Junto Boyz

BUST? WHAT DOT-COM BUST?

Realized that I haven't posted or discussed that much on technology lately, so here's the new beginning. Informative article in CNet's News.com site, which is the first tech news site I read every morning, on the coming holiday season. Online commerce still growing... and growing... and growing.

posted by Bernard @ 7:58 PM

PROTESTWARRIOR.COM
Killing Time... Came Across Some Cool Sites

Just killing time before playing basketball this morning, I was checking email, my fantasy basketball team, and the BlogsForBush site. Checked out a few sites on the BlogsForBush blogroll and came across a cute site called the Yale Diva (yeah, one of my best friends, Kevin, is probably rolling his eyes right now for this "misguided student"... he's a Dem, future Congressman from Missouri, went to Yale and back in New Haven clerking for a federal judge while his wife attends the med school there... says to me often, "dude, you're too nice to be a Republican! just switch!"... i reply, "dude, you're too smart to be a Democrat! just switch!"), which some pretty cool posters from a site called ProtestWarrior.com.

ProtestWarrior.com has a great quote on their mission statement page:

"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." -- John Stuart Mill

And some insightful and great posters, such as one stating:

"War Has Never Solved Anything... Expect for Ending Slavery, Fascism, Nazism, and Communism"

Check it out.

posted by Bernard @ 6:04 PM

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Especially to Our Troops in Iraq

Great article below. Freedom has always come with a price, and only a few nations will shed their blood for another people's freedom. This is the beauty and strength of America.


Our Soldiers, Our Thanks
Here's to the men who risk their lives to keep us free.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BY KARL ZINSMEISTER
Wednesday, November 26, 2003

With Thanksgiving here, and the first American troops to deploy for the Iraq War nearing their one-year anniversary overseas, it's a good time to remember some families in this country to whom the rest of us owe a great deal. Take the family of Sean Shields, a young American I encountered while embedded with the 82nd Airborne Division. Lt. Shields, currently stationed near Baghdad, is the third generation of his clan to serve in the U.S. Army airborne.

Sean's grandfather was one of the men who first created the stellar reputation of the 82nd Airborne--parachuting into the critical battles of Normandy and Nijmegen during World War II. Sean's father served in Gulf War I, eventually retiring as a colonel. Now Sean is an Army Ranger doing his share of the heavy lifting in Iraq. He has shaken off two roadside bombings of his Humvee within a month, and soldiers on without complaint. There are many such families in this country with a multigenerational tradition of military service.

There are also many families who seem oblivious to this tradition. In his recent book, "Keeping Faith," Frank Schaefer describes how, after he'd sent other children to New York University and Georgetown, his affluent Boston neighbors expressed disappointment at his son's decision to become a Marine. "He's so bright and talented and could do anything!" blurted one man. "What a waste!" A similar view is betrayed by New York Times reporter Chris Hedges when he describes today's soldiers as "poor kids from Mississippi or Alabama or Texas who could not get a decent job or health insurance and joined the Army because it was all we offered them."

Are such impressions accurate? From my experiences observing American soldiers--most recently as an embedded reporter in Iraq--my answer is an emphatic "no." A much wider range of talented people serve in our military than many realize. There are suburbanites, hillbillies, kids from concrete canyons and farm boys in our fighting forces. I met graduates of tony schools like Wesleyan and Cornell in Iraq, not only in the officer corps, but in the ranks. I met disciplined immigrants from Colombia, Russia, Panama and other places. Our battlefield computers, helicopters and radars are kept humming by flocks of mechanical whizzes and high-tech aces.

I know of a man who was most of the way through a Ph.D. at Fordham University when, looking for a more active and patriotic career, he decided he'd like to start jumping out of airplanes with the 82nd Airborne. He came in not as an officer but as a private. Four years later, he is a highly competent sergeant. I learned about the son of an engineer and a nursing supervisor who had glided through his school's gifted-student program before landing a job as an open-heart-surgery technician. Then the Sept. 11 attacks convinced him that his country needed him for more important work. He is now a medic in the 82nd Airborne, hoping for an eventual career as an Army doctor.

A few years ago, I interviewed Gen. John Abizaid, now America's top military officer in the Middle East. He had entered West Point in 1969, and noted that at that time the academy had to accept every minimally qualified applicant just to fill his class. Today, entry into our military academies is prized as much as admission to an Ivy League school. That's a clear indicator of how support for the military has rebounded in this country since our Vietnam-era lows--and it hints at the quality of the individuals who flow into our armed forces at all levels.

Our soldiers aren't all saints and scholars, but the base of our military pyramid is full of impressive individuals. There are also many unusually talented men and women at the middle and top of the command structure. The commanders of our troops in Iraq today are instructive examples. Brig. Gen. Martin Dempsey, who leads the First Armored Division in Baghdad, has earned, in addition to his military achievements, three separate master's degrees. Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, whose leadership of the 101st Airborne has temporarily made him the prince of northern Iraq, is well equipped for that task thanks to, among other credentials, a Ph.D. in international relations from Princeton (which he earned two years faster than most doctoral candidates). The commander of our third full division in Iraq, Maj. Gen. Raymond Odierno of the Fourth Infantry Division, has a master's in nuclear engineering.

Independent thinking by line soldiers is not only tolerated in our armed forces, it is required by the new freelancing style of warfare. Outsiders who envision our fighting forces as authoritarian institutions would be surprised to observe the meritocratic nature of our military in action. Obstacles are generally surmounted after open, democratic-style contention among competing views. I witnessed many spirited debates--among officers in the command tents as well as between privates and sergeants--over the best ways to achieve important objectives. The general modus operandi is competition: "May the smartest idea, and biggest bicep, win."

America's soldiers have the skills to fly missiles into designated windows and squeeze off one-mile sniper shots. They have the openness and democratic habits to serve as good representatives of our liberal society. And they are also admirable on a third front: for their moral idealism.

Hollywood war stories like "Saving Private Ryan" and "Black Hawk Down" promulgate the notion that contemporary soldiers fight not for cause and country but simply for the survival of themselves and their buddies. But most American soldiers are quite conscious of the titanic clash of moral universes that lies behind today's U.S. venture into the Middle East. They are not only aware of the historical importance of this fight, but proud of their role in it, and broadly motivated by high principles extending far beyond self preservation.

Gregory Kolodciejczky was a New York City fireman. When the Twin Towers went down, 14 men from his stationhouse were killed, and he decided to help make sure the events of that day would never be replayed in his country. At age 32 he chucked everything and started a new career as a paratrooper. He believes that by fighting in Iraq he is honoring the memory of his dead friends, and helping protect Americans from future acts of terror. I know numerous soldiers who put aside well-paying jobs, family life, graduate school and comfortable careers after concluding, in the wake of Sept. 11, that their country needed their military service.

Families of some of the soldiers I've reported on have shared their letters home with me, and many of these reflect the rectitude of those men and women. Lt. John Gibson of the 82nd's 325th Regiment wrote his parents on his birthday this summer that "we are homesick and want to see our families and loved ones, but not at the expense of an incomplete mission. I know that a completely free and democratic Iraq may not be in place by the time that I leave, but it will be significantly under way before I am redeployed. I see things here, on a daily basis, that hurt the human heart. I see poverty, crime, terrorism, murder, and stupidity. However, I see hope in the eyes of many Iraqis, hope for a chance to govern themselves. I think they are on the cusp of a new adventure, a chance for an entire country to start over again."

Pvt. Melville Johnson of the 82nd Airborne reflected on his time in combat this way: "I feel Iraq has real potential for the future--with the help of the U.S. military, humanitarian agencies, and the installation of a just, fair, and compassionate government. I feel tremendously for the American families that lost a loved one. I also feel for the families of the enemy. At night, before I rest, I think of the enemy we killed. I remember the way their bodies lay in unnatural states, positions God never intended them to take. I hope these images will soon fade. But would I willingly, happily, and completely fight this war again? Yes, I would do it all over again with just as much, or more, determination."

The patriot Thomas Paine once said, "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, so that my children may have peace." This is a creed many soldiers adhere to quite literally. To a man, the deployed GIs I know tell me they don't want any waffling or hesitation about finishing the job in Iraq. They say it is much less important that the Iraqi war be over soon than that it be successful, and they know that will take time.

Amid the sour soap opera of Jessica Lynch, Americans should remember that there are many U.S. soldiers who displayed real self-sacrificial heroism in the Iraq War. Just among the 82nd Airborne there are men like Medic Alan Babin, who left a covered position and exposed himself on the battlefield to come to the aid of another soldier. He was shot in the abdomen and is now fighting his way back from the loss of numerous organs, several full-body arrests and 20 operations.
When you talk to our wounded soldiers they say, astonishingly, that they don't regret the fight. Almost universally, they say they are anxious to return to their units as soon as possible. Most American warriors subscribe to the words of John Stuart Mill: "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."

It's easy for critics on both the left and right to convince themselves that the U.S. is a decadent society, that our young people have gone soft, that we will never have another generation like the men who climbed the cliffs at Normandy. That judgment, I'm here to report, is utterly wrong. We've got soldiers in uniform today whom Americans can trust with any responsibility, any difficulty, any mortal challenge.

