OK, let's get this out of the way, I hate the Eagles. Not as much as Arsenal or the Yankees, but I truly detest the Philadephia Eagles. Their fans are boorish pigs and every game my friends have been to at the Vet ended in a fight. So I'm usually looking for an Eagles loss unless the Giants need them to win for a playoff spot.
My best friend, who's a Cowboys fan, has similar feeling for the Eagles. Undiluted hatred.
However, we are not blind.
When I went over to Atrios this morning, I saw something about Limbaugh and the Eagles. I know he lives in Philly, so I read it.
Sunday, the racist pig Limbaugh claimed the following:
"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL,'' Limbaugh said. "The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. They're interested in black coaches and black quarterbacks doing well ... McNabb got a lot of the credit for the performance of the team that he really didn't deserve.''
Really? Well someone should tell Jim Fassel and Bill Parcells this, because I was under the impression defending against him was, well, a bit of a problem. I know he's had a habit of making the Giants defense look like stunted monkeys. The Eagles have a solid defense, but the Eagles have a weak O line and crappy receivers and no running game. So what the hell is he supposed to do? Toss the ball in the air and run down the field to catch it?
ESPN fucked up hiring a known racist to cover a sport which is 60 percent black. I have neither the time nor inclination to sort through Limbaugh's numerous racist statements over the years, but they are well known. The man has an antipathy towards blacks which is imfamous. Why not hire Ice Cube to comment on hockey or Leeds fans to cover Turkish soccer. The simple fact is that black quaterbacks had to force their way into the NFL and play well to stay there.
So what WAS going on with McNabb, who people on the east coast followed since he wound up at Syracuse. How did a Chicago boy wind up there? All the Big 10 schools wanted him to play defense back or wide receiver. NONE recruited him as a quarterback. Which was their mistake. He took Dick McPherson's Orangemen to bowl games and turned 'Cuse into a football power.
Peter King, Sports Illustrated's football guy says the following:
Last week, the editors at Sports Illustrated sent me to Philadelphia to look into why McNabb was playing so poorly early in the season. The Eagles were 0-2, and McNabb had been brutal in those eight quarters, completing 45 percent of his passes with no touchdowns and three interceptions. Last Thursday, in search of answers, I interviewed McNabb, coach Andy Reid, tight end Chad Lewis and center Hank Fraley. I interviewed the Bucs' Warren Sapp, who had opposed the Eagles in Week 1.
..............
So, before flying to Buffalo for this past Sunday's game, I developed my theories. I thought McNabb was rushing his throws and was mechanically unsound, throwing off his back foot and from other faulty angles. I thought he had happy feet, maybe nervous happy feet because his protection was breaking down so quickly. I thought he was missing open receivers on at least a third of his incompletions and not taking time to see the whole field. I thought he wasn't running nearly enough for such a talented runner; he didn't leave the pocket against the carnivorous Bucs in week one through the first 31 minutes of the game. I thought his weapons were lacking, and that Reid was trying to make studs out of second- and third-receiver types.
I also thought McNabb was getting no help from his running game. And I thought, as I have thought (and said, and written) in the past, that McNabb was simply not accurate enough to be a truly great player; his career completion rate of 56.6 percent over four-plus years demonstrated that.
I was all set to put down my theories in writing at the Bills-Eagles Sunday in Buffalo. But then a funny thing happened on the way to the rip job. McNabb played well.
So it was clear that Limbaugh was talking out of his ass.
The sick thing is, this is exactly what ESPN had in mind when the all-sports network hired veteran provocateur Rush Limbaugh for its Sunday NFL pregame show. You can imagine the meeting. The ESPN bigwigs must have needed drool cups to handle the runoff when they discussed the controversy Limbaugh would generate.
..............................
Limbaugh's idea of commentary Sunday involved an absurd attack on Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb and on "the media" that have overrated him because "the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well. There's interest in black quarterbacks and coaches doing well." McNabb, Limbaugh said, isn't "as good as everyone says he has been."
.......................
It is telling that Limbaugh pounced on a two-game slump by McNabb to advance his own pathetic agenda. It's a shame that Steve Young - who didn't become an effective NFL starter until he was plugged into the great San Francisco 49ers' offense in his eighth pro season - lent credence to Limbaugh's doggerel by suggesting that Koy Detmer would run the Eagles' offense better.
Fortunately for McNabb, his record speaks for itself.
But then, so does Limbaugh's. Unfortunately for ESPN, as long as he's on the air, Limbaugh's record speaks for the network, too.
His comments begger common sense. It's bad enough he lies about democrats for money. Now he slanders football players by talking out of his ass. Having seen McNabb win games, I'd like to know who should get the credit for Philly's wins? It ain't their receivers or O line. That's why I read the newspaper and watch the games instead. I certainly won't watch anything with that racist pig on it, especially if his football knowledge extends to saying McNabb doesn't deserve the credit he gets. I can talk out of my own ass about football and come closer to the mark.
OK, this is ludicrous. Even though the case which inspired this law, the murder of Richard Welch in Athens in 1975, was really leaked by the East German Stasi, the simple fact is that any link to the CIA could be potentially fatal. Daniel Pearl was murdered because he was a reporter. Can you imagine what Al Qaeda would do to Ms. Plame or anyone associated with her? I mean her relatives, her (non-covert) coworkers, her sources, former boyfriends? She's now exposed as an expert in WMD in one of AQ's main areas of operations. Anyone proveably connected to her could be a target. Let's make this very clear: anyone who worked with her could be tortured slowly and then murdered, regardless of their ties to the Agency. Any time she takes a trip overseas, she could be kidnapped, tortured slowly and murdered. If you get confused, just remember what happened to Pearl. He was a reporter and they killed him to make a point.
2) Joe Wilson is a political hack
He may be a democrat, but he's hardly a hack. One of his jobs was as the political advisor to EURCOM, the American component of NATO. He spent a lot of time on the ground in Bosnia. Before that, he was the last American diplomat in Iraq. He was an experienced Foreign Service Officer who held extremely sensitive jobs while US forces were in conflict. He's had very responsible jobs under three presidents. Even if he hated Bush, his politics do not reflect his judgement.
3) Its just politics
Sure, if fighting the war on terror is just politics. The CIA isn't screaming "you damaged our WMD efforts" but that is clearly what happened. It is a matter of national security. Not the bullshit kind which classifies millions of documents, but the real kind which tracks the sale of nuclear warheads. Ever see the movie The Peacemaker, well, it's based on a book about real events. The script takes it all the way, but the potential is real . That is what Ms Plame spent her time trying to prevent.
4) It was just nepotism
TBOGG is kind enough to have dug up Wilson's resume
Ambassador Wilson is CEO of JCWilson International Ventures, Corp., a firm specializing in Strategic Management and International Business Development.
Ambassador Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. In that capacity he was responsible for the coordination of U.S. policy to the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. He was one of the principal architects of President Clinton’s historic trip to Africa in March 1998.
Ambassador Wilson was the Political Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces, Europe, 1995-1997. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Gabonese Republic and to the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe from 1992 to 1995. From 1988 to 1991, Ambassador Wilson served in Baghdad, Iraq as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy. During “Desert Shield� he was the acting Ambassador and was responsible for the negotiations that resulted in the release of several hundred American hostages. He was the last official American to meet with Saddam Hussein before the launching of “Desert Storm.�
Ambassador Wilson was a member of the U.S. Diplomatic Service from 1976 until 1998. His early assignments included Niamey, Niger, 1976-1978; Lome, Togo, 1978-79; the State Department Bureau of African Affairs, 1979-1981; and Pretoria, South Africa, 1981-1982
Wilson is one of the few Americans who had expertise in both Iraq and Francophone Africa and spoke fluent French. He was one of the people ANY administration would have asked to do this. He was respected in the region and knew the players. His wife didn't have to vouch for him and certainly wasn't the only CIA officer who knew of Wilson's expertise. The DCM often works with the CIA station chief, because he's usually under cover as one of the DCM's deputies.
5) It will go away in a day or two
This is the final insult of nearly two decades of warfare between the PNAC crowd and the CIA. The Agency's defenders swear they are hopping, pissing mad over this. They want a resolution to this issue because they feel it places peoples lives in danger. The word treason isn't being tossed around lightly.People really feel that way about this issue.
According to Julian Borger, the Guardian's Washington reporter, reporters are privately, well, not so privately any more, saying Karl Rove leaked Valerie Plame's name to the media.
Well, all you have to do is check the phone logs and it's goodbye Karl. Well, it won't be that simple, since the next question is : what did the President know and when did he know it? Rove is his Stonewall Jackson. Bush is intensely loyal. Something will have to give and soon. Bush relies on Rove. Is it possible that he did this little deed and never told his boss and main client? Did he just think this was politics and oh, not treason.
If there was any justice in this world, Yousef Yee and Jose Padilla would have a roommate next week. Who will make the most hay of this? Howard Dean, pushing towards $15m this quarter? Wesley Clark? Bob Graham? This is turning into the Marianas Turkey Shoot of politics. The president's closest advisor, recklessly betrays a state secret for petty revenge. You could be drunk all the time and whipsaw Bush with this. Bush knows the truth. He wants to know what to do about it. Which is try to bury it.
Which isn't gonna happen.
Why?
For nearly 50 years, the CIA has been cast as international villian number 1. They were formenting coups, ordering assassinations, playing tango with the KGB. Even in the US, the CIA turned from hero to goat in a few short years. This is the first time in the Agency's history, where they have the moral high ground and widespread public support. In a war against a shadowy terrorist group, people want an effective CIA and one which can protect Americans. To do that, they must be protected and able to work in anonymity. Anything which undermines that will not play well.
If 9/11 changed anything, it is respect for the CIA. People want the Agency to work. Exposing a CIA officer's name, especially one who tracked WMD, is treason. That person is trying to prevent a nuclear attack, fear of which Bush used so skillfully to wage war against Iraq.
The CIA is not going to miss the chance to exploit this chance to play the victim. Hard working secret operative exposed by sleazy political hack for spite. The fact that they have the chance to get revenge on Team B's players, well, that's icing on the cake.
Of course, one could overplay their hand, but Bush's troubles are not diminishing.
The tribes were convinced that they had made a free and Arab Government, and that each of them was It," Lawrence wrote in "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" in 1926. "They were independent and would enjoy themselves a conviction and resolution which might have led to anarchy, if they had not made more stringent the family tie, and the bonds of kin-responsibility. But this entailed a negation of central power."
That dichotomy remains today, said Ihsan M. al-Hassan, a sociologist at the University of Baghdad. At the local level, the clan traditions provide more support and stability than Western institutions, he said, noting that the divorce rate among married cousins is only 2 percent in Iraq, versus 30 percent for other Iraqi couples. But the local ties create national complications.
"The traditional Iraqis who marry their cousins are very suspicious of outsiders," Dr. Hassan said. "In a modern state a citizen's allegiance is to the state, but theirs is to their clan and their tribe. If one person in your clan does something wrong, you favor him anyway, and you expect others to treat their relatives the same way."
The more educated and urbanized Iraqis have become, Dr. Hassan said, the more they are likely to marry outsiders and adopt Western values. But the clan traditions have hardly disappeared in the cities, as is evident by the just-married cousins who parade Thursday evenings into the Babylon Hotel in Baghdad. Surveys in Baghdad and other Arab cities in the past two decades have found that close to half of marriages are between first or second cousins.
The prevalence of cousin marriage did not get much attention before the war from Republicans in the United States who expected a quick, orderly transition to democracy in Iraq. But one writer who investigated the practice warned fellow conservatives to stop expecting postwar Iraq to resemble postwar Germany or Japan.
"The deep social structure of Iraq is the complete opposite of those two true nation-states, with their highly patriotic, cooperative, and (not surprisingly) outbred peoples," Steve Sailer wrote in The American Conservative magazine in January. "The Iraqis, in contrast, more closely resemble the Hatfields and the McCoys."
When people hear the word "tribe" or "sheikh", they instantly imagine, I"m sure, Bedouins on camels and scenes from Lawrence of Arabia. Many modern-day Sheikhs in Iraq have college degrees. Many have lived abroad and own property in London, Beirut and various other glamorous capitals… they ride around in Mercedes" and live in sprawling villas fully furnished with Victorian furniture, Persian carpets, oil paintings, and air conditioners. Some of them have British, German or American wives. A Sheikh is respected highly both by his clan members and by the members of other clans or tribes. He is usually considered the wisest or most influential member of the family. He is often also the wealthiest.
Sheikhs also have many duties. The modern Sheikh acts as a sort of family judge for the larger family disputes. He may have to give verdicts on anything from a land dispute to a marital spat. His word isn"t necessarily law, but any family member who decides to go against it is considered on his own, i.e. without the support and influence of the tribe. They are also responsible for the well-being of many of the poorer members of the tribe who come to them for help. We had relatively few orphans in orphanages in Iraq because the tribe takes in children without parents and they are often under the care of the sheikh"s direct family. The sheikh"s wife is sort of the "First Lady" of the family and has a lot of influence with family members.
Shortly after the occupation, Jay Garner began meeting with the prominent members of Iraqi society- businessmen, religious leaders, academicians and sheikhs. The sheikhs were important because each sheikh basically had influence over hundreds, if not thousands, of "family". The prominent sheikhs from all over Iraq were brought together in a huge conference of sorts. They sat gathered, staring at the representative of the occupation forces who, I think, was British and sat speaking in broken, awkward Arabic. He told the sheikhs that Garner and friends really needed their help to build a democratic Iraq. They were powerful, influential people- they could contribute a lot to society.
Some of them also wanted to contribute politically. They had influence, power and connections… they wanted to be useful in some way. The representative frowned, fumbled and told them that there was no way he was going to promise a withdrawal of occupation forces. They would be in Iraq "as long as they were needed"… that might be two years, that might be five years and it might be ten years. There were going to be no promises… there certainly was no "timetable" and the sheikhs had no say in what was going on- they could simply consent.
The whole group, in a storm of indignation and helplessness, rose to leave the meeting. They left the representative looking frustrated and foolish, frowning at the diminishing mass in front of him. When asked to comment on how the meeting went, he smiled, waved a hand and replied, 'No comment.' When one of the prominent sheikhs was asked how the meeting went, he angrily said that it wasn"t a conference- they had gathered up the sheikhs to "give them orders" without a willingness to listen to the other side of the story or even to compromise… the representative thought he was talking to his own private army- not the pillars of tribal society in Iraq.
Apparently, the sheikhs were blacklisted because, of late, their houses are being targeted. They are raided in the middle of the night with armored cars, troops and helicopters. The sheikh and his immediate family members are pushed to the ground with a booted foot and held there at gunpoint. The house is searched and often looted and the sheikh and his sons are dragged off with hands behind their backs and bags covering their heads. The whole family is left outraged and incredulous: the most respected member of the tribe is being imprisoned for no particular reason except that they may need him for questioning. In many cases, the sheikh is returned a few days later with an "apology", only to be raided and detained once more!
I would think that publicly humiliating and detaining respected members of society like sheikhs and religious leaders would contribute more to throttling democracy than "cousins marrying cousins". Many of the attacks against the occupying forces are acts of revenge for assaulted family members, or people who were killed during raids, demonstrations or checkpoints. But the author fails to mention that, of course
You mean Iraqis aren't savages who live like it was 1850? Wow. I thought that only Americans, you know, could read and have social instutitions.
The condescention towards Iraqis, many of whom seem to be fairly well educated, is absolutely stunning. Just stunning. Little brown monkeys who need our guidance to become human beings seems to be the theme. When they videotape middle class Iraqi homes, they seem to look like anyone living in Dearborn or on Atlantic Avenue. They have computers and sattelite TV's and the women have modern haircuts and modern clothes and wear makeup and the men have suits and shirts and pants. They look no different than the Yemenis who run the local newsstand. But our racism and contempt for these people is simply amazing. The idea that we treat these people as if they're mindless children is insane and deadly.
For some reason, we like to abuse France. We think they should be eternally subservient like our German friends and do what we tell them. When they don't, we get all pissy about it.
But the reality was that France was right. They were right about the outcome of the war and the need to get the hell out of dodge. The French knew, since they actually dealt with Iraq, that it was a fragile house of cards and a distraction to the real war on terra. It wasn't some reflexsive anti-Americanism, but common sense. It's not about their oil deals either, although they wanted to protect them.
Look, French intelligence services have spied on the US and we routinely monitor their electronic communications. But then, we have CIA agents in the British government and the German government as well, as they do with us. Let's not assume some naive relationship here. One could bet Israel spends millions to spy on the US to protect their interests. Everyone spies on everyone. But when it comes down to it, the French have a need for a strong US and certainly does not want the bulk of US Army combat power tied up in irrelevant Iraq.
The radicals now running our government understand only two things: subjects and lackies. If you're not one. you're the other.
The US wants to hang about Iraq for years, writing a constitution and patronizing the Iraqis. Let's understand this: they will not tolerate it. The French know that one day, the Iraqis will kick the US out. They know the clock is running. And they are also revolted at the crony capitalism placed on the back of the Iraqis.
The US has repeatedly made it impossible to sell the war to other countries. How can the French President go to the National Assembly and say "let's support the Americans" when American commanders keep saying "our troops are too good for this". That pretty much says "we need cannon fodder". It makes support impossible. Then, toss on crony capitalism and you have the recipe for resentment and no help. South Korea isn't going to send a division because the riots would last for days. Muslim extremists have made it impossible for India or Pakistan to send troops.
In short, American politicians seem to think they are the only ones who have to run for election and that ain't the case. No other politician can expect to be reelected by sending troops to Iraq to defend Halliburton and Bechtel. I mean, Canadians won't touch this mission with a 10 foot pole. And if they won't and the Mexicans won't, why should any other country. Also, no one is going to forgive their debts either. No one will make this easier for us.
The Congress has to realize that we aren't going to get any help, or much money as long as Iraq serves as headquarters for a CPA which is totally isolated, crony capitalists who can't make anything work, and a US Army which kills indiscriminately. We can't "win" this war, as the pundits say. We don't even know what victory looks like. Bush assmued that Iraq was the first stop on his new crusade against the Mussulmen and well, it is turning out to be the last stop as well. It is time that Congress demand we start to leave Iraq and place the UN in charge.
The quintessential new warrior scans the Web for confirmation of the president's villainy. He avoids facts that might complicate his hatred. He doesn't weigh the sins of his friends against the sins of his enemies. But about the president he will believe anything. He believes Ted Kennedy when he says the Iraq war was a fraud cooked up in Texas to benefit the Republicans politically. It feels so delicious to believe it, and even if somewhere in his mind he knows it doesn't quite square with the evidence, it's important to believe it because the other side is vicious, so he must be too.
It's official: the administration that once scorned nation-building now says that it's engaged in a modern version of the Marshall Plan. But Iraq isn't postwar Europe, and George W. Bush definitely isn't Harry Truman. Indeed, while Truman led this country in what Churchill called the "most unsordid act in history," the stories about Iraqi reconstruction keep getting more sordid. And the sordidness isn't, as some would have you believe, a minor blemish on an otherwise noble enterprise.
Cronyism is an important factor in our Iraqi debacle. It's not just that reconstruction is much more expensive than it should be. The really important thing is that cronyism is warping policy: by treating contracts as prizes to be handed to their friends, administration officials are delaying Iraq's recovery, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
....................
Meanwhile, several companies with close personal ties to top administration officials have begun brazenly offering their services as facilitators for companies seeking Iraqi business. The former law firm of Douglas Feith, the Pentagon under secretary who oversees Iraq reconstruction, has hung out its shingle. So has another company headed by Joe Allbaugh, who ran the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2000 and ran FEMA until a few months ago. And a third entrant is run by Ahmad Chalabi's nephew.
There's a moral here: optimists who expect the administration to get its Iraq policy on track are kidding themselves. Think about it: the cost of the occupation is exploding, and military experts warn that our army is dangerously overcommitted. Yet officials are still allowing Iraqi reconstruction to languish, and the disaffection of the Iraqi public to grow, while they steer choice contracts to their friends. What makes you think they will ever change their ways?
Who's an idiot talking out of his ass and who's telling the truth-you make the call
THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER," and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God.
Battle for control of agenda in face of party hierarchy leads to labyrinthine series of manoeuvres
Kevin Maguire and Patrick Wintour
Tuesday September 30, 2003
The Guardian
Labour's hierarchy was forced to backtrack last night after a revolt by union leaders and anti-war constituency delegates over the decision not to allow a vote on the Iraq war threatened to derail the conference.
The row is part of a wider struggle to control the conference agenda which has pitted the increasingly determined and united four big unions against the party leadership.
The unresolved struggle has been going on behind the scenes for months, but over the past few days has been raging off the conference floor as left and right challenge one another over the correct interpretation of the conference's little understood, and ill defined rules.
In order to fend off criticism that Iraq has been sidelined at this year's conference party leaders have to reconsider the controversial decision not to hold a vote on the issue, with an announcement tomorrow. Party officials are desperate to avert both a humiliating defeat for Tony Blair and the embarrassment of widespread protests in Bournemouth.
.....................
On Sunday night party officials had been privately delighted when the constituencies did not put their full weight behind an Iraq vote. Under the party's arcane rules, only four contemporary resolutions are allowed to be debated each year. This year the big four unions had made a pact to support one another's priority issue, and with the unions enjoying half the conference vote, their exclusively domestic agenda was bound to win through.
..................
The unions' unusually co-ordinated tactics are putting the Labour leadership on the back foot all week. In an effort to avoid suffering very public defeats, the party executive yesterday morning took the unusual step of supporting resolutions critical of the government on rights at work and manufacturing. The GMB general union is likely to inflict a visible defeat on Thursday over pensions, demanding compulsory contributions by employers into staff schemes. The union simply walked out of a CAC meeting when loyalists attempted to group it with a motion that was ambiguous about the need to make employer contributions compulsory.
Blair's goal this week is to avoid humiliation. The Unions, who actually fund the posh suit wearers of New Labour, are pissed. They want a vote on the war in Iraq and well, we all know how that ends. The Labour leadership is desperate to avoid the hours of slanging and whinging which will come with any such debate. The other reason is that such a debate could set the stage for a leadership challenge. The war isn't getting any better, and Blair is getting more dogmatic as half of all Britions want him gone.
If they don't debate Iraq, there will certainly be large scale protests. If they do, they will clearly condemn the war. They wanted to avoid the whole thing, like avoiding a crazed drunk. But like a crazy drunk, it is impossible to ignore. It's lose-lose.
Labour is starting to look at Bliar, as they now call him in protests, and see electoral defeat looming ahead. While Smiler marches along, allowing no deviation in the plan, the US erupts in scandal over the exposure of a CIA officer. This can't help Blair with the Labour left or the Unions. Another loss in a by-election and all hell could break loose.
OK, since this is Valerie Plame day in Blogistan, a woman none of us who don't know the Wilson's personally would ever recognize, here's a larger question: when will the Bushies stop betraying those who serve this country?
The wingnuts are trying to argue that "Oh, Plame was an analyst, revealing her name was no big deal". Oh really? Considering that she did travel overseas, under a legend, this is bullshit. It places everything and everyone she touched in danger. besides being a crime, it places entire operations at risk. Innocent people as well as US assets.
But the Bushies don't stop there. As Joe Galloway has reported, the Army is near the breaking point, filled with poilitical appointees rung through the gauntlet , deploying National Guard brigades for over a year, with the resulting loss of soldiers who retire or leave the service, disgusted with the interruption of their lives and loss of their business.
American troops live in filth, lacking bottled water, body armor and weapons while Halliburton makes millions, a scandal unseen since the Spanish-American war. They have no idea when they're supposed to come home, if they'll make it home in one piece, and if their sacrifice will be worth it.
As soldiers sit and stew in the desert, their combat pay, veterans benefits are cut while they have to pay for their hospital food. Nothing better than a private with half a leg being presented with a bill for a few hundred dollars for his food when he can barely feed his family as is. Then there are the planned cut to veterans benefits as well.
Then there are the darker rumors, the attack on the Syrian border which may be less accidental than one thinks, the random detentions of "embarassing" Iraqi prisoners.
At every point, with a zeal only the Red Guards managed to muster, the Bushies rewrite history and make it so perfectly clear that all they care about is what is best for them. Not the country, not those who defend it. All that matters is their theories of empire. America imperialis is what they care about. The sea of dead and wounded around them, of shattered lives and broken dreams do not count for them. Just the glory of war.
So they ruin a CIA officer's life for petty revenge. So they cut benefits for veterans. Douglas Feith and Scooter Libby, along with the rest of the PNAC crew, probably believe they are great men with great ideas. They won't be sitting around any hotels in Baku waiting for a source or humping a '16 through a neighborhood where people stare at them with daggers in their eyes. They're too good for that kind of thing. They were meant for greater things. The actual sacrifice of empire, the kind that fills Ward 57 at Bethesda and that wall at Langley, is beneath them.
Whatever these people believe, what ever they think, they don't believe in America. Not the one 140,000 people are serving in Iraq. They have a vision of the world which only they signed up for.
The sad part, the truly sad part, is that there are people who think these folks are patriots. Who buy Bush's and Cheney's act. And that's all it is. They care more about the bottom line of Halliburton than the people of the United States. And their plan to remake the world, no matter what else it costs. No matter who else pays for it.
OK, the CIA has several branches, but the two relevant ones are the Directorate of Operations (DO) and the Directorate of Intelligence (DI).
DO is the smaller of the two and they run around leading guerrilla armies, blowing things up, actually running and contacting agents. DI analyzes the data DO collects as well as from other sources and then they guess what the enemy may or may not do. Operative
implies that the person goes in the field and handles agents on a regular basis. An analyst usually does not.
Where does Valerie Plame fit in?
My best guess is that her role was less to cultivate agents than to analyze what the situation was in her area. To do that, she would have to travel to the region undercover. It is unlikely she recruited agents, acting instead as a contact person. The CIA station chief would, more than likely, use her as sounding board. Whenever the conversation was too technical for the local crew, she'd go to make an assessment. After all, 10 years in Special Forces doesn't really train you to know which general controls which depot of chemical weapons.
So using her cover as an oil executive, she could travel the region, meet with people, bribe them and make her assessments without drawing undo attention. But I doubt if she was a fulltime DO officer, that her name would have popped up, ever. Her sources were more than likely oil ministry officials who she bribed to mention any AQ contacts, little different than a reporter would do, except for the bribery. But the fact that she was exposed as a CIA officer means anyone who dealt with her is in trouble. There will be a lot of melodramatic talk of operations and agents, but in reality, she had contacts, and if they heard anything of use, they got back to her by e-mail or to the station chief. It would be impossible to run a network of spies and two small kids from thousands of miles away. But she was no minor functionary.
Because she was doing analytical work, her name would have come up repeatedly when talk of the Stans (central Asia) came up. When Cheney started to lean on the Agency for data to confirm Saddam had an AQ alliance, anyone who covered central Asia would have been in the mix. Considering that the agency had not come up with the right answers, someone had a grudge.
The difference isn't critical, because the Agency did develop a legend, or cover story, for her. But considering she became pregnant with twins in the last three years, and lived in Washington, it wasn't like she was in the field. However, she wasn't tied to the Agency so she could work in the industry and gather intel without the stars and stripes waving over her head.
Words and titles are about to become very important as people figure out which one of Cheney's goons ratted her out. You could see the sweat rolling off Bob Novak's chin today.
Everyone in the great leak guessing game has been attributing this to mere spitework, but I think there may be more to it. Assuming that the leak came from the VP's office, and that is a reasonable assumption, there was more than just an attempt to embarass an former Democratic State Department official who was no fan of Bush.
It's well known that the people around Rummy and Cheney were called Team B before they became PNAC. They had fought the CIA for years with their ridiculous assessments of Soviet strength. They assumed the Russians were much stronger and more devious than they had been in the past.
Which is how the whole Office of Special Plans fiasco took place at DOD. The Team B crew took their pet theories and set up shop, despite the objections of the service chiefs and the intelligence agencies.
The problem OSD had was it wasn't getting the data it wanted from CIA and the rest of the alphabet soup. It was getting the truth. At some point there had to be people who were a road block to their dreams of Saddam, nuclear warrior, being proved. There are only a few experts of WMD spread across Energy, DIA, NSA and the CIA. NSA kept their heads down, DIA got out of the way, but CIA stood there to be subject to Team B's abuse.
There are only a few people within the Agency who knew the subject well. My impression was that Plame, while officially an NOC, was well known to the SVR and FIS as the CIA WMD person who worked in the 'Stans. They passed this info on to their CIS client states as needed. So when the debates started about Al Qaeda getting weapons, Plame was the person who kept saying not only that it wasn't happening, but it wasn't likely to happen. Also, there was zero evidence from her sources Saddam could pass such weapons if he wanted to. She'd come back from a business trip, do a brief at Langley and say "it's not happening" Cheney's people sit in occasionally and like neither her tone nor conclusions. Despite the myth, there are plenty of NPR-listening liberals at CIA.
They press and press and her answers never change. It's not happening.
So they finally decide to ignore her, and go about with their lies. She writes a report calling them off-base and goes off to raise her twins. Months later, she's now riding a desk, and doing her job, and someone asks for someone to check this yellowcake thing. She says her husband used to cover the region for the NSC. They check on him, he's got sterling references from EUCOM and is seen as military-friendly. They send him to Niger, he concludes there's nothing to the story.
More months pass. Wilson comes out, saying that the uranium story was crap. The people in the VP's office then put two and two together. Not only is Wilson messing with them, but that bitch Plame is his wife. Let's get them both.
So I think it's not only to teach other people a lesson, but some payback for her honest conclusions.
Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thank you for watching us tonight.
Be careful who you associate with. That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo. In my new book Who's Looking Out for You, which I'll tell you about tomorrow, I describe how knowing what kind of people you are hanging around with is a key to life.
If you choose destructive people, you'll get hurt. If you choose generous people, you will benefit. It's pretty simple. What isn't simple is figuring out the good from the bad. But in some cases, it's obvious. This weekend, [Democratic] Presidential Candidate Howard Dean (search) held a fund-raiser here in New York City. The entertainment was provided by a man who is, well, let's let his words speak for themselves.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AL FRANKEN, COMEDIAN: ...of how big an [bleep] Brit Hume is. And how shameless, how [bleep] shameless these people are. These people are so [bleep] shameless. They are shameless.
And I don't just say this because the FOX [News] people sued me.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
O'REILLY: Now I don't know Howard Dean, but I do know more about him after witnessing that disgraceful display and the attack on [FOX News anchor] Brit Hume. Can you imagine any other presidential contender, any other one, feeling comfortable with that kind of presentation? I mean, aren't our leaders supposed to have some dignity?
Dr. Dean should be ashamed of himself, simply for allowing an emotionally disturbed person to vent that kind of hatred under Dean's banner. And by the way, DNC [Democratic National Committee] chief Terry McAuliffe is also guilty as well.
Defamation and smear tactics are not part of mainstream America. They are the work of extremists, people who hate people with whom they disagree. Fair-minded Americans respect honest differences in the political arena. Most of the Democratic candidates are honorable. But increasingly, the Democratic party is being hijacked by far left elements, who routinely embrace vile, undemocratic tactics.
Maybe Howard Dean simply made a mistake. Maybe he isn't a person who approves of what we just showed you. But maybe again he is.
And that's The Memo
Gearing up for a libel/slander suit, whiny little bitch? Unless you can prove Franken is mentally ill, you might wind up in a court behind that statement. Libel, an untruth told to cause harm? You do have motive, Bill. It could get ugly. Better to ignore him.
Brit Hume has integrity?
why exactly did Sandy Hume kill himself? Was it a rumored homosexual affair with a former Congressman? Never has given a straight answer to that. If Al Franken wanted to be mean, THAT is what he would have mentioned.
O'Reilly is the biggest kind of whiny bitch. Franken embarassed him by telling the truth and now he whines like a cheerleader losing her boyfriend to the head of the science club. For him to whine about this, in the same week the Washington bureau printed Tucker Carlson's home number, terrorizing his young family, who is he kidding? Fox swims in the gutter with the rats.
Honest differences? Tell that to Joe Wilson and his wife. I bet her contacts in the 'Stans feel the same way as the secret police round them up for a chat. Ask Hans Blix, the Shinseki family, or Scott Ritter, or Larry Lindsay, who suffered from being honest and fat. let Bush Adminsitration took an honest difference with Max Clelland and made him look like a draft dodging pinko. They denigrated his service and sacrifice for a laugh. The Dear Leader and his friends at Fox slander, insult and malign. Let us not forget the Wellstones in this either.
