Remember how I posted all those columns on Iraqi history on Daily Kos?
Iraq is a place where outcomes matter. In 1920, two years after WW I, a nationwide rebellion erupted, and when asked, they're still mad at the British for invading and staying. In 1991, the minute Saddam looked on the ropes, the knives came out. Now, we've created a black hole of a power vacuum. There is no one close to running the country. The Army is gone, the Baathists dying by the bucketload, the various factions are waiting to claim their stake.
Yet, I'm reading articles crowing about how well the war went. The problem is that deposing Saddam is like dumping the Czar in 1917. Just because you establish a democratic government, doesn't mean Kerensky is going to stay in power. If you had said in 1916 that the US would be in Russia until 1920, fighting communists, you would have been deemed a madman.
Just because Saddam was an evil bastard, doesn't mean his methods were ineffective. He kept control of a country with millions of guns and two active factions not dedicated to the territorial integrity of the country. He killed a lot of people to remain in power. The US does not have this option. The war alone has ruined the credibility of the US in the Arab World. Saddam's methods are not available.
The US war against Saddam may soon be over, but that may only be the start of the Iraq war. There are millions of guns, rockets and mortars, billions of rounds of ammo, scattered across the country. No one knows who controls them or what they have planned. The Shia want control of their destiny, as do the Kurds, and the Sunnis may not be happy to lose power.
The history of Iraq before the 35-year-long night of the Baath Republic descended upon it should have provided ample warning that once the lid was lifted off, those long decades of repression, more years of terrorism, assassination and massacre were only too likely to follow. For they were what had gone before.
Kanaan Makiya -- today one of the leading figures in the Iraqi democratic opposition and over the past decade and a half, one of the most fearless and perceptive critics of Saddam's tyranny -- summed up the history of Iraq's last decade of political turmoil before Saddam and his colleagues of the Baath took power -- and kept it -- in 1968.
Writing in his classic study "The Republic of Fear," he recalled, "Between 1958 and 1968 there were more than 10 coups and attempted coups two armed rebellions and a semicontinuous civil war against the Kurds."
The 37 years of supposedly constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy which the British Empire created in 1921 until its destruction in the frightful military coup and killings of 1958 was hardly a model of democratic and political propriety either. The late Professor Elie Kedourie of the London School of Economics, the greatest Western authority of his day on the modern political history of Iraq, described it up this way:
"Brief as it is, the record of the kingdom of Iraq is full of bloodshed, treason and rapine and, however pitiful its end, we may now say this was implicit in its beginning."
The Republic of Fear has been in print for a couple of decades.
Someone in Washington could have picked it up and read it.
It doesn't take a genius to see how this would play out, just bothering to read Iraqi history.
So far, 40 reservists and National Guardsmen have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom, the most in any conflict since Vietnam, military experts say, though the Pentagon could not confirm that. The victims have included engineers, law enforcement officers and college students. One was the grandfather of seven. They have died of hostile fire, a mysterious respiratory ailment, heat and heart attacks. One was killed by a pistol-wielding assassin, another by a fellow GI's hand grenade.
As the occupation continues, so will the deaths, military experts predict.
It is clearly more than most of these men and women bargained for when they agreed to drill one weekend a month and two weeks each summer in exchange for a little extra retirement pay or money for college.
They were once called ``weekend warriors,'' a phrase that now sounds almost quaint.
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Many reservists are in their 30s, 40s and 50s, leaving behind children, businesses and homes under construction. More than half of all reservists are married, and 37 percent have children. The rigors of fighting wars and keeping peace have been physically punishing -- even lethal.
Some reservists ``are saying `Hey, this is not what I signed up for,''' said Jeffrey C. Crowe, chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a member of a high-level task force looking into issues such as frequency of call-ups and the unpredictability of deployments. ``Unless we address these issues, retention rates are going to go down.''
For the first time in more than a decade, the Army National Guard and the Army Reserves may fail to achieve recruiting goals, the Defense Department confirmed. The National Guard and Army Reserve were lagging behind recruiting goals by 6,000 and 700, respectively, in recent months. And some National Guard leaders predict that as many as 60 percent of the Guardsmen mobilized today will leave the service at the first opportunity.
``They did not sign up to patrol a perimeter,'' said Jay Spiegel, past president of the Reserve Officers Association. ``They enlisted to drive tanks and shoot artillery.''
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Mark O'Neal ended his 26-year Coast Guard career last year after rumors swirled that his Fort Eustis-based reserve unit would be called to duty for the third time in two years. The rumors were right. The call-up came for the war in Iraq.
O'Neal, 44, was a senior chief petty officer and medical corpsman with the Coast Guard's Port Security Unit 305, a team of boat drivers who secure ports and waterways at home and around the world.
While living in tents, his unit helped protect New York City's harbor after the attack on the World Trade Center two years ago. They were called to duty again when prisoners were transferred from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
``A good 30 percent of the unit got out after Cuba,'' O'Neal said. ``There were a lot of people jumping ship, so to speak.'' The back-to-back deployments ``broke the cohesion of the unit. It affected morale.''
O'Neal said after they returned from Gitmo, members of his unit were promised there would be no more activations for 18 months. But when the reactivation rumors began, he applied for, and received, a hardship discharge. He feared another deployment could cause him to lose the business he owns in Lancaster, Pa.
``If they would say you have two years on and then off for two years, that would even be OK,'' O'Neal said. ``But when you put everything on hold and you don't know what's coming next, well, that's a problem
The reductions of the Army and the emphasis on the Revolution in Military Affairs is destroying the Reserve system. The Abrams reserve/active mix system was designed to deal with a land war in Europe. It wasn't designed for these constant deployments in different theaters. These units are not designed to run around the world, deployment after deployment. They are cracking under the strain. People are losing their homes, jobs and families behind these constant deployments.
He's big, he's a carnivore, he's terrorising the neighbourhood's residents, he's been swimming in people's pools and he's already claimed victims - several cats, a dog and apparently even a horse.
In Lebanon, a giant lizard has been roaming the streets of a Beirut suburb for several weeks, eluding all the attempts by the authorities to catch it.
He's Lebanon's own Komodo Dragon, or so say the witnesses who have seen him.
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It's believed that the one living just outside Beirut was brought to Lebanon by a German who lived here and eventually set him free.
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About three months ago, one person sighted him, but his tale was dismissed as that of a crazy person.
But when pets started disappearing, people started paying attention.
A Komodo Dragon? In Beirut?
He was sent by Al Qaeda to strike fear into Lebanese pets.
What I want to know is how you transport a Komodo Dragon anywhere. Those are the meanest freaking animals around. Vicious doesn't begin to describe them.
I mean, you're walking along the street, eating a falaffel or drinking a coke and you see this lizard. Of course, people think you're crazy after you dig up a picture of the thing and the words Komodo Dragon pops out of your mouth. They live in Indonesia. Nowhere near Beirut. But something is making pets disappear and it's not Israeli commandos.
A Komodo Dragon in Beirut. I've seen them in the Bronx Zoo and they scared the crap out me there. I sure as shit wouldn't to see one diddy bopping down my street.
Since last month, dozens of people who came here to work have been sent back to home towns from Florida to Alaska, and dozens more will be getting tickets until the $10,000 donation from a private business owner to fund the program runs out. Administered by the local police and Lutheran Social Services of Nevada, the program has succeeded not only in getting some people off the streets but also in revealing the day-to-day exigencies of people that Sandra Lewis, interim executive director of the charity, refers to as "the situational homeless."
"Those are the ones we're targeting, people who are homeless because of loss of a job, or they're unable to find employment, or a promised job didn't materialize, or someone got sick," she says.
"We're not shipping out people who are homeless to be homeless in another state," adds Jeremy Levy, a police officer who helped start the program, explaining that the people return to relatives so they have a place to stay while finding their way back into the economy. "This is about people who want to get a job, want to be employed, want to better themselves."
Levy and Lewis say they knew such a program would be popular; what they didn't expect was that the little charity would be overwhelmed. "I don't know, the world must think Las Vegas has jobs aplenty," Lewis says, scanning the waiting room as another day begins. Every seat is filled. People are waiting outside. The faces are homeless faces, street faces, bus-station faces; the faces of people long used to dysfunction rather than comfort.
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There was the following day when they returned to the bus station and saw the locker hanging open, with everything, including their Bible, gone. There were the three months in the Salvation Army shelter, and the walks along the Strip where they were told they could not be hired as waiters or busboys or janitors without an identity card from the Sheriff's Department ($35) and a health card showing they had been tested for communicable diseases ($35), money they didn't have.
There was the daily two-mile walk they began to make from the shelter to the intersection where landscapers troll at sunrise for day laborers. There were six good months in a small apartment when a landscaper hired them to pass out fliers door-to-door in a 6,000-door retirement community, and another month at the Salvation Army when that work ran out
In a sop to the liberals, and NBC employee, Larry O'Donnell (producer of the West Wing) got an MSNBC show. It seems he got the Good Doctor Savage's spot. Anyway, he had a bunch of people on, including Penn Jillette, who's another one of these limousine idealists who sneers at politics. Why is it that fat geeks think God put them on earth to make money, smoke dope and do what they want with no consequence? Some California consultant named Flavia, Coulter and someone I forget.
At one point in the discussion, Coulter describes a Howard Dean rally as "like Nuremberg".
No one, not O'Donnell, not this Flavia chick, no one challenged her.
I wasn't even paying much attention until then, because I was ruining Stonewall Jackson's day at Chancellorsville and fighting to a draw. Kept a corps in reserve the whole first day and hammered the units to the Union left flank right with Meade's fifth corps.
But that made me stop.
I mean, that's crazy talk. And Larry and crew let it pass. Which is what they always do with crazy Annie. She's sitting in a East Hampton house, proof she has friends, of some sort, Crazy Annie says crazy shit and people either ignore it or get steamrolled.
What someone needs to do next time is this:
What? Did you just compare a gathering of Americans to a rally of Nazis? Let me understand you here, are you comparing Howard Dean and his supporters to the Nazi Party. The Nazi Party who murdered men, women and children? I want to know something, Ann. You went to Cornell, you have a law degree. Are words so cheap to you, so meaningless, you would defame Americans who are execising their civil duty to be involved in politics? You owe those people an apology. What you said was not only unfair, but completely uncalled for. Just like Joe Conason has no right to get into your sex life, you have no right to defame people who disagree with you with such savage, unfair language.
Larry should have cut off her mike for that. You wouldn't compare a Bush rally to a skinhead meeting, not even as a joke.
As long as everyone treats her words as some sort of political freak show, she'll get away with this crap. Someone is going to have to either walk out or cut off her mike to get her to move towards some semblence of civility.
But you have to remember, these folks drink with her, fuck her, socialize with her. They may play liberal or conservative on TV, but in the real world, Crazy Annie is a member of the club. Until someone, maybe a Janeane Garofalo or Al Franken, actually get offended by her words, like Chris Rock, she's going to continue to do this. I pray Jon Stewart gets her on the Daily Show. Someone has to get nasty and take her to task. You have to realize that even if they exchange harsh words for your amusement, when they leave, it's all drinks and jokes and maybe a little slap and tickle.
That's how Crazy Pat Buchanan got away with his racist screeds for so long. People like him. He's a nice guy and his door is always open for his friends. When people had marriage issues or needed advice, he was the guy they went to. Until he wrote about fighting Stalin over Hitler and then people flipped. Coulter gets the same protection. Until she really says something indefensible, and she's crafy enough to avoid it about blacks or jews, she'll get a pass. Either because they like her, or feel sorry for her or want to fuck her.
(Gerald) Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs—an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum—in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, according to Posner, cia men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions.
Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do." The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd's and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002. To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid. When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-bin Laden triangle.
Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom's longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high-ranking air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (isi), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis."
Zubaydah said he attended a third meeting in Kandahar in 1998 with Turki, senior isi agents and Taliban officials. There Turki promised, writes Posner, that "more Saudi aid would flow to the Taliban, and the Saudis would never ask for bin Laden's extradition, so long as al-Qaeda kept its long-standing promise to direct fundamentalism away from the kingdom
A: Any testimony from this is now as uselss as candle wax in making cars. He was tortured.
B: The Saudis paid off Bin Laden
C: The Saudis were rooked by Bin Laden. Unless the deal was to only attack Americans and not the Saudi king.
If you think we don't have enough troops in Iraq now — which we don't — wait and see if the factions there start going at each other. America would have to bring back the draft to deploy enough troops to separate the parties. In short, we are at a dangerous moment in Iraq. We cannot let sectarian violence explode. We cannot go on trying to do this on the cheap. And we cannot succeed without more Iraqi and allied input.
But the White House and Pentagon have been proceeding as if it's business as usual. It is no wonder that some of the people closest to what is happening are no longer sitting quiet. The gutsy Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, acting on his own, told reporters last week that the U.S. would consider a new U.N. resolution that would put U.S. forces in Iraq under U.N. authority — which is the precondition for key allies to send troops. And Paul Bremer, who oversees Iraq's reconstruction, told The Washington Post that it was going to cost "several tens of billions" to rebuild Iraq. Both men were telling the American people truths that should have come from the White House.
Our Iraq strategy needs an emergency policy lobotomy. President Bush needs to shift to a more U.N.-friendly approach, with more emphasis on the Iraqi Army (the only force that can effectively protect religious sites in Iraq and separate the parties), and with more input from Secretary of State Colin Powell and less from the "we know everything and everyone else is stupid" civilian team running the Pentagon.
There is no question that we would benefit from a new U.N. mandate that puts U.S. forces in Iraq under a stronger U.N. umbrella. It would buy us and our Iraqi allies more legitimacy, as well as help, and legitimacy buys time and time is what this is going to take.
No shit.
It's about time that he understood how serious things are. But secterian violence is the least of our problems. The Shias blame, correctly, the Baathists and Al Qaeda for the attack. But they blame the US for the utter lack of security in the country. There are 300,000 Shia at the beginning of three days of funerals for their dead. The end of that mourning period bodes ill for the US.
Friedman only saw the possibilities, he didn't see the downside. Well, the downside is here and it's as bad as we imagined.
But many Democrats express reservations about both these New Englanders, and that is reflected in the failure of either to draw the institutional party support that typically rallies around a perceived winner. Some Democrats worry that Dr. Dean would prove an easy mark for Mr. Bush, given his liberal views and his lack of any experience in foreign affairs; others warn that Mr. Kerry is an awkward public figure who has run a timorous campaign ...................
Aides to Dr. Dean's rivals said there was no shortage of issues with which to try to discredit Dr. Dean. They pointed to what they said would be his poor chance of beating Mr. Bush, given his lack of foreign policy experience, stands that could hurt him in Democratic primaries, like his opposition to gun control, and shifts in positions on major issues that his opponents said would undercut his effort to present himself as the straight-talking outsider.
But the unorthodox character of Dr. Dean's candidacy — and the nature of his support from men and women who have been drawn into politics for the first time by his candidacy — has turned Dr. Dean into a difficult target for conventional political attacks.
Aides to his rivals said they had drawn a lesson from Dr. Dean's unsteady appearance on "Meet the Press" in June, which was mocked as near disastrous among party leaders, but now appears to have served to rally his base around him. As a result, Dr. Dean's rivals are all stepping gingerly, waiting for someone else to risk the first shot.
"No one wants to be the person to take on Dean," said Ron Klain, a Democratic consultant who was a senior adviser to Al Gore in 2000.
Dr. Dean's success poses a potentially big problem for Mr. Kerry, and his advisers planned to spend much of the weekend debating how to handle him in the weeks ahead. Many Democrats say it is hard to see how Mr. Kerry could survive losing to Dr. Dean in New Hampshire.
"There's at least a 90 percent likelihood right now that either Dean or Kerry will be the nominee," said Mr. Kerry's campaign manager, Jim Jordan. "And the race is as even as it can be. His advantages are purely stylistic. Kerry's are substantive and experiential."
Yeah and his fundraising just appeared from nowhere.
Look, Nagourney is missing the point because he's being fed shit by four other campaigns.
The issue is not that Dean has vunerabilities, but that Bush is imploding.
He doesn't even address the fact that the insiders are all pissed that Dean doesn't need them to win. He's running a winning campaign, at the moment, because he's not part of the institutional party. People are sick of the say little, no fight back, triangulating Dems. Aaron Magruder made the point this week in Boondocks. Al Sharpton says many of the same anti-Bush things Dean does, but gets no credit for it. Even though he's always warmly received for it. Now, they're ginning up some argument on gun control to use against him, even though that is an ancillary issue for minority voters and turns white males voters off.
The economy is doing nothing, the war is going badly and when people come back from their summer, the news is going to suck. People are going into their third year of either unemployment or underemployment.
CNN ran an especially stupid piece on Wal Mart Democrats vs Starbuck Democrats. I wanted to scream, "you know what they have in common, you patronizing idiot? No fucking jobs." Class matters a lot less now than it did in previous recessions. Because they're shipping all the jobs away. Not just the factory jobs anymore. An Ivy League degree is no more protection than being a certified welder.
The game here is poke the hole in Dean. Every candidate gets it, but unlike Clinton or Carter, Dems are not having it. You go after Dean, as Adam Nagourney will find out, people hammer you. Even if you don't necessarily support him, playing this game with Dean while Bush takes a vacation in August, while Iraq falls apart is silly. President layabout has seen all manner of disaster happen and then done nothing, except raise money and make speeches.
Dean may well stumble, but this is so early in the process, that he has time, room and money to screw up. At the same time, he's denying that to his opponents. There are real questions about Dean's appeal outside the base. He has to make sure he's not just the angry guy, but doctors do that well. Most importantly, he needs to make the issue Bush's policies. If he runs on jobs and the war, the other Dr. Dean can pick the new carpet for the oval office. If it becomes about anything else, he could have real problems.
This came across the e-mail transom and was so blindingly wrongheaded I felt the need to comment on it.
Before I comment, let me say this: I am no pacifist. Our war in Iraq is wrong but Saddam's depature is a good thing. The problem is that the follow through sucked. War on the cheap doesn't work. But as long as human beings exist, some will have to be shot down like dogs so the rest of us can be safe. It's sad, it's regretable, but it's a fact of life. Not that war works. War is always a monument to human failure. But sometimes, humans fail.
"Yes, but what about World War II?" There was a triumphant finality in his voice, as if to say: Gotcha! "What would you have done then?"
"Stayed out of it. After all, what did we get out of it? Soviet-occupied Europe and half a century of Cold War."
"What are you" – the poor kid looked frightened, for a moment, as if he'd seen a ghostly apparition – "some kind of isolationist?"
"You got that one right."
Now, isolationism failed. Besides the millions murdered by the Germans and Japanese, the US would have been unable to protect its basic interests. The Germans spent a lot of time and resources in South America. The idea that the Germans could have controlled our markets and resources like rubber and oil would have weakened the ability of the US to protect their basic economic interests. Would Nazipec be better than OPEC? I don't think so. Isolationism is an ideology of ignorance.
We didn't fight WWIII just because we were good guys and it was a moral cause. Our basic security was at stake.
There is a case to be made that a Dean victory would be worse than four more years of Team Bush. The Bush crowd at least is now saying that the occupation of Iraq is going to be as short as possible. We know they're lying, but at least they pay homage to the traditionally "isolationist," i.e. non-interventionist sentiments of the American people. The Democrats, and the more "internationalist" Republicans, like Senator Richard Lugar, are critical of the President for not "admitting" that the occupation is going to be anywhere from 5 to 10 years, if not more. They take the Dean line, that "we're stuck" there, and can't leave because, although it wasn't before, Iraq is somehow mysteriously tied in with our "national security."
Both sides are wrong. But what is he supposed to say? We'll withdraw immediately? That's not coming out of anyone's mouth. And if he can't see the difference between anyone and Bush's Iraq policy, well, you can lead an idiot to a library, but you can't make them read.
In order to get a word in edgewise, the antiwar movement is going to have to mobilize behind a third party candidacy, most practically a party that already has ballot status in most states.
This narrows the field considerably, since the Libertarian and Green parties are the only ones that come close to meeting such a tough standard. ......... I've had a few letters from readers who would dearly like Congressman Ron Paul to run, as he did in 1988. Now that's the kind of doctor we need to run for President: not the politically ambidextrous Dr. Dean, but the principled plain-speaking Dr. Paul. If only he would do it….
Oh yes, let's have another fantasy candidacy and let Bush get reelected again.
Let's have a real discussion here, not some peacenik fantasies.
The US is going to be involved around the world. The American people like that involvement and support it. Dean, like most mainstream pols, want to redefine how we are involved in the world. Kerry has pretty much made it clear that the current fascination with Imperium is doomed to fail. But we do not get to walk away from global responsibilities. The US, as both a democracy and superpower, will be asked to help create stability.
Raimondo mentions Liberia, but forgets that the Liberians asked for US help. So have others.
Why aren't we isolationists? Because all that does is allow unstable conditions to develop and we wind up there anyway. Not all use of force is bad or wrong. The US can and should use its power wisely and carefully, but there will be times Americans can prevent suffering. There is such a thing as the just use of power. But how can you argue with someone who thinks fighting WWII was wrong. We should not be blinded by Bush's abuse of that power. We have to reset the terms of the debate and the way we use our power. But it is a fantasy to think we will not use it.
No one ever accused Dean of being a pacifist and he isn't one. The ideologically pure will have to run to Nader or the Liberterians or some other people who won't get elected so they can make their points and feel good about themselves.
Four men have been arrested in connection with Friday's car bomb blast in Najaf which killed at least 95 people.
The local governor said two of the suspects were members of the former regime from Basra, while the others were non-Iraqi Arabs subscribing to the puritannical Wahhabi Muslim faith.
The four men are said to have confessed to the bombing and to other plots intended to destabilise the country.
The arrests were announced as crowds gathered at the scene of the blast - outside one of the holiest Shia Muslim shrines - to prepare for the funerals of many of the victims.
Iraq's leading Shia Muslim politician - Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim was among the victims
A gift from our Saudi friends.
Did anyone really think Sadr would have taken a dose of stupid pills and killed a man who, by his position, had to at least be on speaking terms with his father? Not to mention so many others outside his religion's holiest site? He knew Hakim, could have had an audience with him any time he chose. He didn't need a car bomb to kill him.
But with the Hakims out of the way, you have Sistani and Sadr and he has one hell of an argument to oppose the Americans. You have to imagine the debate in SCIRI will go something like this:
"Sadr is young, but he is right, the Americans have to go"
"They will hand over power. Bakr was right."
"Bakr is dead because he waited. Saddam's men killed Bakr in Najaf. They couldn't do it in Tehran, but the bastards got us in our holiest of places. And what do the Americans do? Stand there with their thumbs in their asses. If we don't act, Saddam will be back. The Americans are useless"
"But we lost so many people. The Americans are ruthless. You see what they do. They will send their gunships and kill our people. You see what they do to the Sunnis"
"If they stay here, Saddam will come back and they will steal our oil and women. If we don't oppose them, nothing will change. We have to protect ourselves. They cannot do it and no one will help them."
They realize that the Coalition is not protecting them and cannot deliver the democracy Hakim wanted. Sadr has been proven right by events and another week ends in disaster.
We are past any role for the UN. Even if they wanted, the countries would never get parlimentary approval at this point.
No one, in either party, wants to admit this. Not Dean, not DOS or DOD. We crossed a line when our Saudi friends sent that bomb to kill Hakim. And of course, Al Qaeda and Saddam are now fused like brothers.
We have entered a nightmare from which escape will be painful and bloody.
Bush wants the deaths to stop by March. I think he'll get that wish. Because the odds of us being in Iraq in March are less than 50/50. A lot less.
BAGHDAD, Iraq -- In the 20 weeks since the fall of Baghdad, two U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi women won each other's hearts.
The American men and Iraqi women courted, fell in love and decided to marry, but they had to battle disapproving senior American officers and fears of retribution by militant Iraqis.
When they finally held their double wedding ceremony Aug. 17, the nuptials were carried out with the secrecy and synchronization of a commando operation.
The two brides -- one in a print dress, the other in slacks -- and a few family members came to a city street corner at mid-morning. From there, an Iraqi intermediary led them to the route of their fiance's foot patrol.
The grooms, carrying M-16 rifles, marched up in their Army uniforms, complete with bulletproof vests. A nervous Iraqi judge arrived, and the group ducked into the grassy courtyard of a dilapidated restaurant, where the vows were exchanged.
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No one minded that the Iraqi women and U.S. soldiers flirted with each other. But as the friendships deepened into romance, U.S. officers decided the relationships posed a security problem and prohibited the men from "fraternization" during "combat."
In spite of the prohibition, the soldiers -- National Guardsmen from the Florida Panhandle -- converted to Islam in an Iraqi court a couple of weeks before the ceremony. The double wedding, including the exchange of rings and recitation of vows, was carried out with an American reporter watching.
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The weddings-on-patrol were necessary because the soldiers' superior officers were trying to block them.
"We are accomplishing a mission on the street and protecting our forces," Capt. Jack McClellan, a spokesman for the Florida Army National Guard, said. "We cannot develop relationships with the locals unless they are mission-related. If it's true love, in a few months . . . they can pursue it. They are not allowed to see them."
Yet Sgt. Sean Blackwell, 27, and Cpl. Brett Dagen, 37, were determined.
"I've done two years overseas on active duty, and I never thought this would happen," Blackwell said. "I love her."
Now, he is trying to figure out how to bring his wife -- they are married under Iraqi, but not yet under American, law -- to the Pensacola area, where the couple plans to hold a larger wedding with friends and family.
Subsequent requests for interviews with the men were denied by the military, although Blackwell could answer questions by e-mail.
The women, who agreed to be interviewed, face their own problems. Speaking to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on the condition that their names not be published, they said they fear militants could target them just as they have targeted interpreters, police and other Iraqis cooperating with the Americans.
Jeez, what a mess.
Here's what you have: commanders stupid enough to think they can tell people who to marry when they are determined to convert to Islam. Soldiers willingly disobeying lawful commands with superiors fighting each other over whether they can marry or not. US policy which treats Iraqis as an occupied people. No one stopped Americans from marrying French or British women, even interracial marriages when that was illegal in the US. The US did have this policy in occupied Germany and it broke down in weeks.
It's amazing. There was a total collapse of discipline that the commanders could not deal with and now these women, who they clearly see as a security risk, have to be dealt with.
Anyone who thinks we're in Iraq to liberate the people need to read this story. Marriage should be encouraged, not discouraged, if we were liberators. Now, occupiers have a different agenda.
I was watching NBC tonight. Dateline had a documentary on people who have lost their jobs in the era of Bush. Middle class working people finding out they have been sold out by Bush and his friends. The land of no health insurance and living hand to mouth.
I dislike paranoia as politics. I don't go in for believing in great conspiracies, which is why the Greens mantra about the two parties being the same always bugged me. There is a massive difference in taking big money from Wall Street and Hollywood than from big oil and Enron. A massive difference. Big oil and the people in it seem to care about nothing but finding more oil, at any cost. Movie makers will not pollute Alaska.
But George W. Bush has validated every single dark belief I have ever had in government, and I remember Watergate. Bush is no Nixon, who may have been deeply evil, but he had his limits. Bush has no clue. He's never had a boss, missed a meal, suffered a bad day. He blindly goes through life protected in every way from brutal realities. The ideologues around him no more care about the average American than they do the average Iraqi. I have never seen a politican so dogmatic in my life. America is losing the war in Iraq. We control nothing. Yet, despite offers for help, we refuse. This is getting people killed. Every day.
Bush's tax cuts should be called the Master Card/Visa relief act. Because that is where the money goes. You have $300, where does it go, for dinner or to the credit card company. It's a basic fact and Bush blithely ignores it. Tax cuts is no stimulus. A tax cut during wartime is amazingly reckless.
Bush is betraying the country. He's losing jobs, men, our living standards. The GOP has become so venal that they now contract out call center jobs to India. Instead of being an outrage, it's a footnote in the news. His war betrays our ideals and the Iraqi people. His economic policy benefits his friends while even middle class jobs go overseas. His environmental policy betrays our health and welfare. His justice policy betrays the constitution and what it stands for. His foreign policy betrays our principles and our allies. His military policy leaves our soldiers to swelter and dehydrate while the Vice President's company makes millions in profits for jobs they are unable to do competently.
He fixes his mind and the world is supposed to change. When it doesn't, he keeps on with the same policies.
Bush has made true the statement "what is good for General Motors is good for America". Except it isn't General Motors, but Halliburton.
We have been betrayed by George Bush. By his word and deed. he has done what he wanted, what he thought was best, without regard to the consequences of his actions or what will come after him.
Bush was popular because like any demagouge, he told people what they wanted to hear: we were the strongest, we should rule the world, they didn't understand our pain. We can bring justice with violence and it will cost us little. We may lose a few men, but the enemy will be crushed. We don't have to sacrifice, we can cut taxes and wage war and you won't feel a thing. Our allies are weak and unwilling to use force because they have become soft. We not only will rebuild Iraq, but make the middle east safe for Israel. Our ideals are so superior, all must fall before them.
When reality hit, in a series of truck and car bombs, all Bush can say is "there will be no retreat". Huh? There are 142 dead from the latest attack, 125 wounded and a grieving Shia population. What happens when they get Bremer. He's the last high value target left and considering they're so successful no one knows who they are, his life expectancy is dicey at best. These folks have wounded and killed over 500 people in a matter of weeks. Security problem? One might think so. What does Bush say then? "We're there until the end"?
Bush listened to a group of people who saw Iraq as a stepping stone to US/Israeli domination of the middle east. The reality is brutally different. Instead of dealing with North Korea, crazy, unstrustworthy, dangerous North Korea or stabilizing Afghanistan, home of the world's largest poppy crop, our Army is trapped in Iraq, dying one man a day.
Every day Bush continues in office, he betrays everything this country stands for. Osama Bin Laden may have destroyed two office towers, but George Bush and his minions are well on their way to destroying our souls. He has made America more hated and despised than Bin Laden's greatest dream. In fighting a monster, Bush seems all too willing to turn America into one.
The only way to win a war on terror is to offer real justice, real law, real alliances. To defend democracy and the rule of law, not seek exemption from it at our whim. As long as we blunder about in Iraq, in a pointless, futile war, we will not only lose that struggle, but much of what makes America great. For an America which describes justice as a JDAM bomb, Hellfire missle and Guantanamo Bay will make more enemies than friends. This is not the wild west but the real world. Defending ourselves is fine and just. But to call aggression defense and mismangement and anarchy liberation is to betray what we stand for and who we are.
It is a shame that the president can't seem to tell the difference.
Politics of Porn Justice Department Launches Long-Anticipated War on Obscenity
By Jake Tapper
Aug. 28— Rob Zicari and his fiancée, Janet Romano, are facing the first major federal prosecution for obscenity in more than a decade. They face 10 counts relating to the production and distribution by mail of obscene materials, and each could get 50 years in prison and a fine of up to $2.5 million.
"We're facing more time than the guy that they just arrested that was trying to sell the surface-to-air missile," said Zicari.
On April 8, law enforcement seized five movies produced by Zicari's California-based company, Extreme Associates, which bills itself as "The Hardest Hard Core on the Web."
One of the confiscated movies, Forced Entry, features three graphic scenes of women being spat upon, raped and murdered. Extreme Teens #24 has adult women dressed up and acting like little girls in various hard-core pornographic scenes. We can't even tell you the title of one of the films.
