17 February 2007
Dog Years
The Dog started to talk to me around five. I am not ready. It ia barely Saturday, and I am still exhausted, or perhaps better said, pre-tired. His low pre-bark carries a supplication and an implied threat, and that is how we presently found ourselves skating over the frozen crust over the earth in front of Big Pink at 5:30. I had my coffee in a travel cup, which made slurping awkward in gloves, and picking up the fruit of the dog's mission an issue of such complexity that I ignored it.
In the full light of day, I am an exceptionally good citizen. In the darkness I may be less so.
The Dog is thirteen, and the old rule of thumb is that he has lived seven years for the equivalent of one of ours. According to experts, the old rule of thumb is not an accurate gauge, since dogs reach their equivalent of adulthood within the first couple of years. The actual formula is 10.5 dog years per human year for the first 2 years, then 4 dog years per human year for each year after.
It took me a while to do the math in the darkness. He is 65, and thus the dementia has not progressed as much as you would think. In fact, we are about even on that score.
His thing is to act enthusiastic about the exercise all the way to the most distant point from Big Pink, and then sit down on his furry butt and look at me with disinterest. The only thing that works to get him moving again is a half of a dry dog-biscuit, waved frantically in the chill dark air.
I'm happy no one else was up to see the spectacle. It was a walk with ambivalent success. The dog felt sufficiently comforted to go back to bed. I was up, and cranky, and apparently not the only one in that state.
An Italian judge has indicted a couple dozen Americans in what is going to be the first trial regarding the “extraordinary rendition” snatchings in his country. Most of those who will not be showing up to fill the docket are from the Directorate of Operations at CIA, but there is an Air Force Colonel in the mix and the top Italian intelligence official.
I imagine he latter is going to be fairly lonely at the defense table, come June, sine the Americans are all long gone. It will probably lead to more spectacular revelations than me waving a broken dog biscuit around in the ice-covered parking lot of the Culpepper Gardens Assisted Living Center trying to get the dog to go somewhere warm and dry.
It was an extensive program at its height. The European Union Parliamentary Committee claims that there were “at least” 1,245 secret C.I.A. flights at the beginning of this war, some of them involving extraordinary rendition. There obviously was some complicity on the part of the governments involved, which suggests that they may have known that there was a war on.
That is a dangerous admission, apparently, since the shelf life of this struggle seems to be measured in dog-years. Next week sometime the conflict in Iraq will become the second-longest war in the naEveryone wants it to go away.
The case at hand regards a radical Egyptian cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr better known by his nom-de guerre, Abu Omar. He disappeared while walking near his mosque in Milan, exactly four years ago, on Feb. 17, 2003. He says he was kidnapped, and turned over to his own government.
I don't know what he said from the pulpit that made him a “radical cleric.” The two words seem to have become synonymous, which appears to be the root of the problem. Out of civic nicety, we have lost the distinction between someone who opposes an oppressive government like Hosni Mubarrak and Muktadr al-Sadr, who orders murder.
I am of mixed feelings about the kidnapping program. If the intelligence is correct, and the individual in question is a bad guy, I support it. If it is the wrong person, I am opposed, though inclined to consider it an unfortunate side-effect of war.
In any event, I always thought you waited until after the defeat to hold the war-crimes trials, and normally the enemy gets to hold them. I thought I might have missed something in the press overnight, and I looked hard in the paper when the dog was done with me to see if I could find it.
All I could see in overnight developments was word that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki thinks that the surge in troop levels is going along just fine, and in fact has chased radical cleric al-Sadr to Iran. He called it a “dazzling success” in a conference call to the President.
I don't know if it is actually true, except that what is happening here must be making him nervous. The House took their symbolic vote condemning the Surge on Friday, and passed it, 246-to-182. Seventeen Republicans crossed the aisle to join the Democratic majority.
Even though the vote means precisely zip-squat, they say it lays the groundwork for another real fight over the $99.6 billion Supplemental appropriation for continued combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I understand that there are differences between the former and the latter, but that seems to have been lost in translation somewhere, and the people that started this are hanging out in Waziristan, which I think is in Pakistan, which is supposed to be our greatest ally in the struggle against themselves.
The prospect that the Iraqi Prime Minister might be the only one left in the government at the end of the year would make me anxious, too, if I was in the same place, and it might be enough to get him to do something to convince his police and army to impose order.
I certainly hope so. It must be horrible not to be able to take your dog for a walk with the expectation that you will get home safely. It would be awful to get snatched, or blown up while just trying to make the dog happy.
I think it is time for a deep breath, wave half a dog biscuit in the air, and figure out how the hell we are going to get home from here.
Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com