Of course, there is the classic whiny little bitch rant when he threatened to punch an anti-war protester who's father was killed on 9/11.
O'Reilly is a coward and a liar and works for pond scum. But you already knew that. My fondest wish is that he finally has that long overdue conversation with Ludacris and friends over that Pepsi deal his ranting cost him. See how big his mouth is with people who have no fear of throwing a punch or two. You think he whines like a little bitch now?
Postwar Tremors Deepen Fissures in Iraqi Society
Religious, Ethnic Tensions Rise After Hussein's Fall
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 29, 2003; Page A01
HAIFA, Iraq -- The Kurds who descended upon this hardscrabble Arab village in northern Iraq 11 days ago were so confident they would be able to evict everyone and seize the surrounding farmland, they brought along three tractors.
But instead of responding by fleeing, as thousands of other Arab villagers in northern Iraq have done when confronted with similar Kurdish demands, the residents of Haifa refused to budge. "Our people went to them and said, 'What the hell are you doing here? This area doesn't belong to you,' " recalled Kadhim Hani Jubbouri, the village sheik.
Words were exchanged. Threats were hurled. When the Kurds began tilling a field lined with golden flecks of harvested hay, gunfire erupted.
Arabs contend the Kurds shot first. Kurds maintain it was the Arabs who opened fire. Both agree, however, that the 15-minute firefight was one of the clearest signs of the growing fissures between Iraq's two dominant ethnic groups -- its Arab majority and its Kurdish minority -- since the fall of former president Saddam Hussein's government.
...........................
At the same time, in central and southern Iraq, fault lines also have widened between the country's two principal religious communities: Shiite Muslims, who are a majority of the country's approximately 24 million people, and Sunni Muslims, Iraq's traditional rulers and Hussein's principal supporters.
Although a rift between Sunnis and Shiites is relentlessly discouraged by leaders of both communities, tensions have escalated in recent weeks, raising new prospects of strife. Small bombs have been planted at a handful of mosques in Baghdad. In Khaldiya, a Sunni-dominated town west of Baghdad, unknown assailants ransacked the green-domed shrine of a Shiite saint and set off an explosive last month that damaged his brick tomb. In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, some residents suspect that recent killings of former Baath Party members are inspired by religious zeal, and leaders of Shiite religious parties openly argue that vengeance is warranted against officials of a government that subjugated Shiites, particularly in its last decade of rule.
......................................
"Relations in our country have become very tense," said Anwar Assi Hussein Obeidi, a Sunni Arab who is a leader of the Obeidi tribe, one of Iraq's largest. "If the Americans don't resolve these problems soon, the people will start killing each other."
In the North, Whose Land?
The problem in Haifa is all about land.
Hassan Abid, a farmer with a weathered face and gray-streaked hair, said he moved to Haifa in 1974 along with dozens of other Shiite Arabs fleeing a drought in Diwaniyah, their ancestral home in southern Iraq.
"It was a wonderful new home," he said as walked through Haifa, a village of mud-brick homes and dirt streets 20 miles northwest of Kirkuk, a city in northeastern Iraq known for its oil fields.
To Kurds, however, the steppe around Kirkuk is Kurdish territory. Tens of thousands of Kurds had lived in the area until Hussein's government, in a campaign against a group he deemed subversive, pushed many of them out and resettled the area with Arabs.
But Abid contends Haifa was open land until the Arabs arrived. "There was nobody here before us," he said. "We did not displace the Kurds."
He noted that the Arabs of Haifa arrived in 1974, before Hussein's forced relocations began. And, he said, the villagers are Shiites, while those moved under the Hussein government were typically Sunnis.
"There should be no dispute here," he said.
So what did Rummy think was going to happen. All Iraqis would sit around singing Kumbaya? Not very likely.
In making the case for war against Iraq, Vice President Cheney has continued to suggest that an Iraqi intelligence agent met with a Sept. 11, 2001, hijacker five months before the attacks, even as the story was falling apart under scrutiny by the FBI, CIA and the foreign government that first made the allegation.
The alleged meeting in Prague between hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani was the single thread the administration has pointed to that might tie Iraq to the attacks. But as the Czech government distanced itself from its initial assertion and American investigators determined Atta was probably in the United States at the time of the meeting, other administration officials dropped the incident from their public statements about Iraq.
Not Cheney, who was the administration's most vociferous advocate for going to war with Iraq. He brought up the connection between Atta and al-Ani again two weeks ago in an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" in which he also suggested links between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.
.....................................
heney's staff also waged a campaign to include the allegation in Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's speech to the United Nations in February in which he made the administration's case for war against Iraq. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, pressed Powell's speechwriters to include the Atta claim and other suspected links between Iraq and terrorism, according to senior and mid-level administration officials involved in crafting the speech.
When State Department and CIA officials complained about Libby's proposed language and suggested cutting large sections, Cheney's associates fought back. "Every piece offered . . . they fought tooth and nail to keep it in," said one official involved in putting together the speech.
..............................
Cheney's office declined to comment. Mary Matalin, a former senior aide to Cheney who still provides the vice president with advice, said Cheney's job is to focus on "the big picture." His appearance on "Meet the Press" on Sept. 14, she said, was intended to "remind people that Iraq is part of a bigger war that will require patience and sacrifice."
Cheney does not fully vet his speeches or public statements with the CIA or the wider intelligence community for accuracy, according to several administration officials, but usually gives the CIA a list of possible points or facts that might be used in a speech or appearance.
Matalin said Cheney "doesn't base his opinion on one piece of data," but has access to information that cannot be declassified because it would harm national security or compromise sources. "His job is to connect the dots in a way to prevent the worst possible case from happening," she said, but in public "he has to tiptoe through landmines of what's sayable and not sayable."-/
-/
Wow. He still keeps at it. What is he, crazy?
Of the serious British papers, the Guardian has always cut Tony Blair some slack on the war. No longer
.... some of the other things that Mr Blair said yesterday are hard to forgive or forget. To say that opponents of the war believed that "Saddam was a reasonably benign influence" is an unworthy insinuation. To imply that his critics take the view that "look, why bother, al-Qaida, it's all a long way away" is equally a morally and politically disgraceful charge. There may be a small minority of people who opposed the war who are apologists for Saddam. Some of them may also think that we do not need to worry about terrorism. None of this, though, applies to the overwhelming majority of opponents of the Iraq war, and certainly does not apply in any way to this newspaper. Saddam was a tyrant. Al-Qaida is a threat. There was, and is, no case for looking in the other direction about either of them. But there was - and could still have been if Mr Blair had not buckled - an aggressive, multilateral alternative to going to war alongside the unilateralist Bush regime. That way lay through continued inspections, setting targets and deadlines, and keeping nations, regions and cultures together in the task of internationally based enforcement - armed enforcement if necessary.
Blair cannot admit the obvious-the war was wrong and we are losing it. Instead, he insults the intelligence of everyone in earshot with this denial. While evicting Saddam was a public service, with no resistance to take his place, and Chalabi is a crook and little more, turing Iraq into Mad Max land was not. A society without order is not a society. Nor could we remake Iraq, of all places, to serve our needs.
Saddam was a threat to the region. Al Qaeda is an enemy to civilization. But turning Iraq into a satrapy is no solution. There was a picture of American troops teaching Iraqi kids football. American football. Which encapsulates everything wrong with our occupation policy. Iraqi kids know Ronaldo, David Beckham, Romuldo and Michael Owen. Many, many Iraqis, who have ties to the UK, follow Chelsea and Liverpool and ManU with the dedication we follow the Mets or the Red Sox. I saw a picture of Iraqi kids in Juventus jerseys playing in the street. American football is a foreign in Iraq as pulled pork bbq. Teaching Iraqi kids football will not make them love us. They will play along and then go back to dreaming of playing in the World Cup.
It is amazing. Americans in Iraq must live in a fantasy world. No Iraqi kid is thinking of being the next Wayne Chrebet or Keyshawn Johnson. They want to be the next Beckham or Zindane. Unfortunately, Mr. Blair must be sharing that world.
A three-day orgy allegedly held at a Chinese luxury hotel for hundreds of male Japanese tourists has provoked outrage after reports of the lurid goings-on were published in China's state media.
The 400 or so men, aged between 16 and 37, flew into Zhuhai city in southern Guangdong province expressly for sex at the five-star hotel, according to the media reports.
On one of the nights the men are said to have had nearly 500 girls brought to serve them.
The incident, at a time when Chinese resentment against Japan is already very high, has prompted thousands of angry messages to be posted on the internet by Chinese users.
Many see it as a deliberate attempt to humiliate Chinese pride because it took place on the anniversary of Japan's occupation of north-east China.
The authorities have shut down the hotel where the party was reportedly held - the Zhuhai International Convention Center Hotel - and a police investigation has begun.
I'm surprised that the the hotel is still standing. This harks back to the absolute worse Japanese practices of whoremongering and kidnapping of Asian women for sex slaves. This is a reminder of the worst of the wartime criminal acts. The Japanese like their sex tours, but this, this was very stupid.
In the most ideologically driven occupation since Zhukov and Koniev raged across Silesia and Prussia in 1945, Rummy
and his boys have imposed their rule on Iraq. Not as efficiently as Beria and the NKVD, but just as steeped in ideology.
Newsweek has the gory details:
LAST FEBRUARY, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner was trying to put together a team of experts to rebuild Iraq after the war was over, and his list included 20 State Department officials. The day before he was supposed to leave for the region, Garner got a call from nse Donald Rumsfeld, who ordered him to cut 16 of the 20 State officials from his roster. It seems that the State Department people were -Arabist apologists, or squishy about the United Nations, or in some way politically incorrect to the right-wing ideologues at the White House or the neocons in the office of the Secretary of Defense. The vetting process "got so bad that even doctors sent to restore medical services had to be anti-abortion," recalled one of Garner's team
...............................
On May 16, five days after he arrived in Baghdad, Bremer assembled the top American officials in Baghdad and announced that all ministries would be "de-Baath-ized" by removing roughly the top six layers of bureaucracy. The CIA's Baghdad station chief said. "We'll,that's 30,000 to 50,000 pissed-off Baathists you're driving underground," said the senior spook. Bremer went on: the Army would be formally disbanded and not paid. "That's another 350,000 Iraqis you're sing off, and they've got guns," said CIA man. Said Bremer: "Those are my instructions."
In an interview with NEWSWEEK last week, Bremer maintained that "the de-Baathification decree is the single most popular thing I've done since I've been in Iraq." But it was widely recognized, even by Bremer, that not paying the soldiers was a mistake. Bremer quickly changed course and began cash handouts while trying to reconstitute the Iraqi Army and police. But the damage was done. Particularly in old Baathist strongholds around Baghdad and Tikrit, Saddam's hometown, guerrillas have been killing American soldiers in ambushes with rocket-propelled grenades and crude but effective homemade explosives.
In time, the Americans will probably crush or at least contain the last of the Baathist holdouts. Using cash incentives, American Special Forces have located and flushed out many of the Baathist hide-holes and safe houses. Religious terrorists are another matter. Intelligence officials believe that Islamic jihadists are gaining strength in Iraq, operating out of mosques and communicating in ways that cannot be traced by electronic eavesdropping devices.
On the ground, the Coalition Provisional Authority, charged with actually running Iraq until the Iraqis can take over, is the source of increasing ridicule. "CPA stands for the Condescending and Patronizing Americans," a Baghdad diplomat told a NEWSWEEK reporter. "So there they are, sitting in their palace: 800 people, 17 of whom speak Arabic, one is an expert on Iraq. Living in this cocoon. Writing papers. It's absurd," says one dissident Pentagon official. He exaggerates, but not by much. Most of the senior civilian staff are not technical experts but diplomats, Republican appointees, White House staffers and the like
Stunning right? Not exactly. Iraq was to be their lab for their new crusade. So everyone had to be part of the team and they wonder why no one will send soldiers to be used as cannon fodder. We dont do peacekeeping. Yeesh. What idiocy. No, you just die daily.
Leaking Joe Wilson's wife name to columnist Robert Novak in July is about to explode on the doorstep of the Bush White House.
Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers' allegation was that Wilson had benefited from nepotism because the Niger mission had been his wife's idea. Wilson said in an interview yesterday that a reporter had told him that the leaker said, "The real issue is Wilson and his wife."
The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists. The official said he had no indication that Bush knew about the calls. Columnist Robert Novak published the agent's name in a July column about Wilson's mission.
It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."
Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's occupation, has suggested publicly that he believes Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, broke her cover. He said Aug. 21 at a public forum in Seattle that it is of keen interest to him "to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."
Besides just being stupid, and a crime, it indicates a White House so enraptured with ideological loyalty it would do anything to get those who opposed them.
But this is not their biggest problem. Another WaPo story hangs over the White House:
House Probers Conclude Iraq War Data Was Weak
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page A01
Leaders of the House intelligence committee have criticized the U.S. intelligence community for using largely outdated, "circumstantial" and "fragmentary" information with "too many uncertainties" to conclude that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda.
Top members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which spent four months combing through 19 volumes of classified material used by the Bush administration to make its case for the war on Iraq, found "significant deficiencies" in the community's ability to collect fresh intelligence on Iraq, and said it had to rely on "past assessments" dating to when U.N. inspectors left Iraq in 1998 and on "some new 'piecemeal' intelligence," both of which "were not challenged as a routine matter."
"The absence of proof that chemical and biological weapons and their related development programs had been destroyed was considered proof that they continued to exist," the two committee members said in a letter Thursday to CIA Director George J. Tenet. The Washington Post obtained a copy this weekend.
The letter constitutes a significant criticism of the U.S. intelligence community from a source that does not take such matters lightly. The committee, like all congressional panels, is controlled by Republicans, and its chairman, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), is a former CIA agent and a longtime supporter of Tenet and the intelligence agencies. Goss and the committee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), signed the letter. Neither was available for comment yesterday. The full committee has not voted on the letter's conclusions.
This is going to be used in the debate over the $87B like a sledgehammer. However, the first place this will be used is not in Congress, but the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth this week. Blair won't be able to hold off the anti-war people once this hits the UK papers.
While the Wilson case may be more sexy, this is devestating. Blair, even more than Bush, relied on the intelligence to serve as the cause for war. Now, to have Congress, especially the GOP controlled House, claim the intelligence was faulty....it certainly won't help Blair when Glenda Jackson is waving that letter around and yelling about betrayal.
But you have to connect the dots.
These stories indicate that the intel picture was cooked by ideologues who would go to any lengths, and exposing a NOC CIA agent is any lengths, to distort the intel on Iraq to wage their war. They would not only exagurate any claims, they would seek to ruin anyone who opposed them.
Their claim that Joe Wilson would go to Niger because his wife pressed him to go, a trip to a remote African country which he covered his expenses and took him away from his toddlers, is ridiculous beyond belief. My feeling is that while Rove may have been involved, the other suspect works for Dick Cheney, home of a cabal of CIA hating loons. I would look hard at Scooter Libby, a prime PNAC member, and other Cheney people. If someone had a grudge against the Agency in the White House, it was in the VP's office. Because only someone with a deep grudge would do something so spiteful and short sighted and lacking in real-world common sense. No one besides the extremely curious vacation in Niger. Wilson was a senior and respected diplomat with serious ties to the military. He was not a glory seeking assclown like Max Boot.
Now, the idea is that the Bush Administration had violated so many rules on intel its no surprise that their house of cards is collapsing around them.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 27 — Three projectiles penetrated the concrete and barbed-wire cocoon of security around the main compound for Americans in downtown Baghdad today, hitting the 14th floor of the Rashid Hotel inside the compound but causing little damage and no injuries.
"It woke us up with a bang, but there was really no further impact than that," said Charles Heatley, a spokesman for the American-led governing authority.
But after several weeks of high-profile attacks and beefed-up security around Baghdad, the strike seemed a message that Americans would be a target no matter how much they sought to protect themselves. This was not news to at least one United States soldier in the compound, which is sealed off from the rest of Baghdad with a huge concrete wall and heaps of concrete and barbed wire.
"I've never felt safe here," the soldier said
How could he feel safe? There is no reason to feel safe. The Iraqis are now moving from mortars to rockets. Which is a very bad thing. They fired seven from one location as a test run, what happens when they fire 50 from multiple locations.? Huh?
The Iraqis know where the Al-Rashid is, and with all those uneployed artillery officers around, some of whom had been fanatasizing about doing the same to Saddam, they've had plenty of time to train and plan. Support for the resistance is growing, time is running out and they're growing more proficient each day.
There are few people I hate more in politics than the sleazy, trick baby having, foot sucking Dick Morris. His racially tinted advice has infected American politics for far too long. Morris, who passed the sleaziest rumors about the Clintons was undone when his hooker girlfriend got pregnant. Ever since then, he's been tossing this bullshit about.
An open letter to Karl Rove
Karl Rove
Senior Adviser to the President
for Strategic Initiatives
The White House
Dear Karl:
As you know, I have been doing my best to support President George Bush in the wake of Sept. 11. I felt — and feel — that it is our patriotic duty to do all we can to help him as we confront the threat of international terror.
Now, as the president’s ratings approach rock bottom (you hope), it’s time for me to write to you directly, if publicly, with advice on how to resurrect this dying presidency.
Dying? When Newsweek has you at the exact share of the vote you actually got against Gore in 2000 (48 percent — the word dying is appropriate.
Yes, footsucker, you are correct.
My advice:
1. Confront Iran We confront a deadly threat, as you know, in the determination of the theocratic jingoists in Teheran to acquire nuclear weapons. Don’t worry about being the kid who cried “wolf” too often. Explain candidly and aggressively the danger we face from Iran and rally the public to counter the new threat.
Specifically, invoke the D’Amato Amendment and impose sanctions on European, Asian and Russian companies that invest in helping that criminal regime develop the oil and gas reserves that it uses to subsidize terrorism worldwide.
It is only by appropriately raising the perceived importance of the terrorism issue back to its old heights that Bush can keep control of the political situation at home and abroad. This is not adopting a bad foreign policy for domestic political advantage. It is adopting a good one that has the same end.
This is a GREAT idea. Wonderful idea. So when they arm the Sadrists and send advisors, what do we do then? By the time our patrols were being ambushed it would be too late. Just fucking brilliant. The fact that Bush has no credibility and not even Congress would support widening the war is irrelevant, oh great footsucking genius.
2. Restrict The Mission in Iraq Isolationism has always been the hidden force in American politics. Never really defeated in an election, it lingers in both the Democratic and Republican political bases. The casualties and cost of the ongoing occupation of Iraq are tapping into this potent political force (which I once quantified through polling as 35 percent of the electorate.) These voters put aside their isolationism to back the war in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the danger illustrated by Sept. 11. But they are not about to support what Bush once called “social work” in the guise of what he now calls “nation building.”
We should place No. 1 priority on the safety of our troops in Iraq. If we have to keep them on the base and out of the streets, so be it. The first priority has to be to stop the bleeding, whatever the cost to Iraqi reconstruction. Americans don’t care if the electricity is on in Baghdad, just preserve the lives of our sons and daughters.
Correct again footsucker. The only problem is that it won't stop the war. Pulling them out of the streets means they're even easier targets. The risk of civil war would grow exponentially because the pace and scale of violence would grow.
3. Pass Prescription Drug Benefits The economy is not that important to Bush’s fate. Unlike in 1992, voters understand that there is not much a president can do to impact it. Voters also understand that it is Osama bin Laden, not Bush, who caused the last recession. But health care prices, now that the smoke of terrorism appears — incorrectly — to be clearing, are a very important element in the strength of the Democrats. Just as I told Clinton he was unlikely to win if he didn’t pass welfare reform, I think that Bush has to pass prescription drug benefits for the elderly. None of the GOP objections to the bill should stand in the way of its passage.
For those who say the bill goes too far, I would give the same answer we gave Democrats in 1996 who felt the same about welfare cuts — pass it now and fix it later.
Please, Unca Karl, if you read this, follow this advice. Yes, Americans do not care about THREE YEARS OF NO WORK. Totally irrelevant. Prescription drug benefits are exactly what is needed. The tax cuts, the refusal to aid states, yeah. They don't know, they don't care/
4. Back Hydrogen Fuel Cell Cars Bush needs a major domestic theme to deal with high gasoline prices and with our dependence on terrorist oil. His efforts for more energy production ring hollow with Americans. But by galvanizing Americans around hydrogen fuel cell cars and retrofitting American gas stations to carry hydrogen, he offers a practical way to counter the financial power of terrorism. Just as he seized American imaginations with his commitment to research in his State of the Union Address, he should now move to implementation to regain his hold on the issue.
I don’t work there anymore, but perhaps these ideas might help a very successful president who has provided the leadership we need get reelected.
Yes. Of course. Hydrogen cars. Yes, that will do the trick. Why didn't I think of it.
AUSTRALIA'S stranded shipload of sheep will be unloaded and given away in Iraq today or tomorrow unless the Federal Government can find a last-minute buyer.
Sydney exporter Mark Coulton has broken through the diplomatic impasse by negotiating with the US military and Iraqi traders to unload the sheep in the southern Iraqi port of Basra and distribute them free.
...........................
The contract details how the sheep will be given to Mr Coulton either late yesterday, Iraqi time, or today. Mr Coulton will in turn give them free to Iraqi tribal leaders - to who he normally sells cigarettes.
Hey, you like sheep, we have sheep. Just because they've been dying like slaves crossing the Atlantic, we think Iraqis will love these diseased, infected sheep.
Am I confused or do Iraqis have TV's. If they do, why would they want sheep everyone in the middle east know are diseased. The mind boggling insult here is amazing. Silly hajis, they'll take anything, seems to be the idea. Just another idea which will blow up in our faces.
Sometimes you read shit you simply cannot believe. Look at Atrios this morning, here was one of those stories
State fund buys school operator
If the deal stands, the fund that provides for pensions of Florida public school teachers will own a company that privatizes school management.
By HELEN HUNTLEY, Times Personal Finance Editor
Published September 25, 2003
Florida's state pension fund is investing $174-million in a controversial for-profit school management company.
Through one of its money managers, Liberty Partners, the pension fund has agreed to buy out the shareholders of Edison Schools Inc., taking the New York company private.
In effect, the fund that provides for the retirement pensions of Florida teachers and other public employees will own a company that has played a leading role in privatizing school management.
..................
Edison is the largest private manager of public schools. The company says more than 80,000 students attend the 150 schools it operates in 23 states, including Florida, under management contracts. It reports improving academic performance at its schools.
...................
Investors who bought Edison stock lost millions of dollars. The company only recently reported the first quarterly profit in its 10-year history, primarily the result of a property sale. The company's stock, which peaked at $36.75 a share in 2001, fell to as low as 15 cents last year. It closed Wednesday at $1.70. Numerous shareholder lawsuits are pending.
Critics say the poor results counter Edison's premise that it can operate public schools more efficiently and effectively than school boards can.
This is just amazing. Let me refresh your memory about this company:
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.
Edison Schools, and its watchers, say privatization shouldn't mean an end to accountability
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
This is the company a state pension fund invested in? A failing company with shares worth $1.70 and it's called diversification? Once again friends of Bush rush to save fellow Yalies Chris Whittle and Benno Schmidt. Unreal. No change in management, a ton of public cash, invested by teachers who oppose the company. The Bushes seem to be competing for the Mobutu Sese Seko award for kleptocratic government.
According to my current stats, I've had 77,000 visits in the last 30 days. Which is a lot of visits. Invite your friends and neighbors, the more readers the better.
Nicholas Watt and Larry Elliott
Saturday September 27, 2003
The Guardian
Tony Blair is facing widespread dissatisfaction among Labour MPs who are calling on the prime minister to introduce radical changes to his leadership style if he is to avoid a damaging loss of support.
.................
As the prime minister braces himself for several union-inflicted defeats at the conference, which opens in Bournemouth tomorrow, the Guardian found that just under a quarter of MPs surveyed would like Mr Blair to quit Downing Street immediately.
A similar proportion want a peaceful transition either before or after the next election. Only just over a quarter offered unconditional support. There was a widespread recognition that Gordon Brown would succeed Mr Blair.
In one of the largest surveys of backbench opinion since Labour came to power, 108 MPs discussed top-up fees, the Iraq war and Mr Blair's leadership. Despite unease among Labour whips, who encouraged MPs not to talk, the Guardian spoke to a range of MPs who included staunch loyalists, supporters whose patience is wearing thin, and outright dissidents. They included lifelong backbenchers and former ministers, such as Nick Brown, a strong supporter of the chancellor, who was one of the few to speak on the record.
......................
The findings do not indicate an imminent leadership crisis and they certainly do not show that the chancellor's camp is starting to manoeuvre. But the loss of support for Mr Blair shows how much work he has to do to recover trust on his benches. Alan Keen, MP for Feltham and Heston, indicated that many MPs were looking to the future when he said: "Tony Blair has done a great job for the party. There's no doubt about it, Gordon Brown is by far and away above any other candidates for prime minister, if that post becomes available."
..................
The survey came as the Labour leadership embarks on an intensive round of negotiations to minimise dissent at this year's conference, which is likely to be one of the bloodiest since Mr Blair was elected leader in 1994. Leftwingers will attempt to force a full debate and vote on the Iraq war after the big unions, which command 50% of the vote, agreed to concentrate their fire on domestic policies. The leftwingers will tomorrow attempt to persuade the full con ference to include Iraq as one of the four or five contemporary resolutions which are voted on each year. But unions want to focus on controversial domestic policies, such as foundation hospitals, employment rights and pensions.
As he prepares to deliver his 10th speech as leader, in the conference hall where in 1984 Neil Kinnock signalled the rebirth of Labour with his rousing attack on the Militant Tendency, Mr Blair faces questions about his leadership. Exactly half of those surveyed (54 out of 108) would resist any attempt to have him removed, and a further nine would like the prime minister to stay if he mends his ways. However, a significant number (29) say it is time for him to move on.
Ronnie Campbell, the veteran MP for Blyth Valley, received a blunt message when he campaigned in the recent Brent East byelection: "Get rid of that Blair and I'll vote for you."
Mr Campbell added: "He's got a trust problem, because of the war, because of Hutton, and he'll have a hell of a job to turn it round. If he doesn't, then he's on the skids."
Another MP, Ann Cryer, said she would not "look forward to replacing Tony Blair" but admitted he may have to go. "If we are in difficulties still by next spring it does need clearing up and it needs doing well before the next election - if he's happy to go."
Paul Flynn, MP for Newport West and a longstanding critic, said: "Blair in his time as leader has voted to be hooked up to a daily drip-feed of tabloid attention. It's an addiction. He's courageous when he's wrong and timid when he's right. That's his bloody problem."
...........
It's getting dangerously close to Tony Blair being a liability now. If he is a liability, will he put the party first and hand over? It's a very difficult time. We cannot afford to have another year with fundamental differences between the leader and the party. He'd better not be serious when he says that he's not moving on issues such as top-up fees, or he'll be heading for the rocks."
..............
"I have a high regard for [Blair] and although I think he can be a bit wilful at times and at times he has the wrong kind of acolytes around him - I think they are Nuremberg-style yes-men - as far as leadership is concerned, he is the only game in town."
Blair is in trouble, and may be in more trouble after the Hutton report. Having so many backbenchers not happy is not a good sign. Especially if a debate on the war is quashed or limited. This is not going to kill him politically, but it makes for choppy waters ahead. Blair needs WMD to be found and Bush needs Blair to stay in power. The investigation demanded by the CIA of the leak of a name of a deep cover agent by White House officials could lead to an American version of the Hutton inquiry.
What is amazing is the increasing examination of the conduct of the driven by UN refusal to help, and that IS what it is, and the cost. Even a brief look leads to conclusions of crony capitalism and more poor planning.
Labour MP's are trying to deny the reality of the situation, which is that their PM is increasingly unpopular and there may be no floor to that unpopularity. The more that comes out which discredits Bush and Blair, the worse they look. One real disaster and it could be over quickly for Blair.
The Other Recall: Segway Scooters Hit the Tipping Point
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: September 26, 2003
A problem has emerged with the Segway Human Transporter, the $5,000 high-technology scooter that has computerized gyroscopes to keep it from falling over.
It falls over.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission and Segway L.L.C. today announced a recall of all 6,000 Segways, which tend to tip when the batteries are low and the rider does something that requires a quick burst of power, such as speeding up abruptly or trying to bump over an obstacle.
......................
A user who has an accident like the one described by the commission has to ignore a number of signals from the Segway to get to the hazardous tipping point. The machines have a prominent battery level indicator built into the handlebars, and as power drains, a light comes on, an alarm sounds and the handlebars shake. A Segway can be charged at any power outlet with a cord that is identical to those used in most personal computers.
....................
The Segway made its debut last November with great fanfare and enthusiastic news coverage. Last month, Dan Rather, the CBS news anchor, said the vehicle "just might be the most revolutionary leap since the automobile." But the scooter has also been derided as a yuppie toy, and there was nearly gleeful coverage of a spill taken by President Bush on one last summer.
ROTFLMAO.
I hate those damn things. Yuppie playtoy. Fucking clowns.
Dean Kamen should live in the real world. No one needs a scooter for lazy fatbodies. What good is the Segway?
After all the hype and bullshit, now the thing needs a recall? HAHAHAHAHAHA.
OK, this is supposed to be talk like O'Reilly Day, but I don't watch that Long Island racist blowhard. But I do wonder what the hell is wrong with Fox.
Yesterday, CNN's Tucker Carlson jokingly gave out Fox's Washington Bureau's number as his home number during a segment on telemarketers. Now, call me crazy, but that was a funny joke and not uncommon.
How does Fox respond?
By publishing Carlson's unlisted home number. Carlson has four children under 10. So his third grader had the pleasure of picking up the phone and listening to the wingnuts who listen to Fox. You have to be deranged to curse at a child, yet the Fox audience did so with glee.
Now, I don't care for the man's politics, but that doesn't make him evil. If Ann Coulter, as repellent as her politics is, has the right to sleep with partners of her choice, Tucker Carlson clearly has the right to a private life. More importantly, his kids have the right to live in peace without daddy's job scaring the shit out of them. I can't imagine anyone calling some guy on TV at home to torment him. But the fact that he has a family is no secret. And it was no secret to the people at Fox.
Look, we all know CNN has embarassed the Dear Leader's network with frequent Franken appearances. But that's part of the fun of journalism. You get the joy of tweaking the opposition. CNN has its own troubles Fox can exploit.
But it takes a special kind of evil to nationally publish someone's unlisted home number, knowing he has a wife and four small children at home. When Atrios posted this yesterday, I mentioned that someone could reverse directory that number and find his home in the Virginia burbs. It boggles the mind that someone thought this was appropriate when all they had to do was publish his CNN office number. Every news office has people's home numbers out of friendship or a need to communicate. These people all socialize and know each other. Common courtesy would dictate one doesn' t give out private numbers.
James Carville called Fox pond scum for doing this, I would call them assholes, but it's the same thing. It was horribly irresponsible and reckless. God, I hope everyone at Fox is faithful to their spouses and not having any office affairs. I hope they live sin-free lives. Because this won't go unanswered.
In today's Washington Post, they break down how that $20B for Iraqi reconstruction will be spent.
The discontent is relatively contained so far, said Jim Dyer, Republican staff director of the House Appropriations Committee, but that is because few lawmakers have read the proposal's fine print. As more details seep out, he said, anger is sure to rise.
Those details include $100 million to build seven planned communities with a total of 3,258 houses, plus roads, an elementary school, two high schools, a clinic, a place of worship and a market for each; $10 million to finance 100 prison-building experts for six months, at $100,000 an expert; 40 garbage trucks at $50,000 each; $900 million to import petroleum products such as kerosene and diesel to a country with the world's second-largest oil reserves; and $20 million for a four-week business course, at $10,000 per student.
..................
"We're not talking sanity here," Dyer said. "The world's second-largest oil country is importing oil, and a country full of concrete is importing concrete."
Then Josh Marshall drops this tidbit o' information:
New Bridge Strategies, LLC is a unique company that was created specifically with the aim of assisting clients to evaluate and take advantage of business opportunities in the Middle East following the conclusion of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Its activities will seek to expedite the creation of free and fair markets and new economic growth in Iraq, consistent with the policies of the Bush Administration. The opportunities evolving in Iraq today are of such an unprecedented nature and scope that no other existing firm has the necessary skills and experience to be effective both in Washington, D.C. and on the ground in Iraq.
