2006, reviewed: A Marine in Iraq observes the midgets of Fallujah and the Badass Mayor of Kubaysah, plus CIA dude says Iraqi 'information operations' supporting GOP?

As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded (on video, as usual), one of the bad Guys put down his machinegun so that he could tie the mayor’s hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machinegun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. One of the dead Bad Guys was on our top twenty wanted list. Like they say, you can’t fight City Hall.

Most Profound Man in Iraq - an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines (searching for Syrians) if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied “Yes, you.”...
--the anonymous Marine

Larry Johnson is an ex-CIA officer who is a supporter of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, and generally represents the dissident anti-Bush voice among retired American intelligence professionals. His blog, No Quarter, is a punchy and oft-updated view of things from the ex-CIA side, for example opposing the torture bill (which I haven't wrapped my head around yet), dissecting the National Intelligence Estimate matter with Iraq causing more terrorism, and, interestingly, this:

Maliki and Al Sadr Punk America
by Larry C Johnson

I will say it simply--the Iraqi Government of Prime Minister Maliki is taking part in an information operation to help Republicans in the upcoming election. The evidence? How about the repeated claims that "we have killed or captured" the number two in Iraq? (And no, my reference to "number two" is not a euphemism for defecation.) I refer instead to the steady drumbeat of breathless announcements about the "latest" capture of a senior Al Qaeda operative in Iraq. The frequency of these claims is not a simple consequence of stepped up U.S. and Iraqi military operations. It is a deliberate effort to manipulate U.S. public opinion into believing real progress is being made in Iraq because the truth--that we're losing the ground war in Iraq--is unpalatable grist for the November elections.
.............From the standpoint of Prime Minister Maliki and his Shia allies, Moqtada al-Sadr in particular, the U.S. strategy is a blessing from Allah. Why? Because we are killing terrorists who support Sunnis. The more the United States can kill Sunni insurgents/terrorists, the fewer Sunnis left to fight Shias. But, that theory is not working out so neatly in practice. The various Sunni groups in Iraq are not going away quietly. They are striking back repeatedly and viciously because they believe their very survival as a people is at stake.

Rightly or wrongly, the United States is perceived as having taken a side in this civil war. We are fighting to bolster Shia control. The mullahs in Iran are also happy for this gift from Heaven--the Shia in Iraq are consolidating their control over areas considered sacred to all Shia.

Meanwhile, our troops are caught in a figurative no-mans land with no plan to escape and no plan for victory. For Maliki and his crowd, the only election that matters is the upcoming U.S. vote. If they can keep a Republican Congress who will "stay the course", the Shia plan to control vital areas of Iraq will remain on track. America's sons and daughters who are being killed and maimed in Iraq are sacrificing so that Shias can run Iraq and, with the backing of Iran, change the strategic face of the Middle East. And that new face will not be smiling on the United State or Israel. Mission accomplished?

Therefore a while ago, I put Pat as one of the "pissed off CIA guys" in the sidebar. I hadn't thought of it that way, but yeah, Shiite leaders and Iran will keep running "information operations" to distort the view of the American voter. Make Sunnis look worse, and then run the ethnic cleansing as much as possible against Sunnis. Keep the United States military operating against Sunnis as much as possible. Then solidify the Shiite block and turn south to Saudi Arabia. In the meantime, Shiites offer the Republicans fake - or exaggerated - Middle East Sunni demons to keep scaring the population. Result: escalating disorder in the Middle East and a huge Shiite bloc.

The horrible - yet suspicious - thing behind ALL of this is that the whole real goal of the Iraq war (according to some like Stratfor) was to flip a huge amount of Middle East regional power to the Shiites so that the Saudis would crack down on Al Qaeda. So now this is happening, and a mean fundamentalist Shiite bloc over the whole Persian Gulf will be the result. Bravo.

The Iran-contra veterans who sold them missiles for Reagan in the 1980s are now handing everything over - and cynically trying to secure themselves in November as crusading stabilizers of all reality, and metaphysics too.

********

Moving on, there were a lot of different things here, but I though this email Johnson posted from an anonymous marine in Iraq (probably operating an intelligence unit in Al Anbar province) captured a lot of the situation all at once. Includes the 26 midgets arrested in Fallujah, and the mayor of Kubaysah, who is in reality the Iraqi Chuck Norris of the 21st Century. We also discover that Oprah is the most popular TV show in Iraq. Yes.

Good luck to this guy. He is trying to deal with the Situation best he can until February, he says.

*******

A Marine in Iraq
Received this today from an old Army buddy via a mutual friend who was both a Marine and a CIA ops officer. Seems legit. Points are spot on. [--Larry Johnson]

All: I haven’t written very much from Iraq . There’s really not much to write about. More exactly, there’s not much I can write about because practically everything I do, read or hear is classified military information or is depressing to the point that I’d rather just forget about it, never mind write about it. The gaps in between all of that are filled with the pure tedium of daily life in an armed camp. So it’s a bit of a struggle to think of anything to put into a letter that’s worth reading. Worse, this place just consumes you. I work 18-20-hour days, ev ery day. The quest to draw a clear picture of what the insurgents are up to never ends. Problems and frictions crop up faster than solutions. Every challenge demands a response. It’s like this every day. Before I know it, I can’t see straight, because it’s 0400 and I’ve been at work for twenty hours straight, somehow missing dinner again in the process. And once again I haven’t written to anyone. It starts all over again four hours later. It’s not really like Ground Hog Day, it’s more like a level from Dante’s Inferno.

Rather than attempting to sum up the last seven months, I figured I’d just hit the record setting highlights of 2006 in Iraq . These are among the events and experiences I’ll remember best.

Worst Case of Déjà Vu - I thought I was familiar with the feeling of déjà vu until I arrived back here in Fallujah in February. The moment I stepped off of the helicopter, just as dawn broke, and saw the camp just as I had left it ten months before - that was déjà vu. Kind of unnerving. It was as if I had never left. Same work area, same busted desk, same chair, same computer, same room, same creaky rack, same . . . everything. Same everything for the next year. It was like entering a parallel universe. Home wasn’t 10,000 miles away, it was a different lifetime.

Most Surreal Moment - Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. I had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.

Most Profound Man in Iraq - an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines (searching for Syrians) if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied “Yes, you.”...

Worst City in al-Anbar Province - Ramadi, hands down. The provincial capital of 400,000 people. Killed over 1,000 insurgents in there since we arrived in February. Every day is a nasty gun battle. They blast us with giant bombs in the road, snipers, mortars and small arms. We blast them with tanks, attack helicopters, artillery, our snipers (much better than theirs), and every weapon that an infantryman can carry. Every day. Incredibly, I rarely see Ramadi in the news. We have as many attacks out here in the west as Baghdad . Yet, Baghdad has 7 million people, we have just 1.2 million. Per capita, al-Anbar province is the most violent place in Iraq by several orders of magnitude. I suppose it was no accident that the Marines were assigned this area in 2003.

Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province - Any Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EOD Tech). How’d you like a job that required you to defuse bombs in a hole in the middle of the road that very likely are booby-trapped or connected by wire to a bad guy who’s just waiting for you to get close to the bomb before he clicks the detonator? Every day. Sanitation workers in New York City get paid more than these guys. Talk about courage and commitment.

Second Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province - It’s a 20,000 way tie among all the Marines and Soldiers who venture out on the highways and through the towns of al-Anbar every day, not knowing if it will be their last - and for a couple of them, it will be.

Best Piece of U.S. Gear - new, bullet-proof flak jackets. O.K., they weigh 40 lbs and aren’t exactly comfortable in 120 degree heat, but they’ve saved countless lives out here.

Best Piece of Bad Guy Gear - Armor Piercing ammunition that goes right through the new flak jackets and the Marines inside them.

Worst E-Mail Message - “The Walking Blood Bank is Activated. We need blood type A+ stat.” I always head down to the surgical unit as soon as I get these messages, but I never give blood - there’s always about 80 Marines in line, night or day.

Biggest Surprise - Iraqi Police. All local guys. I never figured that we’d get a police force established in the cities in al-Anbar. I estimated that insurgents would kill the first few, scaring off the rest. Well, insurgents did kill the first few, but the cops kept on coming. The insurgents continue to target the police, killing them in their homes and on the streets, but the cops won’t give up. Absolutely incredible tenacity. The insurgents know that the police are fa r better at finding them than we are. - and they are finding them. Now, if we could just get them out of the habit of beating prisoners to a pulp . . .

Greatest Vindication - Stocking up on outrageous quantities of Diet Coke from the chow hall in spite of the derision from my men on such hoarding, then having a 122mm rocket blast apart the giant shipping container that held all of the soda for the chow hall. Yep, you can’t buy experience.

Biggest Mystery - How some people can gain weight out here. I’m down to 165 lbs. Who has time to eat?

Second Biggest Mystery - if there’s no atheists in foxholes, then why aren’t there more people at Mass every Sunday?

Favorite Iraqi TV Show - Oprah. I have no idea. They all have satellite TV.

Coolest Insurgent Act - Stealing almost $7 million from the main bank in Ramadi in broad daylight, then, upon exiting, waving to the Marines in the combat outpost right next to the bank, who had no clue of what was going on. The Marines waved back. Too cool.

Most Memorable Scene - In the middle of the night, on a dusty airfield, watching the better part of a battalion of Marines packed up and ready to go home after six months in al-Anbar, the relief etched in their young faces even in the moonlight. Then watching these same Marines exchange glances with a similar number of grunts loaded down with gear file past - their replacements. Nothing was said.. Nothing needed to be said.

Highest Unit Re-enlistment Rate - Any outfit that has been in Iraq recently. All the danger, all the hardship, all the time away from home, all the horror, all the frustrations with the fight here - all are outweighed by the desire for young men to be part of a 'Band of Brothers' who will die for one another. They found what they were looking for when they enlisted out of high school. Man for man, they now have more combat experience than any Marines in the history of our Corps.

Most Surprising Thing I Don’t Miss - Beer. Perhaps being half-stunned by lack of sleep makes up for it.

Worst Smell - Porta-johns in 120 degree heat - and that’s 120 degrees outside of the porta-john.

Highest Temperature - I don’t know exactly, but it was in the porta-johns. Needed to re-hydrate after each trip to the loo.

Biggest Hassle - High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and “battlefield” tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no affect on their preconceived notions of what’s going on in Iraq . Their trips allow them to say that they’ve been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here.

Biggest Outrage - Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq , not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest offender - Bill O’Reilly - what a buffoon!

Best Intel Work - Finding Jill Carroll’s kidnappers - all of them. I was mighty proud of my guys that day. I figured we’d all get the Christian Science Monitor for free after this, but none have showed up yet. Talk about ingratitude.

Saddest Moment - Having the battalion commander from 1st Battalion, 1st Marines hand me the dog tags of one of my Marines who had just been killed while on a mission with his unit. Hit by a 60mm mortar. Cpl Bachar was a great Marine. I felt crushed for a long time afterward. His picture now hangs at the entrance to the Intelligence Section. We’ll carry it home with us when we leave in February.

Biggest Ass-Chewing - 10 July immediately following a visit by the Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Dr. Zobai. The Deputy Prime Minister brought along an American security contractor (read mercenary), who told my Commanding General that he was there to act as a mediator between us and the Bad Guys. I immediately told him what I thought of him and his asinine ideas in terms that made clear my disgust and which, unfortunately, are unrepeatable here. I thought my boss was going to have a heart attack. Fortunately, the translator couldn’t figure out the best Arabic words to convey my meaning for the Deputy Prime Minister. Later, the boss had no difficulty in conveying his meaning to me in English regarding my Irish temper, even though he agreed with me. At least the guy from the State Department thought it was hilarious. We never saw the mercenary again.

Best Chuck Norris Moment - 13 May. Bad Guys arrived at the government center in the small town of Kubaysah to kidnap the town mayor, since they have a problem with any form of government that does not include regular beheadings and women wearing burqahs. There were seven of them. As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded (on video, as usual), one of the bad Guys put down his machinegun so that he could tie the mayor’s hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machinegun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. One of the dead Bad Guys was on our top twenty wanted list. Like they say, you can’t fight City Hall.

Worst Sound - That crack-boom off in the distance that means an IED or mine just went off. You just wonder who got it, hoping that it was a near miss rather than a direct hit. Hear it every day.

Second Worst Sound - Our artillery firing without warning. The howitzers are pretty close to where I work. Believe me, outgoing sounds a lot like incoming when our guns are firing right over our heads. They’d ab out knock the fillings out of your teeth.

Only Thing Better in Iraq Than in the U.S. - Sunsets. Spectacular. It’s from all the dust in the air.

Proudest Moment - It’s a tie every day, watching my Marines produce phenomenal intelligence products that go pretty far in teasing apart Bad Guy operations in al-Anbar. Every night Marines and Soldiers are kicking in doors and grabbing Bad Guys based on intelligence developed by my guys. We rarely lose a Marine during these raids, they are so well-informed of the objective. A bunch of kids right out of high school shouldn’t be able to work so well, but they do.

Happiest Moment - Well, it wasn’t in Iraq . There are no truly happy moments here. It was back in California when I was able to hold my family again while home on leave during July.

Most Common Thought - Home. Always thinking of home, of [name redacted] and the kids. Wondering how everyone else is getting along. Regretting that I don’t write more. Yep, always thinking of home.

I hope you all are doing well. If you want to do something for me, kiss a cop, flush a toilet, and drink a beer. I’ll try to write again before too long - I promise.

Semper Fi,

[Name redacted]

Congressman Ryan holding it down

This video shows what Real Democrats ought to sound these days. I appreciate the reference to the college students... Good stuff. Rep. Ryan on the House floor recently.

Al Qaeda is still out there, military industrial profits are up and Colbert gets a Hungarian bridge!

We are not posting much until the new drupal site is rolled out. There has been a setback in the last couple days, as the image uploader mysteriously stopped working. Frustrating to have feature collapse!

Sweet t-shirt:

Neoconservative intelligence spoofing alert (via wotisitgood4.blogspot.com):
Laura Rozen:

"Interesting Warren Strobel/John Wolcott piece on an eerie echo of phony pre-war Iraq intelligence from discredited exile groups and figures being injected into the system via unconventional US government offices, this time on Iran
[......]
And they nod to a piece I reported in the LAT a couple months back -- that a new "Iranian directorate" has been set up inside the same Pentagon policy shop that oversaw the Office of Special Plans.
[....]
It's hard to imagine that this office would wittingly use Ghorbanifar directly for Iran intelligence; but you don't have to go far to find the model that is more likely to being employed. Check out how Ghorbanifar worked with Congressman Curt Weldon -- using a cut-out, "Ali," Ghorbanifar's longtime business partner. And read the Chalabi section of the new Senate Intel committee Phase II report to see the pattern writ large -- the system by which almost a dozen fabricators were pushed forward by the INC to ply their wares on the US government, echoing and providing "confirmation" for the fabrications put forward by an earlier one; some of them have now totally disappeared. Some were pushed forward by the likes of Jim Woolsey through the DOD. I would think that responsible parties in the US government, say at the National Security Council where Stephen Hadley should by now know about Ghorbanifar because he approved the origial Pentagon meetings with him in 2001, would want to be very careful with what they're getting this time on Iran from places like DIA and DoD, and be pressing back hard to question the validity and chain of custody of the original sources."

So they are fabricating another war in the usual ways. Fuck it.

Chavez pledges to support Iran in invasion: Sep. 14, 2006. 09:20 PM
ASSOCIATED PRESS

HAVANA — Venezuela's president pledged Thursday his country would support Iran if it was invaded as a result of its nuclear standoff with the UN Security Council.
The UN has demanded Iran suspend uranium enrichment amid concerns by some nations that it could be used for nuclear weapons. Iran insists the enrichment is aimed solely at producing electricity.
"Iran is under threat; there are plans to invade Iran, hopefully it won't happen, but we are with you," Hugo Chavez told Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a meeting of the Group of 15 developing nations on the sidelines of a Nonaligned Movement summit in Cuba.

Anti-U.S. states try to cement accord Sat Sep 16, 2006 5:00 PM By Anthony Boadle

HAVANA (Reuters) - Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba moved to cement an anti-U.S. alliance and support Tehran's right to nuclear technology at a summit of Non-Aligned nations on Saturday.

More than 40 heads of state and leaders from over 100 developing countries were debating a document supporting Iran's right to nuclear technology for peaceful ends and another sharply critical of Israel's recent war in Lebanon. But governments with friendly ties to Washington, among them India, Pakistan, Chile, Peru and Colombia, sought to steer the summit way from confrontation and finger-pointing at the United States.

North Korea blasted the United States for unilateral actions against individual countries and called for a revitalised NAM to raise a united voice. "The United States is attempting to deprive other countries of even their legitimate right to peaceful nuclear activities," North Korea's second-ranking leader, Kim Yong-nam, said.

A batch of info mostly from JuanCole.com, the indispensable guide to all things Middle Eastern. For example, dissecting a Republican report on Iran packed with disinformation (more here). Cole's recap of 9/11 myths is a good one. Also Steve Clemons' TheWashingtonNote.com is doing good things, such as predicting ahead of time that John Bolton's recent re-nomination was sunk.

Indian guys observe that some World Trade Center scrap found its way to India, since of course there was no reason to keep evidence around.

Valerie Plame scandal flips upside down? CNN.com - Outed CIA agent Plame adds Armitage to lawsuit. The Armitage thing is a strange angle since Armitage was definitely not part of the neo-con camp in the run-up to the war - he was more of a Powell loyalist. It seems like in reality he was burned by his co-Deputy at State at the time, Marc Grossman, who is a shady neoconservative connected with drug trafficking since the good old days of Pakistan in the 1980s. According to some sources, Grossman sent Armitage a memo with Plame's name that did not flag her status as a covert agent.

In a tiny tidbit, Sibel Edmonds has noted that on the morning of September 11, Marc Grossman was meeting with then-Rep. Porter Goss, Senator Bob Graham, and Mahmoud Ahmed, the director of Pakistan's ISI intelligence agency, the guys that created the Taliban! Ahmed apparently wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta before September 11. If you want some mind-blowingly weird shit about Sibel Edmonds, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, financing around 9/11 and other intrigues, check this post, this and this one on wotisitgood4.blogspot.com. Nice.

In the recently released Bin Laden tape, there were odd discrepancies in how global media like chinese Xinhua and Al Jazeera described the hijackers. Either media errors or Vast Conspiracy, I guess.

BAE profit rises 28% on US orders for Iraq:

Thursday, September 14, 2006
LONDON, SEPT 13: BAE Systems Plc, Europe’s biggest weapons maker, said first-half profit rose 28%, more than analysts estimated, on US orders for Bradley fighting vehicles used in Iraq.

Net income increased to 405 million pounds ($759 million), or 12.4 pence a share, from 317 million pounds a year earlier, BAE said on Wednesday in a statement. Profit beat the 354 million-pound estimate of six analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. BAE purchased United Defense Industries Inc, the maker of the Bradley, in June 2005 to become the Pentagon’s seventh-biggest contractor. London-based BAE on September 6 recommended shareholders approve the sale of its 20% stake in Airbus SAS to concentrate on US defence acquisitions.

The sale ‘‘will allow BAE to focus on the defense sector and not be distracted by some serious problems that Airbus is facing,’’ David Hart, an analyst at Fat Prophets in London, said in an interview. ‘‘Refitting Bradleys will be a strong market for them for years to come.’’

The spooky new pope, in his infinite wisdom, decided to quote some fossilized Byzantine emperor named Manuel II Palaiologos, who hated Muslims and was therefore worth quoting.

The U.S. military is starting to fray in a lot of ways, with gang members and white supremacists now getting recruited.

Sen. Tom Harkin down in Iowa talking about the situation. John Bolton's gonna fuck everything up. Great Britain's role in the war in Lebanon - many details of nitty gritty that Blair is going to pay for. Your Iraq statistic reference.

A little humor: Top ten dumbest secret identities. Bert Blyleven drops the F-BOMB twice during a Twins game broadcast!! Awesome. Five great comedians that have totally lost it. Excellent.

Colbert scores a Hungarian bridge, or does he? Watch the video!