At the end of this strenuous year, we give thanks for them.


Mr. Zinsmeister, editor in chief of The American Enterprise, is author of "Boots on the Ground: A Month With the 82nd Airborne in the Battle for Iraq," just published by Truman Talley.

posted by Bernard @ 12:22 AM

BARRY SANDERS INTERVIEW
He's the Greatest Running Back in My Book

I guess it's sports day on my blog. Ali article and now a Barry Sanders interview that I came across on my AOL service. If they start getting exclusives like this, it's definitely going to help their transition into being a broadband service leader.

Anyway, I've always had so much respect for Barry Sanders as an athlete and a Christian. Like David Robinson, he is a model of humility and achievements that I can only hope to emulate. In terms of his greatness, I believe he was the greatest running back of all-time, which is difficult for a Chicago-ian to state since Walter will always be part of my soul. Last year, ESPN polled their NFL analyst on who they thought were the top 10 running backs of all-time. Many of them ranked Sanders 3rd or 4th on their list (couldn't find the link). I understand that they really can't make decisions on 'what-ifs', but it's truly a shame that Sanders was partially handicapped because of his surrounding elements. He played on Detroit Lions teams who consistently had horrible offensive lines and a management that did very little to improve the situation. He retired early at the top of his game when he could have easily stay one more year to break Walter Payton's record, but those types of accolades were not his desire.

I know every football fan has talked about it at least once with someone how awesome or well Sanders would have done on a team with a decent offensive line. And if Sanders played with the huge Cowboy's offensive line that Smith benefited from all those years... 2,500 yards? Maybe 3,000 yards? No problem. Amazing... I'm still picturing all those highlights and moves. All those missed tackles, starting and stopping on a dime, or head-on collisions with only Barry standing up in the end. Sometimes it seemed like a game of smear-the-queer on the field with 11 grown men trying to tackle little Barry Sanders... grade school all over again but with someone that nobody could catch.


Running Into Greatness

By JOHN WIEBUSCH
AOL Exclusive
November, 25 2003

It’s difficult to be objective when the running back you’re trying to be objective about is your son, but William Sanders, father of Barry Sanders, tried to keep his head about him when it came to evaluating the great running backs of the NFL.

"Among all the runners to play the game," William Sanders used to say, to Barry and anyone who would listen, "Jim Brown was a man among boys."

William had seen his son win the Heisman Trophy at Oklahoma State in 1988, and had seen him chosen by the Detroit Lions with the third selection of the 1989 NFL draft. The father had also seen his son win Rookie of the Year honors in his first season, and had seen him dazzle the game with moves so breathtaking they made grown men sit up and cry out in disbelief. But the old man continued to tell the young man that the bigger player (Brown was 6-foot-2, 230) from three decades before was a better player than the smaller player (Barry was 5-8, 200) from the 1990s.

Until 1997. Until the magic and derring-do of one of the greatest NFL seasons any individual player ever has had. Until Barry Sanders gained 2,053 yards, finishing the year with a record 14 consecutive 100-yard games.

Then William Sanders told people that his son was the greatest running back of all-time.

“He never told me then,” Barry says. “He told other people. He told me later.”

In the ongoing Cinderfella debate over which great back’s foot fits the glass running shoe best, a lot of insiders would side with William Sanders, post 1997.

Without much argument, the customers to get their numbers called first in the shoe store would be Sanders, Brown, Walter Payton, and Emmitt Smith. And if the shoe didn’t fit -- and it’s highly unlikely that it wouldn’t, don’t you think? -- Eric Dickerson, O.J. Simpson, and Gale Sayers would be next up.

If Sanders had not done something in 1999 -- if he had not chosen to walk away from the game at age 30, after 10 seasons -- the argument probably would be a moot one.

In his tenth season, Sanders had gained 1,491 yards, increasing his career total to 15,269, an average of 1,527 per year. His poorest season had been 1993 when he missed the last five games with a torn medial collateral ligament in his right knee and still finished fifth in the NFL with 1,115 yards (and that was the only significant injury of his decade in the NFL).

At the dawn of the 1999 season, Sanders needed only -- for him -- 1,458 yards to pass Payton and become the greatest running back, numerically, in pro football history. He needed only -- for him -- say, three "average" seasons to set the rushing record bar so high no one ever could reach it. (If Sanders had put together three of his average years he would have reached 19,850 yards in 13 years; Smith, still active with Arizona, has the current career No. 1 -- 17,354 yards in 14 years.)

But strange as this sounds, Sanders didn’t care about records... or, more specifically, about breaking records. He didn’t need to break Payton’s record to feel fulfilled. In fact, he felt that Payton’s record had a certain sanctity to it and that his walking away from the game respected the sanctity of the record held by the man everyone called Sweetness.

For the first time publicly, Sanders talks about the act that stunned the world of sport in a new book, Now You See Him…Barry Sanders’ Story in His Own Words.

In the book, co-written with Oklahoma writer Mark McCormack, Sanders writes:

"I’ve never been fond of public attention or a lot of dealing with the media. I don’t mean to sound aloof; being in the spotlight just isn’t in my nature… I never valued [the record] so much that I thought it was worth my dignity or Walter’s dignity to pursue it amid so much media and marketing attention."

Should we have been surprised then? Should we be surprised now? Probably not. This is a man who always has called his own signals... and always and consistently could care less how those about him perceived those signals.

-- On the eve of the Heisman Trophy ceremonies in New York in December 1988, he told friends that he wasn’t going. They told him he had to. He listened and went... and won. Later, he passed on invitations to visit the White House. And when his hometown of Wichita, Kansas, honored him with a two-day celebration he arrived home... a day late.

-- He quietly gave one-tenth of his signing bonus of $2.1 million to the Paradise Baptist Church in Wichita. “Because the Bible says you should tithe,” he said. He continued to give 10 percent of his annual salary to charity throughout his career. (He is deeply but quietly religious, a product of his upbringing.)

-- In 1989, he was the runaway NFL Rookie of the Year with 1,470 yards, a 5.3 average, and 14 touchdowns. He also could have been the NFL rushing leader. He stopped short of the achievement in the final minutes of the last game of the season, declining to play against Atlanta even though he needed only 11 yards to pass Kansas City’s Christian Okoye. "We had the game won," he said then, "and that was the only objective. There was no need for me to go back in to get a personal achievement. What difference would it have made?" (Déjà vu?)

In Now You See Him..., Sanders confesses to a wide range of human emotions, including something football people (well, Chiefs coach Dick Vermeil excepted) rarely reveal: tears. After what would be his last game, against the Ravens in 1998, he writes, he sat weeping at his locker after a 19-10 loss closed a 5-11 season.

-- In May 2003, Sanders was to have been one of seven inductees into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in elaborate ceremonies before nearly 800 people at Ford Field. He didn’t show. Instead his wife of three years, former Detroit TV news anchor Lauren Campbell Sanders, accepted the award. Barry was detained in Oklahoma City on banking business (he was the major stockholder in American State Bank). "I’m sorry about it," Campbell Sanders said. "I know the fans want him to be more of a presence but part of that is just his style."

In a telephone call to me arranged by his agent, Jeff (J.B.) Bernstein, Sanders admitted that he has watched more college games than pro games in the five years he has been away from the game, and that he has not been to a Lions game since he left as a player in 1998.

"I still might go to a Lions game this year, though," he said. "For sure, I’m going to be in Ford Field on [Tuesday] Dec. 2 for a press conference about the book. Matt Millen [Lions’ president and CEO] has been great at trying to patch things up between me and the club."

The ultimate healing would be if the Lions retired Sanders’ No. 20 jersey. "That’s being talked about for next season," Sanders admits.

Fifteen pounds under his playing weight at a fit 185 and still only 35 (he’s six years younger than Jerry Rice and 10 months older than Emmitt Smith), Sanders will be a Hall of Fame shoo-in in January.

And in February, his second child with Campbell Sanders will be born. The residents of Rochester Hills, a Detroit suburb, have a son, Nigel, 2. Sanders also has another son from a previous relationship, Barry, Jr., 9, in Oklahoma City.

Barry Sanders has no second thoughts about his decision to leave the game -- or about the stealthy way he did it (he announced it in a note to the Wichita Eagle on July 27, 1999 without talking to the Lions) -- but he does regret the fact that he and the Lions had so little team success during his decade there. In the book, he is candid about what he believes are management failures in retaining key players and building team cohesiveness.

From 1989-1998, the Lions lost four more games than they won, had winning records five times and losing records five times, including three 5-11 seasons. They won only one postseason game, in 1991 following a 12-4 year, but lost to Washington 41-10 in the NFC championship game.

In a remarkable bit of prescience, I came across this excerpt in a story that was written by Curt Sylvester for a national magazine following Sanders’ standout first season in 1989:

"When Sanders eventually retires from football, his goal, he says, is not to be remembered as the NFL’s all-time leading rusher.

"'It is to be a part, along with all the other guys, of turning the team around and making it a winner,’ he said. ‘Just being a natural competitor you want to win. The Lions have been notorious for losing. I think it would be nice to have notoriety for winning and maybe even go the Super Bowl in the next 10 years or whatever.'"