A 'unique company'? You could say that. Who's the Chairman and Director of New Bridge? That would be Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush's longtime right-hand-man and until about six months ago his head of FEMA. Before that of course he was the president's chief of staff when he was governor of Texas and campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2000.
Allbaugh was part of the president's so-called 'Iron Triangle' -- the other two being Karl Rove and Karen Hughes. And now Allbaugh's running an outfit that helps your company get the sweetest contracts in Iraq? That sound right to you? Think he'll have any special pull?
Then Billmon jumps on the pile with a pithy comment:
There's an old joke about the Quakers: They came to America to do good, and did well. But these good old boys apparently have decided to skip the "doing good" part in Iraq and get straight to the "doing well."
But none of this makes sense until you connect the dots.
Why does Iraq, with maybe 130,000 unemployed professionals needs prison experts. If Iraq should have anything, it's people who can build prisons. These guys are living in these ornate palaces and they think they need outside construction advice. I think if Iraqis could meet construction standards where failure meant play time with Uday and Qusay, they can work to rebuild their country. But it's not about that.
New Bridge is going to serve as the broker to this aid money and the contracts which flow from them. Those needs have little to do with Iraq and a lot to do with Bush supporters who will bid and get paid for those contracts. Do you think Democratic linked companies will get New Bridge's help? Planned communities? They mean gated communities for Americans, like they have in Saudi Arabia.
Iraqis don't need business courses, it has a well developed netowrk of universities. U Baghdad was teaching students when Bush's ancestors painted themselves blue and killed Vikings. Iraqis have gone overseas for decades to get advanced degrees from Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, the Sorbonne. They don't need or want these programs. They need modern research equipment and computers, rebuilt libraries. They have the professors and professionals needed already. A program which wasn't about looting the treasury would reenforce Iraq's institutions and not build what is in essence a colonial infrastructure.
This is a scam, which will benefit Bush cronies over Iraqis. These programs have nothing to do with Iraq. They have everything to do with enriching Republican contributors. Business courses? Why do Iraqis need business courses? They've sold things for thousands of years.
Even the plan to hire human rights investigators is a scam. Why couldn't bright young Iraqis be trained in investigatory techniques instead of a $200K a year "experts"? Who do you think will get those contracts? American firms like Kroll. Who will then still have to rely on young Iraqis to do the leg work.
It's not about helping Iraq. It's about enriching the friends of the president.
On PBS tonight, there was a documentary about the rescue of POW's at Cabuntan in the Philippines in January, 1945. This was made in preperation for the release of the movie Ghost Soldiers, based on a book about the raid.
The Japanese, had violated every rule of law and common decency in their treatment of American and Filipino prisoners, starved them, beat them and then murdered them in cold blood. As soon as the Americans landed on Luzon, every effort was made to liberate POW's in Japanese hands. These were risky missions done at the margins. Any mistake, and the prisoners would die.
In late January, Mac Arthur's head of intelligence, Charles Willoughby proposed a raid on the Cabuntan camp. Selected to carry out this mission was the 6th Ranger Battalion, the only Ranger battalion in the Pacific, the others served in Europe and Italy. Accompaning them was the Alamo Scouts, a unit so secret that its existance wasn't revealed until after the war, and Filipino guerrillas. The Alamo Scouts was the 6th Army's recon unit. Of the 104 men who served in its ranks, none died in combat, a record unmatched in US history. The two units and the guerrillas marched 30 miles behind enemy lines and in a moonlight raid, rescued over 500 POW's and escaped back to American lines.
It was one of the great moments in American military history, and not widely known for decades.
When you think of the level of dedication and professionalism involved, compared to our more recent antics, it makes them all the more shameful.
No discipline, no fire control, no respect from the locals. It is painful to watch and read when we can be so much better.
Howard Dean's campaign has raised over $250K in ONE DAY. He started at $1.02m this morning and will end at over 1.27m. That is just amazing. I've never seen anything, heard of anything like this. People see him debate, search for the website and toss in money. And given that he was within the margin of error in beating Bush, we're talking about something unseen here. They beat up on Dean, he gets money, he makes a speech, he gets money, he is quoted in Salon, he gets money.
Now, please explain to me how a candidate who can raise this kind of money from so many people and be unelectable? I think it's time the party start looking hard at this phenomenon and stop treating Dean like an interloper. He is not. He might have a glass jaw, but you know, if next week, Joe Trippi says, as people think, they raised $23.5 in the 3rd quarter, which is double any democratic candidate has ever raised, he's not going to go down easy.
Also, Local 1199, New York's strongest union just did a $35K fundraiser for Dean. This is no middle class crowd. This is a union of health care workers, mostly black and latino and he seemed to get a good reception there.
It's becoming clear that Gephardt isn't going to make the union cut. Dean is as good as he is on the issues and he's got that wad of cash and organization rolling along.
Clark may be able to raise something close, over time, but money in politics is power. The more money you have, the more you can raise. And since Dean isn't begging for it at dinners, it's cheap money as well. Nothing is certain with voters. Dean may not make the cut, but with his money, not only will he be able to make his case, but prevent others from doing the same.
DALLAS -- Southern Methodist University officials shut down a bake sale today in which cookies were offered for sale at different prices, depending on the race and gender of the buyer.
The sale was organized by the Young Conservatives of Texas, who said it was intended as a protest of affirmative action.
A sign said white males had to pay $1 for a cookie. The price was 75 cents for white women, 50 cents for Hispanics and 25 cents for blacks.
Members of the conservative group said they meant no offense and were only trying to exercise their freedom of speech to protest the use of race or gender as a factor in college admissions.
..................
A black student filed a complaint with SMU, saying the sale was offensive. SMU officials said they halted the event after 45 minutes because it created a potentially unsafe situation for students.
"This was not an issue about free speech," Tim Moore, director of the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, said in a story for Thursday's edition of The Dallas Morning News. "It was really an issue where we had a hostile environment being created that was potentially volatile."
..................
David C. Rushing, 23, a second-year law student and chairman of Young Conservatives of Texas at SMU and for the state, said the event didn't get out of hand. At most, a dozen students gathered around the table of cookies and Rice Krispie treats, he said.
"We copied what's been done at multiple campuses around the country to illustrate our opinion of affirmative action and how we think it's unfair," he said.
Poor little peckerwoods whining about those darkies getting ahead.
How in God's name could they thing anything is unfair in their tiny little lives? They go to an expensive private university in one of the world's wealthiest cities in one of the world's wealthiest countries and they think something is unfair? What, they might not be able to get one of their crony buddies a job in the future?
Notice, despite every statistic that Hispanics are poorer than blacks, blacks were charged the least amount. Racist? You make the call. They don't have the balls to say "we hate niggers, spics and uppity white women, especially those who fuck niggers and spics", so they have a cute little bakesale.
What boils my balls is that these kids are lucky. They are rich, white and live in Texas which means no one will ever question them for being in the wrong place at 2 AM. They should have no worries beyond a good supply of condoms and fresh beer. No one yanked them from class for 16 months of fun in sunny Iraq. You wanna talk unfair, that's unfair. Nothing happening to these spoiled little brats is unfair. If SMU has 19 percent minorities, it's because it's in fucking Dallas, which has a lot of blacks and Mexicans. I know they long for the days where coloreds just swept up at SMU, but those days are over. What? Cousin Billy Bob had to go to Baylor instead? Texas A&M? Sorry. It's Southern Methodist University, not Southern Klan University. These little assholes have never had a job to lose, much less lost a job to anyone, they're at freaking SMU.
Free speech my ass. I have a free speech solution, let's discuss every black person lynched in Texas from 1865 and see how unfair Affirmative Action really is. They had to march the first black student in to law school at UT Austin. These folks and the parents and grandparents just walked right in. And now they think someone is taking their "rights" away? The right to what? White supremacy? They want unfair, ask their National Guardsmen classmates about unfair. They're experts on the subject.
Poor planning and coordination is leading to delays in construction and the restoration of power in Iraq.
The Army engineers allowed Iraqi managers and technicians to resume control of their facilities. Bechtel conducted emergency repairs and the renovation of a few generating units around the country. Other needs, such as spare parts for Baghdad South, would have to be purchased by Iraq's electricity commission, a government body responsible for managing power plants and the transmission network.
Bremer and Bearpark hoped electricity production would gradually increase to prewar levels by the end of July. But as the summer began, it became clear that goal was unattainable and that the occupation authority needed a new plan.
They concluded the $230 million Bechtel had been given was not enough to make the necessary repairs. At Baghdad South, for instance, Bechtel provided chemicals to treat water in the steam turbines because it was deemed an emergency issue, but the company lacked funds to buy spare parts for the plant, even if they would improve performance. That responsibility was subsequently shifted to the country's electricity commission, which has a tiny budget and no phones to contact foreign suppliers.
More than parts, plants such as Baghdad South needed a full overhaul -- the equivalent of removing a car's engine, taking it apart and then rebuilding it -- if there was any hope of raising output above 250 megawatts. "We quickly realized that we'd need billions and billions of dollars to fix the system," said Michael Robinson, Bechtel's operations manager in Iraq. "But we had a very, very limited contract."
By June, looters were toppling dozens of high-voltage towers every week, cutting off cities south and west of Baghdad from the national grid. Closer to the capital, saboteurs began felling towers with explosives; one attack plunged the city into a three-day blackout.
Immediately after Hussein's government fell, the military counted 13 high-voltage towers that had been toppled. Now, more than 650 towers -- one-third of the national network -- have been knocked over, often by thieves who scavenge for aluminum wire to sell.
Some of the best engineers, scientists, architects and technicians are currently out of work because their companies have nothing to do and there are no funds to keep them functioning. The employees get together a couple of days a week and spend several hours brooding over ‘istikans’ of lukewarm tea and ‘finjans’ of Turkish coffee. Instead of spending the endless billions on multinational companies, why not spend only millions on importing spare parts and renovating factories and plants?
My father has a friend with a wife and 3 children who is currently working for an Italian internet company. He communicates online with his ‘boss’ who sits thousands of kilometers away, in Rome, safe and sure that there are people who need to feed their families doing the work in Baghdad. This friend, and a crew of male techies, work 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. They travel all over Baghdad, setting up networks. They travel in a beat-up SUV armed with cables, wires, pliers, network cards, installation CDs, and a Klashnikov for… you know… technical emergencies.
Each of the 20 guys who work with this company get $100/month. A hundred dollars for 260 hours a month comes to… $0.38/hour. My 16-year-old babysitter used to get more. The Italian company, like many other foreign companies, seems to think that $100 is appropriate for the present situation. One wonders the price of the original contract the Italian company got… how many countless millions are being spent so 20 guys can make $100/month to set up networks?
Part of the problem is that we simply do not the Iraqis to act in their own best interest and must do it for them. Which is expensive and doomed to fail.
LONDON, Sept. 24 — Called in to anchor the BBC's coverage of the death of the Queen Mother last year, the broadcaster Peter Sissons made a simple choice that set off a complicated furor. Instead of the traditional black necktie traditionally worn by BBC presenters at times of national mourning, he wore maroon.
It was a tiny thing, really. But there were calls of complaint, indignant editorials, denunciations on talk shows, letters to the newspapers, all showing how important the BBC is to Britain's view of itself and how angry, even personally affronted, Britons can become when they disagree with it.
It is the sense that the BBC somehow belongs to Britain, that it both reflects and leads the nation, that has made the current wave of anti-BBC feeling so palpable. The putative cause is the now-discredited report on the "Today" radio program accusing the government of "sexing up" the dossier it gave to to Parliament as justification for an attack on Iraq.
But the complaints go far beyond that single incident to accusations of bias and irresponsibility, to questions of whether the BBC's mighty news and current affairs operation still inspires the automatic respect it once did. Even people who love the BBC worry that its status as Britain's most enduringly credible institution — more trusted than the government, more respected than the monarchy, more relevant than the church — is being frittered away by editorial blunders, an inability to negotiate the changing broadcast landscape, and an aggressively adversarial approach to the news among some correspondents that presents a striking contrast to the BBC's old style of measured politeness.
As anyone who reads this site knows, I follow the BBC fairly closely. I can say that this article is wrong on several points and leaves out several other points which should be spelled out:
* The "discredited" report has not been. In fact, the Hutton inquiry has released no findings on the BBC's work as of yet. It seems that the substance of the report, instead of being discredited, has been, for the most part, confirmed. Andrew Gilligan may have slightly overstated the case, but slightly is about it.
* The BBC's licence fee covers ALL BBC broadcasting. To say that Britons don't use the BBC is like saying Americans don't eat French Fries. The BBC is the main provider of children's programming, internet services and radio as well as the TV channels. They may not watch BBC 1, BB2, or BBC3 but they use the BBC.
* The main indictments against the BBC come from Labour stalwarts looking to protect Blair and the Murdoch press who want a share of BBC's profit-making programs. Most of the attacks come from score settling. There is no popular resentment against the Beeb.
* The core attack on the BBC's credibility comes from 10 Downing Street, which comes off far worse than the BBC in this mess.
Lyall must read different UK papers than I do, because all she did was quote the Beeb's enemies and only brings in its defenders in the end. Is it really a valid complaint that Jeremy Paxman asks aggressive questions? I know what I learned in J school and that's not a bad thing. Quoting Channel 4 on the BBC is like quoting Bill O'Reilly on Al Franken.
What is the point of an article without pointing out the financial and economic motives to attack the BBC. The "loss of esteem" is not about the BBC as much as the potential of stripping the BBC would present to Murdoch and his cronies. Or the political benefit it would bring to Blair. Without mentioning their motives, this article misses a lot.
EP Verdi sent this to me and instead of taking credit for it myself, I'll post it and let the credit go where it should:
GW Bush dedicated nearly a fifth of his speech to the UN to sex slaves and the evils of human trafficking. Please don't let GW Bush use these victims as rhetorical human shields for his aggression in Iraq. Among all of his hypocrisies, this may be the most egregious.
BushCo awarded a $150 million Iraq contract to DynCorp, a company knowingly involved in the sex slave trade in Bosnia. DynCorp has fired and harassed whistleblowers and blocked prosecution of human traffickers. US Servicemen were also involved. DynCorp is charged with the training of Iraqi police. At a time when the rape and kidnapping of Iraqi women and girls is pandemic, how can a
company involved in the trading of sex slaves be considered qualified to train Iraqis to uphold the highest standards of law and order?
The Bush administration has also blocked the progress of a world court on human rights, refusing to sign on (essentially granting immunity for American traffickers in human beings) and pressuring other nations from signing on with threads of blocked aid, loans and trade. A world court on human rights is the only body that could track and prosecute human traffickers. Some links ...
In another case, DynCorp, a subsidiary of El Segundo-based Computer Sciences Corp., won a $150-million contract to train a new Iraqi police force. But the contract was awarded just two weeks ago, and the firm has yet to be allowed into the country because the U.S. military considers Iraq too dangerous for DynCorp staff to set up shop.
Firm With New U.S. Iraq Contract Drops Balkan Sex Case Appeal (05/05/03)
DynCorp on Friday dropped its planned appeal of an employment tribunal's ruling that the corporation unfairly dismissed a woman who blew the whistle on DynCorp-employed U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia for frequenting nightclubs where girls under 15 danced naked and had sex with customers. U.N. employees were also linked to Balkan prostitution rings. The U.S. firm's dropping of the
expected Bosnia appeal follows its landing last month of a $50 million U.S. State Department contract to provide police officers to Iraq.
Middle-aged men having sex with 12- to 15-year-olds was too much for Ben Johnston, a hulking 6-foot-5-inch Texan, and more than a year ago he blew the whistle on his employer, DynCorp, a U.S. contracting company doing business in Bosnia. [...]
Rather than acknowledge and reward Johnston's effort to get this behavior stopped, DynCorp fired him, forcing him into protective custody by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) until the investigators could get him safely out of Kosovo and returned to the United States. That departure from the war-torn country was a far cry from what Johnston imagined a year earlier when
he arrived in Bosnia to begin a three-year U.S. Air Force contract with DynCorp as an aircraft-maintenance technician for Apache and Blackhawk helicopters.
DynCorp, a private military powerhouse, fired two employees who complained that colleagues were involved in Bosnian forced-prostitution rings. The employees went to court -- and won.
Pending lawsuits allege that U.S. military contractors on duty in Bosnia bought and "owned" young women. But the accused men have never been -- and will never be -- brought to justice.
Investigators knew employees for U.S. military contractors in Bosnia bought women as sex slaves. But because of legal loopholes and bureaucratic confusion, no one was prosecuted
And one thing we know about this Bush war on terrorism: sacrifice is only for Army reservists and full-time soldiers. For the rest of us, it's guns and butter. When it comes to the police and military sides of the war on terrorism, the Bushies behave like Viking warriors. But when it comes to the political and economic sacrifices and strategies that are also required to fight this war successfully, they are cowardly wimps. That is why our war on terrorism is so one-dimensional and Pentagon-centric. It's more like a hobby — something we do only until it runs into the Bush re-election agenda.
"If the sons of American janitors can go die in Iraq to keep us safe," says Robert Wright, author of "Nonzero," a book on global interdependence, "then American cotton farmers, whose average net worth is nearly $1 million, can give up their subsidies to keep us safe. Opening our markets to farm products and textiles would be critical to drawing many nations — including Muslim ones — more deeply into the interdependent web of global capitalism and ultimately democracy."
...........................
If only the Bush team connected the dots, it would see what a nutty war on terrorism it is fighting, explains Mr. Prestowitz. Here, he says, is the Bush war on terrorism: Preach free trade, but don't deliver on it, so Pakistani farmers become more impoverished. Then ask Congress to give a tax break for any American who wants to buy a gas-guzzling Humvee for business use and also ask Congress to resist any efforts to make Detroit increase gasoline mileage in new cars. All this means more U.S. oil imports from Saudi Arabia.
So then the Saudis have more dollars to give to their Wahhabi fundamentalist evangelists, who spend it by building religious schools in Pakistan. The Pakistani farmer we've put out of business with our farm subsidies then sends his sons to the Wahhabi school because it is tuition-free and offers a hot lunch. His sons grow up getting only a Koranic education, so they are totally unprepared for modernity, but they are taught one thing: that America is the source of all their troubles. One of the farmer's sons joins Al Qaeda and is killed in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces, and we think we're winning the war on terrorism.
In Clark's new book, he explains a meeting he had with a ranking general at the Pentagon.
I WENT BACK through the Pentagon in November 2001, and one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia, and Sudan. So, I thought, this is what they mean when they talk about “draining the swamp." It was evidence of the Cold War approach: Terrorism must have a "state sponsor," and it would be much more effective to attack a state than to chase after individuals, nebulous organizations, and shadowy associations.
He said it with reproach-with disbelief, almost-at the breadth of the vision. I moved the conversation away, for this was not something I wanted to hear. And it was not something I wanted to see moving forward, either.
What a mistake! I reflected-as though the terrorism were simply coming from these states. Well, that might be true for Iran, which still supported Hezbollah, and Syria, complicit in aiding Hamas and Hezbollah. But neither Hezbollah nor Hamas were targeting Americans. Why not build international power against Al Qaeda? But if we prioritized the threat against us from any state, surely Iran was at the top of the list, with ongoing chemical and biological warfare programs, clear nuclear aspirations, and an organized, global terrorist arm.
And what about the real sources of terrorists-U.S. allies in the region like Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia? Wasn't it the repressive policies of the first, and the corruption and poverty of the second, that were generating many of the angry young men who became terrorists? And what of the radical ideology and direct funding spewing from Saudi Arabia? Wasn't that what was holding the radical Islamic movement together? What about our NATO allies, whose cities were being used as staging bases and planning headquarters? Why weren't we putting greater effort into broader preventive measures?
The way to beat terrorists was to take away their popular support. Target their leaders individually, demonstrate their powerlessness, roll up the organizations from the bottom. I thought it would be better to drive them back into one or two states that had given them support, and then focus our efforts there
Jesus, that's like reading about Hitler's plans for Berlin. Scary.
Well, we know that plan is dying in Iraq. No wonder our allies aren't giving up troops or money. There is no way in hell they want to be part of what, in essesnce, would be the new crusades. It's shocking that this wackiness hasn't become more widely known.
Kos has a long piece on the conflict between the Draft Clark people and his campaign team.
What was entirely predictable and forseen was the difficluties in moving from grassroots movement to political campaign. According to the Prospect, the Clintonistas have been behind Clark running for months. The problem with that is an artificial movement ran smack into a real draft movement.
Personally, I've never liked white horse candidates, and Hugh Shelton's broadside, like the revelations of Arnie's sex life, can cause a broadside effect into what seems like a simple campaign. It's not about Clark's qualifications, but his ability to survive the campaign. The Clinton-Gore-Lieberman folks now around Clark are trying to do things the old fashioned way, with a top-down organization. Meanwhile, Dean's raised $1m online in four days. They may not make the $5m mark, which is amazingly ambitious, but they will come close. Without lifting a finger.
What the Clark people want to do and probably won't, since I don't think most people get the Dean campaign, is emulate its success.
Dean is certainly no grassroots campaign. Nor does it give that illusion. What it does is akin to the Stalin method of partisan warfare. He has his operatives organize the resistance in small cells, which gain strength upon orders from central command. Local leadership sign up to follow orders from HQ, and work on their own, with help, support and recognition from the bosses. It is a centrally directed effort. It seems like a grassroots movement because it has such ferverent support. So Dean can ask for support in areas where he isn't spending money, yet.
Clark, however, wants a French resistance, a group of independent and not so independent groups working towards a common goal. His task, like De Gaulle's is to impose his professionals on the amateurs and get their acts together. Clark and his people will have egos to sooth because they feel that he owes them some margin of respect for their efforts. Because hsi operatives had little to do with local activism, their orders are less orders than discussion points. It will take a lot of discipline to forge his people into a viable campaign organization. Whereas Dean's people exist only because he supported them and nurtured them from the beginning. When Joe Trippi says march, their boots are on the cobblestone. When Mark Fabiani says march, some people wonder why, others resent the order, some walk slowly, some run.
Now, you can manage an organization like that, but you have to understand the limits of what they can do. You have to be ready to negotiate instead of order. If they can do that, it may work. If they can't, it will be a problem into the election.
Maryland to approve Diebold contract despite scathing report
According to the Agonist, the State of Maryland is approving a contract with Diebold.
These are the changes which the report recommended before buying the system. Some of the conclusions in the report have been redacted.
We recommend that SBE immediately implement the following mitigation strategies to address
the identified risks with a rating of high:
• Bring the AccuVote-TS voting system into compliance with the State of Maryland
Information Security Policy and Standards.
• Consider the creation of a Chief Information Systems Security Officer (CISSO) position
at SBE. This individual would be responsible for the secure operations of the AccuVote-
TS voting system.
• Develop a formal, documented, complete, and integrated set of standard policies and
procedures. Apply these standard policies and procedures consistently through the LBEs
in all jurisdictions.
• Create a formal, System Security Plan. The plan should be consistent with the State of
Maryland Information Security Policy and Standards, Code of Maryland Regulations
(COMAR), Federal Election Commission (FEC) standards, and industry best practices.
• Apply cryptographic protocols to protect transmission of vote tallies.
• Require 100 percent verification of results transmitted to the media through separate
count of PCMCIA cards containing the original votes cast.
• Establish a formal process requiring the review of audit trails at both the application and
operating system levels.
• Provide formal information security awareness, training, and education program
appropriate to each user’s level of access.
• Review any system modifications through a formal, documented, risk assessment process
to ensure that changes do not negate existing security controls. Perform a formal risk
assessment following any major system modifications, or at least every three years.
• Implement a formal, documented process to detect and respond to unauthorized
transaction attempts by authorized and/or unauthorized users.
• Establish a formal, documented set of procedures describing how the general support
system identifies access to the system.
• Change default passwords and passwords printed in documentation immediately.
• Verify through established procedures that the ITA-certified version of software and
firmware is loaded prior to product implementation.
• Remove the SBE GEMS server immediately from any network connections. Rebuild the
server from trusted media to assure and validate that the system has not been
compromised. Remove all extraneous software not required for AccuVote-TS operation.
Move the server to a secure location.
• Modify procedures for the Logic and Accuracy (L&A) testing to include testing of timeoriented
exploits (e.g., Trojans). [Redacted]
• Discontinue the use of an FTP server to distribute the approved ballots.
• Implement an iterative process to ensure that the integrity of the AccuVote-TS voting
system is maintained throughout the lifecycle process.
The system, as implemented in policy, procedure, and technology, is at high risk of compromise.
Application of the listed mitigations will reduce the risk to the system. Any computerized voting
system implemented using the present set of policies and procedures would require these same
mitigations.
In English, this means they found the system easily exploitable and I would bet that the testers hacked the Diebold system in several different ways, using time-tested intrusion methods.
Why is the state, with a Republican governor, pushing to use these machines? Time to call in the lawyers.
Intelligence claims of huge Iraqi stockpiles were wrong, says report
Julian Borger in Washington, Ewen MacAskill and Patrick Wintour
Thursday September 25, 2003
The Guardian
An intensive six-month search of Iraq for weapons of mass destruction has failed to find a single trace of an illegal arsenal, according to accounts of a report circulated in Washington and London.
A draft of the report, compiled by the CIA-led 1,400-strong Iraq Survey Group (ISG), has been sent to the White House, the Pentagon and Downing Street, a US intelligence source said, and will contain no evidence of Iraqi stockpiles of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons.
"It demonstrates that the main judgments of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in October 2002, that Saddam had hundreds of tonnes of chemical and biological agents ready, are false," said the source.
The timing of this disclosure could hardly be worse for Tony Blair, just days before the start of the Labour party conference. Iraq has dogged the prime minister almost continuously for five months, overshadowing the domestic agenda. Downing Street had been hoping for respite after the end of Lord Hutton's inquiry, which closes today.
Mr Blair put forward Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as the reason for going to war and he has repeatedly insisted that the weapons would be found.
He told a sceptical Conservative MP in the Commons on April 30 that he was absolutely convinced that Iraq had such weapons and predicted that, when the report was published, "you and others will be eating some of your words."
No, Mr. Blair, it is you who will be eating, crow, I believe they call it. In retirement.
I think this will have the flavor of a shit sandwich in Congress. Tony Blair will, however, not be that lucky.
The Labour party conference at Bournemouth is up for the weekend and the Labour left is already on the warpath. MP Glenda Jackson is surely going to lead the call for Blair's head, and she will be backed with falling numbers, damaging Hutton inquiry testimony and the Unions. But if his only problem was MP Jackson, he could survive. It's going to be the head of the TUC, Robin Cook, Clare Short and the rest of Gordon Brown's stalking horse crew going for him as well. It doesn't help that his minions have been spreading the word "no retreat" in advance of the meeting.
The Kay report is very bad for Blair. It's not good for Bush, making him look like a deluded liar just days after his UN speech. But Blair, who, like a small child's belief in their own virtue, swore that we would find WMD, is about to look like both an American dupe and a liar to the Comnmons. Both of which can be fatal to a political career in the UK. It comes at a bad time for Blair and it will challenge his political skills to no end. Iraq, unlike his other mistakes, is no blip or debate, like Foot and Mouth or MMR or foundation hospitals. It is life and death for thousands of British soldiers and his high handed moralizing matches nothing which is happening in Iraq. He went against popular opinion and now that his policy failed as expected, he will be expected to pay the price with his job.
At least one person has been killed and several wounded after a bomb exploded in a hotel complex housing foreign journalists in the centre of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, police say.
The explosion occurred in the Aike hotel, where US television network NBC has offices, its staff said.
Iraqi police said a bomb had been placed in a hut that housed the hotel generator.
So I guess things aren't getting better, despite what Laura Bush tells her friends over lunch.
PHILLIP RAWLS, Associated Press Writer Thursday, September 11, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(09-11) 15:09 PDT MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) --
State officials whose pleas for a tax increase were soundly rejected by voters are offering grim predictions about the budget-cutting consequences, including an increase in crime and traffic deaths.
At news conferences Thursday, officials said the cuts Gov. Bob Riley will formally propose Monday will hurt health care and education and lead to more crime and car accidents because state trooper patrols will be reduced as parole is stepped up for nonviolent inmates.
"My advice would be for people to do what they can to lawfully protect their homes and families," said Attorney General Bill Pryor, like Riley a Republican and a supporter of the $1.2 billion tax plan that Alabama voters rejected by a 2-1 ratio Tuesday.
.......................
Additional budget cuts to be proposed include switching state troopers to a four-day work week, curtailing their overtime and limiting their driving to 150 miles per day. Public Safety Director Mike Coppage said fewer patrols will lead to more traffic fatalities.
Meanwhile, State Health Officer Don Williamson has frozen enrollment in a program that provides health insurance to children from low-income families.
Other measures being considered include limiting prescriptions for Medicaid recipients and reducing spending on classroom textbooks and computers.
Roger McConnell, co-chairman of the Tax Accountability Coalition that fought the governor's tax plan, said Riley should have started cutting some items recommended by his own education commission, such as a program that offers bonuses to state employees and educators who stay on the job beyond age 55.
"There is plenty of waste and abuse that can be cut before you take state troopers off the highways and let prisoners out. The people of the state are going to reject these ideas in a strong way," McConnell said.
Ooops. Fraud, waste and abuse. The old canard of the pay no taxes crowd. Well, it ain't that simple.
When the first rapes and murders take place as they let the criminals free, be sure to let Grover Norquist know all about it. Riley told you bad thing would happen, now they're happening. Norquist will be safe in his gated community. It's the citizens of Alabama about to catch hell for being short sighted.
Buy another gun, cover your ass seems to be the state motto. So what if the sick go untreated and the children uneducated. Lower taxes for all.
Just take pleasure in the fact that at least Halliburton will make a nice profit with their $87B for Iraq. Money for Iraq, prisoners for Alabama. Your friend Grover has no problem with that spending, you can bet.
By Joan Garvin / Town Crier Correspondent
Retired General H. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on 9/11, shared his recollection of that day and his views of the war against terrorism with the Foothill College Celebrity Forum audience at Flint Center, Sept. 11 and 12.
His review of that historic event and his 38 years in the military kept the audience's rapt attention throughout. But it was his answer to a question from the audience at the end that shocked his listeners.
"What do you think of General Wesley Clark and would you support him as a presidential candidate," was the question put to him by moderator Dick Henning, assuming that all military men stood in support of each other. General Shelton took a drink of water and Henning said, "I noticed you took a drink on that one!"
"That question makes me wish it were vodka," said Shelton. "I've known Wes for a long time. I will tell you the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote
Now everyone who disliked or distrusted Clark and that is a lot of people, are going to come out. Let's be honest, Clark caused a lot of resentment as he moved up the ranks. Being the smartest boy in the room can rub people the wrong way. And given Shelton's professional resume, it is not surprising that he had no love for Clark.
There could be any number of reasons, professional, personal or a combination, which had Clark and Shelton at each other. But what is clear is that Clark's staff habits sat poorly with a warrior like Shelton. And that Shelton was not straight with Clark about relieving him. When this breaks wide, something Shelton may come to regret because of all the mutual dirt which will come up, Clark's friends and enemies will become clear. It's not like he wants to campaign against him, but he's no fan. And he's not alone.
Peter Biles:
Lisa Baxter, USA: Why are the Iraqis not trying to work to bring there country together? I think they would be helping themselves if they tried to stop the violence being caused, and try to rebuild there country, as Kuwait has done.
"Salam Pax":
This is what you get from the media - this is not what's happening in Iraq. I got this a couple of days ago in a web chat in the Guardian and it actually makes me angry. Look, private businesses are back on line. Private banks are back. People are bringing back their businesses - it's what you see in the media that doesn't work - it's what the CPA is trying to do that doesn't work. We need the CPA to deal with the bigger issues - the governing issues - the smaller things, of course we're doing it. Look there are people who gave brought big generators and are selling electricity just to get over this electricity issue. No, we are helping ourselves - this is what you get from the media - the Iraqis are doing as much as they can to get their country back on track. But we cannot get, for example, the big ministries running again without some help, without some sort of governing issues being dealt with first. No, this kind of thing is wrong - the Iraqis are working - we are not just all sitting waiting for the coalition forces to do our work, of course not.
Iraqis can handle their own affairs on the local level. That's pretty clear. It's the security issue which dominates everything. No security, no stability.
