The View From the Outback© 2000 Richard C. Rhodes
A great deal of what we read in newspapers, magazines, and books, and what we see in the movies and on TV is written and produced in New York City or Los Angeles. Much of the "political wisdom" comes from the PR machines of the White House, the Congress, and from the Washington media corps. In short, one might conclude that all knowledge, wisdom, and wit are confined to those who inhabit New York City, Washington DC, or Hollywood. I am now a senior citizen. My experience was gained in many cities in the U.S. and in about 30 foreign countries. That experience has included the U.S. Marines, law school, the ATF, the CIA, Fortune 500 executive, writer, public speaker, educator, editor, and publisher - for openers. For over 20 years, I have written articles off and on for various magazines and newspapers. I've had an enormous number of letters published in major national publications. The Outback is the rural area in Northeast Texas where I have lived for the past 13 years. Every couple of weeks I will attempt to post a new set of musings from the Outback. Click on a Topic to go directly to that topic.
April 24, 2003. Tariq Aziz, the man who was normally the spokesman for the Saddam Hussein regime, surrendered to U.S. authorities. It will be interesting to see how he is treated. Because .... since Gulf One, I had a gut feel that he might be "our man in Baghdad," - if we had one. In the Outback for March 1, 2003, I commented about sending a notice with credit-card payments about not
putting card numbers on my checks. Apparently, I completely destroyed the functioning of the
credit-card industry. I got two or three letters telling me how important it was to put card
numbers on the checks, so the payments don't get credited to the wrong account, etc. Now, I am
starting to pay bills online with one of America's biggest banks. So, will it be only a matter of
time before the Bill Pay database gets hacked and all my credit information is posted on a hacker
site? Guarding privacy is a daunting task. But, don't leave your credit-card number off your
checks. I have a somewhat minor insurance policy that has about 26 numbers in the account
number. I still refuse to put that on my checks, because it is too long. My note says, "You could
give every person in China an ID number with your account-numbering system." President Bush, rightly so, says the oil in Iraq belongs to the Iraqi people. In a few years, we
perhaps will see the same sort of decadent opulence in Iraq that has been seen in much of Kuwait
and Saudi Arabia, with gold faucets on the bidets, free education, free healthcare, and luxury cars
and homes. Then, we can start putting ads on Iraqi TV for our "designer merchandise" and start
making some big bucks in Iraq ourselves. And sell them a ton of Dell and HP computers,
printers, Palm Pilots, X-Boxes, DVD players (oops, the Japanese beat us to it) and all the other
essentials of a good life. One goal, a Lincoln Navigator in every garage. Down with Mercedes as
an international symbol of wealth. See, you skeptics, we are not after the oil. We just want to be
able to make Iraq a big trading partner. We buy oil from them at $29 a barrel. They buy from us
every luxury item one can imagine at ridiculously high prices. Such a deal. In the Outback for May 29, 2002, I wrote: "You could not pay me to watch Jon Stewart on 'The
Daily Show,' or 'Dennis Miller Live' or 'Politically Incorrect.' There is no balance in these
shows. They are all one huge, shrieking, collective, liberal billboard." I have changed my mind
on two of these. "The Daily Show" has a fair amount of bleeding liberals as guests, but it is now
more of an "equal-opportunity" skewer of political parties and institutions. There is some
brilliant satirical writing. I saw "Dennis Miller: The Raw Feed" on HBO recently. He sounded
like he used the Outback as an outline for his show. From dissing the A.C.L.U., to Barbra
Streisand, to the Caribou in ANWR, to Sen. Robert Byrd. It was textbook Conservative
reasoning. Either I was not paying close enough attention to Dennis Miller a couple of years ago
or he has had a magical political transformation. On "60 Minutes," Lesley Stahl did a nice segment on female professional golfer Annika
Sorenstam, whom I have admired for years. Lesley also spoke with Annika's husband and asked
if he could see the difference in her since she had worked harder to build strength into her body,
particularly the upper body. The question that Lesley could not ask and the answer that could not
be given were: "What's it like making love to the new buff Annika?" "Like shooting a hole in
one." Radio Shack no longer has a paper catalog. It is all on the Internet, yet a recent poll indicated that
42% of people shun the Internet. Smooth move. They also have "support" by e-mail. That's a
joke. I have in my main Web page praised the Radio Shack 12-250 weather radio as being the
first weather radio to get it right in being able to block unwanted alerts for specific threats. For
example you can block a Flood Watch, which often comes on at 3 a.m. broadcast to people in
bed on high ground. Now, there is an Amber Alert coming through, recently one at 1:30 a.m. that
awakened me. I sent an e-mail and asked how that alert could be selectively blocked , since it is a
new alert that appeared after the radio was originally produced. So far, I have no answer to e-
mail, and don't expect to get one. And they wonder why their sales are down. Have you ever noticed that the desk mikes on the Leno and Letterman show are not hooked up?
