Disagreeable Item Prefatory to Everything that Comes After - To get the Keegan link in the mailblog item below this one, I had to go back and reread this lengthy November 2003 item critiquing Keegan's article. I think we need to give Keegan and Rumsfeld one point - Saddam really was caught "soon" after that article came out, barely over a month later.

But read the rest of it. I don't want to make a career of pointing this out, but it needs saying now and then: Iraq today looks a hell of a lot more like I said it would than like they said it would, for any official or unofficial hawkish "they" you care to aggregate.

The (Bloody) Road Not Taken II - Couple of e-mails on the subject. Rafe Colburn writes:

To me, the biggest hurdle is lack of a common language. Our soldiers simply can't communicate effectively with the vast majority of the Iraqis, and I don't see how that barrier can be overcome -- hence the Don't Loot video that I linked to on my site awhile back. How do communicate to a few guys who are collecting scrap wood that they shouldn't be doing that if you can't just tell them? Crush their car with a tank. Yeah, that's a good way to make friends.

Anyway, I think the language barrier confounds us as much as anything.

I suspect Rafe is right about this. Mrs. Offering tried to learn Arabic in grad school and found it terribly hard, and she was getting a real language course, which is true for very few of our troops.

Tacitus writes:

Basically, your "road not taken" post is correct. Those have, historically, been the tactics that work in counterinsurgency situations (well, aside from wholesale slaughter, which works too, but not in our grab bag of options). Myself, I think the country would stand for it -- it would, after all, represent a net saving of lives in the long run. Dunno about whether the soldiers would go for it, although I note that Marines have a long history of doing it, and doing it well.

I doubt Tacitus' optimism on the subject from two ends. You may not like Democrats or the idea of an opposition party in wartime, or at least an opposition party that, you know, opposes - but they're not going away. And they've made quite a bit of hay about inadequate body and vehicle armor. It's a chance to ding the Administration while placing oneself loudly on the side of Our Boys (and Girls). In our hypothetical scenario, the Administration responds, "But that's the strategy, dummy!" but that just means the Democrats counter that "It's a stupid strategy that wastes American lives and shows how little the President cares about OB(aG)."

And the vector by which inadequate armor became an issue is, near as I can tell, via the troops themselves. Soldiers and guardsmen bug their relatives; in many cases, troops or their stateside loved ones and neighbors buy gear out of their own pocket; then stateside loved ones go to Representative Hoo-Ah's town meeting and complain. Representative Hoo-Ah issues outraged statements to the media. Just look at the kinds of questions the troops asked Rumsfeld during his Iraq appearance the other day. An awful lot about personal protection. It would be a real battle to, on top of jerking our soldiers around on deployment length and leave schedules and everything else, to get them to do less than the most they could do to protect themselves.

(Note: two questions may get confused here. 1) Could we have spurned the force protection strategy from the beginning; and 2) could we abandon it now. I think the answer is No to both.)

Jonathan Hendry:

But would your idea work for someone else? Perhaps because, being non-American, there'd be less of a grudge, and they'd take fewer casualties.

[Ed: Yeah, but would they be stupid enough to invade Iraq in the first place? Okay, kidding - I know what Jonathan is driving at here, the mythical "international support." Still a fantasy, I maintain, for all the reasons I've maintained it all along. And I note that events have borne me out so far. And John Kerry? Don't kid yourself, JFK. Foreigners may like you, but not that much. Nobody else on the planet that you would want providing troops has the logistical capacity, the spare cash or the desire to provide troops in the quantity needed. We're not talking three battalions to secure some African airport road here. We're talking - say it with me now - a country the size of California.]

Don't the Brits basically follow your suggested approach, with decent success?

Answer: Seemingly, sort of, yes. At certain costs. The Brits have, as Mr. Keegan gushed some months ago, also made deals with local strongmen and theocrats, which has led to all the liquor store bombings and woman-harassing that were staples of the news from the Shiite South before Baby Sadr began stealing headlines.

