April, 2004, Week 1

Thursday  April 1 , 2004

We got the dry wall up and the floor down and most of the furniture moved back in... I am totally wasted. I am going to bed.

I got scammed again...This has been on my webpage for three days and I decided to look it up... http://www.tombguard.org/FAQ.html I am always amazed when I find out something that I should know but am totally ignorant of.  I knew that the Guard was an honor... I didn't know it was a lifestyle too. However... this isn't all true... why someone would think it was appropriate or amusing to make false statements about the Tomb Guard is beyond my comprehension... the men the guard the tomb are a special bunch of guys ... They have a neat website... http://www.tombguard.org/site.html Here is another site folks should know about... http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/thirdinf.htm

A special person

1. How many steps does the guard take during his walk across the tomb of the Unknowns and why?

21 steps. It alludes to the twenty-one gun salute, which is the highest honor given any military or foreign dignitary.

2. How long does he hesitate after his about face to begin his return walk and why?

21 seconds for the same reason as answer number 1.

3. Why are his gloves wet?

His gloves are moistened to prevent his losing his grip on the rifle.

4. Does he carry his rifle on the same shoulder all the time, and if not, why not?

He carries the rifle on the shoulder away from the tomb.

After his march across the path, he executes an about face, and moves the rifle to the outside shoulder.

5. How often are the guards changed?

Guards are changed every thirty minutes, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

6. What are the physical traits of the guard limited to?

For a person to apply for guard duty at the tomb, he must be between 5' 10" and 6'2" tall and his waist size cannot exceed 30".

Other requirements of the Guard:

They must commit 2 years of life to guard the tomb, live in a barracks under the tomb, and cannot drink any alcohol on or off duty for the rest of their lives. They cannot swear in public for the rest of their lives and cannot disgrace the uniform {fighting} or the tomb in any way. False!

After two years, the guard is given a wreath pin that is worn on their lapel signifying they served as guard of the tomb. There are only 400 presently worn.

 The guard must obey these rules for the rest of their lives or give up the wreath pin. False

The shoes are specially made with very thick soles to keep the heat and cold from their feet. There are metal heel plates that extend to the top of the shoe in order to make the loud click as they come to a halt. There are no wrinkles, folds or lint on the uniform. Guards dress for duty in front of a full-length mirror. Sorta but... False

The first six months of duty a guard cannot talk to anyone, nor watch TV. False

All off duty time is spent studying the 175 notable people laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery False (sort'a). Today's Tomb Guard must be able to retain vast amounts of knowledge over many different subjects.  With over 150 different grave sites, 12 poems and numerous questions on the history of Arlington National Cemetery, the Tomb and its guards, as well as the US Army and the Regiment, the Knowledge Corner is a small place in the Tomb Guard quarters where trainees demonstrate what they have learned. A guard must memorize who they are and where they are interred. Among the notables are: President Taft, Joe E. Lewis {the boxer} and Medal of Honor winner Audie Murphy, {the most decorated soldier of WWII} of Hollywood fame.

Every guard spends five hours a day getting his uniforms ready for guard duty. False (8 hours, on average)

Friday  April 2 , 2004

Today was recuperation day... sorta... Mike was kicked out of school (Bad language and disrespect), "B" was sent to detention (Opportunity Room). My Suzuki is sold,

I bought an HP pocket PC... Serious but surmountable learning curve pending.

I love this word... we just had the first shower of April... I love the smell

petrichor (PET-ri-kuhr) noun

The pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell.

[From petro- (rock), from Greek petros (stone) + ichor (the fluid that is supposed to flow in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology). Coined by researchers I.J. Bear and R.G. Thomas.]

"Petrichor, the name for the smell of rain on dry ground, is from oils given off by vegetation, absorbed onto neighboring surfaces, and released into the air after a first rain." Matthew Bettelheim; Nature's Laboratory; Shasta Parent (Mt Shasta, California); Jan 2002.

"But, even in the other pieces, her prose breaks into passages of lyrical beauty that come as a sorely needed revifying petrichor amid the pitiless glare of callousness and cruelty." Pradip Bhattacharya; Forest Interludes; Indianest.com; Jul 29, 2001.

Saturday  April 3 , 2004

A man is known by the silence he keeps. -

Oliver Herford

I took Cindy and "B" to Valencia and deposited the check for the bike and did a little shopping before taking them to lunch.

I worked on the floor and hung a bit of dry-wall and Cindy and "B" helped clean up the place a bit while Christy was at church... she took the kids to the Poppy Fields and then home only to turn around and take them out to Lancaster again to play basketball. She took two other girls too, Michelae (sp) and Lisa. Their mother has put it in her will that we will care for them if anything happens to her. She has done an awesome job of taking care of those kids, she has even paid for her funeral and burial, the kids get her house... on and on... as near as I can tell she has left nothing to chance. She puts Christy and I to shame,,, I have done a little but nothing near what she has done.The kids (this is the first time I have met them) are both cute and both speak well... (a novelty in this day and age)

Sunday  April 4 , 2004

The world is composed of takers and givers. The takers may eat better, but the givers sleep better."

