Swamped



My next book is due this weekend, which means this weekend won't be a busy one for ye olde blogge. What's it about, Ted? Wellll.....I ain't telling. Not yet, anyway. Suffice it to say it's all prose. Non-fiction. Political. Coming out in early 2004.



Will it change the world?



Leave me alone. I'm typing.

Yahoo "Censorship"? Nah.



People are asking what happened to my column "Why We Hate Bush." That piece suddenly vanished from Yahoo's News Op-Ed section yesterday, causing readers to ask if John Ashcroft's jack-booted thugs had finally appeared to drag me off to Gitmo.



Actually, there are occasional software glitches over at Yahoo, and this was one of them. "Why We Hate Bush" was an old column that mysteriously resurfaced to the top of the Ted Rall section a few days ago for no reason. We caught the error and uploaded my new column from yesterday, about next year's Necropublican National Convention, and thus bumped "Why We Hate Bush" into the archives.



Censorship certainly is a reality in the media; even so-called "alternative" newspapers refused, for example, to send me to cover the war in Iraq despite the fact that my pieces from Afghanistan won several awards and were lauded by The Washington Post, The Nation and others as the best war correspondent's reports filed by an American reporter. They were pretty overt about why--they didn't think their readers would be happy to hear anything negative...and they had reason to think I might look a little deeper than the typical clueless embedded types.



Yahoo, however, has yet to suppress my pieces and I count them among one of my better clients. These software problems do come up now and then, however, so this probably isn't the last time I'll have people wondering if the First Amendment is coming under fire.



By the way, if you're looking for "Why We Hate Bush," one of my more incendiary pieces as of late, you can still find it here.

Florida 2000-Style Contest Results



After going through more than 200 submissions for the contest to name my next book, many of which had some kind of riff on the film "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" (talk about obscure!), the winner is...my publisher.



He came up with a great, simple title that I'll be free to reveal a few month's hence. "You have the habit of coming up with really long book titles," he snapped. What, "All The Rules Have Changed" and "Real Americans Admit: The Worst Thing I've Ever Done!" are too long?



I do feel badly that I wasn't able to give away the cartoon original that would have gone to the lucky winner, but it's like this - titling a book is difficult. If I can't do it properly, and it's my job to do it, it's unlikely that someone outside the field of publishing will be able to do better.



I would like to remind the sore losers out there that there's still a piece of original artwork out there for those who want one. All you have to do is convince the editor of your local newspaper to pick up either my cartoons or my columns on a regular subscription basis (that's a 1-year contract). It's actually very easy to do - often all it takes is a letter to the editor.

A Blast from the Past



Every now and then, you come across something that missed the memory hole. Here, for your reading pleasure, is a piece by Loren Jenkins that ran in Salon back in 1998.



My favorite passage:

For while there is little doubt that bin Laden is a sworn enemy of the United States with the financial means to put some teeth in that enmity, his exact role in anti-American terrorism is unclear. The administration's claims are based more on conjecture -- mostly bin Laden's own braggadocio and the bad company he apparently keeps -- than hard and convincing evidence.



Clinton and his security staff have now blamed bin Laden for being behind almost every terrorist act in the past decade -- from plotting the assassinations of the pope and the president of Egypt to the planned bombing of six U.S. jumbo jets over the Pacific, with massacres of German tourists at Luxor and the killings of U.S. troops in Somalia, fatal car bombings of U.S. military personnel in Saudi Arabia and this month's truck bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam thrown in. Not since the '70s heyday of the terrorist Carlos has there been such a Prince of Darkness, if the allegations are to be believed.



But so far, for all of the accusations, no government, not even that of the United States, has established enough credible evidence against bin Laden to conclusively prove his direct participation in, much less leadership of, any of the ugly plots and acts he stands accused of. To date no formal request for his extradition has ever been made, either to the Sudanese government that once housed him or to his current hosts, Afghanistan's Taliban leaders.

In other words, the US government has never presented the American public with any hard proof that Osama bin Laden has carried out a single terrorist attack against us. Yet both President Clinton and Generalissimo El Busho have used him as a bête noire responsible for everything from bad food to bad music.

Though much has been made of the fact that from his safe-houses in Afghanistan bin Laden has forged a loose alliance with perhaps a dozen different Islamic groups in the Muslim world from Algeria to Bangladesh, he seems to be more of a spiritual leader and financier than the sort of terrorist mastermind being alleged.



"Bin Laden is a true believer and a funder of Islamic causes, rather than a planner and active participant," says Professor Shibley Telhani, a Middle East scholar from the University of Maryland who has followed his career. "His real influence is not as a mastermind of terrorism but as a person who is using a personal fortune to encourage others to wage war against the American interests in the Middle East he finds so objectionable."

Even if we captured Osama, in other words, we wouldn't be nabbing the guy who hit our embassies, or the Cole, or the World Trade Center. And what about the groups that actually carried out those attacks?



Bush won't even talk about them, much less try to bring them to justice.

Nazis



People are angry. People are annoyed. It's all because I had the timerity to draw a cartoon, this week, depicting SS officers hanging around a café in an occupied European nation (I was thinking France, but it could be anyplace the Germans occupied during World War II) talking about how much the locals love them, the kids wave at them, the schools are open again and how everything is just hunky dory.



"Bush is an idiot," one guy wrote me. "He hasn't sent anyone to concentration camps." Well, not exactly true. Gitmo IS a concentration camp; if the Administration has its way and begins executing the inmates there, it'll become a death camp. But it is a concentration camp; there's no other term that fits, regardless of your politics. So a Nazi comparison is certainly applicable.



But that's not why I drew the cartoon.



The point I'm trying to make is that occupiers ALWAYS wanna think the locals love them to death. They delude themselves that, because a few whores sleep with them and a few profiteers suck up to them, they're accepted. Of course, it ain't so--an occupier is a foreigner is an exploiter is an enemy. Always. If Canada invaded the US and brought us the blessings of universal health care, I'd be the first to spend my nights picking off Canadian occupation police from Manhattan rooftops. If you read memoirs of German soldiers fighting during World War II, you'll find many accounts of how well they got along with the locals.



Then there are the Internet geeks who would prohibit any comparisons, no matter how apt, between Nazism and post-World War II events. Sorry, but I never signed up for that rule, which is stupid. It just so happens that Nazism was anything but a unique phenomenon in history. It wasn't an aberration, and the undercurrents of oppression and totalitarianism that characterized Hitler's regime exist in every modern Western society. There isn't a huge jump between a guy like Adolf and a guy like GWB, and I'll be damned if I'm not allowed to say so.

Random Reagan Thought



Let me be the first to say it: the former president will likely die soon, and will unjustly be lauded as the man whose profligate spending brought down the Soviet Union and created the economic boom of the '80s. Of course, neither of these assertions are true. The Soviet Union, as most experts will attest, had been economically undermined by the CIA for years--my favorite operation involved dumping millions of dollars in cash in Moscow restrooms to destabilize the ruble. If anything, Chernobyl was the final straw. As for the '80s boom, what boom? Sure, a tiny percent of super rich enjoyed growing incomes during the decade, but the '80s were a period of increasing disparity of wealth. Poor and middle-income people did not benefit under Reagan; quite the opposite.



Bottom line; Reagan was a stupid, vicious scoundrel who deserved prosecution for his role in Iran-Contra and October Surprise. He hurt America by turning its people against each other, by turning them selfish. He shan't be missed, and he shouldn't be mourned.



I'll be away from the blog until Monday.

Today in Vegas



I'll be signing my books and giving a talk with slides of my cartoons today in Las Vegas. The book signing is from noon to 12:30; the discussion starts at 3:15. You should also come see Tom Tomorrow, in the same place, at 1:45.



Location: Liberty Point Complex, 200-280 South Green Valley Parkway, Henderson, Nevada.

Washington DC Radio



I'll be on Washington DC radio station WMAL, AM 630, tonight at 11 pm to discuss the censoring of cartoons, Aaron McGruder's "Boondocks", and "Doonesbury."

Vegas Valley Book Festival



I'll be speaking about and showing my cartoons, and answering questions, at the Vegas Valley Book Festival in Henderson NV tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 24th, from 1:00 to 2:30 at the CCSN West Charleston Campus, in the D Building Auditorium.



No, I have no idea where that is, but I'll get there somehow.

Did I Call It or What?



Last week, on October 16th, I did a cartoon called "Presidential Swap Comics," that guessed what would happen if GWB and FDR switched places, i.e., Bush was president at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. So imagine my surprise to read that our own little Piehole went to visit Pearl Harbor his own bad self!



From the AP:

White House officials drew parallels between Japan's sneak attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 with al-Qaida's attack against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. The campaign against terrorism was the main theme of Bush's Asian trip, and he reminded the world not to let down its guard.

