9/28/2004: Bush (317 Electoral Votes) Kerry (207 Electoral Votes)

[Click on image to enlarge it.] Dark Red=Bush; Pink=Weak Bush; Pink Outline=Barely Bush; Dark Blue=Kerry; Light Blue=Weak Kerry; Blue Outline=Barely Kerry 

O, Great! Uzbeks As Al Qaeda Fighters

My beloved daughter and son-in-law met in Uzbekistan as Peace Corps Volunteers. A visit to them in the mid-1990s during the Uzbek transition from Soviet republic to sovereignty provided an appreciation of Uzbek culture and history. Now, Uzbek volunteers are being drawn into the war on terror as bin Laden sends al Qaeda fighters on to Iraq. The future looks gloomy. If this is (fair & balanced) pessimism, so be it.

[x The Christian Science Monitor]
Al Qaeda's Uzbek bodyguards: As Pakistan rounds up more Al Qaeda operatives in its cities, hundreds of Uzbek fighters remain in the tribal hills.
By Owais Tohid

PESHAWAR, PAKISTAN - Pakistani forces have scored a number of recent successes in ferreting out Al Qaeda operatives from cities and towns across the country.

The latest operation took place over the weekend in the southern town of Nawabshah, where Pakistani forces reportedly killed Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a Pakistani Al Qaeda operative allegedly involved in two assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf as well as the murder of reporter Daniel Pearl.

But even as mid-level Al Qaeda operatives are rounded up in civilian homes and apartments, Pakistani forces have been struggling to wipe out a significant contingent of 600 to 700 fighters operating in the rugged tribal region along the border with Afghanistan. Within this phalanx may be the elusive big fish, including Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri - being protected by mostly Uzbek militants.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan reiterated that top Al Qaeda leaders could be in Pakistan.

"We see relatively littlely evidence of senior Al Qaeda personality figures being here [in Afghanistan] because they can feel more protected by their foreign fighters in remote areas inside Pakistan," said Lt. Gen. David Barno.

Hundreds of Uzbek militants now form the bulwark of Al Qaeda's defenses in South Waziristan. The Central Asians are filling the ranks left by Arab fighters who left the region for the Middle East on the orders of Mr. bin Laden months ago, say tribal sources.

"The Arab militants hardly participate in the [South Waziristan] fight as they have handed over control of the battlefield to these Uzbeks. This saves their ranks from losses," says tribesman Mohammad Noor. "They are using the Uzbeks cleverly here. Many locals are now unhappy with the Uzbeks" for drawing attacks from Pakistani forces.

With Al Qaeda's leadership focused on broad planning, command of the day-to-day fighting in the tribal region has been delegated to Qari Tahir Yaldashev. Mr. Yaldashev, who is directly linked to Al Qaeda's leadership, was a founding member of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). He was the deputy of IMU's founder, Juma Naghanmani, who was killed in Afghanistan by US bombings following Sept. 11, 2001.

After suffering casualties from US forces in the Shah-e Kot mountains of Afghanistan, Yaldashev and some 250 families of Central Asian militants fled to South Waziristan. They joined hordes of Al Qaeda militants of Arab and African origins who escaped the US and its allies at the battle of Tora Bora.

Most of these militants found South Waziristan a haven; local mujahideen and staunch Islamist tribesmen were both ideological counterparts and fellow veterans of the US-sponsored fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Thus emerged a new anti-US triangle made up of core Al Qaeda militants, Central Asian fighters from Uzbekistan and Chechnya, and local force of tribesmen.

In the past, "Al Qaeda never let militants from other regions enter the inner circle, which is purely of Arab origin. But Al Qaeda leadership is aware of the qualities of Uzbek militants and their women.... Both are known as staunch jihadis," says Peshawar-based analyst, Mohammad Riaz.

The tribesmen narrate a story of an Uzbek family that stunned even the Arabs. Just after the fall of the Taliban, an Uzbek militant was fighting in Afghanistan and his wife and 8-year-old son were in South Waziristan.

"When the jihadis brought the body of the Uzbek militant named Ali, his wife dressed up in all white, and his son swung a gun in the air saying, 'Ali is not dead, now the real Ali is born,'" recalls tribesman Farid Khan.

