Is the United States Winning in Iraq?

"Winning or losing is not the issue for 'we,' in my view, in the traditional conventional context of using the word winning and losing and of war."
        - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Yes, he actually said that, and he said that in response to the simple question: "Is the United States winning in Iraq?"

See: they're just words. Words can mean whatever you want them to mean, you know? Whatever you define them to be.

(Has anyone sicced Cardinal Ratzinger on this guy? Cause he's sounding more and more like a relativist to me.)

Anyway, if Don Rumsfeld can play games with the meanings of words, so can I.

So if you define "the United States" to mean "the current administration in Washington";
and if you define "in Iraq" to mean "about the war in Iraq or its planning and execution";
and if you define "winning" to mean "lying";

...then YES! The United States is winning in Iraq!

Makes me proud to be an American.

How Do You Plan To Live Forever?

I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. -- Woody Allen

Everyone thinks about their mortality. Probably, everyone thinks about how to transcend it. There sure are plenty of ideas out there, as there have been for thousands of years (many of them have plenty of currency today). Of course I've been thinking about this because my wife and I are about to participate in the single most popular mode of achieving immortality, that is, we're about to have a child.

I don't want to get specific in this post, though, because I want to do something a little different with this post. I want to solicit your opinion this time out. Since everyone brings their own assumptions to the question, I don't want to prejudice your answers.

So: How do you plan to live forever?

Feel free to interpret the question as you like. Consider it as a spiritual problem, a philosophical problem, a metaphysical problem, or even a biological problem. Everybody has something to say about immortality, especially their own.

Post anonymously if you like, but please post. I will follow up in a later post, though I can't promise how much later, because baby is due any day now.

Just What Was Gannon/Guckert Doing?

It seems Jeff Gannon, aka James Guckert, aka Bulldog, aka "Only a top", was in and out of the White House a lot. And the Secret Service wasn't keeping very good track of his goings and comings. He seems to have been admitted to the White House on several occasions when there was no press briefing, which begs the question: just what was he doing there, and for whom?

I mean, let's not forget that the guy is a whore. Not figuratively. He is literally a prostitute who has sex with other men for money. He says that's all in his past, but you know, wouldn't anyone claim that? And given that he's been caught in an extensive net of lies, why should we believe him anyway?

So, once again, what was this "aggressive top" doing at the White House, with such sloppy record-keeping applied to him?

"On several of these visits, Guckert either entered or exited by a different entry/exit point than his usual one."

It's just sooooo easy to turn that into a cheap and gratuitous joke. Good thing I don't have to -- you thought of it yourself. You have a really filthy mind, don't you?

Anybody See A War Around Here?

You might have missed it, if you weren't looking. Another couple of servicemen were killed in Iraq this weekend.

Did you read that? See it on the news?

That's in addition to the 24 dead and 58 wounded after four car bombings in Baghdad and Tikrit. In general, the level of violence in Iraq seems to be back on the increase. And in other news, George W. Bush just got Congress to pony up another $80 billion (borrowed money, of course) to finance the war and occupation. Remember when he promised this occupation would fund itself? Oh, never mind. And so, the numbers just keep climbing: 1,571 killed and 11,888 wounded, and financial costs of approximately $300 billion. (I'm expecting the Congress to rubberstamp this request, just like it always does.)

Hey, did you hear? We're Still At War! In fact, we're kinda losing it!

Was this news on the front page of any newspaper? Did it lead any newscasts? It wasn't even easy to find on the Internet.

Did you catch those great "elections" in Iraq back in January? It's been three months since then. Let me ask you a few questions about those great elections. Who ran for office? Who won? Who were you rooting for? Do you even know? Do you even care?

And now, three months after these great elections, this Glorious Victory for Democracy, where's the government? The fact is, they still haven't formed a government -- three months after elections!

(If you're still keeping score at home, 127 American service members have been killed and 1,118 wounded while we've been waiting for the Iraqis to form a government.)

Who's driving this clown car? Oh, wait: I already know.

