skip to main |
skip to sidebar
go to originalBy MICHAEL R. GORDON
Published: July 30, 2009
WASHINGTON — A senior American military adviser in Baghdad has concluded in an unusually blunt memo that Iraqi forces suffer from entrenched deficiencies but are now able to protect the Iraqi government, and that it is time “for the U.S. to declare victory and go home.”
Text of Colonel Reese’s Memo (July 31, 2009)
The memo offers a look at tensions that emerged between Iraqi and American military officers at a sensitive moment when American combat troops met a June 30 deadline to withdraw from Iraq’s cities, the first step toward an advisory role. The Iraqi government’s forceful moves to assert authority have concerned some American officers, though senior American officials insisted that cooperation had improved.
Prepared by Col. Timothy R. Reese, an adviser to the Iraqi military’s Baghdad command, the memorandum details Iraqi military weaknesses in scathing language, including corruption, poor management and the inability to resist Shiite political pressure. Extending the American military presence beyond August 2010, he argues, will do little to improve the Iraqis’ military performance while fueling growing resentment of Americans.
“As the old saying goes, ‘Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days,’ ” Colonel Reese wrote. “Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose.”
Those conclusions are not shared by the senior American commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, and his recommendation for an accelerated troop withdrawal is at odds with the timetable approved by President Obama.
A spokeswoman for General Odierno said that the memo did not reflect the official stance of the United States military and was not intended for a broad audience, and that some of the problems the memo referred to had been solved since its writing in early July.
Still, the memo opens a rare window into a debate among American military officers about how active the American role should be in Iraq and for how long. While some in the military endorse Colonel Reese’s assessment, other officers say that American forces need to stay in Iraq for the next couple of years as the Iraqis struggle with heightened tensions between the Kurds and Arabs, insurgent attacks in and around Mosul and checking authoritarian tendencies of the Iraqi government.
“We now have an Iraqi government that has gained its balance and thinks it knows how to ride the bike in the race,” Colonel Reese wrote. “And in fact they probably do know how to ride, at least well enough for the road they are on against their current competitors. Our hand on the back of the seat is holding them back and causing resentment. We need to let go before we both tumble to the ground.”
Before deploying to Iraq, Colonel Reese served as the director of the Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., the Army’s premier intellectual center. He was an author of an official Army history of the Iraq war — “On Point II” — that was sharply critical of the lapses in postwar planning.
As an adviser to the Baghdad Operations Command, which is led by an Iraqi general, Abud Qanbar, Colonel Reese drew examples from Baghdad Province, which is less volatile than the area near Mosul in northern Iraq, where the Sunni insurgency is strongest. But he noted that he had read military reports from other regions and that he believed that there were similar dynamics nationwide.
Colonel Reese, who could not be reached for comment, submitted his paper to General Odierno’s command, but copies have circulated among active-duty and retired military officers and been posted on at least one military-oriented Web site.
Colonel Reese’s memo lists a number of problems that have emerged since the withdrawal of American combat troops from Baghdad, completed June 30. They include, he wrote, a “sudden coolness” to American advisers and the “forcible takeover” of a checkpoint in the Green Zone. Iraqi units, he added, are much less willing to conduct joint operations with their American counterparts “to go after targets the U.S. considers high value.”
The Iraqi Ground Forces Command, Colonel Reese wrote, has imposed “unilateral restrictions” on American military operations that “violate the most basic aspects” of the Status of Forces Agreement that governs American and Iraqi military relations.
“The Iraqi legal system in the Rusafa side of Baghdad has demonstrated a recent willingness to release individuals originally detained by the U.S. for attacks on the U.S.,” he added.
A spokeswoman for General Odierno, Lt. Col. Josslyn Aberle, said of the memo: “The e-mail reflects one person’s personal view at the time we were first implementing the Security Agreement post-30 June. Since that time many of the initial issues have been resolved and our partnerships with Iraqi Security Forces and G.O.I. partners now are even stronger than before 30 June.” G.O.I. is the abbreviation for the government of Iraq.