Indeed, as I pointed out in my cartoon, had Bush been in FDR's place he would have ignored the real threat - Japan - the same way Bush has ignored the real military threats to American security, the real Axis of Evil - Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea. Perhaps he would have attacked countries that, like Afghanistan and Iraq, posed no danger to us, and instead gone after Mexico and Bolivia. What a meathead - I still can't believe his gang of dumb-as-rocks neocons has missed the opportunity presented by 9/11 to cozy up with Iran and Turkey - our natural allies in the Muslim world.



But that's Bush for you - attack the meek, run away from the strong. A typical bully, and a damned dumb one at that.

The Complete Far Side



Behold, it is here: the ultimate collection of cartoons by Gary Larson, whose "Far Side" revolutionized comics. "The Far Side" brought irony, non-traditional drawing styles and dry wit to the daily comics pages and inspired a generation of cartoonists, including yours truly, to try new approaches to the form. And now, for a mere hundred bucks, you can own an OED-thick collection of every single Far Side strip, a thousand of which you've never seen in another collection.



Many of the previously uncollected strips aren't quite as funny as the ones you've seen in the calendars, T-shirts and older collections. But they're still damned great, and they provide a better-rounded picture of the strip and its artist than the "greatest hits." And there are a few gems you probably haven't seen.



I would never go so far as to call a book that weighs 22 pounds "essential," but this one is about as close as it gets.

Oh, the Irony



From today's Associated Press:

On Wednesday, [North Korea] branded as "a laughing matter" Bush's offer of a written pledge from five countries not to attack if the communist nation scraps its nuclear weapons program.



En route to Australia, Bush reacted to Pyongyang's dismissal with a shrug. "This requires a degree of patience," Bush said during a 35-minute session with reporters aboard Air Force One. "Kim Jong Il is used to being able to deal unilaterally with the United States. The change in policy is that he must deal now with a number of nations."



"He has been saying he wants a security guarantee. We're all willing to sign some sort of document — not a treaty — that says `we won't attack you.' But he needs to abandon his nuclear program and do so in a verifiable way."

"A degree of patience"? For a country that has nukes and has threatened to turn the West Coast of the United States into a feiry, irradiated pit?



Iraq, of course, didn't have nukes. Didn't threaten the U.S. Wasn't a danger to us...at all. Which is why we attacked. Because, in the end, Bush is every bit as much of a goddamned coward as he was when he ducked the draft back in 1972.



An aside: Some conservatives have written me to ask why lefties--the term should be retired in favor of "people who can both read AND think"--didn't hold Clinton accountable for his draft-dodging the way we're all over Bush for his. Here's the answer:



Because, dumbasses, Clinton dodged the draft for a war he was against. Bush dodged a draft he was for. It's called hypocrisy.

Brian Lehrer Show, WNYC Radio, New York



If you're in New York City and near a radio, you may want to know that I'll be talking about my book "To Afghanistan and Back" and the war in Iraq with WNYC's Brian Lehrer tomorrow morning, Wednesday, October 22nd, from 10:05 am to 10:25 am.

Went Back to Ohio...



...and had a great time. Thanks to Sally Windle and the students at Lima Senior High School for a look at a vibrant school populated by an intelligent and diverse student body. For the rest of you, I was there yesterday talking about my cartoons, showing some slides and enjoying a great back-and-forth during the Q&A session.



The only sad moment for me was talking to an aspiring art student who came back from a visit to an art school in Pennsylvania dejected, not because he didn't get in - he did - but because he couldn't afford the tuition. Something's very wrong with a country that allows its young people's dreams to be shattered for lack of money...especially since we have no lack of money.

The Curious Tale of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad



As the Administration's tangled web of Iraq war lies unravels, today's government-sourced report that Al Qaeda official/CIA prisoner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, doubtlessly hanging upside down in some stinking cell somewhere in South Asia minus a substantial amount of blood, murdered Wall Street Journal Danny Pearl surely rates a mention for the questions that it provokes.



Like:



Since when is the CIA authorized to hold prisoners? Why hasn't Mohammad, if he was really involved in planning 9/11, been charged in a US court? Why not a military tribunal? What about the extreme likelihood that the US government is torturing the poor bastard? Or are we no longer a nation of laws?



And:



Could it be that the Bushies, unable to lay their greasy paws on Osama or Saddam, have decided to inflate the purported importance of the second-tier Al Qaeda prisoner they DID manage to snare?



For all we know, the very same guy who planned 9/11 for Osama is the same guy who slit Danny Pearl's throat. Who knows? Anything's possible. But that's the point: we don't know what's going on because our government, paid by our taxes, refuses to tell us.



This ain't America, folks. What it is, I'm not sure I wanna know.

Huzzah, President Bush!



We've waited a long time for this, but finally there's reason to praise Bush: he's sending 20,000 Marines to liberate the long-suffering Azeri people from the blight of totalitarian dictatorship exemplified by post-corrupt election rioting. "The fact that the US has long-term oil contracts with the current corrupt regime of Azerbaijan is no reason not to liberate the people of that oil-rich, yet impoverished nation," Bush said. "What's good for Iraq is good for Azerbaijan."



Oh, wait. Bush didn't say anything like that.



And he's not President, either.



I'll be away from the blog until early next week.

Saddle Up the Third Infantry Division



Oppressed Muslims in Azerbaijan have just suffered through a laughably corrupt election, wherein - for the first time since the independence of any post-Soviet state - power has been handed down from father to son. Now Azeris are rioting, but fortunately we know they can count on the U.S. to liberate them from this illegitimate ruler.



After all, we'd never let the fact that US companies have cozy sweetheart deals for Caspian Sea oil wells off the coast of Baku stop us from defending democracy.



Right?

Viva Las Vegas



Well, more accurately, Henderson. Along with fellow cartoonist-blogger Tom Tomorrow, I'll be speaking and signing books at next week's Vegas Valley Book Festival in Henderson, NV, a stone's throw from Sin Strip, on Friday, Oct. 24 and Saturday, Oct. 25. I'll be talking about my graphic travelogue "To Afghanistan and Back."

More on the Comments Feature



Thanks for the e-mailed advice that I could add a comments feature while sorting out the asshole Bushites. But from what I hear, that would still require a lot more hourly monitoring than I'm prepared to devote to this blog. Maybe I could include a test to post that would filter them out, like quizzing them on why Bush lost the 2000 election!

The Horrible Truth About Art Comics and/or Postmodernism



Today's New York Times puff piece on comix underachiever Art Spiegelman (Maus, bad New Yorker covers, nothing else worth mentioning) started me thinking about how artists work around their shortcomings. People like me, who have no shortage of ideas but aren't the best draughtsmen around, end up doing smart, wordy cartoons for alternative newspapers using styles that allow us to avoid having to do a lot of detailed rendering. In other words, we work around our drawing handicaps.



Others have noticed that.



What people may not have noticed, or what I haven't heard at any rate, is that a lot of trendy art comics types, like, say, Chris Ware and almost everyone working in contemporary fiction, work around their lack of ideas with a lot of dazzling artwork and typography.



Pick up a copy of Ware's "Quimby Mouse" in a bookstore near you--don't buy it, you'll just want to bring it back--and you'll see what I mean. The damned thingn is beautiful. Unbelievably pretty. And there isn't a single idea in the whole goddamned book. But people buy it, and pretend that they "get it" when there's nothing to get, because they feel stupid admitting that they don't get it. And also because they can't imagine that such an accomplished artist could be so bereft of original--hell, any--thought.



I'm thinking that postmodernism/deconstructionism is essentially a plot by folks without ideas to convince the world that an absence of ideas is itself an idea. The emperor, no clothes, you know.



So a world divided between idea people and art people has become a world divvied up between smart people who can't draw and dumb people who can. Bee-yutiful.

Anticipation



Imagine my consternation upon publishing this week's column. A few hours after writing the following...

Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad have carried out horrendous attacks in Israel. Many innocent people have been killed. But these groups don't have WMDs. And they've never indicated an interest in attacking Americans.

...this happens. Of course, there's no evidence that a Palestinian group was involved. But the fact that it occured in Gaza sure makes it look that way. So I'm waiting for the inevitable e-mails that say "see? they DO target Americans!" Well, maybe they do...now. If so, that's a new development, one that certainly wasn't true when Bush implied that it was.



The Bushies have a lot of problems with the time-space continuum. They like to say, for instance, that Clinton made a strong WMD case against Saddam in the '90s, so why are Democrats arguing against the same WMD case in the '00s? The answer is that time passed: Saddam destroyed his WMDs in accordance with UN requirements between 1998 and 2003. The inspections worked.



Similarly, Hamas et al have never deliberately targeted Americans. At least not until now--and whatever they're up to now doesn't change the fact that Bush lied through his simian teeth.

Why No Comment Function?



When I was researching the whole blogging thing, a cartoonist pal strongly advised me against including a comment feature in my blog. After I spent a few months reading hundreds of political blogs, particularly among the minority of bloggers opposed to Bush's fascist takeover, I understood why. A comment feature, in an ideal world, would allow people to discuss issues in a civilized way. But we don't live in an ideal world, and what happens in reality is that a bunch of right-wing maniacs link to your blog and encourage their right-wing maniac friends, all of whom should be in Gitmo rather than running free, to post insults in the comments section.