Pakistan's field commander in South Waziristan, Maj. Gen. Niaz Khattak, says the fighters appear to be "trained militants." They eat sardines and drink canned juice; do a lot of exercise; and carry military maps, explosives, and Thuraya satellite phones.

Along with the foreign fighters, Yaldashev has at his disposal fresh local recruits from among the Mehsud tribe.

In a bid to win over tribesmen, Pakistan lifted its embargo this weekend against South Waziristan. It was put in place after tribal leaders refused to help officials track foreign militants.

When bin Laden issued his redeployment orders, most Arab militants left the area for the Middle East. But an estimated 25 to 50 Arab militants are still believed to be in hiding in the mountains of South Waziristan. Possible hideouts include the highest peak, Shawwal, as well as the Khamrang and Bush Sar ranges, which are covered with thick forests and have natural caves. Local tribesmen say the Arab militants are guarded by dozens of armed masked men in these inaccessible locales.

Earlier this month, Pakistan destroyed an alleged terrorist training camp in South Waziristan. Sources say the training center was run by Yaldeshev, who, along with 150 to 200 mostly Uzbek and local militants, recently shifted to the hilly areas surrounded by the Karvan Manza and Kunnigram mountains after escaping earlier military operations.

The race is on as Pakistani forces pursue the foreign fighters before the mountains fill with snow in November.

For many of the Uzbeks, there is no choice but to fight. Their homeland is a tightly controlled police state, and the only path of return would risk an engagement with US forces in Afghanistan. Nor can they hope to blend in among a friendly population - their round faces, thin beards, and pierced noses set them apart from both local tribesmen and Arabs in the Middle East.

"With the persistent pressure of Pakistani security forces and having no point of return, Uzbeks will prefer to explode themselves rather than accept the defeat," says Sailab Mehsud, a regional expert.

Copyright © 2004 The Christian Science Monitor

The Kinkster & Friends (Kerry, W, & the Slickster)

Only the Kinkster can conjure up imagined telephone conversations with Kerry, W, and the Slickster. Kinky Friedman for Governor of Texas! How Hard Could It Be? If this is (fair & balanced) lunacy, so be it.

[x Texas Monthly]
Bring Him On
by Richard (Kinky) Friedman

I'm pals with Clinton and pals with Bush—so, obviously, if John Kerry wants to be president, he has to make friends with me. Hey, is that my phone ringing?

"START TALKIN'," I SAID as I picked up the blower.

"Kinkster," said a familiar voice, "this is John Kerry. I haven't been very happy with you lately."

"Why the long face, John?"

"Are you aware that I'm running for president of the United States?"

"Are you aware," I said somewhat indignantly, "that my books have been translated into more languages than your wife speaks?"

There was silence, followed by a peculiar choking sound. I puffed patiently on my cigar and waited. One of the drawbacks to the telephone is that there's very little you can do to physically help the party on the other end of the line. Either Kerry would recover by himself or else he was definitely going to lose Ohio.

"I went to Vietnam," he said at last.

"I heard something about that," I said.

Indeed, it was one of the things I really liked about Kerry. America was full of patriotic-seeming people, from John Wayne to most of our top elected officials, who, when the time had come to serve their country, had not answered the call.

"I went to Vietnam myself earlier this year," I said. "Nobody told me the war was over."

I heard what sounded like a practiced, good-natured chuckle from John Kerry. That was the trouble with politicians, I thought. Once they'd been on the circuit for a while, their words, gestures, even laughter—all were suspect, relegated to rote and habit. Something as natural as a smile became a mere rictus of power and greed. They couldn't help themselves; it was the way of their people. As Henry Kissinger once observed, "Ninety percent of politicians give the other ten percent a bad name."

"I'll get to the point," Kerry said. "I know you're pals with George W.—"

"I'm also pals with Bill Clinton," I said. "In fact, I'm proud to say I'm the only man who's slept with two presidents."

"That is something to be proud of. But I don't understand how you can support Bush's policies. I'm told you grew up a Democrat. What happened?"

