The Good Book Business

The following quotes are taken from an article on bible publishing from the Dec. 18th issue of the New Yorker.

The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year. Calculating how many bibles are sold in the United States is a virtually impossible task, but a conservative estimate is that in 2005 Americans purchased some twenty-five million Bibles -- twice as many as the most recent Harry Potter book. The amount spent annually on Bibles has been put at more than half a billion dollars.

And if that doesn't raise your secular eyebrows, check THIS out...

According to the Barna Group, an evangelical polling firm, forty-seven percent of Americans read the Bible every week. But other research has found that ninety-one percent of American households own at least one Bible --- the average owns four -- which means that Bible publishers manage to sell twenty-five million copies a year of a book that almost everybody already has.

The article goes on to describe the wide array of Bibles available that target specific audiences. Revolve, for instance, was created after a marketing executive came in "with a variety of teen-girl magazines and threw them on the table...And then she threw a black bonded-leather Bible on the table and said, 'Which would you rather read if you were sixteen years old?'" The resulting product looks indistinguishable from a teen-magazine for girls. Inside there are "quizzes, photos of beaming teen-agers, and sidebars offering Bible-themed beauty secrets." Here is one of their tips.

Have you ever had a white stain appear underneath the arms of your favorite dark blouse? Don't freak out. You can quickly give deodorant spots the boot. Just grab a spare toothbrush, dampen with a little water and liquid soap, and gently scrub until the stain fades away. As you wash away the stain, praise God for cleansing us from all the wrong things we have done (1 John 1:9)

The Next Religious Cult Trial

From All Things Considered, Listen Here

In southwest Missouri, police are investigating allegations of child sexual abuse involving church leaders and church members. Prosecutors in two counties say there are multiple victims and similar patterns of abuse.

Some of the alleged sexual contact may have been committed as part of a ritual or ceremony, crimes that are rare in the United States. NPR has reviewed extensive legal documents in these cases over several months and also talked to most of the accusers, as well as some of the accused.

The area of Missouri where the cases surfaced has been home to extremist and fringe groups in the past. Data show that a high number of cases of child sexual abuse in the same area are reported annually to the Department of Social Services. What makes this story different is that almost all the accusers -- five so far -- and the accused -- five in total -- are related by blood or marriage.

Newton County's Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Bill Dobbs says complicated family ties are involved in the cases.

"We have, in McDonald County, Raymond Lambert, who is married to his stepsister," Dobbs says. "We have George Johnston, who is an uncle to Raymond Lambert. It is alleged by some members of that community that the religious leaders may, in fact, be the biological parents of several children who have been born into this group."

Our story focuses mostly on the pastors Raymond Lambert and his uncle George Johnston. Both men are charged with multiple counts of statutory sodomy or child molestation. Pastor Lambert led his flock on a 100-acre farm. Pastor Johnston led his on a 10-acre farm. They ministered in the family's Grand Valley Independent Baptist Church.

A Close-Knit, Isolated Community

Earlier this year in the spring, 10 people secretly moved out of the 100-acre farm. Most of those left behind were shocked, since members of the religious community were unusually close.

A woman who left with this group agreed to be interviewed, but only on condition of anonymity. NPR agreed to this because she fears for her and her family's safety. She is also an alleged victim named in one of the child sexual-abuse cases. The woman, in her late 20s, says she fled because she realized her extended family was behaving like a religious cult.

"They operate in a cult-like fashion," she tells NPR. "Raymond Lambert sets all the rules for the people who live there. He tells you what to go to school for, he tells you who to marry. He basically controls your life."

Former residents of this religious commune say non-church members were kept at arms-length. While children were home schooled, adults did have jobs outside of the farm. Some worked at Wal-Mart's headquarters in nearby northern Arkansas. The anonymous woman says Pastor Raymond Lambert told her to study music in college, so she became a music teacher.

One day last year, while surfing the Internet, she accidentally came across a cult-awareness Web site. The Bible-based cults she read about began to sound as if they were pages out of her own life. Alarmed, she contacted a California rabbi linked to the Web site. She says he counseled her for months, and in April of this year, she finally found the courage to leave everything she once believed in. Pastor Raymond Lambert not only controlled her, she says, but he also used his role as a minister to sexually molest her.

