reading woodward's plan of attack. fascinating account of decision-making in a bureaucracy. the life-changing course i took in grad school was on the study of bureaucracy. it was a boring-sounding fill-in for my semester's caseload.

woodward certainly doesn't have the whole story behind what led up to the decision to go after iraq, he acknowledges that. we probably won't until people write their memoirs and documents are declassified. but at this point, given woodward's track record, it's as good as we're going to get for a long time.

fascinating and shocking. shocking because the whole lead up to the decision to attack seems to occupy only the first 40 pages of the book. i haven't read the whole book yet but long before page 100 we're already past the decision-making phase and into the planning stage.

this is it from the book with page references:

-at clinton's urging, congress passed a law in 1998 calling for regime change in iraq. (10) THIS WAS THE PRECEDENT THE BUSHIES INHERITED. IT SHOULDN'T AMOUNT TO MUCH, IF ANYTHING, BUT IN BUREAUCRACIES ENTROPY IS ALL.

-cheney came to the vice-presidency with a sense of "unfinished business" re iraq (9). THIS WAS A KEY FACTOR.

-bush relied on cheney heavily because of his experience and lack of ambition for presidency.

-rumsfeld worked hard on bush's campaign and had a talk with bush before he was even selected as defsec where he characterized the clinton approach to being attacked as "reflexive pullback" and he thought bush's should be "forward-leaning." bush like this more aggressive approach. (19) BUSH ALREADY LEANING TOWARD BEING MORE AGGRESSIVE GENERALLY.

-in jan. '01 before cohen briefs bush, cheney tells cohen he wants him to make iraq "topic a." THIS IS ASTONISHING. ASTONISHING THAT IN JAN. '01 CHENEY WOULD STACK A BRIEFING OF A TOTALLY GREEN PRESIDENT WITH IRAQ.cohen thinks, and thinks the bushies will eventually conclude that hussein was effectively de-fanged and contained and that military removal was more trouble than it was worth. bush says he thought so too, pre-9/11. IT IS NOT CLEAR BUT CERTAINLY IMPLIED THAT COHEN DID IN FACT MAKE IRAQ TOPIC A.

-two days after the cohen briefing, tenet briefs bush. the main world threats to the u.s. were 1-obl, 2-wmd, 3-china (long term and because of its size,economically). iraq "barely mentioned." (12) I WAS VERY SURPRISED TO SEE CHINA ON THIS LIST. I
HAVE LONG HAD A STRONG SENSE OF FOREBODING ABOUT CHINA AND THE "CHALLENGES" IT WILL POSE TO US IN THE FUTURE. THIS CONCERN COMES
INFREQUENTLY BECAUSE OF MORE IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS BUT IT'S FASCINATING THAT
IT WOULD BE #3 ON THE CIA'S LIST AT THIS TIME. I'D LOVE TO KNOW THE DETAILS OF
WHAT THE CIA THOUGHT.

-feb. 5, '01: "principals meeting" (bush not present) to discuss how to increase intel on iraq and wmd. discussed: 1-hussein winning p.r. war that sanctions were hurting people, powell wanted to tighten sanctions on certain more dangerous material. 2-u.n. had discovered and dismantled s.h.'s bio-chem wmd capability and found a "surprisingly advanced nuclear program." 3-even then, there had been "suspicious accounting for materials" and then s.h. kicked inspectors out in '98 (13)

-bush wanted more "robust" response to violations of no-fly zone than under clinton. (14) bush worried about what response would be if a pilot was shot down. THOUSANDS OF SORTIES HAD BEEN FLOWN AND NOT ONE PLANE HAD BEEN SHOT DOWN. bush wanted to know if there was a "big bang" scenario in place if that happened. (16)THIS IS IMPORTANT ONLY AS BUSH'S "I LIKE THAT" WAS TO RUMSFELD'S SUGGESTION THAT THE NEW ADMINISTRATION SHOULD BE "FORWARD LEANING" RATHER THAN "REFLEXIVE PULLBACK." IN THE CONTEXT OF EVENTS TO COME IT SHOWS A PLIANT PSYCHOLOGY IN PLACE.

-feb. 16, '01: major u.s./u.k. bombing raid because s.h. close to patching together a hard-to-hit fiber optics network (14)

-march 1: principals meeting chaired by powell who wanted to focus u.n. sanctions on weapons control, which is what he brought up in feb. 5 meeting. rumsfeld concerned about "dual use items." powell thought rumsfeld was loony in his concern. heated fight between powell and rumsfeld (15).

-timeframe unclear but woodward says that at the same time that this rift between the sec's was going on there was a similar one at the next level down. wolfowitz and armitage disagree about how much to trust chalabi and how and to what extent to help any opposition inside iraq. (20)

-between may 31 and july 26: four dep. sec. meetings re iraq. they recommend heavy reliance on iraqi opposition to pressure s.h. no recommendation for direct u.s. military involvement (21).

-woodwar says, apparently in this time frame, wolfie was "fierce advocate" for toppling s.h. because (these are my quotes of woodward, not his of wolfie), "it was necessary and it would be relatively easy" (21). wolfie believes u.s. could easily overrun southern iraq and seize oil fields and that would ignite opposition forces who would overthrow s.h. (22). powell thinks wolfie's nuts. CAN'T BLAME POWELL HERE. THIS IS BAY OF PIGS REDUX THINKING AND FROM A GUY WHO WAS A POLI. SCI. PROF. WOODWARD SAYS POWELL ROLLED HIS EYES AT HUGH SHELTON AND LATER ASKED HIM IF THERE WASN'T SOMETHING HE COULD DO "TO GET THESE GUYS BACK IN THE BOX."

BUT WASN'T WOLFIE MORE RIGHT THAN SAY, COHEN, WAS? TRUE WE GOT NO MILITARY HELP FROM THE OPPOSITION BUT WE DID END UP TAKING THE SOUTH AND THE OIL WELLS ALMOST UNMOLESTED. AND REGIME CHANGE WAS AFFECTED VERY QUICKLY. IF THAT'S ALL WOLFIE, AND ULTIMATELY THE ADMINISTRATION, WERE FOCUSING ON, IF THAT WAS THEIR DEFINITION OF SUCCESS THEN IT WAS EASY. I DON'T KNOW HOW MUCH THEY THOUGHT ABOUT POST-HUSSEIN-OUSTER IRAQ OR HOW MUCH THEY SHOULD HAVE.

THIS IS THE DIVIDE EVEN AMONG SOME CONSERVATIVES LIKE DAVID BROOKS, WHO NEVER EXPECTED A STUBBORN AND INCREASING AMOUNT OF GUERILLA ACTIVITY POST-REGIME CHANGE. NOBODY WANTS IT, I DIDN'T EXPECT IT EITHER, BUT WHAT DOES IT REALLY MATTER? THAT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOUR DEFINITION OF "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" WAS. IF IT WAS REGIME CHANGE PERIOD, THEN YOU CAN PRETTY MUCH DECLARE VICTORY AND COME HOME, WHICH IS WHAT BUSH IS APPARENTLY GOING TO DO.

EVERYONE, BROOKS, LUGAR, MCCAIN, BELIEVE THE SITUATION IS TOO UNSTABLE FOR US TO JUST PULL OUT NOW BUT I THINK THEY WOULD BE SATISFIED IF THE "REBELLION" WERE SIMPLY QUASHED, THAT IS, IF WE JUST KILL A FEW MORE PEOPLE.