They can bang on them and you hear no thumping. Hosts and guests all use radio-packs with
small clip-on mikes. The desk mikes are a throwback to the days when Carson talked into the
desk mike and guests were picked up on a boom mike. This all has to do with "continuity." After
20 years of seeing a mike on Letterman's desk, if it were removed, you might feel something was
not quite right - although you might not be able to actually identify that the mike was gone. In my newfound quest for live performances on DVD, I bought a Norah Jones DVD video. She
does not finish off the ending of words. Listen to Steisand, Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Edye Gorme,
Jane Monheit and many others. The ballad and jazz singers of lasting appeal all enunciate(d)
clearly. The good news is that the DVD cost less than $12, probably for a reason - lack of
demand. And this was after she won all those Grammy awards. I'll play it at least one more time
to help amortize my investment. In past weeks, the WSJ has run articles about the lackluster reception for the Segway scooter, the
emergence of LCD monitors, and how neat the Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) actually are.
All three subject I had long ago covered rather thoroughly - and possibly better. It just galls me
at the big bucks they get for their work. Several times I have mentioned what I will call the "Cholesterol Underground." Led by Dr. Uffe
Ravnskov of Sweden, the group of doctors and scientists believe that the level of your cholesterol
has no relation to heart disease. Their Web site is at: www.thincs.org, and they are sponsoring a
two-day symposium "Wise Traditions 2003" on May 4 and 5 at the Sheraton National Hotel in
Arlington, Virginia. If you live in the area, check it out. Dr. Uffe and other distinguished guests
will speak - such as Kilmer McCully, M.D., Ph.,D., who discovered the theory that
Homocysteine is one indicator for potential heart disease. Sen. John Edwards is on TV a lot with his presidential dog-and-pony show. He is, of course, a
very wealthy attorney. He hammers away that he is the champion of the "little guy," that his
career was distinguished by representing just plain folks against big corporations, etc. How
touching. Edwards is the leading money raiser among Democratic candidates, with $7.4 million.
