First Time
I'd never thought about having a blog of my own until a few weeks ago, probably because I have a website and can put anything I want to on it any time I feel like it. But the website is about...other things...and I guard its PageRank with jealous vigilance. The Googlebot might get confused if my private ramblings turned up on its pages, and I certainly don't want that.
Besides, sentences and paragraphs have been forming in my mind at an overwhelming--and accelerating--rate lately. I send emails to journalists and editors almost every day, and the only ones that get printed are the calm, responsible ones from the part of me that teaches kindergarten in the LA ghetto. No, I take that back: the LA Times did print this one on April 8:
It is a distortion to describe what is beginning now in Iraq as "civil war." History teaches us that nations occupied by foreign powers do not engage in civil war. First they unite to drive out the invader. Then they have their civil war.
But letters like this one....
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 8:38 AM
To: 'editor@usatoday.com'
Subject: U.S. Unlikely to Hand Over Saddam Soon
I am omitting my address and phone numbers from this message (they can be easily found on my website) because I don’t want it considered for publication. It is a direct statement to you, as honest as I can make it.
Saddam Hussein is not an evil man; Donald Rumsfeld is. I have spent many hours looking for independent, verifiable evidence of Saddam’s alleged monstrosity—and found nothing even remotely comparable with what the US has done in Iraq. All the stories have come from Chalabi and his people—the same ones who assured us about the continued presence of weapons of mass destruction. Torture of prisoners? Yes, but pretty mild. Tying the hands of prisoners behind their backs and hanging them from hooks for hours at Abu Ghraib prison, yes. The same hooks have been used in exactly the same way under the US “liberation.” “Gassing his own people”? It was a civil war. Every national leader uses force to put down an armed rebellion. And I’m sure you know where that gas came from: made in the USA.
The last book Saddam wrote was a romantic novel. His favorite song is “Strangers in the Night.” For decades he had a bleached-blonde Greek-born girlfriend, whose most shocking revelation about him, from the safety of Western Europe, was…that sometimes he took Viagra.
Independent journalists who talk to ordinary Iraqis report that even those who were opposed to Saddam miss him now. President Bush is now saying that he (Saddam) won’t be released anytime soon because he knows that if that happened there would be a great celebration in Iraq, and people really would be throwing flowers.
Colin Powell is a good man trapped in an impossible situation. Paul Wolfowitz is a misguided zealot. Dick Cheney hasn’t always been a bad guy, but he has changed. (How many people know that his wife Lynne once wrote a lesbian novel? The writing is outrageously, comically bad, but the vision of two daughters of Sappho walking hand-in-hand into the sunset is obviously heartfelt. My husband said, “If I were married to Dick Cheney I’d have lesbian fantasies too.”) President Bush is a recovering alcoholic, and anybody who has been to a single AA meeting (Ringo Starr gave me my chip for five years of sobriety), knows that alcoholics never stop being weak and vulnerable people, however much they may try to appear otherwise.
But Donald Rumsfeld? He is an evil man.
Besides, sentences and paragraphs have been forming in my mind at an overwhelming--and accelerating--rate lately. I send emails to journalists and editors almost every day, and the only ones that get printed are the calm, responsible ones from the part of me that teaches kindergarten in the LA ghetto. No, I take that back: the LA Times did print this one on April 8:
It is a distortion to describe what is beginning now in Iraq as "civil war." History teaches us that nations occupied by foreign powers do not engage in civil war. First they unite to drive out the invader. Then they have their civil war.
But letters like this one....
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2004 8:38 AM
To: 'editor@usatoday.com'
Subject: U.S. Unlikely to Hand Over Saddam Soon
I am omitting my address and phone numbers from this message (they can be easily found on my website) because I don’t want it considered for publication. It is a direct statement to you, as honest as I can make it.
Saddam Hussein is not an evil man; Donald Rumsfeld is. I have spent many hours looking for independent, verifiable evidence of Saddam’s alleged monstrosity—and found nothing even remotely comparable with what the US has done in Iraq. All the stories have come from Chalabi and his people—the same ones who assured us about the continued presence of weapons of mass destruction. Torture of prisoners? Yes, but pretty mild. Tying the hands of prisoners behind their backs and hanging them from hooks for hours at Abu Ghraib prison, yes. The same hooks have been used in exactly the same way under the US “liberation.” “Gassing his own people”? It was a civil war. Every national leader uses force to put down an armed rebellion. And I’m sure you know where that gas came from: made in the USA.
The last book Saddam wrote was a romantic novel. His favorite song is “Strangers in the Night.” For decades he had a bleached-blonde Greek-born girlfriend, whose most shocking revelation about him, from the safety of Western Europe, was…that sometimes he took Viagra.
Independent journalists who talk to ordinary Iraqis report that even those who were opposed to Saddam miss him now. President Bush is now saying that he (Saddam) won’t be released anytime soon because he knows that if that happened there would be a great celebration in Iraq, and people really would be throwing flowers.
Colin Powell is a good man trapped in an impossible situation. Paul Wolfowitz is a misguided zealot. Dick Cheney hasn’t always been a bad guy, but he has changed. (How many people know that his wife Lynne once wrote a lesbian novel? The writing is outrageously, comically bad, but the vision of two daughters of Sappho walking hand-in-hand into the sunset is obviously heartfelt. My husband said, “If I were married to Dick Cheney I’d have lesbian fantasies too.”) President Bush is a recovering alcoholic, and anybody who has been to a single AA meeting (Ringo Starr gave me my chip for five years of sobriety), knows that alcoholics never stop being weak and vulnerable people, however much they may try to appear otherwise.
But Donald Rumsfeld? He is an evil man.
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