shot dead Iraqi seven
women and children.

The incident occurred on Route 9, near Najaf, when a
car carrying 13 women and children approached a checkpoint.

A US
military spokesman says the soldiers motioned the vehicle to stop but their
signals were ignored. However, according to the Washington Post, Captain Ronny
Johnson, who was in charge of the checkpoint, blamed his own troops for ignoring
orders to fire a warning shot.

“You just *censored*ing killed a family because
you didn’t fire a warning shot soon enough!”, he reportedly yelled at them.

In another checkpoint incident this morning, US forces say they killed
an unarmed Iraqi driver outside Shatra.

Meanwhile it has emerged – as a
result of detective work on the internet by a Guardian reader – that the
explosion in a Baghdad market which killed more than 60 people last Friday was
indeed caused by a cruise missile and not an Iraqi anti-aircraft rocket as the
US has suggested.

A metal fragment found at the scene by British
journalist Robert Fisk carried various markings, including “MFR 96214 09″. This,
our reader pointed out in an email, is a manufacturer’s identification number
known as a “cage code”.

Cage codes can be looked up on the internet ( www.gidm.dlis.dla.mil ), and keying in
the number 96214 traces the fragment back to a plant in McKinney, Texas, owned
by the Raytheon Company.

Raytheon, whose headquarters are in Lexington,
Massachusetts, aspires “to be the most admired defence and aerospace systems
supplier through world-class people and technology”, according to its website ( www.raytheon.com ). It makes a vast
array of military equipment, including the AGM-129 cruise missile which is
launched from B-52 bombers.

On the political front, two new quarrels
have broken out. One centres on an attempt by the US to set up its own
inspection team to find the alleged Iraqi weapons that United Nations inspectors
did not find. The US appears unaware that such a project will have little
credibility internationally and has pressed ahead, offering jobs to some of the
UN inspectors.

The two chief UN inspectors, Hans Blix and Mohamed
ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Authority, are reportedly
furious. Dr Baradei, in remarks quoted by the BBC, insisted that the IAEA is the
sole body with legal authority to verify any nuclear programmes in Iraq.

The other row concerns the new Pentagon-controlled Iraqi government that
the US is establishing in Kuwait, with 23 ministries, each headed by an American
and with four US-appointed Iraqi advisers.

Former US general Jay Garner,
who was placed in overall charge of the “interim government”, is annoyed by the
efforts of Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defence secretary, to impose several
controversial Iraqis as advisers in the government.

They include Ahmed
Chalabi, head of the opposition Iraqi National Congress, who will be offered an
advisory post in the finance ministry. Mr Chalabi was previously convicted in
his absence of a multi-million dollar banking fraud in Jordan, though he denies
the charges.

Mr Wolfowitz wants posts in other ministries to go to Mr
Chalabi’s nephew, Salem, and to three of his close associates, Tamara
Daghestani, Goran Talebani and Aras Habib.

In an interview with the BBC
yesterday, the British home secretary, David Blunkett, conceded that at present
the invasion forces are “seen as villains”, but he added:

“Once this is
over and there is a free Iraq, with a democratic state … the population as a
whole will say that we want a free country, we want a state to live in where we
can use our talents to the full.”

The veteran American war
correspondent, Peter Arnett, was sacked by NBC television yesterday for giving
an interview to an Iraqi TV journalist in which he said the US had “misjudged
the determination of the Iraqi forces”. He was immediately offered a new job by
a British newspaper, the Daily Mirror, which opposes the war.

Another
war-related tragedy has occurred in Israel, where two elderly sisters were found
dead – apparently suffocated – in a room that they had made airtight against a
possible Iraqi chemical attack. Three others died in similar circumstances a
fortnight ago.

On the ground in Iraq, battles continue in various
locations. US forces “testing” the southern defences of Baghdad are reportedly
fighting Republican Guards and other forces at Hindiya, some 50 miles from the
capital.

Fighting has also erupted along the Euphrates river near
ancient Babylon. US marines entered Shatra, 20 miles north of Nassiriya, after
storming it with planes, tanks and helicopter gunships, and British Royal
Marines clashed with Iraqi paramilitaries south of Basra.

Bombing of
Baghdad continued overnight. Targets included the Iraqi national Olympic
committee, which is run by Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday.

At least one
American soldier has been reported killed at Hindiya. A British soldier was also
killed yesterday – the 26th since the war began. The defence ministry said he
died “in the course of his duties” but gave no details.

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The Poetry of D.H. Rumsfeld

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