Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 232

Zevon, Ten Years Sleeping While Dead

Epic piece at The Guardian looks back at life, career and troubles of Warren Zevon, ten years after his death.  Some brutally frank assessments by family members and friends, plus tributes from the likes of Stephen King and Jackson Browne.  Lot of interviews and fresh takes.

Excerpt: 

Zevon continued to make music but his addictions – mainly to alcohol – grew worse until 19 March, 1986, when he officially cleaned up. Sadly, other problems took their place. Zevon had always suffered from obsessive compulsive disorders, but they had largely been covered up by the substance abuse. Now, they came to the fore and, until he learned how to manage him, almost overwhelmed him. But they also brought him a new friend in the form of Billy Bob Thornton, who happened to be a neighbour and fellow sufferer. Zevon approached him one morning at their mailboxes when he saw Thornton taking his post in and out of his box and said quietly: "Oh, so you have that too."

The Military's Double Standard in Prosecuting Soldiers

Since near the start of our tragic war in Iraq, the organization that has done the most extensive, and most respected, counting of the bodies is aptly named Iraq Body Count.  I've relied on their work in my many, many articles and book for over a decade now.  (Current count:  nearly 4500 U.S. troops and at least 125,000 Iraqi civilians).  Now they've posted an important piece by Josh Dougherty on the verdict in the Bradley Manning case at their site that 1) compares how U.S. soldiers who committed war crimes in Iraq have gotten off easy and 2) thanks Manning for releasing material that documented thousands of civilian casualties there that we wouldn't know about otherwise.  In others words:  those who killed civilians got off, the man who exposed the shocking numbers gets severely punished.

Two excerpts, but read it all:

For example, the US Marines involved in one of the most notorious massacres of civilians in Iraq by US forces, in Haditha in November 2005, faced virtually no legal consequences. One Marine was convicted of a minor offense for which he served no jail time, and the rest have all been acquitted or had all charges dropped and will live the rest of their lives in freedom. The helicopter pilots who gunned down at least ten civilians, including two Reuters journalists and a father of two children who stopped to try to help the wounded, as documented in the "Collateral Murder" video exposed by Bradley Manning, face no punishment of any kind...

IBC has produced a list of thousands of incidents in the Iraq war between 2004-09, killing several thousand Iraqi civilians that have now been sourced exclusively from the documents released by Bradley Manning, and who would otherwise have remained hidden to the world at large.  These and thousands of others like them are known to the world today only because Bradley Manning could no longer in good conscience collude with an official policy of the Bush and Obama administrations to abuse secrecy and "national security" to erase them from history. If Manning deserves any punishment at all for this, certainly his three years already served, and the disgraceful abuse he was made to suffer during it, is more than enough.

Countdown to Hiroshima for August 2, 1945: As Bomb Readied, Japan Seeks Surrender Terms

Each summer I count down the days to the atomic bombing of Japan (August 6 and August 9, 1945),  marking events from the same day in 1945.  I've been doing it here for more than two weeks now.  Here's yesterday's report.  I've written  three books on the subject:  Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton),  Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the U.S. military),  and Hollywood Bomb   (the wild story of how an MGM 1947 drama was censored by the military and Truman himself).

—Early today, Paul Tibbets, pilot of the lead plane, the Enola Gay (named after his mom) on the first mission, reported to Gen. Curtis LeMay’s Air Force headquartters on Guam. LeMay told him the “primary” was still Hiroshima. Bombardier Thomas Ferebee pointed on a map what the aiming point for the bomb would be—a distinctive T-shaped bride in the center of the city, not the local army base. “It’s the most perfect aiming I’ve seen in the whole damned war,” Tibbets said. But the main idea was to set the bomb off over the center of the city, which rests in kind of a bowl, so that the surrounding hills would supply a “focusing effect” that would lead to added destruction and loss of life in city mainly filled by women and children.

—By 3 p.m., top secret orders were being circulated for Special Bombing Mission #13, now set for August 6, when the weather would clear. The first alternate to Hiroshima was Kokura. The second, Nagasaki. The order called for only “visual bombing,” not radar, so the weather had to be okay. Six planes would take part. Two would escort the Enola Gay, one would take photos, the other would be a kind of mobile lab, dropping canisters to send back scientific information.

—Meanwhile, three B-29s arrived at Tinian carrying from Los Alamos the bomb assemblies for the second Fat Man device (which would use plutonium, the substance of choice for the future, unlike the uranium bomb meant for Hiroshima). 

 —Japanese cables and other message intercepted by the United States showed that they were still trying to enlist the Soviets' help in presenting surrender terms--they would even send an envoy--but were undecided on just what to propose. The Russians, meanwhile, were just five days from declaring war on Japan.

--Top U.S. officials on now centering on allowing the Japanese to keep their emperor when they give up.  In his diary Secretary of War Stimson endorses a key report which concludes: "The retention of the Emperor will probably insure the immediate surrender of all Japanese Forces outside the home islands."  Would offering that win a swift Japanese surrender--without the need to use the bomb?  Not considered.

