inkbluesky

White House ordered CIA to Forge Letter

The letter’s existence has been reported before, and it had been written about as if it were genuine. It was passed in Baghdad to a reporter for The (London) Sunday Telegraph who wrote about it on the front page of Dec. 14, 2003, under the headline, “Terrorist behind September 11 strike ‘was trained by Saddam.’”

[   ]…“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq – thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President’s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.”

Was this letter part of what some people would call the noble lie. A series of lies to goad the public into supporting a counter-productive war that has created more radical extremists, drained America of hundreds of billions of dollars and costs hundreds of thousands of lives. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Maybe the forged letter was magically delicious. Maybe it crackled and popped. The quicker picker upper. A little fib will do ya. Just “having it your way”. Because we’d all walk a mile for a Camel. “M’m! M’m! Good!” “The antidote for civilization.” Or maybe it was “The pause that refreshes.”

this old shack

For Marriage, the Honeymoon’s Over – A scholar unveils an institution’s troubled history

Dolan’s in-your-face introduction takes the usual, saccharine apotheosis of marriage in American culture, illustrated by Christian conservative James C. Dobson’s description of it in Marriage Under Fire as “the very foundation of human social order,” and turns it upside down. Marriage may be historic, Dolan concedes, “but its history is one of constant, constitutive crisis and conflict.” As a result, she writes, “the legacy of marriage is a burdensome one.”

For Dolan, who works in the scholarly tradition revitalized by Lawrence Stone’s classic The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England: 1500-1800 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1977), “conflict between incompatible models and irreconcilable expectations is the history of marriage.” She rejects the standard story that marriage has moved from “patriarchal to companionate, from obedience to intimacy, from sacrament to contract.”

None of those transitions fully took place, she writes — indeed, they’ve “stalled.” Rather, we have “inherited three models of marriage from early modern England (1550-1700): marriage as hierarchy, as fusion, and as contract. These three models are incompatible and, to make matters worse, each is riddled with internal contradictions.”

Dolan has committed high blasphemy. Sure to suffer the usual deluge of hate mail. She states that marriage is as much about emotional and sometimes physical violence as much as, if not more then the institution that is referred to as the pillar of society. My views don’t run particularly that strong. One listens to and reads the usual right-wing suspects and even more moderate theists then try and figure out what planet they’re speaking from. For all their public interaction their views of emotional commitment and intimacy seem so insular. There is what they think marriage is and then there are actual married people. Its not that humans are great romantics when it comes to relationships, but rather great believers in sentimentality. In the possibility that it will start and remain the way Pride and Prejudice ends. People hate being alone as a rule. Many realize so some level they wouldn’t make a great marriage partner, but get married anyway because fear overrides their ability to come to grips with solitude or just having friends. Dolin does touch on gay marriage, but one of David Letterman’s monologues beat her to her conclusion, why would gays want to get married – so they can be as miserable as everyone else. Not that it should matter, but I’m not against marriage. It is probably best route in life for at least a slight majority of people. Its one of those existential forks in the road, one to marriage and suffering. One to being alone and suffering.

autumn train

When I get older losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings bottle of wine.

If I’d been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I’m sixty-four.

You’ll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

from The Beatles lyrics When I’m Sixty Four (64)