Explaining subtlety is an admission of failure. My blog on Jimmy Carter contained nine references, eight of which were examples of newspeak. One, AlJazeera, was an appeal to understanding and a rejection of categorical imperatives. The fault lies not in Jimmy Carter, but in the way we talk about and understand the "War on Terror".

I am going to make it easy this time, Osama bin Laden is the quintessential example of a "terrorist". The call to kill civilians in the fatwas of 1996 and 1999 fit the definition of terrorism. And so what does that imply?

In the current mindset, the solution is simple - kill him. And if you can't do that,  kill everyone who espouses him, kill everyone who shelters him, and if all else fails kill everything he says.

You know that feeling you get right before a huge storm?  When it feels as if you could plug an appliance directly into the air and it would roar to life?

I am getting that feeling now. My oldest daughter turns 13 tomorrow.

Her vocabulary is reducing to two words:  "whatever" and "ri--ight."  Both are delivered with as much sarcasm as she can muster, and she never verbalizes when an eye-roll will suffice. When she's addressing me, that is.  When she's addressing her friends, 5,000 texted words on a cell phone per hour cannot express all that she has to say. 

Sometimes she starts screaming and crying and slamming doors.  For no discernable reason. 

It's not that we don't have stuff.  To the contrary.  This farmhouse is exploding with stuff.  I give away and throw away truckloads of stuff, and still we have way too much.  We have so much stuff that there's barely room for us in this joint.  So why are we constantly going out to buy more stuff, to haul back here and add to the groaning, teetering piles we already own?  My kids could tell you.  It's because none of what's crammed in here is the right stuff. 

Mortimer Zuckerman writing in the US News and World Report said "Former President Jimmy Carter, acting out his stubborn, self-righteous moralism and his stunning vanity, persists in legitimizing terrorism." Aljazeera says "Give Peace and Jimmy Carter a Chance". Michael Craft, a former senior adviser in the State Department added "Mr. Carter's well-publicized meeting plans amount to rewarding terrorists..." Congressman Eric Cantor said "It is shocking that a former president of the United States would sit down and speak with a terrorist kingpin like Khaled Mashal.This type of meeting will only be misconstrued in the region as a sign of legitimacy for Hamas terrorism,".

I found the NY Times review of Philip Bobbitt’s TERROR AND CONSENT more than just a little interesting. Bobbitt seems to offer a fresh look at the war on terror and international relations that challenges dogma on both the right and the left much in the same way that Thomas Friedman’s THE WORLD IS FLAT reframed the discussion of trade and economics.

While the Administration through its mouthpieces David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker make relative security in Iraq a function of the "surge", recent events suggest levels of violence are more dependent on the actions of one man than 40,000 US troops.

That man is Muqtada al-Sadr. al-Sadr had reason to celebrate the fall of Saddam. His grandfather was executed by the Saddam regime and his father and two of his family were murdered in 1999. al-Sadr's stronghold, popularly referred to as Sadr City, is home to perhaps two million Shia discriminated against by the Bathists and not faring all that well under Maliki. Plausibly as a matter of self defense, the Sadr organization formed several large militias, some in other localities including Basra. In desperate straights, the al-Sadr organization provides health, education and social services to an equally desperate population.

In an obvious payback to would be theocrats, the United States Agency for International Development, convinced administrators at Johns Hopkins University to modify the search software at the largest index of population information - "Popline" - to censor searches on the keyword "abortion". They succeeded.

I visited Popline today - http://db.jhuccp.org/ics-wpd/popweb/ - and type in a few terms related to but not using the forbidden word "abortion".

Evacuation  is one method of abortion in which the fetus is literally sucked out of the womb. Dilation and curettage is a mechanical method where the cervix is dilated and the womb is scraped. Mefepristone is a drug which induces premature delivery.