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Ashcroft had planned on launching the anti-obscenity initiative back in 2001, but was sidetracked by the 9/11 terror attacks. Now the issue is once again a priority for the Justice Department.
"I can tell you that as long as I'm chief of the section, the section will work very hard to prosecute obscenity cases along with child pornography, another important focus for us," said Andrew Oosterbaan, chief of the Justice Department's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section.
"This is about a priority for the country. This is something the country wants prosecuted and therefore we're prosecuting it."
Why in God's name is John Ashcroft wasting our money on this nonsense? They roll up that Al Qaeda network, yet?
The problem with this prosecution, like all obscenity prosecutions, is that it depends on the jury. With porn so widespread, it's hard to say what is truly obscene, even if you find it tasteless or even revolting. Ashcroft is going to wind up facing the best of the First Amendment bar here. Even if he venue shopped the case. A good lawyer will stress the risk to privacy and the comparison with violence in mainstream films.
It's not the kind of prosecution Ashcroft needs at this point. It seems like a sop to the Christian Right at a really inopertune time. He has NO major convictions in a 9/11 case, he has no evidence of rolling up the network which supported the hijackers and his Patriot Act II is facing increasing opposition. So what does he do? Double down his bet and go for an obscentity prosecutition which hands his opponents a case to hammer him with.
He's going to be asked where he would stop and given his freakish views on sex, he's liable to bungle that question badly.
A retired teacher who served as a human shield during the war recounts her experience in Iraq and braces herself for the fines and jail time she faces now that she is back
By Lynn Waddell
NEWSWEEK WEB EXCLUSIVE
Aug. 27 Faith Fippinger, a 62-year-old retired teacher of the blind, was one of more than 200 international human shields who hunkered down in Iraq early this year in hopes of discouraging a U.S. attack.
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Why would a retired woman leave her home in sunny Florida to sleep on a cot in a desert halfway around the world where there was an impending war? Couldn't you have protested the war from America?
It was a humanitarian reason: to serve justice, help the people and instill good will. I follow Gandhi's principle to nonviolent resistance. I wanted to stand beside and protect those who had already suffered. They were caught between their domestic tyrant and United States' ambitions. I went in hopes of stopping what I perceive as an illegal and unnecessary war.
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What happened when the bombing started, were you scared?
The first missile didn't go over our house until 5:30 at night [on March 19]. I have never experienced that sound before. Knowing it was so close, my heart definitely pounded harder than it has before. More than feeling fear, I was overwhelmed by sadness that our government would do such a thing. I knew why I went to Iraq, and I was prepared to give my life if need be for those innocent civilians. When all labels and names are taken down, we are all just human beings.
Did you see Iraqis rejoice at Saddam's fall from power?
Yes, people were relieved, but they were also concerned about what's going on now. They worry if worse is coming. Their motto to America is:- Drink your oil, take your oil, bathe in oil, and get out.- I did not see people dancing through the streets.
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How did people in the hospital respond to you when you told them you were American, and were you ever hesitant to tell them?
I always said I was American because I wanted the Iraqi people to see that our country has concerned caring people. Usually when I did say that I was from America, they would say, "Thank you for helping us. Why this war?" One time there was a man standing beside his dying wife. Six of their children had been killed in the bombings. With tears streaming down his face, he asked me where I was from. I said America, but it was very difficult to admit.
How long did you volunteer at the hospital, and what other experiences did you have there?
Actually I spent about a week, but to me it seemed like a lifetime. Many of the horrors [I saw] will stay with me the rest of my life. There was this beautiful, young pregnant woman whose right arm had been taken off and her left was badly damaged. They took her baby by Cesarean; fortunately she was almost full term. Then the mother in fact lost her left arm. When I would pass by her room, I could hear her crying. She would say, "I can't hold my baby."'
Another Iraqi woman, Dena, went in for surgery on her leg. Bombing had destroyed her home and her whole block. They had to remove her entire left leg. After her surgery, she looked up at me and said,"And this is liberation?"
I saw doctors sobbing while they worked. One doctor would point bed to bed, telling the names of the children who had died there. There were vans in back of the hospital for the dead bodies. Due to sanctions they had no air conditioning. I witnessed families who had sent their children to relatives thinking they would be safe, try to find their children's bodies there.
The Treasury Department wants to garnish this woman's pension and social security. While Dick Cheney makes millions and the Shia have no protection for their leading clerics. Your tax dollars at work at a billion a day
Alastair Campbell is to resign as the government's director of communications and strategy.
Mr Campbell's decision was announced by Downing Street shortly after 1430 BST on Friday.
He said: "It has been an enormous privilege to work so closely in opposition and in government for someone I believe history will judge as a great transforming prime minister."
Mr Campbell said his family had paid a price for his role and said his partner, Fiona Millar, would be leaving No 10 at the same time "in a few weeks".
The BBC is to have a small party celebrating this victory, nothing too obvious, just a few flutes of champagne and a couple of pints. Public chortling is to be avoided.
One down, two to go. So when will Defence Minister Hoon leave the government? I hope Gordon Brown has picked out his colors he wants in the PM's office. He may be sitting there sometime sooner than he planned.
More cash than any Democratic candidate has ever had.
What makes Dean's operation so formidable?
He has found a way to get cheap money.
In any campaign, most of the time and effort is devoted to holding fundraisers. So you have the candidate run from pillar to post meeting executives and movie people and begging for cash. He has to bend the ear of a lot of people. This process takes months and inflicts a bunch of rubber chicken (or in Bush's case, hot dogs and burgers) on people. So you don't get much strategy from campaigns during the fundraising period.
By collecting so much money on the web, Dean can start to focus on Bush as a target, Not just in speeches, but on TV. He can go to tv early and stay there. Which is a tremendous advantage. Not only that, but it costs him almost nothing to get that money from the web. So he's spending pennies per dollar raised. It gives him the flexibility to move around the country and stay visible. His people, knowing that the web allows them to raise money, raise it quickly and raise it cheaply, can plot to run campaign swings like the Sleepless Summer Tour.
What has to scare the other campaigns is that with Dean estimated to raise $10.3m in a normally dormant 3Q, they have no way of knowing how much he can raise in the far more active 4Q. He could easily raise double that as his profile grows.
That money means he can pay staff, not go into debt and run TV ads. He can also target his pitches to the money people carefully. He doesn't have to keep hitting them up. He can go to them and say "we've raised X percentage from online fundraising, we have a popular message". When he goes to Hollywood, people can already see that he's got money coming in. When he goes to Wall Street, he can say the same thing. He won't have to beg them for last minute cash either.
What this does is make it hard to give to other campaigns and forestalls late entries. Because it sends two messages. One, this Dean guy has a lot of support. Why should we give to you instead of him. Two, he has such a money lead and such an efficient way of getting it, how can you match it? The Dean money machine is starting to choke off support to every other candidate. Kerry is doing the best, but it's because of his resume. Gephardt's problem is that he's getting mercy support, but Dean union support is growing. Unions have to be wondering if Gephardt is a ticket to nowhere. A lot of the union activists have to wonder if backing Dean now might serve them well in 2005. Graham, Edwards and Lieberman are being choked off by a lack of cash and exposure.
Why does Dean have such a lead in fundraising?
He bet against the war. Simple as that. And as the war goes south, he benefits. Even if we stablize Iraq, Dean's skepticism has been validated. Lieberman, who still truly supports the war, has been sliding towards oblivion. You won't read that in the papers, but the race so far has turned into a national security refendum and Dean is winning it handily. The only reason Clark would even consider entering the race, and the Dean money lead has frozen him in place, is because of the same issues. Unfortunately for him, there is so little daylight between him and Dean on these issues, his resume is the only outstanding factor in his favor.
The reason people need to pay attention to the money is that is what the pros do. Howard Dean may be your average doctor, well-meaning, slightly arrogant and bossy, but he's an above average fundraiser. Which has caught everyone by surprise.
Update:
Last Updated: Friday, 29 August, 2003, 13:23 GMT 14:23 UK
At least 17 people have been killed by a car bomb in the holy city of Najaf - among them leading Shia Muslim politician Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim.
The bomb blew up near the Tomb of Ali in the central Iraqi city, one of the holiest shrines for Shia Muslims, just as main weekly prayers were ending.
No group has admitted carrying out the attack.
But correspondents say that a power struggle has been going on within what is known as the Hawza - the Shia religious establishment based in Najaf.
Ayatollah Mohammed Baqr al-Hakim was leaving the shrine after saying Friday prayers when the bomb went off
Very bad news. Hakim was one of the main faction leaders and his death could very well drive many people into the arms of Sadr, especially if the Baathists killed him. This is a major blow to US policy in Iraq.
Staff and agencies
Friday August 29, 2003
Up to 17 people have been killed and dozens more injured in a car bombing in the Iraqi town of Najaf, al-Arabiya satellite television reported today
The explosion took place at the Imam Ali mosque, the most holy shrine for Shiite Muslims in Iraq, as worshippers gathered for Friday prayers.
The report, monitored by the Associated Press in Baghdad, could not immediately be confirmed. But there has been considerable unrest among the religious communities in the holy city, which lies 110 miles south-west of Baghdad.
The reported bombing comes one week after a device exploded outside the house of one of Iraqi's most important Shiite clerics, killing three guards and injuring 10 others including family members.
A gas cylinder, which had been placed along the outside wall of the home of Mohammed Saeed al-Hakim in Najaf, exploded just after noon prayers July 22.
The Al-Hakims are one of the most influential families in the Shiite community in Iraq, and Iraqi newspapers reported two weeks ago that the cleric had received threats against his life
Earlier, an American soldier was killed and four others wounded in an ambush north of Baghdad, and the police chief in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit narrowly escaped an assassination attempt, the US military said.
Insurgents fired three rocket-propelled grenades at a support convoy on a main road north-east of Baqouba.
The soldiers were also hit by small arms fire. One of the wounded soldiers will need to have a leg amputated, said Captain David Nelson from the 4th Infantry Division's 2nd Brigade.
The death raised the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq to 282.
OK, a second attempt on Hakim (more like 11th, really), but at the Sherif Ali mosque?
Sadr would have to be clinically insane to risk such a naked attack. And given that it's a car bomb, something his people have shown no skill in making, that has the feel of Saddam's boys. Propane tank, ok, but a car bomb? Nope. Someone has to teach you how to make one and the only folks who can teach him, Hezbollah, sure as shit are not going to blow up the Sherif Ali mosque.
What this does is show the Shia that the Americans will not and cannot protect them. In a rather flagrant manner.
If the Americans can't prevent the bombing of the holiest site in Shia Islam, why are they in Iraq?
Salam Pax's family had a little visit from the US Army .
Our house was searched by the Americans. That happened almost ten days ago. I wasn’t home, but my mother called the next day a bit freaked out.
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have been “informed” that there are daily meetings the last five days, Sudanese people come into our house at 9am and stay till 3pm, we are a probable Ansar cell. My father is totally baffled, my brother gets it. These are not Sudanese men they are from Basra the “informer” is stupid enough to forget that there is a sizeable population in Basra who are of African origin. And it is not meetings these 2 (yes only two) guys have here, they are carpenters and they were repairing my mom’s kitchen. Way. To. Go. You have great informers.
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their genius translator comes to the commander of operation [Pax House Bust] and tells him he has found “suspicious documents”. They are passes to various conferences he has attended and bank cards for old closed accounts he used to have and most alarmingly for the person in charge was an invitation my father received a couple of days earlier to a meeting with General Abi Zaid to which he and others were flown to the Bakr Air Base north of Baghdad.
Winning hearts and minds with bum tips across Iraq.
The government's part-privatisation of the London Underground was blamed last night for exacerbating a massive power failure which blacked out large parts of the capital and brought the transport network to a halt.
Early reports suggested that 250,000 people were affected by the blackout, including tens of thousands of tube passengers who were stuck in tunnels as trains broke down.
Buildings along the Thames were in darkness, 270 sets of traffic lights failed and train services stopped from four main stations
The blackout sparked fears of a terrorist attack. But it quickly became clear that the failure was caused by a fault in one of the National Grid's key circuits serving south London and the home counties.
Sanchez said casualty figures since the end of major fighting were ``about what we would expect to get in this kind of conflict.'' Since then, 143 U.S. soldiers have died -- five more than during the war itself.
Sanchez's news conference was interrupted by two activists from the Chicago-based group ``Voices in the Wilderness,'' which opposes the U.S. occupation. They demanded the Army investigate an incident in which they said six Iraqis were killed by U.S. forces on the northern outskirts of Baghdad on Aug. 7.
Soldiers removed the two women, one of whom held a photo of the alleged victims and read out their names. The other woman held up a black mourning banner for television cameras.
How dare they disrupt the general's conference with some nonsense about dead Iraqis. Dead Americans barely count. Dead Iraqis? They were probably all bitter-enders anyway. Even the kids.
Having read the relevant sections of both Al Franken's and Joe Conason's new books, I can now precisely place where my discomfort with Conanson's approach comes from.
His book, while it makes a lot of good points, comes off as a moralistic screed against the right, which is fair. But he trips up with his attacks on the sex lives of people. He jumbles hypocracy with adultery and comes off poorly. Ann Coulter has never come out for abstinance or sobriety or born-again Christianity. He then attacks her for having an active sex life and being friends with gay men. Which is a bizarre argument. One would hope that she wasn't serious with her hateful blather, that it was an act like Jenna Jameson's blowjobs or something. The real scam is that she's a secular Jimmy Swaggart. She says what she says but you know it's an act if you want to.
Instead of discretely nailing each of his targets, the loathsome Laura Ingraham, who taunted gays and lost a big assed judgement while at Dartmouth, he blurs them all into one mass and misses the point. Ingraham is loathsome because she harmed people. Coutler is loathsome because she, in the words of Chris Rock "makes shit up".
There is a great argument to be made from Conason's raw facts. Which is this: liberalism has become so deeply ingrained that even its opponents benefit from the lifestyles it has permitted. By redefining the role of women, Coulter and Ingraham were free to be successful commentators, jobs they would have found impossible to get as late as the 1970's. They have benefitted from what they think they despise. It isn't relevant who these women sleep with, nor should it be used against them.
Franken takes the smarter and frankly more relevant approach. He doesn't discuss her. He discusses her work.
In one hillarious exchange, he calls Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Coulter claimed that he was the son of Socialist Presidential candidate Norman Thomas.
He says no, my father's name is Evan Thomas, Sr. I'm Evan Thomas, Jr.
Franken asks, are you sure
He says yes, is this about that Ann Coulter thing?
Franken says yes.
Thomas replies, "You know I think there's something wrong with her".
Simple as that he demolishes her. He doesn't describe her as evil or ask about the men she's fucked. He nails her lunacy in a brief, clever way. He debunks her with facts.
Look, the problem with Coulter is that, as Chris Rock says, "she makes shit up". Franken did note something which I think is highly relevant. She doesn't endorse conservative social stands. She endorses the idea of conservatism. She doesn't attack homosexuals and call for their conversion, but homosexuality. When she talks about Christianity, she would rather be having a beer at a Southhampton beach party than be caught dead with the Roy Moore rock worshiping crowd. Her Christianity isn't the snake handling, jesus praising kind, but a sort of strict thing to keep people in line.
Coulter has a weird rhetorical style. She attacks everything and everyone in what is best described as a human wave of words. She's not interested in facts. She wants to overwhelm you. She as indifferent to facts as Soviet officers were to the fact that some of their men would charge German machine guns without rifles. She's got so many crazy arguments going that even if you shoot one down, she's got others flying at you. She says public schools have failed, not that vouchers are the solution. She says liberals are degenerates, but she doesn't endorse pro-life or abstinance. You're so pissed at her crazy reasoning and arguing, like her defense of Tail Gunner Joe, you miss the fact that she doesn't mention the Venona transcripts about real Soviet spies or that only a tiny minority past 1950 spied for ideology.
It's like fighting with your girlfriend. She's gets you so crazy, you miss the points which would win your argument. So instead of fighting about her forgetting to fill up the gas tank, you're arguing about that old girlfriend and your trip to Cancun, which happened before you met her.
Conason rises to the craziness she brings on and picks a fight over her sex life, which isn't the issue.
Franken looks at her work and demolishes it, which is.
A rush-hour power cut has caused major disruption on rail and Tube services in London and the South East.
Power returned to the system at about 1900 BST but the knock-on effects are still being felt by commuters struggling home.
Network Rail says between 500 and 1,000 trains have been affected by the power cut, caused by a fault with the National Grid.
Train company Connex reported the power went out between London and Ashford, in Kent.
South London was hardest hit and Transport for London said 60% of the Tube network was affected.
Panic in London. People run from trains.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
A couple of weeks ago, the Brits used our power problems as a commentary on American society.
I guess the Iraqis are having another bitter laugh.
A British soldier has been killed in southern Iraq, the army has confirmed.
The soldier was hit by gunfire when his patrol was attacked by a crowd with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, said a military spokesman.
He has been named as part-time Fusilier Russell Beeston from Govan, Glasgow.
The 26-year-old was a member of the 52nd Lowland Regiment, attached to the 1st King's Own Scottish Borderers.
Another soldier is said to be in stable condition after being wounded in the incident, which occurred in Ali al-Sharqi, about 200 kilometres (120 miles) north-west of Basra.
But there's a small area north of Baghdad where there's trouble. Or at least that is what they say on CNN every day.
There is a holy shit moment in this article. I'll point it out to you in a moment.
General Is Said to Want to Join '04 Race
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 — Wesley K. Clark, the retired four-star general who has been contemplating a run for president, has told close friends that he wants to join the Democratic race and is delaying a final decision only until he feels he has a legitimate chance of winning the nomination.
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The addition of General Clark into the presidential campaign could shake up a race that has remained fairly static for months, with Dr. Dean, Mr. Kerry and Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri showing greater traction than the others running: Senators Bob Graham of Florida, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, John Edwards of North Carolina, Representative Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio, former Senator Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois and the Rev. Al Sharpton.
While some contenders view General Clark more as a running mate than presidential threat, his credentials could pose problems for several of them. As a former military officer, he would sound at least as credible on national security matters as Dr. Dean. As a Southerner from Little Rock, General Clark might blunt the appeal of Mr. Edwards and Mr. Graham in the South.
And as a Vietnam veteran, he would temper a prominent theme of Mr. Kerry's campaign, that he is the only Democrat running to have served in combat.
But almost all the other Democrats have financial and organizational advantages over General Clark. He has done almost nothing to prepare for a nationwide campaign or even one centered in the early test states, Iowa and New Hampshire. A spokeswoman, Holly Johnson, said his only political activity had been traveling the country, giving speeches
Excuse me, I thought the White House said Dean was the liberal pansy who was a friend of Saddam Bin Laden.
This is a big deal quote because it means that Dean's national security arguments are making headway.
The draft Clark people say they can raise a million, but given his poll numbers and Dean's really large lead in money, Clark would have to spend a LOT of time raising money. Late entries aren't done any more because of the ground work done by the campaigns early in the process. The pledges won't be enough. I don't like late entries into races unless they really add something to the mix. Richard Reeves is talking about Hillary Clinton, other people are talking about Clark. I think both won't meet the reality test. Hillary Clinton is regarded as evil by the right and the first ad would be her promising to serve out her term. Clark would need a staff and millions he isn't going to get.
Popularity is illusive. Poll numbers change. Hillary may seem a dream candidate, but what Southern state would she win? None? Imagine the ads and the attacks. Clark? His peers have sharp words about how he ran EUCOM. There's a bunch of folks, starting with David Hackworth, and going way beyond him, more than willing to attack Clark's character. Read the Halberstam book about the Clinton-era Pentagon. He does not come off well. It may not be fair, but it's politics.
Let's get real: we have a two person race and that may end pretty quickly. We have Kerry and Dean and everyone else is suffocating slowly. Lieberman and Edwards, moribund. Graham and Gephardt, staggering to defeat. Kuchinich, Mosely-Braun, Sharpton, irrelevant. You can add more people in, but that's stupid. If it's going to be Dean, and his money speaks very loudly and is a clear vote of confidence, Clark will not stop him. Hillary can, but she would have to convince people that with three years in the Senate, she should be President.
Remember one thing about political reporters: they don't know what happens in the room with the candidate. They think they do. But they don't. Do yourself a favor, pick up four books on politics. Ed Rollins' memoirs, Boys on the Bus, recently reissued, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 and the Begala/ Carvillebook on campaigns. You will then know more than most political reporters do.
So when you read me, and I don't agree with the Times, or WaPo, remember this: I've been in the room and they haven't. Once you're in that room, your world view changes.
The Daily News's Michael Kramer, as late as last week, was defending the war
Listening to the Bush administration defend its Iraq policy is like listening to an insurance agent remind you about the fine print - after the accident. All the problems, all the caveats, all the potential downside was there for all to see from the start.
This insulting, legalistic defense of a policy gone astray is becoming tiresome. It's true that before the war began, the President made a point of saying that securing a stable and democratic Iraq would take time and effort and wouldn't be easy.
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After Saddam's regime was gone, the Iraqi people would welcome our troops as liberators, security would involve little more than directing traffic, businesses would thrive in a free market, basic services would be restored swiftly, the march to democracy would be inexorable.
That wasn't the best-case scenario. It was the only scenario. No one inside the administration ever predicted anything remotely resembling the current mess.
No. Those who did were fired or humiliated in public.
We don't need to be told how tough it is - and we surely don't need to be told that we were told all along that it would be tough. Rather, we need to hear that pacifying Iraq is proving a lot tougher than anyone expected - so tough that things are going to have to change.
....... The guerrilla resistance is doing well precisely because it can blend into villages and cities without fear of being ratted out to U.S. forces. Increasingly, it seems that the opposition to America in Iraq is broad-based, a lot like the opposition to Israel among Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza.
I guess he's gotten around to reading the real estimates about rebuilding Iraq.
Bush's speech yesterday may have been the worst of his career. It certainly pissed off a bunch of people.
But Bush isn't going to change his mind. Because that means he's a failure and he cannot fail again. It's a psychological/unresolved daddy thing. So Americans will die so GW can gain the respect of his father.
Dean led the eight other candidates for the Democratic nomination by raising $7.6 million in the second quarter, and there has been a huge surge in small-dollar contributions to his campaign over the Internet and from more traditional, meet-and-greet fundraising events, Trippi said. Dean is virtually certain to win the money race -- an important measure of a candidate's popularity inside the party -- this quarter, too, according to rival campaigns. The third quarter will end Sept. 30.
Money from small contributors which none of his rivals can hope to match. He's been able to raise money in spots on the level of Bush and Cheney at a fraction of their cost. Make no mistake, Dean is running against Bush, not John Kerry. Dean has already defined the debate as who will best be able to beat Bush. The minute they start debating Dean and his tactics, the base of the party howls in his defense. It also has to cause Wes Clark to think hard. Dean can bury him in ads and cut off his money. In political terms, he's got the high ground. Joe Lieberman tried to turn Dean into the issue and it was a body blow to his campaign. Al From tried to scare people away, and it backfired on the DLC. Dean's money has pushed all the candidates to attack Bush harder and harder.
Political pros know that money tells the story. Dean's fundraising has been phenomenal.
The physician-turned-politician raised nearly $1 million this past weekend, as thousands of people flocked to rallies in Falls Church and several other cities around the country. If Dean tops $10 million in contributions, which his rivals expect him to do easily, he would become the second Democrat to hit that mark in the year before a presidential election. President Bill Clinton did it in 1995, when he was running for reelection.
Which mean he's raised more money than any Democratic challenger ever and done it earlier.
"We're not going to raise that -- that's for sure," said Steve Elmendorf, a top Gephardt adviser. But, "at the end of the day, money isn't everything."
Jim Jordan, Kerry's campaign manager, said Dean's fundraising has been an "impressive" feat his candidate cannot match. "We won't hit $10 million this quarter, and we don't need to."
The reason, Jordan said: Democratic candidates can spend only $45 million in the primaries, including the federal matching funds, unless they operate outside the traditional campaign finance system
Uh Jim, bullshit. You would kill to have Dean's money and the resources it brings. Any campaign would. Then he lays this whopper on:
Jordan said voters would be "distressed" if Dean broke his earlier pledge to abide by the spending limits for "purely political reasons." But most Democrats do not think Dean would pay a political price for doing what Bush is doing: seeking to raise as much money as he can. Trippi said the decision will not be made anytime soon.
Well, the next quarter will show if they can pull it off. But the reason Dean is doing well is simple: he opposed the war. If the war had gone well, Kerry or Gephardt might have had a chance. But Dean's money advantage is a very big deal as well. Wes Clark has to know he'll never raise that kind of cash in the time left.
What does that money do? It alters the debate. Lieberman and From tried to make Dean the issue. The base, not even Dean supporters, but the base of the party turned on them like wolverines. Because Dean is setting the agenda. He's running against George Bush. If you run against Howard Dean, people want to know why. Which is a pretty intense handicap to deal with. Dean is creating a simple litmus test: how hard will you run against Bush. It's crippled Lieberman and Edwards already. It's hindered Kerry and Gephardt.
Dean's money comes in cheaply and can be spent taunting the ever tempermental Bush.
One message which should be drawn from Dean's summer fundraising is that he's being rewarded for opposing Bush. By fighting Bush's policies and attacking democratic passivity, he's not only cutting himself away from the pack, he's getting records amounts of cash.
The putrid 9/11 teledrama will air on Showtime next Sunday. In a movie which would do Leni and Sergei Einstein proud, this bit of agitprop turns the fraidy cat Bush into a hero of Eisenhower proportions. The reality is that Bush ran like a little bitch until he was sure he was safe. While off-duty firemen, retired firemen (including actor Steve Buschemi, who had been a fireman in the 1980's) ran into the Twin Towers, Bush ran from airbase to airbase, cowering from Al Qaeda. While real heroes were saving lives and dealing with real horror (burning people falling from the buildings), Bush was reading childrens stories and hiding.
This vulgar fiction is now being done in an Orwellian way to rewrite history.
The turgid DC 9/11 would doubtless have been more entertaining with Harrison Ford or Arnold Schwarzenegger or even Ronald Reagan in the role of the president. DC 9/11 is instead the spectacle of Reagan in reverse: Rather than being a professional actor who entered politics, Bush is a politician who has been reconfigured, packaged, and sold as a media star—dialogue included. Indeed, that metamorphosis is the movie's true subject.
The basic Dubya narrative is the transformation of a roistering Prince Hal into a heroic Henry V (as dramatized in the agitprop version of Shakespeare's play staged this summer in Central Park). In DC 9/11, the young Bush—spoiled frat boy and drunken prankster—is subsumed in the image of the initially powerless president. The movie is thus the story of Bush assuming command, first of his staffers (who attest to his new aura with numerous admiring reaction shots) and then the situation. He is the one who declares that "we are at war," who firmly places Cheney (Lawrence Pressman) in his secure location—not once but twice. (To further make the point, Chetwynd has Scott Alan Smith's Fleischer muse that the press refuses to get it: "The Cheney-runs-the-show myth is always going to be with some of them.") Rudy Giuliani, who eclipsed Bush in the days following the attack, is conspicuously absent—or, rather, glimpsed only as a figure on television.
Rumsfeld (impersonated with frightening veracity by Broadway vet John Cunningham) emerges as the Soviet-style positive hero, embodying the logic of history. In the very first scene, he is seen hosting a congressional breakfast, invoking the 1993 attack on the WTC, and warning the dim-witted legislators that that was only the beginning. Rumsfeld is the first to utter the name "Saddam Hussein" and, over the pooh-poohs of Colin Powell (David Fonteno) goes on to detail Iraq's awesome stockpile of WMDs. But there can be only one maximum leader. Increasingly tough and folksy, prone to strategically consulting his Bible, it is Bush who directs Rummy and Ashcroft to think in "unconventional ways." This new Bush is continually educating his staff, instructing Rice in the significance of "modernity, pluralism, and freedom." (As played by Penny Johnson Jerald, the president's ex-wife on the Fox series 24, Condi is a sort of super-intelligent poodle—dogging her master's steps, gazing into his eyes with rapt adoration.)
...............
Several incidents in the Iraq war—the semi-fictional Saving Private Lynch saga, the made-for-TV toppling of Hussein's statue, the outrageous Top Gun photo op with which Bush announced victory—are ready to be excerpted in Republican Party 2004 campaign propaganda. DC 9/11 is that propaganda: The "Battle Hymn of the Republic" swells as Bush flies into ground zero, where he astonishes even Rove (Allan Royal) by spontaneously vaulting a police barricade to hop on the rubble and grab the microphone. A nearby fireman, compelled to tell the president that he didn't vote for him, swears allegiance, mandating Bush to "find the son of a bitch who did this." Once Bush realizes that "today, the president has to be the country," Rove considers the image problem solved. Bush, he explains, has become commander in chief and taken back "control of his destiny." The climax is Bush's televised, prime-time September 20 speech—a montage of highly charged 9-11 footage that ends with the real-life, now fully authenticated Bush accepting the adulation of Congress as he fingers the talismanic shield worn by a fallen New York police officer.
Jesus, this is bad fiction. How fake is this? Compare the Longest Day to Saving Private Ryan's first 20 minutes. In one, a bunch of Marines run on the beach (it was shot partly in Southern France with the 6th Fleet's cooperation), in the other, people explode in front of your face. A real movie about the two weeks from 9/11 would make heroes of firemen and cops and ordinary people. Sure, the cops wouldn't be able to communicate with firemen and Mayor Giuliani would hijack all credit and then be humiliated by Gail Collins in the Times, but it wouldn't reek of fiction. Bush desperately needs to be seen as a hero, even when he is a coward in his heart. He wants heroics without risk. One thing about his father is that he neither wanted nor accepted heroism as a birth right. And he was heroic, not just as a pilot, but as a scholar as well. And when no one wanted jobs like CIA chief, he stepped in. He is not my favorite person by any means, but he had character. Too bad his son inherited his mother's virtues of pettiness and badger-like meanness.
Bush is no Augustus. He's closer to Nero, fiddling while America burns.
His palid speech before the American Legion drew fire from Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel, who were pissed. They want help from the UN. That help isn't coming, but Bush's actions sure make it impossible to even ask.
SEN. CHUCK HAGEL:I do agree with it. I think the world would respond to our leadership. We have nothing to fear from our partners. My goodness, we're in this together. What the world wants to see is responsible American leadership that includes our friends and our allies and those who we are going to have work with over a long period of time if we are to win this war on terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. No one nation is big enough, great enough or powerful enough to do this alone. We need our friends and we'll need our friends for a long time. I don't know if a power or an individual who doesn't need friends. It's especially important in this kind of a world.
SEN. JOSEPH BIDEN: The president invoked Afghanistan in the beginning as if that was a model. I hope to goodness that's not the template we use. Afghanistan is in the hands of the warlords. You essentially have Mr. Karzai who both Chuck and I know well who is the mayor of Kabul - where the Taliban is reasserting itself although we're going after it again. It is a long way from being solved. And it took us a year to finally go back to NATO after a number of us urged... Chuck had a proposal calling for spending additional tens of millions of dollars in Afghanistan ten months ago. They didn't spend a penny of it.
Finally they went back to NATO and said, "NATO, we need help." A lot of us -- Democrat and Republican -- were saying over a year ago, ask NATO to expand the force. Be in there. Get control. Now it's the largest opium producing nation in the world. So I mean we have to act more decisively and more quickly in my view.
Which would be bad enough. Then, NASA issued its report, which ripped into it.