Colonel Reese appears to have anonymously circulated a less detailed version of his memo on a blog called “The Enchanter’s Corner.” The author, listed on the site as “Tim the Enchanter,” is described as an active-duty Army officer serving as an adviser in Iraq who is “passionate about political issues.” That post on Iraq, along with one criticizing President Obama’s health care proposals, has been removed but can be found in cached versions.
Under the plan developed by General Odierno, the vast majority of the approximately 130,000 American forces in Iraq will remain through Iraq’s national elections, which are expected to be held next January. After the elections and the formation of a new Iraqi government, there will be rapid reductions in American forces. By the end of August 2010, the United States would have no more than 50,000 troops in Iraq, which would include six brigades whose primary role would be to advise and train Iraqi troops.
Some experts, like Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former adviser to Gen. David H. Petraeus, have argued that this timetable may be too fast “Renewed violence in Iraq is not inevitable, but it is a serious risk,” Mr. Biddle wrote in a recent paper. “The most effective option for prevention is to go slow in drawing down the U.S. military presence in Iraq. Measures to maximize U.S. leverage on important Iraqi leaders — especially Maliki,” he added, referring to Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki “— can be helpful in steering Iraqis away from confrontation and violence, but U.S. leverage is a function of U.S. presence.”
During a recent appearance at the United States Institute of Peace, a Washington-based research organization, Mr. Maliki appeared to be contemplating a possible role for American forces after the December 2011 deadline for the removal of all American troops under the Status of Forces Agreement.
But while General Odierno has drawn up detailed plans for a substantial advisory role, Colonel Reese argued in favor of a more limited — and shorter — effort, and recommended that all American forces be withdrawn by August 2010.
“If there ever was a window where the seeds of a professional military culture could have been implanted, it is now long past,” he wrote. “U.S. combat forces will not be here long enough or with sufficient influence to change it. The military culture of the Baathist-Soviet model under Saddam Hussein remains entrenched and will not change. The senior leadership of the I.S.F. is incapable of change in the current environment.”
go to originalEX-GOVERNOR: People wonder why she quit and what she plans to do next.
By MATTHEW DALY
The Associated Press
Published: July 25th, 2009 10:58 PM
Gov. Sarah Palin gained fame -- and to some infamy -- since she embarked on a vice-presidential bid less than a year ago. Her surprising departure from Alaska's top office is gaining her something else: questions over her motives and next big move.
She leaves office today with her political future clouded by ethics probes, mounting legal bills and dwindling popularity. A new Washington Post-ABC poll puts her national favorability rating at 40 percent, with 53 percent giving her an unfavorable rating.
The Republican governor faces queries about why she is quitting more than a year before her term ends and what she plans to do after she steps down.
Palin has said little about any major moves but has hinted that she has a bigger role in mind. She is scheduled to speak Aug. 8 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California and has said she plans to write a book, campaign for political candidates from coast to coast and build a right-of-center coalition.
Above all, Palin plans to continue speaking her mind on the social networking site Twitter.
"Ain't gonna shut my mouth / I know there's got to be a few hundred million more like me / just trying to keep it free," Palin said in a recent Tweet, quoting the song "Rollin'," by the country duo Big & Rich.
Such offerings endear Palin to millions of fans, including more than 100,000 who follow her on Twitter. But are they enough to launch a political movement?
Political scientist Jerry McBeath said the answer isn't clear.
"In the context of 305 million Americans, 100,000 is not a lot of followers," he said.
McBeath, chairman of the political science department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, said Palin "needs to do something beyond tweeting -- or twittering, whatever it is -- to establish a continuous national presence."
A more conventional politician would write a syndicated column or host a radio or TV show, McBeath said. "I don't know if Sarah Palin wants that."
"I think she believes she has something to say that is of value to voters who share her views and believes that part of her calling is to continue" speaking out on Twitter, he said.
Spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton disputed the notion that Palin is running for president or has media deals lined up.
"I cannot express enough there is no plan after July 26. There is absolutely no plan," she said earlier this month. "The decision (to quit) was made in the vacuum of what was best for Alaska and now I'm accepting all the options, but there is nothing planned."