Yes, there are people for whom the highlight of their day is to post "Ted Rall is a commie asshole" on the Internet. Those people are welcome to post such illuminating messages on their own blogs.

Central Asia Water Wars



Ah, the irony. There you are, sitting on top of the world's largest untapped oil reserves, enough oil to put the Saudis out of business, so much Caspian Sea oil that the United States invaded Afghanistan just to run a pipeline from your oil to the Indian Ocean, and you just don't have enough water. Seems the Soviets knew a few things that US-backed Third World autocrats don't, eh? Anyway, check out the piece; it's a telling example of post-USSR problems in Central Asia.

Best Bush Quote of the Day



There's a sense that people in America aren't getting the truth.



Believe it or not, that's Bush claiming that things in Iraq are better than the media says. In reality, of course, they're much worse, but Republicans are amazing. No matter how great they've got it, they never, ever stop. They're like the Terminator. Even when they win, they press on for further gains. When Democrats win, which hasn't happened for a long time, they consider the battle won and move on the next issue. Not Republicans. They've got the Iraq spin machine working wonders, but they insist that the media should tell everything--not just 95%--their way.



Everyone should learn from their over-the-top tactics.

Of Course It's UnConstitutional



So the US Supreme Court is going to rule whether the McCarthy-era bastardization of the Pledge of Allegiance--the "one nation, under God" part was added by right-wing lunatics who thought they were differentiating the US from the "Godless" Soviet Union--will continue to be recited by millions of schoolchildren, many of them atheist.



Let's hope the new, saner, post-sodomy ruling Supreme Court will do the right thing and affirm the 9th District Court of Appeals ruling that declared the Christianized Pledge unconstitutional.

This case represents an important opportunity to put a halt to a national effort aimed at removing any religious phrase or reference from our culture," said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, a law firm founded by the Rev. Pat Robertson.

Mr. Sekulow may have missed high school history, but this isn't Afghanistan. We live in a secular country. Religion is a private matter. Neither the state nor its representatives should ever discuss religion in any form in a public forum. Duh.

Criticizing Israel Doesn't Make You Anti-Semitic



Jon is one of the more thoughtful respondents who had a beef with last week's cartoon about "Israeli Policy Fantasies":

Generally i think you are right on target about Bush but you have got it wrong on israel and palestinians. How about a cartoon showing arafat as a 2-bit dictator refusing a very very nice deal three years ago? Where is the biting satire when it comes to blowing up people celebrating a holiday or a wedding or sitting at their kitchen table?

My friend's mother was blow to bits during a Seder in Israel 18 months

ago. Are the Palestinians defending themselves in this case?

I appreciate that strong ideas need strong ,almost hyperbolic rhetoric at times; but i urge you to consider a biting attack on Palestinian duplicity. I am fairly left-wing like you but you are pushing a doctrinaire line almost as bad as the rightists.

Jon raises some good points. Yassir Arafat is a corrupt turd whose corruption nearly erases the good he has done as the world's highest profile Palestinian revolutionary. And anyone who fails to deplore terrorist attacks by Palestinians against innocent Israeli civilians is heartless and immoral.



This cartoon, however, isn't meant to present a fair and balanced look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's simply making fun of the absurd argument, heard repeatedly in the media, that Israel is justified in doing just about anything--assassinating public officials, building Berlin Walls, launching rockets that miss their targets, invading Syria--to "defend" itself.



An analagous cartoon could obviously be done from the other point of view, with a Jewish victim of Palestinian terrorism saying that he doesn't mind losing his family because, after all, the Palestinians were "merely" fighting for independence.



So why didn't I do such a cartoon?



Because, first and foremost, you don't hear Hamas or the PLO arguing that Israelis shouldn't mind getting blown up. But also because an editorial cartoonist's job is to defend the defenseless against the powerful, and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel has the overwhelming advantage in military, diplomatic and political terms. No one needs to come to the aid of the Israelis; they're doing a great job themselves.



American media coverage of the Intifada is so one-sidedly pro-Israel, however, that it's important to balance things out now and then. If it were the other way around, if Palestinian atrocities were always brushed off as the Israelis were condemned, I'd be moved to do a cartoon from the opposite viewpoint.

Karl Rove's Trifecta



Generalissimo El Busho only employs one brain among his besitary of Ford Administration retreads, underqualified hacks and Uncle Toms: Karl Rove. And today is a big day for the chief strategist. After engineering the Florida 2000 judicial coup d'état that installed his boss and Arnold Schwarzenegger's coup lite in California, he's just pulled off the sleazy Texas redistricting Democrats tried to stop by fleeing to New Mexico.



For those who didn't follow the story, redistricting is customarily done after each Census. Last time was 2001. But Texas Republicans, noting that custom isn't law, used their power in the state assembly to take advantage of post-2001 demographic shifts. Anything for a few extra GOP Congressmen--as if they didn't have enough already.



Yeah, yeah, yeah...it's technically legal. But much of what goes on in government is the result of gentlemen's agreements; now that this one has broken down, look for more such shenanigans on both sides. Redistricing is expensive--and we, the taxpayers, pay for it.

We're So Popular



Iraqis show us more love.

US Troops Use Gestapo Tactics in Iraq



Thanks to alert reader Digby for pointing me to this piece from the ever-enlightening UK Independent for yet another answer to the perpetual post-9/11 question "Why do they hate us?"

US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops.

The stumps of palm trees, some 70 years old, protrude from the brown earth scoured by the bulldozers beside the road at Dhuluaya, a small town 50 miles north of Baghdad. Local women were yesterday busily bundling together the branches of the uprooted orange and lemon trees and carrying then back to their homes for firewood.

Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: "They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn't capture anything. They didn't find any weapons."

Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic, that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district.

"They made a sort of joke against us by playing jazz music while they were cutting down the trees," said one man. Ambushes of US troops have taken place around Dhuluaya. But Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as "a punishment of local people because 'you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us'." What the Israelis had done by way of collective punishment of Palestinians was now happening in Iraq, Sheikh Hussein added.

Asked how much his lost orchard was worth, Nusayef Jassim said in a distraught voice: "It is as if someone cut off my hands and you asked me how much my hands were worth."

Go Team America! We're liberating the shit out of them!

Why Don't I Ever Speak/Do Book Signings in Your Town?



I get asked this a lot, and the answer is because there isn't a newspaper in your city that publishes my work.



When I was starting out, I often did appearances in cities like Durham, NC and Iowa City, lovely places both. But not one single human being showed up. Correct that: only one did. Me. On the other hand, when I came to, say, Dayton, OH or Philly, hundreds of people came. This made the trip worthwhile for me, my publisher and the place sponsoring the appearance. The difference? There was a newspaper there that had made people aware of me and to promote the event.



True, there are other means of promotion--posters, flyers, ads, listings, even planted puff pieces in the paper--but I've learned from experience that those don't work very well. So if you want me to come to your town, the best way for that to happen is for you to urge your local newspaper editor to pick up my strip and/or column.



Reading my stuff online may be fun, but if everyone did that, I wouldn't be able to make a living doing this.

Book Title Contest Continues



Thanks to those of you who have sent in suggestions for book titles of my 2004 collection of cartoons and columns about Bush and the goings on in his illegitimate administration. Unfortunately, there are no winners...yet.



Many respondents seem to be after some kind of "Bush Sucks" or "Why Bush Sucks" angle, but book titles have to be a little more subtle, yet straightforward at the same time, than that. So the challenge remains: name the book and you get the original artwork for one of my syndicated cartoons for your wall.



2004 Necropublican Convention in NYC



Next year's Republican National Convention, held late to coincide with the 3rd anniversary festivities surrounding the 9/11/01 attacks and held in New York City despite the fact that every single New Yorker despises Bush and all that he stands for to an extent that can't be expressed by words, promises to put the 1968 Chicago riots to shame. I'm already stocking up bottled water and canned food for the endtimes. And I've got THE most bitching T-shirt designs ready for attendees...

Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline Project Update



The sordid story detailed in my book "Gas War" continues.

Our Good Friend Karimov, U.S. Ally in the War on Terror



Still wondering why they hate us? Check this out.

Why I Don't Cover Everything



Some readers of my cartoons and essays may wonder why I haven't jumped on the scandal invoving the despicable outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson by conservative pundit Robert Novak. Here's the answer:



I'm not very interested in discussing issues that are being extensively, and accurately, covered elsewhere. Unless I have a new angle to add to a discussion, I figure it makes more sense for me to work on the stories and issues being neglected by the rest of the media. It's more fun for me, it's better for the world, and I hope it makes better reading.



If and when I have something to add to the Wilson story, I'll chime in. In the meantime, I'll pretty much agree with those who say that the Democrats are exagerrating the damage, Republicans are understating the treasonous nature of those who planned it (hi Karl!) and that this Administration has as much intention of getting to the bottom of this as it does about 9/11.

