Wednesday, December 22, 2004 Posted: 3:14 PM EST (2014 GMT)
LEXINGTON, Kentucky (AP) -- A teenager is suing her school district for barring her from the prom last spring because she was wearing a dress styled as a large Confederate battle flag.
The lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court claims the Greenup County district and administrators violated Jacqueline Duty's First Amendment right to free speech and her right to celebrate her heritage at predominantly white Russell High School's prom May 1. She also is suing for defamation, false imprisonment and assault.
"Her only dance for her senior prom was on the sidewalk to a song playing on the radio," said her lawyer, Earl-Ray Neal.
Duty, 19, is seeking actual and punitive damages in excess of $50,000.
She said she worked on the design for the dress for four years, though she acknowledged that some might find the Confederate flag offensive.
"Everyone has their own opinion. But that's not mine," she told reporters outside the courthouse. "I'm proud of where I came from and my background."
Duty, now a college student, said school officials told her before the prom not to wear the dress, but she didn't have another one and decided to see if administrators would change their minds.
Our little redneck was told beforehand that her ode to slavery dress violated the school's dress code. Yet, she wore it anyway. Tough shit. Schools have the right to keep order and her racist dress belonged outside the school. She knew that she couldn't wear it, knew it was racially offensive and didn't care. They should have ripped the damn thing from her and burnt it on the ground like other trash.
Dec. 30, 2004 | Washington -- Key measures of the level of insurgent violence against American forces in Iraq, numbers of dead, wounded and insurgent attacks, show the situation has gotten worse since the summer.
While those numbers don't tell the full story of the conflict in Iraq, they suggest insurgents are growing more proficient, even as the size of the U.S. force increases and U.S. commanders succeed in soliciting more help from ordinary Iraqis.
For example:
-- The U.S. military suffered at least 348 deaths in Iraq over the final four months of the year, more than in any other similar period since the invasion in March 2003.
____
--The number of wounded surpassed 10,000, with more than a quarter injured in the last four months as direct combat, roadside bombs and suicide attacks escalated. When President Bush declared May 1, 2003, that major combat operations were over, the number wounded stood at just 542.
-- The number of attacks on U.S. and allied troops grew from an estimated 1,400 attacks in September to 1,600 in October and 1,950 in November. A year earlier, the attacks numbered 649 in September, 896 in October and 864 in November.
U.S. commanders insist they are making progress, in part by taking the fight more directly to the insurgents. And they remain hopeful that more U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces will join the fight soon.
Some observers are more doubtful.
"The prospects in Iraq are grim," Dan Goure, an analyst at the private Lexington Institute think tank in Washington, said Thursday. He assessed the conflict as a standoff, with no clear indication that either side will achieve victory in the coming year.
"Neither side can truly come to grips with the other so far and defeat them," Goure said.
................
It almost certainly is the highest KIA total for any year since the Vietnam War.
U.S. deaths averaged 62 per month through the first half of the year. But since June 28, when U.S. officials restored Iraqi sovereignty and dissolved the U.S. civilian occupation authority, that average has jumped to about 78.
.................
On the brighter side, the U.S. military says ordinary Iraqis are beginning to speak up, making it easier for troops to uncover weapons caches and capture insurgents. That is true around Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq, according to the Marines.
"The atmospherics in and around Ramadi seem to show that the local populace is tired of the insurgents and their intimidation and violence," 1st Lt. Nathan Braden, spokesman for the 1st Marine Division, said in an e-mail exchange Wednesday
No, stupid, they're using the US to weed out rivals. They know those who rat out the resistance will be killed. We can't protect them. So guess who gets their cache found? The rivals.
I don't think it's a standoff when you can't use the roads. That's a big assed victory for the resistance. People need to say the US is losing and it's unlikely to win unless things change radically.
Okay, so maybe not a wild one (I wish!! My Mom's departmental chairperson bow-hunts these and we keep hoping he'll share...but I digress...). The one I picked up at the office is about 14 lbs, comes with the innards/neck, and is currently frozen as hard as granite. I just put it in the fridge to defrost, and will attempt to do something with it on Monday.
So far the game plan it to roast it (gotta get me a throw-away roaster--my Le Crueset roaster may not be wide enough) and then Cut it Up and Do Stuff With It.
Obviously, a lot of the meat is going to be re-frozen As Is, as I am just myself and can't eat all that turkey. Soup from the carcass/trimmings is also in the works.
Other than Turkey Sandwiches and Turkey Salad, I was thinking of variations upon Creamed Turkey and perhaps Turkey Curry. Remember, I have a lot of turkey, and can portion it out accordingly. I also have a Chicken Chilie recipe that can probably play well with cooked turkey, if I just cook up the sauce beforehand.
Alice Marshall sent this to me and since it was posted on her blog, I won't redact her name.
Keep in mind that we will be fundraising in the New Year. My soccer jersey collection needs more additions. And there is that Fragbox I need to challenge all the kool kids on the block. In that vein, here's a snarky reply to a PBS fundraising letter.
Oh yeah, while I won't tell people to give to Tsunami relief through me, a portion of the money raised in the next fundraising drive will be sent to various charities. Most likely, direct funds to bloggers in the region to help defray their costs.
Letter from Susan Richmond
Dear Ms. Marshall:
I’m tempted to say we’re at our wit’s end. But wit - like art, insight and drama - is one of those precious commodities we make it our business to keep in abundance at WETA TV and FM.
Perseverance is another. It has to be, because only one out of every 8 viewing and listening household is a member of WETA.
Surprised it is that high.
That’s a difficult ratio to accept because we are a membership-based station. In fact, WETA is one of the few community-licensed stations in the country. We truly depend on individuals like you. If we had only viewers and listeners but no members, WETA just wouldn’t be around.
All the more reason to respect the moral values of our community: due process, democracy and national security. Both the NewsHour and Washington Week in Review, produced by WETA, were complicit in the trashing of the grand jury process during the Whitewater and impeachment inquisition. Both were complicit by silence in the theft of Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004. Both have failed to adequately cover the well documented problems with electronic voting and voter suppression. Neither show could find anyone to say, on the air, that the betrayal of a CIA case officer was a heinous crime.
We wish we knew how to inspire you to join us.
Fire the apparatchiki and replace them with journalists.
If we haven’t already done so, perhaps this will do it:
Escalating program costs are threatening our ability to continue carrying all the programs you look for and enjoy on WETA. That’s because without your support, we can’t afford the five- and six- figure price tags of high-quality television and radio.
Economize, end nepotism, dump Unfiltered.
In addition we need to raise more than $5,000,000 this year to meet our programming and production budget.
During this time of great fiscal challenge to all in public broadcasting, the future of WETA lies more in your hands than ever before Ms. Marshall. That’s why we can’t stop asking you to become a member of WETA. Without you, we can’t continue to provide the outstanding programs you expect from us.
Since our inception in 1961, WETA has been a leading creative force in public broadcasting. In addition to the arts and entertainment programs we offer, we have a special niche in covering the day’s national and international news. Can you imagine PBS without THE NEWSHOUR WITH JIM LEHRER?
Yes!
Of course, today’s world, covering the news is more challenging than ever before - and it costs more too.
So how come bloggers like Dave Johnson and Steve Gilliard do so much better?
As our expenses soar, it becomes more and more difficult for us to continue providing the top-notch news coverage you’ve come to expect from WETA.
Top notch? Sock puppets for crony capitalism would be closer to the mark.
That’s why we need people like you to join - so WETA’s future will be as brilliant as our past.
CLEAR THE SKIES, MASTERPIECE THEATRE, MYSTERY!, ARE YOU BEING SERVED? and SKINWALKERS: AN AMERICAN MYSTERY SPECIAL are just a few in a long list of programs that make WETA the channel you turn to when you want the highest quality shows - ones you simply can’t find on commercial television.
And what would the Greater Washington area be like without WETA 90.9 FM?
Like WAMU 88.5, whose programming you duplicate.
With favorites such as MORNING EDITION
Favorite?! Morning Edition? How many members did you lose when you took away our lovely commercial-free classical music only to duplicate WAMU’s programming? At the time of the change it was announced that while classical music was popular with members, corporate donors preferred Morning Edition, even though Washington already had access to Morning Edition. You made your choice, bring back Mozart in the morning or go cry to your Philistine corporate donors.
A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION as well as CLASSICAL MUSIC, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
Given that All Things Considered has been infiltrated by operatives for Richard Scaife and Howard Ahmanson, perhaps it would be better to drop it.
and CAR TALK, 90.0 AM is an essential part of our community life.
In an election year like this one, WETA plays an even more important role in the Greater Washington community. Thousands of viewers and listeners tuned in for our acclaimed election coverage - comprehensive, unbiased and focused on issues rather than personalities. The lively and constructive debate we presented helped thousands of people stay involved and cast and educated vote.
Your election coverage was a study in the lies of silence, silence about Bush’s record as a deserter, silence about Sproul Associates conspiracy to suppress the vote, silence about all the things that matter.
WETA is one of 349 public broadcasting stations in America. But we are one of the most prolific stations when it comes to creating original TV programs:
THE NEWSHOUR WITH JIM LEHRER, REPORTING AMERICA AT WAR, IN PERFORMANCE AT THE WHITE HOUSE, JAZZ, WASHINGTON WEEK, AVOIDING ARMAGEDDON, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, THE BLUES, KEN BURNS’s, BASEBALL, ON STAGE AT THE KENNEDY CENTER: THE MARK TWAIN PRIZE, THE CIVIL WAR, SILVER SPRING: STORY OF AN AMERICAN SUBURB, MONEY HELP IS ON THE WAY: A JONATHAN POND SPECIAL FOR WETA VIEWERS, and WASHINGTON OPERA GALA.
Won’t you please join us as a partner in the WETA public broadcasting enterprise by becoming a member right now - and help us bring you more great programs in the future? Please let us know that we’ve earned your membership. If you do, WETA will never be at the end of its wit, wisdom, culture, variety or any of the programming you count on.
Sincerely,
Susan Richmond
Senior Vice President
P.S. At a time of great fiscal challenge to all in public broadcasting, the future of WETA lies more in your hands than ever before. Please share our future by joining with a gift of $35 or more. We need you. Send your support today.
A gift of $35 will generate $100 dollars worth of direct mail appeal. Dump your direct-mail contractor, they are bleeding you white.
Many readers ask me why I pick on the NewsHour and Washington Week. After all, aren’t all the other broadcast news operations much worse?
WETA is produced by our community, and reflects upon us. When Jim Lehrer or Gwen Ifill lie, and the Board of Trustees tolerate that lie, they are complicit. If we allow this to be done night after night, week after week, our community is complicit. I am not suggesting my readers refrain from contributing to WETA, far from it. I suggest that you let them know that you object to the corrupt nature of these shows.
Oh, I would. I would suggest you not send PBS a fucking dime until they air programming reflecting the concerns of people who give them money. NPR is totally useless and corrupt and PBS skates by with minimally effective newscasting. It isn't just the news shows which are corrupt. You have all manner of snake oil salesmen during their fundraising drives. Facelift in a bottle anyone? Gary Null? Come on. PBS doesn't have nearly the ethical standards it should and supporting it is pointless.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Three militant groups warned Iraqis against voting in Jan. 30 elections, saying Thursday that people participating in the "dirty farce" risked attack. All 700 employees of the electoral commission in Mosul reportedly resigned after being threatened.
The warning came a day after insurgents in Mosul, which has seen increased violence in recent weeks, launched a highly coordinated assault on a U.S. military outpost. The United States said 25 insurgents were believed slain and one American soldier was killed in the battle, which involved strafing runs by U.S. warplanes.
The United States, which has said the vote must go forward, has repeatedly sought to portray recent attacks that have killed dozens of people as the acts of a reeling insurgency, not the work of a force that is gathering strength.
The radical Ansar al-Sunnah Army and two other insurgent groups issued a statement Thursday warning that democracy was un-Islamic. Democracy could lead to passing un-Islamic laws, such as permitting homosexual marriage, if the majority or people agreed to it, the statement said.
"Democracy is a Greek word meaning the rule of the people, which means that the people do what they see fit," the statement said. "This concept is considered apostasy and defies the belief in one God — Muslims' doctrine."
Ansar al-Sunnah earlier posted a manifesto on its Web site saying democracy amounts to idolizing human beings. Thursday's joint statement reiterated the threat that "anyone who accepts to take part in this dirty farce will not be safe."
Insurgents have intensified their strikes against the security forces of Iraq (news - web sites)'s U.S.-installed interim government as part of a continuing campaign to disrupt the elections for a constitutional assembly.
The statements by the Sunni Arab-dominated insurgent groups seemed aimed at countering Shiite leaders' claims that voting in the election is every Muslim's duty. Shiites, who make up 60 percent of the population, hope to use the vote to power from minority Sunnis, who were favored under Saddam Hussein (news - web sites).
Iraqis will elect a national assembly that is to write a new constitution.
The Al-Jazeera satellite channel reported that all 700 workers for the electoral commission in Mosul resigned Thursday because they had been threatened and that Iraq's leading Sunni political party, the Iraqi Islamic Party, had withdrawn from the race.
If true, the move will severely hamper efforts to prepare for the vote in Mosul, which has been too dangerous for most work to even begin though the vote is now only a month away.
......................
"The fact of the matter is we're keeping the insurgents off balance and they're reeling backward. They're trying to come at us and we're giving it right back," spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Hastings said.
"The terrorists are growing more desperate in their attempts to derail the elections and they're trying to put it all on the line and give it all they can."
Yeah, so desperate that they can actually scare the shit out of the election workers.
If they were actually doing what they could, it wouldn't be just mess tents with human bombs inside. They are just ramping up, as I fear we will see at the end of next month.
Some of the most vivid descriptions of the devastation in southern Asia are on the internet - in the form of web logs or blogs.
Bloggers have been offering snapshots of information from around the region and are also providing some useful information for those who want to help.
Indian writer Rohit Gupta edits a group blog called Dogs without Borders.
When he created it, the site was supposed to be a forum to discuss relations between India and Pakistan.
But in the wake of Sunday's tsunami, Mr Gupta and his fellow bloggers switched gears.
Text report
They wanted to blog the tsunami and its aftermath.
One Sri Lankan blogger in the group goes by the online name Morquendi.
With internet service disrupted by the tsunami, Morquendi started sending SMS text messages via cell phone from the affected areas of Sri Lanka.
"We started publishing these SMSes," says Mr Gupta.
"Morquendi was describing scenes like 1,600 bodies washed up on a shore, and people burying, and burying and burying them. People digging holes with their hands. And this was coming through an SMS message.
"We didn't have visual accounts on radio or on TV, or in the print media."
Soon, thousands of web users around the world were logging on to read Morquendi's first hand accounts.
In one message, Morquendi wrote about a Sri Lankan woman who was running home with a friend when the wave hit.
"She was being swept away," Morquendi's message read. "She grabbed a tree with one hand and her friend with the other. She says she watched the water pull her friend away."
Mr Gupta says the power of Morquendi's text message blogs was palpable.
"He was running around, looking for friends, burying bodies, carrying bodies," Mr Gupta says of Morquendi.
"I can't even begin to imagine the psychological state he was in when he was sending us reports, and doing the relief work at the same time.
"He was caught between being a journalist and being a human being."
...................
In one of his latest posts, Heretic asks: "Have you ever seen fishing trawlers on the road? Ever seen a bus inside a house?
"Well," Heretic writes, "that was just the least affected areas - so you can just imagine - or can you?"
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 30, 2004; Page A15
BAGHDAD -- They want to be invisible, these young women at Baghdad University explained. They were sitting in a small group -- five students with pale head scarves pulled tightly around their somber faces.
They would not give their names. That would be crazy, they said. The whole point of wearing the scarves now was to be anonymous and unimportant, to avoid being singled out and followed, or kidnapped, or shot. It was more than a matter of blending in. It was a matter of disappearing into the landscape.
"I put on the scarf because I wanted to walk in the street without fearing someone will kill me or kidnap me," said one of the women. " I want to finish my studies. Without the scarf I cannot. I heard rumors about killing women without a scarf. Why should I risk my life?"
This is the new reality for many women in Iraq, Muslims and Christians alike. As the months have passed since the U.S.-led invasion, fewer women are daring to venture out without wearing a traditional Muslim head scarf, called a hejab in Arabic. In Baghdad, moderate Muslim women used to feel they had a choice whether to wear the scarf, even as religious oppression under Saddam Hussein grew over the past decade. Now, in many neighborhoods, it is hard to find a woman outdoors without a head scarf.
Conservative Muslims believe that women should cover their heads to hide their beauty and not tempt the men who see them. Such instructions are spelled out in the Koran, the Islamic holy book.
The practice of wearing head scarves varies widely throughout the Islamic world, from more secular countries such as Turkey where many women dress in the Western style, to strict religious societies such as Saudi Arabia where all women cover their heads and most of their faces in public.
In the past several years, an increasing number of Muslim women living in Western Europe have begun wearing scarves -- in some cases as a religious statement, in other cases because of pressure from other local immigrants.
Although Iraq is predominantly Muslim, for many decades its capital was a trendy, modern city. In the 1960s, women wore short skirts and blouses with low necklines. But their daughters say they do not have such freedom today. They blame a postwar insurgency bolstered by conservative hard-liners.
"Because of the current situation in the country, lack of security, the occupation and many other things, people started to look for a way to escape the terror," said Fadhil Shaker, a psychology professor at Baghdad University. "They want to hide or take shelter to protect themselves. For women, the scarf is the best way to protect them. Women believe the scarf will be the wall to prevent people from looking at them."
Before the war, Iraqi Christian women rarely put on scarves. There was no reason to do so, according to Christian women interviewed recently. Their religion did not dictate it, Muslims and Christians in Iraq got along peacefully and they said they felt no pressure to blend in. Even a few months ago, the sight of a Christian woman without a scarf or a Catholic nun in a habit was not uncommon in neighborhoods where Christians gathered.
But these days Iraqi society feels like it has lost its social compact, its religious tolerance, many of the women said. Christians feel singled out. Anyone associated with the Americans, any foreign military force or the interim government feels singled out.
Nada, a student who declined to give her last name, said the first day she went to college this fall, her mother rushed out of the house at the last moment and presented her with a scarf. She had never worn one.
Female students at Baghdad University now debate whether women should wear the scarves. Some wear them for religious reasons. But most who have recently adopted the practice have done so simply out of fear.
...................
"We cannot force people to believe in what we believe in," said Dalia, who is Muslim. "They even want the Christians to put on a scarf. Christians have their religion and convictions, which differ from ours. We cannot force them to do what we want. We want to have our country secured and stable, and I think forcing people to do what they don't want will add nothing but tension."
Dalia said she is one of the few women at her university who does not wear a scarf.
"The scarf has nothing to do with faith," she said. "I fear there will be time when we cannot walk in the street without head-to-toe abaya [the full black traditional dress] and a face cover. This will be the end of Iraq as a civilized country."
Another things that Iraqis have to thank Americans for.
OLYMPIA, Wash. -- After three statewide vote tallies and 58 nerve-racking days of waiting, Democrat Christine Gregoire was declared Washington's governor-elect on Thursday. But it may not be over.
"Less than two weeks from today I will take the oath of office as your next governor of the great state of Washington," an ebullient Gregoire told supporters at a Capitol news conference.
Gregoire's Republican rival, Dino Rossi, refused to concede and called for a new election. He also was exploring whether to contest the election in the courts or in the Legislature.
Rossi and the state GOP said they have discovered a discrepancy of more than 3,500 votes in King County, the state's largest, possibly pointing to fraud or mistakes that could have swung the ultra-close election.
"I think we need to examine what's right and what's wrong and let's expose it and see if we can correct it," he said at a news conference from his campaign headquarters.
Gregoire congratulated Rossi for running a strong campaign, and said it was up to him to decide when and where to concede. But she ruled out a brand new election.
"Do-overs" only occur in golf, and only during practice, she said. "This is not golf and this is not practice."
Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican, certified Gregoire, the three-term attorney general, as the winner of the closest governor's race in state history. She won a statewide hand recount by a scant 129 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast.
Reed, a veteran county and state election administrator, said he was "shocked and stunned" by just how close it was. The dependably Democratic state went for John Kerry and re-elected Democratic Sen. Patty Murray and six Democratic congressmen, and installed a Democratic Legislature.
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He said Wednesday that the election was hopelessly flawed and that the Legislature should authorize a new election.
"I do not feel like this has been a botched election," Reed told a Thursday news conference. But he said that because it was so close, any error discovered took on great significance.
"Nothing that I have been informed about rises to the level of fraud," Reed said. "There have been human errors. There have been mistakes. At this time there is nothing that appears fraudulent."
Still, he added, "If I were in Sen. Rossi's shoes I would do what he's doing" - researching to see if there were errors or illegal votes that rise to the level of challenging the outcome. He said he supports a revote only if the courts nullify the election.
Gregoire's campaign rejected the idea of a new vote and said Rossi should accept the newly certified tally.
"There is a process for determining a winner and that process is over," Gregoire's spokesman, Morton Brilliant, said Thursday. "Chris Gregoire will be inaugurated in two weeks."
He said it would be irresponsible to spend $4 million in taxpayer money on a new election "just because you don't like losing this one."
Dino Rossi lost. He needs to get over it. Just like we can't prove there was voter fraud in Ohio, despite deep suspiscions, he doesn't get a do over because he lost a close race. Bush was elected by 537 votes and we had to live with it. He lost by 129 votes and needs to get over it. Now.
Thursday, December 30, 2004 Posted: 9:06 AM EST (1406 GMT)
POINT PEDRO, Sri Lanka (Reuters) -- Already haunted by fears of a new tsunami or spread of disease, survivors picking through debris of entire towns to recover corpses at Sri Lanka's northern tip face a new danger -- floating landmines.
Nestled near a border dividing the north between government forces and Tamil Tiger rebels, the area around the small fishing village of Point Pedro -- devasted by giant tsunami waves on Sunday -- is now littered with plastic landmines uprooted by floodwaters.
"There are land mines spread all over. Many of them have moved, hundreds are floating," said Sinnathurai Kathiravelpillai, a district medical officer working near Point Pedro.
Mine disposal units estimate there are around one million mines scattered mostly around northern Sri Lanka, a legacy of a bloody two-decade civil war that killed 64,000 people until a ceasefire three years ago.
Landmines here are a part of life. Children grow up around road signs warning them not to play with them. Many areas are still cordoned off by yellow tape and skull and crossbones signs. Some residents hobble past on artificial limbs.
Demining teams, including several from abroad, are working in the north to create safe access for residents and aid convoys and have already cleared tens of thousands of mines.
The force of Sunday's giant waves -- which has killed nearly 23,000 in Sri Lanka and more than 80,000 across Asia and counting -- churned up sand and earth and residents saw hundreds of the mostly plastic devices bobbing on floodwaters.
.........
Jen
116,000 dead and counting...and yet one more thing to make this situation suck EVEN MORE...ambient floating LANDMINES that have been randomly deposited in the disaster zone..
In The Dark at the End of the Tunnel I asserted that the over all casualty rate of the Coalition against insurgents is in the range of 1:4, and that this, combined with the failure in creating an Iraqi security force indicates that the US is now at, or will soon reach, a military crisis point in the occupation.
For those who doubt the validity of running the numbers, the recent attack by rebels on a US firebase in Mosul provides a grim rebuttal.
I. By the numbers
In the attack as many as 50 insurgents attacked the US firebase, and they wounded 15 Americans, one of whom has since died from his wounds.
First let us look at casualty rates. Because the insurgents were attacking a firebase, it is likely that all 25 dead are guerilla fighters, at the low end would be that air support killed a few non-combatants. It is also likely that most of those who escaped are not casualties, in that they will not be lost to combat. The rebels, without medivac infrastructure, face a grim proposition where wounded means dead.
Under usual rates for insurgents, perhaps 12 of those who escaped were wounded and 10 would turn out to be casualties. Or between 20 and 35 casualties inflicted on the rebells.
For the US - given current trends of fatalities being approximately 15% of serious wounds gives an estimate of 6 US casualties as the low end. However, among 14 wounded, the casualty rate, one would expect 8 to be casualties on the ration of serious to non-serious wonds. Or a range of 7 casualties - 6 wounded 1 dead - as the low end expectation and 9 casualties on the high end.
This results in a range from a best case ratio of 35/6 = 5.8 and a worse case scenario of 20/9= 2.2 with a probable expecation of 4.
Now for the bad news, an occupying army losing at 1:4 against insurgents, in general, is treading water. They are not making any progress against the rebellion, and while they will be able to maintain power as long as they can recruit new troops, they are locked in what can be called "quagmire".
Now for the very bad news - most of the insurgent casualties, according to the army personnel statements made - were from the employment of "close air support". This means that ground soldier for ground soldier the rebels are far closer in combat capability to US forces than the numbers indicate.
Now for the extremely bad news - the rebels were engaged in a very dangerous offensive mission against a hard target. This was a high risk opperation, and it means that this casualty rate is what the rebels could execute if they were trying to push the US off the map. With 1:4 rates, that means that the rebels could push 100 US troops out of a city if they could mount between 500 to 750 offensively deployable rebels. These numbers are attainable for the rebellion at their current rates of recruitment.
II. Trap, Strike, Bleed, Shatter
The Mosul attack was a gamble for the insurgency, and its failure shows where they are on the spectrum of progress of guerilla war. The stages of a guerilla army are to trap, strike, bleed and shatter the occupation. The US is trapped in Mosul as a firebase, and the ambushes, such as the one on Wednesday, show that the rebels are able to execute strikes on US forces. The mess hall attack was proof that they could execute ambushes against troops "behind the lines", as they have ambushed Iraqi government security troops.
The over-run attempt was an attempt at a "shatter". It's failure indicates that the rebellion is not, presently, a threat to throw Iraq into turmoil, and "liberate" areas from Coalition control. Note I say coalition control. Because the situation with the Iraqi Government security forces is different. If the Coalition is treading water, the technical term for the Iraqi Security forces is "fresh meat". The very same guerilla attack which failed against the coalition, would have driven out an Iraqi security group.
The guerilla command, and it is clear that there is some nominal form of networked control, must take a great deal of satisfaction that ground for ground they can fight the best defenses in country, and are superior to the Iraqi security forces.
In short, only by US will, and the ability to sustain casualties to our core warrior class, is Iraq being held stable.
III. A Short History of Stupidity
The story of the US attempts to create an Iraqi security force are a festival of folly. From using Chalabi's unreliable "Free Iraqi Forces", to the disbanding of the Iraqi army, through appointing Samir Shakir Mahoud al-Sameadi, a man with no ability or experience organizing security forces - as the architect and then interior minister of the second generation of security forces, through the mismanagement of the pipeline security - which haas failed to prevent more and larger strikes against oil infrastructure - to the ineffective "Iraqi National Guard", slated to be disbanded early in January, months ahead of schedule. The entire story is a parade of bad decisions on top of which have been slapped some name meant to evoke World War II or Americanism - and instead have been motly assortment of mercenaries and raw recruits, lead by individuals who have little to no tactical, strategic, political or military understanding.
That the would be central government does not have an armed force at its disposal, that it cannot protect its own police stations, bases, recruiting and transportation centers, or even its heavily fortified green zone and oil infrastructure - indicates that the trend towards disassociation from it will continue. Indeed, the stage is ripe for an internal coup run by those who can at least recruit and train a force of "storm troopers".
The parallels to other post-colonial failures, particularly the Diem regime in Vietnam, will not escape commentators. The inability of the United States to appoint individuals in our occupation authority, or in our military liason to the Iraqi government, will be noted. The casualty rates of the Iraqi government forces have already been understood by the locals, who realize that the pay simply isn't worth that hazard.
IV. Conclusions
The Mosul attack, while a tactical defeat for the guerillas, points to a troubling underlying truth: it is only with fortifications, superior armor and close air support that the US maintains military superiority on the ground over the insurgency. The insurgency is close to being able to mount successful shatter attack on fortified US positions.
These very factors are creating a vulnerability. Until now, US air support could be well out of reach of insurgent ability to counter attack. In order to execute close air support, greater vulnerability of air forces to ground based SAM and small arms fire will occur, which opens high value, both in equipment and personnel, casualties more likely. Given the past ability of the rebellion to exploit vulnerabilities, it is a question of when, not if, they will learn to execute on aircraft as they have against M-1 tanks.
This implies that the situation with respect to the Iraqi government's own security forces is much more grim, that the guerillas have ground tactical superiority over their government counterparts, and that this a direct result of mismanagement by the political leadership in the US. Without an army to hand power to, there is no exit strategy, other than "declare defeat and go home". Without a civilian lead military structure capable of suppressing the rebellion, the way is cleared for a coup by either nationalist or theocratic elements, or a combination of both, capable of mounting a short sudden strike against the Green Zone and key parts of the oil infrastructure.
The Mosul attack confirms the general trend of casualty numbers asserted in the previous, namely that the US is at virtual break even against the insurgency on the ground, and that this represents an non-sustainable drain on our pool of available force
I would point out that the helicopter support has already been reduced to fast moving Blackhawks hopping from base to base at nap of the earth and armored attack helos. There are no heliborne operations in Iraq. The US is as roadbound in Iraq as the French were in Indochina. Using US doctrine, US units should be able to insert battalion-sized forces into guerrilla areas. The problem is that the large numbers of RPG's make such assaults impossible. And once the US is road bound, all that stolen RDX makes for a great way to deny highways and railways to the US.
And the Iraqi Army and their top company and battalion commanders clearly have gone over to the resistance. There are too many instances of Iraqis acting in ways only trained soldiers can, like launching company sized attacks, which does not come from guerrilla training. The people who can lead, are leading, troops against us. And the longer it goes on, the more the locals will ally with the resistance.
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 30, 2004; Page A25
Federal officials are developing government-wide identification card standards for federal employees and contractors to prevent terrorists, criminals and other unauthorized people from getting into government buildings and computer systems.
The effort, known as the Personal Identity Verification Project, stems from a homeland security-related presidential directive and is being managed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a Commerce Department agency with offices in Gaithersburg.
In his Aug. 27 directive, President Bush said that "wide variations in the quality and security of forms of identification used to gain access to secure federal and other facilities where there is potential for terrorist attacks need to be eliminated." Bush called for the development of "secure and reliable forms of identification" for federal workers and contract employees.
.....................
"There's wide variations in the quality and security of the forms of identification that people use to get access to federal facilities," he said. ". . . To be completely foolproof will be extraordinarily difficult, but we can raise the risk for the terrorist or other person who wants to fraudulently enter a facility and make it a little bit more difficult for them to get in."
The common standard also will enable many employees who shuttle between departments to enter different buildings with one card. NIST, which has spent about $1 million on the project so far, expects to complete the new standards by late February. Employees could start using the new cards as early as fall 2005, Barker said.
Several departments, notably defense, transportation and interior, began developing more secure, high-tech ID cards long before Bush issued the directive, he said. The trend ultimately could affect private sector workers, as well. Experts say the federal government's adoption of tighter ID card standards could spur more private businesses to follow suit.
Some federal employees have concerns about the new cards.
Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents more than 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies, said the proposed standard would permit agencies to print employees' pay grade and rank on the new cards, which many workers would consider an invasion of privacy.
"For example, an agency might seize upon this technology as a means to track employees as they move throughout a building," Kelley said in written comments to NIST last week. "That is troubling, standing alone. It would be particularly objectionable if the agency tried to track visits to particular sites such as the union office, Employee Assistance Program offices and the inspector general's office."
I never thought I'd be posting under an anonymous name. I never thought a day like yesterday would happen. Not to me. I'm normal.
It was a normal day, and I drove my normal car home from my normal work to my normal house and my normal husband. We had a normal dinner. We watched some normal tv. Then we started talking. Soon it was an argument. That's normal too. For us, anyway, every now and then.
But what happened next wasn't normal at all. My husband exploded. My funny, sweet, kind husband. Angrily shouting. Blue veins popping out on his forehead. He was leaning forward, a few inches from my face. We were sitting side by side on the couch. I put one hand on each of his shoulders, and held him out at arm's length. Maybe I pushed him backward. If so it was wrong. I honestly don't remember.
He is much bigger than me. 80 pounds heavier. And I am pregnant. How it happened, I don't know. But all of a sudden he was beating me. Standing with one foot on the floor and the other knee pinning me down, he beat me. I was punched in the arm, the back, the chest, the top of my head. Before he walked away he punched me in the stomach. My pregnant stomach.
He walked away and I cried on the couch. In pain, in disbelief, in fear for the baby we both had wanted. He came back, told me to stop my crying. I could not. He yelled more. Then he got quiet, put his hand on my leg and told me he was sorry.
If I could afford a hotel, I would have left last night. Instead I locked myself in our bedroom with the phone after tossing his pillow and some blankets out into the hallway. He slept on the couch. The couch he beat me on. I left for work before he was awake. My face is perfect. The rest of me aches. Nothing hurts more than my broken heart. There is one ray of sunshine left, the baby is still kicking today. Heartbeat in the 140's. We were so happy to be pregnant, we bought a home machine to listen.
But today I am lost. Totally and completely. I have known this man 6 years. We lived together nearly two years before we were married. I never thought he would be capable of this. His temper before consisted of yelling things he regretted later. I have done the same. He has never punched walls, hurt the pets, or had problems with work or with family or friends. He has never been jealous or controlling. He does not drink, and does not do drugs.
I wish I had the courage to use my real user name. I do not. I know it sounds stupid to say this and post anonymously. But I am posting this because it declares to the world that I have become something I never thought I'd be: a beaten wife. With an abusive husband. I went to work today, it was only a half day. Those few hours were excruciating. To the rest of the world I am still normal. I chatted at the water cooler. I griped about the shopping left to do, the presents left to wrap, the cookies left to bake, and upcoming visits with the in-laws. Now I am someone totally different than who they knew. At least I feel completely different. The old me died last night.
For some reason I just wanted to say that. Even if I can't say it as myself.
She got some sound advice, mostly on getting the hell out of that situation
Thank you all for your thoughts, kind words, advice and encouragement.
