Some friends turned us on to a TV show called "Weeds" that started in 2005, and we just watched the first season on Netflix. Premise: suburban mom's husband dies suddenly and she turns to selling marijuana to support her family. I really enjoy the show; sharp and witty writing, high-quality acting, and poignant scenes. Having a seen a lot of the dope selling business up close and personal when I was a kid, I can attest to the authenticity of some facets of "Weeds". The show's theme song is a cover of an old Pete Seeger song that I heard over and over again when I was child; I think it may have been a favorite of my parents.

Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes made of ticky tacky
Little boxes
Little boxes
Little boxes all the same
There's a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

And the people in the houses all go to the university
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same
And there's doctors and there's lawyers
And business executives
And they're all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same
And they all play on the golf course and drink their martini dry
And they all have pretty children and the children go to school
And the children go to summer camp
And then to the university
And they all get put in boxes, and they all come out the same
And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family
And they all get put in boxes, little boxes all the same

There's a green one, and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same

**********************

Separate topic--here are some quotes to think about on this fine Sunday:

"I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows, that the Iraq war is largely about oil."

--Alan Greenspan, former Federal Reserve Chairman, in his forthcoming book.

(JH: That's about as clearly as Greenspan has ever spoken on anything (that I have heard, at least), and sadly, I think he's largely right. If it was about a humanitarian mission, we would/should also be in Sudan and the Congo. If it was about nuclear weapons in the hands of evil dictators, we would/should also be in North Korea.)

***

From testimony last week:

Senator John Warner:
"If we continue what you have laid before the congress here as a strategy, do you feel that is making America safer?"

General David Petraeus:
"Sir, I believe that this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq."

Warner:
"Does that make America safer?"

Petraeus:
"Sir, I don't know actually."

(JH: This further decimates MoveOn's dispicable campaign against Petraeus. If Petraeus were a puppet of the Bush administration, or if he was trying to betray the United States, you never would have heard that kind candor.)

***

Fareed Zakaria:
"Are all these gains that Petaeus is making, often quite brilliantly, anything more than temporary?"

(JH: Heckuva question. I agree with the phrasing and I don't have any good answer; I'm not sure anyone does.)

***

George Will:
"(In Iraq we have) a rotational military in a relational society--(we) keep moving in and out relations aren't building."

(JH: True, true. The problem is that the solution to this--longer deployments--is a show-stopper.)


***

From an interview on April 15, 1994, about the first gulf war:

Questioner:
"Do you think US or UN forces should have moved into Baghdad?"

Dick Cheney:
"No. Once you got to Iraq and took it over--took down Saddam Hussein's government--then what are you going to put in it's place?"

More from Cheney in the same interview:

"That's a very volatile part of the world and if you take down the central government of Iraq, you can easily see pieces of Iraq fly off. It's a quagmire."

And more from Cheney from the same interview:

"How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth? In our judgment, not very many, and I think we got that right."

JH: The video of the above interview was played on The Daily Show a couple weeks ago; it is quite a job--for interns, I assume--to go through hundreds of hours of video to find quotes like these. This is my own spin on a point that Jon Stewart made later in the show: Okay, so everything changed on 9/11. Circumstances change, facts change, reasons and justifications for invasion change.

But I don't believe that Cheney had ANY reason to believe that his (foregoing) underlying judgments about what would happen if we invaded Iraq would change; therefore, once the decision to invade was made, it was incumbent upon Cheney to prepare for these things that he knew, in 1994, would become part and parcel of any invasion of an Iraq ruled by Saddam Hussein. And Cheney failed. He failed his president, and he failed the American people. At least folks like George Tenet have the courage to admit failures.

Cheney seems to have been living in a bizarre wonderland of infallibility--where he would do everything "EXACTLY the same" (his emphasis) in connection with Iraq...in fact, it was only a several months ago that Cheney finally stopped saying "exactly." But he still defends his statement that we would be "welcomed as liberators." I don't think it counts, Mr. Cheney, if we were welcomed as liberators by 0.001% of the population and/or if the welcome only lasted for three days.

Finally, I don't think Cheney betrayed us, or did anything due to personal motivation to make more money; that would require a depth of inhumanity that I just don't think Cheney possesses. I think he really believes he is doing the best thing for the country and does not have nefarious motives that are often attributed to him. But he has been wrong and incompetent, and has failed us more times than I can count. I think history will judge him as one of the most powerful and least successful vice presidents ever.