About two-thirds of that came from attorneys, their families, and law-firm staff members. John,
spare us the insult of how as president you will represent the "little guy." It will just be more of
big punitive damage awards that are running doctors out of the profession and pushing up health
costs. Who are you trying to kid? Apparently, the Justice Department is not fooled. They are looking into
$10,000 of campaign contributions from legal assistants at one law firm who gave $2,000 each. One employee said that she understood that she would be reimbursed by her boss, which of course is illegal. On Dec. 31, 2002, I mailed my rebate form to Samsung for the $100 rebate on my 19-inch LCD
monitor. Over the months, I have come across many messages on various sites where people
never got their rebates from Samsung. Finally, On April 16, 2003, I got my $100 check! I guess I
am one of the lucky ones. But, there is no excuse for taking 3 and one-half months to process a
rebate. That will be the last big-ticket rebate offer I will engage in. With regard to Samsung
rebates, caveat emptor. Normally, you could not get me to order something from a TV promotion, even with my fingers
in a vice. But, the cuts played from "Lady Sings the Blues" were too compelling for an old
geezer. The two-disk set came and is wonderful, and already ripped to MP3s on my hard drive,
with jazz and blues classics from Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitz, Diana Krall, Nancy Wilson, Rosey
Clooney, Peggy Lee, about 20 singers in all. You can order the two-disk set by check or credit card by
mail, as I did: Lady Sings the Blues, PO Box 17070, Colorado Springs, CO 80935 for $24.93
($19.98 + $4.95 S&H) or 800-285-9857. Mine took about 2-3 weeks to arrive, which is not bad
for an ad that says "allow 4-6 weeks for delivery." TV product placements: On the CBS program "Yes Dear" for 3-17-03, a six pack of bottles of
CORONA beer was prominently displayed in the upper rack of a shopping cart. On
JEOPARDY!, Encarta (Microsoft) and Amazon.com were mentioned in questions, although
neither was relevant to the clue, per se. See how many you can find? This is my last product
placement report, I promise. Why didn't I think of this before? With the advent the war in Iraq, I had put a couple of cable
news channels back on my favorites list - before I stopped watching after about day four. But,
there was still the distracting crawl to deal with. Since I run my satellite TV receiver though my
home theater amp and control center, I switch the TV to the second input, which produces a
blank screen. I can still hear the TV audio. There is a precedent for this. It is called radio. Since I
already know what most of the talking heads and usual guests look like, I can listen to the audio
and concentrate on the conversation, without the crawl and other distractions. One of the liberating aspects of living in the Outback is that you can step onto the porch and take
a pee. Saves water and septic-tank load. There is a lot of precedence for this activity. I am
reminded of a story told to me by a former Secret Service agent who had been on President
Johnson's ranch security detail. He told me that in the middle of the night L.B.J. would come out
onto the darkened porch and pee into yard, perilously close to the chair in which my friend was
ensconced. Speaking of Pres. Johnson, the former agent also mentioned that when he would drive the prez
around the big ranch in one of the Lincoln Continental convertibles that us old geezers all remember,
L.B.J. would sit in back and whack my friend on the head with a rolled-up newspaper, yelling
"faster, boy, faster." Years later, a friend of mine (who had been on the Johnny Carson show
about 28 times) showed up at my office in his jeans and cowboy boots and invited me to the
parking lot. There sat a vintage Lincoln Continental convertible with the big Texas longhorns as
a hood ornament. Yup, he bought one of L.B.J.'s old Continentals. You think I could make this stuff up?
I'm not that creative. "Mister Personality" debuted on FOX. Monica Lewinsky hosts the show which features men in masks who must win the lady of the moment by their personality. Recall that the men in the first two "Bachelor" shows could not find a long-term mate with virtually nothing hidden. They dumped their "Bachelor" mates. Then, what kind of chance is there to find a soulmate who is behind a mask? Zip! For your sake, and in the interests of science, I watched part of the first episode. If you watch this show, you need to seriously question your intelligence. In more simple terms. If you watch this show, you are a moron. If you own a light pickup truck or an SUV, here is a hot tip. Replace your shocks, regardless of
your mileage, with Monroe Flex shocks. They have a system that maintains your vehicle in a
level plane, even during violent turns or swerves. Also, if you stomp on the brakes at about 50
miles an hour, the nose will hardly dip, if at all. The braking distance is shortened, as the vehicles
remains more squarely on all fours. This same quick acting first stage makes for a much
smoother ride on rough roads or over potholes. I had these shocks on my Chevy S-10 when a
lady pulled across the highway in front of me in a big van. I swerved violently at 70 m.p.h, but
did not roll over. Sadly I still hit her broadside with the front of my truck. Possibly that was
better than rolling about five times. At 17,000 miles, I replaced the factory shocks on my Chevy
Silverado extended cab pickup. The difference is incredible, in terms of smoothness of ride and
the handling of the vehicle around steep turns or during violent swerves. (www.monroe.com)
Again it is the FLEX series. Older Ford Explorer owners take note.
