March, 2003

March 30, 2003 - American dead are coming home to Dover Air Force Base. There are no honor guards to welcome them; no flag draped coffins; no solemn ceremonies to honor the last full measure of their devotion. Their passing is not noted nor marked by the old men who sent them off to die in Iraq. Dover is off limits to the American press and television cameras.

23 British service men came home today. The Union Jack draped their coffins as one by one their comrades carried them off the transport plane. Generals and Admirals snapped to attention and saluted as they passed. Vestured clergy prayed and the regimental band played them home. The British public attended through BBC’s broadcast of the ceremony. Britannia remembered her own....click here for entire article

March 29, 2003 - According to the field commanders whose soldiers are engaged with the Iraqis, Central Command has ordered a pause of 4 to 6 days in the advance on Baghdad to enable the troops to rest and re-supply while the 82 Airborne cleans up Ambush Alley. This, they assure us, is “according to plan”. Just because we see the troops not advancing, the PR folks tell us, does not mean that the there is a “pause”...click here for entire article

March 28, 2003 - The war, we are told, is going according to plan. Whether it is from the Qatar advance headquarters of Central Command or the press briefing room at the Pentagon, military spokesmen assure us that the difficult situation that has emerged in Southern Iraq was not unanticipated and that the course of the battle is ahead of schedule. It is a case of putting the best foot forward. The ultimate issue, we are repeatedly told, is not in doubt. Saddam’s days are numbered. That is to be expected. The American people; those who embrace the aggressive posture that marks the New American Century and those who reject the New American Imperialism that it represents; expect success of American arms. The Pentagon is trying to satisfy those expectations in the briefing room if not on the ground. The Generals are trying to recreate the “gee whiz” atmosphere of the 1991 video game war briefings with videos of smart bomb impacts. Twelve years of the advance of technology infiltrating into every aspect of our daily lives has converted “gee whiz” into “ho hum”. Even our vacations trips are planned in detail by a mapping program and progress on the route is tracked on a laptop by our GPS navigating system. That is why it is news when a smart bomb turns dumb and hits an unintended target and almost incomprehensible when a supply column takes a wrong turn and blunders into a disastrous ambush..click here for entire article

March 26, 2003 - Two generations have come of age since a President from Texas assured us that the end of the war was not in doubt. He assured us that the people that we were fighting would have to submit to the overwhelming power of American arms. He believed that the path would be long and the sacrifices great, but that the end was not in doubt. That was the beginning of a decade long struggle that consumed a generation...click here for entire article

March 25, 2003 - The face of war is ugly and misshapen yet somehow we are drawn to peer intently at the television screen bringing it to us, as the banner in the corner reminds us, “LIVE”. It is not the faux violence of the WWF. Nor is it the real possibility of death and destruction presented in the guise of an automobile race. The sounds we are hearing are the sounds of live fire directed with lethal intent. The smoke we see is from live explosions intended to being death and destruction to real people in real time...click here for entire article

March 24, 2003 - Body bags wrapped in flags have started the long trip home. The only Doctor in an Illinois town is called to service in the Army Reserve. He will be gone for a year. His nephew with the 4th Armored Division has just left Texas for another dusty desert halfway around the world. Saturday the Chamber of Commerce flew flags from every downtown lamppost. On Monday the flags were down. I don't know why they took them down, I just know that Monday morning they were gone....click here for entire article

March 19, 2003 - Patriotism in a democracy does not require blind obedience to the policies of its elected leaders. If there is one lesson that the Vietnam generation should have learned it is that the children who fell on the quadrangle at Kent State were as much patriots as were those who fell in the jungles of Southeast Asia. A patriot is not required to remain silent while his country pursues misguided policies. Patriotism requires that each citizen critically examine the nation’s course and speak firmly when it is necessary to correct it....click here for entire article