It is unfortunate, though, that we don't have better experimental controls. It's a shame that the Brits get pretty much only Shiites while we've had, until the Spanish pulled out, pretty much only Sunni areas. It would have been instructive, from a bloody-minded imperialist perspective anyway, to see what the Brits could or couldn't do with Samarra. Or Fallujah. And how Basra would have liked a sustained American presence. Clearly we need to invade a bunch more countries to improve our database. Right after I drop this acid.

He's Got It Backwards or maybe sideways. Kevin Drum thinks the Kerry-McCain rumors are a chance for the rare "moderate Republican" to "make one last stand" by at least privately telling John McCain "it would be good for the country if he joined a fusion ticket with Kerry." But that's not the way it works in real life. In real life, the moderate Republicans make their stand by, entirely privately, threatening to George W. Bush to privately tell John McCain etc. No marks, no visible bruises, no pesky photos of naked Dubya crouching over Rumsfeld's bare bottom while Lynndie England whistles into her cigarette. All quiet, professional and, most importantly, within the party, not outside. Threaten the nuclear option but don't use it, or your future life as a Republican becomes unbearable. Then, in return for not encouraging McCain to join a fusion ticket, the Bush campaign gives the moderate Republicans some vital thing that they want.

Whatever the hell that might be. I have no idea, myself. Does anyone else? Is there something that "moderate Republicanism" stands for?

The (Bloody) Road Not Taken - Slightly edited version of a comment I posted at Arkhangel's site:

I have toyed with the following idea for some time of an entirely different approach to the occupation. Essentially, abandon "force protection" as the overriding goal. Ditch the body armor, change the rules of engagement, get out and mingle in small groups, strictly control the impulse to massive retaliation both at the instant of an attack and after. This is a policy of sacrificing many more soldiers' lives than we have lost with the aim of building much more mutual trust and sympathy than we have managed. By "many more lives" I'm imagining an order of magnitude more KIAs. The hope is that you overcome the "giant lizards from another star" phenomenon and that those locals who are not irremediably opposed to the US presence become so outraged at attacks on people they've come to like and depend on that "the sea of the people" dries up around the insurgent fish.

And as attractive as it sounds, I always end up thinking: 1) politically, the country wouldn't stand for it - we would loudly decry putting our boys out there "naked" on street corners once the bodies started rolling in; 2) the psychological toll on the troops would be unbearable, and 3) there's just no way I could ask people like Arkhangel and Ginmar and Captain Chown et al to lay themselves out like that. It amounts to "make yourself a bigger target" for some very speculative, notional payoff down the line.

Which is to say, the thing we're doing doesn't work and the thing that might work we can't do.

Sapphire &: Steel, Adventure I - The "crack in time" episode, about two parents in an old English country house who disappear reading a nursery rhyme to their daughter. (My order from Deepdiscountdvd.com arrived in jig time.) Six half-hour episodes (minus titles and such), so about two and a half hours of story. The Adult Offerings give it one thumb up. Mrs. O liked it less than I did, though she agreed that it got better as it went along. Pluses: You're talking some really primal storytelling material here. Nursery rhymes, old crimes, abandonment, mistrust and longing to believe. You can see the story in writer/director PJ Hammond's head, and it's a powerful one. On the minus side, you view it through the smudgy glass of low-budget late-70s British TV. What are essentially ghosts frequently take the form of a small spotlight crawling across walls and floors - the sort of thing your cat would chase. The dialogue ranges from acceptable to less so, as does the acting. In the second half of the adventure, fellow operative Lead appears, and he's written as an Afro-British stereotype.

I've never been one of those people who enjoys cheesiness for its own sake. I dislike camp and kitsch as esthetics, so what I liked I liked in spite of things other people would probably get a knowing chuckle out of. But like I said, it gets better as it goes along. There's a scene in the last episode of the first adventure that's positively gripping. I have hopes future episodes will be even better.

Chown Strike - More from Captain Chris Chown, USMC, somewhere in Western Iraq, who, in an e-mail from his unclass marine corps address, notes it "should put to rest your searching around for info on me being who I say I am." This time around, he offers what he describes as the first part of his answer to my original question two, which was about the progress the Marines have been seeing in Iraq.

