The Zong

Harper’s Washington Editor Ken Silverstein is out with a sobering and well-constructed piece about our potential war with Iran. While recent developments in Korea seem promising, last week the Guardian reported that U.S. planning of airstrikes against Iran are at an “advanced stage.”

I guess it doesn’t hurt to plan ahead, but this is kind of getting stupid now, isn’t it?

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney.

Is there someone, anywhere, who actually has some evidence that going into Iraq was a good idea? Are they really still peddling the idea that things are better than when Saddam was in power? Are they still telling me that in 50 years everyone in Iraq will be farting sunshine and shitting tulips? As Dick Cheney says, “Go fuck yourself.”

Silverstein asked for responses from three prominent foreign policy experts, and their assessment of the situation is, to put it mildly, dismal. Here’s A. Richard Norton, who was part of the Iraq Study Group:

Surveying U.S. history, one is hard-pressed to find presidential decisions as monumentally ill-informed and counterproductive as the decision to invade and occupy Iraq; however, a decision to go to war against Iran would arguably surpass the Iraq war as the worst foreign policy decision ever made by an American president.

Goddamn hippie! Let’s see what Wayne White, former Deputy Director of the State Department’s Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia (under George W. Bush), has to say:

If military action is taken against that infrastructure, there would be nothing “surgical” about the proceedings. The airstrikes associated with contingency planning suggest that such maneuvers, in addition to hitting a number of widely dispersed atomic-development targets, would have to take out much of Iran’s air defenses in order to clear paths to the targets. It would be a very large operation, probably spanning many days. In addition, Iran would strike back with whatever it could—for example, by attacking U.S. fleet elements and commercial ships with any anti-ship missiles that escaped destruction during the first wave of air strikes. It might also launch whatever ballistic and medium-range missiles survive the U.S. assault at various targets in the Gulf region, countries Tehran would likely view as complicit in such an attack. This would generate a major crisis in the Gulf—and, perhaps most importantly, one without a clear endgame.

No clear “endgame”, he says. Sorry, but we discussed chess up in this last week, brah.

What about bachelor #3? He’s Bahman Baktiari, who is director of academic and research programming at the William S. Cohen Center for International Policy and Commerce. No big whoop:

If the United States attacks Iran, the consequences would be disastrous. It would produce a wave of patriotic solidarity with the theocratic regime in Iran, even among those young Iranians who are fiercely critical of the mullahs, and another tidal wave of reaction around the world, especially among Muslims. Within Iraq, Bush’s policy has led to an increase in sectarian fighting, so an attack on Iran would be seen as anti-Shiite as well as anti-Iranian. As of last year, for the first time, a majority of Iraqi Shiites support armed attacks on U.S.-led forces, and if the United States attacks Iran, Iraqi Shiite militias will direct their anger at American soldiers and military personnel.

That all sounds pretty crappy, assuming it’s not hogwash. I’ll admit that Harpers isn’t exactly a bastion of moderate or conservative viewpoints, but these cats have some bi-partisan cred, and their collective meow seems pretty dead set against any major military wrangling with Iran.

If all the military preparations are supposedly a deterrent, then that’s all well and good, but doesn’t that just increase the chances that something bad will happen? What about a little more hard-nosed diplomacy, like the kind we just engaged in with Iran’s old ally on the Axis of Evil?

The Giants announced Saturday that broadcaster Jon Miller, who also calls games for ESPN every Sunday night, has signed a contract extension to be the Voice of the Giants for another 6 years.

With a couple of months of rest after the season, Miller said he realized how much he loves his jobs with the Giants and ESPN and decided to move on a deal that will keep him in the booth at China Basin for his 11th through 16th seasons, past his 60th birthday.

“I still enjoy doing both of them because the most fun a broadcaster can have is following a local team and the story as it unfolds on a daily basis,” said Miller, 55. “The second part is being able to do the game every Sunday seeing all the top teams, teams in both leagues. Doing that exercise is that spectacular, and I can’t see giving up either one of them at this point.”