Then of course, Howard Dean has been tormenting Bush with his sleepless summer tour.
We have to be in the president's face to win," Dr. Dean, 54, said aboard the ancient Boeing 737 his staff dubbed the Grassroots Express.
"When this president talks, sometimes the opposite of what he says is really the truth," he said yesterday in Chicago, between speaking to a tepid union convention and being embraced by about 1,500 supporters atop Navy Pier, "and if we don't call him on it, we can't win."
Chief Justice Moore seemed undeterred. This afternoon he stepped in front of a crowd chanting, "Go, judge, go!" He shouted in response, "To do my duty, I must obey God!"
Chief Justice Moore added that he was appealing -again- to the United States Supreme Court, which rejected him on Wednesday.
"I've been ordered to do something I cannot do," he said. "I cannot violate my conscience."
Many of Chief Justice Moore's supporters said they were outraged by the other justices' action.
"Does Judas mean anything to you?" Rusty Thomas, a minister from Waco, Tex., said. "Those judges betrayed a righteous man. They'll pay the price."
Roy Moore is using this to run for governor or Senator.
Not only is he a religous wacko, he's pretty much running a scam on the gullible. If he practiced Santeria and sacrificed a goat in that lobby, he'd be in an insane asylum. Not surrounded by people worshiping a graven image. Moore is deeply un-american. His stand, as cynical as it is, violates the basic concept of religious freedom and if he can't sacrifice goats, he can't stick a christian symbol in a government building.
I have a couple of bibles in my home. I've seen Chuck Heston smite the Israelites more than once. My grandmother loved that film and I like it as well, cheezy as it is.
But his whole use of this graven image of the 10 Commandments offends the hell out of me. I may not go to church, but I don't think my faith is any less strong or complete than Moore's. My religious tradition, Methodist, finds such a display, vulgar. If you want to serve God, this is not the way to do it. Jesus would be ashamed to see his disciples worshiping a block of stone.
Religious tolerance is no joke. It's important for Christians, no matter what denomination, as well as every one else. I don't want Baptists to define my faith for me any more than a Jew wants me to define their's for them. Roy Moore is wiping his ass with the constitution for his political benefit. A person of truth religious faith wouldn't demean it so easily. God didn't tell him to place that thing there, his campaign manager did. So the christians of Alabama, something like 90 percent of the state, if not more, can feel persecuted. Why? I don't know. It's not like anyone is burning down churches and stealing bibles. It's just a few people who want to remind everyone which religion comes first.
God is closer in a whorehouse than among Roy Moore and his "flock"
I got an e-mail from the Gephardt campaign today. They're running an online campaign to send a pink slip to Bush and Cheey, destroyers of jobs.
This is what they want to send to the White House. Since this is a good idea, I say send it to your newspaper as well. Why the hell not? It's all true.
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
This message is to inform you that Americans can no longer afford to have you running our country into the ground.
Under your administration, more than 3.2 million jobs have been lost, 41 million Americans have no health insurance and our economy continues to suffer.
Rather than engaging our allies and the world to help us rebuild Iraq, you have opted to go it alone. The outrageous act of terror against innocent peacemakers this week in Iraq will strengthen the world's resolve against terrorism. We should seize upon that resolve and begin building new coalitions for peace in Iraq and around the world.
Additionally, your administration is so inexorably tied to Persian Gulf oil and old energy, you are incapable of devising a comprehensive, forward looking energy strategy. America must strive to achieve real energy independence.
It is time for a change! You will not receive my vote in 2004.
Just click the link for the form, or make a copy, edit it and send it to your local paper. Send it on to your local elected officials as well (as needed).
Afghan Taliban a Growing Menace to Stability
Tue August 26, 2003 06:52 AM ET
By Mike Collett-White
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Operating in growing numbers, the Taliban and their allies have succeeded in destabilizing large parts of Afghanistan and creating conditions that could undermine the U.S. military and central government.
Aid and reconstruction is suspended across swathes of territory in the center, south and southeast, giving Afghans the impression the international community has abandoned them now the Taliban has been formally ousted.
"Once people are discouraged, that is the point of success for them, as no one will collaborate (with the authorities)," said Khalid Pashtun, director of foreign affairs in the south of the country.
.........
Officials and aid workers say that most Afghans, including Pashtuns in the conservative south, oppose the ousted Taliban regime, which has stepped up attacks on government forces and is moving in groups as large as 600 fighters.
....................
Critics say the United States may be paying the price for committing only around 10,000 soldiers to Afghanistan compared with about 136,000 in Iraq.
Osama Bin Who?
Isn't this one of the victories Michael O'Hanlon was citing in an article?
In reality, this is no victory, but a dangerous quagmire against a group which should have been destroyed in the field months ago.
Amazing.
As I write this, Bush is chortling about killing more "terrorists", when in reality, they are kicking our asses up and down the Hindu Kush and central Iraq. His wars are failing. His version of "decisive" action is the action of a child going after a bully, not a democracy dealing with real threats.
He's talking about how the taliban ran. Well, yes. They ran away and ran right back.
And in his sociopathic way, he's equating war with justice. Dropping bombs on the enemy is not justice. It's self-defense.
He's talking about the "new" Afghan Army. The one which is outnumbered by the private Army of the minister of defense. There are two wars. One in his head, one on the ground. He talks about Al Qaeda in the same deluded way Westmorland talked about COSVN, the mythical headquarters of the North Vietnamese. AQ is not a fixed organization, but a dynamic one. Kill one leader, another pops up. It's not even known how many groups AQ controls directly. They fund a lot more than they run.
Now he's dragging out the poor, dead Shia as his justification for the Iraq war.
We're beating AQ, but they're flocking to Iraq. Insane, insane, insane.
"The more freedom we gain in Iraq, the more desperate they become"
LOL. Right. The freedom to be kidnapped and raped on the streets. The freedom to steal munitions and blow things up. You don't import 500lbs Soviet bombs. Desperate, how about effective.
"....seizing thousands of AK 47's" to be used by our rifle short troops.
"We captured the man named Chemical Ali" who we said was dead three times during the war.
Bush is lying before the American Legion. If they believe him, that would be sad.
Today, the 140th soldier was killed in Iraq. This is two more than died duing the first part of the war.
Some would call it a milestone, but it's more burden than anything else.
As the Congress debates the magic fairy troop solution, the realities on the ground are grim and getting grimmer by the day.
In a report by CSIS's Tony Cordesman, he outlines the issues:
There are some “stupid mission tricks” the United States and its allies should avoid:
Trying to block infiltration is fine and necessary, but no one who knows Iraq can talk seriously about securing its borders. Iraq’s borders are too long, too diverse, and open to infiltration by anyone or any group willing to move in as a civilian. Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iran all have areas where it would take vast manpower to cover the border as a whole, and in every case, terrorist cadres could come in as civilians into a nation with arms over the entire area.
* Don’t make Islam the issue: One of the keys to dealing with religious extremism is to be extremely careful not to attack Islam and confuse small elements of extremists with a religion and a culture. Careless references to terrorism, Islamists, etc. will compound the already serious problems the United States faces in alienating the Islamic and Arab world.
* Don’t create problems with the Shi’ites: The present war is likely to be lost or won on the basis of whether the Iraqi Shi’ites join in. The outside Iraqi opposition cannot do this; and the United States must be ready to deal with Iraqi clerics. The United States should be careful not to move more of its own troops into sensitive areas without a clear cause or see allied troops come in.
* Use both sticks and carrots in dealing with Iran: The United States needs to find some modus vivendi that minimizes action from Iran. This is an area where the British and Europe might well take the lead.
* Don’t tolerate quiet ethnic cleansing in the north: The United States cannot afford to have the Kurds alienate more Sunnis and the Turkomans.
* Rush the Iraqis forward wherever possible: The good may be the enemy of the acceptable. Winning hearts and minds means putting Iraqis in charge as fast as possible even at the cost of political compromises and problems in efficiency. Giving the Iraqis the Iraq they want and can build is the goal, not meeting our objectives.
* Take a hardline on Syria but a focused one: The United States cannot afford to get involved in Israel’s priorities; it has its own. It should focus on blocking Syrian support of Iraqi and volunteer hostile elements, and not allow itself to be diverted over issues like the Hezbollah and Lebanon.
* Remember regional allies like Jordan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait: It is far too easy to forget the role local powers can play in limiting infiltration, in providing intelligence and aid, and in helping to deal with Iraq’s ethnic issues. This means hard bargaining with Turkey, and trying to rebuild working relations with Saudi Arabia.
* Don’t overreact in terms of force protection and casualties: Hard as it may be, accept the fact that some casualties are the price of keeping the right profile, interacting with Iraqis, and moving nation building forward. The primary mission is not force protection, and everyone has to understand this.
Of course this all makes sense. Everything he's written since last winter has made sense.
Josh Marshall points out an article by Michael Wolff in this week's New York magazine:
Clinton had lost weight and—with a great collection of just-out-of-the-wrapper pastel-colored polo shirts on view throughout the conference—seemed in fabulous form. He was in campaign mode but without the restraints of campaign mode. While there was clear bitterness on his part toward the successor who had rushed “to undo everything I’d done,” and the Republicans who “will run over you unless you beat their brains out,” there was a feisty humor too. Of the disputed Harken oil deal, Clinton said Bush had “sold the stock to buy the baseball team which got him the governorship which got him the presidency.”
Clinton kept referring to the media as (contrary to Kinsley’s view) the “supine” media, pointing out that when Bush insulted Helen Thomas (who, by asking a rough question in the infamous prewar press conference had, Clinton said, “committed the sin of journalism”), no “young journalists” stood up and walked out.
The media, the supine media, was going to have to “go to the meat locker and take out its brains and critical skills.”
..............
There was a little current of fear at the sudden recognition that testosterone could fuel politics. It was a shock, apparently, that we might be this close to real feelings. That politics could actually be personal.
Then Howard Dean savaged Bush last weekend:
The president is sleeping comfortably in Crawford, Texas, tonight," Dean said, speaking to thousands at the rally on Saturday, "but there are an awful lot of Americans who are kind of sleepless these days -- they're sleepless about wondering where their job went. They're sleepless about wondering where their health insurance went or whether they are going to have health insurance. They are sleepless wondering whether their kid is going to be the next to die in Iraq."
Immediately after 9/11 there was a great national outpouring of sympathy for New York, and a natural inclination to provide generous help. President Bush
quickly promised $20 billion, and everyone expected the federal government to assume the burden of additional security. Yet hard-line Republicans never wanted to help the stricken city. Indeed, according to an article by Michael Tomasky in New York magazine, Senators Phil Gramm and Don Nickles attempted to slash aid to New York within hours of Mr. Bush's promise.
Matters were patched up sufficiently so Mr. Bush could make his triumphant appearance at ground zero the next day. But then the backtracking began. By February 2002, only a fraction of the promised funds had been allocated — and Mitch Daniels, the White House budget director, accused New York's lawmakers of playing "money-grubbing games."
Why this stinginess? A source told Mr. Tomasky that "Gramm just doesn't like spending money. And Nickles . . . he's just anti-New York." That sums it up: even after 9/11, hard-line conservatives opposed any spending, no matter how justified, that wasn't on weapons or farm subsidies, while some people from America's "red states" just hate big-city folk.
What does all this have to do with toxic dust? Think how much harder it would have been to stiff New York if the public had understood the extent to which Lower Manhattan had become a hazardous waste site. I can't prove that was what administration officials were thinking, but otherwise their efforts to play down the risks seem incomprehensible.
In the end, New York seems to have gotten its $20 billion — barely. As for the additional help everyone expected: don't get me started. There wasn't a penny of federal aid for "first responders" — like those firefighters and police officers who cheered Mr. Bush at ground zero — until a few months ago, and much of it went to sparsely populated states. The federal government spends much more protecting the average resident of Wyoming from terrorists than it spends protecting the average resident of New York City
International human rights groups have accused the US Government of attempting to block a United Nations resolution that would seek to enhance the protection of humanitarian workers in conflict zones.
US officials are objecting to a section of the resolution which refers to attacks on humanitarian workers as a war crime under the statutes of the newly-established International Criminal Court (ICC).
................
It also insists on either removing reference to it from UN resolutions or having paragraphs inserted that give immunity to nations like America that have not ratified the Rome Statute establishing the ICC.
Human rights groups are angry that less than a week after the attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad, the US is objecting to the draft UN resolution.
With emotions still running high in the aftermath, they now say Washington may have gone too far.
Astounding. What the hell are they thinking in Washington?
They desperately need help in Iraq. Only help that the UN can provide. Yet, a week after the UN rep in Baghdad was blown to bits, they refuse to allow the ICC to prosecute those who attack UN workers.
Do these people have any sense of priorities? Or is everything about ideology. Even if it gets people killed.
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 25 — The clerics who hold sway over Iraq's Shiite Muslim majority are locked in a violent power struggle pitting the older, established ayatollahs counseling patience with the occupation against a younger, more militant faction itching to found an Islamic state.
The militants are suspected of carrying out a series of attacks, including one over the weekend, engineered to eliminate or at least unsettle Najaf's religious scholars just as Shiites feel their moment has come. The bloodshed started in April with the murder of a prominent young cleric, Abdel Majid al-Khoei, inside the city's most holy shrine. That slaying remains such a tinderbox issue that the police and prosecutors only reluctantly confirmed for the first time today that some 12 suspects had been rounded up this month and more arrests were pending.
The tense standoff, as described by clerics from both factions, is playing out among the twisting alleyways of this holy seat, a battle for the leadership of Iraq's Shiite community, which accounts for 60 percent of the country's population of about 25 million.
In one corner sit the senior ayatollahs clustered around Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, all betting that it is only a matter of time before the United States delivers a democratic state that the Shiites can dominate through sheer numbers.
Arrayed against them are more activist opponents of the American-led occupation who back Moktada al-Sadr and who believe that Shiites should aggressively pursue an Islamic state modeled on clerical rule in Iran.
This would be a true nightmare. The Shia start killing each other, it isn't going to stop there. It's going to drag the US in and kick off a civil war. I still think it's the Baathists having fun and setting the two groups against each other.
Make no mistake, either way, a Shia cleric runs Iraq. Election, war, either way they win. It's just a matter of doing it the hard way or the easy way.
It's time to admit that Joe Lieberman's campaign is failing.
To extend the Civil War analogy from the last post, if Howard Dean is Sherman, Joe Lieberman is McClellan and Al From is Clement Vandingham.
Basically, if anyone is going to split the party, it isn't Dean, but Lieberman. He's the one who still endorses the war, insults George McGovern and embraces Bush's failed ideas. There are many people who will sit on their hands if Lieberman wins the nomination. Which I think is wrong, but his defeatism and marginalism would be the true replay of 1972.
Do you really see Lieberman, with his obsessions on public morality, fighting Bush? They want to triangulate their way into power and that ain't gonna happen. Bush fights like a rabid dog when he doesn't get his way and the Dems will have to fight the same way.
Like Lincoln said "give me a general who will fight". McClellan never fought. He had personal courage, but no faith in his men and too much fear of the enemy. Well. Lieberman and From are the same way. They've lost faith in what the Dems should stand for and what they should believe. They have some idea that if they offer a Republican lite, they'll win. And they won't. You don't negotiate your way to victory. You either fight and win or will be fought and lose.
Howard Dean isn't just getting money because he has a nifty website. He's fighting to win. He's not backing this insane, losing war. Joe Lieberman could have been the front runner if he had decided to campaign, and not triangulate his way to the presidency. There are other factors against him, his voice, his looks, but it is his ideas which should get him to withdraw.
Lincoln had to break with the past, condoning slavery, when it hurt the Union and helped the confederacy. Joe Lieberman, like McClellan, wants to moderate the excesses of the opposition. Dean wants to eliminate them.
Sure, Lieberman can hang around, with dwindling resources, splitting the party, but in reality, his bid is spiraling downward.
He's thought about it, pondered it, but at the end of the day, a run this late in the process, with no money, field team or consultants would be hard. Despite what some of his internet fans say, I seriously doubt they could provide the backbone of a presidential campaign at this late date. There isn't the room. Money and staff are spoken for. If they aren't in a presidential race, the consultants have state races to deal with. People will not drop their clients for him.
Also, his entire personal life, conflicts with peers and reputation would be open to debate. After 30 years in the relatively prinicpled world of Army politics, he would find real politics brutal. Herr Schwarzengger thought politics was simply a matter of transfering one form of popularity to another. Yet, Cruz Bustamante leads him by 12 points in the latest poll.
Every day he waits, is a day which he doesn't have to raise money, find staff and make time in Iowa and New Hampshire. Time is not his friend here.
Instead, Howard Dean's kind words about Clark reek of a deal in the air. A Clark endorsement of Dean would be a very powerful signal that the DLC arguments against him were bullshit. Clark would be a first time pol running for president. Jonh Edwards has won a race and he's falling off the radar. Clark has never run for anything, never faced the kind of questioning presidential candidates face, never had to make naked political deals or raise money.
"So I find it very premature. But I think Wes Clark, he's somebody I keep in close touch with. He's a terrific person, very bright, very capable, very thoughtful. Our views coincide on a number of matters, and he is -- I certainly can't say enough good things about him. It would be tough to run against him."
Clark, a former CNN military analyst, said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation" he would make a decision on whether to run for president "in the next week or two."
You don't say that kind of thing if you expect him to run. You say nice things if you're expecting an endorsement. I would not be surprised that instead of announcing he's running for anything, that instead he becomes an advisor to Dean. Why? Dean would protect his flank on social issues and prevent him from being embarassed about not knowing the cost of a loaf of bread. Clark would give Dean real defense and national security credibility. They would be far stronger together, than as rivals. I think Dean has a pretty healthy lead in terms of both fundraising and organization. The meetup numbers bode well for Dean and less well for everyone else.
I don't see Clark whipping up the kind of support in the Democratic base to get him over the hump in the big states. I don't even see him getting the kind of field support to win in NY or Pennslyvania or New Jersey. It takes unions, it takes working the base. The Internet is not enough to get you over the hump in the field.
The White House still doesn't get Dean. Which is not surprising. They think he's some kind of lefty.
I've always compared Clinton's campaigning style to Grant's 1864-65 cmapaign against the Army of Northern Virginia. He took his licks, but he fixed his gaze on Bush and kept at him. By the fall, the Bush campaign was trapped and battered. It wasn't a pretty campaign, but it got the job done.
Dean is campaigning like Sherman. His goal isn't just to beat George Bush, but to lay waste to the GOP. He wants to break their back and redefine the debate. To do so, he's going to go hard at the GOP. If he has to raise money, he'll raise the money. If he has to call Bush a liar, he'll do so. I feel safe in saying that by the end of next year, George Bush will personally hate Howard Dean. This is no way to make friends. They still hate Sherman in Georgia and the Carolinas. Dean has pretty much made the decisions Sherman made when he reached Atlanta: if they want a war, we'll give them total war.
Revealed : how ministers tried to gag David Kelly
By Raymond Whitaker, Jo Dillon and Kim Sengupta
24 August 2003
The Government went to extraordinary lengths to gag Dr David Kelly because of fears that he would expose fundamental flaws in its case for war.
Documents released yesterday by the Hutton inquiry into the scientist's death reveal that the Ministry of Defence was even prepared to block a police investigation into a secrets leak.
Under the plan, Scotland Yard's Special Branch was to be prevented from interviewing Dr Kelly and anyone else who had discussed his doubts about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.
A confidential memo between two senior security officials in the MoD shows the extent to which the Government was prepared to go in its efforts to silence Dr Kelly.
U.S. troops in Iraq (news - web sites) may not have found weapons of mass destruction, but they're certainly getting their hands on the country's stock of Kalashnikovs — and, they say, they need them.
The soldiers based around Baqouba are from an armor battalion, which means they have tanks, Humvees and armored personnel carriers. But they are short on rifles.
A four-man tank crew is issued two M4 assault rifles and four 9mm pistols, relying mostly on the tank's firepower for protection.
............
Some soldiers also say it's easier to get ammo for the AK — they can pick it up on any raid or from any confiscated weapon.
"It's plentiful," said Sgt. Eric Harmon, a tanker who has a full 75-round drum, five 30-round magazines, plus 200-300 rounds in boxes for his AK. He has about 120 rounds for his M16.
(Lt. Col) Young doesn't carry an AK but has fired one. He's considered banning his troops from carrying AKs, but hasn't yet because "if I take the AK away from some of the soldiers, then they will not have a rifle to carry with them."
Jesus.
I know they use enemy weapons in the movies all the time. However, in the real world, it's a very good way to get killed.
Imagine if these guys, forced to do foot patrols, wander into a Ranger or Special Forces patrol. They hear AK fire, they start shooting and you have a nice blue on blue engagement. Or what they used to call friendly fire.
The reason you don't let your men carry enemy weapons is that in a fire fight, you risk having them killed by their own side. Because the AK-47 has a distinct sound as does the M-16. They also use different colored tracers. Anyone seeing and hearing an AK fire is going to shoot in that direction. US units are forced to patrol without adequate weapons and the poor CO here has a hobson's choice, let his men carry AK's and risk fratricide or walk around with berettas and commit suicide.
Of course, this is yet another unit from the 4ID.
Don't you think they could ship over a few more M16's/M4's in the five months we've been in Iraq?
Occupation Forces Hope Covert Campaign Will Help Identify Resistance
By Anthony Shadid and Daniel Williams
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 24, 2003; Page A01
BAGHDAD, Aug. 23 -- U.S.-led occupation authorities have begun a covert campaign to recruit and train agents with the once-dreaded Iraqi intelligence service to help identify resistance to American forces here after months of increasingly sophisticated attacks and bombings, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials.
The extraordinary move to recruit agents of former president Saddam Hussein's security services underscores a growing recognition among U.S. officials that American military forces -- already stretched thin -- cannot alone prevent attacks like the devastating truck bombing of the U.N. headquarters this past week, the officials said.
Authorities have stepped up the recruitment over the past two weeks, one senior U.S. official said, despite sometimes adamant objections by members of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, who complain that they have too little control over the pool of recruits. While U.S. officials acknowledge the sensitivity of cooperating with a force that embodied the ruthlessness of Hussein's rule, they assert that an urgent need for better and more precise intelligence has forced unusual compromises.
"The only way you can combat terrorism is through intelligence," the senior official said. "It's the only way you're going to stop these people from doing what they're doing." He added: "Without Iraqi input, that's not going to work."
Officials are reluctant to disclose how many former agents have been recruited since the effort began. But Iraqi officials say they number anywhere from dozens to a few hundred, and U.S. officials acknowledge that the recruitment is extensive
What's next? Jenna and Barbara set up house in Abu Gharib and start in on the woman's fencing team?
Doing this is stupid on many levels.
A: Some of these guys have crossed the fence and found Allah. Just because you pay them doesn't mean they'll be loyal to you.
B: If you're a Shia cleric, you'll be damned if the occupation is going to reinstall the people who killed your family. Maybe it's time to let young Sadr get his hands on some weapons for his Army of Muhammad. Maybe it's time to show the Americans that Iraqis are sober at 3 PM in the afternoon, unlike the Somalis. Pick up that Thuraya sattelite phone and call your friends in Hezbollah and ask for their best and brightest. Because if the Americans are going to dig up the secret police, it's time to raise the stakes.
C: If you're a Kurd, you really have to wonder what your "allies" the Americans are up to. First, they're going to let the Turks come back, now, they're recruiting the secret police? Maybe it's time for a trip to Najaf for a talk with your Shia friends. Because the Americans are going to get you killed.
D: If you're an average Iraqi, the Americans have just annouced they are going unleash the terror which made your life hellish when Saddam was alive. So when the boys need a place to stay and a warm meal, are you going to turn them down.
By hiring the old secret police, there were several, the US has just given the Iraqi people every reason to lose any faith in them and join the resistance.
An assassination attempt on a leading Shia cleric in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf has killed three people and injured nine, Shia leaders say.
Two bodyguards and a driver of Grand Ayatollah Seyed Mohammed Said al-Hakim were killed in an explosion near his home on Saturday.
US military sources confirmed the attack which they said occurred south of the Imam al-Ali mosque in Najaf at 0310 (1110 GMT).
Mr al-Hakim reportedly suffered scratches on his neck.
The explosion took place as Ayatollah al-Hakim returned to his office from midday prayers.
It was reportedly caused by a device connected to a gas canister placed next to a wall outside his office.
................
A spokesman for the Sciri - Mohamed al Bayati - told the BBC that the US military authorities had turned down requests to provide security for leading religious Shia figures.
You have two main suspects: Baathists and hard line resisters.
Hakim's brother serves on the Governing Council, so it could be an attempt to make cooperation with the US in any form impossible. Or it could be an attempt to eliminate the opposition.
Contrary to the white washed version of history, resistance groups often wind up killing each other along with the occupier.
Big shortage of supplies for forces in Iraq, brass admits
By RICHARD SISK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON - Humvees are running on bald tires, and tank treads are falling off armored vehicles as the Army's supply chain is stretched as thinly as the troops in Iraq, top officers and enlisted soldiers said yesterday.
The always difficult job of getting beans and bullets to the field also has been complicated in Iraq by increasing Army commitments around the world, Gen. Paul Kern, head of the Army Materiel Command, said at the Pentagon.
"We haven't closed down Afghanistan, we've still got people operating in the Balkans and I've got my eye on Korea," Kern said. "So we can't take all the resources of the U.S. Army and send them all to Iraq."
Kern and three sergeant majors on duty in Iraq said the Army has a two-month backlog for Humvee tires and a three-month wait for treads on Abrams tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles.
Kern said the demand for Bradley treads is so great that the Army has been sending replacements by air rather than by sea. "That's a pretty expensive way to move track, but that's what we're doing," Kern said.
.............................
Despite the shortages, morale is high for troops who "walk with death every day out on patrols," said Sgt. Maj. Kenneth Prescott of the Army's V Corps
He said from his air conditioned office from behind his desk.
The Commander lives off base with his wife in a nicely furnished three level villa protected by some kind of 24/7 security force. His staff / directors have similar accommodations, some include their children in addition to their wife. At least one has his 14 year old daughter in a summer employment position handling classified documents. They enjoy the benefits of leased vehicles, some for the spouse as well, and complain if their satellite, cable or internet is not functioning. Such is the life for the ARCENT-KU senior leadership(?) as they set the example to explain that the ever present dangers in Kuwait are what restricts soldiers form some R&R in Kuwait. The Commander emphasizes this danger by explaining to us that he has only been out for dinner with his wife four times. And such is the concern, that if soldiers leave Camp Doha for a night of shopping or dinner, and are caught they will be subjected to counseling, one way tickets home, and will need to find a new job. Thus, a mad rush to the gate is imminent.
These privileges are considered Command Sponsored. Presumably this is different from taxpayer sponsored. Perhaps some of this funding is sponsored by the Host Nation. Whatever: this is money that may better serve getting water, food, hygienic supplies, repellants, mail maybe even spare parts and so much more to the service men and women. This is simply another example of the wrongs committed by senior leaders, supported by even more senior leaders and allowed to continue because the more senior leaders are doing the same thing and if their subordinates get caught they might too.
If there is fear in Kuwait it must be primarily with these great leaders. As just mentioned, the fear that other leaders up the chain will be found out. Fear that some congressman may learn of these government expenditures. Fear that if they are still collecting housing or family separations allowances the double dipping may end and result in paying back some of that hard earned tax free cash. And the fear that if this nonsense were discovered a kind of "relief in place will ensue", and perhaps subject Kuwait to being removed from any income tax exclusion list so the punishment can trickle to the lowest ranks. RHIP, yes fine, but to what extent do these conspicuous abuses continue to be allowed in bringing moral, respect and esprit de corps to new lows? Does this RHIP give license for exemption from being morally and ethically responsible?
It was good to hear that the 3rd Infantry Division is finally getting out of Iraq. Hopefully there will be follow through this time. But what about everyone else? Once 3rd ID is gone, what's the next warfighting unit to leave? I worry that the Central Command is so concerned with the 3rd ID that the other warfighting units will be forgotten. Granted, 3rd ID was the buildup force in Kuwait before the war, so its members deserve to be the first ones home. But what about the 101st Airborne Division, 2nd Brigade; 82nd Airborne Division, 2nd Battalion, 70th Armored Regiment; and the company from the 1st Armored Division that fought with 3rd ID?
Staff Sgt. Matthew Mueller
Baghdad, Iraq
................
I'm not writing to complain or whine like so many soldiers do. I'm writing because I served my country and then some. I'm also losing money — $40,000, to be exact — because my military pay doesn't compare to my civilian pay. As a result, I'm about to lose my home.
As a civilian, I work for the Department of Justice. I feel I could better serve my country working there than as a soldier.
Spc. Walter Smith
Iraq
Day after day I watch these soldiers age beyond their years because of these attacks. One platoon sergeant who we jokingly call "Grandpa" is now actually starting to look like one. One otherwise friendly, outgoing individual has almost entirely distanced himself from the others. These real soldiers are starting to look more haggard every day, obviously suffering from combat stress. Two have been hospitalized and sustained possibly irreparable wounds from a recent RPG attack.
But what makes me proud is their reaction. Knowing they've been ambushed or attacked more than any other platoon in the battalion, they still drive on. No one will hear these GIs complain about no air conditioning as they sleep in warehouses with temperatures reaching well into the 100s. No one will hear them cry about still getting mail that was sent almost three months ago. Instead, they're thankful to read their mail and to be alive for the ones who sent it.
Staff Sgt. Thomas Seal
Abu Ghraib, Iraq
I'm stationed in Ramadi. My accommodations aren't perfect. We're lacking windows, doors and air conditioning. But I'm much better off than members of other platoons in my company who are living in tents or bombed buildings in the desert sand. These soldiers have virtually no relief. They come to my compound and are amazed at how good it appears we have it, regardless of the lack of air conditioning or the frequent mortar and rocket propelled grenade attacks. I've also visited compounds such as Al Asad Air Base and the Office of the Coalition Provisional Authority palace in Baghdad, and I'm amazed at how good they appear to have it. With the amenities they have, one wouldn't think there's a war going on. The point is, there's always someone working harder or living worse than you.
Most of us likely have relatives who fought in World War II, Korea or Vietnam. What they endured should make us feel ashamed for complaining about slow mail and a lack of e-mail and air conditioning.
Sgt. Scott Lewis
Ramadi, Iraq
Recently my platoon sergeant reminded us to stay vigilant and remember why we're here. We all looked at each other and laughed. That leads to my second question: Why are we still here? Our return home should be near the end of the planning stages, because our missions are either completed or near completion. Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. In many places we've helped establish a new Iraqi government. We were also supposed to find weapons of mass destruction. But we haven't found any or any substantial evidence that they exist. We were also supposed to root out any terrorist activities. Terrorist cells remain. But rooting them out shouldn't take four divisions, two armored cavalry regiments, a few individual brigades, various National Guard and Army Reserve units, and Special Forces units.
If anything, having so many troops in Iraq has spurred more terrorists to come here because there's a greater number of targets. This part of the mission can be done far better by small, easily maneuverable units like those in Afghanistan. I don't see even one division in Afghanistan, only parts of one. The rest of that division returned home, only to be turned around shortly thereafter and sent to Iraq. Now they're stuck here with the rest of us for unspecified politicians trying to save their reputations. I don't believe soldiers' lives are worth anybody's vanity.