THAT WOULD BE MY VIEW. WE HAVE SOME RECALCITRANTS IN FALUJAH AND SOME OTHER PLACES. WE NEED TO WIPE THEM OUT AND MAKE SURE WE GET OTHERS ELSEWHERE SO THAT WHEN WE LEAVE WE DON'T GET A RADICALIZED ISLAMIC STATE BUT BEYOND THAT I DON'T THINK, AND I DON'T THINK THE HAWKS ABOVE THINK, THAT WE SHOULD "NATION BUILD." THE FUTURE OF IRAQ IS FOR THE IRAQIS TO DECIDE, WITHIN THE LIMITS OF OUR SAFETY CONCERNS.

THE ONE CONTRADICTION TO MY VIEW HERE OF WHAT BUSH AND THE HAWKS THINK IS WOLFIE'S "SHINING CITY ON A HILL" VISION FOR IRAQ.

-wolfie is relentless in pushing his view and powell is worried about the momentum he is creating. powell speaks to bush personally about not getting pushed into anything. bush says "i get it" (22). later on, woodward writes what everyone by now knows, that bush and powell never had a personal relationship, certainly not like bush and cheney had or even bush and rumsfeld had. OBVIOUSLY, THIS WOULD PLAY A SIGNIFICANT ROLE AS BUSH DECIDED WHOSE JUDGMENT TO RELY ON. woodward says there was always a little bit of competition with, and resentment of, powell that bush felt.

I REMEMBER READING SOMEWHERE THAT BUSH WOULD SOMETIMES MALICIOUSLY SAY TO POWELL SOMETHING LIKE, "WELL, IF IT'S NOT THE WORLD'S GREATEST HERO." BUSH IS SUCH A SMALL, INSECURE, LITTLE ASSHOLE.

-aug. '01: work on iraq stops because bush goes on vacation. deep divisions exist between state and defense (23)

-9/11: bush says it is the "pearl harbor of the 21st century." (24). in interviews with woodward two years after, bush explains thinking that after 9/11 s.h.'s capacity for harm became to him much more menacing, and containing him much less feasible (27). woodward writes, "worse for bush, tenet had explicitly warned him about the immediacy and seriousness of obl threat. focusing on domestic issues and a giant tax cut, bush had largely ignored the terrorism problem." "i didn't feel that sense off urgency...my blood was not nearly as boiling," woodward quotes bush as later describing how he felt. IT SEEMS CLEAR TO ME ALSO THAT BUSH'S SENSE OF BEING A FUCK-UP IN LIFE KICKED IN HERE. BUT HOW MUCH WOULD THIS SENSE OF HAVING SCREWED UP HAVE EFFECTED SOMEONE ELSE, SAY CLINTON, OR EVEN POWELL IF EITHER HAD BEEN PRESIDENT? AFGHANISTAN WOULD CERTAINLY HAVE BEEN ATTACKED BY ANYONE. WOULD IRAQ? I DON'T THINK SO UNDER CLINTON OR POWELL, BUT OWING MUCH LESS, I.M.O., TO BUSH'S SENSE OF HAVING FAILED AND HAVING TO PROVE HIMSELF, THAN TO THE EFFECT THAT CHENEY, AND TO A LESSER EXTENT, RUMSFELD, HAD ON HIM. IT SEEMS TO ME CHENEY'S INFLUENCE ALONE WOULD ULTIMATELY HAVE BEEN DECISIVE. AND RUMSFELD'S ADDED TO THE WEIGHT.

-on 9/11 itself, rumself raises the possibility of going after iraq in response. THIS IS CRITICAL. "hit s.h. at same time--not only ubl," are an aide's notes of rumsfeld's suggestion. rumsfeld asks "pentagon lawyer" to talk to wolfie about iraq "connection withe obl." (25) THE WHEELS ARE IN MOTION BIG-TIME NOW.

-sept. 12: at war cabinet meeting rumsfeld asks if 9/11 didn't present an "opportunity" to hit iraq (25)

***to be continued***


-benjamin harris

a friend has just nominated me for people magazine's list of the "twenty most eligible bachelors who are prosecutors."

PROFILE

name: benjamin harris

personal:

-forty-nine year old
-twice divorce (but one annuled so it doesn't count)
-father of two
-murder cases only, especially cold cases.

interests:

-women's fashion
-wild boar hunting
-art
-starting civilizational war.

accomplishments:

-made legal history by getting reversed for racial discrimination in jury selection.
-stopped by ski patrol for skiing too fast.
-kicked out of personal therapy for being "too difficult."

goals:

-flying a plane into that big square thing in mecca.

quotes:

-"blowjobs are like croissants, i'm not sure i've ever had a good one." (made to ex-wife numero dos)
-"if you were my wife i'd want one too," in replay to therapist's statement, "if i were your wife, i'd want a seperation."

can i write in ariel sharon for president of the u.s.? a most contradictory man, he has nonetheless done exactly the right things to move the israeli-palestinian conflict off stalemate. i'm referring to the security wall in the west bank, his announced intention to pull out of gaza and to remove 7,500 jewish settlers but most of all his courage and strength to do what has been necessary all along: assasinate palestinian terrorist leaders.

last month it was the founder and philosophical--"spiritual" is an inapposite term for such a minister of hate--leader of hamas, sheik ahmed yassin. yesterday the exhilirating news that israeli helicopters had fired hellfire missiles at the vehicle carrying yassin's successor, dr. abdel aziz rantisi and ended the non-practicising pediatrician's days of delivering jewish babies to their graves.

yassir arafat must have a tick about now and some hamas advisor suggested it might be appropriate under these circumstances to keep secret whomever hamas chooses as it's next leader.

i picture a hamas council meeting solemnly conveyed to choose a new leader, and worthy after worthy declining the position with shermanesque finality. what if they held an election and noone ran?


-benjamin harris

Mum and Dad: Part One

Mum and Dad: PART ONE

as dad told it, he first realized that mum was the one for him when, as part of a church or school group, he was invited to her 6 year birthday party.

because of the number of kids there and time constraints he had to leave without getting the chance to give mum her present in person.

he recalled telling a friend disconsonately "tell joan it's from michael."

mum first realized dad was for her when, in their late teens, they ran into each other at "twilight", one of the huge dance halls that dotted rural america in the 30's and 40's and which brought big-time entertainers like benny goodman and a young frank sinatra to the hinterland.

as mum told it, when dad walked in, with his full head of pomaded black hair and dressed in an all-white suit, that was it. years later they could laugh at that all-white suit but magic occurs in strange forms and that night it wore vestments of white.

mum kept the suit preserved until the day she died, which occurred on my father's birthday.

as far as we could tell, it wasn't long after "twilight" that that they eloped to laurel maryland and were married.

i say "as far as we could tell" because we never knew their anniversary date. it wasn't talked about and wasn't celebrated as a family event. we always suspected that that was because if you "did the math," mike III's birth would fall damningly short of the 9-month mark.

mum had strong opinions and didn't recoil from rendering judgments but one subject that she was noticeably soft-hearted on was grils who had "premature" births.

mum had her contentious moments with all of us, and especially with mikeIII and mary jane but of all the harsh words she ever spoke to and about them, not a discouraging one was heard about mike having gotten mary jane pregnant out of wedlock.