I am at home now, as I was when I wrote the post above. At that time TH ("the husband" since I do not want to use DH) was not home from work but he is now. He is wrapping Christmas presents in the living room. Carols are playing on the stereo. It is very surreal.
I used to think I would never put up with such behavior, one strike and you're out, literally. It was an easy enough thing to think when it was hypothetical. I could not understand how someone could stay with a man who'd hit her. I still can't. In threads past I have replied, or at least thought it, if I didn't write it, that of course the only next step was to leave. Permanently. But here I am. Maybe I'm just not tough enough. But I don't want to leave. I don't want to be beaten either, I just want my life back. Yesterday I was on top of the world, whether I knew it or not. We were happy. We were not perfect, but we were in love. We were decorating our baby's nursery. We were looking forward to Christmas. We each took off next week to spend time together. Now I am in a black hole. We had a life we had built together. I did not plan to be alone. I certainly did not plan to be alone and a mother.
He has apologized. He has cried. He has also tried to downplay what happened. I looked him in the eye and told him he could not make excuses, that he was a wifebeater and would go to his grave a wifebeater. It was only a question of whether he would have made that mistake once, or twice. I would never be nearby enough for there to be a third time. That was when he started crying. Such brave words, words I never thought I'd hear myself say because I thought I would never leave the door open for a second time. But here I sit. I wonder if I'm crazy? I know I didn't deserve this. I know it's his fault. But I had a husband, a family, a home, a life. I don't want to start over. I just want everything to be the way it was.
This came totally from the blue for me. Today I googled "domestic violence warning signs" and nothing rang a bell. Not one damn thing. I mentioned his only expression of anger in the past had been yelling stupid things he regretted later. These seemed so tame at the time. I thought this was normal. I have done it too. Is it really so odd? If we argued (say over visiting family) he might say "I never liked your sister anyway!" and apologize later. I've said stupid things too. I've slammed a few doors in my life. I thought that was normal. Has my judgment been so wrong all along? I know most of his old girlfriends. He has never been a violent person.
I have some questions. I don't know if anyone can answer them. Police reports have been mentioned. If we stay together, will his legal past come up with his credit history? What about a background search if he wants to switch jobs, or loses his job and has to apply elsewhere? It would hurt me and the baby too to endanger his job or credit rating. He makes more than three times what I do. What happens when our baby is born? Will there be a problem with DCFS? Will my baby be taken away if I report him, but stay with him?
I have no idea if this will happen again. That's the plain truth. 24 hours ago I'd have said it would never happen once. TH was my best friend. It is so nauseatingly bizarrely unbelievable that I could be asking questions tonight about the consequences of reporting my husband to the police.
After more advice she posted the following
I haven't been able to log on the past few days. We visited the in-laws and their computer with internet access is in the living room. I am overwhelmed to return to this outpouring of support. My simple 'thank you' seems so small in comparison. Some of you who have posted are nearby. I am grateful to know I am not as completely alone as I feel.
Physically, I am well. The baby is active with a good heartbeat. Emotionally, I am still a wreck. There are moments now of normalcy when it seems nothing ever happened. And there are moments when it is so real I cry as if it were five minutes ago. Days of smiling fakely for the IL's have left me feeling numb more than anything else. I want to reach back into that "once upon a time" and rescue the family we were supposed to be.
I have a bag packed at the door, I told TH it was a hospital bag in case I go into labor early. I have not opened an individual savings or checking account because I am afraid a statement would be mailed here and TH would find out about it. I have transferred "our" balances to "his" credit cards. We never added each other as a user but kept our own cards separate. Now my credit cards are empty should I ever need them. And I made copies of his car keys and have them in the "hospital" bag.
Whether our marriage will continue I can't say. I could only forgive if he were truly sorry and I don't know if he is. I can't see into his heart anymore. Now and then he still seems like my best friend. Mostly he is a stranger to me. This is not the man I knew, not the man I loved and married, not the man I wanted a baby with. I want to believe that man is not gone forever.
A friend sent this to me.
I want to make two points. A man who so loses his temper and hits a pregnant woman in her stomach is on the road to murdering her. Pregancy can be one of the most dangerous times in a woman's life. It doesn't take much to go from hitting to murder, as a Washington Post series showed.
Second, waiting to get hit again is silly, because it will happen again. He will hit her, and hit her even harder. Maybe just kill her outright. Anyone that mean can do anything at any time.
Apologies are bullshit. He punched her in her stomach. He was trying to harm her and her baby. Preganancy changes people, and turns some of them into murderers. Laci Peterson is testimony to that, but hardly alone. The WaPo estimated around 1300 pregnant women a year are murdered by husbands and spouses.
Once someone crosses the line into violence, they stay there unless forced to change.
An Apple iPod or other digital music players can hold anything up to 10,000 songs, which is a lot of space to fill.
Apple iPod
'Podcasting' grew from a program that put audio directly onto iPods
But more and more iPod owners are filling that space with audio content created by an unpredictable assortment of producers.
It is called "podcasting" and its strongest proponent is former MTV host and VJ (video jockey) Adam Curry.
Podcasting takes its name from the Apple iPod, although you do not need an iPod to create one or to listen to a podcast.
A podcast is basically an internet-based radio show which podcasters create, usually in the comfort of their own home.
They need only a microphone, a PC, and some editing software. They then upload their shows to the internet and others can download and listen to them, all for free.
Using technology based on XML computer code and RSS - Really Simple Syndication - listeners can subscribe to podcasts collected automatically in a bit of software, which Mr Curry has pioneered.
The latest MP3 files of shows can then be picked up by a music playing device automatically.
Curry code
Mr Curry records, hosts, edits and produce a daily, 40 minute podcast called The Daily Source Code.
He wants to make podcasting "the Next Big Thing" and says it is an extension of his childhood love of radio gadgetry.
"I was always into technologies and wires," he explains. "My parents gave me the Radio Shack 101 project kit, which allows you to build an AM transmitter and subsequently an FM transmitter.
"I had my mom drive me around the block, see how far it would reach on the car radio."
Microphones
Mr Curry is American, but he grew up in the Netherlands where he hosted illegal, pirate radio shows in the Dutch capital. He tried university in the US, and ended up back in Holland where he hosted a music video show.
He spent the next seven years in New York where he worked at MTV hosting the Top 20 Video Countdown, but spent most of his hours tinkering with this new thing called the internet.
"At a certain point in 1995, I was driving in on a Friday afternoon, beautiful blue sky, one of those beautiful days thinking, this is so stupid.
"You know, I'm going do the Top 20 Countdown, take the cheque, go home, and sit on the internet until three in the morning.
"So, after I finished the show, I quit. I said, on air, it's been great, I've been here for seven years at that point, there's something on the internet, I've got to go find it, and I'll see you later."
Podding on
But Mr Curry's technology and broadcast interests started to gel a couple of years ago when computer storage was growing exponentially and high-speed internet connections were becoming more widely available.
The MP3 format also meant that people could create and upload audio more cheaply and efficiently than ever before.
Most importantly, Mr Curry says, people across the globe were bored with the radio they were hearing.
"Listen to 99% of the radio that you hear today, it's radio voices, and it's fake, it's just fake."
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Clark Boyd is technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and WGBH-Boston co-production.
Which is why streaming MP3 stations are booming. Shoutcast has thousands of stations which simply play music which cannot be heard in a Clear Channel world.
Radio never played the best cuts, but man, now, except for Howard Stern, why bother listening. Air America is simulcast over the net and on sattelite radio.
When Jen came over for Christmas, she asked me about my stereo. I don't have one. I have a radio in my bedroom, but all my music is either on one of my machines or my MP3 player. Why do I need a stereo? To play MP3's on? It's cheaper to buy a sound card and good speakers. I certainly won't need a radio in 2006, at least one which plays terrestrial stations. The problem with current media is that they don't get the idea that their customers have moved beyond them to create a flexible media world. One where they can design the music they want, the way they want.
So I set up my speakers and my laptop and played Christmas music and it sounded just fine.
December 28, 2004 - With iPod-savvy Windows users clearly in its sights, Apple is expected to announce a bare bones, G4-based iMac without a display at Macworld Expo on January 11 that will retail for $499, highly reliable sources have confirmed to Think Secret.
The new Mac, code-named Q88, will be part of the iMac family and is expected to sport a PowerPC G4 processor at a speed around 1.25GHz. The new Mac is said to be incredibly small and will be housed in a flat enclosure with a height similar to the 1.73 inches of Apple's Xserve. Its size benefits will include the ability to stand the Mac on its side or put it below a display or monitor.
Along with lowering costs by forgoing a display (Apple's entry-level eMac sells for $799 with a built-in 17-inch CRT display), the so-called "headless" iMac will allow Apple's target audience -- Windows users looking for a cheap, second PC -- to keep their current peripherals or decide on their own what to pair with the system, be it a high-priced LCD display or an inexpensive display. Sources expect the device to feature both DVI and VGA connectivity, although whether this will be provided through dual ports or through a single DVI port with a VGA adapter remains to be seen.
The new Mac is expected to have a Combo drive only, but will possibly have an upgrade path to a SuperDrive at a higher price. It is unclear how big the hard drive capacity will be, although sources indicate it will be between 40GB and 80GB.
Other expected features of the iMac include:
* 256MB of RAM
* USB 2.0
* FireWire 400
* 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet
* 56K V.92 modem
* AirPort Extreme support
In terms of software, Apple will include a special iLife suite (minus iDVD) as well as AppleWorks, sources believe.
................
So what has changed to motivate Apple in producing a low-cost Mac? In a word, iPod.
"Think of your traditional iPod owner," said a source. "This new product will be for a Windows user who has experienced the iPod, the ease of use of the iTunes software, and has played around with a Mac at an Apple retail store just long enough to know he'd buy one if it were a little cheaper."
Apple executives announced on October 13 that 45% to 50% of its retail store customers bought a Mac as their first PC or were new to the platform in the fiscal fourth-quarter. The company has refused to divulge more exacting figures on iPod buyers who also buy a Mac, for competitive reasons.
According to sources, internal Apple surveys of its retail store customers and those buying iPods showed a large number of PC users would be willing to buy a Mac if it were cheap enough, less of a virus carrier than PCs (which all Macs already are), and offered easier to use software solutions not available on Windows-based PCs. Now, Apple feels it has the answer.
Apple has been working on the low-end Mac for almost a year, sources report. Indications are Apple has been working mostly on finding the right mix of price, performance and features that would motivate Windows users to consider a Mac, and less on the actual engineering of the product. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to design a bare-bones PC," said one source familiar with the project. "What it takes is a team of marketing and software experts to find the right mix to convince Windows users to buy a Mac at a price that is not much more than the cost of an iPod."
Sources familiar with the product cautioned that the low-end Mac will be marketed towards a totally different audience than those who traditionally buy even a $799 eMac. "This product is not going to be about performance," said a source close to Apple. "This is going to be the basics, but with just as much of a focus on software as any Mac could ever be."
So when it breaks, I won't have to take it to TekServe?
Look, stripping the Mac of a monitor isn't going to make it appeal any more. That just hides the price. The problem is that at the end of the day, it doesn't run Windows. Look, a cheaper Mac has long been needed, but more people switch from Mac to Windows than the other way around. The people who love MacOS will continue to use it. But the people who don't aren't going to buy a Mac with a legacy of Windows programs around. Yes, you can convert some to MacOS, but there are so many Windows only programs, switching isn't really a desirable option for a lot people without a ton of photoshop files.
I think Apple doesn't get how unpopular it is with a key decision making cohort: teenage boys. Apple's designers seem to have a feedback loop which caters to their current customers, designers, artists and people who aren't comfortable with technology. They sneer at games, something they will admit internally at Apple. And they wonder why only iPod's sell.
Even their iPod ads slant towards women and aesthetes. And they'll wonder why Creative or SONY will eventually own that market. The problem with that is that parents often assign technology decisions to teenagers, especially boys. Tech savvy girls slant the same way away from Apple. They want a fragbox just like the guys they beat online. Apple doesn't make Fragboxes.
Ask a teenager what they think of Macs, and the reaction is frighteningly negative. Of all the tech companies they relate to, Apple has the most negative image. They associate it with school and they don't want it in their personal lives. When they buy a computer, they want a black Dell. As they get older, they want better, more powerful machines. Apple just doesn't appeal to them. Sure, they may want an iPod, because it's cool, but no iMac.
People get pissy when you say this, but they forget, kids have a major role in the way technology dollars are spent. Apple thinks by getting them in school, they can get life long customers. Instead, they make life long enemies, people who detest the Apple brand for it's lack of coolness. Something used in school, but not for their serious gaming activities. Microsoft didn't extend their brand into gaming for no reason. The XBox and PS 2 are black for a reason.
I think that many of Apple decisions have served to alienate the people who would be their most loyal potential customers. I can tell you what happens with many people who walk into an Apple store.
The parents like the machine. The kid likes the machine. They go home. In a house without the tech savvy, they may well buy the machine. But if their teenage techie isn't with them, the odds are they will react badly. They'll explain how it doesn't run the right software (parents think something for school, kid thinks Half-Life 2), how much it costs, and how their friends all have PC's. They will make the coherent, countervailing argument, and Michael Dell has another $800 to send to Bush. Or maybe New Egg has a new home builder. Either way, Apple loses a sale.
I never got that particular blind spot. I remember this, because when my nephew was 13, he begged for a Dell. He had a perfectly functioning Mac, and he hated it like Satan was in the mobo. I didn't get it at the time. Because to me, the Mac worked fine. But it wasn't cool, it didn't play the right games, it was a Mac, and they had those in schools. This in a house with a PS2. They now have three machines, two XP laptops and that Dell. My nephew wouldn't buy a Mac if you bribed him.
I never understood Apple's resistance to gamning or designs which had an appeal beyond their core user group, their small core user group. Apple wants to grow, but it seems to only want to grow with people who agree with it. And there aren't enough of those to successfully challenge Windows.
It would be a lot healthier for the industry if Apple had a larger user share. But Apple's machines simply don't appeal to the people who are most likely to be constant, repeat buyers of technology, young men. As long as Apple refuses to admit their marketing simply misses the people who could grow their company, teenage boys and young adults, then it won't grow. The iPod is a good step, but not enough of a step to get people to switch platforms. Apple thinks that if you get a taste of their technology, you'll jump ship. The problem is that if you get a taste of Half-Life 2, you'll want a PC.
Today in Iraq (news - web sites), American officials are having to face their own verbal and rhetorical Maginot Lines. Our "answer" has been that we can get out when Iraqi forces are trained, when elections are held, and when Iraqis themselves win back the country from the "insurgents" or "terrorists" or "guerrillas" (or whatever we finally determine they are).
But in only the last two weeks, American generals and civilian officials are, in fact, admitting that they have their own similar Maginot Line problems. In Mosul, the Iraqi police force has "faded away." American generals speak of a "virtual connectivity" of the insurgents never seen before, as they use the Internet to pass along techniques, tactics and advice to one another. American generals now admit that almost all of them are Iraqis; we have created the Iraqi terrorists who were not there before.
Take only the astoundingly candid analysis, based in part on an interview with Gen. John Abizaid, the senior U.S. military commander in the region, by CNN's excellent Pentagon (news - web sites) correspondent, Barbara Starr, on television last Sunday.
Starr reported: "Senior U.S. military sources in the region tell CNN the city of Mosul has been wracked by violence for weeks. Local Iraqi security forces have virtually melted away, say those officials. One senior U.S. officer tells CNN, we have no Iraqi police force up in Mosul today.
"The problem in getting Iraqis to fight the insurgency may be deeper across Iraq. The military assessment now is that the U.S. miscalculated Iraqi tribal and religious loyalties and did not realize Iraqis are likely to fight only for their brethren ... So in cases like Mosul, they simply will not fight the intimidation of the insurgents, the U.S. now believes."
And remember, until now Mosul was one of our success stories!
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The truth no one really wants to deal with is that this war could very easily be lost by the United States. All the insurgents have to do is hang on another year. All we have to do is what the French and the British did in their colonies: Let themselves be exhausted and finally destroyed by their hubris, their delusions and their arrogant lack of understanding of the local people.
No shit.
Could be lost? I'd say IS BEING LOST.
Unless exploding mess tents and slit police throats is a sign of victory.
It is even worse than Geyer says.
The population isn't being intimidated, they're working with the resistance. There are no massacres of civilians, no killing of neutrals, just people who work for the Americans. Which is truly frightening. They know who to kill
fuck with my wife's prayer breakfast and you'll pay
State worker tells of scrutiny Labor Department employee says he has been retaliated against after complaints about a superior's actions
By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau
First published: Wednesday, December 29, 2004
ALBANY -- Michael Cunningham says he can't sleep most nights because of the retaliation he's endured from his bosses at the state Department of Labor.
Since questioning a deputy commissioner's use of state resources to promote Gov. George Pataki's prayer breakfast, Cunningham says he's had to seek professional help to cope with "the constant waiting for -- what are they going to try to do to you next?"
Cunningham revealed Tuesday that he had complained to the state Inspector General's Office about a superior at the Labor Department who e-mailed other officials to drum up attendance at Pataki's prayer breakfast in May. He decided to go public, he said, after reading an account in Monday's Times Union about a State Liquor Authority employee, Patricia Freund, who is suing state officials for allegedly retaliating against her for asking questions about employees attending the governor's annual prayer breakfast on state time.
Cunningham, 53, of Colonie, a 25-year state employee and the Labor Department's director of training the past 16 years, still gets his salary of $101,634. He still arranges for staff development programs. But since this summer, when he complained to the Inspector General about Mary L. Hines, deputy commissioner for administration and public affairs, he has been moved out of the executive suite of the Labor Department, investigated for his travel to New York City and told to discontinue many routine business trips.
"I've really been beaten up since then," said Cunningham, who is considering a suit against the state in U.S. District Court.
Kevin Quinn, a Pataki spokesman, said, "This has nothing to do with the breakfast. This is an internal state Department of Labor personnel matter."
....................
Cunningham said his authority has been undermined and his activities heavily scrutinized. He said Hines and Labor Commissioner Linda Angello hired a friend, Pam Kelly, for a newly created civil service post -- organizational development specialist -- to take some of his responsibilities.
Further, he said, his son's hourly job at the Labor Department was abolished by Hines.
In a letter to Hines Dec. 3, Cunningham's lawyer, John R. Saccocio, said his client's performance was consistently rated "outstanding."
"Prior to your arrival," he told Hines, "Mr. Cunningham had never filed a formal complaint."
.................
Cunningham says Hines ordered an investigation of a trip he took to New York City in October to meet with staff there. The probe resulted in a memo directing him to take 1 hours off his attendance record for checking into his hotel at 3 p.m.; quitting time was supposed to be 4:30 p.m. on the trip.
The heavy scrutiny, personal slights and potentially improper treatment have taken their toll, he said. In an evaluation, his doctor, H. Kip Arnold, described Cunningham as depressed, anxious, and distraught, and wrote, "His symptoms seem clearly work-related."
His psychologist, Jessica Seidenberg, said in a letter she provided Cunningham that he is experiencing severe anxiety, moderate depression, poor sleep and high blood pressure. "It is my professional opinion that the conditions at his work place need to be improved so he can experience relief from the stressful conditions he has had to endure," she wrote.
Seidenberg noted that Cunningham's illnesses relate to a job where he is "highly regarded in his position but . . . has been troubled by "recent interactions with the deputy commissioner."
Cunningham says he isn't trying to be an activist "but I do know right from wrong."
Right. They're making waves about the governor's wife pet project. Ooops
Tuesday, December 28, 2004 Posted: 2:06 PM EST (1906 GMT)
(AP) -- At the University of North Carolina, three incoming freshmen sue over a reading assignment they say offends their Christian beliefs.
In Colorado and Indiana, a national conservative group publicizes student allegations of left-wing bias by professors. Faculty get hate mail and are pictured in mock "wanted" posters; at least one college says a teacher received a death threat.
And at Columbia University in New York, a documentary film alleging that teachers intimidate students who support Israel draws the attention of administrators.
The three episodes differ in important ways, but all touch on an issue of growing prominence on college campuses.
Traditionally, clashes over academic freedom have pitted politicians or administrators against instructors who wanted to express their opinions and teach as they saw fit. But increasingly, it is students who are invoking academic freedom, claiming biased professors are violating their right to a classroom free from indoctrination.
In many ways, the trend echoes past campus conflicts -- but turns them around. Once, it was liberal campus activists who cited the importance of "diversity" in pressing their agendas for curriculum change. Now, conservatives have adopted much of the same language in calling for a greater openness to their viewpoints.
Similarly, academic freedom guidelines have traditionally been cited to protect left-leaning students from punishment for disagreeing with teachers about such issues as American neutrality before World War II and U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Now, those same guidelines are being invoked by conservative students who support the war in Iraq.
To many professors, there's a new and deeply troubling aspect to this latest chapter in the debate over academic freedom: students trying to dictate what they don't want to be taught.
"Even the most contentious or disaffected of students in the '60s or early '70s never really pressed this kind of issue," said Robert O'Neil, former president of the University of Virginia and now director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.
'It puts a chill in the air'
Those behind the trend call it an antidote to the overwhelming liberal dominance of university faculties. But many educators, while agreeing students should never feel bullied, worry that they just want to avoid exposure to ideas that challenge their core beliefs -- an essential part of education.
Some also fear teachers will shy away from sensitive topics, or fend off criticism by "balancing" their syllabuses with opposing viewpoints, even if they represent inferior scholarship.
"Faculty retrench. They are less willing to discuss contemporary problems and I think everyone loses out," said Joe Losco, a professor of political science at Ball State University in Indiana who has supported two colleagues targeted for alleged bias. "It puts a chill in the air."
A recent study by Santa Clara University researcher Daniel Klein estimated that among social science and humanities faculty members nationwide, Democrats outnumber Republicans by at least seven to one; in some fields it's as high as 30 to one. And in the last election, the two employers whose workers contributed the most to Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign were the University of California system and Harvard University.
Many teachers insist personal politics don't affect teaching. But in a recent survey of students at 50 top schools by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a group that has argued there is too little intellectual diversity on campuses, 49 percent reported at least some professors frequently commented on politics in class even if it was outside the subject matter.
Thirty-one percent said they felt there were some courses in which they needed to agree with a professor's political or social views to get a good grade.
Leading the movement is the group Students for Academic Freedom, with chapters on 135 campuses and close ties to David Horowitz, a one-time liberal campus activist turned conservative commentator. The group posts student complaints on its Web site about alleged episodes of grading bias and unbalanced, anti-American propaganda by professors -- often in classes, such as literature, in which it's off-topic.
Instructors "need to make students aware of the spectrum of scholarly opinion," Horowitz said. "You can't get a good education if you're only getting half the story."
Conservatives claim they are discouraged from expressing their views in class, and are even blackballed from graduate school slots and jobs.
"I feel like (faculty) are so disconnected from students that they do these things and they can just get away with them," said Kris Wampler, who recently publicly identified himself as one of the students who sued the University of North Carolina. Now a junior, he objected when all incoming students were assigned to read a book about the Quran before they got to campus.
So far, his and other efforts are having mixed results. At UNC, the students lost their legal case, but the university no longer uses the word "required" in describing the reading program for incoming students (the plaintiffs' main objection).
...............
Horowitz, who has also criticized Ball State's program, had little sympathy when asked if Wolfe deserved to get hate e-mails from strangers.
"These people are such sissies," he said. "I get hate mail every single day. What can I do about it? It's called the Internet."
Jen
Okay, so some "liberal arts students" are suing UNC because reading the Koran as an assignment "offends their Christian values?" Someone turn off the fucking gravity there, since it was discovered by flaming homo Isaac Newton...while we're at it, let's turn off the campus water filtration system and rely on faith healing for dystentary since germ theory goes against the Almighty as well....
Do these fucktards deserve to be locked in a room with each other for all eternity or what?
Fucking veal. They go to Christian schools, live in gated communities, go to one church and they expect the world to be like that. Well, they are gonna get the shock of their little lives when they get a job. If they want to remain ignorant, go to Bible college. And if these little asshats are such patriots, they should be in Iraq, not in a college classroom. The real world isn't their suburb and if they act that way in the work world, they're gonna find themselves fired real quick.
By John F. Harris and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A01
The Bush administration more than doubled its financial commitment yesterday to provide relief to nations suffering from the Indian Ocean tsunami, amid complaints that the vacationing President Bush has been insensitive to a humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions.
As the death toll surpassed 50,000 with no sign of abating, the U.S. Agency for International Development added $20 million to an earlier pledge of $15 million to provide relief, and the Pentagon dispatched an aircraft carrier and other military assets to the region. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in morning television appearances, chafed at a top U.N. aid official's comment on Monday that wealthy countries were being stingy with aid. "The United States is not stingy," Powell said on CNN.
Although U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland yesterday withdrew his earlier comment, domestic criticism of Bush continued to rise. Skeptics said the initial aid sums -- as well as Bush's decision at first to remain cloistered on his Texas ranch for the Christmas holiday rather than speak in person about the tragedy -- showed scant appreciation for the magnitude of suffering and for the rescue and rebuilding work facing such nations as Sri Lanka, India, Thailand and Indonesia.
After a day of repeated inquiries from reporters about his public absence, Bush late yesterday afternoon announced plans to hold a National Security Council meeting by teleconference to discuss several issues, including the tsunami, followed by a short public statement.
Bush's deepened public involvement puts him more in line with other world figures. In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder cut short his vacation and returned to work in Berlin because of the Indian Ocean crisis, which began with a gigantic underwater earthquake. In Britain, the predominant U.S. voice speaking about the disaster was not Bush but former president Bill Clinton, who in an interview with the BBC said the suffering was like something in a "horror movie," and urged a coordinated international response.
Earlier yesterday, White House spokesman Trent Duffy said the president was confident he could monitor events effectively without returning to Washington or making public statements in Crawford, where he spent part of the day clearing brush and bicycling. Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' "
Many Bush aides believe Clinton was too quick to head for the cameras to hold forth on tragedies with his trademark empathy. "Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide said, describing the president's view of his appropriate role.
Some foreign policy specialists said Bush's actions and words both communicated a lack of urgency about an event that will loom as large in the collective memories of several countries as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks do in the United States. "When that many human beings die -- at the hands of terrorists or nature -- you've got to show that this matters to you, that you care," said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.
There was an international outpouring of support after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even some administration officials familiar with relief efforts said they were surprised that Bush had not appeared personally to comment on the tsunami tragedy. "It's kind of freaky," a senior career official said.
................
Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who is frequently outspoken in favor of U.S. humanitarian ventures, said he believes the initial U.S. response has been appropriate, even without a public role for Bush. "I think the world knows we're a very generous people," he said.
Still, the United Nations' Egeland complained on Monday that each of the richest nations gives less than 1 percent of its gross national product for foreign assistance, and many give 0.1 percent. "It is beyond me why we are so stingy, really," he told reporters.
And interrupt his vacation over dead wogs? Are you kidding? The Pollyanna President doesn't ruin his vacation because some brown people drowned.
Just because Indonesians will remember our indifference, and they are the largest Muslim nation on earth, hey, shit happens.
Tuesday, December 28, 2004 Posted: 4:18 PM EST (2118 GMT)
SAN FRANCISCO, California (Reuters) -- A female bartender who refused to wear makeup at a Reno, Nevada, casino was not unfairly dismissed from her job, a U.S. federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
Darlene Jespersen, who had worked for nearly 20 years at a Harrah's Entertainment Inc casino bar in Reno, Nevada, objected to the company's revised policy that required female bartenders, but not men, to wear makeup.
A previously much-praised employee, Jespersen was fired in 2000 after the firm instituted a "Beverage Department Image Transformation" program and she sued, alleging sex discrimination.
In a 2-1 decision, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling in favor of Harrah's. All three judges are males appointed by Democratic presidents.
"We have previously held that grooming and appearance standards that apply differently to women and men do not constitute discrimination on the basis of sex," Judge Wallace Tashima wrote for the majority.
He cited the precedent of a 1974 case in which the court ruled that a company can require men to have short hair but allow long hair on women.
.....................
Jen
Bullshit on Parade!
I will point out that Jen does wear makeup when she goes to work, and occasionally when we go to dinner. But then she likes to. No one is forcing her to.
The problem is that it's not a sex issue but a dress code issue. Where companies can require being clean shaven and no jewlery on men, they can require makeup on women. And if it doesn't pass muster in the 9th Circuit, well, it's pretty much not going to make it anywhere. No company is going to require men as part of a normal dress code t wear makeup. But they can limit mustaches and beards. Companies have a great deal of lattitude in enforcing dress codes, as Jen can tell you with her current employer.
In the summer of 1999, Salon was invited to observe a showdown at PC Week's testing labs in Foster City, Calif., between Microsoft Windows and Linux. The atmosphere was tense. The Linux representatives were young and arrogant; Microsoft's were middle-aged and arrogant. But at perhaps no moment did the Microsoft reps' self-satisfaction shine through more irritatingly than when they noted the superiority of their in-house approach to software development as compared to the collaborative, distributed, open-source way of doing business. Look at the browser market, one marketing manager noted. A year before, Netscape had released the code to its browser and started the Mozilla project. But it was going nowhere, and in the meantime Internet Explorer 5.0 was taking over.
To open-source advocates, the comment was cutting. Netscape had generated oodles of media hype when it released the source code to its browser, but there was no denying Microsoft's ensuing total domination of the market.
At Salon, we've covered the saga of Mozilla closely ever since, and we've marked several points at which we thought the Mozilla browser had made significant progress. But it often seemed we were shouting at deaf ears. Internet Explorer continued to reign supreme, and when we told our friends and relatives that there was an alternative, they looked at us kind of funny -- like: all that free software stuff was cute back in 1999, but now you're beginning to sound like one of those freaks who still think the Amiga computer is set for a big comeback.
Then came 2004, the release of the 1.0 version of Firefox, the stand-alone Mozilla browser, and the consequent first decline in Microsoft's browser market share in years.
Back in 1999, everything happened on Internet time. But writing good code isn't easy to speed up. Firefox is welcome proof that open-source software programs can be user friendly, easy to install, and competitive with Microsoft. If Salon awarded a Program of the Year medal, it would go to Firefox.
Here's the problem: Linux advocates are eager to define Open Source as Linux. Wackos like Richard Stallman (and I have the tape to prove he's one) take credit for it. But in reality, Open Source is an idea anyone can use. Hell, most games have a limited form of it, allowing for massive modifications. Open Source is, and will always be more than Linux, although that is the most ambitious project using that ideology. But too many people have been eager to comingle the two.
"Oh, Firefox is open source, just like Linux"
Well, no, anyone can use Firefox. Just because Firefos uses the Open Source ideology doesn't mean it's a harbinger of good things for Linux. What it does mean is that an organized, focused approach for application development works.
Which means if Firefox can take on IE, which is embedded into Windows, then a similar group can take on Word. Which is the real obsticle for wider Linux adoption. Firefox is a route to success, if people take it.
Just don't buy it. This horror show ends if people stop shopping at WalMart. It's that simple. (It's not really that simple, but it's a damn good start.):
Stung by its poor showing over the Thanksgiving weekend, Wal-Mart Stores - which accounts for about 10 percent of the nation's retail sales, excluding autos - is quickly changing some selling strategies, executives said yesterday. Starting today, it is marking down two dozen of its most popular toys and electronics, from Elmos (now $16.88, they were $26.78) to portable DVD players ($149.87, formerly $179.87) to Black & Decker electric jar openers ($28.42, down from $34.88).
Yesterday's across-the-board retailing numbers for November were mixed, with the gap widening between the "haves," namely luxury stores, and the "have-nots," discounters and midlevel department stores whose customers are suffering most from high gasoline prices. And while retailers reported that the day after Thanksgiving was strong, the rest of the weekend, for many, did not live up to expectations.
Wal-Mart will also begin an unusual advertising blitz this morning. Wal-Mart, which does not usually advertise in newspapers - preferring the monthly color circular - will run full-page ads in 15 major markets and 35 secondary markets, Mona Williams, the vice president for communications, said yesterday. Next week, Wal-Mart will introduce seven 15-second television spots.
In addition, Wal-Mart, with $253 billion in sales last year, will run an Internet "circular" for the first time, giving it flexibility to reduce prices again if the competition gets too aggressive.
I wonder how Target and Costco are doing.
I mean, if you only have X dollars to spend, why spend it on cheap shit which will have to be replaced quickly. At least Target's stuff looks nice and the workers aren't treated like shit. I think Wal Mart's problems are not just due to the economy. I think that people are choosing to shop elsewhere. Some, for political reasons, some because of their return policy, some because they sell cheap shit.
If conservatives were smart, they'd go after Wal Mart as well. The company is in hock to the Chinese governemt and takes jobs from American workers. The Bentonville Hillbillies care about one thing, themselves. They give less than any other major corporation their size. McDonald's may treat the franchise workers like shit, but their generousity cannot be questioned. Wal Mart sells cheap and is cheap. Just because they give money to Bush doesn't mean they give a shit about this country. But then conservatives are easy to fool, wave the flag, mention Jesus and they run along like lap dogs
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Every time Lourdes Morales watches the TV news and sees a story on terrorism, she weeps.
Family members have stopped trying to console her, but they, too, cannot understand why Edgar Morales, the family's youngest son, will see the new year arrive in prison where he is waiting to be tried as a terrorist.
"They are comparing my son to (Osama) bin Laden ... and all those people who used bombs and killed thousands of people at random," said Morales.
"They are making him look as if he was this cold-hearted person, and he is not like that."
Morales, 22, was indicted on murder and other charges as acts of terror in May, along with 18 other members of the St. James Boys Gang, a Mexican and Mexican-American street gang.
Morales faces the most serious charge of second-degree murder as a terrorist act. A New York grand jury returned the charges against him in connection with the shooting death of 10-year-old Melanie Mendez, who died from gunshot wounds two years earlier.
Morales plans to plead innocent, said his attorney, Lewis Alperin. No date has yet been set for his trial.
Morales is the first gang member in New York to be indicted under the state's terrorism statute, which became law shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
If the charges did not include the terrorism stipulation, he would face a sentence of 25 years to life if found guilty. With the stipulation, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
.........................
