Saturday, October 16, 2004
Dear Yahoo!:
How old must an item be before it can called an antique?
MicheleAlliance, Ohio
Dear Michele:
Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, and the label of "antique" is similarly subjective.
One guideline states true antiques must be at least 100 years old. This comes from a 1930 U.S. tariff act that defined antiques as works of art and ornamental objects produced before 1830. Why that particular year? That was when machine production became common. Objects made before 1830 were handcrafted.
Today, some mass-produced items are valued as antiques. An object's material and design can mean as much as the manufacturing method or date. While purists consider anything less than a century old to be merely a collectible, some collectibles are just as valuable as antiques. For example, many original Tiffany lamps, while not technically antiques, are still very valuable. And items like movie and sports memorabilia are valuable because of their associations and rarity, rather than their age.
How old must an item be before it can called an antique?
MicheleAlliance, Ohio
Dear Michele:
Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, and the label of "antique" is similarly subjective.
One guideline states true antiques must be at least 100 years old. This comes from a 1930 U.S. tariff act that defined antiques as works of art and ornamental objects produced before 1830. Why that particular year? That was when machine production became common. Objects made before 1830 were handcrafted.
Today, some mass-produced items are valued as antiques. An object's material and design can mean as much as the manufacturing method or date. While purists consider anything less than a century old to be merely a collectible, some collectibles are just as valuable as antiques. For example, many original Tiffany lamps, while not technically antiques, are still very valuable. And items like movie and sports memorabilia are valuable because of their associations and rarity, rather than their age.
Can it be fancied that Deity ever vindictivelyMade in his image a mannikin merely to madden it?
Edgar Allen Poe.
Edgar Allen Poe.
medical examinerHead CaseRoper v. Simmons asks how adolescent and adult brains differ.By Amanda SchafferPosted Friday, Oct. 15, 2004, at 2:50 PM PT
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in Roper v. Simmons, a juvenile death-penalty case in which scientific evidence highlighting differences between adolescent and adult brains may play a decisive role. As the court considers whether Christopher Simmons—who, in 1993 at the age of 17, abducted and killed 46-year-old Shirley Crook—should receive the death penalty, numerous medical and mental health associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the National Association of Social Workers, among others have filed a brief on behalf of Simmons suggesting that older adolescents may not yet have the ability to exercise adult impulse control because their brains have not fully matured. To put 16- or 17-year-olds to death, the brief argues, would be "to hold them accountable ... for the immaturity of their neural anatomy and psychological development."
This claim, based largely on research conducted since Simmons' original conviction, has been widely discussed—with little skepticism—in the popular press, making it difficult to assess its significance. What exactly are the differences between adolescent and adult brains? What neurological evidence has been marshaled on behalf of Simmons—and what are the limitations of this evidence?
First, let's consider how the brain matures during adolescence. While significant growth occurs early on—the brain reaches 90 percent of its adult size by the age of 6—a second wave takes place in the years before puberty. During this time, gray matter—areas of the brain responsible for processing information and storing memories—increases in size, particularly in the frontal lobe of the brain, as a result of an increase in the number of synaptic connections between nerve cells. Around puberty, however, a winnowing process begins in which connections that are not used or reinforced begin to wither (hence the "use-it-or-lose-it" hypothesis). This pruning, which begins around age 11 in girls and 12 in boys, continues into the early or mid-20s, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, an area associated with "higher" functions such as planning, reasoning, judgment, and impulse control. As Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health has said, the real cognitive advances come with paring down or reducing the number of synaptic connections. During adolescence, the amount of myelin, a fatty, insulating material that coats the axons of nerve cells—similar to the way insulation coats a wire—also increases, improving the nerve cells' ability to conduct electrical signals and to function efficiently; this too continues into adulthood and occurs later in "higher" regions of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex.