Most middle eastern leaders tell Kofi the war has been a disaster for them. Al Qaeda in Iraq - or not: check out the reasonable overview from a UPI analysis of the Iraq Sunni fundie situation:

Eye on Iraq: The al-Qaida myth, By MARTIN SIEFF UPI Senior News Analyst
Why did the tactical U.S. successes against al-Qaida within Iraq fail to have any positive impact on quelling the insurgency? Part of the answer is that al-Qaida and its allies had already succeeded in pulverizing the credibility of Iraq's three democratically elected governments by the time U.S. forces could make real inroads against them.

Also, U.S. planners failed disastrously to bring in enough American troops right after the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 to ensure stability and the rapid restoration of basic government services in Iraq.

The U.S. obsession with ambitious, cumbersome constitutional processes distracted American planners and military from being able to focus on the primary issues of restoring power, running water and having enough reliable U.S. and allied troops to ensure law and order in Iraq's cities and towns. As a result, every one of the three civilian governments Iraq has so far had no grassroots credibility or been able to deliver basic protection or reliable services to a significant element of the population by itself.

Even in supposedly peaceful Shiite majority provinces across southern Iraq, the government forces only operate in alliance with, or at the sufferance of, a patch-quilt of Shiite militias that they do not control.

However, the real reason is that al-Qaida was never the only, or even the main, part of the Sunni resistance against U.S. forces in Iraq. By the time Zarqawi was killed, he was only the first among equals in a shifting coalition of anti-American Sunni militia groups. And when Zarqawi succeeded in provoking an overwhelming Shiite violent reaction after the Al-Askariya bombing, he achieved his ultimate strategic goal of making Iraq ungovernable through the U.S.-guided democratic political process that had been set up.

U.S. grand strategy in Iraq, in its obsession with Zarqawi and al-Qaida, never confronted the messy religious and ethnic political and paramilitary realities of the country. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld remained convinced through June that once Zarqawi was hunted down and killed and al-Qaida's operational command structure was smashed, then the Sunni insurgency would evaporate and peaceful, democratic political processes would at last triumph in Iraq.

But it has not happened that way and there is no real sign that it will. The condition we have described in these columns as "Belfast rules" or "Beirut rules" -- the condition of ongoing, many-sided sectarian war between different militias after a central governing authority has collapsed -- continues to be the case in Iraq. Conditions in that unhappy country will only start to improve when U.S. policymakers finally confront this unpleasant fact.

Doomed Palestinians trapped in Iraq: Talk about double jeopardy: Palestinians that resettled after the Nakba (catastrophe of Israel's creation) in Iraq are now pretty much screwed, in particular since Shiites don't like them. This is yet another material reason that West Bank settlements are extremely bad for the world, Arabs and the United States.

Reuters: IRAQ: Palestinian refugees targeted by militants receive no help

13 Sep 2006 13:29:12 GMT
BAGHDAD, 13 September (IRIN) - The deteriorating conditions of Palestinians in Iraq have been highlighted in a report by US-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The report, released on 10 September, said that Palestinian refugees living in Iraq are being targeted by mostly Shi'ite militant groups and are also being harassed by the government.

"Since the fall of [former president] Saddam Hussein's government, Palestinian refugees in Iraq have increasingly become targets of violence and persecution," said Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW's Middle East director.

"Shi'ite militant groups have murdered dozens of Palestinian refugees, and the Iraqi government has made it difficult for these refugees to stay legally in Iraq by imposing onerous registration requirements," she added.

Since we are posting Prof. Juan Cole-derived goodies today, I'm going to have to pilfer his post on 9/11 and Al Qaeda because it makes 1000% more sense than any other bullshit in the media in the last week. I hope he understands!

September 11, 2006: The War with al-Qaeda
The war with al-Qaeda has many dimensions. There is the war with the organization itself. There is the struggle against its offshoots and copycats. There is cooperation with Muslim governments and communities in derailing the threat. There is the question of the strength of Sunni fundamentalist parties that might support al-Qaeda. And there is winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world.

The war with the organization itself largely succeeded by 2003 and no further progress seems to have been made since that time. Some 600 al-Qaeda operatives were captured in Pakistan, many of them through a sting arranged inside the Karachi Western Union office, according to Ron Susskind. The original al-Qaeda has been badly disrupted as to command and control.

It is not, however, dead. Every evidence is that the London subway bombings of a little over a year ago had a strong connection to Ayman al-Zawahiri. He appears to have worked with a Pakistani terrorist group such as Jaish-i Muhammad or Lashkar-i Tayyibah or whatever they are calling themselves these days to recruit the young Britons that carried out the attack. Al-Zawahiri had in his possession their suicide tapes, and broadcast them on Aljazeera. It is urgent that Usamah Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri be captured. Declan Walsh explains why this is is difficult.

It may well be that the Egyptian Islamic Jihad offshoot operating in the Sinai, which conducted the Sharm El Shaikh and Taba bombings of tourist hotels, has a link to Zawahiri.

Al-Qaeda's popularity is declining in some quarters. A Pew poll in 2005 found that significantly fewer numbers of Moroccans, Turks and Indonesians were confident in Bin Laden that year than the two previous years. On the other hand, a majority of Jordanians and Pakistanis continued to have a high regard for his competency.

The Madrid train bombings show the severe challenge posed by local copycat groups that do not have a direct connection to al-Qaeda, but take up one of its calls to action and learn techniques from the internet. If a group has at least some email connections to a known terror group or individual already under surveillance, at least there is a chance of cracking the plot. If they are all "newskins," that makes them invisible.

US cooperation with Middle Eastern governments is at a high level, from all accounts. The operation against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi appears to have been very significantly a Jordanian operation. Egypt and the US conduct joint military exercises. I have a sense that the relationship with Morocco has deepened. Algeria's government fought a decade-long civil war against Islamist political forces, some of them very violent, and has reason to cooperate.

On the negative side, the Sunni Arabs of Iraq appear ever increasingly to be organized by radical Muslim fundamentalist forces of various sorts. This population of some 5 million had been among the bulwarks of secular Arab nationalism in the past, but those days are long gone.

The Islamic Action Council in Pakistan, some members of which sympathize with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, continues to rule the Northwest Frontier Province. The central government, however, which is more secular, has stopped it from implementing Islamic law and hisbah (measures that give anyone standing in enforcing morality on others). Parliament has even moved to rewrite Pakistan's flawed rape law, which is based on Gen. Zia ul-Haq's Islamization measures and is so poorly framed that it often ends up allowing the victims to be punished!

Four MPs from the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan went to mourn Zarqawi's death with his family, triggering sanctions against them. The incident raised questions about how much distance there is between the Salafi Jihadis, the violent revivalists, and the conservative religious parties that seem to eschew violence and pursue ordinary politics.

The US pressured Egypt to open up its parliamentary elections last fall, and the Mubarak regime took revenge by letting 88 Muslim Brother delegates be seated in a chanber with a little over 400 members. These supported Hizbullah in the recent Israel-Lebanon War and have demanded that the Camp David Accords be revoked.

Hamas won the elections in the Palestine Authority. The Israelis have taken many of the elected Hamas representatives and officials into custody, however, and have repeatedly bombed the Interior Ministry in Gaza. These developments have added to the popularity of Hamas and radical fundamentalism while making a mockery of the Bush administration's stated commitment to democratization.

Hizbullah itself achieved enormous popularity, and enhanced the prestige of radical Muslim fundamentalism, by its ability to make a stand before the Israeli military machine. This development will ripple through the region, to the disadvantage of more secular, moderate forces.

The evidence with regard to hearts and minds is mixed. The Pew Global Attitudes Project reports on Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, with a population of 224 mn. In 2000, 70 percent of Indonesians viewed the United States favorably. (Such numbers were typical for US Muslim allies in areas not consumed by the Arab-Israeli conflict). In 2002 as a result of the Afghanistan war, the number fell to 60 percent. Then in 2003 after Bush invaded Iraq, it fell to 15 percent. After Bush sent the US Navy to help Indonesia in the aftermath of the tsunami, the numbers rebounded in 2005 to 38 percent. In 2006 they have fallen again, down to 30 percent.

So since 2000, we have fallen from 70 percent approval in Indonesia to only 30 percent, and at some points we were way down. This story contains a caution and also some encouraging news. The caution is that we are losing the Indonesia public because of this Iraq occupation. It is true in Turkey, as well, and lots of other places. The good news is that it is not irreversible. Do some nice things for someone, and the numbers go up. (The numbers also went up in Pakistan after we diverted some military helicopters to help the victims of the Kashmir earthquake). If we ended our Iraq presence, there is a chance we could repair these relationships with some munificent gestures.

In Turkey, the favorability rating of the US in 2002 was 52 percent. It is now 15 percent. That is a scary plummet! I suspect it is all about Iraq, and particularly the feeling that the US is letting the Iraqi Kurds harbor the PKK terrorists, who are blowing things up in Turkey.

The only really good news in the Pew findings is that the US has grown in popularity in Morocco, to nearly 50%, and is especially popular with youth and women. Moroccans have said they are worried about terrorism and about too much influence of religion in politics. I don't entirely understand what is driving the Morocco numbers, since they were pretty upset about Iraq, but the change should be studied for what it can tell us about doing things right. One thing that helps is that Morocco is a long way from the Arab-Israeli conflict, and, in fact, has good behind the scenes relations with Israel.

The Arab world mostly just dislikes US policy, mainly because of kneejerk support for Israeli depredations against Palestinians. The dislike doesn't change that much, though we reached a nadir in 2003-2004. In 2002 76 percent of the Egyptian public disapproved of us. In 2004 that rose to 98 percent. It has fallen down to 86 percent in 2006. Very few Egyptians approve of US foreign policy. They don't even like US intervention to open up the Egyptian political system.

To the extent that small terrorist groups benefit in their recruitment and in motivating recruits from deeply negative attitudes to the United States, these polling numbers are extremely disturbing. The main things driving a polarization between Muslim publics and the US are not al-Qaeda or terrorism, however. They are Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon. It is the policy. The policy can provoke anger and engender threat, and that is why it had better be a damn good policy. It can also make for friendships, which is what we should be aiming at.

It wouldn't take much now to settle the Israel-Palestine thing, and the time is ripe to have Israel give back the Golan to Syria and the Shebaa Farms to Lebanon in return for a genuine peace process. The Israelis are not made more secure by crowding into the West Bank or bombing Gaza daily. South Lebanon has demonstrated the dangers of ever more sophisticated microwars over rugged territory. It is time for Israel, and for the United States, to do the right thing and rescue the Palestinians from the curse of statelessness, the slavery of the 21st century. Ending this debilitating struggle would also be the very best thing for the Israelis themselves. In one fell swoop, the US would have solved 80 percent of its problems with the Muslim world and vastly reduced the threat of terrorism.

But of all the things this administration has done badly, it has been worst of all at making friends in the region. That could end up hurting us most of all, and playing into Bin Laden's increasingly ghostly hands.

Well that does it for now. Have a nice weekend.

Lamont pulls ahead

Hit up these guys for the results
U.S. Senate
Connecticut U. S. Senate Democrat
Candidate Votes Percent Winner
Ned Lamont 40,044 55%
Joe Lieberman 32,575 45%
Precincts Reporting - 184 out of 748 - 25%

Finally a good day for democracy

War Link Dump II: Neo-cons sparking Iran war, Israel retreats from Bint Jbeil, Anglican Bishop decries Israeli aggression; Bin Laden wins; Laser-like (or microwave directed energy) weapons in Iraq?!!!?

Be advised there are graphic images of violence in this post, partly because the American TV networks have suppressed such imagery. Nothing is quite as elusive as Arab blood on American eyeballs. Now that's information warfare.

When God looks down on a "proportionate response," what does S/He see (via the agonist)? Beirut satellite image:

BBC in pictures:

I won't go into details, but always look at Juan Cole's site. Some of the links come from there today. The Agonist is also essential reading, and Antiwar.com's blog. Good points about Western hypocrisy, and said today:

This whole thing was about Olmert proving he had stones as big as Sharon. (Shades of Fallujah in 2004 if you ask me.)

Pat Lang, formerly a top dog at the Defense Intelligence Agency, observes of the IDF withdrawal from Bint Jbeil:

Sounds Like They Couldn't Stand The Heat.
The IDF pulled its ground forces out of Bint Jbeil Saturday all the way back into Galilee. They fought there for days to take the town, lost some men and then started house demolitions. According to my Israeli sources, Hizbullah counter-attacked in strength starting Friday night. The next day Israel withdrew from the town.

It sounds like the politicians couldn't stand the prospect of real war. Or, more fancifully the IAF has laid an elaborate trap for HA. Some of the members of our seminar will prefer that idea.

A week ago the Jerusalem Post said that a "civil administration" (i.e. occupation) government for South Lebanon was being prepared, but it looks like it won't be needed at all.

Essential reading (and not just because I interviewed the guy!) in the Nation:

Anger in the Arab World by Rashid I. Khalidi - posted July 27

In what passes for analysis of the war involving Israel, Lebanon and Palestine in US and Israeli government circles, in the well-oiled PR machine that shills for them, and in much of the US media, we are told about a struggle against terrorism by a state under siege. The basic argument is that Israel is "responding to terrorist violence," and that the only real question is, How soon will Israeli force, backed by American determination, prevail? But this scenario has little to do with reality in the Middle East.

There will be no "destruction" of Hezbollah, and no "uprooting" of its infrastructure or that of Hamas, whatever the results of Israel's siege of Gaza and its merciless attacks against Lebanon. The rhetoric about "terrorism" has mesmerized those who parrot it, blinding them to the fact that Hezbollah and Hamas are deeply rooted popular movements that have developed as a response to occupation--of the West Bank and Gaza for nearly forty years, and of southern Lebanon from 1978 to 2000. Whatever one might say about the two movements' callousness in targeting civilians (a subject on which Israel's defenders are hardly in a position to preach), both have won impressive victories in elections and have provided social services and protection to their people.......

.....Much depends on whether an Israeli, American or Israeli-American war with Syria and, much more serious, Iran can be avoided. If escalation of what is already a major war in Gaza and Lebanon can be prevented, the conflict's regional effects will be mitigated. Much depends on how fast European public opinion, turning rapidly, expresses its revulsion at what is happening in Lebanon. Tales of the massive destruction and civilian casualties are being carried home by tens of thousands of French, British, Italian and German evacuees, many of them dual nationals, appearing on French and British TV talking about the atrocities they have seen. Much also depends on how adventurous Iran and Syria choose to be, how much punishment Hezbollah can take and still keep fighting, and how wise the Palestinians are in dealing with their difficult internal situation. And much depends on how far the man in the White House will go with his instincts. If he reins in his darker impulses and those of the Israeli general staff, which is running the show on that end of the alliance, the current slide into the abyss can yet be halted. If not, the Middle East and the United States are headed for catastrophe.

Sidney Blumenthal in The Guardian: The neocon resurgence: The delusional US mindset that made the Iraq war a disaster has resurfaced in Lebanon. Lebanon Daily Star: "America's credibility will be a casualty of Israel's war: Whatever reasons arabs ever had to trust washington are going up in smoke".

Osama Bin Laden wins BIG: July 21: "Doing bin Laden's Work for Him" by Michael Scheuer, the CIA guy that ran the Bin Laden unit for years. Gotta read this one:

Most damaging for G-8 leaders will be this week's validation for Muslims of bin Laden's assertion that the West considers Muslim lives cheap and expendable. They will see that three kidnapped Israeli soldiers and several dozen dead Israelis are worth infinitely more to the West than the thousands of Muslims held for years in Israel's prisons, the hundreds already killed in Lebanon, and the eradication of Lebanon's modern infrastructure.

So bin Laden wins without lifting a finger........The impact of this Israel-Hezbollah round will not stop with the inevitable truce that will be declared after Israel ruins Lebanon. While temporary order may return to the Levant, America, Britain, and the West should not fool themselves. They have again gratuitously picked sides in a fight between two inconsequential nations; the survival of neither is a genuine national security interest for any G-8 state. Led by Washington's absurd, 30-year obsession with the minimal Shia threat to America, and blind to the hatred generated among Muslims by their foreign policies, the G-8 have mightily strengthened the enmity, durability, and resolve of the Sunni extremist movement that bin Laden leads and personifies.

Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line: First Iraq, now Lebanon: Mainstream media is making the same excuses furnished in Iraq for the destruction of infrastructure and the mass killing of civilians in Lebanon, writes Firas Al-Atraqchi.

Where were those Israeli soldiers captured? Obviously the moral foundation of the war is that Hezbollah captured those Israeli soldiers over the 'Blue Line', inside Israel. But there are stories burbling up that they were actually captured inside Lebanon on some kind of Israeli commando raid. It seems implausible, but the story is out there.

Neo-cons ginning up Iran war NOW: This is a MUST-read: Iran: The Next War:

Even before the bombs fell on Baghdad, a group of senior Pentagon officials were plotting to invade another country. Their covert campaign once again relied on false intelligence and shady allies. But this time, the target was Iran. BY JAMES BAMFORD

This story HAS to be read. It explains the AIPAC spy scandal, how Ahmed Chalabi told the Iranians that the U.S. was reading their encrypted messages, how Michael Ledeen is gearing up the Iranian opposition to stir up more trouble in Iran. This is a very big deal. I won't quote a lot from here, but this story tracks with a lot of the stuff we've tried to cover here on HongPong in the past. And now it is really getting put into motion. Some jackass on National Review denies everything.

Lebanon Daily Star reports yesterday that Israeli military casualties has forced a change in Israel's military strategy, abandoning a large expansion of ground warfare.

Middle East Report: Israel's War Against Lebanon's Shiites by Jim Quilty in Beirut - July 25. Features copies of Israeli propaganda leaflets (pictured here). Lots of details about those tricky complexities of Lebanese politics.

CSM: UN deaths prompt 'diplomatic firestorm': Annan calls attack on observers in Lebanon 'apparently deliberate,' but Israel angrily denies charge. July 28: "Israeli strikes may boost Hizbullah base: Hizbullah support tops 80 percent among Lebanese factions." July 26: Asia Times Online: Hezbollah banks on home-ground advantage By Sami Moubayed.

Antiwar.com: Be sure to read Fourth Generation War in Lebanon by Ehsan Ahrari. Justin Raimondo: Lebanon: Are the Yanks Coming? Let's hope not…. and Lebanon: Winners and Losers: Bin Laden wins, and we lose. Also, Israel is winning the battle, but not the war on July 25. However, it appears they have lost the battle too. The Fire Next Time by Osamah Khalil about the impact on the rest of the Arab world. Lawless by Nebojsa Malic. Israeli Offensive Targeting Relief Efforts? by Aaron Glantz. Five Myths that sanction Israel's war crimes by Jonathan Cook. (This article was too long though)

On Iraq check out the review of Unembedded, about freelance photo-journalists in Iraq. The photo below was in the book.

Voice of America News conveys Lebanese refugee stories:

'Tehfa says the bombs are not the only danger. Yaroun is all but cut off from the outside world. "Plus, the people die without food. There is no water, no electricity, no gas. Nothing!" she added. Tehfa literally walked to safety, wearing a pair of black flip-flop sandals and carrying nothing but her shiny black handbag. After nearly two weeks under siege, she and a group of about 70 townspeople - waving a large white flag - walked six kilometers to the nearest village, a place called Rmeich. Another Australian, Fatima Salim, managed to find a car to take her to Rmeich, and then slept in a cramped apartment with 80 other people for three days. "I lost my mother, my brother, my sister-in-law. I do not know where they are gone," she said. "Because I go out from one door, they go out from another door. And for one minute, I cannot see my parents. I do not know where they are." '

Some angry Lebanese post photos of wounded Lebanese children, and photos of Israeli children writing messages on bombs. Graphic. They also posted images of the "Marwaheen Massacre" where Israeli jets pounded and killed a fleeing Lebanese familiy earlier in fighting. The family had previously been turned away from a UN post, which is why the Blue Helmets had to pick up the pieces, literally:

Washington Post editorial from Tuesday: "Air Power Won't Do It" as I said earlier. Interview from a week ago with a former Bush hand on Lebanon in Harpers.

News updates from Wednesday, noted because the Dell this fleeing Beirut guy is heaving over the fence looks just like the old HongPong server. Civilians killed as Israelis target ambulances. From nearly a week ago, the AP was reporting the tenacity of Hezbollah fighters against Israel. Hezbollah fighters popped up in Beirut shortly after Israeli bombings without delay. On the 26th, UK Times said Ferocity of Hezbollah comes as a surprise as Israeli intelligence turns out to be incredibly shitty:

[Israeli] domestic support remains strong, but the first cracks have appeared, with media commentators accusing the army of providing an “insulting level of intelligence” about Hezbollah’s defences. As they munched watermelon yesterday, sweating Israeli soldiers were visibly shocked by the stiff opposition they had encountered, describing their Hezbollah opponents as a “guerrilla army” with landmines and anti-tank missiles capable of crippling a Merkavah battle tank.