"only the good girls get pregnant," she used to say, "the bad ones know to use protection." that was a little too facile, too pat, for mum's personality.

mum was a voracious reader. the quintessential image i have is of her sitting in a chair reading. she only had a high school education--and a one-room-schoolhouse-in-rural-pennsylvania one at that--but she had a very good vocabulary as a consequence of her reading and thus a medium for expressing her thoughts, which were those of an agile mind. it was at times a combustible combination.

i always thought that the abrupt, sometimes inexplicable losses of temper and of downright meanness that she exhibited were in significant measure due to that combustible combination, and the container--that of housewife from the 1930's-1980's in small town america--that it was forced to exist in, and occasionally to resist. i don't think mum was in any significant regard aware of this. her upsets seemed to puzzle her as much as they did the rest of us.

then too, she was smarter than dad so you had a confluence of conditions that led to frustration, questioning, uncertainty, fear, guilt, denial, anger, more guilt and sorrow. i think the wonder is not that she had the upsets that she did but that she didn't have more of them.

mum and i talked a lot. i don't know exactly to what extent she talked to me more, if at all, than with my brothers--i never really asked them about it--, but i honestly believe she opened up a little more with me than with the others, or even with dad on some subjects. at least she told me she did and on more than one occasion while i was a teenager, dad would tell me in exasperation "go talk to your mother," or "ben, you can talk to your mother, go talk to her." the subject matter of these i don't remember.

nowhere were mum's existential difficulties greater exhbited than in her relationship with her own mother, who we boys referred to as "gram."


-benjamin harris

i'm starting a new fashion trend--skinny ties, like in the '50's and 60's. not being able to buy any anywhere, even vintage stores, i'm taking the ties i have in to be tailored and narrowed.

-benjamin harris

Mum's Death

tim just called. mum died at about 6:30 today. today was also dad's birthday.

Mum Dying

the human death experience is so mystical.

my brother called this morning to tell me that mum had been going downhill noticeably in the last few days, very weak and complaining of pain underneath her rib cage. tim said he had had her taken by ambulance to the hospital.

my mother always talked with me about things, like her own doubts about god for example, not a popular opinion in the family. her own mother was very strict religiously. mum was closer to her father.

when i went up for her bladder cancer surgery last year i was sitting by her bed in the hospital. it was just the two of us and she told me that for many years she had had a dream where she was on the edge of a field waist-high in weeds, and her father, who died in 1959 was at the far end of the same field. she told me that in her dream her dad said, "c'mon, honey. c'mon, dear," and beckoned with his hands. she was frightened in her dream and said "no, daddy i can't." she said her father turned away "with the saddest look on his face." she told me she knew that if she had made contact with her father that she would die; he would have taken her with him. "so i know when it's my time, my dad will come for me, benjamin."

tim just called me again. they took an x-ray or ultrasound or something and mum's cancer has spread to her liver and it won't be long. we talked for awhile and at one point he said, "ben, you know what mum said to me this morning when she woke up? she said 'tim, you know my dad was here last night." tim asked what she meant and mum said "he came last night and was in the bed beside me."



-benjamin harris

"because it's there," said george mallory, explaining why he wanted to climb everest. never a completely satisfying answer for me. i would gladly risk (or would like to THINK i would gladly risk) my life to save another, kill another, find intelligent life on mars or television, for some "higher" purpose in other words. but "because it's there?" that's it?

just read an article on climbing k2 which is the world's most difficult and deadliest mountain. as the subtitle of the article put it, "(everest is for sissies)."

"[members of an unsuccessful 1939 group] were the first...to die on k2. jordan [one of the author's fellow mountaineers] found some of wolfe's equipment--including a mitten with his name on it--plus 30 of his ribs and vertebrae."

upon finding a piece of purple cloth, jordan wondered who would wear such a thing, "a woman, it must be a piece of cloting worn by alison hargreaves," a gifted 33-year old brit who "was blown right off the summit ridge."

"we resumed walking passing sundry bits of gear...until we reached the arm of a wool shirt. the skin was like burned leather, dark brown, but not black. he hadn't been in the ice for long, because he still had his hands and his feet. well...a foot."

O-KAYYY..."because it's there," huh? have these people nothing better to do? i've always been struck by how these "brave exemplars of the human quest are the idle rich, like hillary and the "gifted" hargreaves.

i actually know someone who has climbed "sissie" everest. i remember him telling how it would take them an hour to transverse two vertical feet, at the end of which time he would be soaked through his clothing with perspiration.

claude fit the mold, an andover grad and schemer from rhode island who fled a bankrupt bentley dealership but not before creatively hiding a stash of loot and high-tailing it to florida and its generous homestead exemption, which has for seventy years attracted such as al capone and o.j. simpson and other judgment-proof a-type personalities. i doubt that any youngstown steelworker has ever climbed everest or k2.

effort is all to me. among other things, it's what makes me loathe the republican "work ethic" of being born on third base and holding yourself out as someone who has just hit a triple. i, and all democrats, are philosophical heirs of ben franklin who actually coined the phrase, "no gains without pain."

and we endure pain for the flimmsiest of gains. al of us who lift weights do so for no other reason than vanity. any other reason is pure pap. if you plopped old ben down in a modern american city, perhaps the most flummoxing sight--more so than cars and jets and cell phones--would be a gold's gym.

all of that i admit. but this extreme mountaineering stuff just seems to me the ultimate indulgence of a civilization, or the upper crust of such, whose raison d'etre is perverse.

i can't help but think that there's something a little similar between these westerners who have nothing to do and too much time to do it in and who choose to endanger their lives, and those mutant young saudi men, whose only way of gaining fulfillment was to fly a plane into a building, immolating themselves and others. it's the nihilist's disregard for human life.


-benjamin harris

One of the Greatest Human Beings Who Ever Lived

"Anybody here seen my old friend Martin..." God bless you Dr. King

TRUE CRIME STORIES: Pepe

True Crime Stories: Pepe

former judge "pepe" rivera comes to my office to review my file on a murder case he's just been retained on.

i give him copies of the police reports, the witness statements, the autopsy protocol.

"jeezus, i hope i don't ever die in dade county," he mutters, skimming over the protocol.

"why, pepe?"

"because i don't want to be described in an autopsy report as an overweight, middle-aged hispanic male with unremarkable genitalia."


-benjamin harris

True Crime Stories: Lester

TRUE CRIME STORIES: Lester

when i was in organized crime/public corruption i inherited an investigation of the head of one of the rehabilitation programs who we had gotten intel on was using program credit cards for expenditures--such as vacations and jewelry--that did not, on their face, appear to be directly connected to the aims of reducing recidivism.

every probe by law enforcement, no matter how preliminary and exploratory, was magnified in effect on the fragile constitution of the program head as a whisper is transformed into a shout by one of those science funhouse contraptions.

blithely ignorant of all this i immediately issued a subpoena for some documents on lester himself. the subpoena was served on a sunday morning just as lester was greeting the new day.

monday morning i got a call from his attorney, former judge tom johnson.

"ben, lester called me on sunday, said you served a subpoena on him."

"yeah tom, i did."

"jeezus ben, lester's shittin' so much he can't touch his asshole with a powder puff."

(over my laughter) "there's a knock on his door on a nice sunday morning, he answers the door in his bathrobe and some guy serves him with a subpoena. i think he spent the rest of the day in the bathroom."


-benjamin harris

MORE IOWA

what is the saying, "it's always darkest before the dawn?" at near dawn today, i got awake and turned on the radio and did a fist pump at the result. dean even finished a DISTANT third. he got killed! you know, the polls definitely were on the scent of a "sea change" but they were as wrong as they notoriously have been in iowa. it was nowhere near a 4-2ay tie.

i was talking to my right-wing brother don yesterday and he was beating the "go dean!" drum. he actually said he liked kerry a lot. kerry is a great candidate and i think edwards would be too. how about that as a ticket?

dean is definitely hurt but he's got too much money to be out of it yet. his speech was emotionally weird. i think he'll stay in it to the end no matter what the results and who knows? maybe he'll run as a third-party candidate and immolate the party.


-benjamin harris

IOWA

this could hardly be a better result. dean is seriously wounded. tim russert said his out-of-control post-election speech could be a defining moment, like muskie crying in the snow outside the manchester union-leader's office.


