New Republic, April 7 Filing from Sulaymaniyah, in northern Iraq, Elizabeth Rubin sketches a frightening portrayal of the shifting alliances and rivalries in the region. The presence of radical terrorist group Ansar al-Islam gives local Kurdish factions unhappy with the so-far meager and wavering support of American forces a sometimes attractive alternative. … Offering a counterpoint to recent Weekly Standard pieces (like this one and this one) that portray Iraqis in America as universally in favor of the U.S. invasion, Jonathan Cohn interviews Iraqi Americans in Southfield, Mich., and notes that different Iraqi ethnic groups have divergent concerns about the war. Some Chaldean Christians, for example, fear a Shiite-led theocracy in postwar Iraq. … And Jonathan Chait tackles the administration’s ludicrous argument that Congress should pass Bush’s tax cut so returning troops will have jobs to come back to. It’s a volunteer Army, Chait points out. When the war’s over, troops will still have jobs, as soldiers.
Economist, March 27 The cover story assesses the war’s early days with a fairly useless recap. Militarily, coalition forces have met with success, but the mag terms the failure of Iraqi soldiers to surrender in the first moments of battle a “sociological disappointment.”… A reporter in Egypt argues that the striking extent of anti-war protests across the Middle East suggests that Arab people are frustrated with their leaders, who failed to make a case against the war in recent weeks (leaving the job to Europeans instead). Citing a protest by half a million people in Syria and another totaling 40,000 in Cairo, the piece contends that Western-leaning leaders may face increased domestic opposition. … The British take on Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “There was something of the Oxford don about him.” The obit continues with double-edged praise: “Even when prickly, he was better value than the average blow-dried politician; and even drunk he talked far more sense than most people do sober.”
New York Times Magazine, March 29 If you follow baseball, you know about Billy Beane—the thrifty general manager of the threadbare Oakland A’s—and his scheme for buying talent on the cheap: When he considers a player, he values certain stats, like on-base percentage, that more traditional GMs don’t think twice about. So the real charm of this profile lies in watching, play by play, as the unsinkably confident Beane buys a pitcher off the team the A’s are up against that night. … A collection of first-person narratives describes what bombing feels like on the ground. In Dover in 1940, Norman ramparts stood up to German attacks that left Brian Urquhart jumpy; during the first Gulf War, for Joel Turnipseed, bombing became dangerously boring. … Genius fashion piece: The frequently lewd cartoonist R. Crumb draws his curvy and no-nonsense wife, Aline, in the latest from Narciso Rodriguez et al. Aline on haute couture: “I wonder in which country the peons put the beads on this dress.”
Time and Newsweek, March 31 The newsmagazines’ coverage of this televised war is behind the curve. Because the firefight in Nasiriyah yesterday took place too late to be included, strategic analysis, a sometime strong point with the weeklies, fails to take such setbacks into account, and reads a bit out of date. … In an interesting piece that analyzes how neoconservative oust-Saddam theory became administration policy, Time quotes our president saying “F— Saddam. We’re taking him out,” in March 2002. The piece predictably profiles true-believer Paul Wolfowitz, and then argues that Dick Cheney became interested in Iraq before Sept. 11, Bush came on board during the anthrax scare in Washington, and Powell was won over after the French betrayed him at the United Nations. … Time and Newsweek both offer rundowns of the equipment the military is using in its assault; Time’s two-pager is more thorough and the list of ground vehicles reads like an automotive buyer’s guide, complete with specs from cost to top speed. … Newsweek told writer Melinda Liu to leave Iraq before the war. Incensed at the command to flee the story, Liu files a piece on her plan to resign upon her return, getting stuck in Baghdad, and the gallows humor in the restaurant of her reporter-ridden hotel, where Iraqi Press Center officials, faking high dudgeon, demanded that reporters obtain visa extensions as the shells began to fall. (Read Slate writer Nate Thayer’s dispatches from Baghdad here.) … Lost in the war shuffle is Time’s 80th-anniversary package, which chronicles “80 Days That Changed the World,” and includes first-person narratives from a marathoner who remembers teammate Jesse Owens waving at Hitler at the 1936 Olympics and from witnesses to Kristallnacht and Pearl Harbor.
