For any of you living in the West, you know that we are screwed when it comes to water. For all intents and purposes, NM, CO, WY, MT, ID, AZ, UT and the eastern portions of the Pacific coast states are desert.

Well, maybe you didnt and thats why we're in the sinking boat we're in today.

Hold on to your hats folks. This here's New Mexico!

A few weeks back, I sent the Unbossed gang an email. I asked: "what do you people actually look like?"

We all communicate regularly by email, but I've only met em dash and her sassy boots.

The responses varied from "tired" to actual photos. My next question should be: "who are you"? And by that I dont just mean what do you do for a living or what are your hobbies. I want to know, what forces shaped you to be who you are today.

So, who am I?

Women and Math
Take that Larry Summers. I bet he didn't know that Dr. Sarah Greenwald maintains a SimpsonsMath website - which includes Girls Just Want to Have Sums and more links on women and math.

In its review of governmental policies and practices in the US, the U.N. Human Rights Committee issued a devasting report today. In the past, such periodic reports have dwelled mainly on social policies and penal practices, such as the death penalty, that have more to do with state and local government than with federal policy. These issues constitute the second half of today’s report, and there’s little that is new since the last U.N. report in 1995 on conditions in the U.S.

In its first half, though, the UNHRC report focuses on human rights abuses by the federal government, all of them introduced by George Bush since September 11, 2001. The list is depressingly long (four and a half pages) and makes grim reading, even though it omits many outlandish administration practices that are merely illegal, unconstitutional, or just plain obnoxious. All too often, the report notes that the U.S. government has not supplied requested information to the Committee.

The Committee further regrets that the State party, invoking grounds of nonapplicability of the Covenant or intelligence operations, refused to address certain serious allegations of violations of the rights protected under the Covenant.

The death toll from the California heat wave has reached 116. The LA Times reports on some of the victims:

They included Araxie Long, 82, and her son, Carl Long Jr., 53, found dead inside their two-bedroom Fresno home Tuesday morning by a relative who went to check on them. Neighbors said that, probably to prevent high electricity bills, the pair did not like to use their air conditioner, though it worked.

Many people didn’t, or still don’t, have the option of using air conditioners because of a lack of electricity: 25,000 customers of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and 1.1 million customers of Southern California Edison lost power.

Reading about this disaster in California reminded me of a Malcolm Gladwell article that appeared in the New Yorker a few years ago.

There's a famous quote by Nietzsche: Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.

What brought this quote to mind was not something about terrorists or torturers, bombs or war, but two stories I happened to read today about everyday things here at home. One is a story about teenage girls in a small town. The other about a prison artist in solitary confinement.

Meet Helen Brady:

She is just 14 years old. While many other girls her age are filling the chatmosphere with gabby text messages, Helen is practicing arresting illegal immigrants. (Or, in this case, her friend Courtney.)

And Donny Johnson:

His paintbrush, made from plastic wrap, foil and strands of his own hair, lay on the lower bunk. So did his paints, leached from M&Ms and sitting in little white plastic containers that once held packets of grape jelly. Next to them was a stack of the blank postcards that are his canvases.

Last year, we asked that question in Blogging at Work? What you need to know. Even better than the post was the great comments at unbossed and at the Daily Kos crosspost. Lots of information and misinformation out there and people willing to share their expertise. Well, it's a year later.

Way, way back before 2004, Congress appropriate money for a report on the situation of US technology. That report, by the the U.S. Department of Commerce Technology Administration (TA) - An Overview of Workforce Globalization in the U.S. IT Services and Software, U.S. Semiconductor and the U.S. Pharmaceuticals Industries - was supposed to have been delivered to Congress in June 2004. That 200 page report was written but never released. Better the public not know just how bad the situation is. The tale of how that report has now been pried loose is a long one. And the report recommendations that could have been acted on over two years have been kept from us.

Milo was traveling along Route 6, for what purpose is unclear. Anyway he stopped to get some local honey, and sent this along. I thought it was remarkable.

“A few decades ago I moved here to central Pennsylvania. Never meant to stay more than a short time, actually. I planned to move somewhere more cosmopolitan, like Pittsburgh, but I couldn’t get the permits I needed anywhere I really wanted to live. It was the land that kept me here, for better or worse.