Byron Frederick

I went into town and bought some 'bull-nosed' corner pieces for the walls, went to Wal-Mart to get some tapes and stopped at Circuit City to have them help me with the new Pocket PC... I went to turn it on to show them the problem I was having but it wouldn't turn on... then in my embarrassed haste to leave... I left it sitting on the counter... $400 Pocket PC up for grabs... luckily someone at the store found it and called... they were able to turn it on and get my phone number... the embarrassment mounts.

I took the keyboard in to see if the boy genius at Circuit City could make it work... he couldn't... so I got my money back... for about 2 minutes, I saw a GPS attachment for the Pocket PC and bought it. When I got it home I read the fine print and it said the software would only work for 30 days, I had to spend another $89 - $265 to buy the real software... I am taking it back tomorrow... why can't they just give you what you buy? I asked the boy genius when I bought it if it came with all the software... he said yes... he was right technically. I lodade the software into my Pocket PC and then I created a trip from Acton to Ojai with no waypoints it wouldn't fit in storage... not only that there is no way to alter the trip once it's loaded without pluging into the Desktop.. the thing is virtually useless.

I brought Mike home from Marks...

The fog of war

The truth vs. your recollection of the truth

Questions for Rice

I hope they put her on the hot seat...

Uzbekistan

(Margolis)

Alamo

Interesting debunking of the affair, I need to look into it someday

Published: April 5, 2004

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — With Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, set to testify before the 9/11 commission on Thursday, much attention is being focused on the expected discrepancies between her recollections of the Bush administration's response to terrorism issues and those of Richard Clarke. One of the two, popular thinking goes, will ultimately be caught in a lie. Already, differences have come to light between how Mr. Clarke, the former counterterrorism director for President Bush, and another White House colleague remember the specific events of 9/11.

In Mr. Clarke's book, "Against All Enemies," he recounts the responses of senior administration officials on that day. Many of Mr. Clarke's recollections conflict with those of Franklin C. Miller, a national security official who worked closely with him. For example, Mr. Clarke writes that Mr. Miller advised the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, to leave the Pentagon by helicopter; Mr. Miller said in an interview last week that he never spoke to Mr. Rumsfeld that day. The two men also have contrasting recollections of the details of important decisions, like providing fighter escorts for Air Force One when it took off from Florida. According to Mr. Miller, Mr. Clarke's memories contain dramatic embellishments that would "make a great movie" but do not reflect the reality of what happened.

These accounts may seem perplexing given the momentous nature of the unfolding events. One might even wonder whether one of the parties has engaged in willful distortion. But these conflicts need not involve bad faith on the part of either person.

Indeed, conflicting recollections are neither unfamiliar (recall the testimonies of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill in 1991) nor surprising. The way the brain stores and retrieves information, research shows, can sometimes lead people to hold different memories of the same event.

Memory errors can be classified into seven categories (sometimes called sins). Three are especially relevant to conflicting recollections: transience, misattribution and bias. Transience is the term for the well-known fact that memories tend to fade over time (unless we rehash and discuss them frequently). Experiments show that specific details of an experience are lost more quickly than general information about it.

In one such study, 12 people were asked to summarize their activities during a "typical day" at work; they also were asked to recount exactly what they did the day before and a week before. The study confirmed what some researchers suspected: the day-old memory was a nearly verbatim record of what actually happened, but a week later memory was closer to a generic description of what usually happens. With the passage of time, memory shifts from a reproduction of the past to a reconstruction that is heavily influenced by general knowledge and beliefs.

Similar considerations almost certainly apply to what Mr. Clarke and Mr. Miller remember. Of course, 9/11 was not an ordinary day at the office. Shocking experiences like the terrorist attacks or the explosion of the space shuttle tend to be better remembered than mundane occurrences. But studies show that with the passage of time, people can forget and distort details of even these experiences.

Such errors are sometimes associated with the memory sin of misattribution, where we remember aspects of an experience correctly but attribute them to the wrong source. For instance, a college student recalled that she first learned of the Challenger explosion in 1986 from television, when the actual source was a group of friends. Misattribution errors can occur for traumatic experiences, as in the case of a rape victim who accused a psychologist of assault based on her vivid memory of his face. In reality, she had seen the psychologist on television just before she was raped.

Because parts of misattributed memories are accurate, people can maintain high confidence in such mistaken recollections. Both Mr. Clarke's and Mr. Miller's accounts are probably correct in some respects, but either one may have fallen victim to misattribution, leading to different claims about who said what to whom.

Bias, a third memory sin, occurs when current knowledge, beliefs or feelings distort the past. For example, studies have shown that we often inaccurately recall political attitudes we held in the past. Our recollection ends up reflecting our current attitudes instead. Research also reveals an egocentric bias, meaning we remember the past in ways that reflect positively our current self — a bias from which government officials are not likely to be immune.

Transience, misattribution and bias occur even when we do our best to recollect the past accurately. Without external corroboration, we cannot know for certain which aspects of Mr. Clarke's or Mr. Miller's account are off the mark — but we do know enough about memory's sins to implicate the likely culprits. It's something the commission, and the country, should keep in mind when Ms. Rice testifies as well.

