Possumblog

Good Morning!

No, really; it is!

Because for once you will be spared a 4,000 word dissertation and dissection of my weekend. Why? Because all I did all weekend was type on Reba's paper. Fifty some-odd pages (some more odd than others), and I didn't have to do any laundry, or wrangle any children, or make any supper, or anything else. And boy, are my arms sore. This paper (which I'm still not through with, by the way) is part of a larger effort, and basically it is one of several self-directed studies she has to accomplish, in which she goes through one of her textbooks and answers a series of assigned questions from each chapter. This one was about international business, and it was full of stuff about how businesses can compete better globally, and the various pitfalls of language, culture, yada, etc., blah-blah. Interesting, I suppose. Although there was one non-sequitur that set me off on a snotty, unscripted four-page ramble that she had not anticipated.

All of the talk had been about communication and stuff and objective and subjective judgments in business and things like that, and then one question popped up about how this related to the situation between Iraq and the United Nations. HUH!? Completely out of left-field, probably in more ways than one. There was nothing that would have led one to believe the text had anything to do with non-business-related politics, and nothing in any of the subsequent chapters. It was a completely stupid, thinly-veiled, political jab. Or, that's the way I took it, because I'm very much a reactionary like that, you know.

So, I gave a quick rundown of Saddam's rise to power; the Iran-Iraq war; the invasion of Kuwait; the subsequent peace deal that allowed Saddam et Fils to continue their reign of terror; the perfidious nature of the back-stabbing, double-dealing members of the UN who either openly supported a megalomaniacal sociopath, or who publicly deplored him while simultaneously lining their pockets with Oil For Food funds; the stepped up effort to reinstitute inspections after 9/11 culminating in a final ultimatum to both Iraq to allow inspections; and to the UN to either be serious about all their rhetoric or face further irrelevance; and the final discovery that despite twelve years of international intelligence reports saying Iraq had WMDs, none had been found, with them either having been spirited out of the country to Syria or Iran, or not having existed in any large quantities to begin with.

I suppose it would have been better to examine what shrewd businessmen the French and Russians were and how they managed to create such good working relationships internationally. But, whatever.

I DID get a chance in amongst all that to finally get my photos from last week of the first cookout of the spring transferred, so those will be up a bit later, AND I got a nice surprise from a long-time reader, also to be discussed in just a bit.

RIGHT NOW, I have some busy-ness to get done--all kinds of FAXING! and DISCUSSING! and MEETING! Whee.

Be back in a bit.

Posted by Terry Oglesby at April 11, 2005 08:52 AM