A lot of casual fans probably don’t realize it, but this is the best personnel decision the Giants have made in years. I’m of the opinion that a lot of people think baseball is boring because they listen to it called by boring, tired sounding bluehairs like the Braves’ Skip Caray or whoever is calling A’s games nowadays.

It’s hard not to take a broadcaster like Miller for granted; he makes the call of the game seamless and transparent. But listen to him call a double play, or describe the players as they gear up for an important pitch, or if you’re very lucky, catch him calling a triple, and you’ll begin to see how very lucky San Francisco Giants fans have been to have him in the booth for a decade.

Pitchers and catchers report Thursday. No word yet on whether any closers will be reporting to the Giant’s camp.

We all knew this kind of thing was probably going to happen, but some of us thought that the New York Times had learned from past mistakes. Instead, they’re helping the Bush Administration bang the war drum again, Judith-Miller style.

After weeks of internal debate, senior United States military officials on Sunday literally put on the table their first public evidence of the contentious assertion that Iran supplies Shiite extremist groups in Iraq with some of the most lethal weapons in the war. They said those weapons had been used to kill more than 170 Americans in the past three years.

Do tell. Surely, you have some identifiable sources this time?

In a news briefing held under strict security, the officials spread out on two small tables an E.F.P. and an array of mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades with visible serial numbers that the officials said link the weapons directly to Iranian arms factories. The officials also asserted, without providing direct evidence, that Iranian leaders had authorized smuggling those weapons into Iraq for use against the Americans. The officials said such an assertion was an inference based on general intelligence assessments.

Oh, right. “The Officials” said all that, huh? Does Ahmad Chalabi still have an office at the Pentagon?

I don’t really need to tell you where this is going. Set aside for the moment that Iran may very well be assisting Shiite militias in Iraq, and that they may very well be killing both American and Iraqi troops with Iranian-made weapons, and remember how it is we got here in the first place.

Is this the future of American foreign policy? Is it now our M.O. to just attack countries that our President doesn’t like, or are we trying to form the 51st state out of Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan? (That’ll be a fun naming contest.)

Officials at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad said they had no comment on the American accusations, the latest in a back-and-forth between the countries as tension has escalated over Tehran’s rising influence in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East and suspicions about its nuclear energy program. And while the Americans displayed what they said was the physical evidence of their claims about Iran’s role in Iraq, they also left many questions unanswered, including proof that the Iranian government was directing the delivery of weapons.

Welcome to the Union, Iraqighaniranistan!

I’m in Los Angeles right now, and the media down here has a way of distorting what’s important all the time, so maybe it’s just my location, but was Anna Nicole Smith the fucking pope, or something? I listened to talk radio hosts mention offhand that another helicopter went down in Iraq, then spent about 45 minutes describing Smith’s life with words like “courageous” and “tragic.”

Rather than give this clueless celebrity any more press, let’s talk about Adelaide Tambo, who passed away last week in South Africa. Wait, you didn’t even know who she was? Neither did I (until two days ago), because the mainstream press seems to think Anna Nicole led a life more worthy of coverage and tribute. Let’s put a couple of paragraphs about the two women side by side, and you tell me which one is which, and which one you want to hear more about:

Through the ’90s and into the new century, she was famous for being famous, a pop-culture punchline because of her up-and-down weight, her Marilyn Monroe looks, her exaggerated curves, her little-girl voice, her ditzy-blonde persona, and her over-the-top revealing outfits.

Don’t guess until you read this one:

One of the best known figures in South Africa’s liberation struggle, she worked as a nurse for much of her life. Her home became a refuge for hundreds of South African exiles over the years, including former President Nelson Mandela, before he was jailed, and current President Thabo Mbeki.

Still don’t know? Well, here’s a hint. Adelaide Tambo wasn’t a blonde.

Tambo was a true heroine, exiled with her husband Oliver (who led the African National Congress) from South Africa during Apartheid. She worked as a nurse and activist, looking after other exiles and committing her life to South African liberation.

Thembi Modise, former ANC soldier and current speaker of the North West Province parliament, told national radio, Mama Adelaide’s caring embrace accommodated any who needed it.