Captain Chown: Some of the progress we are making has to do with our Civil Affairs detachment. I should explain that when we got in country, one of the units attached to my battalion was a det from the 1st Civil Affairs Group. The CAG does not exist in the active duty Marine Corps, so these guys are all activated reservisits. Anyway, their job is to meet with what equates to city council members of local towns/ villages to identify the civic needs of that particular town, and then fill those needs. School renovation, construction, improvements to the community (parks, soccer fields, community centers, etc.) are the big ticket items. We are also helping to train the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC), which is kind of halfway between the police (who we are also providing equipment/ training for) and the new Iraqi Army. Anyway, the reason we are focused here is for a number of reasons. First, (and obviously)helping to fill the civic needs benefits the community. This statement is not as trite as it first may appear. If we are doing the things that help people's families, it makes them less inclined to shoot at us. Also, by identifying construction/ contracting type projects, it allows Iraqi general contractors the opportunity to come in and do the work. What this does is allows us to put money into the infrastructure without making it look like we're just giving money to them. I mentioned before about the "macho"ness of Iraqi culture, the typical Iraqi man doesn't want a handout, he wants a job so he can support his family. It ties in with the "shame" concept of Arabic culture. If a man doesn't have a job, his family thinks of him as less than a man, because he can't provide for them. This man feels like he's under so much pressure to provide for his family, that he's willing to take money from terrorists to shoot an RPG at the Americans. Anyway, the idea is to identify opportunities to provide jobs for Iraqis 1)So they're too busy working to shoot at us, and 2)They're less inclined to shoot at us because their happier at home. We measure the success we are having by how quiet it is at night (when most of the mortar and rocket attacks occur) and by the number of "walk-in" intelligence leads we get. As the security situation stabilizes, people feel less afraid to come and talk to the Americans.

I have to get off this computer now. Other Marines are in line behind me, but I will write more later.

More to come, and I guess we can put that rumor about e-mail access being cut off to rest. In the meantime, see Ginmar's reflections on Abu Ghraib and Arkhangel's reaction to the first Captain Chown interview. (He's jealous of the Marines, basically.)

Ginmar:

Maybe it's the idea that these soldiers just weren't the scary-looking weirdos in the alley we'd like to believe they are. It's so easy to look at the mob and hang their savagery on their religion, their country, whatever. But when the mob is one of our own, I think it's important to claim them and confront whatever it was that made them do it.

This is good advice, and not just for our side, as the pictures of the beheading of Nick Berg make clear.

Bitter Truth II - Johanna Draper Carlson:

When creators get bored, it's always easier to change the character than to reach deeper inside themselves.

She's talking about superhero comics, but the principle applies beyond.

Your Fitness Alternative - Extreme Ironing: "the latest danger sport that combines the thrills of an extreme outdoor activity with the satisfaction of a well pressed shirt."

Hat tip: Mrs. O.

Rack Me, I'm Out - Finally got that boingboing link. I can stop blogging now.

The Bitter Truth - Nate on used bookstores:

Part of getting old is realizing that used bookstores, while very cool, are not quite as cool as you think they are when you first start browsing them in college. The realization comes gradually as you start to see many of the same books in diverse stores. Those certain titles that were wildly overprinted five and ten and twenty years ago find themselves clogging musty shelves across the country - and they're probably not the titles you're looking for.

A big exception, as he points out, is Baldwin's Book Barn in West Chester, PA. Worth a trip if you're ever even vaguely in the area.

That's Nice to Know - So Andrew Sullivan wants us to know that, as of now, he just barely supports the decision to escalate the twelve-year war with Iraq, in retrospect. Maybe I've gotten too cynical. As big a fan of Sullivan's as I used to be, nowadays this kind of thing from him has an inescapable whiff of positioning about it - establishing himself as the sort of iconoclast you want to commission pieces from without having to reassess his fundamental premises. (He falls back on the "Bush's incompentence was the only real problem" argument.)