If the current trend continues, more soldiers will have lost their lives during the "peacekeeping" operations than in actual combat. The answers we seek are heavily shrouded in secrecy. The last time I re-enlisted, my contract said it was for the regular Army, not the Secret Service.
Sgt. Daniel A. Deiler
Samarrah, Iraq
One soldier had a heart attack, and was brought back to Iraq. Another, a good friend of mine, was sent home because of a herniated disc in his back. He spent a month at home and underwent open-back surgery. It took six doctors to get him home for this operation, but the opinion of only one got him back overseas. He is again in Baghdad, complete with a profile that disables him from carrying his weapon or even wearing a frag vest or LBV. Why is he even in a combat environment when he isn't needed? Numbers. And to think I joined a military where I thought the soldier came first.
Spc. T.J. Rumler
Camp Franklin, Iraq
All these malcontents whining about bald tires and no mail. Do you think Roman legionaries whined about such things? It's the new American Empire. They need to get with the program and start enjoying the fruits of imperial labor.
In a sendoff that mixed sadness with defiance, Bremer vowed: "We will not be deterred by any act of terrorism. The rebuilding of Iraq by the Iraqi people will go on. It's not going to be stopped by this act or any such act."
A more realistic assessment was made by a couple of Iraqis:
"Day after day, there is something terrible in our lives," said Raed Ramadani, a shoe salesman at an open-air market in central Baghdad. "We thought the Americans were capable of so much, and now we see they are stumbling like drunkards."
A customer, Miriam Rashidi, chimed in: "Don't misunderstand, I don't want to go backwards to the old regime. But I don't see us going forward."
In more good news:
Today, Turkish military officials visited Baghdad to discuss sending up to 10,000 troops to patrol central Iraq. Reports from Ankara, the capital, indicate the Turks want their troops to operate under their own command, and Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul told a Turkish newspaper: "There will be a special sector under Turkish command and with a separate chain of command. We will decide where we will serve."
Of course, the Kurds won't mind 10,000 Turks going through their territory. What's a few gang rapes and burned villages anyway?
Meanwhile, supercop Bernie Kerik is investigating the UN guards. Unable to fire four murderers in the NYPD, who gunned down a man standing in his doorway, he thinks the guards blew up their boss, livelihood and influence for Saddam, just because they had to snitch to the secret police.
Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner who is organizing a new Iraqi police force, told reporters that investigators are questioning security guards, vendors and other non-U.N. staff. Because security guards working for the United Nations were once informers for Hussein's intelligence service, they are of special interest, he said.
Noting that a high-level meeting was underway in Vieira de Mello's office at the time of the afternoon blast, Kerik asked rhetorically: "Would security guards have access to that information? Would people who work in that building for any other reason have access to it?" U.S. officials said investigators were also trying to track down the origin of the truck that carried the explosives.
It wasn't the guards. All they would have to do is shoot him or let a shooter in. I think they liked feeding their families more than Saddam myself.
The most continuous and probably most effective sabotage was that directed against the French railroads. Attacks were made to derail German troop and supply trains, to cut tracks, blow bridges, and damage locomotives. Directed by SOE/ SO headquarters, railway sabotage was greatly accelerated in 1944 and tied in to a certain extent with the Allied air offensive against enemy transportation.22 Damage done by saboteurs compared favorably with that inflicted from the air. In the first three months of 1944 the underground sabotaged 808 locomotives as compared to 387 damaged by air attack. However, in April and May, air attack was stepped up and accounted for the damaging of 1,437 locomotives compared to only 292 put out of action by saboteurs. Between June 1943 and May 1944 a total of 1,822 locomotives was damaged, 200 passenger cars destroyed, 1,500 cars damaged, 2,500 freight cars destroyed and 8,000 damaged.23 Reliable statistics on other forms of railway sabotage are incomplete. A report by the Vichy police24 records that during October and November 1943 more than 3,000 attempts were made by patriots to wreck some portion of the railway system. In November, 427 of these were successful major operations which included 132 derailments.
Because it makes the life of the occupiers that much harder, even if they have to suffer.
You can't run a guerrilla war without support. No one is hiding in the Iraqi desert. They're living in town, sleeping in beds, eating good food.
The more Viceroy Jerry, his bosses and fellow travellers pretend it's just Al Qaeda and baathists, the more cover the Iraqi resistance has.
Why is there an Iraqi resistance?
Well......
On the morning of Aug. 8, a car pulled up at the Jumah Market in central Tikrit. It was still early, but the popular second-hand market was packed when the car's owner, a local man, took out an old AK-47 he was hoping to sell. American troops in the vicinity saw him and afraid for their safety opened fire on the crowds killing three.
"People come here to sell all sorts of things," said Latif Abdul Karthum, 20, a fruit seller who witnessed the events. "When the man brought out his gun the Americans shot at him from Humvees and a tank. They took away the two people they had killed and left the wounded bleeding on the ground and the ordinary people had to take them to hospital."
One of these wounded, a 30-year-old man, later died of his wounds, said Esma Saleh Al-Jahouri, 29, a doctor at Tikrit Hospital.
An American press spokesman in Baghdad later announced that army snipers had killed "suspected former regime loyalists" for "illegally trafficking weapons," and that the AK47 had been confiscated, along with wires and switches the army claimed could be used to make bombs. Eight people were also wounded, and one arrested.
Kasim Shaker-Diha, a 10-year-old boy, was shot from behind as he tried to run away.
"When the shooting started I tried to run when two bullets hit me; one grazed my head and another hit my legs. I had only come to the market to sell and buy some things to make money for my family," he said from his hospital bed.
Jasm Mohamed Taha, also 10, had come to the market to sell birds from his family's farm. The Americans shot him twice in the chest and then left him to die where he lay. He survived only after being rushed to hospital by a taxi driver. As he lay covered in blood-drenched bandages on his hospital bed he described the attack.
"I don't know where the bullets came from as I was busy selling my pigeons. Suddenly I heard the sound of firing and bullets hit my chest," he said as his father sat crying beside him.
The "suspected former regime loyalist" who the Americans said they had captured was also recovering in hospital. Ahmed Feisal Rahim, 18, gave his version of events:
"This morning I went to Al-Jumah market as it's my hobby to buy exotic birds. Suddenly I heard shooting. I was astonished and looked to see where the bullets were coming from. Everyone started running. I was hit in the legs and fell down where I was shot again in the stomach. In the evening the doctors will operate, when I recover I will be arrested for wearing a black t-shirt because the US thinks that anyone wearing black is a Fedayeen."
France dismissed an effort by the US to get more countries to provide troops for Iraq yesterday, saying an international force should be dispatched only if it had a UN mandate
US President George Bush has predicted that more foreign troops will join American forces in Iraq to help win "the continuing battle in the war on terrorism".
Mr Bush said "al-Qaeda-type fighters" were moving into Iraq, but insisted the US would "stay the course".
He said he was working with the United Nations to seek broader international support - but he gave no sign he was prepared to relinquish more power to the UN.
Oh, and the bomb that killed De Mello was also supposed to kill Bremer, a man he met with frequently.
They won't miss next time.
This is the last stop, the last chance. The UN wants to help us avert a tragedy in Iraq. Bush is a man who never changes his mind or admits error. Iraq is not ours. We are not bringing democracy there. Or order. To prevent the slide to disaster, the US has to allow a UN mandate in Iraq. He will probably lose the election if he does so. In fact, given his party's politics, he may even be forced to resign. But if he does not, more Americans will die, more Iraqis will die and the country may slide into civil war.
I was wrong. Bush does have people willing to bail him out one more time. But unlike his deals in the past, this time, he has to walk away without a profit. He has to tearn up that ridiculous executive order, close up the CPA and make a lot of changes, quickly. Despite their contempt for him., the UN doesn't want to walk away from Iraq. But if the US persists in this, we will lose Iraq, and god knows how many men. Because Iraqi nationalism is spider web like. It may seem invisible, but once you're caught in it, it's hard to get out. If this becomes a national struggle, we will lose and lose badly. Failure is not only an option here, it would be inevitable.
Julian Borger in Washington
Saturday August 23, 2003
The Guardian
The Bush administration plans to open a huge loophole in America's air pollution laws, allowing an estimated 17,000 outdated power stations and factories to increase their carbon emissions with impunity.
Critics of draft regulations due to be unveiled by the US environmental protection agency next week say they amount to a death knell for the Clean Air Act, the centrepiece of US regulation.
The rules could represent the biggest defeat for American environmentalists since the Bush administration abandoned the Kyoto Treaty on global warming two years ago. But the energy industry welcomed them, saying they were essential for maintaining coal-fired power stations.
The regulations are being challenged by 13 states including New York. If adopted, they would represent a multi-million dollar victory for energy corporations, most of whom are significant Republican contributors, and who were consulted in the drafting of the administration's energy plan by vice-president Dick Cheney in 2001.
Is anyone truly shocked?
They keep stealing from America without pause.
Now they want to poison us for the benefit of their rich friends......once again.
What's next? Ending safety rules for cars? Abolishing the Pure Food and Drug act? What next will they try and steal from the American people?
In Joe Conason's new book, Big Lies, he goes after Ann Coulter's sex life, and proclaims her a hypocrite.
That bothers me.
Why? Because, while Ann's lies and opinions are truly odious, and would exile her from public life if she were a short, balding man, her sex life is her business. It is the cheapest of shots to go after a woman, any woman, for being single, lying about her age and fucking whom she wants.
There is more than enough in Ann Coutler's public record to brand her a bigot and fabulist. You can debate her ideas and opinons and crush them with the simple use of history and facts. There is no reason to go after her in her bedroom, unless that conduct was so at variance with her public life to render her opinions mute. If she were a religious fanatic who then shagged teenagers, that's a matter of law and personal hypocrisy. But to nail her for advocating marriage and conservative social morays while dating and presumably fucking...makes me uncomfortable.
The older I get, the more I realize that we all have a right to some hypocrisy in our sex lives. I have always believed that her overheated rhetoric about Bill Clinton masked some sexual desire for him on some level. That fifteen minutes in a room, alone, with him, he would charm her out of her panties and she'd hardly complain. Let's be honest, as crazy as Coulter is, if she came up to you in a bar and had a reasonably sane conversation which ended with the words, "why don't we go back to my place for a drink" how many of you would refuse? If you knew you could screw her, and she wanted to, wouldn't you? She may be rail thin, but she's neither ugly nor stupid. She may be crazy, but who hasn't messed around with the crazy at some point.
If Coulter went back into Conason's sexual history, she might find more than ample evidence to paint him in an unflattering light. That's the way human beings are. We do things in our sex lives that we are not always proud of. We laugh some of it off, deny other parts of it, but no one can really stand having to explain their sexual desires, much less their sexual actions, in public.
I don't find thin, leggy blondes particularly attractive, so I don't have some secret crush on the woman. But if you attack her for whom she fucks, you can do the same to Janeane Garofalo, Barbra Streisand, Molly Ivins, Maureen Dowd or any woman you disagree with. I don't think Joe would like to see Garofalo excoriated for her ex-boyfriends on Crossfire. And if she has a right to keep her sex life private, so does Coulter. Even if she is a hypocrite. The only time it's relevant is when it reflects their work. Judy Miller's notorious reputation for bedhopping is an issue because she's fucked her sources at times. No one is accusing Coulter of doing the same
It's no secret that sex and politics goes together like bacon and eggs. I'm sure in the miasma of Coulter's past are Democrats, reporters, and other people who had no idea what she did for a living.
Once you go after her for being single and sexually acvtive, even if it's hypocritical, you can expect the same thing.
The issue is not her sex life, but her ideas. They're odious enough on their own without asking whom she woke up with. I don't blame her for not debating her sex life with Joe Conason. It's simply none of his fucking business.
The Pentagon says two soldiers which an Islamic group claimed to have captured in Iraq are safe in US hands and had not been captured.
A Lebanese TV station reported that a group, calling itself Fukat al-Madina al-Munawara, or Medina Faction, had captured the pair during a shootout.
LBCI showed what it said were photocopies of the soldiers' military identity cards.
The pair were named as Katherine Rose, 142nd Corps Support Battalion from Fort Polk, Louisiana and Andrew Peters.
But the Pentagon said Peters, 37, had recently lost his drivers licence when he was injured by a landmine and was in US hands. He is being treated in Texas.
Now they're playing mind games. Will the wily Iraqis stop at nothing?
Seriously, they know how American media works, and how to game them. Even this scam sent CENTCOM flying for answers for a couple of hours. Clever and effective. It also highlights the complete ineffectiveness of the US in Iraq in that such a claim could be made, make the wires and not be knocked down in minutes.
In the last few weeks, a Danish soldier died in preventing looting, a British officer was killed by an improvised explosive devise (IED) and now a Marine killed in Hilla, a Shia town 100 miles south of Baghdad.
This is bad news in the extreme. The war is moving to the Shia heartland and while the clerics are not asking for people to kill Americans, the guerrillas clearly have the ability to roam at will in their areas. That is no accident.
Time is running out. We're not talking next year any more. We're talking weeks. Once the weather cools down, the pace and number of guerrilla operations is likely to increase. With increasing hours of darkness, cooler weather and increasing anger, the Americans in Iraq could face more explosions, more attacks, more firefights.
Our friends, the Saudis, have been herding their extremists north to prevent an ongoing bombing campaign at home.
Anyone talking about years, or even months, isn't getting it.
Even without that, GOP pollsters say, there is no cause for alarm. A poll taken in late July by Public Opinion Strategies found that the number of people calling the war and its aftermath a success had fallen from 85 percent in April but was at a still-strong 63 percent. "Americans are quintessential optimists," said Bill McInturff, who conducted the poll.
..............
Bush seemed to acknowledge the political importance when he gave himself a deadline for showing results. "We've got a year and a while during my first term to make the world a more peaceful place, and we'll do it," he said earlier this month.
Though Bush has consistently cautioned Americans that the war on terrorism will be long, he has been upbeat about progress. In his May 1 speech proclaiming "victory" in the war in Iraq, he also said "we destroyed the Taliban" in Afghanistan, and predicted that in the war on terrorism, "we do not know the day of final victory, but we have seen the turning of the tide."
Top Bush aides have begun to talk about a long and expensive U.S. presence in the Middle East, a generational commitment akin to the half-century presence in Europe during the Cold War. "Today America and our friends and allies must commit ourselves to a long-term transformation in another part of the world: the Middle East," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice wrote this month in The Washington Post.
The denial of reality is strong in these people.
Let me explore an alternate version of events:
In about three weeks, the Shia clerics decide that the occupation is not working. Civilians are dying, foriegn terrorists pose a threat to internal Iraqi security, there is no progress on improving the light/power/water situation or the security.
They decide they have to force out the US.
On a Friday in late September, after Friday prayers, Hakim, Sistani and Sadr show up wiht Sunni tribal chiefs to CPA headquarters. With them are an interpreter and 100,000 Shia men. They meet with Bremer and tell him the following:
It is time for you to leave. With your army, your oil companies and your contractors.
We have nearly as many men outside as you have in this country. If we give the word, they will attack your forces without pause or respite. You will have no more success in killing us than Saddam, and when we rose the last time, the odds were much, much greater. If we give the word, we will turn the country against you.
At that point, what can Bremer do?
The assumption in US thinking is that Iraqis are ignorant children.
They are not. The day the Shia clerics decide we should go, we are gone. We cannot kill them, we cannot resist them without fearsome loss of life.
Our adventure in Iraq is coming to a close. It is unlikely the occupation will exist in this form by Thanksgiving. We will either be leaving or facing a total people's war in Iraq.
I'm listening to a History Channel documentary on Mogadishu.
It seems we don't listen or learn from the past.
Michael Kramer, in today's Daily News, offer's the following suggestions:
What to do? None of the four top options is particularly attractive.
Pulling out - which Bush would likely never do - is a nonstarter. The U.S. has too much invested to cut and run, no matter the cost in blood and treasure.
Staying the current course - ..........
Ceding responsibility to the UN -..........
Sending more U.S. troops -................
For Bush, this least-worst option is fraught with political peril. The Democrats who want his job already are swiping at the President's Iraq policy. Within seconds of Bush's announcing that more troops are on the way, the Dems will scream "quagmire" and "Vietnam" - and any chance of debating the increase rationally will be swept away.
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As a political matter, the only problem with Bush's strategy is that it has a deadline. If the situation a year from now looks like democracy could finally come to Iraq, Bush will have little trouble being reelected. If, on the other hand, the situation resembles what it is today, the President could have a lot more time to play golf.
Kramer doesn't get it.
We don't have the troops or the time.
We have ONE division left, the First Cav. Once they go to Iraq, there is no one left. Between Afghanistan and Iraq, more than half of the US Army is deployed overseas. We cannot rotate the troops we have there now. Both Kramer and the Guardian think there is a magical troop fairy with three or four divisions ready to go and Bush is holding back. We may well have to rotate units from Afghanistan to Iraq with only a brief pause.
There are no more troops and even if there were, it may well draw the Shia into the fight. We are not talking about 100,000 men here. We need anywhere from 2-300,000 more troops, none of which exist here or abroad. Disbanding the Iraqi Army was the stupidiest thing possible. Now scattered to the winds, their best and brightest are killing Americans.
The only troops we have are the Guard and reserve and they take six months to train. That system is also creaking to a halt, with plunging enlistments and retentions.
Our deadline isn't next year. It's next month. A lot of prowar gasbags don't understand how truly serious things are.
Let me outline them quickly:
* The Iraqi resistance is made up of several different factions and groups. But ALL of them have men with not only extensive military training, but combat experience. A generation of Iraqis have known war. They live in a gun friendly society. They are able to use complex infantry manuevers to do their attacks.
* The US is unable to identify the enemy clearly, which means they can operate in relative safety, sheltered by their tribes, knowing informants will be identified and killed.
* The US can protect no structure from attack.
* Sloppy handling of Iraqi explosives, and leaving them unsecured, have provided bombmakers with potent raw materials. The bomb used at the UN HQ was a Soviet air dropped bomb surrounded with stray shells and grenades. All left unsecured and easily removed by interested parties.
* Few Iraqis are cooperating with the Coalition, and there seems to be a developed intelligence network in place. You don't just blow up the water pipe, an engineer has to tell you where to place the bomb.
* What US tactics are used tend towards heavy handedness and are indiscriminate. Hundreds, maybe thousands of Iraqis are being detained by the US with no contact with their families.
* American troops are so trigger happy that they have killed numerous civilians, including reporters.
* There are serious reasons to be concerned with the command of both the 3 and 4 ID's and the actions of their men. The last brigade of the 3 ID is hanging on, waiting to go home. While reckless command decisions and low morale abound in the 4 ID. Both are making the job of policing Iraq that much harder. Yet, replacing them is impossible.
* Water, light, gas and power remain in short supply.
None of this bodes well for US forces in the short or long term. The time for more troops, even if we had them, have passed.
Holocaust of the elderly: death toll in French heatwave rises to 10,000
By John Lichfield in Paris
22 August 2003
The summer of 2003 will be remembered as the year of the holocaust of the French elderly.
France was reeling yesterday from figures that suggested some 10,000 people - mostly over the age of 75 - were killed by this month's heatwave, double the previous estimate.
As a political storm raged over blame for the deaths, President Jacques Chirac called an emergency cabinet meeting and promised an inquiry to examine "with complete openness" the failings of the health and welfare system.
Half the victims are believed to have died in old people's homes, many operating with fewer staff during the August holidays. Many hospitals had closed complete wards for the month and were unable to offer sophisticated, or sometimes even basic, treatment to victims. About 2,000 people are thought to have died in their homes from the effects of dehydration and other heat- related problems while neighbours and relatives were away.
Such was the death rate - described officially as a period of "surplus mortality" - that families are now having to wait for up to two weeks for a funeral because of a shortage of coffins, priests and grave-diggers.
The French ran into three bad things at once: unusually high temperatures, no A/C and lots of old people. France has the second highest life expectancy in the world. August is when France pretty much shuts down. So when a brutal heatwave came, they were completely unprepared. They didn't do what people who live in America's eastern seaboard take for granted. Even dealing with heat stroke was difficult.
You have some charmless wingnut bastards here cheering this on, but their black souls should be ignored. The same sorts of crisis could happen in any American city.
The problem is that the bureaucracy which France relies on, was slow to react to this. They simply were caught with their pants down. The shameful part was the bungling which came after the temperature rose. They ignored a situation until it became a crisis.
The reaction to Tuesday's tragedy could have been written in advance. The Americans will tell us that this proves how desperate" Saddam's dead-enders" have become -as if the attackers are more likely to give up as they become more successful in destroying US rule in Iraq. The truth -however many of Saddam's old regime hands are involved -is that the Iraqi resistance organization now involves hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunni Muslims, many of them with no loyalty to the old regime. Increasingly, the Shiites are becoming involved in anti-American actions. Future reaction is equally predictable. Unable to blame their daily cup of bitterness upon Saddam's former retinue, the Americans will have to conjure up foreign intervention. Gulf terrorists", Al-Qaeda ‘terrorists', pro-Syrian "terrorists", pro-Iranian "terrorists"-any mysterious "terrorists" will do if their supposed existence covers up the painful reality: That our occupation has spawned a real home-grown Iraqi guerrilla army capable of humbling the greatest power on earth.
With the Americans still trying to bring other nations on board for their Iraqi adventure -even the Indians have had the good sense to decline the invitation -Tuesday's bombing was therefore aimed at the jugular of any future "peacekeeping" mission. The UN flag was supposed to guarantee security. But in the past, a UN presence was always contingent upon the acquiesence of the sovereign power. With no sovereign power in existence in Iraq, the UN's legitimacy was bound to be locked onto the occupation authority. Thus could it be seen -by America's detractors -as no more than an extension of US power. President Bush was happy to show his scorn for the UN when its inspectors failed to find any weapons of mass destruction and when its Security Council would not agree to the Anglo-American invasion. Now he cannot even protect UN lives in Iraq. Does anyone want to invest in Iraq now? Does anyone want to put their money on a future "democracy" in Iraq?
Fisk, is of course, right.
We have created a Spanish Civil War for Islamic revivalists. This isn't some backwater like Afghanistan, filled with ever-quarelling tribes. This is the heart of Arab civilization. Baghdad and Cairo define the Muslim world's education ans culture. Instead of hillbillies with AK's, you have educated, urban people with AK's.
Any Arab revivalist worth his salt and looking for adventure is flocking to Iraq. Where he will find friendly people, good food, warm beds and plenty of weapons and targets to use them on. The Americans are alien creatures who bring pain, misery and death, with little of their promised democracy. The viceroy, in a cruel live action version of animal farm, has turned into Saddam with better suits and less kinky underlings. Except of course, Saddam's police state worked and Bremer's occupation is a brutal failure.
When Iraqis, out of desperation or decency and the risk of their lives, try to work with us, we cannot protect them. Shia clerics run ramapant, the police are a hollow joke, US forces live in misery and hate and insult the Iraqis. All of the lies issued from the PNAC crowd are turning into a brutal, grinding defeat. US troops are so trigger happy that they shoot anyone that frightens them. When a Reuters reporter was blown away, the other reporters said it was done on purpose. Unfortunately, given the maturity level of the average teenager, that is probably not the case. That kid would have greased his mother at this point.
We have a disaster on our hands and it could end far worse than anyone now wants to imagine. The UN isn't one of Bush's rich friends. No lucky land deals or mystery money will save him this time. America has been too arrogant for too long and our friends think we need to be humbled. The way out is to let the UN run the show, but the vainglorious men in Washington have images of remaking the middle east. Their enablers, writing in their columns, want to sneer at the UN and then demand help. They are immune to the reality that we are not only losing the war in Iraq, losing the war in Afghanistan, and have alienated out allies. We are facing two fast approaching realities. One, the Iraqi people are tiring of our incompetence. The Sunni tribes are in rebellion and the Shia are close. Once the Turks enter the picture, there will be a war with the Kurds and they may show their disgust with yet another American betrayal. Two, anything done to improve Iraq has to be under the auspices of the UN or not at all. We can't beg for money for Iraq and then allow only American companies to benefit. That's a fantasy. Bush and his foriegn policy three-ring circus better realize that the time for compromise is past, the choice is between aquiesence and outright eviction and defeat.
The security problem now has got a terrorist dimension, which is new, but the rest of the security is in better shape than it was three months ago when I arrived here," Paul Bremer, the US diplomat running the civil administration of Iraq, said, arguing the force did not need to be enlarged for the time being. "We have an element of terrorism. It does not mean chaos."
Is he kiddng?
The only way to get help is to turn over administration to the UN. Today's NY Times states as much:
An administration official said a separate idea floating around was for the Iraqi Governing Council — whose existence the Security Council "welcomed" in a resolution passed last week — to be asked to request military help from the United Nations.
But knowledgeable diplomats at the United Nations scoffed at the idea, in part because of widespread skepticism about the legitimacy of the Governing Council, which consists of 25 Iraqis handpicked by the American occupation led by Mr. Bremer.
"The Governing Council does not have the status of a government in the eyes of most members of the United Nations," a Western diplomat said. "It will be hard for the United Nations to invite them in even to make a presentation."
An Arab diplomat, going further, said Arab countries would oppose vesting any authority in the Governing Council. "No request from that council will be seen as legitimate," he said.
Asked how the bombing of the United Nations headquarters might have changed Islamic countries' thinking on providing assistance, Pakistan's United Nations ambassador, Munir Akram, said the question being asked in the Islamic world was: "What can the United States do to make the presence of its forces there more acceptable to the Iraqi people?"
Among other possible concessions, he said, were "an indication of a timetable for withdrawal, and a greater degree of international participation in economic decision-making."
Bremer is a bad administrator hampered by Dick Cheney's visions of empire. The fact is that US will be tossed from Iraq without a significant change in both military and economic policy. There is zero popular support for replacing US troops and I think the clock is running on Shia tolerance. As is we have weeks left to start making changes. Iraqis can suffer blackouts and kill each other without US assistance.
Poland to withdraw troops from 'high-risk area' near capital
By Daniel Howden in Warsaw
21 August 2003
Poland scaled back its military commitment in Iraq yesterday in response to Tuesday's devastating attack on the UN headquarters in Baghdad.
Under a hastily agreed new formula for the occupation, Polish troops will withdraw from a "high-risk area" near Baghdad, leaving the territory to come under the command of US forces, Polish Foreign Ministry officials revealed.
"We have ceded 1,000 square kilometres that would have come under the control of the Polish command to the US administration," Tadeusz Iwinski, a senior foreign policy adviser to the Polish Prime Minister, Leszek Miller, told The Independent.
Poland is due to take formal charge of the central third of occupied Iraq, sandwiched between the American and the British zones in the north and south, on 1 September.
The new Polish-led division will operate in a territory one- quarter the size of Poland (80,000sq km), which includes four predominantly Shia Muslim provinces south of Baghdad now occupied by US Marines.
In Spain, opposition parties called for the withdrawal of 1,300 troops committed to Iraq for peace-keeping operations, after one of its naval officers was killed
That sense of urgency has prompted a return to a debate the administration had considered resolved - the question of whether to turn to the UN to endorse an international troop presence in Iraq. However, the outcome of yesterday's discussion by the president's leading national security advisers was far from clear. Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary and a staunch opponent of UN or Nato involvement, was away in Honduras, but the vice president, Dick Cheney, shares his views.
Nations that Washington had counted on to provide troops, such as India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, who by some estimates could provide up to 40,000 soldiers, have been reluctant to send forces without a UN mandate.
Meanwhile, most security council members have refused to contemplate a UN peacekeeping mandate unless Washington cedes some military and civilian authority to international organisations.
That is too high a price for the administration hawks. Even a Nato operation with its inevitable "command by committee" is anathema
It's too late for all this.
What parliament would vote to send troops to Iraq now? The war is more unpopular now than it was in March. The lies told by the Administration makes any intervention unacceptable. How could you defend this with the CPA still in place. Halliburton still walking around with a free hand. Only a suicidal government would propose joining such a venture. The only way this could work is with a UN administration and consent of the Shia and Sunni clerics. Otherwise, they're just sending more victims.
It seems the Governator is not only promising to not raise taxes, but not cut education.
Hmmm....bullshit.
California has a $38 billion budget deficit. B as in billion. Let's take a look at the way California spends its money.
2003-04
Dollars
K-12 Education 27,390.3
% 43.64
Higher Education 8,508.6
13.56
Health and Human Services 15,146.1
24.13
Now with education expected to be 57 percent of the budget and Health Care 24 percent, what gets cut? It will simply be impossible to close the budget gap with over half the budget dedicated to eduation without significant cuts. With 43 percent dedicated to K-12 education, much of it mandated by the federal government and state law as is, the old song of Waste, Fraud and Abuse won't cut it. Does Arnold really think that there is billions of dollars of waste in California's education system? It's not Enron, there are regular, public audits. People know where the money goes. Surely some of it is spent badly, but not at the level of billions.
Any such promise is only permissable because people don't look up the relatively easy to find numbers. Arnie's made a promise no human can keep. It's nice to say, but it's either the naiviety of a rich, pampered businessman or the blatant lie of a sociopath desperate for more public acclaim. Either way, anyone voting for him based on that promise is deluding themselves to a frightening degree. Those three budget items are 81 percent of the budget. Now you could empty out Pelican Bay and Chino and close Golden Gate Park, but that's not going to get you there.
Arnie is not being real. I know, between the juice and the acting, reality is well, what he makes it. But when it comes from someone who wants to run the sixth largest economy on earth, a state where one out of every eight Americans live, higher standards prevail. The old farts he's gathering around him is a typical rich guy move. Hire some brains and work it all out. Well, no. This is not a restaurant or real estate. The man has to be ready to deal with an economic crisis which can harm the entire country.
If this is the crap he's spewing, something Warren Buffett knows is fiction, then he's going to find campaigning a brutal business. You can intimidate the Hollywood press, but when national reports ask you questions, threatening to cut off access will not scare them.
>Lorie checked the Web site of the Federal Aviation Authority. The F.A.A. and the Secret Service, which had an open phone connection, both knew at 8:20 a.m. that two planes had been hijacked in the New York area and had their transponders turned off. How could they have thought it was an accident when the first plane slammed into the first tower 26 minutes later? How could the President have dismissed this as merely an accident by a "bad pilot"? And how, after he had been specifically told by his chief of staff that "We are under attack," could the Commander in Chief continue sitting with second graders and make a joke? Lorie ran the video over and over.
"I couldn't stop watching the President sitting there, listening to second graders, while my husband was burning in a building," she said.
Mindy pieced together the actions of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. He had been in his Washington office engaged in his "usual intelligence briefing." After being informed of the two attacks on the World Trade Center, he proceeded with his briefing until the third hijacked plane struck the Pentagon. Mindy relayed the information to Kristen:
"Can you believe this? Two planes hitting the Twin Towers in New York City did not rise to the level of Rumsfeld's leaving his office and going to the war room to check out just what the hell went wrong." Mindy sounded scared. "This is my President. This is my Secretary of Defense. You mean to tell me Rumsfeld had to get up from his desk and look out his window at the burning Pentagon before he knew anything was wrong? How can that be?"
"It can't be," said Kristen ominously. Their network being a continuous loop, Kristen immediately passed on the news to Lorie, who became even more agitated.
