Tag Archives ⇒ France

Buying my Personality in a Store

September 8, 2004
· Martin Kelley

A guest piece by Amanda

Orig­i­nal­ly post­ed as a com­ment to “My Exper­i­ments with Plain­ness”, Aman­da’s sto­ry deserves its own post: “I’ve noticed that I’m becom­ing real­ly attached to my clothes. As I was grim­ly and method­i­cal­ly culling my clos­et, a whiny, des­per­ate voice in my head piped up, and I began to have a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion with myself… [A] reser­va­tion I have is that plain dress­ing may just be anoth­er way of telegraph­ing the image I want the world to have of me. Only instead of that mes­sage being ‘I am cool and wor­thy of your atten­tion and envy’ the mes­sage might be ‘I’m so hoooooly’.”

Hi there!

I am 21, and the only mem­ber of my fam­i­ly who attends meet­ings of Friends. (I am not a Friend yet, being young to the whole expe­ri­ence, and an ex-catholic, and hav­ing wan­dered for sev­er­al years in strange paths!! 🙂 How­ev­er, I am tak­ing it very seri­ous­ly, and read­ing all I can get my hands on. I feel a strong call towards plain dress, and have gone through fits and starts of it spon­ta­neous­ly, even as a Catholic child. At 12, I decid­ed I would no longer wear colours in imi­ta­tion of all the siants habits I saw in my books, and my friends and I (I grew up in rur­al Cana­da, home­schooled, the old­est of 11 kids, an anar­chon­ism to begin with) tried sewing our own clothes our­selves, praire dress­es and pinafores. 

When I was 14, we moved to the States, to the sub­urbs, away from our uber-traditional Catholic enclave, and I began to nor­mal­ize myself out of the “home­school­er uni­form” (its own sort of plain dress — those ter­ri­ble jumpers with ankle socks and can­vas sneak­ers! Ack!) and into main­stream fash­ion, where I’ve been solid­ly entrenched ever since, espe­cial­ly since mov­ing to NYC.

I am now in the process of purg­ing a lot of my stuff, and seek­ing a sim­pler way of liv­ing. I quit smok­ing, and have decid­ed that drink­ing as a recre­ation­al activ­i­ty is out unless it’s an orga­nized event. This may become more strict in time, but I have to ease into it a lit­tle bit. I got rid of sev­er­al bags of clothes and a bunch of house­hold items I was hoard­ing “just in case I might need them some­day”. Clas­sic. A lot of things have pre­cip­i­tat­ed this, but one of them is my absolute hor­ror at how I’ve gone from mak­ing $12,000 a year to near­ly $30,000, and I still am sav­ing no mon­ey at all, nor am I mak­ing any last­ing purchase/investments, etc…I’m just spend­ing it on vain and use­less things. I’ve noticed as well, that I’m start­ing to have more and more big-salary fan­ta­sis­es, and recre­ation­al­ly go to stare in shop win­dows at clothes, not just to appre­ci­ate the asthet­ic val­ue of some of the most gor­geous gar­ments in the world (after all, this is Man­hat­tan) but also to drool and cov­et. I found, while exam­in­ing my con­cience, that it was­n’t even the thing — the piece of cloth­ing that I want­ed, and it was­n’t a sim­ple desire to have some­thing pret­ty. I saw myself link­ing these clothes and things to my self worth and future hap­pi­ness. You know:

“Once I am thin and rich enough to wear this, I will be hap­py. I will be so hap­py. So very hap­py. Every­thing will be per­fect, and my hair will always be straight, and I will have my teeth veneered, and I will have a hand­some man who wor­ships the ground I walk on, and three bright-eyed chil­dren who appear only on Sun­day morn­ings to snug­gle with me in my California-king-sized bed with the white crisp sheets, while I lan­guid­ly smile at their frol­ic­ing and plan to buy them a gold­en retriev­er pup­py lat­er that after­noon as I stroll through an antique fair and buy a vin­tage wick­er bird cage, which I will fill with finch­es and hang from my sun-drenched porch in my sec­ond house in the south of France, and I be hap­py. So hap­py. So very hap­py, if I am only thin and rich enough to wear those clothes.”