“But I think all of us will always remember Ma Tambo for loving everybody,” said Modise. “For loving the poor, for opening up her arms, for making sure that people had food. Because she believed that you would never think, if your stomach was empty. She went all out and fed all of us.”

I’ll admit I know very little about the life of this remarkable woman. I really had to go looking for any information at all, but listening to the radio today I learned just about everything that happened in the life of Anna Nicole Smith, a cartoonish, pill-popping, worthless narcissist who I’m supposed to feel sorry for because her life was filled with “tragedies,” like when the 89-year old man she married died.

Chalk this one under the countless other examples we have of how fucked up our priorities are. You know and I know that the world needs a lot more Mama Adelaides and less Anna Nicoles, but a whole lot of people are watching round-the-clock coverage of the latter, while the former is being mourned far from the lazy eyes of the Western World.

I’m not really much of an A’s fan, but nobody deserves this.

The A’s want to build their ballpark and mall village on low-lying land west of Interstate 880, less than half a mile from a tidal channel. With ocean levels expected to rise as the globe heats up, the high tides that churn up that channel could turn the A’s ballpark into prime waterfront property — or into soup.

I can tell you from years of going to games at Candlestick Park that having a field below sea level is totally cool. I hope I live long enough to see the first “Tide Delay” in baseball history.

Local effects of the rising waters were the subject of a global warming conference this past week at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center, hosted by the city’s Public Utilities Commission. San Francisco and Oakland airports will be under water if no protective steps are taken, and areas of Silicon Valley that now are near the bay could “look like the Lost City of Atlantis” by 2100, in Travis’ words.

It was widely reported that the Giants’ AT&T Park could be vulnerable, but what hasn’t been noticed is that the same rising tide could turn the A’s Field of Dreams into Field and Stream.

What’s that? You think that last line was bad? You should check out the “illustration” that accompanies this article.

Yeah, it’s gonna be an interesting century.

The Gore Watch ™ is heating up, and I’m here to tell you that there are a lot of folks who are unhappy about it. It must be some kind of liberal conspiracy, like that whole global warming thing, because A-Gor has been nominated for a shit-ton of awards recently, including an Oscar and the frigging Nobel Peace Prize, not to mention the oh-so-coveted Prince of Asturias award over in Spain, whatever the hell that is.

I’ll say this much: the man hasn’t even said if he’s gonna run yet, but the Gore-bashing has commenced already in earnest. Conservative writers everywhere are saying some unkind stuff about him, because all of a sudden they’re scared shitless that he actually might run. I mean, if you thought he was dangerous to the GOP before, think about how hard it would be to vote against him if he has an effing Nobel Peace Prize in his pocket.

And so we’re getting stuff like this, written by a God-fearing, pants-shitting conservative named Doug Patton:

A recent “Wall Street Journal” article quotes a United Nations study that estimates Gore’s solutions for supposed manmade climate change would cost a staggering $553 trillion over the next century. That means that every man, woman and child on planet earth would be 30 percent poorer in the year 2100.

This is pretty rich, just sitting here and reading this. I mean, really look at that last sentence and think for a minute what kind of mind can produce something like that. Then again, if his math is “accurate,” then I guess he has a point. I’ll be 123 years old in 2100, and I’ll bet I’ll really miss that extra cash that Al Gore wants to flush down the toilet.

Most meteorologists know they can’t give us an accurate forecast beyond next week. Yet Al Gore and his cadre of “scientists” can tell us what’s going to happen fifty years from now? Please.

Can we start keeping a tally of how many conservatives put quotes around “scientists” when talking about global warming? The way they do it, you’d think Al Gore hired a bunch of carnies to dress up in white jackets and point at pictures of hurricanes and melting icebergs. If you’re gonna put quotes around it, let’s make it clear who these “scientists” really are. Could they be “the leading international network of climate scientists,” or are they maybe “the hundreds of scientists who’ve had their findings supressed by the Bush Administration“?

