Weekly Review

By Paul Ford

Midterm elections were held in the United States; the Republican Party lost its majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Six incumbent Republican senators, including Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, were defeated, and Santorum's daughter cried. Nancy Pelosi of California, who is expected to become the first female Speaker of the House, had lunch with President George W. Bush.^{1 2 3} In Iraq the parliament extended the nationwide state of emergency by 30 days, and eight soccer players and fans were killed by mortar rounds. “We are the Shiite nation,” yelled a man from his hospital bed.⁴ Three U.S. soldiers, four British soldiers, and 159 Iraqis were killed on a Sunday; ^{5 6} Baghdad's morgues were clogged. “Every day, there are crowds of women outside weeping, yelling, and flailing in grief,” said a morgue director. “They're all looking for their dead sons and I don't know how the computer or we will bear up.”⁷ The Saddam Hussein genocide trial resumed, even though Hussein was sentenced to death two days before the U.S. election.^{8 9} Fifty performances of “Saddam at the Gallows,” a new play due to open in Kolkata, India, had already sold out.¹⁰

The principal of a high school in North Carolina apologized after an excerpt of a speech by Joseph Goebbels was played over the PA system during a soccer game,¹¹ and the walls of a prison in Missouri were painted pink and accented with stenciled teddy bears. “We made it like a day care,” explained Sheriff Mike Rackley.¹² Zama Ndebele, the wife of Premier S'bu Ndebele of the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, promised to return her herd of Nguni cattle to the state in the wake of a cows-for-favors corruption scandal.^{13 14} Despite the objections of the Vatican, a gay rights rally was held in Jerusalem under the guard of nearly 3,000 police. Rabbi Yehuda Levin flew from Brooklyn to denounce the rally. “They are not,” said Levin, “being tolerant of our feelings.”¹⁵ In Beit Hanun, Gaza, Israeli forces accidentally killed 18 civilians, including seven children; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the killings as a “technical failure.” The U.N. Security Council drafted a resolution condemning the attack, but the United States, represented by Ambassador John Bolton, vetoed it.^{16 17} Democratic senators made it clear that they would not confirm Bolton (who was installed as U.N. ambassador via recess appointment) to his position in 2007.¹⁸ Republican Party Chairman Ken Mehlman resigned,¹⁹ and in Patna, India, twenty eunuchs were hired to sing, beat drums, and collect municipal taxes.²⁰

Ed Bradley and Jack Palance died.^{21 22} Officials in Sydney, Australia, refused to allow a cargo ship to dock until a rogue monkey on board was captured or killed; the ship's crew later said that the monkey--a “small brown blur”--had probably been blown overboard during a typhoon.^{23 24} The moon appeared to be leaking gas,²⁵ there was a hurricane on Saturn,²⁶ and fourteen ducklings were stomped to death in Florida.²⁷ The civil war in Iraq was breaking up marriages. “I love my husband, but my family has forced me to divorce him,” said Hiba Sami, a Shiite woman who was married to a Sunni man for 18 years. “We have four children and every day they cry because they miss their father.”²⁸ Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned, and to replace him President Bush nominated Robert Gates, a member of the Iraq Study Group and former head of the CIA, who was investigated in 1991 by the office of the independent counsel for his role in the Iran-contra scandal, and was suspected to have passed military intelligence to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. ^{29 30 31 32 33} To protest the Iraq war, a man named Malachi Ritscher committed suicide in Chicago by setting himself on fire next to a 25-foot-tall sculpture called “Flame of the Millennium.” Along with a self-penned obituary, the 52-year-old Ritscher posted a farewell message on his website in which he described the “deep shame” of a day in 2002 when he stood, knife in hand, next to Donald Rumsfeld, but was unable to bring himself to slash the defense secretary's throat. “I too love God and country,” wrote Ritscher, “and feel called upon to serve.”^{34 35 36} “Who's Rumsfeld?” asked Marine Lance Corporal James L. Davis Jr., who is serving in Zagarit, Iraq.³⁷