-benjamin harris

TRUE CRIME STORIES: Shit

TRUE CRIME STORIES: Shit

your chances of making an arrest in a new murder case fall off drastically after the first 24 hours.

that's why, in mdpd, when your team's up for the next homicide and one comes in, you work around the clock that first day. there's a frisson to the work with everyone aware that the cosmological clock is ticking on them. breaks in the work are few, fewer for some than others.

the homicide prosecutor's job description at such scenes is to consult and advise the detectives on any legal issues that come up, to take the long view toward trial when they might take the more immediate view.

i was on homicide duty one week and got called out to a scene at some guy's house. i forget the context. the body was in the living room.

i was standing next to the lead detective, a big, intense, florid-faced cop who i'd known for years. he was taking notes feverishly. a few streams of perspiration ran down his cheeks.

the most horrid smell wafted to my nostrils. homicide scenes are not for the easily offended of sights and smells but this was unusual. it wasn't decomposition, it wasn't anything i could associate with the crime.

"what the fuck's that smell?", i said to jim.

"i just took a shit in my pants," he said, not raising his pen or eyes from his notepad.

"are you kidding me?"

now he looked at me. "i had to take a shit but we're busy."


-benjamin harris

the capture of saddam hussein needn't mean it's over for the democrats. it IS over, because howard dean will be the nominee but imagine if lieberman or edwards or even kerry would be? the democrats would be innoculated against attacks that they are soft on foreign policy and would have been free to hammer bush on economics.

imagine if the nominee were clinton. he would do the next best thing. "the war's over. bush wants to live in the past. don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow. it's the economy stupid."

but no, we get dean. "let's refight the war politically. i was/am/always will be against it. DOES EVERYBODY HEAR ME? I WANT EVERYONE TO HEAR THAT. but i'm in favor of us staying there. to finish the job. getting hussein doesn't mean the job's finished. i don't know what 'the job's finished' means. i'll let you know. what i do know is that bush doesn't understand foreign policy. i do. i had to negotiate sensitive maple syrup tariff issues with the canadians. tough negotiators, those canadians."


-benjamin harris

Coffin's Corner

COFFIN'S CORNER

william sloane coffin, the great divine of the 1960s, was the subject of a little new yorker article this week.

the occasion was proximity to the divine's 79th birthday and, owing to a bum ticker, his own proximity to the GREAT BEYOND. ominously, coffin spoke, according to the interviewer, "with flies buzzing around him."

the divine's guidance was sought on the war with iraq. he allowed as how he was against it. having dispatched that subject, he expounded on the weltanschauung that informs his opinions.

unlike the floppers who see good and evil in simplistic terms like good and evil, the divine has a more nuanced view owing to the nuance and subtlety of his own mind which is of course the hallmark of end-state intellectual evolution, to wit:

"nothing is more dangerous than misunderstanding evil. evil has an irremediable stubbornness about it. and it must be recognized, it has to be constrained, but it can never be resolved."

"an honorable pacifism recognizes that the mystery of evil is beyond its solution."

this is subtle. this is complex. this is The Great Insight.

the intellectual architechtonus being laid, the divine then concatenated historical events with a manner of creativity hitherto unknown among those who concatenate events for a living:

"poor old woodrow wilson said 'we're ending world war I, we're making the world safe for democracy.' as a result we opened all kinds of doors to every kind of dictator, from ataturk all the way to salazar, and in between franco, mussolini, hitler and stalin."

with this last, the interviewer, ben mcgrath, noted that even the coffins dog, a dalmatian, "sat quietly nearly seeming almost to listen." at such perspicacity even the beasts of the earth are stilled.

black fles buzzing ("it's sunday. i guess i'm getting worked up"), the divine expanded on the theme of american responsibility for "ataturk, salazar, franco, mussolini, hitler and stalin":

"and that's what's so pernicious, so dangerous, about bush [to end the suspense, coffin's for howard dean]. that he just doesn't understand the stubbornness of evil, and he just doesn't understand american complicity."

coffin's own axis of evil, mcgrath recorded for posterity, comprised "environmental degradation, pandemic poverty, and a world awash in weapons."(at this point it was observed that there were two lap dogs in the room, interviewer mcgrath having descended to all four fours, chin resting on the divine's chair seat).

rev. coffin is a quote-monger, a veritable walking bartleby's, who keeps binders full of pith. in the course of this short interview he managed to squeeze in references to wilson, moses, hamlet, oliver wendell holmes, the new testament, and this one from st. augustine: "yea, my pride-swollen face has closed up my eyes."

ungenerous readers of rev. coffin's views, those disrespectful of their elders, those not of as nuanced an intellect may have been reminded of another quote:

"fetch here the stocks, ho!
you stubborn ancient knave, you reverend braggart
we'll teach you."
-lear

-benjamin harris

the attacks by islam on the west, in iraq continuously and ever bolder, in saudi arabia, spectacularly twice in turkey, are harbingers. whether we "degraded" al qaeda with our post-9/11 riposte or whether they were just lying low and in the r&d phase of the next round, the signs are ominous that a new attack on america, in america, is coming, and it's imminent.

-benjamin harris

Freddy Adu to Play for United

FREDDY ADU TO PLAY FOR UNITED

D.C. united, that is, not manchester united. quite a coup for major league soccer. the best young player in the world will make his debut next spring at rfk stadium and will appear on letterman tonight.

mls is unlike the four major team sports leagues. it is a "single entity owner" structure, much more centrally controlled than the franchise structure in the nfl, mlb, nba and nhl. only other league to attempt the single owner concept was abe saperstein's old american basketball league.

the benefits are classical economic economies of scale in purchasing and licensing but also makes the league, theoretically, better able to deal with dislocations and unfairness caused by a george steinbrenner or a donald trump who single-handedly destroyed the united states football league. players sign a contract with the league, not with the individual teams, and are assigned to one of the teams, which also helps competitive balance.

mls has never been able to break through the american sports public's conscious, not even close, not even close to the extent that the old north american soccer league did. adu could change all that. the u.s. is such a personality/celebrity driven culture that a player with real star power could allow the "beautiful game" to poke through. pele did it for nasl. d.c. has always been one of the league's glamour franchises. teaming adu with the incomparable ray hudson is a marketing dream.

the signing gives credibility to mls on two other fronts. first, since its inception, the league has had to loan or sell some of its best players abroad for much needed cash. that made it look like--because it was to some extent--a minor league masquerading as a first-division league. making the financial committment to adu (no details announced), and outbidding man-u and other european teams reverses that image.

second, just keeping home grown talent at home is all soccer will have to do to succeed here. there is a huge soccer public in the u.s. not a potentially huge, an actually huge. manchester united sold out everywhere it played in the u.s. this year. the cosmos drew 77,000 to matches at giants stadium. the tampa bay rowdies and ft. lauderdale strikers drew very well.

what america will not pay to see is second-rate anything. the american world cup team has proven it can compete with the best in the world, and was supported as such. more freddy adus peppered throught the ten mls teams will result in a very attractive product on the field, sorry, pitch.

so congratulations to mls. adu and american soccer could be the start of a beautiful relationship.