Like a Pervert in the Schoolyard of Nations - Ogged explains another dimension of the "Abu Ghraib problem":

. . . what happened at Abu Ghraib is, in terms of America's image in the rest of the world, worse than a massacre or systematic repression because it makes Americans seem gross. Of course wanton killing is shameful and disdainful, but it's not weak and depraved in the way the Abu Ghraib torture is weak and depraved. Abu Ghraib is a new image of America, and it evokes neither respect nor fear.

Do the Math, the Continuing Series - Pete Guither at Drug War Rant reports a study that indicates that, no, marijuana is not addictive, and no, it's not a gateway drug - particularly if its use is legal.

Via Walter in Denver.

pre-war Dept. of Preliminary Explanations - Yesterday I lwrote about Congressman Buyer's request to be assigned, as a reserve LTC JAG, to the postwar Iraqi detention system. He was turned down. I wrote that this, among other evidence, showed that "Abu Ghraib worked precisely the way the high command wanted it to work."

Comes Mr. Joyner with an alternative hypothesis:

Or perhaps the Pentagon decided that they could get by without the advice of a part-timer whose last relevant experience was as, what, a captain during the Gulf War?

Must be it! Gerald Ford's SecDef, the Veep who ran the Gulf War, the NSA and Deputy Secretary of Defense who made their reps in Cold War days and the various functionaries last heard from during the Iran-Contra scandal didn't want a lot of old fogeys pressing the dead hand of the past on the Scales of History.

Note: Mr. J. does have some further objections touching on the separation of powers. Actually, a politically-sensitive Congressman in the Abu Ghraib chain of command might have been just the thing that would have headed off the degenerate practices that ensued. We make a lot of a soldier's duty to refuse illegal orders, and rightly so. But in practice, it's hard to do so absent more courage than most of us are given or, as in Buyer's case, some outside connection on which to stand. But the real import of the Buyer story, I think, is that it exemplifies the Pentagon civilian leadership's decision to cut the JAGs out of the interrogation process.

The Sheep Will Have Two Heads and 2000 Life Points - If you ever wonder, "How come nobody's adapted the Book of Revelation as a Pokemon adventure?" it just means you haven't looked hard enough yet.

(Hat tip: RGB Bill.)

Financial Self-Defense - CNBC offers "3 'creative accounting' red flags for investors." Iron law of the financial universe: Mature companies grown more slowly than developing companies. Every developing company that survives will become a mature company. That means that its growth will slow at some point. When that happens, its management will have an incentive to obscure the trend. The CNBC article provides some ways you can recognize if that's happening.

Draw Your Own Conclusions - I can't resist a good cri de couer, and goodness knows I've written them myself, so do read Tacitus' wrestling with the What Now? question. It's very well expressed. Still, there's this part:

As I said, a difficult conclusion indeed, for I share many of the premises that inform the work of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et al. The possibility of forcible cultural change via military action; the need for a fundamental reordering of the Islamic world; the necessity of smashing old paradigms and strictures on American behavior; the questioning of shibboleths of the international order; the aggressive promotion of American hegemony as the only alternative to chaos: these are things I strongly believe in, and it is unlikely that I will ever again see an Administration with personnel so very much in accord with these principles. And yet. What good are they if they are discredited in the execution?

Seems to me that if an Administration is uniquely in accord with a set of principles, and the outcome is a total cock-up, it's at least possible the principles aren't what they're cracked up to be. I'll grant you, four out of five of Tacitus' premises fill me with unfeigned horror. (I think a fundamental reordering of the Islamic world is absolutely necessary. I think our trying to force that reordering at gunpoint is a fool's errand.) But this Administration has gotten everything it wanted but the results. Its brain trust has prepared for This Moment for periods of time ranging from a decade to a quarter century. All those essays in the quarterlies, all those conferences at think tanks, all those meaningful conversations in hallways. Outcome: it ain't that pretty at all. These were the people who wanted to do it doing it to the best of their abilities. The real cause of their discontent? The premises were faulty in the first place.