"It is not that I want to defend gangs," said state Rep. Jeffrey Dinowitz. "But it should never be justifiable to use laws with purposes other than their original intent.
"We already have the appropriate laws to prosecute gang members for their crimes," he added.
The anti-terror law passed overwhelmingly in the New York Senate 53-1.
Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson, who brought the charges against Morales, said the terrorism stipulation was justified.
"The obvious need for this statue is to protect society against acts of political terror," Johnson said in a statement. "However, the terror perpetrated by gangs, which all too often occurs on the streets of New York, also fits squarely within the scope of this statute."
The 70-count indictment said the gang members conspired to "intimidate or coerce a civilian population."
It included a long list of crimes cited as evidence they terrorized a city neighborhood, including allegations they harassed and robbed customers of a local restaurant, fired guns into a crowded park, shot a teenager in the face and slashed someone's throat.
..............
If the judge lets the charge stand at trial, it is likely to be tossed on appeal. Street crime lacks a political motive and terrorism has one, by any common definition.
Bob Johnson is looking for a way to break up these gangs because of the heinous nature of this particular crime. But the idea that a street gang member is a terrorist is ludicrious on its face. Terrorism is a political act. Being a thug is not and his lawyer will easily disprove that. All of the crimes he's been charged with can be dealt with under New York law as is. The terroism law is grandstanding more suited to Law and Order than a real courtroom.
Boeing developers say a robotic airplane called Scan-Eagle has done more than a thousand hours of intelligence and reconnaissance work for the Marines in Iraq.
The unmanned aircraft was developed and built by the St. Louis-based defense unit of Boeing Co. and the Washington-based Insitu Group.
Boeing officials said they could not comment on specific Scan-Eagle missions. But they spoke generally of its use.
It travels above insurgent positions and sends real-time video images to Marines on the ground. The unmanned craft can relay facial expressions on enemy soldiers. It can transmit in such detail that it shows steam rising from their coffee.
Boeing officials say the four-foot-long aircraft has a ten-foot wingspan and can fly up to 15 hours at a time on less than two gallons of fuel.
posted by Kevin F at 6:08 PM
Jeebus. Apparently the mainstream media (MSM to the mouthbreathers) is doing it all wrong by, you know, reporting stuff. The latest outrage according to the 101st Fighting Keyboarders™:
Does it not seem reasonable to expect that revealing the identities of Navy SEALs engaged in clandestine operations could have profound negative consequences? WTF? I blogged on this outrageous reporting at the time, but I expected the guys to just sit there and wallow in the mud being slung at them from the MSM. I guess things have changed somewhere along the line, because now six Navy SEALs and two of their wives have filed a lawsuit against the Associated Press. The plaintiffs are not surprisingly unnamed because their lives and those of their families are in real danger if their true identities were ever discovered by AQ cells located in the US. It’s not like Joe Army Guy who can go on CNN and wish his wife and kids Merry Christmas in uniform. There’s really no telling if Joe is a tank driver or a truck driver. Navy SEALs to a man are ALL up to their necks in taking out leadership targets in the Iraqi insurgency and AQ. If one of those guy’s names are revealed, particularly in association with a media driven “war crimes” frenzy, then their safety at home is in real jeopardy if not from AQ, then from some nutbag islamofascist sympathizer in San Diego or Virginia. It’s not like SEALs are authorized to carry concealed weapons in the US like a law enforcement officer. Some moonbat with a gun could do a drive-by on their house.
Which happens so often it's like a crimewave that requires the Frogman Signal over Gotham City.
To recap: where did the AP get these incriminating photos? The Internets.
And were they taken by another one of those Islamofascist AP photographers that the Grassy Knoll AP-Haters He-Man Club find living in their anxiety closets? No. Not really.
Preliminary findings of a military inquiry suggest that some of the recently published photographs of Navy special forces capturing detainees in Iraq were taken for legitimate intelligence-gathering purposes and showed commandos using approved procedures, a Navy spokesman said.
The photos, which have drawn a strong reaction in Arab media, also appear to show Navy SEALs sitting or lying on top of hooded and handcuffed detainees in the back of a pickup truck.
Citing the ongoing investigation, a spokesman for the Naval Special Warfare Command in Coronado on Monday declined comment on the pickup truck pictures, which were among 40 images of detainees an Associated Press reporter found on a commercial photo-sharing Web site posted by a woman who said her husband brought them from Iraq. (my emphasis)
So now the frogmen and a couple of their wives (including, we assume, the braintrust who decided to share hubby's "Here's me kicking a wogs face in." photos with...apparently the whole world) have decided to sue:
Six Navy SEALs and two of their wives filed a lawsuit against The Associated Press and one of its reporters today for allegedly revealing their identities in photos published in early December, according to a press release from the plaintiffs.
The complaint, filed in California Superior Court, alleges that AP reporter Seth Hettena obtained a photograph in a personal Web site maintained by one of the wives of the Navy SEALs, which contains personal photographs.
None of the plaintiffs are named in the lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by E&P. They are represented by attorney James W. Huston of San Diego.
Hettena allegedly removed photos from that site and published them on December 4, 2004, in a story stating that the pictures "could be" the earliest evidence of possible prisoner abuse in Iraq, the plaintiffs contend. The SEALs argue that the pictures "actually depict special warfare operators' standard procedures during covert operations. The Iraqis shown being captured in the photographs were leaders of anti-coalition attacks and Saddam loyalists." ("removed" them from the site? Wha?)
Uh, then why do SEALS wear that Budweiser on their uniform. Delta Force doesn't wear their unit insignia on their uniforms. The idea that SEALS need to be protected from the media is a joke. Otherwise, Kevin Dockery and Richard Marcinko wouldn't have had post-Navy careers. Why are there so man documentaries of SEAL BUDS training. Despite the hype, SEALS are not a secret unit and membership in a SEAL Team is not a secret.
And the idea someone is going to roll up to a Special Ops member and shoot up his house is ludicrous. Gun ownership is permitted in Virginia and California and I'm sure that SEAL Team members avail themselves of those laws.
All they have to do to find out who belongs to a SEAL Team is observe all the short guys with SEAL insignia on their uniforms. I think the AP's lawyers will successfully argue that once pictures are placed on the Internet, they are part of the public domain. The reason they're suing is to forestall courtmartials for torture and abiding torture. Not for "revealing" their identities. If that was the case, half the bars in Norfolk couldn't arrest anyone after a fight.
The year seemed to begin well for the music industry's fight against peer-to-peer file traders. Record sales were up slightly, and many in the industry attributed the rise to the industry's extremely punitive copyright-infringement lawsuits against individual file traders. More than that, though, executives were buoyed by the visage of a white knight on the horizon -- a savior in the form of Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple, whose stylish iPod and brilliant iTunes Music Store looked to spark a revolution in the way we experience music.
Now things look somewhat less rosy for the music industry, not to mention for Hollywood and other content owners. According to experts, industry lawsuits prompted no appreciable drop in online file-trading activity, although there does seem to have been a shift in the P2P trade: Instead of downloading singles, traders are increasingly interested in downloading much bigger chunks of content, such as full albums, television shows, and entire movies. BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer application celebrated by techies for its capacity to move extremely large files, became both very popular and easy to use in 2004 (especially when combined with RSS, the Web syndication service that ought to get 2004's award for Web geeks' most beloved New Thing) -- a development that doesn't sit well with the media firms.
But while the illegal trade flourished, the legal market for digital music also hit new heights. Apple's iTunes store has sold more than 200 million songs, and its success has prompted many rivals -- including RealNetworks and, more interestingly, Microsoft -- to launch their own online music shops. The iPod, meanwhile, became a kind of cultural icon in 2004, landing on the cover of Newsweek (headline: "iPod Nation") and swelling Apple's bottom line.
But the music industry seems eager to squander even the goodwill of all these shiny happy iPod people. Still more willing to fight its battles on Capitol Hill rather than the marketplace, record labels got their friends in Congress to introduce draconian anti-infringement legislation this summer that would mete out severe penalties to anyone who "intentionally aids, abets, induces or procures" copyright violation by a third person. The measure -- known as the Induce Act -- is so restrictive, critics say, that under its terms many of the technologies we hold dear would never have come to pass. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation: "If this bill had been law in 1984, there would be no VCR. If this bill had been law in 1995, there would be no CD burners. If this bill had been law in 2000, there would be no iPod."
-- Farhad Manjoo
The problem with file sharing is that it is viral, not infectious.
What I mean is that you can't stop it with laws. People trade child porn online and that's legal nowhere. The record industry has tried repression over and over and it fails over and over.
As far as online music shops, how many versions of Britney Spears do you need? The real gold is in the back catalogue and out of print music, which people will pay for. Not current hits.
If you asked me what legal downloads I enjoyed the most, it would be Moroccan gnawa music and Balinese Gamelan. Not the Four Tops. But the rise of Bit Torrent makes a lot of this obsolete. Gnutella made it hard, Bit Torrent makes it nearly impossible to stop. Because the distribution network crosses borders and laws in a way it is nearly impossible to stop.
Information wants to be free, especially when it's a lot cheaper to download than buy.
And you can rant about theft all day long, in a society where Wal-Mart brags about low prices, these are the lowest prices of all.
It seems strange to contemplate now, but around this time last year just about everyone in the political establishment believed that Howard Dean would handily win the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004, thanks mainly to his deft use of what experts were calling a powerful new political tool -- blogs. That, of course, didn't happen; though Dean used his formidable online operation to raise more money and to put together a more robust organization than any other candidate, his blog savvy mattered little in Iowa, New Hampshire and other primary contests.
In retrospect, Dean's loss should probably have been a sign to proponents of Web-based political activism that they needed to spend some time thinking of creative ways to convert a vibrant online movement into an effective offline tool. But in the heat of the campaign there was no time for such introspection, and instead bloggers -- the most powerful of whom seemed to be liberals, epitomized by the denizens of Daily Kos -- raced forward with their crusades.
And for a while, things looked peachy. With the advent of blog-based ads, money poured in to political campaigns (not to mention to the bloggers themselves). Bloggers also managed to affect the political news cycle (remember "Rathergate"?) and they got themselves invited to both parties' conventions. But it was hard not to think of the Democratic defeat of Nov. 2 as a Dean-in-Iowa redux for the bloggers. John Kerry raised a lot of money online, but he didn't win. And neither did many of the congressional candidates who'd financed their campaigns with blog money. Readers of Daily Kos funneled half a million dollars to a "Kos dozen" of congressional candidates, and every single one of those lost at the polls.
So what happened? Was the entire online political effort something of an illusion -- a mere echo chamber of blue-state optimism, all sound and fury, signifying nothing? Alas, it sure seems that way now. But here's hoping that by 2006, smart bloggers find ways to break through the echo chamber, and people-powered online movements begin to matter in the real world.
Farhad Manjoo
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The most potent tool in the Dems arsenal last year was not blogs. But then, you'd actually have to leave the computer to see that. It was meetups. Meetups turned individuals into collective units. Not only Dean benefitted from them, but Clark as well. Blogs are mostly a tool of communication, not organization. It would be silly to assume that Kos can organize people on the ground to win elections-now.
This so misses the point. The fact is that the Dems would have been swamped by Bush's money without online giving. Campaigns which would have been swamped had a fighting chance because of online money. See, this is the old San Francisco, "let's have a revolution" kind of thinking. What isn't being credited here is that blogs had more influence than Salon did on the election. And we're talking small, often one or two man operations here. Echo chamber my ass. It was a lot closer to a public square, where for the first time, oridnary people could join the political process.
The fact is that money is the first step in winning. In most of the Congressional races Kos spent time and money on, most of the candidates were making their first or second run for office. In most cases, you have to run more than once to win a seat. But with that extra money, money they would have never gotten otherwise, the GOP had to devote time and resources they would not have had to spend to win those races.
What Manjoo expected was a miracle, when in reality, none of these systems existed even in 2003. The advent of blogads and online fundraising was built on the fly and worked a lot better than anyone could have expected. All blogs could do is give campaigns a fighting chance. They couldn't win the seats for the candidates. Instead of bemoaning the failure, I'd look at the success. In a short time, blogs became a political force, not through PR ot K Street, but by individuals working together. Campaigns have to win on the ground. A blog can only give them a fighting chance.
If you want to see the difference, look at the current fight for DNC chair. A job no one cared about outside Washington four years ago is now the topic of the day. That's real, significant change. It isn't flashy or earth shattering, but it's the first step in retaking American politics from K Street.
So is this good for gays too? Do they get to pass their beneifts on to their loved ones? No? Is that because you've voted against it Mr. barely in the closet. So how much is the guy you live with getting again, as much as Karl Rove?
This came in the mail:
Check out this Dec. 26 exchange between Reps. David Dreier and Charlie Rangel on Late Edition w/Wolf Blitzer on SS privatization:
DREIER: There would be options that would give a higher rate of return than today is received on Social Security.
And, Charlie, I will tell you, African-Americans would be the greatest beneficiaries of this, as they would be able, with a shortened life span, they would be able to pass this on to future generations.
So I think that the whole notion of private....
RANGEL: So, because we die earlier, we should vest in (ph). The truth of the matter is...
DREIER: It's something that can be passed on to future generations, Charlie.
RANGEL: Give me a break. Give me a break.
The truth in the matter is that we do get more money from the survivors, since the women live longer. And so, basing this on how fast you intend to die -- another thing, I promised the president that I will wait until he comes forward with a plan.
Dreier is offering the reverse "It's a Wonderful Life" plan for blacks, with no Clarence to save them. It's good to die young, because you get to pass along the private account to your family! Who knew "ownership society" meant buying the farm? It's comforting to know Swift's A Modest Proposal has replaced Robert's Rules of Order for members of the House GOP Caucus.
First of all, the idea that this pissant amount of money is going to be some kind of annuity is, well, a cruel joke. We are not talking more than a few grand. Dreier just placed this in the most racist terms possible: niggers, you die early because we neglect you, don't give you decent medical care and put you in shitty, redlined neighborhoods without even supermarkets, so you should support gutting social security.
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Twenty-eight people were killed in an explosion that flattened several houses in Baghdad overnight, apparently when a police unit was lured into a trap laid by insurgents, officials said on Wednesday.
Six policemen were among the dead and four others were missing, Interior Ministry spokesman said. A further 21 people were wounded in the blast, late on Tuesday in the Ghazaliya district of western Baghdad. Most were neighbors.
The police had responded to a call from a neighbor saying that there was shooting coming from a house, the spokesman said: "When the police arrived and went in, the house blew up.
"It seems to have been a trap."
"The house was turned into a bomb," a police officer said.
Three houses were entirely destroyed, razed to piles of bricks and rubble. Entire families were wiped out, said neighbors who believed foreign fighters may have lived there.
A U.S. military spokesman said he had no information.
Earlier on Tuesday, about two dozen police and other Iraqi security force personnel were killed in other attacks by insurgents who appear bent on wrecking next month's U.S.-backed election.
Seven weeks after a U.S. offensive on the guerrilla bastion of Falluja in a bid to quell the revolt before the Jan. 30 vote, there are signs the insurgency has recovered much of its vigor.
The quantity of explosive used in Baghdad was a reminder of the vast supplies from Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s army that the insurgents have at their disposal.
This was practice for the Americans.
neighbors who believed foreign fighters may have lived there.
Yet, no one called the cops or the US to raid the place. Think about that. Oh my, there are Saudi guerillas next door. Maybe we should bake them a cake. Not call the First Cav to get them out of there.
Is It True What They Say About Ann?” DVD
Burkett, Elinor; Wright, Patrick
Go behind the scenes with Ann Coulter, and meet the woman behind the stinging barb and the quick wit. In the brand new documentary “Is It True What They Say About Ann?” you’ll see the “conservative movement’s diva” at her best:
* In original interviews where she takes on the likes of Katie Couric and Phil Donohoue
* Giving a college lecture, where she deftly handles her hecklers and graciously receives her many fans
* Delivering blistering commentary via satellite -- both when the cameras are rolling, and when they aren’t
* In candid interviews shot exclusively for this insightful documentary
You’ll also get a rare glimpse of the real Ann Coulter:
* Learn about her childhood in -- and flight from -- the suburbs
* Hear Ann talk about how her mother still sends her Easter baskets every year
* Find out about Ann’s passion for such rock bands as the Grateful Dead and the Ramones
In addition to the 40-minute documentary “Is It True What They Say About Ann?” bonus features of this DVD include:
* An additional 40 minutes of exclusive interviews with Ann
* Ann letting loose with her fans at the Conservative Political Action Caucus
* Ann eviscerating a special issue of the New York Times
* The Ann Coulter Photo album
The most controversial political commentator of our day, Ann Coulter is the author of the bestselling Slander, Treason, and How to Talk to a Liberal. And finally, here’s a documentary that spotlights this fascinating woman. Ann’s legions of fans won’t want to miss this DVD full of exclusive interviews, classic television clips, and Coulter insight.
But they left out:
Her seances at Joe McCarthy's grave
The hunt for black mogambo
Beating Yeshiva students for fun and profit
Converting Muslims at whip and handcuff point.
Being batshit crazy for fun and profit
Anal sex, not just for Catholic School Girls anymore
And most of all, how to live as a post-op transexual
As I write this, the death toll from the Asian tsunami has been estimated by CNN to exceed 23,000. Millions are reported homeless. Reports from Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Somalia, India, and Burma tell of chaos and ongoing rescue and relief efforts. It is a monumental story.
But even as I check websites, my local paper, cable, network and local newscasts about this disaster, I can't help but wonder:
* Will this story get as much coverage as the Scott Peterson case?
* Will U.S. media invest its mighty resources into a story that is far from home, affects mostly people of other nations, and is relentlessly painful to witness?
* Will media organizations –- especially those that have cut back foreign bureaus -- redeploy staff to cover and stay with this story for more than its first days?
* Will newsrooms that have adopted a "hyper-local" approach to news be willing to blow up that strategy in the face of a story that should transcend our parochial interests?
* Will newsroom leaders see in this story the opportunities to bring readers and viewers closer to people, places, and issues they may never have known?
* Will they reject the notion that Americans are interested in the story only in proportion to the number of U.S. citizens directly affected?
* Will local television affiliates demand that their networks provide continuing and fresh pictures from overseas, so viewers won't see recycled images and assume the story is static, rather than dynamic?
* Will networks send their top reporters, even anchors to the scene? What a powerful message that would send about the importance of this tragedy so far from our shores.
* Will local journalists find creative ways to localize the story while still connecting it to the major event? Will local meteorologists apply their teaching skills to this story as effectively as they explain hurricanes and snowstorms?
* Will journalism organizations carefully vet the charities to which they direct citizen contributions, so donors can be confident their dollars are in the hands of good stewards?
All these questions speak to newsroom leadership, both formal and informal. Who is guiding the decisions about this story in your newsroom right now? Chances are some of your veteran staff may be taking holiday time off. Who, then, is stepping up to offer a vision for remarkable coverage right now? Who is thinking globally, locally, and journalistically?
Real simple answer: no.
Brown people dying is trumped by Iraq. Unless famous musicians hold a concert.
What has been known for some time by those who calculate military casualties has now hit slate.com The article is a welcome exposition of what has been clear for sometime - that the Iraqi rebellion is every bit as dangerous as previous post-colonial conflicts, and that it is only vastly improved medical treatment and armor that is preventing the conflict in Iraq from spiralling through the roof in death toll figures.
What is important is that the two authors are not critics - their article is steeped with Rush Limbaughisms, such as labelling the insurgents in fallujah "terrorists". Their call is for more equipment, more men, more firepower. They believe, as the "Best and the Brightest" of LBJ believed - that given enough force "we can win this thing". It might be true, but their is the paradox - the people who can "win this thing" wouldn't have gone in. And the ones who have, have every reason not to admit that winning Iraq will require sacrifice - political, economic and military.
But instead, we have soldiers playing Rumsfeld Roulette.
I. Counting Casualties
In the spring I began calculating relative casualty rates for the US lead coalition against the insurgents. Up until that time the focus had been on the official fatality figures supplied by the US government, and most media outlets were pedalling propoganda - counting only "fatalities in combat" - to reduce the total number of dead to something resembling a bad Memorial Day Weekend.
That the US public was being kept in the dark about the extent to which military manpower is being drained is not surprising. It is only in the last few months that the media has admitted we are facing a "rebellion" in Iraq, it is only in the last few months that they stopped using terms such as "terrorist" to describe the guerillas and insurgents, and it was only recently that they stopped buying the "foreign fighter" rational of the war.
It still, however, covers up the nature of "contractor" deaths. Originally the fatalities reported in the Mosul blast were 18, and then this was dropped to 13. Who were the other five? US contractors. That is to say, Americans serving in a combat role, and, under the rules of war, military personnel. Indeed a better term for them would be "para-militaries".
Instead, I looked at total military casualties - which from the military perspective are defined as service personnel lost for combat duty. At the time, even wounded not returned to duty figures were sketchy, and contractors in military roles were not counted. These numbers are still difficult to get hard data for. More over, then, as now, Iraqi security forces killed or wounded and not returned to duty were not counted, or reported. Neither the Iraqi Interior Ministry, nor the Iraqi Defense Ministry provided this information, and what information there was was not compiled.
The other difficulty was finding the number of actual enemy dead, rather than the military's distressing habit of counting any one killed in a war zone as a kill. It may make them look better, short term, but it is not accurate. Instead, it became necessary to look at two factors.
The first is that the insurgents often collected their own dead when they could. The second was that hospitals were willing to report deaths and injuries to women and children. Taking these reported numbers as percentages when available, it became clear that 70% of reported Iraqi casualties in war zones were civilians.
Taking the best estimates of these totals, that is fatalities, plus wounded not returned to duty, plus contractors, plus security personnel, it was very clear that the insurgents in the Al-Ansar province were inflicting on casualty for every three they took. This might seem like it is a walk over for the Coalition - getting three of them, for each one of ours they get. However, that number is well below the historical victory rate for occupiers or established military forces against an insurgency. The grey zone is around 4 or 5 to 1. If an established force is only disabling at 4 to 1 against an insurgency, it is very likely to be headed for defeat, not victory. To give an idea of scale, the US coalition inflicted 1000:1 during the first Gulf War, and 100:1 during the invasion. In the most intense days of fighting, the ratio dropped to 2:1. In short, a rate which is headed for defeat.
The reason that established forces must inflict casualties at this rate is rather simple: they are deployed offensively, and represent the top fraction of their nation's personnel, against the rank and file of the target population. In short, one Coalition soldier, contractor or security officer is a great deal more difficult to replace than one insurgent.
II. Analysis of Forces
To determine whether a force is on the way to victory or defeat, it is necessary to have an idea of three things:
1. Force Pool - how many people available for which combat positions.
2. Attrition Rate - how many are lost, including those lost to desertion, and the disintegration of units.
3. Replacement Rate - how many are coming in, in all capacities.
The importance of the first cannot be a simple count of people in uniforms. It must include such high skill positions as heliocopter pilots, doctors, high level officers, low level officers and specialists. This combines with the second part closely, because major powers seldom retreat because of low level losses. Instead, it is when they begin taking attrition to hard to replace personnel, high level officers, specialists and individuals with special skill and talent sets, that continued occupation becomes more and more difficult.
In Vietnam it was not, ultimately, the attrition of enlisted personnel that was fatal to the US war effort, it was the attrition of low level officers. While the casualty rates for "grunts" in Vietnam were high, they were more sustainable than the Korean conflict, or the American Civil War. What was unsustainable was the attrition to the officer core - which was at rate comparable to the worst conflicts in American history. There was a leadership drain. This is a continuing pattern: in Afghanistan, it was the loss of high level officers and helicopter pilots that doomed the Soviet occupation.
Which brings up the third prong of the model of conflict: replacement rates. Individuals with special skill and talent sets are not only harder to replace in time, but there is a far more limited pool of people. There are limited numbers of people who have the combination of talent and trainability to be pilots, colonels and doctors. Loss of one of these is equivalent to losing 100 ordinary soldiers for attrition purposes. This isn't the same thing as saying that the lives of each and every person aren't valuable as human lives, but in the calculus of sustaining a war, some losses weigh much more heavily than others.
When an military begins losing high value personnel at an unsustainable rate, one of the first responses is to keep the ones they have in the field longer and longer. This, while it works in the short run, is fatal in the long run. The only people who can train new skilled individuals are experienced skilled individuals. The best people to train new combat chopper pilots, are combat chopper pilots. This was a lesson learned in World War II. The Japanese kept many of their best pilots deployed for battle after battle, the Americans rotated many of their experienced pilots back. Over time, the American air forces increased in average skill, while slow attrition removed the most knowledgeable and able core of Japanese pilots. Without the warrior skills to pass on, the Japanese were finally forced to throw barely trained, and finally kamikazee pilots at the Americans.
The most important two force pools in a post-colonial conflict are for crack troops - the top of the warrior pool of talent - and the high skill transport, command, control and medical personnel. Without these two groups - the teeth and the nerves of the military force - there is no ability to impose order on an area.
The United States has only approximately 50,000 crack warriors available, this number can be obtained by looking at the rotation of forces through Iraq multiple times. Of this number, only 10,000 are deployable offensively at any one time, and this is only if we use the British forces to hold other points while doing so. 10,000 is an all out number, while 3,000 is the more usual number. This means that the present casualty rates among combat infantry, marines and elite forces between Iraq and Afghanistan are placing an attrition rate of approximately 1% on on the force pool of the "teeth" of the occupation. Such attrition rates are sustainable, but they are well above the level of acceptable "wastage". In blunt terms, it is a loss rate high enough to mean that the occupation is in at a "fish or cut bait" point - win, or go home.
Currently losses among air transport personnel are well within the sustainable rate, the lack of heavy anti-aircraft by the insurgents is particularly important for the survivability of US personnel. However, in the catagorey of heavy ground transport, the loss rate is already too high to be sustained, and has forced the US to move to air transport of supplies. Increasing both cost and creating a brittle point in the US war effort. By making striking at air transport more important, it has created an incentive to do so. The losses of truck drivers are now so high that is is almost uneconomical to hire them.
The other class of individuals that must be looked at is the loss of high leadership. So far this rate has been sustainable, but it is creating the same brittle point: as US forces rely more and more on remaining in "garrison" mode, it reduces the ability to project force out into the country side. We are protecting our officer core, but at the cost of effectiveness in fighting the insurgency.
The last important pool to look at is the pool of Iraqi security personnel. The insurgency knows that if it can shatter the effectiveness of the Iraqi government forces, then eventually the war is theirs.
It is here, with the problems of recruitment and replacement visible everywhere in Iraq, that the most glaring omission in reporting is seen. The United States strategy is "Iraqification" of the war. In the end, the rate at which Iraqi security forces are coming into effectiveness is the metric as to whether the current strategy is going to prevail. There is no other number which matters as much, and yet there is no other number which is harder to guage. However, even from published sources, it is clear that the Iraqi security forces are completely ineffective against the insurgents, the insurgents are killing or disabling more security forces, than in reverse, and are able to execute strategic attacks on infrastructure as well. Taking out the insurgents killed by the coalition, the insurgents are out killing the government by at least 3:1.
In fact the inability to secure politically reliable Iraqis is a well known security problem on US bases.
As importantly, many of the medical, technological and logistical advantages that are being provided to Coalition service personnel and para-militaries serving with them, are not available to the Iraqi military. The coalition is a post- revolution in military affairs force - that is, one where information and logistics are integrated into the total force. The Iraqi military isn't even a modern mechanized force. It is, essentially, a World War I level force taking on a similarly equipped insurgency. It does not have mobile hospitals, control of hard points. It does not have chopper forces, tanks, high level command and control, training facilities, or safe places to rotate forces.
In short, the Iraqi security forces are fighting on a roughly equal footing with the insurgents.
Already the insurgency has been effective enough to begin drawing support from Kurdish separatists. Should they find a way to reignite shia discontent - which is very possible if elections do not produce a large flow of money into the poor slums of Iraq's major cities - then the replacement rate of insurgent forces will be at, or above, the rate of the government. More over, the insurgents are clearly training their new recruits - the level of effectiveness of their attacks has not dropped, in terms of casualties inflicted per attack, but has, instead, increased.
III. Conclusions
1. The current loses in the elite warrior pool in Iraq are unsustainable as a permanent occupation, and the loses by the Iraqi security forces mean that there is no "hand over" or end game. The US is also sustaining losses in ground transport which are creating a vulnerability in the ability to supply forces in Iraq, and await only a rebel force which is capable of striking at US air facilities to paralyze the occupation forces. While the insurgents are losing well underneath their replacement rates for ground infantry, and have little in the way of skilled personnel to replace other than bomb builders.
2. The United States is within 18 months of a crisis point in the occupation, where the Iraqi rebellion will be sufficiently advaned to execute shatter attacks at the vulnerability points, and the United States will no longer be able to replace the crack troops that are being lost in ordinary opperations in Iraq. At this point the ability of the US to engage in "chomp and stomp" operations to slow the spread of the rebellion will dwindle, and the insurgency will be able to openly take control of more and more of Iraq itself. Morale is dropping and dissent within the pro-war military community is growing.
This is only assuming that Iraq remains largely an internally driven insurgency, with most of the troops involved being local. Recent political statements from bin Laden, and the winding down of the Palestine-Israel conflict would indicate that it is possible for the insurgency to begin drawing on a larger force pool of discontented Arabs. Should this happen, the replacement rate of the insurgency will mushroom, and rather than facing flare ups of violence, and specific attacks, Iraq will rapidly approach a fall apart point.
3. The present crisis is driven by the failure to create the conditions by which a government military and security force, and the associated culture and institutions, can grow in Iraq.The rates of casualty of the government forces are higher, at the present, than the casualties that the security forces are able to inflict on the insurgents. The Iraqi government forces are losing, straight up against the insurgents, and would not be able to maintain power without the occupation forces.
4. The insurgency is showing signs of spreading out from the Sunni core, and should it be able to tap other pools of internal dissent, the position of the Iraqi Government's security forces will be untenable. The insurgents have superior morale, tactics, leadership and training to the government. They are roughly even on logistics, and have better areas to shelter their forces. They are behind only in supply of weapons and in support of a major government - neither of which are decisive.
Should the insurgency turn this particular corner, the government of Iraq will fall in a matter of days, as the insurgents will be able to dismember the government's already tenuous presence in the country side, and will be able to strike at the leadership core of the Iraqi Government.
These factors indicate that the United States, should it desire a postive outcome in Iraq, will have to make large sacrifices to create a much larger war effort, will have to force internal political changes in the Iraqi government leadership, will have to take Iraqi security personnel out of Iraq to be trained in safe areas to be redeployed in Iraq.
Current US replacement rates, and military strategy do not allow for these changes, and therefore it can be concluded that should the present rate of losses of coalition personnel and Iraqi security forces continue, without a dramatic increase in casualties inflicted on the enemy, that the US occuaption in Iraq will have a negative outcome - producing either a failed state, or a state with a hostile government.
What I would add is that the draft is no real solution to this. If the well-trained, veteran infantry were shooting up cars and getting ambushed, quickly trained teenagers shoved into combat will be even less effective.
Simply put, the one core, overriding fact is that the majority of the Iraqi populace, have decided to watch the US struggle and ultimately fail. Our early failures to ensure security and basic needs like constant power ensured that. Once we were unable to do that, then the need and obligation to assist the US faded away. Why risk helping the foriegners when they can't do anything. It is clear from the kinds of attacks launched that this isn't some Sunni-only insurgency, some group of fundies and ex-Baathists. This is a wide-spread, widely supported resistance, with agents in every relevant US base and Iraqi agency. Neignbors freely and openly rat out their neighbors, even their kin, who work for the Americans. The French Resistance would have killed for this kind of intelligence. Even if people do not pick up guns, they feed the resistance information and cuts across ethnic lines.
The Shia clergy has been achingly silent about the deaths of Shia serving the government. Sistani could have called for Shia men to join the police or Army, which would have placed a serious burden on the Sunni resistance. Instead, they remained silent as Shia police and Guardsmen are killed. Partly to avoid being sucked in as American proxies like the Northern Alliance. Party because collaboration with the Americans is still unacceptable. One of the Shia police chiefs dodged an assassination today. Now, which Sunni guerrilla got close to him? Try none.
And it's not blackmail either. Nothing like blackmail. Because you cannot get that kind of information from blackmail alone. The ability to walk into a police station and slit throats comes from an inside job and some deep hatred. You can't blackmail someone into that.
The resistance is not just Sunnis, too many bodies are coming up in odd places, places where Shia troops train and Shia police work. People you trust do this. Not strangers. Not spies. Too many people who work for the Americans, even in menial jobs, come up dead or quit for this to be the concern of a guerilla leader. Who cares who lays bricks? This is tribal, this is neighborhood. Sunni or Shia, it doesn't matter. Shia wind up just as dead as Sunnis in this war. And the people who send them to their deaths smile in their faces and note exactly which Americans they work for.
And too many Americans assume that because they smile in our troops faces and take their toys, that the people around them aren't plotting their deaths and rejoicing at every IED. Sure, build their schools, Sadr's new teachers will appreaciate the work after he takes over. Americans assume the open reaction is the honest one. Which is insane in a society where honesty could have gotten you a long, slow, painful death. Iraqis survived by keeping their thoughts to themselves. And Americans assume a smile and a handshake means an honest intent. Well, it doesn't. Not in a dictatorship. They smile and nod to survive, and they plot revenge and Americans are easy to seek revenge against. David Petreus, former commander of the 101 ABN ran Mosul for months. He swore he was making solid deals with the locals. They smiled in his face, nodded when he did, made him feel welcome and set out bombs for his men. When the 2nd ID showed up, they didn't even bother to smile. The just set bombs.
The Iraqis have lived for centuries under the thumbs of cruel, capricious masters. We have not. They can survive what we can throw at them, because it is all in their history. The only difference is that they have the means to resist us on close to our terms. They couldn't shoot the British out of the sky in 1920. They can shoot us out the sky in 2004.
Our friend eloped! She ran off with a guy we don't really like, and told her family but not her friends!