Note: This is taken from the Bush campaign site. Someone needs to parody this sucker with these pictures of Bush in a cowboy hat and talking to some old lady in a wheelchair. They should have him cowering in a corner and snatching money from the the prostethic hand of a vet.
Here is a translation of the speech into simple English.
President Bush Addresses the United Nations and Calls on World to Unite Against Terror
United Nations General Assembly
New York, New York
...............
By the victims they choose, and by the means they use, the terrorists have clarified the struggle we are in. Those who target relief workers for death have set themselves against all humanity. Those who incite murder and celebrate suicide reveal their contempt for life itself. They have no place in any religious faith, they have no claim on the world's sympathy, and they should have no friend in this chamber. Events during the past two years have set before us the clearest of divides: Between those who seek order, and those who spread chaos; between those who work for peaceful change, and those who adopt the methods of gangsters; between those who honor the rights of man, and those who deliberately take the lives of men, and women, and children, without mercy or shame.
Like my boys in the 82nd Airborne. Damn Iraqi terrorists scaring our boys so they have to gun down small children, damn them.
Between these alternatives there is no neutral ground. All governments that support terror are complicit in a war against civilization. No government should ignore the threat of terror -- because to look the other way gives terrorists the chance to regroup, and recruit, and prepare. And all nations that fight terror, as if the lives of their own people depend on it, will earn the favorable judgment of history.
We were right, you weren't. Now give me some money.
The former regimes of Afghanistan and Iraq knew these alternatives, and made their choices. The Taliban was a sponsor and
servant of terrorism. When confronted, that regime chose defiance -- and that regime is no more. Afghanistan's president, who is here today, now represents a free people who are building a decent and just society -- a nation fully joined in the war against terror.
Yep. We've turned over the brutal state apparatus of torture and kidnapping to private industry. Already, these new entrepreneurs are revitalizing the economy.
The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction. It used those weapons in acts of mass murder, and refused to account for them when confronted by the world. The Security Council was right to be alarmed. The Security Council was right to demand that Iraq destroy its illegal weapons and prove that it had done so -- The Security Council was right to vow serious consequences if Iraq refused to comply. And because there were consequences -- because a coalition of nations acted to defend the peace, and the credibility of the United Nations -- Iraq is free, and today we are joined by representatives of a liberated country.
See, look at our greedy stooges up there. So greedy they will sell their own country out for money.
Saddam Hussein's monuments have been removed -- and not only his statues. The true monuments of his rule and his character -- the torture chambers, and the rape rooms, and the prison cells for innocent children -- are closed. And as we discover the killing fields and mass graves of Iraq, the true scale of Saddam's cruelty is being revealed.
And bad taste. This guy needed to be in a guinea T and married to Carmela Soprano. Yeesh. If it was ugly-coat it in gold and put it up.
The Iraqi people are meeting hardships and challenges, like every nation that has set out on the path of democracy. Yet their future promises lives of dignity and freedom -- and that is a world away from the squalid, vicious tyranny they have known. Across Iraq, life is being improved by liberty. Across the Middle East, people are safer because an unstable aggressor has been removed from power. Across the world, nations are more secure because an ally of terror has fallen.
Yes, because they can send the fundamentalist nutjobs to Iraq to kill Americans. Every angry half-wit wishing to play Robert Jordan can come to Iraq.
Our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq were supported by many governments, and America is grateful to each one. I also recognize that some of the sovereign nations of this assembly disagreed with our actions. Yet there was, and there remains, unity among us on the fundamental principles and objectives of the United Nations. We are dedicated to the defense of our collective security, and to the advance of human rights. These permanent commitments call us to great work in the world -- work we must do together. So let us move forward.
Hey, all that shit I said about you folks being gutless pussies-just kidding. First, we must stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq as they build free and stable countries. The terrorists and their allies fear and fight this progress above all, because free people embrace hope over resentment, and choose peace over violence.
Yes, like they do in the American cities of Detroit and Washington DC.
The United Nations has been a friend of the Afghan people --distributing food and medicine, helping refugees return home, advising on a new constitution, and helping to prepare the way for nationwide elections. NATO has taken over the UN-mandated security force in Kabul. American and coalition forces continue to track and defeat al-Qaida terrorists and remnants of the Taliban. Our efforts to rebuild that country go on. I have recently proposed to spend an additional 1.2 billion dollars for the Afghan reconstruction effort -- and I urge other nations to continue contributing to this important cause.
Well, after we forgot to ask for money before. A pure oversight, I swear.
In the nation of Iraq, the United Nations is carrying out vital and effective work every day. By the end of 2004, more than 90 percent of Iraqi children under age five will have been immunized against preventable diseases such as polio, tuberculosis, and measles -- thanks to the hard work and high ideals of UNICEF. Iraq's food distribution system is operational, delivering nearly a half million tons of food per month -- thanks to the skill and expertise of the World Food Program.
When their workers aren't threatened.
Our international coalition in Iraq is meeting its responsibilities. We are conducting precision raids against terrorists and holdouts of the former regime. These killers are at war with the Iraqi people -- they have made Iraq the central front in the war on terror -- and they will be defeated. Our coalition has made sure that Iraq's former dictator will never again use weapons of mass destruction. We are now interviewing Iraqi citizens and analyzing records of the old regime, to reveal the full extent of its weapons programs and long campaign of deception. We are training Iraqi police, border guards, and a new army, so that the Iraqi people can assume full responsibility for their own security.
For a problem we uh, created by disbanding their army. Yeah, we screwed up. But give us money.
At the same time, our coalition is helping to improve the daily lives of the Iraqi people. The old regime built palaces while letting schools decay -- so we are rebuilding more than a thousand schools. The old regime starved hospitals of resources -- so we have helped to supply and reopen hospitals across Iraq. The old regime built up armies and weapons, while allowing the nation's infrastructure to crumble -- so we are rehabilitating power plants, water and sanitation facilities, bridges, and airports. I have proposed to Congress that the United States provide additional funding for our work in Iraq -- the greatest financial commitment of its kind since the Marshall Plan. Having helped to liberate Iraq, we will honor our pledges to Iraq -- and by helping the Iraqi people build a stable and peaceful country, we will make our own countries more secure.
We build schools, we also shoot children. Well, just remember the first part and forget the second.
The primary goal of our coalition in Iraq is self-government for the people of Iraq, reached by orderly and democratic means. This process must unfold according to the needs of Iraqis -- neither hurried nor delayed by the wishes of other parties. And the United Nations can contribute greatly to the cause of Iraqi self-government. America is working with friends and allies on a new Security Council resolution, which will expand the UN's role in Iraq. As in the aftermath of other conflicts, the United Nations should assist in developing a constitution, training civil servants, and conducting free and fair elections. Iraq now has a Governing Council -- the first truly representative institution in that country. Iraq's new leaders are showing the openness and tolerance that democracy requires -- and also the courage. Yet every young democracy needs the help of friends. Now the nation of Iraq needs and deserves our aid -- and all nations of good will should step forward and provide that support.
Hey, we broke it, you help fix it.
The success of a free Iraq will be watched and noted throughout the region. Millions will see that freedom, equality, and material progress are possible at the heart of the Middle East. Leaders in the region will face the clearest evidence that free institutions and open societies are the only path to long-term national success and dignity. And a transformed Middle East would benefit the entire world, by undermining the ideologies that export violence to other lands.
And start a series of violent civil wars which will kill millions. We can't even call Iraq a civil war. It's us, and it's the Iraqis. Not a civil war.
Iraq as a dictatorship had great power to destabilize the Middle East ... Iraq as a democracy will have great power to inspire the Middle East. The advance of democratic institutions in Iraq is setting an example that others, including the Palestinian people, would be wise to follow. The Palestinian cause is betrayed by leaders who cling to power by feeding old hatreds, and destroying the good work of others. The Palestinian people deserve their own state -- committed to reform, to fighting terror, and to building peace. All parties in the Middle East must meet their responsibilities, and carry out the commitments they made at Aqaba. Israel must work to create the conditions that will allow a peaceful Palestinian state to emerge. Arab nations must cut off funding and other support for terrorist organizations. America will work with every nation in the region that acts boldly for the sake of peace.
Even though we will never, ever, ever punish the Israelis for anything, no matter how many donkey carts of death they blow up with expensive rockets from American helicopters.
A second challenge we must confront together is the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Outlaw regimes that possess nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons -- and the means to deliver them -- would be able to use blackmail and create chaos in entire regions. These weapons could be used by terrorists to bring sudden disaster and suffering on a scale we can scarcely imagine. The deadly combination of outlaw regimes, terror networks, and weapons of mass murder is a peril that cannot be ignored or wished away. If such a danger is allowed to fully materialize, all words, all protests, will come too late. Nations of the world must have the wisdom and the will to stop grave threats before they arrive.
Yep. Which is why we have found none in Iraq.
One crucial step is to secure the most dangerous materials at their source. For more than a decade, the United States has worked with Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union to dismantle, destroy, or secure weapons and dangerous materials left over from another era. Last year in Canada, the G-8 nations agreed to provide up to 20 billion dollars -- half of it from the United States -- to fight this proliferation risk over the next ten years. Since then, six additional countries have joined the effort. More are needed, and I urge other nations to help us meet this danger.
Give me money, dammit.
There is another humanitarian crisis, spreading and yet hidden from view. Each year, an estimated eight to nine hundred thousand human beings are bought, sold, or forced across the world's borders. Among them are hundreds of thousands of teenage girls, and others as young as five, who fall victim to the sex trade. This commerce in human life generates billions of dollars each year ? much of which is used to finance organized crime.
Unless the whores benefit Dynacorp.
There is a special evil in the abuse and exploitation of the most innocent and vulnerable. The victims of the sex trade see little of life before they see the very worst of life -- an underworld of brutality and lonely fear. Those who create these victims, and profit from their suffering, must be severely punished. Those who patronize this industry debase themselves and deepen the misery of others. And governments that tolerate this trade are tolerating a form of slavery.
Don't you touch Hilary Duff. Don't you touch her , you filthy white slavers. Get that tramp Aguilera. She sleeps with negroes. So does that Spears woman, kissing Maddona and all. Filthy whores. Take them, not Hilary, leave my sweet blonde princess alone.
This problem has appeared in my own country, and we are working to stop it. The PROTECT Act, which I signed into law this year, makes it a crime for any person to enter the United States, or for any citizen to travel abroad, for the purpose of sex tourism involving children. The Department of Justice is actively investigating sex tour operators and patrons, who can face up to 30 years in prison. Under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the United States is using sanctions against governments to discourage human trafficking.
You paying attention Vatican City? Can ya feel me, popey?
The victims of this industry also need help from other members of the United Nations. And this begins with clear standards and the certainty of punishment under the laws of every country. Today, some nations make it a crime to sexually abuse children abroad. Such conduct should be a crime in all nations. Governments should inform travelers of the harm this industry does, and the severe punishments that will fall on its patrons. The American government is committing 50 million dollars to support the good work of organizations that are rescuing women and children from exploitation, and giving them shelter, medical treatment, and the hope of a new life. I urge other governments to do their part.
Lindsay Lohan is pretty cute as well. Leave her alone as well. Oooh, Hilary and Linsday, and maybe that cute Avril Lavinge as well.
We must show new energy in fighting back an old evil. Nearly two centuries after the abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade ... and more than a century after slavery was officially ended in its last strongholds ... the trade in human beings for any purpose must not be allowed to thrive in our time.
Disney, you were Soooooo unfair to Hilary. So unfair. But that Raven's kinda cute, if you go for that sort of thing.
All the challenges I have spoken of this morning require urgent attention and moral clarity. Helping Afghanistan and Iraq to succeed as free nations in a transformed region -- cutting off the avenues of proliferation -- abolishing modern forms of slavery -- these are the kinds of great tasks for which the United Nations was founded. In each case, careful discussion is needed -- and also decisive action. Our good intentions will be credited only if we achieve good outcomes. As an original signer of the UN Charter, the United States of America is committed to the United Nations. And we show that commitment by working to fulfill the UN's stated purposes, and give meaning to its ideals.
Do what i say and give me money. Money, dammit money.
I was reading the Daily News when I saw a picuture of Britney Spears, holding on to a young, very fit, black man. AOL's IM screen had a shot of them kissing.
Now, 30 years ago, Spears would have paid ANY amount of money to hush that picture up. It would have been career suicide. A young, blonde, white girl from Louisiana with a black man? Lord a'goshen, it would have been a sin. They would have placed a contract on his head, as Elivs threatened to do when Priscilla ran off with a Hawaiian karate instructor. It would have been so scandalous that if it got out, she would have been personally ruined. Today, the only issue is if the guy is married or not. While some folks might be pissed, most only care if the guy is cheating or not.
The reason I bring this up is to illustrate that times change.
TV has come to a crossroads in terms of content.
The Sopranos, the quirky, slowly produced crime drama, has forced a sea change in how TV deals with sex and language. Before the Sopranos, cable worked the edges of language and taste. Shows like Dream On and Garry Shandling pushed some boundaries on sex and language, but they were niche hits. Blips on the radar of TV programming. Even Sex in the City, which is only now a bonafide hit after years of cult status, didn't radically move the goalposts. But when the Sopranos started to win Emmys and popular acclaim, driving HBO subscriptions, the whole picture changed. It was event TV, people were abandoning network Sundays to watch it. It got press and critical acclaim and a cult following. The name Tony Soprano replaced Michael Corleone as shorthand for thug-like tactics.
TV found that while it could do crafted shows like Homicide and Law and Order, they couldn't do the kind of attention getting, award-winning stuff HBO could.
Now, if it was just an artistic problem, it wouldn't be all that interesting. It was becoming a financial problem as well. The smaller the audience, the lower the ad rates. Shows had to reflect a more adult sensibility in many ways. NYPD Blue was the first to have partial nudity and language harsher than hell or damn on their show. Some shows have followed this, some have not. The problem is that there are always watchdog groups.
Researchers for the Parents Television Council - a conservative watchdog group - counted the "damns" and "hells" and a whole bunch of other words that can't be repeated in a family newspaper.
..................
"The findings of this study point to one obvious conclusion," the report said, "the broadcast networks have made little or no effort to curb foul language during the prime-time hours in the last five years."
It said the "overwhelmingly foul language became coarser and more frequent over time, across the networks, and unless checked, we can surely expect this trend to continue well into the future."
The group urged the networks to take a bar of soap to their potty-mouth characters - or warned the Federal Communications Commission would need to cleanse the airwaves.
Well, if these people had bothered to check, it was the FCC who liberalized the rules.Why? Because of the economic pressure on producers and broadcasters. People watch shows like South Park, the Shield, Playmakers and Nip/Tuck on basic cable. TCM doesn't edit movies, period. Not for language or content. This wasn't always the case. When AMC showed Apocalpyse Now unedited, the ad buyers went nuts. They were afraid that people would turn away from the channel. When they didn't, the issue faded away on basic cable.
Now, Broadcast TV is moving in that direction as well.
Oddly, it doesn't affect most TV shows. the 8 PM dramas like Gilmore Girls, Ed, JAG will never have people screaming shit, much less fuck. Their writers know the limits of their time period prevents more extreme language. But the 10 PM dramas like NYPD Blue, Without a Trace and Law and Order:SVU will most certainly push language and sex. The US is the most restrictive in terms of what can be said on broadcast TV. Clearly, shit is the next word to become acceptable for use on broadcast TV. Bullshit and shit are the new line for censorship before midnight. As it stands now, after midnight, there are no restrictions on language. One could see that moving back to 10 PM eventually. But financial pressures will always limit what goes on Broadcast TV.
But speculation in the media and elsewhere has been rekindled after each denial, mostly because of such clues as the now-famous e-mails posted by Mrs. Clinton's staff on her re-election Web site which urged her to run for President, or Bill Clinton's ostensibly off-the-cuff remarks about how his wife would make a great candidate, or more recently, his 'private' discussions - reported recently in Time magazine - about how he really wanted her to run. In the context of polls showing her as the most popular theoretical Democratic candidate, these seemingly small things have suddenly been imbued with great meaning.
In an interview with The Observer about the ongoing speculation, Mrs. Clinton said she just considered it to be a part of the job."That's just the nature of how things work," she said. "I don't think I have a choice. I think that I do my job to the best of my ability, and try to get things done and I feel very good about the coverage and the attention that's been given."
Mrs. Clinton insisted that she was remaining focused on her legislative priorities, which she classified broadly as 'homeland security and economic security,' and that the somewhat livelier interest being taken in her designs on the White House were irrelevant. "I just haven't really had any reason to think it's had an impact in terms of the work that I do, going to committee meetings, going to vote, going to speak to the press about these issues. Obviously someone will ask me and I'll say the same thing I've always said, and then we'll talk about Bertie Ahern's visit to Albany, or what I'm going to do in Rochester on Friday, so it really doesn't have that much of an impact at all "
.............
Brooklyn Congressman Anthony Weiner, a Democrat who says he believes Mrs. Clinton will not run in 2004, even sees a deliberate strategy at work in Mr. Clinton's comments. "Recently it's been coming from [Bill Clinton], and I think he recognizes that there's something to the old Oscar Wilde expression that it's better being talked about than not being talked about."
But Mr. Weiner also sees a downside for Mrs. Clinton in the Presidential chatter. 'I think it's not good at the end of the day," he said. "She's worked so hard over the last few years to make herself the average hard-working senator for her state. And to whatever extent it might make some New Yorkers proud that their senator is being considered that way, I'm sure there are others, swing voters, who are sensitive to the charge that she's just ambitious and she's using New York as a stepping stone. It's probably best not to give those people fodder"
In a bristling exchange, Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., challenged Rumsfeld on the $20.3 billion part of Bush's plan that would go toward rebuilding Iraq and establishing a democratic government.
"Secretary Rumsfeld, where is the mandate from the American people to carry out the reconstruction of Iraq?" Byrd said. "When did the American people give their assent?"
Rumsfeld cited the resolution Congress approved allowing force against Iraq and defended rebuilding as being in U.S. interests.
"Once having gone in, the last thing we need to do is turn over that country to another dictator like Saddam Hussein," he said.
Underlining the partisan tensions over Iraq, when Byrd continued asking questions, committee chairman Ted Stevens, R-Ala., cut him off, saying Byrd had already exceeded his allotted time by seven minutes.
"Seven minutes," Byrd said. "Think of that, on an $87 billion request."
This bill, if passed as the White House wants, will cost people their seats. Byrd is right. There is NO assent to spend that kind of money. More importantly, even if they get all the money, this will be it. They need, realistically, $55B to rebuild Iraq, and there is no way to get that money. They may well not get anything like the $20B they need now. Bush doesn't have the political capital, nor is there the kind of sympathy for the Iraqi people needed for this to be friction free. Bush may get what he wants, only to have the bill shoved down his throat, especially if the security situation doesn't improve.
Expect this to be a very nasty fight. Especially when people find out this is just the first down payment. I feel for any Congressman who has to explain this vote in the Rust Belt outside of Michigan or in the industrial South. You know, the places without decent schools and losing jobs.
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A federal judge has ruled that the Federal Trade Commission overstepped its authority in creating the national ``do-not-call'' list against telemarketers.
The ruling Tuesday came in a lawsuit brought by telemarketers who challenged the list of 50 million people who said they do not want to receive business solicitation calls. The list was to go into effect Oct. 1.
U.S. District Judge Lee R. West said the main issue in the case was ``whether the FTC had the authority to promulgate a national do-not-call registry. The court finds it did not.''
You HAVE to be kidding. Jesus, now the GOP's Indian pitchmen can ruin my dinner for a product they don't want.
A month ago, administration officials said they wanted billions of dollars pledged for Iraq at a meeting of donor nations in Madrid next month. It now appears they will have to settle for a fraction of that, which will complicate efforts to get the rest from Congress.
Increasingly, as well, the nations that have been asked to send forces to Iraq are not coming through. India and Pakistan now seem to be long shots. South Korea says it cannot decide until the end of October.
Turkey is being asked to send 10,000 troops, but "several thousand might be more realistic," a Turkish official said.
Mr. Bush's performance today seemed to reflect the precarious situation.
Fidgeting in an almost eerily silent hall — where the audience observed a tradition of not applauding before or during a speech and offered only perfunctory applause at the end — the president spoke in an even tone, occasionally smiling but rarely becoming passionate.
In the corridors all day, diplomats were intensely discussing the recent decline in Mr. Bush's popularity at home and wondering if his troubles would make it easier for countries around the world to oppose the United States on Iraq.
Next time, get the troop and money commitments before you wage war.
Rory McCarthy reports from al-Jisr, scene of the killing of three farmers at hands of US troops
Wednesday September 24, 2003
The Guardian
It was the middle of the night when the crack paratroopers from America's 82nd Airborne Division arrived outside Ali Khalaf's farmhouse in the parched fields of central Iraq.
Some of the family were asleep on mattresses in the dirt yard outside the single-storey house. Ali's brother Ahmad lay there with his wife, Hudood, 25, and their two young sons and so they were the first to hear the soldiers as they approached the house at around 2am yesterday.
"We heard voices and so my husband went out to check what was happening. We thought they were thieves," said Hudood. "My husband shouted at them and then immediately they started shooting."
By the family's account, the troops of the 82nd Airborne - known proudly as the "All American" - opened up a devastating barrage of gunfire lasting for at least an hour. When the shooting stopped, three farmers were dead and three others were injured, including Hudood's two sons, Tassin, 12, and Hussein, 10.
Yesterday a US military spokesman in Baghdad, Specialist Nicole Thompson, insisted that the troops came under attack from "unknown forces". The "unknown forces" ran into a building, which was surrounded by the troops who then called in an air strike. "I can confirm at least one enemy dead," she said.
.................
The US military likes to advertise its achievements: how their patrols in the troubled town of Falluja, a few minutes drive from Ali Khalaf's farmhouse, hand out colouring books and repaint schools and how elsewhere they repair broken water mains and sewage plants.
Most of the time it matters little. In the heartlands of central Iraq, home to the Sunni Muslim minority, and now too in the Shia-dominated provinces of the south, there is less and less sympathy for the American military and their allies
Diebold, the best known of the voting machine companies, seems to have their insiders dumping shares as the price climbs. They've been dumping shares on the market since 2002, when the share price was $36. It's now at $52, but they've been selling at $49. Which is very, very interesting.
Usually, shares are dumped only as the price goes down. It's mighty curious behavior to dump shares as the stock price is climbing and their marketablity should increase. The sudden desire for massive profit taking is curious, to say the least. The company isn't losing money, its client base is growing, so why the profit taking?
With them moving to close down Bev Harris's blackboxvoting.org tonight with claims that links on her site posed copyright violations, my feeling is that their technical issues are not small ones. The company's putting on a nice public face, but the degree of insider sales by senior officers does not make one feel warm and fuzzy inside. Early profit taking could have many causes.
One director, Eric J Rooda, has dumped give or take, $30m worth of shares in Diebold, starting on August 12 and ending August 25. For whever reason, despite a climbing share price, he divested himself of a lot of stock in a hurry.
For a company not losing money, this is odd behavior. By every indicator, Diebold should be growing in size and influence, along with their share price. It would be a company where profit taking should be a minimal concern or the share price should be going down. Usually, when insiders sell a lot of shares, the company's price is declining.
Just on the financial activity alone, I get the feeling that Diebold officers expect some kind of legal challenge which will cause a wack in their stock price . The share sales began last year and have continued apace, with major activity in August and September. It's unusual to say the least. One might get the feeling they were preparing for future bad news with early profit taking.
Congressman Jim Marshall from Georgia got the Potempkin tour of Iraq and is now telling us everything is fine.
On Sept. 14, I flew from Baghdad to Kuwait with Sgt. Trevor A. Blumberg from Dearborn, Mich. He was in a body bag. He'd been ambushed and killed that afternoon. Sitting in the cargo bay of a C 130E, I found myself wondering whether the news media were somehow complicit in his death.
Oh yes, they fired the RPG's and launch the nightly mortar bombardments. Yes, the Iraqis need to read a newspaper to resent being occupied and want to kill American soldiers. Yes. That's what drives the resistance, ABC News. Boy, that Canadian traitor, Peter Jennings, is so pro Baathist. What pure idiocy. The enemy is killing our soldiers. The Army is killing reporters.
During the conventional part of this conflict, embedded journalists reported the good, the bad and the ugly. Where are the embeds now that we are in the difficult part of the war, now that fair and balanced reporting is critically important to our chances of success? At the height of the conventional conflict, Fox News alone had 27 journalists embedded with U.S. troops (out of a total of 774 from all Western media). Today there are only 27 embedded journalists from all media combined.
Well, Congressman, several of the divisions kicked the embeds out. The 3ID did after our soldiers complained about Rumsfeld.
Throughout Iraq, American soldiers with their typical "can do" attitude and ingenuity are engaging in thousands upon thousands of small reconstruction projects, working with Iraqi contractors and citizens. Through decentralized decision-making by unit commanders, the 101st Airborne Division alone has spent nearly $23 million in just the past few months. This sum goes a very long way in Iraq. Hundreds upon hundreds of schools are being renovated, repainted, replumbed and reroofed. Imagine the effect that has on children and their parents.
The schools, the schools, the schools. All these idiots can talk about is schools. Did anyone in Iraq complain that Saddam didn't educate Iraqis? What about the security? What about Sadrists walking into the schools and demanding women were hejabs and killing school teachers and prinicpals? Education is not a problem in Iraq. Security is. What about the kidnap gangs and rapists and carjackers? Imagine the effect that has on children and their parents.
..............
We may need a few credible Baghdad Bobs to undo the harm done by our media. I'm afraid it is killing our troops
What? You mean the lack of armor, weapons and water isn't? If it was up to the media, Saddam would have run away like a scared chicken before the first shot was fired.
It is pure, unvarnished idiocy to think that happy talk will save Iraq. I bet the Congressman can't say hello in Arabic. Without that skill, it is impossible to judge what Iraqis really think. Or how they feel about the spate of "school" building. We're too quick to pat ourselves on the back for doing what Iraqis can do if we paid them a decent wage. Iraq is a complex society with sophisticated people. They want security so they can reopen their shops and factories and send their daughters to school without them falling victim to rape gangs and kidnappers.
We haven't even tiurned on the power yet, and we're being told that too much negative news is being filtered out of Iraq? Get the sewage out of the street, get the power on, and then let's talk about positive news.
Josh Marshall quotes this tidbit from racist Tory Andrew Sullivan:
HOW LOOPY IS CLARK? The answer, I fear, is that he's Ross Perot without the emotional stability. So now his previous remark that he'd be a Republican if Karl Rove had returned his calls is just a metaphor, or a fabrication, or a dream, or something. Or maybe he called Rove on a cell-phone or an email. Will he respond to these discrepancies?
Bill Safire is suggesting Clark is a stalking horse for Hillary Clinton after he wipes out the competition.
OK, people may not like Wes Clark, suggesting he has a Clintonesque habit of telling people what they want to hear. But even one of his fiercest critics, David Hackworth, had to reasses the man.
Clark was so brilliant, he was whisked off to Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and didn't get his boots into the Vietnam mud until well after his 1966 West Point class came close to achieving the academy record for the most Purple Hearts in any one war. When he finally got there, he took over a 1st Infantry Division rifle company and was badly wounded.
Lt. Gen. James Hollingsworth, one of our Army's most distinguished war heroes, says: "Clark took a burst of AK fire, but didn't stop fighting. He stayed on the field till his mission was accomplished and his boys were safe. He was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. And he earned 'em."
It took months for Clark to get back in shape. He had the perfect excuse, but he didn't quit the Army to scale the corporate peaks as so many of our best and brightest did back then. Instead, he took a demoralized company of short-timers at Fort Knox who were suffering from a Vietnam hangover and made them the best on post - a major challenge in 1970 when our Army was teetering on the edge of anarchy. Then he stuck around to become one of the young Turks who forged the Green Machine into the magnificent sword that Norman Schwarzkopf swung so skillfully during Round One of the Gulf War.
I asked Clark why he didn't turn in his bloody soldier suit for Armani and the big civvy dough that was definitely his for the asking.
His response: "I wanted to serve my country."
Now, I understand that some of Clark's enemies have their reasons for disliking him. High command is a rough business, and you make enemies. He was a golden boy in the Army and that left hard feelings. He wasn't part of the Airborne Mafia or the Armor mafia, and they have their own allegences. I also think some of his harshest critics come from outside the Army. And I know enough about the military to not get all misty about a resume. But let's get real here. His personal character is above reproach. So is Howard Dean's, as far as I know.
Think about this for a minute: both Dean and Clark, who could have gone to Wall Street and made hundreds of millions of dollars (Dean graduated Yale and came from a Wall Street family, Clark had a Rhodes Scholarship), chose public service instead. Wes Clark, who could have walked into Bechtel with his engineering degree (which is what they give you at West Point) and wound up running the company, chose to serve in the Army during a time where rampant drug use and violence filled the ranks. Dean chose to make his career in rural Vermont over his home town, where he would have probably become chief of internal medicine at one of New York City's largest hospitals.
Both men chose a life of public service over economic success. You don't practice medicine in Vermont to become rich. Or stay in the US Army.
Wes Clark is no Ross Perot. He didn't fill his pockets with government money for personal gain. He may not be conventional, but Clark is the kind of citizen the US educational system is supposed to turn out. Does any sentinent person think Clark would risk his reputation over contacting Karl Rove? Much less lie about it? Unlike Bush, he didn't miss that flight to Vietnam.
At key points in their lives, both Clark and Dean chose career paths which required personal sacrifice. They made decisions which would limit their income and personal comfort.
Can anyone ever, at any time, say that about George W. Bush? Can anyone attest to his personal courage or sacrifice? Of course they're scared of Clark in the White House. Of course they have to discredit him. They have to try and make him seem somehow less than the President. It's not even a close call. They know a comparison between Dean and Clark and Bush and Cheney is not one they want to make. We know who comes up short. George Bush spent his entire career in the service of private gain and failed miserably at it. Wesley Clark spent his career in the service of the public good and succeeded wildly. If I was in the White House, I'd be nervous.
"I wasn't particularly impressed with anything he came up with," said Staff Sergeant Jason Dungan of the U.S. Army's 4th Infantry Division, based in deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.
"He just brought up some old issues."
.......................
"We've been out here for six months, and it looks like we're going to be here for another six months more," said one soldier as he ate dinner in a huge tented "chow hall" at a U.S. base in one of Saddam's former palaces in Tikrit.
"That's it. It's a done deal, so nothing he (Bush) says makes a blind bit of difference to us."
.........................
But other soldiers said they were encouraged by the speech, which they listened to accompanied by the intermittent boom of outgoing mortar fire, a nightly ritual at the base on the banks of the Tigris river. "I feel it's good to see we have the support of everyone in our government and that they're trying to carry that over to the U.N.," said Sgt. Darryl McDougal. "Then maybe we can get global support for what we're doing."
High morale and devotion to the President continues.
WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 — Ed Gillespie, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said today that recent attacks on President Bush by Democratic presidential candidates amounted to "political hate speech" that would not sway public opinion
Is it a coincidence, as Terry McAuliffe said, he's seen three different RNC chairmen in three years?
Now, here's a little lecture for Mr. Gillespie.
You do not, no matter how snarky we feel, represent the Dauphin. George Bush is not a saint, he does not walk on water, he is not a divinely inspired leader and his father is not the Sun King. He does not live in Versallies and his office does not have any divine rights attached.
He was chosen, elected, whatever, to be president, and not by Jesus, no matter how much religious twaddle he tosses about. He is a politician and under the First Amendment, he has no special protection.
No matter how much you dislike it, criticism of his policies is not political hate speech. It is not hateful to call Bush a miserable failure. You may not like the term, but there is plenty of evidence to make it stick.
Let's face facts, Ed. Unca Karl and his boys are driving the car over the cliff and you're in the backseat. The speeding and drinking was fine. Singing I can't drive 55 is fine when the weather is clear and the road empty. But now, you're coming up on the end of the road and while you're sobering up, your driver is still slamming them back and speeding along. Saying the driver is a drunken fool is not hate speech but a fact.
People are losing confidence in Bush because his policies are failing and now we have an $87B bill that no one wants any part of. Saying so is not hate speech, but a fact. Americans are dying daily in Iraq. The economy is losing jobs and companies are shipping them overseas. So why shouldn't the Bush Administration be called a nest of failed ideas? Because it isn't?