I real­ly, real­ly woke up one after­noon to find myself stand­ing on 5th Ave and 59th street, on my lunch break, star­ing in a win­dow, and hav­ing that fan­ta­sy with absolute­ly no inter­nal iron­ic monolouge at all. At all. 

It com­plet­ley pan­icked me. 

I’ve noti­cied that I’m becom­ing real­ly attatched to my clothes. As I was grim­ly and method­i­cal­ly culling my clos­et, a whiney, des­per­ate voice in my head piped up, and I began to have a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion with myself. 

“You can’t get rid of so many of your cool clothes. The clothes are you, they’re a huge part of who you are.”

“Wait,” the oth­er voice in my head, the stern one, said (I am a schiz­o­phrenic and so am I) “You are say­ing that I am what I wear. That’s sup­posed to make me want to keep them? Do you even hear what you’re saying?”

The first voice was total­ly backtracking. 

“No, no, no, I did­n’t mean you were your clothes, or that you were only worth as much as your clothes, why do you always have to be so lit­er­al? I meant that your clothes tell peo­ple about you, about who you are and what you believe in. They’re an out­side sign of who you are.”

“Ah.” said the sec­ond voice, rather sar­cas­ti­cal­ly, I thought, “So we’d rather have peo­ple learn every­thing they need to know about us by our clothes, instead of hav­ing them take the time to get to know us from expe­ri­ence of us.”

“Well, that’s all very well!” said the first voice. “That’s nice in an ide­al world. But the truth is, the sad truth is, most peo­ple won’t take the time to get to know you if you don’t seem cool.”

“Wow.” said the sec­ond voice. “Wow. This has noth­ing to do with fash­ion, does it? This total­ly has to do with your infe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex, dat­ing back to about sec­ond grade, does­n’t it?”

At this point the first voice began to suck its thumb, and I real­ized to my hor­ror that the sec­ond voice was right. It’s always right.

“Fash­ion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.” ~Quentin Crisp

I’ve actu­al­ly begun buy­ing my per­son­al­i­ty in a store, and telling myself that it’s okay because I’m buy­ing it in a thrift store. I know from per­son­al expe­ri­ence that the right head­scarf or pair of vin­tage shoes, or fun­ny t‑shirt will sud­den­ly raise the val­ue of my social cur­ren­cy off the charts. And I’m becom­ing real­ly depen­dent on that, to the point where I’ve start­ed to actu­al­ly feel anx­i­ety around my “style” and my clothes. I iron­i­cal­ly played the role of fash­ion police for a boy at a par­ty who was mock­ing me for being from Williams­burg, and although I was kid­ding around when I exco­ri­at­ed him for his American-Eagle shorts and surfer-boy hair, it struck me, I’m spout­ing all these “rules” as if I’m mock­ing them, but I actu­al­ly live by them, don’t I? 

And I’ve increas­ing­ly begun to obey them out of fear instead of out of a love of neat clothes or a sense of aes­thet­ic. I have cool­er clothes than ever, and suden­ly I have a need to make more mon­ey so that I can keep look­ing cool, and keep fit­ting in, and keep prov­ing to every­one, most of all myself, that I should be invit­ed to Angel­i­ca’s birth­day par­ty because the whole rest of the class is and it’s not fair…oh wait. That was sec­ond grade. 

Ben­jamin Franklin wrote: “Mon­ey nev­er made a man hap­py yet, nor will it. There is noth­ing in its nature to pro­duce hap­pi­ness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its fill­ing a vac­u­um, it makes one. If it sat­is­fies one want, it dou­bles and tre­bles that want anoth­er way.”

This seems like a huge cliche, but you know, the more I think about it, the more it seems that the mod­ern hor­ror of clich­es may have less to do with a love of orig­i­nal­i­ty than with a fear of the truth.

So those are the moti­va­tions — that much is worked out. But the prac­tice of it is hard. Was I expe­ri­en­ce­ing a gen­uine call­ing to plain dress as a child, or did I just read too much “Lit­tle House”? (Is there such a thing as too much “Lit­tle House”?) And now, am I just a costume-loving poser?

I feel a bizarre attrac­tion to head-covering as well, though I recoil with my whole post-feminist self from those pas­sages in the bible. I don’t think I believe in sub­mis­sion to any­body. In fact, I’m not sure even God wants me sub­mis­sive ‑I feel he wants my co-operation.