'This Was Her Way to Heaven'

"The first incident started with taking my clothes off when I was 15 years old," she said. "He touched me from head to toe, every part of my body, and told me that this body belongs to God. And the only way that I could subject myself to God is to give my body to Raymond, who is God in the flesh."

She grew up on the farm, passionately believing in God and church, trusting that her sexual relationship with Raymond Lambert would bring her closer to God.

"I believed that it was right, and that it was OK," she said. "I didn't feel like I needed to tell anybody, because I was believing in that at the time."

In June, she filed child sexual-abuse charges against Raymond Lambert. Not long after, Missouri police began to investigate other church leaders in the community, including Pastor George Johnston, an uncle of Raymond Lambert.

Mike Barnett, Newton County's child-abuse investigator, says another alleged victim, a 17-year-old girl, told him that Johnston sexually abused her, beginning when she was 8 years old.

"It became worse at about 12," Barnett says, referring to the 17-year-old's case. "He would tell her that he was ordained by God, that this was her way to heaven, and that she needed to give her body to him."

Barnett says he investigates child abuse all the time, and cases involving religion are rare. In a police statement, he says 63-year-old pastor George Johnston told this alleged victim that even if she had sexual intercourse with him, she would remain a virgin. In neighboring McDonald County, the state alleges that Johnston gave "angel kisses" to this same young girl, where the kiss would involve touching and fondling of her breasts and other inappropriate areas.

Allegations Heard in Court

At a preliminary hearing in October, another alleged victim, 20-year-old Mackenzie Kyle Amey, took the stand in the Newton County courthouse. Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Bill Dobbs asked her what happened in the winter of 1998, when she was 12.

"I was starting to develop or go through puberty," Amey said, "and I had some stretch marks coming, and he told me that he could heal them for me, and he touched my breasts."

On the stand, Amey alleged that Pastor George Johnston, whom she used to call Grandpa, was going to teach her algebra, but instead, "he touched me on my breasts and my vagina."

Months before these allegations, families in the religious community were coping with other disturbing news, says Amey Burkett, who grew up on the 100-acre-farm.

"In April, I learned that my grandfather thought that his daughters needed taking care of spiritually," Burkett tells NPR. "And so in order to do that, in order to keep his daughters, he had sex with them. He then went on to father a child for most all of his daughters, or his daughter-in-laws [sic]."

Her grandfather was the late Cecil Epling, a minister originally from Ohio. According to Burkett, Epling wanted his seven sons and four daughters to become a tight-knit community, so he helped buy them the Missouri farm. When Epling died, his stepson, Raymond Lambert, took over the ministry. George Johnston later joined the family's church.

Family members say Cecil Epling passed his sexual beliefs to both pastors, teaching them that they needed to fulfill the sexual needs of their daughters and selected girls in the church.

"What's inside of them is God, and they think that they have all the power, all that it takes to take care of a woman," Burkett says.

Taking care of a woman meant having sex with her, in some cases from early childhood on. Burkett said that Pastor Raymond Lambert believes that women should be put in their place to make them humble. Burkett said that this usually required stripping off clothes.

"He would always say, if you're spiritually hindered, it's one of two things: your mind or your flesh," Burkett said of Lambert. "By taking off your clothes, and knowing that you weren't ashamed of your body, it did feel like it set you free. And I know that sounds weird. A lot of things sound weird to me now. But it didn't then."

Pastors Deny All Charges

Lawyers for Raymond Lambert and George Johnston say each of their clients deny every charge made by the alleged victims.

"No one has begun to question, why are you talking now?" says defense attorney Dwayne Cooper, who represents Raymond Lambert and his wife, Patty Lambert. "What are their motives in coming forward at this time, all of them simultaneously?"

Pastor George Johnston's attorney, Andy Wood, said the allegations have hit his clients hard.

"George and his wife are just absolutely devastated," Wood said. "This has come out of nowhere. These kids that they did think of as being their grandchildren -- now these kids have made these just horrible, horrendous accusations against him. And obviously, it's ruined their whole life."

I met Pastor Johnston at a preliminary hearing for one of three child sexual-abuse cases against him. He's a balding man, with a moustache and pasty skin. During the hearing, he sat solemn and devoid of expression, rarely looking up at anyone in the courtroom. When I ask him about the charges against him, he declines to speak, referring me to his lawyer.

Lawyers for Pastor Lambert and his wife, Patty, agreed to let me talk to their clients, but with substantial restrictions. I was allowed only to ask about life on the farm, and how the allegations have affected them.

Raymond Lambert is charged with seven counts of statutory sodomy or child molestation in McDonald County. Patty Lambert is charged with child molestation.

In a soft voice, Pastor Lambert describes his life: "You wake up one day and things have all changed. And the whole world now seems to be looking at our lives, and they're accusing us. We've been tried and sentenced in the media already."

Lambert says he loves every person who left the 100-acre farm, including those now accusing him of child sexual abuse. He says the allegations have been tough for his entire congregation.

"God said he was going to try us," Lambert said. "The only problem of it is, we never thought we'd be tried in such a way." While he speaks, his wife Patty holds his hand tightly.

"Everyone that lived there by choice would build, and we would watch each other's children as we went out to work," Raymond Lambert says, recalling life on the farm. "And it was a place of a community -- it was not something of a forced thing."

'They're Not Fearing Me'

Raymond and Patty Lambert say families left the farm not because they feared Raymond, but because of rumors that the FBI or other authorities might take children away from families and put them into foster care.

"They're not fearing me. That's not what this is about," Raymond Lambert says.

Patty Lambert adds, "The fear came from the outside. I have no great fear of these charges, because I'm going to trust my God all the way through it."

Raymond Lambert nods his head in agreement.

"If our love and our truth about one another, and about what God has given us -- and about our relationship, my wife and I -- hadn't been based on something true and strong, this would have tore our life apart," Raymond Lambert says.

"But thanks be to our lord that our love is stronger," he says. "We stand together and we believe as one that our lord is going to make a way, as he's made a way and going to make a way for all those that have left."

The child sexual-abuse allegations have affected more than 30 families. One trial date has been set for Pastor George Johnston in February. No matter what the legal outcome of any of these cases, this community that so many believed in for decades is gone.

YEAH BABY!!!

There were plenty of welcome signs for Daisuke Matsuzaka on Thursday, including the scoreboard at Fenway Park.

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka throws his first pitch at Fenway Park during a tour of the ballpark.

Matsuzaka, who held a baseball, noticed that the mound was one of the only places at the 94-year-old park that looked the way it will look next April. John Henry, the principal owner of the Red Sox, encouraged Matsuzaka, his new $103.1 million pitcher, to test out the dirt hill that will become his new home.

So Matsuzaka strolled to the mound, a gloveless Henry crouched behind the plate and Matsuzaka threw his first pitch at Fenway to the man who will sign his lucrative paychecks. Matsuzaka’s pitch was high and Henry leaped for it, tumbled backward and narrowly missed landing in a puddle.

“We didn’t go over the signals,” Henry explained.

Henry smiled as he recounted Matsuzaka’s errant pitch; Matsuzaka smiled then and throughout most of his introductory news conference. After 29 days of negotiations that veered from stagnant to tense to successful, the Red Sox and Scott Boras, Matsuzaka’s agent, agreed to a six-year, $52 million contract late Wednesday.

The relieved and happy Red Sox greeted Matsuzaka by showing his picture and listing his name in Japanese on the video scoreboard. Larry Lucchino, the club’s president, said, “Welcome to Boston,” in Japanese to Matsuzaka. The club also served sushi to more than 300 reporters at an event with the feeling of a postseason pregame. That is, if the game pitted teams from two countries.

“We understand his importance in Japan,” General Manager Theo Epstein said. “We know what he represents.”

After posting $51.1 million, the Red Sox won the right to negotiate with Matsuzaka, then sweated it out and traveled to Boras’s backyard before getting a deal.

Matsuzaka, who was 108-60 with a 2.95 earned run average with the Seibu Lions, wore a black suit with red pinstripes and a red, black and white striped tie. He is still learning the intimate details about what it means to pitch for the Red Sox, who are viewed as everyone’s team in New England.

“Everybody told me I should say I’m going to beat the Yankees,” Matsuzaka said, through a translator. “I thought it was a joke, so I didn’t say that.”

If Matsuzaka had vowed to foil the Yankees, he might have received even more attention, if that was possible. There were 18 satellite trucks lined up on Van Ness Street beside Fenway. When Matsuzaka held up his Red Sox jersey for the first time, an electrical storm of flash bulbs popped for at least 30 seconds.