Lorie checked out the North American Aerospace Defense Command, whose specific mission includes a response to any form of an air attack on America. It was created to provide a defense of critical command-and-control targets. At 8:40 a.m. on 9/11, the F.A.A. notified NORAD that Flight No. 11 had been hijacked. Three minutes later, the F.A.A. notified NORAD that Flight No. 175 was also hijacked. By 9:02 a.m., both planes had crashed into the World Trade Center, but there had been no action by NORAD. Both agencies also knew there were two other hijacked planes in the air that had been violently diverted from their flight pattern. All other air traffic had been ordered grounded. NORAD operates out of Andrews Air Force Base, which is within sight of the Pentagon. Why didn’t NORAD scramble planes in time to intercept the two other hijacked jetliners headed for command-and-control centers in Washington? Lorie wanted to know. Where was the leadership?
Of course there was no leadership. George Bush is the weakest president of the modern era. His subordinates are awful people, blinded to the facts and the realities of their actions. Contempt for the president is growing, not diminishing. At every turn where a strong leader is needed, Bush is either late or wrong. Not just politically wrong, tactically wrong, morally wrong. His actions bordered on cowardice on 9/11 and really haven't changed much. The only reason these women are surprised is that they focused on other things. Anyone looking hard at Bush would see a man frightened of his own shadow, with the morals and methods of a bully.
This vacation of his is a disaster. The UN is reducing its presence in Iraq, the World Bank and IMF are outright fleeing. While he's raising money, Iraq is falling apart, with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah joining forces and hunting Americans.
Let me explain the importance of this. AQ is Sunni fundamentalist, Hezbollah is Shia fundamentalist. If they are cooperating, this is no small deal. Both are expert at setting bombs and Hezbollah's military is nothing to sneer at. The Israelis don't.
So while Bush is serving up hot dogs and brisket, America's sworn enemies are turning Iraq into a terrorism free-fire zone. This is independent of the Iraqi resistance. That's right. You have muslim revivalists using Iraq as a playground, without much cooperation from the Iraqis. Forget the talk of Syria and Iran, most of them are coming in from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.
When Bush comes back from his golfing and barbecues, he'll find Iraq in a mess, the infrastructre suffering from the effects of crony capitalism and the Israel/Palestine conflict as stalemated as 1916 in France. His solution, as it has been since he took office, to deny reality and pander to his base, regardless of the cost. He no more wants answers to 9/11 than he wants to answer questions about his drug use.
Julian Borger, in today's Guardian, notes that the cult of privitzation has been a dangerous failure.
The privatisation of defence contracting has also left soldiers in Iraq, supposedly the ultimate heroes in the Bush pantheon, without proper supplies, living quarters or even enough water in the desert heat. All these things were supposed to be provided by private companies, according to reams of contracts signed before the war.
The trouble is that contractors fall over themselves to sign multi-million dollar deals in peacetime but, when the shooting starts, their employees frequently refuse to drive their trucks towards the action.
........
"You cannot order civilians into a war zone," Linda Theis, an official at the army's field support command, told the Newhouse News Service. "People can sign up to that, but they can also back out."
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The same goes for the civil reconstruction of both Afghanistan and Iraq, where many tasks that would have been performed by perfectly adequate local government bodies or aid agencies had been contracted out to US firms with close ties to the administration.
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It is impossible to say whether the cult of privatisation owes its grip more to an ideological commitment by the White House, or the close personal ties between its inhabitants and the businesses they used to work in.
A quick glance at the most well-known privitzation effort, the Edison Schools, shows how and why privitization usually fails.
Investors and school districts are ditching the country's leading public education privatizer
By Tali Woodward
Special to CorpWatch
June 20, 2002
A year ago, Edison Schools Inc. was flying high. With 133 schools under its control, Edison had quickly become the nation's largest for-profit manager of public schools. And the public education funding that the company was tapping into seemed to provide a potentially limitless revenue stream. Founder Chris Whittle had predicted that, by 2020, Edison would run one in ten public schools in the United States. The company was a hit with Wall Street: shares were trading at $38, up from $18 when Edison went public just over two years earlier.
Now shares of Edison are changing hands for about a dollar, the minimum price required to stay listed on NASDAQ. Edison has racked up $250 million in losses since it began. The company announced June 3 that it had secured the $40 million investment it needs to open school in the fall. But the futures of 74,000 kids in Edison schools from Maryland to California remain tied to a company that is financially unstable. Edison's economic troubles raise renewed questions about the wisdom of turning public schools over to for-profit corporations -- and could pose a major setback for the school privatization movement.
Edison is still reeling from a three-month inquiry into the company's finances by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Investigators determined that the company consistently misreported revenues, providing an unduly rosy picture to investors. For example, Edison reported $375.8 million in revenue in fiscal 2001. According to the SEC's May 14 order, $154 million of that never passed through the company: it was spent by school districts on salaries for teachers and other staff at schools run by Edison. The SEC also found that Edison does not have an adequate system of internal accounting controls in place.
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Hidden costs were also an issue in San Francisco, where the school board yanked the charter that allowed Edison to run an elementary school in June 2001. The school had suffered incessant teacher turnover -- almost half of the teachers who taught there during its first year quit in the spring, the next year it was over half. Many criticized the regimented curriculum and heavy emphasis on test preparation. Teachers also objected to the fact that they were working much longer hours than their counterparts at San Francisco's other public schools.
A district investigation also found evidence that the school had a habit of "counseling out" students with academic or behavioral difficulties, which is in-line with complaints elsewhere that Edison schools weeded out students who were unlikely to perform well on standardized tests. The San Francisco school was also not providing the bilingual and special education programs required by the charter, the district report said. The California Board of Education, which is generally more supportive of the for-profit model, granted the company a quick replacement charter, and Edison has continued to run the school anyway -- but more teachers have left, and test scores have sunk so far that the school is ranked last of all San Francisco's 75 elementary schools
In the classroom, this has had some bizarre effects.
Days before classes were to begin in September, trucks arrived to take away most of the textbooks, computers, lab supplies and musical instruments the company had provided -- Edison had to sell them off for cash. Many students were left with decades-old books and no equipment.
A few weeks later, some of the company's executives moved into offices inside the schools so Edison could avoid paying the $8,750 monthly rent on its Philadelphia headquarters. They stayed only a few days, until the school board ordered them out.
As a final humiliation, Chris Whittle, the company's charismatic chief executive and founder, recently told a meeting of school principals that he'd thought up an ingenious solution to the company's financial woes: Take advantage of the free supply of child labor, and force each student to work an hour a day, presumably without pay, in the school offices.
"We could have less adult staff," Mr. Whittle reportedly said at a summit for employees and principals in Colorado Springs. "I think it's an important concept for education and economics." In a school with 600 students, he said, this unpaid work would be the equivalent of "75 adults" on salary.
Although Mr. Whittle said he could have the child-labor plan in place by 2004, school board officials were quick to say they would have nothing to do with the proposal.
But once Edison leaves the market it would be required to disclose financial information only to select business partners - a change that some critics said could make it more difficult for school districts to evaluate the company.
San Francisco parent Caroline Grannan, who founded an Edison watchdog group after the firm opened a charter school in her city, complained that there was already too little information available about its operations.
"I don't see how it can possibly position them to do a better job in the schools. The only thing that I can see that it gets them is less public scrutiny," she said.
Edison demonstrates the flaws inherent in privatizating public services. The profit motive is not strong enough to make people do things they may not want to do. People forget the legacy of public service and the lengths that people will go to in living up to their responsibilities. It may seem like a way to cut costs and improve services, but that's only in optimal situations.
The problem with private companies is that they have incentives to cut costs in ways government doesn't. The implication is that government is both ineffiecent and corrupt and neither is necessarily true. Also, we forget that in many areas open to privitization, the best and the brightest are not only government employees, but wish to remain that way. So there was no reason to believe that the best teachers would want to be Edison employees.
Chris Whittle, in order to save money, started to sell classroom assets and wanted to use child labor. No one would tolerate this from their public schools. Why would he even consider this? Because he wanted to make a profit. Not for the greater good of the community.
But the biggest flaw in privitization is the bidding process. When Edison proposed to run five New York schools, the proposal was soundly thrashed. When Edison proposed building their headquarters near the northern end of Central Park on 5th Avemue, community opposition was bitter. Why? Because the company had political links to then Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the minority community inferred this was an attempt to harm their children. The political taint of Edison was so offensive to the parents and teachers, the program had no chance to succeed, regardless of their prospects.
Edison was forced on Philadelphia because of a political decision by then Gov. Tom Ridge, despite loud and vocal opposition by community members.
Politics and private companies taint the bidding process and the best contractor is not always the one which wins the contract. So privitization becomes an intensely political product, regardless of any benefit. to the public. So instead of providing public services, it becomes a way to push crony capitalism. Edison didn't draw contracts only because they offered solutions, they had powerful investors with political connections. Their actual ability to raise test scores and improve education is theoretical at best. So is privitization. We have theories about market forces in traditionally non-competetive sectors. We don't have much imperical evidence one way or the other.
The other problem with Edison, is that their track record is limited. There is no long term proof that their method or any privatized school actually performs better than public schools. In fact, despite centuries of private boarding schools, Groton, Philips Andover, Exeter, St. Paul's, Madiera, there is no reason to believe they deliver a fundamentally better education than elite public schools, Hunter, Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, Boston Latin, Cambridge Ringe. While there may be class differences, the actual achievement of students from elite public schools match those of private schools.
So there are already serious questions about the effects of privitisation and resource usage inherent in any evaluation of Edison.
It is not clear that contracting out government services produces any true efficencies and there are any number of pitfalls in doing so. No matter how much we distrust government, they are accountable to the public. Private companies, when they fail to perform, may be sued, but no one can force good service from them. They are accountable to their investors first and foremost. Not the public good, no matter what they say.
The last few weeks have seen blows on all three of these fronts - the continued daily toll of "ordinary" military casualties, the destruction of a section of the oil pipeline to Turkey and the sabotaging of the Baghdad water supply, and now the death and destruction wrought at the Canal Hotel. What was presented as reassuring at an earlier stage, that the saboteurs were not a unified force, now appears almost the opposite, in that the coalition cannot even reliably identify its enemies. But their aim is clear enough - to spread fear and confusion, make Iraqis angrier with their occupiers, and stretch the coalition forces ever more thinly by multiplying what has to be protected. Senator John McCain said in Baghdad yesterday even before the UN headquarters were hit that more American troops might be needed, an expansion that would be deeply unpalatable to the Bush administration. If more troops are needed, American or British, they will no doubt be found. The ultimate solution, however, has to be an Iraqi one. Real security can only be achieved by the coalition forces and the Iraqis working in tandem, in policing, in intelligence and, eventually, in military action. In its efforts to expand the Iraqi police and lay the basis for a new Iraqi army, the occupation regime has recognised this truth, but there is unhappily a long way to go.
We really have to stop this bullshit.
The Iraqis aren't going to work with us. They are not going to kill their relatives for the greater glory of Halliburton. George Bush is so fundamentally corrupt, and the Iraqis are so fundamentally angry at the occupiers, that people are willing to help anyone destroy anything. They blew up the pipeline for the water. How did they learn the spot to hit? Some civil engineer had to tell them. How did they know where de Mello's office was? Someone who worked in the building told them.
The Iraqi resistance is sheltered and embraced by the Iraqi people. It could not exist otherwise.
There is no logical reason for many Iraqis to do anything but oppose an occupation. There isn't a week where US media, media Iraqis read and see, tells them that the occupation will last at least five years. Under those circumstances, why should they cooperate with the US. To make the occupation last longer? Not one Iraqi cleric has stood with the US, even for reconstruction. The Shia watch, wait, and let Sadr do their organizing. The Governing Council is a bunch of squabbling hens playing for advantage.
Iraqis want peace and stability. But they also love their country and mistrust foreigners. They have no reason to help us. No assurance we're going to leave. You have the incompetent Bernard Kerik swearing we won't leave. His cops can't even guard a damn building and they hate the US. He lies like cows shit. Viceroy Jerry talking about "terrorists" and "bitter enders". Bremer took hours to get to the Canal Hotel. Hours. And he's talking about revenge. Bringing people to justice? We don't even hand over the evidence for looters. How do we try bombers in a war zone? It's a war. They're going after our prestige. This is not some private mano a mano battle between US and Osama or us and Saddam. The US is exposed and they are going to make war where they can, when they can.
In the real world, the occupation is failing badly, every day. It's now failing in ways we have to notice. All this stuff about the pace of attacks-bullshit. It's 127 degrees for the opposition as well. They've done a lot in the heat. When it gets cooler, they'll get more active. They don't get free water and AC.
The only question is how do we leave. With an election or with an eviction by the Shia clerics. Either way, time is winding down.
The King David Hotel in Jerusalem was built by the Moseri family, members of the wealthy and influential Jewish establishment in Cairo and Alexandria. They set up a shareholding company to finance its construction, consisting mainly of Egyptian businessmen and wealthy Jews from all over the world. The luxurious seven-storey building, with 200 rooms, was opened to the public in 1931. In 1938, the Mandatory government requisitioned the entire southern wing of the hotel, and housed the military command and the Mandatory government secretariat there. The British chose the King David for its central location and because it was easy to guard. They built a military communications center in the hotel basement and, for security reasons, added a side entrance linking the building to an army camp south of the hotel. Fewer than a third of the rooms were reserved for civilian use.
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After exiting the hotel, Gidon summoned two women fighters who were waiting nearby, and ordered them to carry out their mission. They ran over to a nearby telephone booth, and delivered the following message to the hotel telephone operator and to the editorial office of the Palestine Post:
I am speaking on behalf of the Hebrew underground.
We have placed an explosive device in the hotel.
Evacuate it at once - you have been warned.
They also delivered a telephone warning to the French Consulate, adjacent to the hotel, to open their windows to prevent blast damage. The telephone messages were intended to prevent casualties.
Some 25 minutes after the telephone calls, a shattering explosion shook Jerusalem, and reverberated at a great distance. The entire southern wing of the King David Hotel - all seven storeys - was totally destroyed. For reasons unclear, the staff of the government secretariat and the military command remained in their rooms. Some of them were unaware of events, and others were not permitted to leave the building, thus accounting for the large number of victims trapped in the debris.
The reason I bring this up is that the attack on the King David Hotel sent a clear message to the British occupiers of Palestine. That there was no place they could be safe and no target not liable to be attacked.
The bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad sends exactly that message. As the chat show conservatives fumble for an answer, the Iraqi resistance makes it clear, no occupiers can govern this country. Of course, the people lined up to do it don't exactly inspire confidence either.
B A G H D A D, Iraq, Aug. 19 - A massive car bomb explosion ripped through a hotel housing the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad today, killing at least 13 people and wounding several others, including the top U.N. official in Iraq.
U.S. military officials in Baghdad said a car bomb blew up near the al Kanal hotel housing the U.N. headquarters in northeastern Baghdad around 4:30 p.m. local time.
The explosion caused a substantial portion of the building to cave in and two people were believed to be buried in the rubble, said a U.S. official, and rescue teams were attempting to dig them out.
There were no official reports on the number of people injured, but witnesses said about 40 people were wounded in the blast.
Among the wounded was Sergio Vieira de Mello, the Brazilian who heads the U.N. mission in Iraq, who was trapped between floors, said U.N. officials. He is being treated for his injuries.
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"I like to remind people that a free Iraq will not longer serve as a haven for terrorists, or a place where terrorists can get money or arms," (Bush) told reporters at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, today
We're going to see a repeat of the Khobar Barracks bombing of 1996 against a major CPA facility. These are just the warm up strokes for a major bombing campaign. If I were Paul Bremer, I'd make sure my life insurance was paid off.
Update: This is a major embarassment for the US. The death of Sergio Vieira de Mello makes it clear that the the US is unable to protect any structure seriously. The attack is believed to have been conducted by a cement truck driven directly into the lobby of the hotel and detonated by the driver. This means the truck drove through two layers of security, US on the outside, UN on the inside.
The competence of both Viceroy Bremer and Lt. Gen. Sanchez has to be taken into question. How could the UN compund be left vunerable to such a devestating attack is only the first question.
What is also clear is that US security measures are a joke. Some group of terrorists are clearly working unfettered, with access to not only weapons, but intelligence.
It was such an embarassement that Bush was able to pull himself away from his golf game and discuss it. He may have been silent for hours after the blackout, but he sure hopped on this. Why? Because he knows his reelection runs through Baghdad. He can mouth all the pithy statements he wants, but there are a considerable number of Iraqis willing and able to aid disorder on any scale.
This new campaign is designed to do two things, create discomfort for Iraqi citizens and show the impotence of the US. All this childish namecalling "murderers, et al" is pointless. It's a war and they're using the tools they have to win. The less the US does, the more it has to do, the more likely Iraqis will turn on them. Killing the UN representative grabs attention in a brutal, effective way.
With exploding pipelines and flooded streets, it's time to ask why we're losing this war.
First, the entire war was based on a series of false assumptions, which centered on the political fiction that exiles would be warmly accepted by the Iraqi people as viable representatives of a post-Saddam Iraq. Why that assumption was made is beyond me, but since ideology trumped basic common sense, there was no way that the kind of people who are eventually going to run Iraq would have been acceptable. The idea that we would fight a war to make Ayatollah Hakim President of Iraq would have gotten zero support.
In reality, the exiles, many of whom had dealings with Saddam or were completely unknown, were resented as tools of the US. One cleric allied with the US was chopped into tiny bits by Shias in Najaf. The great neocon hope, Ahmed Chalabi, is now the most hated non-Baathist in Iraq. Far too little was understood about how dissident politics would play out, even though, it is clear that only home grown heroes would ever make the cut. Only an exile leader with demonstrable suffering, like a Hakim, can have any credibility. Exiles who have grown up with fairy tales about life in Iraq, or who left as children, have little chance to be accepted by average Iraqis.
Second, at every opportunity, we have been giving the wrong signals. Relying on exiles, attacking Islamicist parties, living in Saddam's palaces. Iraqis figured the score as their libraries and museums were looted while the oil ministry was protected. Jerry Bremer, completely untrained in any civil skill useful to rebuilding a country, acts like a viceroy. Instead his expertise is in "terrorism". It's like Red Dawn where the Russians bring in a guy who's expert on hunting partisans. You don't have to be a scholar in American studies to see what the Americans are really thinking. He lives in Saddam's palace, drinks his booze and drives around in an armored SUV. To the average Iraqi, the only difference is that he doesn't have people tortured by his sons.
The conduct of the troops belies a deep contempt and racism for Iraqis. But unlilke uneducated Somalis, many of these folks not only speak and read English, they understand the world. Iraq is not some backwards swamp, but a complex, cultured country with plenty of educated people. Baghdad is not Kabul. They know how Americans live and how they live and they think it's not funny they're suffering and the Americans are not. We have completely underestimated the attitudes and resolve of the Iraqi people, who see no reason for their continue joblessness and wretched misery.
Third, there is no information gap. Iraq is not Somalia or Afghanistan, where the locals barely read and are lucky to have radios. Kids in Iraqi streets worship David Beckham, watch Premiership soccer, listen to the BBC and go online. When ABCNews runs a story on Halliburton and Bush, they can read it or watch the video. The BBC tells them about Tony Blair's lies the same time they tell us. Iraq is a wired country with lots of information available to the public. Within minutes of lights going down on the east coast of the US, Iraqis were laughing about it in their tea houses. We are dealing with a sophisticated, educated, armed populace. We act as if we are dealing with ignorant children. They are not.
The racist assumptions about Iraqi awareness means that we discount real threats like Sadr and his tacit working arrangement with Hakim and Sistani and seek to blame our problems on Saddam and his friends and Al Qaeda. At no point has the US been able even to manage the anarchy. The police are ineffective because we don't fully trust them. We expect Iraqis to work with the US, yet provide them no protection or safety. We use them and they get killed, at points, by their own families.
Fourth, US tactics range from the abysmal to the common sense. It is increasingly clear that there is a leadership problem in the 4th Infantry Division. Their battalion commanders seem to lack basic common sense in dealing with Iraqis. While the 3rd ID is burnt out, the 4th ID seems to revel in bad tactics and bad leadership. You have commanders using questionable tactics and the command staff living in luxury while the manuever units live in hell. Special Ops is uneven at best. The vaunted and secretive Task Force 20 seems to have little regard for Iraqis or their safety. Meanwhile, the 101st, while losing men, has a much better commander and command structure. The difference in their operations seems to be night and day. But it goes deeper than leadership.
The US military is tactically at sea in Iraq. Each battalion, in each brigade, in each division seems to be doing its own thing. Not in terms of tactics, but in terms of everything. Some units are well supplied, some are not. Some sweep through towns and make enemies, some don't. It seems to be that every unit is working off of a different playbook, yet none of the plays work. It seems clear that the leadership at the top of CENTCOM is so busy trying to run two wars, they haven't noticed the 4ID is a disaster in the making. The current use of partisan sweeps is a failure. The locals are not going to help the US find their relatives. Every time they announce that they've taken 20 AK's, remember Iraq has over 5 million of them. Or about 55 for every GI in country. We are fighting a colonial war against the best armed population in history. Iraq was a vast storehouse of weapons and those who wanted them, took them. We are sending in units against Iraqis who have the same basic weapons we do, automatic rifles, machineguns, mines, grenades. No colonial population has ever had the chance to resist their occupiers on nearly as even terms. Most Iraqi men have military training, hundreds of thousands have combat experience. Their tactics negate our equipment. They are able to use signal flares to manuever, which is a basic infantry manuever, but almost impossible for the untrained to master correctly. These are no fat former secret policemen doing this.
US troops are so trigger happy and so poorly trained, they shoot civilians without pause. A cameraman shooting US troops was gunned down. Whole families have been blown away by US troops. Abuse of Iraqis is common. You have to wonder what isn't making the papers. Our MOUT (urban warfare) training is so unrealistic, that basic car stops often end in tragedy, while guerrillas brag about shipping guns past them. Most American soldiers patrol with their weapons pointed at the locals, off safe. We often shoot recklessly among civilians as well. The desire to go home is obvious, but when troopers kill a child because they freak when Iraqis fire guns in celebration, that's a failure of training. The brutal fact is that the US Army was unprepared to occupy Iraq and its current methods make the occupation worse.
But colleagues who were with the award-winning cameraman when he was killed told a different story.
Nael al-Shyoukhi, a Reuters soundman, said the soldiers "saw us and they knew about our identities and our mission.
"After we filmed we went into the car and prepared to go when a convoy led by a tank arrived and Mazen stepped out of the car to film.
"I followed him and Mazen walked three to four metres. We were noted and seen clearly.
"A soldier on the tank shot at us. I lay on the ground. I heard Mazen and I saw him scream and touching his chest. I cried at the soldier, telling him 'you killed a journalist'. They shouted at me and asked me to step back and I said 'I will step back but please help, please help'."
He said they tried to help but Dana was bleeding heavily. "Mazen took a last breath and died before my eyes."
Stephan Breitner, of France 2 television, added: "We were all there for at least half an hour. They knew we were journalists. After they shot Mazen, they aimed their guns at us. I don't think it was an accident. They are very tense. They are crazy."
Fifth, the occupation has no political supporters. You have some exiles, some grifters and some parasites, but even most of Saddam's stooges won't suck up to the US. You would think that a country riven with informers would be either in civil war or vying to get close to Uncle Sugar. Instead, they're not supporting the US and turning their back when the guerrillas strike. No one serious in Iraq wants anything to do with this occupation. Those that do are angling for power at best. The US is unable to deliver basic services and is, thus, losing the middle and working classes they desperately need to support them.
The US, unable to provide basic security, is discredited by this more than anything else. Without power, light and gas,the US are just occupiers who need to leave.
Finally, the cost of rebuilding Iraq is begining to dawn on the administration. The lack of consensus from our European allies means they will refuse to help. Without UN help, the cost of running Iraq is too much to bear. We can't afford it, not the $2b for the electrical grid, forget the billions to rebuild the oil industry, forget the actual war-related damage. The guerrillas don't have to do much, just blow thing up the US cannot afford to fix. Of course, there is no relation to the fact that Bush's cronies have gotten all the big contracts, despite rank imcompetence. Why should France sink billions into Iraq so Dick Cheney can make more money?
The Iraqis know this. They know the jury-rigged CPA is an obstacle, not an aid, to real rebuilding. Why should they support an occupation which, at its core, seeks to remake their country for the safety of Halliburton? A free, independent, Iraq sounds great. But since the US is allowing the exploitation of the oil fields in the name of crony capitalism, they know that's a pipedream. When they go online and read the NY Times, they take the hint.
Everyone talks about 4th generation warfare. Well, we live in a 4th generation information age. If we write it and say it, they see it. Forgetting that fact, gets Americans killed.
With great disappointment, I am returning the George W. Bush "action figure," which you will find enclosed in this package. I am seeking a full refund for this defective toy for the following reasons:
* Despite its billing as an action figure to pair up with my GI Joes, it was obviously not made to be a soldier. Never mind the lack of any scar on its face. The bigger problem is that I cannot find any weapons of mass destruction anywhere in the box. Heck, I can't find any weapons at all!
* When I pull the string to make it talk, the results are muffled and unintelligible or make no sense at all. Is this supposed to be some kind of rotten joke on your customers?
* Every time I turn the doll upside down and shake it, white powder comes out. What's with that?
* Even worse, my GI Joe dolls don't seem to like this one at all, and I'm beginning to understand why:
If this is the kind of thing that runs in a respectable midwest paper like the KC Star, Bush has issues.
Tony Blair's most senior aide told intelligence chiefs their draft dossier failed to demonstrate "an imminent threat" from Iraq, the Hutton inquiry has heard.
The comment, in an e-mail from Downing Street chief of staff Jonathan Powell, was written just one week before the controversial dossier on Iraqi weapons was published on 24 September last year.
Mr Powell wrote that the dossier "does not demonstrate he (Saddam Hussein) has the motive to attack his neighbours, let alone the West".
The e-mail was sent to senior figures including chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, John Scarlett, Mr Blair's communications chief Alastair Campbell and the then foreign affairs adviser Sir David Manning.
The Guardian points out that the original dossier had no such claims as 45 minute launch.
However critics will seize on the email as contrary to the tone of speech Tony Blair made when introducing the document to parliament on September 24, in which he described the Iraqi WMD programme as "active, detailed and growing".
He added: "The WMD programme is not shut down. It is up and running."
However, the prime minister did qualify the description of Saddam's capacity to launch WMD by acknowledging the threat would only become a reality some point in the future if the international community took no action.
Mr Powell also raised the question of connections between Saddam and al-Qaida, though his comments on this have been blacked out by inquiry. He also mentioned the danger of Saddam trying out a PR stunt showing that weapons no longer existed.
The dossier is good and convincing for those who are prepared to be convinced.
I have only three points, none of which affect the way the document is drafted or presented.
First the document does nothing to demonstrate a threat, let alone an imminent threat from Saddam.
In other words it shows he has the means but it does not demonstrate he has the motive to attack his neighbours let alone the west.
We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we do not claim that we have evidence that he is an imminent threat.
The case we are making is that he has continued to develop WMD since 1998, and is in breach of UN resolutions.
The international community has to enforce those resolutions if the UN is to be taken seriously.
Second we will be asked about the connections with Al Quaeda. [The next sentence has been covered over]
Third, if I was Saddam I would take a party of western journalists to the Ibn Sina factory or one of the others pictured in the document to demonstrate there is nothing there.
How do we close off that avenue to him in advance?
Seems that Blair goosed this to make it scarier, sexier is really the wrong word. Ooogabooga, Saddam will kill your babies, boo, type nonsense which veered deeply and truly from reality, and as it turns out, common sense.
Iraq was broke and corrupt. Why would scientists, many of whom detested Saddam, give him more chemicals? There is every evidence that he didn't want them anyway. He never knew when his generals would try to kill him anyway. So why give them a tool they might use on his palace? These weapons didn't exist since 1998, period.
Kenyan Women Reject Sex 'Cleanser'
Traditional Requirement for Widows Is Blamed for Aiding the Spread of HIV-AIDS
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 18, 2003; Page A12
GANGRE, Kenya -- The women of this village call Francise Akacha "the terrorist." His breath fumes with the local alcoholic brew. Greasy food droppings hang off his mustache and stain his oily pants and torn shirt.
He's always the first one in line for the village feast, tucking into a buffet carefully prepared by the women of the village like he's diving into the ocean, no restraint. He's too skinny and has, as the women point out, terrible taste in clothes. His latest hat is a visor styled from shabby paper stolen off a local cigarette billboard.
But for all of his undesirable traits, Akacha has a surprisingly desirable job: He's paid to have sexual relations with the widows and unmarried women of this village. He's known as "the cleanser," one of hundreds of thousands of men in rural villages across Africa who sleep with women after their husbands die to dispel what villagers believe are evil spirits.
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"Slowly, by slowly, we must change," said Dalmas Ongan, 62, who wore a three-piece gray suit and a straw hat and said he loved the play. "We used to say we would die for our traditions. Even me, I used to say cleansing was good. But I think this attitude helps nothing. We all may die if we don't stop this one."
BLITZER: General, I want you to listen, during the war, when you were still working for CNN -- and just want to alert our viewers, you're no longer working for CNN as our military analyst.
CLARK: Right.
BLITZER: But during the war, early in April, Tom DeLay, the majority leader in the House, really hammered you directly. I want you to listen to what he told our Judy Woodruff then.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. TOM DELAY (R-TX), MAJORITY LEADER: Frankly, what irritates me the most are these blow-dried Napoleons that come on television and, in some cases, have their own agendas.
General Clark is one of them that is running for president, yet he's paid to be an expert on your network. And he's questioning the plan and raising doubts as he becomes this expert.
I think they would serve the nation better if they would just comment on what they see and what they know, rather than putting their own agenda forward as an expert.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: Well, pretty strong words from Tom DeLay going after you. What do you say to that criticism?
CLARK: Well, first of all, I'd be happy to compare my hair with Tom DeLay's. We'll see who's got the blow-dried hair.
But beyond that, Wolf, he's got it exactly backward. It's upside down. I am saying what I believe. And I'm being drawn into the political process because of what I believe and what I've said about it.
So it's precisely the opposite of a man like Tom DeLay, who is only motivated by politics and says whatever he needs to say to get the political purpose. And so, you know, it couldn't be more diametrically opposed, and I couldn't be more opposed than I am to Tom DeLay.
You know, Wolf, when our airmen were flying over Kosovo, Tom DeLay led the House Republicans to vote not to support their activities, when American troops were in combat. To me, that's a real indicator of a man who is motivated not by patriotism or support for the troops, but for partisan political purposes.
I don't think Clark can mount a credible campaign at this point, but he sure did hammer DeLay without even mentioning who served in Vietnam and who didn't. Clark is certainly setting himself up to be vice president. Dean or Kerry would hammer Bush and Cheney with him.
Two young British soldiers have saved the life of an abandoned newborn Iraqi girl after finding her in an ammunition dump.Private Damien Kenny and Private Jonathan Hunt were searching a house in Basra in the south of the country after rounding up five terror suspects when they made their amazing discovery.
There, in a dusty 3ft-long padlocked metal box and nestling among rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK47s and ammunition, was little Rose-named by the soldiers after the red rose of their Lancashire regiment
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Lieutenant Craig Rogers, who is in charge of the unit which found Rose, told LBC radio that the baby's father had been arrested.
He said: "The mother has actually said that it was the father who put the young child inside the ammunition box. He has been arrested by ourselves."
