jjjveryness.com

This week the military and diplomatic leaders in Iraq came before Congress to testify about progress. Members of select committees were able to speak and ask question to find out precisely where we war in our “war on terror”.

A number of Senator performed capably from both parties. Time focused on a single line of questioning that came at the end of a long day of hearings:

Obama hit Petraeus and Crocker with an artful series of questions about the two main threats: Sunni terrorists like al-Qaeda in Iraq, and Iran. He noted that al-Qaeda had been rejected by the Iraqi Sunnis and chased to the northern city of Mosul. If U.S. and Iraqi troops succeeded there, what was next? He proposed: “Our goal is not to hunt down and eliminate every single trace of al-Qaeda but rather to create a manageable situation where they’re not posing a threat to Iraq.” Petraeus said Obama was “exactly right.”

Obama asked Crocker about Iran: We couldn’t expect Iran to have no influence in Iraq, could we? “We have no problem with a good, constructive relationship between Iran and Iraq,” Crocker replied. “The problem is with the Iranian strategy of backing extremist militia groups and sending in weapons and munitions that are used against Iraqis and against our own forces.” Obama then pursued Barbara Boxer’s previous line of questioning: If Iran is such a threat to Iraq, why was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad greeted with open arms and apparently a lot of official kissing in Baghdad last month? “A visit like that,” Crocker said, avoiding the question, “should be in the category of a normal relationship.”

At which point, Obama dropped the hammer. The current situation in Iraq was “messy,” he said. “There’s still violence; there’s still some traces of al-Qaeda; Iran has influence more than we would like. But if we had the current status quo and yet our troops had been drawn down to 30,000, would we consider that a success?” Crocker, semi-speechless, chose to misinterpret the question, saying a precipitous drawdown to 30,000 troops would be disastrous. But Obama’s question was more diabolical. He was saying, Hey, al-Qaeda’s on the run, and Iran is probably more interested in harassing the U.S. military than having another war with Iraq. How much better does the situation need to be for us to leave? He had taken Joe Lieberman’s dart and beaten it into a plowshare.

When General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker took the stage before the Senate, and then the House there were a few important notes. The first was that neither was equipped to answer the fundamental questions of the war; answers about why we are there, why we’re not leaving, and our fiscal policies are the territory of Bush, Rice and others. But Petraeus and Crocker have provided generally honest appraisals about what is happening, and the course they believe we should take.
Because of their limited context it was difficult to leverage any pressure for bigger answer - Senator Russ Feingold expressed his dismay he only has the general and ambassador to question for that very reason. Obama’s point was important, then, because is was one of the few moments when we did get a bigger answer than Petraeus and Crocker could give. But leading them to agree that we had reasonably met the measures of success we’d accept as a premise for future drawing down right now, it’s a reasonable inference that there is a separate agenda at work in Iraq.
When Secretary Gates announced yesterday that that military would not reduce its size this year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said:

The president still doesn’t understand that America’s limited resources cannot support his limitless war. Let me be clear: This is not a so-called troop pause. With today’s announcement, the president has signaled to the American people that he has no intention of bringing home any more troops.

Instead he is leaving all the tough decisions to the next administration. President Bush has an exit strategy for only one man, himself, on January 20, 2009.

Perhaps there is another reason, more or less noble. But at least we have an idea why we’re not staying, thanks to this week’s hearings.

General David Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, originally uploaded by Andrew Gascho.

There are times abstracted commercials make no sense, like esurance’s secret agent cartoons. But when you’re an established brand with a solid reputation sometimes you need something radically different than your standard message in a standard delivery. I think this is up the same alley as the nearly-famous Honda ad, which worked for so many of the same reasons the above Audi ad does.

Update:
Peter rightly questioned whether the Audi commercial has an obvious message.
Both commercials I reference above drive home valuable messages to viewers. Honda presents their attention to detail and precision assembly that have helped Honda earn a reputation for reliable and pleasurable to drive cars. In Audi’s advert, we get the sense of beauty and class that accompanies even the mechanics of their vehicles; even their engines are luxurious.
Both commercials require some interpretation to draw any conclusions, so they obviously carry a baseline experience of ‘cool’ as a fall-back.