During a 45-minute news conference, Matsuzaka smiled and laughed a lot. But Japanese reporters said Tak Sato, Matsuzaka’s translator, did not fully translate Matsuzaka’s responses, so the pitcher’s personality was mostly disguised from American reporters. A Japanese reporter provided a full translation and the words proved that Matsuzaka was poised and had a swagger, which is the scouting report for him on the mound, too.

When Matsuzaka was asked about achieving his lifelong dream of playing in the major leagues, he clarified his thoughts on dreams.

“I hate the word dream because a dream is a dream,” Matsuzaka said. “It’s not what happens. So to come here, I make it a goal. I believe I can be in the major leagues.”

When Matsuzaka was asked about the size of his contract, which could climb to $60 million if he reaches incentives, he showed his confidence.

“For that amount, I feel pressure, but it’s a little,” Matsuzaka said. Then, for emphasis, he added, “It’s a little.”

After Hideki Okajima, a Japanese reliever, signed with the Red Sox two weeks ago, he said that Matsuzaka did not feel pressure.

Matsuzaka wore a Boston Bruins jersey to drop the first puck for their game with the Devils on Thursday night. Boras said Matsuzaka would speak with Jason Varitek, the Red Sox catcher and another Boras client, on Friday.

With a fatigued look, Matsuzaka described the negotiations as long, presumably indicating that he experienced anxiety as they dragged on. Matsuzaka said one of the turning points in the discussions was when he realized that the Red Sox would be diligent about making sure that he, his wife and his daughter had as seamless a transition as possible.

“I didn’t want to make that decision to go back to Japan,” Matsuzaka said.

As a high school senior, Matsuzaka became an instant legend when he threw 250 pitches to win a 17-inning quarterfinal game in the Koshien tournament and returned two days later to twirl a no-hitter in the championship. Over all, he pitched four straight days and threw 535 pitches.

Matsuzaka has also pitched in two Olympics, he won a title with the Lions and he was the most valuable player in the World Baseball Classic.

“We feel Daisuke certainly has the makeup and the history to be able to deal with all the pressures of playing and winning in Boston,” Epstein said.

Boras echoed Epstein by saying Matsuzaka was a child prodigy and was used to big crowds and big expectations. In highlighting how intensely Matsuzaka is covered, Boras recounted how 70 Japanese reporters were in his office parking lot when he arrived at 4:30 a.m. this week seeking an update on the Matsuzaka negotiations.

“In Japan,” Boras said, “he’s the equivalent of Michael Jordan.”

The souvenir store on Yawkey Way did not yet have Matsuzaka jerseys with his No. 18, Johnny Damon’s old number. But Amanda Geggatt, who works at the store, said the phone had been ringing nonstop with requests for Matsuzaka T-shirts or jerseys or anything.

“If it rings one more time,” she said, “I’m going to pull it out of the wall.”

But the phone is bound to keep ringing. Matsuzaka mania is just beginning here. The Red Sox feel Matsuzaka is one of the elite pitchers in the world and they are eager for him to show it. Matsuzaka is eager to throw pitches that matter at Fenway, eager to pursue a goal that is not a dream.

“As a member of the Boston Red Sox, I’d like to contribute to a world champions,” Matsuzaka said. “And I’d like to meet Curt Schilling.”

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As War Ravages Baghdad, City's Ambulance Workers Must Pick Up the Pieces

This was in the new york times some days ago...

Each time emergency workers return to the Mansour district ambulance station after a run, they jot notes in a dog-eared logbook that doubles as a grim diary of life here in the capital.

Sept. 10, for example: bombing with two dead.

Or Sept. 29: woman shot in the abdomen.

Oct. 10: man with shrapnel wounds.

Ambulance workers have among the clearest views of Baghdad's descent into chaos. As the city has disintegrated around them, they have been left to pick up the pieces. They are often overwhelmed, and have increasingly become targets themselves.

''These three years have been equal to 16 years as a paramedic,'' said Ali Jasim, 38, before he set off on a convoy carrying medicine and other supplies to Balad, a town north of the capital that was the site of horrific sectarian bloodletting.