It's the Illegitimacy, Stupid



In a letter to the editor of today's New York Times, incoherent pseudoliberal Peter Beinart, editor of the New Republic(an), says:

"It is true that there are liberals who hate the president (sic) so much that they abandon rational thought and assume that everything he does must be evil."

No, there aren't.



Everything that Gov. Bush does is by definition illegal because his rule is illegitimate. For the same reasons that oppressed peoples despise dictators everywhere, Bush is despised because his rule comes not from the people, but in spite of them.



A contributing factor, naturally, is the fact that everything Bush has done as been evil. Even if you accept Bush's legitimacy--that makes you a minority in the polls--it's hard to miss that.

Responsibilities of the Oppressed



I was pleased to receive this otherwise-complimentary email today from Jane:

I'm sure you've heard from many women on your section [in this week's column] about Arnold S. "Sexual harassment is serious business, but evidently not to the 16 women involved--none filed charges." Good lord, man, it's obvious you've never been a woman. File charges? Basic, on-the-job harassment charges, perhaps? And how do you think Jane Doe, Production Assistant, would fare against Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the richest men in Hollywood? Assuming it ever got to trial (instead of settled out of court), would you really give odds on a conviction once Arnold said he was simply joking, it was all very European, he has great respect for women, his wife & her family women blah blah blah? And of course, if Jane had planned to have any sort of career in Hollywood at all, what odds would you give on her being able to continue it? A production set isn't like a corporate job. A few weeks on the set and you might never have to see that person again, you might be told if you complain. So you ride it out. I'm not making excuses per se -- but it is how almost everything goes in that town. The point is that, for economic and professional reasons, women everyday choose to overlook sexual harassment in the workplace. (Not only could I tell you a story or two about the film industry, but I could tell you the same stories about the State Dept. when I worked there many years ago -- the one time I saw someone get popped on sexual harassment charges was due to a leaked report, and not because the system worked.) Don't worry, I haven't dedicated a voodoo doll in your honor; I just think your perspective isn't all that realistic on what a woman would be up against in a situation like that. (In terms of power relations, think of it as young female production assistant = Afghanistan, Arnold Schwarzenegger = US and you'll begin to understand it better, perhaps.)

Jane is right. A woman who has been sexually harrassed by a powerful, wealthy actor would face an uphill battle being taken seriously by her boss, the police and other authorities. Of course the odds of said actor facing punishment are extremely long. This is a function of basic power politics, as Jane points out.



It is, however, your moral duty as a member of society to do whatever you can to prevent predators from victimizing other people. If someone rapes you, and you're too freaked out/terrified/traumatized to go to the cops, then that rapist goes on to rape again. Your refusal to file charges emboldens him. Even if you yourself stand to gain nothing--quite to the contrary, to face untold humiliation--you become part of the evil unless you take any and all possible actions against the person who hurt you.



Back in the 1970s or 1980s, the women who claim that Gov.-Elect Arnold groped them might never have gotten anywhere with their complaints against him. But, had they filed them, they would have been on the record, and might have prevented his rise to the governorship. Assuming that these women are telling the truth, these women decided to let the evil pass on to someone else.



It's sort of like The Club, the anti-car theft device you lock on your steering wheel if you live in a big city. The idea isn't to stop a thief, the idea is to hope that he moves on to someone else's car. "Victimize her, not me" is not a good prescription for a civilized society...something the Afghans, by the way, understand. Their resistance against the US occupation will eventually cause us to pull out, as it did the Russians and the British before.

Cheney Justifies, Continues Lies About Iraq's WMDs



From today's mailbag comes this from J.R.:

That "The War" is bogged down is not factual. The war is over. It was very quick, even by the hasty and shallow judgement of the young. Now it is a remodel job. That people think US is in Iraq for humanitarian reasons is reasonable, being that is why we are there ... The 60% that support G. Bush know you walk that road, too. Education of you, us and the Iraqi people is the solution, not cutting down things you don't understand, that you lump into one fantastic conspiracy theory. The truth is much simpler.

Yes, the truth is simple, but J.R. doesn't have a clue. The war is anything but over; if anything, it began with the fall of Baghdad. Saddam & Co. knew that they'd never be able to defend themselves from a U.S. military onslught, so they never tried. They planned a protracted war of resistance against a clueless occupier. Unfortunately for us, it's going even better than expected (from the Iraqi p.o.v.) because we've managed to turn ourselves into Muslim Enemy No. 1. Good job, Governor Bush! You've really made us safer now!



Yeah, the war's over...except for the guys getting killed and separated from their limbs every single day. Yeah, we're there purely for humanitarian reasons...except for the oil and the no-bid reconstruction contracts to Administration-connected companies. Except, except, except...why do people smart enough to own a computer and compose a coherent sentence on it believe such transparently false BS?



Maybe because they're listening to evil bastards like He Who Gives Press Conferences Hours After Major Heart Surgery:

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney argued Friday that critics of the Iraq war advocate a policy of inaction that could risk hundreds of thousands of American deaths in another terrorist attack.

Cheney offered no new evidence that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had posed an imminent threat, as the administration contended before the war. Instead, without drawing a direct link between Saddam and the Sept. 11 attacks, he cast the Iraq invasion as a crucial component of a Bush administration-led battle to prevent even deadlier future attacks.

That strategy would include taking action against governments that could help terrorists gain weapons of mass destruction.

"That possibility, the ultimate nightmare, could bring devastation to our country on a scale we have never experienced," he said. "Instead of losing thousands of lives, we might lose tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of lives in a single day of horror."

Here, at a glance, is Bush-Cheney's twisted association of Iraq with the 9/11 attacks. Yes, a government could one day give terrorists WMDs to be used against the United States. But not Iraq.



Because, Mr. Lieutenant Governor, IRAQ DIDN'T HAVE WMDs. It would be pretty friggin' hard for Iraq to give something they didn't have to anyone. Oh, and: IRAQ DIDN'T HAVE ANY LINKS TO AL QAEDA OR OTHER TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS.



Administraton liars say that Iraq had links to "terrorist groups." They don't specify which ones because they mean Hezbollah and Hamas, groups that have never launched attacks against targets outside Israel. Those groups are clearly a danger to Israel, but implying that they plan to blow up New York City is beyond a stretch--there's just no reason to believe it.



If a government that DID have WMDs (say, North Korea, which we're ignoring) decided to give WMDs to terrorist groups with which it had links (Pakistan-Al Qaeda, for instance, but we're ignoring that too), then we'd be screwed. But Bush's not interested in protecting us from these real threats.

Cheney largely ignored the continuing violence around Iraq and the lack of broader international help for the U.S. mission there, mentioning only in passing in a 25-minute speech the "difficulties we knew would occur."



He offered a point-by-point rebuttal to criticisms:



_A team of U.S. weapons hunters in Iraq led by David Kay has so far found none of the suspected weapons of mass destruction that were a main Bush rationale for war. But Cheney focused on other portions of an interim report from Kay that suggested — but did not provide definitive evidence — that Iraq might have had weapons or weapons programs.



The examples Cheney cited included: the discovery of Iraqi intelligence laboratory and safe houses containing equipment suitable for biological and chemical weapons research; a prison lab complex possibly used to test biological weapons on humans; a vial of live botulinum bacteria stored since 1993 in an Iraqi scientist's refrigerator which could make a biological weapon but showed no signs of having been used; research on Brucella and Congo Crimean Hemmorrhagic Fever, neither considered traditional biological warfare agents; and design work for prohibited long-range missiles.



"Taken together, they ... provide a compelling case for the use of force against Saddam Hussein," Cheney said of the findings. "The United States made our position clear: We could not accept the grave danger of Saddam Hussein and his terrorist allies turning weapons of mass destruction against us or our friends and allies."

Really. Were the American people told that they were going to lose hundreds of young men and hundreds of billions of dollars over the "possible" lab and a vial of 10-year-old biotoxins? That's not how I remember it.

Cheney mocked those who have questioned whether the danger from Saddam was as immediate as Bush claimed in prewar days. "As long as George W. Bush is president of the United States, this country will not permit gathering threats to become certain tragedies," he said.

Here's Bush's vile policy of preemption, that justifies attacks against just about any country we feel like it. This is part and parcel of the policy of the neo-conservatives who dominate the Administration. Know them, fear them, remove them next fall.

Despite some fears that the war stirred up more terrorism than it prevented, Cheney said that both Saddam's and terrorists' hostility to America "has long been evident."

This from a real patriot like Dick Cheney, a man who evaded the draft during Vietnam and is destroying fundamental American values, like not invading other nations unless it's absolutely necessary.

Cheney also responded to criticism he described as advocating that the United States "may not act without unanimous international consent" when its security is threatened — even though virtually no opponents have taken that position.



"It comes down to a choice between action that assures our security and inaction that allows dangers to grow," he said. "President Bush declined the course of inaction, and the results are there for all to see."



Those results, he said, include empty torture chambers, new schools, reopened hospitals, improving infrastructure, progress toward democracy and no danger of an alliance between Saddam and terrorists.