There is a lot of speculation about how to deal with Saddam Hussein and sons if they are
captured. Now that we see just some of the documentation of the murder, torture, and general
abuse suffered by the population of Iraq, I have a suggestion. Put Saddam and sons (and others who carried out the torture) in separate cells in Baghdad
equipped with all the modes of torture practiced by the regime, such as cattle prods, battery acid,
scalpels for ear amputations (without painkillers), suspension devices for hanging victims by
their hands tied behind their back, assorted rubber hoses, clubs, and guns (my idea is that they are
loaded with blank cartridges - for the shock effect when the trigger is pulled). Each citizen who can demonstrate some reasonable proof that he was tortured by Saddam's
goons should be given one-half hour to do whatever they fancy in Saddam's cell, or another cell
of their choosing. They might recognize their tormentor, for example. Those without ears would
be given priority access, as their credentials are among the easiest to verify. Saddam and the
others would be well fed and a doctor on hand to treat their wounds. With proper nutrition and medical care, Saddam might survive another 20 years, the sons more
than twice that long. In that time, a lot of people could get some closure for their treatment at the
hands of the former regime. Each visit by one of the aggrieved parties - and their actions - should
be filmed and recorded. The video would be posted daily on:
www.DespotsThisIsWhatYouHaveToLookForwardTo.org as food for thought. Finally, when Saddam and/or his sons finally succumb to the toll of this accumulated trauma, the
disfigured and mutilated remains should be embalmed and displayed in the town square in
caskets with plexiglass tops. A kind of a miniature Holocaust Museum in reverse. Just wait until the more full disclosures of the atrocities of the Saddam regime are documented
and published. This little plan of mine will not seem so radical, or maybe even un-Christian.
Finally, the phrase "dying a thousand deaths" will have meaning. The media were overjoyed that they were going to be allowed to be embedded with our forces on
the drive to Baghdad. I wonder how many think it was such a hot idea now? War is not the
computer game it appeared to be from the coverage of Gulf War One. You did not see Bob
Simon running around in the middle of this battle. He tried that in Gulf One and got captured by
the Iraqis. Been there, done that. I had a premonition that David Bloom of NBC might be killed, mostly because he was with a
unit that was a spearhead of the move to Baghdad and would no doubt see some heavy fighting.
It is very sad that he died, from enemy action or natural causes - as was the case. Several of the
media were killed. That is a hazard of the job in a shooting war. One has to question the wisdom
of those who chose to stay in Baghdad until the end. Was the hotel where most of them stayed
somehow off limits to Iraqi snipers and American counterfire? Is every smart bomb 100% smart?
Is there not a chance that anybody on the street might get caught in a crossfire or a friendly-fire
mistake? For all its vaunted inside vantage point, the reports from most of the media were sound bites or
video bites, without a larger context. In the few days I watched the coverage, before enforcing my
news blackout, I learned very little about the real progress of the war. Two people just infuriated me. Bob Arnot is a medical doctor. Is he going through a mid-life
crises? What in the hell was he doing in the middle of the fray? And Ted Koppel looked
ludicrous in his flak jacket and helmet. I have always admired Ted, but now I think he has lost
his mind. What was an old geezer like him (we are near the same age) doing out there risking his
life to report little dribbles and drabs of the war? Many have also criticized him for making political statements during his coverage. I wouldn't know. At the first sight of Koppel in that combat getup, I hit the channel change button. I knew that pontificating was soon to follow. That's who he is. One also has to wonder why Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon, was running around the battlefield for CNN. He tells stories of being asked to do some emergency field surgery, including opening one skull by scoring it with a Black & Decker drill. He laughed about it. What a wierdo. He failed to mention if the patient lived. Sanjay, you could have kept that story to yourself. I get confused, since there is a Sanjay Gupta in charge of Online services for Bank of America. Gupta and Kumar must be like Smith in India. In the next campaign, I wonder how many journalists will be anxious to go along for the ride?