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By Cary Tennis
Dec. 28, 2004 | Dear Cary,
I've always thought of myself as a good friend -- someone who cares for the people in my life and wants the best for them. However, a situation has just come up that is testing that vision of myself.
I just learned that a friend of mine eloped over the weekend with her boyfriend of a little over a year. Sounds like happy news, right? So why do I feel so sick to my stomach? Perhaps because I've never really liked my friend's boyfriend -- er, husband. He is a good-hearted person, but extremely overbearing and dull. I've always thought she was with him partly out of desperation or a fear of being alone, and I questioned their real compatibility.
Or maybe it's because she planned an elopement for over a month without telling any of her friends -- even though she probably kept it to herself because she knew we wouldn't approve. I feel lied to and betrayed that she kept a secret from us while she was busy scheming and inviting her family to the wedding. Maybe it's that I wonder if part of her motivation was to prove wrong all of us who aren't big fans of her husband -- otherwise, why the foolhardy rush into marriage after only a year of dating? Or perhaps I just feel jealous that she has gotten married while my much-longer relationship is stuck in the "we want to get married but aren't 100 percent positive yet" phase.
What's going on here? How do I put aside my own feelings and tell her congratulations when I'm really thinking that she made a hasty bad decision?
Bad Friend
Dear Bad Friend,
I don't know why I had so much trouble answering this one, but I did. I had to keep rewriting it. I knew what I wanted to say, but it wasn't coming out right. I think I was trying to be cute and amusing. It's hard to be cute and amusing and serious and subtle too.
...........
Elopement is an act of social transgression. It divides the bride's total society into two smaller groups -- the group that was in on it, and the group that wasn't. It grants special status to those who knew, and disses those who didn't. As opposed to a carefully planned wedding and marriage, which attempts to bring family and friends of both parties together and cement bonds, elopement gives primacy to the private emotions of the couple to the exclusion of social consensus, and only admits a few of the inner circle -- presumably those who approve of the private emotional bond. So your view of it differs depending on whether you're the justice of the peace or the bartender at the roadhouse where they decided to do it, or the bride's father or the groom's best friend or the minister who always thought she'd have a church wedding -- right here is this very chapel where she was baptized, by golly! -- or her best friend from high school or just one of many cheerful acquaintances all waiting their turn at matrimony like children lined up for the roller coaster -- Hey! She butted in line! She didn't follow the rules!
....... There's no need to shame her; she's done nothing wrong; she's simply defied one of the unwritten rules of a voluntary and rather fluid social group.
But enough about her: Good luck with your own life!
As usual, Tennis is as wrong as white shoes in October.
The problem is the sneaking. When you sneak to do something, there is a reason to do it.
God knows, you can't tell people to not get married, you aren't in their relationship.
But unless you know their dynamic, there is no way to know whether you're right or you're missing the point. But if all her friends didn't like the guy, well, that's a sign right there.
The problem is that you can have a feeling that something isn't right, but there isn't much to say. Love versus being in love is a very difficult line to walk. I guess people have to figure that out for themselves.
But the fact that she didn't include her friends is a bad sign. But then Miss Letter writer is playing a different version of the same game. She's not sure. Well, life isn't a zero sum game. Marriage, like any other great venture, is a risk. My bet is that she's going to find it a long road to the altar. I think one of the signs of getting married is the willingness to sacrifice for someone else. When that isn't there, or if it's done grudgingly, well, you might want to think hard about the whole exercise.
Dec. 28, 2004 | Washington -- The U.S. Agency for International Development prepared Tuesday to add $20 million to an initial $15 million contribution for Asian earthquake relief as Secretary of State Colin Powell bristled at a United Nations official's suggestion that the United States has been "stingy."
A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press the increased aid figure was bound to be pushed even higher as assessments of the damage from the biggest earthquake in 40 years are received.
The Pentagon is preparing a supplemental relief operation and pre-stocked supplies of shelter, food and water bags are on their way to Indonesia from Dubai, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Powell, irritated by the U.N. official's criticism, toured morning television talk shows to say the Bush administration will follow up its contributions with large additional sums.
"The United States has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world," Powell said when asked about the comments Monday by Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian aid chief.
Initially, the U.S. government pledged $15 million and dispatched disaster specialists to help the Asian nations devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunamis that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
On Monday, President Bush sent letters of condolence and Powell called the disaster an "international tragedy" as he laid out the initial American aid efforts.
Appearing Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America," the secretary said that at least 11 Americans have died in the disaster and hundreds remain unaccounted for.
Powell chafed at statements that Egeland made at a Monday news conference, at which the humanitarian aid chief exhorted "rich" nations to do more.
"We were more generous when we were less rich, many of the rich countries," Egeland said. "And it is beyond me, why are we so stingy, really ... Even Christmas time should remind many Western countries at least how rich we have become."
I guess the Holy Christian Emperor realized that $15m was about what Usher spent for his cars and Atlanta home. That millions of destitute people might need a bit more than his Napoleonic coronation.
The worst of Times Two new books on the New York Times relive its recent crises. But while the Jayson Blair scandal made for splashy headlines, the real question is how the country's leading newspaper will recover from spreading lies about Iraq's WMD.
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By Andrew O'Hehir
Dec. 28, 2004 | Near the end of "Hard News," his gripping account of the Jayson Blair scandal and the brief, disastrous reign of former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines, media reporter Seth Mnookin makes an offhand comment that pretty much nails the peculiar status of the Times in American society. "For the Times to be the Times," Mnookin writes, "its employees ... need to be willing to sublimate their own egos to serve a larger, quasi-public good."
Mnookin means this to be another log on the pyre he's building under Raines, who is depicted in "Hard News" as a vainglorious tyrant, far more the book's villain than the pitiable Jayson Blair, a bewildered young man perhaps suffering from mental illness who should never have found himself in a position to disgrace the nation's leading newspaper. But what sticks with me here is the notion that the New York Times -- a for-profit media corporation that has been controlled by a single family for the last 108 years -- serves a "quasi-public" purpose. While this is clearly true, the purposefully ambiguous phrasing needs some unpacking.
Every morning's edition of the Times defines what the terms of discourse will be on that day for the political, intellectual and media elites of the United States. Like almost everyone else I know, I read the Times first thing in the morning, and I did so long before I moved to New York. Savvy as we may all think we are about the Times, and much as we may scrutinize and second-guess its perceived missteps, the decisions made by its editors dictate our agenda more than we would like to admit.
During Salon's daily conference call of desk editors, there is nearly always some discussion of the day's Times: How has the paper's coverage of Bush, or of Iraq, shifted recently? What books or movies were reviewed? What trends were spotted embarrassingly late -- or distressingly early? What stories has the Times covered that we've missed? And what stories do we need to jump on before the Gray Lady airs them out?
If there's a connection between Mnookin's measured and judicious "Hard News" and "The Record of the Paper," Howard Friel and Richard Falk's blistering critique of what they describe as the Times' chronic misreporting of U.S. foreign policy, it's that both books remind us that the Times is fundamentally a business, and its reputation for impartial and careful newsgathering is fundamentally a marketplace commodity. It's what the Times is selling us. Like all other commodities, it is shaped by the conditions under which it is sold: It goes up and down in value, it is repackaged and redesigned to seem more appealing, it is understood by different consumers (that is, readers) in different ways.
Of course, it's true that the press in general bears an important public trust in American democracy, at least in theory, and the Times' dominant position brings with it a disproportionate responsibility. But setting the civics lesson aside, the true mission of the New York Times is not to serve the public but to serve its owners and shareholders. It's a corporation striving for market share in a capitalist economy. It's a brand -- the most prestigious brand name in journalism -- and the decisions of its editors and managers, whether good or bad, are seen as affecting the long-term viability of that brand.
This understanding takes us a good distance toward answering a burning question that both these books bounce off en route to their desired targets -- which are, in Mnookin's case, an indictment of Raines' chaotic regime, followed by reassurances that the essential chemistry of the Times has reestablished itself; and, in Friel and Falk's case, a riveting and despairing analysis of the paper's ideological self-castration.
Along the way, both books briefly (and unsatisfactorily) ponder the jarring disparity between the Blair scandal and the case of Judith Miller, the Times reporter who did more than any other single individual, except perhaps George W. Bush, to spread the notion that Saddam Hussein's regime possessed weapons of mass destruction and, by extension, that war with Iraq was both necessary and inevitable.
As Mnookin's chronicle captures in high page-turner style, l'affaire Blair had the media world (and, for a week or so, the whole country) enthralled during a slow news cycle in the spring of 2002. And no wonder: It was a gripping tale of a breathtaking con job and unbelievable mismanagement, leavened with schadenfreude and seasoned with those inescapably American ingredients, racial guilt and hostility.
A young and inexperienced African-American reporter is fast-tracked to the front page, despite repeated warnings from his editors and supervisors that he can't be trusted. Suffering from who knows what combination of mental instability, anger, drug addiction and exhaustion, he perpetrates the most massive and ambitious series of frauds in the recent history of journalism, "reporting" dozens of stories from places he never visited about people he never met.
The scale of the Times' response was every bit as impressive as the scale of Blair's deceptions. After an editor at the San Antonio Express-News informed the Times that Blair had apparently plagiarized an article from his paper about a Texas woman whose son was missing in action in Iraq -- and after Times editors realized that Blair had never traveled to Texas and that his story was entirely bogus -- a team of five Times reporters, three editors and several researchers spent a week, working almost 24/7, digging into Blair's reporting career. Acting as in-house independent investigators, they interviewed Blair's editors and colleagues, sought access to his personnel records and expense reports, and had a series of tense encounters with the paper's upper management, including Raines, managing editor Gerald Boyd and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.
A former Newsweek reporter who covered the Blair scandal at the time, Mnookin provides an admirably full account of this ultimate crash-reporting assignment and the foxhole mentality it bred among the investigative team. (Full disclosure: Mnookin was a frequent contributor to Salon from 1998 to 2002, and I've met him two or three times.) It's compulsive bedside reading for journalism junkies. As reporters Dan Barry, David Barstow, Jonathan Glater, Adam Liptak and Jacques Steinberg began to excavate Blair's trail of deceit, they realized, first, that the scope of his deception was massive and, second, that part of the story was about the dysfunctional management style and poor communication of the Raines-Boyd regime.
..............
Looking too closely into the Miller affair, then, would raise the question of how America's leading newspaper, which prides itself on its impartiality and its "non-crusading" character, was so readily hypnotized by a mendacious administration that it splashed that government's most spectacular untruths across the front page, over and over again. This question goes well beyond Judith Miller or Howell Raines or Bill Keller, all of whom have to look in the mirror every day and wonder to what extent they are responsible for a misguided war that has cost thousands of human lives and now feels like a bottomless disaster. Jayson Blair was just a weird kid who told some fibs.
It's easy for a book reviewer to sit here and second-guess the Times' reporting on Iraq long after the fact. The individual who bears ultimate responsibility for the Iraq war is George W. Bush, and he might well have gone ahead with his long-desired invasion if the Times had never swallowed any of Chalabi and Wolfowitz's bunkum (and, for that matter, if 9/11 had never happened). Of course, you or I didn't know that when Colin Powell gave his fateful audiovisual presentation to the United Nations in February 2003, he was pretty much pulling it out of his butt. Almost every reporter has been hoodwinked by a source and, if he or she is honest, can imagine being swept up in scoop-fever to the point of making Miller's mistakes, egregious as they were.
No, the fundamental question about the future of the New York Times, in the Keller era and beyond, is whether it can recover a sense of true impartiality and independence, or whether its editors and managers have become so snuggly with power, so seduced by the corroded political discourse of our time, that they define "impartiality" as a point of perpetual, semi-neutral waffledom, halfway across the infinitesimal distance between Joe Lieberman and John McCain.
Friel and Falk quote from the legendary opinion of late Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, when the court ruled that the Times could publish the leaked documents in defiance of the Nixon White House: "In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy," Black wrote. "Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell."
Seen in this light, the Jayson Blair case was an embarrassing sideshow, nothing more. With the bogus WMD stories reported by Miller and approved by various editors, the Times -- which, for all its flaws, remains the last, best hope for American journalism -- disgraced itself and betrayed its essential role in what remains of our democracy. We have to hope that Bill Keller, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and about 1,200 other people who work on 43rd Street understand that.
Blair was a slimy little troll who asskissed and backstabbed his way to the Times and his departure, like Jack Kelley and Bob Greene, will hardly be missed.
Miller, OTOH, is a vastly different story. She promoted a fake story and screwed people to get it, as the Washington Post was kind enough to inform us. You really can't stop nutjobs, but Miller, unlike Blair, isn't crazy or a drunk. She does, however, have an agenda. There can be no change at the Times as long as she draws a paycheck.
Insurgents have launched multiple attacks on Iraqi police posts in Sunni Muslim strongholds north of Baghdad, reportedly killing at least 27 people.
In one of the apparently coordinated strikes, a police station in Dijla, south of Tikrit, was stormed by gunmen who executed 12 officers.
There were at least four other deadly ambushes around Tikrit, US forces said.
US-backed Iraqi security forces have lost hundreds of men in attacks by rebels opposed to US troops in Iraq.
Other attacks included:
* Three policemen shot dead at a checkpoint outside Tikrit
* Four police and one national guardsman shot dead at a police station in Ishaki south of Samarra
* A local police commander assassinated in Baquba
* A car bombing near a US-Iraqi convoy in Samarra that killed three national guardsmen and three civilians.
Car bomb
In a separate incident in Baghdad, a suicide car bomber tried to kill a senior Iraqi National Guard officer as he was leaving his home.
The blast occurred in the Adhamiya neighbourhood of the capital, injuring at least eight Iraqi guards and passers-by, reports say.
Maj Gen Mudher Abud al-Mula - who was unhurt in the attack - used to be a Shia staff officer in Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated armed forces.
In related news Ayatollah Sistani condemned the attack on Shia policemen and national guardsmen.
What? You mean he didn't? He remained as quiet as a church mouse? But how could that be? Shia are dyiing to make a new Iraq. Sistani would have said something, right?
Iraqi resistance intelligence is better than we want to think. A lot better.
The United Nations is mobilising what it says will be its biggest relief operation ever in response to the Asian quake disaster.
At least 23,000 people were killed - mostly from sea surges triggered by the worst earthquake in 40 years.
Thousands are missing, millions are homeless, and the disaster zone is now threatened with outbreaks of disease.
At least 10 countries have been affected, with Sri Lanka, Indonesia, India and Thailand among the worst hit.
Countries around the world have pledged money, personnel and supplies to the international aid effort now getting under way.
Click here for map of affected area
But the United Nations says it faces an unprecedented challenge in co-ordinating the distribution of aid to survivors.
Hundreds of planes carrying emergency aid will be airborne within the next couple of days, the UN's emergency relief co-ordinator Jan Egeland said.
Survivors may have little clean water or sanitation after Sunday's 9.0 magnitude earthquake sent huge waves from Malaysia to Africa.
DISASTER TOLL
Sri Lanka: 13,000 dead Indonesia: 4,500 dead may be up to 25,000
India: 3,500 dead Thailand: 866 dead Maldives: 52 dead Malaysia: 44 dead Burma: 30 dead Bangladesh: 2 dead
Tourists were affected
Many places are still affected by flooding and communications remain disrupted, with contact not yet made with some remote regions.
Though it was not the biggest tsunami wave ever recorded, "the effects may be the biggest ever because many more people live in exposed areas than ever before", said Mr Egeland.
He said the relief operation would probably cost "many billions of dollars".
"However, we cannot fathom the cost of these poor societies and the nameless fishermen and fishing villages...that have just been wiped out," he said.
I was watching ABC News and every picture had a white person in it. They talked to white people. The fact that entire provinces were wiped from the earth, people had lost their homes and their families and the economies of several countries were torn to shit with no warning, all I'm hearing about is how tourists had vacations ruined.
The fact that they will all go home to clean water and standing homes, and that only the richest Westerners can even visit these places, seems to have escaped the news, except as horrible pictures. The idea of talking to wogs and finding out how they feel about losing everything is not nearly as important finding out how Oprah's designer buddy and his boyfriend survived in their luxury hotel most locals can't even enter.
It doesn't seem to occur that the important story is not the tourists, who need to go the fuck home, but the people who live there. The people who live there only exist as tragic figures, not fellow humans. We'll get plenty of pictures of the poor unfortunate nig nogs, but we will not be allowed to relate to them as people, with families, who grieve at the horror of their losss and ruined lives. Only white tourists get to tell their stories, despite the large number of English speakers in the region. Tragedy only counts when the skin is white and a vacation ruined.
Colonialism may have ended, but some days, you really have to wonder.
An audio tape attributed to Osama Bin Laden has called on Iraqis to boycott elections scheduled for 30 January.
The voice, whose identity cannot be confirmed, says: "Anyone who takes part in these elections will be an infidel."
The recording also backs Jordanian-born militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as the al-Qaeda network's leader in Iraq, Arabic TV station al-Jazeera reported.
Iraq's electoral commission criticised al-Jazeera for airing the tape and vowed to push ahead with the poll.
Chief electoral officer Adil al-Lami told the AFP news agency: "We know that Bin Laden is a terrorist, we are going on with our job, we insist on doing the election on time."
'Bin Laden' tape: Excerpts
He accused al-Jazeera of assisting Bin Laden by passing on his orders to Zarqawi's supporters in Iraq.
A spokesman for al-Jazeera refused to say how or when it received the latest recording.
The network, which broadcast excerpts with a still photograph of Bin Laden wearing a white robe, insists its coverage of Iraq is unbiased.
The tape describes Zarqawi as the "emir" of al-Qaeda in Iraq and praises the "daring operations" of his group against US troops and Iraqi officials.
"The brothers in the group there must listen to him [Zarqawi] and obey him for what is good," the message says.
Zarqawi's al-Qaeda-linked group has claimed responsibility for many bombings and hostage murders in Iraq, including that of UK captive Kenneth Bigley.
The BBC's Heba Saleh, in Cairo, says the chilling message will almost certainly add to the atmosphere of fear surrounding January's election.
He says the speaker has tried to play on the divisions between Iraq's Sunni minority and Shia majority.
Adam Ereli, a spokesman for the US State Department in Washington, said it had not yet been determined whether the voice was that of Bin Laden.
Let's see, we invaded Afghanistan in November, 2001 and in December 2004, he's still sendiing out fan club tapes.
Dec. 27, 2004 | Los Angeles -- Writer Janis Hirsch faced a painful ritual at one sitcom: She'd get a tap on the shoulder from one or another male colleague, turn around and find them exposing themselves.
"You learn to laugh with it even if it steals your soul," she says.
Television shows, especially comedies, are created in an often brutal atmosphere. "It's one of the few places on earth where everybody says exactly what's on their minds," says veteran writer Dennis Klein. "It's as dark and nasty as possible."
But if the tradition of the raucous, freewheeling "writers room" is the Hollywood status quo, Amaani Lyle is fighting it. The 31-year-old former writer's assistant for "Friends" has filed a lawsuit that has landed before the California Supreme Court.
Lyle alleges the raw sexual remarks that peppered writers' work sessions and conversations added up to harassment, even though they weren't aimed directly at her or other women in the room.
Her suit, which also alleges demeaning remarks were made about blacks and constitute racial harassment, names "Friends" producers Warner Bros. Television Productions and Bright Kauffman Crane Productions, as well as writers Adam Chase, Greg Malins and Andrew Reich.
Lyle worked for four months in 1999 before she was told she was a poor typist and fired. But Lyle, who is black, claims she was let go after pressing for black characters on the sexually charged NBC comedy about six pals in New York. It ended a successful 10-year run last season.
Her suit has galvanized the entertainment industry and news organizations, who argue it could imperil professional freedom of speech. Lyle supporters say workplace anti-discrimination laws will be undermined if the defense prevails.
The state Supreme Court will decide whether the lawsuit, dismissed in 2002 by a Superior Court judge and then reinstated in part last April by an appellate court, can go to trial. Briefs are being submitted now and the case may come before the high court next summer.
Warner Bros. admits that some, but not all, of the sexually explicit talk Lyle is alleging did take place, said attorney Adam Levin, who represents the defendants. But that's not the point, he said. The banter was a vital part of the creative process, Levin contends, and Lyle had been warned about sexually explicit discussions.
..............
For writers, professors or news reporters whose jobs might involve discussion of delicate issues including sex, restraints on speech would be a First Amendment violation, he said.
But Lyle's attorney, Scott O. Cummings, contends the graphic discussion of writers' sexual preferences and experiences amounted to a hostile work environment. He said the defendants are trying to duck responsibility by hiding behind free speech protections.
"It's ridiculous to say this had anything to do with the creative process," he said.
Lyle, now serving with the Air Force in Europe, was unavailable for comment.
Both sides have their supporters.
"We shouldn't be exempting certain industries and segments of our workplace from these laws," says Elizabeth Kristen, project director for the Legal Aid Society's Employment Law Center in San Francisco. "If you exempt the studios, other industries might claim that they need to have exemptions from discrimination laws and other laws."
The case raises an important question about the balance of creative freedom and workplace protection, says Erwin Chemerinsky, a Duke Law School professor.
"What's important here is that the workplace be open to everybody, that there not be a hostile workplace," he said, and a jury should be allowed to weigh whether the writers' remarks were necessary to storytelling.
But Crispin Sartwell, a writer ("Six Names of Beauty") who teaches at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Penn., says he's inclined to side with the "Friends" scribes and the cause of unfettered expression.
"The show was so concentrated on sexual titillation ... they're practically obliged to explore that," said Sartwell. "They're writing 'Friends,' for God's sake."
Members of the media, including Los Angeles Times Communications LLC and the American Society of Newspaper Editors, filed a friend of the court brief warning of a chilling effect on the exchange of ideas and information for newspapers and others if the suit prevails. The Writers Guild of America, west, Inc., argued in another brief that restrictions on the writing process would muzzle those who create all forms of entertainment.
....................
On sitcoms dominated by men the tone can be angry and anti-female, she said. The choice is suffer a "mean room" or leave, Hirsch said, because suing could damage a career.
So far, writers say they haven't heard calls for restraint because of the lawsuit. But newcomers should be aware they're in for a collegial but intense experience, cautioned Klein, whose credits include "Cosby" and "The Larry Sanders Show."
"It's a very tough atmosphere and if you don't love it it's not going to work for you at all," he said. "And if you're touchy it's awful for you."
So at what point can I walk around the LA Times City Room and whip out my dick?
It's a bullshit argument. They can't put obscenities in the script, so they can work clean. The cold, hard fact was that it was a boy's club and Lyle clearly wasn't one of the boys. I bet they were shocked to shit when she sued them. If I were Warner Bros, the last thing I would do is bring this to trial.
Their argument is specious. These men act this way because they can. When I wrote about this before, I thought Warners needed to settle, because the poised Lyle, who's in the Air Force, can hardly be accused of being overly sensitive. These guys do not want to be in an LA jury trial explaining why they said all these sexually demeaning things to a college educated black woman. They do not want their workplace habits exposed and they do not want to discuss why there are so few black writers working for them.
A lot of these guys are spoiled children unable to behave professionally in a work setting. In fact, I'd bet that these guys enjoyed tormenting and shocking women. Her lawyer has played his hand well, saving her comments close to trial time. I would bet anything that when Lyle describes how tormented and abused she felt when these nasty white men said all these sexually suggestive things to her, Warners will be quite unhappy. They have an idea of what she'll say, and what the writers will say, but the have no clue as to their demeanor on the stand, and that will probably work against them.
The problem isn't the First Amendment, but their behavior.
And Warners is not in a good position with Friends to begin with, which had one black cast member at the end of the run. We're not talking 24 here. The last thing that Warners needs to do is explain why a show set in New York had no black cast members or even recurring characters until after years of complaints.
This is not a winning argument for a downtown LA jury.
If you want to know why Democrats keep losing, maybe it is because we keep hiring political "professionals" who can't even explain our platform positions to their own effing families.
"Even I have trouble explaining to my family that we are not about killing babies." Gore-Lieberman campaign manager Donna Brazile, in the New York Times, on the Democratic Party's stance on abortion.
I mean, this is not rocket science. Democrats support women being able to choose when to have children, ensuring that all children are wanted and cared for. The ability to choose means that 1) women get to choose when and with whom they have sexual relations, 2) are able to choose from a full array of birth control options to avoid becoming pregnant if they do not want become pregnant, and 3) as a last resort access to a safe and legal abortion only up to viability or to protect the life of the woman.
Our position is properly called pro-choice, because it is about having the ability to make the choices necessary to control when and how to have children. It is not pro-abortion, because if the first two parts of choice are guaranteed then the number of abortions will be reduced dramatically.
The opposition is improperly called pro-life because they are simply not. The vast majority -- and I would hazard to say all on the right wing -- of the anti-abortion crowd also support the Iraq War regardless of the number of women and children who have died, and support the death penalty. These people do not care universally about life; they care about denying women access to birth control and abortions.
And if Donna Brazile can't explain that to her family then she should not be in the political game.
Wow, I'm not the only one who thinks she's both incompetent and an idiot. If she can't explain a core belief of the people who pay her, then why the fuck are they paying her?
She is simply not competent at her job and no one will say so.
Republican Seeks Partner for His Member #email this post
Really, nothing turns a girl on like bad puns and "badmitton":
Conservative in Politics, Liberal in Bed - m4w - 38
Reply to: anon-53210390@craigslist.org
Date: 2004-12-22, 4:36PM EST
Do you need a member of the G.O.P. to fill your G.A.P.? In dire need of NSA sex. Is your type a lean, mean, badmitton playing machine? Then, I'm your man. 5'10", brown hair, brown eyes, 175lbs., professional. I'll even leave the bowtie at home... or wear only the bowtie.
I can meet you anywhere near my office... Connecticut and M Street (Farragut North) Area. We can even have drinks at The Palm first, if you're discreet. (I'm in a relationship so bedroom behavior only applies.) Let's swap pictures if you're interested...
The candidate du jour is 9/11 Commis./ex-Rep. Tim Roemer. -- And while the Cong. Dem leadership has enough sway to get news outlets to report about a new candidate, they may not realize that to the DNC members, their opinion is a kiss of death. While DNC members are not in agreement about who the ideal candidate would be, there is a near unanimous contention that the next chair can't be a DC creation. So unless Reid/Pelosi are using some political jujitsu tactic to kill potential candidacies by endorsing them, they may need to realize that about the most influence they'll have on this process is veto-power (and even that has be used judiciously).
The fact is that this whole debate has changed. People now care who gets this job and neither Reid nor Pelosi have enough sway to force anyone's hand on this. Their downticket races were a nightmare. There is no reason Tom Coburn should be sitting in the Senate. None. But everyone wants their own man in the chair. Kerry wanted Vilsack, until he opened his mouth about those fucking primaries. Now, they want the pro-life Roemer. If I ran, oh say, Emily's list, Nancy Pelosi would be on the end of a sharp, short phone call.
What everyone in DC is fearing, but what is increasing clear, is that it's Howard Dean's job to lose. If there was a vote, he'd win in a landslide. DFA and other groups are already praising his name to the skies. Simon Rosenberg is probably the compromise candidate, but either way, Dean brings cards unheard of into the DNC chair debate, namely massive popular support. Now, the Dems can ignore him or shove him aside, but they risk triggering a real civil war. They still want to have business as usual when it is clear that will no longer suffice.
People who think Dean should wait until '08 are living in a fantasy world. He will no more have a chance in 08 than he did in 04 if the same people run the party. They will preclude a Dean candidacy as sure as rain falls from the sky. The only way for Dean's principles to dominate the party is for him to run it. He cannot do it from outside, and all this talk about moving to the Greens is a joke. They can't shit and wipe their asses at the same time. The Greens are infighters like it was a college English department. That's not ever going to be a serious vehicle for change. Nader? He says the right things, but takes money from Grover and friends.
The threat I would take seriously is the threat to withhold funds. The DNC was able to raise money in the streets, unprecidented. If they push a loser like Roemer, someone who's also pro-gutting Social Security, as head of the party, then why would I or anyone else raise a dime for them? What would they stand for?
The one thing about Deaniacs which drives me nuts is their tendency for groupieism. They seem to forget that it's not about the man, but his ideas. The goal should be to further his ideas not his personal ambition. The DNC chair is usually a thankless job, even to offer his name for it is no small deal. I think they need to take the hint and see he's interested in the job to change the party, placing his desire to do that far above his national ambition. He even realizes that he won't be running in '08. There's this same kind of groupie mentallity about Hillary Clinton, who is obviously too unpopular to run a national campaign. She's a good Senator, but like Ted Kennedy, that's it. Anything more is going to end badly. Unless Kerry drops dead and Edwards goes insane, they're more than likely to run again. Why? Because what Deaniacs miss and Clinton groupies don't see is that Kerry actually is respected by the vast majority of the party and can actually act like it's senior statesman. That doesn't mean he ran a perfect campaign or did everything we wanted, but he's the one likely candidate which can actually unite the party. Notice the lack of Democratic defections in 2004 and the number of Republican ones.
But Kerry couldn't fight the insiders and run a race. That's impossible. The best way to push a liberal agenda is to have an actual liberal running the party. If you want someone to run on your principles you need a different kind of party, one where Al From will shut the fuck up and go away.
If you want to blame someone for something, blame the Congressional Committees for getting hammered. They lost races which they should have won, not only in 2004, but 2002 as well. The reason being that the leadership was refusing to stand and fight for principles and had to be forced to fight in some races. More than the Kerry campaign, that's where the argument lies and the change is needed most. And the only way to change that is to get control of the party mechanism. Without that, you can yammer about change all day long, but it won't happen. And if you want to see Howard Dean's principles in action, well, it might do if he ran the party.
By JAMES M. ODATO, Capitol bureau First published: Monday, December 27, 2004
ALBANY -- To some people, Patricia Freund's job might sound perfect. But she doesn't think so. Monday through Friday, she arrives at her spartan office at the State Liquor Authority at 8 a.m., and, for her entire 7-hour shift, does no work.
She spends the morning reading one of the novels she brings from her Argyle home -- until lunch-time, when she steps from the back office she shares with no one and that her boss never visits.
After the break, she returns to her desk and opens "A Distant Mirror," about the calamitous 14th century, because she has just finished "Bury Me Standing," a story about the journey of gypsies. Besides an occasional daydream, the novels help her pass the hours until quitting time at 4 p.m. Then she quietly slips out the back door, having done nothing productive for the $82,789 she is paid annually. With benefits, her job costs taxpayers more than $100,000 a year.
In a normal week, she speaks to no one, except maybe a janitor, and receives no assignments from her boss, Edward F. Kelly, chairman of the liquor authority, she says.
Her work life has been this way, she says, since March 2002, when she was called to a meeting with Kelly and other liquor authority officials and removed from her hectic position of director of wholesale services. She had been promoted to the job in 1998 after serving as the authority's personnel director. Kelly named her his special administrative assistant. Her new duties were nebulous.
"My last real assignment was eight months ago, some Xeroxing," she says.
After 25 years of state service, her career is on hold at best. The reason, she says, is because she has been outspoken about beliefs that public employees should keep their religious lives separate from their work lives. Her downfall, she says, came after she questioned why co-workers, particularly supervisors, attend the governor's annual prayer breakfast, an event she went to in 2000 and found offensive.
She is suing Kelly; Lawrence Gedda, commissioner of the authority; J. Mark Anderson, deputy commissioner; and other officials at the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board. In a civil rights case lodged in 2003 in U.S. District Court in Albany, Freund alleges that her First Amendment rights to free speech were violated and that she was retaliated against because she sent two e-mails to the authority's human resources director. Depositions in the case are under way.
..............
Freund says her work relationships were good in May 2000 when she accepted Anderson's invitation to attend that year's prayer breakfast, held by George and Libby Pataki at the state convention center at the Empire State Plaza. She says she went because she perceived attendance was important to her superiors and feared they would hold it against her if she didn't go.
Anderson, she says, had purchased a table and invited co-workers to fill it. Court papers include a memo from Anderson to a co-worker in which he expresses pleasure that she will attend the breakfast, an event that will "showcase" Chairman Kelly.
"With most of our agency's units represented, it seems like a great way for the authority to present itself to the governor, Legislature and other agency heads," he wrote. The prayer breakfast draws hundreds of state employees, officials, lobbyists and prominent New Yorkers. Attorney General Eliot Spitzer this year advised the private trust that organizes the breakfast to register as a charity, which it has done. The event's cost is supposed to be covered by ticket sales. Prices were upped to $30 per person and $500 to $1,000 for VIP tables in May, when First Lady Laura Bush made an appearance.
Participants pay their own way, the governor's aides say, adding that complimentary Bibles given out are donated by different denominational groups.
"The prayer breakfast is an inspirational, private event that has, over the past 10 years, brought people of different backgrounds and faiths together, including local officials, state legislators, religious and community leaders, and other New Yorkers who choose to attend," said Pataki spokesman Todd Alhart.
But Freund, a deeply religious Jew, says she didn't feel right about the event or the Contemporary English Version Bible, with Pataki's name inside, that was handed out. She objected to passages such as "We are made acceptable to God the minute we believe in Jesus" or "Confidence in Jesus stands above all other creeds."
She says she mentioned her discomfort to co-workers and her comments got back to superiors. In subsequent months, she felt Anderson and others were cool toward her.
................
Freund suspected that co-workers were on state time when they went to the prayer breakfast, so she e-mailed the human relations director, Janet Nelson, who had succeeded her in the post.
She asked for a list of attendees, who invited them, the amount of time they were excused from work, who sanctioned the event, and why it was deemed work-related.
Nelson replied the same day, saying that Libby Pataki is the sponsor of the event; that a staff member and his wife invited people from the office and paid for their attendance; that no one was directed to attend; and that anyone who went did so on their own time and charged accruals "as appropriate."
The next day, Freund e-mailed some follow-up questions, largely to determine what Nelson meant by "as appropriate." Nelson again promptly responded, saying workers charged time out of their work day to attend.
...................
Barbara Zaron, president of the Organization of Management Confidential Employees, which represents non-union civil servants such as Freund, says she has heard of several cases of retaliation against state employees who have independent streaks.