So add ‘em up for Barry Sanders -- the 15,269 yards, the 5.0 average (second only to Jim Brown’s 5.2), the 109 touchdowns (after every one of which he simply handed the ball to an official), the 10 Pro Bowl selections, the four rushing titles (and three second-place finishes), the 76 100-yard games, the Rookie of the Year award in ’89, the Player of the Year honor in ’97 -- and, for him, it still comes down to 0 for 10 in the Motor City.

Add ‘em all up for the rest of us, though… and he’s a highlight film we can watch for eternity.


John Wiebusch was Editor in Chief of NFL publications for 32 years. The editor of NFL Insider, GameDay, PRO! magazines and the Super Bowl Game Program, he has edited and/or written more than 100 books. John writes weekly columns on NFL Legends.

posted by Bernard @ 9:32 PM

MUHAMMAD ALI... THE GREATEST
From Esquire's 70th Anniversary Issue

Not a strong follower of Esquire, but I grabbed a copy while I was at the airport in the U.S. and came across this article on Muhammad Ali. Great article. I'm a sports fan like any American kid growing up playing little league, basketball, ice hockey, etc. And stories like this one just hit me in the heart. Like the Upper Deck baseball card commercials in the early '90s, which brought tears to my eye everytime I saw it on the tube (if you know which one i'm talking about, i know you're a fan that grew up in the era of Don Mattingly, MJ, and Joe Montana like me). Anyway, even if you're not a sports fan, it's a great article to read.


Ali Now

ESQUIRE
by Cal Fussman | Oct 01 '03

Muhammad Ali came through the double doors into the living room of his hotel suite on slow, tender steps.

I held out my hand. He opened his arms.

Ali lowered himself into a wide, soft chair, and I sat on an adjacent sofa. "I've come," I said, "to ask about the wisdom you've taken from all you've been through."

Ali seemed preoccupied with his right hand, which was trembling over his right thigh, and he did not speak.

"George Foreman told me that you were the most important man in the world. When I asked him why, he said that when you walked into a room, it didn't matter who was there—presidents, prime ministers, CEOs, movie stars—everybody turned toward you. The most famous person in that room was wondering, Should I go to meet him? Or stay here? He said you were the most important man in the world because you made everybody else's heart beat faster." The shaking in Ali's right hand seemed to creep above his elbow. Both of his arms were quivering now, and his breaths were short and quick.

I leaned in awkwardly, not knowing quite what to do. Half a minute passed in silence. I wondered if I should call for his wife.

Ali stooped over, and now his whole body was trembling and his breaths were almost gasps.

"Champ! You okay? You okay? "

Ali's head lifted and slowly turned to me with the smile of an eight-year-old.

"Scared ya, huh?" he said.

ALI WAS IN DUBLIN for the opening ceremonies of the Special Olympics. A van pulled up outside the hotel, and it was with much effort that he slowly lifted himself into the front seat. And yet as soon as the driver pulled out onto the road, the left-hand side of the road, Ali was waving his arms in a childish portent of doom and gasping, "Head-on collision! Head-on collision!"

There were four of us in the back: Ali's wife, Lonnie, who is fourteen years younger than Ali and who grew up across the street from his childhood home in Louisville; his best friend, Howard Bingham, a photographer he met in 1962 and who's snapped more pictures of Ali than anyone has ever taken of anybody; and a businessman named Harlan Werner, who's organized public appearances for Ali during the last sixteen years.

Jet lag had come to dinner with all of us as we took our table near a flower-filled courtyard at Ernie's Restaurant. Ali asked for a felt-tipped pen, and while the rest of us talked he pushed his plate and silverware out of the way, spread out his cloth napkin, and began to draw on it. First he sketched a boxing ring, then two stick figures, one of which he labeled "Ali" in a cartoon bubble and the other "Frazier." Then he began to set in the crowd around the ring in the form of dots. Tens of dots, then hundreds of dots, then thousands, his right hand driving the pen down again and again as if to say: And he saw it! And he saw it! And she saw it! And he saw it!

Occasionally, Ali would stop, examine his canvas for empty space, and then go on, jackhammering in more dots. It must have taken him more than twenty minutes to squeeze all of humanity onto the napkin. Then he signed his name inside a huge heart and handed it to me.

"Thank you," I said.

"That'll be ten dollars, please," he whispered.

And that was the way it was with Ali. You just couldn't help laughing, even when you knew he'd play that same line off the next hundred people. No matter how many times he told a fresh face, "You ain't as dumb as you look," it worked.

But watching him eat was awkward. His right hand picked up a piece of lamb and trembled as he tried to bring it to his lips. He did not eat very much. His sciatic nerve was paining him, he was tired, and it was best to go back to the hotel.

On the way to the door, the diners at the other tables—every one of them—stood and applauded. Ali moved gingerly, almost painfully, and then, all of a sudden, he bit his bottom lip, took a mock swing at one of the applauding men, and the restaurant roared with laughter.

THE NEXT MORNING, Ali went to meet Nelson Mandela. The South African leader was speaking at a summit for college students from around the world about freeing people with mental disabilities from a stigma that can be as heavy as a ball and chain.

The meeting was halfway through when Ali entered the room, and everybody stood and cheered as the two embraced like old kings. Mandela called the musician Quincy Jones onto the stage. As the three men hugged, I wondered if any of the kids in the audience could truly conceive of the day when a nineteen-year-old named Cassius Clay walked into a luncheonette in Louisville with a shiny Olympic gold medal around his neck, asked for a meal, and was pointed out the door by people who said they didn't serve niggers. Could they see him walking to the edge of the Ohio River and throwing his gold medal in? Could they imagine this same smiling Mandela breaking rocks as a prisoner on Robben Island? Yes, the young people knew they were in the presence of fame. But did they truly know what these men had lived through and stood for?

The kids asked questions. Mandela and Jones spoke. The owner of the most famous mouth in the world was silent.

Mandela introduced Cyril Ramaphosa, a man he called "the architect of the new South Africa." Ramaphosa came forward amid applause to greet Ali. Ali made a move to stand up from his chair, but the weight of his body held him down.

Mandela saw this and gestured that there was no need to make the effort, that Ramaphosa would come to him. "He's young," Mandela joked.

It was perfect diplomacy from a white-haired man who uses a walking stick, there was laughter all around, and Ali could have accepted this with a smile. But he gritted his jaw and rocked his body forward once, twice, and on the third try found the momentum to rise to his feet so that he could embrace Ramaphosa. Every kid in that room knew exactly what he or she had just seen. And until the day he dies, Cyril Ramaphosa will remember the day that Muhammad Ali rose to greet him.

THE BEST WAY TO DESCRIBE Ali's speech patterns is to imagine that Ali has two wells inside him from which he is able to draw words. The first well, the well of the whisper, is filled to the top. Ali can easily dip into this well, fill up a small cup of words, and extend it to you. But sometimes it's as if the Parkinson's makes his entire being shake and some of the whispered words spill out of the cup before they get to your ears. And he must reach in again, sometimes several times, before you can understand them.

The other well contains a deep voice, the voice you remember from decades ago, only raspier. This well seems half full, but the words are rich. Ali can haul up these words, but it's as if he has to yank on a rope that extends deep inside him and jerk a heavy bucket containing a few of them out of his larynx and through his lips.

There were about ten of us in the hotel restaurant for lunch. Ali had finished his Caesar salad (without bacon), the plates were cleared, and the waitress asked if we'd all like dessert.

She took several orders, but when she came to Ali, he simply drew a triangle in the air with his finger.

"Ali," Lonnie said, "just say what you want."

Again, he drew the triangle.

"Okay," Lonnie said, rolling her eyes and going along with him. "A piece of pie."

Ali sketched two circles in the air with his second finger.

"With two scoops of vanilla ice cream."

Ali drew two parallel vertical lines that connected at the ends to two parallel horizontal lines.

Lonnie squinched her eyes. Huh? Now it was like charades.

"A square?" someone suggested.

"A rectangle?"

"A box?"

For years, his rants, poems, and predictions made the world lean in. And now he was making us all lean in with his silence. Everyone's eyes were focused on Ali, and suddenly he yanked the words from the deep, rich well. "Woof! Woof!"

We all cracked up. He wanted the pie in a doggie bag.

THE IRISH SINGER Sinéad O'Connor was eating fresh berries in the hotel pub with her teenage son and Harlan Werner later that afternoon before the opening ceremony of the Special Olympics. O'Connor said that the only person in the world she'd ever wanted to meet was Muhammad Ali.

So many people feel a special and unique link to Ali. People he's never met send intensely personal mementos. George Foreman credits his transformation from a man who instilled fear to a smiling entrepreneur to Ali. O'Connor can still see herself as a girl watching Ali call himself beautiful on television. It amazed her, a kid from an abusive home, and she was never the same.

We went up to the Alis' suite, O'Connor carrying a painting she'd created just for Ali. Howard Bingham asked O'Connor if she'd like a photo with the champ. Yes, she nodded. And then something happened that I hope I can describe.