-benjamin harris

the philadelphia inquirer reported on wednesday that a secret cia report has warned that the continued guerrila attacks on coalition forces in iraq are convincing the iraqi populace that america can be defeated there and that more and more iraqis are supporting the insurgents.

after "the end of major combat operations" in may a couple of soldiers per week were being killed; that was inevitable. but over the last few months the attacks have been obviously well-coordinated and more deadly. the attack on the palestine hotel when paul wolfowitz was staying there was a brilliant public relations coup to show the world that hussein loyalists had not been vanquished and in fact were able to attack at will what one would have assumed to have been an impregnable target. the look of anger, fear, and embarrassment on wolfowitz' face at his press conference afterwards was a bit humorous and said it all.

this week 26 italian soldiers were killed in the deadliest single attack yet.

in the face of all this the administration has announced that it is going to accelerate the timetable for turning over control of the country to civilian authorities.

so secretive is this administration, so isolated is this president, so deceiving have they been with what they know and what they're thinking that it amounts to little more than guess work to imagine what they're up to.

the cia report has the ring of truth. psychology is an important weapon in war. it is what kept the north vietnamese and viet cong going against the pounding of the b-52s.

the north koreans were being defeated and were demoralized at their prospects going up against the military that had just won world war II, until the chinese came to their aid. their whole psychology changed and they became a coherent, successful fighting force. you can never let your enemy think that he has a chance of success.

what SHOULD be done in iraq is clear: more troops, many more, should be deployed and there should be massive, ruthless application of force (1) to find and kill saddam hussein and the remaining 15 jokers in the pentagon's deck of cards and (2) to communicate to the islamic masses in the only language they understand that every man, woman and child will be slaughtered by the greatest military force in world history if they violently resist the coalition.

so what is the administration up to? as with any large organization where several major actors are involved in decision-making, there certainly is not any one explanation. there are a number of cross-currents effecting our response to events.

to go back to before the beginning of time, in 1998 i believe it was, paul wolfowitz, donald rumsfeld and others signed a full-page ad in major newspapers calling for the use of military force to oust saddam hussein. at papa bush's urging, that team was installed in the pentagon and that philosophy dominates input from there.

rumsfeld came to the pentagon after one prior stint. in an interview once he said that any new defense secretary is floored by the dog-and-pony show the military can put on for him to demonstrate their extraordinary capability, to engender awe and encourage deference. he related an anecdote from 1975 where the secretary of navy came into his office with a video showing how a u.s. sub had so artfully evaded soviet defenses that it slipped undetected into a russian military harbor and took a video of the port through it's periscope.

rumsfeld said he soon learned not to be cowed by such spectacles and to adopt an independent and appropriately skeptical view of military intelligence.

rumsfeld is the most radical, creative secdef the united states has ever had. he came to his second act with an agenda to transform, modernize and streamline what he saw as a huge, bloated, entropic organization. those efforts have been applauded in this space.

the showpiece for rumsfeld's new military was of course the iraq war. he proved what previously had been thought disproved in vietnam and elsewhere, that a war--or the "major combat operations" portion of it-- could be won with air power and a minimum of ground forces.

what is hard to understand is the memo he wrote that the war "could" still be won but that we were in for a "long, tough slog." the language and the tone certainly suggest that there is something he's not telling us about the capability of the enemy but even with the increased boldness of the guerrila attacks they are nothing more than pop-gun actions against the 135,000 troops we now have there much less the number we should have there. these attacks, even if they went on ad infinitum, would not defeat the coalition.

perhaps he was talking about the apparent failure of wolfowitz' "shining city on a hill" vision for the arab world but the memo did not seem to be talking about that. it seemed to be a purely military view.

whatever, it says here that the administration will not commit more troops for two reasons. one is rumsfeld's influence. if he had to admit that more ground forces were needed it would look like (although it wouldn't be) a refutation of his high-tech war strategy.

the second reason is purely political. polls show that most americans support the decision to have invaded iraq. they believe that that operation was a success. if significant numbers of new troops were deployed it would put the lie to bush's aircraft carrier pronouncement and open the subject for debate again, thus giving howard dean, bush's probable opponent, more ammunition where at present dean is preaching to a choir that only exists to the left of the pulpit.

besides rumsfeld a second major actor, and as maureen dowd wrote this week, perhaps the most important, is vice president dick cheney. i don't believe that cheney was a signator to that '98 policy statement on iraq but from all reports he has a very dark, that is to say accurate, view of the world america finds itself in and consequently a very hawkish foreign policy view. he meets daily with the president, is considered, because of his age and health, to be an honest broker without any personal agenda and because he is loyal and discreet almost nothing is known of exactly what it is he tells the president in their daily sessions.

what is known from his public statements makes cheney a reinforcer of rumowitz' hawkish views and as seymour hersh has written extensively, both relied heavily on the "intelligence" they were getting from the secret basement-dwelling group of spooks rumsfeld installed in the pentagon to find evidence of iraq's attempts to acquire nuclear weapons even where none existed.

because the president is unabashadly uninformed about what is being reported in the press and because of his previous lack of foreign policy experience, he relies extremely heavily on the information he gets from this remarkably narrow group of advisors. the result, in one instance, was the inclusion of laughably--and as hersh has written, possibly deliberately and mischievously planted as a dark practical joke--wrong information on the nigerian yellow cake matter. this information was fed to bush and he insouciantly included it in his state of the union address.

thus the president exercises no skeptical detachment over the information he is given, as rumsfeld said he learned to do after his first stint at the pentagon.

it could be that the fallout from yellow-cake and the continued irritation of the iraqi guerrila activity is giving the president pause in his reliance on the pentagon. the recent announcement that condelleza rice would be put in charge of the post-iraqi planning group was obviously taken by rumsfeld to be a snub. perhaps this will also bring secretary of state powell into a position of greater influence in the president's policy direction. all of this would mean greater hope for a wrong-headed moderation in u.s. foreign policy and the greater involvement of our western allies and the u.n.

from the time rumsfeld took over as defense secretary, his irascible personality, the hatred of him that exists in and outside the pentagon among career officers, and the president's aversion to conflict among his advisors, led many to believe that he would be the first of bush's cabinet secretaries to go. that talk faded with the adulation he received after the iraqi war was "won" so quickly but now it is back again.

the "other" major actor of course is the president. who knows for sure what effect all of this has had on him, if he has grown disenchanted with rumsfeld, how, if at all, frustrated he is with the iraqi situation. he was a tabula rosa in foreign affairs when he came to office. it was always the suspicion here that he was far more likely to go along with a recommendation to invade iraq because of saddam hussein's attempt to assasinate his father. would we have invaded another deserving islamic nation, like syria?

we know that bush is a man of confidence in his convictions. by all accounts he never wavered on the correctness of the course he set on iraq. he was sure and determined. like many conservatives, he seems to see the world in black and white. he is deeply religious. his attorney general is as manicheanistic a man as has ever held the position. does the president really believe in his heart that "the war is not with islam" as he said after 911? apparently so. after a recent demonstration he was heard to say to an aide "do they really think we think all muslims are bad?"

what about rumowitz, do they see this conflict in civilizational terms? peter boyer's article in this week's new yorker on general wesley clark quotes clark as saying that he was told by a three-star general that after 911 the pentagon's civilian leaders "devised a five-year plan to topple the regimes in iraq, syria, lebanon, libya, somalia, iran, and sudan." best plan i've heard so far but i don't trust clark on this, it seems highly unlikely that such a plan could be hatched without anyone finding out about it besides some disgruntled three-star and where the hell is the evidence for it? this space was all broke out with excitement when it looked like the administration might be rattling their sabres in syria's direction in the spring but that petered out.

could the bushies be biding their time? right now, the president looks to be a good bet to be reelected, the economy seems to be getting on track and criticism of the war doesn't seem to have much traction with joe in peoria. why rock the boat? once a second term is secured might we see an expanded conflict?

predictions are irresistible but there is so much uncertainty here, so much secretiveness. oh well. the guess here is that we will muddle through in iraq in 2004 without committing any more troops, there will be a major push, as appears to have been begun, to get saddam hussein, which will be a major public relations coup and a not insignificant accomplishment, then a similar concerted effort to find osama bin laden. bush will be reelected and we will continue to fight the war on terrorism piecemeal. rumsfeld will be replaced in the second term, maybe by condi rice, and the other terror crescent countries will be safe for "four more years."