The soldiers believe the girl may have been in the box for at least 10 minutes.
Now what kind of animal would do that to their child? What was he going to say? He "lost" his daughter? Amazing.
Faez Ghani Aziz, the avuncular director of a state-owned vegetable oil factory in southern Baghdad, was under intense pressure. Dozens of workers who had been dismissed before the war were demanding their jobs back, but the Industry Ministry told him to reject those requests because the factory already had plenty of workers.
A man had recently walked into Aziz's office with a grenade and threatened to pull the pin if his job was not reinstated, factory officials said. Although Aziz managed to restore calm, scores of people protested the next day in front of the ministry's temporary headquarters to demand jobs.
"These people were saying, 'Either you let us back to work or we're going to do something,' " said Luay Ali, security director for the ministry, which oversees owns the vegetable oil company.
Two days after the grenade incident, Aziz drove to work in his white Isuzu Trooper sport-utility vehicle. Gunmen cut him off with two cars. They dragged him out of the Trooper, threw him to the ground and shot him five times, ending with a bullet to the head.
The killers never stated their reason for targeting Aziz, but his colleagues have little doubt he was murdered because he refused to rehire the workers. "There is a very clear connection," Ali said.
Rampant unemployment has long been a problem in Iraq, where a once-prosperous, oil-slicked economy ground to halt after eight years of war with neighboring Iran and 13 years of U.N.-imposed economic sanctions following Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. When the Americans arrived, though, many here assumed they would secure the well-paying job of their dreams -- or at least unemployment insurance payments.
"There is such a thing in America, so why can't we have it here?" said Suhail Abdul Hussein, the leader of a group of jobless men who have been staging a sit-in across from the Republican Palace. "We have no money to live."
American officials have paid salaries to a quarter-million government workers. And Bremer also has decided to compensate several hundred thousand former soldiers.
But those payments cover only a fraction of Iraq's workforce. Abdul Hussein and his fellow protesters are among the 60 percent of Iraqis who were unemployed before the war and, as a result, are ineligible for a payment from the occupation authority.
Of course the expectations are unrealistic. But the management is ridiculously incompetent as well.
Jamie Wilson in Baghdad
Monday August 18, 2003
The Guardian
.......
In a scheme likely to raise as many laughs among Iraq's hardline Islamic clerics as Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, troops of the 4th Infantry brigade in Tikrit are planning to put up pictures around the town of Saddam's face superimposed on the bodies of a busty Veronica Lake, a slinky Zsa Zsa Gabor, a grooving Elvis and British-born rocker Billy Idol.
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"We're going to do something devious with these," Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Russell told Reuters, referring to a range of spoof Saddam pictures taken from the internet site www.worth1000.com.
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"I think a lot of local people might find that offensive," a spokeswoman in Baghdad said. "I'm going to call them [the 4th ID] now and try and find out what's going on."
Lt. Col Russell is the same genius who ordered snipers to shoot into an arms bazaar and killed two gun dealers and a couple of other people. I see he's been thinking again.
But then the antics of the 4ID have included:
* Kidnapping and holding non-combatants hostage
* Violent searches of Iraqi homes
* Pointless anti-partisan sweeps with names like Operation Ivy Lightning.
* Firing 155mm shells against mortars
David Hackworth has an example of the leadership of the 4ID in action
* So here is the background: My soldiers and I live in sweltering hot tents on a [deleted]. We have no air-conditioning, very few fans, no buildings to live in and no running water or electricity aside from the generators that we can keep running. So 4ID decides to tell all the battalions that they are getting these live-in container things.Great, troops are excited.
We figure it’s the least the division can do for us, since they can’t get mail, water or chow right, maybe they can provide us with some decent shelter. Keep in mind that the division headquarters lives in a palace complex with air conditioning and running water. They also have trucks that they can work out of that have air conditioners, electricity and phones in them, we call them expando vans because the sides of the truck expand to create more space.
Well, 4ID had decided to keep these container things for themselves, so they can use them as office space, since they clearly don’t have enough room in a palace complex for all their soldiers and troops. Dad, I never believed that our officer corps could be so blatantly wrong. How the heck can anyone in their right mind expect troops to re-enlist? Soldiers are electing to leave the unit at the first available opportunity. I have only had four soldiers re-enlist in the last four months! I'm losing 20 in the next month to retirement, ETS or PCS.
Yes indeed. The leadership of the 4 ID should be an inspiration to all Americans.
Aides Say Bush Waited for Facts Before Commenting on Blackout
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
IRVINE, Calif., Aug. 15 — When news of the Northeast blackout hit the West Coast on Thursday, President Bush and his staff seemed to go into a blackout of their own. For nearly four and a half hours, while Mr. Bush huddled with aides in San Diego to sort out the crisis, the White House was publicly silent on a power failure that put the most populous corner of the nation in the dark.
Today Democrats said that Mr. Bush reacted slowly, just as they said he did on Sept. 11, 2001, while Republicans countered that the president was being thorough and prudent. But even supporters said that Mr. Bush's response to the blackout showed how a White House that puts a premium on meticulous, long-range planning does not always react with lightning speed when things abruptly change.
As with Mr. Bush's response to the attacks of Sept. 11, when he waited until that evening to make a formal statement from the White House, it was more important, Republicans said, for the White House to be sure of the facts before the president said the power failure was not caused by terrorism
In South Carolina, Job Losses Crack Solid Support for Bush
By MICHAEL JANOFSKY
REENVILLE, S.C., Aug. 12 — Lynn Mayson is an unemployed machine operator here. Roger Chastain is president of a textile company. While they travel in distinctively different circles, they have quite a bit in common.
Both are Republicans. Both were part of the Solid South vote that helped George W. Bush win the White House in 2000. And, now, both say they are angry enough about job losses in the region to vote for someone else in 2004.
"Something's got to give," said Ms. Mayson, a mother of three, as she left a state-run jobs center the other day. "I'm not going to vote for Bush unless things change. The economy has got to get better, and it's only going to do that if someone makes something happen."
Mr. Chastain, whose company, Mount Vernon Mills, has laid off 1,000 workers in recent years, is part of a coalition of textile executives who have formally complained to the White House about trade practices they contend are driving Americans out of jobs and manufacturers out of business, while giving huge advantages to China and other countries.
"Bush can forget about the Solid South," Mr. Chastain said. "There's no Solid South anymore.
.......
Asked for a show of hands in Spartanburg to indicate how many of the executives voted for Mr. Bush in 2000, all indicated they had. Asked for a show of hands of how many would be willing to abandon him in 2004, all indicated they would.
"This is an excellent opportunity for any elected official to base their campaign on jobs," said Roy Baxley, chairman of the South Carolina Cotton Board. "This is the time to step up to the plate."
Bush hasn't got a prayer if these people turn on him.
The cheap labor conservative dogma of low wage, low taxes, high profits means they need to export more jobs to Mexico and Ireland and anywhere else they can get people to work for less. These people didn't need unions, didn't trust government. They bought the cheap labor mantra like it was religion and are now catching hell.
Bush has no empathy for working people.He's never worked a day in his life. Never had a real boss. So how could he understand what is happening? You might as well speak Ukrainian to him. He goes to his play ranch at Crawford, hides out during yet another crisis and these hard working people expect him to do anything to hurt his friends. Bush may not wear leopard skin robes, but he's as much a kleptocrat as Mobutu or Baby Doc Duvailler. His friends and interests come first, before the country or common sense. He can't steal like they did, but he helps loot working people's pockets with a fervor which would shame Fagin.
All these people want is to pay their bills and have a job. They can't do either. And for extra measure, their kids are coming home minus a limb or two, if not dead. Bush is waging a brutal war on America's working class. Taking their jobs, crippling and killing their kids and acting as if it all doesn't matter.
Alabama Tied in Knots by Tax Vote
Riley Stuns GOP by Stumping for Hike
By Dale Russakoff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 17, 2003; Page A01
PELHAM, Ala. -- Amid suburban sprawl that has obliterated farms and timber stands and even a hideout where the Ku Klux Klan plotted the infamous Birmingham church bombing, Alabama Republican Party Chairman Marty Connors paused on a recent day over hash browns and eggs in a local Cracker Barrel, struggling to make sense of the latest turn in Alabama politics.
"We've got a conservative, evangelical Christian,Republican governor," he said, enunciating each word as if to get his head around the details, "trying to get a massive turnout of black voters to pass a tax increase so he can raise taxes on Republican constituents."
In a stunning subplot to the fiscal crises roiling the states, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R) -- who for three terms in Congress boasted that he never voted for a tax increase and was elected governor on a promise not to raise taxes -- is proposing to raise state taxes by a record $1.2 billion, eight times the largest previous increase and almost twice what is needed to close a $675 million budget deficit.
Seizing Alabama's crisis as an opportunity to right historic wrongs, he says the state should act to improve schools funded at the nation's lowest level per child and to lift the tax burden from poor people, who pay income taxes starting at $4,600 a year for a family of four while out-of-state timber companies pay $1.25 an acre in property taxes. The changes would move Alabama from 50th to 44th in total state and local taxes per capita, he says.
"I'm tired of Alabama being first in things that are bad and last in things that are good," an impassioned Riley told a Rotary Club in Prattville the other day as he traveled the state, sleeves rolled up, hawking what he calls Alabama's "Foundation for Greatness
Black voters don't trust the governor, the anti-tax people don't want higher taxes and the governor is trying to drag the state forward.
The low wage, low skill economy buoyed by steel and farming isn't going to last forever. North Carolina educates its kids, has high tech and decent services. UNC is more than a football team and coach. Even Mississippi takes education more seriously. The rubber has to meet the road here. Low taxes, low services and entrenched business power means a stagnant future. But it's a tax vote and if it passes, it will be by the smallest of margins.
U.S. Fears Shiite, Sunni Cooperation Will Bolster Resistance
By Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 17, 2003; Page A01
NAJAF, Iraq, Aug. 16 -- A popular Sunni Muslim cleric has provided grass-roots and financial support to a leading anti-American Shiite cleric, a rare example of cooperation across Iraq's sectarian divide that has alarmed U.S. officials for its potential to bolster festering resistance to the American occupation, senior U.S. and Iraqi officials say.
The ties mark one of the first signs of coordination between anti-occupation elements of the Sunni minority, the traditional rulers of the country, and its Shiite majority, seen by U.S. officials as the key to stability in postwar Iraq.
The extent of the cooperation remains unclear between Ahmed Kubeisi, a Sunni cleric from a prominent clan in western Iraq, and Moqtada Sadr, the 30-year-old son of a revered Shiite ayatollah assassinated in 1999. But ideologically and practically, it represents a convergence of interests between the two figures, who were left out of the Iraqi Governing Council named last month and, in their own communities, have emerged as influential if still minority voices of opposition to the four-month-old occupation.
Supporters of the two clerics acknowledged cooperation, but denied there was any financial support.
U.S. officials say they are especially worried that such cooperation will strengthen Sadr. U.S. officials were taken by surprise by the young cleric's rise to prominence and have remained publicly dismissive of his influence. But they privately acknowledge his support among the poorest and most alienated in cities such as Baghdad and Basra -- a constituency that has long played a role in Iraqi politics -- and express frustration over their inability to curb his influence at a time of growing criticism of U.S. reconstruction efforts.
While the older Shia clerics are not especially happy with Sadr, he's a very convient stalking horse. Hakim and Sistani can throw their hands in the air and express frustration, while laying the groundwork for a unified resistance. Everyone knows that Shia-Sunni unity is the prerequisite for tossing the Americans out. It isn't as simple as playing one Shia faction against another. Remember, the Sunnis and Shia have left each other alone.
THe other way of looking at it is that anyone who will oppose the coalition will get support and Sadr is the test case.
On Atrios and CalpunditNY Times columnist Tom Friedman comes under debate today.
Of course, Iraqis want to run their own government as soon as possible, said Mr. Fattah — but not in order to join the old Arab nationalist parade, but rather to focus on themselves. "Iraqis know Saddam was a fake," he explained. "His Arabism came at their expense. For Iraqis it was not Arabism, it was torture and subjugation. [Now] there is this feeling that the Arab world has lashed out at us because we did not `resist' the Americans. It was because Iraqis have learned the lessons of phony Arabism — that Saddam could send $35,000 to the families of [Palestinian] suicide bombers, while leaving his own people starving and living on two dollars a day.
"That's why there is a dramatic gulf now between Iraqis and a lot of other Arabs. Young people here want to move on. In 10 years, this will be a very different place. If I can be a part of it, it will be like Hong Kong or Korea — but with an Iraqi face."
Talking to young Iraqis such as Hassan, you sense how much they want to break the old mold
Here's the problem. First, Fattah, like many of Friedman's sources, is someone who shares his ideological world view. Many of his columns are based on interviews with similiar people, academics, journalists, businessmen. All people who share an understanding of the west. All of who are either secularlists or inclined to respect secularlism. This man is not an Iraqi, he's an Iraqi exile. And while exiles talk a good game, they live in a very different world than most Iraqis.
Second, and this is critical, he has no respect for the Islamic revivalists. Because he disagrees with their world view, he discounts their opinions. When he quotes Shia clerics, he quotes ones who share his ideas, not the people with power. It would be like filtering everything in baseball by talking to Yankee fans or trying understand the Premiership though the Liverpool team website. It's not an invalid view, but it's not the only view. People like Sadr are not stupid. They are no less consciencious, intelligent or thoughtful than their non-revivalist peers. It is their world view which is different.
So when his pipe dream winds up exploding, Friedman doesn't understand why people don't embrace his friends ideas of how their country should be run. The reality is that the clerics are the men with power and influence, not his academic and exile friends.
Tom Friedman writes about the world as he wants it to be, not as it is. His academic/exile friends have no voice and no power. So he can talk about Iraq being rebuilt, but the odds are by this time next year, Sadr and his publications bureau will probably be the ones making the decisions. Not some American with Iraqi parents.
In 1977, I was 13 when the blackout hit. We were sitting at home, watching Beretta, and then the lights went out. Within minutes, my neightbors were running around, stealing shit. The next day, folks had new TV's, new quadraphonic stereos, new sneakers. My local shopping area was gutted. At one point, the boys took a van, chained up one of the gates and ripped it off. The cops were helpless.
The stores got new gates and reopened, but there was no idea of a civil compact between citizen and government. At best it was an alien force which kept us poor.
It's funny, if you read Stanley Crouch, you would think that all these teenagers did, between insulting women and walking around with guns, would be to listen to rap music. That they were anti-social, hostile proto-criminals. Well, the blackout proved that's all bullshit. These kids were amazingly civic minded. They directed traffic, ran errands, played around in the dark. What they didn't do was cause trouble. In fact, they seemed amazingly focused and capable. Of course, no film crews bothered to show this. They made their way to the three looted stores in Brooklyn, but somehow forgot to talk to these kids who were performing a public service without being asked. I saw a few passing police cars, but that was it. No cops on foot patrol, no conflicts between them and the kids.
Maybe it was 9/11 or maybe our media depiction of teenagers as dangerous are dead wrong. While New York was dark, teenagers actually did what we wish them to do, act responsibly in a crisis. But that won't make the news.
The Government's dossier on Iraq's weapons capability was hardened up in the days before its publication in a number of key respects that did not tally with the views of some of its most senior experts, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
Scrutiny of documents released by the Hutton inquiry into the death of the weapons expert Dr David Kelly reveals that not only were key claims about the nature and extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction strengthened in the two weeks before the dossier's publication in September 2002 but that a crucial change was made to the title.
Right up until the publication of the final draft, and as late as 19 September, the document was entitled "Iraq's programme for weapons of mass destruction". But on 24 September, when the Government published the finished version, it left out the words "programme for".
According to Dr Glen Rangwala, the Cambridge academic who exposed the Government's February dossier as having been plagiarised from a student thesis on the internet, that change is important because the inclusion of the word "programme" does not assume that such weapons existed.
The Government changed the title of its September 2002 dossier on Iraq at the last minute, to portray a situation in Iraq that some of its most senior experts did not accept as valid.
Documents released by the Hutton inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly show not only that the claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were strengthened in the two weeks before the dossier's release, but also that a crucial alteration was made to the title. The last draft of the dossier available to the inquiry from 19 September was entitled "Iraq's programme for weapons of mass destruction". But the title on both the Downing Street website and printed versions is simply "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction".
Referring to a weapons "programme" does not imply they exist or are being produced. The most it indicates is that production could begin in future. UN weapons inspectors in Iraq throughout the second half of the 1990s focused on uncovering the potential for Iraq to develop nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, as there was little evidence that actual weapons existed or that production was taking place.
What? Blair lied about Iraq's WMD?
Let's list the accomplishments of the snipe hunt so far:
* David Kay promises a surprise. Maybe a jack in the box? Maybe a whole bunch of papers? Because he sure doesn't have any weapons. A fact Whitehall leaked to the BBC and Guardian over a month ago.
* A scientist digs up a rusty centrifuge. Now, if he dug up 99 more, Iraq might be able to process uranium at some level.
His reward? To be held incommunicado by the CIA to prevent embarassment.
*Judy Miller fills the New York Times with "tips" from Ahmed Chalabi, now the most hated non-Saddam Iraqi in Iraq. Drunks at OTB have a higher success rate.
* Task Force 20, the combined Ranger/Delta Force/NEST/ Dev Group team designed to hunt WMD and Saddam have killed upwards of 80 Syrians, 20 Iraqi sheep smugglers, 20 average Iraqis including two girls and a handicapped man, Uday and Qusay (but only after a gun battle which would make Jerry Bruckheimer hard with envy) and been ambushed at least once.
* Task Force 75, the "overt" task force, runs around, trips over "covert" TF 20 missions and both find nothing. Maybe before
* After the bill of sale for two hydrogen trailers were found, they still denied the obvious. Instead, claiming these canvas sided trucks were bio weapons labs. Why yes, doctor, let's experiment with anthrax and risin in a canvas sided truck. Why don't I store them in my fridge at home while I'm at it? Those silly Russians with their isolated islands and Americans with space suits on. Please. Let's just fire up the Scandia and get to work. Maybe the Brits should discuss Marconi's plans for those factories of death on wheels they sell.
* Claims about Niger are so obviously fradulent, the Italian media wouldn't touch them.
A bomb has been blamed for a fire at a key pipeline in northern Iraq, cutting off oil exports just three days after they had resumed.
The US-appointed interim oil minister in Iraq said it would be several days before the pipeline was back in order.
"We believe at this stage it was an explosive device planted on the pipeline," Thamir Ghadban told reporters.
The fire, which burned for 24-hours before it was put out on Saturday, engulfed a section of the pipeline at Baiji, north of Tikrit - the hometown of ousted President Saddam Hussein.
The export of oil from northern Iraq is a crucial factor in America's post-war reconstruction plans for the country
Our friend Kosis being rather dismissive about the recent blackout, but he, like a lot of people not familiar with New York, may have missed the point.
New York is unlike most American cities. When the power goes down, bad things happen that do not happen in other places. It's not about being "inconvienced" for one thing or spending a charming night "camping out". First of all, when the subway stops, that strands millions of people. The subway handles about 2 million people a day, not just from the city, but the suburbs. Most people use mass transit here, so when there are no trains, people are screwed. This isn't LA, you don't hop in your car and jump on the freeway. People work in Manhattan and downtown Brooklyn and live elsewhere, sometimes 10-15 miles away. No subway, you have to walk. In most American cities, people walk from the parking lot to their car.
So people were walking 10 miles to their homes in some cases. The lucky ones, only 2-2.5 miles. But with both the subways and commuter rail lines down, millions of people who would normally leave the city had a very difficult way home. This isn't Boston, where a long walk is 20 blocks. Get stuck in midtown, you have a couple of miles to walk home, maybe over a bridge or two. The buses were jammed so tight that wasn't an option for many, well into early morning. And let's not forget the tourists, many of whom wound up sharing a sleeping spot on the sidewalk with trapped suburbanites.
But those were the lucky ones, as were the people stuck in elevators. Some building have back up generators, some don't, but a stuck elevator shouldn't be dangerous. It's the subways which make a blackout dangerous.
When the trains stop, they're underground. While some of the lines are above ground, the vast majority aren't. And unlike Boston or Washington, the tracks can be 50, 100 feet underground. On a good summer day, the platforms can easily reach 120-130 degrees. Imagine being stuck underground, with rats, for two hours in 130 degree heat in darkness. It was lucky that no one died. So when you have to escape, you may have to walk up to a half-mile in the dark to reach an exit and climb up steep ladders. The fact that the subways were evacuated in an orderly manner, without panic, is a good thing. But that doesn't mean it wasn't a big deal.
New York lives and dies on mass transit. When it stops working, the city's economy stops working. It literally shuts down. Once the subways went, New York was paralyzed. Buses can only handle half of the mass transit ridership in the region. While people own cars in the city, the city's economy relies on mass transit. So when you shut down the trains, you have two immediate issues: public safety and the economy. Because the city is losing millions a minute once mass transit goes down.
That's why New York's elected officials are hopping mad. It isn't a show. When the commuter rails and subway go down, it's an economic and public safety nightmare. And once they do go down it not only drains money from a battered city and state budget, but it takes from 6-9 hours to restart. So while the blackout ended at 9:30 PM yesterday, the subways didn't get going until 6 AM. There are over 365 miles of track in the system as well, all of which has to be checked.
Then there's the water issue.
Most New York buildings have their water pumped electrically from roof tanks. Any building over five stories is going to be without water within an hour or so after the power is cut. So millions of people not only lost their water, but did so in 85+ heat. Which especially sucks for the elderly. It's definitely not a matter of just sitting in the dark. No elevator service, no water, hell EMS made more runs Thursday than on 9/11.
What caught people was not only the timing but the scale. So yes, it was a big deal, even if CNN made it seem like Light Out Across the Northeast. It was pretty serious business.
Most people didn't complain about the lack of power for a day, except as in it is a pain to deal with.
New Yorkers do take things in stride, and play down dangers, but make no mistake, New Yorkers were lucky.
It doesn't surprise me that Arnold's Field Poll numbers are already slipping.
Besides the fact that he's being targeted by his GOP opponents, McClintock and Simon, his stands on immigration are going to kill him. Toss in Arianna's birddogging and Arnold has a rough few weeks. He may have the silly platitudes down flat:
"Well you know that I'm not responding to any of those things because I would be crazy if I would," Schwarzenegger said of Huffington's criticism. "To me the most important thing is that we move forward in a positive way. My campaign is a positive campaign that will bring the economy back, reduce the budget and teach the politicians in Sacramento that we cannot go and spend money that we don't have."
But that will not help him with his fellow Republicans.
The California GOP believes in fratricide. Everyone has forgotten the little contrempts earlier this year within the party:
Oakland's Reeves rips GOP racism
State Republican official's e-mail to board members says that blacks 'provide window dressing'
By Daniel Borenstein
TIMES POLITICAL EDITOR
The highest ranking African-American in the California Republican Party on Tuesday condemned the racism he has endured working for the GOP.
"Black Republicans are expected to provide window dressing and cover to prove that this is not a racist party, yet our own leadership continues to act otherwise," party Secretary Shannon Reeves wrote in an e-mail to party board members.
His comments were sparked by news last week that Vice Chairman Bill Back had circulated an electronic newsletter in 1999 containing an article by someone else suggesting that the nation would have been better off if the South had won the Civil War.
Reeves, an Oakland businessman, called on Back to drop his bid for party chairman in next month's election at the state GOP convention. Back is running against Silicon Valley attorney Duf Sundheim.
Of course, such an honest assessment recieved the following reply:
Now weighing in we have Shannon Reeves, a fellow I was once prepared to admire although I saw him as something of a bombastic gasbag. I voted for him, too, but I wouldn't do it again. Now he has decided to suck up to Steele and Sundheim, jump in and kick old Bill Back while he is down, possibly to extend his own fifteen minutes of fame. He has just released a lengthy whining letter explaining how awful it is to be a black Republican. I, for one, am getting bored with that kind of garbage. Let me offer this suggestion to Mr. Reeves: "Get over it, Bucko. You don't know squat about hardships. You couldn't imagine what I went through, born in the poorest section of the country at the beginning of Great Depression to an unskilled laborer forever drifting, looking for a job to feed his family. Ragged, shoeless, malnourished, and down with every disease from rickets to dysentery, I survived a childhood on hard-scrabble share-cropper farms, picking strawberries for a nickel a hand carrier or in a dismal New Orleans slum lying about my age so I could get a job, any job, to help out my family. I would have killed to be at what is now called the poverty level. And, Bucko, you never heard me whine about it and you won't. I became the first Republican I ever saw because a great teacher explained to me that people who were determined to make it on their own belonged in the Republican Party while those who needed help were Democrats
So you see the caliber of people we're dealing with in the California GOP.
Atrios has a story on Arnie belonging to US English, an "English-only" immigration group with racist overtones, Kos goes into his links to Enron. But both miss something else. The minute that Arnie announced Pete Wilson was involved in his camapaign, that went out over Spanish and Asian language media. Arnie's people think his fame is going to get him over the hump, but not in the Spanish or Asian-language media.
In fact, LA's highest rated station is Spanish-language. The minute 187 was discussed, forget US English, Arnie is going to face a daily barrage, in Spanish, especially, about his character and beliefs. The assumption is that young men would favor him because he kills things on Century City backlots and his education plan would win over parents. But he's going to get hammered, every day, in Spanish, and at the same time, Bustamante will get reams of positive press.
At the core of Arnie's problem is hypocrisy. It's perfectly fine for heavily accented white immigrants to have all the rights and privleges of Americans, but let them come from Latin America or Asia and suddenly they don't deserve rights. Arnie should properly be hammered daily by that on Spanish-language radio. Even if people's Spanish fluency is limited, those messages get out and around the community. Running ads on Univision, Telemundo and the radio stations, especially in an election where you need a simple majority to win, could be a decisive edge.
There is an alternate language world in places like New York, LA and the Bay Area. The GOP seems dimmly aware that what works in Texas, where the Dems were the party of Mexican-American land theft and denial of rights, will not play in pro-Democratic California.
Given the truly fratricidal nature of the California GOP, I would expect Arnie to have a brutal fall.
Paul Bremer, the US's civilian administrator for Iraq, has deployed 120 new security personnel to guard the 25 members of the council appointed by the Americans to help run its occupation.
..........
The Americans are presenting the tight security as an effort to protect the council from Saddam's loyalists and foreign militants that the US claims are now slipping into Iraq. But the reality is that the Governing Council needs protection from the ordinary Iraqi people they are supposed to "govern" as much as from anyone else. "If Ahmed Chalabi [the member of the council most often singled out for loathing by Iraqis] walked down the street without security guards, the people might kill him," said one Iraqi.
..........
On the streets, it has none. Salman Hatem, a trader at Baghdad's book market, said: "We want the Americans to go and take the Governing Council with them."
I guess that intermittent water, power and lack of gas makes people grumpy.
Look, the governing council is an American's idea of fairness. They choose, you support may sound like a parody of another Fox slogan, but it is no way to run a country. Even though Hakim stuck his brother on there, he stuck his brother, not himself. The Americans think they can implant a bunch of exiles and let them enact their ideas of democracy and that is, for lack of a better phrase, pissing people off. The exiles are living in London or Cambridge and frankly Mr. Hatem doesn't want some Londoner making plans for his future.
Iraqis from Iraq reserve that right for themselves. Relying on exiles was a mistake, and now the locals are basically saying: go back to (Tehran, London, New York).
The exiles think they can resume their lives in Iraq and the odds are very low that they can. The lack of basic services, the realities of politics steeped in violence and mistrust and the simple fact that many can no longer adapt to life in Iraq will come to them slowly. For many, Iraq is their past, not their future.
That doesn't happen in New York. It just doesn't. The subway runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The subway ran on 9/11. So when the subway stops running, it's weird.
They placed red tape on the entrances and stationed a cop at some.
But the buses are free.
I changed my mind on the spagetti and bought fast food instead. Which required riding a bus. Most of the stores were closed, but Wendy's wasn't. I wasn't buying any food from around where I lived so soon after the lights came up. Food poisoning sucks.
If you saw the BBC or read the UK papers, you would have thought New York was in some kind of turmoil. You would be wrong. New Yorkers slept on the street last night. Right in the middle of downtown. Or walked miles to their home. No one robbed, only a few knucleheads looting in Brooklyn. Most people went on with their lives, had a beer, talked to friends, threw out the food they didn't cook. People actually had a sense of community when things turned bad and didn't think twice about it.
There's an assumption that New Yorkers are rude, which they can be. But that isn't the same as callous. People actually talk to strangers here and no one was shocked that people directed traffic without prompting until the cops came, or bought water for people they didn't know.
There were thousands of block parties which lasted well into the night. Couldn't sleep with no power, thus no AC.
Even tonight, people are barbecuing on the street, drinking beer, both might get you a ticket normally, but the cops have other priorities.
New York is a weird place.It might seem the coldest, most forbidding place on earth until something happens. It's not like people change, but they just do the right thing. New Yorkers, by nature, are generous. A little leadgue team runs out of momney for a tournament, people send them donations. It's easy to raise money from New Yorkers.
This was, in many ways, different than 9/11. That was a tragic thing which happened to a few people. But the lights stayed on, the TV worked, supermarkets were open, people could get home. This was a bad thing which happened to everybody. You were affected in your home, or stuck walking for miles or, nightmarishly, in a subway tunnel. It wasn't a matter of momentary survival or help, it became a matter of personal survival. Eating, sleeping, getting home, getting water. This wasn't a TV show.
I spent hours on the phone. Nothing else to do. My niece, who's six, didn't seem to understand why we couldn't put a new light bulb in, until I explained that the entire city had no light. She concluded that it was "mad serious". My sisters were surprised that the power took so long to come on. So was I.
'
I finally got my power back at 6:30 PM EDT. Which means I spent 26 hours in the dark.
I am not a happy person.
I'm watching ABC News and Claire Shipman seems shocked that Iraqis are enjoying our recent misery. Now, I know she's not a stupid woman, but why in the hell would she be shocked that an Iraqi would not only draw that conclusion, but after months of listening to bullshit and outright fantasy from Viceroy Jerry about their power, expect them to have any other reaction.
I've been saying for months that this is no way to live. My food is gone, I'm eating canned ravioli, a treat I haven't enjoyed since high school and I still have to bathe. I didn't like it for 26 hours. I would be out of my mind in rage after five months. If you've never been in a pitch black city: it is absolutely frightening. No one had RPG's, no one was going to shoot me for walking around, no one had set up random checkpoints. Yet, it was still amazingly frightening. It is unnatural for a city to be in utter darkness.
Then toss in spotty water and rotting garbage, and you have a real degregation in the way that people live.
It's not fun and you cannot excuse it away. It is fundamentally unjust to leave Iraq without power and to expect them to suffer for months what we in NY didn't like for a day. Yes, things move slowly, yes, there is sabotage, but to expect people to tolerate this for months is asking for violence. Tolerance has its limits.
It's nice to know that during a crisis, George Bush will continue to raise money and mutter something about changes. A fifth of the country loses power, and he doesn't even make a show of going to Washington and getting his people together? Once again, Bush acts as if he can contract out leadership. The buck may stop somewhere, but not in his pocket or on his desk.
For the curious, I was at home when the lights went out, and spent the night on the phone and listening to the news. It wasn't bad, actually. Now, let me shower and eat spaghetti. The lights may be on, but the food is still bad.