Palin's biggest legacy may be putting Alaska on the national stage, said Larry Persily, a former journalist and Palin staffer who now works for a Republican state legislator.
"Before, if you played a word game and someone said Alaska, you might say oil or even whales," he said. "Now you say Alaska: 'Palin.' "
Alaska's first female governor arrived at the state Capitol in December 2006 on an ethics reform platform after defeating two former governors in the primary and general elections. Her prior political experience consisted of terms as Wasilla's mayor and councilwoman and a stint as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
Unknown on the national stage until John McCain tapped her as his running mate, Palin infused excitement into the Republican's presidential bid. But she also became the butt of talk-show jokes and Democratic criticism, targeted at news that the Republican Party had spent $150,000 or more on a designer wardrobe and what some considered poor performances by the Alaska governor in television interviews.
Now, 2 1/2 years later, former state Senate President Lyda Green, a one-time Palin ally who is now a leading critic, said Palin's tenure is likely to have a negative effect on the state.
"There are going be some things that the Legislature will have to go in and redo," she said, including the likely review of a deal to bring a natural gas pipeline to the state.
Green, who like Palin is a Republican from Wasilla, called Palin a narcissist whose actions "are very much toward herself and her goals and what she sees for her future."
But Palin's future goals remain unclear.
Stapleton said the answer will emerge in coming weeks:
"On July 27, we'll sit down and say, 'OK, here are your options. How do you now want to effect that positive change for Alaska from outside the role as governor?' "
By Victoria Gill
Science reporter, BBC News
Endangered hammerhead sharks are often caught for their valuable fins
Many species of open ocean shark are under serious threat, according to an assessment by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
The Red list gives the status of 64 types of shark and ray, over 30% of which are threatened with extinction.
The authors, IUCN's Shark Specialist Group, say a main cause is overfishing.
Listed as endangered are two species of hammerhead shark, often subject to "finning" - a practice of removing the fins and throwing away the body.
This is the first time that IUCN Red List criteria, considered the world's most comprehensive inventory of the conservation status of plants and animals, have been used to classify open ocean, or pelagic, sharks and rays.
The list is part of an ongoing international scientific project to monitor the animals.
The authors classified a further 24% of the examined species as Near Threatened.
Sharks are "profoundly vulnerable" to overfishing, they say. This is principally because many species take several years to mature and have relatively few young.
Shark in fishing net
Open ocean sharks are caught in high seas tuna and swordfish fisheries
"[But] despite mounting threats, sharks remain virtually unprotected on the high seas," said Sonja Fordham, deputy chair of the IUCN Shark Specialist Group and one of the editors of the report.
"[We have] documented serious overfishing of these species, in national and international waters. This demonstrates a clear need for immediate action on a global scale."
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recognised the potential threat to sharks over a decade ago, when it launched its "International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks" in 1999.
But the "requested improvements fisheries data from member states... have been painfully slow and simply inadequate", according to this report by the IUCN.
Many pelagic sharks are caught in high seas tuna and swordfish fisheries.
Although some are accidentally caught in nets meant for these other fish, they are increasingly targeted for their meat, teeth and liver oil, and because of high demand, particularly in Asia, for their fins.
Discarded bodies
"The hammerheads are special because they have very high quality fins but quite low quality meat," explained Ms Fordham. "They often fall victim to finning."
She told BBC News that, although finning is widely banned, this ban is not always well enforced.
"The EU finning ban is one of the weakest in the world," she said.
"The best, most sure-fire way to enforce a ban is to prohibit the removal of fins at sea.
"But in the EU, you can remove them, providing the fins you bring ashore weigh less than 5% of the weight of the bodies."
This rule was designed to prevent finning, but it provided "wiggle room", said Ms Fordham.
"The IUCN has estimated that, under these rules, you could fin and discard two to three sharks for every shark you keep, " she explained.
'No fishing'
Species listed as Vulnerable included the smooth hammerhead shark, the porbeagle shark and the common, bigeye and pelagic thresher sharks.
Fisheries have fought to keep their right to fish porbeagle sharks because their meat is so valuable, according to Ms Fordham.