“It was really scary. Most of our armoured personnel carriers have holes,” a paramedic told The Times after recovering three wounded tank soldiers. “It’s a very hard situation. We were in Lebanon before but it wasn’t like this for a long time.” A tank commander said: “It’s a real war.” In the Galilee town of Safed, Brigadier-General Shuki Shachar, deputy commander of the northern forces, conceded that the foe was not an easy one. “Hezbollah is a fanatical organisation. It is highly motivated to fight. I don’t want to give grades to the enemy, but they are fighting. They are not escaping,” he said. He insisted, however, that Israel was “changing the balance” after a belated recognition that the Shia group was dug in deeper than expected.

“After a few days we realised that Hezbollah prepared itself over the last six years with thousands of rockets, with hundreds of shelters, bunkers, with hundreds of rockets hid in houses of civilians inside south Lebanon,” he said. [this is one of those small things you figure out BEFORE you launch a war --Dan]

His forces had never intended to “conquer every square inch” of Bint Jbeil but had now achieved their objectives of taking the high ground. Wherever the Israel Defence Forces decided to act, the general said, “we have no problem to do so, no restrictions”.

Which is why they have already departed Bint Jbeil. Because they launched a war unaware of the honeycombs of bunkers and rockets. Hmm.

Things are definitely getting worse in Iraq but at least we got Lasers now?!! under the radar, it seems. News analysis: U.S. could face a showdown with al-Sadr, even more so as the U.S. eggs Israel on to kill more Shiites. In a shrewd move, the U.S. Army fired a gay Arab linguist. War Crimes trials for abusing and torturing detainees are a possibility. Time magazine: How the Lebanon Crisis Complicates U.S. Prospects in Iraq. Democracy Now reports: Star Wars in Iraq: Is the U.S. Using New Experimental Tactical High Energy Laser Weapons in Iraq? It doesn't quite sound like a laser. My money is on directed microwave radiation... I won't make a joke, because this is too creepy:

MAJID AL GHEZALI: Just the head was burnt, and the other parts of the bodies wasn’t anything happened on it.
NARRATOR: Al Ghezali reported that he had seen three passengers in a car, all dead, with their faces and teeth burnt, the body intact, and no sign of projectiles.
MAJID AL GHEZALI: There wasn’t any bullet. I saw the teeth, just the teeth and no eyes, all of them. With the body, nothing for the bodies. Just the teeth, and all the -- I mean, the heads were burnt.
NARRATOR: There were other inexplicable aspects. The terrain where the battle took place was dug up by the American military and replaced with other fresh earth. The bodies that were not hit by projectiles had shrunk to just slightly more than one meter in height.
......DOCTOR NO. 2: It seems to be a new weapon.
SAAD AL FALLUJI: Yes, a new weapon.
DOCTOR NO. 2: They are trying to do experiments on our civilians. Nobody can identify what the type of this weapon.

Ohohoho those crazy Iraqis and their stories. "How could such a thing be true?" says the skeptic. One possibility: half a billion dollars in spending may have produced something larger than a pen laser to fuck around with occupied Muslim populations. The last bit of the article:

WILLIAM ARKIN: So, right now you have about $50 million a year being spent on non-lethal weapons. You have about another $200 million or so being spent on high power microwaves, active denial-type systems. You’ve got probably another $100 to 200 million being spent on secret black laser programs. And then you’ve got the big lasers, the high energy laser of the Air Force and the other tactical lasers. So probably, when you add all of that up, you know, the United States is probably spending a half of a billion dollars a year right now on directed-energy weapons, you know, probably somewhere in the order of 300-400 million euros. So this is a significant amount of money. This is the size of the defense budgets of some countries in Europe.

On a lighter note, Joe Klein on Lieberman's Last Stand and another one of his friends ditches him. Polls are showing Lamont doing real, real well. Oddly, we discover that John Ashcroft was against torture, which is part of the reason they got rid of him.

Blog bits: The Guns of August on DailyKos.com was an interesting roundup of everything. William Arkin tries pretty hard at the WaPo to keep tabs on this stuff. Al Qaeda says it ought to fight alongside Hezbollah and Hamas, a surprising twist. Some general remarks from Obsidian Wings. Neo-con blather about Arab governments supporting Israel turns out to be false. Arab-American Abu Aardvark notes that the Rome conference was a failure.

Idiot on Fox talks about how great it is that Israel attacked UN peacekeeping posts. Greek antiwar protesters toppled a statue of Harry Truman (bet you didn't see that one coming). Kind of a funny video of these cute (Iranian?) girls talking about how much they like Hezbollah.

More Haaretz of course: Haaretz has an interesting feature on how Israeli intelligence agencies have attempted to wrap their heads around Hezbollah's tactical reality. Opening a window on intelligence. "No Time to Lose" by Amir Oren is about the peculiarity of the blaring American "green light" to bomb the shit out of Lebanon. The plan was 2 kilometers "cleared", but it ain't happening. Hezbollah, an empire of millions. Big questions, great frustration indeed. Moral Muddle - interesting questions at an IDF base about the morality of killing Lebanese civilians. A kind of funny article about Arab journalists. Check out The turnabout will come quickly By Meron Benvenisti, a peace guy explaining why the war will be abandoned in Israel. From Wednesday, The war so far / No goals attained By Ze'ev Schiff. Was there a proper decision process? By Aluf Benn. Has the army failed? By Amos Harel Finally,

Morality is not on our side By Ze'ev Maoz

There's practically a holy consensus right now that the war in the North is a just war and that morality is on our side. The bitter truth must be said: this holy consensus is based on short-range selective memory, an introverted worldview, and double standards.

This war is not a just war. Israel is using excessive force without distinguishing between civilian population and enemy, whose sole purpose is extortion. That is not to say that morality and justice are on Hezbollah's side. Most certainly not. But the fact that Hezbollah "started it" when it kidnapped soldiers from across an international border does not even begin to tilt the scales of justice toward our side.

German paper Der Spiegel has INTERVIEW WITH LEBANESE PRESIDENT EMILE LAHOUD: 'Hezbollah Freed Our Country'.

Mitch Prothero in Salon.com on the bullshit about Hezbollah hiding among civilians:

Throughout this now 16-day-old war, Israeli planes high above civilian areas make decisions on what to bomb. They send huge bombs capable of killing things for hundreds of meters around their targets, and then blame the inevitable civilian deaths -- the Lebanese government says 600 civilians have been killed so far -- on "terrorists" who callously use the civilian infrastructure for protection.

But this claim is almost always false. My own reporting and that of other journalists reveals that in fact Hezbollah fighters -- as opposed to the much more numerous Hezbollah political members, and the vastly more numerous Hezbollah sympathizers -- avoid civilians. Much smarter and better trained than the PLO and Hamas fighters, they know that if they mingle with civilians, they will sooner or later be betrayed by collaborators -- as so many Palestinian militants have been.

For their part, the Israelis seem to think that if they keep pounding civilians, they'll get some fighters, too.

The Anglican Christian Bishop in Jerusalem gets blown off by American Christians. Pretty scathing letter from the Bishop:

.....Movement of residents of the West Bank is difficult or impossible as “security measures” are heightened to break the backs of the Palestinian people and cut them off from their place of work, schools, hospitals, and families. It is family and community that has sustained these people during these hopeless times. For some, it is all that they had, but that too has been taken away with the continued building of the wall and check points. The strategy of ethnic cleansing on the part of the State of Israel continues.

This week, war broke out on the Lebanon-Israeli border (near Banyas where Jesus gave St. Peter the keys to heaven and earth). The Israeli government’s disproportionate reaction to provocation was consistent with their opportunistic responses in which they destroy their perceived enemy.

In her recent article, “The Insane Brutality of the State of Israel,” American, Kathleen Christison, a former CIA analyst says, “The state lashes out in a crazed effort, lacking any sense of proportion, to reassure itself of its strength.” She continues, “A society that can brush off as unimportant an army officer’s brutal murder of a thirteen year old girl on the claim that she threatened soldiers at a military post (one of nearly seven hundred Palestinian children murdered by Israelis since the Intifada began) is not a society with a conscience.” The “situation” as it has come to be called, has deteriorated into a war without boundaries or limitations. It is a war with deadly potential beyond the imaginations of most civilized people.

As I write to you, I am preparing to leave with other bishops for Nablus with medical and other emergency supplies for five hundred families, and a pledge for one thousand families more. On Saturday we will attempt to enter Gaza with medical aid for doctors and nurses in our hospital there who struggle to serve the injured, the sick, and the dying.

My plan is that I will be able to go to Lebanon next week - where we are presently without a resident priest - to bury the dead, and comfort the victims of war. Perhaps as others have you will ask, “What can I do?” Certainly we encourage and appreciate your prayers. That is important, but it is not enough. If you find that you can no longer look away, take up your cross. It takes courage as we were promised.

Write every elected official you know. Write to your news media. Speak to your congregation, friends, and colleagues about injustice and the threat of global war. If Syria, Iran, the United States, Great Britain, China and others enter into this war - the consequence is incalculable. Participate in rallies and forums. Find ways that you and your churches can participate in humanitarian relief efforts for the region. Contact us and let us know if you stand with us. I urge you not to be like a disciple watching from afar.

2 Corinthians 6.11:
“We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians, our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return - I speak as to children - open wide your hearts also.”

Blackwater blowback: As I just mentioned, the incident with the Blackwater guys in Fallujah was a big deal – so big, it may have crashed the American war effort altogether.

Well that took a long time. I am done blogging for a while, at least a few days. Things are too horrible to leave my mind in this frame. It's the last Saturday in July, and here I am, presenting all this death and doom. I don't want to spend precious days doing stuff like this any more.

Lebanon war drags on: Mossad says Hezbollah can fight "for a long time to come"; Chinese furious about dead UN peacekeeper, new Hezbollah rocket reaches Afula

Mossad and IDF disagree over damage to Hezbollah
By Ze'ev Schiff and Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondents, and The Associated Press
Last update - 11:05 28/07/2006

The heads of two Israeli intelligence agencies disagree over how much the Israel Defense Forces assault has damaged Hezbollah, although both agree that the group has been weakened.

The Mossad intelligence agency says Hezbollah will be able to continue fighting at the current level for a long time to come, Mossad head Meir Dagan said.

However, Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin disagrees, seeing Hezbollah as having been severely damaged.

Both intelligence chiefs agree that Hezbollah remains capable of command and control and still holds long-range missiles in its arsenal, they said at a security cabinet meeting Thursday.

Yesterday there were protesters at Grand & Summit Avenues here in St. Paul. The first were a group of Jewish guys - Hassids I think. I stopped by to talk with them for a minute, but I didn't want to get confrontational. I mentioned how the Israeli government's decision-making process had been hasty, as reported in Haaretz (and noted here), the government hadn't actually looked at the possible consequences of its action. 'What about Hezbollah's process?' one replied. True enough. I wished them luck and was on my way. Later some peace protesters showed up across the street. I had no camera, but the photos would have been interesting.

That's the rough thing about it all. Everyday people in the middle of it get fucked over, injured and dead. Their societies are set back years as the belligerent groups get the upper hand, and the wheel keeps turning around and around.

It was Friday evening, the sun was setting, and soon it was Shabbas, one of the more perilous periods of reflection in some time. I can't say I would know what to do, what Israel's shrewd decision at this next turn ought to be. It is now clear to the directors of Israel's intelligence services that Hezbollah's ability to fire rockets into Israel is not going to be curtailed by military action anytime soon, and they are perfectly aware that Hezbollah's strategy is to bog Israel down in a very hot occupation as long as possible. If the Shiite organization survives (which it will, in one form or another) then they can claim their victory – a pyrrhic one, as always. Hezbollah has a new type of rocket with a range of around 90 kilometers that they launched at Afula.

Hezbollah unveils new rocket; UN official fears war will last into late August; Canada winds down evacuation from Lebanon
Jul. 29, 2006. 01:00 AM; KATHY GANNON - ASSOCIATED PRESS

NAQOURA, Lebanon—A top UN peacekeeping official said yesterday he feared the war in southern Lebanon would continue until late August and voiced fears Israel would flatten Lebanon's southern villages and destroy Tyre "neighbourhood by neighbourhood'' if Hezbollah rockets keep landing in the Jewish state.
At UN peacekeeping headquarters in Naqoura, barely a stone's throw from Israel, political affairs officer Ryszard Morczynski said Tyre would become a target of intense Israeli attacks because Hezbollah was firing rockets from the city's suburbs into Israel's northern port of Haifa.
Hezbollah boasted yesterday of a new kind of rocket it called the Khaibar-1 that it fired deeper inside Israel than the hundreds of others since the outbreak of fighting more than two weeks ago........
The guerrillas said they used the Khaibar-1 — named after the site of a historic battle between Islam's Prophet Muhammad and Jewish tribes in the Arabian peninsula — to strike the Israeli town of Afula.
"With this, the Islamic Resistance begins a new stage of fighting, challenge and confrontation with a strong determination and full belief in God's victory," Hezbollah said in a statement.
Five of the rockets crashed into empty fields outside Afula, causing no injuries. Still, Israel deployed a Patriot interceptor missile battery north of Tel Aviv, believing the area could be in range of Hezbollah's barrages.
Israel said the Khaibar-1 rockets were renamed, Iranian-made Fajr-5s. They have four times the power and range of Katyusha rockets, making them able to hit Tel Aviv's northern outskirts.
The United Nations decided to remove 50 observers from the Israeli-Lebanon border, locating them instead at better-protected posts with 2,000 lightly armed UN peacekeepers. The move comes days after Israeli bombs hit a UN observer station, killing three observers, while a fourth — Canadian Maj. Paeta Hess-von Kruedener — is missing and presumed dead.
About 12,500 Canadians have fled Lebanon, out of about 40,000 believed to be in the country, and Foreign Affairs officials said the evacuation effort is in its final phase. Ships ferrying Canadians out of Beirut yesterday and today were the last planned daily trips.

Grand Strategy or Lack Thereof: Beyond those battered few thousand meters of South Lebanon, there is the matter of Grand Strategy, the highest order of statecraft and international politics. The whole thing still looks like a Clean Break war. It's built on the same fanciful foundation as the war in Iraq. The true neo-conservatives launched the war in Iraq with a set of goals – among them was rebalancing the Middle East to make Israel and the United States the dominant or hegemonic powers. The major Neo-con strategy was to manipulate the balance of power between Sunnis and Shiites. Oddly, President Bush himself apparently didn't know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites when he invaded Iraq, according to some reports, so he didn't realize that his war would turn Iraq into an Iranian satellite state, and apparently his advisors didn't tell him. This is peculiar (video/source):

Oborne: I traveled to Boston to meet a former U.S. diplomat who had been a leading authority on Iraq for over a decade. A chance remark made just two months before the war, hinted at how the complexities of Iraq had bewildered Americans at the highest levels.
Peter Galbraith - former U.S. diplomat: January 2003 the President invited three members of the Iraqi opposition to join him to watch the Super Bowl. In the course of the conversation the Iraqis realized that the President was not aware that there was a difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. He looked at them and said, "You mean...they're not, you know, there, there's this difference. What is it about?"

....For the United States to launch a war where the president is not aware of this very fundamental difference between Sunni and Shiite Arabs is really stunning. It's a bit like the U.S. president intervening in Ireland and being unaware that there are two schools of Christianity - Catholics and Protestants.

Bush might have thought twice about invading, had he known that the majority religious Shiite parties are very, very much like Hezbollah. (the Neo-cons knew it: they thought it would be a great way to scare the hell out of Saudi Arabia).

Iraq's ruling Dawa Party: Hezbollah's Cousin: Right now, the Iraqi Dawa Party and Prime Minister Maliki support Hezbollah, infuriating Israel's supporters in Washington. It is obvious why they do. Dawa, one of the core Shiite parties now controlling (most of) Baghdad, and its government backed with so much American blood and treasure, well, those Dawa guys support Hezbollah over Israel. Dawa and Hezbollah are not "the same" but as political and religious movements, they are part of the same current, very close in their interests, and their work as Iranian allies. Dawa has a history of operating like a secret society, terrorist organization and mysterious influencer of events from the East, essentially. (the Hashshashin - the mythical Cult of the Assassins - were called al-da'wa al-jadīda - and seemed a bit similar) Dawa operated a secret connection to fellow Shiites through the worst of times in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere. They were tied right into the bloody 1991 Shiite rebellion in Iraq. Be sure to check out Juan Cole's background on Dawa here and here.

In 1980s Lebanon, branches of Dawa were part of the Shiite side of the civil war – and they wanted the West out of there. 200 million Americans are hearing every day that Hezbollah blew up the Marine Barracks. But the vast "Hezbollah" entity of today didn't exist at all then. Who blew up Western stuff all the time? Shiite "fanatics" linked to the Dawa Party. Hezbollah and Dawa are very hard groups of people, enmeshed deeply within the whole population.

As Juan Cole added:

February 11, 1984, Saturday: Trial Of Bomb Blast Defendants Opens
By ALY MAHMOUD (KUWAIT) - Associated Press

Twenty-one defendants accused of bombing the U.S. and French Embassies last December were formally arraigned today, as their trial began under extreme security.....

Five people were killed and 86 injured in the rash of bombings on Dec. 12. Besides the U.S. and French embassies, four Kuwaiti targets were bombed.

The prosecution has demanded the death penalty for 19 of the defendants. The others are believed to have played a lesser role in the bombings in and around the capital of this oil-rich Arab nation . . . Of the other defendants, 17 are Iraqis; two, Lebanese, three, Kuwaitis and two are stateless. Most of them said they belonged to Al-Dawa (Islamic Call) Party, an Iraqi movement of Shiite Moslem fanatics who are pro-Iranian, said court sources who asked not to be identified.

The Chinese are furious: The Israelis have bombed the hell out of UN positions in South Lebanon, killing 4 UN observers including a Chinese one, and the Chinese are furious about it, as well as America's actions in the UN to take the pressure off Israel. This was part of a strategy to get that pesky international community out of the way where it won't see Israeli atrocities. Fortunately for the Lebanese, their country isn't sealed off like the West Bank and Gaza, and even if American viewers don't see a lot of carnage, the rest of the world does.

It should be noted that China has many interests in Iran's oil and natural gas fields. If the crisis with Iran escalates, China will be directly involved, defending Iran.

Lebanese Refugee Tsunami: And of course, the Lebanese population is churning all over the place, tossed out of their homes, with results unknown. Chris Allbritton at Back-to-iraq.com is reporting on this situation, currently down in the battered Lebanese city of Tyre. This chaos will take a few more weeks to become fully realized by the world. These refugees will slosh around this hot, hot summer, and who knows where they'll end up? That alone is a huge, shocking problem that the Israelis have generated with an unreal, frightening vigor. I didn't expect this right now, especially from a dorky-looking non-general named Ehud Olmert.

Neo-cons expanding the war: For some of them (of course, Michael Ledeen type guys, obviously) goal was to spark a broader regional war, a great settling of scores, a Battle Royale from the Mediterranean, across the Levant, into Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia and Saudi Arabia. Whenever the crisis heightened, Ledeen said, "Faster Please," and there it went.

After the neo-conservatives' crappy war plan in Iraq shattered the country, I thought that would be the last massive war they'd be allowed to spark. I thought that the "realists" and experienced military people would sense that they were in too deep, and would reel things back. Clearly, I didn't give the neo-cons enough credit.

That's the spooky subtext to everything happening now. Israel has local interests in setting a deterrent on their northern border, while the United States has an interest in a stable Lebanon that isn't folded into some massive war. That's the reality, but to the Neo-cons and other lunatic hawks that yet again dominate our televisions, there's a vast illusion that Hezbollah can be made to evaporate like a saucer of water with a touch of strategic bombing, and HAMAS will topple after the U.S. sends a few letter bombs to Syria's president Assad. The Neo-cons still have a firm belief they have that demonstrations of force will make all these boisterous Arabs fold their cards. They see this as a golden opportunity to join Israel and American wars into one colossal mega-war... They always forget that Israel's enemies are not America's.

