Rumsfeld, 9/11 and Saddam Hussein

February 26, 2006 Davi Ottenheimer Leave a comment

Thad Anderson, a law school grad student who runs outragedmoderates.org, has posted some interesting documents that show the Bush administration immediately started looking for ways to link Saddam Hussein to the attack on September 11th, 2001:

On July 23, 2005, I submitted an electronic Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense seeking DoD staffer Stephen Cambone’s notes from meetings with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Cambone’s notes were cited heavily in the 9/11 Commission Report’s reconstruction of the day’s events. On February 10, 2006, I received a response from the DoD which includes partially-redacted copies of Cambone’s notes. The documents can be viewed as a photo set on Flickr.

The released notes document Donald Rumsfeld’s 2:40 PM instructions to General Myers to find the “[b]est info fast . . . judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at same time – not only UBL [Usama Bin Laden]” (as discussed on p. 334-335 of the 9/11 Commission Report and in Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack).

Sometimes, in an investigation, it is handy to start off with a hypothesis and look for supporting evidence. On the other hand, in most situations it is usually best to keep an open mind and let the facts speak for themselves, in order to avoid hasty or false conclusions or wrongful associations. It is always hard in a crisis to move quickly and yet practice caution. According to these notes Rumsfeld not only started with a hypothesis, but he seems to actually have ordered his staff to work under a foregone conclusion and find facts to support it/him.

Finally, these documents unveil a previously undisclosed part of the 2:40 PM discussion. Several lines below the “judge whether good enough [to] hit S.H. at same time” line, Cambone’s notes from the conversation read: “Hard to get a good case.”

The Guardian has picked up the story here, with the obvious conclusion:

…these notes confirm that Baghdad was in the Pentagon’s sights almost as soon as the hijackers struck.

History, Poetry

Wildwood Flower (I’ll Twine Mid the Ringlets)

February 26, 2006 Davi Ottenheimer Leave a comment

by Maud Irving, 1860

I'll twine 'mid the ringlets
  Of my raven black hair,
The lilies so pale
  And the roses so fair,
 The myrtle so bright
  With an emerald hue,
And the pale aronatus
  With eyes of bright blue. 

I'll sing and I'll dance,
  My laugh shall be gay;
I'll cease this wild weeping --
  Drive sorrow away,
 Tho' my heart is now breaking,
  He never shall know
That _his_ name made me tremble
  And my pale cheeks to glow. 

I'll think of him never --
  I'll be wildly gay,
I'll charm ev'ry heart,
  And the crowd I will sway,
 I'll live yet to see him,
  Regret the dark hour
When he won, then neglected,
  The frail wildwood flower. 

He told me he loved me,
  And promis'd to love,
Trough ill and misfortune,
  All others above,
 Another has won him;
  Ah, misery to tell;
He left me in silence --
  no word of farewell. 

He taught me to love him,
  He call'd me his flower
That blossom'd for him
  All the brighter each hour;
 But I woke from my dreaming,
  My idol was clay;
My visions of love
  Have _all_ faded away.

Note the differences between the song lyrics and the original poem?

After watching the movie “Walk the Line” about the Johnny and June Cash affair, I started to get curious about some of the history and poetry behind their music. It turns out that NPR did little story on Wildwood Flower as part of their “100 most important American songs in the 20th century”. Unfortunately the audio for the program doesn’t seem to work anymore, and based on the text introduction it seems they acknowledge that not much is known about the origins of the poem.

With a little bit more searching I found a reference to another poem by Maud Irving called “Mildred” in the Volume LXI, July-December 1860 edition of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Louis Godey’s publication (edited by Sarah Josepha Hale) was an American institution before the Civil War. Filled with poetry (from authors such as Edgar Allen Poe) it had a circulation of 150,000 and over a million readers. Unfortunately the war undermined Godey’s market, in spite of his attempts to remain neutral and keep up with the latest poetry/verse at the time. I wonder if anyone has captured any more information about Irving and his writing? According to Vicki Betts, a Librarian, “the Robert R. Muntz Library at the University of Texas at Tyler holds microfilm for Godey’s Lady’s Book for 1840-1892”. Might be a fun field-trip, or maybe someone will help convert the actual texts to a searchable database…

Poetry

Hunger only for a taste of justice

February 24, 2006 Davi Ottenheimer Leave a comment

by Tracy Chapman

Energy, Security

Assessment of US Tap Water Quality

February 23, 2006 Davi Ottenheimer Leave a comment

General Ripper in the movie “Dr. Strangelove” said he was afraid “precious bodily fluids” could be contaminated by the Communists, so he drank only distilled water or rainwater. He might have sounded a bit nutty at the time, but the latest data on US tap water might make the movie seem less comical. The Environmental Working Group released a report recently that had some disturbing findings:

In an analysis of more than 22 million tap water quality tests, most of which were required under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act, EWG found that water suppliers across the U.S. detected 260 contaminants in water served to the public. One hundred forty-one (141) of these detected chemicals — more than half — are unregulated; public health officials have not set safety standards for these chemicals, even though millions drink them every day.
[…]
Our investigation reveals major gaps in our system of public health protections when it comes to tap water safety. Federal programs that allocate grants and low-cost loans to prevent water pollution and protect the rivers, streams, and groundwater that we drink are sorely underfunded.

When you consider how important clean water is to the national infrastructure, the data suggests serious shortcomings that threaten to undermine US security.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, as quoted by Salon, called clean drinking water “a key ingredient to keeping people healthy and our economy strong.”

And that certainly puts the Ann Arbor, Michigan water quality concerns in perspective, as well as the risks to critical infrastructure.

flyingpenguin

Rumsfeld, 9/11 and Saddam Hussein

Wildwood Flower (I’ll Twine Mid the Ringlets)

Hunger only for a taste of justice

Assessment of US Tap Water Quality

the poetry of information security