-benjamin harris

some wag once said of antonio vivaldi that he did not compose 400 pieces of music, he composed one piece of music 400 times, so distinctive and similar was his repertoire.

the same could be said of frank gehry's late architecture. they're all beginning to look like bilbao and son of bilbao.

there's no gainsaying the significance of the original. it is the first post-modern building, one of the most important in the entire 20th century. and it is dramaticus maximus. when i first saw a--small--picture of it in the new yorker my jaw must have dropped. there had never been a building like it, with it's billowing, windowless titanium skin and it's raucous shapes.

that first picture i saw was a view of the "petals" but i didn't see horticulture. i saw a nuclear explosion captured by a still camera, an unfolding of a violent awe-inspiring drama, and in the metallic color of those atomic bomb detonations captured a split second after detonaton. in that way too it seemed to me the perfect emblem of this particular fin de siecle. gehry conveyed movement, quite a feat in the design of a building.

i bought a couple of coffee table books on gehry after that and was disappointed to see so much of bilbao in places other than bilbao, in toledo (ohio), cleveland (ohio), minneapolis, and dusseldorf. bilbao had not been a creation that sprung full-blown like athena from the head of zeus. this was the culmination of a process. at least it seemed a culmination.

detestable los angeles has finally gotten around to honoring it's native son by scraping together enough jingle to complete the interminably-delayed walt disney concert hall. what a deflating experience.

paul goldberger of the new yorker sniffs at the unimpressed. disney "is more refined that that of the guggenheim, and more sumptious..." "gehry has not repeated himself here so much as he has expanded his architectural vocabulary." those who see disney as epigonic "are missing an architectural experience of immense power and subtlety."

i'm with those unrefined philistines who see a constricted vocabulary and want to shout, "the bilbao mold--lose it!"

-benjamin harris

anything that presents an obstacle to howard dean getting the democratic nomination for president is ok with me but the confederate flag flap is a sign of the democratic distemper not of the vermont sap's unelectability.

let's consider the different ways in which this issue does not apply to dean:

-dean believes the union was the right side to be on in the civil war.
-dean does not have a confederate flag sticker on the back of his pick up truck.
-dean does not even have a pick up truck (i'd bet)
-dean is not a racist (except in the sense that all elitists, of which he is one, are racists). all the other candidates who spoke on the issue last night conceded that.
-dean does not support policies that would harm or are insensitive to minority rights.
-dean does not have some "southern strategy" where he is going to subtly appeal to southern racists.

so where's the beef? are you john edwards telling me you didn't have, or would have disavowed if you had, ONE pickup truck driving supporter who had a confederate flag on the back of said truck? in NORTH CAROLINA?

and al sharpton? AL FRIGGIN' SHARPTON. HE is a racist. one of the greatest outrages by a public figure in the last thirty years was his libel, on new york city radio, of a state prosecutor who he accused of being involved in the non-existent rape of tawana brawley.

this is what passes for legitimate discourse in the democratic party these days. a major candidate, the presumptive nominee, gets raked because he recognizes that one of the party's big problems is that it only has 22% of white male voters AND HE WANTS TO APPEAL TO THEM ON ECONOMIC ISSUES! he wants them to get past race and see the democratic party as standing up for his economic interests. and that is topic A on his opponents agenda? pathetic. just pathetic.

howard dean is a symptom of what is wrong with the democratic party, but not on this issue. it is just the reverse. it is the "reverse racism" of those like al sharpton and the pandering to the loony left of john edwards, who this page expected better from, that is the larger problem with the democratic party.

-benjamin harris.

TURN OUT THE LIGHTS, THE PARTY'S OVER

today's commerce department figures, 7.2% quarterly economic growth, "the strongest in nearly two decades," and 57,000 new jobs in september (not great but a good start per the cognescenti). unless the president gets caught with a live boy or a dead girl, that's about all she wrote for the demos.

unbelievable that this knucklehead, this gentleman's "c" legacy, this failed oil man, who LOST the 2000 election, who has run an arrogant, ruthless, very right-wing administration, THIS guy is going to get reelected in a landslide. and the democrats will counter with the most illegitimate, laughable opponent, someone who will reinforce all the polity's fears about them. this could be a landslide of epic fdr/lbj proportions.

happy halloween.

-benjamin harris

OFTEN WRONG, ALWAYS CERTAIN

the university of southern california, whose nickname is the "trojans," plays washington state university ("cougars") today in a college tackle football game. usc is favored to win by 12 points. they won't.

additional lingering doubts about our founding fathers faith in the wisdom of the common man are raised by the predictions that oklahoma will beat oklahoma state by 16 points or more and that THE ohio state university will squeak by (+6) THE pennsylvania state university. interest rates are at all time lows. a home equity loan placed on these two outcomes will return handsome dividends.

take the pittsburgh "panthers" getting one point against the boston college "eagles."



-benjamin harris

Good News, Bad News

GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS

the best overall indicator of the vulnerability of an incumbent president has always been the "right track, wrong track" question. the latest polls show that the president is in trouble. 53% say the country is on the wrong track. not as important, but reinforcing that result, is bush's approval rating, also at 53%, it's lowest since before 9/11.

but there are more ominous signs for the democrats. the lead economic story today is the robust corporate earnings report and the reinvigoration of the economy in general. this was also the story in sunday's times. this is a quote from today's article:

"the strong corporate profits are being reported as the economy
appears to have had its strongest quarter of growth in almost three
years [OUCH], spurred in part by the tax cuts earlier this year [DOUBLE
OUCH]. when government data are released later this month, economists
are expecting to see growth in the gross domestic product near 6% for
the third quarter, and they are forecasting strong growth--if slightly
lower--for the remaining three months of the year."

let's be realistic. the democrats have no shot, none, zero, zip, zilch, nada, of winning back the white house if these figures, or anything like them, hold up in 2004.

in a healthy two-party system them's the breaks. sometimes you're the windshield and sometimes you're the bug. as has been said here before though, what the democrats have to avoid is illegitimacy and the appearance of illegitimacy.

and there's more bad news on that front. some democratic poobahs were on the diane reem show this morning handicapping the candidates. the first significant sign this political season that howard dean was going to be a force were the early reports of his phenomenal fund-raising. this year he has raised more money than any democratic candidate EVER besides bill clinton in 2000.

what i did not know is that there is an iron law of politics: whoever is the fundraising leader at the end of the year preceeding the start of the primaries (that would be this year) has NEVER failed to win either party's nomination, and unless something really unexpected happens, that is going to be howard dean.

this is on top of the bad news that two major centrist figures, gen clark and sen lieberman, have decided to bypass the iowa caucuses. say what you will about that political strategy; what it can't help but do is dampen efforts by both to raise more money. that great snapping sound you just heard? that was the sound of wallets throughout the Democratic Nation snapping shut when lieberman comes calling for cash.

this page has spoken often and at length at the disastrous prospect of a dean nomination on the democratic party. so to avoid repeating myself, i'll let david brooks say it this time. his column today is titled "rescuing the democrats" it deserves to be quoted at length.

"john edwards has the most persuasive theory [of what's wrong
with the democrats]. he argues that most voters do not place
candidates on a neat left-right continuum. but they are really
good at sensing who shares their values. they are really good at
knowing who respects them and who doesn't. edwards's theory
is that the democrats' besetting sin over the past few decades
has been snobbery."
...


"edward draws an implicit contrast between himself and howard
dean and johny kerry...

