Daily · Dreamtime

By Edward M. Kennedy

Sunday, January 18, 2004; Page B07

Of the many issues competing for attention in this new and defining year, one is of a unique order of magnitude: President Bush's decision to go to war in Iraq. The facts demonstrate how dishonest that decision was. As former Treasury secretary Paul H. O'Neill recently confirmed, the debate over military action began as soon as President Bush took office. Some felt Saddam Hussein could be contained without war. A month after the inauguration, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said: "We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." The next day, he said tellingly that Hussein "has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction."

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, gave advocates of war the opening they needed. They tried immediately to tie Hussein to al Qaeda and the terrorist attacks. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld created an Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon to analyze the intelligence for war and bypass the traditional screening process. Vice President Cheney relied on intelligence from Iraqi exiles and put pressure on intelligence agencies to produce the desired result.

The war in Afghanistan began in October with overwhelming support in Congress and the country. But the focus on Iraq continued behind the scenes, and President Bush went along. In the Rose Garden on Nov. 26, he said: "Afghanistan is still just the beginning."

Three days later, Cheney publicly began to send signals about attacking Iraq. On Nov. 29 he said: "I don't think it takes a genius to figure out that this guy [Hussein] is clearly . . . a significant potential problem for the region, for the United States, for everybody with interests in the area." On Dec. 12 he raised the temperature: "If I were Saddam Hussein, I'd be thinking very carefully about the future, and I'd be looking very closely to see what happened to the Taliban in Afghanistan."

Next, Karl Rove, in a rare public stumble, made his own role clear, telling the Republican National Committee on Jan. 19, 2002, that the war on terrorism could be used politically. Republicans could "go to the country on this issue," he said.

Ten days later, in his State of the Union address, President Bush invoked the "axis of evil" -- Iraq, Iran and North Korea -- and we lost our clear focus on al Qaeda. The address contained 12 paragraphs on Afghanistan and 29 on the war on terrorism, but only one fleeting mention of al Qaeda. It said nothing about the Taliban or Osama bin Laden.

In the following months, although bin Laden was still at large, the drumbeat on Iraq gradually drowned out those who felt Hussein was no imminent threat. On Sept. 12 the president told the United Nations: "Iraq likely maintains stockpiles of VX, mustard and other chemical agents and has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon." He said Iraq could build a nuclear weapon "within a year" if Hussein obtained such material.

War on Iraq was clearly coming, but why make this statement in September? As White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. said, "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." The 2002 election campaigns were then entering the home stretch. Election politics prevailed over foreign policy and national security. The administration insisted on a vote in Congress to authorize the war before Congress adjourned for the elections. Why? Because the debate would distract attention from the troubled economy and the failed effort to capture bin Laden. The shift in focus to Iraq could help Republicans and divide Democrats.( Read more... )

The Camera Doesn't Lie. But It Can Fib.
In Diane Arbus's 'Truthful' Photos, Artifice Plays a Crucial Role

By Blake Gopnik
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 18, 2004; Page N01

SAN FRANCISCO

American photographer Diane Arbus is famous as one of the all-time great observers of human nature. She's praised for looking past the surface of even the most freakish Americans -- transvestites, sword swallowers, fellow New Yorkers -- and somehow getting at what they are really all about.

Admirers prefer the immediacy and honesty of her vision to the artifice and fancy lenswork of the great photographers who came before her. They see her mature work, which covers roughly 15 years starting in 1955, as being about an intimate moment of contact between photographer and sitter, with the camera just recording the encounter.

"I have learned to get past the door," she once said, "from the outside to the inside."

But now that I've spent time with the 200 or so photos in the landmark Arbus retrospective currently at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, it's clear to me she's a fake. Arbus doesn't show the world gloss-free, just as it is. She uses tons of trickery to present the world the way she wants it to be seen, and then throws in another, even bigger dose of art to make it seem as though that's not what she has done.

Of course, this brilliant fakery puts her in the camp of Leonardo, Rembrandt and Gainsborough, along with all the other portrait greats who've had to build a world they've shown by using brush and paints. Who knows, or cares, what kind of looking Rembrandt really did, how he got on with his sitters or how well his portraits of them match their actuality? What matters now is the specific image of humanity they conjure up in us and the magical skill that Rembrandt used to construct that image. Arbus committed suicide in 1971 at 48, and many of her sitters must be gone by now as well. Only her art lives on. And its artifice, not its accuracy, is what makes it great.( Read more... )

Baltimore, Wrapped In Mystery

By K.C. Summers
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 18, 2004; Page P01

There's classic Baltimore: crab cakes, white marble stoops, the Orioles. There's quirky Baltimore: bouffant waitresses, John Waters, window-screen art. And then there's Laura Lippman's Baltimore, which contains all of the above, plus a few things you may not have heard about. A giant ball of string. An immaculately preserved 19th-century mill village. A naked guy with a harp.

More about the string and the village later. Let's start with the naked guy. That would be Orpheus, a 24-foot statue on the grounds of Fort McHenry, overlooking the real Baltimore Harbor. Lippman, author of the Tess Monaghan series of crime novels, thinks it's the best view in the city.