From the NY Times:

Hussein has been held by the U.S. military since being detained by Marines on April 12, 2006, in Ramadi, about 70 miles west of Baghdad. Throughout his incarceration, he has maintained he is innocent and was only doing the work of a professional news photographer in a war zone. […]

The AP said a review of Hussein’s work and contacts also found no evidence of any activities beyond the normal role of a news photographer. Hussein was a member of an AP team that won a Pulitzer Prize for photography in 2005, and his detention has drawn protests from rights groups and press freedom advocates such as the Committee to Protect Journalists.

”The Amnesty Committee took only a few days to determine what we have been saying for two years. Bilal Hussein must be freed immediately,” said Curley, the AP’s president.

”The U.S. military has said the Iraqi process should be allowed to work. It has, and the military must finally do the right thing by ending its detention of a journalist who did nothing more than his job. Bilal’s imprisonment stands as a sad black mark on American values of justice and fairness,” Curley added.

It’s a great thing when a wrongly imprisoned man is set free. Of course he hasn’t been freed yet, he’s just been granted amnesty. The US is still holding him. But it’s a great thing he’s been exonerated. The question this raises, of course, is what has become of America that a prisoner we hold for 2 years can be rightly cleared of wrong-doing in a fraction the time from the courts of a barely functioning government.

Have you seen a truly awful piece of Photoshop work? Clumsy manipulation, senseless comping, lazy cloning and thoughtless retouching are our bread and butter. And yes, deep down, we love Photoshop.

Photoshop Disasters seems like a great repository of terrible Photoshop work. I love it, especially since many of the images are the result of terrible and obvious visual mistakes executed with reasonable Photoshop talent. To me, that’s the real definition of a Photoshop Disaster.

From the NY Times:

What was supposed to be a majestic procession for the Olympic torch through the French capital turned into chaos Monday as thousands of people from around Europe, many with Tibetan flags, massed to protest the passage of the flame. The torch went out several times, and police officers had to put it onto a bus to try to protect it as demonstrators swarmed the security detail. In the end, organizers canceled the final leg of the procession.

And from Time:

“The Chinese have made sure that for a few hours, Paris will look like Tiananmen Square,” noted Robert Menard, head of the Reporters Without Frontiers group, before the Paris protests he helped organize. “I think it’s shameful.”

And back to the Times:

A Chinese spokesman, Qu Yingpu, said Chinese officials were grateful to the police “for their efforts to keep order.” He added: “This is not the right time, the right platform, for any people to voice their political views.”

I think the belief that a public space is an inappropriate platform for public expression is precisely the issue so many people are taking with China right now. I can’t think of a more appropriate time to protest than during China’s crackdown on Tibet, leading up to the first Olympics held in a non-democratic society.

Street art, Munich by jacobssalon at Flickr

I can’t believe Chris Dodd, the senator from Connecticut, is in this. Genius.

Hulu gets a few more passes before the intro animation and intolerable 15-second pre-roll ad drive me back to youtube for posting these clips.

Update: NBC provides a commercial free embed. Sweet.

81% of Americans believe we’re going in the wrong direction. It’s bad that we’re so lost, but great that nearly everyone recognizes that fact.

Part of the vintage ads contest at worth 1000.

WHY IS THE BOOK RELEVANT?
37signals used the unconventional Getting Real process to launch five successful web-based applications (Basecamp, Campfire, Backpack, Writeboard, Ta-da List), and Ruby on Rails, an open-source web application framework, in just two years with no funding, no debt, and only 7 people.

It’s easy for me to forget how staggering the success of 37signals has been. Do yourself a favor and check out Getting Real, now available for free online. Regardless of whether you’re building a web app or not, the principles are useful in virtually any context (which is why they’re now shopping for a publisher to turn out a more generic business book version).

(The Elephant in the Room photo courtesy BitBoy on Flickr)

Nothing short of amazing. Ambition fully realized, here.

Update: Download a high res version here.