"he draws an explicit contrast with george bush, arguing that the
bush administration rewards wealth and punishes work. this is
not about economics, he says; it is about values. the bush admini-
stration disrespects working americans. it lowers taxes for people
who sit around the pool and collect capital gains..."

this is EXACTLY right. the one thing i would disagree with brooks on is the following. after acknowledging that edwards campaign has not caught on he writes,

"but that doesn't mean edwards's theory is wrong, OR THAT THE
DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS ACCURATELY UNDERSTAND THEIR
PLIGHT."

it's not that they, the democratic primary voters, don't understand the party's plight. they do. they're very "bright." it's that they don't care. they are selfish, self-centered elitists and they have one of their own in howard brush dean III and they don't care what happens to the democratic party.

brooks quotes edwards as saying "not only will i run for the real america, i will run in the real america...democrats too often act like rural america is just someplace to fly over between a fund-raiser in manhattan and a fund-raiser in beverly hills."

the problem for edwards and the democrats is that those elitist jet-setters are overwhelmingly influential in the democratic primaries.

brooks ends his column with this:

"except for bill clinton, democrats have nominated presidential
candidates who try to figure out middle american values by
reading the polls, instead of feeling them in their gut. if they do
it again, the long, slow slide will continue."


-benjamin harris

big political news today. gen. wesley clark and sen. joseph lieberman have decided to pull out of--bypass is their word--the iowa caucuses.

reason: in clark's case, too late a start. a caucus state puts a premium on organization, which puts a premium on locking up key figures and groups in the state early. whatever clark's strengths as a candidate they were going to be dimished by the political machinations needed to do well in iowa.

lieberman though has been in the race for a long while. he certainly has had the time and has the money to have organized the state. his problem: iowa's leftist activist democrats, disproportionately powerful in the state, were never going to be receptive to a strong supporter of the iraq war and of free trade policies.

very risky strategy by both. noone has succeeded in doing this before. al gore punted on iowa in '88 hoping for favorite-sonism in the south, and although he did well on super tuesday, he was overwhelmed by big mo from iowa and new hampshire.

gore was a marginal candidate though in '88, very much like john edwards is this year, too young, too green, not enough previous exposure on the national scene. gore's run in '88 was a trial balloon for future efforts and to make himself visible as an attractive veep candidate for whomever won the nomination that year. in fact, michael dukakis went south for a running mate but went for maturity and someone who knew the intricacies of capitol hill rather than a fresh southern face.

it has been the suspicion all along, here and elsewhere, that this is gen. clark's strategy, to run for veep. he was a consultant to howard dean and others before entering the race himself and while his anti-war bona fides are almost as strong as dean's he had no chance of matching dean's or gephardt's organizational head start in iowa.

the problem for lieberman is that the race doesn't just go from iowa into super tuesday. the new hampshire primary is in between. gephardt must win in iowa to stay viable beyond. his campaign has explicitly stated that. but right now, dean is the favorite in iowa and all the other major candidates are mounting major efforts there.

let's say dean and gephardt come in one-two in some order in iowa with kerry third. that would be a major accomplishment for a governor from vermont. he would go into new hampshire with momentum, as a favorite son, and with a commanding lead in new hampshire's polls. gephardt would limp along and compete in new hampshire but barring a major upset he would be all but gone. new hampshire would then be waterloo for kerry. if he didn't win there he would be effectively done.

new hampshire has a way of shaking things up (see buchanan v bushI and mccain v bushII) and an outsider like clark might surprise in the primary there. if clark finished second to dean, kerry would certainly be done. if kerry finished second and clark even third, clark would live to fight on super tuesday.

lieberman and clark are hoping, in the new york times words, to put an asterisk beside the iowa caucus results to stop big mo. lieberman is a very smart man, a very shrewd politician and he's got a lot of money. it would be foolish to underestimate him. if somehow his strategy succeeds he will have forever changed the democratic nomination process, all to the good, in the opinion here.

if a dismal finish in iowa was inevitable, might as well make a virtue of a necessity. but pulling out removes the possibility of a surprise. if lieberman even finished third in iowa, behind say dean and gephardt, that would seriously hurt kerry and give lieberman, who is from connecticut after all, a real chance to narrow the race to him and dean in new hampshire.

but it seems far the more likely outcome of all this that lieberman will be permanently mired in the second tier of candidates and one more obstacle will be removed from howard dean's path to the nomination.


-benjamin harris

Some Look at the World and Ask 'Why?' Others Look at the World and Ask 'Why Not?'"

"SOME LOOK AT THE WORLD AND ASK 'WHY?' OTHERS LOOK AT THE WORLD AND ASK 'WHY NOT?' "


there's probably some mlb rule against this, but why i don't know.

nosebleed seat tickets for world series games in miami are going for three and a half bills. primo seats are going for ten times that. that's through scalpers of course. the face value is for something like $65 and $150. all that extra money people will pay for these seats goes to someone other than the supposedly cash-strapped, definitely season-ticket deficient marlins.

mlb clearly has some say in, if not complete authority over, the setting of prices for the "fall classic." fine. but what would be wrong with this: all those bandwagon jumping marlin fans (like me and a per-game average 48,000 others), all those yankee-loving, south florida-living cockroaches who want to go to a world serious game, you have to buy tickets to a whole bunch of games next year.

doing the math as they say, it'll work out the same for mr and mrs cockroach but give the club more money and avoid the scalping laws as well as the charge of price gouging. during the regular season--hell, during the division series against the gints--marlins tickets ran from about $9-$50, face. decide what you're going to charge for season seats next year--$10-$75?--. seats in section 430 row z going for $350 for the world series through scalpers? we will sell you a ticket up there to see the yankees but you have to buy tickets to 35 games next year too, our choice by the way. hey, you'll enjoy seeing the padres in may.

you mr. big-spender willing to part with $3500 for a box seat with a $150 face, you must buy 23 tickets to games next year, again our choice of dates.

this has been done for years in other sports. at the university of pittsburgh for instance, to get a ticket to this years game against notre dame you either had to buy a season ticket or bundle your purchase with tickets to two other attractive games, ball state and kent state. they've been doing that for years. single game tickets against notre dame? you've got to be kidding, bud.

public relations fallout. bull----. the public relations fallout in miami is over all these bandwagon jumpers and evil empire fans who are not "real" marlins fans. it would be treated as it is in pittsburgh, as a deliciously clever, understandable and fair way for the team to keep "its" money and provide some security for the future.

obviously, it's too late for the marlinskis to do anything like this now and as i said there's probably some mlb rule against it but there shouldn't be.

-benjamin harris

Reincarnation, Cont.

REINCARNACION, CONT

"by forty a desreputable series of matrimonial scandals had been varied, and sometimes advertised, by a succession of [his] publications."

"...his [mirabeau's] reputation was such that he was barred by the not very sqeamish society of the paris drawing rooms..."

