Here's one for the conspiracy theorists. I was listening to a radio program last night and they were talking about the incident where the marine hung the American flag on the Saddam Hussein statue. Apparently, the Marine hung the flag upside down (blue stars section down) which mean "distress". The Marine was later interviewed on CNN by Larry King, and he said he was told by his superiors to hang the flag that way.

The person on the radio was speculating about the Marine's actions, since Marines are taught from the get go how the treat the American flag. The person on the radio also said that no one in the news media commented about it.

I remember hearing about this incident, and I thought the buzz on was that it was a mistake for the Marine to even put the American flag on the Hussein statue because it was like a symbol of America conquering Iraq. The coalition forces didn't want to send that message, so they quickly took the flag off. But why was it hung upside down in the first place? Wer the Marines sending a silent message about the "real state of the war in Iraq"? That maybe what those 600 embedded journalists, and all the other international media are reporting are not true, and it's a sham war and that particular Marine's boss wanted the whole world to know it. That, and this is what the radio person said last night, Saddam Hussein and those missing Iraqi leaders whose pictures are now on playing cards (Pokemon watch out) were cut a deal and are now living somewhere and enjoying themselves on a tropical island.

Conspiracy theorists, discuss amongst yourselves.

You need to sign up to read the NY Times online, but there's a great op/ed piece written by Eason Jordan, a CNN news executive, which was published today (4/11/2003). The piece is titled The News We Kept to Ourselves, and in it Jordan talks about the atrocities of the Iraqi regime that CNN never reported.

Some choice bits.
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I came to know several Iraqi officials well enough that they confided in me that Saddam Hussein was a maniac who had to be removed. One Foreign Ministry officer told me of a colleague who, finding out his brother had been executed by the regime, was forced, as a test of loyalty, to write a letter of congratulations on the act to Saddam Hussein. An aide to Uday once told me why he had no front teeth: henchmen had ripped them out with pliers and told him never to wear dentures, so he would always remember the price to be paid for upsetting his boss. Again, we could not broadcast anything these men said to us.

We also had to worry that our reporting might endanger Iraqis not on our payroll. I knew that CNN could not report that Saddam Hussein's eldest son, Uday, told me in 1995 that he intended to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected and also the man giving them asylum, King Hussein of Jordan. If we had gone with the story, I was sure he would have responded by killing the Iraqi translator who was the only other participant in the meeting. After all, secret police thugs brutalized even senior officials of the Information Ministry, just to keep them in line (one such official has long been missing all his fingernails).

Then there were the events that were not unreported but that nonetheless still haunt me. A 31-year-old Kuwaiti woman, Asrar Qabandi, was captured by Iraqi secret police occupying her country in 1990 for "crimes," one of which included speaking with CNN on the phone. They beat her daily for two months, forcing her father to watch. In January 1991, on the eve of the American-led offensive, they smashed her skull and tore her body apart limb by limb. A plastic bag containing her body parts was left on the doorstep of her family's home.
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Such lovely people the Iraqi regime, something I'm sure the sign painter from Berkeley who wrote "We love you Saddam" would say. Well at least the Berkeley sign painter won't have to worry about finding a loved one's body parts in a plastic bag on their doorstep, since the person had no beef with Saddam.

When some of the anti-war protestors talk about how horrible America is, I think they need to remember that in places like Iraq things were much worse. Had these anti-war people protested against Saddam, I'm sure they would be missing what? fingernails, teeth, their children, their lives?

A strange match. John Cusak and Meg Ryan. I don't know. It sounds odd.

Wow, I'm on Blogshares whatever that is. I found it in my sitemeter report.

I've been spending the last two days playing with my company laptop. The Company finally gave me an IBM Thinkpad R31. What a pain in the butt the machine has been. I only got it because a salesman quit, so they had an extra one around. At least it's new. My coworkers got older ones.

I think I would preferred an older one, because mine didn't come with a docking station or port replication. Now we're trying to figure out how to connect a keyboard and a mouse, and it's a pain. The USB to PS2 connectors don't work, so now the solution is to buy a USB keyboard and mouse. Stupid IBM! They don't have a keyboard and mouse port on the back of the laptop. IBM is known for manufacturing their machines so you can only use IBM products. I hope this isn't the case, but I wouldn't surprised.

Then I spent the whole morning trying to figure out how to connect to the company VPN. That was another picnic. After two hours, I think we finally fixed it but I won't know till I take it home this weekend and test it out. I should have tested it here again, but I didn't. I've just about had enough of my laptop.

I asked my boss if I should just stick with a desktop, and he said to no. He had a hard time with the company IT department when he got his laptop, and he said just to stick it out and make the IT people fix it. I just have no patience for this kind of stuff, and I used to have to work at an IT Helpdesk. It's just so frustrating for me. I don't understand why things can't just work, or why the IT people don't test the machines they hand out.

The last two days at work have been so horrid for me that I haven't been able to work. I'm sure my bosses love that. I emailed our VP about all the laptop problems I was having, thinking maybe he would say something to the IT department. I doubt it though. He's probably thinking "didn't I tell her she could only have a desktop?" He works from a laptop, so maybe he knew the process would be this painful.