Funny, that's not what Iraqis say. And there never was any such danger, because Saddam and Islamist groups were mortal enemies. Cheney knows that.

Amid the concerted White House public relations offensive, the critics were not quiet. Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean said the administration has "badly misled" the American people.



"We've now learned that Saddam was not involved in the September 11th attacks, that there was no strong evidence Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that presented an imminent threat to the United States, that Iraq did not try to purchase nuclear materials from Africa, that Saddam was nowhere near developing nuclear weapons, and that the Bush administration had no real plan for reconstruction once Saddam was gone," Dean said.

Just so.

Another Reason to Stay Home



According to this follow-up to the story about the Harlemite who kept a tiger and alligator in his 7-room apartment in the projects:

There are 15,000 pet tigers, lions, cougars and other "big cats" in the United States, nearly three times as many as in the wild, said Wayne Pacelle, senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States. "It's become ... a national epidemic," Pacelle said. "They're sold pretty cheaply. You can buy them on the Internet." Web sites advertise tiger cubs from $500 to $2,000 or more, depending on the breed. Dealers also peddle lion, leopard and cheetah cubs.

Assuming that each of the 15,000 pet, um, kitties lives in its own house or apartment, that means 1 in 6,000 American households is harboring something big, muscular and bitey. Divide your city's population by 6,000, think about it, and have a nice day.

Saddam Human Tithe Count: 2 Dead, 4 Wounded



Two American soldiers are dead and 4 were wounded last night in our ongoing, peaceful, victorious occupation of Iraq, where we are much loved. The details of this latest sacrifice to Halliburton and Bechtel:

BAGHDAD, Iraq--Two U.S. soldiers were killed and four wounded in an ambush in the same Baghdad neighborhood where hours earlier a suicide car bomb killed 10 people, including the driver, the U.S. military said Friday.

Shiite Muslims denied there was an ambush and said fighters loyal to a radical Shiite cleric battled U.S. troops Thursday night as the Americans approached their leader's headquarters. Up to two Iraqis died in the fighting and seven were wounded, according to various Iraqi reports.

Witnesses said seven U.S. tanks backed by three low-flying helicopters returned to the area early Friday, but left an hour later without incident.

The U.S. military said troops from the 1st Armored Division were on patrol in Sadr City, the largest Shiite Muslim enclave in Baghdad, when they were ambushed about 8 p.m. Thursday.

Sheik Abdel-Hadi al-Daraji — an aide to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr — blamed the clash on the Americans, saying they opened fire first.

Outside al-Sadr's office, about 10,000 Shiites gathered for Friday prayers and mourners placed two coffins of Iraqis they said died in the clash with the Americans. Many of the worshippers carried portraits of al-Sadr and his father, a top religious leader who was killed in 1999 by suspected agents of Saddam Hussein.

"Look at how far we've come, much further than anyone would have expected," Bremer told ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday. "We're back at prewar levels in power, we're back at prewar levels in water, the schools are open, the hospitals are open, and we're really making tremendous progress here."

In Sadr city, al-Daraji denounced the American forces occupying his country.

"America claims to be the pioneer of freedom and democracy, but it resembles or indeed is a terror organization," al-Daraji told the congregation, which chanted "no to America and yes to martyrdom" as the coffins arrived. "The Americans may have forgotten that the real power rests with God and not with the wretched America."

He accused the Americans of trying to drive a wedge between Iraq's majority Shiites and minority Sunnis and claimed the U.S.-led coalition was responsible for "manufacturing crises and trying to create havoc." But he stopped short of calling on Shiites to take up arms against the Americans and instead insisted "we want peace."

Al-Daraji, like some in the outdoor congregation, wore a white coffin shroud, a custom among pious Shiites to signal their readiness for martyrdom.

Given my own experiences with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, I'm inclined to take Iraqis at their word when they claim that the Americans fired first. They're a nervous, trigger-happy, bunch. Also, I can't help thinking of the book "Black Hawk Down" when locals describe low-altitude choppers hanging out over their dusty streets. This caused an enormous amount of resentment against U.S. Marines in Mogadishu, Somalia. Now it's happening again. I guess the Pentagon never read the book.

Afghanistan Continues Slide Into Civil War; US Stands By and Laughs



While UN peacekeepers sit around Kabul with their thumbs up their ass, northern Afghanistan has plunged into full-scale civil war. My old buddies from my war correspondency days, warlords Atta Mohammad (no relation to the dead 9/11 hijacker) and Rashid Dostum, are tearing up the landscape near Mazar-e-Sharif, a provincial capital city near the nation's border with Uzbekistan.



Here are some of the lowlights from the Associated Press.

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan - After fighting that killed dozens of people, rival warlords in northern Afghanistan said Thursday that they had reached a truce and would begin withdrawing tanks and other weapons within 48 hours.

But with soldiers squared off along a tense battlefield, it was not clear whether the cease-fire would hold despite assurances from both sides.

The fighting between the two groups — both nominally loyal to President Hamid Karzai — was the worst in northern Afghanistan in months, with one side claiming more than 60 people were killed.

One warlord, Atta Mohammed, said the truce took effect immediately and that both sides would return all weaponry to their bases in 48 hours.

"I am sure this cease-fire will hold," Mohammed told The Associated Press.

Gen. Majid Rozi, a senior commander for northern warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, confirmed the details of the truce and said the withdrawal of weapons had begun.

The agreement followed talks involving Afghan Interior Minister Ali Ahmad Jalali and British Ambassador Ron Nash.

"If there is no peace in the north of the country, it will damage the trust the international community has in us," Jalali said after the signing of the truce on Thursday.

Much of the fighting has occurred about 12 miles west of Mazar-e-Sharif, home to 1.5 million people and scene of some of the bloodiest battles in the U.S.-led war to oust Afghanistan's former Taliban regime.

A spokesman for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, Manoel de Almeida e Silva, said the conflict was "very intense," with both sides using tanks and mortars.

It was not immediately clear what sparked the fighting. A government spokesman in Kabul said it was most likely due to disputes over land or access to water, the cause of repeated clashes in the past two years.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan said it was concerned about the fighting and was closely monitoring it.

There are about 5,500 NATO-led peacekeepers in Afghanistan, but they are restricted to Kabul. NATO has drawn up plans to expand the force to other cities, including Mazar-e-Sharif.

Keep being concerned. Keep "monitoring the situation." No need to leave Kabul. After all, it's only been two years since you took over.



Still wonder why they hate us?



We're such losers.

Piehole Quote o' the Day



From a wire service story about Generalissimo El Busho's current PR initiative to convince us that Everything Does Not So Suck As Much As You Think:

Bush rejected criticism that progress is too slow in Iraq, saying Americans are not hearing the real story. "It's a lot better than you probably think," the president said, adding that people who have been in Iraq are stunned by the stories at home.

He said schools and hospitals are reopening, children are getting immunizations and water and electricity are coming back. "Life is getting better," he said.

"People who have been in Iraq." Funny, I was under the impression that the reporters who write about the Iraqi Resistance killing one of our soldiers every day, Shiites rioting in the streets after we arrested one of their clerics, people going months without electricity or running water and get quote after quote from locals saying that things were better under Saddam and that they hate our guts...I thought they were in Iraq too. And they're probably spending a bit more time, and seeing a little more reality, than Bush's henchmen like Donald Rumsfeld, as he breezes in and out of fortified American cantonments.



Occupiers always lead the press to showcases like new schools and prisons where the inmates have blankets (today, anyway). Stupid though many reporters may be, they're smart enough to see through such efforts in occupied Iraq. If the United States doesn't want to be seen as a neocolonialist occupation form out to exploit Iraq's oil, it shouldn't have invaded in the first place. And now it needs to get out.

I'm a Father Confessor to Republicans. They write to me to be led to the light, and are often startled when I engage them in a constructive, civil manner. They are, of course, falling for my evil ploy: to dazzle them with the civility and politeness they don't hear in their GOP households. ("Shut yer piehole, ya Clinton lover!")



One such lost soul is my faithful correspondent, Alan:

What about the "where's the WMA's?...Gotcha!" inanity that has sorta been your umbilical cord lately? A couple weeks ago, you were demanding Bush apologize to every upright-walking mammal on the plant for his decisions and for him to insist upon his own execution.

On the heels of inspector Kay's report, as a man of principle a was sure you'd devote this wk's column to ingesting crow for your own miscalculations. Or was was everything in your copy illegible (except the 'no WMA's found'?) like it was for most other lefties?

By the way, which one of the illustrious dozen or so democratic hopefuls do think is the one to cure all our ills?

Here we see a standard rightie ploy: the cry of hypocrisy, reflexively uttered whenever one dares to make a point. I admit it: I hold conflicting views. Life is complicated. Here, however, Alan has failed to find one of these conflicts.



Referring to my column deploring "gotcha politics" this week, he says I've been doing the "gotcha" thing on Bush concerning WMDs. No, Alan. Wrong.



