Oriflammes are gleaming! The rabble is roused! T-shirts are free for the taking! Five Years of War, Five Days of Action has reached its apex out on Low Plaza. A devoted cadre of protesters walked out of class at noon. Though the crowd has dwindled, there's no reason to think any of the 236 people who confirmed their attendance via Facebook flaked out. Since then, they've encircled the sundial, which has been recomissioned as a podium. The professors invited (Hamid Dabashi, Rashid Khalidi, Zainab Bahrani, and Bruce Robbins) wrapped up their speeches earlier. Three veterans (one a Columbia grad student) have told their war stories. But as the speeches end, hijinks await. The group has promised protestacular mischief at 2 o'clock. An anonymous tipster informs Bwog that Butler, Alma Mater, a banner, and some unfurling may be involved. Stay tuned for live(ish) updates.

Update, 1:52 pm: Much of the crowd is now sitting. One speaker, a postdoc student, asked the crowd whether it wanted to engage in any chants--response was unenthusiastic. Bwog is stroking sweat away from its brow, and regretting having bought a black, heat-absorbing laptop. Talk has turned to divesting Columbia from business with Iraq war contractors (some $5M invested!), and to demanding that Columbia introduce scholarships for Iraqi students. This has raised audience engagement to a low whooping level.

Update, 2:14 pm: The event reached a monumental finale when a banner was flung from Butler (Bwog was mighty impressed) and Alma Mater was veiled and surrounded by a militant bunch of arm-linkers. Bwog remains a bit confused about why the banner looks like a pink dress, and about why the veil looks like it was made of some sort of do-rag material. Sunbathers seemed befuddled but engaged. The clanging of the bell has recommenced.

Photos after the jump

Demonstrations against the war in Iraq continue today with a walk-out happening right now at the sundial, in the middle of a sea of sunbathers, who have splayed themselves out on South Lawn and and on the Low Steps. Check back for continuing coverage of the walkout plus the rumored "dramatic political statement" occurring at 2 PM by Alma Mater.

Bwog Lecture Hop Editor Pierce Stanley sends a dispatch with notes on last night's teach-in about the Iraqi refugee crisis and his new understanding of this week's series of Iraq War protests.

The distinct sound of a bell has been ringing in my head for the last three days, and it's starting to affect my all too precious sleep cycle. Every time I have tried to sleep this week, I have not been able to help but hear the intermittent chime of the bell commemorating the victims of the Iraq War ringing endlessly in my head. Fortunately for the Iraq War protesters who have been demonstrating against five years of American involvement in Iraq by ringing a bell for every casualty in the American occupation of that nation, they seem to be succeeding in raising awareness to their cause with such an unconventional method.

State Assemblyman confirms what everyone already knows, Morningside Heights is old and has lots of pretty buildings.

Iraq activists: Ring my bell, wash my flag.

Columbia's killing cancer. Cool!

Columbia students are hot for Hookah.

Smart Women Securities for Females in Finance.

GSSC election circus continues.

Bwog heard a high pitched, triangle-like pulse emanating from College Walk, and upon closer inspection, noticed that a funeral service being held for those killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war. The protest is called "5 Years of Occupation, 5 Days of Action" and the leaders of the protest are marked by their stenciled red and black on white t-shirts. Coffins and petitions currently surround the Sun Dial as a girl stands at a microphone reciting dates and numbers dead.

If that mini-gong is bothering you, however, don't hold your breath. The last time Bwog checked, the readers were still on April 2003 and a single pulse is going towards every person who has died so far. And depending on which report they believe, there have been between 104,000 and 1,446,063 deaths since the invasion.

-JJV

The Three Trillion Dollor War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict is Nobel Prize-winning, globally-thinking Columbia prof Joseph Stiglitz's new book. The book posits that Bush's cost estimates for the war in Iraq were incorrect—the administration cited a $200 billion figure—and that the Iraq conflict will cost almost double that of WWI, putting the figure at just about three trillion dollars. Ergo, attention-grabbing book title.

But the thing is, taxes (particularly for the rich) haven't really risen—in fact, they've been lowered in some cases. And Stiglitz argues that deficit spending makes not raising taxes possible. In fact, he'll be testifying in front of the Senate on Thursday saying so.

So... Columbia in the news. And by "the news", of course, we mean probably MSNBC.

- JNW

So the U.S has been fighting this war for the past few years-- you may have heard of it. It's taken a lot of lives, cost a lot of money, and generally spiraled into a mess of civil war, religious strife, torture, and global disapproval. Listening to Ambassador Hamid Al Bayati recite his government's policy on Tuesday night during an International Relations Forum (formerly Towards Reconciliation) event, however, I felt blissful waves of revisionism washing over my mind as he allayed our concerns with his Panglossian assertions. The U.S. had no motives but human rights in going to war, he told us. There was a direct link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, who was scheming the take over the world by invading oil-rich states one by one. Saddam either destroyed his WMDs while the UN was investigating or covertly smuggled them out of the country. The majority of Iraqis love America's actions. Violent insurgents and terrorists are from outside of the country. "It's a transition period." Don't worry-- things are better than ever, and "eventually [time frame not provided] Iraq will be stable and secure."

Was I the crazy one for believing all the dreadful things I'd heard about the Iraq fiasco? Here was the ambassador himself, telling us that no matter what the United States has done "we're all human, we make mistakes." Because Abu Ghraib is kind of like that time I forgot my sister's birthday.