Suck it up and move on, Ed. That's what your President is telling our troops, with not enough water, armor or weapons, adding on months to their tour. You don't like the criticisms? Too bad. At least you can get all the bottled water you need without a cut going to Halliburton.
US Soldiers In Iraq Detain AP Photographer, Driver
BAGHDAD (AP)--U.S. soldiers on Tuesday detained an Associated Press photographer and driver, handcuffing them, forcing them to stand in the sun for three hours and denying them water or use of a telephone.
Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion, 70th Armored Regiment detained photographer Karim Kadim and driver Mohammed Abbas, both Iraqis, near Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad and kept their guns trained on them, despite repeated attempts by the two to explain that they were at the scene as journalists.
................
"We identified ourselves from the very beginning as press, even before we approached the troops. I was asked not to take any pictures and I didn't. We were told to leave and we walked away, and then one of them shouted at us to come back," said Kadim.
...................
On Thursday, U.S. soldiers shot up Kadim's car in Khaldiyah during a firefight after a U.S. convoy was hit with a remote-controlled roadside bomb. Kadim was in the car, along with another driver and both jumped from the car and ran for cover after they saw that a tank had them in its sights. They were fired on as they ran and the car was badly damaged in subsequent shooting. Neither man was hurt.
................
"When I told one of the soldiers that the cuffs were too tight, he told me it wasn't his problem. All this time, they had their weapons trained on us. We were not offered any water and my repeated requests to call the office were rejected, " he said
Just as opinions about the war and its aftermath vary widely, reporters in Baghdad disagree about what it's like in Iraq these days.
Although some paint a picture of recovery, with U.S. armed forces making progress in getting the country going again, others sketch a bleaker scene, in which bombings, ambushes and looting are the rule, not the exception.
Reporters agree on this much: Bad news -- not good -- sells.
''It's the nature of the business,'' Time's Brian Bennett says. ''What gets in the headlines is the American soldier getting shot, not the American soldiers rebuilding a school or digging a well.''
................
The Baghdad that Bennett sees is a city where gunfire erupts every night and dozens of Iraqis are reported dead in the morning. Looting and robberies are common. ''There is a mounting terrorist threat, and the people who want to kill American soldiers are getting more organized,'' he says.
But he also sees a city where restaurants are reopening daily, where women feel increasingly safe going out to shop, where more police means intersections aren't as clogged as they were this summer. ''My neighbors are nice,'' he says. ''My street is a pretty quiet place.
Until the Americans come knocking.
What seems to elude the reporters is this: until Iraqis can work and have reliable power, water and security, things will not get better. What is the point of building 100 schools if the girls can't attend. American reporters, who largely don't speak Arabic, don't seem to read their own work, much less understand Iraqi culture.
One central factor of Iraqi culture is the ability to hide one's feelings. If you hated Americans, shouting it is not the wisest approach if you want to stay out of Abu Gharib Prison. American reporters live much better than Iraqis and can pay for security from ex-SAS and Rangers. They don't go anywhere without a man carrying an AK-47 at a minimum. You can bet neighbors are nice when an ex-Para is watching your back with a automatic rifle.
There isn't one American reporter working for a major orgainzation which doesn't have armed protection while doing their job. Think about that. You have Americans, working in an alien culture, travelling with armed men and using translators.
I often quote from the WaPo's Anthony Shadid and the Independent's Robert Fisk here. If you read their stories, they are almost uniformly bleak, with stories of unrelieved violence and horrific choices. What is the difference between their reporting and others?
They speak fluent Arabic.
When you read reporters who can speak to Iraqis without translators or Iraqi blogs, the picture you get of the occupation is both sad and horrible. There is no upside, because there is no upside to an occupation. Of course Iraqis are going to go shopping and eat. They have a sophisticated cafe culture which is older than Paris's. Why would they deny themselves the simple pleasures, when all that really means is sweltering in a cramped apartment.
But that is not the same as an improving standard of living.
When you can read about nightly gun battles, unchecked crime and other fun stuff Iraqis have to put up with, things which enraged Americans when it happened on a small scale in their cities, you have to wonder why people want to keep talking about rebuilt schools. Saddam didn't destroy schools. Iraqis are not ignorant. Why are they not talking about putting the power back on and getting the sewage out of the streets. The police serves as little more as guides to the guerrillas and targets of abuse for the Americans. When is Iraq going to start pumping out oil again?
There are things which would be clear signs of progress in Iraq which simply are not happening. Asking about why there is such a negative picture from Iraq is like asking a wounded man why is he bleeding. Get the water on and the shit from the streets and then tell me about schools. Get the basics working, then we can talk about the new schools. Because under Saddam, Iraq had power and functioning schools and sewers which worked. Which is a pretty low standard to meet.
But the dead have faces- and families. The war's reverberations continue far away from Iraq. The ultimate price of the conflict is still being paid, long after the shot through the neck that killed Sergeant Smith.
"I'm living in a zone — like a zombie," Mrs. Smith said. "I'm hoping I'll wake up one day and it won't be true."
Sergeant Smith, 33, was one of 38 soldiers from the Third Infantry Division killed in the war or its aftermath, along with four others from other units who fought with the division.
In his case, the circumstances surrounding his death "a courageous lone stand against Iraqi foes" may earn him the nation's highest military award, the Medal of Honor. The division's medal application — which cites his "extraordinary heroism and uncommon valor" — is steadily making its way through the Army's bureaucracy. It would be the first awarded since two soldiers received it for actions in Somalia in 1993.
Whether this gives Mrs. Smith solace seems to depend on her emotional state, which fluctuates wildly day to day, even hour to hour, from grief and pride to a gnawing emptiness then a fierce determination to keep his memory alive.
"What is the Medal of Honor?" she asked angrily in the dining room of her new home here on the Gulf Coast north of Tampa, the home where his mother and stepfather lived, and where memories of him linger. She was crying now. "What is it to me? What is it to Paul? Maybe it's something to the kids, but it doesn't bring my husband back. It's nothing."
Then, at other times, it is something. She has built a shrine of sorts in her bedroom that includes the Purple Heart and Bronze Star he has already received, posthumously. She has left a place on the black felt for the Medal of Honor.
As I was looking through the NY Times this morning, I saw the strangest article. As a former library worker, I had no idea that someone owned the Dewey Decimal System for catagorizing books.
Where Did Dewey File Those Law Books?
By MICHAEL LUO
Who knew that someone owned the Dewey Decimal System?
Apparently not the owners of the Library Hotel, nestled in the shadow of the New York Public Library. Now the boutique hotel, which numbers its guest rooms and stocks them with books according to Melvil Dewey's century-old library classification system, is being sued for using it.
"The Dewey Decimal System is a product, a trademark, a brand name," said Joseph R. Dreitler, a lawyer for the Online Computer Library Center, a nonprofit library cooperative that filed the suit last week in Federal District Court in Ohio. "The idea here isn't to put the Library Hotel out of business. The idea is to protect Dewey and the Dewey Decimal System trademark."
The hotel opened three years ago at Madison Avenue and 41st Street. From its imitation card catalog in the lobby to its stately second-floor reading room, it is designed as a siren for book lovers. Each floor is devoted to one of the 10 main categories of knowledge in the Dewey system: Social Sciences, Languages, Math and Science, Technology, the Arts, Literature, History and Geography, General Knowledge, Philosophy and Religion.
Now, Dewey is the system used everywhere but your college library. Why? Because most major libraries, including the main Public Library across from the hotel, use the Library of Congress system, which allows for much greater detail in cataloging. Dewey is fine for books of 100,000 -1,000,000 pieces of information, but when you get into more than that, the numeration system becomes confusing. The letter-number LOC system is much more detailed, but harder to use without training.
Having worked with both, LOC allows for easier location of books in large libraries, but Dewey is pretty simple, even for kids.
Bush Presses 'Faith-Based' Agenda
President Proposes Regulations to Ease Federal Funding
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 23, 2003; Page A10
President Bush repealed and proposed several regulations yesterday to make it easier for religious charities to receive federal money, including allowing such groups to make hiring decisions based on job candidates' faith.
The announcements were the most significant steps so far in Bush's plan to pursue his "faith-based" initiative through administrative power after encountering congressional resistance to doing so through legislation.
"In any employment decision, there's discrimination," said Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. "Universities hire smart people."
............
Ira C. Lupu, an authority on religion and the Constitution at George Washington University Law School, said the regulations could make it easier for charities to push the boundary of how much religious content is allowed. "These regulations might not preclude funding for a substance-abuse program that includes religious inspiration for its participants," Lupu said. "They might say you want to motivate them with lessons from the Bible."
Bush will do everything to get the vote of the religious right, no matter what. Constitution, schmmonstitution. Praise Jesus and line up for Mel's new movie.
With lights recently blacked out in the mid-Atlantic and wetlands conservation being squeezed, President Bush wants to spend nearly $5.7 billion on Iraq's electricity system and as much as $100 million next year to restore that nation's drained marshlands.
Such comparisons are dogging the administration as it formally launches its defense of an $87 billion emergency war spending request, which Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) yesterday labeled "fiscal shock and awe." And they are creating a growing sense of unease among Republicans, who say the president's war spending will no doubt be used against them in next year's elections.
"I have no doubt that some people will be angry," said Rep. James C. Greenwood (R-Pa.), "and I have no doubt some people will try to take full political advantage."
.............................
"Look at the needs we have here at home with our own roads, sewers and water projects," said Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio). "It's hard to tell people there isn't money for sewers and water and then send that kind of money to Iraq."
No kidding. I would expect this might be a real problem. You can't rebuild Iraq over the US and expect Americans to relax, smile and be happy about it. A lot of these items will be stripped out by Congressmen who want to keep their seats.
Iraq Council Head Shifts to Position at Odds With U.S.
By PATRICK E. TYLER and FELICITY BARRINGER
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 22 — Ahmad Chalabi, the president of Iraq's interim government, is in New York this week to press alternatives to the Bush administration's occupation policy in postwar Iraq, he and his aides say. In the process, he may complete a personal transformation from protégé of Pentagon conservatives to Iraqi nationalist with a loud, independent voice.
In an interview today in New York, Mr. Chalabi professed gratitude to the Bush administration for toppling Saddam Hussein's government, but his specific proposals were directly at odds with the policies Washington is pursuing in Baghdad and at the United Nations. He demanded that the Iraqi Governing Council be given at least partial control of the powerful finance and security ministries, and rejected the idea of more foreign troops coming to Iraq.
Mr. Chalabi's strategy, he says, is to get from the United Nations General Assembly sovereign status for the unelected 25-member Governing Council. This move to lobby other nations for a swift transfer of some sovereignty is going down poorly in Washington, according to the Iraqi leader's aides.
Mr. Chalabi has sent representatives to France and Germany to discuss putting Iraqis back in charge under a new United Nations mandate that would end American control of the occupation, even if American troops remain in Iraq. His aides say he also plans to tell the Senate that the United Nations could save billions of dollars on Iraq's reconstruction by allowing an Iraqi administration to handle it.
Oh please. Chalabi wants to be the next king and if he can play the Americans, he'll play the Americans. Who do you think engineered the sell off of Iraq's industry. Who do you think will be the "middlemen" in these deals? Who will enforce them? He thinks that the Americans are idiots. So he's trying to bum rush the UN, set him self up as the voice of the Iraq government and then go from there. The Americans are building him an army, so why can't he slide his cronies into positions of influence.
Each day brings greater assertions of independence from Iraq's interim leaders. Today, the Governing Council issued an expulsion order to the two largest Arab satellite networks operating in Iraq, Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya, accusing them of inciting violence against the new government and challenging its legitimacy, said a council member, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who said he had helped draft an order that will be made public Tuesday.
....................
"We don't want to come out in the open and pick a fight with Bremer," he said, "but the sovereignty issue is coming to a head, and it is pretty clear that a breach is coming pretty soon between the Governing Council and Bremer."
Hmmm, nice move on the road to dictatorship. Al Arabiya is the most popular channel in Iraq, according to Iraqis. They consider Al Jazeera too pro-US.
These folks are plotting to seize power, and Bremer needs to decide what to do, let them get it or pick new stooges.
UN secretary general to warn that pre-emptive strikes are a threat to world peace and stability
Julian Borger in Washington and Jon Henley in Paris
Tuesday September 23, 2003
The Guardian
The UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, will openly challenge the White House doctrine of preemptive military intervention today, arguing that it could lead to the unjustified "lawless use of force" and posed a "fundamental challenge" to world peace and stability.
In a speech to be delivered shortly before George Bush addresses the UN general assembly, Mr Annan will declare that the Iraq crisis brought the UN to a "fork in the road" as decisive as 1945 when the world body was formally established.
The 191 UN member are struggling to heal deep rifts caused by the war on Iraq, in which the US acted without the aproval of the security council.
In a text of his speech released in advance, Mr Annan questions US arguments that nations have the "right and obligation to use force pre-emptively" against unconventional weapons systems, even while they are still being developed.
"My concern is that, if it were to be adopted, it could set precedents that resulted in a proliferation of the unilateral and lawless use of force, with or without credible justification," he says.
Stretched Thin, Lied to & Mistreated
On the ground with US troops in Iraq
by Christian Parenti
An M-16 rifle hangs by a cramped military cot. On the wall above is a message in thick black ink: "Ali Baba, you owe me a strawberry milk!"
It's a private joke but could just as easily summarize the worldview of American soldiers here in Baghdad, the fetid basement of Donald Rumsfeld's house of victory. Trapped in the polluted heat, poorly supplied and cut off from regular news, the GIs are fighting a guerrilla war that they neither wanted, expected nor trained for. On the urban battlefields of central Iraq, "shock and awe" and all the other "new way of war" buzzwords are drowned out by the din of diesel-powered generators, Islamic prayer calls and the occasional pop of small-arms fire.
Here, the high-tech weaponry that so emboldens Pentagon bureaucrats is largely useless, and the grinding work of counterinsurgency is done the old-fashioned way--by hand. Not surprisingly, most of the American GIs stuck with the job are weary, frustrated and ready to go home.
It is noon and the mercury is hanging steady at 115 Fahrenheit. The filmmaker Garrett Scott and I are "embedded" with Alpha Company of the Third Battalion of the 124th Infantry, a Florida National Guard unit about half of whom did time in the regular Army, often with elite groups like the Rangers. Like most frontline troops in Iraq, the majority are white but there is a sizable minority of African-American and Latino soldiers among them. Unlike most combat units, about 65 percent are college students--they've traded six years with the Guard for tuition at Florida State. Typically, that means occasional weekends in the Everglades or directing traffic during hurricanes. Instead, these guys got sent to Iraq, and as yet they have no sure departure date.
.................
Leaning back on a cot, he's drawing a large, intricate pattern on a female mannequin leg. The wall above him displays a photo collage of pictures retrieved from a looted Iraqi women's college. Smiling young ladies wearing the hijab sip sodas and stroll past buses. They seem to be on some sort of field trip. Nearby are photos clipped from Maxim, of coy young American girls offering up their pert round bottoms. Dominating it all is a large hand-drawn dragon and a photo of Jessica Lynch with a bubble caption reading: "Hi, I am a war hero. And I think that weapons maintenance is totally unimportant."
The boys don't like Lynch and find the story of her rescue ridiculous. They'd been down the same road a day earlier and are unsympathetic. "We just feel that it's unfair and kind of distorted the way the whole Jessica, quote, 'rescue' thing got hyped," explains Staff Sgt. Kreed Howell. He is in charge of the squad, and at 31 a bit older than most of his men. Muscular and clean-cut, Howell is a relaxed and natural leader, with the gracious bearing of a proper Southern upbringing.
"In other words, you'd have to be really fucking dumb to get lost on the road," says another, less diplomatic soldier
.................
Added to such injury is insult: The military treats these soldiers like unwanted stepchildren. This unit's rifles are retooled hand-me-downs from Vietnam. They have inadequate radio gear, so they buy their own unencrypted Motorola walkie-talkies. The same goes for flashlights, knives and some components for night-vision sights. The low-performance Iraqi air-conditioners and fans, as well as the one satellite phone and payment cards shared by the whole company for calling home, were also purchased out of pocket from civilian suppliers.
Bottled water rations are kept to two liters a day. After that the guys drink from "water buffaloes"--big, hot chlorination tanks that turn the amoeba-infested dreck from the local taps into something like swimming-pool water. Mix this with powdered Gatorade and you can wash down a famously bad MRE (Meal Ready to Eat).
To top it all off they must endure the pathologically uptight culture of the Army hierarchy. The Third of the 124th is now attached to the newly arrived First Armored Division, and when it is time to raid suspected resistance cells it's the Guardsmen who have to kick in the doors and clear the apartments.
QUOT-The First AD wants us to catch bullets for them but won't give us enough water, doesn't let us wear do-rags and makes us roll down our shirt sleeves so we look proper! Can you believe that shit?" Sergeant Sellers is pissed off.
The soldiers' improvisation extends to food as well. After a month or so of occupying "the club," the company commander, Captain Sanchez, allowed two Iraqi entrepreneurs to open shop on his side of the wire--one runs a slow Internet cafe, the other a kebab stand where the "Joes" pay US dollars for grilled lamb on flat bread.
"The haji stand is one of the only things we have to look forward to, but the First AD keeps getting scared and shutting it down." Sellers is on a roll, but he's not alone.
Even the lighthearted Howell, who insists that the squad has it better than most troops, chimes in. "The one thing I will say is that we have been here entirely too long. If I am not home by Christmas my business will fail." Back "on earth" (in Panama City, Florida), Howell is a building contractor, with a wife, two small children, equipment, debts and employees.
Yep, rationed bottled water and lost businesses. Our soldiers in action, supported by Washington down to the last kebab, captured AK-47 and prosthetic limb.
In today's Salon, Edward W. Lempinen, says Iraq is not Vietnam. While others, like Max Cleland, disagree, let's examine his arguments
We forget that the birth of the United States took 13 years, from the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775, through the British surrender in 1781, to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788. Without the help of the French government and the Marquis de Lafayette, the American rebels might have lost the war. And when the revolution was finally won, Lafayette penned his famous line: "Humanity has won its battle; Liberty now has a country."
Which brings us to the core of the present contradiction: A vocal bloc of the antiwar left does not see the invasion of Iraq as a liberation. It cannot. Its rage against Bush, while justified, is so powerful that it overwhelms subtlety and nuance. In such a polarized political climate, one cannot embrace the possibility of liberation without seeming to embrace Bush and Cheney. Because that latter embrace is impossible, it becomes impossible for some to strike a firm, constructive alliance with the Iraqi people.
Uh, Iraqis don't see it as a liberation. Few, except for those want of a paycheck in a country with 60 percent unemployment, have welcomed us. At best, they tolerate us, at worst, it's all jihad, all the time. Any causal reader of the Washington Post or New York Times, can read about the open hatred they have for Americans. It's not his straw man of an anti-war movement, but large numbers of Iraqis who oppose the occupation. And it's not rage against Bush, but his squandering of the US military in Iraq while Osama Bin Laden diddy bops around the Hindu Kush.
That reflex was evident in the run-up to the war. Millions of people turned out for demonstrations in the U.S. and Europe, and though many Iraqi exiles -- including religious leaders and intellectuals -- had favored the invasion, the marchers rarely confronted the issue of human rights under Saddam. Sometimes, they were openly hostile to Iraqis on the march route who dared to question the antiwar movement. Such are the ugly dynamics of political denial: The human rights dossier conflicts with the imperative to oppose Bush, and so the dossier is, in effect, ignored
You mean the exiles? Hell, Iraqis hate the exiles. Hate them to the core. Chalabi is a dead man. The exiles are detested by their fellow Iraqis.
A similar trend has unfolded since the fall of Baghdad: Though there have been many positive developments, there has been a disproportionate focus on the struggles, the failures, the breakdowns. Thus the attention paid to the now-infamous 16 words in Bush's State of the Union speech that claimed hard proof of Saddam's quest for nuclear weapons, or to the claim by the government of U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair that Saddam needed only 45 minutes to launch a WMD strike, or to the enrichment of Cheney's old posse at Halliburton.
The press, too, bears some blame for creating the distorted perspective. By focusing on the points of highest drama, the news creates an impression that Iraq is engulfed in chaos. But the impression is misleading. Iraq is the size of California; most of the attacks have occurred in the so-called Sunni Triangle, the land between Baghdad in the south, Fallujah about 35 miles to the west, and Tikrit, about 100 miles to the north. That's roughly the size of the triangle between San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Modesto, or between Manhattan, Philadelphia and Allentown, Pa. The bombing of the U.N. and other symbolic targets in Baghdad and elsewhere in the Sunni triangle have been terrible, but the rest of Iraq is relatively stable, with only scattered attacks. There have been periodic mass demonstrations against the occupying forces, but they are not daily and not widespread. Though Iraqis appear bitterly frustrated with U.S. incompetence, they have thus far given the U.S. and U.K. time to get things in order.
This is patently untrue. There is unrest across Iraq. We get reports daily of attacks in Mosul and Basra. As a professor from the Naval War College explained to me, the "Sunni belt" is a ficition created by the US. The demonstrations are frequent and often. No place in Iraq could truly be described as stable, although there is less violence in some places than others. It's just that we have a sporadic war in Basra and Mosul and a full out war north and west of Baghdad.
The torture chambers are closed. Uday and Qusay Hussein, Saddam's sociopathic sons and his likely successors, are dead. An Iraqi governing council has been established, and though it has yet to find traction, it can at least be said that Ahmed Chalabi, the unpopular Iraqi exile, is not the dominant force that Bush's neo-con hawks hoped he would be. A new Cabinet of 25 Iraqi officials was named this month to oversee day-to-day government services in the country. There is freedom of speech and religious freedom (both of which are being used to criticize the U.S.) There is freedom of the press. Take a look at the smart new publication Iraq Today, and you see evidence of a nation that is frustrated, fearful, angry -- and still, in spite of it all, hopeful.
"The new Iraq will be different from that of Saddam Hussein," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told the Arab League this month, at his first meeting since joining the group. "The new Iraq will be based on diversity, democracy, constitution, law and respect for human rights." The other ministers must have listened with misgiving, because none of them share those values.
Let's see, these folks just sold off their country, are being shot at daily and torture, rape and kidnapping are now a freelance operation run by 100,000 gangsters. Hopeful is not the word most Iraqis use for their daily plight.
But among those who are liberals or leftists, rage is an insufficient response to the current state of affairs. Apart from all the incompetence and corruption evident in Bush's handling of the invasion, in spite of his dubious motives, something hugely important and inspiring is happening in Iraq: The 25 million people who live there today have a degree of freedom and opportunity that most of them have never known. And while there's much potential for the effort at liberation to collapse, there is also the potential that it may succeed.
Am I being naive? Possibly. Maybe the governing council and the Cabinet and the noble words of Hoshyar Zebari are symbols orchestrated by Washington to make the sale back home, even though they're unrelated to political reality as perceived by the average Iraqi. I continue to wonder why many Iraqis seem more angry at the U.S. than at Saddam or the saboteurs who target their power stations and oil pipelines. Certainly I know how tenuous conditions are in Iraq; perhaps a few more car bombs, timed and targeted with care, could plunge the whole country into chaos.
The difficulty, for many on the left, is that the war and Bush seem inseparable, so that if you cheer the liberation, you seem to be cheering Bush and Cheney. But that perspective, too, is a form of shortsightedness: If the war is not over in a matter of weeks, one thinks, then it is lost, or not worth fighting. When the car bombs blow, you say: "I told you so." The Iraqis are responsible for their own freedom, or maybe you think that the Arab world is not ready for freedom. These are the thoughts that can sometimes be implicit in a slogan like "bring the troops home.
The US Army hates Iraq, Iraqis and wants to come home. This isn't some leftist rant, but what soldiers tell their families and David Hackworth and Stars and Stripes every day. There was no liberation. We have no allies. We occupy a country with people who grow to hate us more ferverently each day. Why is that so hard to understand? Is the news unclear? This isn't 1963 where only reporters get to tell you what happened. Iraqis can get online and tell you what the deal is and they dislike our occupation intensely. Why do these people ignore this?
Leaving Iraq prematurely is the worst message that the U.S. can send to the world; that would only confirm the cynicism and lack of commitment that others perceive in us, and it's not a message the left should endorse. Instead, we should suspend use of the slogan "Bring the Troops Home" before it catches fire. Better to rally behind a new line: "Do the Job Right."
And bring the troops home when the job is done.
We will not be asked to leave. We will be told. Please understand that. When they have had enough, we will be evicted.
Kanan Makiya is a Brandeis professor and Iraqi exile who was the foremost documenter of Saddam's human rights abuses. Before the war, he issued passionate exhortations to his Western comrades to show solidarity with oppressed Iraqis, even if it meant swallowing their own partisanship to back Bush's policy. Yet Makiya always opposed a protracted American military occupation. In February, he began to realize that the administration didn't share his agenda for rebuilding Iraq, and he published a blistering Op-Ed in the Observer.
Describing a plan much like the one that was later implemented, he wrote: "The United States is on the verge of committing itself to a post-Saddam plan for a military government in Baghdad with Americans appointed to head Iraqi ministries, and American soldiers to patrol the streets of Iraqi cities. The plan, as dictated to the Iraqi opposition in Ankara last week by a United States-led delegation, further envisages the appointment by the U.S. of an unknown number of Iraqi quislings palatable to the Arab countries of the Gulf and Saudi Arabia as a council of advisers to this military government."
This plan, he wrote, "is guaranteed to turn [the Iraqi] opposition from the close ally it has always been during the 1990s into an opponent of the United States on the streets of Baghdad the day after liberation ... We Iraqis hoped and said to our Arab and Middle Eastern brethren, over and over again, that American mistakes of the past did not have to be repeated in the future. Were we wrong?"
Makiya hasn't yet to come forward to answer his own question. He hasn't published anything in months, and didn't respond to requests for an interview
LIke Flounder in Animal House: he fucked up, he trusted us. Hiding from the horror you unleashed on your own people doesn't make it go away, however. His little fantasy of a non-secular state wasn't going any further than Waltham. He should admit his mistake and oppose the occupation.
In an article on the idiots who thought the war would work out, Salon quotes Christopher "Drinky Crow" Hitchens on his impressions of the occupation:
Christopher Hitchens, an ex-Trotskyite who famously broke with the left during the run-up to war, is even more sanguine about his stance. While the liberal conventional wisdom is that the occupation is a debacle, "I know from my own experience it's not true," he says. Hitchens recently returned from Iraq, where he hung out with L. Paul Bremer, the occupation's chief administrator, and his most recent Vanity Fair column paints a fairly rosy picture of the occupation's progress. "I was quite startled by how well it was going," he says. "I support it whether it goes well or not. I don't demand success in advance of a policy I support. It can take a long time if you want a revolution."
Hitchens admits being somewhat baffled by the American failure to get the electrical grid up and running in Iraq. "I must say it is staggering to me that this country can't mobilize the can-do bit, the know-how bit it's so famous for. That is amazing."
Still, while humanitarian concerns formed part of Hitchens' rationale, he says he doesn't much care if some Iraqis now say their lives are worse than they were under Saddam. "I've never yet been to any country that's undergone a revolution -- and by the way, if this was being called a revolution rather than an occupation, the left would be making excuses for it -- in any country that's undergone a revolution it's very common to find a perverse nostalgia for the old days. You still find it in Spain. The vast majority of Iraqis wanted [Saddam] to be removed even at the cost of foreign intervention, and still do. Most Iraqis and Kurds regard it as a deliverance. But suppose they didn't. The news has to be broken to them one way or another. Unfortunately, the government in their state wasn't one to which one could be indifferent. Iraq is not unfortunately just their internal affair
Yeah, so much so that they help US troops fight the guerrillas, support the IGC and call for continued US involvement in their country's development. Why, it's not like their services have declined or personal safety is affected.
Here's the problem for people like Drinky Crow: he doesn't speak Arabic. It doesn't matter what Viceroy Jerry and his cronies say, it matters, as Tom Friedman says, what is said about them in public. And in public, words like collaborator are freely tossed around, as are calls for the US to leave. To make the point, they kill a few cops a day.
In the speech, Mr. Bush will repeat his call for nations — including those that opposed the Iraq action — to contribute to rebuilding the country, but he will offer no concessions to French demands that the major authority for running the country be turned over immediately to Iraqis.
"We'll stay on the same schedule" of drafting a constitution and holding national elections, one senior official said in an interview today. Mr. Bush will not discuss a timetable in the speech, but his aides said in interviews over the weekend that completing the process by spring or summer would be, in the words of one, "very ambitious." That assessment is bound to anger European nations that have demanded a far more accelerated transfer of power.
Mr. Bush made clear in a Fox News interview taped today, to be broadcast Monday, that he would define a larger role for the United Nations very narrowly. Asked if he was willing to give the United Nations more authority in order to obtain a new resolution, he said, "I'm not so sure we have to, for starters," according to excerpts released by Fox tonight.
Mr. Bush added that the United Nations could help write a constitution because "they're good at that." He also said that when it came time for elections, the United Nations might oversee the process. "That would be deemed a larger role," he said, but he made clear that he would not allow any resolution "to get in the way of an orderly transfer of sovereignty based on a logical series of steps. And that's constitution, elections and then the transfer of authority."
......................
Mr. Bush's descriptions of Iraq's future will receive the most scrutiny, and he is expected to give little ground and admit no errors of judgment about the reconstruction of the country. While he will call for international financial contributions and more troops from around the world, he has so far gained little of either since his speech to the nation two weeks ago when he said it was the responsibility of other nations, including opponents of the Iraq action, to contribute to both security and reconstruction.
ROTFLMAO
The only question is will they boo or just forget to clap. Because if he does this, he's killing American soldiers for pride.
There has been an explosion near the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.
Witnesses said a car had exploded in the car park in front of the building.
Well, they returned to Schweinfurt eight times. Just sending a message to the UN before Bush speaks: If you come here we will kill you.
In 1991, the Democratic Leadership Council were the outsiders and Jesse Jackson and the liberals were the insiders. They had tossed up Michael Dukakis and he lost 40 states. Why? Because he was the most singularly inept Democratic candidate to run for office in decades. When asked what he would do if his wife was raped, he fumbled the answer. Then, they showed him in a tank, with a too big helmet. He spent the 1960's agitating for no-fault car insurance. In Massachusetts.
Clinton realized that if his campaign was going to succeed, they'd have to change the dialogue and the message. Yet, the party regulars remembered him for his overlong 1988 convention speech and nasty rumors about his sex life. The same talk about no decent candidates and an inevitable Bush victory filled the air. Clinton? Hell, he was just another small state governor. Bush had won a war. The attacks against Clinton came fast and furious. Then his draft record came up after New Hampshire and everyone thought he was done. Rumors of a black baby were floating around.
The same people who stuck by Clinton then, are against Dean today. They switched horses from Bob Kerrey to Jerry Brown to Paul Tsongas, all to stop Clinton. It was a nasty fight and Clinton had to pull a jack move. In a set up, he went after Jackson supporter Sista Souljah for allegedly racist comments. While the story was small, it made Clinton look big by refusing to bow down to Jackson and his wing of the party.
Bush's numbers never got better and Perot jumped and took the center away from Bush, which limited the scale of the victory.
But no one should be surprised by this. If Dean wins, the Clinton wing and the DLC lose power. The talk is that Dean is too liberal and a "patsy" for Bush, just as Clinton's lack of military service was supposed to be a problem in 1992. However, that was blunted by a brutal debate on the Senate floor where John Kerry gave him a pass. Kerry, as both a bronze and silver star winner and founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, was in a unique position to provide political cover against John McCain's attack.
Dean is going to have to hammer the DLC at some point. Unlike Clinton, Dean already has the base. He now has to convince the regulars that he's going to win. But to do that, he has to have that moment where he breaks with the past of the party. It can't just be a denunciation. He has to explain why they're wrong, how they're wrong and what he plans to do about the future. Despite the Clintonistas, who, logically would be expected to back Clark, who is A) from Little Rock, B) a Rhodes Scholar, C) benefited under Clinton, Dean has to face down the regulars and tell them a new day is here.
I think a lot, most actually, of the skittishness is that they can smell a seachange. Bush is not only likely to go down, but take a lot of GOP swing seats with him. They don't want to blow what could be a chance at realignment. You won't see anyone quoted on it, but they want more than the White House and if Bush starts to sink, they could get it. The regulars, despite their losses, see Dean as a risk. When they say vunerable, that's code for dead meat. Which is the word hanging around Bush these days. So they're betting that if they play it safe, they will gain everything.