Attacking Bush because HE FUCKING LIED HIS ASS OFF isn't "gotcha politics." When a man claims to KNOW that a nation (a) has dangerous weapons of mass destruction, (b) plans to use them against us and (c) will kill millions of Americans unless we stop them first, he'd better be prepared to face the music when everything that his critics said--that none of this was true--turns out to be the case. Bush murdered hundreds of US servicemen and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis, and maimed God knows how many more, with his treasonous lies. He deserves to be called to account.



Assuming that Rush Limbaugh is guilty of racist remarks and pill-popping, on the other hand, attacking him for those minor offenses is "gotcha politics." We can't nail the guy for being a silver-tongued right-wing demagogue, so we hope he'll go down on drug charges. It's BS, pure and simple.



Alan's clearly doing a little pill-popping of his own on the Kay report, which clearly states that neither evidence of an active weapons program nor weapons themselves have been found in Iraq. Frankly, I didn't reference the Kay report because it merely confirmed something that right-thinkin Americans knew well before March: there never were WMDs, and Bush was lying all along.



As for the Democratic hopefuls, any of them would be an intellectual, fiscal and moral improvement over George W. Bush. Yes, even Lieberman. Right now, however, my money is on Howard Dean, simply because I think he's the only candidate who can win. He's telegenic, fast on his feet and I bet most voters could imagine him as their President. I reserve the right to change my mind, but that's how I feel now.

Countless correspondents have written to point out that there's an error in this week's column. Donovan McNabb, not Donald McNabb. I don't follow football, and this makes it obvious, but that's still no excuse to screw up. My apologies to Mr. McNabb.

In this week's column, I off-handedly mentioned something that I thought had been pretty well-established by now: that Bush "attacked Afghanistan without cause." Although the protests against invading Iraq were far bigger than those against bombing Afghanistan, in truth many thoughtful Americans have been horribly hoodwinked by the Administration. They don't understand that, as with Iraq, Afghanistan had nothing to do with fighting terrorism and everything to do with the usual geopolitical grabs for influence over the oil and natural gas supplies which are the lynchpin of modern capitalist production. Here's an e-mail I got today from John, one of my regular correspondents:

Camon, even for you, attacking Afghanistan without cause????

Where did you come up with that one from????? Do you realize that the only government in the world that recognized the taliban as the rightful government of Afghanistan at the time was Pakistan? Even the UN didnt. So, it is not like we invaded even North Korea or Iran. We gave an ultimatum to the parasite thugs that leached on to the Afghani people. But even if....WITHOUT CAUSE??????? How could you say that??? How could you HONESTLY say that???? Where are you? Is there a real person in there somewhere??

Yes, John, there is a real person in here. Somewhere. And he really needs a shower. Onward and downward:



Those who haven't found it at Target for $7 like I did should pick up a copy of Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War." Written with the cooperation of Bush and his top officials, the book details the Administration's first reactions to the 9/11 attacks. The so-called neocon wing of the Administration--Rumsfeld, Rice, Armitage--urged Bush within hours after the collapse of the World Trade Center to use the attacks as an excuse to attack Saddam Hussein. This isn't some liberal conspiracy monger, but the Administration's official story. Bush decided that the American people hadn't been properly primed for an Iraq attack, so they decided to go after Afghanistan instead.



Now there's little doubt that Afghanistan's Taliban regime had something of an unholy alliance with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. In fact, bin Laden was in Afghanistan, not far from Kandahar, as of 9/9/01, under the protection of Mullah Omar. But Bush didn't have any evidence that Osama had carried out 9/11 at the time. As far as we know, he still doesn't. So attacking Afghanistan to get Osama didn't necessarily make sense. Furthermore, the Taliban repeatedly offered to turn Osama over if presented with evidence against him--a reasonable request considering that The Taliban had no diplomatic relations with the United States, much less an extradition treaty.



Reliable sources within Afghanistan, however, informed me that bin Laden had fled Afghanistan on or before 9/11 in anticipation of U.S. missile attacks. Where did Osama go? Probably Pakistan's "Northern Areas," the Pakistani-held section of Kashmir. This area is extremely rugged and mountainous, and the locals are highly sympathetic to bin Laden's brand of Islamic fundamentalism. Kashmir is a standard escape route from Afghanistan when the heat is on; that's where the hijackers of an Indian jet went after the Taliban released them.



Why did Bin Laden leave? Because Bush spooked him, giving him so much advance warning of a U.S. invasion that he would have had to have been an utter moron not to flee. Had Bush really wanted Osama, he would have asked Pakistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan--all U.S. allies--to seal their borders with Afghanistan. Then he would have inserted Special Forces commandos to trap bin Laden and his entourage. The fact that he never attempted to do this proves that capturing bin Laden was never a principal war aim of the U.S. invasion.



Bush's interest in the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project, however, is well-documented in my book "Gas War." Most experts agree that, had 9/11 not provided a pretext for a war, Bush would have invaded Afghanistan by the end of 2001 nonetheless. The details are in my book; sorry, but you'll have to read them there since I don't feel like typing the whole thing up again.



But I digress. I do that. Back to John's letter:



Three nations: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates gave diplomatic recognition to the Taliban regime in 2001. They did, after all, control 95% of the country at the time, and were widely expected to finish off the Northern Alliance by the summer of '02. The United States and United Nations continued to recognize the Northern Alliance as the legal government of Afghanistan, but in practice had many dealings with the Taliban, who were actually in charge. (The Northern Alliance, meanwhile, received little help from the United States, which had largely given up on it.) For instance, top Bush Administration officials met with Taliban officials in Texas during February 2001 in order to discuss the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project. I wonder what happened to the beautiful Afghan carpet the Taliban mullahs gave Bush as a present? It was supposedly a beauty.



Yes, Bush issued an ultimatum to turn over Osama. But when the Taliban agreed to do so, Bush refused their offer. Perhaps he wasn't all that interested in Osama after all; me, I would have loved to hear Osama testifying in court about the interesting meetings he had with Bush's father. But I can understand why Bush 43 might not have been so interested.



I'll admit, I don't understand the North Korea/Iran/Afghanistan comparison. So if the United States invades a nation that doesn't happen to enjoy full diplomatic recognition from the US and/or UN, it doesn't count? And what about Iraq? Saddam Hussein's Iraq had a seat at the UN and was, in fact, recognized by most of the world's nations. But that's different--I guess. For some reason that I can't quite figure out.



So yeah, it was without cause. We weren't after Osama, we weren't going after the guys who did 9/11, and we sure as fuck didn't care about liberating the long-suffering people of Afghanistan. As I write this, NATO is still thinking about maybe possibly expanding peacekeeping outside of Kabul--you know, to 95% of the country. The part that always needed it most. If we had a cause, it wasn't one we could say in public.



In all fairness, I understand why Afghanistan looked legitimate to some people. The Taliban were foul, they harbored terrorists, terrorists attacked us. But we didn't act against the Taliban to liberate women, the Taliban offered to turn over the terrorists we demanded, and the terrorists we demanded had nothing to do with 9/11. It was a brilliant act of deception, as demonstrated by the fact that, even now that the Iraq war has become a debacle, most opponents of the Administration, people like Howard Dean, continue to support the Afghan invasion.



Oh, and they're Afghan people, not Afghanis. Afghanis are the money, like dollars and rubles.

A Reminder for New Yorkers

"Schlock 'N' Roll" cartoonist Ward Sutton's latest project, a gallery event called "Breaking News," is tonight at 7 p.m. at the Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South at Thompson Street in Manhattan. Check out "special clips from The Daily Show, a presentation from The Onion, a reading by Tom Tomorrow (This Modern World), performance by Zeroboy, music by Joe McGinty & Nick Danger (Loser's Lounge), animation by Robert Smigel & J.J. Sedelmaier (SNL's TV Funhouse), as well as artwork by yours truly and others not so truly. I'll be hanging out, scrounging for food and drink in these difficult times.



Hey, what's the point of ear hairs? I mean, biologically. Are they nature's way of protecting us from evil brain-eating centipedes? Surely some evolutionary biologist reading this knows the answer.

My favorite e-mail from today comes from "Sam in L.A.", who shares the following with us:

You leftwingers are idiots. All of us to the right of you are richer than you, so our political campaigns crankout more propaganda than yours no matter how much yours crank out. You don’t even realize we divert your attention over to other policy matters so you won’t notice us cranking out so much campaign propaganda that the voters give us the majority of the political offices.

Therefore, our government policies will always be so widespread that you are marginalized (even if you stop us from getting the media controlled by people who are too rich to care about how much campaign propaganda we crank out, and even if you stop us from giving big campaign contributions to campaigns and getting the government policies we want in return.)

Thank you for making your so-called clean money campaign finance reforms voluntary, so our campaigns can still outspend yours by as much as they want to. In other words, thank you for letting our campaigns continue to crank out more propaganda than yours no matter how much yours crank out.

Goodbye doddering old Senator Strom Thurmond. Hello California Governor Arnold the Groper. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!….