These guys don't understand fourth-generation warfare at all. They are trapped in a mindset of total war against enemy populations. They want to bomb away the enemy populations, rather than negotiate on shared interests. They view these enemies as an existential threat, rather than a threat to the interests of their state. And of course, these days all the hawks cannot even explain a difference between the interests of the United States and Israel.

The Prisoner's Dilemma: The jail is the heart of the state. (all this time we thought it was General Motors - but they're pretty much fucked)

Aside from the actual acts of the war, the presentation of this war to the Israeli and American publics is interesting. It revolves around the morality of negotiations, pure and simple. Is it moral to force Israel to negotiate with HAMAS and Hezbollah on the issue of their captured prisoners – and, as we never hear about, the thousands of Arab prisoners, including Lebanese, held by Israel. The morality of Israel's Arab prisoners is marked at "terrorist," and that is the end of an unspoken rule here in the United States.

Of course, the Bush Administration is facing its own prisoner crises, as their clever decision to quit the legal system altogether has produced a creepy shadow zone – of secret prisons that infuriate the Europeans, extraordinary renditions, torture: a vast, violent cancer in America's intelligence system.

Iraq's Abu Ghraib was a prisoner's dilemma as much as the Extremely Bloody Deal About Four Soldiers ripping up vast, unstable areas of the Middle East right now. In Iraq we have a matrix of private contractors who: develop "intelligence" by holding prisoners, interrogating them, running teams around, going out to on raids with U.S. troops. This kind of stuff is how those Blackwater mercenaries got hung from the bridge in Fallujah.

No less an authority than Janis Karpinski, the general blamed for Abu Ghraib, announced that Israelis had operated in Abu Ghraib, evidently as contractors. Regardless of how proper it is for "third-party nationals" to roam America's foreign (expanding!) military prisons, the matter of Iraqi prisoners is... salient, to say the least. It is obvious that the U.S. practice of rounding up lots of people and dumping them in places like Abu Ghraib is resonating with the Israeli prisoner issue.

Bomb your way out: And then there is the matter of tons upon tons of American bombs subtly being passed to Israel and blown up all over the place, pissing off British citizens. Subtle as... bombs all over the place, killing the "innocent" and the "guilty." It is eerie, to say the least, that the United States is propelling the conflict higher and higher, quite apart from Israel's actual interests.

Well, that's all for now. Check out this video of the ambassador to the Arab League on Lou Dobbs. He gives Lou the old-one-two, and Lou sucks. Glad I don't have CNN now.

Lebanese President claims Israel uses phosphorus chemical weapons; Gaza militants & Hezbollah look for ceasefire deals; Kurds VS Iran picks up!

Armies are criticized because the excess of power that they accumulate enables them to dictate steps of political significance during a time of crisis. In these situations, military contingency plans become the principal alternative available to the politicians, which is why they tend to accept the army's viewpoint. But this time we have before us a particularly extreme case. Not only was the military plan the only one, but the political leadership voluntarily relinquished its duty to discuss it thoroughly. This places political thinking, to which military thinking is supposed to be subordinate, in a particularly inferior situation.
A voluntary 'putsch' By Yagil Levy - Haaretz

"The enemy is deceiving its own people and the world by presenting the occupation of Maroun al-Ras as a great military achievement," a Hizbullah statement said. "An army using its elite forces and tanks backed by its air force that can enter a frontier village only after days of fighting ... is a defeated and useless army."

Lebanon Daily Star, July 24, 2006

Major diplomatic movement on all fronts as Israel finds itself in the middle of a sputtering yet shockingly ugly military campaign. However, Hezbollah has apparently said they will become an entirely defensive force if Israel vacates the small Shebaa Farms area, which is considered either part of Lebanon or Syria, depending on whose map you go with. (that link was pro-Israel, here's a Wikipedia one and one from Joshua Landis at SyriaComment.com) Blame this particular line in the sand on the French. Anyway... It's all up in the air, but it's clear that Israel's more fanciful goals have fallen flat, yet they may still get some sort of international armed force involved, but probably only if Hezbollah permits it.

Phosphorus chemical weapons used by Israel, alleges Lebanese Prime Minister, doctor on CNN: Story on RawStory, a segment on CNN placed on YouTube: Very graphic - actually showing injured, severely burned Arabs, which I thought had been banned on American television:

Reuters: Lebanon president says Israel uses phosphorous arms 24 July 14:16:57 GMT

There have been previous reports of white phosphorus chemical weapons use in Fallujah... The irony of these methods is not subtle. Naturally, when the regular weapons aren't getting it done, the dirty stuff becomes appealing...

Anti-Iranian war propaganda: The same shady Iranian neo-con guy, Amir Taheri, who made up the fake "yellow stars for Jews in Iran" story is now visiting the White House. It's guys like him that are grooming Bush, telling him what he wants to hear, playing the new Chalabis, expecting to stir up trouble, TPMmuckrakers report. It's Taheri's little cronies that are going to spoon-feed the damn corporate media with stories about WMD or whatever else to scare the shit out of America again, likely right before the election. This guy Taheri is in with Ledeen and the rest of them. Taheri proclaims:

"The mini war that is taking place between Israel and Hezbollah is, in fact, a proxy war in which Iran’s vision for the Middle East clashes with the administration in Washington."

And who's gonna play the proxy? Ahmed Chalabi Amir Taheri. The Iran propaganda spigot is on full until election day. Meanwhile...

How the Israeli military manipulated policy to start the war: As the kidnapping's fallout unfolded inside Israel, the top military echelon's off-the-shelf plans to bomb the shit out of Lebanon were quickly approved and put into execution, superseding any grand political process to evaluate the consequences and prepare alternative choices. Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Peretz, lacking a certain respect because they aren't generals but "civilians," deferred to the IDF's plans. This is not a portrait of a rational decision-making process:

Haaretz: A voluntary 'putsch' By Yagil Levy:

In Israeli historical memory, two incidents have been metaphorically defined as a military "putsch": the pressure applied by Israel Defense Forces generals on then prime minister Levi Eshkol to embark on the Six-Day War in 1967, and the "quiet putsch" as journalist Ofer Shelach termed the behavior of the army at the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Nevertheless, neither of these resembles the move that led to the start of "Lebanon War II."

On July 12, 2006, the Israeli government decided to bring about "a new order in Lebanon" by means of a massive military attack, which would cause the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah, or at least to remove it from the border with Israel and to deploy the Lebanese Army in its place. Like the expanded goals of "Lebanon War I," an attempt is being made here to reshape Lebanon's fragile political order by means of force.

In the history of the relationship between the political and military leaderships of Israel, the government has never made such a significant decision so quickly, operating in crisis mode just a few hours after the kidnapping of the soldiers. Under these circumstances, the military contingency plan was the main plan presented to the ministers, if not the only one. As absurd as it may sound, the government decision to embark on the Lebanon War I in 1982 was the result of a longer and more orderly decision-making process.

An expedited discussion in the cabinet does not enable an examination of non-military options - or, alternatively, a discussion of the full significance of a military operation and a positing of realistic political goals. The accelerated process did not enable the ministers to discuss the practicality of the demand to deploy the Lebanese Army, part of which is Shiite, along the border, as a force that is capable of imposing its authority on the independent Shiite militias that will remain after the dismantling of Hezbollah, if it is in fact dismantled.

It is doubtful whether the significance of the two possible results of the Israeli military blow - a change in the fragile inter-ethnic balance of power in Lebanon as a result of the disintegration of Hezbollah as the center of power that will not be replaced by another, or, alternatively, its success in surviving the attack - could be discussed in such a pressured time framework.

.......Armies are criticized because the excess of power that they accumulate enables them to dictate steps of political significance during a time of crisis. In these situations, military contingency plans become the principal alternative available to the politicians, which is why they tend to accept the army's viewpoint. But this time we have before us a particularly extreme case. Not only was the military plan the only one, but the political leadership voluntarily relinquished its duty to discuss it thoroughly. This places political thinking, to which military thinking is supposed to be subordinate, in a particularly inferior situation.

This inferiority stems, paradoxically, from the "civilian" label of the present leadership. The term "civilian" does not relate in this case only to the biography of the leaders, but to their political agenda as well - i.e., the convergence plan. A civilian leadership often tends to increase the army's freedom of operation, particularly when it operates in a cultural-political environment in which half of the voters favor the use of force to solve political problems. Under these circumstances, the civilian leadership needs the army as a political instrument for the purpose of implementing the civil agenda. After all, the "disengagement" plan was implemented thanks to the support of the army, and the same will be true of the convergence plan in the future.

This dependence makes it difficult for the political leadership to hold the army back in times of crisis - not to mention the fear of losing legitimacy by demonstrating "hesitancy" as compared to the determination of the army. Political leaders with a military past, or "hawkish" civilian leaders, have a greater ability to restrain the army in similar circumstances, as seen in the difference between former prime ministers Yitzhak Shamir (the Gulf War) and Benjamin Netanyahu (the Western Wall tunnel episode), on the one hand, and Moshe Sharett (the retaliatory operations), Levi Eshkol (the Six-Day War) and Shimon Peres (Operation Grapes of Wrath), on the other. Prime Minister Olmert now joins the second group.

Haaretz opinion: Stop now, immediately By Gideon Levy:

This war must be stopped now and immediately. From the start it was unnecessary, even if its excuse was justified, and now is the time to end it. Every day raises its price for no reason, taking a toll in blood that gives Israel nothing tangible in return. This is a good time to stop the war because both sides can claim they won: Israel harmed Hezbollah and Hezbollah harmed Israel. History shows that no situation is better for reaching an arrangement. Remember the lessons of the Yom Kippur War.

Israel went into the campaign on justified grounds and with foul means. It claims it has declared war on Hezbollah but, in practice, it is destroying Lebanon. It has gotten most of what it could have out of this war. The aerial "target bank" has mostly been covered. The air force could continue to sow destruction in the residential neighborhoods and empty offices and could also continue dropping dozens of tons of bombs on real or imagined bunkers and kill innocent Lebanese, but nothing good will come of it.

Those who want to restore Israel's deterrent capabilities have succeeded. Hezbollah and the rest of its enemies know that Israel reacts with enormous force to any provocation. South Lebanon is cleaner now of a Hezbollah presence. In any case, the organization is likely to return there, just as it is likely to rearm. An international agreement could be achieved now, and it won't be possible to achieve a better deal at a reasonable price in the future.

.......Now Israel is hoping for the elimination of Nasrallah. That's an atavistic impulse, even if understandable, which seeks the head of the enemy in order to prove our victory over him. There's no wisdom or practicality in it. Once again it is worth reminding ourselves of the dozens of people Israel assassinated in Lebanon and the territories, from Sheikh Abbas Mussawi to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, each replaced by someone new, usually more talented and dangerous than the predecessor. The goals of the war should not be dictated by dark impulses, even if they come in response to the wishes and demands of the mob. The only advantage that would benefit Israel from the elimination of Nasrallah would be that maybe it would bring about an end to the warring. But it can be halted even without that. The other desired goal, the return of the prisoners, will anyway only be achieved through negotiations to release prisoners. Israel could have done that before the war.

It is still too early to weigh out the balance of achievements and failures of this war. The day will come when it will become clear that it was purposeless, as are all wars of choice. Ceasing it now guarantees a limited achievement at a limited price. Continuing it guarantees a heavy price without any guarantee of a suitable reward. Therefore, Israel must cease and desist. The president of the United States can push us to continue the war all he wants, the prime minister of Britain can cheer us in parliament, but in Israel and Lebanon, the blood is being spilled, the horror is intensifying, the price is rising and it is all for naught.

Billmon is top notch these days, observing plates shifting throughout the Mideast in, as always, unlikely yet ugly ways: The All Against the All:

I've been waiting to see whether the Turks are going to flatter the Israelis by imitating their invasion of neighboring country -- Kurdistan, in this case. So far, there've been no official cross-border troop movements (although Turkish special forces have been operating inside Iraq since just after our cross-border troop movement, if not before.)

But today the Kurds accused the Iranians of intervening in their internal affairs, with a cross-border movement of artillery shells:

"A senior Iraqi-Kurdish official accused Iranian forces on Thursday of shelling Kurdish guerrillas in northern Iraq.
"Othman Mahmoud, interior minister of the Kurdish regional government in the north, said shelling was going on along the border about 170 km (105 miles) north of the city of Sulaimaniya....."

......So many hatreds, so little time!

Let's see. We've got: Israeli Jews fighting Lebanese Shi'a and Palestinian Sunnis; Palestinian Fatah militants who've stopped fighting Hamas militants, but only because they're both fighting the Israelis; Saudi Sunni fundamentalists issuing fatwas against Hezbollah Shi'a fundamentalists; Egyptian Sunni fundamentalists backing those same Hezbollah Shi'a fundamentalists; Iraqi Sunnis killing Iraqi Shi'a and vice versa; Iraqi Shi'a (the Mahdi Army) jousting with Iraqi Shi'a (the Badr Brigade); Iraqi Kurds trying to push Sunni Arabs and both Sunni and Shi'a Turkomen out of Kirkuk; Turks threatening to invade Kurdistan; Iranians allegedly shelling Kurdistan, Syrian Kurds rebelling against Syrian Allawites who are despised by Syria's Sunni majority but allied with the Lebanese Shi'a who are hated and feared by the House of Saud and its Sunni fundamentalist minions. Oh, and American and Israeli neocons threatening to bomb both Syria and Iran......

......There is a passage in Kanan Makiya's book Republic of Fear that has haunted me ever since I read it. I've quoted it before to explain why I expected nothing but horror from the "liberation" of Iraq. It describes what happened in the summer of 1959 in the city of Mosul (a patchwork of ethnic, religious, tribal and class distinctions, then and now):

"For four days and four nights Kurds and Yezdis stood against Arabs; Assyrian and Aramean Christians against Arab Moslems; the Arab tribe of Albu Mutaiwat against the Arab tribe of Shammar; the Kurdish tribe of al-Gargariyyah against Arab Albu Mutaiwat; the peasants of the Mosul country against their landlords; the soldiers of the Fifth Brigade against their officers; the periphery of the city of Mosul against the center; the plebians of the Arab quarters of Al-Makkawi and Wadi Hajar against the aristocrats of the Arab quarter of ad-Dawwash; and within the quarter of Bab al-Baid, the family of al-Rajabu aggainst its traditional rivals, the Aghawat. It seemed as if all social cement dissolved and all political authority vanished."

Did you get that?? You better...

You also might be interested on Antiwar.com: July 25: Syria Emerges Front and Center by Pat Buchanan and Israel Is Winning the Battle, but Not the War by Ivan Eland.

July 25: Haaretz: ANALYSIS: The road to peace runs through Shaba Farms By Zvi Bar'el

The Lebanese government is pleased with itself, and Syria, too, has reasons to smile. As the fighting continues, Lebanese government officials are coming up with new definitions for what is known as "the complete arrangement," the one that is supposed to replace the arrangement that existed before July 12.

And so July 12 is joining the long line of historical dates that mark the stages of Lebanon's "new" independence just like February 14, the date of Rafik Hariri's assassination in 2005; or May 25, the date of the Israel Defense Forces withdrawal from Lebanon.

Saturday saw another development in the status of Fuad Siniora's government versus the strength of Hezbollah. After the government received "a franchise" to enter into negotiations on a prisoner-exchange deal, Energy Minister Mohammed Fneish, a Hezbollah representative, announced that once the IDF withdrew from the Shaba Farms area, Hezbollah's role as a "liberating" army would be over, and it would stick to a purely a defensive role.

This is a very significant statement, because it begins to define the conditions for Hezbollah's disarmament.

The government of Lebanon, Hezbollah, the United States, France and the United Nations have all realized now that the key to achieving a long-term and sustainable cease-fire by means of the deployment of the Lebanese Army in the south lies in a resolution to the Shaba Farms dispute.

At this stage, however, it is not enough for only Hezbollah and the Lebanese government to agree that the return of the Shaba Farms area would spell an end to the movement's "liberating" role. Syria is no less an important player in this regard. In keeping with maps approved by the UN, the Shaba Farms area lies in Syrian territory, so an official document in which Damascus relinquishes the area would be required too. For years now, Damascus has refused to provide such a document.

Will Syria agree to grant one now? An agreement to this end may be reached later in the week, when Syria learns both that it is the only one standing in the way of a settlement, and more importantly, according to Lebanese sources, that Washington is likely to offer Damascus a generous benefits package and a warm return to the "family of nations."

The next stage would have to be securing Israel's consent to withdraw from the Shaba Farms area, as this would then be a withdrawal from Lebanese territory; and only then could the Lebanese Army take up positions in the south, perhaps with the assistance of a multinational force if Hezbollah gives its okay.

The Lebanon Daily Star is a badass paper, no doubt.

Hizbullah gives government negotiation power
Daily Star staff: By Nada Bakri and Mohammed Zaatari
Monday, July 24, 2006

BEIRUT/SIDON: Israeli warplanes continued their bombardment of Lebanon on Sunday, killing at least eight and wounding 45, as Hizbullah gave the Lebanese government the green light to negotiate on its behalf for a prisoner swap with Israel. Any swap would include the two Israeli soldiers captured by Hizbullah in a cross-border raid on July 12, and Lebanese and Arab prisoners in Israeli jails.

"The Lebanese government will lead the exchange through the intermediary of a third party. This has been accepted by Hizbullah," Speaker Nabih Berri said Sunday.

It was not immediately known who the third party would be. Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said Sunday that the two Israeli soldiers were "in good health" and called on "the United Nations or any third friendly party to engage in discussions of a prisoners' exchange."

"Germany has played an important and prominent role between Lebanon and Israel in the past, and it can play a similar role now," Salloukh said after a meeting with Peter Witteg, the head of international affairs at Germany's Foreign Ministry.

Meanwhile the Israeli offensive continued for the 12th straight day, bringing the overall death toll to at least 380 with over 1,000 wounded, according to Lebanese authorities.

A Lebanese press photographer, Layal Najib, 23, was also killed when an Israeli missile struck near her car on the road between the villages of Qana and Siddiqine. Najib worked at Al-Jaras (The Bell) magazine and was also a freelance photographer for AFP and several other news outlets.

Israel on Saturday attacked telecommunications installations in the North of Lebanon, killing a technician with the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation, Suleiman Chidiac, and wounding two others. The station's signal was cut in several areas across the country. The destroyed relay stations were used by TeleLiban, LBCI and Future TV, and several radio stations.

Israeli air strikes also hit a mini-bus carrying 16 people fleeing the village of Tairi as it worked its way through the mountains from the Southern port city of Tyre.

A missile hit the bus near the village of Yaatar, killing three and wounding the rest of the passengers, who were taken to hospitals in Tyre. The Israeli military had told residents of Tairi and 12 other nearby villages Saturday to evacuate by 7 p.m. The villages form a corridor about 6 kilometers wide and 18 kilometers deep, believed to be the "buffer zone" desired by Israel.

At least four other people were killed by Israeli strikes in the South, Lebanese television reported, but the deaths could not be confirmed. Some 45 people were wounded in Israeli air raids that targeted villages and towns around Tyre on Sunday, security and hospital officials said.

Israeli warplanes also targeted Hizbullah strongholds in the southern suburbs of Beirut.

On Sunday, Israel hit the Southern port city of Sidon for the first time, destroying a religious complex linked to Hizbullah and wounding four people. More than 5,000 people have sought refuge in the city from other Southern villages. Four people were wounded in the strike. Israel also targeted Hizbullah's power base in the Bekaa Valley, hitting three factories, a house and bridges and roads. The air strikes ignited large fires, killed at least one civilian and wounded two others.

Three rescuers from the Civil Defense personnel of the Islamic Scout Mission, an association affiliated with the Amal Movement, were wounded after Israeli air raids struck their ambulance as it transported wounded civilians to nearby hospitals, according to Hassan Hamdan, the association's official in the South. "After the rescuers succeeded in crossing the fields and arrived in Bourj Rahal, Israeli warplanes launched missiles, leaving three of them wounded," he added.

Israeli troops continued to hold a Lebanese border village that they battled their way into the day before, but did not appear to be advancing, Lebanese security officials said. But warplanes and artillery were battering areas across the South. Hizbullah confirmed on Sunday that Israeli forces had occupied a key Lebanese frontier village and said three of its fighters had been killed there.

"The enemy is deceiving its own people and the world by presenting the occupation of Maroun al-Ras as a great military achievement," a Hizbullah statement said. "An army using its elite forces and tanks backed by its air force that can enter a frontier village only after days of fighting ... is a defeated and useless army."