We're now two years into the Second Bush War. It's been two years since "Mission Accomplished," and we're still bleeding over Iraq, literally as well as figuratively, blood and red ink in alarming volumes, and I'm still sitting here wondering just what the fuck was the reason to get us into this mess again?

And while I'm wondering that, it seems like the Iraq War has disappeared from the national news. Why do you suppose that is?

Have we just become numb to the steady drip-drip-drip of American and Iraqi deaths? Or has the news been squelched by the media, reduced to the minimum volume necessary so that they can still say with a straight face, "we covered it -- now move along"?

Well, on the one hand, broadcasting quagmire and failure is bad politics: it reflects badly on the liar and fool who got us into this mess, who is well-known to be nasty and vindictive to those who are seen to disagree with him or his party. We have abundant evidence that the mainstream media are either on the Republicans' side already (e.g. Fox News) or have been effectively bullied into meek submission to the Republican agenda (e.g. CNN). On the other hand, quagmire and failure is a real bummer: it just doesn't sell advertising, a lot of which is incidentally bought by Republican companies.

And so, it makes all kinds of sense that we have a steady turn-down of the news from Iraq. Slowly it is scrubbed from the news, and the air minutes and the column inches are fed a different diet. Instead of hearing about anything which actually has any bearing on our lives, the newscasts are led by Scott Peterson, then Robert Blake, then Michael Jackson, then Terri Schiavo, then John Paul II, then Charles and Camilla, then Michael Jackson again, then Cardinal Ratzinger Pope Benedict XVI ... Who's next? Who cares, as long as the public is sufficiently distracted?

And on and on and on it goes, while somewhere, in a far-off land, another American lies bleeding to death in the street. While you're watching Fox News tonight, his body will be secretly conveyed under cover of darkness back to the United States, safely shielded from any media attention, and he will be quietly buried and forgotten. His government, so eager to get into this war and now with no fucking clue how to win it or otherwise disengage, is keen to just forget the whole thing, and hopes that you will want to just forget it as well.

I guess it's just the Patriotic Thing to Do.

Trapped Inside ... Something ...

Last week, I had a short play of mine performed in a festival in New York. The festival producers had asked me to supply a short bio for the program, and I sent them something which began like this:

Patrick M Brennan is a playwright trapped inside the body of a computer programmer...

I think that's a pretty good joke. At least it's a not-bad joke. All right, it's a joke!

Anyway, when I went to see a performance of the festival, this is what was written in the program:

Patrick M Brennan is trapped inside a computer programmer...

ummm... What?!? I'm trapped inside a computer programmer? What the fuck is that supposed to mean? They took my joke and they turned it into a confusing non-sequitur. Thank You! I'm sure that made a terrific impression on the audience!

See, I'm a writer. I think about the words I'm writing. Even when I write a bio, I'm careful about my words. Words are all I have. Screwing up an actor's bio would be bad, but not nearly as bad as screwing up a writer's bio.

Anyway, of course I know they didn't do it on purpose. Someone clearly typed my bio into the document for the program, and made an honest mistake.

Since I sent the bio to them over email, however, it kind of baffles me that Copy and Paste seems beyond their comprehension ...
(as does actual proofreading ...)

No, it's OK. I'm over it now. Really. I didn't even mention it to them. I only blogged it for the whole world to see!

No, really, it's OK. The medication will kick in any moment now ... really.

(mumbling to self:) "trapped inside a computer programmer." Oh, hey, that's a great joke. Yeah.

Adobe and Macromedia

That was a bolt out of the blue! Taking a train back to Boston from New York, I picked up a newspaper and learned that my two favorite companies have decided to get married! How exciting!

The past five years of my professional life have been dominated by Adobe and Macromedia. When I was working for Adobe, I was helping to build LiveMotion, and directly competing against Macromedia's Flash. I have spent the past three years with Convoq, developing a client application in Flash, and Adobe has been less of an issue in my life. I don't know how the merger will affect the direction of our product, but I've always considered Adobe to be a very well-run company, so I'm not really worried. Besides, with a baby on the way and another release of my own company's application to get out the door, I've got bigger fish to fry.

That doesn't mean I don't wish I'd bought some Macromedia stock, as I'm sure this guy did.