Only problem is that the base (unions, regular voters) and leftish independents don't want safe, they want change. Dean has best articulated that need for change, but they aren't sure it will play in Red States.
So people shouldn't be shocked by the sniping, which is mild compared to the usual circular firing squad around Democratic party politics. According to the Miami Herald, the GOP may be preparing a full out purge
WASHINGTON - Faced with rising costs, sinking polls, unsympathetic allies, an increasingly skeptical Congress and potential splits in his political party, President Bush has begun to question the hard-line Iraq policies long championed by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Foreign-policy concerns and domestic politics are prompting the administration to rethink its approach to Iraq, said a number of administration foreign and domestic-policy officials, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity because, as one of them put it, "the president hates seeing internal debates in the paper."
..................
The officials said Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, was concerned about new polls that suggest sinking support for the president's handling of Iraq. Rove also is worried about a potential schism between traditional Republican conservatives wary of spending huge sums in Iraq and neoconservatives who want to remake not only Iraq but also Iran, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. Even some of Bush's strong support from military families appears to be ebbing, one official said, as overseas tours are extended and casualties mount.
The American-backed administration in Iraq has announced sweeping economic reforms, including the sale of all state industries except for oil.
The surprise announcement by Iraqi Finance Minister Kamel al-Keylani dominated the second day of meetings organised by the International Monetary Fund in Dubai.
The recently-appointed minister unveiled a string of reforms that analysts said read like a manifesto devised by Washington, signing off 30 years of Saddam Hussein and the socialist Baath Party.
Al-Keylani said liberalisation of foreign investment, the banking sector, taxes and tariffs would "significantly advance efforts to build a free and open market economy in Iraq".
But the BBC's Nick Springate, in Baghdad, says many ordinary Iraqis will see the moves as a big sell-off with predominantly multi-national, American companies viewed as getting "rewards".
The American administration in Iraq is likely to play a role in overseeing the privatisation process, along with the Iraqi Governing Council, our correspondent says.
I think this is the kind of thing an elected Iraqi government needs to decide. This is the kind of land grab which could serve as kindling to Iraqi suspicions of a plan to turn them into the new West Bank. Other people will control their economy. I would think killing will follow this announcement. You couldn't pay me to be near a IGC or CPA member. Because the resistance now has a rallying cry. "They're stealing our country".
Why the rush to privatize? The infrastructure isn't there to support private companies, nor are the laws. They left oil off the list because the Shias and Kurds would have picked up their guns. Iraq, realistically, is years away from a privatized economic system. This should not only have been years off, but is pretty much cheap words without a sane security situation. One estimate has 100,000 criminals now running around the country. How do you do business when every idiot with a gun can demand a shakedown. That doesn't include the overlap between crooks and resistance members. How do you think the resistance gets their cash? By smiling nicely and putting out a tin cup?
The idea infuriates Iraqis, yet there is no practical way to impliment it. What idiot would buy a factory in Tikrit? Because if the US Army doesn't shoot it up at night, the Iraqi mafia may come by for a shakedown, or even better, have the boys blow it up and paint, "die Zionist pig" on the ruins. Your security costs may be more than the revenue from the plant. Next thing you'll see are Iraqis sunning themselves with their new Albanian girlfriends on the shores of Beirut, driving stolen German Mercedes. It's more desperate than logical, but when they drop mortars on Abu Gharib every night, desperation is a factor here.
The Dean campaign is trying to raise $5m in 10 days, and according to their latest figures, they've already raised $250K. In 17 hours. They didn't do a big campaign, they just annouced it and the money is flooding in. This is free money, money not being raised by fundraisers or solicitations.
It is amazing. While Clark is now the "frontrunner" in one poll and the Clinton old guard flock to him, the Dean campaign is raising money at a level only Republicans have and this is before the unions and Hollywood do their large fundraisers. The calculus of this is pretty serious for his opponents. This is a spigot of money the Dems are going to need to keep open and the scary part, well scary for Clark and the rest of his opponents, is that he hasn't even begun to spend it.
Dean has the freedom only money can buy and that is impressive. It means while Clark has to organize, Dean is building. You don't want to try to get in when someone else is building an organization. Also, they're going to have to hit Wall Street while Dean has a 24/7 fundraising machine. It works almost on autopilot. These guys are confident enough to start fundraising on a Saturday afternoon. While Clark is setting up his machinery, Dean races ahead. Oh, I think Clark will make up some ground, but the Dean internet plan is well thought out and everyone else is in second place.
I had to laugh, when I heard about Kerry's comments that "Dean was imploding". Ron Brownstein compared it to being a Red Sox fan. Every time the Yankees come to town, they yell "Yankees suck". Which, most Americans would agree, is an accurate statement. However, he added, "you can bet they'd like to suck like the Yankees suck". If implosion means raising nearly $15K an hour on a weekend, online, he needs to implode. If no one has bothered to mention it, his campaign is in disarray.
Here's a hint: people like Dean's ideas enough to back them with money. Either come up with better ideas than his or get out of the race and stop the whining.
Grateful troops praise our president Again, the applause seemed to lack a certain enthusiasm usually found when the president speaks to military groups. After the speech, Pvt. Kenneth Henry, 21, a Third Division radar operator with a field artillery unit, was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying of Mr. Bush:
"He likes war. He should go fight in a war for two days and see how he likes it."
Mr. Bush's military experience consists only of serving as a jet pilot with the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War. But his outfit never left Texas, and he since has been accused of going AWOL for a year to campaign for a political pal of his father's.
Oh yeah, according to a piece posted on Atrios, they want to chop 1.5 million vets from receiving benefits.
Hubris leads to many things, but the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, 400,000 men strong, was the mistake which will, ultimately ,undo our occupation and war.
Why?
Because it was the one national institution which existed apart from Saddam Hussein. He didn't trust it, and he didn't let it get too close to him. Their officers were bribable and they hated Saddam. Yet, they were tossed out of a job and had to threaten the CPA to get demobilzation cash.
The heart of any Army is not its generals, but its young sergeants, captains and colonels. They're the men who win battles and lead troops. Keeping them on your side is the difference between victory and defeat in war. If Viceroy Jerry and his crew had been smarter about this, they would have been able to provide security. It might not have prevented a civil war in the end, but, the security problem would have a very different cast.
Despite the defeat in the first Gulf War, the Iraqi Army was sound for what it was. It had good command and control, good training and decent elite units, both Special Forces and Republican Guard. There was a sound nucleus to build a new Army around. Instead, by casting the army to the winds, it created the backbone of an opposition.
How can you tell?
Because the tactics of the resistance are growing in proficiency. The guerrilla units are too large and well coordinated to be merely pissed-off jihadis. Attacks signaled by flares and coordinated remote mine attacks are not taught in training camps, but in military schools. Sure, some of the kids may be bribed, but there is enough military training among Iraqis to make a resistance possible. They have the ability to set ambushes and escape. Not just once, but repeatedly. And last week, in Ramadi, Iraqi resistance held off US Armor and infantry for three hours, forcing them to withdraw. That is not being done by bored Syrians.
KIRKUSH MILITARY TRAINING BASE, Iraq, Sept. 15 — The mock attack begins with whistles, because the new Iraqi army needs to conserve its blanks.
Within a few minutes, under the watchful eye of private trainers paid by the United States, a platoon of recruits overruns the enemy position. Like the rest of their battalion, these young men are only weeks from becoming full-fledged soldiers.
When they are ready, their new army will have 735 men.
In Washington, politicians and military planners say the United States needs to rely much more heavily on Iraqi soldiers and police officers, both to restore order and to lighten the load on overworked American troops. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that strengthening the Iraqi security services is a top priority. Pentagon planners have optimistically spoken about replacing American soldiers with Iraqi troops.
But on the ground here, the Iraqi cavalry appears a long way off.
There is this assumption that the Iraqi Army was tactically unsound. Retraining the Army seems not only to be a waste of time, but is hampered by the fact it is tainted as an army of collaboration. It exists because of the Americans and is designed to serve American, not Iraqi, needs. How can they expect the Iraqi people to rally around what is in essence, the New ARVN.
The new army will be of little use against well-armed guerrillas, much less as a deterrent to the established armies of Iran and Turkey, Iraq's neighbors to the east and north, said Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington policy institute. That is likely to remain the case for the next several years, he said.
"One of the great problems here is that they are creating an Iraqi army that is seen by most Iraqis as not an Iraqi army, but as a paramilitary force that looks more like a tool of the occupation than a national defense force," Mr. Cordesman said.
That opinion is widely shared on the streets of Iraq. In Kufa, a religious center 100 miles south of Baghdad, a half dozen men agreed in interviews that America had acted deliberately to leave Iraq's army weak. "It's not the right thing to do," said one of the men, Hussan Muhammad.
You have to wonder why the new Iraqi Army will be a fraction of the size of the old Iraqi Army and will be for years. Also, what self respecting Iraqi would serve in such a force.
General Eaton said the occupying forces were reconstructing the Iraqi army as quickly as possible. The soldiers of that army, many of them conscripts who had been ill treated, fled after the fall of Mr. Hussein's government. Its barracks were looted to their walls, its tanks blown apart or stripped to their tracks, its weapons stolen.
The old Iraqi bases "do not tolerate human life right now," General Eaton said. "The buildings are carcasses."
The occupying forces plan to rebuild the bases while they train a select group of former Iraqis officers in how to lead a volunteer force in a democratic nation, he said. Then, next spring, it will recruit former soldiers, telling them that "the barracks are ready" and "your leaders have been retrained."
If all goes as planned, the 13,500 recruits will form the two new divisions to complement the 6,700 from Kirkush.
This army can only serve one purpose, to repress other Iraqis. It is too small and weak to do anything else. Most Iraqis, not stupid, have figured this out.
Once the Army was dissolved, a key tool of national unity was loss and the resistance gained many new members. A resistance which grows more efficient by the day.
Greg Dyke, the BBC's director general, has accused "a small coterie" around Tony Blair of putting British television at risk by opening the gates for foreign multinationals to buy up ITV.
In an extraordinary outburst, which shook delegates to the Royal Television Society's convention in Cambridge, Mr Dyke added that it is "bullshit" to claim - as the Government does - that the introduction of US managerial skills would mean better programmes on British television screens.
His furious attack suggests that the BBC's management is in no mood to sue for peace in its long-running row with the Government, despite the setbacks the corporation suffered during a difficult week at the Hutton inquiry.
As the inquiry enters its final week of public hearings, The Independent on Sunday has learnt that Andrew Gilligan, the journalist whose reports were the original trigger for the inquiry, is unlikely to broadcast on Radio 4's Today programme again.
A senior BBC source conceded for the first time last night that Mr Gilligan's links with the Ministry of Defence have been too badly damaged for him to return to his old job. They also fear that he will be a permanent target of newspapers hostile to the BBC, such as those owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Looks like an all-out fight to the finish between the BBC and the Blair government. I cannot imagine any American broadcaster taking on their government regulator with such language. The BBC management is betting, even if they take some lumps from the Hutton inquiry, that their overall public standing as well as the thrashing the government is going to get, gives them the upper hand. The move against the BBC is so naked, and so political and Blair is so unpopular, that this is not a high risk move. Everyone has a fond memory of Auntie Beeb, even if they are convinced it is a tool of the man/the left. They don't want politicians playing games with it, especially since it seems that Blair is out for payback.
It's getting better all the time, it can't get much worse
Worried Optimism on Iraq
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
These days, though, even someone at my eye level is having a hard time seeing the part of the glass in Iraq that is half full. I am still an optimist on Iraq, but a "worried optimist." My optimism is based on one big thing that has happened — and my worrying is based on two smaller things that have not.
The big thing that has happened in Iraq, which you can really feel when you're there, is that there is a 100 percent correlation of interests between America's aspirations for Iraq and the aspirations of Iraq's silent majority. We both want the same thing for Iraq — that it not become Iran, that it not become Saddam, but that it become a decent, modern-looking Iraqi alternative. This overlap of aspirations is hugely important. This is not Vietnam.
Every day, Iraqi civilians are wounded or shot dead by US troops in Iraq.
Just five days ago, a woman and her child were killed in Baghdad by an American soldier after US forces opened fire at a wedding party that was shooting into the air.
A 14-year old boy was reported killed in a similar incident two days ago.
Then on Thursday afternoon, several Iraqi civilians were wounded by US troops after the Americans were ambushed outside the town of Khaldiya. At least two American vehicles were destroyed and eyewitnesses described seeing body parts on the road after the ambush
But here's what's worrying. The resistance from the Saddamists is getting stronger, not weaker. It is becoming so strong, I would argue, that a new war needs to be mounted against the Saddamist forces in the Sunni triangle near Baghdad. Two Republican Guard divisions just melted away in this area and they still have to be defeated. The war has to be finished, but we can't be the ones to finish it. This is a purely urban fight, and if we try to finish it alone what will happen is more of what's happened in the past two weeks — fatal blunders. We just accidentally killed 10 Iraqi policemen in one town and gunned down a 14-year-old Iraqi boy in another who was part of a wedding party firing guns in celebration. Non-Arabic-speaking Americans cannot fight an urban war in Iraq. Forget it. We must get off this course immediately.
Any South Korean deployment would likely provoke a fight with antiwar activists, who launched violent protests in April when parliament agreed to send 675 military engineers and medics to Iraq.
In Turkey, a recent poll indicated most Turks oppose sending troops, just as they opposed the U.S.-led war that ousted Iraqi Saddam Hussein. Any deployment must be approved by parliament, which in March blocked plans for Turkey to host American troops intending to open a northern front in the war.
A large contingent of Turkish troops also could provoke unrest from Iraqi Kurds, given decades of fighting between Turkish troops and Kurdish rebels over the border in southeastern Turkey.
New Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, a Kurd, has said Iraq's neighbors should not send troops.
In part, this is because many Iraqis are still afraid that we're going to leave and Saddam will come back and punish all who worked with us. In part, this is because America is so radioactive in the Arab-Muslim world that even an America that has come to Iraq with the sole intention of liberating its people cannot be openly embraced. In part this is because while we think we've "liberated" Iraq, and deserve applause, we forget the fact that Iraqis couldn't liberate themselves is deeply humiliating for them, and our mere presence there reminds them of that. And in part, it's because while we and the Iraqis share the same broad aspirations, it doesn't seem to them that we have a workable plan to achieve them.
BAGHDAD, Sept. 20 -- Several gunmen in a pickup truck opened fire on a vehicle carrying a member of Iraq's Governing Council today, critically wounding her in the first assassination attempt against an Iraqi political leader appointed by the U.S. occupation authority.
Akila Hashimi, a former diplomat and member of the Baath Party who has emerged as one of the council's international emissaries, was ambushed two blocks from her home in western Baghdad as she was being driven to work. One of only three women on the 25-member council, Hashimi had planned to depart later today for New York with a small delegation of Iraqi leaders to attend U.N. General Assembly sessions.
Hashimi was shot at least once in the left side of her abdomen but was spared more severe injuries because her driver sped away and a security guard opened fire to prevent the attackers from pursuing, according to witnesses. After surgery at a Baghdad hospital, where she was listed in critical condition, Hashimi was taken to a U.S. military hospital in a convoy of armored vehicles and ambulances.
If we have many more such "friendly fire" incidents, even the Iraqi silent majority will turn hostile. That is what the Saddamists want. Which is why I will stop worrying about this only when I see the new Iraqi government has formed its own robust internal security force (now being discussed), with its own intelligence assets, to fight the Saddamists by the local rules. That is the only way to root them out, and only Iraqis can fight this war. If Americans have to keep killing Iraqis, we're dead.
Asked about the Americans and their occupation, Mr. Alawi shook his head. "I am cooperating with the Americans for the sake of my country," Mr. Alwai said. "It's the nature of the Iraqi people to be proud and nationalistic, more than most people. We want to evict them."
American commanders still express confidence in the institutions they are helping to build in Iraq, including local councils, police and fire departments and highway patrols. In some parts of the country, these efforts are beginning to yield results.
In Ramadi, though, it is less clear that these American-inspired institutions are working, or even that the beneficiaries of the new government endorse them.
One day last week, a group of new officers from the Iraqi Highway Patrol lounged beneath a highway overpass. Asked about the Americans, they responded with scorn.
"I hate the Americans," said Muhammad Khobaeir Waeel, a new officer. "They don't respect us. They throw us to the ground and put their boots on the backs of our heads."
Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio interviewed the Independent's Robert Fisk, recently. Fisk, who is hated by those who know him for telling the truth, had some very interesting comments on Wesley Clark.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, John Hlinko, we have just reached Robert Fisk in Baghdad. We want to thank you for being with us, cofounder of the DraftWesleyClark.com campaign. Zoltan Grossman, thanks for being with us from the University of Wisconsin.
We're going not to the break right now, which we usually do, but because we have Robert Fisk on his satellite phone at this moment. we want to go directly to him.
Robert Fisk, we'll get your comment at the beginning, hearing that Wesley Clark is now running for president as the antiwar warrior. Then we'd like to get your observations of what's happening right now on the ground in Iraq.
ROBERT FISK: I have to say first of all about General Clark, that I was on the ground in Serbia in Kosovo when he ran the war there. He didn't seem to be very antiwar at the time. I had as one of my tasks to go out over and over again to look at the civilian casualties of that have war.
At one point NATO bombed the hospital in which Yugoslav soldiers, against the rules of war, were hiding along with the patients and almost all the patients were killed.
This was the war, remember, where the first attack was made on a radio station, the Serb Radio and Television building. Since then we've had attacks twice on the Al Jazeera television station. First of all in Afghanistan in 2001, then killing their chief correspondent, and again in Baghdad, this year.
This was a general who I remember bombed series of bridges, in one of which an aircraft bombed the train and after, he'd seen the train and had come to a stop, the pilot bombed the bridge again.
I saw one occasion when a plane came in, bombed a bridge over a river in Serbia proper, as we like to call it, and after about 12 minutes when rescuers arrived, a bridge too narrow even for tanks, bombed the rescuers.
I remember General Clark telling us that more than 100 Yugoslav tanks had been destroyed in the weeks of that war. And when the war came to an end, we discovered number of Yugoslav tanks destroyed were 11. 100 indeed.
So this was not a man, frankly whom, if I were an American, would vote for, but not being an American, I don't have to.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk speaking to us in Iraq. And then you have the time that the British general, Michael Jackson, Wesley Clark had told him to get his British troops to the airport before the Russians got there, so it wouldn't be perceived that the Russians were liberating and General Michael Jackson responded to him, 'I'm not going to start World War III'.
ROBERT FISK: Yes. Jackson did indeed say that. One member of Jackson's staff confirmed to me that the quote is true. I think the words--I think the verb is wrong, but World War III is correct.
It was a very strange atmosphere to that war, over and over again when NATO has bombed the target, it was clearly illegitimate. Or when they killed large number of civilians, they were either silenced, or they lied.
We had the very famous occasion, infamous occasion when American aircraft bombed an Albanian refugee convoy in Kosovo, claimed later or NATO claimed later it was probably Serb aircraft. It was only when we got there and found the NATO markings on the bomb, that NATO fessed up admitted that they had done it themselves and had been confused.
When I went to the scene months later and tracked down the survivors, it turned out that although they were confused, NATO aircraft had gone on bombing that convoy for 35 minutes even though there were civilians there, because mixed in among them, most cruelly, this was an act of Milosevic's regime, were military vehicles as well.
We shouldn't be romantic about the Serb military or the Serb security police they were killers and murderers. But NATO, in its war against the Serbs, committed a number of acts which I think are very close to war crimes, and General Clark was the commander. So this is a man who wants to be the president, democratic president of the United States of America. Well I don't interest myself in what he thinks about the last war in Iraq. I watched it first hand and had my own opinions. But I sure as hell know what it was like to be under the bombs of his war in Serbia.
AMY GOODMAN: Robert Fisk, I want to ask you about General Powell's visit, Secretary of State General Powell's visit to Baghdad. But we still have Steve Rendall in the studio who is leaving in one minute as we listen to this description of what's happening in Iraq. We were wrapping up the discussion of Wesley Clark whether or not he was for this war. Your final comments, Steve?
STEVE RENDALL: I'd like to just say that politicians would like to be all things to all people. Our problem is not with Wesley Clark's campaign, it's with the media's portrayal of him.
One point I'd like to say, your listeners should go look at the daily column that Clark wrote for the Times of London, right around the time of the fall of Baghdad. He wrote there, for instance, the day after the fall of Baghdad he wrote "Liberation is at hand. Liberation, the powerful bomb that justifies painful sacrifices, erases lingering doubts and reinforces bold actions." He also wrote that George W. Bush and prime minister Tony Blair "should be proud of their resolve in the face of so much doubt".
This is the day after, this is on April 10, the day after the so called fall of Baghdad. He was cheering this event, and it's very hard for us to see reporters casting him as antiwar candidate.
Well, he's not George Bush. But then, really, who is?
I think people are going to be surprised when his free ride ends in a debate.
A Muslim US Army chaplain who worked with al-Qaeda suspects in Guantanamo Bay has been detained by military investigators, US officials say.
He has not been charged, but it is believed that he is suspected of espionage.
Captain Yousef Yee, formerly known as James Lee, has been held since 10 September as part of a military investigation, said a spokesman for Southern Command, which oversees the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The chaplain was arrested as he stepped off a plane at Jacksonville Naval Air Station in the US state of Florida.
A senior law enforcement official told the Associated Press news agency that agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation confiscated classified documents Mr Yee was carrying and questioned him before he was handed over to the military.
He lived in Syria for four years and then rejoined the Army and then was sent to minister to the most important center for terrorist prisoners we hold. Uh, why?
Did anyone think that a conversion to Islam and four years in Syria might be cause for concern? Didn't anyone in the Army's vast intelligence bureaucracy think Chaplain Lee might be better off in oh, CENTCOM and not working directly with AQ suspects? Call me paranoid, but I think placing him there was not the best move.
Polls May Indicate That TV Address Eroded President's Support on Iraq
By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 20, 2003; Page A02
President Bush has often used major speeches to bolster his standing with the public, but pollsters and political analysts have concluded that his recent prime-time address on Iraq may have had the opposite effect -- crystallizing doubts about his postwar plans and fueling worries about the cost.
A parade of polls taken since the Sept. 7 speech has found notable erosion in public approval for Bush's handling of Iraq, with a minority of Americans supporting the $87 billion budget for reconstruction and the war on terrorism that he unveiled.
"If Bush and his advisers had been looking to this speech to rally American support for the president and for the war in Iraq, it failed," said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup poll. He said Bush's speech may have cost him more support than it gained, "because it reminded the public both of the problems in Iraq and the cost
How about this: they got a bill they didn't expect and they are pissed.
When Bush said $87B for Iraq, most Americans realized this adventure was going to cost more and take longer than they expected. Neither of which sat well with them. Where is the oil money? Why are they killing our troops?
What hurt evem more was that Bush didn't bother to mention they were extending the tours of troops in Iraq to a year, without counting stateside service.
It was a horrible speech, poorly delivered with a number of gratuitous lies included.
Shinseki criticizes
U.S. fight in Mideast
The former Army chief of staff
says more aid from allies is needed
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Richard Borreca
rborreca@starbulletin.com
Former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki says America's fight in Iraq and Afghanistan "didn't have to be this difficult."
Addressing the National Speakers Conference, a meeting of state House speakers in Waikiki, Shinseki noted that three more U.S. soldiers died yesterday in an ambush in Iraq.
"We are in a tough fight in Iraq and also in Afghanistan. It didn't have to be this difficult. We are better than this," Shinseki said.
Shinseki, a 38-year career Army officer who retired in July, did not expand on his critique. However, in February he told a congressional committee that the United States would need up to 200,000 troops as a peacekeeping force in Iraq. There are about 145,000 U.S. troops there now.
Shinseki said yesterday that while America has "what it takes to seize the initiative and begin to turn this problem (in Iraq) around," he added that "we will need the help of others, our friends, our allies and even our former adversaries."
"I want to assure you, we are going to prevail, and when we do it will be because of the American soldier," Shinseki concluded.
In Kansas, Amanda Bellew, wife of Army Spec. Jason Bellew, a member of the 129th Transportation Company, said she and other family members are hoping to gather 50,000 signatures on their Web site, www.129bringthemhome.com, to present to Congress in opposition to the extended tours.
Amanda Bellew said the tours seem particularly onerous, since the 129th, made up of troops who drive and maintain heavy-equipment transports for hauling 70-ton M1 Abrams tanks, has recently been short of appropriate missions.
"We have pictures of a golf cart tied down in the middle of this trailer," she said. "They hauled SUVs for high-ranking officers on one mission, and by the time they got where they were going, all the windows [of the SUVs] were busted out, from things being thrown at them."
The unit was mobilized in January, she said, but did not leave for Iraq until April. "We were all planning for December or January homecomings," she said. "But now they're talking about April 2004, and possibly as late as January 2005. We're not into bad-mouthing the Army or anything like that, but the three months they were away from home [in the United States] should count in that year."
Malcontents.
But a hardening of attitudes often seems evident in both countries. After the bombing of the truck in the Ramadi area in Iraq, an American tank dispatched to the scene sprayed a field of tall grass with heavy machine gunfire, killing no one, for there was no one there to kill.
Even the jokes have turned. In the American military headquarters in Gardez, a soldier scrawled out the word "FUN" vertically on a blackboard, then wrote out sentences to follow each letter: F is for the fire that burns through downtown; U is Uranium bombs; and N is for No Survivors in Al Ramadi.
"I know they hate my guts, but they can't say so because I've got a gun," an American soldier said the other night, standing guard outside the base. "Kind of funny, isn't it?"
Whiners
This much is clear: Two unarmed civilians were killed Sept. 1 in the town of Mahmudiya, including a 19-year-old woman who had hoped to attend medical school. They died when U.S. soldiers raked a small apartment in the town 20 miles south of Baghdad with machine gun fire and tossed a grenade into the kitchen.
The soldiers did that — as they are trained to do, their commander said — after they banged on the door and were shot at from inside.
The shooter was a 16-year-old boy, who said he thought he was defending his home from thieves. Military investigators questioned him for several days and released him.
Beyond those basics, accounts of the incident conflict. But even the simple facts underscore the perils of sending battle-trained troops on police operations, as U.S. commanders must do in Iraq.
The version the Iraqis told amounts to a horror story that infuriates Iraqis here.
Ungrateful Iraqis. Just because we shoot the unarmed and blow up an apartment, how dare they resent us. We're protecting them. They need to suck it up and move on.
I wrote about Oprah's little love fest last week. But I find these comments amusing
The sight of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver perched on Oprah Winfrey's sofa and demonstrating the perfection of their marriage made more than a few of the talk-mistress' fans more furious than women scorned, more angry than wet hens and so forth. The oprah.com message board is crowded with complaints about the appearance of the candidate and adoring wife -- see how he respects women -- on nationwide TV under Winfrey's auspices.
"America's woman role model has let us down," writes one woman. "First she has some rah-rah show on going to war with Iraq," writes another, "and now this. It makes me sick. I am no fan of hers anymore."
"As a Californian," writes a woman, "I am offended that Oprah is doing an interview with the one celebrity candidate and his famous wife. . . . We are already seeing our legitimate votes, rendered last November, hijacked by a media circus, with Arnold serving as ringleader. Oprah, don't pander to your famous friends, please."
Her war shows weren't exactly pro, but she had Tom Friedman on for three hours. Only problem was that the real scholars blew him out of the water. Jessica Matthews (the daughter of Barbara Tuchman), head of the Carnegie Endowment, made him look stupid, repeatedly. The poor soccer mom audience didn't know whom to believe, the nice Jew from New York or the scholars.
Oddly enough, when I went to check on the Arnie discussion on her message boards, it was gone, as disappeared as if Winston Smith had been to work.
I checked the "what would I do if my husband cheated" section. But alas, no postings from Maria.
What people have to understand about Oprah, is that she has an image and a reality. I mean, she's the primary example of a cult of personality. She is single and childless and rumors about her sexuality abound. Yet, she dispenses advice about marriage and childraising with no second thoughts. No matter how crazy Dr. Phil sounds, he has kids and a wife. You have to understand that Oprah is a modern day goddess. Not exactly divine, but a quasi-priestess of middle class normalcy. You live this centered "spirtiual" life with just enough knowledge of the world around you to make things logical. Oprah makes a certain kind of woman feel comfortable.
However, if you're a black man......let's just say she has issues. As in, black men are the villians in her stories. She rarely calls on them for expert advice or ideas. In fact, the straight black man is rarer on her show than in a hockey game. Oprah once had a white woman discuss racism. Ever see one of her movies? No strong black men in them. In one, set in the 1950's, Halle Berry plays a woman who leaves a black doctor for a white garage mechanic/jazz musician. If my sister hadn't bought the large TV and gun ownership was legal, well........I was dumbstruck when I saw part of this. Just dumbstruck. Why not show a black man riding with Quantrill's Raiders.....oh, that's Ride with the Devil, but at least Ang Lee has an excuse, he's Taiwanese.
Why anyone is surprised by Oprah plugging her friends, one a philanderer, the other in deep denial, is beyond me. My only surprise is that the DNC didn't scream bloody murder.
Meteor Blades goes into great detail in the cost of rebuilding Iraq on Kos. Wouldn't believe its his first piece.
Anyway, I call this process finding the Easter Bunny. Why? Because it's not going to happen. We cannot rebuild Iraq alone or even close to alone. We have two different Easter Bumnny hunts. One is economic, the other military. I'll deal with the economic one right now.
Iraqis need to rebuild their own society, with lots of assistance, but not the kind that Viceroy Jerry is providing. People who can't talk to each other, no one speaking Arabic? How did this happen. Maybe it's me, but didn't Arabs build their own buildings, roads and structures when the Gauls and Vandals were looting Rome and raping women? Hasn't Iraq been settled for several thousand years? I think it's safe to say Iraq can rebuild Iraq if we got out of the way and stopped killing their children every night.
We are looking to turn Iraq into some kind of political unicorn, a pro-Israeli democracy in the Arab world. Chalabi may have sold that to the overseers, but most Iraqis have no plan on any such government, one saying they would kill him the first chance they got. Considering the hatred for him, I'd take them at their word.
But more importantly, Halliburton can't build anything as long as there are people willing to kill them. Iraqis aren't going to get any of these conctract and therefore have no incentive to make anything work. The Baath party wasn't the Taliban. It was the government. Of course, its records are ash and its employees sweltering in the end of summer heat, broke and desperate. Bush wants to impose some kind of free market dictat on the Iraqis and that's not going to happen. It was a state run economy and it will take a decade for that to change. Without Uday and Qusay stealing everything they could, it looks better.
What amazes me about the American overseers is that they don't get the connection between crime and dictators. Thugs have to come from somewhere. Uday and Qusay didn't get into the smuggling business on their own. Saddam's government was fundamentally corrupt. Yet, instead of dealing with that, they're playing hide the salami in CPA headquarters.
The Iraqi police is worse than useless. They may stop the criminals, but they're helping the guerrillas kill Americans. Why? Because if they don't, the guerrillas call them collaborators and kill them. In one case, dumping them in the street in plain view of reporters. Oh yeah, and the Americans shoot them like dogs in a fear fueled frenzy. If investement relies on the Iraqi cops and new military, well, better not expect any eggs this year, or next, or the year after.
Any talk of turning this around quickly is hunting for the Easter Bunny. Because, as Sam Cooke sang, "a change is gonna come" and that change is the rise of the Shia leadership. They're playing the US as long as they can. but they're one disaster away from deciding we have to leave. We have left Iraq jobless and unsafe. How long can that last before something gives? The Easter Bunny, as cute as they draw him, is not real. Neither are most of our plans for Iraq. You don't turn a state economy into a market economy overnight. Or close to it. Nor leave the country to the mercy of rape gangs and carjackers and then take the guns away. Or allow a leading Shia cleric to be evaporated by a car bomb.
These send a clear signal: we cannot make you safe, nor do we want you to be safe. So how do you operate a business when you can be robbed any day or night?
The hippity hop of the Easter Bunny fills the air in Iraq. But he's not alone, because there's another Bunny Hunt and it's for the elusive dead-enders and Baathists killing Americans. He doesn't exist anyway, not in the way Americans think he does.
Occasionally, you'll read an ominous article on the new electronic voting machines. That the GOP will steal elections because the machines are not sound.