I don’t know why conservatives are so fucking scared of climate change, but I’ll tell you something: I wrote a paper on global warming in the 9th grade (that was about 14 years ago) and even way back then there really didn’t seem to be much of a debate about it among the scientific community other than how we might be able to slow it down, and so now I really think these dickheads are lying through their teeth when they keep suggesting that climate change (which many of them denied even existed until recently) is due to natural processes like cows farting or driving cars.

Also, did Doug Patton really just suggest that because meteorologists can’t predict next week’s weather accurately, then we can’t be sure that climate change is happening? Yup, I just read it back. He totally did, that cheeky mouth-breather.

If you look around the internet at what is being written by conservative bloggers and wannabe journalists, you’ll see that there is an absolute glut of this kind of bullshit out there right now, some calling Gore’s movie “propaganda” and calling climate change a “hoax” and so on. All the while, I can feel Al Gore getting stronger (and possibly thinner), and the call for his candidacy is reaching a fever pitch. Someone get me a t-shirt that says “Gore-Obama ‘08” goddamit!

Alas, even with all this stuff flying around, the only stuff I can find about Al’s actual plans is in the frigging gossip columns.

Laurie David, the producer who pushed to turn Mr. Gore’s global-warming slide show into a movie, said she had written checks to Senators Clinton and Obama. But she said she was hoping that her film’s star might be enticed into another run.

“Gore-Obama would be a pretty great ticket, don’t you think?” she said. “I’ve told him that many times,” she said of Mr. Gore, “and he always pretends that his cellphone isn’t working.”

It’s a shame he isn’t picking up his phone, because the Democrats called, and they want their goddamn spines back.

San Franciscans have had a few good days to digest the juicy gossip-turned-reality about our very own Mayor “Player” Newsom and his sexy misdeeds. As far as I can tell, everyone seems pretty much aight with it. Especially the ladies, many of whom probably wouldn’t mind a little roll in the sack with G-New. Although they evidently want a new wardrobe even more.

You know who I really think is a moron? C.W. Nevius, that’s who:

When the Gavin Newsom scandal broke, most of us assumed the public reaction would be a no-brainer. Sleeping with a married woman? How do you think that would play with wives, girlfriends and single women in the Bay Area?

As a Newsom staffer told a Chronicle reporter, there goes the women’s vote.

Nevius then goes on to express shock that this wasn’t the case, as if a politician schtupping someone else’s wife was basically akin to him being a rapist. He also actually thinks this entire thing affects Newsom’s re-election chances, which makes him a double-moron. He brings up the “Man Code,” like all straight men in this city belong to the same fraternity or something. Here’s some S.F. Fish Wrapper journalism at its very best:

It seems that what is at work here is another case in which women are from Venus and men are from the mysterious, dark side of the moon.

“There is a code that men live by,” says family therapist Tracey Gersten, a woman. “Women may not know about it, or they may pooh-pooh it, but it is very real. I think if you put a group of men in a room, they’d have no trouble putting a man code together.”

They certainly didn’t have any trouble coming together on this one. When I wrote a column earlier this week suggesting that many San Franciscans were ready to let the mayor move on, my e-mail box filled up with men who disagreed. So did The Chronicle’s voice-mail system. Most of the men who called to react to this week’s scandal were upset with the mayor, while most of the women weren’t.

Sounds like a real scientific poll. You’re telling me that your “e-mail box” didn’t fill up with people writing in to agree with you? I’m shocked!

My e-mail box is filled with advertisements for pills that are supposed to make my penis an even bigger dick than Gavin Newsom, but the feedback I’m getting from the guys I know seems pretty consistent: Sure, it’s terrible that he slept with his best friend’s wife, and you can bet your ass that no wife of mine is going to be joining me and Gavin for a game of Boggle ™ anytime soon, but it’s not like he just fucked every wife in the city, so if he can get Muni running better I’ll probably vote his womanizing ass back into office and hope that he settles down with a nice girl one of these days.

I think that the idea of a universal Man Code is great for selling beer and marginalizing homosexuals, but if there’s a violation of code here then it’s surely better referred to as the “Friend Code,” that whole “Bros before Hos” thang. I surely won’t ever have an affair with my any of my friends’ wives, girlfriends, and probably not any of their mothers, but that’s because I’m not a politician with a ruthless disregard for personal loyalty. As it is, I do think that this was a gigantic dick move on the part of the mayor, but the only thing it really affects is my opinion of his decision-making capabilities when it comes to women, and lord knows I can’t really give anyone a hard time about that.

