Omar Alomar’s “The Teeth and the Comb” is an interlinked series of very brief, miniature stories about everyday objects. How does this author use these non-human, usually immobile things to make comments about human society? How can the teeth of a comb provide us with a parable about our own democracy? Why the choice of a comb as a symbol? What are some other objects that Alomar selects for this symbolic treatment and what “comments” do they make about us?
While Alomar is busy personifying objects (that is, giving them human attributes), Pascale Petit’s poem does the opposite, in a sense. Why might Petit pay tribute to her mother not only by comparing her to an Amazonian warrior, but also the Amazon rainforest and river? We generally believe that comparing a human being to a non-human thing is a downgrade, but can it be uplifting as well?
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As a student at Miami Dade College, I believe that improving communication between students, staff, administrators and faculty is essential for the success of our college. For starters, as a student I would make sure to be more proactive in speaking up when needed. This means attending meetings, talking to my professors during office hours and asking questions when something needs clarification. Furthermore, I will strive to use language that understands the other party’s point of view and maintain an open mind for dialogue.
Sample Solution
As a student at Miami Dade College, I believe that improving communication between students, staff, administrators and faculty is essential for the success of our college. For starters, as a student I would make sure to be more proactive in speaking up when needed. This means attending meetings, talking to my professors during office hours and asking questions when something needs clarification. Furthermore, I will strive to use language that understands the other party’s point of view and maintain an open mind for dialogue.
The main reason of the U.S. intelligence failure on Iraq is the corrupt nature of the U.S. thinkers and intelligence community, which then lead to the manipulation of sources resulting in the failure of intelligence. An example where this could be seen is in the presumption that Saddam was pursuing a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) program. Since 9/11 the United States government was searching for a casus bellum in order to invade Iraq (Freedman 2011, pg.8), thus the U.S. agencies started to investigate the flaws and threats posed by the Assad regime, which started the corrupt cycle of specific selection of information. The U.S. intelligence faced ‘confirmation bias’ where individuals selected evidence that supported their hypothesis rather than contradicting it (CIA 2008). An example of this is when the Iraq foreign minister, Naji Sabri, met with Bill Murray, CIA head in Paris, in September 2002, and discussed Saddam’s intentions to have WMDs, however the report presented at the end of this meeting clearly stated that at that point in time there was virtually nothing (Taylor 2013). Following this meeting CIA Director, George Tenet, made a speech claiming that Iraq is stockpiling chemical weapons and developing nuclear weapons that could be ready within 24 months and legitimized this by stating that he collected this information by having “Direct access to Saddam and his inner circle” (Taylor 2013). In response Murray said that his report mainly stated that Saddam did not have a real nor active WMD stockpile or program, majorly due to the shortage of materials. Murray himself, a CIA head, believes that the intelligence was cherry picking that consisted of selecting and combining supportive sections of the reports to stir public opinion towards the wanted policies (2013). Another example of this is when the CIA claimed that the aluminum tubes in Iraq were evidence of the WMD program, but this was not completely true because intelligence analysts explained that their size was too small to be used for uranium enrichment (Fitzgerald and Lebow 2006). This once again shows how the government reshaped the occurrences in Iraq in order to provide enough reasoning to start the war, however this also demonstrates how maybe this is not the intelligence’s failure but of the Bush administration poor approach to foreign policy which was based on weak evidence, thus shifting the blame to U.S.A.’s leaders for taking such aggressive measures against such a sensitive topic. Overall, this demonstrates the unprofessional nature of the U.S. intelligence and administration which undoubtedly resulted in the failure, the manipulation of information was successful in starting the war, but it was too fabricated to convince the Iraqi population and world spectators to support the U.S. invasion.
Additionally, failure derived from the increasing competition among agencies, each seeking “to maximize [their] position relative to the others for influence in national security policy” (Turner 2005, pg.46) by reshaping their assessments to best fit the government’s wanted results. This level of common false agreement was the perfect recipe for an intelligence plan with no concrete foundation and creating an infertile
