Blizzards

I love blizzards----I love them more than any other major weather related news event (especially when I do not have to leave the house).

My plan for the day----sit home, occasionally look out the window and think "wow that's a lot of snow", put on the news sporadically and hope that this will be dubbed "Blizzard of '05" (I like when Blizzards get named after the years that they hit---I recall surviving the "Blizzard of '96"--I'll come back to that) as I want to tell my grandchildren about how their Grandpappy survived the "Blizzard of Naught-Five", and maybe (just maybe) venture out into the elements and track down some fruit-punch Gatorade to soothe the cotton mouth that a bottle and 1/2 of wine causes within a mouth the morning (afternoon) after it is consumed.

Blizzard of '96 story----


When the Blizzard of '96 struck I was living in a small house out in the suburbs of New York City. The house was a converted bungalow with a small driveway leading to a road that formed a distorted circle before it eventually connected to the main road at one of its ends. As the snow accumulated trucks continually passed by our road, plow to the ground, moving snow on our rode as they drove by. Anyone who has ever seen a plow grind through new fallen snow knows that a plow does not just deposit snow in a neat and out of the way area directly within the path of the truck's forward momentum, it also builds giant mountains of Everest proportions to its sides. The result of this is, as the plow clears off the road in front of the house it builds an insurmountable (and eminently un-shovelable) tower of snow at the base of the driveway.

As the snow withered away that night and it became time for me to shovel the driveway so that our asphalt would communicate with the exposed tar of the road, I called a good friend and offered him 5 CDs from my collection if he would grab a shovel and help me in this process. (This was a habit of mine back then and it is how I got the carpet laid in my basement). He was within walking distance so 20 minutes later he showed up, body wrapped in a black parka, a sky blue sock hat stretched over his head, and 2 bitter red puffy gloves covering his hands that clashed with his angry hat, ready to get to work. We started by the garage door (within which the badass 1994 4 cylinder Saturn was housed) and began digging our way out of the foot of snow masking the driveway below. In about an hour we had managed to dig our way to the end of the driveway, where silently waiting for us was an angry giant, it towered over both of us in its majestic beauty, it was the K-2 of plow made mountains. It was breathtaking beautiful, it raced the high into sky with 3 distinct peaks that reached out to the newly formed clouds of amorphous white that encircled its God's eye view of the vast land that stretched out before it (and my driveway). I stood there, stunned for a moment at what nature could create, amazed at how small I was, and aware of how fleeting life is. A small tear escaped the grasp of my right eye. Nevertheless it had to be conquered.

As the existential splendor of the grandeur of the mountain faded, I began to develop an ingenious plan. I would use a tool of man to conquer the power of nature, I was going to rediscover fire, I was going to unleash the wheel, I was going to alter the elements as no creature before me had been able to do! I was going to take the badass 4-clander Saturn out from the newly shoveled driveway and use the 20 feet between the garage and the majesty of God's tallest creation to drive the Saturn to breathtaking speeds and destroy the mountain with 1 violent act. This is how the mountain would end, not with a bang but with a Saturn.

I raced to the garage opened the pathetic door and jumped behind the wheel of my Badass Saturn. The massive leviathan stared mockingly through the windshield daring me to ram it, challenging me to knock it down. Angrily I pressed down firmly on the gas; the car sprang to life and sped towards our mutual destruction. The mountain grew large in the foreground the catastrophic crash was imminent, I closed my eyes.

When I finally came to and took account of my surroundings I was unpleasantly surprised with the situation I found myself in. The car teetered back and forth like a rusty see-saw, only I was unable to figure out why or discern the fulcrum. Finally, I looked out the window and to my horror realized what had happened. I had driven through the top of the mountain, knocking it down in a violent explosion and had replaced the summit with my Badass Saturn, now delicately balanced atop the newly formed apex, all 4 wheels suspended in the air (stratosphere) and rotating pathetically. I repelled down the North face and met up with my friend at the base of the uncovered driveway. Realizing the time and work that would now have to be done we both sat down for 15 minutes and contemplated silently how the pale monolith before us had managed to turn 2 hours of shoveling into a 6 hour rescue expedition.

I am pleased to report that 7 hours later the car was freed without incident.