And who would have thought that one of our best and brightest reporters would have died from
an embolism, possibly caused from spending too much time sitting and sleeping in cramped
quarters. In the next one, let the Predators send back the pictures and sounds. In retrospect, just what did
all of the front-line reporting prove or accomplish? Other than provide entertainment for the
morbidly curious? In the Outback for January 7, 2003, I wrote an article entitled "Let South Korea Fend For Itself."
In that piece, I tended to agree with a young lady carrying a candle in a protest in S. Korea, who
said that the Americans should go home - that S. Korea could defend itself. In addition, I was
incensed at the attacks on our troops in S. Korea by local citizens and my perception that they
had forgotten how it was that the Korean Miracle had come about - because we were there in
force to protect them - for 50 years. Several months after I wrote my piece, I see that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld says that he
wants U.S. troops stationed near the DMZ separating N. and S. Korea to be moved farther from
the heavily defended zone, shifted to other countries in the region, or brought home.
The South Korean military, which has relied on American forces to deter an attack from
communist North Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953, is capable of defending the
border itself, Rumsfeld said. How interesting. It took 50 years to come to this conclusion. There now are about 37,000 U.S. troops in South Korea. It is the second largest concentration of
American forces in Asia behind Japan, which has about 45,000. Rumsfeld also said there is a need to adjust the U.S. force structure in Western Europe, where
about 100,000 troops are permanently based, mostly in Germany. Why are these troops still in
Western Europe? There has not been a credible threat to W. Europe since the end of the Cold
War. For years I have been bitching about the drain on our nation's economy of having so many U.S.
troops abroad, often in places where there seem little current reason to do so. And the lack of
willingness of many well-developed countries to spend the money to provide for much, if any, of
their own defense. Now, I have discovered the reason why we are still sitting on our tanks in so many places. How
dumb could I be? It took a talk on C-SPAN by Prof. Andrew Bacevich of Boston University, to
put all this into perspective. Andy Bacevich is a graduate of West Point, served 23 years in the
Army (Colonel), and has a Ph.D. in American Diplomatic History. He is a prolific writer of
articles and op-ed pieces. In his new book, "American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy," Prof.
Bachevich argues that we are the new Roman Empire, with projections of our military power so
widespread that they are, to him, an obvious expression of our policy to intervene in world affairs
not by diplomacy, but by the use of - or threat of - military power. We both agree that the
invasion of Iraq is so obvious an extension of that policy as to be hardly arguable. The professor
suggests that the trend to coercion instead of diplomacy gained prominence in the first Bush
presidency, was continued by Bill Clinton, and is certainly transparent with the new Bush
doctrine of "preemptive strikes." With the memory of the words of Andrew Bachevich still fresh in my mind, the New
York Times reported that the U.S. was hoping to maintain four key military bases in
Iraq on a long-term basis. They said in part: "A military foothold would be felt across the border
in Syria, and, in combination with the continuing U.S. presence in Afghanistan, it would virtually
surround Iran with a new of web of American influence." Prof. Bachevich must be smiling
smugly.
We may withdraw some or all of our troops from Saudi Arabi, since they were mainly there to
protect against incursions by Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Can we ever forget that one major factor
in Osama bin Ladin's hatred for America was our troops being located on Saudi land? On Arabic
land. Why having troops in Iraq on long-term basis will be any less inflammatory in the region is
not easy to comprehend. One presumes that we will maintain some strong military presence in Qatar, our "new best
friend" in the region. Is this also not a continuing invitation for the spawning of more radicals
who hate America and will try to do us major harm? And will we remove our troops from
Kuwait, since again, they were there to protect against incursions by Saddam? As of Sept. 30, 2002, the U.S. had 230,484 military forces deployed overseas. That was, of
course before the buildup for the Iraq invasion. Germany had 68,701 of our troops. What are they
protecting, a knockwurst factory from E-Coli? We had 12,466 in Italy. How many people does it
take to guard the PX in Naples? Oh, I remember the great PX in Naples from decades ago. We
drove down there from our apartment in Rome to go shopping. It is probably still going strong.