Letters to a Young Whatever - Anent last night's advice on getting one's poetry writing education, Greg Turner e-mails the following:

One of the best pieces of advice about writing that I ever received came from Debbie Harry of Blondie by way of a fiction teacher I had as an undergraduate: "Learn to play your instruments; then get sexy."

I'm not really sure about the punctuation of the phrase, but the sentiment seems to ring true across nearly everything.

Chain of Command - CNN reports

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A congressman with experience in military detention said Saturday that the Pentagon rejected an Army plan to send him to advise the military police commander who oversaw Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison in the early months of the war in Iraq.

Rep. Steve Buyer said he was disappointed by the decision -- which came months before the Army first reported allegations that prisoners at Abu Ghraib were being abused.

"It was pretty dumbfounding to me," he told CNN, "and disappointing that the Army had this plan to send me and the [Office of the Secretary of Defense] said no."

Buyer, an Indiana Republican and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, served as a legal adviser in 1991 during the Persian Gulf War, he said during a telephone interview with CNN about a story first reported by The Associated Press.

He served the 800th Military Police Brigade -- the same brigade assigned to Abu Ghraib.

Memo to anyone still maintaining the "few bad apples" explanation: Stop kidding yourselves. Abu Ghraib worked precisely the way the high command wanted it to work.

U.S. TO HAND OVER BLAME ON JUNE 30

In a nationally televised address, President George W. Bush revealed that the blame for the Iraqi prison abuse scandal would be transferred from the U.S. to the new Iraqi government on June 30.

"Accepting blame for the prison abuse scandal is an important step in Iraq's evolution towards democracy," Mr. Bush said, adding that accountability for the scandal must go to the highest levels of Iraq's yet-to-be-appointed government.

From the Borowitz Report.

Baleful Chronology - A chronology of rhetoric and reality by Will Saletan. I can't read past this part:

"SFC Snider grabbed my prisoner and threw him into a pile. . . . I saw SSG Frederic, SGT Davis and CPL Graner walking around the pile hitting the prisoners. I remember SSG Frederick hitting one prisoner in the side of its [sic] ribcage. The prisoner was no danger to SSG Frederick. . . . I saw two naked detainees, one masturbating to another kneeling with its mouth open."

Let This Be an Example - Radley has a moving meditation on the last days of Bill W., founder of AA. "There are a couple of different ways of looking at alcoholism," he begins, then makes a persuasive case that we've chosen the wrong one.

You Don't Have to Leave Home to find serious prison abuse, either, as James Joyner points out. Money quote:

Still, it's hard to see how these conditions don't constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment

Roll of Honor - William J. Kimbro. Pass it on.

For the record, singling out a sailor for praise because he refused to torture prisoners is indeed a sign of how far we as a nation have sunk. But that's no slur on William J. Kimbro.

Weakly [sic] FItness Blog Item - 168 pounds, two miles walking, one weightlifting session, blah blah blah. Attempted to shop for running shoes today. This is an elaborate business for would-be marathoners, involving stepping onto paper towels with wet feet and looking at your crummy old shoes to find the crummiest, oldest parts. Problem is, nobody in a mall shoe store, even a so-called "athletic" shoe store, is qualified to help you turn what you've found into a sensible shoe purchase. I did get a recommendation for a local "serious" running shoe store, but it closed before I could get there. (Much Mother's Day activity beforehand.)

Anyway, Your TD and I are in the Marine Corps Marathon officially as of this week, so there's no turning back. We must, as Seth put it, stay the course. The race goes off Halloween Day. I confess to being scared and intimidated. But once I have those shoes, man!

Dave Lull e-mailed me a Guardian article about scientists who argue that it's possible to be healthy and fat. It's got too much strawman-jousting in it, especially re how nutritionists supposedly view Body Mass Index. (In fact, even most popular treatments of BMI hedge themselves round with qualifiers.) The article kind of meanders from its point, actually, but from what I've read, an overweight person who exercises may well be better off than a sedentary person of "appropriate" weight who does not. All other things being equal, less fat on your bones is better than more, to a point. (Get too fat free and your skin cracks like Death Valley and bad stuff starts to happen chemically - body fat is a solvent for some necessary reactions. Plus you look like fucking bog people.)