Of course, Bayati is not in control of his phrases and memorized statements, as anyone would be quick to point out. A Google search reveals that the ambassador himself was formerly associated with the Shiite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri) and a die-hard anti-Saddam agitator, which may explain his repeated exhortations against the deposed despot and also why he skirted questions about U.S. criticism of Iranian interventions in the conflict, given that Sciri has an armed guard funded by Iran. No matter! Bayati toed the line, and toed it well, giving us all new insight into what a puppet regime looks like.

-KER

We probably should have mentioned something about this earlier, but we plead subconsciously willful ignorance. Let's make it quick, then: the recent Shattered Glass-lite semi-scandal over at The New Republic heavily involves one Cpl. Matt "Rod Majors" Sanchez, who was used as a source for accusations of fictionalization. Surprised?

You probably know the story already, but here it is again: Allegations from The Weekly Standard came out that "Scott Thomas" (now outed as Scott Thomas Beauchamp), a soldier who was doing an Iraq diary for TNR, was fabricating unpleasant details and that he was hand-picked to write because he was married to a TNR reporter. Currently, TNR editors (and the military!) are still investigating, they say, and re-checking every piece of information. Sanchez, it turns out, was the guy telling TWS reporters that Thomas had cooked his facts.

Of course, not everyone is buying Sanchez's story. A tipster passed along this Time Magazine blog entry today, which speaks for itself.

(Yeah, we know that's Hayden Christensen. So?)

- KER

Because Bwog doesn't do hot, sandy or constantly-in-existential-danger, Iraq didn't quite make it into our summer plans. Not so for Matt Sanchez, GS, who has been blogging out of the war-torn country for the past couple of weeks. What the hell's gotten into the conservative activist, military man, Spec opinion writer, American studies major and one-time porn icon? We reached the Marine corporal by e-mail in an attempt to find out.

How did you get the opportunity to travel to Iraq? Moreover, why go there in the first place?

I applied for the media embed; the process seems daunting but if you're tenacious and know exactly what you want to do, your chances of getting approved are a lot higher. I had several advantages. I have a security clearance from my time at NYPD Counter-Terrorism, I know people who have been through the process and they explained it in detail, I had a definite plan of doing a syndicated radio show, In Their Own Words and Hometown Heroes, and I was as specific as possible with dates, units, places etc.

Think your summer plans are exciting? Well porn legend turned Marine corporal turned conservative activist Matt Sanchez has you beat. Eschewing the safety of comparatively calmer destinations (Eastern Chad, for instance?), Sanchez has traveled to a certain far-away quagmire of death squads, roadside bombs and internecine warfare--namely Iraq.

Not satisfied with American media coverage of the Mess-O-Potamia, Sanchez is attempting to set the record straight, embedding himself with an American military unit and posting daily to a blog. Sanchez's work makes for some interesting reading, and Bwog wishes the Corporal luck in returning to America safely.

Last night, Columbia poli-sci professors Robert Jervis and Richard Betts tag-teamed Mount St. Vincent's College's Joseph Skelly on the situation in Iraq and Bwog artist Rachel Lindsay was on scene. This one was begging for a cartoon.

After their second body meeting on the subject, on Tuesday evening the Dems endorsed Senator Russ Feingold's plan for withdrawal from Iraq within six months of the bill's passage, defeating the Obama plan by a healthy two-thirds majority of members present. Now they're planning a big wing ding for March 20--the fourth anniversary of the start of the war--for which they are "pumped."

At Bwog's request, Columbia University College Republicans President Chris Kulawik had this response:

"While we're sure Senator Feingold can take comfort in knowing that his plan has been endorsed by such an influential and important group as the Columbia College Democrats, the Columbia Republicans are waiting to hear directly from leading Republican figures before making any endorsements. Seriously, we recognize that our members have diverse views and, therefore, we do not take any positions. At the same time, we are quite shocked that the College Democrat E-board feels that they have the authority to speak for all their members. How are campus Democrats who do not endorse the Senator's plan represented by this decision?"

Bwog is shocked--SHOCKED--that powerless campus organizations make symbolic gestures. Who do they think they are?

- LBD

Manhattan poll takes calculated, er, "responsible" stance on expansion: city's "success...difficult to absorb". There's always Bounty.

Mudd to get greener (does that mean less muddy, or more?)

Police rubber-stamp 11-block strike walk...

...but in opinion, we find self-conscious Iraq caution, and the same message with a lot more braggadoccio...plus, to top it all off, love is slaughtered by science. With V-Day and the aforementioned strike looming, we predict such selections will stay the course.

What is your course here [Limited War and Low Intensity Conflict] about?

The course here is a double headed oxymoron by title, which I love, I think it's part of what draws students to it. Really it's a course that revisits the classic works, some of the seminal works on what we've come to regard as limited war, others would call it wars of national liberation, revolutionary war, insurgency, counterinsurgency, terrorism, counterterrorism, small wars.

Small wars. What exactly is a small war?

Well, we've spent 15 lessons in this course exploring that question. What does limited war mean? Kind of to cut to the chase, it depends on your point of view and perspective. At least as classical literature lays out, it has at least two different schools of thought. With the Western perspective, we cover it all, but we're admittedly leaning towards the First World, advanced industrial nation state perspective, we have tended to define wars as small vs. total.

The West has, for a long number of years, been challenged with the idea of not only waging limited wars but winning them, finishing them well and legitimately. I mean, kind of case in point, Iraq, Afghanistan, the global war on terrorism. So that's an important question to at least return to, if not begin with: is there actually such a thing as a small war, or is it just a matter of perspective?

"We won't end this war until we're all vegetarians," she hooted. "The corpses are piling up in our homes, not just Iraq." The audience met her with laughter; on her march out she waved her cane, hollering, "You'll be laughing straight to the grave!"