What did happen, I wondered, to the little boy who cried when Adlai Stevenson lost? What happened to the young man whose heroes were Abraham, Martin, and John? Time changes the river, I suppose, and it changes all of us as well. I was tired of Sudan being on the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations. I was tired of dictators with Swiss bank accounts, like Castro and Arafat and Mugabe, masquerading as men of the people. I was tired of Europeans picking on cowboys, everybody picking on the Jews, and the whole supposedly civilized world of gutless wonders, including the dinosaur graveyard called Berkeley, picking on America and Israel. As I write this, 1.2 million black Christian and Muslim Sudanese are starving to death thanks to the Arab government in Khartoum and the worldwide mafia of France, Germany, China, Russia, and practically every Islamic country on the face of the earth. What happened to the little boy who cried when Adlai Stevenson lost? He died in Darfur.

"I don't know what happened," I said. "But as Joseph Heller once wrote, 'Something happened.'"

"You'll be back," said Kerry. "You'll be back."

He was telling me about his new health plan and how the economy was losing jobs when I heard a beeping sound on the blower and realized I had incoming wounded.

"Hold the weddin', John," I said. Then I pushed the call-waiting button.

"Start talkin'," I said.

"Hey, Kinkster!" said a familiar voice, this time with a big, friendly Texas drawl. "It's George W. How're things goin' at the ranch?"

"Fair to Midland, George," I said. "John Kerry's on the other line telling me about his new health plan. What's your health plan?"

"Don't get sick," said George with his own practiced, good-natured chuckle.

"He also told me the economy is losing jobs."

"What do you care, Kink? You told me you never had a job in your life."

"That's not true," I said. "I used to write a column for Texas Monthly, but it got outsourced to Pakistan."

"Kink, the economy's doin' fine. The country's turnin' the corner. We even have bin Laden in custody."

"I remember you told me that. Where is he now?"

"Time-share condominium in Port Aransas. His time's gonna run out two weeks before the election."

I chatted with George awhile longer, then finished up with John. I had just returned to my chair and unmuted FOX News when the phone rang again. I power walked into the office and picked up the blower.

"Start talkin'," I said.

"Kinky, it's Bill Clinton. How's it hangin', brother?"

"Okay, Bill. I just talked to George Bush and John Kerry on the phone."

"Skull and Bones! Skull and Bones! Tyin' up the telephones!" he chanted. "Hell, I still think about that night in Australia when you and me and Will Smith all went to that Maynard Ferguson concert. Too bad Will didn't bring his wife, wasn't it? Man, that was a party!"

I remembered that night too. Millions of people undoubtedly love Bill Clinton, but I've always believed he has few real friends. That night he and I had talked about the recent death of one of his very closest, Buddy the dog. Like they say, if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

"Hey, Kink. There's a big ol' white pigeon sittin' on my windowsill here at my office in Harlem. Do you recall once asking me why there were white pigeons in Hawaii and dark pigeons in New York?"

"Sure. And you answered, 'Because God seeks balance in all things.'"

"That's right. Hell, I always wanted to be a black Baptist preacher when I grew up."

"Be careful what you wish for."

"Imagine, a white pigeon right in the middle of Harlem. If the whole world could see that, what do you reckon they'd say?"

"There goes the neighborhood?"

There followed the raw, real laughter of a lonely man who'd flown a little too close to the sun.

"Just remember, Kink," said Bill. "Two big best-selling authors like us got to stick together. Those other guys? Hell, they're only runnin' for president."

Copyright © 2004 Texas Monthly Magazine

Standing Tall

Height is destiny. I stand at 6-feet plus. I owe my improbable rise to greatness to being a six-footer. If you believe that, I have some great apartment buildings in Fallujah that would be a terrific investment opportunity. If this is (fair & balanced) stature, so be it.

[x The Chronicle of Higher Education]
Political Timber: Glitter, Froth, and Measuring Tape
By EDWARD TENNER

As the presidential debates approach, some anxious Democrats are taking comfort in the five-inch height advantage of their candidate, who stands 6 feet 4 inches to George W. Bush's 5 feet 11 inches. They remember, all too well, the 1988 presidential debates between George H.W. Bush and Michael S. Dukakis.

At the time, the newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer described the elder Bush as "tall and terrible. He whined. He stumbled. He looked nervous and hyperactive. From the first question about drugs, he was on the defensive." Then Krauthammer also mentioned the results of a focus group of undecided voters convened by The Washington Post, who ultimately leaned toward Bush. After the candidates shook hands, one member had explicitly mentioned the six-inch gap in height.