Do you know the poses that we all have, whether for snapshots with friends or when we're having a photo taken with somebody famous? Any photographer will tell you the same thing: As soon as the camera comes out, so does your pose. Well, there was no pose here. Sinéad tucked her head into Ali's left shoulder, and slowly her right arm moved around his waist. It was unmistakably the hug that a six-year-old girl gives to her father, and I know this very well because I have a six-year-old daughter.

It is amazing to see someone lose thirty years right before your eyes and the eyes of her own teenage son, and—well, I didn't do it justice.

A LUXURY SUITE atop Croke Park was reserved for the Alis to watch the opening ceremony. It offered a splendid view of the athletes from 156 countries triumphantly entering the stadium in Olympic fashion, but there was one problem. The suite was at the end of a long corridor, and its location made for a difficult trip to the elevator that would take Ali down to the floor of the stadium, where he was scheduled to get into a golf cart for a victory lap around the track when the U. S. team entered. The corridor was packed with people, and because Ali never, ever, brushes anyone off, this could extend a two-hundred-yard walk into a two-hour journey.

To scoot through the masses, it was suggested that Ali be pushed along in a wheelchair to the elevator. Yet this created a dilemma. If one television camera was to capture the image of "poor old Ali" confined to a wheelchair, it would be replayed over and over until it was quite obvious to everyone who saw it that this was, in fact, what had become of poor old Ali.

When the time came, security guards made way for the wheelchair, which cut through a swath of people. There were no video cameras. Ali stepped out of the wheelchair at the elevator, which descended to the stadium floor where the golf cart was waiting. He sat in the front seat. Howard Bingham got in the back with his cameras and motioned for me to hop aboard.

We're so accustomed to looking from a distance upon Ali in moments like this that it's hard to consider, or even imagine, Ali's vantage point. As the cart hit the track, our ears filled with the roar of "Ahhhhh-lee! Ahhhhh-lee! Ahhhhh-lee!" and I began to understand the drawings Ali does over and over again—the ring surrounded by all those dots. In that stadium, there were eighty thousand dots circled around him, all focused on him. All these dots released a burst of energy that came down upon the golf cart like a tidal wave. It's hard to describe, hard to even think in a moment like that, but the sensation made you feel like a child first becoming aware of the power of the ocean. And then Ali sent this enormous energy back with a wave of his trembling right hand. And as soon as it climbed all of the dots to the top of the stadium the wave folded and cascaded down upon him again. The energy climbed and crashed, over and over and over, until the golf cart turned into a tunnel and everyone was awash in affection.

A few days later I turned to the editorial page of a British newspaper. A cartoon depicted a giant Statue of Liberty wearing sunglasses and clutching a bayoneted machine gun towering over tiny Iraqis, who were throwing back stones. There were a lot of ways to feel about that cartoon. But it made me realize just how large Ali is. There are very few people in the history of the planet who could make everybody in the world stop for a moment, forget their differences, smile, and applaud in unison. Perhaps Ali was the only one left. I wondered if there'd be anyone after.

LONNIE WAS WAITING with the wheelchair when the elevator arrived back at the top of the stadium. A crowd converged, and a blond-haired woman slithered through, leaned in, and kissed Ali. Not a kiss on the cheek, but a Hollywood smacker on the lips that seemed to go on for half a minute. Lonnie stood by shaking her head and chuckling.

Of course, after sixteen years of marriage she must have gotten used to this. But still it must be hard sharing your husband with six billion people. When we reached the suite, she told me that it was difficult for some folks to realize that Ali actually had a family life. Lonnie and Muhammad have a son named Asaad who plays baseball, does yard work, and has the concerns of any normal twelve-year-old kid. And while Ali will always belong to the world, people cannot expect to ring his doorbell at the crack of dawn, as some have done in the past, and find a genial Muhammad rubbing sleep from his eyes to say hello.

As we spoke, a boy was wheeled into the suite. He had a sort of palsy and couldn't control the movements of his limbs or his head. His parents asked if he could meet Muhammad. Ali moved close and put his lips against the boy's cheek. The boy's head was turned the other way, and he couldn't see Ali, but he felt his lips. His body spasmed toward Ali, and his right arm reached out over his body, found the back of Ali's head, and stroked it.

Three hours after Ali knocked out George Foreman in the middle of Africa, Ali was doing magic tricks on a doorstep in N'Sele for a group of Zairean children. Once, about twenty years ago, when he was walking on a street in Los Angeles, he saw a man threatening to commit suicide by jumping from a fire escape, and he hurried inside the building and talked the man to safety. The embrace with this boy in the wheelchair lasted for more than two minutes.

As the ceremony neared conclusion, we were alerted so that Ali could leave before the crowd flooded out of the stadium. On the way to the elevator, though, we were slowed down in the corridor, and by the time we got downstairs to the exit, a wave of people was beginning to surge upon us. Either we had to move fast or we'd be swallowed by it.

Ali's stride immediately opened, and the burst of power and speed was exhilarating. He was walking, but walking as if he were on a treadmill set at top speed. I smiled as we reached the van, recalling the way he used to steal rounds that appeared lost by flurrying for the last fifteen seconds before the judges penciled in their scorecards.

And I thought: One Irishman could have gone home that night and said, I just saw Muhammad Ali. Pity, he was in a wheelchair.

While another could have gone on to meet his buddies at the pub and boasted, I just saw Ali sprinting out of Croke Park. What's this about Parkinson's disease? My God, he looked fabulous.

ALI HAS ALWAYS BEEN a walking contradiction. Somehow we'd all grown to accept that he could be about color and beyond color simultaneously. But the contradictions in the sixty-one-year-old Ali were baffling. How could his mind be so nimble one moment and then drift off to sleep the next? How could he struggle to get into a van and then streak out of a stadium like an Olympic walker? I wondered if a couple of days with him at his home would explain.

Ali's home and office are on a serenely landscaped eighty-eight-acre farm in Berrien Springs, Michigan. In the hallway outside his office, I walked past a copy of his overturned conviction in the conscientious-objector case against the government, a copy that is framed and signed by eight Supreme Court justices. As I stepped into his office, I found Ali on the floor like a four-year-old, inspecting a huge pile of ropes, coins, decks of cards, dice, balls, and other paraphernalia of the magic tricks he loves.

Two other guests entered, and Ali immediately held out a velour pouch, which he showed to be empty. Then he produced a long strip of yellow cloth, which he carefully stuffed into the pouch. There were none of the normal distractions provided by a magician's words. Ali simply nodded for one of the men to pull out the cloth. Gone! The guests exulted, not only at the trick, but that it could be performed by a man whose movements were slow and shaky. Ali pulled out a handful of pennies, made sure they were seen by all, inserted them into one of his guests' hands, then immediately made him close it. When the guest opened his fist, he gasped. He was holding dimes. On and on the tricks continued. But before his guests departed, Ali showed them the ruse behind every trick he had done.

"Never do a trick twice," he whispered after they left. "And never show them how you do it."

"I don't get it, champ," I said. "If that's the case, then why did you show them?"

"To prove to them . . . how easily they can be deceived."

Ali turned to a Bible on a long conference table—there was always a Bible around Ali—and began highlighting contradictions on its pages with a yellow marker, contradictions that he had listed on a sheet of paper and xeroxed so that he could hand it out to just about everyone he met.

One passage would call a woman Abraham's wife and another his concubine. One would describe forty thousand stalls of horses for Solomon's chariots; another would list the number as four thousand.

I had seen Ali examining these contradictions often in Dublin.

"Why," I asked, "do you spend so much time on them?"

"To show people . . . how easily they can be deceived."

We went over some more, and at one point he whispered, "In a hundred years . . . they'll turn me white."

"What?" I asked. "How could they do that?"

"They did it to Jesus."

HIS RESPONSES to questions were always short and simple, and sometimes profound.

"What was more important, saying, 'I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong' or not stepping forward when your name was called for draft induction?"

"The action," he whispered.

"You've made a lot of people smile and laugh for a long time. But what makes you laugh?"

"Something that's funny."

"What is goodness?"

"My mother."

"What's your definition of evil?"

"Unfriendliness."

"What did you learn from trying to come back from retirement at age thirty-eight, when you were badly beaten by Larry Holmes?"

"Stay around too long and you get whupped."

"What makes you most proud?"

"My family."

But sometimes there would be no response.

"Do fears diminish with time, or do they increase?"

Nothing.

"What are your biggest regrets?"

Silence.

He circled the large rooms in the office as if he were moving around a boxing ring. Nearly everywhere there was some kind of scrapbook. Ali would pick one up and leaf through, showing me kids and grandkids. We came across a photo of one of the first meetings between him and Lonnie on a Louisville stoop. Even then, at twenty, he was holding his arms out to the six-year-old freckle-faced girl from across the street. He looked at the photo and smiled, then asked an assistant to make fifty copies.

Ali's first wife, Sonji, had a taste for revealing clothing, which conflicted with his notion of a Muslim wife. He courted his second wife, Belinda, who was raised in the faith, when she was a teen working in a Muslim bakery. It was Belinda who went after him in a hotel room ten years later, just before the Thrilla in Manila, when she found out that Ali had taken the modelesque Veronica Porche to meet the president and first lady of the Philippines. That divorce, and the divorce from Veronica after his boxing career, ultimately led him back to the freckle-faced girl who'd grown up across the street.