—Six years ago earlier on this day, August 2, 1939, Albert Einstein sent a letter to President Roosevelt stating the Germans were trying to enrich uranium 235—and that this process would allow them to build an atomic bomb. This helped spark FDR’s decision to create the Manhattan Project. 

Good Times, Bad Times

Okay, if American Hustle is a giant hit (next from David O. Russell in December with Jennifer Lawrence, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper) then perhaps it will help my forthcoming memoir on my '70s Crawdaddy years...

Weighty Program

Yes, the man with the 132-pound scrotum is getting his own cable show, TLC.   In fact, that's the title of it.  I will spare you the photos and the balls and cojones jokes.  He's Wesley Warren, 49, of Las Vegas.  Not to be a spoiler, but it does seem like he finally got the needed operation.  

Nixon Home Movies

My piece at The Nation on "Our Nixon" airing on CNN tonight.

Countdown to Hiroshima, for August 1, 1945: The Russians Are Coming

Each summer I count down the days to the atomic bombing of Japan (August 6 and August 9, 1945),  marking events from the same day in 1945.  This covers the previous three days.  I've written  three books on the subject:  Hiroshima in America (with Robert Jay Lifton),  Atomic Cover-Up (on the decades-long suppression of shocking film shot in the atomic cities by the U.S. military),  and Hollywood Bomb   (the wild story of how an MGM 1947 drama was censored by the military and Truman himself).

—Truman wrote a letter to his wife Bess last night talking about the atomic bomb (but without revealing it): “He [Stalin] doesn’t know it but I have an ace in the hole and another one showing—so unless he has threes or two pair (and I know he has not) we are sitting all right.”

 And today he gives a letter to Stalin, which confounds him. Earlier, Stalin had promised to declare war on Japan around August 7. Now Truman writes that more consultation is needed. Truman had earlier pushed for the quick entry, writing in his diary "fini Japs" when that occurred, even without use of The Bomb. Now that he has the bomb in his "pocket" he apparently hopes to stall the Soviets.

 --Truman has also approved statement on the use of the bomb, brought to him last night in Germany by a courier, drafted by Secretary of War Stimson and others, and ordered it released after the bomb drop. A line near the start has been added explicitly depicting the vast city of Hiroshima (occupied mainly by women and children)as nothing but a “military base.” The president, and the drafters of the statement, knew was false. An earlier draft described the city of Nagasaki as a “naval base” and nothing more. There would be no reference to radiation effects whatsoever in the statement—it was just a vastly bigger bomb.

—The Potsdam conference ended early this morning, with Truman expected to head back to the US by sea tomorrow.

—The “Little Boy” atomic bomb is now ready for use on the island of Tinian. Under the direction of the lead pilot, Paul Tibbetts, practice runs have been completed, near Iwo Jima, and fake payloads dropped, with success. Truman’s order had given the okay for the first mission later this day and it might have happened if a typhoon was not approaching Japan.

—Stimson writes in his diary about decision today to release to the press, with Truman’s coming statement after  the use of the bomb, a 200-page report on the building of the bomb, revised to not give too much away. Here he explains why they will release it at all: “The aim of the paper is to backfire reckless statements by independent scientists after the demonstration of the bomb. If we could be sure that these could be controlled and avoided, all of us would much prefer not to issue such a paper. But under the circumstances of the entire independence of action of scientists and the certainty that there would be a tremendous amount of excitement and reckless statement, [Gen. Leslie] Groves, who is a very conservative man, had reached the conclusion that the lesser evil would be for us to make a statement carefully prepared so as not to give away anything vital and thus try to take the stage away from the others.”

George Saunders to the Graduates

It's not graduation season, but the NYT couldn't pass up a chance to publish the one delivered this year at Syracuse University by ho t fiction writer (he teaches there) George Saunders--whose collections of often offbeat short stories I am eagerly reading now.  

So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up.  Speed it along.  Start right now.  There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness.  But there’s also a cure.  So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf – seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things – travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness.  Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Vets and Suicide: Even Worse Than We Thought

Over ten years ago, I started writing regular pieces at Editor & Publisher and elsewhere (and then in my book So Wrong for So Long ) on the then-hidden but surging problem of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and vets of those wars, attempting suicide.  One of my first, then regular, sources was Paul Reickhoff, director of leading vet group IAVA.    Today his group came out with a survey that goes beyond the continuing rise in suicides.

Nearly one in three post-9/11 veterans – 30 percent – has considered suicide. Forty-five percent of those who served Iraq and Afghanistan know a veteran who has thought about taking his or her own life. And 37 percent know a veteran who has committed suicide.

Those grim statistics are among the results of a new survey released Wednesday conducted by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA.) The study, which IAVA does annually, also found deep unhappiness at how lawmakers in Washington treats those who put their lives on the line in combat.

Go to the Mattress

Amazing Craig's List ad by San Fran woman selling mattress, with bad vibes embedded.  "It's three years old, and feels like you're sleeping on a fucking cloud - even when you're unknowingly sleeping next to a lying cheater. In a bad relationship and have to lie next to the constant reminder that you didn't go to grad school so that you could move and get engaged? Then this is the bed for you, it will get you to fucking REM and for 6-8 hours every night you'll forget that you're sleeping next to a sociopath."