"Our steadfast fighters have presented through the Maroun al-Ras confrontations and the losses of the enemy - in troops, tanks and helicopters - an example of what the confrontations will be in every town, village and position," it said. A spokesman for UN peacekeepers stationed along the Blue Line between Lebanon and Israel confirmed for AFP the Israeli advance. "Israeli troops and tanks are now inside Maroun al-Ras," said UNIFIL adviser Milos Strugar.

In the latest salvo into Israel, Hizbullah launched rocket attacks across northern Israel, including Haifa. Some of the rockets slammed into a house, an apartment building and a major road, killing at least two people, Israeli police said.

With the attacks Sunday, a total of 17 civilians have been killed by Hizbullah rockets over the past 12 days and 19 Israeli soldiers in fighting in Lebanon. - With agencies

Meanwhile, in Gaza a prisoner deal may be afoot as well. Perhaps the realists around the world's governments are actually motivated to help put something together before the neo-cons start armageddon.
Haaretz: IDF artillery shelling kills 2 children, 4 others in northern Gaza Strip

Gaza groups ready to deal on cease-fire, release of Shalit
Last update - 05:36 25/07/2006 By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent

All groups in Gaza, including Hamas, would now accept a cease-fire deal with Israel which would include releasing Gilad Shalit, according to the Palestinian Agriculture Minister, who also heads the coordinating committee of Palestinian organizations there.

Ibrahim Al-Naja said the factions were ready to stop the Qassam rocket fire if Israel's ceased all military moves against the Palestinian factions in Gaza. They are also ready to release Shalit in exchange for guaranteeing the future release of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas leaders did not confirm this report on Monday, but if it is true, then this is the first time that Hamas has indicated its acceptance of the Egyptian proposal to solve the crisis.

Egypt's proposal did not include an Israeli commitment to the immediate release of Palestinian prisoners, only guarantees for their future release. Al-Naja said the Palestinian faction's conditions were that the cease-fire would be mutual and Israel would stop all its actions against the Palestinians.

He also said Israel must provide clear guarantees to free veteran prisoners, minors and female prisoners incarcerated in Israel. "This initiative was presented in an attempt to alleviate Palestinian suffering, but now it depends on Israel, which is showing no indication yet of its willingness for a cease-fire," he said.

PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas will present the understandings among the Palestinian factions to U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at their meeting on Tuesday, Palestinian sources said.

It looks like, well, everyone is refactoring... Tuesday's gonna be interesting.

Air Power strategies don't really work

In any event, the present IDF effort to "cleanse" the south of guerrillas by fire will fail. The IAF and its associated heavy artillery simply lacks the weight of fire needed to drive this enemy from its prepared positions in the stony ground of South Lebanon.
Col. Pat Lang (retired) - former top Middle East guy at the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency

We'll have a little more later from Haaretz about how, from the start of this war, the Israeli military establishment, led by Dan Halutz (pictured, thanks Wikipedia), basically cut off Israel's political options, dumped the blitzkreig plan on the heads of Olmert and Defense Minister Peretz, who, in turn, needed to 'look tough' to them... but first, the problem with Air Power.

Bombing the shit out of people can produce a good tactical situation sometimes, but as a military strategy it only makes sense if it's backed up with appropriate ground forces, and since war is an extension of politics by other means, a political strategy. The problem is that the U.S. Air Force strategic thinking that produced the carpet bombing of Vietnam is at work again in the halls of the Israeli Defense Force headquarters.

This way of thinking believes that dropping enough bombs is enough to evaporate enemy will. There is supposed to be a folding of the enemy's hand, since booms from the sky are sort of perceived like God's unavoidable vengeance, or something.

Donald Rumsfeld suffers from this badly – he was an Air Force boy, he never had to get neck deep in the Vietnamese mud. After Vietnam the U.S. Army had to rebuild its whole doctrine to never get bogged down on land like that again. The Air Force, on the other hand, thought it kicked a lot of ass in Vietnam, since you can make a metric out of identified targets destroyed. This, of course, leaves out the part where the surviving people on the ground are still willing to die fighting you, and they will still be able to get guns from somewhere and mess up your political agenda.

It is also plainly obvious that "shock and awe" was supposed to cause Iraqi will to evaporate from the beginning, and it didn't. Now, sadly, the chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Force is an Israeli Air Force propeller-head who never had to slog around and get sniped at around Ramallah, Nablus or Gaza.

Instead, like Rummy, he thinks he can bomb his way through. And this never really takes care of the problem. Now, the Israeli ground forces are flailing around in far too small of numbers, barely able to get a few hundred yards into Lebanon, and shitloads of airstrikes all over the hapless Lebanese North are supposed to prove the brilliance of this strategy?

Mark my words, the people of this world will have some kind of reckoning with the use of air forces once the dust settles on this round of shit. Killing civilians by the dozen from planes is equal in morality to killing them with suicide bombers. You can say the policy is better or worse in its goals, but in death, the morality of the act has the same balance. Innocent blood remains so, even when spilled from a flying object.

So we will add these words from an old hand in America's intelligence community, Pat Lang.

Now, I "get it."
Dan Halutz is the first IDF chief of staff who is not a soldier. He is a military aviator. I had missed that, but a statement attributed to a "senior officer" of the IDF in a New York Times story today caused me to look at IDF leadership. The "scales" have fallen from my eyes. "I believe in AIR POWER," the officer told the Times and Halutz is likely to be the officer who was interviewed

He has no ground forces experience at all. He reminds me a bit of Rumsfeld, the one time naval aviator and opponent of the use of sizable ground forces. Like Rumsfeld he is a proponent of "modern" warfare, gee-whiz techno- equipment and disdainful of big, heavy armored forces. He has re-organized the armed forces so that the ground forces no longer report directly to him.

Someone will say that Chaim Laskov had been head of the Israel Air Force (IAF) before becoming chief of staff in the early '50s. This is essentially irrelevant as a comparative situation. Laskov was not a pilot and was a ground force commander and a founder of the IDF Armored Corps before he became head of the air force.

Halutz is an ally of right wing political forces in Israel and an extreme proponent of the "Air Power" ideology that has been an active force in military affairs ever since it was enunciated by the Italian fascist Giulio Douhet in the '20s. The doctrine was taken up by Hugh Trenchard in Britain, Mitchell in the U.S., and the pre-war 2 German Luftwaffe. It persists in many air forces today.

The "Air Power" ideology in its purest form holds that ground forces have largely been made obsolete and useless by the invention and development of aircraft and other air delivered weapons, missiles, etc. "Air Power" theorists believe that this is true at the tactical, operational and strategic levels.

In Lebanon the IDF appears to be following a strategy at all levels that is entirely dictated by "Air Power" theory.

At the tactical and operational levels of war, Israel seems to be intent on destroying Hizballah south of the Litani River and north of Metulla to some unknown depth. Thus far, just about all the attacks against Hizballah have been made by air weapons and artillery. These weapons are inherently indiscriminate in their application, especially in the hands of "Air Power" theorists who typically want to "make the rubble bounce." This is especially true if the aforesaid airplane enthusiasts see that their theories are not yielding the desired result. If you still believe in "surgical strikes," look at the pictures from Lebanon. The IAF is "leafleting" all of south Lebanon urging citizens to leave their homes and flee northward. They appear to be intent on "herding the cats" away from their border through the use of aerial firepower. They know that Hizballah is a LEBANESE Shia guerrilla army with its roots in the Shia portion of the Lebanese population. Most of the people of the south are Shia, and the IDF knows that if they remain where they are they will support the Hizballah guerrillas both now and in the future. Indeed, the guerrillas, are, in many cases, villagers from this area. In any event, the present IDF effort to "cleanse" the south of guerrillas by fire will fail. The IAF and its associated heavy artillery simply lacks the weight of fire needed to drive this enemy from its prepared positions in the stony ground of South Lebanon. The actual ground maneuver attempted thus far is a joke and typical of the role imagined by "Air Power" advocates for ground forces. "Maroun al-Ras" is a tiny village less than a mile from the Israeli border, and no amount of fancy graphics on TV "gushed" over by retired generals can alter the fact that its capture is an insignificant achievement that has had and will have no effect on the amount of fire going into northern Israel.

At the strategic level, the IDF under Halutz is following classic "Air Power" theory which holds that crushing the "Will of the People" is the correct objective in compelling the acceptance of one's own "will" by an adversary or neutral. With that objective in mind, all of the target country is considered to be one, giant target set. Industry, ports, bridges, hospitals, roads, you name it. It is all "fair game." In this case the notion is to force the Lebanese government and army to accept a role as the northern jaw in a vise that will crush Hizballah and subsequently to hold south Lebanon against Hizballah. Since Lebanon is a melange of ethnic and religious communities of which Shia LEBANESE are a major element and since many Lebanese Shia are supporters of Hizballah, the prospect of getting the Lebanese government to do this is "nil." As for the Lebanese Army, the US attempted for two years (1982-84) to re-structure and re-train the Lebanese Army to make it a "national" non-sectarian force only to learn when this army was committed to battle in 1984 against Druze and Christian forces, that it simply fell apart. The US then abandoned the effort. Nothing much has changed in Lebanon since then.

Bottom Lines:

-Air Power and artillery will not decisively defeat Hizballah or force it to withdraw from rocket range of Israel.

-The Lebanese government and army are not what the Israelis have once again dreamt of and they should have known that. The policy that Israel is following is truly a triumph of hope over experience.

-An international force that will fight Hizballah in the south to disarm it is a pipe dream. Who will do that? The only realistic candidate would be France in terms of military capacity. This would be a major irony of history.

Bottom Line Advice for Israel: Occupy the ground or expect to suffer the effects of failure.

Seems sort of obvious, doesn't it?

Israel is "proper fucked": Strategically, there is no way this can work

Pre-1982 war ethnic layout of Lebanon: What could go wrong?

(Via the sweet UTexas map collection)

There is a sense that this is finally the Clean Break scenario happening, but there is one more problem yet to be un-tethered from order into chaos. What happens when the chaos spills into Syria? As Stratfor notes, the Israelis are 'terrified' of any regime after Bashar Assad, since it would be made of A) rebellious Kurds - who are somewhat friendly, if not allied, to Israel. B) Sunni tribes branching down into Iraq, into Anbar province and beyond, deep into the Iraqi insurgency. C) Small religious minorities like Alawites, Christians, Druze and Armenians D) A pretty good number of Palestinians. That is not a good situation for Israel, and they probably won't try to topple Assad's government. But someone else might. (Kurdish map from here, the Vladimir-Kurdistan blog)

A couple bits from Stratfor to post. They don't want people reposting their special report alerts, so I will make do with excerpts. They have a pretty close view of what the thinking is inside the Israeli military.

Basically, Stratfor makes it clear that their view is that Hezbollah's strategy is to fight until the bitter end, trapping Israel in a very high-intensity occupation and 'counter insurgency' situation, but Hezbollah has the kind of advanced anti-ship, surface-to-surface, anti-tank and anti-personnel missiles (from Iran, who knows where else? China? Russians?) to make the Israeli mission an impossible weight, far beyond what the Palestinian militant groups could achieve on their own.

So Stratfor has a pretty intricate description of what the Israelis think they can accomplish. However, if I were playing this situation in a video game like, say "Command and Conquer: Generals", the Bekaa Valley with hundreds, if not thousands, of hidden Hezbollah rockets is the last place anyone sane would want to go.

The neo-cons often harbor fantasies about breaking up ethnically diverse states like Iran and Syria, then attempting to create dominating power relationships with the US and Israel at the top, and the various bickering ethnic groups below, set against each other in high British colonial style. The Baluchis and Azeris are two that neocons are known to court in Iran, and look what has happened in Iraq. Anyone who tries to stop them is another 'terrorist,' usually a 'fascist' to boot.

This is like what Ariel Sharon thought he could engineer in Lebanon in 1982, putting the Christian Phalangists on top in a bloody civil war, crushing the Shia and other sects supported by Syria and Iran, as well as the PLO. While occupying Lebanon, Israel managed to kick the PLO out to Tunisia, which bought more time to throw settlement colonies into the West Bank. As the occupation dragged on, the Iranians helped band the Shia in southern Lebanon together under Hezbollah, and they organized a guerrilla war of attrition to force Israel to withdraw in 2000. This was a prime example of 'fourth-generation warfare,' and it now appears that the 'warfare' part of that equation is back in full force again.

Yet absorbing more of the West Bank is clearly where Israel's real interests lie: (wikipedia)

Epoch Times: Israeli acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (Center-L), his Defence Minister Shaul Mofaz (2nd-R) and former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres (R) gather together in front of a map as they visit March 14, 2006 the Israeli west bank town of Ariel. (Pavel Wolberg-Pool/Getty Images)

Apart from the sheer bloodiness and hellish horror of such an 'ethnic re-engineering', which disgusts me deeply, setting that aside, the strategy doesn't fucking work. The basic concept in Revisionist Zionism – and now, obviously the Bush doctrine – that more bombs will inspire surrender and obedience has failed every time. Hezbollah is well-prepped for the current Israeli strategy – they know how the airstrikes work, they know from experience how Israeli intelligence has tried to catch them in this area. Most of all, they know they won straight up last time, and this time, the Israelis have better technology, but Hezbollah sure does too. They can keep falling back farther north, while still tossing long-range rockets into Haifa, and resisting all the Israelis' brutal methods by folding the organization into thousands of unstoppable, independent, rocket-bearing cells, or teams of about three, surrounded by a radicalized populace. Far better terrain for the guerrilla than the occupier, in 4GW terms.

Another point is that Israel and the United States (who obviously planned this all in tandem - hence, more U.S.-manufactured bombs on their way today to Israeli planes, Lebanese craters and Arab blood generally) have grossly underestimated the quality of Hezbollah's arsenal. This was a classic, grievous mistake on the order of Israel's foolish idea in 1973 that the Arabs were far too weak to attack – then came the Yom Kippur war.

Believing your enemies too weak and too strong, simultaneously, is a key marker of Fascist thinking.

Listen carefully to what Stratfor is saying: you can sense a waning confidence that Hezbollah could be 'eliminated' tactically, no matter how many bombs are dropped. Also, note the lack of brakes on the situation: Israel doesn't want Syria's government to fall, even while attacking the nearby Bekaa Valley. However, if, say, Al Qaeda or the Muslim Brotherhood happened to have a little luck with assassinations, anarchy across the Levant, all the way to Iran, Afghanistan, would be certain. That would not be in the interests of Israel, the United States, Iran, the EU, Turkey (especially!) or any other states.

It would be just another winning round for Al Qaeda, whose record so far in 'sharpening contradictions,' erasing stability to create 'the base', seems to be on a winning tack. The vast numbers of refugees generated in the last few days (hours!) will also help Al Qaeda style militants find converts among South Lebanon's "New Palestinians" of the 21st century. Another well thought out strategy from Washington.

Also note in particular the loss of Israeli initiative. From Sun Tzu to Clausewitz, a key aspect of warfare, especially 4GW, is retaining the initiative (PDF) – staying on the move, massing up & picking battles – but Hezbollah's dispersed, long-range nature has taken Israel's initiative apart. Israel will fight where and when Hezbollah wants them to, in a sense. Yesterday at noon from Stratfor I got:

Red Alert: The Battle Joined
The ground war has begun. Several Israeli brigades now appear to be operating between the Lebanese border and the Litani River. According to reports, Hezbollah forces are dispersed in multiple bunker complexes and are launching rockets from these and other locations.

Hezbollah's strategy appears to be threefold. First, force Israel into costly attacks against prepared fortifications. Second, draw Israeli troops as deeply into Lebanon as possible, forcing them to fight on extended supply lines. Third, move into an Iraqi-style insurgency from which Israel -- out of fear of a resumption of rocket attacks -- cannot withdraw, but which the Israelis also cannot endure because of extended long-term casualties. This appears to have been a carefully planned strategy, built around a threat to Israeli cities that Israel can't afford. The war has begun at Hezbollah's time and choosing.

Israel is caught between three strategic imperatives. First, it must end the threat to Israeli cities, which must involve the destruction of Hezbollah's launch capabilities south of the Litani River. Second, it must try to destroy Hezbollah's infrastructure, which means it must move into the Bekaa Valley and as far as the southern suburbs of Beirut. Third, it must do so in such a way that it is not dragged into a long-term, unsustainable occupation against a capable insurgency.

Hezbollah has implemented its strategy by turning southern Lebanon into a military stronghold, consisting of well-designed bunkers that serve both as fire bases and launch facilities for rockets. The militants appear to be armed with anti-tank weapons and probably anti-aircraft weapons, some of which appear to be of American origin, raising the question of how they were acquired. Hezbollah wants to draw Israel into protracted fighting in this area in order to inflict maximum casualties and to change the psychological equation for both military and political reasons.

Israelis historically do not like to fight positional warfare. Their tendency has been to bypass fortified areas, pushing the fight to the rear in order to disrupt logistics, isolate fortifications and wait for capitulation. This has worked in the past. It is not clear that it will work here. The great unknown is the resilience of Hezbollah's fighters. To this point, there is no reason to doubt it. Israel could be fighting the most resilient and well-motivated opposition force in its history. But the truth is that neither Israel nor Hezbollah really knows what performance will be like under pressure.

Simply occupying the border-Litani area will not achieve any of Israel's strategic goals. Hezbollah still would be able to use rockets against Israel. And even if, for Hezbollah, this area is lost, its capabilities in the Bekaa Valley and southern Beirut will remain intact. Therefore, a battle that focuses solely on the south is not an option for Israel, unless the Israelis feel a defeat here will sap Hezbollah's will to resist. We doubt this to be the case.

The key to the campaign is to understand that Hezbollah has made its strategic decisions. It will not be fighting a mobile war. Israel has lost the strategic initiative: It must fight when Hezbollah has chosen and deal with Hezbollah's challenge. However, given this, Israel does have an operational choice. It can move in a sequential fashion, dealing first with southern Lebanon and then with other issues. It can bypass southern Lebanon and move into the rear areas, returning to southern Lebanon when it is ready. It can attempt to deal with southern Lebanon in detail, while mounting mobile operations in the Bekaa Valley, in the coastal regions and toward south Beirut, or both at the same time.

There are resource and logistical issues involved. Moving simultaneously on all three fronts will put substantial strains on Israel's logistical capability. An encirclement westward on the north side of the Litani, followed by a move toward Beirut while the southern side of the Litani is not secured, poses a serious challenge in re-supply. Moving into the Bekaa means leaving a flank open to the Syrians. We doubt Syria will hit that flank, but then, we don't have to live with the consequences of an intelligence failure. Israel will be sending a lot of force on that line if it chooses that method. Again, since many roads in south Lebanon will not be secure, that limits logistics. [Get ready for this one, it's been key in Iraq -Dan]

Israel is caught on the horns of a dilemma. Hezbollah has created a situation in which Israel must fight the kind of war it likes the least -- attritional, tactical operations against prepared forces -- or go to the war it prefers, mobile operations, with logistical constraints that make these operations more difficult and dangerous. Moreover, if it does this, it increases the time during which Israeli cities remain under threat. Given clear failures in appreciating Hezbollah's capabilities, Israel must take seriously the possibility that Hezbollah has longer-ranged, anti-personnel rockets that it will use while under attack.

Israel has been trying to break the back of Hezbollah resistance in the south through air attack, special operations and probing attacks. This clearly hasn't worked thus far. That does not mean it won't work, as Israel applies more force to the problem and starts to master the architecture of Hezbollah's tactical and operational structure; however, Israel can't count on a rapid resolution of that problem.
........
An extended engagement in southern Lebanon is the least likely path, in our opinion. More likely -- and this is a guess -- is a five-part strategy:

1. Insert airmobile and airborne forces north of the Litani to seal the rear of Hezbollah forces in southern Lebanon. Apply air power and engineering forces to reduce the fortifications, and infantry to attack forces not in fortified positions. Bottle them up, and systematically reduce the force with limited exposure to the attackers.

2. Secure roads along the eastern flank for an armored thrust deep into the Bekaa Valley to engage the main Hezbollah force and infrastructure there. This would involve a move from Qiryat Shimona north into the Bekaa, bypassing the Litani to the west, and would probably require sending airmobile and special forces to secure the high ground. It also would leave the right flank exposed to Syria.