True Crime Stories: Bailey/Haversham

TRUE CRIME STORIES: Bailey/Haversham

robert johnson sat at his desk reading a box file. he had gone through all of the meat of the case, the reports and statements, and now because of his obsessive-compulsiveness, he had begun reading the case-law that his predecessor had pulled and stuck in a folder.

the concentration required to parse the more important documents not needed, he sat back in his chair and read easily. he read the headnotes and the case summary and then moved on to the next one.

it was about the fourth case, jerome e. bailey v state. "jerome bailey, jer-ome bailey," where had he heard that name before? common enough name; the way the brain works, it was probably a false connection with some receptor that housed the memory of a basketball player or a porn star.

two sentences into the case summary it clicked and robert johnson sat up straight.

the brain is an automaton at these moments and all of the associated memories came back to him instantly, unconsciously.

he had been in the city only a couple of weeks when he first read about the case the first and last time until now. that was in june of 1982. he remembered exactly where he was when he read about it, in the open-air lobby of his apartment building one steamy morning waiting to give a friend a ride into work, the same work he had had for the last 21 years.

his mind riveted on the story, he could still see the photographs of the defendant, one from 1955, looking handsome but slick and, mouth slightly open, a bit deer-in-the-headlights overwhelmed by the phalanx of media reporters that he was trying to push through; and the other current photograph, looking old and haggard and smoking a cigarette. he had just been released from prison so that he wouldn't have to die of the cancer inside the institution. he remembered bailey's quote, "i knew what was going to happen, i could have prevented it, but i didn't."

robert johnson's friend came down to the lobby and they left. he didn't remember if he had finished the article or just left the newspaper there in the lobby. he was 27 and starting his career and he was in a hurry.

he thought of the case often over the years, had thought of going to the library and researching it, but he was in a hurry and over time details were forgotten. first to go was the defendant's name. jerome bailey was just too common.

for a long time after that he remembered the other name, h.d. haversham, so typical for 1955, so anachronistically anglo and southern for 1982.

no city had ever been transformed so suddently and completely and shockingly as miami had been, first in 1959 then again in 1980. and yet the past was so near. new york, as one contrast, has always been diverse and chaotic and edgy and ethnic and violent. you could go back one hundred years and find stories like this probably.

miami was new but with its past close by the contrast was more stark and it was easy to imagine the shock created by such a black act in that simpler, slower time.

robert johnson read the case intently now. he passed over the legal issues and tried to find the factual summary, to have his memory refreshed on the details. a defense attorney had told him once that you can always tell how the appellate court is going to rule in a big case by the detail they go into in the factual summary. the more detail, the more they reveal of the the heinousness of the crime, the more likely it is that they will affirm the conviction.

elizabeth haversham? he had forgotten. the wife had been murdered too. drowned, both of them. but there were no facts just "murder"...by drowning" and the legal reasoning.

it wasn't here but at least now he had the mother lode. he typed jerome e. bailey's name into westlaw and there was the companion case.

h.d. haversham, judge h.d. haversham. murdered by the procurement of jerome e. bailey, judge jerome e. bailey.

this wasn't even miami. this was palm beach. what was palm beach in 1955? wealthy and privileged and waspy. beautiful and natural and peaceful. staid, closed, clannish. proper. scandals, if at all, kept behind closed doors. the kennedy's longtime winter home. what a great name for palm beach, h.d. haversham. "judge" should be prefixed to that name.

robert johnson remembered from the newspaper article. there had been a scandal. haversham had caught bailey doing something and raised hell and went public with it. robert johnson remembered reading between the lines and thinking there was some bad blood there, maybe blueblood versus the ariviste bad blood, at least to the extent haversham made it so public. no black curtain of silence shielding the brethren here.

when the judge and mrs. haversham turned up dead, everyone in palm beach knew who had done it in the way everyone in small towns knows everyone else's business. it was an open secret yet bailey had not been indicted until 1960 and robert johnson recognized the irritation in the court's circumspect language. "the evidence reveals that despite the complete information obtained by law enforcement officials regarding the facts and circumstances surrounding the murder event...the state nevertheless continued its investigationn without charging or arresting any of the suspects awaiting the time when further evidence might be developed..."

but even in the opinion in judge haversham's murder there was no factual recitation beyond mentioning "murder"...by drowning." bailey's status as judge was buried in both opinions, on page 13 of the 17-page opinion in h.d. haversham's case, on page 4 of 7 in his wife's. not a black curtain of silence, but of whispering at least.

a judge having another judge murdered was like incest in 1955. one simply didn't speak of it in polite society like the small, closed, clannish, polite legal community in palm beach in 1955, where every member of the bar knew each other as was reflected in the courtliness in both opinions paid to the "able attorney for the defendant."

but the details were kept out so that the case could be forgotten and lawyers generations later would not really know what had happened. this was one case where robert johnson's defense friend was wrong. this case was too big, to scandalous, too painful to remember. decide the case and forget about it. "we shall utter their names no more," is how it was put after the lincoln assasination conspirators had been tried, convicted, and hung. so robert johnson was left with his memory and the details would have to be sought in another forum, at the library or on google.

robert johnson read both opinions straight through now. the deference only went so far. the irritation in the delay in the arrest, "despite complete information," and the outrage at the act was evident in the legal "reasoning" affirming each conviction.

"much emphasis is placed by appellant upon the statements of counsel for the state that appellant when testifying in his own behalf 'took the fifth amendment.' the trial record discloses that appellant's counsel failed to object to such argument..." and further "once a defendant elects to testify, as did the appellant herein...argument directed to what he says and does not say is justified." robert johnson laughed out loud.

another point of error asserted was to the pre-trial and in-trial denial to bailey of access to "certain...tape recordings secretly made by investigating law-enforcement officers under the direction and supervision of the state attorney--some tapes recording the voice of defendant bailey and other tapes recording the voice of the [hitman who testified against bailey]." "the defendant failed to properly object to the procedure he complains of as to discovery." "PROPERLY" object. the opinion reflects that able counsel for the defendant damn well had objected, early and often, but apparently not "properly" so, in the court's opinion. johnson laughed. one must always take care to be "proper" in palm beach in 1955.

***

there were eight other cases that came up in robert johnson's westlaw search of "jerome e. bailey." his convictions were affirmed in per curiam opinions by the florida supreme court and his petition to the united states supreme court was denied.

a related case involved one of the hitmen. in 1957 the florida legislature passed an extraordinary law authorizing the payment of $100,000 for information leading to arrest and conviction in the case. one of the hitmen took the bait and contacted the lawyer who promptly made a deal with the state. the lawyer then sought to collect the reward. that was denied.

in 1959 bailey applied to withdraw from the florida bar. in its opinion granting the application the supreme court wrote that "approximately one year ago the grievance committee...conducted hearings concerning the applicant and that he believes that shortly he will be afforded the opportunity of offering testimony in connection with further proceedings in said matter but that he does not wish to avail himself of the opportunity to do so [at this time]."

in 1958 jerome e. bailey represented one j.c. clinton, who was convicted for possession of moonshine whiskey. that conviction was affirmed too.

the next to the last entry in the westlaw search was a 1953 workmen's comp case. bailey represented the employer. the appellate court ruled in bailey's favor, "reversing the judgment of the circuit court of palm beach, h.d. haversham, judge."

-benjamin harris

REINCARNACION


"mirabeau [french revolutionary leader] was the life-long victim of two passions. he could not see a pretty woman without falling in love with her, nor encounter a subject of controversy without writing about it. "


-benjamin harris

money-making opportunities abound today in college tackle football, perhaps not for followers of the advice offered here, but in general.

i think the penn state "nittany lions" will get closer to the purdue "boilermakers" than the 12 1/2 point line.

were i to offer wesley clark more economic advice i would recommend a home equity loan placed on michigan state to beat illinois by more than 3 1/2.

similarly, i think las vegas is wildly wrong in the nebraska-missouri game. take the "cornhuskers" giving 7.

wake forest will not beat georgia tech by 4 1/2 or more.

my contrarian personality is offended by the chatter on fsu-miami. i wouldn't have touched this game except for reading this morning, in the miami herald, of predictions of a seminole rout. fsu is snake-bit against miami! these games almost always come down to a field goal. so, just to be a punk i will take miami getting 7.

finally, i like the notre dame "fighting potato, or is it potatoe? eaters" getting 9 1/2 against pitt.


-benjamin harris



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