Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

I'm really not sure that if this new US policy of bombing Mosques in Iraq is going to fly. I realize that guerilla forces are not only using the mosques as bases, but also to store weapons and so on. But the problem is, by attacking a mosque, you attack both civilians and Islam itself… Symbolically and politically it plays directly into the hands of leaders like al-Sadr. Fuck, sometimes you wonder if the US commanders have ever read anything by Mao or Guevara.

Oh, and I don't know if you watched Nightline last night, but Ted Koppel was talking about the plans set into motion via 9/11. They started with “Continuity of Government” and explaining why Bush didn't return immediately to Washington after the attacks — “This was absolutely the Armageddon plan put into effect.” (with the implication that they're still on).

Richard Clarke also backed up that they went into that mode after the war, saying,

Every federal agency was ordered, on the morning of 9/11, to activate an alternative command post, an alternative headquarters outside of Washington, D.C., and to staff it as soon as possible. [We'd had drills where we'd] gone off into caves in mountains in remote locations and spent days on end in miserable conditions, pretending that the rest of the world had blown up, and going through the questions, going through the drill. . . . Everyone there play acts that it's really happened. You can't go outside because of the radioactivity. You can't use the phones because they're not connected to anything.

Don't divide the world into "them" and "us." Avoid infatuation with or resentment of the press, the Congress, rivals, or opponents. Accept them as facts. They have their jobs and you have yours.