Daniel L. Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard, is the author of "The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers."

Questions for Dr. Rice

Published: April 4, 2004

1. In his statement on March 24 to the independent commission investigating the 9/11 attacks, George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, said, "In August 1996, bin Laden, in collaboration with radical Muslim clerics associated with his group, issued a religious edict or fatwa in which he proclaimed a `declaration of war,' authorizing attacks against Western military targets on the Arabian Peninsula."

Two years ago, the joint Congressional committee looking into pre-9/11 intelligence made reference to the participation of Saudi clerics — salifi — in the preparation of additional fatwas issued by Osama bin Laden in 1998 in which he "declared war" against Americans. What's more, the director of the National Security Agency reportedly told a closed session of that committee that on Sept. 10, 2001, his agency intercepted messages by the 9/11 hijackers. The messages, which went untranslated until Sept. 12, were reportedly not to Osama bin Laden but to Saudi clerics.

Who, then, planned and executed the 9/11 attack beyond Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants? What have the intelligence agencies of the United States and other countries suggested were the reasons, motivations and objectives of these other groups? What has the United States government learned about the participation before and after 9/11 by these Saudi clerics? What has been done to halt their support of Mr. bin Laden and bring them to justice? What has been done to compel the Saudi government to take action against these forces?

2. Looking back on 9/11, were your priorities appropriate for the threat based on what you knew? Did you take the necessary precautions given your perception of the threat at the time? Press reports indicate that before 9/11, you believed that the use of ballistic missiles against United States was our most pressing national security vulnerability. What precautions were taken to ensure that Al Qaeda militants in Kashmir did not provoke a ballistic missile exchange between India and Pakistan?

3. Why was Iraq viewed by the president — and others — as a likely, if not the most likely, perpetrator of 9/11?

4. What was the accumulated evidence on Sept. 11 that Iraq was a direct and imminent threat to the United States? How much reliance did our government put on human sources, Iraqi defectors and former Iraqi officials for this intelligence? In retrospect, do you consider these sources to have been credible?

5. The stated purpose of invading Afghanistan was to remove the Taliban and deprive Al Qaeda of its primary sanctuary. There appears to be no evidence that Iraq, before 9/11, was a sanctuary for Osama bin Laden and his followers. Yet Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Yemen and several North African countries have served as havens for them and other anti-American terrorist groups. What steps did we take before or after 9/11 to deprive terrorists of these havens? Why do we not have more troops in Afghanistan today to thwart the continued and escalating attacks from the Taliban and Al Qaeda?

6. J. Cofer Black, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism, told Congress last week: "Iraq is currently serving as a focal point for foreign jihadist fighters, who are united in a common goal with former regime elements, criminals and more established foreign terrorist organization members to conduct attacks against coalition and Iraqi civilian targets. These jihadists view Iraq as a new training ground to build their extremist credentials and hone the skills of the terrorist."Has the United States invasion of Iraq played into the hands of anti-American Islamic extremists and made Iraq a breeding ground for terrorism? Leading up to the invasion, what was your plan to avoid an escalation of terrorism from within Iraq?

Scott Armstrong, founder of the National Security Archive, is director of the Information Trust.

By PETER BERGEN

Published: April 4, 2004

1. A search of all your public statements and writings reveals that you apparently mentioned Osama bin Laden only once and never mentioned Al Qaeda at all as a threat to the United States before 9/11. Why?

2. Both Bob Woodward's book "Bush at War" and Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" show that shortly after 9/11 there was considerable focus by the Bush cabinet on Iraq's possibly being the perpetrator of the attacks. Why was Iraq considered a suspect when there was no evidence that it was involved in any act of anti-American terrorism for a decade — other than a failed attempt to assassinate former President George H. W. Bush in 1993 — while there was overwhelming evidence that it was the Al Qaeda network that attacked the World Trade Center in 1993, tried to blow up Los Angeles International Airport in 1999, blew up American embassies in Africa in 1998 and attacked the destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000? After all, the cabinet did not discuss the possibility that the attacks were the work of Iran, Libya or Syria, all countries that have a history of terrorism directed at Americans.

3. Mr. Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism director, has said that of the 100 or so meetings held by cabinet-level officials before 9/11 only one was about terrorism. Is this true? If so, was this emblematic of the Bush administration's posture on terrorism?

4. The Bush administration's position, and your own, has been that it would not have been possible to conceive that planes might be used as missiles against the United States. Yet during the 1996 Olympics countermeasures were taken for just that eventuality. How do you reconcile this discrepancy?

5. According to the interrogations of detainees held as suspected Al Qaeda operatives, the lack of response to the attack on the destroyer Cole made the group feel that it could act with impunity. Early in your administration Al Qaeda was identified as the principal suspect in that attack. In addition, Osama bin Laden released videotapes in January and June of 2001 more or less taking credit for his role in it. Why was there no response of any kind from your administration to the Cole attack, an act of war against the United States that killed 17 sailors and nearly sank one of the most advanced destroyers in the American fleet?