"Yet we've already had recommendations from scientists that there should be no fishing of these sharks."
For certain species - that are considered particularly vulnerable - the authors have recommended their complete protection.
"The big-eyed thresher shark, for example, is very slow growing," explained Ms Fordham.
"Fishermen can very easily identify it, because it has a very big eye. So if they catch it accidentally, they can throw it back.
"These sharks tend to survive well when they're thrown back."
By the end of this year, the Shark Specialist Group will publish a complete report, outlining the status of all 400 species of shark, and closely-related skates and rays.
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Iran's post-election tumult has exposed the sharply divergent ways in which the Obama administration and its Republican opponents view the nature of American power and the president's role in speaking to political dissent outside the borders of the United States.
The debate over how far Obama should go in encouraging the protesters who returned to the streets of Tehran amid clouds of tear gas Monday has emboldened Republicans, who see an opportunity to criticize his foreign policy as too timid. In recent days, GOP leaders have invoked the unambiguous Cold War rhetoric of Ronald Reagan as the model for the message Obama should be sending to the demonstrators, citing the inspiration it provided to millions of dissidents behind the Iron Curtain.
During a single weekend interview, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) invoked the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the Prague Spring, the Solidarity movement, and Reagan's 1982 "evil empire" speech on the Soviet Union to argue for more explicit U.S. criticism of the Iranian government, which the Obama administration has made clear it will engage no matter who ultimately emerges as president.
"A direct parallel is now being drawn between the fight for freedom from Islamist tyranny in Iran and across the Middle East and the fight decades earlier for freedom from Soviet tyranny," said Nile Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
"It's almost as if the president lacks confidence in the greatness of his own nation," he added. "He seems unwilling to aggressively project American global power, as if it were something to be ashamed of."
But Obama's shades-of-gray approach rejects comparison to an era when Communist bloc dissidents had virtually no access to the Western media and the world was more neatly divided between a pair of superpowers, not complicated by the set of ambitious regional powers such as Iran that the Obama administration is seeking to manage.
Since taking office, Obama has argued that reclaiming America's moral authority by ending torture and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay provides essential diplomatic leverage to influence events in such strategic parts of the world as the Middle East and Central Asia. The speech he delivered to the Islamic world in Cairo eights days before the June 12 Iranian election sought to do that by providing what the president saw as an unvarnished accounting of U.S. policy in Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"We're trying to promote a foreign policy that advances our interests, not that makes us feel good about ourselves," said a senior administration official who, like others, declined to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
Obama's approach to Iran, including his assertion that the unrest there represents a debate among Iranians unrelated to the United States, is an acknowledgment that a U.S. president's words have a limited ability to alter foreign events in real time and could do more harm than good. But privately Obama advisers are crediting his Cairo speech for inspiring the protesters, especially the young ones, who are now posing the most direct challenge to the republic's Islamic authority in its 30-year history.
One senior administration official with experience in the Middle East said, "There clearly is in the region a sense of new possibilities," adding that "I was struck in the aftermath of the president's speech that there was a connection. It was very sweeping in terms of its reach."
The adviser said that "there is something particularly authentic about those who are carrying out these demonstrations," citing the fact that some are carrying symbols of the 1979 Iranian revolution as they march for new elections, including photos of the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
"The more you keep this in Iranian terms, the better the chances of change," the adviser said.
The administration's only direct intervention in Iran's post-election unrest was to persuade Twitter to delay planned maintenance that would have taken down the social-networking service during the prime organizing hours of Iran's opposition.
"Iran is not a country behind an iron curtain, and there's a much wider range of information that permeates, a much greater interaction with the world, and a much different view of American history," said Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. "There's a certain inevitability to these Cold War analogies. But the president has been right on the money in asserting the need to keep us out of this debate."
Obama has condemned the violence as "unjust" and endorsed the "universal principle" of peaceful protest, an approach informed by a sense that America's troubled place in Iranian history would undermine the demonstrators by coloring their cause as a U.S. interest.