Before the collapse of Saddam Hussein's government in 2003, so-called hot calls, for bombings or shootings, were virtually nonexistent for Baghdad's emergency workers. Now most of Baghdad's ambulance calls are hot. A relatively calm 24-hour shift might mean having to wash the blood from their clothes only once, the workers say.

In this war-ravaged city of five million people, only about 90 ambulances and crews are typically available on any given day for emergency calls, said Dr. Hashim Jabbar Muhammad, chief of the Health Ministry's emergency directorate. He said international standards recommended several times that number for a city this size.

The city's emergency dispatch system, the Iraqi equivalent of 911, amounts to a dingy room with 10 phone lines; on a recent visit, three of them were broken. Calls come in at a rate of about one every 10 minutes, although residents often complain that the lines are busy.

Each call requires a cumbersome process of calling back to make sure the call is legitimate.

The ambulance corps here and elsewhere in Iraq feel each spike in violence. When sectarian assassinations surged after the attack on a sacred Shiite shrine in Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, in February, the Baghdad ambulance drivers who pick up dead bodies were swamped.

The capital's maddening traffic, and the fact that most residents ignore sirens, compound the challenges. Ambulance crews are also treated with suspicion by American troops because militants have been known to use ambulances to transport weapons or bombs. The Americans frequently pull over ambulances in the middle of runs to search them.

Emergency workers earn salaries that are often barely enough to live on, as little as $80 a month for new paramedics. Drivers are also held responsible for any damage they incur on their vehicles.

''I wish I could quit,'' said Muhammad Nerous, 26, who has been a paramedic for six years and works at a station in the Bab Sharji neighborhood. ''Every day when I come to work, I pray there will be no explosions because I am fed up with these scenes.''

As they rush to bombings now, a secondary blast is often aimed at them. Eleven emergency workers were killed in 2006. Previously, six others had been killed since early 2004, when the department started keeping track.

More than 10 percent of Baghdad's ambulance drivers have resigned in the last three months alone as violence has escalated, said Dr. Muhammad of the Health Ministry.

On a typical call last month, a crew from the center in Mansour, a troubled western Baghdad neighborhood, transported a woman who had just gone into labor to the hospital. But after dropping her off, a firefight broke out nearby, and the crew was stuck in the cross-fire.

Upon their return, the workers scrawled a new notation in the logbook: ''We could have been killed for this assignment. But God's protection was available.''

It was apparently unavailable several months ago when gunmen killed an ambulance driver from Mansour en route to the dangerous southern neighborhood of Dora. As the ambulance was stopped in traffic, two men appeared and sprayed the vehicle with bullets. The driver, Akram Muhammad Sahih, 34, a married father of two, was killed.

''I pretended I was dead,'' said Ali Jabbar Hatin, 34, who was sitting next to Mr. Sahih in the ambulance. He escaped injury but the other paramedic in the vehicle was wounded.

Arkan Ali Hussein, 40, a veteran paramedic who works out of the Mansour center, has an unusual system for keeping in touch with his worried wife throughout his 24-hour shift. She calls his cellphone and hangs up, avoiding a charge. When he calls back and then hangs up, she knows he is alive, he said. The pair exchange missed calls at least a dozen times a day.

But he is reluctant to share with her the horror he sees. Two months ago, a man wearing a suicide belt detonated himself at an army recruiting center in western Baghdad. Mr. Hussein was among the first to arrive.

''There were pieces of flesh everywhere,'' he said. ''People were yelling and screaming.''

The first man he treated was badly burned, riddled with shrapnel. He shoved a tube into the man's mouth to establish an airway, then rushed him to the hospital.

When he returned, he spotted a severed leg lying on the ground but could not find the body it belonged to, so he left it, moving on to another victim. The gruesome injuries that he sees nowadays, he said, are much worse than anything he witnessed as a medic in the military during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

''Back then, there was a bullet in the body or a blast from a mine.'' he said, ''Now we're finding flesh everywhere, heads, legs and hands.''

Most of the paramedics have only minimal training. As a result, Dr. Muhammad said, their main strategy, rather than treating patients in the field, is to ''scoop and run.''

Often, however, there is little they can do. Bilal Mehdi, 26; his brother, Hilmi, 23; and their father, Mehdi Hussain Lazim, 54, are part of a small contingent of emergency workers who only pick up the dead.