"What's the secret to a successful marriage?"

"Agreement. . . . Agree on everything."

"But, champ, if you had to agree on everything to make a marriage successful, there'd be no successful marriages."

"The first three . . . taught me how to do the fourth."

LONNIE ASKED MUHAMMAD if he'd shown me the gym. In the half-humorous tone a wife might use to remind a husband reclining in a La-Z-Boy that the grass needed to be mowed, she mentioned that Muhammad had never really used it.

The gym is adjacent to the office, and Lonnie was right. It seemed like a museum. There was no smell of sweat, the boxing ring in the center of the room looked as though it had just been assembled, and the exercise machines appeared as if they had just been removed from boxes. The walls were decorated with photos of Ali fighting Frazier and Foreman. There were nostalgic shots of his trainer, Angelo Dundee, and shaman/cheerleader Bundini Brown. There was a recent photo of the one child of Ali's who boxed, his daughter Laila.

Ali slowly walked over to the dangling speed bag and turned it into a staccato drumroll that didn't miss a beat. His hands moved in a circle, and now that the bag was vibrating, his hands, arms, and the rest of his body looked very, very solid. After about twenty seconds he stopped and sat down.

"You've got such a beautiful gym," I said. "Why don't you work out every day?"

"What year were you born?" he asked in a whisper.

"Nineteen fifty-six," I said. "That makes me forty-six."

"I started boxing in 1955." There was a long pause. "That's a long time. . . . I'm tired."

MEDICINE COMES in the form of porridge that turns orange when left in the open air for a few minutes. And when he lifts the spoon to his mouth, it turns his tongue orange for a little while.

Sometimes it seems to make him sluggish and drift off. Once he napped sitting up on a couch, his left leg jangling my right. I wondered if that was the feeling of Parkinson's.

"What does Parkinson's feel like inside?" I asked when he awakened about ten minutes later. "Does it hurt?"

"No."

"Does it feel like a part of you is in jail?"

"Hard to explain . . ." he whispered. But he tried in his way. "All great people are tested by God. . . . I'm being tested . . . to see if I'll keep praying . . . to see if I'll keep my faith. I'm being tested."

THE NEXT MORNING I met one of Ali's nine children, his twenty-six-year-old daughter Hana, who has written a tribute to her father and is at work on another book in his own words.

Hana speaks in a blizzard of sentences that makes you lean forward and blink because they come in the same cadence of a very famous voice of forty years ago. While Ali highlighted biblical contradictions, she smiled and nodded when I brought up some of the confusing physical contradictions.

"Sometimes it has to do with him taking his medicine. But you've got to understand: He doesn't let Parkinson's be an excuse for not doing anything in his life. He loves to travel, and he'll be on a plane out of here again tomorrow. That's really tiring.

Also, my dad gets up in the middle of the night—at four or five. Gets up and eats, goes back to bed. He doesn't get a full night's sleep. People say he always looks so tired. But when you see him at home for a while, you see a difference. He might wake up with a clear voice because he got a full night's sleep."

She talked nonstop for an hour on myriad subjects, and I could not help but glance at her silent dad and smile at the irony.

"Champ," I turned to him, "she talks like you!"

Ali looked at his daughter, rolled his eyes, shook his head, and, with a disbelieving smile, moved his thumb against four top fingers in that gesture of a mouth that can't stop yakking.

WHEN YOU LOOK BACK at Ali's life, so much seems to have been fated. For instance, I've heard a lot of stories about boys, but only one of a boy who asked his little brother to throw rocks at him so that he could practice avoiding them with the movements of his body. Was there some divine purpose in this?

Two years after Ali was born, another child came into the world, in Beaufort, South Carolina. People coming to see this newborn actually leaned into the crib to see if the boy had only one arm like his daddy, failing to understand that the daddy's missing left hand and forearm came not from heredity but from being shot off in an argument over a woman.

The little boy was Joe Frazier. And the boy worked a farm in Beaufort with his father, cutting trees with a two-man cross saw, his daddy using his only hand, his right hand, forcing Joe to muscle it back and forth with his left. The left hook that was developed in those muscles, the lunging left hook that circled around from beyond the corner of your right eye, was the one punch that a boy who could avoid rocks in the street by simply moving his head would be vulnerable to. Watching the two confront each other in the ring was fated to be like watching lightning go at thunder.

I helped take off Ali's watch. I pulled gloves off a rack and helped set them over Ali's hands. Then I took two gloves and pulled them over my own fists. Years ago, I trained to challenge the best fighter in the world, Julio Cesar Chavez, to go one round with me. That round actually came to be, but that is another story. What is important here is that I trained to fight that one round for three hours a day for more than six months, trained my short arms and compact body in the exact style of Joe Frazier.

Now, ten years later, in Muhammad Ali's gym, my legs began pumping up and down like a creaky locomotive warming up, and I began bobbing and weaving in a crouch, my right hand figure-eighting in front of my face for protection. Then I launched a left hook into the heavy bag that the city of Philadelphia would have been proud of. In the relentless style that Joe loved to call smokin', I began to beat on the body of the bag. I had watched so many tapes of Joe Frazier that I could even sound like him.

Ali's eyebrow arched like that of a sleeping lion awakened by an old familiar scent—and I slammed the bag harder.

"You good!" Ali said.

He stood, moved me out of the way, and began to pepper the bag with jabs. Pop! Pop! Pop! He steadied himself and threw a left-right and some more jabs.

"You think that's going to keep me off?" I snorted. "I'm still coming!" I moved in on the bag in a crouch and launched a cannonade of body shots. At the time of the first fight, on March 8, 1971, you were either for Ali, as I was, or for Frazier. But as their three fights unfurled to the Thrilla in Manila, those who loved Ali discovered that they also had to love Joe Frazier. Because Joe was the one guy Ali could not chump in the ring.

Ali would be trying to mess up Frazier's head as Frazier's punches flew, trilling, "You can't beat me. I'm God!" And Joe would come back with, "Oh, yeah, then God's gonna get his ass whupped tonight!" and keep punching. Ali once said there was a point in the third fight that took him to the border of death, and it forced him to pull everything out of himself to shut Frazier's left eye and keep him in the corner when the bell rang for the fifteenth round. I slammed four straight hooks into the bag to see what it would bring out of him now.

Ali stepped in, but he did not punch. And suddenly I saw something I thought I'd never see again: Muhammad Ali was dancing. Dancing! Moving around the bag, not like when he was twenty-two, but with rhythm and grace.

He looked at himself in the mirror that covered a distant wall, and his head and chest rose as he circled. Then he stopped, planted, swiveled, and threw a combination of rapid punches. The corner of my eye caught a glimpse of that photo of Bundini Brown, his cheerleader in his corner for all those years, and I began chanting: "Float like a butterfly, / Sting like a bee. / Your hands can't hit, / What your eyes can't see!"

The breaths coming through Ali's nose were deep and focused, and an intensity radiated from his eyes as he threw volley after volley, and I howled, "Go to the well once mo', champ!"

He moved around the bag, stopped, fired an eight-punch combination fast enough to shine your shoes, then planted himself and ripped a left hook. If that heavy bag had been a sixty-one-year-old man, I would have had to start counting.

Ali stumbled away from the bag, and I realized just how deeply he was breathing and wondered if I'd goaded him too far.

He walked toward a rubbing table covered with mats, and I thought he might collapse on it, but instead he grabbed the mats, put them off to the side, rested his backside on the table, then lay back on the table and started to do sit-ups. When he finished, he remained on his back, lifted his legs in the air, and began bicycling, and then, without halting the pedaling motion, he rocked forward with synchronized stomach crunches. Try that for a few minutes—just to know what it feels like.

Ali got off the table and walked to a stationary bicycle, where he pedaled for a few minutes, then over to the super leg press. He set it for two hundred pounds, gripped the handles with his hands, and ordered the thick bars of weight to rise by extending his legs. He adjusted the clip to 250, grimaced, and pushed his legs out again and again.

"That's a lot of weight," I said, my way of asking him to relax.

"Feels good," he whispered. Then he locked his jaw and pushed his legs out once more.

WE RETURNED TO THE OFFICE and put on a tape of some interviews Ali had done in 1971 and 1974, and it was like watching a peacock spread its feathers at the height of its plumage. Ali stared at the smooth and smiling round face of his prime. He stroked his mustache and whispered, as if amazed, "Gray hair." Then, as the afternoon turned into early evening, he focused again on contradictions, highlighting them in Bibles on the big conference table.

I looked at this quiet, even studious man and wondered about all the conflict that had blown across his life. What must the insides of a man feel like preparing to fight Sonny Liston or George Foreman? To stand up against a government for his beliefs even if it meant he'd lose his livelihood and/or go to jail? To go on television—a young man who'd failed an army intelligence test—and match wits with the medium's quickest minds? To stand on a street corner in front of a television camera after he'd received death threats and announce his exact location?

Lord knows, Parkinson's disease is enough weight for any man to carry. But I couldn't help but wonder if it was the winds of conflict, more than Ali himself, that were missing in his encroaching old age. Ali reached into his cabinets in search of more contradictions and handed me a piece of paper that, at the top, said: words of wisdom. There were hundreds of phrases, little gems to live by. As I looked them over, he disappeared, then came back with a bowl filled with vanilla ice cream.