His Cairo speech sought to clear the air -- in Iran's case, by acknowledging the U.S. role in the 1953 coup that toppled the democratically elected prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Translated into Farsi, the speech was delivered to Iranians in real time through a State Department-sponsored text-messaging service.
Obama's advisers say the outreach may have contributed to the defeat in Lebanese elections a few days later of a coalition led by Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed party, that had been predicted to win. In recent days, administration officials have pointed to the Iranian demonstrations as further evidence of Obama's possible influence in the region.
Asked Friday whether the administration believes Obama's outreach to Iran and the Muslim world is affecting events on the ground, press secretary Robert Gibbs said, "You're witnessing something that many people might not have presumed or imagined . . . just a few -- even a few weeks or a few days ago."
Obama's supporters on Capitol Hill have argued that the Iranian demonstrators, some of whom do not favor a change in the Islamic nature of the government, should have no doubt the administration supports their cause.
But Republicans clearly see Obama's approach to foreign policy as a potential weakness. On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called Obama's response "timid and passive" on ABC's "This Week." He cited Reagan's 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate, where he called on Russia's Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall," in urging Obama to "speak truth to power."
In his appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation," McCain compared Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to the printing presses that the United States provided in the early 1980s to the Solidarity leaders in Gdansk, Poland, to help them spread their anti-Soviet message. He recalled his meeting with Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident, who told him that Reagan's "evil empire speech" had "spread like wildfire throughout the gulag."
"We've seen this movie before," McCain said. "And I don't consider it meddling when you stand on the side of principles that made our nation the greatest nation in history."
Jun 14, 7:26 AM (ET)
By HYUNG-JIN KIM
South Korean protesters burn North Korean national flags during a rally, denouncing the ninth anniversary of the June 2000 summit between former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in front of Kim Dae-jung's house in Seoul, South Korea, Sunday, June 14, 2009. North Korea's communist regime has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic bomb-making program in defiance of new U.N. sanctions. Banner read: "Support U.N. sanctions." (AP Photo/ Lee Jin-man)
Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea's communist regime has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic bomb-making program in defiance of new U.N. sanctions.
The North's defiance presents a growing diplomatic headache for President Barack Obama as he prepares for talks Tuesday with his South Korean counterpart on the North's missile and nuclear programs.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak told security-related ministers during an unscheduled meeting Sunday to "resolutely and squarely" cope with the North's latest threat, his office said. Lee is to leave for the U.S. on Monday morning.
A commentary Sunday in the North's main state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, claimed the U.S. has 1,000 nuclear weapons in South Korea. Another commentary published Saturday in the state-run Tongil Sinbo weekly claimed the U.S. has been deploying a vast amount of nuclear weapons in South Korea and Japan.
North Korea "is completely within the range of U.S. nuclear attack and the Korean peninsula is becoming an area where the chances of a nuclear war are the highest in the world," the Tongil Sinbo commentary said.
Kim Yong-kyu, a spokesman at the U.S. military command in Seoul, called the latest accusation "baseless," saying Washington has no nuclear bombs in South Korea. U.S. tactical nuclear weapons were removed from South Korea in 1991 as part of arms reductions following the Cold War.
South Korea's Unification Ministry issued a statement Sunday demanding the North stop stoking tension, abandon its nuclear weapons and return to dialogue with the South.
On Saturday, North Korea's Foreign Ministry threatened war on any country that dared to stop its ships on the high seas under the new sanctions approved by the U.N. Security Council on Friday as punishment for the North's latest nuclear test.
It is not clear if the statements are simply rhetorical. Still, they are a huge setback for international attempts to rein in North Korea's nuclear ambitions following its second nuclear test on May 25. It first tested a nuclear device in 2006.
In Saturday's statement, North Korea said it has been enriching uranium to provide fuel for its light-water reactor. It was the first public acknowledgment the North is running a uranium enrichment program in addition to its known plutonium-based program. The two radioactive materials are key ingredients in making atomic bombs.
On Sunday, Yonhap news agency reported South Korea and the U.S. have mobilized spy satellites, reconnaissance aircraft and human intelligence networks to obtain evidence that the North has been running a uranium enrichment program.
