This week’s news features a British government report that says her majesty’s intelligence service grossly misinterpreted and overstated the threat posed to Middle Eastern stability by Saddam Hussein. There were, they now admit, no weapons of mass destruction and what the analysts thought was evidence of WMDs, well that was just wrong. The report goes on to say it was not Prime Minister Tony Blair’s fault – his incompetent intelligence advisors misled him. The Brits made the kind of mistakes anyone could make, if “anyone” is defined as the Central Intelligence Agency. Last week, a report by the U.S. Senate said our intelligence analysts made essentially the same mistakes. Hmm, go figure. As was the case with Mr. Blair, the Senate reports no undue pressure on the intelligence people from the White House. If only the analysts had read the data correctly, there would have been no Iraq invasion, George Bush and Mr. Blair would have had stood their armies down and the reservists would have gone home to their families.
It’s a real shame, that’s what it is. What are the chances that two of the most powerful men on Earth would both get the same kind of bad information, information that would cause the mistaken invasion of a sovereign nation?
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Pepsi Needs Coke
I was flying from Philadelphia to Orlando one evening in May, during the National Hockey League playoffs. As it happened, the Philadelphia Flyers were playing the Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay was getting the better of Philadelphia. The Florida-based flight crew periodically announced game developments, razzing the Philadelphians gently, at least at first. The passengers more than rose to the bait, responding with boos and catcalls. Tampa Bay won the game about the time we touched down and I felt a distinct mood shift from good-natured jocularity to something more tense. I wondered why. It’s only a game, right?
Identity in America is changing. A century ago, we knew ourselves by our region, state or hometown. The new immigrants clung to the ethnic enclave or the religion their parents brought from across the ocean. Trades, even 40years ago, were roughly divided on lines of national origin – Italian stonemasons, Irish painters and plasterers, German tool-and-die makers.
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