The Bush Administration and their corporate babysitters cannot win all the time.

Yesterday, the Valle Vidal Protection Act passed the House unanimously. Today it moves on to the Senate. Proof that community voices, loud enough, focused enough and relentless enough can still win out over those trying to put the kabosh on our democracy.

I don't generally post a link to someone else's work but this piece at Poynter Online—Caring About the News Again: A veteran newsman who turned off news of the latest Middle East crisis describes what plugged him back in—needs wider recognition.

Then, read the sole comment.

Which point do you agree with, dear Unbossed readers?

Stock up now because Grandma's gooey home-made sweet rolls are going to get a lot more expensive.

Colorado dryland wheat farmers on the eastern plains are dealing with a double whammy: the driest spring ever recorded and a fluke June hail storm that destroyed thousands of acres of wheat fields ready to be cut. While no one disputes the hard work and unpredictable income of farming, what can residents on the suburban Front Range learn?

It's called "kitchen table economics." Pull up a chair.

A few weeks ago, unbossed provided links to information included in An Inconvenient Truth. There and at the Daily Kos crosspost you can find additional links. Great stuff and I don't know why the I.T. website did not include clickable links.

So, data and map addicts, here are new sites to feed your addiction, most related to climate change and the fact-based world.

Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of A Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time.

Cynicism wasn't always so disempowering. The first Cynics were a group of ancient Greek philosophers, most notably Diogenes, who caustically denounced the established culture of their time. Monklike ascetics who preached simplicity, self-discipline, and self-sufficiency, they offered a moral alternative to the empty materialism, legalism, and religious hypocrisy that had come to dominate Greek society. Back then, to be a Cynic meant to stand up for one's convictions.

So here, ultimately, is how it all plays out: when the Iraqi man in the mosque posed a threat, he was your enemy; when he was subdued he was your responsibility; when he was killed in front of my eyes and my camera -- the story of his death became my responsibility.

The burdens of war, as you so well know, are unforgiving for all of us.

--Kevin Sites, November 21, 2004, Fallujah, Iraq

- Testimony of Guadalupe G. Villarreal, Dellums (House of Representatives) War Crimes Hearings, Apr. 28, 1971, Washington D.C.

Through these fields of destruction
Baptisms of fire
I've watched all your suffering
As the battles raged higher
And though they did hurt me so bad
In the fear and alarm
You did not desert me
My brothers in arms
  - Dire Straits, 'Brothers in Arms'

It is said that "rock bottom" has the advantage of being the only place from which ascent is guaranteed.

Ann Coulter is a sociopath and a syndicated columnist with Universal Press Syndicate. Her columns are carried in 100 newspapers nationwide. Universal Press Syndicate is a division of Andrews McMeel Universal whose client list includes Rizolli/Universal (publishers of art books), National Geographic, and Signatures, a San Francisco publicity firm representing 250 artists in the music industry among them Madonna and the late John Lennon.

The following is a letter to Rizolli/Universal, National Geographic and Signatures:

Back in January, labor groups and healthcare advocates cheered the passage of Maryland’s Fair Share for Health Care Act, which would have forced Wal-Mart and other large employers to dedicate eight percent of their payroll expenditures to healthcare. On Wednesday, a federal judge struck down that law.

Rumsfeld gave a pair of intriguing radio interviews nearly two weeks ago. Though not in the same league as The Lone Ranger, Fibber McGee & Molly, The Green Lantern, It Pays to be Ignorant, Lum’n Abner, Easy Aces, Ma Perkins, The Texaco Star Theater, or Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy, the Rumsfeld interviews were heavily scripted. They were as hammy as Bob Hope, as cloying as Just Plain Bill, and as far-fetched as Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. And like the Uncle Don program, they seemed to anticipate an audience of children.

I want to focus on the questions asked, however, more than Rumsfeld’s tedious answers. When did it become acceptable for interviewers, even Bush apologists like Monica Crowley and Eileen Byrne, to take instructions from administration officials about which questions to ask them on air? Because the questions ‘put’ to Rumsfeld had his fingerprints all over them.

How do you do, I’m sure.