"It's just a gorgeous place to walk around," she says as we head down toward the water. "The fact that there's a fort here is almost incidental." She's wearing jeans and a black leather jacket and looks at least a decade younger than her 44 years.

Lippman set her seven best-selling Tess Monaghan books in Baltimore (the eighth is due out this summer), and she clearly adores the place. On this brisk November morning, she's agreed to show me some of her favorite spots in the city. We've already stopped at the old-timey Cross Street Market to stock up on hot, fresh Utz potato chips, made on the premises. They are startlingly good, ruining you forever for vending machine chips.

Now we're walking around the sea wall, past huge container ships and marine terminals. It is gorgeous here, with the sun glinting off the water, and the tableau of tugboats and warehouses reminding the visitor that this is a city that works for its living.( Read more... )

http://www.tchevalier.com/unicorn/tapestries/index.html

The tapestries can be
interpreted several ways – as a virgin seducing a unicorn, as
a woman renouncing the physical world of the senses for the
spiritual world, as the Virgin Mary with Christ. The first
is the most popular interpretation, and refers to the old
belief that the unicorn is so wild it cannot be tamed, except
by a virgin. If she sits in the woods, the unicorn will come
and lay its head in her lap.



http://www.tchevalier.com/unicorn/tapestries/index.html

The Lady and the Unicorn  -  
The tapestries can be interpreted several ways –
 as a virgin seducing a 
unicorn, as a woman renouncing the physical
 world of the senses for the 
spiritual world, as the Virgin Mary with Christ.
 The first is the most 
popular interpretation, and refers to the old 
belief that the unicorn 
is so wild it cannot be tamed, except by a virgin.
 If she sits in the 
woods, the unicorn will come and lay its head 
in her lap.

Separating Fact from Fiction
      By MIFTAH
      January 14, 2004

      As events develop in the Middle East conflict, it seems certain
facts continue to be ignored in favor of reiterated
      ones that owe more to lazy reporting than accuracy.

      Perhaps serving as the best example of ignored facts is the
continued description of the ‘road map’ as a “stalled”
      peace plan. The ‘road map’ is not simply in a rut nor is it merely
dormant, it is dead, it is beyond resuscitation, it
      is resting in peace, not providing peace. Former Israeli Mossad
head Efraim Halevy was dead on when he
      stated, “the road map cannot be implemented. It cannot be
implemented. We know this, and the Palestinians
      know this, and the United States knows this." It is time the media
skipped printing the standard two sentence
      explanation of what the ‘road map’ is and how it is not being
implemented and just cut straight to the heart of
      matters.( Read more... )

From the Houston Chronicle, January 12, 2004

Israeli attack on U.S. Navy ship led to cover-up
By ADM. THOMAS MOORER
After State Department officials and historians assembled in Washington,

D.C., last week to discuss the 1967 war in the Middle East, I am
compelled
to speak out about one of U.S. history's most shocking cover-ups.
On June 8, 1967, Israel attacked our proud naval ship -- the USS Liberty
--
killing 34 American servicemen and wounding 172. Those men were then
betrayed and left to die by our own government.
U.S. military rescue aircraft were recalled, not once, but twice,
through
direct intervention by the Johnson administration. Secretary of Defense
Robert McNamara's cancellation of the Navy's attempt to rescue the
Liberty,
which I personally confirmed from the commanders of the aircraft
carriers
America and Saratoga, was the most disgraceful act I witnessed in my
entire
military career.( Read more... )

    [Have these people no sense of common decency? They apparently
believe that rules and ethics and common sense are only for the "little
people."]
--
Robert V. Keeley

Los Angeles Times

Cheney Hunting Trip With Scalia Raises
Impartiality Questions

By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer

4:37 PM PST, January 16, 2004

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney and Supreme Court Justice
Antonin Scalia spent part
of last week duck hunting together at a private camp in south Louisiana,
just three weeks after the high
court agreed to take up the vice president's appeal involving lawsuits
over his handling of the
administration's energy task force.

While Scalia and Cheney are avid hunters and long-time friends, several
experts in legal ethics questioned
the timing of their trip.

"The better part of wisdom should have led Justice Scalia to avoid the
vice president while this case was
pending before the court," said New York University law professor
Stephen Gillers.

Federal law says "any justice or judge shall disqualify himself in any
proceeding in which his impartiality
might be questioned."

For nearly three years, Cheney has been fighting demands that he reveal
whether he met with energy
industry officials, including then-Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, when he
was formulating the president's
energy policy.

A lower court ruled that Cheney must turn over documents detailing who
met with his task force.
However, on Dec. 15, the high court announced that it would hear his
appeal. The justices are due to hear
arguments in the case in April.

"I do not think my impartiality could reasonably be questioned," Scalia
said today in a written response to
an inquiry about the hunting trip. "Vice President Cheney was indeed
among the party of about nine who
hunted from the camp. Social contacts with high-level executive
officials (including Cabinet officers) have
never been thought improper for judges who may have before them cases in
which those people are involved in their official
capacity, as opposed to their personal capacity. For example, Supreme
Court justices are regularly invited to dine at the White
House, whether or not a suit seeking to compel or prevent certain
presidential action is pending."

Cheney does not face a personal penalty in the pending lawsuits. He
could not be forced to pay damages, for example.
( Read more... )