3. Use air power and special forces to undermine Hezbollah capabilities in the southern Beirut area. The Israelis would consider a move into this area after roads through southern Lebanon are cleared and Bekaa relatively secured, moving into the area, only if absolutely necessary, on two axes of attack.

4. Having defeated Hezbollah in detail, withdraw under a political settlement shifting defense responsibility to the Lebanese government.

5. Do all of this while the United States is still able to provide top cover against diplomatic initiatives that will create an increasingly difficult international environment.

In my view, this is the part where Israel is "proper fucked." Maybe only one of these will actually work, at best:

There can be many variations on this theme, but these elements are inevitable:

1. Hezbollah cannot be defeated without entering the Bekaa Valley, at the very least.
2. At some point, resistance in southern Lebanon must be dealt with, regardless of the cost.
3. Rocket attacks against northern Israel and even Tel Aviv must be accepted while the campaign unfolds.
4. The real challenge will come when Israel tries to withdraw.

No. 4 is the real challenge. Destruction of Hezbollah's infrastructure does not mean annihilation of the force. If Israel withdraws, Hezbollah or a successor organization will regroup. If Israel remains, it can wind up in the position the United States is in Iraq. This is exactly what Hezbollah wants. So, Israel can buy time, or Israel can occupy and pay the cost. One or the other.
[..........]

Hezbollah has dealt Israel a difficult hand. It has thought through the battle problem as well as the political dimension carefully. Somewhere in this, there has been either an Israeli intelligence failure or a political failure to listen to intelligence. Hezbollah's capabilities have posed a problem for Israel that allowed Hezbollah to start a war at a time and in a way of its choosing. The inquest will come later in Israel. And Hezbollah will likely be shattered regardless of its planning. The correlation of forces does not favor it. But if it forces Israel not only to defeat its main force but also to occupy, Hezbollah will have achieved its goals.

Sounds like Israel has blundered into a pretty ugly situation, if not an outright trap. Apart from the moral horror of injecting Israel into a giant war, killing hundreds of civilians, there is the more cold horror that it's not even going to fulfill the outwardly proclaimed goals.

Unless the goal is simply to escalate the region into a huge war, causing panicked Americans to rally round the flag again.

The problem is that once Israel has a really bad stalemate on its hands, the neo-cons will 'flight forward' from the crisis, escalating like Nazis going into Russia. And that means a war with Iran. In all likelihood, we will soon see all the theatrical staged shit like WMDs in Iran, and perhaps some false flag terror attacks will drive things into a frenzy, apart from the brinkmanship of guys like Iran's Ahmedinejad. I can't believe I'm saying this kind of shit these days, but hey, look where we are.

Unless, of course, more sane elements in the U.S. and elsewhere can intervene.

This, by the way, is the basic shape of your "October Surprise" intended to get people to vote Republican this fall. There will be plenty of well-packaged sequels until November, but we can basically see now that Clean Break is the 2006 Congressional Campaign Roadmap, and the Democrats ought to fucking act to put the brakes on and articulate an alternative, NOW.

Clean Break comes to life: Escalation Options: Ledeen hooking up Iranian elements w/ guns? This was all a neo-con conspiracy from the get-go

I just noted how the neoconservative Clean Break strategy appears to have been put into action. It offered a plan for Israel to "roll back" Syria with a massive war in Lebanon, theoretically giving the Israelis hegemony and an ability to dictate terms to the Arabs. The problem is that it's a dumb plan that won't fucking work, but they are going to kill hundreds (thousands?) more to keep trying it. Also word comes that Michael Ledeen is prepping the Iran war in a hardcore kind of way right now while trumpeting "World War IV."

Now that arch "conspiracy theorist" Wayne Madsen is saying that Ledeen is preparing to help Iranian dissidents plant WMDs inside Iran, to provide a staged "discovery" soon, thus providing a pretext for the U.S. to attack Iran. Once upon a time, of course, I met the man, and I wrote in the Mac Weekly:

I asked why the Iranians would bomb Jerusalem if it would kill so many Muslims. He said that the Iranians murderously hate Arabs and kill them all the time. In fact, he said, the Iranians are killing “hundreds” of Arabs in Iraq today, sending in money and munitions.

His scheme to free Iran was to supply the opposition with the tools to destabilize the regime, “but not a single bullet.” I have a hard time believing he could resist arming the Iranian opposition. In fact, many say that the Pentagon, administered by Ledeen’s allies, has courted a weird, cultish anti-regime Iranian guerilla group based in eastern Iraq called the Mujahideen al-Khalq. If Bush wins, it’s quite unlikely that the neo-cons will be able to resist using forces like these to harass Tehran, but we have no idea what sort of reaction this would provoke from the highly mobilized, nationalist Iranians.

And this appears to be exactly what is happening now. The odd thing about the following clips from Madsen's site is that these are exactly what we would have expected to hear a few years ago - that is, the old-school Neo-con conspiracy for middle eastern war is still unfolding, exactly like we feared it would. Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo now pretty much proved to be accurate in this school of thinking.

So consider the following - and as always, take Madsen with a grain of salt. But consider how closely this follows what you expected the neo-cons to be doing:

July 21, 2006 -- Informed sources have told WMR that arch-neocon Michael Ledeen, who acts as an unofficial foreign policy adviser to Karl Rove, was at the White House yesterday with a group of Iranian opposition figures. Among the topics discussed was a promised $25 million grant by the Bush administration to the Iranian insurgents. The money is to be used to plant Desert Storm-vintage biological and chemical weapons shells, confiscated by U.S. forces in Iraq, on the Iranian side of the Iraqi border. The weapons will be used as "proof" of Iran's plan to "attack" U.S. troops in Iraq. That will be used to justify, ex post facto, the coming U.S. attack on Iran. Our sources report that George W. Bush dropped by the White House meeting to offer his support to the Iranian opposition operatives.

Pretext for war with Iran: White House plans to move chem-bio weapons from Iraq into Iranian side of this desolate border.

*********

July 21, 2006 -- The current Israeli assault on Lebanon was stage-managed between the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and neocons in the Bush administration, according to well-connected sources in the nation's capital. The Bush administration had prior knowledge of and supported Israel's planned attacks on Gaza and Lebanon, the sources have revealed. In addition, there was no move by the Bush administration to warn Americans in the Occupied Palestinian Territories or Lebanon to leave the areas before the Israeli invasions. No travel warnings were issued to U.S. citizens in an attempt to mask Israeli attack plans, an action that resulted in last-minute Dunkirk-like sea evacuations of foreigners from Lebanon.

The first indication that Israel pre-planned its assault on the Palestinians came early this month when the Israelis began denying entry to the West Bank to Palestinians holding U.S. passports. The U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem refused to intervene with Israel, claiming it was the decision of a sovereign nation. The denial of entry to Palestinian-Americans was a violation of the Oslo Accords and the Geneva Conventions. The United States does not officially recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Washington insiders report that the Bush administration's coordination with Israel in the attacks on Hamas and Hezbollah involve the official adoption of the white paper, "A Clean Break: New Strategies for Securing the Realm," as U.S. policy. The "Clean Break" document, authored in 1996 by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and other neocon operatives, was written at the same time the program for the invasion and occupation of Iraq was drawn up by the same neocon players.

The current U.S.-Israeli strategy of bombing and invading Lebanon is a follow-up to four years of covert activities by the Pentagon, White House, and Mossad in Lebanon that involved the car bombing assassinations of top Lebanese officials in order to clear out Syrian forces from Lebanon. The assassinations of Elie Hobeika, George Hawi, and Rafik Hariri were all carried out to destabilize Lebanon and force the withdrawal of Syria from Lebanon. Syria was blamed by the Bush administration for all the car bombing assassinations in Lebanon.

Israel's border exercise that saw the capture by Hezbollah of two Israeli soldiers on the Lebanese side of the border and the contingency plans involving the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier by Hamas in Israel, near the Israeli-Gazan border, provided a pre-text for the Israeli attack on Gaza and Lebanon. Similar plans have been drawn up to respond to a Syrian "capture" of Israeli troops in Lebanon near the Syrian border or from the Golan Heights. That will be used to justify a joint Israeli and American attack on Syria, with Israel entering from Lebanon and the U.S. entering from Iraq.

The carrying out of the joint Israeli-U.S. attack plan for Lebanon, Syria (and eventually, Iran) is the reason why the United States has stymied UN attempts to seek an immediate cease-fire. The intent of the Bush administration is to see a widening of the conflict. Unconfirmed UN ambassador to the UN John Bolton, appearing on Fox News, laid out the future blueprint for the joint U.S.-Israeli regionalization of the war in the Middle East when he stated, "I think that if you look at the support that Iran and Syria have given groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad that really the reckoning we need here is a reckoning, not just with the terrorist groups, but with the states that finance them."

WMR has also learned that top Israeli and U.S. military officers are adamantly opposed to the Clean Break policy. Many Israeli generals, remembering Israel's bloody occupation of Lebanon in the 1980s, favored negotiating a prisoner swap with Hezbollah. The Olmert government is purging the last remnants of the Yitzhak Rabin elements who favored negotiations from the Israeli military and intelligence agencies much in the same way that opponents of the Bush regime have been purged from the U.S. military, CIA, and State Department.

********

July 21, 2006 -- The son of David Gribben, Vice President Dick Cheney's boyhood friend and his chief of staff at the Pentagon and Vice President for Corporate Affairs at Halliburton, has reportedly joined Cheney's White House staff as an assistant. The elder Gribben is an active player in the corporate-religious tax dodge known as The Fellowship, an Arlington, Virginia-based contrivance that uses religious tax-exempt status to lobby the U.S. and foreign governments on behalf of the military-industrial complex. With the carrying out of the Clean Break by Israel and the United States, profits for companies like Halliburton are bound to skyrocket. The Israeli attack on Lebanon is already estimated to have resulted in $2 billion in damage to Lebanon's infrastructure. WMR previously reported that Jacobs/Sverdrup has been promised a lucrative Pentagon contract to build a large U.S. airbase in northern Lebanon.

************

July 20, 2006 -- WMR reported that the Israeli military was using poison gas on villages in south Lebanon. According to a former U.S. weapons expert who served in Iraq, the artillery shell in a photo taken in Lebanon (below) is a chemical weapon delivery device. It is being handled by an Israeli Defense Force soldier and Hebrew lettering can be clearly seen on the armored vehicle. Another chemical weapons shell of the same type can be seen lying on the ground to the right. It is not known what type of chemical is in the chemical canister, however, gas dropped by the Israelis in villages in southern Lebanon has resulted in severe vomiting among the civilian population.

Media commentators have scoffed that Israel, with its relatively unique history, would ever use chemical weapons or poison gas in any war. It is precisely because of that perception that they are using such weapons. The deniability factor prevents the media from taking seriously the credible reports of banned weapons being used by the Israelis.

Alright, that's the maximum neo-con conspiracy theory case. But go back and read the Clean Break again, and maybe you'll finally fucking get it, if you don't already.

Apocalypse Chic: When you get that special Babylon feeling

Fadi Ghalioum/Reuters. NY Times:
Journalists inspected damaged buildings Thursday after Israeli air raids in southern Beirut. (photo feature)

I would like to examine the many layers of what is going on in the mideast right now, a tricky proposition. I haven't posted a ton of stuff on the 9 days of heavy fighting so far, as the various blog commentaries and disturbing hawkish proclamations have the air of armchair morons who know nothing about the region, yet still are convinced that lots of people have to die, and then it will all make sense.

When Newt Gingrich calls it World War III, that's really... uh, something.

First I have to subtract the particular aura of doom that has settled over events, an aura deliberately fostered by all sides' political leaders that I call 'Apocalypse Chic.' In the next post I'll start into the concrete tactical reality of the situation - but first we need a little better metaphysical footing.

Last week I shared a certain moment with my former roommate on the stoop of my new building on Grand Avenue. "Shit! It's the Apocalypse!" I lamented. It seemed a juncture with eerie precedents in years past, hanging around Macalester bitching about the war and the latest lurch towards Armageddon. Later my caretaker said, "You know, it's always some damn thing - one crisis after another." Yet somehow the world keeps turning.

After Iraq started, I used to fear that total destabilization - the Eschaton or the Apocalypse - the point of no return, the end of predicting the future, since chaos renders it opaque. I thought that our leaders had embraced a creepy kind of foreshadowing, a sidewinding dance towards a destiny of doom. Yeah, they still do. But I don't really believe in the Eschaton anymore. It just gets more complicated each time. (image filched from Wikipedia)

The concept of "Judgment Day," (in my view a fiction since I don't believe in organized religion) first came about with the Zoroastrians in Persia, and from there integrated into Judaism (during the Babylonian captivity), Christianity and Islam. (That's definitely part of why the Book of Daniel is so kooky). Its purpose, in part, is to structure social and political authority, as decisions of the leadership can be represented as actions designed to face their societies for the imminent (and immanent) Rapture.

To fundamentalists in America, this is definitely compounded by Iraq's history as the site of wicked Babylon, and a fealty towards a highly militarized Israel, preparing to settle all the Promised Land - especially the West Bank - as a preparation for the End.

Many times in history, from the Nazis to Khmer Rouge, the American apocalypse brigades, Israel's messianic ultra-Orthodox West Bank settler organizations like Gush Emunim, and of course various Islamic movements, all of these have a foundation of belief that God dispensed order and disorder into the world, and free will counts for a limited time only, until S/He cancels the lease. Therefore, the leaders claim to be positioning their societies before this 'ultimate judgment,' and anyone who challenges their decisions is fucking up the preparations for the End of Days.

At this late date in the Middle East, "propaganda by deed" and demonstrations of lethal force are intended to both create new norms of behavior and solidify the obedience of the followers behind the leaders. The latest violence is like a kind of inverted Calvinism, where instead of Good Works demonstrating how you are a blessed one, the latest violence is represented as an act on the "cosmic plane," a kind of formal complaint or argument to the Metaphysical Other, to be scored on the approaching Last Day.

The aura of doom is a very disabling one - it tells you that everyday people are incapable of intervening in some blessed, fated order of events. It tells you that there is a veil of the supernatural behind which the government acts. It's a toxic fog sitting on your mind, cutting off all the alternative options and frames of reference before you've even had a cup of coffee. It's death in life. And it's the devil's greatest lie, told by all the totems of the highest morality in our societies.

It's very trendy these days, and it certainly brings out the worst in all the players. Bin Laden's style of bringing in a certain tone of eschatology has been incorporated into the tactics, strategy and Public Relations moves of Israel, the United States, Hezbollah, Iran, and the other actors in the region. That's why all the sides make their tactical moves for relatively simple reasons, while each vesting themselves in Apocalypse Chic. You just can't avert your eyes from the spectacle. You Have To Watch.

Jezreel Plain, the site of Megiddo, (Biblical Armageddon).
Karl Rove scheduled the Ultimate Battle for October 2012, just before the Presidential Election

Army Counter-Intelligence guy finds old WMDs in Iraq from the Carlyle Group, then covered up by Rumsfeld??! Plus Curt Weldon's Wild WMD Goose Chase

Couple interesting things around the WMD backstory. There was a bit of talk about what is going on with a few new crumbs about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Some Republicans including Rick Santorum and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (who?) are trying to peddle a story that WMD were found!! !!!! in Iraq recently. Indeed, at the time I thought it reasonable they might find some old shells from the 1980s somewhere - a suspiciously retarded reason for a war, but still possible. However, no less than Fox News promptly debunked the story.

Well, now it looks like some WMDs did turn up, but since they were from the good old Carlyle Group (more here and here), it would have been embarassing and so they 'evaporated'. At least, that's the line now coming from a retired counterintelligence officer.

But first, let Democratic Rep. Jane Harman (quasi-hawk) describe the Old WMD News and Declassification Hypocrisy on TPMCafe:

....Republicans including Rep. Pete Hoekstra and Senator Rick Santorum are trying to spin a report on degraded pre-1991 WMDs that were found in Iraq as news of the utmost importance – despite the fact that we’ve known about the existence of these rusty canisters for many years.

There is nothing new here. Nothing in this report, classified or otherwise, contradicts the Duelfer Report, which assessed that we would find degraded pre-1991 weaponry in Iraq.

....In fact, David Kay, who led the U.S. team that searched for WMDs in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, called these stockpiles “less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink.” And Charles Duelfer, the CIA’s weapon inspector, called them “local hazards,” not WMDs.

The real news here is that this report was essentially declassified on demand. Selective declassification for partisan purposes undermines the integrity, and the safety, of the men and women in the intelligence community.

The intelligence community is supposed to speak truth to power. It’s not the IC’s job to provide political cover for the Republican Party. Those pushing this story are trying to manipulate the facts to get an outcome they want, and we know from recent experience what happens when the intelligence gathering process is politicized.

If the Republicans want hearings, then let’s have hearings. But they should cover the use – and misuse – of all pre-war intelligence, not just this flimsy and cherry-picked report that is much ado about nothing.

Meanwhile Rep. Curt Weldon wanted to go out on his own into the Iraqi desert near Nasiriyah and basically break out a shovel. Never quite happened, but I bet this guy could dig:

[Dave] Gaubatz, who lives in Dallas, is a former Air Force special investigator who served as a civilian employee in Iraq for a number of months in 2003.

While in Iraq, he acquired what he considered reliable information on the existence of WMD caches in four locations - not old stuff dating from the pre-Gulf War days, but recently produced gas and chemical weapons.

He never could get U.S. military officials to look into the matter. They apparently viewed it as too speculative and too much of a drain on personnel who were, after all, engaged in combat. But he has persisted - even as evidence mounted that there were no WMDs to be found in Iraq.

Gaubatz said he first contacted Weldon and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R., Mich.), head of the House Intelligence Committee, to share his info and get them to prod the Defense Department and intelligence agencies to do the WMD searches in the locales.

Instead, Gaubatz said, Weldon latched onto the idea as a "personal political venture" and discussed a Hoekstra-Weldon trip to Iraq, under the guise of visiting the troops, that would detour to Nasiriyah. Once there, Gaubatz said, the congressmen planned to persuade the U.S. military commander to lend them the equipment and men to go digging by the Euphrates for the cache Gaubatz believed to be there.

He said that Weldon made it clear he didn't want word leaked to the Pentagon, to intelligence officials, or to Democratic congressmen. As Gaubatz told me: "They even worked out how it would go. If there was nothing there, nothing would be said. If the site had been [scavenged], nothing would be said. But, if it was still there, they would bring the press corps out."

Gaubatz's exciting website is here.

Good times: Rummy and the Boss

And now, the source of these nasty little beaners: Rummy and the Carlyle Group.... according to DeBatto...

An interesting tale from one Dave DeBatto, ostensibly a former Army Counter-Intelligence officer and currently a co-author of some books called "CI", an "Army Counterintelligence Novel" series. He is writing a non-fiction, "Our Generals Don't Even Know Who We Are: How Incompetence, Inattention, and Inefficiency Within U.S. Military Intelligence Has Left America More Vulnerable than Ever". In it, he relates the time in Iraq when he was led to a secret WMD cache in a base in eastern Iraq, and is led by the base's WMD officer to a secret bunker:

After relating his background and experience to us, [Chief Warrant Officer Amar Abdul] Rahman told us that there was indeed WMD in this area and that he would be willing to lead us to it. Not being overly trusting of Iraqi’s at that point and certainly not of a prior Iraqi military officer, I was very skeptical of anything he told us. I asked Rahman why he was telling us all of this and he said very matter-of-factly, “Because I love my country and I want things to change.”

I looked at Weichert and asked him with my eyes what he thought. Weichert’s response was to Ask Rahman if he would lead us to the weapons right now and Rahman said, “Yes, of course.” With that, the three of us got into our Humvee and drove to a bunker located at the southeast quadrant of the base, not even one mile from where were sitting.

The bunker sat in a deserted part of the base that had several similar bunkers spread throughout a large area and connected by a single serpentine road. All of the bunkers were constructed of concrete covered by tan stucco, which blended in perfectly with the surrounding desert. They were of various sizes, but all had two, large metal doors which either slid to the side or opened outward, leading into the one large storage area inside.
[...........]
Rahman next pointed to the hand lettered numbers on the side of the crates. They were numbered from 1-29. Rahman said that he placed hand-lettered numbers on each one personally and can assure us that were 29 chemical WMD bombs under his supervision. Not 28 or 30 – but 29. He seemed to be very proud of his accuracy and neatness in numbering each crate. He went on to say how he had spent the last eight years or so playing “cat and mouse” with UNSCOM (the UN inspectors). Every time they were due to come to his region for an inspection, he would be notified by his superiors. Then he would arrange for the bombs to be transported to a different area that was not going to be inspected. Sometimes, he told us, he would simply dig a deep hole near the storage facility and bury the bombs, crates and all, until the inspectors left and then dig them up again and put them back where they were. He was familiar with Scott Ritter and Hanz Blix in particular and said they never found any WMD in his region.