Booke Oberwetter covers the controversy over McDonalds in film and film criticism. From her you can find links to what else you need on the subject.

More next week. Must start endurance training in earnest now. Less than six months until race day.

Small World - So first I wrote that Captain Chris Chown, USMC, quoted in the Post before the beginning of the assault on Fallujah, was "everything we could want in an American fighting man." Then I got a couple of reader e-mails informing me that, according to the London Times, Captain Chris Chown was a "she," not a he. Then at the end of April I got yet another e-mail on the subject:

Sir, I must say I protest your Dept of Corrections on 11 Apr. 04, 8:27 AM blog. As Mr. Adam Cole writes "Capt Chris Chown is a female." Or words to that effect. Well, somebody better tell my wife, and explain to me how I am the father of three children then. If [anyone had checked], he would find that females are not currently allowed to serve in US Marine Corps infantry unit.

Sincerely,

Captain Christopher M. Chown
Air Officer
1st Battalion 5th Marines

Well, dang. My correspondent has a pretty good argument, particularly given a 2003 picture of Capt. Christopher Chown, USMC helicopter pilot, standing next to "embedded media reporter Gen. Oliver North." (Scroll down. And let's do the old Ross Thomas joke together, shall we? General? The Marine Corps would never - but of course it would. Congratulations.)

Naturally, I apologized - it looks like the sole evidence for the femininity of Captain Cown was a single London Times pronoun, clearly, in retrospect, a typo. And naturally, I asked Captain Chown if he'd consent to be interviewed. He agreed and I sent him six starter questions. I reproduce his answers below, unedited.

A word about authenticity before we get started. It is the case that someone could be scamming me here. If so, shame on you, Pretend Captain Chown. You're not just having a joke at my expense. You're putting words in the mouth of a real person in a lot of danger who may at any point make the ultimate sacrifice while you're turning him into a practical joke.

I did a bit of Googling around and I viewed headers, none of which activity was dispositive. But at this point, after the "Is Salam Pax real" and "Is Ginmar authentic" kerfuffles, I'm erring on the side of assuming correspondents are who they say they are. Since starting this blog, I've heard from a Pakistani academic whose work I quoted in 2001 and a soldier I am absolutely confident served in Balad under LTC Sassaman. People write you if you write about them. I have no reason to believe my e-mailer is not who he says he is, it's plausible that I should hear from him, and one other puzzle piece fits with the overall design: I haven't heard from Captain Chown in a few days now, after a steady exchange of e-mails. And two different sources have reported rumors that as of this week, Kellogg Brown and Root has been ordered to cut off "nonessential" internet access for our troops in Iraq for at least 90 days. Again, this proves nothing. But it fits with the authenticity hypothesis.

I'm presenting Captain Chown's responses unedited, which is no less than he deserves. I will append the occasional comment for context. Note that he states very clearly that he believes the mission on which he has been dispatched by the civilian leadership is appropriate: "I really do believe what my leadership is telling me, and that we DO need to be here, helping the Iraqis." It would be beyond churlish for me to try to talk him out of that opinion. Time enough for that after he and his fellows are safely home. If I get the chance, I'll have further questions and if he's willing to answer them, I'll run them here. (If you think my questions were lame, keep in mind that a) I was just warming up, and b) it's not as if I'm particularly good at this.) He explicitly consented to be quoted by name.

Here we go:

UO: Were you in Iraq with the Marines during last year's tour too, and if so, how would you compare the atmosphere between the two stints?

Capt. Chown: Yes, I was in Iraq last year. I was with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU). My job then was different than this year (I'm a helicopter pilot by trade), so I didn't have a lot of direct contact with Iraqis. Plus, we never really got much further north than An Nasiriyah. The people I saw would wave as we flew past. The times that I was on the ground, I experienced a lot of the same thing I see these days when outside the city, and that's smiling, waving happy to see us. I guess the main difference is that last year was more of a high-speed drive to Baghdad, fighting in the open desert and bypassing cities and towns wherever we could. The speed with which we were able to move essentially collapsed the Iraqi army command and control network, which is why they were unable to mount effective resistance. This year, we are going into the cities and towns, trying to engage the population, and help rebuild what Saddam Hussein let waste for years. You can really tell which areas were favored by Saddam, where the money went to. This is in stark contrast to the rural areas, which live in abject poverty. It's also more uncertain this time. I'm sure you've seen all the news about Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). There are a lot more being found than make the news, because we are getting pretty good at finding them before they go off. We also get a lot of intelligence from local people who will come up to a patrol and communicate through gestures where "something bad" is. We have interpreters, but not as many as we would like, and they are extremely busy.

[EDIT: In an early e-mail, Captain Chown wrote the following about local reactions: "One thing for sure, though. This is a very strange place we are in. Outside the cities, the people are friendly and glad too see us, but in the city, not so much." Quick UO comment: Note this apparent direct contradiction of my "Red State World" hypothesis.]

UO: [EDIT: In an earlier e-mail, Captain Chown explained both his view of the marines' mission and his attitude toward the deployment: "We are still in Iraq, and plan to be here for as long as it takes to provide a secure environment for non-government organizations and other agencies that are better equipped than the military (civil projects, health care, infrastructure, etc.) to handle the kinds of things that Iraq needs to get back on its feet. [Passage about country vs. city reaction quoted above.] We are doing good things here which are hopefully making some of the news services. I know it sounds like a robot towing the "party line", but I really do believe what my leadership is telling me, and that we DO need to be here, helping the Iraqis. Slowly (almost agonizingly so), we are making progress. It may not look like it from wherever you are, but here on the ground, the Marines see it every day."] Can you tell me about some of the progress you're seeing?

Capt. Chown: Question 2 is another email subject entirely. I will try and answer this one later.

UO: What's it like? Do you, as some of us imagine, assume that just about any Iraqi you meet might try to kill you, or are you able to trust most of the locals most of the time?

Capt. Chown: The guidance we have received is "Think as if every Iraqi is trying to kill you, but DO NOT treat them that way." The intent behind this message is to keep the Marines on their guard so if anything DOES happen, they are ready, but otherwise, treat citizens with respect.

UO: What kind of prep did you get in advance of the current tour - e.g. language instruction, cultural training etc?

Captain Chown: Before we came over here, we received a broad brush culture course, in order to introduce us to the differences between American culuture and Iraqi/ Arabic culture. This training included a sort of "what not to do" class, where we learned the things that we might do to inadvertently offend, such as eating, doing other things with the left hand, pointing bottoms of feet at people. Also, we were taught Iraqi naming convention, and how somebody's name is their personal name, then the name of their father, grandfather, great grandfather, etc., then the name of their tribe, then the region they are from. We were taught this in order to show us the importance of family to their culture, but also, if we were to roll into a city and ask "where's Hussein?" (an American would assume we were talking about Saddam) chances are if the Iraqis felt inclined to tell us, then it would be someone else, other than who we were looking for, but to an Iraqi, that's who we asked for. We had a limited number of Marines (mostly down at the squad leader level) who were able to take a six week course in Arabic speaking and writing. They were taught basic conversational Arabic, mostly focused on "who what when where why" type questions, and they can basically ask for directions as well. The dialect in Iraq is apparently different from what they were taught, but it is still common enough that they can make themselves understood. We also have interpreters, but as I mentioned they are very busy. Also, we were taught that since Iraqi culture is sort of a "macho" one, meaning that if you don't have a mustache, you are seen as less of a man, so my commanding officer directed the battalion to grow mustaches. One of the talking points we are using is "No better friend, no worse enemy" and the mustaches were a part of the "no better friend" piece. We had Iraqis tell us that they understood we were trying to be sensitive to their culture by growing mustaches, and that they appreciated it. When we went to Fallujah, we shaved off the mustaches as kind of a visual sign we were entering into the "No worse enemy" piece. The bottom line is that the intent when coming over here was to conduct operations that would result in a secure environment for the transition to Iraqi self government (which also entails civil and infrastructure development). The operations that we execute all have this overarching goal, whether it is helping to rebuild a school, get water and electricity turned on, or utilizing precise combat power to neutralize a threat to U.S. personnel and innocent Iraqi citizens.

