Vol. CCLIV, Live Free! or Die No. 2 The New Hampshire Gazette First Class U.S. Postage Paid October 23, The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ • Editor: Steven Fowle • Founded 1756 by Daniel Fowle Portsmouth, N.H., Permit No. 75 2009 PO Box 756, Portsmouth, NH 03802 • [email protected] • www.nhgazette.com Address Service Requested The Fortnightly Rant Obama's Dilemma Barack Obama, the American President bin Laden as if he were more dangerous who was recently named the winner of the than George Orwell’s fictional Emmanuel Nobel Peace Prize, is considering whether Goldstein, said just five months after Op- to grant a request from General Stanley eration Enduring Freedom began, “I truly A. McChrystal for tens of thousands of am not that concerned about him.” If Bush additional troops to … do something in himself could so easily dismiss his former Afghanistan. nemesis, why should Obama feel obliged We say “to do something” because it is to stake his presidency on his capture? not entirely clear just what the troops al- President Obama has said that he wants ready in Afghanistan are doing now. to get the strategy right before making a The U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 decision about the number of troops re- because the hijackers who carried out the quired. The apparent difficulty of settling September 11, 2001 attack on the U.S. had on a clearly focused mission in Afghani- been allowed to train there by the Taliban, stan could be partly a function of the ter- who ruled the country then. rain. Gertrude Stein once famously said The invasion clearly established a prin- about Oakland that there is no “there” ciple that ought to be well remembered there.1 Oakland is a compact city with a by anyone who is responsible for any sort population of about 400,000 people. Af- of training facility — in the eyes of the ghanistan covers 4,500 times as much ter- U.S., you are responsible for the behavior ritory and has 70 times the population. of those who train on your territory. Saudi Yet if cohesiveness is a necessary compo- Arabia provided fifteen of the nineteen nent of “thereness,” there is less “there” in 9/11 attackers and most of the funding, Afghanistan than there is in Oakland. but we’re never so much as threatened the The central government has the power Saudis. The nation absorbing the smart to control Kabul, provided your defini- bombs and the blood has been Afghani- tion of control does not include prevent- stan. ing terror attacks. A vast array of warlords daily newspaper covering Congress, “It is repeatedly reports that McChrystal is ask- The stated goals of the invasion were and tribal leaders control segments of the a number that we were not aware of and it ing for an additional 40,000. In fact, he to capture or kill the alleged mastermind remaining territory. They generally occupy is worrisome.” has proposed three options to the White of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden, their time fighting each other, unless the The fuel itself costs just $2.78 per gal- House. The option with the best chance of to destroy his al Qaeda terrorist train- country is occupied by a foreign power, in lon, according to The Hill’s October 15 ar- success calls for up to 80,000 more troops ing camps, and to end terrorist activity in which case they may form temporary co- ticle. The real expense lies in getting it to — which the Pentagon simply does not Afghanistan. So far, none of these things alitions to fight their occupier. where it is being used. The fuel arrives by have. have really been accomplished. No one Whatever Afghanistan may have or tanker at a port in Karachi, Pakistan. From In post-Vietnam America, military knows where bin Laden is; large swaths lack in the way of “thereness,” getting there it must be trucked overland at least commanders have attained near-mythic of the country are, in effect, terrorist train- from “here” to “there” is remarkably chal- 400 miles north to reach the Afghanistan stature,2 which their civilian superiors ing camps; and acts of terrorism are daily lenging — and astonishingly expensive. border. Within Afghanistan, the roads are disregard at great peril. McChrystal has occurrences. The sole undeniable accom- By the time a gallon of fuel gets to wher- inadequate, and often mined. To get to its personally received the full benefit of that plishment of Operation Enduring Free- ever it is used by the U.S. military in Af- destination, fuel must often be hauled by adulation despite a past full of troubling dom has been the overthrow of the Tali- ghanistan, it has cost the Pentagon $400. helicopter. details, like signing off on the deeply dis- ban government, underscoring the U.S.’s Rep. John Murtha recently told The Hill,a The CH-47 Chinook, a standard U.S. honest citation for Pat Tillman’s Silver almost fetishistic adherence to its doctrine 1 — Stein wrote, in her autobiography titled Everybody’s Army transport helicopter, consumes Star and commanding a unit known to regarding the culpability of those who al- Autobiography, “What was the use of my having come about 358 gallons of fuel per hour of have carried out interrogations anyone but low terrorist training to take place on land from Oakland it was not natural to have come from flight time, according to GlobalSecurity. a Bush-league lawyer would call torture. there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like they control. but not there, there is no there there.” According to the org. At that rate, the Pentagon is burn- President Obama is faced with an excru- Meanwhile Osama bin Laden, the scraw- anonymously-edited Wikipedia, Stein’s comment was ing $143,200 worth of fuel every hour it ciating dilemma. It would be easier to feel “not meant to disparage the city,” but was a response to ny cave-dwelling diabetic said to have set “learning as an adult that her childhood Oakland home spends flying fuel around. sympathy for him if he had not brought it the entire Afghanistan operation in mo- had been torn down,” and was intended to “express The mission may be vague and the lo- on himself by appointing McChrystal in tion, seems well on his way to becoming a sentiment similar to ‘you can’t go home again.’” gistical problems surreal, but General the first place. Regardless of Stein’s intention, the phrase has taken the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question. on a life of its own in the public mind, and that is the McChrystal insists he knows what he 2 — Bestowed on them by guilt-ridden media, cowed George W. Bush, who once had hyped meaning to which we refer. needs: more troops. The mainstream press into wrongly taking the fall for “losing” Vietnam. News Briefs: Judd Gregg Votes to Keep Paying Rape-Enablers It begins to sink in that we Jones’s assailants, presumably print in Jones’s contract specified have just a little more than a year because the attack did not take that if she happened to suffer a left to kick Senator Judd Gregg place on U.S. territory. The gov- violent assault by her co-workers, around, so we can’t afford to let ernment of Iraq has taken no she couldn’t sue. She’d have to this next item go to waste. action because a Coalition Pro- settle for binding arbitration. Twenty year-old Jamie Leigh visional Authority order limits Senator Al Franken (D-MN) Jones hed been working for Hal- Iraq’s ability to prosecute U.S. recently introduced an amend- liburton subsidiary KBR in Iraq contractors. ment to the Defense Appropria- for all of four days when her The only action KBR is known tions Bill to prohibit the federal co-workers allegedly drugged to have taken in response to government from doing business and gang-raped her in 2005. An Jones’s rape, besides locking her with corporations that employ Army doctor confirmed the rape in that shipping container, was such clauses in their contracts. and gathered evidence with a to tell her to “get over it.” KBR The Franken amendment passed, rape kit. After Jones reported her may also have removed the pho- despite the fact that thirty Sena- assault to KBR officials, they had tographs and the Army doctor’s tors voted against it. her held in a guarded shipping notes from her rape kit, which Yes, they were all Republicans. container until her Congressman had been in its custody, but this And one of them was the Senior intervened, and she was able to has not been proven in a court of Senator from New Hampshire. Due to the disappointing results of a recent inspection, the largest thing the return home to Texas. law. Department of Transportation will permit to cross the Memorial Bridge The U.S. Department of Jus- Nothing has been proven in News Briefs without special dispensation is that species of featherless biped depicted in tice has taken no action against a court of law because the fine to page two the lower left of the photo, commonly known as the human. Page 2 - The New Hampshire Gazette - October 23, 2009 The study was conducted by The Eek!-Onomy reasearchers from the University “I don’t think this is going to of Pennsylvania. make everybody think, ‘Oh, good Bang, Bang times are here again,’” economics We’ll drop this theme, but let’s professor Lawrence White told go out with a bang or two.