Earlier this year, they helped deliver 800 bodies to the morgue in one month from a single sewage treatment station in the mixed eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Rustamiya. Bilal Mehdi said he took 300 bodies himself. Militia members had been dumping bodies into the sewers nearby, and they would wind up at the station. Mr. Mehdi had to clamber down by rope to retrieve the putrid remains.

More recently, he said, he delivered a dozen bodies stacked in his ambulance in one trip from Mahmudiya, south of the capital; some of them decapitated, some without legs. He drove back with his head out the window, because the smell was so overpowering.

As the body count in Baghdad continues to mount, Mr. Mehdi says he wishes he could leave his job. But without any other job prospects, he is stuck for now. He knows it is only a matter of time until his next call.

Reality's estraged

Dec. 13, 2006 The Bush administration asked an appeals court on Tuesday to overturn a judge's ruling that all U.S. dollar bills must be changed to accommodate the visually impaired.

Just in time for the holidays, they pick a fight with the blind! It's not like "Of the more than 180 countries that issue paper currency, only the United States prints bills that are identical in size and color in all their denominations" or anything...


Speaking today, less than a week after England formally renounced the phrase "War on Terror" and just a few days after Rumsfeld claimed he never cared for the term(?!?!?!?), Bush alluded to a future Iraq that would be "strong ally in this war against radicals and extremists who would do us harm." He only used the phrase war on terror during the questions and answer session. He also said this. "There's a lot of consultations taking place, and as I announced yesterday, I will be delivering my plans after a long deliberation, after steady deliberation. I'm not going to be rushed into making a difficult decision, a necessary decision to say to our troops, "We're going to give you the tools necessary to succeed and a strategy to help you succeed." That doesn't sound like a draw-down to me.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering "It's a remarkable period in American history right now." (Quotes all from bush today, cept the first one from the court case)

Religious Worship at the Pentagon

This is a promotional video for the Christian Embassy, an evangelical group dedicated to promoting the worship of Jesus Christ among our countries military leaders. I am beginning to understand how these folks can still rationalize our Iraq strategy. Keep the Faith. Please watch this...I think it is so important to see how religion is completely screwing up our world.

Closer to the Abyss

Below is an excellent article on the weaknesses in this new Study Group`s (GuFaw) fix-all end-all for Iraq. You can download the Study here, the article follows below


U.S troops just don't have the means to stop Iraq's death squads. Why the Baker proposals could turn into a nightmare.

By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek
Updated: 10:42 a.m. ET Dec. 6, 2006

Dec. 6, 2006 - On this the day of the Grand Plan, such as it is, let’s dream that a year from now there are a new set of givens in the Middle East growing out of the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group: the United States, working with the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, has trained up an efficient military and police force. Baghdad is secure. Tens of thousands of American ground combat forces are on their way home. (Many tens of thousands more remain for air-to-ground combat, intelligence, logistics, training, advising, embedding and such.)

Meanwhile, the Palestinians and Israelis, prodded by Washington, are moving ahead toward a resolution of the issue that has bled the region like an ulcer for more than 50 years. Damascus is tilting away from Tehran and democracy is allowed to flourish once more in Lebanon. We’re still spending more than $2 billion a week on the Iraq adventure, but there seems to be an end in sight.

Another possible improvement that Study Group co-chairman James Baker probably has in the back of his mind, if not in his report: a year from now Saudi Arabia will have ramped up its oil production considerably. Once again, as in the 1990s, it may have the spare capacity to turn on the pumps at will, driving global prices down in coordination with U.S. policy. If it does, it could starve Iran of the money the mullahs need to fuel their plans for regional dominance and nuclear development.

All that might happen … But, no, I don’t think it will. Much more likely is that our dreams in the Middle East a year from now, like this year, last year and the year before, will be nightmares. And that’s true even if by then we’re “winning.”

Every day we move closer to the edge of a humanitarian abyss. Think the Balkans, Rwanda or Darfur, but with this grim difference: the United States won’t be able to stand back from the slaughter and wring its hands in Iraq. It is implicated up to its elbows already, and there’s more to come. Attempts to hold Iraq together by political compromise have failed. If the Americans stay there in any way, shape or form, they’re going to have to choose sides, backing Iraqi “friends” who will do whatever they think is necessary to impose order.