The focus-group participants had cited other factors, of course, but the possibly fatal handshake was added to the capital's political lore. "Half to two-thirds of what people take away is visual rather than verbal," a Republican pollster told The New York Times in 1996. "It's huge." To some Democrats, that principle implies the need for a physically imposing candidate. After the initial surge of Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, some supporters of rival Democrats stooped to open heightism, deriding Dean as an example of "short man's syndrome."

How did it come to this? Why is stature now considered such a political advantage -- or liability?

It's easy to blame the tube for fostering a flight from serious issues into glitter, froth, and measuring tape. But taller was seen as better in the 19th century, too, and long before. The already imposing Lincoln may have chosen his signature stove-pipe hat to further accentuate the strong point of his appearance. Herodotus heard that the Ethiopians made the tallest and strongest men their kings.

Still, height was not considered destiny. James Madison's nickname, "Little Jemmy" -- his height is usually given at 5 feet 4 inches -- was not politically fatal. Lincoln's shorter opponents and their fans accepted and even flaunted their stature. Stephen A. Douglas was famous as the "little giant," and Gen. George B. McClellan, whatever his failings as a Civil War commander, won the 1864 Democratic nomination as "Little Mac," a phrase his troops had always used affectionately. (A brilliant military engineer, he was also compared admiringly with Napoleon earlier in his career.) Friend and foe spent little time talking about height. It was a given, to be used derisively or positively.

That attitude changed toward the end of the century. Timothy A. Judge, a professor of management at the University of Florida, and Daniel M. Cable, an associate professor of management and organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who study height and success, have observed in a recent analysis of the literature on the topic in the Journal of Applied Psychology that William McKinley, elected in 1896, was the last president shorter than the average man. And there were signs of the end of the good-natured banter of the waning century. McKinley's journalistic critics portrayed him as a "little boy" controlled by his big nursemaid, the Republican boss Mark Hanna, and the growing big-business trusts.

Fear of the big began to mix with mockery of the small. An unpublished University of Iowa dissertation by Michael Tavel Clarke, "These Days of Large Things: The Culture of Size in America, 1865-1930" (2001), suggests that the interest in personal size and strength was partly a response to the emergence of industrial combinations and other corporate giants that threatened to crush individuality. At the same time, the scientific professionals of the late-19th and early-20th centuries regarded small stature in Africa, Asia, and Europe as a throwback to primitivism and feared its importation. Eugenic interpretations of stature abounded.

For example, William Zebina Ripley's The Races of Europe, published in 1899, popularized the division of the Old World into distinctive biological types, with tall Northern European blonds on top physically and mentally as well as geographically, followed by the stockier Alpines and the still-darker Mediterraneans. America's old racial stock (those called "native Americans" around 1900 were mainly Anglo-Saxon Protestants) was threatened by an influx from the shorter nations of Eastern and Southern Europe.

With the closure of the frontier in the 1890s, medical and educational authorities believed a new struggle would occur within the growing cities, where high-density living and immigration seemed to be endangering public health. They established height and weight standards and fitness programs to help assure the stature of a more-diverse urban population, meeting the threat of degeneration.

For their part, African-American people were starting to stand tall in sports. In 1908 Jack Johnson, more than six feet tall, defeated the world boxing champion, a 5-foot-7-inch white Canadian named Tommy Burns, seeming to confirm the fears of the founder of the modern Olympics, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, four years earlier that "black men, red men, and yellow men" would eventually "leave the white man behind them" in competition.

Several decades later, the stereotype of the short, simian Japanese marked World War II-era racism in America, and the emergence of better nourished and taller postwar generations of Japanese has not yet ended the acrimony about height among nations and races. In 2001 the Sunday Telegraph reported a campaign by the Chinese government to encourage the nation's children to drink more milk (even though many are lactose intolerant) after the humiliation of learning that Japanese average height had overtaken Chinese stature for the first time in recorded history.

Height is not only a nationalist concern, of course. It can be a revealing index of social change. For economic historians, records of stature, whether from military data or archaeological digs, illuminate health and living standards in a way that production and consumption data alone never can. Contemporary changes, too, can signal the real rise and decline of public welfare.