I have a novel and unique idea, which doesn't involve handwringing.
It's called activism.
Simply put, you demand that the machines leave a paper trail. How do you do this? Well, we have this thing called a lawsuit. What you do is file and claim that the state must provide a verifiable, non-electronic printout of every vote. That this printout must also correlate to any signature or Id mark made by a voter.
See, you can sit on your hands, whine and claim that the nasty Bushies and their corporate masters will keep him in office, or you can whisper into the ears of the NAACP and other groups and demand there be external accountability for electronic machine voting. The voters rights act is a nice catchall.
If you think the other side may cheat, why in the hell would you sit around and wait until after the election for them to complain? Preemptive action is now the motto of the Bush Administration, let it be yours. Why in God's name, if you think the machines may be rigged, would you not do a meetup or something and file papers. Each state consititution is different and if there is fraud, you can bring it to heel. Personally, I think the elections they cite had reasons for the last minute swings, but if you genuinely believe these machines can be used for voter fraud, filing a legal action, with at least six months to go before a vote, might make sense.
Or you can join the tin of hat brigade and claim Bush will rig the election no matter what.
You may not win, but you can raise a stink. Which is better than staring into space and plotting your emigration to Canada or Holland. Some of us like democracy in America and plan on keeping it. Thereis no law that says you have to be a vicitm. People sue and beat large corporations every day. Stop whining and start doing. Sometimes, that actually works.
Hundreds of thousands of reservists and National Guardsmen have been hit by a triple whammy since 9/11. This is a warning for all of you out there that a fourth blow could be on the way.
First, the reserve personnel endured call-ups to active duty to guard airports and other strategic facilities. Second, just a few months after they returned to their civilian jobs, the Pentagon within a few short months recalled tens of thousands of reservists to fight in Afghanistan and, later, Iraq. Finally, reservists and Guardsmen watched as their active-duty counterparts went home after six months while they endured mandatory tour extensions that have prolonged their separation from families and jobs.
Unfortunately, that fourth blow is not hard to identify.
Having been jerked around willy-nilly by the Pentagon and their own service branches for the past two years, many reservists and Guardsmen may be about to take it on the chin from a different source – their civilian employers.
The 1994 "Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act" *(USERRA) requires employers to save the job position held by a Guardsman or reservist called to active duty. But labor experts warn that over the last year there has been a startling increase in incidents where civilian firms have "reorganized" their operations to the result that returning part-time soldiers have come home to the unemployment line. In a number of cases, employers have directly issued layoff orders for returning reservists despite USERRA. An equally distressing number of incidents have reportedly occurred where employers have pressured reservists and Guardsmen seeking protected time off -also guaranteed under USERRA - not to participate in their mandatory military training.
Charles Ciccolella, a Labor Department deputy assistant secretary for veterans employment and training, told the Newshouse News Service this week that his department is currently investigating 1,300 cases where reservists or Guardsmen have left active duty only to find themselves out of a job - something that USERRA explicitly prohibits. Ciccolella said that the number itself is probably a fraction of the total, with "several times that many more" incidents being privately mediated by a volunteer citizen-s group, The National Committee for Employer Support for the Guard and Reserve (ESGR).
................
"It-s Catch-22," Wilson said. Companies that can assert "legitimate business reasons" for terminating employees can evade sanctions in USERRA. "Large employers are smart enough to paper it over," she said. For example, a company can conduct a major reorganization in which subordinate divisions are restructured or eliminated altogether with concurrent layoffs, including troublesome employees who have left their cubicles or workstations to serve their country in uniform.
American companies love America, as long as it doesn't cost anything.
ABC's new, and probably shortlived series, Threat Matrix, is black and white where 24 is shades of gray. Where 24 explores the complex relationship between national security, life and the defense bureaucracy, Threat Matrix is yet another ABC retread of the spy couple show which has failed for them for years, and has an amazingly simplistic understanding of how the feds work.
If 24 is about the kinds of doubts and dark dealings which ifluence intelligence, Threat Matrix is about how we can run around the world and kidnap and kill people.
First, I'm sorry, but most intelligence people are bland, not noticable types. At least Kiefer Sutherland is a physical person. His height, average, and build, is a close match to what a real intelligence officer with a military background would look like. They are people who blend into the crowd, do not stand out, do not draw attention.
In scenes of the uprising at Mazar-i-Sharif, real CIA officers are seen on camera. They wouldn't stand out in a crowd. Which is the point. James Bond is a myth, not a prototype.
The idea is that there are these cross-agency teams which deal with security threats. Which is comical on its face. The agencies hate each other. One of the strengths of 24 is the tremendous amount of infighting between different agencies and between different branches of the same agency. But now, these agencies are supposed to work together and kill dirty Arabs.
Second, one of the plot points depends on sending the blonde, buxom Kelly Rutherford to Jakarta to interrogate a suspect. Now, you tell me, if you wanted to not attract notice, would you send a buxom blonde to freaking Indonesia. It's not Berlin you know, a blonde stands out. When, of course, this extraction fails, she runs to a safehouse where the "CIA" rushes in and shows ID. That's just writer stupidity all around.
At this point I flipped back to the reality of WWE Wrestling.
NO CIA officer carries CIA ID overseas, except when for very specific purposes (meeting at NATO). Why? Because in Indonesia, where the CIA helped kill between 500,000 and million "communists" in 1965-66, the agency is detested. The cops stop you and find it, they may just kill you for sport.
The way you do it, and they've shown this on TV, is that you have a preset exchange of codewords to verify ID, maybe a medallion or other item. So if you're on the run, someone would say "bagels" and you would say "lox" to confirm your ID. Then they ask you a personal question like "what is your dog's name". You don't shout CIA. At worst. you would say "we're from the Embassy".
After flipping back, you see a WTO protest in Chicago and someone walking on the floor with a bomb of the Merchantile Exchange. Which is difficult considering post 9-11 security measures. The team hustles him out, tosses him in a bomb truck, and he explodes.
The whole show is filled with crappy characters and stupid situations. It's sloppy, poorly written and yet another retread of bad ABC spy shows. It is as bad as 24 is good.
But if this was a mere review, I'd tell you to watch A&E's MI-5 (Spooks) and see a much better, smarter show. Or wait until 24 returns after the World Series.
However, what drives me nuts about all these shows is the vast technology they show and the instadatabases, which don't exist. Yes, there is a lot of technology and computing power, but most of these shows vastly overstate the quality and speed by which they work. Few spies sit in an office with banks of computers and MIT geniuses on call. People see this and expect instant answers. To be honest, JAG has a much more honest feel on how real intelligence works, which means there are mistakes, humans, and computers don't dominate everything. Offices look like offices and not movie sets.
But the show has two other pernicious messages: one, that the US is on top of all these threats and two, wily Arabs plot in secret. Both of which might not be true. Terrorists can look like anyone and be anyone. Islam is a religion, not a race.
According to Eric Alterman, whiny little bitch Bill O'Reilly makes the following claim:
Bill O'Reilly (to name one) is starting to look like Emil Jannings at the end of The Blue Angel. On Thursday night, only two days after telling former patent-medicine huckster Michael Savage that "your shtick is to overstate," Big Daddy No-Spin told his audience: "The left has booked a full roster of character assassins. I mean these guys make Donald Segretti and the Nixon plumbers look like the Muppets."
So how many psychiatrist's offices did Franken burglarize last week? And you, you mucksavage, firebombing the Heritage Foundation is a TERRIBLE idea. It would be ... wrong. But I always did think Bud Krogh favored Dr. Bunsen Honeydew, especially around the eyes.
Who knew they were all such delicate flowers? I mean, even my gal Annie Coulter got into a snit this week and threatened Not To Talk if someone "say,from Planet Earth " interrupted her. Lou Dobbs jumped in " possibly because he didn't want Annie's head to explode from the effort. They'd have been scraping peroxide off the studio walls until February.
You know what? Tough. Welcome to real politics again. You asked for it. Every damn one of you "even you, John McCain, who has not done nearly enough yet to keep the crazies in line
Poor whiny little bitch Bill. A comedian makes fun of him and now he thinks he's Daniel Ellsberg. Did they think we were going to get our asses kicked forever? Accept their lies and nonsense forever? We're not all Alan Colmes, being bitchslapped every night because an argument would be rude. We're just as American as they are, and we're gonna not only clean up their mess, but send them back down the memory hole. Their ideas suck, their ethics suck, their morals suck and we don't have to stand by and let them loot the country. It isn't theirs to loot.
O'Reilly and Hannity are free to spout their crap, but now, they have to defend it. No more free rides. No more random slanders which go unanswered. They wanted hard core politics, well, they've got hard core politics. Donald Segretti my ass. Unlike the Republicans, we don't have to shit on the Constitution to win.
After months of denial, except in old Labour, the loss of a seat in a formerly safe Labour district in London, people are begining to realize that Blair's unpopularity may have consequences at the polls. New Labour's policies, from increased school fees, the bungling of several national crises, and most importantly, the bitterly opposed war in Iraq, have come knocking on Blair's door.
The by-election (to fill the seat of an MP who died of cancer last June) was a shock, not only to Labour, but to the Liberal Democrats who won the seat.
Labour could lose the next General Election following its disastrous poll at the Brent East by-election, former minister Frank Field has warned.
He said the party was in "deep trouble" following the Liberal Democrats' Thursday night success in the former Labour stronghold.
But fellow ex-minister Glenda Jackson said she believed Labour could win a third term - if Tony Blair was to quit as prime minister and party leader.
She said the Brent East result showed the electorate had a "complete lack of trust in the government" and therefore in Mr Blair.
Now, Jackson, the former actress and old Labour stalwart, is no friend of Blair, But she is respected and more importantly, Blair senses real trouble as well.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has signalled his readiness to listen to voter concerns after the Liberal Democrats seized one of Labour's safest seats in a key north London by-election.
Sarah Teather won the Brent East poll by more than 1,100 votes, overturning a 13,047 majority and marking Labour's first loss of a Commons seat in a by-election for 15 years.
The by-election, which saw London MEP Robert Evans knocked in to second place with 7,040 votes, compared with Ms Teather's 8,158, sent shock waves through the New Labour leadership.
The significance of this defeat would be as if a Republican won the Congressional seat from Cambridge, MA or Berkeley, CA.
Since then they have received higher ratings in the opinion polls than in previous years. But Brent East is hardly natural territory for them and they will have to dig in deep if they are to resist the 2.7% swing that Labour needs in order to win it back at the next election.
For Labour there is no disguising the damage that comes from losing one of your safest seats in the country.
His 1997-2001 government was the first in half a century not to lose a by-election to the Opposition and Labour has dominated the opinion polls for over 10 years.
But in recent months, his ratings on trust among the public have collapsed, many of his MPs are increasingly unhappy with various policies he is pursuing, and the trade unions are threatening to challenge his hold over the party.
Blair's war is deeply unpopular with the British people as are his domestic policies. What's even worse for Labour is not just that they lost the seat, but that their voters stayed home and those who came out, voted LibDem. The fear is starting to spread. With the unions tired of the Blair highhandedness with their money and the average citizen tired of the war, things are looking down for Labour. It might be time to toss the Smiler aside to save the party.
Once upon a time, when these things happened in a far off land, the residents picked up weapons and killed the people doing it. They were so offended by the practice, they wrote it into their laws, so no soldier could just burst into their home without cause.
"What are they doing? Who are they taking?!" I asked no one in particular, gripping the warm, iron gate and searching the street for some clue. The area was awash with the glaring white of headlights and spotlights and dozens of troops stood in front of the house, weapons pointed- tense and ready. It wasn't long before they started coming out: first it was his son, the 20-year-old translation student. His hands were behind his back and he was gripped by two troops, one on either side. His head kept twisting back anxiously as they marched him out of the house, barefoot. Next, Umm A., Abu A.'s wife, was brought out, sobbing, begging them not to hurt anyone, pleading for an answer- I couldn't hear what she was saying, but I saw her looking left and right in confusion and I said the words instead of her, "What's going on? Why are they doing this?! Who are they here for?"
Abu A. was out next. He stood tall and erect, looking around him in anger. His voice resonated in the street, above all the other sounds. He was barking out questions- demanding answers from the troops, and the bystanders. His oldest son A. followed behind with some more escorts. The last family member out of the house was Reem, A.'s wife of only 4 months. She was being led firmly out into the street by two troops, one gripping each thin arm.
I'll never forget that scene. She stood, 22 years old, shivering in the warm, black night. The sleeveless nightgown that hung just below her knees exposed trembling limbs- you got the sense that the troops were holding her by the arms because if they let go for just a moment, she would fall senseless to the ground. I couldn't see her face because her head was bent and her hair fell down around it. It was the first time I had seen her hair- under normal circumstances, she wore a hijab.
That moment I wanted to cry- to scream- to throw something at the chaos down the street. I could feel Reem's humiliation as she stood there, head hanging with shame- exposed to the world, in the middle of the night.
One of the neighbors, closer to the scene, moved forward timidly and tried to communicate with one of the soldiers. The soldier immediately pointed his gun at the man and yelled at him to keep back. The man held up an 'abaya', a black cloak-like garment some females choose to wear, and pointed at the shivering girl. The soldier nodded curtly and told him to, "Move back!". "Please," came the tentative reply, "Cover her-" He gently put the abaya on the ground and went back to stand at his gate. The soldier looking unsure, walked over, picked it up and awkwardly put it on the girl's shoulders.
.......................
The house was ransacked… searched thoroughly for no one knows what- vases were broken, tables overturned, clothes emptied from closets…
....................
Abu A. hasn't come back yet. The Red Cross facilitates communication between him and his family… L. no longer walks down our street on Fridays, covered in chocolate, and I'm wondering how old he will be before he ever sees his grandfather again…
A serving US soldier calls for the end of an occupation based on lies
Tim Predmore
There is only one truth, and it is that Americans are dying. There are an estimated 10 to 14 attacks every day on our servicemen and women in Iraq. As the body count continues to grow, it would appear that there is no immediate end in sight.
I once believed that I was serving for a cause - "to uphold and defend the constitution of the United States". Now I no longer believe that; I have lost my conviction, as well as my determination. I can no longer justify my service on the basis of what I believe to be half-truths and bold lies.
With age comes wisdom, and at 36 years old I am no longer so blindly led as to believe without question. From my arrival last November at Fort Campbell, in Kentucky, talk of deployment was heard, and as that talk turned to actual preparation, my heart sank and my doubts grew. My doubts have never faded; instead, it has been my resolve and my commitment that have.
My time here is almost done, as well as that of many others with whom I have served. We have all faced death in Iraq without reason and without justification. How many more must die? How many more tears must be shed before Americans awake and demand the return of the men and women whose job it is to protect them, rather than their leader's interest?
Jowell warns of radical changes in purpose and funding by 2006
Matt Wells, media correspondent
Friday September 19, 2003
The Guardian
The BBC is to be subjected to the most wide-ranging review of its role in its 80-year history, amid a growing clamour for the abolition of the licence fee and a curb in the powers of the corporation's governors.
Tessa Jowell, the culture secretary, yesterday signalled the start of a "root and branch" review of the BBC's purpose and funding with a guarantee that its independence from government would be preserved.
But she gave a stern warning that the BBC cannot expect to continue in its present form when its royal charter is renewed in 2006.
Ms Jowell left open the possibility that the role of the governors, who have attracted criticism for giving near-unequivocal backing to the BBC's executives over the Kelly affair, could be the subject of fundamental reform.
She also said the review of the BBC's charter would cover the licence fee - abolition of which she has previously described as "somewhere between improbable and impossible".
And of course, this has nothing to do with the beating awaiting the Blair government from the Hutton inquiry. Hell, the need to alter the BBC comes just before what is likely to be Blair's greatest political defeat and the begining of the end of his career.
Polly Toynbee nails the BBC's enemies in the Guardian
For an indicator of what is to come, study Tessa Jowell's current review of the BBC's brilliant and world-beating online service. If she listens to false arguments about "unfair" online competition and cuts it back, then fear the worst for the BBC's future governance under its 2006 charter. Her promise of a "radical and wide-ranging review" of the charter was ominous in the context of these times. She hastened to deny any threat, but it lingers in the air none the less.
The Tories have their own agenda. John Whittingdale, working with David Elstein, long-time Murdoch man and BBC enemy, is framing a manifesto promise to halve the licence fee, leaving the BBC with only public service programmes. The American PBS subscription model is Rupert Murdoch's dream scenario. Meanwhile, the perennial poison of Gerald Kaufman, who chairs the culture, media and sport select committee, knows no bounds; he has just put down an early-day motion calling for the head of Greg Dyke, the BBC director general, along with "resignations and dismissals at every level". So why did the prime minister effectively reappoint a BBC-hater to oversee broadcasting in the Commons?
Is the BBC blameless? Of course not, but considering the prevailing stink of most journalism, it has probably over-done the hairshirt mea culpas. After all, the essence of Gilligan's story was true. The dossier was fundamentally flawed, and intelligence officers were saying so. Kelly was a high-level source who saw how the text was strengthened, even if he was not quite right to finger Campbell directly. But the inquiry has shown how paper-thin was the difference between John Scarlett doing his political masters' bidding, and the masters doing it themselves. Meanwhile, Hans Blix has confirmed that this dossier was plain wrong; Saddam had peashooters. Gilligan's errors are less important than the substance of his report, which was correct - and revelatory.
But the BBC is not blameless and lessons are already learned. The governors will not take reporters' assurances at face value in future. Journalists will be banned from writing for newspapers. Gilligan's article in the Mail on Sunday was a damaging liability, as are John Humphrys writing for Murdoch and all the others who imperil the BBC's name in the ferment of a politicised press. Also the BBC, too, often joins the unthinking cacophony of abuse and bullying of politicians; in the din of mindless attack-journalism it has to stay analytical, serious and trustworthy. But these are all slippages easily repaired with firm editorial control. None of what has happened cries out for radical reform. The greatest danger is that the government thinks that it does - either in a red mist of revenge, or simply out of that age-old fidgety habit of making change for change's sake.
When next annoyed with the BBC, just turn to its website and gaze upon news in 43 languages, news that is more read than on any other website in the world. Or the CBeebies site for children. Look up anything at all and savour the tone of authority, balance and depth. In the end, the BBC's strength depends on enough people putting aside personal irritations with it to make sure no one dares harm a digital, online or terrestrial hair on its head
Let's not mince words: it's political payback. Murdoch wants the good shows, Labour wants revenge. Why? Well, because things are not going well.
I think the British press has underestimated the anger the people feel towards Blair and his war. A lot.
Lib Dems seize Brent East victory
The Liberal Democrats have snatched one of Labour's safest seats with a victory in a key north London by-election.
Their candidate Sarah Teather won the Brent East poll by more than 1,100 votes, overturning a 13,047 majority and marking Labour's first loss of a Commons seat in a by-election for 15 years.
London MEP Robert Evans received 7,040 votes compared to Ms Teather's 8,158, while the Conservative candidate, local councillor and nurse Uma Fernandes, was beaten into third place with 3,368 votes.
The 29% swing from Labour to the Liberal Democrats is the largest for almost a decade, and is being described by commentators as one of the most stunning turnarounds in British electoral history.
Losing safe seats is a bad thing. As people will find out next year in the US.
Sept. 17, 2003 | International laws and treaties do not prohibit Virginia from executing juveniles, a judge ruled Wednesday in the case against teenage sniper suspect Lee Boyd Malvo.
Defense lawyers had argued that an overwhelming consensus of foreign nations and certain international treaties combined to bar the execution of people under 18 at the time of their crime.
"The world has spoken. This isn't a close call. This is the world against us," said defense lawyer Craig Cooley. "Some things are so absolutely abhorrent to humanity that it is simply unacceptable. We are at that point when we talk about the execution of children."
Yes, killing children makes perfect sense. Justice delayed is justice denied. If they can get teenagers killed in Iraq, why not in Virginia. So what if no other civilized country does it? He's no better than a 14 yo Iraqi getting cigarettes, is he?
Why the Post missed the war Post executive editor Leonard Downie Jr. denies any such transformation, saying "nothing is done differently now than before." But Getler, and other Post insiders, disagree. Getler says the Post, like the rest of the press (but with a more significant impact, since it is the most closely watched barometer of the politics and mood in Washington), failed to capture adequately the transition from Osama and Afghanistan to Saddam and Iraq, a move that drastically increased dissent across the globe. "The Post is not biased," Getler says, "but in the summer of 2002 up through [the start of war in Iraq], they were not alert enough, early enough, to dissenting voices."
Downie attempts to justify the paper's prewar shortcomings on the grounds of lack of sufficient clarity and resources. "We had so much to report on all at once in the buildup to war," he says. "Now, we have an ability to focus on fewer issues because many prewar issues [such as military deployments, UN resolutions, etc.] are no longer timely." But these comments betray the work of his own national security reporters. They had the goods, but the Post editors chose not to display them.
Pincus, 70, who honed his skills and skepticism during his years reporting on Watergate and Iran/contra, blames a pack mentality and desire to please for the decision to bury his stories before the war began. "The Post was scared," Pincus says. "I believe papers ought to crusade when we're on to something." Later, he says, when things started going badly, editors were more willing to print pieces critical of the Administration. "This is a country in which it doesn't matter what you say if you succeed," he says. "But if you fail, people go back and look at why."
On August 10, Pincus and reporter Barton Gellman wrote a 5,663-word front-page report that will likely be considered the magnum opus of the intelligence fiasco, "Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence." In painstaking detail they summarized and revealed how Bush, Cheney et al. "made allegations depicting Iraq's nuclear weapons program as more active, more certain and more imminent in its threat than the data they had would support." Pincus says the attention focused on the article, and the dozens preceding it, show the impact a Post story can have once it hits the front page.
This is the benign version of reality.
The fact is that the Post editorial page supported the war. Jim Hoagland was a bigger cheerleader than Tom Friedman. The editors didn't even read their own reporters. Tom Ricks, Rick Atkinson and Anthony Shadid were writing story after story about the war and the editorial page ignored them. Shadid speaks fluent Arabic. From his stories from before the war, it was clear that things were going to go differently than they did. Yet, the editors, led by publisher Donald Graham, swallowed the kool aid. Their reporting on the combat has only been matched by the LA Times and Independent, but they didn't match that with what ran on the editorial page.
Even now, Shadid's reporting, to anyone with a clue, should be frightening. Parents executing kids, wide spread support for the resistance, a frightening gap between American perceptions and Iraqi realities. Yet, Hoagland and the opinion writers still ignore the darker implications of his work and Tom Ricks reporting on the Army. Among which is that Iraqis have not accepted the occupation in any way, shape or form.
Bush had intimidated the Post and the other mainstream media looking to avoid a fight with a winner. Which is how they could all stand there and watch Bush ignore Helen Thomas at his last press conference before the war. Now, that Bush has all the marks of his lifelong failure continuing, they're begining to do their jobs. Not nearly well enough, but they're starting.
Yet not one major news organ, either in the US or UK, has questioned a central assumption: the ability of the US to stay in Iraq over a year. The French, Germans and Russians have classified memos clearly examining US ability to maintain force levels in Iraq. And one can assume that the numbers do not wash. Why else would the French say "hold elections in a month"? To be persnickety? I doubt it. I think they have hard numbers and they do not like what they add up to. And instead of taking this offer, they sneer at them. Remember, France and Iraq had strong relations throughout most of the last 50 years. They have a clear idea of what is going on there. No one wants to say, given how Bush and Rumsfeld react to even the slightest bad news, "Iraq is a wash. The minute the Shia turn on you, its over. Give the country to someone and get the hell out." But that is their conclusion. That explains their actions clearly.
Until the US papers not only investigate the utter failure of Halliburton to supply the troops, a scandal unlike any since the Spanish-American War, but the actual ability of US forces to function in the field, the pretense that we'll get help or our new Iraqi Army will help, we'll be spinning our wheels. The fact is that the Iraqis are getting better each day and we aren't.
NYSE Ousts Grasso as Chairman
Size of Pay Package Drew Wide Criticism
By Ben White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page A01
NEW YORK, Sept. 17 -- Dick Grasso, who worked his way up from a clerk's job to become the powerful head of the New York Stock Exchange, was forced to step down today in the face of mounting criticism of how much he was paid.
Grasso resigned as chairman and chief executive after board members participating in a conference call voted 13 to 7 to ask him to leave, to help restore investor confidence in the world's largest stock market. He had fought for more than two weeks to preserve his job after the exchange for the first time disclosed his pay package -- which included a lump-sum payment of nearly $140 million.
.........................
The rapid fall of a man who only weeks ago was among the most powerful and respected leaders in the financial world has opened a larger debate about whether the NYSE needs to make major reforms in its practices and oversight.
Grasso's departure, two years to the day after he helped the NYSE reopen after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, caps a controversy that erupted on Aug. 27 when the exchange disclosed that the chairman would receive $139.5 million in deferred compensation, mostly covering the past eight years.
The pay package, unusually large even by Wall Street standards, was criticized by shareholder activists who said it called into question Grasso's independence as a federally chartered regulator of the securities industry and enforcer of governance standards on NYSE-listed companies.
Greedy Dick was an excellent manager, but he got caught taking too much from the till. Even so, he gets to keep the cash as a parting gift. But the thing which sealed his fate was a $5m bonus he got for opening the exchange after 9/11. That was seen as an insult to many, many New Yorkers and fueled local outrage.
During his years at the exchange, Mr. Grasso worked hard to burnish its image as an icon of United States capitalism and as a place where even the smallest investor can buy a share of the American dream and be treated fairly.
Yes, and that worked out really well, didn't it.
During Grasso's reign, he held the city up for $900m to build a new exchange building, only to back down after 9/11, figuring a 90 story tall building might be um, a target for nogoodnicks. Too bad the city was $100m on the hook and won't be getting that money back. It was amazing that he remained silent as former SEC head Arthur Levitt screamed about the potential for losses during the spate of companies going public. He was too busy counting the money. Nor did he have much to say as companies foisted knowingly fraudulent analysis in deals everyone knew was driven by the need to make deals, regardless of the fate of investors. The internal corruption at the NYSE which took place under Grasso's nose has undermined the economy.
The problem is that Greedy Dick was taking too much money and was too impressed with himself as people were becoming revolted by excessive "executive compensation". He took $140m, which is more than many successful companies make in profit. His base salary was more than the exchange made last year, $31m. Grasso seemed to have incredibly poor judgment when it came to his salary. In an era where stock owners have taken a bath as CEO's have gotten richer, cashing out is deemed to be tacky. especially at those levels.
When the pension fund managers of NY and California demanded his resignation, Greedy Dick's days were done. They are the most powerful public voices on the exchange and you ignore them at your peril. Greedy Dick's income was too much for them to bear and it was their fiduciary responsibility to demand he take a hike. Not that the traders on the floor were happy with him or the board which stuffed his pockets with cash. Not that they're going anywhere, any time soon.
The NYSE has to change their management methods and this is the wedge which will allow it to happen.
Note: The culture which spawned Grasso is one which has become the last bastion for the New York ethnic white male with a less than complete college education. It is the home of the sea of NYU and Fordham business school students. While black and latino professionals went to work for government and the Fortune 500, ethnic whites took over the floor of the exchange.
During World War II, the floor opened demographically, like much of society. War-bound blue bloods grudgingly handed the reins over to Irish and Italian Catholics and Jews. Gail Pankey got her job sight unseen in 1972, when her married name was O'Connor. She began, like many newcomers, as an exchange employee, passing messages around the floor in the days before computers. She eventually became a two-dollar broker.
On her first day as a seat holder in 1992, she arrived to find her desk drawers filled with Parmesan cheese that had dried like concrete and smelled from 12 feet away, she said. She was unable to trade for hours, as carpenters rebuilt her booth. The next month, her phone lines were cut, forcing her to shut down for two days, she said, adding that she did not file a formal complaint for fear it would hurt business.
Her life got harder when profits started slipping on the floor. To keep her from doing business, she said, members often called in the regulatory side of the exchange to examine her books. Brokers can be audited once a year, with due cause. She was audited three times a year, she said. Each time it meant essentially closing up shop so that officials could pore over paper work.
"I couldn't get work done," she said. "I sent a letter to the exchange saying, this is harassment -- stop it. It stopped. I had several people in market surveillance apologize and say I'm only following marching orders."
Exchange spokesman Richard Adamonis said, "Gail's an upstanding person. If she said it's true, I have to believe it's true." He said that the audits were not documented because no formal complaint was brought against her.
As Ms. Pankey grappled with leaving the floor a few years ago, Mr. Grasso took her to Il Mulino, the Greenwich Village restaurant where he ate Thursday nights. Ms. Pankey said she told him that unfair treatment by other brokers was getting worse because they were fighting hard to help each other through the slump. Though Mr. Grasso was very supportive, Ms. Pankey said, she decided to quit anyway.
The exchange does not keep figures on how many minorities work on the floor. But officials acknowledge the sea of white men with short-cropped hair. Of the exchange's 1,500 administrative jobs, 31% are filled by minorities and 43% are held by women, with some overlap.
"It would be inaccurate to say that the floor reflects the demographic of society," Mr. Grasso said in an interview earlier this summer. "We set an example and hope that they will parallel it."
With televisions installed on the exchange's floor, the outside world could see both the chaos and the sea of white, male faces. Mr. Grasso wanted more women and minorities in that crowd, but he had no say about whom member firms hired as brokers. He cracked down on harassment, focusing on what the exchange's rule book calls "indecorous behavior," forcing traders to project a more sophisticated image.
Mr. Grasso tried to make the rollicking floor more presentable. The funny-hat parade, traditionally led by a trader banging a tin drum, is gone. It went the way of bad tie day. No more chiding, "it's snowing in New York!" after someone's just-shined shoes get sprinkled with talcum powder. Nor may members humming the theme song from "Jaws" to the trader who hasn't a clue that his pals have affixed a shark picture to his back. Penalties for curse words range from $250 to $1,000.
Wounded Soldier Becomes a Citizen After Giving a Lesson in Courage
By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, September 18, 2003; Page C01
Army Spec. Hilario Bermanis officially became an American yesterday at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, proudly raising his right arm to take the oath of citizenship. It is the only limb he came back with from Iraq.
Bermanis, a native of Micronesia serving in the 82nd Airborne Division, lost his left arm and both legs in June when he and a fellow paratrooper guarding a cache of weapons in Baghdad were attacked with rocket-propelled grenades. Bermanis's squad mate was killed instantly.
While he had already fulfilled one of the obligations of citizenship with his time in Iraq, Bermanis, 21, pledged to serve nonetheless: "I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, and I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law. . . . "
I'm in tears reading this. There isn't really much to say .
Poor Tom Friedman. It must be tough to watch your position as the leading paper's leading columnist fall before your very eyes. It must say a lot that a part time writer, economics professor Paul Krugman, is now your full-time employers most read and most important columnist. That Bob Herbert gets all the credit for exposing a racist drug fueled witch hunt in Texas. Even Maureen Dowd knows when to switch boats. Then Nick Kristoff, of all people, helps nail Bush on a major foreign policy lie. There you are, with the increasingly doddering Bill Safire and the trivial David Brooks on the wrong side of the war. What can you do? Admit error? Realize you're just dead wrong?
Your plan on being on the inside of foreign policy, like Ted Koppel was so long ago with Henry Kissinger, just fades away. The stinging rebuke of Jessica Matthews on Oprah, was just the first of many to come your way. Now, you even have to be mocked by Modo, who picked on a little girl for an act Dowd was quite familiar with.
Even a comedian's views on government is taken more seriously than yours. It must lead to writing really stupid, laughably stupid things to gain attention. Just remember, Paul Krugman has tenure, no one cares if he gets fired.
You know, I think he spelled Saudi Arabia F-R-A-N-C-E. So when you read France, substitute Saudi Arabia and this might make sense.
It's time we Americans came to terms with something: France is not just our annoying ally. It is not just our jealous rival. France is ecoming our enemy.
Yes, French subs lurk off the coast and French advisors now tell the Taliban how to fight Americans. French millionaires are flooding Iraq with money to oppose Americans and one of France's richest families is backing Al Qaeda, which is French for "we hate America".
If you add up how France behaved in the run-up to the Iraq war (making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war), and if you look at how France behaved during the war (when its foreign minister, Dominique de Villepin, refused to answer the question of whether he wanted Saddam or America to win in Iraq), and if you watch how France is behaving today (demanding some kind of loopy symbolic transfer of Iraqi sovereignty to some kind of hastily thrown together Iraqi provisional government, with the rest of Iraq's transition to democracy to be overseen more by a divided U.N. than by America), then there is only one conclusion one can draw: France wants America to fail in Iraq.
