A long time ago, I heard the following joke: The Illiad and The Odyssey were not written by Homer, but by another Greek named Homer.
Funny? Well, maybe not. There's some truth to this, though. If you Google my name ("Don Harlow"), you'll find a whole lot of pages with that name on them. Most of them are mine, thanks to my on-line work for Esperanto. But somewhere in there, you'll find one about a Don Harlow buried at the Arlington National Cemetery -- the one who was, for a number of years, the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force. He wasn't me -- I think.
The question arises because last Sunday, while I was getting dressed, I heard Richard Ben-Veniste and John Lehman discussing the 9/11 panel's work with Tim Russert. Ben-Veniste was emphasizing that the panel had pretty much decided (read: "demonstrated") that there was no link between the Al-Qaeda Islamic terrorist network and Saddam Hussein's non-religious police state in Iraq. This is not a pleasant concept for the administration; that linkage was close behind the illusory Weapons of Mass Destruction in their decision to make war on little Iraq. As late as last week, Vice-President Cheney was stating that he had information (that maybe the panel didn't have -- whyever not?) that demonstrated such a link. As an example, former navy secretary Lehman pointed to a high officer in Saddam's militia who was also a member of Al-Qaeda.
Today the Washington Post advises us that this appears to be a confusion of names. The officer in Iraq, one Lt. Col. Hikmat Shakir Ahmad, is quite likely not the same as Al-Qaeda's Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi, who seems to have operated in Malaysia, quite a distance away from Iraq. The Post also reports that this confusion was already called into question months ago by U.S. intelligence agencies, and that the link has already been soundly rejected by those in the know.
Such name confusions are not, I believe, new; I vaguely remember a report of some confusion between Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 terrorist, and some other Mohammed Atta. (Atta, too, was supposedly a link between Al-Qaeda and Iraq, based on a reported meeting between him and a high-ranking Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, Czech Republic; but phone records show that the terrorist Atta seems to have been using his cell phone in Florida on the day he was supposedly in Prague. Teleportation, anyone?)
It will be a shame -- at least for the administration! -- if this does prove to be no more than a confusion of names, as seems to be the case. Though I suspect that many of those who watched Meet the Press won't hear of this refutation of Lehman's claim, and will continue to believe -- along with, at one point, over half of all Americans -- that the link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda has been satisfactorily demonstrated.
In the meantime, I suspect that the Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force should receive a pretty hefty pension. I wonder why the government isn't sending it to me.
Note: I got tickets today for my wife and myself to see Fahrenheit 9/11 this Friday evening at our local cineplex (Century 16). Looks as though the campaign by "Move America Forward" -- a front organization for Republican Party-associated PR firm Russo Marsh and Rogers -- to intimidate theater owners, and particularly franchises, from showing Moore's new film has fizzled. Bad luck, boys.
Another letter of mine, published in the Perspectives section of the Times family of newspapers on June 6, 2004 (so somewhat more than a month after I wrote it). I present it here in the published form rather than the one in which I wrote it (mainly a matter of the editor manipulating paragraph breaks).
Jeff Finder (Apr. 29) wonders about the government's refusal to let us see the coffins containing fallen American soldiers being brought home.
The government, of course, explains that this is due to a wish to prevent intrusions on the privacy of the families of our honored dead. Since a flag-draped coffin is effectively anonymous, this explanation bears less the sweet aroma of reason than the stench of an excuse. One might as well expect the government to be cancelling plans for future censuses in order to avoid intrusion on the privacy of American families. I have not noticed them doing so.
Still, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." So we need not seek consistency in protection of American families among those mighty intellects who today guide our footsteps in war and ... well, war.
Letter of mine published in West County Times on April 26, 2004.
A recent letter in the Times by Bob Leach blames Democrat administrations for "no-win wars in Korea and Vietnam."
Well, he is half right. Democrat administrations (Truman, Kennedy, Johnson) were certainly responsible for the "wars" part of his claim.
Leach seems to forget, however, that the "no-win" part derived from the policies of their republican successors (Eisenhower, Nixon) ― though, giving Eisenhower his due, to call Korea "no-win" is perhaps excessive, since we got what we wanted out of that war (the status quo) and the other side (control over the entire peninsula) did not.
Leach also claims that the Panama Canal is now in Chinese hands. He must have just seen Pierce Brosnan in "The Tailor of Panama" ― and even as part of the plot of that movie, Chinese control of the Panama Canal was a fabrication.
Today much time on television and radio is being given over to the wonders performed by the just-deceased former president.
I would also like to comment on the man, as governor of California and as president of the United States, but I remain mindful of the old adage:
De mortuis nil nisi bonum.
So I shall only say: Ronald Reagan, rest in peace.