Summer is in full throat. Cicadas drone through the day, crickets are loud every night. Pairs and threes of teenagers walk through the evening neighborhoods, their voices drifting through the window screens.

At summer camp, wedgies must be getting out of hand.

Experienced camp administrators know wedgies play a regulatory role in the living organism that is camp. They are an expression – and more important, a release – of group tension. During counselor orientation week in June, a savvy head counselor will lay down the law for the staff, particularly for the junior counselors and CITs: I don’t care what happened last year, no wedgies this season. Vague talk of outraged parents, threatened lawsuits and increased insurance premiums is appropriate here.

(I should digress to note that wedgies are, at least in my experience, a male phenomenon. Now that I think about it, perhaps the current popularity of thong underwear among women can be traced in part to some sort of “wedgie envy.” Might be worth academic research.)
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According to his obituary in the New York Times, King Fahd bin Abdel-Aziz of Saudi Arabia urged Saddam Hussein to retreat from Kuwait in the days following Iraq’s 1990 invasion. The Times reports: “Then Dick Cheney, the defense secretary at the time, visited the king to make the case that Saudi Arabia stood a good chance of being Iraq’s next victim. He displayed satellite photos of Iraqi missiles aimed at Saudi Arabia and described other threats.”

Dick Cheney with satellite photos “proving” Saddam’s ill intentions. An American invasion of Iraq soon follows. Sound familiar?

King Fahd, throughout his reign, attempted to straddle the gulf between Saudi Arabia’s western allies and its conservative Wahhabi clerics. In the 1980s, he funded the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, including the Saudi Osama bin Laden. He gave $25 billion to Saddam for his war against Iran. The U.S. was also providing aid and arms to Saddam until a few weeks before Iraq invaded Kuwait.

After that invasion, Osama (whose family is close to the Saudi royals) offered to lead the mujahedeen, fresh from their victory over the Soviets, against the Iraqis in Kuwait. Then Dick Cheney showed up with his satellite photos and dire predictions. The gulf between western allies and fundamentalist Muslims could no longer be straddled. Fahd had to jump to one side or the other. He jumped to the U.S. side. The self-titled “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques,” whose gambling, alcohol-drinking, womanizing playboy years had long made him suspect among the devout, now rejected an all-Muslim army in favor of opening the closed kingdom to non-Muslim military. The Times’s obituary features a photo of King Fahd and General Norman Schwartzkopf reviewing American troops.
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February 2002 – At the request of the Central Intelligence Agency, retired diplomat Joseph Wilson travels to Niger to investigate reports that the African nation was selling “yellowcake” – lightly processed uranium ore – to Iraq. He concludes the “yellowcake” reports are without merit.

28 Jan. 2003 – Ignoring reports from Mr. Wilson and the State Department, President George W. Bush says, “Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” in his State of the Union address.

6 July 2003 – The New York Times publishes an op-ed by Mr. Wilson revealing there was no Niger-Iraq “yellowcake” connection.

9 July 2003 – Karl Rove discusses the role of Valerie Plame, CIA operative and Mr. Wilson’s wife, in arranging Mr. Wilson’s mission with syndicated columnist Robert Novak.

11 July 2003 – Mr. Rove discusses Ms. Plame, although not by name, with Time magazine report Matt Cooper.
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On the seventh day of the seventh month in the fourth year of the War on Terror, death came to another western capital, in the form of bombs in London’s transportation system. The leaders of the Group of Eight nations, meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland are repeating their boilerplate speeches about resolve, but what can they actually do?

Since 2001, western nations, primarily the United States, have invaded one country related to al Quaeda (Afghanistan) and one nation unrelated to al Quaeda (Iraq). Anti-western Islamic militants appear to be regaining strength in Afghanistan and intelligence experts agree Iraq is now the incubator of international terrorism that it was not prior to the 2003 invasion.

The War on Terror, unlike previous wars, is not about seizing territory. It’s not, as some would have us believe, about Christendom versus Islam. The War on Terror is a war of principles. The United States, along with al Quaeda, is losing this war.
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