"Enjoy life," he whispered. "It's later than you think."

He handed me a Koran and asked me to read. He sat back and enjoyed the prayer coming off my lips, then dozed off like a six-year-old.

I watched him sleep and recalled a moment in the Dublin hotel when I sat alone eating breakfast and heard a song over the radio, a song that Ali himself had recorded in the early sixties, and as the words played forty years later I heard them in Ali's youthful voice.

When the night has come,
And the land is dark.
And the moon is the only light we'll see.
No I won't be afraid,
Oh I won't be afraid,
Just as long as you stand, stand by me.
If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall,
Or the mountains,
Should crumble to the sea.
I won't cry, I won't cry
No I won't shed a tear,
Just as long as you stand, stand by me . . .

I'd felt tears at the corners of my eyes when the violins came in. But there were none now. And that's what you need to know about Ali.

No matter how much his hands or legs shake, no matter how many words tumble and fall before they reach your ears, you don't feel sad when you're around him. He doesn't feel sorry for himself, and he won't let you, either. This is a man who, when asked what age he wanted to live to, said one hundred.

Of course, things will go downhill, just as they do for all of us. And a day will come when the wells will run dry and the world will no longer hear Ali's voice.

But it won't matter. Actions have always spoken more eloquently than words. And if you need words, well, the wisdom he's taken from life can be reduced to one.

Give.

posted by Bernard @ 8:41 PM

AN IRAQI SPEAKS... NOT SOME MOB OF 100,000 DIMWITS
From The Editorial Page of The Wall Street Journal

Great point by Mr. Talabani below. It is not a "resistance" that our troops are encountering in Iraqi, but terrorists who fight to retain their power in a lost dictatorship and outsiders seeking to stop freedom's progress on Iraqi soil. Shame on those who say it is a "resistance" to the U.S. and Bush's policies. Using such an important point in history and a critical period for the people of Iraqi for their own selfish political purposes is disgraceful. It is far from the truth and a grossly false statement that the terrorists fighting our soliders are rejecting their new "freedom" or feel captive by U.S. troops (read prior post for new survey results as proof).

Do you honestly believe the people of Iraqi want to go back to the prior form of government? To live in fear and terror? Or at best mediocrity and minimum subsistence? Who do you really think is behind all these attacks?

Shame on those who say our soliders shed their blood for naught and that they wasted their lives in a hostile land. As Mr. Talabani stated in his editorial, Americans are liberators. Nothing more or less. Not hostile occupiers or helpless caretakers. Not future dictators or relief works. Liberators who risked their lives for the freedom of the people of Iraq and are fighting against the same types of people who created the horror of 9/11.

Who really believes it is a "resistence" to the U.S. and its people? Who thinks the suicide car bombings are executed by the people of Iraq? Do you believe the average citizen of Iraq cared whether the U.S. received multi-lateral support before they overthrew Saddem? Do you really believe many of those nations that voted against the U.S. in the U.N. resolution would have later on volunteer their troops for such a mission and possible retaliation from world terrorists? Reality dictates practical approaches in life. Too much hope, wishful thinking, and discussion leads to indecision, fear, and dire consequences if people's lives are at stake.


The Way Forward
We Iraqis must bear the brunt of the fighting.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
BY JALAL TALABANI
Sunday, November 23, 2003

BAGHDAD, Iraq--It has been my privilege to preside over the Iraqi Governing Council during a month of momentous events. We now have an agreement for the transfer of authority between the coalition, the liberators, and the council, the representatives of the liberated Iraqis. President Bush has outlined an inspiring vision for a free and democratic Middle East. Our American friends are resolutely striking back at the vicious remnants of Saddam Hussein's regime and damaging the network of Baathists and foreign Islamists attempting to destroy the Iraqi experiment in democracy. Yet these gains could easily be forfeited if we Iraqis do not bear the brunt of the fighting.

The enemies of Iraqi freedom are not "resistance," a word that evokes the heroism of Poles in the Second World War, nobly battling their occupiers. Nor can those who murder our American liberators, Red Cross workers, U.N. officials and Italian policemen be termed "guerrillas." Rather, they are terrorists. They are the thugs and torturers who repressed their fellow Iraqis for 35 years, the perpetrators of genocide, men who butchered hundreds of thousands of Kurds, Marsh Arabs and Shiite Arabs. The creation of an antidemocratic fascist counterrevolution of Baathists and foreign Islamic volunteers, some of whom are from al Qaeda and Ansar al-Islam, is a classic unholy Middle Eastern alliance. These people have more support among the Arab media and in the studios of al-Jazeera than they do in Iraq.

The significance of this wave of terrorism is not military but political. On the battlefield the terrorists are losing. But the terrorists have grasped something that too few in the U.S. will admit: that Iraq is now the central front both in the war against terrorism and the struggle for a better Middle East. The terrorists will not stop fighting if the U.S. troops are withdrawn, rather they will become emboldened to believe that they can win this conflict.

Only the U.S. was capable of toppling Saddam's dictatorship, a brilliantly executed campaign in which the Kurdish guerrillas, the peshmerga, were the only Iraqis to take casualties fighting with the coalition. The defeat of the terrorists, however, must be largely an Iraqi endeavor. By taking up arms and routing the terrorists, Iraqis will own their new democracy--nobody will be able to say that it has been handed to them.
Two measures must be taken so that Iraqis can fight side by side with your brave GIs. First, we need to use existing Iraqi patriotic forces. There are over 60,000 peshmerga who have fought alongside the coalition and who are keen to contribute. We accept the sensitivities that preclude using Kurdish troops in Arab areas. However, the peshmerga can be used to provide backup and guard facilities, as well as protect the borders of our country, thereby freeing up Iraqi forces for operations in the Sunni Triangle.

Second, the new Iraqi army, police and intelligence services must be trained by the coalition and dedicated to defending democracy. Resurrecting the former Iraqi army is not an option. The Iraqi army had a record of internal repression and external aggression. L. Paul Bremer, the coalition's administrator, demonstrated great wisdom when he formally wound up the Iraqi army. Like the Allied decree in 1946 that dissolved Prussia, the edict abolishing the Iraqi army struck at the roots of the Arab nationalist militarism that plagued Iraq even before Saddam.

Those advocating the recall of the former Iraqi army are propounding the "stability first" policy that President Bush rejected with his Nov. 6 speech. The Iraqi peoples were victims of the "stability" imposed by the Iraqi army. All patriotic Iraqis were heartened when Mr. Bush said that "60 years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe--because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty." Our battle against the terrorists will be long and painful, but while we fight we will continue to rebuild. Iraq is often falsely described as a mess, even a quagmire. Yet seven months after liberation, Iraq is making impressive progress by any standard. It is a testament to the determination of all of Iraq's peoples, Kurds, Arabs, Turkomans and Assyrians alike, that they have persevered in the face of a merciless terrorist campaign.

What is happening in Iraq is not, however, the restoration of normality, because in Saddam's Iraq there was no such thing. Rather, it is a courageous and necessary attempt to create the basic elements of a decent, democratic society in a place where human dignity was relentlessly crushed underfoot. Iraqi Kurdistan's experience of self-government, tolerance and civil-society building over the last 12 years is now being extended to the whole of Iraq. In Baghdad today, there are scores of newspapers and nearly as many political parties. For the first time in 35 years the basic issues facing Iraq can be loudly debated in public rather than fearfully whispered behind closed doors. Iraq today is a success. It was Iraq under Saddam that was a "mess," where mass graves were "normality."

Critically, Iraq is finally benefiting from its own resources. Under Saddam, Iraq gave cheap oil to the region to buy influence, while wasting oil revenues on arms and palaces. So while oil production is still below prewar levels, our net oil revenues are probably higher now that Baathist waste has been eliminated.

Most of Iraq is now peaceful. Iraqi Kurdistan and largely Shiite Arab southern Iraq have suffered relatively little violence. The localized terrorist problem in the Sunni Arab "triangle" and parts of Baghdad should not deter foreign investors. Rather they should build on the success of the Madrid donors' conference. Entrepreneurs and foreign lenders, such as the World Bank, should begin operating in Iraqi Kurdistan and southern Iraq. Some foreign firms have already teamed up with Iraqi enterprises to reconstruct Iraq. They know that Iraq is ripe for foreign investment and development. Iraq needs to attract foreign investment to create the private-sector jobs that our economy, dominated by state enterprises, so desperately needs.

The terrorists want our bid for democracy to fail, just as the same terrorists attempted in recent years to undermine self-rule in Iraqi Kurdistan. The courage of the U.S. and Britain in liberating Iraq was a blow to the negative forces in the Middle East, to the Arab chauvinism and Islamist radicalism that so murderously combined to commit the atrocity of September 11. These terrorists know that if they are defeated in Iraq, then they will be defeated everywhere, but that if they can make the U.S. stumble or lose its nerve in Iraq, then their cause is not yet lost. It is for Iraqis to prove them wrong.