The most detailed evidence for these maturation processes comes from magnetic resonance imaging studies, which underscore the changing arrangement of gray matter and extent of myelination in adolescents and adults. Such research makes the case, for instance, that marked differences do exist between the brain of a 13-year-old and that of a 25-year-old. (Click here to read a widely cited study by UCLA professor of neurology and neuroimaging Elizabeth Sowell.) But while the legal system draws specific (and often arbitrary) age distinctions, Sowell's studies and others like them explore average features among groups of different ages (for instance, a 12- to 16-year-old cohort and a 23- to 30-year-old cohort in the papers cited above). Such studies are not designed to parse finer age-based distinctions—they do not differentiate between the neural maturity of a 17-year-old and, say, an 18- or a 19-year-old. In fact, most scientific work reflects the reality that the transition from adolescence to adulthood is a gradual process. (While a great deal of development occurs by early adulthood, the brain's total myelination may not actually reach its maximum until roughly age 45.)
Another key argument advanced by the AMA and others on behalf of Simmons is that adolescents rely more heavily on the amygdala—an evolutionarily older area of the brain associated with "primitive impulses of aggression, anger and fear" —than adults do. This proposition seems logical, since the prefrontal cortex, which interacts with and in effect "reins in" the amygdala to temper impulsiveness and gut reaction with reasoning, does not fully develop until the early 20s.
However, at least one critical piece of research—cited by the AMA, the American Bar Association, and numerous media outlets—is considerably weaker (or at least less relevant) than it at first appears. The work is by Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, director of cognitive neuroimaging at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, who asked groups of adolescents and adults to view a series of black-and-white images of fearful faces. Using functional MRI, a technique that maps areas of brain activation, she observed that when studying the images, adults displayed more activity in the prefrontal region, while in adolescents the amygdala lit up more noticeably. Research subjects were later asked to describe what emotions the photographs had conveyed, and adults, far more than adolescents, correctly identified fear. Of her findings, Dr. Yurgelun-Todd told PBS's Frontline: "[W]ith emotional information, the teenager's brain may be responding with more of a gut reaction than an executive or thinking kind of response. And if that's the case ... you'll have more of an impulsive behavioral response."
On closer examination, however, Dr. Yurgelun-Todd's work does not entirely substantiate this point. As another brain expert, Dartmouth professor Abigail Baird, told me, teens tend not to be engaged by black-and-white photos from a different era (in this case, the '70s), and so their prefrontal cortexes are not as active. When Baird performed a similar experiment using contemporary color photographs of younger people, the adolescents' "frontal lobes [went] bananas." In other words, she said, they were "able to be more analytical when they [cared]."
Perhaps more important, Baird stressed distinctions between various parts of the prefrontal cortex: The areas most activated by the photographs of faces, she said, are located near the upper midline and upper outside parts of the face, near the temple (in neurospeak, the medial dorsal and dorsolateral regions); the area most closely associated with impulse control, on the other hand, is found directly over the eyes (it's called the orbital region). Baird argued that photographic studies, while useful for showing how adolescents read faces, were "not really relevant to the question of impulse control" because they involved an area of the frontal lobe with a different function. (She also added that at least in her studies, the activation of the amygdala did not appear to differ at all between adolescents and adults.)
So what does this mean for the case of Roper v. Simmons? Ultimately, there are a host of reasons, which are beyond the scope of this article, not to execute a convicted juvenile, just as there are probably good reasons to eliminate the death penalty entirely. (Indeed, using brain-imaging techniques, it may be possible to show that many people who commit violent crimes have aberrant prefrontal cortical activity, or other brain features that differ from those of the average adult.) Still, in weighing the arguments in Roper, the court should not rely primarily on the neuroscience presented for the defense. Most of it is solid, reputable work, and some of it is relevant to the case. But overall, the research can't make the fine, age-related distinctions that the court must consider; nor does it offer as clear or simple a message about adolescent impulse control as the popular press would have us believe. As Dr. Sowell told Science in May (before deciding not to speak to the media): "The scientific data aren't ready to be used by the judicial system. The hardest thing ... is to bring brain research into real-life contexts." A decision to spare an immature defendant, then, should not turn on science that is itself not wholly mature.