Zaron says she was retaliated against herself, losing her job duties in the Cuomo administration for more than a year after she refused to sign an incorrect time card of a politically connected worker.
She says Freund's e-mails seemed to be appropriate, since the liquor authority's human resources director responded.
"They could have handled it differently," Zaron said. "It sounds like the punishment isn't warranted."
Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, chairman of a committee that oversees public authorities, called Freund's allegations "extraordinarily serious."
"No one should be made uncomfortable about their religion as part of their public employment," the Westchester County Democrat said.
.................
Freund says she has been under a lot of stress as a result of the "hostility" she receives at work. Her husband, Hans, a Holocaust survivor, died two years ago. She says no one at work offered her condolences. She met him at Union College in the 1970s when she was a student and he was a professor who taught the Bible as literature.
"He was a refugee of Nazi Germany and was very, very supportive of me in this situation," she says. "He could draw comparisons between what was happening with me and what had happened to him and members of his family."
This has little to do with religion and everything to do with patronage. Yet another reason to not trust state government. Because she objected to the First Lady's little bullshit prayer/fundraising deal, she's been iced out of her career. The idea is to shut up and go along. The state is unlikely to rule in her favor, but the feds are a different case.
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A01
The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers.
The plane's owner of record, Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., lists directors and officers who appear to exist only on paper. And each one of those directors and officers has a recently issued Social Security number and an address consisting only of a post office box, according to an extensive search of state, federal and commercial records.
This Gulfstream V turbojet is believed to be used to transport suspected terrorists to other countries for interrogation -- a practice called rendition. (Special To The Washington Post)
Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor are names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories -- just the kind of "sterile identities," said current and former intelligence officials, that the CIA uses to conceal involvement in clandestine operations. In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.
The CIA calls this activity "rendition." Premier Executive's Gulfstream helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits, the jet has permission to use U.S. military airfields worldwide.
Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in the CIA's arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown, the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.
According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane spotters, the Gulfstream V, with tail number N379P, has been used to whisk detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt; and Sweden, usually at night, and has landed at well-known U.S. government refueling stops.
As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of the practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges to renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to transfer captives to countries that use harsh interrogation methods outlawed in the United States. That, he said, is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on Torture.
The CIA has the authority to carry out renditions under a presidential directive dating to the Clinton administration, which the Bush administration has reviewed and renewed. The CIA declined to comment for this article.
"Our policymakers would never confront the issue," said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA counterterrorism officer who has been involved with renditions and supports the practice. "We would say, 'Where do you want us to take these people?' The mind-set of the bureaucracy was, 'Let someone else do the dirty work.' "
The story of the Gulfstream V offers a rare glimpse into the CIA's secret operations, a world that current and former CIA officers said should not have been so easy to document.
Not only have the plane's movements been tracked around the world, but the on-paper officers of Premier Executive Transport Services are also connected to a larger roster of false identities.
Each of the officers of Premier Executive is linked in public records to one of five post office box numbers in Arlington, Oakton, Chevy Chase and the District. A total of 325 names are registered to the five post office boxes.
An extensive database search of a sample of 44 of those names turned up none of the information that usually emerges in such a search: no previous addresses, no past or current telephone numbers, no business or corporate records. In addition, although most names were attached to dates of birth in the 1940s, '50s or '60s, all were given Social Security numbers between 1998 and 2003.
Civil Air Transport (CAT) was a unique airline formed after World War II in China by General Claire L. Chennault and Whiting Willauer. The history of CAT is marked by adventure and international intrigue. Using surplus aircraft from the war, in 1946 CAT began to airlift supplies and food into war-ravaged China. During the Chinese Civil War, under contract with the Chinese Nationalist government and later the Central Intelligence Agency, CAT flew supplies and ammunition into China to assist the Chinese Nationalist forces on the Chinese mainland. With the defeat of the Nationalists in 1949, CAT helped to evacuate thousands of Chinese by air to the island of Taiwan.
In 1950 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) bought the airline to use in clandestine missions to fight communism in Asia. CAT continued to fly scheduled passenger flights while simultaneously using other aircraft in its fleet to fly covert missions. During the Korean War, CAT airlifted thousands of tons of war materials to supply United States military operations. In 1954 CAT aircrews airdropped supplies to the French at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina. Throughout the 1950s CAT flew this fascinating combination of scheduled commercial flights and clandestine missions.
With the spread of communism throughout Southeast Asia, CAT’s mission changed. In 1959 CAT was renamed Air America. Under the new corporate name, (though CAT continued to fly scheduled passenger flights out of Taiwan), Air America flew all other type of air operations in Laos and South Vietnam. Operating in mountainous terrain, Air America crews flew with skill and courage in supplying the anti-commuinst forces in Southeast Asia. Air America flew a variety of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters because of the region’s unforgiving topography. Missions included airdropping thousands of tons of food, evacuating civilians, rescuing downed U.S. aircrews, and emergency medical evacuations. In 1975, Air America helicopter crews helped to evacuate Americans and South Vietnamese from South Vietnam during the fall of the country. In 1976, Air America’s twenty-six year tenure as the CIA’s airline came to a close. The CAT/Air America experience is unparalleled in commercial aviation history. More than two hundred and forty civilian CAT and Air America employees gave their lives in Asia from 1946 to 1975.
CAT/Air America was the most famous, but hardly their only airline
Is the CIA back in business at Rickenbacker International?
by Bob Fitrakis
Are we a big ol’ lucky dog of a city, or what? I couldn’t be more excited about Saturday’s Business section front-page story in the Dispatch. The lead told us: “Rickenbacker International Airport will begin receiving cargo shipments from Malaysia as a result of service added by Evergreen International Airlines.”
Thank God we finally got somebody to replace the former Southern Air Transport (SAT) after the company went bankrupt amidst allegations that its pilots and planes were used in CIA drug-running operations.
Evergreen began racing “time-sensitive cargo” from Kuala Lumpur to Rickenbacker on Sunday. They’re aiding some of our best corporate citizens “…such as The Limited and Eddie Bauer,” according to the Dispatch, where no doubt garments are made in state-of-the-art cheery facilities by well-paid Third World employees. I was so excited I took a few minutes to research Evergreen’s history.
Evergreen, originally based in McMinnville, Oregon, expanded from a small helicopter in the 1960s “to a major international airline with secret government contracts” according to the Portland, Oregon Free Press. The Oregonian reported that “Evergreen Airline Company, Evergreen International Airlines, Inc., was built on remnants of two older airlines—one a wholly owned CIA proprietary, or front company, and the other a virtual branch of the U.S. Forest Service that for years secretly had helped the CIA recruit paramilitary personnel.”
In 1975, after a series of embarrassing revelations during Senator Frank Church’s investigation of the CIA, the “company” liquidated Intermountain Aviation Inc. of Marana, Arizona near Tucson. Intermountain’s assets were purchased by two Oregon companies that the CIA selected: Evergreen and Rosenbalm Aviation Inc. But Evergreen was the big winner. One of the CIA’s top aviation officers, the legendary covert ops expert George Doole worked for Evergreen as a director. Prior to this, Doole managed all of the CIA’s proprietary airlines. The CIA selected Evergreen to take over the agency’s airbase at Marana. An investigation by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Oregonian documented that “The CIA offered Intermountain’s substantial Arizona assets only to Evergreen.”
What followed was a decade of privileged treatment and government contracts to the airline. Evergreen purchased the CIA’s Arizona assets at a fraction of their real worth. An Arthur Andersen and Co. financial statement indicates that Evergreen’s assets nearly doubled from $25 million to more than $45 million one year after the deal. Evergreen’s revenues rose from $8-10 million range in 1975 to $77.9 million by 1979, according to U.S. Civil Aeronautics Board documents.
The Washington Post reported on Evergreen’s CIA connection in 1980 after it was chosen to fly the former Shah of Iran from Panama to Cairo.
In 1984, CBS News reported that the CIA was using a “network of private companies” to fly military weapons to Central America to support the Contra rebels trying to overthrow the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. CBS named both Southern Air and Evergreen Air as involved in the arms shipments. The day after the broadcast, the Washington Post reported that “Private airlines, including Evergreen, were owned by the CIA during the Vietnam War, but the agency has said that the airline has since been sold.”
The New York Times jumped in a day later with the following lead: “The Central Intelligence Agency is using small private airlines to fly guns and other military supplies to United States-backed forces in Central America, and false flight plans are sometimes filed to cover up the shipments….” The Times mentioned Evergreen Air by name.
So using aircraft for CIA missions is nothing new. However, your very own torture ferrying service is a bit much.
CORNELIUS, N.C. - Reggie White, a fearsome defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles (news) and Green Bay Packers (news) and one of the NFL's greatest players, died Sunday, his wife said. He was 43.
The cause of death was not immediately known, however White had a respiratory ailment for several years that affected his sleep, according to Keith Johnson, a pastor serving as family spokesman. An autopsy was scheduled.
"Today our beloved husband, father and friend passed away," White's wife, Sara, said in a statement. "His family appreciates your thoughts and prayers as we mourn the loss of Reggie White. We want to thank you in advance for honoring our privacy."
White died at Presbyterian Hospital, where he was taken after his wife called 911. A police officer was outside White's Tudor-style home in a gated community, and would not let a reporter approach the house.
A two-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year and ordained minister who was known as the "Minister of Defense," White played a total of 15 years with Philadelphia, Green Bay and Carolina. He retired after the 2000 season as the NFL's all-time leader in sacks with 198. The mark has since been passed by Bruce Smith.
"Reggie White was a gentle warrior who will be remembered as one of the greatest defensive players in NFL history," NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said. "Equally as impressive as his achievements on the field was the positive impact he made off the field and the way he served as a positive influence on so many young people."
A member of the NFL's 75th anniversary team, White was elected to the Pro Bowl a record 13 straight times from 1986-98. He was the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year in 1987 and 1998.
"A 43-year-old is not supposed to die in his sleep," Johnson said. "It was not only unexpected, but it was also a complete surprise. Reggie wasn't a sick man ... he was vibrant. He had lots and lots of energy, lots of passion."
Johnson is the head of Christian Athletes United for Spiritual Empowerment, a ministry that White helped found. He said White had gone to see the movie "Fat Albert" on Christmas night with family and friends.
You know, at least Steve Carlton had the grace to not share his wacky world views with people. I think a 43 year old man who drops dead suddenly after a football career, well, you might want to ask how he remained a peak performer for so long, only to die so young. But of course, White was more than the hagiography, an American tradition, would indicate. He was wildly ignorant and bigotted as well.
DENVER -- A low-income elementary school is still waiting for a $50,000 donation promised five years ago by NFL star Reggie White to create a college tuition fund for 85 students.
"I'm really disappointed," Harrington Elementary Principal Sally Edwards said this week. "I think it's sad that we promised something and we didn't deliver."
White made the pledge in 1998 when his team, the Green Bay Packers, was in Denver for a preseason game against the Broncos. He gave a large cardboard mock-up of check, made out to Harrington Elementary, to the Rev. Leon Kelly, an anti-gang activist who steered White to the school.
White, who retired from the Packers after the 1998 season, could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
The money was to create a tuition fund for the school's 85 first-graders that year, to be awarded to those who graduate from high school with a C average or better. The students would now be in the sixth grade in various middle schools.
Edwards and Kelly said they haven't been able to contact White despite numerous attempts. Kelly said he feels bad the money wasn't there for the students.
"You can't get a kid to understand that," Kelly said.
Kelly still has the mock check.
If he could send a message to White, Kelly said, it would be, "Hey, Reggie, what's up? Cool. But what's up with this scholarship money?"
Oh well, maybe he didn't have the cash. Athletes like to talk big, but actually doing is another issue entirely.
Good riddance. The man was a raging anti-gay, anti-Asian and anti-Latino bigot. And of course the religious right embraced him immediately as one of their own.
Let me share a little of what this intolerance, prejudiced ass had to say:
Gays are like liars and cheaters
" 'Homosexuality is a decision, it's not a race,' White said. 'People from all different ethnic backgrounds live in this lifestyle. But people from all different ethnic backgrounds also are liars and cheaters and malicious and back-stabbing.' " - Reggie White, Associated Press, March 25, 1998.
Gays hurt children, kill our people
"White said he stands by his remarks regarding gays. `I am going to speak the truth and I am going to speak out against things that's hurting our children, that's killing off our people,' White said. `If people think that's a contradiction and that's hate, they need to take them up with God, not with Reggie White.'" Associated Press, April 26, 1998, quoting White's 20/20 interview.
Gays are like backstabbers and malicious people
PEGGY WEHMEYER of ABC's 20/20: "Just last week, Reggie White and his wife, Sara, met us for an exclusive interview. White told us he was sorry if he offended anyone, but he wasn’t backing down one inch. (on camera) Are you saying there that homosexuals are like liars, cheaters, backstabbers and malicious people?"
REGGIE WHITE "Yes." - ABC's 20/20, April 27, 1998.
"Sodomite community"
"Reggie White's wife said CBS was `'too scared'' to hire her husband as a football commentator because of his controversial speech before the Wisconsin State Assembly. White, the Green Bay Packers defensive lineman who retired and unretired last week, used ethnic stereotypes and called homosexuality `'one of the biggest sins'' in the Bible in his remarks last month. 'They were too scared of the Sodomite community is what they said,' Sara White told ABC's '20/20'." - ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 26, 1998
Gays responsible for STDs
"America is not big enough to shake her fist in the face of a holy God and get away with it, and as I read this I want to explain something. I'm going to read this and then I want to explain something. As America has permitted homosexuality to establish itself as an alternate lifestyle, it is also reeling from the frightening spread of sexually transmitted disease. Sin begets its own consequence, both on individuals and nations."- Remarks by Reggie White to the Wisconsin Assembly, March 25, 1998.
Homosexuality one of the biggest sins
"Let me explain something when I'm talking about sin, and I'm talking about all sin. One of the biggest ones that has been talked about that has really become a debate in America is homosexuality."- Remarks by Reggie White to the Wisconsin Assembly, March 25, 1998.
Gays have problems
"Now, I believe that one of the reasons that Jesus was accused of being a homosexual is because he spent time with homosexuals. I've often had people ask me, would you allow a homosexual to be your friend. Yes, I will. And the reason I will is because I know that that person has problems, and if I can minister to those problems, I will."- Remarks by Reggie White to the Wisconsin Assembly, March 25, 1998.
Being gay compared to lying, gays hurt nation
"But the Bible strictly speaks against it, and because the Bible speaks against it, we allow rampant sin including homosexuality and lying, and to me lying is just as bad as homosexuality, we've allowed this sin to run rampant in our nation, and because it has run rampant in our nation, our nation is in the condition it is today."- Remarks by Reggie White to the Wisconsin Assembly, March 25, 1998.
Offended that gays say deserve rights
"Sometimes when people talk about this sin they've been accused of being racist. I'm offended that homosexuals will say that homosexuals deserve rights. Any man in America deserves rights, but homosexuals are trying to compare their plight with the plight of black men or black people. In the process of history, homosexuals have never been castrated, millions of them never died. Homosexuality is a decision. It's not a race."- Remarks by Reggie White to the Wisconsin Assembly, March 25, 1998.
You know, he could have simply picked up a book. But his brand of ignance is real common among black folks.
More Aryan theories from Reggie White, now-deceased religious right spokesman (they used White in their "ex-gay" ads):
When I look at the history of America, and particularly the history of slavery, one of the main reasons that Africans were enslaved was because of economics and skin color.
Now, let me explain what I'm talking about. During the time that the New World was to be built, the Europeans had to make a decision whether they were going to enslave their own. They couldn't enslave their own because their own could assimilate. They couldn't enslave the Indians because the Indians knew the territory, and the Indians knew how to sneak up on people. But the only people they could enslave was the Africans because of their skin color. We couldn't assimilate, and because of our skin color if we escaped, we were sent back to our plantations pretty much....
Why did God create us differently? Why did God make me black and you white? Why did God make the next guy Korean and the next guy Asian and the other guy Hispanic? Why did God create the Indians?
Well, it's interesting to me to know why now. When you look at the black race, black people are very gifted in what we call worship and celebration. A lot of us like to dance, and if you go to black churches, you see people jumping up and down, because they really get into it.
White people were blessed with the gift of structure and organization. You guys do a good job of building businesses and things of that nature and you know how to tap into money pretty much better than a lot of people do around the world.
Hispanics are gifted in family structure. You can see a Hispanic person and they can put 20 or 30 people in one home. They were gifted in the family structure.
When you look at the Asians, the Asian is very gifted in creation, creativity and inventions. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They're very creative. And you look at the Indians, they have been very gifted in the spirituality.
When you put all of that together, guess what it makes. It forms a complete image of God.
No, Reggie, when you put it all together it forms a complete picture of a bigot.
PS Any of you out there Asian? Cuz I'd love one of them watch TVs.
Jesus he was stupid. The NFL wants to whitewash his character, but the sad fact was that he was a full blown religious bigot. I mean, you hear this level of idiocy all the time in black churches, as "the truth" but his idiocy was rather pronounced and his wife pushed him along. Some black people think they can spout the idiocy of their youth and it's OK. It wasn't and the NFL's praise of him isn't going to go unchallenged.
Thank you for the suggestion. I had never had goose before. Jen did an excellent job, it being her project and all.
Jen showed up early, like 11:30. Which was good. Of course, I had to shower after she got here. No, she didn't watch. And my bedroom was a mess, but I had to clean the kitchen and living room. But I shower quickly and slipped into my Holland National Team shirt, a subtle bright orange hued jersey.
I had bought Jen the top three things from her Amazon wish list, Katamari Damacy, a wacky PS2 game, and two books. Neal Stephenson and Art Spiegelman.
She bought me a Hertha BSC jersey with my name on the back. For the clueless, a simple EPL replica jersey runs at least £40 with no name from a UK site. A real, team jersey can run to about US$75. The guy personalized it on the spot at the team store.
As Christmas gifts go, that was pretty special.
So we tore though a plate of sausages and the quiche I made. Fresh mushrooms and frozen onion and peppers are the way to go. We didn't drink at first, although by the end of the evening, a magnum of Sangovese was gone, and I don't drink red wine. I had hard cider.
By the time her friends arrived, we were eating the appetizers we set out, the cold cuts and the greek cheese and olives and onions and pickles. Of course, Jen had brought a bottle of Jim Beam and Absolut. So by the time we got to the goose , we'd had a few drinks.
The goose was delicious. I loved the goose. Jen did a truly wonderful job as you can see. Of course a third of the weight rendered off as fat. Not a lot of meat, but it was pretty good all the same. No, I didn't think of spice rub on goose, but I didn't cook it, ok.
We had more food than we needed, since this was the first time we'd done anything like this.
The baked macaroni went over well. But they loved the bread pudding. Just scarfed it down. Which was a source of pride. My father asked me where I learned to make bread pudding. It was the one thing he didn't teach me to cook.
Finally, Jen and I relaxed, watched TV as she finished up the wine. I was surprised she could still walk, but she got into a cab and went home.
Two days before Christmas, I was surprised to hear from a friend of mine in the National Guard...suprised because this was the first any of my group of friends had heard from him, as we were not sure if they would be allowed leave over Christmas. Thankfully, he was. He leaves on the 27th for Iraq, so I dropped what I was doing and met him at a local establishment along with my roommate. The talk was positive while recounting past exploits and current feelings [of the "it's nice to see you guys" type], but we all knew the discussion that lay ahead.
"So what's you're opinion on this whole thing? You're the only one of us with an inside view."
The conversation that followed finally cemented my opposition to this war. Some things I had heard of before. Others made my jaw drop. I got up, asked the bartender for a pen to take notes on what my friend was saying. I asked my friend if it would be alright for me to post the things he talked about on this site. He agreed: "These are things people should probably know about."
More Below the fold
[editor's note, by Clever] I have not included any personally identifying material for reasons of privacy. While my friend did not say that his name could not be used, I personally feel that there should be some obfuscation to avoid 'unofficial' reprisal. We have too often seen the reputations of Americans dragged through the dirt to denigrate and revenge comments made to educate on the realities of this war and this administration.
Training
My friend had been training at a base in Oklahoma. Being a testosterone-filled male, his only true "complaint" was the lack of attractive women around the base. I have to chuckle at that...definately something he would have liked to know about before signing up.
Children used as IEDs
The first thing my friend touched on was that they were informed of the use of children strapped with explosives by the insurgents. An insurgent would conceal explosives on a child and have them walk up to a group of soldiers, detonating the device. I asked him if this was a forward thinking type of training [as if this had yet to happen]. He replied that there had been numerous accounts of this tactic being used. "I don't want to be the guy shown on CNN shooting a kid, but I really don't want to be the guy who gets his unit blown up either. That's how fucked up it is." By the time a child is close enough to be deemed a danger, he said, they are close enough to be deadly. "If it's between the child an my unit, I will choose my unit. But I don't like either [choice]."
Dismissing Standards
"I literally walked."
My friend is in good shape. He's been in the guard for 3 years. He's active besides. Many others in his unit are not. The previous quote harkens at the reality that many of the soldiers we are sending are not up to Guard standards. While running in formation during PT [Physical Training], everyone must keep pace. During such an exercise, my friend had to slow his pace down to a speed walk as to not leave behind many in his unit. That's when he dropped this bomb:
"They don't have PT standards anymore. They have them, they're just not enforced. It's about numbers...if they did [enforce standards], we'd lose a lot of guys."
My friend also voiced concern over a diabetic in his unit. He had asked the medical officer what to do if his friend went into shock. He did not like the reply:
"You couldn't do much. If he slipped into a coma he'd be gone. We couldn't get him out in time."
I must wonder aloud why we are sending diabetics into highly physical and stressful combat duty. There was a diabetic on my football team in high school. He had to check his blood sugar at least twice during every practice [practices were two hours]. They trained our equipment manager on what to do if he went into shock. He would get a little loopy if his blood sugar got to low and would need to eat a candy bar or sometimes give himself an injection. Do you think this would be possible in a firefight?
Physical standards are not the only ones being shirked:
"They're passing guys on shooting proficiency with 12's [out of 40]. The normal cutoff is 24."
I think I've finally figured it out, all the positive reviews of the war: They're grading on a curve.
Fiscal Mismanagement
"We could have done it at our base."
The Guard spent $150,000 to bus my friend's unit to Fort Hood, TX for two days of "special training." Afterwards, my friend wondered what the reasoning was, as all the training they did could have been done at their own base. One of the highlights was "Glass House" training, where one stakes out an invisible perimeter to operate inside.
Poor Coordination
During a "live" combat exercise, my friend's unit was outfitted with a "laser tag" type system: you wear a vest that will indicate when shot, your gun is outfitted with a laser to "shoot" other combatants. Your tax dollars at work, providing as close to live fire as allowed...except for two things:
* neither team was given blanks. "We made bang-bang noises."
* The opposing team was not outfitted with the "laser tag" system.
Take from that what you will.
Mentality
Branding
As one would suspect, there is contempt in the military [and according to my friend, this is highly prevalent in his unit, mostly made up of Bush supporters] for anything branded [rightly or wrongly] as liberal. While not going into details, my friend said that "liberals" are treated differently, as if suspect, which is why he has not discussed any misgivings with his commander. I do not disagree with him on this, if only for the story I am about to relate:
A soldier in my friend's unit had a sick mother. It was relayed to that soldier that his mother's condition had taken a turn and there was about a 30% chance that she would make it through the week. It was the week of Thanksgiving. There were no drills scheduled due to it being Thanksgiving. The commander denied the soldier's request for emergency leave to visit his mother. The soldier was finally given leave 4 days later after the unit's chaplain had intervened and convinced the commander to approve the request. The soldier's mother died two days later. Her son was able to see her before she died.
Go ahead and brand me a bleeding heart liberal...that type of indifference pisses me off. I must give that chaplain credit...especially if it took him four days to convince the commander.
Casualties
As with all wars, there are civilian casualties. Some wars more than others. One would hope to minimize them, but my friend relayed to me that this is not the case for this conflict:
"Shooting a grenade [from a grenade launcher] into a crowd of people to kill one insurgent amongst the crowd is acceptable. Better to kill them all than to let them [the insurgent] go is the idea, I guess."
My friend put this into context, however. For him, the scenario would be an insurgent waiting to ambush a group of soldiers [with an IED] lurking in the crowd. Once again, with a choice of who is to die, my friend reiterated: "I would choose my unit. I would fire the grenade."
Inequality
"Our gear is half green and half tan. It's almost comical...green in the desert."
While Marine and most army camouflage is tuned to the desert climate, guard and reserve camo is not even close. He was issued two sets of warm weather fatigues: on tan and one green. His cold weather gear is all green. [The desert gets to near freezing at night.]
Personal Thoughts
My friend spoke of much more, even citing publications [most notably the Army Times], that he found disturbing, but as I am currently unable to substantiate these references, I will omit them for the time being. He did however have a couple opinions to share.
Middle Management
My friend, even after the aforementioned story of the soldier with his dying mother, respects his commander. He sees him doing about as much as he can to keep his men in the know and preparing them for what they'll be doing when they get over to Iraq. He does harbor contempt for those above his commander, the middle management and appropriations area of the military. From what he's seen there is great favoritism place on equipping and training those of more "conventional" military while passing leftovers down to the Guard and Reserve. "It's like a business, with the 'better clients' being favored." By doing so, my friend reasons, he and his unit lack essential training and equipment for doing the job right when they get there. "I'm worried about how we'll be treated when we get there. At best we'll be put on small duties, like guarding doors. At worst, we could be put out there to absorb bullets so the "real" soldiers don't get killed." With 40% of the troops in Iraq being guard or reserve, this is a real possibility, intentional or not.
Why I fight
The following is verbatim.
"I don't fight for Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney...I'm fighting for the people with me. I'm with my friends. That's who I'm fighting for."
It is his character. It is why I call him friend. It is why I support our troops. It is why they should come home.
Beyond all the chants of "freedom" and "democracy," it is the reason why our soldiers fight...for each other.
Conclusion
My friend is 3rd in command in his unit. With the decline in officers in the Guard and the promotion of those of longstanding service to higher positions, there is a real chance he will end up in command. I am glad that there are people such as he willing to be devoted to his unit as much as they are devoted to reason. I have no doubt he will do his best to keep himself and his friends safe.
There is, however, a large chance that he will not come back. His function in his unit is disarming IEDs, one of the most dangerous positions available. It is why I feel a duty to relay the information and opinions he has given me.
: I was appalled this morning to hear Tim Russert interviewing -- if you can call an exchange of meaningless pap and platitudes an interview -- with TV quack shrink Dr. Phil. They traded baseless generalizations about "the family" for way too long.
Add this to the Meet the Press sin of having Jerry Falwell and Al Sharpton on a few weeks ago to talk religion.
Who the hell is booking this show? Meet the Press has been the smartest show on TV. They can get anyone they want. They used to try a little harder to find someone smart.
Now their guests are as random as an elevator ride.
For shame.
James Wolcott seconds the motion:
What's next, Suzi Orman laying out Social Security privatization for us between teeth bleachings?
I'm not sure what which was worse, Dr. Phil's thimble-deep patriarchal profundities or the sage nods with which they were received by Untiny Tim.
Now, I'm no professional Media critic like Jim Wolcott, no DVD's of shows not aired, no trips to NAB to see the new shows. But I like Dr. Phil.
Oh, not because he gives good advice. Hell, I could give his advice.
But because he deals with pure born fucking idiots. I mean, if you watch his show, you wonder why he doesn't leap up out of the seat and smack the shit out of most of these people. Like the doctor who screwed a nurse (a daily occurance, trust me) and then knocked her up. His wife "didn't know what to do". Usually, this is how Law and Order starts, when Dennis Farina gives Jesse Martin that look over a dead body. It's normally not talk show fodder, ultimate stupidity.
But Dr. Phil serves a purpose: explaining the obvious to idiots.
Like, sucking cock in high school makes you a whore, not popular. When you give a roomful of guys blowjobs, we're not talking future girlfriend material. But from the reaction of the girls involved, you would think that this was rocket science and they were being lectured by Werner Von Braun.
Phil deals with people so stupid, you have to wonder if they can breathe. Like the woman who bought her 13 yo daughter booze and let her date an 18 year old. She wanted to be a friend.
Or the guy who sat on a street corner handing out his resume. Yeah. He did that. After selling everything in his house to buy a $3000 laptop. And his wife went along.
In his defense, he doesn't fall for the "buy less at Starbucks" trap of personal finance. He had ELizabeth Warren on, who had written a well-received book on real personal finance issues.
As therapy, what he does is not good. But as old-fashioned advice, well, there are a lot of stupid people on the planet who need to be told to suck it up and move on. Dr. Phil's sole value is in explaining life to the stupid. And when you see a woman who's addicted to returning everything, you have to wonder how stupid people can be. Dr. Phil fishes in the sea of the stupid and weak. And he is successful, because there are so many dunderheads.
In my last column, I focused on the Kerry campaign's inability to articulate an alternative national security strategy. This, I suggested, made it difficult to lay bare the colossal failures of the Bush Administration in the same area and to convince voters to trust the Democrats with the defense of the nation. I also noted that Democrats did not always have this problem; the "fighting faith" of 1950s cold war liberalism, for all its problems, presented Americans with a national security framework sufficient to earn their trust (and thereby, not incidentally, allow liberals to make considerable progress on social justice issues at home).
By coincidence, New Republic editor Peter Beinart simultaneously published an elegantly written, passionately argued 5,683-word essay addressing himself to exactly the same problem and deploying the same historical example as a guidepost to the future. The essay, "A Fighting Faith," was widely embraced as the fulcrum of debate about the future of a liberal foreign policy vision. In this regard, Beinart and TNR performed a salutary service, as such a debate is sorely needed. Unfortunately, Beinart's own contribution is fundamentally flawed, and must be discarded if this debate is to lead liberals in a fruitful direction.
Just as the magazine did when its editors argued in favor of Bush's foolhardy war--and Reagan's Central American fantasies before that--Beinart's essay employs McCarthyite tactics in conjunction with wishful thinking in the service of a chimerical political agenda. His solution for the political problem that ails the Democratic Party fits in perfectly with TNR's own intellectual DNA structure, calling as it does for the expulsion from the Democratic coalition of MoveOn.org, perhaps the left's most energetic and committed popular organizations, in support of a combination of policies (liberal on the domestic front, neoconservative internationally) with no clear constituency in America or anywhere else. In doing so, it reproduces the failures of the Bush Administration that have destroyed the sympathy and solidarity the United States enjoyed in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
First the McCarthyism: Beinart's attacks on MoveOn--which understate the organization's 2.9 million membership by nearly 100 percent--rest largely on statements made by organizations he claims are related to it, often by nothing more than a click on its website. Many of his charges turn on the weasel word "seems," as in "in recent years, [MoveOn] seems to have largely lost interest in any agenda for fighting terrorism at all. Instead, MoveOn's discussion of the subject seems dominated by two, entirely negative, ideas...." As a certain Prince of Denmark once remarked: "Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not 'seems.'"
Beinart falsely accuses MoveOn of opposing military retaliation against Al Qaeda because its organizers argued on behalf of a strategy that spared population centers from bombing attacks. He apparently cannot conceive of an effective military response that does not include the killing of thousands of innocents. In fact, just as the liberal realists of the 1950s whom Beinart so admires opposed the excesses of conservative US foreign policy--including CIA-sponsored coups in Iran and Guatemala--so too did liberal realists argue in 2001 that the US government was not availing itself of the best approaches to fighting Al Qaeda. New Yorker reporter Nicholas Lemann surveyed a group of them and came away with a remarkably consistent--and painfully prescient--set of analyses. "Military power is not necessary to wiping out Al Qaeda," Stephen Walt of the Kennedy School at Harvard told Lemann. "It's a crude instrument, and it almost always has effects you can't anticipate.... This is ultimately a battle for the hearts and minds of people around the world. When your village just got leveled by an American mistake, the conclusions you draw will be rather different from what we'd want them to be." Stephen Van Evera of MIT concurred: "A broad war on terror was a tremendous mistake.... you make enemies of the people you need against Al Qaeda."
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Can Beinart point to any evidence that the US government possesses the knowledge, authority or cultural sensitivity necessary to perform this historically unprecedented operation? Does Beinart really believe that the Arab masses are yearning to be freed in order to catch the last episode of Desperate Housewives? Such naïve hubris about America's ability to remake other cultures to our liking at the point of a gun is what underlay the decisions that cost us 58,000 lives in Vietnam and wrought death and destruction across Southeast Asia for more than a decade. In the persons of Paul Wolfowitz and other alleged "idealists" in the Bush Administration, it has reared its ugly head again, and produced tragic results. Now Beinart wants to run the same damned movie with liberal credits at the end. Are American liberals really cursed to make this same mistake over and over like one of Pavlov's poodles
No. Because Beinart is full of shit. Because he's a lap dog who works for lapdogs.
Of course, we can help him succeed by supporting the Greens, Nader and other fantasists and ignoring the fact that ther Dems supported Vietnam until 1970. I say if you leave now, Vichyites like Beinart will win the day. Iraq will mark a high tide of US influence in the world. After Iraq, we will have to be first among equals in a real way. Unilaterialism is ending in the sands and alleys of Iraq.
Lookit , boys. Look at the pretty senator's hot wife
My husband is a doofus. Laurie Coleman, demostrating her appeal to deliverymen and pool boys
OK, I have a action packed filled afternoor, but before I go, I'll let you all know the Goose came out fine. I'm rerally proud of Jen for pulling it off, a first time effort. I think next time, I'll try the meat. And I have to give her a hand for forsaking her beloved ham. Next time, I'll compromise.
When I come back, I'll load up pictures of our Christmas meal. Until then, this is an open thread.
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 26, 2004; Page A01
TIKRIT, Iraq, Dec. 25 -- The roaring bonfire licked the dark sky as Jennifer and Jeremiah Pray leaned closer to the pulsing warmth. Their faces glowing, their eyes bright, they relished their first Christmas Eve together in more than three years of marriage, not to mention the brief respite from the war going on around them.