South Korea's Defense Ministry said it could not confirm the report. The National Intelligence Service - South Korea's main spy agency - was not available for comment.
North Korea said more than one-third of 8,000 spent fuel rods in its possession has been reprocessed and all the plutonium extracted would be used to make atomic bombs. The country could harvest 13-18 pounds (6-8 kilograms) of plutonium - enough to make at least one nuclear bomb - if all the rods are reprocessed.
In addition, North Korea is believed to have enough plutonium for at least half a dozen atomic bombs.
North Korea says its nuclear program is a deterrent against the U.S., which it routinely accuses of plotting to topple its regime. Washington, which has 28,500 troops in South Korea, has repeatedly said it has no such intention.
The new U.N. sanctions are aimed at depriving the North of the financing used to build its rogue nuclear program. The resolution also authorized searches of North Korean ships suspected of transporting illicit ballistic missile and nuclear materials.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the new U.N. penalties provide the necessary tools to help check North Korea's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The sanctions show that "North Korea's pursuit of nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver those weapons through missiles is not going to be accepted by the neighbors as well as the greater international community," Clinton said Saturday at a news conference in Canada.
Sun Jun 14, 2009 4:07pm EDT
WASHINGTON, June 14 (Reuters) - CIA director Leon Panetta says it's almost as if former vice president Dick Cheney would like to see another attack on the United States to prove he is right in criticizing President Barack Obama for abandoning the "harsh interrogation" of terrorism suspects.
"I think he smells some blood in the water on the national security issue," Panetta said in an interview published in The New Yorker magazine's June 22 issue.
"It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point."
Cheney, who was a key advocate in the Bush administration of controversial interrogation methods such as waterboarding, has become as a leading Republican critic of Obama's ban on harsh interrogations and his plan to shut the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In a blistering May 21 speech, Cheney said Obama's reversal of Bush-era policies were "unwise in the extreme" that would make the American people less safe.
Panetta called Cheney's actions "dangerous politics."
He told The New Yorker he had favored the creation of an independent truth commission to look into the detainee polices of former President George W. Bush. But the idea died in April when Obama decided such a panel could be seen as politically vindictive. (Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Alan Elsner)
© Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
By Kim Murphy
June 13, 2009
Ted S. Warren / Associated Press
Erik Espinoza, right, and Anders Miller, center, both of Pike Place Fish Market, look on as J.J. Swanton, left, throws a fish in the salmon-tossing contest held in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Pike Place Market in Seattle in this Aug. 2007 file photo.
Animal rights group PETA protests their plans to exhibit their fish-flinging technique at an upcoming veterinarians conference.
Reporting from Seattle -- In this noisy den of brine and ice, scales and slime, fish always have been part meat, part missile.
One man points to an enormous white-bellied fish, and another man in a wet apron scoops it up from the ice, hoists it over his shoulder and sends it flying 15 feet toward the counter
"Hali-BUT! Hali-BUT! Heyyyyyy!" six men scream in unison. "Goin' right home! Goin' right home!" The counterman catches the hurtling fish neatly between the head and tail fin and slaps it onto a wrapping sheet.
The Pike Place Fish Market is the legendary home of the flying fish: Halibut as big as a wrestler's thigh, spiky medallions of crab, the smooth, rainbow flesh of Chinook salmon, all become rapid-fire marine rockets in the hands of Seattle's fishmongers -- who are as famous for the speed of their fish as for its freshness.
But did anyone ever think of the fish?
Asserting that the practice of lobbing fish above the heads of patrons and tourists at the market and other venues is disrespectful to creatures that already have gone through a lot, an animal rights group is protesting plans to stage a flying-fish exhibition at an upcoming national veterinarians conference in Seattle.
Ultimately, they would like to see the practice banned at the fish market too. They argue that tourists would not be nearly so eager to snap photos if dead kittens or gutted lambs were sailing over their heads.
"Killing animals so you can toss their bodies around for amusement is just twisted," said Ashley Byrne, senior campaigner for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in Washington, D.C.
