We think in metaphors. To understand a thing or a place or an emotion, we must hold it up next to another and view its similarities or contrasts. Sometimes this happens in an instant; a passing shadow or the almost imperceptible touch of cool air that is like or different than...though, there are times when we examine and scrutinize in linear time, outside of time, stratifying the possibilities, organizing the symbolisms, feeling the shape of a thing, understanding without the hierarchy of language.
Sometimes the viscera of reality intrudes beyond its usually confining membrane, and we are subject to the nexus, the concatenation of events; of irony and pathos:
The White House said overnight,
Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda 'on the run':
THE White House said overnight that Al-Qaeda leaders were "under a lot of pressure" and "on the run" following the release of a new video recording by the group's chief, Osama bin Laden.
"The Al-Qaeda leadership is on the run and under a lot of pressure. We are continuing to take the fight to the enemy abroad, and making it difficult for them to plan and plot against America," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said in Twentynine Palms, California.
The spokesman's comments came after the new video recording surfaced on Al-Jazeera television overnight in which Bin Laden called on Muslim fighters to go to Sudan to wage war against "crusader thieves" and slammed the international isolation of the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
"We must continue to take all terrorist threats seriously. That is why we are acting on all fronts and doing everything within our power to prevail in the war on terrorism," McClellan said.
30 killed, three Israelis wounded in Dahab explosions
Thirty people were killed and at least 150 were wounded, including three Israelis, in three massive explosions in Dahab, on the east of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Monday night.
The attacks, senior security officials said, were likely carried out by Global Jihad or Al Qaida cells known to be in Egypt and Jordan.
Cells of terrorists affiliated with al Qaida, one official said, were known to be operating in the hills and caves in the Jabal Halal region in the northern Sinai and were believed to have been behind the latest terror attacks in Sinai, including the bombings in Sharm el Sheikh in July and Taba last year, which together killed over 100 people.
(from Reuters)
"The formation of this government is an important milestone toward our victory in Iraq," Bush said to loud cheers. "Here's my attitude -- the only way we can lose in Iraq is if we lose our nerve and I'm not losing my nerve, and I know that the United States Marine Corps will not lose their nerve, either."
(from MSNBC)
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 23 -- A string of car bombs rocked Baghdad on Monday, killing 10 people and wounding nearly 80 in an apparent campaign to discredit Iraq's new leadership. At least 15 people were killed in other bombings and shootings.
Police also discovered the bodies of 28 people in the capital and the northern city of Mosul. They included 15 police recruits from Ramadi who were kidnapped Sunday and slain by insurgents, police said.
The seven car bombs exploded over a five-hour period in six widely separated neighborhoods across the capital. The first blast occurred near the Health Ministry and killed five people, Lt. Col. Faleh al-Mohammedawi said.
Two hours later, bombs hidden in two cars exploded near Mustansiriya University, killing five others, including a 10-year-old boy, al-Mohammedawi said. Blasts also occurred in central Baghdad, the Karradah district, Mansour and the New Baghdad area in the east of the capital.
Al-Mohammedawi put the total number of wounded at nearly 80, most of them in the two fatal bombings.
(fromABC News: Bush Reiterates Confidence in Iraq Choice)
President Bush said Monday the United States has made some missteps in Iraq but that his decision to send in American troops to topple Saddam Hussein was the right call.
"On the big decisions of sending the troops in, I'd have done it again," Bush told a questioner after a speech here on immigration.
Bush said a new democracy is arising in Iraq where there once was tyranny. Over the weekend, Bush talked with Iraqi leaders who were named Saturday to form a coalition government.
"Each one of them said, `We want to have a national unity government. We're sick of the sectarian violence. We believe if you stand with us, we can achieve our objective of becoming a democracy that listens to the people,'" Bush said.
"And I believe them. And I believe them. And I told them, I said, `Look, it's going to be up to you to make it work, but you can count on the United States of America, because we believe in liberty and the capacity of liberty to change lives and to change a neighborhood for a more peaceful tomorrow.'"
(from New York Times)
9 Killed in New Wave of Bomb Attacks in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 24 -- Insurgents unleashed a wave of car bombs across Baghdad today, killing at least 9 people and wounding 76 more in attacks that targeted the back gate of Mustansiriya University, two police patrols and a busy central Baghdad intersection at rush hour. All of the dead were civilians. Three police officers and four Interior Ministry commandos were among the wounded...