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The American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, National Association of Social Workers, Missouri Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, and National Mental Health Association.Amanda Schaffer is a science writer living in Brooklyn, New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2108284/
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The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in Roper v. Simmons, a juvenile death-penalty case in which scientific evidence highlighting differences between adolescent and adult brains may play a decisive role. As the court considers whether Christopher Simmons—who, in 1993 at the age of 17, abducted and killed 46-year-old Shirley Crook—should receive the death penalty, numerous medical and mental health associations, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the National Association of Social Workers, among others have filed a brief on behalf of Simmons suggesting that older adolescents may not yet have the ability to exercise adult impulse control because their brains have not fully matured. To put 16- or 17-year-olds to death, the brief argues, would be "to hold them accountable ... for the immaturity of their neural anatomy and psychological development."
This claim, based largely on research conducted since Simmons' original conviction, has been widely discussed—with little skepticism—in the popular press, making it difficult to assess its significance. What exactly are the differences between adolescent and adult brains? What neurological evidence has been marshaled on behalf of Simmons—and what are the limitations of this evidence?
First, let's consider how the brain matures during adolescence. While significant growth occurs early on—the brain reaches 90 percent of its adult size by the age of 6—a second wave takes place in the years before puberty. During this time, gray matter—areas of the brain responsible for processing information and storing memories—increases in size, particularly in the frontal lobe of the brain, as a result of an increase in the number of synaptic connections between nerve cells. Around puberty, however, a winnowing process begins in which connections that are not used or reinforced begin to wither (hence the "use-it-or-lose-it" hypothesis). This pruning, which begins around age 11 in girls and 12 in boys, continues into the early or mid-20s, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, an area associated with "higher" functions such as planning, reasoning, judgment, and impulse control. As Dr. Jay Giedd of the National Institute of Mental Health has said, the real cognitive advances come with paring down or reducing the number of synaptic connections. During adolescence, the amount of myelin, a fatty, insulating material that coats the axons of nerve cells—similar to the way insulation coats a wire—also increases, improving the nerve cells' ability to conduct electrical signals and to function efficiently; this too continues into adulthood and occurs later in "higher" regions of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex.
The most detailed evidence for these maturation processes comes from magnetic resonance imaging studies, which underscore the changing arrangement of gray matter and extent of myelination in adolescents and adults. Such research makes the case, for instance, that marked differences do exist between the brain of a 13-year-old and that of a 25-year-old. (Click here to read a widely cited study by UCLA professor of neurology and neuroimaging Elizabeth Sowell.) But while the legal system draws specific (and often arbitrary) age distinctions, Sowell's studies and others like them explore average features among groups of different ages (for instance, a 12- to 16-year-old cohort and a 23- to 30-year-old cohort in the papers cited above). Such studies are not designed to parse finer age-based distinctions—they do not differentiate between the neural maturity of a 17-year-old and, say, an 18- or a 19-year-old. In fact, most scientific work reflects the reality that the transition from adolescence to adulthood is a gradual process. (While a great deal of development occurs by early adulthood, the brain's total myelination may not actually reach its maximum until roughly age 45.)
Another key argument advanced by the AMA and others on behalf of Simmons is that adolescents rely more heavily on the amygdala—an evolutionarily older area of the brain associated with "primitive impulses of aggression, anger and fear" —than adults do. This proposition seems logical, since the prefrontal cortex, which interacts with and in effect "reins in" the amygdala to temper impulsiveness and gut reaction with reasoning, does not fully develop until the early 20s.
However, at least one critical piece of research—cited by the AMA, the American Bar Association, and numerous media outlets—is considerably weaker (or at least less relevant) than it at first appears. The work is by Deborah Yurgelun-Todd, director of cognitive neuroimaging at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, who asked groups of adolescents and adults to view a series of black-and-white images of fearful faces. Using functional MRI, a technique that maps areas of brain activation, she observed that when studying the images, adults displayed more activity in the prefrontal region, while in adolescents the amygdala lit up more noticeably. Research subjects were later asked to describe what emotions the photographs had conveyed, and adults, far more than adolescents, correctly identified fear. Of her findings, Dr. Yurgelun-Todd told PBS's Frontline: "[W]ith emotional information, the teenager's brain may be responding with more of a gut reaction than an executive or thinking kind of response. And if that's the case ... you'll have more of an impulsive behavioral response."
On closer examination, however, Dr. Yurgelun-Todd's work does not entirely substantiate this point. As another brain expert, Dartmouth professor Abigail Baird, told me, teens tend not to be engaged by black-and-white photos from a different era (in this case, the '70s), and so their prefrontal cortexes are not as active. When Baird performed a similar experiment using contemporary color photographs of younger people, the adolescents' "frontal lobes [went] bananas." In other words, she said, they were "able to be more analytical when they [cared]."
Perhaps more important, Baird stressed distinctions between various parts of the prefrontal cortex: The areas most activated by the photographs of faces, she said, are located near the upper midline and upper outside parts of the face, near the temple (in neurospeak, the medial dorsal and dorsolateral regions); the area most closely associated with impulse control, on the other hand, is found directly over the eyes (it's called the orbital region). Baird argued that photographic studies, while useful for showing how adolescents read faces, were "not really relevant to the question of impulse control" because they involved an area of the frontal lobe with a different function. (She also added that at least in her studies, the activation of the amygdala did not appear to differ at all between adolescents and adults.)
So what does this mean for the case of Roper v. Simmons? Ultimately, there are a host of reasons, which are beyond the scope of this article, not to execute a convicted juvenile, just as there are probably good reasons to eliminate the death penalty entirely. (Indeed, using brain-imaging techniques, it may be possible to show that many people who commit violent crimes have aberrant prefrontal cortical activity, or other brain features that differ from those of the average adult.) Still, in weighing the arguments in Roper, the court should not rely primarily on the neuroscience presented for the defense. Most of it is solid, reputable work, and some of it is relevant to the case. But overall, the research can't make the fine, age-related distinctions that the court must consider; nor does it offer as clear or simple a message about adolescent impulse control as the popular press would have us believe. As Dr. Sowell told Science in May (before deciding not to speak to the media): "The scientific data aren't ready to be used by the judicial system. The hardest thing ... is to bring brain research into real-life contexts." A decision to spare an immature defendant, then, should not turn on science that is itself not wholly mature.
sidebar
Return to article
The American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Society for Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, National Association of Social Workers, Missouri Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, and National Mental Health Association.Amanda Schaffer is a science writer living in Brooklyn, New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2108284/
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today's papersRamadan and SmokeBy Sam SchechnerPosted Saturday, Oct. 16, 2004, at 4:00 AM PT
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BUSHISMS THE DVD is here! For years now, youve seen press accounts of our presidents famous struggle with the English language. Well now, thanks to this just-released DVD, you can SEE Dubya says things like: War is a dangerous place! And PUZZLE over statements like: Karyn is a West Texas girl, just like me. Comedian and pundit BRIAN UNGER hosts Slates own JACOB WEISBERG and AL FRANKEN in this hilarious DVD collection of dozens of George W. Bushs misstatements. The DVD is packed with extras including four all new videos from the GEORGE W. BUSH SINGERS and artwork from Doonesburys GARRY TRUDEAU. Buy your copy online today at www.bushism.net
The New York Times leads with American forces' continued aerial and artillery bombardment of Fallujah as Ramadan began. The Los Angeles Times leads, and the NYT fronts, deteriorating situation in Haiti, where pro-Aristide gangs shot at police and blocked relief shipments intended for some 300,000 people left homeless by Tropical Storm Jeanne. The NYT's piece is longer, giving it room to more fully, vividly, and disturbingly describe "[t]hese twin crises, natural and political." The Washington Post leads with polls it helped conduct showing that the presidential race in Florida is tied among both registered and likely voters--as well as among the growing, moderate population of non-Cuban Latino voters. Strangely, the paper does not even mention, much less reconcile, the preponderance of recent polls from the Sunshine State showing President Bush with a small but relatively consistent lead.
The NYT paints the Fallujah operation as one of intimidation: F-16s screamed overhead at low altitude as Marines encircled the city and American loudspeakers directed warnings at insurgents. Even as families fled, fearing the long-awaited U.S. assault, American commanders told the paper that the bombardment was not the beginning of a larger operation; the ops were merely meant to disrupt Ramadan attacks by Abu Musab Zarqawi, whom the U.S. says is holed up there. The WP, more convincingly, plays the story the other way around, quoting an official in Baghdad who called the bombardment part of "shaping operations" to prepare the battlefield, as American firepower targeted concrete blast walls U.S. forces left behind in April. "We'll continue to do these operations for the next few days, and then we'll see where we are," the nameless official said.
One odd disagreement between the papers: The NYT says the Americans deny arresting a Fallujah cleric who headed the delegation that had, until recently, been negotiating for a peaceful handover of the city. Meanwhile the Post seems to have no doubts that the arrest occurred after prayers Friday evening and gets a rather inscrutable analysis from a U.S. diplomat: "I think it's more military than political for sure," he said of the arrest. "Not to say that when it's done, this won't be seen as a turning point in the political process here."
The LAT fronts--and the others stuff--news that members of an Army Reserve quartermaster company in Iraq allegedly refused to drive a fuel convoy on Wednesday because they thought it was too dangerous. Some soldiers described the trek across central Iraq in unreliable fuel trucks without proper escort as a "suicide mission," according to relatives. The WP says the Army called the incident a "temporary breakdown in discipline," and is investigating possible disciplinary action, which the LAT notes could possibly include mutiny or cowardice, but probably won't. In its piece, the NYT interviews Slate contributor Phillip Carter, who says that such insubordination is uncommon these days, but maybe not for long. "The paradigm shift that's happening is that a truck driver is just as likely to see combat as soldiers in an infantry unit," Carter said "There are no rear units in Iraq any more."
The papers' Iraq stories all mention, very briefly, that 10 people were killed yesterday in southern Baghdad when a suicide car bomb detonated near a convoy of Iraqi police, leaving an 18-foot crater in the street. The LAT says that four of those dead were members of a family that was passing by in a car. Early morning wires all note that a series of pre-dawn blasts in Baghdad struck five churches, a hotel and a hospital, killing one.
The LAT and NYT note that Bush's favorite member of the coalition of the willing, Poland, has decided to draw down its troops in Iraq beginning early next year. "Whether they change the number of troops or their profile, that's up to them," said a State Department spokesman, who gamely added, "We don't see in this announcement any lessening of the commitment."
The papers all say the U.S. has grudgingly agreed to give Germany, France, and Britain time to woo Iran back to the bargaining table before pushing the matter of its nuclear program to the Security Council. "They said they really wanted to do it," an Administration official said in the NYT. "We said, it sounds like you're going to do it anyway, so go ahead." The European plan would entail Iran's immediate agreement to cease all efforts to develop an independent nuclear fuel cycle for its first reactor, which could go online as early as next year. Following verification by the IAEA before then end of November, the Europeans would then discuss a wide range of security and economic issues, including trade cooperation and aid; the WP says it's assumed the U.S. would eventually take part in the talks. Not that the administration has its hopes up, according to an anonymous State Department official: "[U]nfortunately, our feeling is that the Iranians are still Iranians."
Everyone notes that a rare poll of U.S. troops and their families shows that they favor Bush over Sen. John Kerry by an almost three-to-one margin. Because it is for some reason illegal to poll troops about their voting intentions, the poll actually asked whom they trusted more to handle the responsibilities of commander in chief. More surprisingly, only 55 percent of those troops who have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan believe the Iraq war to be worth it, and 48 percent of all troops, a plurality, say Bush lacks a clear plan for Iraq.
The papers all note that Karl Rove spent two hours testifying yesterday before the federal grand jury probing whether administration officials illegally leaked the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Rove's lawyer said that his client is not a target of the investigation.
Brent would? ... The WP picks up on a surprisingly blunt interview Brent Scowcroft gave this week to the Financial Times. Although the Scowcroft, former national security advisor for Bush the Elder, later said in a statement to the WP that he endorses the current President Bush for a second term, he took George W. to task for his foreign policy, calling the Iraq war a "failing venture." Scowcroft also accused Bush of being "mesmerized" by Ariel Sharon. "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger."Sam Schechner is a freelance writer in New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2108321/
What did you think of this article?Join the Fray, our reader discussion forumPOST A MESSAGE READ MESSAGES
Also in today's Slate:in other magazines: Chirac and Schrder for Bush?: The Weekly Standard thinks so.surfergirl: I Know You Are, But What Am I?: Comedy Central's irony deficiency. summary judgment: Reinventing the Real: Is Philip Roth's alternative history of World War II any good?
today's papersRamadan and SmokeBy Sam SchechnerPosted Saturday, Oct. 16, 2004, at 4:00 AM PT
(advertisement)
BUSHISMS THE DVD is here! For years now, youve seen press accounts of our presidents famous struggle with the English language. Well now, thanks to this just-released DVD, you can SEE Dubya says things like: War is a dangerous place! And PUZZLE over statements like: Karyn is a West Texas girl, just like me. Comedian and pundit BRIAN UNGER hosts Slates own JACOB WEISBERG and AL FRANKEN in this hilarious DVD collection of dozens of George W. Bushs misstatements. The DVD is packed with extras including four all new videos from the GEORGE W. BUSH SINGERS and artwork from Doonesburys GARRY TRUDEAU. Buy your copy online today at www.bushism.net
The New York Times leads with American forces' continued aerial and artillery bombardment of Fallujah as Ramadan began. The Los Angeles Times leads, and the NYT fronts, deteriorating situation in Haiti, where pro-Aristide gangs shot at police and blocked relief shipments intended for some 300,000 people left homeless by Tropical Storm Jeanne. The NYT's piece is longer, giving it room to more fully, vividly, and disturbingly describe "[t]hese twin crises, natural and political." The Washington Post leads with polls it helped conduct showing that the presidential race in Florida is tied among both registered and likely voters--as well as among the growing, moderate population of non-Cuban Latino voters. Strangely, the paper does not even mention, much less reconcile, the preponderance of recent polls from the Sunshine State showing President Bush with a small but relatively consistent lead.
The NYT paints the Fallujah operation as one of intimidation: F-16s screamed overhead at low altitude as Marines encircled the city and American loudspeakers directed warnings at insurgents. Even as families fled, fearing the long-awaited U.S. assault, American commanders told the paper that the bombardment was not the beginning of a larger operation; the ops were merely meant to disrupt Ramadan attacks by Abu Musab Zarqawi, whom the U.S. says is holed up there. The WP, more convincingly, plays the story the other way around, quoting an official in Baghdad who called the bombardment part of "shaping operations" to prepare the battlefield, as American firepower targeted concrete blast walls U.S. forces left behind in April. "We'll continue to do these operations for the next few days, and then we'll see where we are," the nameless official said.
One odd disagreement between the papers: The NYT says the Americans deny arresting a Fallujah cleric who headed the delegation that had, until recently, been negotiating for a peaceful handover of the city. Meanwhile the Post seems to have no doubts that the arrest occurred after prayers Friday evening and gets a rather inscrutable analysis from a U.S. diplomat: "I think it's more military than political for sure," he said of the arrest. "Not to say that when it's done, this won't be seen as a turning point in the political process here."
The LAT fronts--and the others stuff--news that members of an Army Reserve quartermaster company in Iraq allegedly refused to drive a fuel convoy on Wednesday because they thought it was too dangerous. Some soldiers described the trek across central Iraq in unreliable fuel trucks without proper escort as a "suicide mission," according to relatives. The WP says the Army called the incident a "temporary breakdown in discipline," and is investigating possible disciplinary action, which the LAT notes could possibly include mutiny or cowardice, but probably won't. In its piece, the NYT interviews Slate contributor Phillip Carter, who says that such insubordination is uncommon these days, but maybe not for long. "The paradigm shift that's happening is that a truck driver is just as likely to see combat as soldiers in an infantry unit," Carter said "There are no rear units in Iraq any more."
The papers' Iraq stories all mention, very briefly, that 10 people were killed yesterday in southern Baghdad when a suicide car bomb detonated near a convoy of Iraqi police, leaving an 18-foot crater in the street. The LAT says that four of those dead were members of a family that was passing by in a car. Early morning wires all note that a series of pre-dawn blasts in Baghdad struck five churches, a hotel and a hospital, killing one.
The LAT and NYT note that Bush's favorite member of the coalition of the willing, Poland, has decided to draw down its troops in Iraq beginning early next year. "Whether they change the number of troops or their profile, that's up to them," said a State Department spokesman, who gamely added, "We don't see in this announcement any lessening of the commitment."
The papers all say the U.S. has grudgingly agreed to give Germany, France, and Britain time to woo Iran back to the bargaining table before pushing the matter of its nuclear program to the Security Council. "They said they really wanted to do it," an Administration official said in the NYT. "We said, it sounds like you're going to do it anyway, so go ahead." The European plan would entail Iran's immediate agreement to cease all efforts to develop an independent nuclear fuel cycle for its first reactor, which could go online as early as next year. Following verification by the IAEA before then end of November, the Europeans would then discuss a wide range of security and economic issues, including trade cooperation and aid; the WP says it's assumed the U.S. would eventually take part in the talks. Not that the administration has its hopes up, according to an anonymous State Department official: "[U]nfortunately, our feeling is that the Iranians are still Iranians."
Everyone notes that a rare poll of U.S. troops and their families shows that they favor Bush over Sen. John Kerry by an almost three-to-one margin. Because it is for some reason illegal to poll troops about their voting intentions, the poll actually asked whom they trusted more to handle the responsibilities of commander in chief. More surprisingly, only 55 percent of those troops who have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan believe the Iraq war to be worth it, and 48 percent of all troops, a plurality, say Bush lacks a clear plan for Iraq.
The papers all note that Karl Rove spent two hours testifying yesterday before the federal grand jury probing whether administration officials illegally leaked the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Rove's lawyer said that his client is not a target of the investigation.
Brent would? ... The WP picks up on a surprisingly blunt interview Brent Scowcroft gave this week to the Financial Times. Although the Scowcroft, former national security advisor for Bush the Elder, later said in a statement to the WP that he endorses the current President Bush for a second term, he took George W. to task for his foreign policy, calling the Iraq war a "failing venture." Scowcroft also accused Bush of being "mesmerized" by Ariel Sharon. "Sharon just has him wrapped around his little finger."Sam Schechner is a freelance writer in New York.Article URL: http://slate.msn.com/id/2108321/
What did you think of this article?Join the Fray, our reader discussion forumPOST A MESSAGE READ MESSAGES
Also in today's Slate:in other magazines: Chirac and Schrder for Bush?: The Weekly Standard thinks so.surfergirl: I Know You Are, But What Am I?: Comedy Central's irony deficiency. summary judgment: Reinventing the Real: Is Philip Roth's alternative history of World War II any good?
When will the madness stop? How can anyone fathom returning the current Administration to power when the entire morass we face now, including the steady and ever increasing loss of American lives was based on deliberate deception and misrepresentation of known facts.
Whenever I see the report of American military casualties I find it impossible to understand why there is not an enormous outrage in the entire United States.
Perhaps this indignation will, God willing, be reflected in the ballot boxes on election day. We must not allow ourselves to be taken for granted. False premises are not justifiable in the process of leadership, especially where the loss of human life is a known and consistent consequence.
Whenever I see the report of American military casualties I find it impossible to understand why there is not an enormous outrage in the entire United States.
Perhaps this indignation will, God willing, be reflected in the ballot boxes on election day. We must not allow ourselves to be taken for granted. False premises are not justifiable in the process of leadership, especially where the loss of human life is a known and consistent consequence.
October 17, 2004
6 U.S. Servicemen Die in Iraq; 5 Churches Are AttackedBy RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.
AGHDAD, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 17 - Scattered violence erupted across Iraq on the first weekend of the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, as six United States servicemen were killed in car bombings and helicopter crashes.
Five Christian churches in Baghdad were firebombed early on Saturday morning in what appeared to be coordinated attacks, the latest effort by insurgents to terrorize the relatively small population of Christians in Iraq.
Two military helicopters crashed at 8:30 p.m. on Saturday in southwest Baghdad, killing two soldiers and injuring two others, the military reported. American officials declined to say whether the crash appeared to be caused by an accident or an act of aggression. More than two dozen military helicopters have been downed in Iraq since the end of major combat was declared 17 months ago.
The crash followed two deadly car bombings in northern and western Iraq that killed four servicemen on Friday. One attack, in Mosul, the largest city in northern Iraq, killed a soldier after an improvised bomb packed into a vehicle exploded near a military convoy at 1:20 p.m.
On Friday night, a suicide bomber driving a explosive-laden vehicle killed a marine, two soldiers, and their civilian translator near the restive town of Qaim in western Iraq near the Syrian border, said Maj. Kris Meyle of the Air Force, a military spokeswoman in Baghdad. Another soldier was also wounded, she said.
In addition, the news agency Agence France-Presse reported on Saturday night that a statement attributed to a terror group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant believed to be responsible for attacks on Iraqi civilians and American soldiers , claimed the group had beheaded 11 Iraqi police and national guardsmen. The authenticity of the statement could not be verified, however, and there was no confirmation of the report.
The new Iraqi security forces continue to be vulnerable targets for insurgents. On Friday, a suicide bomber in southern Baghdad driving a vehicle loaded with 300 pounds of explosives tried to attack a patrol of Iraqi police but missed, killing 10 bystanders instead.
American officials had been bracing for widespread violence during the monthlong Ramadan holiday, which began Friday. On the first day of Ramadan last year, insurgents killed at least 34 people in Baghdad in coordinated assaults that included bombing the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross and four police stations.
No one was killed or injured in the church bombings on Saturday, Iraqi officials said. But the damage was heavy in some places, including a Catholic church in the prosperous neighborhood of Karada, where fires after the explosion burned the length of the sanctuary and blew out large sections of roof and wall. The Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman, Col. Adnan Abdul Rahman, said the five churches were all attacked with improvised explosive devices between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m.
The attacks continue a campaign of terror against Iraq's 800,000 Christians, an effort that took its most violent turn on Aug. 1 when car bombers attacked five churches in Baghdad and Mosul during Sunday evening Mass, killing at least 12 people.
Of the five churches struck on Saturday, two were in Dora, in southern Baghdad; the others were in Mansur, the upscale neighborhood just west of central Baghdad; Karada, in southeastern Baghdad; and near the Shurta tunnel in western Baghdad. At the still-smoldering St. George's Church in Karada, the caretaker, Nabil Jamil, said an American military official had come by at about 5 p.m. on Friday and warned that there had been threats against Christian churches.
Thousands of Christians have already emigrated to Syria and other nations, and many who remain fear rising efforts to pressure them to leave. "Iraqi Christians are suffering a lot now," said Audet Abdal, 48, who lives behind St. George's Church, which she has attended since her youth. "We can't wear crosses or show signs of Christianity."
Mr. Jamil said the 4 a.m. blast tore through concrete to form a semicircular impact crater four feet wide at the entrance to the 58-year-old church and ignited a raging fire that burned almost an hour. The sanctuary was demolished, its walls and ceiling blackened with soot and charred embers strewn about the floor.
Still, Mr. Jamil said, Mass would be said Sunday. But he said he had no idea whether the church could be rebuilt. "It will be very difficult," he said. "We don't have money."
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