I’ll be curious to know what MSNBC has to say in defense of Crowley, whom the network recently promoted to the rank of an occasional ‘news’ anchor. Are NBC’s journalists permitted to read from Pentagon scripts?

What's on your mind, invective-spitting lambkins?

I've decided to adopt the methods of the New York Times so I can, in all honesty, claim to be honest. In other words, I'm starting a corrections page. I feel that this will allow me to maintain my integrity and hold myself up as a beacon of ethics, fairness, and unbiased, factual reporting.

My friend Tony always wanted to be the seed that started a mass movement - any mass movement. It never ever worked. When we'd go to ball games, Tony would even try to start The Wave. People stayed in their seats.

Today I thought I'd channel Tony and maybe plant some seeds for the environment. Friends, this will be soooooo coooollll.

"Yo, Blair!" was how President Bush got the attention of his loyal British counterpart. Our Commander-in-Chief wanted to let Mr. Blair know what he thought: that Syria should just tell Hezbollah to "stop this shit." I'm sure if I had the same access to top secret information on secret prisons and Americans' private lives, I would come to the same conclusion. But since I don't, his words sounded a bit stupid to me.

In a press conference last week, Denver, Colorado Mayor John Hickenlooper announced a series of wide-ranging initiatives to increase alternative energy and more efficient use of water.

From the Rocky Mountain News:

Mayor John Hickenlooper's plan to green up Denver starts with a private company building three solar power plants and continues with school kids taking a tree home to plant.

Bottom line: The cost of the ambitious Greenprint Denver plan announced Wednesday will be covered by investor-partners, the city's own budget for routine replacement of equipment, and volunteer labor.

"There are really no significant costs," the mayor said in an interview Thursday.

Consider the case of Richard Stickler, nominated but not approved by the Senate for appointment to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA).

I hate, hate, hate these guys.

I wanted to start off with some good news today. You know, something about solar energy, water harvesting, clean energy...but then I run into things like this and I lose my mind.

. . . or a privatizer anywhere for that matter. After all, the role of government is soley to act as a conuit for money from the pockets of tax payers to the pockets of private companies. It's in the Constitution, isn't it?

In the late spring of 2000, I composed my first op-ed and offered it to a variety of American newspapers. It commented on the absurd manner that George Bush had selected Dick Cheney, or allowed Cheney to select himself, as Bush’s running mate. Particularly egregious was the selection of a fellow Texan, a direct challenge to the Twelfth Amendment.

The electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves

You’ll recall that Cheney dashed up to Wyoming to re-register to vote there, a stunt all the more preposterous because he continued to live in Texas. From this episode, I surmised that both men believe that the normal rules don’t apply to them. Bush had asked voters to judge his qualifications to become president on the basis of how he chose his running mate, and I took him at his word. Bush proved himself to be a scoundrel, contemptuous of the law and the norms of society. I’d applied for enough jobs where the Chair of the search committee manipulated the process, to recognize Cheney’s vile personality as well. Neither man had the slightest intention of being held to the rules that most of us live by.

Jemand von Niemand posted this eloquent essay at Daily Kos, in response to passionate commentaries at that site about the violence in Gaza and Lebanon. His essay goes far beyond the posts that gave rise to it, and deserves to have a wide readership. With his permission, I'm crossposting it here.

In another blog posting this morning, there was occasional language which suggested that the Israelis were behaving like nazis in Gaza and Lebanon -- and equal responses that even hinting at these comparisons was anti-Semitic.

I could see what I assumed was being said, on both sides, but it reminded me of demonstrations at various Israeli consulates in the United States this week -- usually two opposing crowds, a sea of Palestinian flags on one side, the blue-and-white of Israel on the other, each separated by the dark blue of police uniforms -- and dull grey of steel barriers, hastily set up. At the demonstration I witnessed, there was no overt violence -- but the atmosphere between the two sides was explosive, ugly and unreasoning in the extreme. There was an ocean of gasoline between them, searching for a flame.

Benjamin Ryan is graduate student doing free work for the English-language Daily Star in Beirut, and until all this started, has been studying colloquial Lebanese Arabic. You can find more of his daily updates from Beirut here.