Mr. Talabani is the current president of the Iraq Governing Council and secretary-general of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.

posted by Bernard @ 8:33 PM

100,000 PROTEST AGAINST BUSH FOR... WHAT?
Baghdad University Survey Last Week Shows Support for U.S. Troops

When President Bush visited Britain last week, supposedly 100,000 people gathered to protest against the president and his policies. I really want to know why these people are protesting. Are they protesting against the new found freedom that Iraqis are experiencing? The fact that inhumane torture has ended in Iraq and they want it to start again? Are they upset that Iraqis can build a democratic government without the push and pull of a dictator unwilling to relinquish power? It is because they are unemployed and have nothing better to do? Unemployed and want to vent their frustrations? Simply anti-American, so just protesting anything "American"? Anti-Semitic? Sadly, this fear and ignorance against Jews is more widespread then many of us would like to believe. Fair amount of the protesters carried "upside-down U.S. flags covered in Nazi swastikas or Stars of David." Maybe it's unfair of me to generally label this crowd as a mass mob without a real purpose or assume they lack the intelligence to comprehend what they were really protesting against.

I understand they are protesting against the invasion of Iraqi. But for what reasons are they upset about? The results are clear that a dictator has been toppled, inhumane torture and abuse has ended, and a road to democracy set in place for the people of Iraq. The road will be difficult and long, but did you really expect anything less? It is the clash of ideologies on a world scale that are at stake and the price will be high. Democracy's stake in the Middle East is a great threat to some people, especially Islamic extremist, that they are willing to lose their lives to end its progress. So more Americans will die, more Brits too, and others' blood will be shed for democracy and freedom to lay its foundation in Iraq.

As I stated, the results of the invasion have been good for the people of Iraq and a majority of them agree with me. Last week, Baghdad University posted the results of a wide survey showing that 72% of Iraqis supported the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq, and 63% supported the council that was established. This means, minus Saddam's followers and those he rewarded, that a vast majority of Iraqis support the U.S. presence. If the people of Iraq support the U.S. presence, what are these protesters upset about? What are they against or for?

It has to be more than the idea of "war" that drives these people. "Peace not war" is a shallow and impractical approach to the world. If that is the core and depth of their protests than it would be difficult for me to have a meaningful conversation with many of them.

International protocol? Not sure if many of them even cared about this, but I would think this is one of the few legitimate reasons for protest. They can protest against the U.S. for overstepping its international boundaries as a global power. Since the U.S. didn't have the full support of the U.N., which is more complicated since there were economic reasons for France and Russia to block the resolution, people can accuse the U.S. of abusing its power. If I was a dictator in the world, I would protest and use all the diplomatic means that I could to raise a ruckus since such actions would set a precedent towards a potential invasion by the U.S. into my kingdom.

I would also care if I didn't trust the U.S. democratic process and believed that a madman or lunatic could become leader of the free world, but it is very unlikely if not impossible. Besides all the jokes against Bush and questions about his intelligence, he is far from a madman or lunatic, and has proven himself to be a bold leader guided by his principles rather than opinion polls.

If they bring up the "blood for oil" issues, then I really will make wide assumptions that these people are idiots. And if they truly believed "big business" drove Bush and his policy-makers towards war then they should protest on an equal level against the leaders and governments in France and Russia.

Many of the voices in the U.S. public forum are tangled in next year's presidential race so positioning and politics have taken the frontseat while open and honest discussions have been pushed aside. I enjoyed talking with my graduate school classmate and friend, JB, early on when the invasion was initiated. JB is a San Francisco Democrat, so we don't see eye-to-eye on many issues but we can intelligently discuss things between us.

He said to me, "Look, I know the neoconversative philosophy is driving much of this invasion and those guys want to plant "democracy's flag" in the Middle East, but just come out and say it instead of all this BS about Saddem and his WMD..."

"Do you really think those things can be stated, JB? Come on... And there were legitimate concerns about weapons of mass destruction..."

What really amuses me up is how people in the U.S. are upset that we are spending billions on Iraq, but supposedly doing nothing on our economy and job creation. What does 7.2% GDP growth mean to them? Why am I getting a few calls a week on my resume this past month versus one or none over the prior six months?

In the CNN article one woman stated, "I don't understand how Bush can justify spending billions extra on defense when these more basic needs of employment and medical care aren't being met."

Are these two policies and actions by the government co-dependent on one another? So do you want our government to create more jobs? Do you know what effect creating artificial jobs to prop up the economy will have? It would only be a bandaid for the economy with greater consequences than good for the U.S. So do these people really know what they are asking for when they protest against the use of U.S. dollars for Iraq versus job creation and "improving our economy"?

What were they protesting against in Trafalgar Square last week? Can someone please write me and let me know? Thanks.

posted by Bernard @ 7:39 PM

ROBERT RUBIN IS A STUD
Our Shrinking World Creates A Greater Need for Global Awareness

Since I have some time before breakfast, I wanted to write a short comment on Robert Rubin's new book, "In An Uncertain World." I was reading an excerpt in this week's Newsweek on the flight from Seoul to Los Angeles for my trip to this year's Comdex. The former Chairman of Goldman Sachs and U.S. Treasury Secretary is simply a brilliant man. I honestly don't know the extent of his intellect, but in terms of what he reflects in his speeches, writing, and professional accomplishments are rarely match.

While I was reading the excerpt, it made me realize how little the average American knows about the interdependence of nations in our world today. Actions even within a smaller economy, such as Brazil, can create a chain reaction that affects the U.S. and the rest of the world.

"To me, the events of those years lead to four important points. The most straightforward of these is the international interdependence that results from greatly increased integration of trade and capital markets - and how little understood that interdependence is. I remember Pedro Malan, the finance minister of Brazil, telling me in October 1998 how difficult it was to explain to his people that their currency was under attack and interest rates were higher in part because the Russian Duma had failed to raise taxes. The global crisis underscored the reality that in an economically integrated world, prosperity in faraway countries can create opportunities elsewhere, but instability in a distant economy can also create uncertainty and instability at home."

These are not new ideas, but Rubin is the type of man that can convey this knowledge to a wider audience than some University of Chicago economics professor. This led me to think that the study of global interdependence should be a required curriculum in our high schools today. A reading and analysis of the growing economic, cultural, and social interdependence should be at least a part of a world civilization or another social science course that is typically within the freshman curriculum. Many Americans are truly ignorant of the world beyond their nation, state, city, or even backyard. For individuals and our nation to make a greater impact in the future, our citizens need to realize how truly connected and dependent we are with every human being in the world today.

posted by Bernard @ 8:14 AM

PC MAGAZINE SUCKS!
Crazy at Comdex... American Breakfast Rocks!

I didn't think I would have time to blog while at Comdex, but I just needed to sit down and get away from the crowds. After spending all day Sunday setting up our booth, Monday was crazy. Our team of four stood from 10am to 5pm straight without a break because we were flooded with people interested in our software and technology. We didn't have time for lunch nor even thought about it. Same thing today. The response towards our product was great. Many told us flat out that we had the coolest or best product at Comdex, and many were from leading companies such as Nokia, ABC, and Dell.

So this brings up my gripe with PC Magazine. Supposedly they had a "Best of Comdex" award where they would "comb" the floor and choose the best products. To my knowledge, they didn't visit our booth, so I went to their staff this afternoon to invite them over and they informed me that they already decided the recipients during the morning. In a snobby manner they brushed me off and said that they double-checked this morning and I wouldn't have known whether their staff passed by or not.

Since I'm only consulting for this software company, I really don't think I have much at stake or a strong bias. I think PC Magazine was lazy about this process or already pre-selected their "Best of Comdex" with their advertisers or sponsors. What a scam. They suck. You reading this PC Magazine? You guys suck.

Anyway, being back stateside has been awesome because I can eat an American-style breakfast again. My colleagues and I have been eating at a breakfast buffet every morning. This has been key to our daily survival since we've been skipping lunch due to our lack of time. More importantly, the breakfast buffet at the Hilton rocks. At 7:00am it serves a full lunch menu also. So I've been eating sausage (korean breakfast sausage sucks), eggs, french toast, cottage cheese (i missed this so much), and other breakfast foods. The best thing on the menu though has been an Italian sausage mix. How awesome is this for breakfast? Grilled Italian sausage with onions and green peppers! Italian sausage might be the best invention to come out of Italy. Better than anything Leonardo da Vinci made. I love Italians this week for making my stomach very happy. Amore Italia!

posted by Bernard @ 4:33 PM

GOING TO COMDEX

In a rush this morning because I'm taking off for Comdex with the Korean software company I'm consulting for. Though an old article, Cooper's perspective sort of sucks if it's completely true because this small software company I'm helping out is looking for substance thousands of miles away in Las Vegas. We'll see what happens and if we meet any significant strategic partners or sales channels.

I might not have much time to blog next week, but we'll see. I might be too tired from standing up all day and talking with whomever to stand at the craps tables. I miss craps though since they don't play that game in Asia.


Perspective: A last hurrah for Comdex?