6. On Aug. 6, 2001, President Bush was briefed that members of Al Qaeda might plan to hijack a plane in order to secure the release of Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a spiritual leader of Al Qaeda jailed in the United States. Given what you now know of the importance of Sheik Rahman to Al Qaeda — as well as the fact that two of his sons played key roles in the group — how would you now characterize this piece of intelligence?

7. Why did you have no plan in place on 9/11 to immediately attack Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies? The United States government had repeatedly put the Taliban on notice that they would be held responsible for any attacks by Al Qaeda. By delaying the military response for a month, the Taliban and Al Qaeda had time to disperse, regroup and fight another day.

8. When you came into office some two dozen members of Al Qaeda, including several senior commanders of the group, had already been indicted. What plans did you have to bring these men to justice?

9. Why has there been no public apology or resignation by any Bush administration official over the most catastrophic intelligence and national security failure of the past five decades?

Peter Bergen, a fellow of the New America Foundation and an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins University, is the author of "Holy War Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden."

BUSH AND THE UZBEK COMMUNISTS
Copyright: Eric S. Margolis, 2004

April 5, 2004

NEW YORK - After a wave of bombings and attacks across Uzbekistan left 40 dead last week, the Bush Administration quickly offered the strategic Central Asian state help in `fighting Islamic terrorism.'

Uzbekistan plays a key role in White House plans to dominate key Central Asian oil producing states — the region I call `Petrolistan.'.

The new US air base in Uzbekistan at Khanabad is the lynchpin of a network of American bases in neighboring Tajikistan, Kyrgystan. Afghanistan and Pakistan guarding the planned pipelines exporting oil from great Caspian Oil Basin.

Khanabad is a vital stepping stone in this new strategic `imperial lifeline' beginning at bases in Germany, Bulgaria and Romania, heading eastward to bases in Iraq and Qatar, then to South and Central Asia. The air bridge is designed to speed highly mobile US forces to trouble spots across the Muslim World, serving the same military function as did roads to Rome's legions and Suez to the British Empire's maritime power.

Uzbekistan, hailed by the White House as `our partner in the global war against terrorism,' is a favored US ally and aid recipient. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says relations between the US and Uzbekistan are `growing stronger every month.'

Russians, however, have long called the communist despots who rule Soviet Central Asia `Red Mafia' and `Red Sultans.' Aptly, because these regimes combine Stalinism's extreme brutality with the Mafia's criminality, clannishness and rapacity.

The Bush Administration's shameful tryst with Uzbekistan shows how the fake `war on terrorism' has allowed some US allies and vassals to massively abuse human rights under the banner of fighting terrorism.

Numerous rights groups — most lately Human Rights Watch — accuse the brutal totalitarian regime of Uzbekistan's President for Life Islam Karimov of being one of the world's worst abusers of human rights. All political opposition parties have been outlawed as `Islamic terrorists.' Free speech banned, newspapers censored, mosques and religious institutions put under secret police control. My extensive travels across Uzbekistan, which took me from the grave of the conqueror Tamerlane (Timur) in Samarkand to the fabled desert oasis of Khiva, revealed one of the most repressive police states I had seen.

Uzbekistan holds over 7,000 political prisoners under unspeakable conditions — more political prisoners than were held in the Soviet gulag during the 1980's. Human rights groups report that Prisoners are subjected to electric torture, burning with blowtorches, boiling alive, gang rapes, acid baths, and other atrocities.

Ironically, President Bush keeps trying to justify invading Iraq by citing Saddam's `torture chambers and rape rooms' while ignoring the horrors in Uzbekistan.

The Bush Administration rejects normal relations with communist Cuba because of its sorry human rights record and political prisoners. Cuba holds about 350 political prisoners. The US's new best friend, communist Uzbekistan, an infinitely more brutal, despotic tyranny than Cuba, holds over 7,000 prisoners.

America's other allies and satraps across the Muslim World also tolerate no real opposition; anyone stepping out of line is immediately jailed. Patrick Seale, one of the finest journalists covering the Mideast, recently observed this has created a dangerous political void — and terrorism. Al-Qaida, Hizbullah, Hamas?`have stepped into the vacuum created by the failure of Arab governments to stand up to Israel and protect their countries from Western pressure.' In other words, privatization of failed state policy.

An inevitable reaction to Karimov's despotic regime has been growing armed resistance by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). After 9/11, the US wrongly declared the IMU a terrorist organization, attacked its Afghan bases, and reportedly killed its deputy leader, Juma Namangani, and threw scores of IMU fighters into the Guantanamo gulag. The IMU, and other local militants, all branded `terrorist groups,' seek to overthrow Central Asia's communist regimes, or liberate Sinkiang from repressive Chinese rule.

Washington has been blasting Pakistan over its black market dealings in nuclear components. President George Bush urgently needs senior al-Qaida leaders captured or killed before November elections. So a deal was struck: Islamabad agreed to attack supposed concentration of IMU and al-Qaida militants in South Waziristan.

After a lot of wild claims about killing or wounding Al-Qaida leader Ayam al-Zawahiri and IMU chief Tahir Yuldash, Musharraf's copycat war on terrorism resulted in the deaths of about 100 local Pashtun tribesmen, and dangerous unrest in the traditionally autonomous tribal belt. Pakistan's army was seen imitating the Israeli Army in the West Bank and Gaza by bulldozing homes of suspects.