The Prays, because of unfortunate coincidences arising from their military lives, have spent all of four months together since they wed in 2001. Although they are both in Iraq, they are stationed at different bases, with different missions.
Soldiers with the Army's 82nd Airborne Division don reindeer antler hats as they serve up a Christmas meal in Baghdad's Green Zone. (Bob Strong -- Reuters)
"It's difficult," said Capt. Jennifer Pray, 26, a combat hospital nurse from Biloxi, Miss., looking into the fire, smoke twirling as a few large raindrops hit the dust. "Any time we spend together is precious to us, whether it's Christmas or anything else."
"It has made us stronger," Capt. Jeremiah Pray, 28, an intelligence officer from San Diego, said of their time apart.
This year, with the help of the Army, the Prays spent the holiday together at a small compound near downtown Tikrit. In full battle gear, they went to a candlelight service at Camp Omaha and sang carols with hundreds of other U.S. soldiers.
At far-flung outposts in Iraq, U.S. soldiers enduring a holiday season far from home attended talent shows, musical performances, religious services and gathered around trees that were fake but festive to observe a holiday that allowed them to think of someplace else.
"We're here so the people in our lives don't have to be," Lt. Col. Jeffrey Sinclair, commander of the 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry Regiment, told his troops at the bonfire. "They're going to have a great Christmas because of you. Next Christmas, you'll be home. It's all about us all being here together. Don't get focused on the fact that you're in Iraq."
For most soldiers fighting this war, Christmas was almost like any other day, with dangerous patrols, tedious guard duty and reams of paperwork. But the routine was broken by feasts of lobster tail and roast turkey, with soldiers wearing bright red Santa hats and reflecting on the important things in their lives.
In the northern city of Baiji, Spec. Jeremy Staggs, 34, of Coleman, Tex., thought of his family back home and the people who feel like family in Iraq, as he shared pizza and potato salad with fellow GIs. They decorated a tree in the corner of a rec room and traded Secret Santa gifts.
"We had a Christmas party, and it was actually really good," Coleman said Saturday afternoon. "Sure, it's difficult being away from home, but what has made it all good is the support we've gotten from the American people."
Soldiers acted like gleeful children as they opened packages sent from the United States, with wrapped presents, food, toiletries, magazines, books and games spilling out. The troops played with electric race car sets and video games. Tinsel, wreaths and blinking lights adorned the palaces taken over by the military and lit up forward operating bases.
Christmas in north-central Iraq was wet instead of white. An extremely rare rainstorm hovered over the region much of the day, transforming the dirt-covered terrain into a wintry muck under dark gray skies.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) - One of Turkey's richest businessmen said he has been kidnapped in Iraq, appearing in a video aired Saturday alongside one of his weeping employees and saying they were being treated well by their captors.
Kahraman Sadikoglu, president of the Istanbul-based Tuzla Shipyard, and ship captain Ahmet Yurtdas had not been heard from since they left the southern Iraqi city of Basra by land on Dec. 16, according to their families.
The footage did not say who was holding the two men or mention demands.
Several newspapers said a ransom demand of $25 million had been made, but Foreign Ministry officials and family members of the hostages refused to confirm the reports.
``Today is Dec. 23. We were captured four or five days ago,'' Sadikoglu said on the videotape, broadcast on Turkish television. ``We're fine and they will check us out, what we're doing here, and will hopefully release us. God is Great.''
Sadikoglu said he was working for the United Nations and the Iraqi government on a project clearing harbors of sunken ships. ``We don't have any problems with the Iraqi government, we're creating jobs and food for the Iraqis,'' he said. ``If that is a crime too, then we will accept the punishment.''
In his mid-50s, Sadikoglu is renowned for salvaging ships around the world and restoring luxury yachts. One of Turkey's wealthiest men, he is popular among many Turks for having renovated and rescued the Savarona, a luxury yacht that once belonged to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey. The Savarona is listed as one of the world's largest yachts.
His wife, Julide Sadikoglu, expressed hope that her husband and the captain would be released soon, the Anatolia news agency reported.
``I understood from Kahraman's speech that there is nothing to be afraid of,'' his wife said after watching the video. ``I am very happy to see them healthy.''
She said Sadikoglu was doing business on his own and that he was not related to ``Americans, Britons or any other state,'' Anatolia reported. Sadikoglu reportedly employed some 40 Turkish and Iraqi workers in Basra, according to Turkish newspapers.
In the video, Sadikoglu said he was working for the United Nations and the Iraqi government.
More than 170 foreigners have been kidnapped in Iraq this year, and at least 34 of them - including seven Turks - have been killed by their captors. Besides the two Turks in Saturday's video, at least four foreigners are known to still be held, three of them Americans
Santa better bring me a fuckin' Playstation 2, mom. And fucking Jax 3, or I'm gonna go get Daddy's shotgun and hunt his ass down. And your boyfriend's first, because if I'm huntin' Santa, I'm getting rid of all the assholes in my life
Jen's sitting here, playing with my TV and watching I love the 80's on my Sony 24" TV. I'm waiting for football. We're eating sausages and getting ready to cook the goose.
Oh yeah, she's going on about her favorite World's Strongest Men. She's really into it. Which I find amusing, but I think she just likes to see guys running around in skimpy gear, lifting things.
And if you're absoultely curious, Jen got me an orginal Hertha BSC Jersey with my name on it. Which is nice and really expensive. Stunningly so. I just got the stuff from her Amazon wish list. A walk down the block and an order from Barnes and Noble, my shopping was done.
The kids are happy with their gifts, I'm happy to hear about it on the phone.
There's booze, music and quiche.
OK, so obviously, it's going to a slow day in terms of posting and this is an open thread. Enjoy.
By Jackie Spinner
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 25, 2004; Page A01
BAGHDAD, Dec. 24 -- It was the night before Christmas, and at the Virgin Mary Church of Palestine Street in the Iraqi capital, parishioners were making last-minute preparations for the holiday.
Steel barricades were erected in front of the main gate to keep potential car bombers from getting too close to the church, and several young men rehearsed how they would search strangers for hidden explosives.
A few parishioners attended Mass on Christmas Eve at St. Joseph Chaldean Church in Baghdad. Security concerns forced the cancellation of many evening services in Iraq's capital; others were held in the morning. (Samir Mizban -- AP)
The security director -- the church hired one of its parishioners for the job a few months ago -- said softly that he placed his hand over his heart every morning as he walked to work.
"We are frightened," he said, his blue eyes looking down at a desk covered with passages from the Bible and images of Mary, the mother of Jesus. "People are frightened to come to church."
For the first time in as long as even the old women could remember, Iraqi Christians prepared for the Christmas holiday with heart-thumping sadness and dread. This was the year to scan the sanctuary for the safest place to sit in case a bomb exploded. Or not to go at all.
Many Christmas Eve services were canceled or changed to daylight hours, and police cars guarded the churches on Friday night. Priests expected to deliver their Christmas messages to nearly empty churches. People shopping for presents, decorations and trees did not linger on streets for fear of being targeted by insurgents.
At a bookshop in Baghdad on Friday, Wasan Warda, 35, watched her husband, the owner, wrap Christmas gifts for a Muslim customer. "This is the first Christmas we will not go to the church for the service," she said.
"Put yourself in my shoes," her husband said. "Are you going to take your wife and kids to church with this danger?"
Warda began to cry. "But you know how important Christmas Mass is for us and for the kids," she said.
See what Americans have brought to Iraq. They can't even celebrate Christmas anymore, something they could do under Saddam.
You can't miss Paul Rieckhoff. He's the bald guy sitting in the corner, his arms a flurry of motion, eating, answering phones and marking papers. "I'm multitasking," says Rieckhoff, 29, who until February was an Army lieutenant in charge of a platoon in Baghdad.
"We were the door kickers," he says, meaning he and his 38 men had to break into places where they thought snipers might be hiding. All his men returned home alive but several were wounded, including one whose legs were blown off.
"I just got a call from Jim Lehrer of public television, who wants me on his show tonight," Rieckhoff says. "Excuse me while I change into clean clothes. This may be the first time you ever interviewed someone with his pants off."
Since this past summer he has been in charge of a 250-member, nonprofit advocacy group called Operation Truth, which is based in offices at Broadway and Ninth Street in Manhattan.
His group exists to make sure that soldiers are getting the equipment they need to fight a bitter battle in Iraq and to deal with issues such as "stop loss," the involuntary extension of active duty for soldiers beyond their contractual obligations, the so-called "back-door draft."
He began getting calls from the media after a reserve unit in Iraq refused to deliver a fuel shipment in October because, the soldiers said, their vehicles had little or no armor.
At the time, Rieckhoff said "this is the validation of why we exist. Troops have been saying this for a long time."
When a soldier rose to the microphone days later at a news conference held by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, challenging the secretary on what the soldier called "hillbilly armor," meaning armor collected from Dumpsters to be slapped onto unprotected Humvees and trucks, Rieckhoff was delighted.
"That soldier has got some guts," he said.
See, he's just another malcontent. All that fancy Amherst education has got him confused. He should shut up and support the president and not whine like a little baby. Just because he was in Iraq as an infantry officer doesn't mean he knows as much about the war as the guys at Town Hall.
Dozens of New York City supermarkets are still locking in their janitors at night, even after neighborhood and labor groups began urging government officials to crack down on the practice six months ago, janitors and community leaders say.
Five janitors said in interviews that supermarkets in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx still locked them in, with fire exits blocked or padlocked, even though the Fire Department was alerted to the problem last June. Fire officials, who have not made the issue a high priority, say they have not found any instances of locked-in employees, although the workers' advocates say the department's investigations have been half-hearted and flawed. The lock-ins are an effort to prevent workers from stealing merchandise, many say.
Antonio A., a late-night floor cleaner at more than a dozen supermarkets - including Bravo, C-Town and Pioneer stores - said he was locked in at all but three of the stores, unable to get out until a manager arrived in the morning.
"People put pressure on for a while, and things got better for a short time, but now stores are locking people in the same as before," said Antonio, an immigrant from Mexico who refused to give his full name because he feared being fired for speaking out.
Alberto Martinez, who recently quit his supermarket job to work at a restaurant, said he was locked in at all but one of the stores where he washed and waxed floors.
"I haven't seen things change a lot, and I don't see the government doing much," he said. The five janitors said that when their supermarkets closed for the day, managers pulled down shutters over the front windows, and the emergency exits were blocked or padlocked.
Last June, the Fifth Avenue Committee, a community group in Brooklyn, organized demonstrations at several supermarkets to protest their practice of locking in janitors. In July, the committee sent the Fire Department a list of 36 supermarkets where workers said they were locked in. The committee and other advocacy groups have also urged the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration to inspect supermarkets to prevent lock-ins.
"This is behavior that shocks the conscience," said David Yassky, a city councilman from Brooklyn. "In grade school, we all learned about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and we learned once and for all that business owners shouldn't put lives in danger by locking the fire exits."
Fucking assclown Christians needing to feel like vicitms in a country where four out of five people believe in Jesus. They're as silly as white surpremacists who think White folks are oppressed people.
When I saw a black minister saying they would only shop in stores where people said Marry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays because they were "taking Christ out of Christmas", I just want to ask, where the fuck have you been the last century or so. Santa Claus is an invention of Coca Cola. In most Christian countries, St. Nick is an actual saint.
I just saw the story of a GI who played St. Nick for some Luxembergian kids in 1944. And they invite him back every so often. At the time, many of the younger children had never celebrated Christmas during the war. So the homesick GI's handed out candy, cake and whatever they had to the kids, many of whom hadn't had much during the German occupation. The amazing thing is that the whole thing was caught on film. The soldier, who was a kid 60 years ago is in his 80's now, with a bunch of dead friends in the US cemetery in the area. All of the Americans who died in the assault on Germany are buried in five massive graveyards in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland
Now, that's about the Christmas spirit, not some whining about how Jesus is being ignored by retailers.
Not being an idiot, I also realize that New Years is next week. Which is also a holiday.
The whole new Christian cult relies on a never ending sense of victimization. Not a geniune belief in Christ, but this "I listen to rock music, I look cool and I follow Jesus bullshit" or more accurately, that people won't laugh at me when they find I go to church. Amy Grnat was on Nightline last night and it was all she could do not to roll her eyes at this crap. She told Koeppel "you know I was an English major", suggesting that she both retained critical faculties and wasn't a halfwit. Just because Jesus is involved doesn't mean it doesn't suck.
These people thrive on victimization and isolation, as if Americans are being attacked for having faith. Oh, there goes the poor Christian. No, there goes the annoying asshole. These people want to oppress others, not talk about faith and service and compassion. A bible which looks like Seventeen? Talk about uncritical thinking.
Belief is not a marketing tool to get you to buy unbiblical books like the Left Behind series, about the misreading of Revelations. No, there's no rapture in it. It was invented by some crazy English guy in the 1700's. Most of it is a sort of American fashion. Protect us from the cruel world and it's nasty economy and those scary Mexkins and negroes. Let us hide behind you in segregated "Christian" schools. The people marketing Jesus as a security blanket and not a call to faith are hucksters, not religious. When I see Jesus action figures, I'm seeing a scam.
Chrisitanity, at least to me, is about charity and selflessness, not proving how good a groupie you are.
BAGHDAD, Iraq - A gas tanker truck wired with explosives blew up in a west Baghdad neighborhood Friday, killing one person, wounding 19 and lighting up the night sky with a fireball, just hours after Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld left the capital.
There were no members of the multinational forces among the casualties, said Capt. Brian Lucas, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.
The butane truck was parked near the Libyan Embassy in the Mansour district, an upscale district where many foreigners live and embassies are located, police said. Residents said they could hear small-arms fire immediately after the blast.
Most of the wounded suffered severe burns, said a doctor at Baghdad's Yarmouk hospital. Three nearby houses were damaged by the blast, though there were no injuries inside the embassies.
Rumsfeld's surprise one-day tour in Iraq (news - web sites) took him to the cities of Mosul, Fallujah and Tikrit and the heavily barricaded Green Zone in Baghdad — he did not visit the Mansour area — and throughout his meetings with U.S. troops, he insisted that the insurgency that plagued the country for months would be defeated.
Still, violence has escalated even after the U.S. offensive in Fallujah last month that largely captured the guerrilla's main stronghold.
On Tuesday, insurgents in Mosul, a northern city that has become a center for violence, carried out the deadliest yet against Americans — a suicide attack on a mess tent at a U.S. base.
Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica, who investigated abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, is leading a new, wide-ranging probe into security lapses that allowed the bomber to penetrate into a packed mess hall on the base, authorities said Friday.
The Mosul blast — claimed by the radical Islamic group known as the Ansar al-Sunnah Army — killed 22 people, most of them American soldiers and civilians. The bomber believed to have carried out the attack was probably wearing an Iraqi military uniform, the U.S. military has said.
Lt. Col. Paul Hastings, a spokesman at the Mosul base, said the investigation will be "conducted quickly and thoroughly" but that there was no deadline for its conclusions.
"Now we have a pretty good idea that it was a suicide bomber," Hastings said. Formica "is going to investigate into the how's — how did that happen?"
For the Bloomberg administration, the case was just one more in an unusual collection of city lawsuits that grind along, regardless of national politics: dealing with the civil rights damages people claim to have suffered at the hands of Mr. Giuliani or his senior aides.
In the three years since Michael R. Bloomberg succeeded Mr. Giuliani, the city has spent close to $2 million to settle lawsuits brought by residents and city workers who accused the Giuliani administration of retaliating against them for exercising free speech or other constitutional rights.
Among them is a limousine driver, James Schillaci, who had complained in a newspaper article about a red-light sting set up by the police in the Bronx. The same day, police came to his home to arrest him for a 13-year-old unpaid ticket. The next day, the mayor obtained - illegally, Mr. Schillaci said - the record of his arrests from decades earlier and discussed it, inaccurately, at a news conference. The city settled with him for $290,000 in 2002.
Giuliani called him a criminal at City Hall, a tactic he would use to much greater effect later on.
A correction worker charged that he was bypassed for promotion because he supported a political opponent of Mr. Giuliani's and that city investigators videotaped the guests arriving at his home for a political fund-raiser. The city paid him $325,000 this year.
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The totals for such claims could grow. Dantae Johnson of the Bronx has charged in a lawsuit that after he was shot by a police officer in May 1999, Mr. Giuliani and the police commissioner, Howard Safir, falsely described him as a criminal to justify the shooting. The officer was convicted of assault. The city has denied responsibility.
This is one of the more egregious cases, and the city will be likely to settle. Why? Johnson was coming from midnight basketball and walking straight to his home. A plainclothes car pulled up beside him and a gunshot went off. Yet, a few months later Robert Iler, Sopranos star, was arrested for robbery in Carl Schurz Park, a few blocks from Gracie Mansion where New York's mayors live. Giuliani vilified Johnson, saying that his mother should have been watching him, while he called Iler a "good kid". Of course, Johnson, to this day, has no criminal convictions and Iler pleaded out to the robbery.
Eric H. DeVarin III, an assistant deputy warden in the Correction Department, has claimed in a lawsuit that he was denied promotion because of a dispute with Mr. Kerik's former girlfriend. Mr. Kerik has said that is untrue.
However, the city has paid $250,000 to another corrections officer in the same case and is trying to suppress the deposition transcript from public release.
The coming issue of the journal CityLaw reports that a federal magistrate has said that an AIDS housing group can proceed with a suit to recover $35 million in government contracts that it claims to have lost as punishment for protests against Mr. Giuliani's policies. The city lawyers say the Giuliani administration had many sound reasons to stop doing business with the group, called Housing Works.
The Housing Works case is part of "a continuing saga of the policies and litigating tendencies of the Giuliani administration," said Ross Sandler, director of the Center for New York City Law at New York Law School, which publishes CityLaw
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Giuliani had ESU (New York's SWAT) stationed on the top of City Hall, ready to shoot AIDS patients hobbling along in front of City Hall
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A former member of the police Street Crime Unit, Yvette Walton, was fired in 1999 after publicly criticizing the unit's operations. The police commissioner, Mr. Safir, said she was dismissed for abuse of sick leave, but testimony showed that her commander had planned to punish her for that infraction simply by docking one day's vacation. When she began speaking out, the matter was abruptly transferred to the commissioner's office.
Mr. Safir "removed Walton's case from the jurisdiction of her commanding officer, and, without hearing or trial or consideration of her overall performance, dismissed Walton as a police officer," Federal District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ruled. "I find that Walton's dismissal was in retaliation for the exercise of her First Amendment rights."
Mr. Safir disputed that finding, but in November 2002, the city paid Ms. Walton $327,000 and allowed her to retire with her pension, according to Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which represented Ms. Walton.
Walton was ther only black, female member of the unit, which had been involved in the murder of Amadou Diallo. While the four officers who participated in his murder were found not guilty by an Albany jury, two still remain on the NYPD in modified assignments. Two others are now firefighters. However, Walton, who testified before the City Council, was punished far more harshly than the four men who fired 41 shots into an unarmed man in the vestibule of his own building.
SCU was designated to go after gun crimes. The former commander of the unit warned Safir that a rapid expansion would lead to disaster. Which it did, but because their numbers were so good, Giuliani wanted their numbers increased. At the time of the Diallo murder, none of the four officers involved had been long time members of the unit.
And yes, the officers were aquitted, but what else do you call shooting an unarmed man 41 times? An accident?
Safir, and by extension, Giuliani, were desperate to shut her up, and then fired her on a bogus charge of abuse of sick leave. NYPD cops have unlimited sick leave. The city couldn't afford a trial which would air not only Giuliani's dirty laundry, but the PD's and its endemic problem with minority cops being disproportionally punished compared to white cops.
The city paid $490,000 in February 2002 to Timothy Donovan, a police captain, and promoted him to settle his suit claiming that he was punished by Mr. Safir because he would not rewrite a sexual harassment investigation document to put certain senior chiefs in a more favorable light. "It was a case that Bloomberg quickly cleaned up," said Matthew Brinckerhoff, the lawyer for Mr. Donovan.
In March 2000, after Patrick Dorismond, a Times Square security guard, was shot to death in a confrontation with an undercover police officer, Mr. Giuliani responded to criticism of the shooting by releasing Mr. Dorismond's sealed juvenile record. In a wrongful-death suit against the city, his family cited Mr. Giuliani's release of the criminal records as part of a pattern of smearing people hurt by the police. The city paid $2.25 million to settle the suit in 2002.
Derek Sells, the lawyer who represented the family, could not say precisely what role Mr. Giuliani's release of the juvenile records played in the settlement. "It was an embarrassing issue for the city," Mr. Sells said. "It was very clear that it was a breach in the law."
The Dorismond case had killed Giuliani's career until 9/11.
Patrick Dorismond was standing on a midtown street corner, when approached by an undercover cop to buy pot. When he shoved the cop away, somehow he was shot. No one was ever punished for his death.
But that wasn't what got Giuliani in trouble. It was the release of his sealed juvenile criminal record. He had broken a longstanding social rule in New York: you don't smear working guys. He worked for a living. It's one thing to dig up dirt on skells and perps, but not working guys. He had a job and a family. Dragging his name through the mud was simply not done. Hatred for Giuliani was so paltable that the Dorismond funeral nearly turned into a riot. Only quick thinking by Al Sharpton prevented that, when he hustled the family away.
What Jim Dwyer doesn't mention, and should, is that in every case but Schillaci, the complainants were black or Latino.
He also doesn't mention the years of warfare between Giuliani and artist Robert Lederman. Lederman was arrested 26 times in like five years. He won every case.
What was clear is that Giuliani used the police force as a way to silence critics and limit dissent. But in every case, Giuliani was warned off and proceeded anyway. Then the city has to come in and pay the bill.
While he was doing this, Kerik was on the pad with people either mobbed up or doing business with the city.
Oh yeah, on 9/11, Giuliani ran to the cameras. His heroism was as fake as John Wayne's. All for show.
Former top Police Department aide John Picciano has followed his scandal-singed boss Bernard Kerik out the door of ex-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's consulting firm.
Picciano had been Kerik's $145,000-a-year chief of staff when the latter was commissioner for jails and then police under Giuliani. In 2002, Picciano followed Kerik first to a security partnership that dissolved and then to Giuliani Partners.
"He left of his own volition," Giuliani spokeswoman Sunny Mindel said of Picciano Thursday. "We are on good terms and we want to wish him the best."
Other ex-correction officials hired at Kerik's behest are staying for now at the separate division that once carried Kerik's name but is now being renamed Giuliani Security.
Long before Kerik's alleged abuses and lapses in city service became front-page news, Picciano's actions raised questions in the jail system and the NYPD.
They included a 1998 police complaint filed by a female correction officer that Picciano threatened her with a gun in a domestic dispute.
Picciano was never arrested. From all accounts, he also never faced the usual firearms review board, though the officer was never charged with filing a false report.
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That's led others in city government to ask how carefully Picciano had been vetted as chief of staff, given his own repeated bankruptcy filings and use of a tax-exemption trick that got other officers fired.
Sid Schwartzbaum, president of the union representing deputy wardens and assistant deputy wardens, which had many clashes with Picciano, said: "John Picciano was the protected and connected one, if anybody has been.
"In their offices, most people on the executive staff have pictures of honorable, committed leaders on the wall -- Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Nelson Mandela," he said.
"In John Picciano's office there was hanging Al Pacino as Michael Corleone and Marlon Brando as Vito Corleone. Picciano assumed a nostalgic role that transcended into unfettered power and made him a negative influence in Kerik's office," he added
OK, you're in law enforcement and you have pictures of actors as mobsters on your wall? Are you fucking kidding me? This guy waved a gun and engaged in tax fraud and Kerik kept him around. And so did Giuliani
Now, in addition to being the Dean of the Fainthearted Faction, another thing to note about Rep. Ford is that he's a man with big plans --- statewide office, national office, the sky's the limit. He ran against Nancy Pelosi two years ago to be the head of the Democratic caucus when he was only in his third term and thirty-two years old, for crying out loud.
So what I'm wondering is what big funders and groups of Democrats are going to go to Ford and tell him that if he ever wants to get out of his Memphis House district just who does he think it's going to be who's going to fund and staff out his campaign?
Hey, if I were him, I'd worry about keeping his seat, forget anything else.
Now, he's in Congress because people like his daddy. But he runs to the right because he wants to go places, fast. However, if it were me, I'd be going around his district and asking why he wants little ol' black church ladies to eat cat food. His head is in Washington, but his ass is in a poor city in a poor state. And just because he's high yellow doesn't mean he's white. He serves a black district and there is no way in hell they want to mess with social security. Too many of them depend on it.
This is the kind of gimmick which will let his daddy's enemies find a bright young lawyer, maybe out of UT or Vandy, and run for his seat, clubbing him with this. He's doing this because he thinks he can play Washington games, but this will bite him right in the ass.
According to people who have been there, Fallujah is not a very big city. You can walk across it in half an hour. Yet when the history of this miserable war is written, I suspect it may loom large. Like Stalingrad, it will mark the point where the war turned against the invader.
You may recall that the U.S. Marine commanders on scene declared some weeks ago that the battle was won and Fallujah was ours. It now appears they were Panglissading through reality, in a way that seems universal among American generals. Fighting still continues in Fallujah. Far from fleeing, resistance fighters are now infiltrating back into the city. Sectors we have "pacified" spring back to life in IED attacks and ambushes. There is talk about letting a few civilians return to Fallujah’s ruins, but only under conditions that would make normal civilian life impossible.
Of course, Fallujah itself was largely destroyed in the American assault. The American military did the only thing a Second Generation military can do: it put firepower on targets. 2GW armed services are one-trick ponies: they only have one act, and they perform it regardless of whether it fits the circumstances or not. In Fourth Generation war, the usual result is what has happened in Fallujah: a moral victory for the other side. As Colonel Boyd argued, and as this column has pointed out time and time again, the moral level of war is the most powerful, the physical level the least powerful.
Correspondent Patrick Cockburn, who is in Iraq, reports another result of Fallujah:
just at the moment that the U.S. troops were moving into Fallujah, suddenly, most of Mosul – a city in the north, which is at least five or six times the size of Falluja – fell to the insurgents… This is far more important in some ways that what’s happened in Falluja.
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Operationally, Fallujah, like Stalingrad, proved to be a trap. It led us to concentrate so many of our few combat troops in one place that the insurgency was able to make major gains in other, more important places. It again drew a glaring contrast between how America fights – by pouring in firepower – and the stated aim of the American invasion of Iraq, liberating the Iraqi people. You cannot liberate people by destroying their homes, their jobs and their cities. If operational art is the art of linking tactical actions to strategic goals, American generals have once again shown the world that they have no operational skill – a situation that is typical of a Second Generation military. (It may be useful to remember that the American military failed operationally in the first Gulf War as well; Saddam’s’ Republican Guard escaped 7th Corps’ slow, inept attempt at operational encirclement.)
After the first Marine assault on Fallujah in April – an assault that was wisely abandoned, since it threatened to set off a nationwide uprising against the occupation – Pat Buchanan said that Fallujah will probably mark the high water line of neo-con imperialism. I think the outcome of the second battle of Fallujah will confirm that prescient assessment. Just as Stalingrad marked the turning point in Fall Barbarossa, so Fallujah will go down in history as the "tipping point" in America’s Last Crusade.
The reality is that war without intelligence is failure. The US lacks evem basic intelligence in Iraq.
They clearly just waited for the US to go by, kill some buildings and the unlucky, and then came back.
The elections are shaping up to be a bloody massacre in the offing. Car bombs at key polling stations, people being shot in firefights and the US unable to do dick about it.
By SUSAN PAYNTER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Something scary and sickening lurks like a stalker behind the pretty picture of Gov. Gary Locke leaving office to spend more time with his small son and daughter.
It's true Locke decided that a run for a third term would leave scant time to savor the joys and discoveries of being an everyday dad.
But ugly threats against Locke's family, specifically his kids, contributed in some measure to the governor's decision. And, however you feel about Locke as a leader, that sinister fact should worry everyone in the state.
A column I wrote last month on the toll of nasty personal attacks on public people got Sen. Ken Jacobsen thinking about the threats he'd heard against the Lockes. So, after the governor announced his decision, Jacobsen called with a chill up his spine.
As far back as two years ago, Jacobsen said, other legislators told him they believed Locke was leaning against another run. And at least part of that was due to the potential menace and pinheaded meanness another election might expose his children to.
"There were definitely death threats on his kids," Jacobsen said. "It wasn't really reported at the time. But a man was arrested just a few months ago for having made some of those threats just after Locke was elected to a second term."
"He wondered what he was putting his family through," former Senate Majority Leader Sid Snyder told me on Wednesday.
A father figure in Olympia until he, himself, traded public office for more time with his wife, Synder said Locke was clearly concerned two years ago. "And I thought then that he'd never run again, that things like that might weigh on his decision," Snyder said.
"All the things a governor has to worry about and now this," was how Locke put it to Snyder at the time.
Then came Locke's rebuttal to President Bush's State of the Union Address.
An avalanche of ugliness crashed out of the e-mail ether.
Hundreds and hundreds of e-mailed insults and slurs, many of them personally threatening, poured into the governor's office. "Some were really racist, saying things like, 'Why don't you and your family get on a boat and go back to China,' " Jacobsen recalled. "I think Gary, having had his kids later in life and maybe feeling them to be especially precious, made him worry about what they might face."
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How could it not?
Now the already crowded battle to replace Locke is coming to a rapid boil. Let's hope that none of the contenders -- one of them a woman, one of them African American and all of them with families -- is burned by assaults on their personal safety. At the very least, let's make a pact to leave the kids alone
This is an absolute shame. Fucking cowards threatening his kids and racist to boot.
When our Army desperately needs heroes, where are these men? After all, if they're brave enough to threaten kids, they can face down an RPG in a Humvee.
Marianna Winchester, whose 25-year-old son, Lt. Ronald D. Winchester, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on Sept. 3, examines a Purple Heart he was awarded.
They decided, after agonizing about it, to put up the tree, the same as always. They tacked a wreath to the front door, the same as always. But they could not hang the Advent calendar in the kitchen, because their lives are not the same as always.
The Kolms, Thomas and Jacqueline, are trying.
They are trying to make it through the holidays without the son they called Mr. Christmas. Without the son the Marines called corporal. Without the son the insurgents who fired grenades at his amphibious assault vehicle in Iraq called a target.
"This is hard," said Mr. Kolm, the father of Cpl. Kevin T. Kolm of Hicksville, on Long Island, who was killed on April 13. "It was his holiday."
Even before the mess-tent bombing in Mosul on Tuesday, several dozen families in the metropolitan region were living through their first Christmas without a soldier who was killed in Iraq.
Some of them say they are struggling through a time that inevitably brings back memories - memories that now deepen the pain of loss and the sense that everything has changed, even as they go through the motions as if nothing has changed. In New York State, 36 of the 61 casualties in the war were killed this year. In New Jersey, 18 of the 28 soldiers who have died in Iraq died this year. In Connecticut, it is six of the 11 dead.
As numbers, perhaps, those are not overwhelming. But the emptiness in well-ordered households like the Kolms' is.
"This is the year of all the firsts," Mr. Kolm said.
It was the first Thanksgiving without Kevin, who was 23 and was a crew chief for a lightly armored troop carrier. It is the first December without the Advent calendar; Kevin was the one who kept it up to date. And no one will gift-wrap the mail this year, the way Kevin did last year, as a gag, when he was home on leave. His parents laughed as much as he did.
Marianna Winchester, whose 25-year-old son died in September, eight days into his second tour of duty in Iraq, hung his Christmas stocking from the mantel, just below his baby pictures, just above the poster of him as an offensive lineman at the United States Naval Academy. Sitting on the couch, surrounded by ceramic snowmen that her son made as a child, she repeated what she said when a friend telephoned and asked how she was.
"Fine until you called," Mrs. Winchester said.
Jeanin Urbina, 17, the sister of a 29-year-old National Guardsman who was killed outside Baghdad on Nov. 29, described what this first Christmas without her brother was like. "Really there are a million different ways to say it: Christmas will never be the same," she said. "We don't really want to talk. We just want to start healing."
The holidays have a way of stirring memories. Mr. Kolm remembered stashing presents in the attic when Kevin was young. His father will never know whether Kevin figured out the hiding place; he says he thinks Kevin never did but now he can never ask.
What Mr. Kolm remembered was how Kevin would sneak out of bed on Christmas morning at "zero-dark 30." As the son and grandson of marines, Kevin Kolm understood the military shorthand for the middle of the night.
"You know, he couldn't really find himself - teenager, the generic story, looking for what he was going to do," Mr. Kolm said. "Then one day in November of 2000, he said, 'Dad, I think I want to go in the corps.' I said, 'Don't do it for me, you've got to want to be doing this for yourself.' He said, 'No, I'm really into it.' And he was. He fell right into it."
He was assigned to the same kind of amphibious unit that his grandfather, Ralph Kolm, drove in the Palau Islands in 1944 and at Okinawa in 1945. Thomas Kolm worked on light antiaircraft artillery in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. That prepared him for a career maintaining telephone equipment and, eventually, telecommunications networks. But, even if he did not quite say so, nothing prepared him for this Christmas.
Calls publicity 'unfair and unnecessary distraction' to firm
BY DEREK ROSE and RUSS BUETTNER
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
In a hastily called news conference, Kerik said he met with Giuliani yesterday afternoon to tell him he was resigning.
"Though it hasn't been an easy decision, I feel it was the right one," Kerik said, standing in front of a hotel in midtown. "The events surrounding my withdrawal have become an unfair and unnecessary distraction to the firm and, most importantly, to the work that they do at the firm."
In a separate news conference, Giuliani insisted he had not urged Kerik to resign.
But the split came after days of Giuliani increasingly distancing himself from his former protégé.
"I feel very bad for Bernie," Giuliani said. "He made the decision to resign, and I agree with him on that. I think he needs the time to focus, and I think he will reemerge a better man."
Kerik, who reportedly earned $500,000 a year in the job, did not take questions from reporters.
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On Dec. 3, Kerik reached the apex of his career. He stood beside President Bush in a nomination ceremony at the White House. Both men noted Kerik's moving life story.
