Though giving Saddam Hussein the drop on the first day of Eid (the fifth (?) day of Christmas) hardly compares to the soul-shuddering outrage of the wholesale carpet-bombing of subsistence farmers, it is a bleak reminder of the irredeemable nature of the current masters of the world.

Is this a case of brutish and unrepentant men* who decide life and death today taking special care to plan "milestone" atrocities, fixing the launch dates to coincide with calendar remembrances of our species' transcendant aspirations, or are these star-crossed days coincidental, happenstance?



Yes, many of the men** crossing the t's, and dotting the i's on the blueprints of carnage from distant bunkers beneath a distant Capitol are wholly unaware of days held by dusky foreigners in reverence, and merely drop their bombs with no more thought than to the effect on their missiles of the prevailing wind. And I'm certain too, the ultimate author's of the orders those bombs fly are totally cognizant of what they do, when they do it, and why.





Killing Birds



Ask a smart hunter like America's vice-president, Dick Cheney what "getting one's ducks in a row," or "killing two birds with one stone" means. The Mayberry Machiavellis, as one wag in the press dubbed the disaster on eight legs currently running the world's most muscular state, fancy themselves tacticians in the traditional mode; Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the men*** lurking in the shadows behind them, are students of the Great Game, as played by the succession of emperors and kings, generals and captains of industry throughout history. Masters in their own eyes, they know that in this game, as with chess, a clever move, and God save us they do believe themselves clever, must have more than a single purpose.



So, while the drones servicing the horror may not know Eid from Ramadan, Hannukah from Yom Kippur, or Christmas from Easter, their task-masters do. Those that coin flip titles for the bloody "operations" in distant lands, then roll the news of their genius off the PR production line back home like the newest gadget, or movie catch phrase know: In war and marketing, timing is everything.