March 18, 2003 - It is that time of year again; the time of year when the attention of the known world is focused on what is really important in life. Such unimportant concerns as war and peace, hunger and suffering, economic dislocation and unemployment are suspended and the mind of the free world is focused on that annual semi-religious festival – The NCAA Basketball Tournament. It is also the time of the annual celebration of Effete Hollywood Liberalism – The Oscars....click here for entire article

March 18, 2003 - When George Will and I were students at University High in Urbana, Illinois the civics class required for high school graduation was titled Principles and Practice of American Democracy. Most high schools assigned the course to the football coach who was expected to teach just enough to get the pupils to pass the state mandated multiple guess test on the Constitution. Our school had Dr. Ella Leppert who was a cut above and focused on the principles underlying the founding of our Republic and the practices that challenged it. Most Uni High teachers were graduate students working on their doctorates and left after receiving their degrees. Dr. Leppert remained and taught my Grandchildren before she retired. She died last year....click here for entire article

March 17, 2003 - The smoke is dissipating, the face of war is clearly reflected in the mirror and it is misshapen and ugly. The President of the United States has described March 17th, 2002 as the “moment of truth for the world” and indeed it is. United States citizens have been advised to evacuate the Middle East. UN inspectors have been told to evacuate. The die is cast, the President has plunged into the Rubicon and the New World Order ushered in by the First Iraqi War is irreparably changed....click here for entire article

CAP PISTOL DIPLOMACY

March 15, 2003 - It is a skill every trial lawyer must acquire: the ability to gauge the credibility of the evidence in support of one’s own position. On the surface a witness or document may seem to strongly bolster your case, but if the evidence is demonstrably suspect the effect of introducing it in the proceeding is to strengthen the opponent and diminish your client’s case. The use of suspect evidence only tends to place the legitimate information you may offer under the shadow of a provable doubt...click here for entire article

March 14, 2003 - After hitting the Trifecta in September 2001 the Bush Administration was riding high on the international stage. What had shocked this nation reverberated around the world. In France the headlines read, “We are all Americans.” Not since the liberation of Paris in 1944 was France public opinion so pro-American. It was a reflexive reaction to the horror of the act both here at home and abroad. Osama Bin Laden and his company of cowards had done what even a threatening Soviet Union had been unable to do – they united the world against their reign of terror. As a result the Bush Administration treasure chest of international political capitol was brim full and overflowing. America was never higher in world opinion. When America demanded the apprehension of Bin Laden and his company the world supported its demand. When America went to war with the Taliban when that regime failed to respond the world approved and supported the action. How was that support dissipated? It wasn’t easy, but like so many suddenly flush gamblers the Bush Administration has managed to ride the crest of its big score down to the point that it can’t cover its markers. It began to believe that the cards would never run against it and the stack of diplomatic chips began to dwindle as each new hand was dealt. When the Saudi Sheik and the one-eyed Mullah slipped out the Afghan back door without covering the pot the Bush Administration called for a new deck. With three new players at the table, Iraq, Iran and North Korea the Bush gamblers tried a new game with a secure feeling that the world would back its new play...click here for entire article

March 13, 2003 - “We, the most distant dwellers upon the earth, the last of the free, have been shielded until now by our remoteness and by the obscurity which has shrouded our name. Now, the farthest bounds of Britain lie open to our enemies. There are no more nations beyond us – only waves, and rocks, and the Romans. Pillagers of the world, they have exhausted the land by their indiscriminate plunder. East and west alike have failed to satisfy them. To robbery, butchery and rapine, they give the lying name "government". They create a desert and call it peace. Which will you choose – to follow me into battle, or to submit to taxation, labour in the mines and all the other tribulations of slavery? Whether you are to endure these forever or take a quick revenge, this battle must decide.”...click here for entire article

March 12, 2003 - “You must note beside, that we have tried the utmost of our friends, our legions are brim-full, our cause is ripe. The enemy increases every day. We, at the height, are ready to decline. There is a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted - all the voyages of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat and we must take the current when it serves or lose our ventures.”… Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act IV, Scene III