Born to a prostitute mother, he became a decorated detective, commissioner of the city jails and Police Department, author of a best-selling memoir and a speaker at the Republican National Convention.
But a week after the nomination, Kerik withdrew, citing problems with a nanny's paperwork.
Within days, the Daily News published the results of a six-month investigation finding Kerik failed to report thousands of dollars in gifts, became entangled with a company long suspected of mob ties and had carried on two simultaneous extramarital affairs in a secret apartment near Ground Zero.
This week, The News ran the content of E-mails Kerik sent to a friend in 1999 that suggest he was willing to divulge confidential details of a city investigation to the subject of the probe, Interstate Industrial of Clifton, N.J.
The paper's hard look at Kerik flowed from previous News investigations that led to the arrest of two high-ranking officials promoted by Kerik when he headed the city Correction Department.
In response, the city Department of Investigation last week launched a probe.
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"He put his life at risk to protect them," Giuliani said.
The letters loom down on Centre Street like a loud, blustery taunt, mocking the rule of law and the equal application of justice.
"BERNARD B. KERIK COMPLEX," the letters say all in caps.
Was it Rudy's way of thumbing his nose at everyone who'd warned that Bernie was just a hard-charging lightweight?
Was it an inside joke about the former police-and-correction commissioner's famous disdain for civil rights?
Those are the questions people were asking on Dec. 12, 2001, when Rudolph Giuliani, in one of his last official acts as mayor, renamed the old Manhattan Detention Center in honor of his loyal protégé and knock-around campaign chauffeur.
Here's the question people are asking today: How much longer will it be before Bernard B. Kerik is walked in handcuffs through the Bernard B. Kerik Complex?
That's not as far-fetched as it might sound.
A criminal probe is already under way in the Bronx. The city Department of Investigations has opened its own case. While Manhattan prosecutors haven't yet made a formal move on the man who was going to be secretary of Homeland Security, new details of alleged corruption and sleaziness keep showing up almost every day.
And at noontime yesterday, a man named Trevor Montclair came up the windy Centre Street sidewalk as I was standing out in the cold. He took one look at the big KERIK sign and jammed his hands back into his pockets.
"They never have the right criminals inside," he said.
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Giuliani is still delusional. Kerik is the deathknell of his political ambitions, not a speed bump. Firing him is pointless.
Because of your efforts V-Day, and the spirit, energy and movement to end violence against women and girls, has spread wildly around the world. Last year there were 2300 events, celebrations, in over 1100 cities, villages and towns. From Delhi to Detroit women took back their bodies and their lives. I was lucky to be in Mumbai where I witnessed the extraordinary humor of a brilliant Indian cast performing “The Vagina Monologues” for hundreds and raising money for a local shelter. I was there in Tulsa, Oklahoma performing for 2500 Native Americans so that women there would be safe and free. I was there when 7000 people from all over the world marched on Juarez, Mexico and insisted that there be justice for the hundreds of disappeared women and safety for the living.
We have had huge victories. Our Agnes Pareiyo*, was elected Deputy Mayor of Narok, Kenya. V-Day Europe** was born. A young girl from the Anti-Rape Dolphin program in the slums of Nairobi, Kenya successfully fought off her rapist. A teenager brought “The Vagina Monologues” to her high school and the community stood behind her. Women made vagina cookies for their benefit in Cairo, Egypt. The list goes on and on.
Each one of these individual victories has begun to break through the wall of denial, shame, and secrecy that surrounds the seeming inevitability and acceptability of violence against women.
Unfortunately the violence continues. Whether it’s the rise of sexual assault against women soldiers in the U.S. military or rapes by football players on college campuses or the continued lack of security and support for women in Afghanistan and the terrible situation of women in Sudan; or the rampant escalation of sex trafficking of girls around the world. The epidemic goes on.
This year we must go further. We must show how central, how impacting, how contagious, how devastating this violence is to everything and everyone. We must transform our activism into real political power and vision. We must help vagina warriors become vagina leaders. This is the year we must see what we see, know what we know, say what we have to say.
This is the year where we bring V- Day to the smallest villages, into the places of most resistance and need, into our homes if necessary. This is the year where we stand, through our Spotlight, with the women of Iraq who have lost more freedom than they have gained as a consequence of the U.S. war and subsequent occupation. In Iraq where the incidents of rape and abduction by organized gangs has increased fear of sexual violence deterring women from returning to work or seeking employment and families from permitting their daughters to go to school.
This is the year where we end violence against women. Remember, I promised it would happen in 2005? We have a lot of work to do.
V-Day is an outrageous, global, personal, anarchic unstoppable movement. There are thousands, if not millions of us. We are everywhere. We have humor, intensity, sorrow, grace, and perseverance. We are having an impact.
Go further. Work harder. Believe deeper. Be bolder. Speak louder.
We will win.
Eve Ensler
V-Day Artistic Director and Founder, Playwright, Performer, & Activist
Former Gov. John G. Rowland, who resigned July 1 amid a scandal over his acceptance of gifts and favors from state contractors and others, pleaded guilty this morning in U.S. District Court in New Haven under an agreement that will send him to jail.
"Obviously mistakes have been made throughout the last few years, and I accept responsibility for those," Rowland told reporters after entering the plea. "But I also ask the people of this state to appreciate and understand what we have tried to do over the past 25 years in public service."
The plea is the result of sensitive negotiations between Rowland and federal prosecutors who were gearing up to seek an indictment of the Republican former governor early next year on charges that could have included conspiracy and racketeering, sources said.
Rowland entered the New Haven courthouse about 9:30 a.m. with his wife, Patty, and his lawyer, William F. Dow III. He declined to take reporters' questions, but told them, "I'll see you on the way out."
Prosecutors told the judge that Rowland accepted $107,000 worth of vacations, work on his cottage and free flights from state contractors and others. Assistant U.S. Attorney Nora Dannahey said the charge also involves a conspiracy to defraud the IRS.
Federal guidelines call for a sentence of between 15 to 21 months in prison, the lawyers involved said. Sentencing was set for March.
U.S. District Judge Peter Dorsey advised Rowland that as a convicted felon he would not be able to vote or hold public office.
How the fuck did he think he could take that kind of bribe and get away with it? Jim McGreevey lost his job and marriage over less. You take $107K in kickbacks, your ass belongs in jail.
And he's a piker compared to our own Grifty McPad, taking millions. Hell,Kerik's condo was worth more than that. They don't call it the Big Apple for nothing. Greedy asshole.
Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- In 35 years as Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat raised billions of dollars. He spent the fortune to wield power, to pay militants who attacked Israel and to invest in the U.S. and the Middle East.
Arafat used a holding company to buy stakes that ranged from $285 million in Egyptian mobile-phone company Orascom Telecom Holding SAE and its affiliates to some $30 million in private equity, mostly in the U.S. These included $3.2 million in Herndon, Virginia-based Simplexity Inc., which makes electronic-commerce software, $2.1 million in New York- and Boston-based Vaultus Inc., which makes software for wireless computers, and $1.3 million in New York-based Strike Holdings LLC, which owns the Bowlmor Lanes bowling alley in Manhattan's Greenwich Village.
Arafat, who died on Nov. 11 at age 75, disclosed $799 million of investments in documents the Palestinian Authority has released over the past two years that show he didn't just invest in building basic services in the West Bank and Gaza.
At a time when the authority was starved for funds, Arafat's money managers placed bets from Tel Aviv to Silicon Valley on venture capital funds, software startups and telecommunications companies.
``Arafat was notoriously secretive, and he spread the money all over,'' says Rachel Ehrenfeld, director of the New York-based American Center for Democracy and author of ``Funding Evil: How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It'' (Bonus Books, 2003). ``He didn't give the public a view of the investments until the donor community protested about corruption.''
Well someone had to pay for Suha to live in Paris, didn't they?
Looking for that last-minute Christmas gift? Here's an idea: a backpack. Not just any backpack. Get the one stuffed with a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants, a T-shirt, underwear, socks, a CD player, deodorant, a phone calling card, a comb, razors and ... allow me to explain.
The backpack full of practical goodies goes to American soldiers wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan who are in hospitals and rehab centers here at home, trying to put their lives back together after horrendous injuries.
They often want and need simple, everyday items. Hence, the list of toiletries and comfort clothes along with the CD player, which even comes with extra batteries. You can't get more practical than that.
The backpack program is the brainchild of the Wounded Warrior Project, one of the many charities doing their part in the war on terror.
Some of the groups, such as Give 2 The Troops and Operation Gratitude, send care packages to soldiers at the front that contain everything from video games to soap. Others, such as Injured Marine Semper Fi Fund, raise money to reunite families and their wounded soldiers.
These charities are all homemade. Andi Grant started Give 2 The Troops when her Marine reservist husband was called to duty. He returned safely, but her project continues and grows.
A photo in The New York Times shows her Connecticut house stuffed with boxes, some from donors, others ready to go to the front. All she wants for Christmas is a warehouse and money for postage!
Just reading about these incredible Americans fills me with pride - and a little guilt. Which is why I clicked onto the Wounded Warrior Project Web site and contributed the $99 that pays for a backpack. I immediately felt better.
John Melia, a founder of Wounded Warrior, assured me soldiers who get the backpacks feel better, too.
"It's not just the stuff we put inside," Melia said by phone. "It's that it comes from the public. It wouldn't mean as much if it was government-issued. To them, it shows their sacrifice meant something to people."
Melia knows from that feeling. A former Marine, he was injured in 1992 when his helicopter crashed near Somalia in a training exercise.
"I remember thinking probably nobody even knows that four Marines were killed and 14 were injured," he said. "That always stuck with me, wondering what the public knew."
When challenged, people can be decent, Too bad Bush never bothered. We keep running these stories because they matter. The wounded need our collective help. They're numbers to the neocons, replaceable parts. But to the rest of us, they're kin, friends, coworkers.
This is running on Kos and Juan Cole, so I figured why not join in:
From: Lori Noyes
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 12:28 AM
Subject: Request for Help for our wounded troops at LRMC
Dear CAP Friends:
I am writing is to tell you about a project the Ramstein Cadet Squadron at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, is starting. The Landstuhl Regional Medical Center (LRMC) here in Germany got an influx of about 500 wounded troops from Iraq last week and more arrive almost daily. They arrive straight from the battlefield, with only the torn, dirty, bloody clothes on their back. They have no clothes, underwear, or toiletry items. The hospital provides them with only a cotton gown or pajamas, robe, and disposable slippers. Some stay only a few days before being sent to hospitals stateside, while others are here up to several weeks. The military gives them a $250 voucher to buy clothing and toiletries at the BX, but many are not ambulatory, and those who are have to wait for a bus to get down to the BX on Ramstein 7 miles away. The BX runs out of the clothing and it takes weeks for more to come in. Those who can go to the BX still need something to wear to get there!
The cadets are collecting new clothing and toiletries to that they can take to the wounded at LRMC. Below is a list of items the wounded need. It is cold here in Germany and warm items are needed. Items need not be name brands . . .
For males - all sizes, but mostly medium and large
briefs
boxer shorts
undershirts or T-shirts
white crew sox
cotton turtleneck shirts
flannel shirts
sweatshirts (crew or zip-up hooded)
sweat pants
inexpensive athletic shoes
knit caps
knit gloves
For females - all sizes, but mostly medium and large
cotton briefs
cotton T-shirts
cotton turtleneck shirts
flannel shirts
bras - mostly sizes 34, 36, 38 with cup sizes B and C
white crew sox
sweatshirts (crew or zip-up hooded)
sweat pants
inexpensive athletic shoes
knit caps
knit gloves
Toiletry articles -
disposable razors
shaving cream - regular and/or travel size
deodorant - regular and/or travel size
tooth brushes
tooth paste - regular and/or travel size
nail clippers
combs
hair brushes
The hospital could also use new or used video tapes or DVDs of movies for the patients to watch. Comedies or light drama are best. Please avoid movies about war or those with excessive violence.
If your squadron would like to help, we would greatly appreciate it, no matter what the quantity. Every little bit helps.
If you wish to send money, make your check out to the Ramstein Cadet Squadron and put "Help for LRMC" on the memo line. We will use the money to purchase toiletry items and movies. But American-sized clothing listed below is what is mostly needed, which the BX is currently out of.
Send your donations to:
Lt Col Lori Noyes
PSC 2 Box 6037
APO AE 09012
or
Ramstein Cadet Squadron NHQ-OS-119
Unit 3395
APO AE 09094
We can get items to the hospital faster if they come to my mailing address, but feel free to send them to the squadron address.
Feel free to pass the word along to other CAP units in your wing. Thank you for your support of our troops.
In service,
Lori L. Noyes, Lt Col, CAP
Deputy Commander
Ramstein Cadet Squadron
Let's hope they're as flooded with stuff as Walter Reade was with phone cards.
In downtown Baghdad, dozens of gunmen carried out a brazen ambush on a car, pulling out three election officials and executing them on the pavement in the middle of morning traffic.
There has been so much violence in Iraq that it's become hard to distinguish one senseless act from another. But there was a picture that ran on the front page of this newspaper on Monday that really got to me. It showed several Iraqi gunmen, in broad daylight and without masks, murdering two Iraqi election workers. The murder scene was a busy street in the heart of Baghdad. The two election workers had been dragged from their car into the middle of the street. They looked young, the sort of young people you'd see doing election canvassing in America or Ukraine or El Salvador.
One was kneeling with his arms behind his back, waiting to be shot in the head. Another was lying on his side. The gunman had either just pumped a bullet into him or was about to. I first saw the picture on the Internet, and I did something I've never done before - I blew it up so it covered my whole screen. I wanted to look at it more closely. You don't often get to see the face of pure evil.
There is much to dislike about this war in Iraq, but there is no denying the stakes. And that picture really framed them: this is a war between some people in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world who - for the first time ever in their region - are trying to organize an election to choose their own leaders and write their own constitution versus all the forces arrayed against them.
Do not be fooled into thinking that the Iraqi gunmen in this picture are really defending their country and have no alternative. The Sunni-Baathist minority that ruled Iraq for so many years has been invited, indeed begged, to join in this election and to share in the design and wealth of post-Saddam Iraq.
As the Johns Hopkins foreign policy expert Michael Mandelbaum so rightly pointed out to me, "These so-called insurgents in Iraq are the real fascists, the real colonialists, the real imperialists of our age." They are a tiny minority who want to rule Iraq by force and rip off its oil wealth for themselves. It's time we called them by their real names.
However this war started, however badly it has been managed, however much you wish we were not there, do not kid yourself that this is not what it is about: people who want to hold a free and fair election to determine their own future, opposed by a virulent nihilistic minority that wants to prevent that. That is all that the insurgents stand for.
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We may lose because most Europeans, having been made stupid by their own weakness, would rather see America fail in Iraq than lift a finger for free and fair elections there.
As is so often the case, the statesman who framed the stakes best is the British prime minister, Tony Blair. Count me a "Blair Democrat." Mr. Blair, who was in Iraq this week, said: "Whatever people's feelings or beliefs about the removal of Saddam Hussein and the wisdom of that, there surely is only one side to be on in what is now very clearly a battle between democracy and terror. On the one side you have people who desperately want to make the democratic process work, and want to have the same type of democratic freedoms other parts of the world enjoy, and on the other side people who are killing and intimidating and trying to destroy a better future for Iraq."
No Tom. We occupy their country.
You can call it anything you want, any how you want, but you see Shia excited about elections because they get power. That's it.
What you will not notice is any Iraqi being terribly upset about their murder in broad daylight. They didn't even wear masks. They walked down the street, yanked these guys out of a car, with everyone watching, and killed them. They didn't sneak in or sneak off. No one called the cops or the US Army.
WE want to hold an election. Iraqis are more than content to cheer on the people killing Americans.
Huh? How's that?
Well, do you know the kind of intel you need to kill three guys in a car in rush hour? It came from their office, from people who saw them every day. Their neighbors helped kill them as well. Someone pointed out the car, the driver and the route. Then, they gathered 30 men to do this, not a word leaked. No one warned them. Nothing was said.
That's no small trick.
It matters how the war was fought and how it started. The lack of support we have from Iraqis comes from that.
Iraqis are perfectly content to tell the resistance about their neighbors and friends. And it's not blackmail or coerson. It's willful and eager.
Dec. 22, 2004 | Baghdad, Iraq -- Hundreds of U.S. troops, backed up by armored vehicles and helicopters, on Wednesday blocked bridges and cordoned off areas of Mosul where insurgents have mounted attacks. The operation in the nearly deserted city came a day after one of the deadliest incidents for U.S. troops, when 22 people died in a blast at a nearby military camp.
There was little apparent sympathy for the dead Americans on Mosul's empty streets. "I wish that 2,000 U.S. soldiers were killed," declared Jamal Mahmoud, a trade union official.
On Monday, a blast destroyed a packed mess tent on Forward Operating Base Marez -- a military camp for U.S. and Iraqi government forces just south of Mosul -- killing 22 people and injuring 69. The lunchtime attack represented one of the worst single incidents for the U.S. military in Iraq.
U.S. officials in Mosul said their investigation into the cause of the blast was continuing.
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Regardless of the cause, the apparent sophistication of the operation indicated that the insurgents probably had inside knowledge of the base's layout and soldiers' schedule. The attack sparked renewed concerns about the ability of U.S. troops and their Iraqi allies to provide security for key legislative elections on Jan. 30.
The U.S. military said they had expected an increase in violence as insurgents attempt to disrupt the political process and derail elections for an assembly that will draft Iraq's new constitution.
"Insurgents, who have everything to lose, are desperate to create the perception that elections are not possible," said Gen. George W. Casey, the commander of multinational forces in Iraq. "We will not allow terrorist violence to stop progress toward elections."
Mortar attacks on U.S. bases, particularly on the huge white tents that serve as dining halls, have been frequent in Iraq for more than a year. Just last month, a mortar attack on a Mosul base killed two troops with Task Force Olympia, the reinforced brigade responsible for security in much of northern Iraq. The dead included 13 U.S. service members, five U.S. civilians, three Iraqi National Guard members, and one "unidentified non-US person," the U.S. military command in Baghdad said in its latest statement on Wednesday evening.
Of the 69 wounded, 44 are members of the U.S. military, seven are U.S contractors, five are U.S. Defense Department civilians, two are Iraqi civilians, 10 are contractors of other nationalities, and one is of unknown nationality and occupation, the statement said.
About 50 people -- most of them injured soldiers from Mosul -- arrived on an Air Force C-141 transport plane at Ramstein Air Base in Germany for treatment at nearby Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, said Maj. Mike Young, a base spokesman.
The hospital said at least eight were in critical condition, Landstuhl spokeswoman Marie Shaw said. With a light snow falling, some wounded were carried out on stretchers, while about a dozen were expected to be well enough to walk off the plane.
In the immediate aftermath of the occupation of Iraq in April 2003, Mosul -- with a population of 1.2 million -- was cited as a model success story by U.S. commanders. But armed opposition has mounted steadily, especially since last month's U.S.-led operation to retake the rebel-held town of Fallujah.
In November, guerrillas launched a coordinated surprise attack against a number of police stations and occupied all of them. The municipal police force, estimated at over 6,000 officers, disintegrated and -- despite the success of U.S. forces a few days later in re-establishing control -- to this day only a small portion of its members have returned to work.
..................
"We are targeting certain objectives, geographical as well as intelligence information about the terrorists," Hastings said. "We are going to take the fight to the enemy."
Some of the residents watching the U.S. troops said they were worried about the possible repercussions of the base attack. Sadiq Mohammed, a grocer, expressed concern that the U.S. military would use the attack as a pretext to launch a major crackdown in the city.
"Yesterday's attack on the American base will for sure lead to an escalation in U.S. military activities in Mosul," he said.
Izdihar Kamel, a civil servant, praised those who had carried Tuesday's attack saying, "it was a heroic operation. This is Jihad and he who carried out this attack is a hero." ................
-- In the Sunni Muslim cities of Haditha and Haqlaniyah in central Iraq, lists posted on walls of local mosques carried the names of 170 police officers who said they had quiet their jobs in response to insurgent demands. The rebels often target policemen, accusing them of being American collaborators.
They just blew up your mess hall, you fucking nitwit. How the fuck are you going to have elections when you can't protect a fucking mess hall on a US base, surrounded by a couple of fucking battalions. This wasn't some backwater. David Petraeus ran around for a year pretending he was making progress. The 101 ABN had the occasional IED, but everyone accepted his word. Now, it sounds like stories from the Central Highlands, 1967. Daily rocket and mortar attacks.
Now, I don't think that Petreus was lying, but like most Americans, he takes Iraqis at their word. Iraqis don't. But he did. And every bit of pretense that the Army has that the Iraqis want us anything but dead is insanity. The Shia want power handed over on a platter, the Sunnis don't want shit to change, and the Kurds want their own country. None of that includes Americans, their bases or our plans for their oil. Sistani is perfectly content to watch Americans die to further his goals. Not once did he tell Shia to join the police or Army. Nor did he defend the ones who did. He watched them slaughtered, and despite the mythology, the resistance has plenty of Shia members. It ain't all Sunnis and Baathists. Every time a cop is killed in Iraq, the odds are that he's a Shia. On some level, even the Shia think these guys are traitors. And they are more than willing to let them die. And if that's the case, then why does anyone think they're going to help Americans?
Suicide mission The mess-hall bombing in Mosul, say military analysts, signals the final unraveling of the U.S. war effort in Iraq.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By David DeBatto
Dec. 23, 2004 | The devastating noontime mess-hall attack on a U.S. base just outside of Mosul Tuesday -- which resulted in 22 dead America soldiers and civilians -- was the latest in an escalating series of ever-bolder moves by the Iraqi insurgency against coalition and Iraqi forces. According to Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the explosion was likely incited by a suicide bomber.
To some military analysts, the fact that a suicide bomber could wreak so much damage inside a heavily fortified Army base suggests that the Iraqi occupation has sunk to a new level of chaos. The war in many parts of Iraq, they say, is apparently so out of control that we don't even know what we don't know. The lack of human intelligence is almost total. "The situation in Iraq is so confusing that I have no idea what is going on there, and anyone that tells you that they do is not telling you the truth," says Thomas Nichols, professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, R.I.
A more blunt assessment comes from retired Military Intelligence Sgt. Maj. J. David Gallant, an instructor at the Army Military Intelligence Center and School at Fort Huachuca, Ariz. "National will is going to falter in its support of this U.S. Involvement -- more than it already has -- if our soldiers cannot even be secure in large, semi-hardened containment areas," he says. "This is a damned cold slap in the face, and not one of these soldiers should have been killed or injured." He goes on to say, "Iraq is heading for civil war and total chaos and the Jan. 30 election is like putting a Flintstones Band-Aid on a gushing femoral artery."
That a suicide bomber could penetrate the base shows a new and increased sophistication by the insurgents to obtain accurate, actionable intelligence, analysts say. It also marks a new low in terms of American commanders securing their facilities against such attacks. Commenting on the breach, Sgt. Maj. Gallant says, "If my son or yours were in that DFAC [mess hall] and was killed or maimed, I would goddamned well want to know just who the hell is not doing his job that is allowing incipient attacks like this to occur."
................
Blame? The US military still thinks because that Iraqis smile in their face and let them play with kids that they like them. I would bet that suicide bomber was well liked by his American bosses.
A rocket attack is bad, but you can't control rockets. This? You are supposed to prevent this. But it's not the worst yet. A suicide bomber is not a military success. It may be a political victory, but my concern is an outright military victory where a US unit is trapped and destroyed like GM 100.
In Vietnam, the French used columns of armored vehicles called Group Mobiles. GM 100 was made up of French veterans of Korea. Well, just after Dien Bien Phu, GM 100 was trapped and destroyed in an ambush in the Central Highlands. The opening scene of We Were Soldiers depicts part of this.
That's the beginning of the end for the US. When the resistance can trap and destroy a US unit, then, it's done.
NEW DELHI (AP) - It was a private act of two hormone-charged teenagers that lasted 2 minutes and 37 seconds on digital video.
But offered for sale on the Internet, the fuzzy images of the 17-year-old girl having oral sex with her high school sweetheart has sent shock waves through urban India, exposing the growing friction between the conservative middle class, its increasingly Westernized progeny and modern technology.
"It came to me as a surprise that kids are having sex so soon," Barkha Dutt, who hosts the country's most popular television talk show on social issues, said in an interview. "Even we are not aware of how much things have changed."
India may be the birthplace of Kama Sutra, the 6th century sex manual, but sex today is a generally taboo subject. Premarital sex is not widely condoned, and public displays of affection draw frowns.
Caught in the scandal's stinging sweep is Avnish Bajaj, the Indian-born American who heads eBay's Indian subsidiary Baazee.com, where the video clip - shot by the schoolboy himself using his cell phone camera - was put up for sale.
Arrested last week under an ambiguous Indian law on cyber porn, Bajaj was freed after posting bail Tuesday, but his U.S. passport remained confiscated.
Bajaj's arrest triggered a diplomatic spat between the United States and India and a threat by eBay executives to reconsider doing business in a country that would toss one of their top managers in jail as a scapegoat.
"This incident has certainly given us pause and raises concerns about the safeguards that are in place for businesses operating in India," said Henry Gomez, an eBay vice president in the United States.
"This situation is one of concern at highest levels of the U.S. government," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington.
Bajaj set up Baazee.com in 2000 and sold it to San Jose, Calif.-based eBay, the Internet's leading auction company, for about $50 million in June. The Harvard-educated executive has since headed the Bombay-based subsidiary.
The sex clip was recorded weeks ago and passed on by the bragging schoolboy to three of his friends and eventually made its way to video disc sellers in New Delhi. It did not draw much attention until an engineering student at a prestigious Indian college listed it for sale on Baazee.com.
Now the girl's parents have sent her off to Canada. The 17-year-old boy, the son of an affluent businessman, is now in a juvenile detention center. He went to Nepal to escape the media glare and was arrested at the airport when he returned to the capital on Sunday. A judge on Tuesday ordered him held until Jan. 4 for questioning to try to determine how the video clip reached the man who tried to sell it.
The controversy over the clip - it's the talk of urban India, an obsession of newspapers and talk shows - is typical of a society in transition, said Dr. Ranjana Kumari, the director of the think tank Center for Social Research.
India's recent economic boom has created unimaginable wealth among the tech-savvy urban population, who live in a globalized world dominated by the Internet, international brands and Western lifestyle with its relatively liberal sexual values.
Kumari says urban India is being pulled apart by these new values and its own centuries-old social conservatism.
"It is this transition which is resulting in a lot of confusion," Kumari said.
Observers like Kumari think a variety of people share the blame for grossly amplifying this sex scandal - including the authorities who arrested Bajaj and the boy, who remains unidentified because of his age; the teenagers' parents, who weren't aware of their children's activities; and teachers, for sidestepping sex education in schools.
Oh, I'm sure she won't suck any cocks in Canada. Nope. Blow job free zone.
Just when you think Ameicans are weird about sex......
Wednesday, December 22, 2004 Posted: 9:36 AM EST (1436 GMT)
BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- Fugitive mobster James "Whitey" Bulger is getting better with age, even as federal authorities say they're refining their nearly 10-year hunt for the former Boston crime boss.
Bulger, 75, has made fewer mistakes in recent years. Early on, he made regular contact with associates, but a new detailed timeline of his odyssey shows he's since isolated himself.
"He's gotten better and better at it," U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan said at a news conference, where the timeline was released Tuesday.
Authorities say they're as determined as ever to capture Bulger, who lived a double life as a ruthless gangster and an FBI informant before fleeing racketeering charges in January 1995. He's also charged in connection with 21 murders.
"He's extremely bright, extremely devious," Sullivan said. "He's very cunning. He prepared for a life as a fugitive."
Bulger as early as 1986 opened a London bank account under an alias, "Thomas Baxter," the timeline shows. The last confirmed sighting of Bulger was September 2002 in London. There's credible information that Bulger has been spotted since then, but Sullivan wouldn't say where or when.
Bulger remains on the FBI's Most Wanted list, with a $1 million reward for information leading to his capture.
His former FBI handler, former agent John J. Connolly Jr., tipped him off just before Christmas 1994 that he was about to be indicted.
......................
Bulger, the former leader of the Winter Hill Gang, thrived for decades in Boston's underworld as an informant. Connolly allowed Bulger to commit crimes in exchange for information that Connolly used to convict other mobsters.
Connolly was convicted in May 2002 of racketeering, obstruction of justice and making false statements. He is serving a 10-year prison sentence.
This is the brief version.
A fuller version has Whitey, drug dealing pedophile, he used to like his women in the 11th Grade at Catholic School, murdering people in Southie and covered by his brother Billy, who also happened to be Speaker of the Massachusetts House.
They used to live next door to each other. However, Billy was supposed to have been unaware that his brother ran Southie for the Patriarcha family. And was also an FBI snitch, who's handlers wound up in jail and framed an innocent man for 30 years in jail. My bet is that Whitey is in the UK as a favor for the IRA and their English criminal associates. There is no way he could just live in the UK without protection from his fellow villians. Remember, the Boston mob and cops supported the IRA in word and deed and weapons.
Bulger stole everything he could, tagged a generation of Catholic school girls and sold enough coke to fill Fenway Park. Yet, until people found out he was a rat, and playing the FBI, he was a real life folk hero. People loved him because he could make problems go away. But like with some mob nicknames, no one called Whitey that to his face. It was either Jim or Jimmy.
And oddly enough, the Boston Herald had a screaming headline that the Big Dig was under criminal probe. Hmmm, I wonder who had their hands in that?
DENVER, Dec. 21 - Americans across the country expressed anguish about the devastating attack on a United States military base in Iraq on Tuesday. But it was the question of where the nation should go from here that produced the biggest sigh from Dallas Spear, an oil and gas industry worker from Denver.
"I would never have gone there from the beginning, but that's beside the point now," Mr. Spear said, his jaw clenched. "We upset the apple cart and now there's pretty much no choice. We have to proceed."
Mr. Spear's sentiment was echoed in interviews in shopping malls, offices, sidewalks and homes on a day when the news from Iraq was bleak. With 14 American service members killed and dozens injured, it was apparently the worst one-day death toll for American forces since United States forces defeated Saddam Hussein's regime in spring 2003.
Many people said they were dispirited or angry, but many expressed equal unhappiness about seeing a lack of options.
Whether one supported or opposed the invasion has become irrelevant, many said - there is only the road ahead now, with few signs to guide the way.
One soldier who has been to Iraq and is soon to go back said he believes the war itself has changed, and that guerrilla attacks like the one in the northern Iraq city of Mosul on Tuesday have constricted the view on the ground about how to proceed.
"When we went to war there was a clear-cut enemy," said Specialist Richard P. Basilio, 27, of Philadelphia, who leaves for Iraq after the holidays for a 12- to 18-month deployment as an Army computer technician. It will be his third tour to the Middle East and his second to Iraq. "Now the rules have totally changed. You don't know what's going on," he added. "You just have no idea who's your friend and who's your enemy."
Mr. Basilio's mother, Janet Bellows of Daytona Beach, Fla., said the bombing in Mosul, combined with the prospect of her son's departure, have left her "absolutely devastated."
"It's like watching your son playing in traffic, and there's nothing you can do," Ms. Bellows said. "You can't reach him."
..............
Charlie Eubanks, a cotton farmer and lawyer from the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, said he supported President Bush but had been lukewarm about going to war. Now, he said there was no choice but to fight on, and that reports on opinion polls were only "aiding and abetting" the enemy by making opponents think the American will is weak.
OK, so planning on sending your children to die in Iraq? If you think we should proceed in Iraq, send your teenagers there. After all, you're asking other people to do the same. I mean, yank them out of college and send them to the recruiter. Otherwise, you're full of shit. All those "security moms" want security to be provided by other people's kids. Well, your turn is coming. When they take the class of Duke 2006 and ship them to Iraq, see how much you support Bush then.
When people say Kerry should have run against the war, this is what he would run into, American stubborness. People think we "have" to win. Tell them we're losing, and they look at you like you're crazy. They don't get that the US is losing and there is no easy solution, like more allied troops. Kerry wasn't going to get them and Bush will be told to piss off. Who joins a losing war? You think anything short than a full corps of Egyptian and Pakistani units would do any good? And they aren't coming because the leaders of those countries are allegric to plastic explosives in their cars.
We need 150K more troops, not 10K, and the people who have them aren't unhappy at us losing. All the Likudniks in Washington think Muslims are children who need guidance. Well, they're not. They're going to watch Americans die and not lift a finger to stop it. Why should Muslims help to suypport a scheme which seems to benefit Israel's repression of the Palestinians. The Bushies talk democracy and watch the Israelis murder and steal Palestinian land. Not that the Palestinians are smart enough to avoid the trap of violence, but Arabs have zero reason to support a policy which they think, in the end, leads to a US compliant, Shia-led Iraq and a stronger Israel.
Americans don't see it that way, but that's us and we're in the minority. Also, we're the ones who need troops.
SAMARRA, Iraq — ..........Most U.S. bases in Iraq are regular targets of enemy fire; magnets for insurgents who are trying to hamper international reconstruction efforts. Most of the fire misses because the insurgents are not a highly trained military force. Sometimes the attacks hit hard.
The explosive attack in Mosul yesterday that caused mass casualties at a U.S. Army mess tent immediately reminded soldiers in Samarra of an attack on a nearby patrol base July 8, when a suicide bomber managed to enter the front gate and detonated a massive car bomb.
That blast killed five U.S. soldiers and four Iraqi National Guardsmen, .........
Explosions occur several times a day, and mortar rounds fall within a few hundred meters of the installation. Insurgents have targeted U.S. soldiers repairing schools and Army snipers hunkered atop a historic minaret, now scarred by grenade blasts.
Senior officials here said the insurgents could be building up to a series of bigger attacks as elections approach at the end of January, and said they were particularly concerned about a large attack on a patrol base such as Uvanni, where soldiers sleep and eat in large groups.
The soldiers do what they can to protect their fortresses, using snipers and regular patrols to thwart such attacks.