The corpses of 15 young men, tortured and riddled with bullets, were found in the back of two abandoned Kia trucks in the heavily insurgent region of Abu Ghraib west of Baghdad, an Interior Ministry official said. The men had been recruits on the way to serve in a special Interior Ministry force trying to bring calm, the official said, to Ramadi, one of the most dangerous cities in Iraq.
(from a speech by Condoleeza Rice at Chicago Council on Foreign Relations)
And just finally, the Iranians say that they want to make this, or they want to make this about their right to civil nuclear power. We are not questioning their right to civil nuclear power. They can have civil nuclear power. But because of a track record of 18 years in which they were not clear and not transparent with the International Atomic Energy Agency that civil nuclear power cannot include the ability to enrich and reprocess on Iranian territory, because when you learn to do that you've learned the key technology to making a nuclear weapon. And so the Iranians have been offered ideas by the Russians, ideas by the Europeans, it's time that they take those ideas, suspend their enrichment and reprocessing activities and return to the table. But Iran is not Iraq, these are two very different circumstances and we believe that the remedies before us are quite robust.
The Baltimore Sun
Iran hints at withdrawing from nuclear treaty
Ahmadinejad says nation to reconsider IAEA membership ahead of deadline
"What has more than 30 years of membership in the agency [IAEA] given us?" he asked at the news conference, which was only the second since he took office last year at which foreign journalists have been allowed to ask questions.
"Working in the framework of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the agency is our concrete policy," he said. "[But] if we see that they are violating our rights, or they don't want to accept [our rights], well, we will reconsider."
(from the New York Times, Published: April 24, 2006)
Rice Pushes Security Council on Iran
The credibility of the U.N. Security Council will be in doubt if it does not take clear-cut action against Iran over Tehran's nuclear program, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Monday.
(from IPA)
Pakistan Stressed by US Designs on Iran
M B Naqvi
KARACHI, Apr 24 (IPS) - As the crisis around Iran over its alleged nuclear ambitions assumes an ugly shape, Pakistan finds itself once again, under enormous political pressure because of aggressive United States policy towards a Muslim country in its immediate neighbourhood.
(from The Nation)
Attack Iran, Ignore the Constitution
The founders of the American Republic were deeply concerned that the President's power to make war might become the vehicle for tyranny. So they crafted a Constitution that included checks and balances on presidential power, among them an independent Congress and judiciary, an executive power subject to laws written by Congress and interpreted by the courts, and an executive power to repel attacks but not to declare or finance war.
But the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, as laid out in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States and reiterated in 2006, claims for the President the power to attack other countries--like Iran--simply because he asserts they pose a threat. It thereby removes the decision of war and peace from Congress and gives it the President. It is, as Senator Robert Byrd put it, "unconstitutional on its face."
(from The Guardian)
Bush ignored intelligence on Iraqi weapons, says ex-CIA officer
The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy," Mr Drumheller said. Meanwhile a leaked Pentagon document showed that Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, is pressing ahead with plans to reshape the armed forces despite recent criticism of his stewardship from several retired military officers. Plans approved last month by Mr Rumsfeld and leaked to the Washington Post revealed the increasing use of special forces and an increased role for the military in areas that have been the domain of the CIA.
Mr Drumheller, who had a senior role in the run-up to the war, told 60 Minutes that the CIA provided the White House with information from Iraq's then foreign minister, Naji Sabri, who had reportedly made a deal with the US.
"[The source] told us that there were no active weapons of mass destruction programmes," Mr Drumheller said. He said that the then-CIA director, George Tenet, passed the information on to George Bush, Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and other senior officials, who were initially excited. But that changed, he said.
"The [White House] group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they were no longer interested. And we said 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"
(from The Washington Post)
Bush said: "I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free."
Sometimes the search for Dostoevski's "new word" or Flaubert's "le seul mot juste" (the one precise word) is not a search at all, it is an epiphany of a kind, without the use of metaphor.
"After a long search, we, insignificant creatures, realized that the god we had always been looking for was none other than ourselves. Our search had been an act of creation."
--Andrés Useche
