Review: Guests of the Ayatollah
July 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam
[rating:5/5]
This is a long book, but well worth finishing. An in-depth account of the Iran Hostage Crisis, an understanding of which seems very valuable in today’s climate. Bowden takes you into the minds of the hostages:
Two of the other marines, Billy Gallegos and Rocky Sickmann, played similar games. Gallegos rigged a slingshot out of rubber bands, and he and Stickmann opened their window slightly one night after lights out and shot Geritol tablets at a guard standing outside next to the building’s back wall. When the first pill pinged off a car nearby, the guard jumped. When the next pill hit, convinced he was under attack, he shot off his weapon. Soon there was a small crowd of guards, weapons up, shouting into their radios. Eventually the guards burst into the chancery and searched all the rooms, but the marines had long since closed their window, disassembled the slingshot, and crept back under the covers on their mattresses.
And covers the feelings of the time, in America:
America’s long lack of a military response to Iran’s provocations prompted a popular joke; in which President Carter was visited by the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt, who wondered what was going on in the world.
“The Soviets have invaded Afghanistan,” Carter says.
“Are you retaliating with conventional forces or with nuclear weapons?” Roosevelt askks.
“Uh, neither one,” says Carter. “We’re boycotting the Olympics in Moscow.”
But most interesting to me was getting to know the people who stormed the embassy. Mere students who found themselves on the world stage. Completely naive and ridiculous, with no apparent knowledge of the world outside Iran.
Wound up now, Cooke described the fear he had seen in the eyes of visa applicants who had lined up by the thousands before the embassy seizure to apply for visas to escape Iran. “These were people trying to escape,” he said.
“Tell me there’s a long line outside of the Iranian embassy in Washington of blacks and Indians or Hispanics and whatever, seeking to try to escape the United States in order to come to Iran, you know, for their protection. Well, by God, there was a line half a mile long outside of my embassy the day we opened, of people who were just that. Religious and ethnic minorities trying to escape your government. Real oppression. Firing squads, executions.
As one hostage said to his captors:
“One of the things that I didn’t learn was what you were trying to accomplish,” he said. “You were the first social revolution in history that didn’t have to compromise from the very first moment for lack of money. When you took over, you had all the money you needed to make Iran back into part of the fertile crescent. If you wanted to do reforestation, if you wanted to reinstitute the underground irrigation systems you once had…anything at all. Anything was possible because you had the money, and you threw that away.”
Ebtekar argued that all revolution required a period of cleansing, of wiping away corrupt influences, such as Iran’s ties to the United States.
“All I’ve got to say is that nothing we could have done to you in our wildest dreams is half as bad as what you’ve done to yourselves,” Morefield said. “Your children and your grandchildren are going to curse your name.”
Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam
[rating:5/5]
links for 2007-07-26
July 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment
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Then the photographers are put in a car and driven up to the Post printing plant in the Bronx. Once there, they must complete three mock assignments:
* Photograph someone through the window of a car.
* Photograph someone leaving a building (as if on a p
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William Jefferson Clinton is polished, Cameron Diaz professional. Nicole Kidman seems distant and uninterested, while Sly Stallone’s a lot smarter than you think he’d be. While professional photographers frequently encounter celebrities, true insight into
links for 2007-07-26
July 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment
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“We were struck by how an Iraqi reacts to the sight of the bloody or decapitated corpse of a family member in a not unlike an American, or at the very least a Canadian, would,”
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Brutal, urgent, devastating — the documentary “The Devil Came on Horseback” demands to be seen as soon as possible and by as many viewers as possible.
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The way U.S. and Mexican authorities describe 44-year-old Zhenli Ye Gon, he might have sprung from some pulp novelist’s overheated imagination
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So, you’re happily married to the Muslim man of your dreams when, suddenly, he drops the p-bomb: polygamy.
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There is a rumor afloat that 80 subpoenas have been issued for warren’s trial but those subpoenaed have all disappeared. Can anyone verify or put this to rest?
Review: Beyond Shock and Awe, Warfare in the 21st Century
July 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Beyond Shock and Awe: Warfare in the 21st Century
[rating:5/5]
Haney, a former operator who wrote Inside Delta Force, puts together a collection of essays on the future of warfighting. The first essay on the state of the world, and written by Haney, is worth the price of the book alone. From the conclusion of that essay:
We didn’t know the enemy, and I don’t think we knew ourselves. I fear the cancer has metastasized. I fear we are in the opening phase of what may become the Third World War. I pray that I am wrong.
Rogue state dictators and terrorists are not obliging enough to fight on our terms. They have noticed America’s failures in Lebanon and Somalia. All it takes for them to win is time. Prolong the war, kill lots of U.S. servicemen, and the American people and their leaders will figure out that it pays to quit. For the United States, long, bloody, low-level wars are not worth fighting due to their great expense and heavy casualties relative to a paltry gain.
Beyond Shock and Awe: Warfare in the 21st Century
[rating:5/5]
links for 2007-07-25
July 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment
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The letter, to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, says editors oppose the mandate because it goes against “our desire not to have our working press photographers become unwilling participants in any commercial and marketing arrangements the NFL has with its
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One of the most common questions I hear Aperture users asking is “how should I organize my library?”
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Pinhole cameras have been a long-time favorite of adventuresome photographers. But forget the Quaker Oats carton and go wide with this roll-film, panorama design.
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Andreas Gursky’s “99 Cents” is not just one of my personal favourites, it probably is the one, the photo that I would name - when pressed - as my personal favourite photo. For me, “99 Cents” embodies all that makes contemporary photography the exciting ar
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Los Angeles Times photojournalist Rick Loomis is both the subject and narrator of a new multimedia project launched on KCET-TV’s Web site, “IRAQ: News In Transition” (click on “View Multimedia”).
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When Keith McCammon unwittingly took a picture of that building, he was launched on an odyssey that has so far involved an Arlington police officer, the chief of police and the defense of the United States of America.
