Author: Jonathan Schwarz

This interview Mr. Tomorrow found with Daniel Pipes —:

Q: What is the biggest lesson you have learned from the Iraq war?

PIPES: The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them.

— raises an important question: have the wogs always been this ungrateful? The historical evidence indicates they have. Henry Morton Stanley knew this; here’s what he wrote about his 190 African servants on his 1871 trip to find Dr. Livingstone:

“The blacks give me an immense amount of trouble; they are too ungrateful to suit my fancy.”

Also like Iraqis, Stanley’s servants had a tendency to die in copious, ungrateful quantities.

FURTHERMORE: Seymour Hersh:

The Patai book [“The Arab Mind”], an academic told me, was “the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior.” In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged—“one, that Arabs only understand force…”

Henry Morton Stanley:

“The savage only respects force, power, boldness, and decision…”

One exciting thing about America today is we all get to experience quantum mechanics on a huge scale. Just as Schrodinger’s cat is both alive and dead at the same time, the United States is simultaneously at war and not at war.

For instance, here’s the Assocated Press just now on Jose Padilla:

A divided Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Jose Padilla, held as an enemy combatant without traditional legal rights for more than three years, sidestepping a challenge to Bush administration wartime detention powers.

It’s not surprising they’d put it this way. After all, Bush & co. tell us we’re at war and he’s a wartime president every two seconds.

But here’s the thing: according to the Attorney General of the United States, the person prosecuting Padilla, Congress has not declared war:

GONZALES: There was not a war declaration, either in connection with Al Qaida or in Iraq.

It’s easy to understand why the Bush administration wants it both ways: we’re at war because that gives them more power…but we’re also not at war because they would then have treaty obligations, such as under the Geneva Conventions.

Meanwhile, the AP, the rest of the U.S. media, and the Democratic party say nothing whatsoever about this. No one asks Bush the obvious question: “Is the United States at war?”

I guess everyone intuitively senses that the war’s quantum superposition, in which it exists and does not exist at the time, can only be sustained as long as we don’t observe the issue. If we did, the war’s wavefunction would collapse and it would be either one or the other.

And who wants that? It’s much more enjoyable to live inside a gigantic thought experiment.

Did you know high schools and even middle schools have started using tasers on students? I didn’t.

There’s a brewing controversy on this now in Wichita, Kansas, which I learned about from Jake Lowen of the excellent organization Hope Street Youth Development. Here’s the timeline he sent:

February: Wichita Police introduce tasers into schools.

Early March: Students at Wichita West High School discover this and are understandably concerned. Organized by Hope Street, they gather 250 signatures on a letter to the school district asking about health effects and the district’s use policy.

March 16th: A 15 year-old student is tasered during a confrontation at another high school, Wichita North. However, no one except those involved know at the time because the school district covers it up.

The next week: The tasering becomes public thanks to an anonymous tip from a teacher. The Wichita Eagle criticizes the school district for trying to hide it.

Today, March 30th: The Wichita Eagle reveals two other attempts to taser students, including a 14 year-old girl.

If you know anything more about schools using tasers, either where you live or elsewhere, I’d be very curious to hear about it—either in comments here or via email. And if you’re wondering why this matters, you can read Amnesty International’s 2004 report, documenting 114 (adult) deaths from tasers.

So in a speech yesterday Bush said this:

Today, some Americans ask whether removing Saddam caused the divisions and instability we’re now seeing. In fact, much of the animosity and violence we now see is the legacy of Saddam Hussein. He is a tyrant who exacerbated sectarian divisions to keep himself in power.

I actually have some sympathy for this perspective. But it does contrast starkly with Bush’s pre-war views, as recorded in the January 31, 2003 “White House Memo”:

The memo indicates the two leaders envisioned a quick victory and a transition to a new Iraqi government that would be complicated, but manageable. Mr. Bush predicted that it was “unlikely there would be internecine warfare between the different religious and ethnic groups.” Mr. Blair agreed with that assessment.

Again, Bush’s speech was yesterday (Wednesday). This memo story was on the front page of the New York Times two days before (Monday). So…would it be too much to ask for some enterprising reporter to repeat both instances of Bush’s words back to him, and politely ask when between January 31, 2003 and March 29, 2006 HE MANAGED TO FIGURE THIS OUT?

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess: yes, it is too much to ask.

Philippe Sands was on Hardball last night. He’s the U.K. law professor who originally broke the news on the memo recording the January 31, 2003 Bush/Blair meeting at the White House.

His book, “Lawless World,” isn’t available in the U.S. yet. And I was genuinely surprised when Sands said it also mentions ANOTHER memo:

…one other aspect that I’ve described in my book, “Lawless World” that hasn’t emerged so much in “The New York Times” is another memo, which records a conversation between Colin Powell and his counterpart in the United Kingdom, Jack Straw, which makes it clear that in Colin Powell’s eyes if there wasn’t enough evidence for a second security council resolution, then there wasn’t enough evidence to justify the U.S. going in alone.

This immediately reminded me of a story the Guardian published on May 31, 2003. The story claimed a transcript of a conversation between Colin Powell and his U.K. counterpart Jack Straw was circulating in NATO circles. Supposedly they spoke briefly before Powell’s address at the U.N., and both had deep concerns about the Iraq intelligence:

Mr Powell told the foreign secretary he hoped the facts, when they came out, would not “explode in their faces.”

This seems plausible on its face. Remember that Larry Wilkerson, Powell’s chief aide, has said:

I recall vividly the Secretary of State walking into my office. And he said, looking out the window, just musing. He said, “I wonder what we’ll do if we put half a million troops on the ground in Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other and don’t find a single weapon of mass destruction.”

However, right after the story came out, the Guardian issued this correction:

In our front page lead on May 31 headlined “Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims,” we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.

I’ve wondered ever since what was going on here. Was the transcript real, or fake? Did the Guardian ever actually see it? Why did the Guardian phrase the correction in such a peculiar way, while leaving the story on its site? Note they don’t apologize for the story as a whole; just for claiming Straw “met with Powell at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations.” Does this indicate the transcript was real, but Straw met with Powell elsewhere, or at a different time, or they spoke by phone?

Now, of course, I wonder: is this what Philippe Sands was talking about yesterday? It seems plausible.

On the other hand, Powell and Straw would have been more likely to discuss a second resolution in late February or March.

In any case, this is an important subject that deserves further coverage. Certainly the memo Sands refers to should receive attention. And the origins of the Guardian story should be cleared up. If any of this is real and is ever published, it would likely be extremely unpleasant for everyone concerned.

(The entire Hardball transcript is posted here.)