[Edit: The language and culture training sounds better than what Arkhangel describes Army units as getting.]

UO: This is the question that I imagine might present the most problems: What the heck, in your view, is going on in Fallujah? Over here, the apparent "handover" is being variously viewed as everything from clever rope-a-dope to politicians leashing the marines to a pretty face put on an actual defeat. What's up with Saleh et al (the FPA)? [EDIT: The reference to Saleh kind of dates the interview period, doesn't it?]

Captain Chown: Defeat? I don't think so. The other side is just yelling louder. I may have to wait a while to answer the rest of this one.

UO: Another sensitive area: what's the supply situation like? For awhile it seems every artery out of the country was closed. There has been major media reporting on the topic, so it seems like it's in bounds to inquire.

Captain Chown: I couldn't even begin to answer this one. Right now, all I can see is what's going on directly in front of me. Don't get much in the way of news, so I'm not really sure I understand the question.

End notes: You can find Captain Chown's "mustache story" repeated at SpaceWar. This is of course consistent with both the theory that Captain Chown is who he says he is and that someone who has done about as much Chown-googling as I have is impersonating him. Like I said, I believe him. I'm believing my ear, basically. He sounds authentic, likeable yet formal. And I think anyone who wanted to shine me up would either present himself as a total Administration tool or, more likely, act like my secret antiwar sympathizer in the Marine Corps, the better to leave me flopping foolishly on the bottom of the boat once I'd bitten.

UPDATE: As I mentioned in my initial e-mail to Captain Chown, a big reason why I was ready to credit the feminine pronoun in the London Times story is that I was heavily under the influence of Ginmar's LiveJournal at the time, and thought nothing of reports that here was another American woman in uniform going into harm's way. Also: No, Captain Chown's response to the question about trusting Iraqis is not quite an answer. Perhaps he'll choose to expand on the topic later. Give me access to Donald Rumsfeld or someone from Abu Ghraib and I'll press them mercilessly on every topic. Give me a regular line soldier in harm's way with no blemish on his record, whom I barely know, and I won't. Simple as that.

Poetry Corner - It is far from clear to me that I should be giving advice on the writing or publishing of poetry, but people keep asking. A correspondent to be named later (if he chooses) asks "What suggestions would you have for someone who would want to try his hand at poetry? (And whose previous attempts were awkward teenaged belchings?)" To which I writ:

What would I recommend as far as "trying your hand?" Start by slavishly imitating poets you admire. This is the opposite of the standard advice that you need to concentrate on "finding your own voice." Don't take this wrong, _____, but fuck your own voice. Your own voice will take care of itself as your craft matures. Your own voice will, if you're going to have one, insist on emerging. In the meantime, learn the craft. Learn the vocabulary and practice of meter. Learn rhyme schemes. Learn the ways that free verse gets written that yet contains music. Reread poets you admire, read about them and then read the poets they get compared to. Take a class, particularly a class in prosody. Pick an approach to poetry writing that you dislike and take a class in that too. Put every poem you write away for six months and then pull it out and look at it again. (Fun fact: I only settled on the word "gutters" in the last line of Friday's poem when I opened it Friday morning. Before that it was "rises." "Gutters" is so much better I can hardly believe I ever accepted the earlier choice, but six years gives you the time to think of this stuff.) When your completed poem drafts have sat around long enough that you have some distance on them, show them to people whose taste you trust. Not before. We'll just piss you off.

Read Samuel R. Delany's novel, Dhalgren, which has two poets in it, and contains the absolute best advice I know about how to handle other people's opinions of your work. And it is without a doubt the finest novel about a crazy guy caught in a time loop who fucks a tree that I have ever read.

Above all, don't worry about whether you "are" a poet. Just worry about poems. They're what matters.