Iraq and Justification

Whether or not this war is "justified" is a tough multifaceted beast that I do not think I could settle with just one post. One also must ask, what defines justification? Could it be that in spite of dubious pre-war intelligence and global corruption/miscalculations a free and democratic Iraq emerging from the ashes will justify the war regardless of the willy nilly fashion in which the war was waged/planned or is the war unjustified regardless of the outcomes secondary to the loss of lives for a the questionable assertion of "threat" and the semantics surrounding its time frame? Does the retrospective revelation that the premises and assertions that we once strongly believed to be true have turned out to be false nullify the self-defensive actions that with only the hindsight of time have turned out to be misleading and perhaps aggressive rather than defensive? How you answer these questions will mold the lens with which one views the war and its aftermath.

That being said, I think it is important to paint a realistic picture of the pre-war period based upon all the available evidence in order to give this epoch its due. Saddam's WMD's had served as an adequate deterrent from keeping the advancing army of Bush I from crossing to far into the Kuwaiti/Iraqi border and driving Saddam out of power. The threat of US soldiers encountering a chemical/biological attack was all too real and kept the US from removing Saddam from power (amongst many other important reasons not mentioned here). After '91 with the US backed UN sanctions and the decimation of Saddam's arsenal, the appearance of a functional WMD program was as important to Saddam as actually maintaining one. According to Deulfer Saddam kept alive the duplicitous appearance of WMD's to the point of explicit deception of even his Iraqi guard and specifically his citizens.

Though his WMD's were destroyed after the Gulf War and with the advent of UN sanctions Saddam was clever enough to abuse a program intended to specifically aid the citizens of Iraq during the lean years of the sanctions. As he siphoned money from the program (estimates state that 1/6 dollars went into Saddam's pockets) he continued to use the miserable state of his citizens as a tool of propaganda intended to sway global opinion against said sanctions. Pre 9/11 Saddam's weapons (or appearance) served as a deterrent, post 9/11 in a very paranoid US they became a very real threat. Though the WMD intelligence is now assessed with a critical eye retrospectively, during the pre-war period the intelligence was accepted prima facie, and believed to be a very serious threat. Now we can look back with the aid of 2 years, CIA reports, a US occupation and realize that the intelligence was misleading, that Saddam's non-compliance with the UN was actually his posturing in order to buy time for his corrupting influence upon the UN security council to take full effect(with France/Russia/Germany complicit in the deception and therefore in the blame), that the WMD intelligence was in error and may have been inflated by the Iraqi's themselves (not to mention questions of a cherry-picking US administration), and that there is more to blame for the failures of diplomacy than the "Bush Doctrine" and a rush to war.

We have the luxury to sit here and debate this, hindsight allows us the clarity it the present that it denies our past, but when the intelligence was assessed by anyone from Clinton, to Bush and even Putin (who personally warned Bush of the regimes weapons) the situation was very different.

I was initially against the war. I felt that the inspectors needed more time, that diplomacy seemed to not be given a chance. Retrospectively I realize I was wrong about a lot (particularly in regards to the diplomacy that was doomed to fail regardless of the US terms). That being said, there are still many glaring mistakes in the way this war has been waged and planning for the post-war period has been abysmal. Regardless, I now feel that it is vital to ensure that a stable Iraq emerges from this war and that a real functional and secure democracy is enacted. Iraq, UN corruption, the humanitarian toll of the sanctions are complicated variables that demanded a delicate and urgent solution. Maybe this is the best (or worst) solution to the conundrum, only history will be a true impartial judge and (only 2 years out) we are still living it.

Movie Reviews

So there are 300+ sites on the web where you can read in depth movie analysis----though I would love to contribute, my blogging time is limited and I would rather spend it discussing other topics.

HOWEVER---I must review the movies I see, so I have developed a rating system (not a very original one) that allows me to briefly review a movie and move on----

Here is the system---

O stars----Horrible/Painful/Walked Out of the Movie/Terrible/Nothing Worse
*--- Poor
**---Average/Forget the movie 30 seconds after leaving the theater
***--Good
****---Excellent
*****--Classic


1st Review will be---

Hotel Rwanda--****

Absence

I have been studying for the boards this week and have not kept up with the posting, come this weekend I shall be back with small postings until Feb 8 at which point my exam will be done and I am back to all things blog.