Small wonder so many Pakistanis were deeply upset by the Waziristan raids, coming as the did after the abandonment of the Kashmir liberation struggle and backstabbing old allies, like Taliban and IMU, to placate Washington.

The US seems to have learned nothing from the Cold War, when all sorts of dictatorial regimes and massive human rights violations were condoned under the banner of fighting communism. In fact, the Bush Administration is showing the same kind of knee-jerk reaction to the accusation `terrorist' that US governments did in the 50's and 60's to accusations of communism.

Today, any group forced to take up arms against intolerable injustice is automatically branded by Washington, guardian of the status quo, `terrorists.' The IMU, Chechen independence fighters, Nepalese Maoists, Hizbullah, Hamas, Kashmiri independence fighters, and Filipino separatists are recent additions. Talk about picking fights where no important US interests are involved.

Fighting Uzbekistan's Stalinist regime is not terrorism, it is liberation of an oppressed people. By supporting despotism for the sake of oil and anti-Islamic crusader ideology, the US is putting itself on the wrong side of justice and history.

Follow-up: Re Capt. James Yee, the persecuted Muslim chaplain this column called the `American Capt Dreyfus,' accused of treason and spying. The US Army has dropped all charges against Yee.

Misremembering The Alamo

Tue Apr 6, 4:50 PM ET

BY JUSTIN EWERS

The last time the battle of the Alamo was fought on the big screen, John Wayne played Davy Crockett, the old fort seemed to be garrisoned exclusively by white men in coonskin caps, and myth trumped history at every turn. "There is literally not a line, not a sentence, not a place, not a person, nothing in that film that corresponds with reality in any shape or form," says Frank Thompson, author of Alamo Movies. The film's two historical advisers were so disgusted that they walked off the set.

This week, John Lee Hancock's The Alamo, the 13th version of the epic to be filmed, premieres on the big screen. While experts are circumspect about the movie's historical merits, those who have seen the movie say it is closer to the truth, for what that's worth, than John Wayne's account or any of the others.

For decades, "the Alamo [has been] the shrine of Texas liberty," says Thompson. The 200 or so defenders of the fort in San Antonio, all of whom died trying to hold off up to 6,000 Mexican regulars in 1836, "were the saints who were immolated on that pyre." The first historian who dared suggest, in 1978, that Davy Crockett was captured after the battle and executed--rather than fighting, gloriously, to the end--received death threats. (Most experts now agree with this interpretation.) But over the past decade, what started as a trickle has now become a stream of scholarship offering new insight into the Texas revolution--who the Alamo martyrs really were and what inspired them to fight.

Misfits. Historians take pains to stress that the lily-white image of most Alamo stories is misleading. Not only were there a significant number of Tejanos--ethnic Mexicans living in Texas--fighting in the fort alongside the Anglos, but the heroes of Texas independence were not, well, so heroic--at least not at the beginning. "Many of these guys when they arrived were sort of rotten and nasty," says H. W. Brands, author of Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence--and Changed America. Jim Bowie was a slave trader and land speculator before he came to Texas. Davy Crockett was a backwoods politician who had just been humiliated in an election. Sam Houston, the general of the Texas army who later avenged the deaths of the Alamo garrison and won Texas independence, had a notorious weakness for the bottle. William Travis, who was in command of the Alamo when it fell, had deserted his pregnant wife, young child, and a mountain of debt. He brought his personal slave, Joe, with him to the battle, one of a handful of black men who would be trapped inside the fort. To its credit, historians say, the new movie, unlike its predecessors, embraces the complexity of these men--Houston wrestles with his drinking, Crockett with his image. Travis's slave appears for the first time in an Alamo film.

But the movies can't answer the question that still tantalizes historians: What was it about Texas that made the volunteers so willing to sacrifice their lives for it? It's important to remember, says Brands, that "no one went to the Alamo to die; they all thought they were going to win." Initially, Houston dispatched a group of men to destroy the fort, which guarded one of the two roads into Texas. Once they arrived, however, he was persuaded to let them fight, and the defenders began to dig in. The Mexican Army surprised what was still a tiny garrison in late February 1836. Travis immediately began sending letters to Houston asking for reinforcements. But political infighting in the main army camp prevented Houston from sending help. On the morning of March 6, after a 12-day siege, the Mexicans attacked.

The specifics of how the fort fell, however, interest historians less than why these men fought in the first place. Some argue that their motives can be summed up in two words: cheap land. Houston's call to arms, published in American newspapers, was clear on the SUBJECT "If volunteers from the United States will join their brethren in this section, they will receive liberal bounties of land. We have millions of acres . . . unchosen and unappropriated." (The Mexican government, of course, begged to differ.)

Others insist that the fight stemmed from legitimate political grievances. By the 1830s, there were probably 30,000 Americans living in Texas (compared with around 3,000 Mexicans). Unlike most of the men at the Alamo, many of them were longtime residents who had justifiable complaints about the Mexican government. When Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna seized power in 1833 and dissolved the country's legislature, they were appalled. And they weren't alone: Three popular uprisings were put down in other parts of Mexico before the Texas rebellion.