That was the not-so-coded message from the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, shortly after he met with President Bush in the White House on Monday. (Yes, you read the name of his organization right. Hakim’s goal is quite explicitly “the Islamic Revolution in Iraq,” but, hey, America finds its friends where it can in Baghdad these days.)

Addressing the United States Institute of Peace during his Washington visit, Hakim said the United States was soft on the armed opposition he wants to exterminate. “This fight they are getting from the multinational forces [is] not hard enough to put an end to their acts but leaves them [to] stand up again to resume their criminal acts,” Hakim said through an interpreter. “This means that there is something wrong in the policies taken to deal with that danger threatening the lives of the Iraqis.”

It’s obvious to Hakim that to prevent a civil war, you wipe out the present and potential combatants on the other side. He labels those as Al Qaeda (a small group, despite its penchant for spectacular terror), Takfiris and Baathists, which could mean a very wide range of Sunnis. “Otherwise, we'll continue to witness massacres being committed every now and then against the innocent Iraqis,” said Hakim, presumably meaning Shiites. And if the United States won’t do the job, well, then somebody has to. “Patience has its limits,” said Hakim. “I am afraid that someday the Shiite religious authorities might lose their ability to calm down the reaction to the continuous sectarian cleansing attack.”

Of course Hakim slipped by the question of the many Shiite death squads that already have made slaughtering Sunnis a major industry. Many are believed to be from his own organization, operating as part of the existing Iraqi government forces. “Such things that have been mentioned against us are just allegations and false accusations,” said Hakim.

Anyone who sifts the platitudes of this Islamic revolutionary can see his vision of Iraq’s democratic future is for rule by a Shiite majority that answers to clerical guidance. Uninvited (meaning Jordanian, Turkish, Kuwaiti, Syrian or Saudi) outsiders will be excluded while security cooperation with friends—meaning Iran—is encouraged. Hakim says his organization is legal, and its militias have been integrated into (others would say taken over) government units. Illegal militias, as defined in an order signed by U.S. proconsul Paul Bremer shortly before he left Iraq in 2004, are to be done away with.

That would include especially those of Hakim’s rival warlord, Moqtada al-Sadr. As a Hakim supporter in the government told me privately the other day, "Moqtada should be behind bars, underground or across the border—those are the three options he has—and a fourth one is for him to behave. The U.S. doesn't need to tackle him. They don't need to do the dirty work. We will do the dirty work. They should stay over the horizon."

But there’s a particular irony in Iraq. As respected Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld pointed out when I called him at Hebrew University in Jerusalem the other day, the notion that Americans can teach Iraqis the brutal arts of counterinsurgency is at best improbable. “I think that this whole idea of Americans training Arabs is so silly I cannot take it seriously,” said Van Creveld, whose new book, “The Changing Face of War” (Presidio), will be out early next year.
If winning hearts and minds is supposed to be part of the plan, then the U.S. troops just don’t have the means. They don’t speak Arabic, they don’t understand the culture, they don’t share the faith, they don’t know the history. Van Creveld doesn’t mince his words: “The American military have proved totally incompetent.”

The United States, grabbing here and there for a politically correct model to control the chaos, has only engendered more bloodshed. Most Iraqis want us gone, according to the polls, and the U.S. trainers giving instruction in combat techniques eventually will see that knowledge turned against us by their students. “All they really teach is how to fight Americans,” says Van Creveld. “How stupid can they be?”

The essential point is that Iraqis on all sides of the divide think they know precisely what an effective counterinsurgency campaign looks like, and it’s not the relatively fastidious one the U.S. would have them wage. “The Iraqis under Saddam [Hussein] were world champions at counterinsurgency,” notes Van Creveld. The former dictator has been standing trial, and already has received one death sentence, for doing what he thought needed to be done to crush rebellions by Shiites and Kurds—and it worked. Now the United States has turned the tables, the former victims don’t want to be held back. “Maybe they are not trained in the American sense, but they are very well trained to do what they have to do in Iraq,” said Van Creveld.

The sad fact is that insurgencies are defeated only rarely, and then by imposing the peace of the grave on hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. How much more can Washington let itself be implicated in such carnage? How far over the horizon do American troops need to pull back to escape the stench of such a victory? One answer: all the way home.

Matrix Ping Pong BACKWARDS!!!!

I have not seen the original, but I think this is great.