22 May 2003

I'm up. My fingers don't feel very agile this morning. My brain is a monolithic mass. I have put on something for breakfast. It is cloudy with a 60% chance of rain. It is 57, colder than it should be, and rain is likely for all the days of the weekend. We will be traveling, if the plan comes off, and so begins the Hundred days. Five ships and 16,000 sailors return to Norfolk, back from a war that really doesn't seem to be over, though we may have reached a chapter heading of sorts.

I hear the BBC murmur that there was a 6.7 event on the Richter Scale, epicenter was in northern Algeria. There are 500 dead and a thousand injured. It helps to keep things in perspective. Nature is bringing us moisture here and drought elsewhere, gentle green in one place and sudden suddering vilolent destruction elsewhere. It is terror delivered without malice or consideration, acts of God we used to call them before we banned His name from our public life and exiled Him to the provinces of the private extremists who justify their acts of vilence in His many names.

It used to make sense that way, the things that happened to us out of the blue, and now we have just rendered the violence of nature as senseless as the violent political acts of the terrorists. Though nature kills more, we can do nothing about it. So we worry about what we can, as though the passions of men are the forces of nature.

I have no idea what I am doing on my last day of active duty. It is appropriate, I suppose, given the ad hoc nature of this career. I was scheduled to be in Las Vegas to make some perfuctory remarks about bioterrorism. The threat of the same thing here has kept me in town, just in case. There should be nothing on the calendar at the office since I am not supposed to be here. I think I will just play the day like I was in Vegas.

Ah, Vegas! I should dress for the office like I was going to win big. Wear a polyester leisure suit, powder blue, pomade my hair way back, toy with a set of dice on my pressed-wood fake mahogany desk as I talk through the issues with my office-mates. Rattle. Lucky seven! Then I could walk over and talk to an Elvis impersonator and ask his opinion on what I need to do.

Not on the schedule, but looming, is a major decision I must make. I wish the times were not so electric at the office, the urgency of what we are doing so important that I could just concetrate on how looney the management is. Then I think about that and think I am nuts for even considering staying. I need to sign some papers and I am on the payroll when we come back after the long weekend. If there is a long weekend, that is.

My trip was cancelled as the Cabinet engaged in a struggle. Don Rumsfeld and Tom Ridge did not want to increase the threat condition to Orange, but Condy Rice did and Colin Powell is in Paris, mending fences with erstwhile friends. What they knew was coming and we did not was another tape. Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri is supposed to be the voice on the tape. He is the second most powerful figure in Al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden, an Egyptian physician who has abandoned his oath to take the path of jihad. He called on Muslims to attack the West in all its manifestations everywhere.

Al Jazeera played it, of course. They are not only fiercely indepenent but they are doubtless still angry about the two correspondents the Marines killed in the occupation of Baghdad. The broadcast of the tape so soon after the suicide attacks in Riyadh and Casablanca only added to the anxiety level here, though of course it might have no relation. The intelligence community warned that it might contain coded signals to sleeper cells for a new wave of attacks in America.

But they don't know how old the tape is or where it was made. The press claims there was only about three minutes of usable material out of the eleven minutes Al Jazeera received. So if it is a call to arms, it is one edited and and scheduled by the network in Qatar.

There are signs and portents everywhere. Chatter is up, they say. Embassies are closing around the near east in anticipation of action. Goodness knows al Qaeda needs to demonstrate it is still in business depsite the cloaims of the Administration. And we should periodically be reminded that our adversaries, including Saddam, are apparently living with Elvis in the Heartbreak Hotel despite the dead-or-alive $25 million bounty. Western intelligence officials believe al Zawahiri may be hiding in Pakistan, up near Peshiwar somewhere in the hills. I agree that it might be in the desert, but we should also consider Las Vegas.

The Times picked this quote, though they might have made it up: "The Crusaders and Jews understand only the language of killing and blood. They can only be persuaded through returning coffins, devastated interests, burning towers and collapsed economies...Kick those criminals ...the Americans, British, Australian and Norwegians...killers of your brothers in Iraq..."

I am confortable with the laundry list of the Usual Suspects. But the inclusion of Norway baffles me. Perhaps it was their participation in the secret peace talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis a few years ago. Or maybe they think Elvis is hiding in Oslo. But I know better. So that is this monring, and I am going to play this last day as a first one. I am going to bet the red and the black, pick a lucky number and roll the dice. And then begin the 100 days.

Napolean had his and now I have mine. I wish I was departing my island prison and sweeping back onto the Continent, the nations at my feet once more, an army rising at my command. I would like the sound and the fury to surround my coming and I would like England and the Germanies to quiver at the sound of my name. Or I will settle for drawing an additional paycheck for this three months.

One must take what is offered sometimes, the status and I am no force of nature. Not yet, anyway.

Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra