Day: December 2, 2003

Not one moment

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Sport must love it when I read the paper on our walks.

This morning, I looked up from my paper to see a woman passing by. She gave Sport and me a funny look. She looked at him, then she looked at me. A smile slowly crept across her face. I figured this was the usual smile Sport tends to elicit from oh, everybody, because he’s so darned cute.

But no.

I looked down and saw that a giant bagel was hanging out of Sport’s little mouth. Thankfully, I was able to snatch it away before he did too much damage.

Accounting for victory

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Whatever actually happened in the ambush at Samarra, the U.S. military’s newfound love for enemy body counts should be disturbing to everyone, for or against the Iraq war.

“We’ve been killing and capturing bushels of these guys, but no one was talking about it,” one senior military officer told a Los Angeles Times reporter. “For a while there it was beginning to look like only Americans were being killed.”

An obsession with what things “look like” is beginning to opress all facets of the Iraq occupation. Touting enemy-kills in a war defined by the asymmetric nature of the opposing forces is beyond useless. And given the difficulty of differentiating between the warriors and the noncombatants, the numbers will be grossly overinflated and tragically overlook the real impact on Iraqi civilians of the occupation.

Here are some figures that do matter in evaluating the success of the occupation:

  • Is the number of daily attacks going up or down?
  • Is the unemployment rate going down?
  • Is the number of well trained Iraqi police going up?
  • Is the number of U.S. troops going down?

U.S. forces have been put in a very tough position. Do we really want “Kill as many as you can” to be publicly defined as part of their mission in Iraq? It’s bad for morale, it’s bad for the occupation, it’s bad for average, innocent Iraqis.

(Also posted to Stand Down.)

Hmph

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

I don’t think spending $11 million over three years for a guy who’ll only pitch 80 innings makes a lot of sense, but if you’re going to do it, I’m glad LaTroy Hawkins is the guy to do it with. He throws hard and he isn’t really old (about to turn 31).

Once again, Cubs General Manager Jim Hendry seems to be playing to Dusty Baker’s weakness. With Hawkins, the Cubs will have four excellent relievers in the pen. Hopefully that will be enough to keep Baker from abusing his young starting staff so badly. But I think the rest of the bullpen should be had on the cheap with castoffs and minor-leaguers.

As for the Red Sox’s acquisition of Schilling, it obviously gives them a big leg up in a potential playoff matchup against the Yankees. The rotation will be a far cry from this year’s, “Martinez and Lowe, watch out below.”

But don’t give them the AL title yet. The Manny Ramirez matter needs to be handled somehow.

Here’s the possible impact of the Luis Castillo’s re-signing with the Marlins:

* Along with the Marlins’ re-signing Lowell, it’s a sign that Pudge Rodriguez may have to move elswhere — perhaps the Cubs! They only have so much money to go around. If nothing else, they’re clearly demonstrating what their priorities are. In spite of his October heroics, Rodriguez’s market value is still low because of his age and injury history. His 2003 performance has “contract year” written all over it. His value may be depressed enough to make the Cubs’ competitive, if the rumored deal for the Pirates’ Jason Kendall doesn’t work out.

* The downside of it is that Castillo was probably the best second baseman available, a hole the Cubs cannot fill from within. Vina and Grudzielanek are both older, have injury histories and really aren’t great leadoff material.