Judging the state of the tide is an art. The virtuoso gains the flood and is sped on his way. The casual navigator is seized by the ebb and driven on the shoals. So it was with Brutus who spoke with such confidence to Cassius as they led their legions to meet Octavius and Antony on the fateful field of Philippi. What was left of their lives was indeed bound in shallows and in miseries as they found themselves alone on the field without the friends they had tried to the utmost...click here for entire article

March 10, 2003 - There is a Marine Sergeant, waiting in Kuwait. I met him when he was just 5 years old. He is my secretary’s son I watched him grow up. There is an Army Lieutenant there too. He was 12 when his dad and I became friends. His dad won the Bronze Star in Vietnam. He was an all conference tackle in high school. He is sitting in the Kuwaiti sandstorms as well.

I just cleared away a petty matter in the local courts so that a Marine Lance Corporal could be deployed with his unit. He is 24 years old with a wife and two kids. There is a Lieutenant-Colonel stationed at the DMZ looking north. We became friends while he was teaching military history at the University of Illinois. His Army unit is the trip wire over which the North Korean force will stumble on their way south...click here for entire article

March 10, 2003 - Iraqi citizens are subject to arrest at any time a member of the regime decides that they are dangerous to the regime and may be imprisoned indefinitely as an enemy of the state. The regime requires no warrant and the arrest is not subjected to any form of judicial review. The person arrested has no right to contest or even know the charges against him. The person does not have the right to know the evidence against him nor to rebut it with evidence in his defense. He does not have access to counsel to represent him. He is subject to intense physical and psychological pressure. He may be summarily punished, imprisoned or even executed. His conversations, telephone calls and mail are open to the regime’s monitoring. He may be placed under surveillance and his associates subject to investigation merely because of the associations. In short, Iraq is a police state...click here for entire article

March 6, 2003 - We are America and we are waiting. What are we waiting for? That is a good question. What is it that we are waiting for? The Congress has long ago abdicated its Constitutional responsibility to decide the question of war or peace in its usual exhibition of political cowardice. It handed the President the power to make war whenever he chooses against whatever country or shadowy gang he chooses. Now we know that the President has made the decision. He has spent a billion or two of our money putting a quarter million American service personnel and their equipment on the Iraqi border. He did not do that to bring them home again. It hasn’t been an exercise...click here for entire article

March 4, 2003 - We claim that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the “mastermind” who planned the murder of more than 3,000 people aboard 4 aircraft and in offices in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He has been arrested and is in U.S. custody at some undisclosed location abroad. If the characterization of him as the chief conspirator is accurate, he is the epitome of evil itself and one of the world’s worst criminals. I have no doubt that the United States government is in possession of sufficient credible evidence to demonstrate that the description of him as the “mastermind” is on the mark..click here for entire article

March 3, 2003 - Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is in custody. We are told that he was arrested by Pakistani security police at a home in Rawalpindi. Last fall it was Pakistani police that captured Ramzi bin al-Shibh in a raid and shoot out. We are told that Mohammed is in United States Custody at an undisclosed location where he is being interrogated. He is subject to an indictment in a US District Court for his role in a pre-911 plot that included the hijacking of US airliners in Asia and crashing a plane into CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There is no doubt that the capture of Mohammed is an important step in dismantling the Al Qaida criminal network. Almost as significant as the arrest itself is the way that it came about...click here for entire article

March 1, 2003 - Yesterday, February 28, 2003, was one of those days that mark a sea change in the tides of history. There are many such days we remember. They usually mark events that burst rudely into our consciousness. April 12, 1861 marks the day that Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter to commence the four years of fratricide that film romanticizes in Gods and Generals. December 7th, 1941 that marks the perfidious attack on Pearl Harbor and lives in infamy. November 22, 1963 that marked the end of Camelot on a Dallas Street. And, the most recent, September 11, 2001, of which we are reminded daily. Those are the kinds of days on which we annually remember just where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news...click here for entire article