“I will not now call you ser­vants: for the ser­vant knoweth not what his lord doth. But I have called you friends: because all things what­so­ev­er I have heard of my Father, I have made known to you.” John 15:15

Anoth­er reser­va­tion I have is that plain dress­ing may just be anoth­er way of telegraph­ing the image I want the world to have of me. Only instead of that mes­sage being “I am cool and wor­thy of your atten­tion and envy” the mes­sage might be “I’m so hoooooly”. Or, per­haps more pos­i­tive­ly, it might be a mes­sage that is “wit­ness” — a con­cept I am strug­gling with on its own — what if I make mis­takes and my wit­ness is mis­tak­en, etc.

My com­pro­mise was to get rid of all the clothes I’d bought just for atten­tion, all the clothes I was keep­ing for pure­ly sen­ti­men­tal rea­sons, every­thing that did­n’t fit, or match with any­thing else, etc. And to be hon­est, that just pared it down to where I can actu­al­ly fit all my clothes in my 1 clos­et and dress­er, a feat hereto­fore unknown to me. Also, a big part of this move was to start tak­ing care of my clothes, some­thing I’ve nev­er done. I’ve made an active dici­pline of some­thing as sim­ple as hang­ing up my clothes each night, as an act of respect and grat­i­tude. It occured to me that when I am so for­tu­nate as to have many poses­sions, it seems extreme­ly wrong that I should mis­treat them the way I’ve been doing. 

Wow. For­get plain dress, plain speech is going to be an even big­ger prob­lem. I’ve writ­ten a novel.

* blush *

Any­how, it is won­der­ful to see it dis­cussed, some­times I feel like I’m just nuts. I mean, I know I’m nuts, but I don’t like feel­ing that way. 🙂

in friend­ship,
Amanda

Tough Time to Love War(Making)

January 23, 2003
· Martin Kelley

This just isn’t a good time to be George W. Bush. Unit­ed Nations inspec­tors comb­ing Iraq for weapons of mass destruc­tion have come up emp­ty hand­ed. Sad­dam Hus­sein has allow­ing them rel­a­tive­ly unfet­tered access but all they’ve uncov­ered is a few unused shells.

Bush is noth­ing if not per­sis­tent when it comes to per­ceived world bad guys. Just yes­ter­day he told an audi­ence in St. Louis that Hus­sein is “a dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous man with dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous weapons.” Despite the repeat­ed use dan­ger­ous, the rest of the world is uncon­vinced. Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Ger­hard Schroder still talks about “peace­ful solu­tions” and Ger­many and France is putting the brakes on war in the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, wait­ing for evi­dence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruc­tion to turn up.

It must frus­trate our pres­i­dent to see that all these years of mil­i­tary sanc­tions against Iraq have been work­ing. All the evi­dence uncov­ered by the U.N. inspec­tors prove that we can “win with­out war,” as one cur­rent slo­gan goes, and that we have in fact been win­ning. We’ve kept Sad­dam Hus­sein from rebuild­ing his mil­i­tary after the Gulf War. U.S. iso­la­tion of Iraq has been suc­cess­ful despite its numer­ous flaws. Sad­dam is not a threat.

Which brings us to real threats and to North Korea. Pres­i­dent Bush and his team of war mon­ger­ers have been so busy look­ing at Iraq that they’ve giv­en North Korea just spo­radic atten­tion. Recently-declassified reports show that the U.S. Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency has known much more about North Korea’s nuclear bomb mak­ing over the last dozen years than anyone’s been admitting.

The C.I.A. has known that North Korea and Pak­istan have been trad­ing nuclear secrets. Pak­istan has been show­ing its ally of con­ve­nience how to build the cen­trifuges that process weapons-grade ura­ni­um. North Korea in return has pro­vid­ed the mis­sile tech­nol­o­gy that gives Pak­istan the nuclear reach to destroy arch-rival India. Now that we know Pres­i­dent Bush knew all about this his­to­ry of what we might call “dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous” tech­nol­o­gy trade, why did he cozy up to Pak­istan fol­low­ing Sep­tem­ber 11th? He so want­ed wars with Afghanistan and Iraq that he nor­mal­ized rela­tions with a coun­try far more dan­ger­ous. If a Pak­istani or North Kore­an nuclear weapon goes off in New York City it will kill a whole lot more peo­ple than Osama bin Laden’s four hijacked air­planes. What hap­pened on Sep­tem­ber 11th was ter­ri­ble but it’s noth­ing com­pared to what a ene­my with resources could do.