"And it particularly sends a terrible message to the public when vets call it fun to toss around the corpses of animals. If anyone should be promoting compassion and not callousness toward animals, it should be vets."
The 102-year-old Pike Place Market is perhaps Seattle's most important institution, a cacophony of commerce in the middle of the city that hosts 10 million visitors a year, including flocks of tourists and Seattleites in search of lunch and fresh flowers.
Stretching three levels down the hillside above Elliott Bay, the narrow, crowded rows of stalls and shops begin in the open-air bustle along Pike Street and Western Avenue, opposite the original Starbucks. The air is fragrant with the smells of fish, hot fried mini-doughnuts, Hmong flower sellers' fresh blooms and sizzling gourmet sausage.
In the seemingly endless warrens of shops in the basement and nearby alleys, visitors might find anarchist treatises, herbal tinctures, vintage comic books and last Friday's newspaper from Sarajevo.
The market's flying fish have become such an institution of the Pacific Northwest that the fishmongers often are hired to give demonstrations at conferences, hospitals, schools and company retreats.
Jeremy Ridgway, one of the managers at the market, said that he has done fish shows for the ministry of manpower in Singapore, for schoolchildren in Oklahoma and at countless other venues.
"People get excited about it. They get to hold a fish; they get to touch it. A lot of people have never held a salmon before. In Oklahoma, they don't have wild fish, unless you count catfish," he said.
He said fishmongers are bewildered at the notion that their toss -- which they describe as merely the quickest way of getting fish from display cases to the counter -- shows any lack of reverence for a creature that is, after all, their livelihood.
"I mean, the fish are dead," Ridgway said. "The thing is, we're not laughing and making fun of them. . . . It's just Point A to Point B. That's why we do it."
"Two crabs!" somebody yells, and the smart ones in the crowd quickly duck.
In a letter to the veterinarian association, PETA Director Sarah King said the flying fish demonstration represents callous disregard for the suffering the creatures undergo before they come to the table.
"There is more than enough scientific evidence to prove that fish feel pain and that they do not die well at the hands of the fishing industry," she said, citing numerous studies that show fish have intelligence as well as sophisticated social structures.
"When the fish used in these 'tosses' are pulled up from the depths of the ocean, they undergo the excruciating pain of decompression. The intense pressure often ruptures their swim bladders and damages other internal organs. Then the fish slowly suffocate or are bludgeoned to death. Others are still alive when they are cut open. The fish toss celebrates cruelty to marine animals," King wrote.
W. Ron DeHaven, chief executive of the American Veterinary Medical Assn., said that the flying fish demonstration was scheduled during the convention's July 11 opening session as a team-building exercise for as many as 10,000 veterinarians, receptionists and veterinary technicians.
"We start from a fundamental standpoint as an association, where we support the use of animals for human purposes, such as food and fiber, exhibition and for use as pets and companions, and we think this is consistent with our principles," he said.
At the same time, he said, "we wouldn't want to do anything that would appear to be disrespectful of animals."
PETA has butted heads with the association in the past, criticizing it for not opposing the force-feeding of geese for foie gras or the tight confinement of mother pigs.
So simply switching to rubber fish for the convention demonstration -- after PETA offered to buy such substitutes -- may not be a good option either, DeHaven said.
"The vast majority of our members would support the use of fish for this purpose, and if we are perceived as caving to political pressure from PETA, there is vulnerability for us there, and I don't want to ignore that," he said.
Ridgway said the fishmongers were willing to throw the rubber variety for the vets, but wonders what the point would be. "It would be like throwing basketballs," he said.
"It's probably no more disrespectful than eating them," said Sue Carter, visiting the market one recent afternoon from Mukilteo, Wash., smiling as her salmon sailed toward the cash register. "I wouldn't want to see a fish gasping for air coming flying through the air. But one that's already on the way to the table, why not?"
Sympathy was on ice. Few were inclined to think it through, and those who did came up hungry.
"As far as whether I'd want to see dead cats being thrown around, well, who's going to throw dead cats, unless you're in China or something?" said Vancouver, Canada, resident Robin Graham. "A dead fish is a dead fish."
kim.murphy@latimes.com