Aside from the "left-winger" jibe (hey, I'm a moderate, it's the country that's gone over the Niagara Falls of ultra-conservatism/Bushite proto-fascism...and I may be an idiot, God knows I feel like one whenever I see people like Ann Coulter raking in the cash while I sit in my tiny apartment), Sam's pretty much spot-on. The right will always have more money than the left, and making campaign finance reform voluntary is like any other regulation that's voluntary--on the environment, labor rights, you name it--utterly worthless.



On the other hand, Democrats/liberals/progressives are an overwhelming majority in this country. The irony is that this majority has been hoodwinked by hundreds of millions of advertising dollars into supporting politicians and programs that work against the interests of the nation as a whole and against them personally. The duty of those of us smart enough to realize that rich people don't give a damn about the rest of us is to show them that that's so. That's the purpose of the book I'm currently writing; more on that later.



By the way, I'm having a hard time being bummed about Arnold Schwarzenegger's victory in California. To hear my Democratic friends tell it, this is just as bad as Florida 2000, but no--it ain't. Arnold worked within the system; if Californians don't like the recall provision in their state constitution they ought to get rid of it. Isn't that what their referendum system is for? Bush, on the other hand, overturned the system, broke the rules, violated the state and federal constitution, stuffed ballot boxes, dispatched violent goons to intimidate officials conducting a recount. Hardly the same thing, though it's icky to see that pig George Schultz joining Arnold's transition team.

The Great Ted Rall Book Naming Contest

True confession: I've always had trouble naming my books. An old college roommate came up with "Waking Up in America." The original title for "Revenge of the Latchkey Kids" was supposed to be "Kill Your Parents Before They Kill You"; oddly, the Barnes & Noble chain refused to carry any book with such an, um, title. Anyway:

Next year I'm publishing a collection of essays, columns and cartoons about the Bush Administration. I'm entertaining several possible titles, but to tell the truth I'm none too thrilled about them. That's why I'm turning to you for help.

Send your suggestion for a title (and subtitle) for my 2004 Bush Administration book to chet@rall.com. Form should be along the lines of "Beating Around the Bush: Diary of a Contrarian." (Like I said, I'm having problems.) Try to avoid puns based on my name. Short is better. Alliteration ain't bad. Most of all, though, it should describe the contents of the book in a way that makes readers want to pick it up and take it home.

If I use your suggestion or something close to it, you'll win the original artwork for one of my cartoons--a value of $500 to $700. Not all cartoons are available, but I'll give you your choice within reason. Deadline is ASAP. Contest ends when I announce that it's over right here; otherwise, assume it's ongoing. Good luck!

Arnold Schwarzeneggar is governor-elect of California this morning because he learned the art of the apology. Confronted with the fact that he had said some stupid stuff about Hitler as a young man and that he had indulged in foul behavior with unwilling women, he didn't pull the usual duck-and-cover maneuvers that normal politicians use. He admitted it, apologized for it, and did so--brilliantly, in my view--in front of a friendly crowd, at one of his rallies. Imagine if Bill Clinton had said, "Yeah, I had sex with Monica Lewinsky. She's da bomb and I love her and we're moving in together as soon as my divorce from Hillary comes through!"? We would've loved him for it--and he wouldn't have faced the impeachment that he richly deserved.

On a serious note, I doubt that Arnold will be able to govern California any more effectively than Jesse Ventura did in Minnesota. Although the national Republican Party has gotten behind him in the final hour, Arnold remains an outsider at odds with the hard-right tenor of the state's GOP leadership, and he's dealing with a disciplined Democratic-controlled legislature in Sacramento. He's going to need to close that $8 billion budget gap somehow--make that $12 billion if he repeals the car tax--and it's hard to imagine where he'll find the money without soaking the rich with a big income tax hike. I almost feel sorry for the guy...and sorrier for the long-suffering people of California, who'll continue to make do with failing schools and infrastructure because of Proposition 13.

One "Whit Abraham," who claims to be a cadet at the US Naval Academy, is the latest to send his words of electronic wisdom my way. This missive merely confirms how close I came to social disaster when I very nearly ended up enrolling at Annapolis myself back during the fall of '81; the lure of free tuition, guaranteed employment and those girl-magnet uniforms were great, but not great enough when I considered the likelihood that I'd end up court-martialed for insubordination. If you think I'm snotty now...! Anyway, here's Whit's letter:

Your cartoons sure are eye-poppers. Judging by your long list of guidelines for the e-mails that you receive, I will venture a guess and claim, probablly accurately, that you love to dish out criticism but can't take any. That's your excuse for only reading emails from people who agree with you, and "appreciate" what you articulate through pictures. Hiding behind this list of rules is pretty embarassing for such a clever guy, even though it is a great way to celebrate yourself. Maybe you should learn how to face criticism - you are a political critic yourself, arent you? Great job on consistintly overlooking why our war against Saddam was indeed just, and the fact that post-war investigations and reparations to an already damaged nation will take more than a few months after the shooting stops. I understand that you make your living off of irrational sensationalism, but what purpose do your cartoons really serve? I understand that you arent the only satirist out there, but you sure are a prominant one. People like you weaken the morale of our citizenry when, in order to sow the seeds of peace in the Middle East, they need to believe in our leadership and the just reasons that were articulated for engaging in war. Historically, people such as yourself were shunned during times of national crisis, and for good reasons. People like you provide an obscene amount of public criticism and denegration, offer no subsequent solutions to the problems you indirectly address through petty cartoons, and then shirk behind "email guidelines." In short, you speak loudly and carry no stick whatsoever. Therfore, you are obviously a coward. Most Americans would call you something else...a synonym that starts with p. Report me to my internet provider...they liberated Baghdad while you had arts and crafts time. Besides, thats what I'd expect from a newsboy like you.

Let's take these in order. The reason for my e-mail rules, Whit, is that I'm a busy guy. I do an op-ed column, three syndicated cartoons and four freelance cartoons every week. Plus I'm writing a book, and now this blog thing! That only leaves so much time for responding to e-mail. I figure, if I'm going to reply to anyone, it's gonna be my fans, not people who hate my guts and wish I was dead. And yes, I also pledge to report people who threaten me to their ISPs and law enforcement authorities. Given how many nuts there are in the world, it's stupid to assume that people who send you a death threat aren't serious about it. So yeah, I take these things seriously. Think about it: when's the last time you sent a death threat to someone whose opinion you disagreed with? Right. Most people don't do that. So, when someone does, they should be reported.

I love this quote: "People like you weaken the morale of our citizenry when, in order to sow the seeds of peace in the Middle East, they need to believe in our leadership and the just reasons that were articulated for engaging in war." Sounds like my pal Alan Keyes, who posited that I should be shot or jailed for damaging the war effort. "Need to believe"? No one needs to believe anything but the truth. If it isn't obvious by now that the Bush Administration lied--not distorted, not misled, but outright lied--about Saddam's ties to Al Qaeda and his ability to strike US targets with weapons of mass destruction, I don't know what to say. Our "leadership" is illegitimate and unelected and should be treated as such. That means every single thing they say or do is by definition a lie. If Bush declares Arbor Day, don't believe it. Oh, and please let me know when the "seeds of peace" start sprouting in the Middle East as the result of the invasion of Iraq.

The "coward" insult is a right-wing standard. I'll leave it to others to judge whether or not I'm a pussy (there! I said it!), but I've probably spent more time in war zones than Whit--Afghanistan and Kashmir to be specific, plus some hairy moments in southern Kyrgyzstan during an Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan offensive. And I didn't have a gun. I don't take offense personally, the brave men and women journalists--"newsboys," if you will--who died to bring us the truth from Afghanistan during late 2001 were anything but cowards. And unlike Whit, they learned how to spell wherever THEY went to school.

Max R. sent me the following missive about a cartoon I drew last week that depicted the ultimate solution to what Israelis consider the Arab problem:

You must be unaware of which side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has repeatedly talked about driving the other side into "the sea." It's interesting that you managed to turn that Arab threat against Israelis on its head by implying (absurdly) that it's the Palestinians who face that danger. (Cartoon of 10/2/03) Nice timing, too. It's true that you couldn't have known that 19 Israelis (Jews and Arabs) would be killed in Haifa by a suicide bomber -- but since those massacres happen like clockwork, you could have expected it.

True. When I drew that cartoon last week, no one from Hamas or Hezbollah was kind enough to drop me a line about upcoming suicide bombings. But what people on BOTH sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict miss is that BOTH sides are the victims of terrorist attacks. The suicide bombers are reprehensible, targeting innocent civilians. So are the Israeli army and air attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. Both sides think they're retaliating--whatever. In what way does knowing that a suicide bombing will likely occur in Israel next week make it inappropriate to comment on Ariel Sharon's disgusting policies?

Given your other cartoons, I don't know why I should think that you care how many Israelis are killed by Palestinian suicide bombers. Still, it's depressing to see so clearly that Israel's defense of its citizenry is a joke to you.