There are real threats to world peace, far more “dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous” than Iraq. The Unit­ed States needs to drop its president’s obses­sions and look square­ly at the world and who we’re allied with. And when we reset our poli­cies we wqcan use Iraq as our mod­el. For as the U.N. inspec­tors have proven, we can cre­ate peace through diplo­ma­cy and we can iso­late trou­ble­mak­ers through smart sanctions.

What a tough les­son for U.S. lead­ers bent on war. 

American Spies and Blood for Oil

January 15, 1999
· Martin Kelley

Sad­dam Hus­sein was right: the U.N. teams inspect­ing Iraq did con­tain U.S. spies. His expul­sion of the teams was legit­i­mate, and the U.S. bomb­ing that fol­lowed was farce.

Karl Marx once wrote: “Hegel remarks some­where that all facts and per­son­ages of great impor­tance in world his­to­ry occur, as it were, twice. He for­got to add: the first time as tragedy, the sec­ond as farce.” We’re see­ing that today, with each suc­ces­sive mil­i­tary action by the U.S. against Iraq becom­ing ever more trans­par­ent and ridiculous.

Per­haps you haven’t heard the news. It was con­ve­nient­ly released the day before Pres­i­dent Clin­ton’s Sen­ate impeach­ment tri­al was to begin and the major Amer­i­can news net­works did­n’t give it much atten­tion. They were too busy with seg­ments on how the U.S. Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice designed his own robes. With hooks like fash­ion and sex attend­ing the impeach­ment tri­al, how could they be blamed for under-reporting more Iraq news.

But on Jan­u­ary 7th, the New York Times con­firmed rumors that Unit­ed States plant­ed spies on the Unit­ed Nations: “Unit­ed States offi­cials said on Wednes­day that Amer­i­can spies had worked under­cov­er on teams of Unit­ed Nations arms inspec­tors fer­ret­ing out secret Iraqi weapons pro­grams.” The Wash­ing­ton Post and Boston Globe fur­ther report­ed that the oper­a­tion was aimed at Sad­dam Hus­sein him­self. NBC News report­ed that U.N. com­mu­ni­ca­tion equip­ment was used by U.S. intel­li­gence to pass along inter­cept­ed Iraqi messages.

This is exact­ly what Sad­dam Hus­sein has been charg­ing the U.N. teams with. He has long claimed that the teams, run by the Unit­ed Nations Spe­cial Com­mis­sion or UNSCOM, were full of “Amer­i­can spies and agents.” It was for this rea­son that he denied the inspec­tors access to sen­si­tive sites. And it was this refusal that prompt­ed Pres­i­dent Clin­ton to attack Iraq last month.

So what’s going on here? Senior U.S. offi­cials told NBC News that the main tar­gets of last mon­th’s attack weren’t mil­i­tary but eco­nom­ic. The cruise mis­siles weren’t aimed at any alleged nuclear or bio­log­i­cal weapons fac­to­ries but instead at the oil fields. Specif­i­cal­ly, one of the main tar­gets was the Bas­ra oil refin­ing facil­i­ties in south­ern Iraq.

In a sep­a­rate arti­cle, NBC quot­ed Fad­hil Cha­l­abi, an oil indus­try ana­lyst at the Cen­ter for Glob­al Ener­gy Stud­ies in Lon­don, as say­ing Iraq’s oil pro­duc­ing neight­bors are “hop­ing that Iraq’s oil instal­la­tions will be destroyed as a result of Amer­i­can air strikes. Then the [U.N.-mandated] oil-for food pro­gram would be par­a­lyzed and the mar­ket would improve by the dis­ap­pear­ance of Iraqi oil altogether.”

Since the start of the Gulf War, Iraq has pro­duced relatively-little oil because of a com­bi­na­tion of the U.N. sanc­tions and an infra­struc­ture destroyed by years of war. A report by the Unit­ed States Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion back in the sum­mer of 1997 stat­ed Iraq’s per cap­i­tal Gross Nation­al Prod­uct was at lev­els not seen since the 1940s.