Revolution. By rising up against tyranny, many Texans felt they were following in the footsteps of their grandparents, who had fought for independence from Britain. The Texans even outlined their objections to Mexican rule in a declaration of independence, signed only a few days before the Alamo fell.

One issue notably absent from the Texas declaration--and from all previous Alamo movies--was slavery. Almost a quarter of the original American settlers in Texas owned slaves. When the Mexican government abolished the practice, Texans viewed it as yet another infringement on their liberty. "The colonists were overwhelmingly southerners," says William C. Davis, author of Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic, "and they felt they needed slaves to capitalize on that vast arable land in the eastern part of the state." To take away slavery, they felt, was to take away Texas.

The slavery question has muddied the pristine image of the Texas revolution. John Quincy Adams, two months after the Alamo, argued on the floor of the U.S. House that "the war now raging in Texas is a Mexican civil war and a war for the re-establishment of slavery where it was abolished." Popular history never mentions it, says Davis, but in the Texas revolution "you have the same contradiction [that you do in] the Civil War, when you've got several million Confederate citizens and soldiers preaching all the rhetoric of liberty while owning 3 million slaves." The difference, he insists, is that in the fight for Texas, slavery was only an issue, not the issue.

As to what exactly was the issue for Crockett and the rest, experts are uncertain. "I don't think you can go back and say in 1835 and 1836, there was this big slave conspiracy," says Richard Bruce Winders, curator at the Alamo. Nor can historians necessarily attribute the uprising solely to liberty or land. The defenders of Texas, and the Alamo, may have all been fighting for different reasons. As one veteran wrote afterward of his fellow soldiers: "Some were for independence; some for the Constitution of 1824 [which had been abandoned by Santa Anna]; and some for anything, just so it was a row."

And what a row it was. "In the wake of the Alamo," writes Brands, "the specifics shaded into inconsequence. Whatever motivated men to die such a death must be righteous." Today, as historians grapple with the Texas revolutionaries' murky motives and convoluted cause, one thing is for certain: "We have to say they fought bravely," says Brands. "Does that make them heroes? I don't know the answer to that."

More on the Alamo, no wonder they fought to the death:

GOLIAD MASSACRE. The Goliad Massacre, the tragic termination of the Goliad Campaign of 1836,qv is of all the episodes of the Texas Revolutionqv the most infamous. Though not as salient as the battle of the Alamo,qv the massacre immeasurably garnered support for the cause against Mexico both within Texas and in the United States, thus contributing greatly to the Texan victory at the battle of San Jacintoqv and sustaining the independence of the Republic of Texas. The execution of James W. Fannin, Jr.'s,qv command in the Goliad Massacre was not without precedent, however, and Mexican president and general Antonio López de Santa Anna,qv who ultimately ordered the exterminations, was operating within Mexican law. Therefore, the massacre cannot be considered isolated from the events and legislation preceding it.

As he prepared to subdue the Texas colonists Santa Anna was chiefly concerned with the help they expected from the United States. His solution was tested after November 15, 1835, when Gen. José Antonio Mexíaqv attacked Tampico with three companies enlisted at New Orleans. One company, badly led, broke ranks at the beginning of Mexía's action, and half its number, together with wounded men from other companies, were captured by Santa Anna's forces the next day. Twenty-eight of them were tried as pirates, convicted, and, on December 14, 1835, shot (see TAMPICO EXPEDITION). Four weeks elapsed between their capture and their execution, enabling Santa Anna to gauge in advance the reaction of New Orleans to their fate. It was, on the whole, that in shooting these prisoners, Mexico was acting within its rights. Believing that he had found an effective deterrent to expected American help for Texas, Santa Anna sought and obtained from the Mexican Congress the decree of December 30, 1835, which directed that all foreigners taken in arms against the government should be treated as pirates and shot.

Santa Anna's main army took no prisoners; execution of the murderous decree of December 30, 1835, fell to Gen. José de Urrea,qv commander of Santa Anna's right wing. The first prisoners taken by Urrea were the survivors of Francis W. Johnson'sqv party, captured at and near San Patricio on February 27, 1836 (see SAN PATRICIO, BATTLE OF). Urrea, according to his contemporary Reuben M. Potter,qv "was not blood thirsty and when not overruled by orders of a superior, or stirred by irritation, was disposed to treat prisoners with lenity." When the Mexican general reported to Santa Anna that he was holding the San Patricio prisoners, Santa Anna ordered Urrea to comply with the decree of December 30. Urrea complied to the extent of issuing an order to shoot his prisoners, along with those captured in the battle of Agua Dulce Creek,qv but he had no stomach for such cold-blooded killing; and when Father Thomas J. Malloy, priest of the Irish colonists, protested the execution, Urrea remitted the prisoners to Matamoros, asking Santa Anna's pardon for having done so and washing his hands of their fate.