One might conclude that France thinks we WILL fail in Iraq and that Bush's plans are the mark of the insane. And consiering far more French speak Arabic than Americans, they have a sound reason for avoiding a war in Iraq.
France wants America to sink in a quagmire there in the crazy hope that a weakened U.S. will pave the way for France to assume its "rightful" place as America's equal, if not superior, in shaping world affairs.
If this is the case, the French plan is going ahead beautifully.
Yes, the Bush team's arrogance has sharpened French hostility. Had President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld not been so full of themselves right after America's military victory in Iraq — and instead used that moment, when the French were feeling that maybe they should have taken part, to magnanimously reach out to Paris to join in reconstruction — it might have softened French attitudes. But even that I have doubts about.
Yes, because, oddly enough, Iraq was no threat to the west.
What I have no doubts about, though, is that there is no coherent, legitimate Iraqi authority able to assume power in the near term, and trying to force one now would lead to a dangerous internal struggle and delay the building of the democratic institutions Iraq so badly needs. Iraqis know this. France knows this, which is why its original proposal (which it now seems to be backtracking on a bit) could only be malicious.
Or just what every Iraqi says in English and Arabic every day across the world media and on the Internet and even to the State Department. The exact view from Chalabi to Hakim to the Sunni clerics.
What is so amazing to me about the French campaign — "Operation America Must Fail" — is that France seems to have given no thought as to how this would affect France. Let me spell it out in simple English: if America is defeated in Iraq by a coalition of Saddamists and Islamists, radical Muslim groups — from Baghdad to the Muslim slums of Paris — will all be energized, and the forces of modernism and tolerance within these Muslim communities will be on the run. To think that France, with its large Muslim minority, where radicals are already gaining strength, would not see its own social fabric affected by this is fanciful.
It seems Tom has forgotten that our French enemies have much experience in dealing with Islamic fundamentalism, or is the country of Algeria unknown to him. Algeria was so traumatic to France, it took 20 years just to show the Battle of Algiers, and an honest conversation just began in the last two years. It isn't Operation America Must Fail, but Operation America took on too much and will fail. They know the difference and the consequences of failure.
If France were serious, it would be using its influence within the European Union to assemble an army of 25,000 Eurotroops, and a $5 billion reconstruction package, and then saying to the Bush team: Here, we're sincere about helping to rebuild Iraq, but now we want a real seat at the management table. Instead, the French have put out an ill-conceived proposal, just to show that they can be different, without any promise that even if America said yes Paris would make a meaningful contribution.
So Chirac could lose his parliamentary majority in the next election? Is he kidding? The war in Iraq is bitterly opposed by every remaining European country. Europeans have said no to our war in Iraq in massive numbers. No one is going to vote to bail us out of an adventure they opposed and refuse to take part in. France is serious, they're sayig leave, and not one of our other allies is lifting a finger to help. Even the Canadians refuse to send troops to Iraq. The Canadians. If the Canadians won't send troops, why should the French.
......................
Clearly, not all E.U. countries are comfortable with this French mischief, yet many are going along for the ride. It's stunning to me that the E.U., misled by France, could let itself be written out of the most important political development project in modern Middle East history. The whole tone and direction of the Arab-Muslim world, which is right on Europe's doorstep, will be affected by the outcome in Iraq. It would be as if America said it did not care what happened in Mexico because it was mad at Spain
Yeesh. What idiocy. The French will not spend billions to install Sadr or the Hakims as the new rulers of Iraq. If George Bush wants to, fine, but the French public and military have decided this will not work and will have no part of it.
What a sad, silly column. It must suck to be overshadowed by someone working part time.
I was watching Platoon the other night and got a feeling of deja vu. It was like watching the news, more or less. The pointless patrols and the combat.
Then I started to think of the music and oddly enough, all the standards seemed to be oddly relevant: Fortunate Son, We gotta get outta this place, The End.
It was as if they all had a creepy sort of meaning.
What music evokes our latest military adventure to you?
The makers of the bestselling video game Grand Theft Auto are being sued for more than £60m after two teenagers said they were copying its violent scenes when they killed a man.
The court case could help to decide the debate over whether violent video and computer games cause aggression in children. Grand Theft Auto and its three sequels are designed in Britain and have topped the UK and US games charts, selling more than 20 million copies in the past five years. The player acts the role of a street thug with 40 different weapons.
Points, ammunition and more weapons are awarded for completing missions that include stealing cars, crashing them, shooting pedestrians and other motorists, drug dealing and beating up prostitutes. The fourth in the series, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, quickly became the bestselling video game in history when it was launched last year, with 250,000 copies sold in the first two days.
The $100m legal action involves Joshua Buckner, 14, and his stepbrother William, 16, from Newport, Tennessee, who shot dead Aaron Hamel, 45, and seriously injured Kimberly Bede, 19, on 25 June.
It's unlikely to go far because of the First Amendment. Creators of art have extremely wide latitiude in what they can create. And since this game was targeted to adults, the plantifs have to show that the parents weren't culpable. The game makes it clear that the activities are criminal. It's named after a crime. So they have to explain how Sony and Rockstar Games targeted kids. This game is not marketed to kids, is not for kids and it is not the company's intention for kids to play it. It's easier to blame the game than the parents, when in reality, the kids should not have owned the game.
Proving this in court will be very hard to do. None of the studies are definitive, much less reliable and the First Amendment is pretty hard to face down
The State of Technology Shows at the Javits Center: Code Blew
Jen Runne is a friend of mine and a tech writer and editor. She's been around the NY internet business since it began a decade ago. Normally, we both attend the TechXNY Show, otherwise known as PC Expo. This is the largest technology show on the east coast and it is usually a gauge of two things, one, the new technology coming out for sale, two, the state of the entire industry. This does not make for happy reading, but hey, most things here don't.
Jen Runne here, typing from the press pavilion at the Javits Center. If you didn't know that this was the first day of the TechXNY-the newfangled name for PC Expo-I can't say that I blame you; someone apparently forgot to tell most of the exhibitors also.
This year's show is an odd blend of small software manufacturers pushing largely redundant products, a few big name category leaders pushing their top wares, and in an odd case of adding insult to injury, an enormous cadre of outsourcing companies.
The main thing that struck me was the lack of a crowd, and who actually did show up. My usual routine upon going to any Javits show is to first stop in at the press room to pick up a schedule. The first sign that there was something amiss was the sandwiches. As in there were still some left at 1:30 in the afternoon. The press room runs like clockwork at every show, and puts out a deli-style spread at 12:30 sharp. At a busy event, you'd think that they were giving away anti-radiation pills during a meltdown. I've seen stragglers make a messy "sandwich" out of soggy bread and the tired romaine lettuce that had been used as garnish on the cold-cut platters after showing up imprudently late at 12:50. After 20 minutes of messy power eating, the 15-minute-or-more wait for a computer usually began. Today, I don't think I saw more than 20 people up here at any one time-and I got a fresh sandwich, which I got to eat at my leisure at a workstation.
I then headed down to the exhibit area, half-expecting the crowd to have picked up after lunch. It hadn't. I could have done handsprings and cartwheels down the aisles without hitting anybody. Only one-quarter of the main floor was set up at all; the rest was cut off by divider curtains in an effort to make the place look less depopulated. I started by heading over to the rear of the room-the area usually set aside as the Nonprofit Ghetto. While the usual players were there, it was sad to see that the crowd wasn't even bothering to circulate back there. Usually, they can at least use flyers and free candy to get a few minutes of facetime with potential members, but this ploy didn't seem to be working. The only booth back there that did a roaring business was Phil Kaplan, aka Pud of F*ckedCompany. Believe it or not, he was actually selling copies of his book-as in making sales-and hawking his new line of private-label hot sauce, which was also moving quite briskly at $5 a bottle. To his credit, Phil looked great, and we had a fun chat-I got to tell him how much his book sucked as he laughed back at me while signing copies for $15 a go.
It was the only high point of the day. Any new products worth seeing had been shown the night before, at the press-only Digital Focus event. This is the premiere pre-season show for new consumer and business products, and it reminds me of the way that trade shows used to be about five years ago. Most of the exhibitors from the night before had opted to not get floor space at this show, which was probably a wise choice. The ShowStoppers post-show event-another press-only private exhibitor extravaganza-had been cancelled a few weeks ago. I headed back up to the front of the hall to see the Olympus, Xerox, and HP pavilions. The only surprise that I got there-they were all larger duplicates of their booths from Digital Focus-was the crowd. They must have left the "free exhibit hall" pass policy in place right up to the first day of the show. This was not the usual mix of suits, developers, and marketing types. About half of the attendees looked like they had wandered in off of the street during their lunch hours, except for the two or three homeless people that I saw on the show floor who presumably didn't have jobs and therefore no official break time. All of the registration was self-serve, so apparently these folks just walked in, printed up a badge for themselves, and strolled on in. I've seen professional trade show parasites before-people who come in just to grab Frisbees and T-shirts to sell on eBay-but it's been a while since I've seen someone START a show with four bulging Duane Reade bags. I know that this is technically a private event, open to the "qualifying public." I'm starting to wonder what the standard currently is to "qualify."
On the other hand, given the amount of space that was given over to overseas "outsourcing" companies, there may soon be more of an overlap between the homeless and tech workers than previously anticipated. Most of the mini-receptions, raffles, and "fair and balanced views of outsourcing" pep talks were being given by companies whose employee bases were entirely in Eastern Europe, the former USSR, or India. Apparently, even Nepal is getting into the game. One lone pro-technology-union organization bravely set up a tiny table near one of the larger foreign interests, where he was being politely ignored by his neighbors. Almost a third of the floor space of the entire show was taken up by companies extolling the cost savings of having someone else in another country replace your current worker base. I didn't take so much as a free candy from any of these booths, and I won't. I did not enter their raffles for bottles of Russian vodka or other exotica.
Before you start pointing at me and yelling "BIGOT," just remember this: "Global Business" means only one thing-companies get to move out of the States. Workers do not. Slashdot recently had an article that covered the travails of a man whose US job was replaced by an Indian outsourcing company. He point-blank asked said company if he could work for them, and was told point-blank that he could not be hired by then because he wasn't an Indian citizen. Now, if I took a few month's rent-about 4K, let's say-I think it's fair to say that I could do fairly well for myself living in Romania, or the Ukraine, or India-but you know what? I can't go there and start a business because I'm not allowed to.
Dear readers, please try to imagine a trade show in the European Union which devoted one-third of its floor space to US companies, whose sole pitch was "No more annoying month-long vacations or pesky health-care taxes! American workers will work for almost no benefits or perks, and for half the pay!!" Also imagine that this show was at least partially sponsored by the State. Keep imagining-because it ain't never gonna happen. To the best of my knowledge, we are the only country on Earth stupid enough to undercut our own core industries at the roots. Remember…companies get to move out of the U.S. Dell can outsource its tech help to India, and still enjoy massive tax breaks and the golden halo of being a "U.S. Company." The single parent in Des Moines who used to do second-shift tech help doesn't have the same transborder mobility. Note that all of this avoids the whole H1-B visa issue altogether-most of the outfits at the show today are companies whose employees are working overseas, in their home nations.
Dell, by the way, was not exhibiting any of its products, but was getting major brand advertising by co-sponsoring the Christina Foundation, a very worthy not-for-profit group that helps companies donate their old computers to charitable causes. Someone needs to remind Dell-and other industry leaders that outsource overseas-that charity truly begins at home.
I'm glad that I showed up-if nothing else, I needed to see today with my own eyes, because I wouldn't believe how bad it was otherwise. I only hope that today serves as some kind of wake-up call to those who would give any concession imaginable to keep high-tech industry alive in the States-you need stick as well as carrot in this formula, and obviously enough of the former isn't being used. Otherwise, there will be even less show at the show next year.
Any comments on this? Email me at jen at runne dot com.
Any comments on this? Email me at jen at runne dot com.
Note: The large number of outsourcing companies is surprising, because while foreign companies sold software and hardware in the past, few sold bodies. This is not the kind of thing which should inspire confidence in booming economy in the next year or so. American companies have become bottom-feeding scum and disciples of cheap labor conservatism. Henry Ford said he had to pay his workers enough to have them buy his cars. Too bad people forgot that simple lesson
Jon Stewart asked that rhetorical question last night after a rant about Darrel Issa whining about the stay of the California Recall. But it seems to be a much larger question.
CNN's John King just asked Bush if there was a link between Saddam and 9/11 and he just admitted there was no proof there was.
WHAT THE FUCK?
After months of conflating the two, combining the two, confusing the shit out of the American public on purpose, allowing a judge to conclude Iraqi links to 9/11 with scant evidence, now he says that there's no link?
What? The Atta story didn't hold up? Saddam funded Hamas, right? So he had to back Al Qaeda. There's Ansar-al Islam, they're Al Qaeda and they were technically in Iraq, even though Saddam didn't control that part of the country.
They have to be kidding.
They used 9/11 as a cudgel for every half-wit idea they wanted to pass and now they say ooops, all that leading language, sorry about that.
Every day, the Bushies lie and lie and then add new lies to their old lies and alter those lies to another set of lies and then modify those lies to conform to new lies. What political philiosophy is this? Orwellism? Even Nixon didn't lie like this. My God, they lie more than Clinton did when he had his dick in that girl's mouth. I mean, I've seen guys cheating on their wives lie less and lie more coherently.
The American people are not stupid. They may not care about politics, but they don't like being lied to. Hell, any campaign could Fisk Bush for weeks. And they lie in such a way which makes their truth telling repugnant. Oh, we have no proof that there's WMD or links to 9/11, but we'll find it. Yeah, and the dog ate my homework.
This technique of lying is usually called the Jedi Mind Trick, where you tell such a reality-altering lie, that if no one checks, they have no idea of the outrageousness of the lie.
The next thing will be the disappearance of David Kay, or as he shall be known "The man that never was". Josh Marshall says that report of his will never see the light of day, barring a congressional investigation. What Iraqi Survey Group, there is no Iraq survey group in Iraq, why would you say there is an Iraq Survey Group will be the new meme. Oh, of course we have evidence of planning, and that was the danger all along. It is preemeptive war.
Bush lies like an alcoholic, anything to prevent the intrusion of reality into his little world and his co-dependents are also liars. This is an outrageous level of conduct. Neither Nixon nor Reagan had such a blatent disregard for the fundamental truth of matters. They lied about their actions, not the reasons for their actions. They are lying so badly, so blatently, the media has to contradict them daily. In any other country, where politicians were not assumed to be liars, parliament would demand the whole lot be tossed out. This is a level of patent dishonest which should shock and awe the average American because of the consequences: 6000 dead, wounded and sick from Iraq. In less than six months, a $480B deficit. At every level, in every way, the Bush Administration is a group of pathological liars.
When Adolf Hitler dolled out spoils to his generals, he carved up vast tracts of Russia to give to them, like feudal estates. His plans for the Ukraine included vast land grants. The peasants would work the land for the German masters. Despite an initial acceptance of these plans, they later led to guerrilla warfare and a massive defeat of Army Group Center, one of the greatest military disasters in history.
The key to the Reich's plan was economic exploitation of the natural resources and peoples.
In that spirit, I bring you the following op-ed piece by Ted Rall
The Pentagon's rush to protect WorldCom from a scrappy Bahraini-based competitor, Batelco, which has built cell networks in the Middle East, has exposed yet another unholy alliance between corporate America and the Bush Administration. Demonstrating the brand of lightening-quick entrepreneurship traditionally treasured by free-market-loving Americans, Batelco raced into Iraq after the U.S. invasion and installed cell towers throughout Baghdad. With half of land lines out of service and Saddam's 1990 plan to build cell towers stymied by U.N. trade sanctions, Baghdadis welcomed the new service. But the CPA shut down Batelco and threatened to confiscate its $5 million of equipment. Now the CPA is now prohibiting companies more than 10 percent owned by foreign governments from bidding on civilian cell business in U.S.-occupied Iraq. That eliminates Batelco and most other Middle East-based telecommunications companies and, according to analyst Lars Godell of Forrester Research in Amsterdam, leaves MCI with "a head start."
Ordinary Iraqis, meanwhile, are back in the pre-Alexander Graham Bell era.
Companies like Vodafone, T-Mobile and NTT DoCoMo of Japan all have more experience of "setting up green field operations in developing countries [than MCI]," says Godell. He adds that the Bush Administration's decision not to seek competitive bids "confirms the worst suspicions" of European cellular companies. Fortunately for them, being American means never having to say you're sorry.
Old-fashioned influence-buying, coupled with inside-the-Beltway cronyism, is MCI's not-so-secret weapon in the fight over Iraqi spoils. As recently as June 2002, a week before the big accounting scandal broke, The Washington Post reported that WorldCom contributed $100,000 to a GOP fundraising gala featuring Bush--"enough to be listed on the program as a vice chairman of the event." Before becoming attorney general, John Ashcroft (news - web sites) cashed a $10,000 WorldCom check for his losing Senate race. And the University of Mississippi's Trent Lott Leadership Institute, named for the racist GOP Senator, received $1 million from WorldCom. With Republicans controlling Congress, the Supreme Court and the White House, WorldCom no longer needs to be an equal-opportunity corrupter
I am convinced that the 4 ID is run by a peculularly brand of inept officers. Only inept people would allow the following to reach the press.
The soldiers of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Regiment swear they have divine protection and say the easiest place to be attacked is in what they call "RPG alley."
The mile-long main street's two-story homes, cafes and furniture shops are daubed with "Saddam is our leader" graffiti and the road is holed by grenades.
But the young and middle-aged soldiers sit tall or stand up in their open Humvee vehicles along what has become Tikrit's front line, daring the anti-American guerrillas who have killed or wounded U.S. soldiers almost daily throughout Iraq to try their luck with them.
As the convoy slowly turns into the street, Lt. Col. Steve Russell ends the sports banter and the jokes about his major almost falling from the truck with a curt, "OK, guys, heads up." It is after curfew, and only the low hum of the engines and occasional animal squeal can be heard.
.................
For the convoy riders, their success is thanks to God.
The soldiers often explain they overcome their fear on patrol by reciting their officer's refrain: "We are immortal until God decides otherwise."
Russell, a 40-year-old teetotaler from Oklahoma with five children, strums hymns on a guitar before a sortie and reminds his men nobody has been wounded on one of his convoys.
A letter from his eight-year-old daughter inspires the commander. "Dear Dad, hope you kill the bad guys. Love, Patricia."
But it is his unswerving faith that drives him through RPG alley. "I truly believe we are protected by God," he said.
.......................
We are fighting darkness here, we are fighting the devil," he said. But not all the battalion's soldiers are believers.
After one RPG flew over his head, Specialist Ian Mastro asked to leave Russell. He volunteered for 12-hour overnight sentry duty so that he no longer has to leave the base.
With an unlit Marlboro hanging from his lips, Mastro, 25, retells how Russell jumped from his truck and strode straight into the middle of a well-lit intersection taunting the unseen assailants. "Is that all you got? Is that all you got?"
"I had to get out of there," Mastro said. "I can't deal with that whole being stupid sitting around trying to be shot at. Man, it was scary."
Russell is the same commander who shot up the Tikrit market, wounded and killing children while gunning down "gun dealers". Ok, now, this shit is a bit much. Not only is he convinced Jesus is on his side, he's "doing God's work". Because what happens when God turns his head, Allah gets his due? Religious mania is not uncommon in the military, but this guy is a piece of work. In most units, you would try to keep Col. Ripper away from the press, far, far away from the press. Not in the 4 ID. They send the reporters right to him, seemingly unaware how crazy this guy sounds.
Not because of his genuine belief in God. But because he taunts guerrillas, who are smart enough to not kill him on the spot. Although the whole God thing is overblown, he's far from the only commander who walks with Jesus. But the waiting around to be attacked? Yeesh. I hope he has plenty of purified water to protect his essence. Because he sounds like the kind of charismatic leader who is actually a wackjob in disguise.
Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the man Dick Cheney has never heard of writes this in an editorial:
President Bush's speech last Sunday was just the latest example of the administration's concerted efforts to misrepresent reality -- and rewrite history -- to mask its mistakes. The president said Iraq is now the center of our battle against terrorism. But we did not go to Iraq to fight Al-Qaida, which remains perhaps our deadliest foe, and we will not defeat it there.
By trying to justify the current fight in Iraq as a fight against terrorism, the administration has done two frightening things. It has tried to divert attention from Osama bin Laden, the man responsible for the wave of terrorist attacks against American interests from New York and Washington to Yemen, and who reappeared in rugged terrain in a video broadcast last week. And the policy advanced by the speech is a major step toward creating a dangerous, self-fulfilling prophecy and reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of the facts on the ground.
This is an insurgency we're fighting in Iraq. Our 130,000 soldiers in Iraq now confront an angry but not yet defeated Sunni Muslim population who, although a minority in Iraq, had been in power for a century. We are now also beginning to face terrorists there, but it is our own doing. Our attack on Iraq -- and our bungling of the peace -- led to the guerrilla insurgency that is drawing jihadists from around the Muslim world. The ``shock and awe'' campaign so vividly shown on our television screens has galvanized historic Arab envy, jealousy and resentment of the United States into white-hot hatred of America.
Where once there were thousands, now there are potentially millions of terrorists and sympathizers who will be drawn into this campaign.
We've seen other examples of the kind of insurgency we're now facing. One was in Afghanistan against the Soviets in the 1980s, and we all should know the end of that story by now. Bin Laden was one of the outside jihadists drawn into that battle; he emerged as the head of a group of hardened soldiers he called Al-Qaida.
It is perhaps not surprising that the administration is trying to redefine why we went to Iraq, because we have accomplished so little of what we set out to do -- and severely underestimated the commitment it would take to deal with the aftermath of war
WASHINGTON, Sept. 16 — New intelligence assessments are warning that the United States' most formidable foe in Iraq in the months ahead may be the resentment of ordinary Iraqis increasingly hostile to the American military occupation, Defense Department officials said today.
That picture, shared with American military commanders in Iraq, is very different from the public view currently being presented by senior Bush administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who once again today listed only "dead-enders, foreign terrorists and criminal gangs" as opponents of the American occupation.
The defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were concerned about retribution for straying from the official line. They said it was a mistake for the administration to discount the role of ordinary Iraqis who have little in common with the groups Mr. Rumsfeld cited, but whose anger over the American presence appears to be kindling some sympathy for those attacking American forces.
Other United States government officials said some of the concerns had been prompted by recent polling in Iraq by the State Department's intelligence branch. The findings, which remain classified, include significant levels of hostility to the American presence. The officials said indications of that hostility extended well beyond the Sunni heartland of Iraq, which has been the main setting for attacks on American forces, to include the Shiite-dominated south, whose citizens have been more supportive of the American military presence but have also protested loudly about raids and other American actions.
As reasons for Iraqi hostility, the defense officials cited not just disaffection over a lack of electricity and other essential services in the months since the war, but cultural factors that magnify anger about the foreign military presence.
No shit.
Repeat this sentence after me: we have no Iraqi allies.
The poor man, having embarked on the USS Bush, doesn't get that ship is sinking. The Bush folks are lying to the point that the American press calls them on it daily.
The current whopper is "we never linked 9/11 and Saddam", which is a lie of such striking porportions, I want to scream at my TV. The Labour regulars need to pay as much attention to this side of the pond as we are to theirs. Within the last two weeks, everyone is scattering from the President. The vice president spent an hour being called a liar on the nation's leading interview show.
The idea that there won't be any retreat from Iraq is insane. Just pure madness.
With many Labour activists and MPs predicting that the end of his six year premiership is in sight - along with Gordon Brown's inheritance - Mr Blair looks set to use his Bournemouth conference speech to dispel such talk. He may change tack, but not his strategic direction. The judgment reflects discussions inside No 10 on how best to renew the New Labour project after the past year's battering.
"Retreat would be an absolute disaster," Mr Blair has told aides. He has been persuaded that the cabinet and the wider party are mature enough in government to engage in serious debate and stay on course
...................
On Iraq, a relentlessly optimistic Mr Blair believes it will take at least six more months for the public to acknowledge that the invasion was the right course, partly as stability and self-government return to the country but also because the findings of the Iraq Survey Group will confirm the much-disputed weapons threat
But the party activists have had enough of this mess.
Tony Blair is heading for an embarrassing defeat over Iraq at Labour's annual conference as union leaders and constituency activists prepare to voice strong criticism of the war.
The prime minister will next week receive a foretaste of the assault when the TUC conference in Brighton condemns the invasion and calls for Britain's armed forces to be brought home.
A strongly-worded motion, to be moved by the left-led Transport and General Workers' Union with the backing of four smaller unions, will be passed overwhelmingly despite covert lobbying by Downing Street officials.
The composite motion "condemns the British and US governments' unilateral decision to wage war on Iraq" and calls on the government to "work through the UN for the withdrawal without delay of coalition troops and for control of Iraq to be given to the Iraqi people".
The tough line adopted at the TUC in Brighton is likely to be echoed in Bournemouth three weeks later at Labour's conference, when former cabinet ministers Robin Cook and Clare Short will lead the charge.
The British press, mainly because they've never seen a prime minister collaspe in their lifetimes, don't realize that Tony Blair is the modern Neville Chamberlain.
With all the nonsense about appeasement which was floated before the war, everyone rushed to cloak him into the mantle of Churchill, but instead, he has landed in the robes of Neville Chamberlain.
How?
Because he is one disaster away from being forced out. They trusted Chamberlain on Hitler, when Churchill screamed that he would have to be hunted like wild boar and devoured. Well, Blair trusted Bush on Iraq and the disasters keep piling up. If a large group of British soldiers are killed or if the CPA is successfully attacked in a way which cannot be hidden, how long could Blair truly survive? The British oppose this war in large numbers and no longer trust him. What act sends him over the edge? His simple belief in the rightness of his cause is charming, as is a devotion to a small pet. But when that pet turns on you and attacks, devotion can be seen as mania.
Iraq is a disaster to which Blair signed on for. It is not a complete disaster.....yet. But that day is coming.
Here's some free advice: when the New York Times tell you that you've been sued by the RIAA, don't answer their questions.
Why?
Because anything you say may be an admission of guilt. If you answer their questions and admit to owning downloaded music, you have made a prime facie admission of liability. You cannot talk your way out of this or offer to make a deal. Because even if you do, you could still be sued.
Why?
Because once you admit to ownership, you admit liability. You are telling the RIAA that you agree with their basic allegation that you have violated their rights.
See, I'm not a lawyer, but I read them and the basic issue is this: any admission leaves you in trouble, not only with the RIAA, but with every other party who has rights to the music, publishers, artists, songwriters, even a federal prosecution. Just because you settle with the RIAA, they cannot abrogate the rights of other parties. So all these single moms trying to cut a deal with the RIAA, based solely on the report of a newspaper, leave themselves open to legal action by any number of seperate parties. Also, your ISP could sue you for abusing their service.
If you find out you've been sued, say nothing until you are actually served. Don't admit ownership, knowledge or anything to anyone but your lawyer. And you will need one.
At the very minimum, contact the Electronic Freedom Foundation www.eff.org and get sound legal advice. Don't make a rash decision to settle, only to find out that an artist's or publisher's lawyer is flinging a suit your way.
Also, there is NO definitive ruling on the legality of copying music online. It is unclear if the music falls under fair use or not. Until a court decides, it is legally murky.
The RIAA has not helped matters by only suing those people with more than 1000 songs available. Is distributing 999 legal? Is owning 10,000, but making available 999 legal? There are serious legal questions here and you shouldn't volunteer to set legal precident by admitting guilt.
Since these suits are being filed against user names, many may be targeted against minors, non-users of the machines or other people not involved in the alleged tort. Also, many of the alleged "infringers" may already own copies of the music, thus giving them a legal right to own the song in any form.
You should not stop downloading, admit to anything or alter your activities until you seek legal counsel. You should act as if you are behaving legally and within the law until and unless a lawyer tells you otherwise.
And, when you talk to reporters after being served, do not admit to any questionable legal ownership. Don't say "the records cost too much" or "they make too much money." Instead say, "I believe I was acting under my rights to fair use, no differently than if I was recording a video or a concert off TV. I think the RIAA is infringing on my rights to fairly use music with this legal action."
If asked if its stealing, say "Until a court rules it's a crime, I believe it is a legal and fair use of the Internet and recorded music"
Don't argue the right to steal. There is no right to steal. Don't say you didn't know there was a legal question about the software. Argue the right of fair use and say digital files is no different than video tape or live recordings.
The minute you admit anything, you set yourself up for all kind of legal hassles. In most cases, most of the people sued are judgment proof, meaning they have no recoverable assets anyway. The RIAA, like an insurance company, wants to settle quickly. They do not care about your rights in the process. Signing on the dotted line could cause any number of subsequent legal hassles.
In the end, you may have to settle, but only do so with legal advice. You can't make a better deal than a lawyer and trying is stupid.
Baghdad Burning has a wonderful example of why the average Iraqi hates their exile relatives.
Shatha was full of self-righteous blabbering. She instantly lost any point she was trying to make by claiming that girls in Iraq were largely ignorant and illiterate due to the last 30 years. She said that Iraqis began pulling their daughters out of school because non-Ba'athists weren't allowed an education.
Strangely enough, I wasn't a Ba'athist and I got accepted into one of the best colleges in the country based solely on my grades in my final year of high school. None of my friends were Ba'athists and they ended up pharmacists, doctors, dentists, translators and lawyers… I must have been living somewhere else.
Every time Shatha was onscreen, I threw used tissues at her. She feeds into the usual pre-war/post-occupation propaganda that if you weren't a Ba'athist, you weren't allowed to learn. After 35 years that would mean that the only literate, sophisticated and educated people in Iraq are Ba'athists.
Something you probably don't know about Iraq: We have 18 public universities and over 10 private universities, plus 28 technical schools and workshops. The difference between private and public colleges is that the public colleges and universities (like Baghdad University) are free, without tuition. The private colleges ask for a yearly tuition which is a pittance compared to colleges abroad. Public colleges are preferred because they are considered more educationally sound.
Arab students come from all over the region to study in our colleges and universities because they are the best. Europeans interested in learning about Islamic culture and religion come to study in the Islamic colleges. Our medical students make the brightest doctors and our engineers are the most creative…
In 6th year secondary school (12th grade), Iraqi students are made to take a standardized test known as the Bakaloriah. The students are assigned 9-digit numbers and taken to a different school with random examination supervisors to watch over the testing process. For 'science students' the subjects required for examination are math, physics, English, Arabic, chemistry, Islam (for Muslim students only), French (for students taking French), and biology. For non-science students, the subjects are Arabic, English, history, geography, Islam (for Muslims), math, and economics - I think.
As soon as we get our averages, we fill out forms that go to the Ministry of Higher Education. In these forms, you list the colleges and universities you would like to end up in, the first being the one you want most. I recall nothing on the form asking me if I was a Ba'athist or loyalist, but maybe I filled out the wrong form…
Anyway, according to the student's average, and the averages of the people applying to other colleges, the student is 'placed'. You don't even meet the dean or department head until after classes have begun. Ironically, the illiterate females Shatha mentions have higher averages than the males. A guy can get into an engineering college with a 92% while for females, the average is around 96% because the competition between females is so high.
What Shatha doesn't mention is that in engineering, science and medical colleges over half of the students in various departments are females- literate females, by the way. Our male and female graduates are some of the best in the region and many public universities arrange for scholarships and fellowships in Europe and America. But Shatha wouldn't know that…or I must be wrong. Either way, excuse me please, I am after all, illiterate and unlearned.
Among Arabs, only Palestinians approach the general level of education and respect for degrees that Iraqis have, although education is highly prized throughout the Arab world. Too many Americans confuse Iraqis with Afghans and the two places could not be more different.
I'm watching Bill O'Reilly whine about Al Franken, but he never mentioned the one thing he should have: the unprecidented publicity CNN gave Franken in his war with Fox and Blowhard Bill. He was on every news show, from the morning show with O'Brien and Puppethead, Aaron Brown, two days on Crossfire, Paula Zahn, Larry King and even Lou Dobbs.
Why did this happen?
Because he was shoving it hard and fast to their most hated rival, Blowhard Bill.
It's not anything anyone would ever admit to, but CNN