Quick update today, as I'm trying to get some real work done at the paper and figure out what I'm going to be doing over the next couple days. The offices here are a little emptier now, as our translators are all working from home. One woman came in teary eyed - she accepted a hug, but didn't want to talk about whatever it was that was wrong. One of our reporters has a grandmother in the south, in a town that Israel has been bombing on a daily basis. She was able to convince her parents to move out of their home in the southern suburbs at the beginning of this week, fortunately. All the interns are still here, surprisingly. We all hung out at a huge empty apartment in Hamra last night and listened to the bombs drop, watching DVDs of Friends on the big screen TV there.

Yes, there is an ecology of chopsticks, in particular disposable chopsticks. Daniel Collins, geoscientist and environmental engineer, blog - Down to Earth - discusses how China's efforts at afforestation affects on Japanese diners as well as crops grown near the forest. Link

For those of us surprised by the lack of coverage of the Mexican election cliffhanger, it is even worse to witness the negligence and outright bias in the reporting coming out of the most respected media outlets.

On Saturday, Reuters put out the headline: “Most Mexicans don’t want recount: poll.” Too bad they were citing a poll of 605 people taken by the newspaper Reforma, an unabashed supporter of the conservative PAN, and most notably a voice for the declared “winner” of last-week’s election, Felipe Calderón. That’s like taking a poll by Fox News and publishing it to support that “yes, things really are going great in Iraq.”

For those who think the title is harsh, read on...

Written by my Pony Express and Why Orange co-founder, Buhdydharma. Many thanks to the Great Pony for permission to share this with Unbossed readers. --Avila

One person gets angry at another and kills him.

Thats how it starts.

How many people are murdered everyday on the planet?

How many years in history have we not had a war on the planet somewhere?

The history of mankind is brutal, bloody and violent. Rape, killing, fire and war. Human beings are by nature bloody vicious animals. Left to their own devices with no restriction, no authority and no preexisting moral code the average human is a savage, concerned only with his own welfare, the only thing differentiating him from an animal being his superior cunning.

This essay was written by Betsy L. Anglert and posted with permission. Many thanks to Betsy, and please check out Be-Think for more of her beautifully-crafted essays. -- Avila

A New York Times article, “Schoolbooks Are Given F’s in Originality,” caught my attention. It stated that two of this nation’s most prominent history textbooks were virtual duplicates. The authors were not the same; however, the words within these books were. I was not totally surprised to see this, for I have often mused, “Who writes our history?” We read the words within textbooks, repeat these, and recognize the specifics as fact. Yet, how do we know that what we read is true. According to the New York Times, much of what is presented is not as it appears.

On Monday, the Senate will begin its debate on a measure to expand federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. The bill in question would essentially override a 2001 decision by President Bush that limited funding for such research to a relatively small number of pre-existing stem cell lines — lines that critics say have proved of little use to scientists because of their age and contamination.

Presdent Bush has threatened to veto the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act, which rescinds the ban on federal support for embryonic stem cell research. If he does so, it would be the first veto of his presidency.

"What better time than the dog days of summer to watch a dog-torture advocate get hounded?"

--Maureen Dowd in The Kansas City Star.

William J. Haynes II has drawn bipartisan fire for coercive techniques used to question terrorism suspects as he struggled to win U.S. Senate confirmation to a seat on a federal appeals court.

Drowning in stuff? Poor but need stuff? Want to step off the capitalist treadmill? Don't buy into the idea that buying stuff is the best way to express your love of country? Want to live more lightly on the earth?

Then consider Freecycle.

Mike Rosen never expected it.

"It" is the phenomenon of "culture jamming", or carrying out well-planned and -practiced incursions into the netherworld of conservative talk radio to refocus the dialogue and insert other perspectives, if not some truth, into the conversation. More and more liberals are braving the open phone lines to confront what they view as falsehoods, gross stereotypes, and inflammatory language.

Here is the second part of the what's new at GAO roundup. Corporate tax avoidance, failures by Department of Defense contractors, and Medicare Part D call center problems. Part I may be found here.

On January 25, 2002, Alberto Gonzales advised Bush that "the war on terrorism is a new kind of war, a new paradigm [that] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitation on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders some of its provisions quaint."

