Strange day in New York. Got on the No. 4 today at Grand Central. Nice new R-11 car. Crowded. Backpacks and baby carriages everywhere. Strangely, the conductor comes on the loud-speaker, squawking:
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Back to the office, punched up the feeds on Bloglines. Speculation on the last moments of the amazing political career of Karl Rove. The President's top man is going back to the grand jury without promises that he won't be indicted. Wants to clear things up about leaking a CIA operative's name in retribution for her husband's telling the truth about the false yellow cake reports. I heard he'll tell the grand jury this:
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Got home, saw the Mayor on TV with the police commissioner - the Mayor who placed the crown of nomination on the head of the incumbent President last summer at a gala celebration of his policy in New York. They were talking about the terror threats on the subways, how it wasn't safe on the 4 Train. They didn't tell us what we should do about it. I could have sworn the Mayor said this:
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
The President was on television today, I heard, talking about global politics and the war on terror. Or so it seems. No coverage of the "major address" on the cable news tonight, no comparisons to Churchill and FDR. Not with Rove and the 4 Train hogging the news cycle. I'm guessing the President might have said this again:
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Thought of the 1,944, sitting in this chair, holding this laptop, drinking this wine, looking at these children. Thinking about the 1,944. They really should come to all of us on days like these. Rove and Bush and the 4 Train. And these words, written in the sky, a ghostly epitaph for the honor of our nation:
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
from Amazon.
Ahh, the winding gyre. or the 50th anniversary of Howl or 13 ways of looking at a blackbird.
p.s. thanks for Jason Servokas' Down in the Flood.
Posted by: John | October 06, 2005 at 10:11 PM
Funny, I was on that same train, but I thought I heard the conductor say that Mohammad Atta had met w/ Iraqi intelligence officers in Czechoslovakia.
Posted by: chervokas | October 07, 2005 at 08:22 AM
*Ahh, the winding gyre*
Do you mean the widening gyre of Yeats, or do you have something else in mind?
Posted by: Tom K | October 07, 2005 at 11:39 AM
I think he meant Yeats.
While finishing your post, I also thought of Wallace Stevens and you as a modern man of Haddam in "13 Ways..." (but I felt your post had a more Orwellian twist).
Posted by: Kat | October 07, 2005 at 12:07 PM
There's big difference between winding and widening; Yeats' gyres always wind, I suppose, but they only widen at certain stages.
Not that I can claim to understand much more than that about his entertaining gyre-related obscurantism.
Posted by: Tom K | October 07, 2005 at 02:55 PM
Hmmm, Tom. Let's assume GWB was wrong in that claim: a matter that is still disputed, but that I am prepared to concede.
That, by itself, doesn't prove him wrong about his war policy. FDR claimed, publicly, that the NAZI's had a plan to carve up the new world. He even produced a map to prove the claim. Whatever the Nazi's may actually have had in mind, both the map and the plan he described were, we now know, inventions of British intelligence, which was very eager to assist FDR in his efforts to turn US public opinion toward war.
The decision to fight WWII was right, despite these unsavory facts. Likewise, as I have argued for a long time now, history's judgment on GWB's decision to invade Iraq will be influenced very little by the means that he used to justify the war, and very much by whether it succeeds or fails.
For that reason, the interesting debate in the coming years will by, what exactly constitutes success? (Assuming we don't see either of the polar extremes: (a) undeniable failure (civil war, genocide, US military disaster) or (b) undeniable success (Panglossian liberality breaking out, persisting, and spreading throughout the region).
Posted by: Tom K | October 07, 2005 at 03:05 PM
Tom - sadly, it's damned close to (a) right now....
Posted by: Tom W. | October 07, 2005 at 04:31 PM
It's not good right now. I've never been convinced that (a) isn't the place it's likeliest to end up. But (a), if and when it arrives, will be very visibly different from where it is now.
Posted by: Tom K | October 07, 2005 at 05:09 PM
It never made sense to me. Why would you invade Iraq if there were other options? Here was a country that opposed the Shiite revolution in Iran. Here was a regime that ran a secular dictatorship despised by Shiite and Sunni fundamentalists. So, why would you destroy that regime without a really good reason. Now Iraq and Iran have good relations. A good thing? Maybe. But I don't think one US life should have been lost for this experiment in nation building.
Posted by: Ralph | October 09, 2005 at 01:24 AM