My real problem with this is Newsom’s response. It’s nice that he apologized and admitted what happened, (when was the last time you heard any politician say “Everything you’ve heard is true”?) but now he’s going the extra mile and entering an alcohol rehab program, which I thought was something only conservative pedophiles and gay evangelist sex-addicts did nowadays. It’s true that he probably ruined his best friends’ life, and I generally think that people who cheat on their spouses are pretty crappy, but the truth is, I want young and charismatic politicians that I support to fuck around as much as they want, or at least as much as their spouses will let them.

Politicians don’t have to be nice people to do their job well, and they certainly don’t live in the world that most of the rest of us do, so if they want to screw up their own marriages because it makes them feel more powerful and confident to get blown by an intern or to nail a dreamy starlet in the Oval Office, then I say go for it, and I don’t mean just male politicians, either. If, God forbid, Hillary Clinton is our next president, I hope she gets a whole lot of extramarital ass if it gives her the confidence she needs to kill all the terrorists and balance the budget.

So the grand revelation in all this is that Gavin Newsom sometimes thinks with his dick. I think that, as long as he doesn’t govern with it, San Francisco will probably be alright.

P.S. - Dear Gavin: friendship’s off, brah.

So the new National Intelligence Estimate came out on Friday, just in time for everyone who gets a copy to spend a nice weekend reading it during the Super Bowl. Several important points in the NIE were tragically punctuated by the deadliest bombing in Iraq since the start of the war almost four years ago.

A small piece of the NIE, called the “Key Judgments” has been made public. Among it’s somber points:

Despite real improvements, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF)—particularly the Iraqi police—will be hard pressed in the next 12-18 months to execute significantly increased security responsibilities, and particularly to operate independently against Shia militias with success. Sectarian divisions erode the dependability of many units, many are hampered by personnel and equipment shortfalls, and a number of Iraqi units have refused to serve outside of the areas where they were recruited.

This makes the New Way Forward sound even more flawed than it did before. How will the troop surge get Iraqi security forces in better shape to take over the defense of their country? As we saw very recently, these forces do not seem even close to prepared.

The Intelligence Community judges that the term “civil war” does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq, which includes extensive Shia-on-Shia violence, al-Qa’ida and Sunni insurgent attacks on Coalition forces, and widespread criminally motivated violence. Nonetheless, the term “civil war” accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict, including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities, a sea change in the character of the violence, ethno-sectarian mobilization, and population displacements.

This paragraph kind of makes me dizzy, but the New York Times found a guy who can explain what this means, even to me. He worked on the last NIE (which Bush dismissed as “just guessing” in 2004) and here’s what he says now:

John E. McLaughlin, who oversaw the previous intelligence estimate when he was acting director of central intelligence, said that he believed that intelligence officials in 2004 had presciently assessed what was to come in Iraq, but that the escalation of sectarian violence over the past year had made the situation even more complex.

“Civil war is checkers,” he said. “This is chess.”

That sucks, because I’ll bet President Bush really loves checkers. There isn’t any good news at all in the few pages we get to read of the NIE, and it seems to sum up basically what everyone (except Dick Cheney) is saying now about this conflict: We can’t win for losing, because every move we make is bound to be the wrong one.

In chess, that’s called “zugzwang.” We’ve painted ourselves into a corner, and the responsibility for the decisions that got us here lay exclusively with The Decider, as he himself has pointed out. Meanwhile, Congress continues to step on its own dick trying to pass bipartisan, non-binding resolutions against the troop surge instead of trying to extend any actual authority, and John McCain actually said something I agree with about it.

“I do believe that if you really believe that this is doomed to failure and is going to cost American lives, then you should do what’s necessary to prevent it from happening rather than a vote of ‘disapproval,’” McCain said.

I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I’m not voting for you or anything so don’t get all excited, but well said, Senator.