He even ran his hand along one of the crates and brushed off some dried clay, which was clinging to the outside. These were dug up after the last inspection before the war and placed back into the bunker with the large areas of clay still covering some of the crates. He was right – every one of the wooden boxes had varying amounts of dry, reddish clay – which is the common soil found at that location – caked to their wooden exteriors. These bombs had definitely been buried locally at some point just before being placed into that bunker – that was a fact.

Looking around the rest of the bunker interior, I could see dozens of metal chemicals containers – some apparently unopened, and some with their tops open and with dried, powdery substances on the floor all around them and inside the containers. Some containers were covered with what appeared to be dried liquids, almost like dry paint, streaming down the sides.

I can honestly say that I was having a hard time comprehending what I was seeing. Unless my senses were deceiving me, Weichert and I had actually found the mother load of Operation Iraqi Freedom – actual Iraqi WMD. I walked over to one of the crates and saw a plastic sheath containing what appeared to be a bill of lading. I cut it open with my Leatherman and pulled the documents out.

At this point I want to say that loud and clear that I very much regret not having either shoved that document in my pocket or made a copy of it and sent it home for safe keeping. At the time I actually thought that a report would be written and normal Army and intelligence protocol would be followed, so there would be no need for me to have to prove anything. But I digress…

I opened the folded off-white paper form and noticed several interesting things right away. The bombs had been purchased in the United States in 1988 from what appeared to be a government contractor called The Carlyle Group. I am almost embarrassed now to say that I had not heard of The Carlyle Group at that time so the name meant nothing to me. The only reason I remember it at all is that I was amazed that the bill was in English and I was stunned to see that a bomb that was used by Iraq in delivering chemical WMD – the only WMD found during the entire Iraq war – was in fact supplied to Saddam Hussein by the United States. Un-blanking believable.

The date on the bill was either 1987 or 1988, I don’t recall exactly. I do recall that the bomb was manufactured in Spain and shipped through France. So much for their claims of being holier-than-thou. I checked several more bills and they were all identical. These bombs had all been shipped together. Rahman told us that similar weapons had been used all throughout the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s as well as against the Kurds. We were staring at what could have possibly been some of the same type of WMD used in one of the most heinous attacks in recorded history - the gassing of Halabja in March of 1988 which killed an estimated 5,000 Kurdish civilians.

I instructed Weichert to both videotape and take digital still photos of the bunker and its contents. The outside area which included many more chemical containers and HAZMET suits were documented as well. At least fifteen minutes of video and 50 still photos were taken at that location. These were then incorporated and attached to the detailed written report that I wrote and sent up the chain of command through CI channels.

I also personally reported the discovery to the battalion commander of the 223rd, Lt. Col. Timothy Ryan. Ryan seem excited by the news and asked to be taken to the bunker immediately. Weichert and I drove Ryan to the bunker within minutes after his request and showed him our discovery. He seemed genuinely impressed with the authenticity of our find. He commented, “You guys have found the real deal.” So we had. Too bad it was ours.

Interestingly, according to the ever-improbable internet journalist (and oft labelled 'conspiracy theorist') Wayne Madsen, already a GOP effort is underway to "swiftboat" Dave DeBatto:

June 23, 2006 -- The "swift boating" of Army counterintelligence personnel who blew the whistle on Rumsfeld's/Carlyle's Iraqi WMDs and prisoner torture in Iraq. In 2003, Frank Greg Ford, a 32-year veteran of military and counter-intelligence assignments, served in Samara with the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion of the California National Guard during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Samara is the ancient capital of Mesopotamia. Ford and Dave DeBatto. a former US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent who was assigned in 2003 to Iraq, took part in thousands of interrogations in Iraq. Ford revealed details of U.S. torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a tactic that resulted in an aggravation of the Iraqi insurgency. DeBatto found evidence of an even greater crime, the provision of deadly nerve agents to Saddam Hussein by Ronald Reagan, his envoy Donald Rumsfeld, and George H. W. Bush.

DeBatto and Ford also stumbled across evidence that the only WMDs, nerve agents that had deteriorated over the years, had been supplied to Iraq by the Reagan and Bush I administrations for their war against Iran. Reagan's Special Envoy to Saddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld, worked out the deal to supply the WMDs to Iraq. It is these components, known to various UN weapons inspection teams and counter-intelligence teams like those of DeBatto and Ford, that are the subject of Sen. Rick Santorum's and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra's proclamation, ballyhooed by Sean Hannity, that the weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in Iraq. These weapons are made in America, supplied by Carlyle, and were known to Rumsfeld as well as senior members of the Bush I and II administrations, including Dick Cheney.

In December 2004, a right-wing organization based in McLean, Virginia, "Veriseal.org," which is tied to other "swift boating" type organizations went on the attack against Ford and DeBatto. They claim that Ford, a former Navy corpsman, never served with the Navy SEALS and had manufactured his record. The site also castigated DeBatto for writing a fictional book on Army counter-intelligence. The swift boating of veterans by a group of mysteriously-funded cranks operating from a P.O. Box near CIA headquarters in Langley is part of a general policy by the right-wing to debase any veteran who questions the illegal war in Iraq and the other outrages of the neo-cons.

The following is an excerpt of the hit piece on Ford found on the VeriSeal site: Frank "Greg" Ford claims to have witnessed members of his National Guard battalion torturing Iraqi prisoners while his unit was stationed in Samarra in 2003, according to David DeBatto, a former National Guard Tactical HUMINT Team (THT) member and author of a story titled "Whitewashing Torture" published on a far left web site in early December.

"DeBatto says that Ford reported the alleged [torture] abuse to his commanding officer and, hours later, was strapped to a gurney and flown out of Iraq for psychiatric evaluation. According to Army sources contacted by VeriSEAL, an informal investigation pursuant to Rules for Courts-Martial was conducted in response to Ford's allegations and the allegations were determined to be unfounded. Ford was medevaced from Iraq only after exhibiting what was described as delusional behavior."

I would not be surprised to find more stories along this axis coming up during the election. Oh, and of course, I'm sure we'll hear that the WMDs are in Iran, too....

Time to bounce outta this

Sorry for the lack of updates. I have decided there is something unsavory and a tad depressing about a blogging lifestyle in June. I am moving out of the spot in Loring Park right now, getting into the web development job at Macalester. Right now I gotta take apart my desk & get it ready for my dear roommate's movers or his head's gonna explode.

There are quite a few separate things I wanted to write about, but first I wanted to do a little *actual* research with some books from the library. I've got the books now, so I'll be on that once things are set up in St. Paul.

Don't expect much for updates until Saturday at the earliest.

Michael Bower, known for playing Donkeylips on I think the old Nickelodeon show Salute Your Shorts, says Scientology is bollox.

This shit is disturbing: WWTDD.com: Connie Chung is insane.

You can watch "Why we fight" the documentary on Google Video.

Juan Cole is always the go-to guy for Iraq analysis and his bit on post-Zarqawi is good.

AP:News analysis: Iraq insurgents fight on despite major setbacks:

Sunnis demand the release of a top Sunni religious leader Saturday in Tikrit, Iraq. Protesters said the United States wrongly detained him. (BASSIM DAHAM/Associated Press)

Specter is Pe-yossed with Cheney's meddlesome ways about Wiretapping; Victor Hanson is kinda dense; Juan Cole rejected from Yale

Sen. Arlen Specter is pissed with Dick Cheney about White House interference in their hearings on mass wiretapping and phone data mining. TPM has the angry letter from Sen. Arlen Specter to Vice President Cheney.

Stephen Kappes returns to the CIA after being chased out by Porter Goss, NY Times reports. I have no idea how to interpret this, save one bit at the end:

A man of military bearing and a storied past, Mr. Kappes would become the first person since William E. Colby in 1973 to ascend to one of agency's top two positions from a career spent in the clandestine service. General Hayden has said that his return would be a signal that "amateur hour" is over at the C.I.A., which has seen little calm since Mr. Kappes's departure. A no-nonsense former Marine officer who insists on addressing his elders as "sir," Mr. Kappes speaks Russian and Persian; served as the agency's station chief in Moscow and Kuwait during a quarter-century at the C.I.A.; and played a pivotal role in the secret talks with Libya that culminated in December 2003 in the agreement in which Col. Muammar el-Qadaffi agreed to give up his chemical and biological weapons program. ...After leaving the agency, he became an executive vice president at ArmorGroup, a private security firm based in London.

Well that is sketchy on the face of it, though I haven't heard of ArmorGroup in any especially nasty things. More on them here and Kappes here.

Victor Davis Hanson: a fog-headed, bespectacled wistful neo-con, (perhaps best deemed a 'Gonzoconservative') he's the armchair general's armchair general. When you need to make fusty locutions about the wisdom of the Peloponnesian War, he's your man. He is one of these guys infatuated with how the Athenians and Spartans fought, using it as a kind of triumphalist template to encourage Americans to support wars because the Greeks did it. Davis' most recent was "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War", which, despite hashing through the details of the good old days, is basically supposed to tell you that the Athenians were Right to fight Sparta. In reality, the war was a terrible idea, brought on by stupid, belligerent Athenians who doomed Athens to the dustbin of history. But it felt really fucking cool at the time to Greek Victor Davis Hansons... As this response to his book "A War Like No Other" makes clear, he's fucking stupid because the war destroyed Athenian power. But this is the kind of guy that the Hoover Institution puts up as their military historian.

He described the Abu Ghraib scandal as 'hearsay.' He also has rambled at length about secret Mexican plans to generate that AZTLAN separatist thing in the SW United States. In this case, he is defending General Tommy Franks' dumb decisions in the execution of the Iraq invasion against the content of 'Cobra II', an insiders' account of the early war filled with many anonymous interviews: Commentary - Refighting the War. One bit:

Even American psychological operations, an often over-hyped element of war-fighting, worked well: when American planes showered leaflets on it, an entire Iraqi division guarding Baghdad more or less melted away, leaving behind only 2,000 of its original 13,000 combatants.

Except for the part where we decided to fuck them over after the war and they kept fighting us anyway. It takes guts to ride the horse both ways:

Nor do Gordon and Trainor credit the still more telling fact that, following the Afghanistan campaign in the fall of 2001, some fifteen months of national and worldwide discussion ensued concerning Iraq, including the excruciatingly drawn-out United Nations debate. Rarely, in truth, has the United States conducted so prolonged and so public a discussion about its intentions in the run-up to any war.

The authors are more on target in dwelling on the administration’s preoccupation with weapons of mass destruction at the expense of other, more compelling writs for action. As they point out, the WMD issue warped the public presentation of the war and later diverted some resources away from reconstruction to numerous wild-goose chases after nonexistent or no longer existent arsenals. Yet even here there is a disconnect in their version of the WMD issue—attributable, no doubt, to the selectivity of their sources. While suggesting deceit on the part of an administration bent on overplaying a fanciful danger, they do not question the sincerity of General Franks’s frantic efforts to warn his commanders about the impending threat of chemical and biological attack.

In other words, since the WMD lies took 15 months to pound into everyone's head and consequently fucked up the post-war stage, this is... um... very patriotic. Thanks. Oh by the way, his other contributions to the Neo-Con Commentary rag are summarized:

"Donald Rumsfeld, we are told, had a bad summer and a worse fall. But what Midge Decter's biography reminds us is that we need this seventy-one-year-old veteran far more than he needs us."
"The real strategic issue is not how many soldiers are on the ground, but how they are used."
"Far from tying us down, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and its aftermath have enlarged our strategic options."
"The antiwar movement contains a large element of plain anti-Americanism; where does it come from?"

I think if you poked a hole in his ear, a reeking cloud of burnt popcorn stink would come out.

Howard Fineman is like the Beltway media version of Hanson: totally stodgy, but perhaps two pixels to the left of Joe Klein. Fineman:

But perhaps the netroots' favorite avatar in waiting is Gov. Brian Schweitzer of Montana. In their eyes he's the rootin'-tootin' real deal, a rancher turned politician who believes in government activism set free from traditional liberal thinking and interest-group methods. This week a protégé of Schweitzer's, a rancher named Jon Tester, won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Kos happily noted that Tester comes from "the middle of nowhere"--Big Sandy, Mont.--and provided a link to a Yahoo map to prove it.

So that's the place to start from in this new political era: not Washington, but the middle of nowhere.

As Kos puts it, "No doubt." Mainly because DC is a total mess and fog-brains like Fineman are part of the problem.

Juan Cole was blocked from working at Yale. The Jewish Week observes : Middle East Wars Flare Up At Yale: Controversial academic shot down for appointment; was campaign against him politically motivated?

Juan Cole, one of the country’s top Middle East scholars, was poised for the biggest step of his career. A tenured professor at the University of Michigan, Cole was tapped earlier this year by a Yale University search committee to teach about the modern Middle East. In two separate votes in May, Cole was approved by both the sociology and history departments, the latter the university’s largest.

The only remaining hurdle was the senior appointments committee, also known as the tenure committee, a group consisting of about a half-dozen professors from various disciplines across the university.

Last week, however, in what is shaping up as the latest in a series of heated battles over the political affiliations of Middle Eastern studies professors, the tenure committee voted down Cole’s nomination. Several Yale faculty members described the decision to overrule the votes of the individual departments as “highly unusual.” The reasons behind the rejection remain unknown; several calls to a Yale spokeswoman went unreturned.

But university insiders say that the uncharacteristic rebuff may have been influenced by several factors, central among them the political commentary Cole writes on his blog, “Informed Comment.” They also contend that Cole’s nomination was torpedoed mainly by senior professors in both departments who were concerned with Cole’s controversial persona. Often favoring a pugilistic tone and consistently criticizing Israel’s policies in the West Bank, Cole has attracted a visibility that has made him a favorite target of several conservative commentators.

When Cole’s potential hiring became publicly known, several of his detractors, including the American Enterprise Institute’s Michael Rubin and Washington Times columnist Joel Mowbray, took various steps to protest the decision. They wrote op-ed pieces in various publications and Mowbray went as far as to send a letter to a dozen of Yale’s major donors, many of whom are Jewish, urging them to call the university and protest Cole’s hiring.

Cole, while refusing to comment on the tenure committee’s vote, told The Jewish Week he believes that “the concerted press campaign by neoconservatives against me, which was a form of lobbying the higher administration, was inappropriate and a threat to academic integrity.

“The articles published in the Yale Standard, the New York Sun, the Wall Street Journal, Slate, and the Washington Times, as part of what was clearly an orchestrated campaign, contained made-up quotes, inaccuracies, and false charges,” he said. “The idea that I am any sort of anti-Jewish racist because I think Israel would be better off without the occupied territories is bizarre, but I fear that a falsehood repeated often enough and in high enough places may begin to lose its air of absurdity.”

Well, I think it sucks because Juan Cole is basically The Dude on these matters. Billmon's reaction to this was worth checking:

I’m sure Mowbray doesn’t have a clue about the perverse irony of what he’s done – which plays directly into every conceivable anti-Semitic stereotype about wealthy Jews pulling strings from behind the scenes. Neither Al Jazeera nor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could dream up a scenario more calculated to confirm every Middle Eastern prejudice about what (and who) drives U.S. foreign policy. How can we explain to them that it’s just the educational bureaucrats at Yale, who would probably do whatever it takes to please any well-heeled group of donors – even if it involved putting on bright red lipstick and getting down on their knees. Especially that.

....Well, they’ve finally got their man... The Bush administration has done a 180 on Iran policy, the GOP Congress is stumbling towards defeat, the Likud Party (Israel branch) has been reduced to a corporal’s guard and the dream of a Greater Israel is irreparably lost – in other words, the neocon world has come apart at the seams – but at least Juan Cole isn’t going to Yale. Mission fucking accomplished.

To his credit, Cole is saying he's not too upset because his current job is pretty sweet:

I am doing what I enjoy doing, which is studying and teaching the Middle East and South Asia, and communicating about it to various publics. I have not, and short of foul play cannot be stopped from doing what I am doing, and what I enjoy. I welcome critiques of my work. There are obviously some critics, however, who go rather beyond simple critique to wishing to silence or smear me. In the former, at least, they cannot succeed by mere yellow journalism. So I have what I want, but they cannot have what they want. I win, every day.

Cole's work is top-notch, and it's a damn good thing that someone in academia has the guts to take on the Likud-Republican Complex these days.

All right, I think that does it for today. Are we entertained yet?

Yellowcake breakout & Black PSY OPS: DC insiders go on the record to label the Niger forgeries White House "Black Propaganda" sparking the war. We were right

Vanity Fair:

"To me there is no benign interpretation of this," says Melvin Goodman, the former C.I.A. and State Department analyst. "At the highest level it was known the documents were forgeries. Stephen Hadley knew it. Condi Rice knew it. Everyone at the highest level knew." Both Rice and Hadley have declined to comment.

The great Meta-Story – the major narrative, the center of gravity of the past few years – is the "core reality" of why the war in Iraq started, and its interesting corollary, the Republican claim that "investigations will make us sad and hurt America." More or less, all along, the plan was to scare the shit out of America and make the Democrats appear weak. This was done by planting fake stories about evil foreign menaces, and as time goes by, more and more details about this essential backdrop to the 'War on Terror' burble up from the morass of this young, dumb century.

The story of the Niger forgeries is definitely woven into the major Bush Administration scandals - the fake war intelligence, the AIPAC spy scandal, the Chalabi-defector manipulations, and it directly spawned the Valerie Plame scandal. When Plame's husband publicly called out the forgeries, Scooter Libby and others "outed" his wife as a CIA agent, more or less because they wanted to "play dirty" to defend fake elements of the war propaganda, such as the forgeries.

On March 14, Senator Jay Rockefeller IV, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to F.B.I. chief Robert Mueller asking for an investigation because "the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq." But Senator Pat Roberts, of Kansas, the Republican chair of the committee, declined to co-sign the letter.

Then, on March 19, 2003, the war in Iraq began.

The core of the war's meaning is a kind of elusive ghost, having iterated through WMD paranoia, the fun of Democracy Building, the heavily implied 9/11 link, Palestinian militant financing, and of course a handy sense of racism and imperial control fantasies, along with the often acceptable oil seizure (and for quite a few million fundamentalists, cleansing Babylon of evil, clearing a path for Zion and the Second Coming).

We should observe that Iraq's WMD chase distracted the army from stabilizing Iraq, saving its bureaucracies and businesses, and instead sent it on wild goose chases for mustard gas shells in the desert. So this deception, labeled "classic psy-ops" in the article, not only started a 'fake war', it directly killed American soldiers and thousands of Arabs. These fuckers are going to prison, someday.

The dicey thing about the invasion of Iraq was that it was a 'heavily engineered' event in history, and the vast majority of reporters and media people can't quite handle the problem, though they're finally getting better. To a true conspiracy theorist, "engineering" is always behind everything, while in reality, historical events come around as much as by chance, self-delusion among leaders (groupthink) and social trends. However, the Iraq war was a centrally propagated, mean little joke on history, and its perpetrators were clustered in the DC beltway. Crucial points that persuaded Congress to support the war were based on planted information and disinformation, subverting the democratic public's ultimate right to make the biggest decisions of war and peace.

Let's summarize what is pretty much known: Basically, in a nutshell, some neo-cons (widely thought to be Michael Ledeen and his boys like Michael Maloof and Larry Franklin) planted Niger government documents forged in French to the U.S. embassy in Rome, using shady Italians to cover their tracks as "cut-outs." Ledeen, a top neo-con all-around, and his allies like John Bolton, Scooter Libby, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser and a pretty narrow cluster of people used this planted intelligence to spread terrifying stories like "Saddam is getting the Bomb" and "he is allied to this big Zarqawi conspiracy" throughout 2002, preparing Americans to accept another war.

