Alley Garden Update

I LOVE MY GARDEN!

The potato plants now cover the mound with big, strong, green leaved plants. The broccoli, red cabbage and collards have gotten hold and are beginning to grow. It's like I can see how healthy and full of vitality they are. As soon as the moon gets to the right phase (I think it's into first quarter), we'll plant peppers, tomatoes, squash, spinach and whatever else strikes our fancy. I'd also like to plant berry bushes. I think blueberry and blackberry grow well around here.

I am so excited about it! Like I said, it's the first time I'm doing something like this. I've been around gardens, but other people tended them. My grandmother had a beautiful garden. I spent a summer on a farm outside of Elizabethtown, Kentucky where I learned what real yellow squash tasted like right out of the garden. It was delicious. That's where we had farmers coming from all around the area to see our fifteen foot corn. They'd ask how we got our corn to grow so tall and we told them we just prayed over it. Then they'd ask us to come pray over their corn. It was around then that I ate fresh spinach for the first time which I enjoyed so much. You see, I was brought up in a very modern home. I guess my folks figured canned veggies were as good as any, although they did some frozen (I was revolted by the frozen mixed veggies for some reason - I'd near vomit trying to eat them). Most all veggies were seriously cooked, it seemed. It was as a became an adult that I learned it was better to stay as close to raw as possible.

This is the first time I'm tending my own garden. Don't get the idea I'm doing this on my own, that would be impossible. My good friend lives next door, and he knows all about this stuff. It's just that I'm tuning into Life - real Life. I can feel, see and sense the vital spirit in it all like I never before have, and it's wonderful! Try it. You might like it.

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Iraq Program Part I

“Program! Getchur Program here! You can’t tell the players without a program!” the man used to call out on our way into Briggs Stadium to watch the Tigers when I was young. That was before they renamed it to Tiger Stadium then, much later, built a new one across the street.

So here’s a quick program on Iraq that Senator McBush can check out since it’s obvious he doesn’t have a clue to what’s going on over there and “doesn’t care what anybody says.”

First, there are three main groups in Iraq Sunni, Shia, and Kurds. The Kurds are a separate ethnic group in the north of Iraq (and the south of Turkey and northwest of Iran). They were semi-autonomous since the Gulf War I in 1991, protected under the cover of the No-Fly Zone. They were the closest things to friends we had in Iraq and where there have been the least problems. I won’t say no problems, but I’ll save that for another time.

Most of the Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia is Sunni. Saudi Arabia is Sunni and so is Osama bin Laden (remember him?). The Shia are mostly in Iran and, wouldn’t you know it, Iraq. Yep, Iraq is predominantly Shia by about a two-to-one margin. Saddam was a Sunni, and he put mostly Sunnis in power. He was also pretty brutal in putting down the Shia such that a lot of them had to flee Iraq and live in Iran for some time. So with “democracy” coming their way it was okay with the Shia if the US came in and overthrew Saddam, since they would ascend to power by virtue of their majority. Of course the Sunnis weren’t so thrilled.

When the US took over in 2003, they disbanded the predominantly Sunni military and the police and sent everyone home. Several hundred thousand soldiers went home and took their weapons with them. Right after the US toppled Saddam, people in Iraq realized there were no cops on the street and serious looting began, old scores began to be settled and a general lawlessness set in. Beginning at the neighborhood level, militias were formed to protect the residents since the US couldn’t or wouldn’t do it – although the Oil Ministry building was protected quite well, thank you very much. This was when the genesis of the militias in Iraq occurred. The economy of the country was in shambles with sixty percent unemployment. Militias were able to pay a couple of hundred a month and sometimes there was a couple hundred dollar bounty for killing Americans. The Sunnis formed the core of the resistance to the US occupation. They also attacked the Shia for collaborating with the invader. One thing to remember is there isn’t one group of Sunni insurrectionists. There are a number of groups formed along tribal bases.

Prior to the war, a Jordanian named Zarqawi had spent some time in OBL’s Afghan training camps and was hanging out in northern Iraq, Kurdistan. Remember, this was the area beyond the control of Saddam. He was interested in having his own jihadist franchise, and started his al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, or al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) as its called in the US. The US military actually had him targeted prior to the invasion and could have taken him out, but it was nixed by the administration because he made good propaganda. Anyway, his group created a lot of mayhem in Iraq after the 2003 invasion. It’s important to note that AQI is made up mostly of non-Iraqis. As bad as they are, it’s absurd to think that they can take over Iraq.

Next time: we deal with the Shia and Basra.

Iraq is FUBAR

FUBAR: a military acronym meaning Fucked Up Beyond All Rehabilitation. It’s a good term. It’s happened to me a few times. Things just get screwed up and go south and all you can do is pack it in and move on. I’m not sure exactly when it dawned on me that Iraq was FUBAR, but it seems it was at least three years ago. I wish I would have written about it then.

I must confess the drop in violence in Iraq over the last year made me wonder whether the Surge might indeed be working, although I couldn’t see how since there still weren’t enough troops to follow the Petraeus doctrine of counterinsurgency of one troop per fifty natives, which would have meant sending about five hundred thousand troops to Iraq. As it turned out there were a couple of other factors that accounted for most of the drop in the killing.

First, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr had been observing a ceasefire. Second, the US had been paying off Sunnis and former Saddam Baathists not to shoot at Americans, along with the fact that a lot of Sunnis had gotten fed up with al-Qaeda and had gone after them already. Finally, most of the killing and violence was centered around the ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods and cities and by last year had pretty much been completed after going on for two or three years.

I thought it telling that just as John McCain was saying. “The surge is working. I don’t care what anyone says,” Maliki decides to attack Sadr in Basra and all hell breaks loose throughout the south of Iraq with hundreds of deaths and a sounding defeat of Maliki, and by extension, the Americans. What McBush won’t tell us is that the US is already defeated in Iraq. If we’ve been there five years and there is this much violence, you cannot say we won. I don’t know what planet McBush is living on.

My Sin Profile

Greed:	Medium
Gluttony:	Low
Wrath:	Very Low
Sloth:	Low
Envy:	Medium
Lust:	Medium
Pride:	Very Low

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I didn't think I was so greedy!