I’m wondering now what else needs to happen for Democrats to grow a fucking backbone on this issue. Does the classified part of the NIE say “Just kidding about all that loser talk in the ‘Key Judgements’ section. We’ve got the bastards right where we want them”? It’s hard to believe that there isn’t enough evidence at this point for a majority of our congressman to get serious about the power of the purse. Let’s go back to what the President said about why this surge will work. (The bold type is there for dramatic bloviation.)

Our past efforts to secure Baghdad failed for two principal reasons: There were not enough Iraqi and American troops to secure neighborhoods that had been cleared of terrorists and insurgents. And there were too many restrictions on the troops we did have. Our military commanders reviewed the new Iraqi plan to ensure that it addressed these mistakes. They report that it does. They also report that this plan can work.

Now let me explain the main elements of this effort: The Iraqi government will appoint a military commander and two deputy commanders for their capital. The Iraqi government will deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad’s nine districts. When these forces are fully deployed, there will be 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades committed to this effort, along with local police. These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations — conducting patrols and setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.

In what particular dimension does the Iraqi government and its security forces have this kind of capability, and once again, what makes anyone think that a larger presence of American troops is going to prevent the kind of massacre we saw on Saturday? It is important to separate the political conflicts from one another here: the majority of the members of congress who are against the surge do not advocate pulling out of Iraq completely at this juncture. They simply see that this is an ill-conceived, politically-motivated desperation play rather than a new direction or strategy. The only thing that is sure is that by the time congressional Democrats get around to doing anything about it, it will probably be too late.

How’s about that Rex Grossman?  Had he not underthrown two passes by 10 yards for interceptions, the Bears might have covered the spread. His take on one of those picks, returned for a Colts touchdown:

“The timing on it wasn’t right,” he said. “I was giving Moose a chance to go up and battle for it. Kind of a hitch and go. The corner got his eyes around and saw the ball and made a good play on it.”

Muhammad agreed.

“We were on two different pages where he was going to throw the ball and where I was going to run,” he said.

That’s awfully generous, but I suppose it’s true if you substitute “where he was going to throw the ball” for “ten yards behind me, where all the defenders were” and also “where I was going to run” with “for a touchdown.”

Actually, that sentence wouldn’t really make sense if those substitutions were made, but you get the point. You heard it here first: Rex Grossman will no longer be a starting quarterback by the middle of next season.

So I’ve decided to temporarily ignore the new NIE until Monday because nobody reads anything on Saturday or Sunday, so stay tuned for that. Also next week: Gavin Newsom’s proboscis, Gore Watch! ™, and some other bullshit, probably about Barry Bonds.

My postseason football picks record stands at an even 5-5, and so I’m gonna try and make this last prediction count. This weekend, most of us will sit and watch the World Series of Football because, well, that’s what we do. I’m looking forward to this game about as much as I’m looking forward to last year’s Super Bowl, although we might see some interesting football played if both of these teams decide to show up and play.

The Chicago defense, banged up though it may be, has consistently proven in the postseason that it doesn’t care how long Rex Grossman leaves them on the field. Also, this defense has consistently come up big on a grand stage. A lot has been made of how Grossman played in the game against the Saints, but in my mind the expectations were so low that he would have had to actually piss his pants on the field and piss away the game as well for him to meet those expectations. As it is, he exceeded them, and now everyone thinks he’s the tits.

The Colts and Peyton Manning showed a lot of resilience, and offensive firepower in moving the ball late against the Patriots. I don’t think they’ll have as easy of a time against the Bears, but they’ll find a way to score. The real determining factor in this game will be the Colt’s defense. If they get pressure on Grossman and can keep Benson and Jones under wraps for the most part, they’ll do pretty well. Sounds like a big if, but I know a little something about not knowing anything about football.

Speaking of not knowing anything about football, I think that the weather won’t play much of a factor at all in this game, and that’s bad news, Bears. The Colts will score early and often, and Rex Grossman will puke all over himself, figuratively at least, and then will fade into history like a legion of other quarterbacks that got to play in a Super Bowl this one time. Like Dan Marino.  (Colts 34 - Bears 17)