U.S. May Fine Some Who Shielded Iraq Sites
By ADAM LIPTAK
Ryan Clancy arrived in Iraq in February in a double-decker bus filled with opponents of the war, after a rocky journey in it all the way from Milan. He had used frequent flier miles to get to Italy from Wisconsin.
"There weren't a lot of Milwaukee-Baghdad flights," he explained.
Mr. Clancy is 26 and owns a record store. He went to Iraq, he said, to observe, to learn and "to protect the civilian infrastructure." He spent weeks as a human shield at a grain silo that he feared would be the target of American bombing.
The government is not happy with Mr. Clancy and several others like him. Not long after they returned home this spring, they received letters from the Treasury Department seeking information about their activities in Iraq and noting that spending money there was a crime that could lead to 12 years in prison and civil penalties of up to $275,000.
Mr. Clancy and other opponents of the war say the inquiries are part of an effort to suppress dissent, but the government says they are a routine enforcement of regulations. And a Treasury spokesman bristled at the notion that the inquiries were politically motivated.
"Of course not," the spokesman, Taylor Griffin, said. "Unlike in Iraq under Saddam Hussein — where dissent was met with imprisonment or worse — the freedom to protest and disagree with the government is a cornerstone of American democracy. However, the right to free speech is not a license to violate U.S. or international sanctions. While free expression is a right enjoyed by all Americans, choosing which laws to abide by and which to ignore is not a privilege that is granted to anyone."
Other experts said the inquiries were selective, but properly so
It's the Bush Admnistration. Of course it's punative. It's a stupid fight because they won't pay and suing them makes an even bigger stink. Fined for leaving coloring books. Jesus.
The U.S. spokesman said there was no reason for the Americans to apologize.
"If you throw rocks or fire at U.S. forces, then we'll return fire," the spokesman said. "The proximity of non-Muslims close to a mosque is somehow viewed as a threat. We disagree. It's our prerogative to travel wherever we want to in this country."
He described the protest as "something that was slightly contrived."
Tariq Ubaid, a 35-year-old cleric, predicted a violent response if the Americans came to the neighborhood today. He said Shiite religious figures had prevented the crowds from firing directly at the American soldiers on Wednesday.
"The Americans want to prove that they are occupiers and that they can do whatever they like," Ubaid said. "They want to see what kind of reaction people will have against them."
He said that if Americans returned today, clerics would do nothing to stop people from attacking them.
"It's up to the people what they do," he said. "They will attack them with their weapons. Today, we forbade people from shooting the Americans. We stopped them," he said.
Sadr City has, at least, 2 million people. If they decide to ambush and kill a US convoy, that convoy is dead. The Americans may be able to bully their way around the Sunni towns, but there are more people loitering around Sadr City than the US has in country. Any incident in that area could make Black Hawk Down look like a picnic.
Why? Because, by the time the tanks got there, dogged by close in rpg fire every inch of the way, any patrol would be long dead. Get a map of Baghdad and dig up some shots of the area on Google. There's even a sattelite shot of Baghdad around. Narrow streets, limited access and masses of people. You blast in, you kill hundred and the Shias will join the Sunnis in turning against the Americans. You don't blast in, and the patrol gets killed, morale goes even lower. A more aware American commander would apologize to the Shia clerics and stay the hell away for a while. Why? Because one set of enemies is bad enough. Sadr City would really look like the Battle of Algiers.
Everyone is pissing and moaning about how Arnold will terminate the opposition.
Well, here's your chance to play campaign chairman.
The rules: pick a campaign from the following:
Davis
Bustamante
Huffington
Simon
McClintock
Canejo
Unaffiliated 3rd Party (NARAL, Right to life, NRA, FAIR, La Raza)
Assume you can buy ads in all the major markets
What would you do and how would you do it.
You can post in comments or e-mail your answer to me.
How would campaign against Arnold and what would you do?
How do you beat his name recognition?
You can describe your campaign, write an ad, whatever.
Here's an example:
Announcer:Arnold supported Prop 187.
Citizen:What?
Announcer: Well, he came out for it.
Citizen: But isn't Arnold an immigrant?
Announcer: Yes, it would seem so.
Citizen:So how could be against basic rights for immigrants? Education? Health care?
Announcer: Well, I guess only some immigrants deserve rights, according to Arnold.
Citizen: But if he hadn't come here, he'd have never become rich?
Announcer: True
Ask Arnold why he believes in rights for some immigrants and not for others. Call the Schwarzenegger campaign at 1-213-555-5555 and ask him why he supported Prop 187.
OK, let me make a few things clear, so there's no misunderstanding or confusion.
Iraq: There is no good news from Iraq. There are degrees of bad news. awful news and truly depressing news. So if you come here, expecting to see some varient of good news, we're both hoping for the same thing. Unfortunately, I think we will be disappointed.
I never, ever imagined that things would be so bad so quickly. No power, no gas, no order and contracts to Bush's friends. I find this absolutely mortifying. I simply cannot believe that I hit the paper every day and things get worse. The US military once took pride in delivering turkey dinners for holidays. Now, US soldiers live like bums, shitting in open holes, surrounded by flies and with dirt low morale. If anyone had said this to me in March, I would have simply not believed it.
Anyone who reads Stars and Stripes, the happy talk newspaper of the military, has to be stunned. Things in Iraq are bad. Not everywhere, everyplace, but so bad in some places that mothers are sending their kids water and people are dying of heat stroke. I don't even think I'm close to getting at how bad this is. This is a total failure of command responsiblity right up to the White House. People in the military are astounded at the rank corruption and incompetence in Iraq. We aren't even sure who the enemy is and we seem to add to them daily.
Nothing seems to work and what some people don't understand is that things are coming to a head. People are unemployed, broiling (and most Iraqis had air conditioning) and are in danger. We've assumed a political solution would create daily living solutions and it isn't. How long would you tolerate the general disorder, disrespect and violence from an occupying army and utter cluelessness which looks suspiciously like a neo-colonialist plot to seize your country's natural resoruces?
September 9, will be six months from the fall of Saddam. That's a long time for no clean water and intermittent electricity.
So I'm hardly picking the worst stories and highlighting them, I'm just picking the stories which pop up. And they're all bad.
This is far worse than I ever imagined and I take zero joy in it.
The Greens: This isn't a Democratic Party site, as you'll notice I don't link to candidates or anything to do with the party. I could give a shit about "party unity". This is my site, my opinions, and as I said, I don't have any political agenda. I'll make it clear, I don't like the Greens. I don't like the way they do business, take money from the GOP and harm people who they should have something in common with. I have scant respect for the stock speculator Nader either. And it goes beyond his supping with Grover Norquist and Phyllis Schaffely. I think he diverted concerns about social justice into making middle class life a safer place for his friends. Good theories, little regard for people.
Do I blame Nader for 2000? Somewhat, but I also blame Gore and Lieberman's half-assed, no-fight campaign. Gore ran a bad camapaign and still won. But Nader acted out of pique and as a professional politician, he should know better. He didn't owe the Dems a thing. Except for 20 years of access to their committees in Congress, hiring his staffers and giving him unwarranted influence. So when Greens conviently forget that their "standard bearer" sucked on the hind teat of Democratic politics for a couple of decades, I find it both hypocritical and amusing. Ralph Nader was a creation of Democratic Party politics, his fame comes from Democratic Party support and now, because he doesn't get to play kingmaker, he runs off, joins with the naive Greens and makes war against his former patrons.
Now, I do believe in third parties, progessive politics, but the academic/Marin County tint of the greens leave me cold. New York has several parties, Working Families, Right to Life, Conservative. They get on the ballot and have organizations. The Greens, mostly a nice way for professors to hide their affairs with their TA's and for "activists" more wedded to "identity politics" and meetings than real political work.
BAGHDAD -- American troops shot dead two members of the new Iraqi police force and beat up a third, Iraqi police officers said yesterday, in a development that has aggravated already stressed relations between US troops and the Iraqi people.
American military officials have said little about the Saturday shootings, saying that the matter is under investigation. But family members of one of the victims and police officers -- including a captain who was at the scene -- described a horrific shoot-out in which coalition soldiers shot uniformed Iraqi police even as the officers were waving their badges and yelling, "We're police! We're police!"
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Captain Alaa Isamil said he received a report Saturday night from fellow officers that they had identified a stolen car and were pursuing it. When Isamil arrived at the scene, the lieutenant who had called him was dead on the street from a bullet in the head. His front passenger door was open. Another officer was dead in the back seat and a third was splayed on the ground with a wounded leg.
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The driver, whom police said was interviewed yesterday by US investigators, offered the following account, according to Isamil:
The police were trying to apprehend alleged car thieves, who shot at the police car. Iraqi police returned fire, and American soldiers -- apparently hearing the shots -- arrived on the scene. But the troops shot at the Iraqi police car, hitting the officer in the back seat, Isamil said.
The lieutenant in the front seat stumbled out of the car with his hands up, wearing his black and white Iraqi Police arm band and shouting that he was a police officer. A soldier then shot the lieutenant between the eyes. The driver, who had been crouched down in the front seat and waving his badge, was kicked and beaten by US troops.
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Any Iraqi is fair game for US troops.
When the Iraqi police listen to their clerics and let the Americans get killed in ambushes, it will be because we treated Iraqis with no respect.
frustrates me that those who want to tell soldiers in Kuwait and Iraq to buck up are in the U.S. or Germany. None of them knows what it's really like out here. I'm tired of people like the writer of the letter "Attitude appalling' (July 20) who say that noncommissioned officers' attitudes out here are appalling. I'll tell reader's what's appalling: The way officers, especially upper-level officers, have stripped NCOs of their ability to take care of their soldiers and give them direction. Why would the Army's backbone, the NCO Corps, have its soldiers puzzled and perplexed at this deployment/war? It's because the ones in power are the officers, and they've drawn us all out here into this conflict without a real mission just to fulfill their need for promotion or recognition
...........
It is so much worse. If I could only find the words to describe the harsh reality here in Kuwait and Iraq, I would. Politics and selfishness are at the lead of this nation-building operation, the complete opposite of all Army values.
So the next time anyone wants to slam NCOs or any other soldiers for the situation that we're in, they shouldn't blame us. They should look at the big picture and see what hell we live in out here. They have no right to sit in Germany or the States and judge us and our conditions.
Spc. Jason K. Sapp
Kuwait
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If the chain of command would take heed and be concerned about the morale of its soldiers, I'm sure that it would have a contingency plan to get us home. If it really wanted it done, I assure readers that it could get done. So while I'm here soaking up the blazing sun, hot air and dust of Iraq, the rest of the company is soaking up air conditioning in Kuwait, including the higher-ups like the company commander and first sergeant.
With a company and "leadership' like mine, it's no wonder why soldiers have no morale and don't want to re-enlist. I have a very negative attitude now, and I'll continue to be that way because the company continues to be that way toward me and my peers. They don't care, so why should I? I ask again, whatever happened to the morale and welfare of soldiers?
Spc. Darnell Belcher
Camp Dogwood, Iraq
I'd like to show my appreciation to the people at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and the military families of that area. I'm a soldier who was wounded in Iraq and medically evacuated to Landstuhl for medical care. When I arrived I didn't have any clothes, money, wallet or ID card. I had nothing. Soon after arriving, I was given civilian clothes and shoes as well as a new ID card. The nursing staff and doctors were very professional. I could tell they cared about the jobs they had to do.
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Staff Sgt. Monte Webster
Iraq
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As for those who say that all the GIs here are motivated and have high morale, all I can say is that they don't have their fingers on the pulse of the GIs. Either that or they aren't here. I want to hear what soldiers really think who just came back from deployments and are now scheduled to come to Iraq for a year. I'm sure there are some soldiers in Iraq who have high morale. But the continuous beating from the conditions, the heat, the Department of Defense and the Army will soon strip that away from them as well. Sometimes soldiers reach their limits and have enough.
I come in contact with numerous soldiers, officers, junior leaders and senior leaders on a daily basis. The conversations are all nearly the same: about getting out of the Army, out of Iraq or finding ways to prevent it from happening to them again.
I also wonder why no one can tell GIs what's going on. If we're two weeks from completing a mission, why can't someone tell me today what's happening with me and the unit? Are commanders asking questions or waiting for information to be volunteered? It seems to me that a lack of direction and purpose leads to a lack of leadership and motivation.
Since GIs are expected to stay in Iraq for a year when the few airmen here are on 120-day rotations, what's the plan to send GIs back to the U.S on leave to visit their families and try to hold their lives together until the deployment is complete?
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Sgt. 1st Class Darren Gaddy
Iraq
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I'm no hero and deserve nothing for my participation in Operation Iraqi Freedom. But what we all deserve is a clear-cut, concrete answer to when we can go home. Everyone in this theater deserves that. The hierarchy of command is so secretive about everything. They only help in bringing down the spirits and morale of their soldiers. I've never been a prisoner, but this deployment is as close to imprisonment as I ever want to be. Even incarcerated people know when they can go home.
Staff Sgt. S.A. Morgan
Iraq
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Recently I received a package from my mother. Upon opening it I found a note from a customs inspector who checked my package. It was so messy that no one in my unit could read it. I also found that one of my magazines was missing and several newspapers were ripped up.
Today was my phone day. I called my mother and told her about the package. It turns out that she didn't send me some of the things that were in the box, such as a VHS tape from a church at Fort Hood, Texas, and some audiocassette tapes. Nor did she have any idea how a torn latex glove wound up in the package.
I'm not really upset about this, but I feel sorry for the soldier whose stuff I received. I just think that it's time the military fixes the mail service and gives units a date when they can expect to go home. How is it that a military that takes over a country in three weeks can't fix the mail system in four months?
Large crowds of Iraqi Shia Muslims have demonstrated against US troops in the capital Baghdad, accusing them of defiling a religious school.
The protests, involving thousands, were triggered when the crew of an American helicopter flying close to the school's communications tower appeared to try to tear down an Islamic flag.
An Iraqi civilian was killed after US troops opened fire on the demonstrators who started throwing stones and chanting "No, no to America".
.......
The protests by stone-throwing crowds in Baghdad were a rare show of anger by the Shia Muslim community which has mainly welcomed the overthrown of the former regime.
................
Hassan Azab, a member of the district council, said: "We're peaceful people, but one edict (from the imams) and the entire American Army will become our prisoner
One flag sets thousands of people off.
Imagine what would happened if the US was stupid enough to try and arrest Sadr, forget Hakim.
If Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential aspirations melt like a dollop of Cheez Whiz in the sun, the trouble may well be traced to an incident in South Philadelphia on Monday.
There, the Massachusetts Democrat went to Pat's Steaks and ordered a cheesesteak -- with Swiss cheese. If that weren't bad enough, the candidate asked photographers not to take his picture while he ate the sandwich; shutters clicked anyway, and Kerry was caught nibbling daintily at his sandwich -- another serious faux pas.
"It will doom his candidacy in Philadelphia," predicted Craig LaBan, food critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, which broke the Sandwich Scandal. After all, Philly cheesesteaks come with Cheez Whiz, or occasionally American or provolone. But Swiss cheese? "In Philadelphia, that's an alternative lifestyle," LaBan explained.
And don't even mention Kerry's dainty bites. "Obviously, Kerry's a high-class candidate, and he misread the etiquette," LaBan said. "Throwing fistfuls of steak into the gaping maw, fingers dripping -- that's the proper way."
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The owner of Pat's Steaks, Frank Olivieri, was forgiving, though he points out that Bill Clinton and Al Gore knew to ask for Whiz. "It happens," he said. "I swayed him to the Cheez Whiz. If you're eating in Philadelphia, you eat what I serve you."
OK, to be fair, in Boston, when you order a sandwich, ad you can get a good cheesesteak sandwich there, everything comes with white cheese. So it's not freakish for him to order one with swiss or provolone and mayo. But in Philly, where people fight at the drop of a hat, people take everything hard. So not ordering Cheez Whiz is seen as a personal insult. So is breathing, forget rooting for the Mets or a non-Eagles team. He's comparing ordering swiss cheese on a cheesesteak to man to man sex. Philly is a very weird place.
Schwarzenegger's Team Is Shuffled
The actor brings in several key aides to former Gov. Wilson to run his campaign. 'There are tensions inside,' a strategist says.
By Mark Z. Barabak and Michael Finnegan, Times Staff Writers
Less than a week after entering the race for governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger has already shaken up his campaign team, demoting a top strategist and turning day-to-day operations over to aides who ran former Gov. Pete Wilson's office.
The moves reflect both a scramble to assemble a campaign on the fly — the actor surprised even some close advisors with his decision to run — and increased assertiveness on the part of the candidate's wife, television correspondent Maria Shriver, who has assumed a central strategy role, according to Republican operatives familiar with the campaign.
The moves also underscore Schwarzenegger's ties to Wilson, a political mentor who remains a controversial figure in California, particularly among Latino voters. And the restructuring yokes Schwarzenegger more tightly to the Sacramento establishment — a potential problem for a candidate who has portrayed himself as a political outsider.
As part of the shuffle, Bob White — Wilson's longtime staff chief, alter ego and one of Sacramento's best-connected insiders — has joined the campaign in the top job, bringing along Patricia Clarey, a deputy from Wilson's gubernatorial days.
From the people who sought to disenfrancise immigrants in the 1990's. When the fear of the brown people reigned, they stood tall. They would make sure no Mex'kin child would get edumicated, or steal medical care. Then they made sure the colleges would keep you out.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader was hit with a pie as he endorsed party member Peter Camejo for California governor.
The show of political support at the Green Party's San Francisco headquarters took an unscripted turn Tuesday when a prankster burst into the room and slammed a cream pie into Nader's face. The culprit fled through a side door.
Camejo later suggested the pie assault was the work of Democrats who may feel threatened by the Green Party's growing popularity.
Even 10 years ago, such a thing would have been unimaginable. Now, someone needs to knock Ralph off his pulpit and let him know his antics are no longer appreciated.
It's recall time in California and since a movie star is running,his fans will all come out to vote for him. Let's get real. Arnold is getting a lot of hype, but he's inexperienced. He's going to to get hammered by the real world very soon. No one at the LA Times cares if he doesn't like their questions.
Unless you break the law, the Hollywood press is about the business of publicity. The questions don't get too hard and everyone plays along so you can be famous and they can get their story.
Well, politics is a different business and a few weeks of hard questions, about everything from his voting record to his daddy's Nazi past could not only change the poll numbers, but his attitude towards running. The assumption that his fame and platitutdes will get him over the hump is insane. It won't and it can't. He'll be dogged every step of the way and contrary to popular belief, voters are neither stupid nor gullible. They're going to say Arnold until it starts to matter.
Politics is a hard business and doing stunts and reading lines are not enough. Anything could sink him, an illegal alien employee, unpaid taxes, a child out of wedlock, any number of surprises could explode on his campaign and he doesn't have enough time to defuse them.
But I find it insulting that political reporters see an actor run for office, and all of a sudden, the job of amusing me suddenly translates into competence in political life. There is no evidence that Arnold has any experience in the kind of leadership needed to run a troubled economy. The stakes, not only for California, but the entire US economy, are high. It's the fifth largest economy on earth, home to one out of every eight Americans. If Arnold was to be elected and fail, the entire US could suffer the consequences.
Despite his latest pronoucements, it's about more than leadership. You have to understand government. This is not a time for amateurs in government. He won't only have to get a job done, but he'll have to get a hundred jobs done, constantly under fire from right and left.
This campaign will go in ways no one can imagine. There are 195 candidates on the ballot, punch card ballots.
The reality is that Grey Davis is done. His numbers suck and are not getting better. The best thing he could do is step aside and let Cruz Bustamante run alone. Davis lost the confidence of the voters, and he damn near lost to Bill Simon, despite a deeply flawed campaign, because people simply disliked him. For him to campaign against the recall isn't going to work. Bustamante can win if he has the money and the attention. It's time for the party to tell Davis to step aside. Yes, the recall is wrong, but Davis asked for it, he lied, and in California, you can be punished for that. He's being punished. It's time to make sure them Dems aren't punished along with him.
Julian Borger in Washington
Wednesday August 13, 2003
The Guardian
A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".
As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.
All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".
Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.
"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.
We have reviewed several theories of individual differences,
epistemic and existential needs, and individual and collective
rationalization to arrive at eight specific hypotheses concerning the
motivated social—cognitive bases of political conservatism. In
what follows, we consider evidence for and against the hypotheses
that political conservatism is significantly associated with (1)
mental rigidity and closed-mindedness, including (a) increased
dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity, (b) decreased cognitive
complexity, (c) decreased openness to experience, (d) uncertainty
avoidance, (e) personal needs for order and structure, and (f) need
for cognitive closure; (2) lowered self-esteem; (3) fear, anger, and
aggression; (4) pessimism, disgust, and contempt; (5) loss prevention;
(6) fearof death; (7) threat arising from social and economic
deprivation; and (8) threat to the stability of the social system. We
have argued that these motives are in fact related to one another
psychologically, and our motivated social—cognitive perspective
helps to integrate them. We now offer an integrative, meta-analytic
review of research on epistemic, existential, and ideological bases
of conservatism.
Needless to say, this didn't go over well with Congress.
NORTON, Kan. — The mother of a Missouri Army National Guard soldier stationed in Iraq has launched a campaign to improve what she says are horrible living conditions her daughter and the 159 others in her unit have faced.
After receiving letters from Majors describing living conditions unlike any the soldier had previously seen in eight years of active duty with the army, Ankenman decided she had to do something for her daughter. So she started a campaign of collecting supplies — including sugar, toilet bowl brushes and cleaner, sponges, soap and hygiene products, granola bars and precooked meat snacks — to mail to Iraq.
“When I started this, Patty wrote us and said bugs were eating them alive and they had no bathroom facilities except for putting two pieces of wood over a cardboard box and that’s what they used as a toilet.
“They got two bottles of water a day, one MRE (meals, ready to eat) a day and no showers. She said it was three weeks before they could take a shower,” Ankenman said.
Ankenman has reached out to her fellow Norton residents, and so far they have mailed 320 pounds of supplies to the unit.....
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... I can support her needs, but I can’t support 160 soldiers. That’s the reason I started asking for help,” Ankenman said.
Well, she's wrong about this, in that regular soldiers are also getting two liters of water, only MRE's and living in filth. Once upon a time, oh, the First Gulf War, US troops were lavishly supplied. They had hot meals, could call their families, had adequate water.
Times columnist Paul Krugman, among others, explains why soldiers in 2003 live worse than they did in 1991.
Military privatization, like military penny-pinching, is part of a pattern. Both for ideological reasons and, one suspects, because of the patronage involved, the people now running the country seem determined to have public services provided by private corporations, no matter what the circumstances. For example, you may recall that in the weeks after 9/11 the Bush administration and its Congressional allies fought tooth and nail to leave airport screening in the hands of private security companies, giving in only in the face of overwhelming public pressure. In Iraq, reports The Baltimore Sun, "the Bush administration continues to use American corporations to perform work that United Nations agencies and nonprofit aid groups can do more cheaply."
But interviews with nearly 40 Marines in Fox Company and the 2nd Battalion raise the question of whether military leaders endangered some troops by waging war on the cheap, sending Americans into combat without adequate resources to fight the enemy and protect themselves.
No armored vehicles: When orders finally came to cross the border into Iraq, ships carrying AAVs -- armored land-sea vehicles that transport infantry -- had not yet arrived. Maj. Lawrence Kaifesh, commander of Golf Company, said the decision on which three battalions would get the AAVs "went back and forth."
The 2nd Battalion was allocated 44 7- and 5-ton trucks; seven were armed with either an MK-19 grenade launcher or an M2 .50-caliber machine gun. Fox Company got 13 trucks. One broke down and a single truck was armed with a grenade launcher, the company's only big gun.
Fox Company also was short on ammunition for its M240 Gulf machine guns, the largest weapon the infantry can carry. There were so few colored signal flares that the company scrapped plans to use them. Some Marines stuffed bullets into their pockets because they had no ammunition pouches. And the company had only 75 hand grenades for its 200 Marines, who are trained to carry two to four grenades each.
Cpl. Wayde Broberg, whose SAW machine gun had jammed in the firefight at al Gharraf, fought with an M-16 rifle. Available repair parts were limited to those cannibalized from other weapons. Broberg, 26, of Herriman, was hit in the face by shrapnel.
You would think these were wartime problems and would be solved sooner, rather than later.
WASHINGTON -- U.S. troops in Iraq suffered through months of unnecessarily poor living conditions because some civilian contractors hired by the Army for logistics support failed to show up, Army officers said.
Months after American combat troops settled into occupation duty, they were camped out in primitive, dust-blown shelters without windows or air conditioning. The Army has invested heavily in modular barracks, showers, bathroom facilities and field kitchens, but troops in Iraq were using ramshackle plywood latrines and living without fresh food or regular access to showers and telephones.
Even mail delivery -- also managed by civilian contractors -- fell weeks behind.
............
One thing became clear in Iraq. "You cannot order civilians into a war zone," said Linda K. Theis, an official at the Army's Field Support Command, which oversees some civilian logistics contracts. "People can sign up to that -- but they can also back out."
As a result, soldiers lived in the mud, then the heat and dust. Back home, a group of mothers organized a drive to buy and ship air conditioners to their sons. One Army captain asked a reporter to send a box of nails and screws to repair his living quarters and latrines.
It seemed no one realized that civilians wouldn't sign up for nightly mortar attacks and the occasional ambush. Better to be sued and alive than perform a contract which will get you killed, is the way a lot of people think. It's nice to know that Halliburton's subcontractors are that patriotic.
It was always unrealistic to believe democracy could be imposed on Iraq overnight, writes Edward Luttwak
................
It would be an astonishing achievement of cultural transformation if a functioning Iraqi democracy could be established in a mere 30 years, or indeed 60. But the Bush Administration cannot contemplate decades of colonial government, and is therefore pushing for the formation of some kind of elected government in two or three years.
But the immediate problem is that even that perilously accelerated timetable is much too slow for many Iraqis - and for the US Army, which is heading for a veritable collapse in re-enlistments among the troops serving in Iraq. Most are utterly disgusted by the futility of their duties.
They are repairing schools in the furnace heat of the Mesopotamian summer while able-bodied Iraqis nearby are idly watching, if not jeering. They are clearing playgrounds for children who have been taught to throw stones at them. They are guarding hospitals from looters while being cursed even by the visitors of the patients they are protecting.
The officers who now govern towns and entire districts are constantly besieged by local leaders and imams demanding more of everything, from electricity to well-paid jobs, but who resist any suggestion that they themselves could act, for example, by getting their followers to clean up the garbage-strewn streets. They prefer to keep them listening to interminable speeches and sermons.
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The perils of a rapid exit are many, but the only alternative is a prolonged occupation that offers no greater guarantees of success, at far greater cost.
Luttwak was one of the first and most prominent conservative military thinkers to come to prominence from the age of Reagan. For him to write it's time to leave is pretty interesting.
He had left shuttered his shop, which sold nets to fishermen plying the Shatt al Arab that flows through Basra. The night before, he recounted, he had spent another sleepless night in a sweltering apartment without electricity, buffeted by a humid wind blowing off the Persian Gulf. At one point, in desperation, he started his car, turned on its air conditioner and put his son inside to sleep.
One month, said the gaunt, unshaven and angry Khairallah. That's how long he gave the British forces occupying Basra to bring electricity, water and fuel. After that, more riots would ensue. "But not with rocks," he said, nodding his head. "With guns"
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In a country devastated by war, more than a decade of sanctions and years of often willful neglect, Basra's problems are especially acute. British officials blame the loss of electricity- at one point it was available 20 hours a day- on looting, an increase in demand because of the hot weather and a breakdown in one of two major power stations. That, in turn, has slowed oil refining and delivery of fuel to gas stations. Backup generators are old and inefficient. Smuggling of fuel has made matters worse, they said.
The oil pipeline from Basra to Nasriyah was recently sabotaged, and silt has blocked half the main canal that brings drinking water to Basra. That has intensified residents' complaints that water, when available, is salty. Pickard acknowledged that there was 'an understandable degree of frustration"and complained that British officials' priorities in Basra "power, water and fuel" are not shared to the same degree by U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.
“It seems so bureaucratic. It's so difficult to get things going,"he said from a building that had been looted of everything but its windows before the British moved in. “We have not had a great deal of say. We don't feel we've been able to influence the reconstruction program."
He pointed to a U.S.-funded project to renovate 200 schools in the region. While admirable, Pickard said, "painting schools isn't going to stop people from rioting"
What? They've been liberated. Why all the complaining, Saddam is gone. A little salt water today, a Hailburton guaranteed future tomorrow.
Turkey's military is ready to serve in a multinational peacekeeping force in neighboring Iraq, a top general said Sunday.
With U.S. military manpower stretched thin, the United States is looking to several countries, including Turkey, for additional troops in Iraq. It hopes to replace some of the exhausted U.S. units with non-American troops.
The announcement by Gen. Yasar Buyukanit at a cocktail party for journalists in Ankara, could help ease public opposition against contributing to the U.S.-led operation. As a largely Muslim country, Turkey could help the United States gain support in the Islamic world for its occupation of Iraq if Ankara participates in the peacekeeping.
"If there is instability next door, we can't keep our eyes closed," said Buyukanit, deputy chief of staff. It was the first time the military publicly endorsed sending peacekeepers to Iraq.
Besides massive opposition from the Turkish public, this pretty much would, oh, kick off a raging civil war.
Modern Turkey's founder, Mustafa Kemal (better known as Atatürk--"father of the Turks"), enacted a constitution 70 years ago which denied the existence of distinct cultural sub-groups in Turkey. As a result, any expression by the Kurds (as well as other minorities in Turkey) of unique ethnic identity has been harshly repressed. For example, until 1991, the use of the Kurdish language--although widespread--was illegal. To this day, any talk that hints of Kurdish nationalism is deemed separatism, and grounds for imprisonment
Ali said that in the summer of 1994, 16 army tanks rolled through his village searching for Kurdish guerrillas. Some of the tanks had rubber wheels, like the kind the Germans sell to Turkey; the others were track vehicles, like the M-48 and M-60 tanks made in the United States.
Even though no rebels were found, the soldiers returned a few months later and delivered an ultimatum to the people: Become village guards or abandon your homes. The 70-year-old muhtar insisted the villagers had never fed or otherwise assisted the rebels; they just wanted to grow their crops. He told the soldiers that the people chose to be left alone. It was the wrong choice.
A few nights later, the muhtar was dragged from his home and shot. The townspeople still refused to take arms from the government. Instead, they gathered their furniture and household belongings and moved away.
Whatever Kocasirt had been before, it was now a collection of deserted, burned, and dynamited houses. It was a ghost town, except for the cemetery. There we encountered an old woman who had just returned to the village by foot. She was wailing softly and sprinkling red cherries on a tombstone. She said she was "feeding the spirit" of her dead brother. My guide recognized her: She was the sister of the muhtar. Reaching for a weed in the overgrown graveyard, the woman made a sweeping motion with one hand. "They just plucked him like a flower," she said.
The Turkish government has been far worse to the Kurds than Saddam has," one well-educated Kurd said bitterly. His comment stunned me, for Turkey never used poison gas or conducted mass executions as Saddam did, but one Kurd after another said the same thing. They described past Turkish military techniques like raping wives in front of husbands, or assembling villagers to watch men being tied and dragged to their death behind tanks, and they noted that Turkey had been less tolerant of Kurdish language and culture than Saddam.