At Refugio on March 15, 1836, Urrea was again confronted with the duty of complying with the fatal decree of December 30. Thirty-three Americans were captured in the course of the fighting at Nuestra Señora del Refugio Mission, half of them with Capt. Amon B. King'sqv company, the others "one by one" (see REFUGIO, BATTLE OF). King and his men had infuriated their enemies by burning local ranchos and shooting eight Mexicans seated around a campfire, and these enemies were clamoring for vengeance. Urrea satisfied his conscience by shooting King and fourteen of his men, while "setting at liberty all who were colonists or Mexicans."

A more difficult situation confronted him on March 20 after James W. Fannin's surrender (see COLETO, BATTLE OF). Fannin's men had agreed upon and reduced to writing the terms upon which they proposed to capitulate. The gist of these was that Fannin and his men, including his officers and the wounded, should be treated as prisoners of war according to the usages of civilized nations and, as soon as possible, paroled and returned to the United States. In view of Santa Anna's positive orders, Urrea could not, of course, accede to these terms, but refusing them would mean another bloody battle. Fannin's men possessed, besides their rifles, 500 spare muskets and nine brass cannons and, if told that it would mean death to surrender, could sell their lives at fearful cost and might cut their way through Urrea's lines. When the Mexican and Texan commissioners seeking surrender terms failed to agree, Urrea shortened the conference by dealing directly with Fannin and proposing written terms, under which the Texans should give up their arms and become prisoners of war "at the disposal of the Supreme Mexican Government." He assured Fannin that there was no known instance where a prisoner of war who had trusted to the clemency of the Mexican government had lost his life, that he would recommend to General Santa Anna acceptance of the terms proposed by Fannin's men, and that he was confident of obtaining Santa Anna's approval within a period of eight days. Fannin, who could not have done much else-Urrea had received reinforcements and artillery that would have devastated the Texan position in an open prairie on ground lower than the Mexican lines-accepted Urrea's proposals but did not inform his men of the conditional nature of these terms. On the other hand, Maj. Juan José Holsinger,qv one of the Mexican commissioners, lulled their suspicions by entering the Texan lines with the greeting, "Well, gentlemen! In eight days, home and liberty!"

Fannin's men delivered up their arms, and some 230 or 240 uninjured or slightly wounded men were marched back to Goliad and imprisoned in the chapel of Nuestra Señora de Loreto Presidio at La Bahía,qv the fort they had previously occupied (see FORT DEFIANCE). The wounded Texans, about fifty (some estimates are much higher) including doctors and orderlies, Colonel Fannin among them, were returned to Goliad over the next two days. On March 22 William Ward,qv who with Amon B. King had been defeated in the battle of Refugio, surrendered near Dimitt's Landingqv on the terms accorded Fannin, and he and about eighty of his men of the Georgia Battalionqv were added to the Goliad prisoners on March 25. Urrea, in compliance with his promise, wrote to Santa Anna from Guadalupe Victoria, informing him that Fannin and his men were prisoners of war "at the disposal of the Supreme Mexican Government" and recommending clemency; but he reported nothing in his letter of the terms that Fannin and his men had drafted for their surrender.

Santa Anna replied to Urrea's clemency letter on March 23 by ordering immediate execution of these "perfidious foreigners" and repeated the order in a letter the next day. Meantime, on March 23, evidently doubting Urrea's willingness to serve as executioner, Santa Anna sent a direct order to the "Officer Commanding the Post of Goliad" to execute the prisoners in his hands. This order was received on March 26 by Col. José Nicolás de la Portilla,[qv] whom Urrea had left at Goliad. Two hours later Portilla received another order, this one from Urrea, "to treat the prisoners with consideration, and especially their leader, Fannin," and to employ them in rebuilding the town. But when he wrote this seemingly humane order, Urrea well knew that Portilla would not be able to comply with it, for on March 25, after receiving Santa Anna's letter, Urrea had ordered reinforcements that would have resulted in too large a diminution of the garrison for the prisoners to be employed on public works.

Portilla suffered an unquiet night weighing these conflicting orders, but he concluded that he was bound to obey Santa Anna's order and directed that the prisoners be shot at dawn. At sunrise on Palm Sunday, March 27, 1836, the unwounded Texans were formed into three groups under heavy guard commanded by Capt. Pedro (Luis?) Balderas, Capt. Antonio Ramírez, and first adjutant Agustín Alcérrica (a colonel in the Tres Villas Battalion in April 1836). The largest group, including what remained of Ward's Georgia Battalion and Capt. Burr H. Duval's[qv] company, was marched toward the upper ford of the San Antonio River on the Bexar road. The San Antonio Greys, Mobile Greys, [qqv] and others were marched along the Victoria road in the direction of the lower ford. Capt. John Shackelford's[qv] Red Rovers [qv] and Ira J. Westover's [qv] regulars were marched southwestwardly along the San Patricio road. The guard, which was to serve also as a firing squad, included the battalions of Tres Villas and Yucatán, dismounted cavalry, and pickets from the Cuautla, Tampico, and Durango regiments.

