Yearly Archives: 2003

Hail, Dorothy

4/17/2003 – 2:48 pm

My friend Jeanne said, “Those guys at the Pentagon must have watched ‘The Wizard of Oz’ too many times. They think Saddam Hussein is the Wicked Witch of the West and now that he’s gone everyone will kneel down and say, ‘Hail, Dorothy.’” If you follow the analogy, George W. Bush is Dorothy. I wonder […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)

Freedom’s Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

4/10/2003 – 2:45 pm

The battle for Baghdad, and thus the war in Iraq, is drawing to a close. Already the hawks in the Pentagon are rattling their sabers toward Syria. The war on terror, it is to be assumed, continues unabated even if we still can’t find Osama bin Laden. Shortly after 9-11, President Bush, referring to terrorists, […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)

Shock Waves

4/3/2003 – 2:43 pm

I was reading the twenty-fourth paragraph of a war story in the Washington Post Sunday when the sentence jumped out at me: “If the Pentagon does deploy into Iraq all the troops currently scheduled to go, almost half the combat power of the Army and the Marine Corps will be in Iraq.” That’s an uncomfortable […]

By floegel | Posted in Commentary | Comments (0)

A War of Choice

3/27/2003 – 3:44 pm

Early in the Clinton administration, UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright sat in a meeting with General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, discussing Bosnia. Ms. Albright suggested sending in American troops. “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” she asked. General Powell, […]

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All Over the World

3/20/2003 – 3:41 pm

Life is uncertain. Change is the only constant; so it is now. As I write these words, we are still within the 48-hour window that precedes the onset of hostilities in Iraq. I went downtown Sunday night to the front lawn of the Unitarian Church. Some 400 of my fellow Burlingtonians gathered with candles to […]

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American Made

3/13/2003 – 3:39 pm

Ten years ago, I was one of a group of activists fighting the world’s largest hazardous waste incinerator. We were in the middle of an eye-gouging street brawl with the new Clinton administration, which had broken its promise to shut the burn box down. The incinerator was in a poor neighborhood, next to a school, […]

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Do As I Say, Not As I Do

3/6/2003 – 3:35 pm

The president gave a speech last week on the situation in Iraq. He said the United States, and anyone willing to join us, is going into Iraq to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein and replace it with a democratic government. This will be a good thing, the president said, because planting a democracy in […]

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