Sau­di Ara­bia and Kuwait have picked up this slack in pro­duc­tion and made out like ban­dits. Before the Gulf War, Sau­di Ara­bia was only allowed to pump 5.4 mil­lions bar­rels a day under it’s OPEC quo­ta. Today it pro­duces 8 mil­lion bar­rels a day, a fifty per­cent increase that trans­lates into bil­lions of dol­lars a year in prof­it. If the sanc­tions against Iraq were lift­ed, Sau­di pro­duc­tion would once more have to be lim­it­ed and the Anglo-American oil com­pa­nies run­ning the fields would lose ten bil­lion dol­lars a year in revenue.

t’s time to stop kid­ding our­selves. This is a war over mon­ey. The U.S. and Britain are get­ting rich off of Sau­di Ara­bi­a’s increased oil pro­duc­tion and don’t want any­one muscling in on their oil prof­its. It is in the eco­nom­ic inter­est of the U.S. and Britain to main­tain Iraqi sanc­tions indef­i­nite­ly and their for­eign pol­i­cy seems to be to set off peri­od­ic crises with Iraq. France and Rus­sia mean­while both stand to get lucra­tive oil con­tracts with a post-sanctions Iraq so they rou­tine­ly denounce any bomb­ing raids and just as rou­tine­ly call for a lift­ing of sanctions.

Sad­dam Hus­sein is also mak­ing out in the cur­rent state of affairs. A economically-healthy Iraqi pop­u­la­tion would­n’t put up with his tyran­ny. He cur­rent­ly rules Iraq like a mob boss, siphon­ing off what oil prof­its there are to pay for fan­cy cars and pres­i­den­tial palaces. He gets to look tough in front of the TV cam­eras and then retreats to safe under­ground bunkers when the bombs start falling on the Iraqi people.

It is time to stop all of the hypocrisy. It is esti­mat­ed that over a mil­lion Iraqis have died as a results of the post-Gulf War sanc­tions. These oil prof­its are blood mon­ey and it is long past time that they end.

Hussein Backs off, Clinton Whines

November 14, 1998
· Martin Kelley

Sddam Hus­sein has just backed off. He’s agreed to a diplo­mat­ic solu­tion and has agreed to let Unit­ed Nations weapon inspec­tors back in.

U.S. offi­cials said that they were about to attack Sat­ur­day night, Nov. 14, when Hus­sein agreed to the inspec­tions. One Pen­ta­gon offi­cial is quot­ed as say­ing “It was almost as if he knew,” which is a ridicu­lous state­ment con­sid­er­ing that rumors of an immi­nent attack were cir­cling the inter­net and news sites all week­end. Of course Hus­sein knew, we all did.

This should be cause for rejoic­ing. Blood won’t have to be shed, diplo­ma­cy (notably France and Rus­si­a’s) have saved the day again, and the U.N. teams can go back to work.

But U.S. admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials are upset. They want­ed a war. They’re double-guessing their tim­ing, wish­ing they had bombed him ear­li­er this week. They’re imply­ing that they might bomb Bagh­dad any­way. They’re whin­ing that now they have to once again work with the U.N. and with Iraqi officials.

Why is the Admin­is­tra­tion so upset? It’s because they have no real pol­i­cy in the Gulf. Ear­li­er this week they admit­ted that they did­n’t know what they would do after the attack. Here they were send­ing war­ships and per­son­nel into the Gulf and they had no long- or mid-term vision for what these peo­ple were going to do after the first hun­dred cruise mis­siles went off. U.S. pol­i­cy is once more stuck in the same mud­dle its been in since mid-1991.

Clin­ton wish­es Hus­sein would just dis­ap­pear. That his mil­i­tary would launch a coup and dri­ve him from pow­er. That a cruise mis­sile would hit and kill him. They wish that Iraqi mil­i­tary know-how would dis­ap­pear. But none of this is like­ly to hap­pen. In the real world, high-tech U.S. mis­siles can’t do very much. The real world requires diplo­ma­cy, nego­ti­at­ing with peo­ple you don’t trust, de-escalating rhetoric. These are skills that the Clin­ton Admin­is­tra­tion needs to develop.