February 2002 memo in which President George W. Bush said: "Common article III of Geneva does not apply to either al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees."

NPR interview with Gonzales March 15, 2004

"The truth of the matter is that the rules and procedures of our criminal justice system simply do not apply in this case."

Q: What about the Geneva Conventions?

AG: Well, Geneva only applies with respect to signatory states. Obviously Al-Queda is not a state, and is not covered by Geneva Conventions.

This is interesting. From the Health Care Advisory Board [subscription required]:

Under a program launched by Farmington, Maine-based Franklin Community Health Network, patients treated at Franklin Memorial Hospital are offered the option of working off medical bills that they are unable to pay.

Continued after the jump

Here is a quick round up of recent GAO reports with information you can use. There are so many new reports on critical issues I am breaking this into two parts. This part has information on reports on an overview of plans for rebuilding Iraq, failures by NOAA contractors, and tax fraud by charities that participate in the federal combined campaign. Part II will be up tomorrow.

For those who have lost loved ones and for those who are desperately searching for loved ones, our hearts are with you.

And . . .

OK, my fellow Professers, you like to read the liberal blogs. Maybe you write a comment from time to time under your blogonym. Maybe you even post Kos diaries or whatever. These blogs can be like those French salons back a few centuries where spirited discussion was part of the revolutionary spirit. Fun. In an academic sort of way.

But if you care about what is going on in this country now, is this the best you can do? Let me remind you that the purpose of tenure is to protect you so you can speak out about the evils in this society, especially when the cause is not popular.

William Haynes has already done great damage to our country; while he might belong in a courtroom, it shouldn't be as a judge.

What does William Haynes, President Bush's appointee to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stand for?

So we wake up this morning to find that the EnCana Corp has hacked a road into the White River National Forest in Colorado for no apparent reason.

It takes a four-hour horseback ride to get to Jeff Mead's favorite hunting grounds below Mamm Peak near Rifle, so the outfitter was understandably dismayed when a gas-exploration company built a road last year right through the remote part of the White River National Forest.

"I've lost a lot of clients," Mead said. "Nobody wants to hunt where they're building roads and putting in gas rigs."

When EnCana built the road - one that the company subsequently decided not to use, at least for the time being - Mead unwittingly found himself in the middle of a 30-year-old national debate over what kind of protections should be afforded to U.S. Forest Service roadless areas.

"This affects everybody in this state, not just the hunters," he said. "This is about whether we protect these lands or not."

The new report is a response to critics of CEO pay, such as the AFL-CIO Executive Pay Watch and United for a Fair Economy.

From La Jornada

Yesterday, hundreds of thousands mobilized on behalf of left-wing candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico City. Charging fraud in the Mexican election of July 2, López Obrador took his people to the streets, demanding a complete recount.

Us against the world. That's how it's always been.

So check out the invasive species in your neighborhood, and I don't mean just the annoying people next door.

This essay was written by blogger Testvet of Outside The Beltway and is posted to Unbossed with the author's permission. --Avila

I came across an article about the Army and how they view PTSD and the new term Acute Stress Reaction (ASR). It is supposed to be diagnosed within 2-4 days of the incident that causes the stress; what the government calls a stressor.

Soldiers are trained to kill and doctors to heal. At least that's how we usually understand those two professions.

--Dr. Steven Miles of Physicians For Human Rights.

If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies.

And that's just the conservative talking.

International Protest Day calls for the end of Guantánamo Bay

Saturday, July 15th is an "International Day of Protest: Shut Guantanamo Now!" and demonstrations will be held in London, Melbourne and Sydney as well as cities in Yemen, Kuwait and Bahrain, and throughout the United States.

Two years after the release of photographs of U.S. military personnel torturing Iraqi detainees at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, there is extensive evidence that psychological torture is ongoing, systematic and central to the interrogation process of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay.

On July 4, George Bush delivered a bewildering message to assembled troops: “You’re winning this war” in Iraq. Everybody knew that’s not remotely true, though nobody interrupted his speech to say so. Later that afternoon, Mister Bush held a birthday party for himself. It was an act of hybris, or at least folly, as everybody knew his birthday actually came days later. It would have been considered rude to say so, I think, so the event proceeded as scripted.