U.S. News & World Report, March 31 The technology being used to pinpoint Saddam’s whereabouts—systems that can listen in on cellular and land-line phone conversations, satellite photos, and predator drones—are the same used to look for Osama in Afghanistan. Which means that without an insider tip, U.S. forces are unlikely to find him. … A piece on hunting down Saddam’s assets updates a March 10 Time piece on the subject, and notes that U.S. officials have seized assets that were previously frozen in U.S. banks, and are beginning to collaborate with foreign governments to find Saddam’s more elusive loot.
Weekly Standard, March 31 Kicking off the issue with a self-congratulatory riff, a Notebook piece cites three earlier Standard articles in which Reuel Marc Gerecht waxed political on the need to restore Middle Eastern “awe” of American military might. (OK, we get it! We saw the New York Times piece about Dick Cheney getting 30 copies of the mag each week—the Weekly Standard has the administration’s ear!) … David Brooks analyzes the war commentary, noting that pundits seem to be talking about the prewar and the postwar but ignoring the war itself. Too bad, he writes, because this war’s tactics are novel: “Has there ever been a conflict in the history of man in which the one army strove so mightily not to kill the soldiers of the other army?”… Joshua Muravchik turns a skeptical eye on the latest draft of Bush’s hastily touted roadmap to peace between Israel and Palestinians. Problems include its “breathless” pace.
The New Yorker, March 31 Has Seymour Hersh been reading Slate’s “Press Box”? Perhaps grateful that Jack Shafer has defended his piece on Richard Perle, Hersh has followed a Press Box tip, trying to figure out who forged the documents “proving” that Iraq attempted to buy enriched uranium from Niger. Hersh contends that in the late ‘90s, a member of the U.N. inspection team was leaking “unverified and unverifiable intelligence reports and tips—data known as inactionable intelligence” to British intelligence agency MI6; the info was to be distributed to newspapers as part of an anti-Iraq propaganda campaign. The forged nuke documents may have originated here, Hersh says. The CIA declined to comment on the potential MI6 connection. … Nicholas Lemann takes up what seems to be the question of the week: When—and why—did Bush and Co. adopt the neocon fixation with forcibly ousting Saddam? Lemann’s piece describes the shifting critical mass of consensus within the diplomatic community.
Sports Illustrated, March 24 A writer plays a round of golf with former President Bill Clinton and finds that he cheats, and cheats, and then cheats some more. The right-wing critics who saw Clinton’s golf dissembling as a metaphor for his presidency didn’t know the half of it. Clinton, who says he plays by the rules, often takes several mulligans per hole. He concedes long putts to himself, and he tallies up an 82 for the round, when he probably deserved 100. Clinton’s playing partners let him get away with the chicanery, in part because he encourages all them to cheat, too. (Another highlight: He claims, delusionally, that he considered trying to qualify for the Senior PGA Tour, but decided it would take too much time.) … The issue also includes SI’s laughably terrible NCAA tournament predictions: Their wizards got only five of the Sweet 16 right. (Penn to the Sweet 16? In 1953, perhaps.)— D.P.
Car & Driver, April 2003 The three-block town of New Rome, Ohio, population 60, issued 3,390 traffic tickets last year. An article profiles the rise and coming downfall of this surreal village that collects $400,000 a year with a speed trap that preys on motorists with chipped taillights, dirty license plates, and loud mufflers. The state auditor calls this one-stoplight town the “per-capita corruption capital of Ohio.” Until last year there hadn’t been a City Council election since 1979; instead, one councilmember would merely appoint another. Also, tens of thousands of city dollars have been unaccounted for. The story’s heroes are a dapper easterner, who rode into town on a Corvette and tried to shake things up, and a righteous barber whose anger at the city had been festering for two decades.— A.Z.
—David Plotz and Avi Zenilman also contributed to this column.