It is time for the U.S. to stop whin­ing when diplo­ma­cy works. And it is time for a U.S. to devel­op a real­is­tic pol­i­cy for build­ing a last­ing peace in the Gulf.

Stop the Zipper War Before It Starts

January 30, 1998
· Martin Kelley

Why is Pres­i­dent Clin­ton talk­ing about a reprise of the 1991 Per­sian Gulf War?

We’re told it’s because U.N. inspec­tors believe that Iraq has hid­den “weapons of mass destruc­tion.” But of course so does the Unit­ed States. And Britain, France, Rus­sia, the Ukraine, Chi­na, India and Pak­istan. Iraq does­n’t even hold a region­al monop­oly, as Israel cer­tain­ly has atom­ic weapons atop U.S.-designed rock­ets aimed this very moment at Hus­sein’s Bagh­dad palaces.

Insanely-destructive weapons are a fact of life in the fin-de-Millennium. There’s already plen­ty of coun­tries with atom­ic weapons and the mis­sile sys­tems to lob them into neigh­bor­ing coun­tries. Hus­sein prob­a­bly does­n’t have them, and the weapons U.N. inspec­tors are wor­ried about are chem­i­cal. This is the “poor man’s atom­ic bomb,” a way to play at the lev­el of nuclear diplo­ma­cy with­out the expens­es of a nuclear program.

Clin­ton seems obliv­i­ous to the irony of oppos­ing Iraq’s weapons of mass destruc­tion with our own. The air­craft car­ri­ers and bat­tle fleets that have been sent into the Gulf in recent weeks are loaded with tac­ti­cal nuclear missiles.

If the pos­ses­sion of weapons of mass destruc­tion is wrong for Iraq, then it is wrong for every­one. It is time to abol­ish all weapons pro­grams and to build real world peace along lines of cooperation.

He’s our Bully

Most Amer­i­cans, on hear­ing a call to let Hus­sein be, will react with dis­be­lief. Con­di­tioned to think of him as our mod­ern Hitler, any­one oppos­ing a new Gulf War must be crazy, some­one unfa­mil­iar with the his­to­ry of the appease­ment of Hitler pri­or to World War II that allowed him to build his mil­i­tary to the fright­en­ing lev­els of 1939.

But Amer­i­cans have alas not been told too much of more recent his­to­ry. Sad­dam Hus­sein is our cre­ation, he’s our bul­ly. It start­ed with Iran. Obsessed with glob­al mil­i­tary con­trol, the U.S. gov­ern­ment start­ed arm­ing region­al super­pow­ers. We gave our cho­sen coun­tries weapons and mon­ey to bul­ly around their neigh­bors and we looked the oth­er way at human rights abus­es. We cre­at­ed and strength­ened dic­ta­tors around the world, includ­ing the Shah of Iran. A rev­o­lu­tion final­ly threw him out of pow­er and ush­ered in a gov­ern­ment under­stand­able hos­tile to the Unit­ed States.

Rather than take this devel­op­ment to mean that the region­al super­pow­er con­cept was a bad idea, the U.S. just chose anoth­er region­al super­pow­er: Iraq. We looked the oth­er way when the two got into a war, and start­ed build­ing up Iraq’s mil­i­tary arse­nal, giv­ing him the planes and mil­i­tary equip­ment we had giv­en Iran. This was a bloody, crazy war, where huge casu­al­ties would be racked up only to move the front a few miles, an advance that would be nul­li­fied when the oth­er army attacked with the same lev­el of casu­al­ties. The Unit­ed States sup­port­ed that war. Inter­na­tion­al human rights activists kept pub­li­ciz­ing the abus­es with­in Iraq, and denounc­ing him for use of chem­i­cal weapons. They got lit­tle media atten­tion because it was not in U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests to fight Hussein.

Noth­ing’s real­ly changed now except U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests. Hus­sein is still a tyrant. He’s still stock­pil­ing chem­i­cal weapons. Why are U.S. polit­i­cal inter­ests dif­fer­ent now? Why does Bill Clin­ton want U.S. media atten­tion focused on Iraq? Look no fur­ther than Big Bil­l’s zip­per. Stop the next war before it starts. Abol­ish every­one’s weapons of mass destruc­tion and let’s get a Pres­i­dent who does­n’t need a war to clear his name.