By Charles Cooper

November 15, 2002

The first time my editors sent me to the Comdex computer trade show in Las Vegas, I was young, wide-eyed and owned a reasonable head of hair. Well, at least I had more on my head than the accompanying photo might suggest. During those go-go days in the mid-1980s, the annual trade show was something else. For starters, it was a semi-annual event. The new product spigot was full blast. So much was happening that the event's organizers could hold another Comdex each spring in Atlanta.

In those pre-monopoly days, Comdex was full of possibilities and fizz was in the air. Nobody knew how this nascent industry was supposed to end up. And if they said they did, well, they were just fibbing. There was just too much going on.

Microsoft was just another software company. Truth be told, it was not even considered first among equals. That title went to Lotus, at the time the preeminent software developer with its runaway spreadsheet success Lotus 1-2-3. When Bill Gates opined, the press did not fawn over him like a rock star. We paid closer attention to the more interesting ruminations of Lotus' then-CEO Mitch Kapor or the always-flamboyant antics of Philippe Kahn of Borland.

Fact is the early versions of Windows were awful and, besides DOS, Microsoft didn't have much of a product portfolio to talk up on the show floor--at least not compared to what was going on at Lotus, Borland, WordPerfect and Ashton-Tate.

Of course, that helped to make it all the more fun.

The competition on the hardware side was equally fierce. IBM may have been big and bad, but upstart clone makers like Compaq Computer, Tandon and AST Research usually grabbed the bigger show headlines.

Comdex was a geek's delight and you could lose yourself in the back aisles and easily stumble upon new products that were uniquely, outrageously cool.

Even the dumbest ideas got their 15 minutes of fame--and there was no short supply of oddball gadgetry. My particular favorite was a co-processor board that let Mac users operate a PC. The product was so kludgy and so expensive you had to wonder why anyone would bother.

But that was just it. Everything was up for grabs. This was not just a conventional trade show. It was a happening. Comdex may have been a zany potpourri, but you came away convinced that there was important stuff going on there that would reshape the future.

In a way, it succeeded too well. The computer industry, which grew up to become a key part of the overall economy, also outgrew Comdex. Now that Microsoft lords over the software industry as a convicted monopolist and PCs have transmogrified from cool to commodity, this is just another--albeit expensive--trade show.

With the big names increasingly staying away, who can blame them? For a lot of companies, the hassle and expense of trekking out to Vegas just isn't worth it. They can get a better return for the buck showing up at the sundry specialized conferences that attract the really serious buyers. With the economy still in a funk, every penny saved is a penny earned. So it hardly came as a surprise when Comdex promoter Key3Media warned earlier this week that it may need to file for bankruptcy protection.

The sad truth is Comdex just isn't relevant anymore. And it will never recapture that lost spark.

posted by Bernard @ 5:18 PM

L.A. BIMBOS... NOT TALKING ABOUT THE WOMEN THERE

As I look to move back to the U.S. after my 3 year stint in Asia, I'm open to almost every major city in the U.S. On the top of my list is NYC and afterwards Chicago, San Francisco, D.C., and Los Angeles would follow. I was initially concerned that if I move to L.A. that I would never get married, or that it would be very difficult. I have a narrow personality and character type I'm attracted to, and I thought that if I move to Los Angeless that it would be difficult to find a professionally driven woman with spunk, intellect, etc. From my brief travels to the land of silicon breasts and countless wannabes (actors, writers, and producers), I simply didn't think I would find a woman I wanted to settle down with. Self-designated monkhood... that's what I would be destined for in L.A. (ok, L.A. lovers and women in L.A. start sending the hate mail if you want).

By a blessing, I started dating a wonderful woman, so this is not the focus of my post. I was recently enlightened by a good friend on the other side of the gender coin. She moved to L.A. earlier this year and started to test out the dating waters. The results so far have been amusing to say the least.

THE SLAM
One time she was having a quiet dinner with her date in a respectable restaurant. She thought the evening was progressing nicely when suddenly the guy slams his knife on the dinner table. There was a pause, so she asked him if everything was okay.

He ignored her question and proceeded to boldly proclaim, "Damn girl! You belong at Hooters! You gotta work at Hooters!"

She soon ended the dinner and ignored his calls after that random explosion of raw lust.

THE BET
Another time she was on a date and the discussion led to a bet. I don't remind the topic, but it wasn't a serious or heavy topic at all. The Casanova offers the conditions of the bet. If he's correct, then they both go naked into a hot tub. If he loses, then she gives him a wet kiss. Anton Chekhov would be rolling in his grave.

"Excuse me? No." she replies.

"What?!" shocked that a woman would turn down his fine offer.

"No."

"Yes."

She told me that this went on for a while and that he was very serious about the bet. A little too horny for a first-time date and a little too serious over a stupid bet. This Casanova thought he was too smooth for his own good and got flustered since he saw his ship towards some action sinking.

My friend and I were talking about some of these experiences and discussed the differences between L.A. and NYC. She's was a consultant at Bain & Co. before moving to L.A. and getting into the production side of the movie world. She's cool, professionally polished, and well-rounded. So I assume she met up with similar types of people in NYC. Now since she's in the open range she is encountering the whole spectrum of men. Ones that she never thought she would meet and those she thought only existed on reality TV shows.

I believe her circle in NYC was mainly comprised of bankers, consultants, and other professionals who tend to be more polished and well-mannered unless you get the geeks gone wild due to their new social status and money. In L.A. she's open game to all types and it's difficult for her to judge the terrain much less the animals in this wild kingdom by appearance alone.

My other friends in L.A. don't help to balance this perspective since they have similar complaints. From her experiences, she now believes L.A. isn't only filled with female bimbos, but male ones as well.

posted by Bernard @ 4:36 AM

ZELL MILLER IS MY NEW ROLE MODEL
A Democrat I Love

Ok, besides my friends that are Democrats, which are the majority of my friends, I have a new person I hold dear... Zell Miller. The Democratic senator from Georgia served as governor of his state before his current position. As governor, he was known for his independent thinking and principles. During his time, the Washington Post called Miller "the most popular governor in America" and he simply kicks ass in his featured editorial below.


George Bush vs. the Naive Nine
Why this lifelong Democrat will vote Republican next November.

BY ZELL MILLER
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Monday, November 3, 2003 12:01 a.m.

If I live and breathe, and if--as Hank Williams used to say--the creek don't rise, in 2004 this Democrat will do something I didn't do in 2000, I will vote for George W. Bush for president.

I have come to believe that George Bush is the right man in the right place at the right time. And that's a pretty big mouthful coming from a lifelong Democrat who first voted for Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and has voted for every Democratic presidential candidate the 12 cycles since then. My political history to the contrary, this was the easiest decision I think I've ever made in deciding who to support. For I believe the next five years will determine the kind of world my four grandchildren and four great-grandchildren will live in. I simply cannot entrust that crucial decision to any one of the current group of Democratic presidential candidates.

Why George Bush? First, the personal; then, the political.

I first got to know George Bush when we served as governors together, and I just plain like the man, a man who feeds his dogs first thing every morning, has Larry Gatlin sing in the White House, and knows what is meant by the term "hitting behind the runner."

I am moved by the reverence and tenderness he shows the first lady and the unabashed love he has for his parents and his daughters.

I admire this man of faith who has lived that line in that old hymn, "Amazing Grace," "Was blind, but now I see." I like the fact that he's the same on Saturday night as he is on Sunday morning. And I like a man who shows respect for others by starting meetings on time.

That's the personal. Now, the political.

This is a president who understands the price of freedom. He understands that leaders throughout history often have had to choose between good and evil, tyranny and freedom. And the choice they make can reverberate for generations to come. This is a president who has some Churchill in him and who does not flinch when the going gets tough. This is a president who can make a decision and does not suffer from "paralysis analysis." This is a president who can look America in the eye and say on Iraq, "We're not leaving." And you know he means it.

This is also a president who understands that tax cuts are not just something that all taxpayers deserve, but also the best way to curb government spending. It is the best kind of tax reform. If the money never reaches the table, Congress can't gobble it up.

I have just described George W. Bush.

Believe me, I looked hard at the other choices. And what I saw was that the Democratic candidates who want to be president in the worst way are running for office in the worst way. Look closely, there's not much difference among them. I can't say there's "not a dime's worth of difference" because there's actually billions of dollars' worth of difference among them. Some want to raise our taxes a trillion, while the others want to raise our taxes by several hundred billion. But, make no mistake, they all want to raise our taxes. They also, to varying degrees, want us to quit and get out of Iraq. They don't want us to stay the course in this fight between tyranny and freedom. This is our best chance to change the course of history in the Middle East. So I cannot vote for a candidate who wants us to cut and run with our shirttails at half-mast.

I find it hard to believe, but these naive nine have managed to combine the worst feature of the McGovern campaign--the president is a liar and we must have peace at any cost--with the worst feature of the Mondale campaign--watch your wallet, we're going to raise your taxes. George McGovern carried one state in 1972. Walter Mondale carried one state in 1984. Not exactly role models when it comes to how to get elected or, for that matter, how to run a country.

So, as I have said, my choice for president was an easy decision. And my own party's candidates made it even easier.


Mr. Miller is a Democratic senator from Georgia and the author of "A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat," published last month by Stroud & Hall. You can buy it from the OpinionJournal bookstore.

posted by Bernard @ 12:50 AM