Consider the public-health catastrophe of North Korea. According to a 2003 report of the World Food Program and Unicef, 42 percent of North Korean children are now classified as stunted, their growth markedly below their age norms, and most may never recover. Thanks to prosperity and a Western diet, 17-year-old boys near the border on the South Korean side average 5 feet 8 inches; most teenagers on the North Korean side stood less than five feet, even though before World War II, Koreans in the northern part of the country had been slightly taller. Height is thus a mirror of the isolation and decline of the North Korean economy, with its widespread poverty and resulting malnourishment.

Yet the United States shows that political freedom and apparently abundant food are not necessarily enough. In a paper published earlier this year in the journal Economics and Human Biology, the University of Munich economic historians John Komlos and Marieluise Baur show how "within the course of the 20th century the American population went through a virtual metamorphosis from being the tallest in the world, to being among the most overweight." In the mid-19th century, Americans were from 3 to 9 centimeters taller than Western and Northern Europeans, and underweight. Now the Dutch and Scandinavians (followed by the British and Germans) are from 3 to 7 centimeters taller than Americans, who have one of the highest rates of obesity. (Beginning in the 1970s, Uncle Sam ceased to be drawn mostly as tall and thin and has often been cut down to size, according to the University of Oregon journalism professor and cartoonist Thomas H. Bivins, who has studied the figure's history.) Because their study excludes Asian and Latino people and those born outside America, and because black people show the same pattern as the broader population, Komlos and Baur discount immigration as the reason why Americans have become relatively shorter. Their hypothesis is that European welfare state policies and greater social equality have produced better nutrition and health care.

Two strains of social science collide, then, when stature rears it head in politics. One historicizes height as convention and metaphor, a symbol of dominance or otherness, a relic of imperialism and nativism. The other takes height seriously as a yardstick of overall fitness, as the authorities of the progressive era saw it, a characteristic predicting intelligence and performance. In their survey article, Judge and Cable suggest that tall people may make more money at least partly because they actually are better at their work. For example, being tall can generate admiration, which can promote self-esteem, which can enhance competence. Another study in the College Mathematics Journal by Paul M. Sommers, an economist at Middlebury College, compares the heights of American presidents with their ratings in two surveys of historians, and finds that a disproportionate number of the highest-rated chief executives were taller than average -- if only because "historians want someone they can look up to in the highest office." Perhaps the members of the Washington Post focus group were on to something.

Yet ultimately, height is a social as well as an anatomical fact. While physically altering height is one of the most painful of all surgical interventions -- limb lengthening requires cutting through the thigh bones and having the patient turn screws in agony over months and months to deposit new calcium -- elites have relatively painless ways to manage impressions. In 1840 in Paris Sketch Book, the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray depicted a magnificent wig, sumptuous coat, and high-heeled shoes (Rex), a little bald man in his underwear (Ludovicus), and their fusion in the fully clothed Sun King (Ludovicus Rex) -- elevated by his footwear. More recently, shorter-than-average male film stars -- from Alan Ladd and Humphrey Bogart to Tom Cruise -- have been aided by costume and adroit cinematography. But tricks like the "Ladd box" (on which the actor stood) would not have worked if the people who used them hadn't had their own ability to project a charismatic, dashing -- in fact, "larger than life" -- persona. Outside show business, too, we have all known or seen people who have managed to appear taller than they actually were.

There is thus hope for shorter candidates to cast long shadows with the proper delivery and gestures, and not being seen to care about stature. Howard Dean's real height problem may not have been being under 5 feet 9 inches but in insisting he was 5 feet 8 3/4. And whatever merits Bush's and Kerry's debating arguments might have, much more will depend on their rhetorical prowess than on their stature. The correlation between height and success may be significant, but the exceptions have been as striking as the rule. Above all, we should think twice about height as a proxy for greatness on the world stage. At 6 feet 4 to 6 feet 6 inches, according to the FBI "wanted poster," Osama bin Laden would stand above both candidates.

Edward Tenner is a senior research associate at the Jerome and Dorothy Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. He is the author of several books, most recently Our Own Devices: The Past and Future of Body Technology (Alfred A. Knopf, 2003).

Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education