Great artwork - Fallujah can be stressfull, from what we've heard. But you know columnists and bloggers get stressed too. Being called a “chickenhawk” is dispiriting and it's related to this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/...

H/T Harvey Mansfield

Barbara Slavin (unintentionally) didn't do those State employees any favors when she quoted them. No doubt, Harry O'Hara has a tougher time than he wus sounding quotes would indicate - He was actually in the Green Zone, in a country that just has close to a million dead, 2 million refugees internally, and 2 million external refugees. But that quote makes him sound like he's whining - instead of thanking his lucky stars compared to the soldiers and Marines Bush has offered up like paschal lambs tied to a pack of lies.

We don't mean to sound dismissive of O'Hara - Quite the contrary - In fact, we suspect that he was not quoted properly or that some key backround material was left out. We just meant to say the way Slavin phrased his quotes made him sould less than he likely is. No doubt - he had a hellish time and it we know that it must be tough for committed FSOs to serve a policy that they know was dishonest and against America's interest. Powell's the only one who gets to cash in for carrying out a policy that he privately eyebrowed against to Tom Friedman.

Thanks for the nice words about the artwork. Sometimes, a post comes from the art and sometimes the other way around.

For those who know the Stiftung, our relationship to and respect for the Foreign Service as an institution is probably fairly well known. Baghdad is pretty much a 24 hour Mad Max movie and there is no question the emotional stress on anyone dumped there is non-trivial. We do think, however, it is simply indefensible to equate any of the civilians' burden within the Green Zone to the troops and NGOs who are actually out in the reality's horrors.

The PRT concept is pure Agitprop for Cher Condi to claim she too is “surging” — a cynical imposition of deadly risk on the Foreign Service. This trauma stress thing is another dig at her from the Foreign Service via their association. Yet claiming to equate their suffering with the troops is an obscenity.

On a different note, here's the Slate update on the Black trial:

http://www.slate.com/id/216...

“For years the Kurds were my favorite lost cause. I do not mean this at all cynically.”
~Marty Paretz 5-01-07

“But I have no doubt that the anti-Bush pile-on will treat Tenet as a hero.”
~Marty Peretz 4-26-07

NB - Sorry Marty for the typo misspel of Peretz in the quote above.

This is pretty funny - Baker Curve and all that - Baker seems to have moved on:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/spi...

I think the point of the article is that there is so much stress that it effects everyone who is near it. O'Hara would not compare his experience with that of a foot soldier doing daily patrols. Nor would a thoughtful soldier compare HIS situation to that of a five year old Iraqi kid wondering if the militias are going to break in and shoot his family in their beds.

Everyone has it bad there.

An update. Just because. Hope everyone had a good week.

“Firebase Feith, sir?”
“Yeah - rhymes with, er, uh ...”
“Teeth?”
“Uh no, ahhh...”
“You don't know, do you?”
“Uh, all I know is that he is why we are here.”
“Was he in charge of the lies?”
“Yeah - something like that.”

“Ahkmed don't latte, SIR!”

“Hadji don't surf either, SIR!”
“They surf the web”
“Yeah, in Arabic - what use is that, SIR?”
“Ok, let's order up some Turkish coffee.”
“How about some mint tea? Joe Wilson is expected any day now. SIR.”
“Who's Wilson?”
“Some hippie from Sante Fe with a cute amazing spy wife, SIR!”
“Sante Fe?”
“Sante Fe, Yes! - Sir”
“Ok, set up the panini machine and invite the best people from Fallujah's gallery scene.”
“Ok, SIR! Done, SIR!”
“Oh, and the fighten' poets of Fallujah - basically rappers in the regional demotic might be ...”
“SIR, I have a question.”
“Wha...”
“What if I am beheaded or killed?”
“Good question - Uh Patraeus wrote a pamphlet, let me go thru my binder...”

“All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years.”
~Brian Williams,
NBC newsreader
(self-styled intellectual)
NYU Lecture, April 2007
(Ironies unintended)

“If we’re all watching cats flushing toilets, what aren’t we reading? What great writer are we missing? What great story are we ignoring? This is societal, it’s cultural, I can’t change it. We should maybe pause to think about it. Because like everybody else, I can burn an hour on YouTube or Perez Hilton without breaking a sweat. And what have I just not paid attention to that 10 years ago I would’ve just consumed?"
~Brian Williams
NBC newreader
NYU Lecture, April 2007
(modern sage warns
a generation)