With sadness that the Left, whose number I once counted myself among, is so rabidly anti-Israel

I don't know about "The Left." I myself resent the notion that criticizing Ariel Sharon makes one anti-Israeli. (Hmmm...sounds familiar, huh?) Of course I care. I care about the harm occuring on both sides of Sharon's vile Berlin Wall that he's building to establish a total apartheid state--and that wall is the subject of the cartoon.



Retaliation is a multisyllabic way to refer to lowering yourself to your enemy's level.

A scrumptious steak dinner is in the balance. One of my savviest drinking buddies and an all-around great guy who knows more about Inside the Beltway politics than most people I know has bet me that General Wesley Clark will defeat Governor Howard Dean for the Democratic nomination. I think Dean will win, not only because I want him to—as a charter member of the 2004 Anybody But Bush club, I think the Vermonter stands a better chance of defeating Piehole* than any other Democratic presidential candidate to date—but because I think he has it locked up. Failing, of course, some future scandal involving cats, herpes and hair spray. My best guess is that Clark, a registered Republican until 25 days before his declaration of intent, is running for the vice presidency. Frankly, I think the only guy who can give Dean trouble now is John Kerry--and he's pretty much toast. Still. My friend's a smart guy. Does he know something I don't?

*Piehole = my term of endearment for the man who plays the president on TV. Also known as Shrub, Bush 2, Bush 43, the Resident, Thief-in-Chief, Generalissimo El Busho, That Idiot.

People write the darnedest things! Check out this e-mail I received today. One Bryan (I'll spare him the use of his last name), writes:

I think you need to ask yourself a question......

Here it is..... Have I gone to far? First off let my say I do enjoy your work, albeit with a grain of salt. Next, I know this might be hard for you to contemplate. But just humor me for a moment. Have you ever heard the saying "The truth is probably somewhere in between both extremes." Ok you obviously hate the Bush administration. So let's call him the "right" extreme. Although I don't agree....I would call someone on the level of Hitler the most extreme conservative, but I digress. Bush is the most extreme for this argument. Who would be on the "left" extreme... hmmm.... Let's think.... Maybe Ghandi, but he wasn't a saint either. Just lookup his views on the untouchables cast in India. Ok. How about you! Yea... So if I am right, then that means the truth is somewhere in between your point of view and Mr. Bush and both of you can be accused of being an extremist...

Just think about it...

OK, I'll allow that the Bush Administration fits on the ideological spectrum somewhere to the left of Hitler. Let's say, on a scale from 1 to 10, Adolf's a 10 and Marx was a 1. The question is, where's Bush? By definition 5 would be a centrist. Since Bush's regime espouses a radical right-wing agenda--establishing a concentration camp at Gitmo, paring the Bill of Rights, running up a $10 trillion deficit so that a few thousand superrich people don't have to pay taxes, a USA-Patriot Act that allows government spooks to paw through your stuff without having to tell you about it--he's no 5. Or 6. I'd give him an 8 for what he's done and a 9 for what he'd like to do. Death camps? Nah—not yet, anyway.

Where I run into trouble with Bryan is his supposition that, as someone who's against Bush's politics, I'm an anti-Bush, a Ghandi to Bush's Hitler. That would make me a 3 for what I am and a 2 for what I'd like to do. But that's silly. I'm all over the place ideologically; I espouse libertarian values of keeping the government out of people's personal lives, conservative opinions on balancing the budget, free trade and keeping out of foreign conflicts that don't concern us, and leftist views of economic and social justice. I support the Second Amendment right to bear arms; I'm against the death penalty because it turns society into murderers, not because I think Mumia's innocent. Which I don't.

I'm certainly not much of a wild-eyed revolutionary in the vein of, say, Dubya. For one thing, I pretty much like my streets free of rioters and think the United States would be just dandy if it would nip and tuck some of its uglier aspects: propping up dictators, paying teachers like shit, letting homeless people sleep on the street, that sort of thing. On the other hand, I'm willing to concede that the system may not be reformable, that it may one day have to be utterly destroyed in order for progress to occur. That'd be a shame, though, since it wouldn't take much reform to make things perfect. So where do I rank myself? I don't, but if you put a Constitutionally-protected firearm up to my head and demand that I tell you, I'll say: 5. I feel like a moderate, anyway. The "average" may be right-wing, but that doesn't turn the rest of us into left-wing. Not automatically, anyway. Ideological labeling is stupid, unless you're describing a simpleton like Bush.



So, there. I thought about it. Why? I can't imagine.

Israel, already being led over the precipice of disaster by Ariel Sharon, continues to escalate the cycle of madness in the Middle East by attacking Syria without provocation. (It followed the bombing in Haifa that killed 19 Israelis, but there's zero proof that Syria had anything to do with that attack.) If President Assad possessed any integrity, he'd do what countries do when their neighbors invade their airspace to drop bombs: declare war. But he won't, because he would surely lose against Israel's U.S.-financed army and because his "brotherly Arab nation" friends wouldn't lift a finger to help if he did. And there's always the chance that George W. Bush would use such a declaration as an excuse to add Syria to his growing collection of Muslim colonies. As Scott McClellan says, "We've always stated that Israel has the right to defend herself." How about Syria. Scott? Does Syria have the right to defend herself too? It's just another reason why Arabs feel powerless, and resort to extreme measures like blowing themselves up to make a point.

I like to complain, but you already knew that. Here are my two complaints for the day:

People often send me e-mail to request that I put out a new collection of cartoons, yet when I actually publish one, the sales are abysmal. The latest example: my book "Search and Destroy" came out in 2001, yet has sold a mere fraction of my books based on a theme, like "To Afghanistan and Back". Bottom line: fans say they want collections but aren't very enthusiastic about them once they come out. Of course, there are other problems, like the fact that cartoon collections invariably get stuck in the "humor section," a.k.a., your bookstore's ghetto. Theme books like "Afghanistan" enjoy more prominent play in "current events" or "non fiction." So if you've ever wondered why there aren't more books collecting your favorite comic strips, here's why: because you don't buy them.

Complaint deux: The Internet. If you read cartoons or columns on the Internet, you're reading them for free. The only way this stuff can continue to exist is for it to be subsidized through some other medium, like print newspapers. If a newspaper or magazine runs a cartoon, they pay for it. Before the Internet, a cartoonist's fans would write their local newspaper editor to encourage them to pick up my stuff. If they were unsuccessful, they had no other way to see my work--which was a strong inducement. Now, if you live in a city where the paper doesn't deign to run Ted Rall cartoons, you can simply come here to my website. There's no pressure; the stuff's right there, in color even! This isn't a state of affairs that can last forever--but I don't like the way it's trending.

Birds do it, bees do it, now I'm doing it too. Welcome to my tentative experiment with the blogging format.

To be honest, I'm more than a little skeptical about this. Most blogs are self-indulgent tripe, far too many political blogs, regardless of whether they speak to the left or the right, preach to the converted. Can I do any better? Not likely. More importantly, I know that I'll often be too busy to post anything. Will people keep checking back?

I already get the chance to express myself politically and otherwise in cartoons and columns, so I don't plan to use this blog the same way other politically-minded people like, say, Tom Tomorrow does: commenting on current events, linking to news stories, that sort of thing. Right now I'm going to use this blog to discuss what it's like to be a working cartoonist and columnist, discuss and respond to the mail I receive. So let this serve as fair warning: if you send me e-mail, it may very well end up here, being critiqued, ridiculed or otherwise served up in a way that could displease you.

I'm also going to use this forum to announce events I'll be attending. Towards that end, I'll be at an opening reception for "Schlock 'N' Roll" cartoonist Ward Sutton's latest project, a gallery event called "Breaking News." It's at 7 p.m. this Thursday, October 9 at the Judson Church, 55 Washington Square South at Thompson Street in New York City. As Ward puts it, there'll be "special clips from The Daily Show, a presentation from The Onion, artwork by Art Speigelman, a cartoon reading by Tom Tomorrow (This Modern World), performance by Zeroboy, music by Joe McGinty & Nick Danger (Loser's Lounge), animation by Robert Smigel & J.J. Sedelmaier (SNL's TV Funhouse), as well as:

Melinda Beck * Jennifer Berklich * Ruben Bolling * John Boone * Damian Catera * Robbie Conal * Jim Costanzo * Jay Critchley * Anita Di Bianco * DD Dorvillier & Michelle Nagai * Mariam Ghani * Josh Gosfield * Peter Grzybowski * Peter Kuper * Steve Lambert * Sandra Low Ulrike Mueller * Barbara Nei * Pink Punk * Michelle Pred * Ted Rall * Sarina Khan Reddy * David Rees * Michael A. Rippens * Ward Sutton * Micah Wright * and many more!"

Nowadays I'm in the final push to make the deadline for my next book, which will be out next spring. I'll let you know more about it later, but it's going to be all prose and will probably be the closest thing to a full-fledged explanation of my political philosophy that I've ever written. The cartoon and column format aren't really long enough to get into a lot of nuance; with luck this book will solve that problem. Also be on the lookout for "Attitude 2: The New Subversive Social Commentary Cartoonists," out in February from NBM Publishing.