Lt. Nick Kron, 25, of Richmond, Va., a tank platoon leader in Samarra, said he once discovered what appeared to be a sand-and-rock mock-up of Forward Operating Base Brassfield-Mora, north of Samarra, while on patrol nearby. Kron said the apparent reproduction included buildings and a berm built to protect against rocket attacks. Brassfield-Mora is regularly targeted by insurgent mortar fire, he said.
CPL Nathan Almquist is comforted by a member of his unit as he stands over a stretcher with the body of a Task Force Olympia soldier after an apparent insurgent rocket attack on a dining facility on a military base in Mosul, Iraq. DEAN HOFFMEYER / RTD
FORWARD OPERATING BASE MAREZ, Iraq - A deadly precise rocket attack killed 24 and wounded 64 in a dining hall tent inside a U.S. military compound outside Mosul today.
The dead included 14 U.S. soldiers, an Iraqi soldier and at least three civilian workers, according to a military briefing in Mosul. Identities of the other dead were still being determined.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, briefers said.
Two of the slain soldiers were from the Richmond-based 276th Engineer Battalion of the Virginia National Guard. They are the first fatalities for the unit since it arrived in Iraq nearly a year ago.
Hundreds of U.S. soldiers had just sat down for lunch about noon when rockets launched by insurgents hit the giant dining tent.
The force of the explosions knocked soldiers off their feet and out of their seats. A fireball enveloped the top of the tent, and pellet-sized shrapnel sprayed into the men.
Amid the screaming and thick smoke that followed, quick-thinking soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot.
"Medic! Medic!" soldiers shouted.
Medics rushed into the tent and hustled the rest of the wounded out on stretchers.
Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters outside. Others wobbled around the tent and collapsed, dazed by the blast.
"I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.
Near the front entrance to the chow hall, troops tended a soldier with a gaping head wound. Within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag. Three more bodies were in the parking lot then.
Soldiers scrambled back into the hall to check for more wounded. The explosions blew out a huge hole in the roof of the tent. Lunch trays and overturned tables and chairs covered the floor.
Grim-faced soldiers growled angrily about the attack and swore as they stomped away.
................
"This is the worst day of my life," Brig. Gen. Carter F. Ham said at the briefing, held at a palace once used by Saddam Hussein's sons. "It's times like these when [our troops] really come shining through."
Tears welled up in his eyes and his voice was thick with emotion. "This hurts, this really hurts."
The military asked that the dead not be identified until families could be notified.
Insurgents have fired mortars at the chow hall more than 30 times this year. One round killed a female soldier with the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division in the summer as she scrambled for cover in one of the concrete bomb shelters. Workers are building a new steel and concrete chow hall for the soldiers just down the dusty dirt road.
Lt. Dawn Wheeler, a member of the 276th from Centreville, Va., was waiting in line for chicken tenders when a round hit on the other side of a wall from her. A soldier who had been standing beside her was on the ground, struggling with shrapnel buried deep in his neck.
"We all have angels on us," she said as she pulled away in a Humvee.
How did this happen?
Simple: ex-Iraqi Army soldiers, at least the kind that can stand and fight have totally penetrated the base at Mosul. That was no lucky shot. That was planned, but then any junior artillery officer could hit a white tent visible from half the town. The problem is that the US cannot do countermortar patrols because they don't have enough men and the mortars and rockets are protected by a network of informants. The US mov3es after them, they know. There isn't an Iraqi working on that base without either the permission or active cooperation of the ressitance. Anyone who objects is threatened or killed.
My bet is that they had ranged and mapped that tent months ago and waited for the right time. Not ON a holiday, but close enough to set people back. Americans keep assuming Iraqis are little smarter than monkeys. Yet, they have isolated and penetrated ever US base with a well-planned campaign of economic warfare. The Army wanted to build a permanent dining hall, the resistance slowed that to their time table. Former Gen. George Joulwan said the commanders need to ask for more troops. There are no more troops. Our allies are not coming to rescue us from a war they opposed. And Tony Blair's blather about democracy, surrounded by SAS and Apaches, sounds rather palid.
We are fast reaching the day when we will either have to draft troops to support the war or leave. And Bush has not prepared the country for a draft. To propose it risks any other plans he has. Congress would be paralyzed with debate on the draft and a lot of people who talked big would face bitter opposition at home. Rummy did the war on the cheap. Now, the bill is coming due
The Associated Press "insurgency" Conservative bloggers tar an AP photojournalist with complicity in Sunday's street execution in Baghdad -- another cheap shot at the "left-wing" media.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Mark Follman
Dec. 22, 2004 | Conservative bloggers suggested Monday that an Associated Press photographer was complicit with militants who executed three Iraqi election workers on Baghdad's dangerous Haifa Street on Sunday. They accused the photographer of knowing in advance that the executions were to take place; rather than warn the authorities, they insinuated, the photojournalist went after the disturbing story and images to shock readers and smear the Bush administration's war effort.
"Even with today's proliferation of compact photographic equipment, a legitimate photojournalist rarely gets the opportunity to capture an execution," wrote the pseudonymous "Wretchard" of the Belmont Club blog. "It may have been pure luck, but it was surely the longest of odds that would have brought an Associated Press cameraman to the site of a surprise attack on two [sic] Iraqi electoral workers."
Wretchard compared the AP coverage with the famous Vietnam-era photo taken by Eddie Adams, who captured the execution in Saigon in 1968 of Vietcong Capt. Bay Lop by South Vietnamese Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan. But Wretchard argues that the political trappings are different this time.
"Although the Eddie Adams photograph was widely used to illustrate the 'brutality' of the Saigon government, the photos taken by the Associated Press are unlikely to reflect badly on the electoral workers' killers. Press reports highlight the confidence and boldness of the insurgents: 'Both of the victims shown in the sequence wore traditional Arab headscarfs. In contrast, the attackers were bareheaded and apparently unafraid to show their faces,' suggesting that 'collaborators' must conceal their faces while the Ba'athists stride with impunity through the light of day. It was fortunate for the AP that their photographer was accidentally there."
Running with that theme, blogger Roger Simon called on the AP for an explanation.
"If their photographers were notified of the assassination in advance and, instead of warning the electoral officials, chose to hurry to the scene with their cameras ... well ... we all make our judgments from there," Simon wrote. "We should all be waiting for a clarification from the Associated Press. I invite them to make one."
Idiots.
They were there long enough to have a shooter follow the sounds of bullets and 30 men roaming the streets with AK's.
No one was tipped and the guerrillas have their own cameras. Fucking fantasists. They don't need the AP.
The message I took from this was simple: they don't give a shit. They will walk down the street, kill whom they want and not give a shit if you take their picture.
SHARPSBURG, Maryland (AP) -- Male fish that are growing eggs have been found in the Potomac River near Sharpsburg, a sign that a little-understood type of pollution is spreading downstream from West Virginia, a federal scientist says.
The so-called intersex abnormality may be caused by pollutants from sewage plants, feedlots and factories that can interfere with animals' hormone systems, The Washington Post reported Sunday.
Nine male smallmouth bass taken from the Potomac near Sharpsburg, about 60 miles upstream from Washington, were found to have developed eggs inside their sex organs, said Vicki S. Blazer, a scientist overseeing the research for the U.S. Geological Survey.
Authorities say the problems are likely related to a class of pollutants called endocrine disruptors, which short-circuit animals' natural systems of hormone chemical messages.
Officials are awaiting the results of water-quality testing that might point to a specific chemical behind the fish problems, Blazer said.
"It certainly indicates something's going on," Blazer said of the new findings in Maryland. "But what, we don't know."
The Potomac River is the main source of drinking water for the Washington metropolitan area and many upstream communities. It provides about 75 percent of the water supply to the 3.6 million residents of Washington and its Maryland and Virginia suburbs.
Blazer, who works at a federal fish lab in Leetown, West Virginia., said she found the latest abnormalities last week while examining tissues from fish taken from the river near Sharpsburg.
The same symptoms had previously been found about 170 miles upstream, in the South Branch of the Potomac in Hardy County, West Virginia.
Jen
Remember, this is DC's drinking water. It 'splains a lot, if you think about it..
.........What to make of these numbers? First of all, Karl Rove got screwed by Time Magazine. He deserved that Man of the Year award after selling this lemon to the American people.
But what makes me angry was Kerry and his gang's inability to take advantage of the situation. I may regret saying this later, but fuck it -- they should be lined up and shot. There's no reason they should've lost to this joker. "I voted for the $87 billion, then I voted against it." That wasn't nuance. That was idiocy. And with a primary campaign that consisted entirely of "I'm the most electable", Kerry entered the general without a core philosophy or articulated vision for the job.
I could deal with losing to a popular incumbent. But it's tough to deal with the most unpopular incumbent to win reelection.
Of course, there's a silver lining to all of this. A Kerry presidency would've been an unmitigated disaster, with a hostile congress, budget woes, the mess in Iraq, etc. Not a good time to be in charge. Those Supreme Court seats would've been nice (whoever we would've been able to push through a hostile Senate), but we've got an opportunity for long-term gain.
The left is already working to build it's own version of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy -- the $300 million annual machine that developes the conservative message (think tanks), disseminates it to the public (Fox News, Rush), and trains their leaders in how to wield it.
The war isn't going well, and Bush will be hard pressed to rescue anything positive from that quagmire. The budget is a mess, and budget cuts will cause great resentment while savings get eaten up by his Iraq misadventures. The GOP's right wing is screaming for payback with an agenda that doesn't sell on Main Street. GOP moderates may be emboldened by Giuliani's and Schwarzenegger's popularity to reassert themselves.
Well, Giuliani's going to be logging time in front of grand juries and Arnold will eventually have to deal with his budget nightmares.
But I was irritated by the people posting that Kerry sucked and the primaries were rigged against Dean....
Yawn.
Kerry ran a good campaign, but Rove made it about the issues of evangelicals and they came out. It's real simple. It wasn't gay marriage alone, but religion in schools, and Bush's image as a religious man.
The problem is that he ran Nixon's 1972 campaign. Which means while he beat the Dems, the issues are working against him.
Both sides are wrong in this debate. Amy Sullivan and Peter Beinhart think that selling out core democratic principles will get them to power. They won't.
But the people who think Howard Dean could ever be president are also delusional. That Confederate comment pretty much closed a lot of minority doors to him. That comment helped Kerry with a lot of blacks and latinos and killed Dean as just another white liberal who took blacks for granted. You can ask Mark Green how that works as an electoral strategy.
The fact is that John Kerry got more votes than any other Democrat in history and stands a better than average chance of winning in 2008. Hillary Clinton, who I think is unlikely to run, won't make it past two primaries if she did. Her personal unpopularity is so high that it makes a national run impossible, regardless of current polls. All of this squabbling is pointless.
People forget that Nixon was detested, and people still voted for him. And many were happy to see him gone. Just because people didn't like Bush doesn't mean they knew Kerry enough to vote for him. A lot of people are whining "oh, I wish it was Dean" "I didn't really like Kerry". Which is silly. Dean is not going to be president any more than Goldwater would be. Those people don't win. And the Democrats simply have to stop looking for candidates like movie stars. We're not picking People's Sexist Man of the Year. John Kerry suffered from being obscured by Bob Kerrey and Ted Kennedy. The Republicans do not run people Americans don't know. They don't run strangers. Democrats act like an election is Looking for Mr. Goodbar and that we'll pick up the right guy eventually. Too many people are fixated on 1992, and that was a fluke. We need to run familiar candidates.
Hillary Clinton is the new Ted Kennedy. Her place is in the Senate. Otherwise, she is strikingly unqualified to be President. Living next to power isn't the same as exercising it.
Whether it's Edwards or Kerry again, the Dems need to go into 2008 the way the GOP went into 2000. I'm tired of the whining and the search. Howard Dean was popular in the way Goldwater was popular. The best thing he could do is be DNC chair. I'm also tired of the fantasists who want him to be "outside" the party. Well, no. You need power to have power. Being outside power means being outside. Simple as that. You need someone like Dean to reform the institution, not stand outside shouting while people continue to be rolled by Tom DeLay. The DNC needs reform, not another hustler on the make like Donnie Fowler or a washed up governor like Ray Mabus. We need someone who doesn't need the job, not someone who would be more famous by getting it.
All this blame Kerry, blame Iowa stuff is silly.
Remember, a lot of people who hate Bush stayed home. And even if they voted for him, Iraq is getting worse, not better.
By Donna St. George
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 19, 2004; Page A01
Their killings produced only a few headlines, but across the country in the last decade, hundreds of pregnant women and new mothers have been slain. Even as Scott Peterson's trial became a public fascination, little was said about how often is happens, why, and whether it is a fluke or a social syndrome.
Their deaths passed quietly. Tara Chambers, 29, was gunned down on a June morning inside her North Carolina home. Rebecca Johnson, 16, was shot in the chest as she sat in a pickup truck in Oklahoma. Ana Diaz, 28, was killed in a parking lot in Reston as she stopped to get a friend on their way to work.
They all were pregnant, with futures that seemed sure to unfold over many years. One was a nurse's assistant who planned to name her daughter T'Kaiya. Another had just bought a house. The youngest was a high school cheerleader.
Their killings produced a few local headlines, then faded, each a seeming aberration in the community where it happened.
But pregnant women like them have been slain in Maryland and Mississippi, in California and Kansas, in Ohio and Illinois. Jenny McMechen, 24, was shot in a friend's home in Plainfield, Conn., and Kerry Repp, 29, was shot in her Oregon bedroom, and Tasha Winters, 16, was shot in Indiana the day she told her boyfriend about the baby. Ardena Carter, 24, was found dead in the Georgia woods, and Kathleen Terry, 22, was run over in Idaho, and Melesha Francis, 26, was strangled in New York, and Thelma Jones, 21, was shot sitting on her back steps in Louisiana -- the day her mother ordered a cake for her baby shower.
A year-long examination by The Washington Post of death-record data in states across the country documents the killings of 1,367 pregnant women and new mothers since 1990. This is only part of the national toll, because no reliable system is in place to track such cases.
Largely invisible, it is a phenomenon that is as consequential as it is poorly understood. Even in the past two years -- as the Laci Peterson homicide case has become a public fascination, with a jury last week recommending that her husband, Scott, be sentenced to death in her killing -- little has been said about the larger convergence of pregnancy and homicide: how often it happens, why, and whether it is a fluke or a social syndrome.
In the Washington region alone, at least three pregnant women have been killed in the past seven weeks -- one in St. Mary's County, a second in Manassas, a third in Fairfax County. Another pregnant woman was found slain Thursday in Missouri.
Until recently, many of the cases have gone virtually unstudied, uncounted, untracked. Police agencies across the country do not regularly ask about maternal status when they investigate homicides. And health experts have focused historically on the medical complications of pregnancy -- embolism, hemorrhage, infection -- not on fatal violence.
"It's very hard to connect the dots when you don't even see the dots," said Elaine Alpert, a public health expert at Boston University. "It's only just starting to be recognized that there is a trend or any commonalities between these deaths."
The Post's analysis shows that the killings span racial and ethnic groups. In cases whose details were known, 67 percent of women were killed with firearms. Many women were slain at home -- in bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens -- usually by men they knew. Husbands. Boyfriends. Lovers.
The cases are not commonplace compared with other homicides but are more frequent than most people know -- and have changed the way some experts think about pregnancy.
Five years ago in Maryland, state health researchers Isabelle Horon and Diana Cheng set out to study maternal deaths, using sophisticated methods to spot dozens of overlooked cases in their state. They assumed they would find more deaths from medical complications than the state's statistics showed. The last thing they expected was murder.
But in their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2001, they wrote that in Maryland, "a pregnant or recently pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause."
"It was a huge surprise," said Horon, who recalls paperwork covering the researchers' kitchen tables on weekends and evenings as they sought to understand the astonishing numbers. "We thought we had to have made a mistake. We kept checking and checking and rechecking."
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In all, 13 states said they had no way of telling how many pregnant and postpartum women had been killed in recent years.
The states included California, where the Peterson case has flashed across television screens and filled newspaper columns since Christmas Eve 2002, when Laci Peterson, eight months pregnant, was reported missing. Her body was discovered in San Francisco Bay in April 2003.
That year, California for the first time changed its death certificate process to include a female victim's maternity status, but no data are available yet. In the nation's most populous state, no one can say how many pregnant women like Peterson have been killed.
Three weeks after Peterson disappeared in Modesto, Quinnisha Thomas lost her life in Sacramento, 80 miles away. Eight months pregnant, Thomas, 18, was walking home from a grocery store when her ex-boyfriend shot her in the head execution-style because, prosecutors said, he believed fatherhood would get in the way of his music career. "This was a big, major inconvenience for him," prosecutor Mark Curry said.
Other states that say they have no way of counting pregnant and postpartum homicides include Arizona, where Melinda Gonzalez, 20, was found dead in a park when she was three months pregnant; and Pennsylvania, where Christina Colon, 24, five months pregnant, was shot and found dead in a quarry.
Cara Krulewitch, a University of Maryland researcher who has studied maternal deaths in the District and Maryland, contended that states are not to blame so much as the lack of a national focus.
The FBI collects comprehensive homicide statistics but does not look at pregnancy. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks maternal health but has no uniform way of monitoring maternal killings.
"The system is flawed," Krulewitch said.
In Maryland, which keeps track of cases better than most states, slightly more than 10 percent of all homicides among women ages 14 to 44 happened to a pregnant or postpartum woman in the past decade. If that held true nationally, it would suggest about 295 maternal homicides nationwide a year .
Jacquelyn Campbell of Johns Hopkins University said the number of cases has surprised her, even after her many years of research on women's homicides. Although she knew of pregnant homicide victims, she said, "I thought it was a tragedy. I didn't think it was a trend."
Now, she has come to believe: "It's a phenomenon. It probably was always there, but we just didn't know."
The homicides documented by The Post happened in small mountain towns, in tough urban neighborhoods, in quiet suburban subdivisions. The women who died included a college student, a popular waitress, an actress, a church volunteer, a mother of three, a Navy petty officer, an immigrant housekeeper, a businesswoman, a high school athlete, an Army captain, a minister's wife, a Head Start teacher.
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One recent year of homicides -- 2002 -- was examined in greater detail to get a closer look at how and why the cases happened. For a group of 72 homicides in 24 states, The Post interviewed family members, friends, prosecutors and police. The analysis showed that nearly two-thirds of the cases had a strong relation to pregnancy or involved a domestic-violence clash in which pregnancy may have been a factor.
The dead included Ceeatta Stewart-McKinnie, 23, a college student in Richmond who was beaten to death by her boyfriend. The couple had dated on and off for years, and she had had abortions previously, prosecutors said. This time, he was married -- and she refused to end her pregnancy. Turkey hunters found her bludgeoned body in the woods.
In Chicago, Chavanna Prather, 17, was a high school student who played basketball and worked part time at McDonald's. Prather became intimate with her manager at work, then became pregnant and asked for money for an abortion, police said. She was found dead in a river on the city's South Side. He awaits trial.
In Rochester, N.Y., Zaneta Browne, 29, was at odds with her married boyfriend about her pregnancy in 2002 when he shot her with a .22-caliber rifle. The killer and his wife secretly buried her on rural land, hoping no one would find out. Browne left three children behind. She was nearly four months pregnant with twins.
Louis R. Mizell, who heads a firm that tracks incidents of crime and terrorism, observed that "when husbands or boyfriends attack pregnant partners, it usually has to do with an unwillingness to deal with fatherhood, marriage, child support or public scandal."
Young women may be more at risk than others, several statewide studies suggest -- possibly because of more volatile relationships with young men or less money or greater uncertainty about parenthood. Of women whose cases were researched in detail, 16 of 72 were teenage victims -- about one in five.
They included Vanessa Youngbear, a 16-year-old cheerleader in Oklahoma who was nearly seven months pregnant when her ex-boyfriend, then 18, blasted her with a shotgun. Witnesses said the boyfriend had not wanted to pay child support and had worried that he might face charges of statutory rape if authorities found out he had impregnated a minor.
In Nevada, Monalisa Nava was just 14 when she was gunned down -- the same age as the ex-boyfriend who allegedly killed her. Nava was happily pregnant, her mother said, but unwilling to move with her boyfriend to Mexico, as he wanted. Police and family members say he shot her in front of her younger brothers as her mother dialed 911, and he has been on the run ever since.
At any age, "pregnancy is a huge, life-altering event for both the male and the female," said Pat Brown, a criminal profiler based in Minneapolis. "It is certainly a more dangerous moment in life. You are escalating people's responsibilities and curtailing their freedoms."
For some men, she said, the situation boils down to one set of unadorned facts: "If the woman doesn't want the baby, she can get an abortion. If the guy doesn't want it, he can't do a damn thing about it. He is stuck with a child for the rest of his life, he is stuck with child support for the rest of his life, and he's stuck with that woman for the rest of his life. If she goes away, the problem goes away."
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Ashley Lyons, 18, faced a similar horror in a park near her old high school in Kentucky early this year -- on the day she went to her doctor for an ultrasound and learned she would be having a boy. She was 22 weeks along.
She had already picked out a name, Landon, and created a baby journal. As one entry gave way to another, she confided her ex-boyfriend's opposition to the pregnancy. Still, she wrote: "You are the child I have always dreamed about. . . . I know it will be a long time before I meet you, but I can't wait to hold you for the first time."
Excited by the ultrasound Jan. 7, Lyons made plans to show the fetal pictures to her ex-boyfriend, Roger McBeath Jr., 22. She left her family's home, telling her mother she would be back for dinner. But when her father and brother found her, she was sitting in her parked car -- with the car engine running and the headlights on.
She had been shot twice in the head and once in the neck. In her lap was her handbag -- half opened -- with the ultrasound picture inside, her father said.
"He knew that if she had that baby that she would be in his life forever, and he didn't want that," said prosecutor Shawna Jewell.
On a cold Kentucky afternoon four days later, Lyons was buried with her tiny baby tucked into her arms.
BushSorry. I just don’t see what the big deal is about Bernard Kerik.
Since George Bush’s re-election, the pressure to be mistake-free is off. When he was running for office, every little thing that happened was blown up in the liberal media. The potential damage was nerve-wracking.
Now that he’s in the White House for the next four years, I admit that I don’t follow news about “scandals” the way I used to. I just don’t care anymore. Nothing is more scandalous to me than Bush’s amnesty program for law-breaking illegal aliens, but since the media are pro-illegal immigration and/or open border advocates, they don’t have much to say; however, some liberals don’t think Bush is going far enough. They want him to grant citizenship to illegal aliens, but I’ll deal with that in different post.
Some of you conservatives may be worried about scandals this term because the mid-term elections are still looming. If so, I think you’re giving Democrats too much credit. As we’ve seen in the recent election, they just aren’t clever enough to turn their fate around in a measly two years. If Bush was Teflon during the campaign, he’s downright untouchable now, in my opinion.
That’s why I was shaking my head at the Los Angeles Times’ pitiful attempts to manufacture a scandal. The story begins this way: “The abrupt withdrawal of the White House’s choice to head the Homeland Security Department is an embarrassing setback for President Bush’s effort…”
So Kerik, Bush’s choice for Homeland Security chief, employed an illegal alien to take care of his kids. First of all, the president supports the employment of illegal aliens to the point where he wants to grant them amnesty. Only if Bush were hard-line anti-illegal immigration would this episode be truly embarrassing.
Secondly, Kerik has skeletons in his closet. Who doesn’t, for crying out loud? I assume Bush didn’t do a thorough job of checking this guy out first, but he’s sort of busy running the country. It was hit and miss, and nothing more. But leftists are trying as hard as they can to create controversy where there is none.
During the election cycle, leftist newspapers campaigned for John Kerry and attacked Bush on all fronts. What happened? Nothing much, as far as I remember. The “scandals” didn’t stick. In the case of CBS, their National Guard story crashed and burned. So I ask, what makes liberal journalists think their puny schemes will work this time?
Using words like “embarrassing” and “setback” are obvious attempts to engender some kind of backlash against the president, but it’s merely indicative of bored liberal journalists with nothing better to do. Check out these headlines:
TIME: “Inside Kerik’s Fall.” — Kerik’s fall? It’s been a week Bush announced his pick. When did Kerik have time to fall and from what height? Bored press.
San Diego Union Tribune: “Kerik case strains cautious friendship between Bush, Giuliani” — Strains? I don’t know Bush or Giuliani, but I seriously doubt this incident…oh, why bother? (See this funny story from Scrappleface, who won Best Humor Blog.)
If you have some time on your hands today, you could do this with almost every story. While I understand that news people have to report the news and put an alarming spin on it to get people to read it, the way they jumped on this Kerik “scandal” is laughable.
In the words of a commenter on Lucianne.com: “[T]he election is over. Quit campaigning, already.”
No controversy? Funny, the Bronx DA and US Attorney think so.
This aunt Jemima,(female Uncle Tom...you didn't think we liked that picture on the pancake box, did you?) misses the point entirely. Maybe being from DC, she might not think that having a police chief taking money from gangsters once removed is a bad thing, but in cities where Marion Barry would be a digraced figure unable to run for school board, we take corruption a little more seriously.
Yes, every one has skeletons in their closet, but most people wouldn't set up a love shack in view of a mass grave where his officers hunted for the remains of their collegues day and night.
Sure, people have problems, but they usually wouldn't oversee a law enforcement agency where 500 workers engaged in tax fraud.
And while many of us take a break up hard, we wouldn't stalk our ex-lover's son in another state.
What idiots like her miss is that this isn't about Bush, or even Bush's bad decisions. I know some folks must feel the need to wipe massa's ass, but critical thinking should enter into this at some point. I mean, if your police chief is taking money from the mafia, once removed, it should cause you to pause.
I can assure you the FBI, home of non-leftists, were none too happy to find Kerik dripping in LCN ties. That's a bad thing. Because as this dimwitted worshiper of Bush has not figured out yet, Kerik was for sale to the highest bidder, the mob, Taser. He was not shy in using his office for personal gain and the gain of his friends.
If this woman wasn't so intent on ignoring the obvious, she might notice that Kerik's current problems start with his unfair treatment of black commanders in Corrections. Since this is the type of woman who doesn't mind stepping over black people for personal gain, she might not notice this, but people in New York have. Kerik was one tool in the oppressively racist regime of Rudy Giuliani, who she probably thinks is some kind of hero for running to the cameras on 9/11.
What a lot of conservatives are overlooking is this: if Kerik would take money from the mob, who wouldn't he take money from? Which People's Security Bureau or Foriegn Intelligence Service-backed firm would get a DHS contract? What company would foist poor quality equipment on the government so Kerik could get the kickback? Would he open the ports to Mafia smuggling?
Kerik failed miserably in training the Iraqi police, who now gleefully kill Americans, but this is OK because President Pollyanna likes him?
This absolute fucking idiot, and I mean bottom scraping moron, simply thinks this is media generated? Well, can someone build me a ground floor condo in an exclusive neighborhood for $50K? And please explain the $170K sale price, because you can't buy a decent apartment in a good neioghborhood for that kind of money. For someone who professes to be a Christian, outright corruption should bother the hell out of her. Unless it's OK when white people steal. Black people, shoot them like dogs. White people, carry their bags and praise them for not taking your money, just someone elses.
Here's a hint: Democrats supported Kerik because they wanted the DHS money. Democrats have largely been silent about Grifty McPad's antics. This isn't some leftist campaign, but astonishment that such a bent cop could get so far.
But then, I don't get these black sellouts anyway. They work with the GOP, get used by the GOP and then slapped in the face by the GOP. Every time the Negroes go to massa for permission to do outreach, they get patted on the head, fed a cookie and sent back to shining shoes for massa. Take Ken Blackwell. Despite his grovelling for Bush, you don't think the GOP will forget to support him in 2006? Some white candidate will suddenly get the party's support as they just forget to vote for him in the primary.
When will these Uncles and Aunts get that white folks neither trust nor like them and blacks think they're crazy. The GOP isn't the party for opportunity for blacks, but the party of humiliation. Until they dump the crackers, that's all it will ever be, despite this woman's delusions.
The public scandal prompted by ex-police commissioner Bernard Kerik's aborted appointment as Homeland Security Secretary has shifted to Staten Island, the city's Republican stronghold.
The borough's GOP district attorney, Dan Donovan, said yesterday he doesn't recall a reported 1998 conversation with Kerik aimed at helping a construction firm remove a stain on its reputation.
Kerik, while correction commissioner, became involved in the company Interstate Industrial, a city contractor. Interstate employed Kerik's friend and later-indicted benefactor, Larry Ray, as well as his brother, Don Kerik, in lucrative jobs.
But Kerik's relationship didn't occur in a vacuum. The father and brothers of Interstate owner Frank DiTomasso -- struggling against allegations of mob links -- were longtime close friends of then-Borough President Guy Molinari.
DiTomasso and Ray gave Kerik thousands of dollars in unreported gifts, according to published reports.
Donovan was then chief of staff to Molinari, the most powerful Republican on Staten Island and a man hailed by ex-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani as his own political mentor.
According to the Staten Island Advance, Molinari has stood firmly behind the DiTomassos, calling suggestions of mob links by prosecution witnesses in another case "outrageously untrue."
According to the Daily News, Kerik e-mailed Ray that in pressing for Interstate to win a clean bill of health from regulators, he had "explained everything to Dan Donovan, chief of staff."
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Republicans in Washington also continued to close ranks yesterday.
President George W. Bush spoke for the first time about Kerik's failed bid, which ended when he withdrew his name Dec. 10. Bush said he was disappointed Kerik pulled his name from consideration, though it was the right thing to do.
"I think he would have done a fine job as the secretary of Homeland Security, and I appreciate his service to our country," he said.
So will the President send him Kools in jail?
As Jules says in Pulp Fiction: "He must be one motherfuckin' charming pig"
Yeah, I bet a lot of people are going to become very forgetful.
How grateful was Giuliani to Molinari?
In 1993, he pushed a referendum for secession from New York City. As a rule, New Yorkers are embarassed by Staten Island, with it's open racism and Republicanism. But that got Giuliani enough votes to win. This was a very short line from the mob to city hall. It also demonstrates how Kerik was able to glom on to these guy. Anything Molinari wanted, Giuliani would provide. Starting with a ballpark in Staten Island for the Yankees all while he made war against the US Open because former mayor Dinkins supported it.
The Molinaris rise to power was abruptly halted by well, the suicide of Brit Hume's son Sandy. It seems that Susan's husband, Bill Paxson, an upstate Congressman, was rumored to have been Hume's lover. People were saying that it was a merkin and beard marriage, until Sandy turned up dead. All of a sudden, he's quit his seat and she's becoming a TV commentator. She was in line to run for one of the top spots in the corporation, like mayor, maybe even governor or Senator. Because she was likable, to the left of her father on most issues, pro-choice, and likable. Her public image was a very positive one, no race baiting, reasonably intelligent and not an ideologue.
Her husband was in the House leadership and likely to move up as well.
Until Sandy Hume turned up dead and people believed that it was because it was because of his affair with a married Congressman. Well, no sooner than you can say resigned in disgrace, well he was gone and so was his wife.
So there ended Guy's hope for his very own dynasty. He then had to invest his hope in the much dimmer and doomed to eventual defeat Vito Fossella, who now holds her seat in Congress.
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL and LISA L. COLANGELO
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Mayor Bloomberg took a swipe at his opponents yesterday, saying candidates who take contributions from people who do business with the city are corrupt.
Bloomberg, a billionaire who self-finances his campaigns, was defending a Campaign Finance Board plan that would make it easier to track city vendors who make political donations.
"I fail to see why, if I spend money that I earned myself, it should give you the right to go out and be corrupt," Bloomberg said yesterday of so-called "pay-to-play" donations.
And he bristled at suggestions the process is moving ahead quickly because it could hurt his opponents in the 2005 mayoral race.
"Those two things don't get tied together in anybody's mind, other than people who like the corruption that they have been able to engage in and want to continue to do that," he said.
In 1998, voters approved a referendum asking the Campaign Finance Board to disclose and regulate contributions by donors who do business with the city.
In recent weeks, Bloomberg has clashed with City Council Speaker Gifford Miller (D-Manhattan) over a law to raise the matching funds candidates can receive in high-spending races to $6 from $5 for every dollar raised.
So what will he ever say about Bernie Kerik, who got free apartments and loans from city contractors
And here's why the city wanted Bernie Soprano's deposition hushed up:
December 21, 2004 -- While Bernard Kerik's Cabinet appointment was pending, a former city prison warden tried to air lurid details of Kerik's sex life in a federal lawsuit.
Erik DeRavin's lawyer argued that salacious specifics about Kerik's affair with a correction officer while he was correction commissioner should be revealed because otherwise, Kerik might pull a Bill Clinton — and fudge what kind of affair it was.
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The suit got nastier during Kerik's brief bid to become head of Homeland Security, when DeRavin's lawyer, Gregory Lisi, sought the dirt in depositions of Kerik and Pinero.
Federal Magistrate Judge Kevin Fox has yet to rule on whether to make public the sealed depositions — particularly any steamy portions.
But a transcript of a court proceeding on Dec. 7 show lawyers heatedly arguing over what should be released.
"When Ms. Pinero stated . . . that she had a sexual relationship with Mr. Kerik, I asked her definition of what sexual relationship [is]," Lisi said.
"As your honor knows from some other cases — the one that comes to my mind immediately for me is the Bill Clinton case — that different people have different definitions of what 'sexual relationship' means."
Lisi said he wanted specifics to prevent Kerik from imitating Clinton by giving tortured explanations of what constitutes a sexual affair.
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"It's been stated by my client that she did, in fact, have sexual relations with Mr. Kerik, and that's where it should end, your honor," he added.
During his deposition, Kerik was also grilled about why certain employees were promoted or denied promotion.
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No. it's to jerk Kerik around. But I don't see how the judge could seal it, especially when Judith Regan is now more than likely to be called as a witness. Why? That little conversation between her and Ms. Pinero. She can attest to their relationship.He wants to punish both Pinero, for running to her boyfriend and all her little favors as well as drag Kerik around in the mud. It also gives the city an incentive to settle for more than $250K