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Turkey also forced at least 500,000 Kurds to leave their villages at gunpoint. Excellent reports on Turkey by Human Rights Watch say that some refugees who have tried to return to their homes recently have been shot by government-armed thugs.
So the odds of Iraqis, any Iraqis, allowing Turks to patrol their country are small. For the Shia and Sunni, it's an insult. For the Kurds, it's a matter of genocide. If the Turks come, they have to fight.
TACOMA, Wash. - Duane E. Longstreth and his mother, Jennifer West, enlisted in the Army together in January 2002.
He became a combat engineer with Company B, 307th Engineer Battalion at Fort Bragg, N.C., and was sent to war in Iraq. She became a communications specialist with the 44th Signal Battalion in Mannheim, Germany.
On Friday she learned her 19-year-old son, a private first class, had died a day earlier of non-combat injuries - apparently an accidental gunshot - in Baghdad.
"My son left us a hero," West, 36, told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Monday from her family's home in Tacoma. "He was doing the right thing, and he was proud to be doing what he was doing."
He was among four non-combat fatalities in Iraq reported Monday by the Department of Defense. The others were Sgt. Floyd G. Knighten, Jr., 55, of Olla, La.; Spc. Levi B. Kinchen, 21, of Tickfaw, La., and Pvt. Matthew D. Bush, 20, of East Alton, Ill.
............
Spc. Kristopher Haney, who serves with West in Germany, told The Seattle Times the family was informed that Longstreth died of a gunshot wound to the head. Investigators believe it was an accident and that no other soldiers were involved, Haney added.
Besides the obviously tragic nature of this story, something is odd about an accidental shooting when someone is alone. He was a combat engineer and knew how to handle a weapon. It's easy to get the feeling that the Army is being vague about these deaths to protect the families.
Richard Norton-Taylor, Vikram Dodd and Nicholas Watt
Tuesday August 12, 2003
The Guardian
The government's attempts to bolster its case for the war against Iraq suffered a heavy blow on the first day of the Hutton inquiry yesterday when it was revealed that unease about the dossier on Saddam Hussein's weapons programme ran much deeper than Downing Street has claimed.
Evidence presented to the inquiry into the apparent suicide of the Ministry of Defence scientist David Kelly showed that concerns expressed by Dr Kelly about the language of the government's dossier was shared within the intelligence community, even at a senior level.
In a further undermining of Tony Blair's case, the inquiry heard that Dr Kelly's status was much more significant than the government has admitted, a direct rebuttal of last week's description of the dead scientist by a No 10 press officer as a Walter Mitty fantasist.
.............
One unnamed official, now retired, expressed concern to Martin Howard, the deputy chief of defence intelligence, in a letter which was read out. The official wrote: "As probably the most senior and experienced intelligence community official working on 'WMD', I was so concerned about the manner in which intelligence assessments for which I had some responsibility were being presented in the dossier... that I was moved to write... recording and explaining my reservations."
In the current issue of the Weekly Standard, home of people who do not read or completely understand history, Reuel Mark Gerecht, safe from his desk, suggests that the US doesn't need more troops in Iraq. Yes, I know it's insane, but his logic is charming, if warped.
Irrespective of whether we should seek to have Europeans, Pakistanis, or Indians dying with or in lieu of Americans, irrespective of whether murderous hard-core Baathists and Sunni fundamentalists would feel less "occupied" and less murderous seeing Turks in their country, and irrespective of whether the economically stressed, antiwar countries of the European Union would actually give meaningful financial aid to Iraq, the idea of a "new coalition" to oversee the reconstruction of Iraq is entirely unwise. It would probably encourage the worst political and cultural tendencies among Iraqis, even among those who are profoundly pro-Western. It could easily send a signal throughout the Middle East and beyond that the Bush administration doesn't have the stomach to transform Iraq, let alone the region
Who cares? He thinks we're building the young Republicans in Iraq. This is not a choice. Any glance at the force structure of the Army shows that there are not enough men to control Iraq now. Saddam had three times the number of police just to keep control. There is this fantasy that Americans are the best soldiers on earth and Saddam's policing levels were totally for repression. How do 150,000 men and women police 26 million Iraqis? As the Army Times reported on July 28, only one division remains undeployed. Without large numbers of infantry and police, Iraq will remain unsafe.
IT OUGHT TO BE self-evident that Washington would not want any military or security assistance from any Muslim state that is not a functioning democracy, which essentially rules out everyone but Turkey. The Arab Sunni states, all ruled by dictators or princes, have to varying degrees an interest in not seeing a stable, democratic, Shiite-dominated Iraq born in their midst. America's toppling of Saddam Hussein may possibly provoke an intellectual and political earthquake in the Middle East, but we can be certain that the states of the Arab League, which refused to recognize the legitimacy of Iraq's new governing council, will try hard to preserve the status quo. And the Turks have an awful reputation in Iraq, both among the Kurds, who have long-standing ethnic troubles with their northern neighbors, and among the Arab Shia, especially their clergy, who see the Turks as propagators of a secularism hostile to Islam. The Bush administration went to great lengths to keep the Turks out of northern Iraq during the war. Having Turkish soldiers at Iraqi street corners would be one of the swiftest ways of torpedoing the country.
American troops don't speak Arabic. This arrogance will get people killed. Arab troops would save American lives. Simple as that. We don't speak the language and people, Americans and Iraqis alike, die because of that. Turks in Iraq would start a civil war.
Post-Saddam Iraq is unquestionably a laboratory for new, potentially revolutionary ideas. But it ought not be a theme park where Eurocentric officials, diplomats, and think-tankers try out new strategies for bridging the America-Old Europe divide. Iraq and the Middle East are much too important to be held hostage to France and Germany.
This means it should be a laboratory for bad American ideas on rebuilding Iraq instead. The idea that Iraq is our toyboy and we know what's best for Iraqis permeates this article.
This arrogant sort of gameplaying with Iraqi and American lives is amazing. We shouldn't let the Europeans in. As if this is a choice. This isn't optional. This is to save American lives. It may seem like it would ruin our plans at the Weekly Standard, but sharing the burden is the only way to ultimately stabilize Iraq. The author can sit back, project some fantasy world of American dominance and not get killed. The people who have to carry this policy out have no such luck.
RAMADI, Iraq -- Al-Qaeda terrorists who have infiltrated Iraq from Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries have formed a deadly alliance with former intelligence agents of Saddam Hussein to fight their common enemy, the U.S. forces.
The alliance, known as Jaish Muhammad -- the army of the prophet Muhammad -- is believed to be responsible for increasingly sophisticated attacks on U.S. soldiers.
In the past four months, it has smuggled millions of dollars, weapons and hundreds of Arab fighters across the desert border with Saudi Arabia.
...........
For the Arab foreigners in Jaish Muhammad, the alliance is a jihad, similar to that forged by Mr. bin Laden and his allies to expel Russian forces from Afghanistan. According to those who know them, the Iraqis have joined for a combination of religious and nationalist reasons.
The Saudi al-Qaeda officer, who moves across the border but was believed to be in Iraq last week, is supported by wealthy Saudis rather than the Riyadh government.
His Iraqi partners recruit from the pool of security and intelligence officers who are unemployed and embittered by their loss of status.
Recruits are selected on the basis of skill with weapons and their religious tendencies. After vetting by the Wahhabis, they begin al-Qaeda-style training.
They are given lectures to prepare them for jihad and are taught the tactics of guerrilla warfare, such as how to make remote-controlled bombs.
Bush said "bring 'em on" and it seems the Saudi branch of Al Qaeda is taking him at his word.
Hey, it's the flypaper theory, yet again. The more terrorists, the merrier, right?
This was a natural, predictable outcome of the Iraq war. In utter anarchy, of course, terrorists would infiltrate Iraq and establish a base. Who would stop them? The US Army?
When you get ideologues like Max Boot, who, from the safety of their desks, want to create an American Empire, other people respond. The rich Saudis who back revivalist terrorists see Iraq as a big fat opportunity for michief making. They have a lot of Americans to kill to make their points and given the poor language skills of the US Army, well....who knows the difference between a Saudi, a Kuwaiti, an Iraqi. We can't even tell the difference between a car bomb and a family in a car.
It's not as if the Iraqis don't have enough home grown anti-American fighters.
However, the US doesn't seem to realize that among many in the Arab world, despite the hopes of Tom Friedman, this is their Spanish Civil War. Except they're marching under the banner of Allah and not the Comintern. To fight the Americans in Iraq is a good thing to many, many people and given the acts of the neo cons, no country is going to stop them from crossing over.
Al Qaeda doesn't have to attack the US mainland. There are 150,000 targets within driving distance. The bomb outside the Jordanian embassy may just be a warning shot.
TIKRIT, Iraq, Aug. 7 Killing an American may now be worth $5,000 to an Iraqi in Saddam Hussein's heartland -a quadrupling of the bounty, which the U.S. commander in the region said is a sign of desperation among guerrilla die-hards.
"THE WORD IS the price has quadrupled for doing attacks on U.S. forces," Maj. Gen. Ray Odierno told a news conference Thursday at his headquarters in Saddam's hometown, Tikrit.
Rates some weeks ago were about $250 for an attack and $1,000 for a "successful" one, he said, adding: "We believe now that's gone to about $1,000 and $5,000, something in that area."�
Or maybe there's an influx of new money and better targets.
The more you pay, the more people willing to play along.
Iraqi teenager Ali Abbas has told how he is looking forward to receiving new limbs.
Ali, 13, lost both his arms in a coalition attack on Baghdad early in the Gulf War in which his parents and many members of his family died.
He came to a specialist centre in London to have artificial limbs fitted along with 14-year-old Ahmed Mohammed Hamza who lost his left leg and right hand
........
Mohammed said: "I am very enthusiastic to have my limbs fitted as soon as possible."
I bet he is.
And even better, Saddam is gone. So is most of his family, but hey, he'll live in a free Iraq, well, as free as Halliburton allows it to be.
Improving the Iraqi people lives, one artificial limb per wounded child at a time. Hey, at least he wasn't hit with a Mark 77 "looks, acts and burns incredibly like napalm, but officially isn't" bomb.
It has been more than three months since the Americans arrived in Baghdad, but still the electricity cuts out in the hospital. Staff have seen pictures on television of how the local prison has been refurbished, but all the Americans have done here is stick up no smoking signs and try and limit the visiting hours.
The night shift at the hospital is just beginning and already Dr Fahad is treating his second patient. Entry wounds, exit wounds, bullets lodged in the subcutaneous knee joint, like the one he is trying to remove now, he's seen them hundreds of times in the past few months.
...........
The hospital is guarded by members of the 1st Armoured Division from Fort Riley in Kansas. Nicknamed the Ironstones, they used to sleep in quarters at the back of the hospital but have recently moved to the presidential palace compound because of fears over their security at Yarmuk.
Only Captain John Margolis and a couple of their other commanding officers are still living in a small office next to the emergency room
.............
There seems to be an uneasy truce between the doctors and the Americans. The doctors don't like the way the soldiers sometimes try to interfere, especially stopping them smoking in the wards.
"Like it makes any difference," says Dr Sabah, pointing at the bloodstained floor and walls.
But Capt Margolis, who seems a good, well-meaning man, is unrepentant.
"This is freedom and freedom can mean different things, and in this case freedom means we are going to have to enforce our values on them," he remarks without irony.
"The Iraqi doctors who have been to the west want their hospitals to be like ours and we have to change their values to do it."
By SCHEHEREZADE FARAMARZI, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq - The night air hung like a hot wet blanket over the north Baghdad suburb of Slaykh. At 9 p.m., an electrical transformer blew up, plunging the neighborhood into darkness.
American soldiers, apparently fearing a bomb attack, went on alert. Within 45 minutes, six Iraqis trying to get home before the 11 p.m. curfew were shot and killed by U.S. forces.
Anwaar Kawaz, 36, lost her husband and three of four children. "We kept shouting, 'We're a family! Don't shoot!' But no one listened. They kept shooting," she told The Associated Press. She's expecting another child this month.
When asked about Friday's shootings, Lt. Col. Guy Shields, coalition military spokesman, said, "Our checkpoints are usually marked and our soldiers are trained and disciplined. I will check on that. That is serious
So did the soldiers speak to them in Arabic? If not, that could explain a lot.
With the recent rise of former Special Operations officer Peter Schoomaker to the Army Chief of Staff position, it is clear that Army Special Operations (Rangers, Special Forces, Civil Affairs) will get more consideration than in the past. The Army has always had a love-hate relationship with elites. On one hand Rogers Rangers is a source of great pride, yet most commanders don't like the streak of independence that they have. There's long been a theory that they drain resources and people from regular units.
However, outsiders from Roosevelt to Kennedy and now Bush have fallen in love with the men who seem to be able to do anything, anytime, anywhere.
In the Army, special operators come in three flavors:
Rangers: light infantry trained as commandos. Missions include long range patrols, sabotage, airfield seizure and raids.
Special Forces: Specially trained troops who go behind enemy lines, work with guerillas, train allied armies and do long range reconnaisance. There is also some overlap between their work and intelligence missions.
Delta Force: A specially-trained unit originally created for hostage rescue, but has been used on extremely sensitive missions delegated by the national command authority. Not officially recognized by the Army in it's Table of Organization and Equipment or Order of Battle.
Now, when properly used, they're known as combat force multipliers. A small team of SOC troopers can direct artillery and air support, as they did in Afghanistan and in Iraq. But like a lot of things, they have their clear limits.
First, these men are the best in the Army. They are carefully selected and weeded out for their intelligence, physical fitness and responsibility. They are also amazingly professional in their conduct and appearance.
Second, they are highly trained. It may take well over a million dollars to fully train a Special Forces trooper in various specialities.
Third, they are fragile. Without being used carefully, they can be overrun and killed by even the worst troops. When you have 12 men against 200, bad things happen, regardless of training, expertise or experience. They have to be used with care.
Spec Ops does do some things which could and should be spread throughout the Army, especially in terms of professionalism, fitness and training. But before you remake the entire Army on this model of combat force multipliers, you need to understand the limits of the Spec Ops model and the missions that the US Army is facing.
We're clearly moving into an era of peacekeeping where actual infantry is needed. The US is man short in Iraq because of our incredible investment in technology. We have armor everywhere and troops used to working with armor instead of foot patrols. One of the dirty little secrets of US deployments is that we've relied upon other people's infantry. It's the Pakistanis. Nigerians and the French who we expected to actually walk the streets, while we would sit back and provide the punch. This strategy led Delta Force and Rangers into Mogudishu's streets, killed 18 and wounded 81. We would swoop in, pop down, do missions and leave. The problem with this is that US troops have scant idea of how to patrol and survive. Many of the troops are unskilled in foot patrols and rely on either fragile humvees or large, noisy Brads. We'd simply contracted that work out to anyone and everyone else. While US doctrine was still focused on armored and airmobile warfare, the missions required good old fashioned foot infantry.
Now, they want to rebuild the Army without seeming to admit that the role of the US Army is going to change. Infantry warfare is coming back and you need men, not robot planes and armored cars. There is a great temptation to take the lessons of SpecOps and spread them throughout the Army. And some of them are applicable. But others, especially those which maximize weaponry over actual infantry are risky at best. American troops need to learn to work with people, establish a foot presence and to lose unfounded fear of the locals. More machines cannot do this. Only men can.
I'm watching Frank Gaffney argue that things are getting better in Iraq on MSNBC. Well, I'm actually listening to music, but since it's Gaffney, I know he's announcing the party line. Things are getting better, blah, blah, blah.
There's a wonderful English language word for that: bullshit.
Let me put to you as simply as possible.
Imagine Dallas with intermittent power, light and gas, with polluted water and dirty streets. In the middle of summer. You could bet those Texans would be mighty pissed. Gaffney's power, light and gas works. When he goes home, he's going to have a warm meal and a cool shower and cable TV. Not in Iraq.
The residents of Basra are rioting, because the coalition is under the mishaprension that their mere presence is a good thing. Which is the dream of the neocons. But in reality, Iraqis are suffering and most US soldiers aren't doing much better.
In last week's letters to Stars and Stripes, the bitching is loud and to the point.
Just before the war ended, we were sent to Iraq. We arrived during the "winter" months. We've been living at Tallil Air Base. We're currently living off Meals, Ready to Eat, T-rations, and junk food from the local post exchange. We’re also currently living without air conditioning. During the day the temperature reaches 127 degrees in the shade.
Due to more attacks on convoys, more items are becoming rare. Two examples are mail and bottled water. Our mail has been reduced to two times a week. Due to a lack of bottled water, each soldier has been limited to two 1.5 liter bottles a day. We’ve had two soldiers drop out due to heat-related injuries.
Pfc. John Bendetti
Tallil, Iraq
They ask all the time, "When are we going home, sergeant?" I say with a smile, "When everyone’s free!" It’s hard to give an answer to something I don’t know. It’s even harder to tell a young mother who just returned from a six-month deployment in Afghanistan and has deployed again that her baby will remember her. Or telling a young man who's been struggling to make his marriage work that his wife and children will be waiting for him. Or telling a young soldier, fresh from his mother's grasp, that he’ll be visiting home soon. Or telling other soldiers with tons of bills that their checks will show up in the mail soon. But then again, none of us even knows when we'll receive a postcard for at least one person in a unit of more than 150 soldiers.
Sgt. Tresa R. Boyd
Camp Dogwood, Iraq
I’m extremely proud of what we've done here in Iraq and I consider it a privilege to have helped make the world a safer place. We infantrymen have given everything — blood, sweat and tears — and asked for so little in return. Simple things. Hot chow and a letter from home.
Staff Sgt. Mike Page
Iraq
When will we have much-needed morale boosters such as phones and Internet access, and why can these luxuries be put everywhere else in Iraq except here? Who can fix this problem? Who do we point the finger at to get these major morale issues corrected? Every soldier and family member across the globe needs to know that we're not getting the things we need and deserve. I pray this letter will motivate the people who can make these dreams a reality
Pfc. Richard Stanley
Taji airfield, Iraq
My mother sent me a package nearly two months ago. Today I received it along with a letter. The letter said that the package had been sent back. Not only was it sent back, but it was opened and several items were missing. I'm not upset that it was sent back as much as that there are people out there who actually have the lack of character to steal items from a package sent to a soldier risking his life for his country.
Trouble flares again in Basra Tempers over fuel and power shortages boiled over
Disturbances have broken out for a second day in the southern Iraqi city of Basra as frustration over fuel shortages boiled over.
Streets have been barricaded with burning tyres and at least one Iraqi has been wounded, although it is unclear how this happened.
A British army spokesman stressed that the trouble was not on the scale of Saturday's violence when an estimated 2,000 people took to the streets.
But the spokesman did say that coalition troops were fired upon and gave fire in return. Warning shots have also been given.
This is, as they say, bad news.
The 1920 rebellion began with riots in......Basra.
Now, the Shia, not Saddam loyalists, are rioting because they want gas, water and light.
People forget that these are the basics of modern life, not just in the US, but in most of the world.
Remember, it is 120 degrees in Iraq in the day. It cools down to 90 at night.
The Americans and British spend more time worrying about splittng up Iraq's oil than providing immediate relief. But, without some kind of immediate relief, this will spread throughout southern Iraq.
Straight out of Iraq British troops have come under attack after being deployed on the streets of Basra on Saturday to quell fuel riots. The trouble broke out after Iraqis took to the streets to protest about shortages of petrol and power.
They reportedly threw stones, attacked cars registered in nearby Kuwait and burned tyres after electricity failures caused huge queues in 50C heat at petrol stations.
British forces were hit by stone and fired into the air to keep back a crowd at one petrol station as, witnesses said.
This is like having a beer riot in Manchester or a bagel riot in Brooklyn. Gas jused to be .06 a gallon in Iraq. Now, what was once was ubiquitous is now scarce. Amazing.
Remember Boyz in tha Hood? Well, imagine if instead of dealing with a police department you mistrusted, you were dealing with an Army which would shoot you dead for the slightest infraction. But instead of suing and singing rap songs about it, you and your buddies could get AK-47's and shoot the soldiers with impunity.
Well, that's what we're done in Iraq. Turn the entire county into some overgrown South Central LA. Hostile, scared soldiers pointing their weapons at children, teenagers looking to kill soldiers and a vast culture gap. We're throwing people in jail without pause, placing them in "the system" and pissing off their relatives. But there is a difference. In LA, you have rights. You can get a lawyer, talk to the media, make a stink. In Iraq, the Americans make up their own rules. And a redress of grievences comes with the nightly ambush or sniper attack. And instead of drug dealing criminals, you have various forms of political fanatics, criminals, Islamic revivalists and kids looking to have fun with weapons. Instead of the Roling 60's Crips, it's some Martyr's Brigade. And of course, the Crips and Bloods ruled by fear over a few square blocks of their set. These guerillas have the support of the population, passive or active, one can never tell.
I've seen that look you see when reporters ask what happened to a missing relative. It's the same look people get after a police shooting. They look bewildered and wonder what exactly they did wrong to deserve that fate. Except, in this case, the soldier doesn't have his weapon pulled, no court looks at it and there is no hope of justice. The US Army is doing the job the way it sees it, which is to make sure their people get home alive. But, when you have a commander smugly describe the sniping of two arms dealers you have to wonder what he was thinking.
"We did not give them the chance to engage," Col Russell said, standing next to a cache of weapons and ammunition laid out on a tarpaulin.
He showed identity cards which, he said, linked the men to old regime.
"When people pick up weapons and carry them freely they become combatants and we will engage them," he added.
"I think we sent out a strong message today that you cannot walk around the streets with weapons."
Only problem is that two other people were wounded in the shooting. And, of course, given the tribal nature of Iraq, the dead men's families are honor bound to seek revenge or get paid. Given the colonel's hard nosed attitude, well, someone is going to pay.
Of course, the war continues elsewhere. funny how the deaths of Uday and Qusay didn't stop anything.
Soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade on patrol in the northern city of Kirkuk were fired on with a rocket-propelled grenade and small arms early Saturday, said Lt. Col. Bill McDonald, spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division operating in the area.
Two soldiers were wounded in the explosion and were in stable condition, McDonald said. The troops returned fire, he said.
Also Saturday, soldiers west of Kirkuk opened fire on a car that ran a military checkpoint, wounding two Iraqis, McDonald said. The victims were evacuated to a Kirkuk hospital in stable condition, he said.
In south-central Baghdad, two soldiers were wounded in a roadside bomb attack on their armored Humvee vehicle, said Maj. Todd Mercer of the 82nd Airborne Division.
But given US policing methods and relations with Iraqis, we're headed down a similar road that was reached in LA. One day, US troops will push Iraqis too far and that's when all bets are off. Unlike LA, all of Baghdad's buildings are already burned down, so all the rage will be focused on the Americans.
This is a good country, a developed country. The resistance are not Fedayeen Saddam, they are mujahedin, Islamic resistance. They are heroes and we pray to God to save them. We can kick the Americans out.
.......
The Journalist: Robert Fisk, Middle East Correspondent of 'The Independent'
.......... A new resistance movement is now cutting down US soldiers every day. Anarchy is widespread. Changing the map of the Middle East is what this illegal invasion was supposed to have achieved, according to the right-wing and pro-Israeli advisers around Donald Rumsfeld. They may be right, but the new map is unlikely to be the one they had planned for. Amid the wilderness of occupation, America may contemplate that its young men are dying for an illusion that will prove as dangerous to Israel as it will to America and the Arab world. Mission accomplished indeed!
The Shopkeeper: Sa'id abu Ali, Sadr City
......... Is this liberation? Most of the injustices still exist. Can you go out in your car after 10pm? If you manage to escape the looters, the Americans will shoot you. If there is occupation, there will be resistance. All Iraqi citizens want the situation stable and safe and an end to the occupation.
The Aid Worker: Dominic Nutt, Emergencies Officer for Christian Aid
I think the most obvious issue is a lack of security across the country. It is clearly deteriorating. Under the old regime people were too terrified, and law and order was not an issue. Now women and girls are being attacked. Soldiers have two options: shout or shoot, nothing in between. They need an effective police force.
..........
The Iraqi Politician: Dr Adnan Pachachi, acting head of Iraqi Governing Council
............
Right from the very beginning, I wanted the UN to have a central role. I said immediately after the collapse of the regime that the secretary general should appoint a special representative to oversee the whole process. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and we have to deal with a situation where a huge US army is in Iraq.
WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush (news - web sites) has appointed one of his major political fundraisers, Thomas Foley, to run the Iraqi state business sector and draw up a sweeping privatization, Foley said.
As the coalition's director of Iraq (news - web sites) public sector development, Foley will effectively decide which of the roughly 200 state-owned companies, employing about half a million people, should survive or die.
Foley, who expected to depart as early as Monday, is to report to the US governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer.
When will Congress say something? This is just getting silly. Halliburton, now another one of Bush's cronies. Thank God Enron failed, or they'd be running Iraq's power into the ground.
Let's be serious for a moment: there is a sea of difference between Jesse Ventura and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Ventura is a Vietnam vet, who served as a mayor of a town and a football coach. He was a civic minded person who had a political track record and ran a grassroots campaign. Not based on his acting or wrestling skills, but real ideas and a record of public service.
Arnold is none of those things and seems to be running because it is a good idea. Not because of any competence in either business or public life. Name recognition means little if you cannot handle the pressure of a campaign. People know him. That doesn't mean they think he should be governor in a crisis.
My real fear is of a last minute candidate like a John Doerr or a Ron Unz, rich, filled with ideas and able to blanket the media with money, without anyone really understanding their agenda. Arianna is marginally more competent than Arnold, but she's not a risk in the same way. This is uncharted territory and the potential for real mischief exists. There are 200+ candidates on the ballot, some are jokes, some could be dangerous.
I think, at the end of the day, Arnold is a better idea than candidate, and Republicans, seeing a once in a lifetime chance, savage each other, neutralizing him.
I've been making changes in the template. This should work better for everyone and their browsers. I'm playing with point size and look, so....bear with me.
I guess the Kennedys don't sound too happy about this
About 49 other Kennedys were called, including Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), who has turned into a prodigious fundraiser on behalf of House Democrats, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who in November lost Democrats their Maryland governorship for the first time in three decades. None of them seem interested in commenting on this bizarre development, except Mark Shriver, Maria's brother, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates who lost a primary contest for Congress last year. "I'm not talking," says Shriver. "He's my brother-in-law and I'm supporting him and that's all."
As for Maria, now a potential first-lady-in-waiting, yesterday she asked for an unpaid leave from her position as an NBC reporter. It was granted. She wasn't talking, either.
By Knut Royce and Timothy M. Phelps
WASHINGTON BUREAU; Staff writer Craig Gordon contributed to this story.
August 8, 2003
Washington - Pentagon hardliners pressing for regime change in Iran have held secret and unauthorized meetings in Paris with a controversial arms dealer who was a major figure in the Iran-contra scandal, according to administration officials.
The officials said at least two Pentagon officials working for Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith have held "several" meetings with Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian middleman in U.S. arms-for-hostage shipments to Iran in the mid-1980s.
The administration officials who disclosed the secret meetings to Newsday said the talks with Ghorbanifar were not authorized by the White House and appeared to be aimed at undercutting current sensitive back channel negotiations with the Iranian regime.
..........
Ledeen once described him as "one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known." But the CIA, noting he had failed four polygraph tests administered during the arms-for-hostages deals, warned its officers not to deal with him, asserting he "should be regarded as an intelligence fabricator and nuisance."
Douglas Feith should be fired at once. Because this sounds a lot like oh, treason.
No wonder they were talking about Powell's desire to spend time with his wife earlier this week. Who is their strategic inspiration? Adolf Hitler? Because unless the US Army has a spare million men somewhere, we can barely run Iraq. A war in Iran would end in a crushing defeat. Of course, this ties into another recent fiasco:
07/17/03 (Washington Times) ) Depicted by the Pentagon as a mere border skirmish, the June 18 strike into Syria by U.S. military forces was, in fact, based on mistaken intelligence and penetrated more than 25 miles into that country, causing numerous Syrian casualties, several serving and former administration officials said.
Although diplomatic relations between the two sides have been frosty after the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq, the two nations have close intelligence ties, which have become strained as a result, these sources said.
"I think this was a deliberate effort to disrupt cooperation between U.S. and Syrian intelligence agencies," an administration official said.
...........
"We had good intelligence, and it indicated that there were people moving around during their curfew close to the border in a convoy of SUV's and our forces went in and stopped them," the Times quoted Rumsfeld as saying.
But one administration official described the intelligence as "totally false," and a former CIA official labeled it "flimsy" and another former U.S. intelligence official called it "almost non-existent."
Hmmm, false information to get us to attack Syria, secret deals to undermine the Iranian government. It seems someone is not only blind and deaf to the lessons of Iraq, they truly want to destroy the US Army. They gamble and lose and up the stakes. This is going to wind up in trials. Bush looks like he skates closer and closer to impeachment every day with this kind of crap going on. People need to be fired behind this, and it isn't Armitage and Powell.
Dave Winer, the old Apple guru (which should be a clue to his grasp of reality), has proposed a blogging conference for Boston in October at Harvard. I've been to Harvard in the fall and while a brunch of hash and eggs at John Harvard sounds appealing, I can do that any day I want to travel to Chinatown, spend $10, ride for four hours, get off, take the Red Line to Harvard Square and walk half a block. The price of the discount bus ride and brunch would be about the same, minus the beer and trip to Books for a Buck.
Greetings.
I know youre busy so heres whats going on.
1. We're having a conference about weblogs on October 4, at Harvard Law School.
2. The pleasure of your company is requested. (In other words, youre invited.)
3. I am the host of the conference. It's going to be a great show. We're going to have a lively discussion including (at no extra cost) Web Energy and lots of philosophy, great art and technology and lots of ideas.
4. Presenters include Glenn Reynolds, Joshua Marshall, Doc Searls, Scott Rosenberg, Adam Curry, Elizabeth Spiers, Jim Moore, Susan Mernit and more. Moderators: Lance Knobel, Ed Cone, Christopher Lydon and myself. And new discoveries, people we hadnt heard about until we set out to find the most interesting and eclectic blogs and bloggers.
(More self serving crap)
10. Okay this didn't turn out to be that short. Hehe. Hmm. Anyway, its time to say that seating is very limited, so if you want to come, please sign up right away. The cost for this incredible once-in-a-lifetime experience is a mere $500,
Say what?!
and if youre a student (please provide a photocopy of your ID) its only $250. Harvard affiliates also qualify for the discount (Harvard ID, or harvard.edu mail address). We're using the money (where needed) to get the talent in and out of the city, and to put on a few great parties so we can all mingle, share ideas, and learn a lot.
Yeah, I'm gonna pay $500 to listen to Instacracker and not insult him? My friend taught at Harvard. If I couldn't bother to sit in on one of his lectures, why would I pay money I wish I had to listen to Instacracker and a bunch of people, excluding Josh Marshall, that I don't read and don't care about. Adam Curry? He was a hasbeen before I graduated college. And anyone who has followed my work at NetSlaves knows Scott Rosenberg and I should not be in the same room at the same time. Just because he's attacked my integrity more than once might be a problem. But then I've called him an incompetent who wasted millions of dollars, so....we're even on that score. And he didn't invite the lunkhead Taranto or Den Beste, the man who thinks life is like Star Trek.
At least they would provide comic relief as the audience abused
