CSM column on Iraq

The column I had in yesterday’s Christian Science Monitor was on Iraq. It’s titled “A pattern of culpability in Iraq”.
Regular readers of JWN may find quite a few familiar themes in there… Actually, one of the many things I use the blog for is as a way of working out ideas.
At my editors’ urgings, I pulled a few punches in the text. “Many human rights experts consider…” etc etc. As always, we were working right up against deadline. Not sure how I feel about all that caveating. (Or, more to the point, not sure how I feel about being urged to engage in it.)

Anyway, I have many more things I want and need to be writing here in the days ahead. And a column to write for Al Hayat.
Yesterday I had to drive up to Philly to pick up my youngest, Lorna, from college. It was fun, but quite exhausting. Driving up, though, I discovered the joys of C-SPAN radio, which plays at 90.1 on the FM dial in an extended listening area around DC area.
I heard the end of the hearings of the hearings that Senate Appropriations Committee subcommittee on defense spending held with Wolfowitz and Gen. Peter Pace, re the administration’s request for a $25 billion supplemental appropriation for the war in Iraq. It was not quite clear, often, WHO was talking; but still, it was good to hear many Senators giving the Bushite flunkies a bad time. Then, the station switched to a taped recording of Rumsfeld and Myers’s “town hall meeting” with US soldiers in Baghdad. Most of the soldiers’ questions seemed to deal with “when will we get home” and other quality of life issues. It struck me the soldiers, for all the carefully orchestrated “hoo-ah”s that punctuated the event, did not come across like a bunch of happy campers….
Well, quite addictive listening, really. I guess you can also get the audio feeds from C-SPAN Radio through the internet.
On the way back, we found that the particular portion of the beltway we were traversing was being repaved. All traffic on the Outer Loop was being squeezed into one lane, which made for a really nasty delay. We rolled into our driveway in Charlottesville shortly before 1 a.m. Ways past my usual bed-time!