In between, Bush gave a revealing interview to Stars & Stripes. Too bad it has gone almost unnoticed, because the questions asked were blunt and entirely foreign to the president’s experience. Anyway, Bush’s pat answers depicted a man supremely indifferent to the most basic concerns of the troops he had just gotten through lying to.

The interview happens to be a brilliant self-portrait of a strutting peacock. On the one hand, we see a serious journalist asking serious questions. On the other, an actor delivering rehearsed lines as if from a stage.

Did you read Robert Samuelson's latest Washingotn Post column? If not, here’s what you missed:

The real truth is that we don’t know enough to relieve global warming, and -– barring major technological breakthroughs -– we can’t do much about it.
…

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it’s really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don’t solve the engineering problem, we’re helpless.

The tragedy about today's tally in Mexico is not that the Panista candidate, Felipe Calderón, won. Polls were showing that the momentum was in his favor coming into the elecion, and he probably did actually win. The true tragedy to me is a Mexican electorate that is too afraid to try anything new.

What's on your mind, comrades?

If you have seen An Inconvenient Truth or had the opportunity to see The Slide Show in person, you were probably blown away by some of the graphs, charts, and photos. While I cannot track down all or even a small percentage of them, below are links to some of them.

And I invite you to add links and sources in comments.

As children, we learned the story of the American struggle for independence from the British Crown. As we grew older the lessons became more nuanced and the clarity of patriotism—one man's rebel is another man's freedom fighter—became less so.

History is rife with examples of colonial domination and rebellious uprisings. We often ascribe pure motives among the rebels in some romaticized notion that the American Revolution was the standardbearer for the triumph of righteous democracy.

Perhaps there is another way to look at the situation with some interesting parallels to the current turmoil in Iraq and Afghanistan?

From the Unbossed vault. I don't know whether to be angry or exasperated about the need to repost this from a September 2005 rant.

I realize that many of you have discovered that the Internets™ is a cool new way to promote your campaign, issue or candidate. I agree, else I wouldn't be blogging about politics and public policy.

I think we'd also agree that progressive Democratic campaigns would do well to study the success of Dean for America's web-enabled grassroots movement.

Wow! We're two for two, so far.

Feeling smart, are ya? Basking in the glory of your 15 milliseconds of blog fame?

Don't get too confident in your newfound political genius because now it's time for a little Auntie Em style ass-kickin'.

Gee, what is it with NPR underwriters? It's getting so that being on that list they read at the end of NPR shows means joining a gallery of rogues.

This is freaky. But too good not to share.

George Bush sings.

Want to relive those great years back when we all liked Ike? Who doesn't?

If you thought the NSA's domestic spying was the outer limit of the perversions of law permissible under this badministration, a report today in the LA Times will give you more to think about. The Times reveals that the California Office of Homeland Security this year has been collecting daily reports from federal law enforcement agencies that monitor, inter alia, political protests around the state. These included "A demonstration in Walnut Creek at which U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) and other officials spoke against the war in Iraq." A spokeman for the California Attorney General condemned the practice.

"When we discovered their existence, we informed OHS officials that we had absolutely no use for that kind of information," [Tom] Dresslar said. "Collecting information on protests has no legitimate anti-terrorism intelligence function. None. No intelligence agency has any need to maintain this kind of information."

That aspect of the LA Times report has gotten a certain amount of attention already. Yet buried deep in the story there is a much more troubling allegation that Homeland Security officials discussed proposals that would have violated the civil liberties of ethnic Iranians living in California.

[Graphic descriptions of U.S. "policy" regarding treatment of enemy combatants follow. Photos have been linked for reader discretion. This essay is part of an ongoing series in The Pony Express "Shut Down Gitmo" campaign.

According William Pfaff, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the Bush administration is not torturing prisoners because it is useful but because of its symbolism. It originally was intended to be a form of what later, in the attack on Iraq, came to be called "shock and awe." It was meant as intimidation.

We will do these terrible things to demonstrate that nothing will stop us from conquering our enemies. We are indifferent to world opinion. We will stop at nothing."