The prisoners held little suspicion of their fate, for they had been told a variety of stories-they were to gather wood, drive cattle, be marched to Matamoros, or proceed to the port of Copano for passage to New Orleans. Only the day before, Fannin himself, with his adjutant general, Joseph M. Chadwick, [qv] had returned from Copano, where, accompanied by Holsinger and other Mexican officers, they had tried to charter the vessel on which William P. Miller's [qv] Nashville Battalion had arrived earlier (these men had been captured and imprisoned at Goliad, also). Although this was really an attempt by Urrea to commandeer the ship, the vessel had already departed. Still, Fannin became cheerful and reported to his men that the Mexicans were making arrangements for their departure. The troops sang "Home Sweet Home" on the night of March 26.

At selected spots on each of the three roads, from half to three-fourths of a mile from the presidio, the three groups were halted. The guard on the right of the column of prisoners then countermarched and formed with the guard on the left. At a prearranged moment, or upon a given signal, the guards fired upon the prisoners at a range too close to miss. Nearly all were killed at the first fire. Those not killed were pursued and slaughtered by gunfire, bayonet, or lance. Fannin and some forty (Peña estimated eighty or ninety) wounded Texans unable to march were put to death within the presidio under the direction of Capt. Carolino Huerta of the Tres Villas battalion.

From two groups shot on the river roads, those not instantly killed fled to the woods along the stream, and twenty-four managed to escape. The third group, on the San Patricio road, was farther from cover; only four men from it are known to have escaped. A man-by-man study of Fannin's command indicates that 342 were executed at Goliad on March 27. Only twenty-eight escaped the firing squads, and twenty more were spared as physicians, orderlies, interpreters, or mechanics largely because of the entreaties of a "high bred beauty" whom the Texans called the "Angel of Goliad" (see ALAVEZ, FRANCITA), and the brave and kindly intervention of Col. Francisco Garay.qv Many of those who eventually escaped were first recaptured and later managed a second escape. Two physicians, Joseph H. Barnardqv and John Shackelford, were taken to San Antonio to treat Mexican wounded from the battle of the Alamo; they later escaped.

Portilla wrote that the total number of his prisoners was 445, exclusive of William P. Miller's eighty men, who had been captured without arms at Copano and were thus to be spared. Texan sources specify the number of prisoners as 407, exclusive of Miller's men. This may have been correct. Some of the prisoners taken at Refugio but not executed with King's men are known to have been at Goliad, where they were again spared because they were serving the Mexican army as blacksmiths, wheelwrights, or other artisans. The exact fate of others captured at Refugio is not known. They may have been added to the prisoners at Goliad and killed with Fannin on March 27. Urrea detained about twenty of Ward's men to build boats at Guadalupe Victoria, and Señora Alavez intervened with her husband, Col. Telesforo Alavez, whom Urrea left in charge of this village, to spare their lives as well; they afterward escaped. About a week after the Goliad killings, Santa Anna ordered the execution of Miller and his men and the others who had been spared at Goliad, but he rescinded the order the next day. The men were marched instead to Matamoros after the battle of San Jacinto. Though some managed to escape en route, most remained there until the Mexican government later released them.

After the executions the bodies were burned, the remains left exposed to weather, vultures, and coyotes, until June 3, 1836, when Gen. Thomas J. Rusk,[qv] who had established his headquarters at Victoria after San Jacinto and was passing through Goliad in pursuit of Gen. Vicente Filisola's[qv] retreating army, gathered the remains and buried them with military honors. Some of the survivors attended the ceremony.

The common grave remained unmarked until about 1858, when a Goliad merchant, George von Dohlen, placed a pile of rocks on what was believed to be the site. In April 1885 a memorial was finally erected, in the city of Goliad rather than on the site, by the Fannin Monument Association, formed by William L. Hunter,[qv] a massacre survivor. In 1930 some Goliad Boy Scouts found charred bone fragments that had been unearthed over the years by animals, and an excursion to the site by Goliad residents on New Year's Day, 1932, succeeded in attracting an investigation of the site by University of Texas anthropologist J. E. Pearce. The authenticity of the gravesite was further verified by historians Clarence R. Wharton and Harbert Davenport.[qqv] In 1936, in celebration of the Texas Centennial,[qv] money was appropriated to build a massive pink granite monument, dedicated on June 4, 1938. Davenport presented the address, which was published as "The Men of Goliad" in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly[qv] (1939).

The impact of the Goliad Massacre was crucial. Until this episode Santa Anna's reputation had been that of a cunning and crafty man, rather than a cruel one. When the Goliad prisoners were taken, Texas had no other army in the field (see REVOLUTIONARY ARMY), and the newly constituted ad interim government[qv] seemed incapable of forming one. The Texas cause was dependent on the material aid and sympathy of the United States. Had Fannin's and Miller's men been dumped on the wharves at New Orleans penniless, homesick, humiliated, and distressed, and each with his separate tale of Texas mismanagement and incompetence, Texas prestige in the United States would most likely have fallen, along with sources of help. But Portilla's volleys at Goliad, together with the fall of the Alamo, branded both Santa Anna and the Mexican people with a reputation for cruelty and aroused the fury of the people of Texas, the United States, and even Great Britain and France, thus considerably promoting the success of the Texas Revolution.