Monday, December 15, 2003

A truth that Bush can never speak is that one reason for invading Iraq was to demonstrate to governments that support terrorism what happens to our enemies in the post-9/11 world. Those pics of Saddam and the hole where they found him are worth thousands of words. But what they say to individual Iraqis may be more complicated. Iraqi blogger Zayed is surprised at his own mixed feelings: I don't know what got into me but I really felt sorry for the man. For the first time in years he looked so human. He was just a typical helpless 66-year-old Iraqi at that moment. I stared hardly at his eyes and tried to convince myself that this was the same man who destroyed Iraq and sent millions to their deaths. I found myself talking to the screen "Why did you have to do this to yourself?", "Why did you have to put us into all of this?", "Why didn't you fight back or at least kill yourself to spare us these images?". I had no reason to, but I felt humiliated. I sank into an overwhelming depression and sadness, and I had a desperate need to get terribly drunk. I should have felt joy but I didn't. And I'm still dissapointed with myself. 2:48:32 PM    comment []

The Tar Heels played poorly in a win over a lesser opponent, but at least coach Roy Williams maintained his perspective: "It's just a bad day, but some great things happened in the world. We got Saddam [Hussein]. I'd like to find one of those dad-gummed holes he was living in and go there for a little while myself." 10:10:13 AM    comment []

The Orgasmatron could be coming soon to a clinic near you. A Winston-Salem doctor has patented a device that brings women sexual pleasure by stimulating nerves in the spinal cord. The device is implanted in the lower back during outpatient surgery. The rest is simple: flick a switch, scratch that itch. Thus is answered the question: What do you get for the woman who has everything? Dr. Stuart Meloy tells the Business Journal that he's working with medical-device manufacturers, trying to trademark the Orgasmatron name, and hoping to set up a local clinic that could attract 1,000 customers per year for the $17,000 procedure. The paper reports that volunteers abound for clinical tests of the product. Man, if this thing kills spiders and takes out the garbage, a lot of marriages could be in trouble. 9:56:57 AM    comment []

"If you don't need to fight a war, but you fight it anyway and win it and thus remove a really bad guy from power, have you done the right thing?" That was the last of twenty questions about going to war in Iraq that I posed in a newspaper column fourteen months ago. Some readers chastized me for that final question, saying it seemed to rationalize the war, which the previous nineteen questions had argued against. But it summed up -- and sums up now -- some of the complexity of the situation. 9:37:19 AM    comment []