We had 10, 258 in the United Kingdom. For exactly what? Japan had 41, 848 of our troops.
South Korea had 37,743. The U.S. had a total of 263 military stationed in all of Sub-Saharan
Africa. Let them fight it out among themselves, I guess. In Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, we had 549,
including 478 Navy and 64 Marines. It is one of the great incongruities of our foreign policy that
we lease a naval base in Cuba from Castro. He is evil and repressive, unless he can meet some
military need we have. As of 2-28- 2003, we had a military force of 1,453,391, plus 38,937 in the Coast Guard. See: www.dior.whs.mil/mmid/military/miltop.htm It is a .PDF file, to save it, right-click on Total DoD - Sept. 30, 2002 and Save Target As. The American people and the Congress need to start putting on the pressure to reduce our force
sizes overseas. That is unless you enjoy pissing your tax dollars down a rat hole - and seeing
continued vituperation against the U.S. for the troops stationed in the Arab countries and in S.
Korea, for example. Nato and the EU can take care of themselves, thank you. Likewise for S.
Korea - to a large degree. Prof. Andrew Bachevich thinks that the "American Empire" is too well entrenched and has too
much momentum to be scaled back. I hope he is wrong. Americans need to really examine the
concept of preemptive strikes and/or wars. The next presidential campaign will certainly air out
that controversy. In life you often find that the biggest and strongest people do not assert their power unless
provoked. They let you know they have the power, but they don't go looking for trouble. The
U.S. used to be that gentle giant who did not strike back until punched in the stomach. The
events of 9/11 did justify the military campaign in Afghanistan, but by no stretch of the
imagination did it justify an invasion of Iraq. Pundits and ex-generals are now calling the issue of WMD, whether we find any or not, as moot.
Oh, really. I thought that was the whole rationale for the various Security Council resolutions, the
U.N. weapons inspectors, and for the invasion. Weapons of Mass Destruction. As Gilda Radner (old SNL shows)
might say, "Never mind." If you look at the laws in the U.S. regarding "self defense," you will always find a phrase like
"authorized to use deadly force only if serious personal injury or death is imminent." Why
should there be another standard for "national self defense"? Well, there is that other phrase in
the law that speaks of personal defense or "defense of others in imminent danger of serious
physical harm or death." Imminent is the key word. But, that should be the business of the
United Nations, were it not so inept at solving disputes. Now, we are looking more like the playground bully or the LA gang members who strut around
daring you to "cross the line." Looking for an excuse to beat the crap out of you. We barely get
the statues of Saddam toppled over in the square when we started threatening Syria. We have
enough trouble just rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq. If we do decide to continue our "worldwide cleansing" efforts, may I suggest that the president
need not rely just on the potential for weapons of mass destruction, or harboring terrorists, but
on horrendous abuses of human rights. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights wrote in
the WSJ for April 21, 2003: So, maybe running around the world knocking off oppressive regimes is a good thing. If so, let's
call a spade a spade and quit trying to find links to al-Qaeda and other ethereal pretexts for
military action. COPYRIGHT 2000 Richard C. Rhodes You are welcome to quote sections from this page - or the whole page, as long as the source URL is included. Of course, I would be flattered if anyone linked to this page. It is very hard to be the writer, editor, fact checker, copy editor, and publisher of anything. So, I beg your forgiveness for the many mistakes that creep in. Suggested Reading From Past Columns Click Here for Suggested Reading List Archive of Back Issues Media List of Addresses and e-mails Postal Service State Abbreviations, etc. Richard C. Rhodes End |