Ledeen is also suspected to be tied to this scheme because he spent a long time in Italy hanging around with crazy right-wing P2 Masonic Lodge types (P2 is Propaganda Due - known for doing cool shit in the Vatican Bank scandal and Operation Gladio - a covert European strategy during the Cold War, intended to suppress Communists and leftists, which spawned all manner of strange and perhaps mythical episodes of rightwing violence, "false flag" incidents, intended to psychologically manipulate the public - or so say disputed Wikipedia articles.). Ledeen developed a loving interest in "Universal Fascism", more or less.

One strange thing is that any low-level analyst could determine they were forgeries because they were incredibly bad. This was one reason that Sy Hersh suggested maybe Ledeen didn't actually do it. They were so bad that they had the wrong ministers for their supposed date, and the French was really, really bad.

Now, the Counter-Attack: A bunch of the CIA's oldest and meanest, Colin Powell's chief of staff, and others have stepped forward to label this manipulation as "Black PSY OPS" or something along those lines. They have been in the background, steadily emerging since 2003 (especially on the Internet), offering a flipside alternative to the scrupulously observed media narratives about the war and WMDs as "honest mistakes", supporting Rummy, Bush, and Karl Rove's ballot box engineering nearly every step of the way. Tragically, in 2004, Kerry's "centrist" campaign consultants lacked the cojones to attack the intel spoofing, even though Kerry helped bust up Iran-Contra, their grandest scheme.

What is a Black PSY OP?

Aside from the drug trafficking, the trickiest aspect of the War on Terror to understand is the shadowy idea of "information operations," information dominance or information warfare, military doctrines whose effects on democratic public knowledge and behavior are both highly partisan and quite subversive in nature. Check out the military's Information Operations overview for info (PDF). Layered above this is the Pentagon's "public relations" or "strategic communication" (PDF) strategy - the well-lit, Victoria Clarke world, the embedded reporters, the in-your-face narrative, emotionally exciting, an intense Confrontation with that Other presented in the media, especially television.

The process of creating, planting, laundering and marketing those fake stories would properly be called "black propaganda" or "black PSY OPS", especially as they manipulate the American public. "Black" signifies misdirection or deception in source or content of information or disinformation.

A psychological operation or "PSY OP" is a sort of operation which manipulates the perceptions of a target audience or group. Sun Tzu understood this. For example, using a vast visual display of weapons to intimidate an enemy into surrender is a basically psychological operation. This can also include planting contradictory stories to divide and confuse an enemy. Background here at the Information Warfare site:

'Psychological Operations: Planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. The purpose of psychological operations is to induce or reinforce foreign attitudes and behavior favorable to the originator's objectives. Also called PSYOP. See also consolidation psychological operations; overt peacetime psychological operations programs; perception management. ' US Department of Defense

Here's an example of where the military PR blends into information operation and Black PSY OPS. These are my rough categories, basically suggestions based on authenticity of content and source, and intended target audience - and its political relationship to the source of the information, especially voter blocs:

1) A school is rebuilt in Fallujah and a New York Times reporter is embedded with a unit that is helping open it. This is an authentic "strategic communication" which could also be a White PSY OP, but not deceptive in itself.
2) The military spokesman falsely says a school is being rebuilt in Fallujah but no reporters can get there and no media offer any dissenting reports. This is an information operation, but perhaps not a Black PSY OP because the source is authentic.
3) A authentic school story is purchased (by say the Lincoln Group) in an Iraqi newspaper to reinforce Iraqi public perception of the "clear-hold-build" strategy. This is a PSY OP, but not a Black PSY OP because its content is true. It could be a Gray PSY OP because its source is mis-represented, though. The Iraqi paper is essentially a "cut-out" for the US military PSY OP unit's work.
4) A fake school story is purchased by the US military in an Iraqi paper. A military spokesman or media contact tips an American reporter (or a right-wing blogger looking for the "real happy news the media hides") to the story in the Iraqi paper. The translated, planted report boosts the emotions of those Americans who hear it. This is a Black PSY OP and Covert Propaganda. This especially matters to Democrats because:
5) The Covert Propaganda and Black PSY OPS directed at the American public by the executive branch and its allies will always be designed, by habit or accident, to favor the ruling party.

Technically it is illegal for the government to plant "covert propaganda" into the American public's brains, but what this means is unclear. The Bushies have been caught a few times sending video news releases that have been repackaged by TV networks as authentic news segments.

4th Generation Warfare: The US gets manipulated via information operations: In 4th generation warfare theory, a multi-tiered strategy to achieve political objectives in a tactically fluid and confusing environment is applied by all parties. Unfortunately, with everything in Iraq, some parties have found ways to manipulate the Pentagon by their own information operations. The goal is to trick the US into attacking different parties against their own interest.

This would include how Iran helped Chalabi generate the fake "defector" intelligence before the invasion of Iraq, and how petty squabbles between Iraqi parties are mis-represented as Terrorists vs Counter-Terrorists, and the US hits one side with overwhelming air and land-power for no compelling reason. In those situations, the US itself has suffered an information operation that caused it to overreact and alienate the population, increasing power for some local parties while directly killing off their rivals. Chalabi purged the many middle-class professional "Baathists" (in name only), people the US didn't need to attack, but did anyway, because Chalabi manipulated U.S. perceptions. Recent U.S. attacks against recent Marsh Arab tribes around Basra bear the marks of manipulation, according to a source for Juan Cole:

' The [sectarian conflict near Suwayra] faded out in November of last year. It suddenly errupted three days ago. There were actually three days of violence in that area. The first day was an attack on Obaid by members of the Ghuran tribe who were members of the Mahdi army (at least they carried Mhdi army id's). 14 people were killed. The second saw an attack from Suwaira security forces (although the area administratively belongs to Baghdad).

The third day saw a massive assault by Iraqi and US army accompanied by helicopter gunships and fighter planes. The assault lasted for 10 hours . . . It is absolutely fascinating for me to see that piece of information being propagated on Iraqi news channels, newspapers and websites as a land dispute. It was originally based on a "police source".

It is now almost certain that the US army was misled into taking action against one of the two parties yesterday. The whole thing was a 'sectarian' assault that failed miserably the first time. It failed again this time . . .

In yesterday’s ‘American’ raid only one man was killed – young Marwan (!!) 6 were injured and about a dozen detained (exact number unconfirmed).

Today, all tribes in the area (Sunni and Shiite) were in uproar against the Ghurraan. Their 3 acts were seen as treacherous. The Ghurraan shaikh, Saad A. A. al-Bassi sent word to Obaid that he was enlisting support from his tribe to disown the sub-clan that was responsible (known as Rattaan). A few hours ago I received word (unconfirmed) that Saad was arrested by the Iraqi National Guard!

Another staged petty confrontation would be the U.S./Shiite operations against the Turkmen Sunnis of Tal Afar & northern Iraq. These could all be examples of the U.S. military suffering from successful PSY OPS targeting.

Back to the Forgeries: Two of the "pissed off CIA dudes" we have listed on the sidebar, Larry Johnson and Pat Lang, have gone on record with Vanity Fair that the Niger uranium forgeries – the claim that "Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa" – was systematically fabricated and inserted by neo-cons into the American intelligence community, a colossal conspiracy which led to trapping the American army in the snake pit of Iraq. The story weaves a byzantine path through the unique hell of Italian intelligence, such as this:

Among those Berlusconi appointed to powerful national-security positions [in 1994] were two men known to Ledeen. A founding member of Forza Italia, Minister of Defense Antonio Martino was a well-known figure in Washington neocon circles and had been close friends with Michael Ledeen since the 1970s. Ledeen also occasionally played bridge with the head of SISMI under Berlusconi, Nicolò Pollari. "Michael Ledeen is connected to all the players," says Philip Giraldi, who was stationed in Italy with the C.I.A. in the 1980s and has been a keen observer of Ledeen over the years.

Enter Rocco Martino. An elegantly attired man in his 60s with white hair and a neatly trimmed mustache, Martino (no relation to Antonio Martino) had served in SISMI until 1999 and had a long history of peddling information to other intelligence services in Europe, including France's Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (D.G.S.E.).

By 2000, however, Martino had fallen on hard times financially. It was then that a longtime colleague named Antonio Nucera offered him a lucrative proposition. A SISMI colonel specializing in counter-proliferation and W.M.D., Nucera told Martino that Italian intelligence had long had an "asset" in the Niger Embassy in Rome: a woman who was about 60 years old, had a low-level job, and occasionally sold off embassy documents to SISMI. But now SISMI had no more use for the woman—who is known in the Italian press as "La Signora" and has recently been identified as the ambassador's assistant, Laura Montini. Perhaps, Nucera suggested, Martino could use La Signora as Italian intelligence had, paying her to pass on documents she copied or stole from the embassy.

Shortly after New Year's 2001, the break-in took place at the Niger Embassy. Martino denies any participation. There are many conflicting accounts of the episode. According to La Repubblica, a left-of-center daily which has published an investigative series on Nigergate, documents stolen from the embassy ultimately were combined with other papers that were already in SISMI archives.

SISMI director Nicolò Pollari acknowledges that Martino has worked for Italian intelligence. But, beyond that, he claims that Italian intelligence played no role in the Niger operation. "[Nucera] offered [Martino] the use of an intelligence asset [La Signora]—no big deal, you understand—one who was still on the books but inactive—to give a hand to Martino," Pollari told a reporter.

Rocco Martino, however, said SISMI had another agenda: "SISMI wanted me to pass on the documents, but they didn't want anyone to know they had been involved."

As the frightening forgeries materialized in the American intelligence community, one analyst after another marked them as forgeries, but soon one neo-con after another kept stuffing their claims into the speeches of Cheney, Bush, the talking points of pundits on the radio & TV (this was a particular function of the Office of Special Plans, Kwiatkowski has said).

Vanity Fair describes the "echo" effect that manipulated allied intelligence agencies into perpetuating the fake charges. Basically, it is like telling your 10 most arrogant and powerful acquaintances the same bullshit, but passing it through intermediaries or "cut-outs". This makes the artificial disinformation (aka a "PSY OP" that intel agencies are supposed to detect) instead appear authentic and broad.

The Niger forgery is merely one piece that has been traced pretty far back along the chain, via all these pissed off CIA people and others around various parts of the chain. But the same pattern of...

Terrifying Claim->lots of intel agencies get claims->international echo effect in analysis/policy->scary public leaks and tales - a la Judith Miller->drumbeat of scary media stories->WAR

...was the basic pattern around the false stories from Ahmed Chalabi and his defectors, which people like Larry Johnson, Kwiatkowski, essentially this whole gang have railed against for years. So Vanity Fair describes how the intel agencies were bombarded with "Yellowcake" reports:

Over the next two years, the Niger documents and reports based on them made at least three journeys to the C.I.A. They also found their way to the U.S. Embassy in Rome, to the White House, to British intelligence, to French intelligence, and to Elisabetta Burba, a journalist at Panorama, the Milan-based newsmagazine. Each of these recipients in turn shared the documents or their contents with others, in effect creating an echo chamber that gave the illusion that several independent sources had corroborated an Iraq-Niger uranium deal.

"It was the Italians and Americans together who were behind it. It was all a disinformation operation," Martino told a reporter at England's Guardian newspaper. He called himself "a tool used by someone for games much bigger than me."

What exactly might those games have been? Berlusconi defined his role on the world stage largely in terms of his relationship with the U.S., and he jumped at the chance to forge closer ties with the White House when Bush took office, in 2001. In its three-part series on Nigergate, La Repubblica charges that Berlusconi was so eager to win Bush's favor that he "instructed Italian Military Intelligence to plant the evidence implicating Saddam in a bogus uranium deal with Niger." (The Berlusconi government, which lost power in April, denied the charge.)

Then there are the surface political motives for SISMI doing special disinformation favors for the New Bush White House:

During the Clinton era, the neocons persisted with their policy goals, and in early 1998 they twice lobbied President Clinton to bring down Saddam. The second attempt came in the form of "An Open Letter to the President" by leading neoconservatives, many of whom later played key roles in the Bush administration, where they became known as the Vulcans. Among those who signed were Michael Ledeen, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and David Wurmser.

According to Patrick Lang, the initial Niger Embassy robbery could have been aimed at starting the war even though Bush had yet to be inaugurated. The scenario, he cautions, is merely speculation on his part. But he says that the neocons wouldn't have hesitated to reach out to SISMI even before Bush took office. "There's no doubt in my mind that the neocons had their eye on Iraq," he says. "This is something they intended to do, and they would have communicated that to SISMI or anybody else to get the help they wanted."

In Lang's view, SISMI would also have wanted to ingratiate itself with the incoming administration. "These foreign intelligence agencies are so dependent on us that the urge to acquire I.O.U.'s is a powerful incentive by itself," he says. "It would have been very easy to have someone go to Rome and talk to them, or have one of the SISMI guys here [in Washington], perhaps the SISMI officer in the Italian Embassy, talk to them."

Lang's scenario rings true to Frank Brodhead. "When I read that the Niger break-in took place before Bush took office, I immediately thought back to the Bulgarian Connection," he says. "That job was done during the transition as well. [Michael] Ledeen … saw himself as making a serious contribution to the Cold War through the Bulgarian Connection. Now, it was possible, 20 years later, that he was doing the same to start the war in Iraq."

Brodhead is not alone. Several press outlets, including the San Francisco Chronicle, United Press International, and The American Conservative, as well as a chorus of bloggers—Daily Kos, the Left Coaster, and Raw Story among them—have raised the question of whether Ledeen was involved with the Niger documents. But none have found any hard evidence.

My evidence is that I personally talked to Ledeen for a while at Macalester and he seemed diabolical, anarchic and crazy. However that ain't fingerprints. After 9/11, the article describes the path of the Niger forgeries as "murky," and moves on to tackle how tightly Michael Ledeen himself was tied into the rest of the neo-con rhetroric & action machine that catapulted the U.S. into Iraq on all that dodgy intelligence. Of course around here, I have stuck by the line from Dr. Rashid Khalidi, who told me in an interview way back in October 2003:

Me: A Frontline interview with Richard Perle was published with the documentary “Truth, War and Consequences.” He talked about the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans, which reviewed intelligence on Iraq prior to the war. Perle said the office was staffed by David Wurmser, another author of the Clean Break document. Perle says that the office “began to find links that nobody else had previously understood or recorded in a useful way.” Were the neo-cons turning their ideology into intelligence data, and putting that into the government?

RK: I can give you a short answer to that which is yes. Insofar as at least two of the key arguments that they adduced, the one having to do the connection between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaeda, and the one having to do with unconventional weapons programs in Iraq, it is clear that the links or the things they had claimed to have found were non-existent. The wish was fathered to the reality. What they wanted was what they found.

It was not just the Office of Special Plans, or whatever. There are a lot of institutions in Washington that were devoted to putting this view forward. Among them, other parts of the bureaucracy, and the vice president’s national security staff. The vice president’s chief of staff Lewis Libby is a very important member of the neo-con group. He and the vice president have created the most powerful national security staff that anybody has ever had in the office of the vice president. I’ve read published assessments, which say that this is actually more influential than Condi Rice’s staff, the real NSC. This is another center of these views.

And then there are the think-tanks—I would use the word ‘think’ in quotes—like the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hoover Institution and so on, all of which are devoted to spreading similar ideas. Basically any fantasy that Chalabi's people brought in, “we have a defector who says,” was turned into gold by these folks.

We now know this stuff, with a few exceptions, to be completely and utterly false, just manufactured disinformation designed to direct the United States in a certain direction. Whether the neo-cons knew this or not is another question, but I believe Chalabi’s people knew it. I would be surprised if some of them didn’t know it.

Along this basic line, we have followed along on this case at Hongpong.com pretty much since it opened up, though we've let it slide lately since very little has happened in the case in a long time, and the Scooter Libby trial it spawned has basically dragged on with only a trickle of information.

Well, that's all for now. I am going to the DFL convention in Rochester now. Remember that your brain is a military target.

Read up: DC insiders call out the Niger forgeries as "black propaganda" to start the Iraq war

Vanity Fair has kind of a blockbuster article out. I have to run off, but you guys need to look at this. It's both "nothing really new" and also "holy shit this is insane" at the same time. I will have more later putting it in some context, but for now smoke crack & enjoy.

The War They Wanted, The Lies They Needed
The Bush administration invaded Iraq claiming Saddam Hussein had tried to buy yellowcake uranium in Niger. As much of Washington knew, and the world soon learned, the charge was false. Worse, it appears to have been the cornerstone of a highly successful "black propaganda" campaign with links to the White House
By CRAIG UNGER

......"A Classic Psy-Ops Campaign"

or more than two years it has been widely reported that the U.S. invaded Iraq because of intelligence failures. But in fact it is far more likely that the Iraq war started because of an extraordinary intelligence success—specifically, an astoundingly effective campaign of disinformation, or black propaganda, which led the White House, the Pentagon, Britain's M.I.6 intelligence service, and thousands of outlets in the American media to promote the falsehood that Saddam Hussein's nuclear-weapons program posed a grave risk to the United States.

The Bush administration made other false charges about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (W.M.D.)—that Iraq had acquired aluminum tubes suitable for centrifuges, that Saddam was in league with al-Qaeda, that he had mobile weapons labs, and so forth. But the Niger claim, unlike other allegations, can't be dismissed as an innocent error or blamed on ambiguous data. "This wasn't an accident," says Milt Bearden, a 30-year C.I.A. veteran who was a station chief in Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria, and Germany, and the head of the Soviet–East European division. "This wasn't 15 monkeys in a room with typewriters."

In recent months, it has emerged that the forged Niger documents went through the hands of the Italian military intelligence service, SISMI (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare), or operatives close to it, and that neoconservative policymakers helped bring them to the attention of the White House. Even after information in the Niger documents was repeatedly rejected by the C.I.A. and the State Department, hawkish neocons managed to circumvent seasoned intelligence analysts and insert the Niger claims into Bush's State of the Union address.

By the time the U.S. invaded Iraq, in March 2003, this apparent black-propaganda operation had helped convince more than 90 percent of the American people that a brutal dictator was developing W.M.D.—and had led us into war.

o trace the path of the documents from their fabrication to their inclusion in Bush's infamous speech, Vanity Fair has interviewed a number of former intelligence and military analysts who have served in the C.I.A., the State Department, the Defense Intelligence Agency (D.I.A.), and the Pentagon. Some of them refer to the Niger documents as "a disinformation operation," others as "black propaganda," "black ops," or "a classic psy-ops [psychological-operations] campaign." But whatever term they use, at least nine of these officials believe that the Niger documents were part of a covert operation to deliberately mislead the American public.

The officials are Bearden; Colonel W. Patrick Lang, who served as the D.I.A.'s defense intelligence officer for the Middle East, South Asia, and terrorism; Colonel Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell; Melvin Goodman, a former division chief and senior analyst at the C.I.A. and the State Department; Ray McGovern, a C.I.A. analyst for 27 years; Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia division in 2002 and 2003; Larry C. Johnson, a former C.I.A. officer who was deputy director of the State Department Office of Counterterrorism from 1989 to 1993; former C.I.A. official Philip Giraldi; and Vincent Cannistraro, the former chief of operations of the C.I.A.'s Counterterrorism Center.

Memorial Day observation

I wandered off and didn't feel like writing on Memorial Day. However the many sacrifices of America's soldiers, sailors and Marines should be noted. Before this strange and dark administration took the helm, I had a pretty serious view of what service in the military meant. In part this was because there were two other Daniel Feidts who fought for the United States.

Daniel S. Feidt Sr., my grandfather, enlisted in the Army Air Corps during World War II, even though he could have avoided service since he was an elected Minnesota state senator, more than 30 years old, and color-blind. He went into the intelligence section and planned raids against the Axis from Britain, Egypt and late in the war, at the Poltava air base in recaptured Ukrainian territory. At one point there was a Nazi air raid and a bomb whizzed through his tent and out the other side. He eventually reached the rank of major, and since he was a lawyer, they asked him to go work at the Nuremberg trials, but he declined because it was time to go back stateside and start a family.

Another interesting story was the one of Daniel Feidt of the Pennsylvania Dutch, who fought in the Civil War. We have transcripts of his letters home, which really would be interesting to put up here. I am not certain if he is my direct ancestor, though.

But the Daniel Feidts had the good fortune to survive their brushes with war. Not so for my dad's cousin, Bruce William Heskett, who was killed in a tank in Quang Tri, South Vietnam on 29 June, 1970. He was born 20 April 1945 and came from Spokane. He was a first Lieutenant, cut down only a few months into his tour that commenced on the 8th of February that year. He served in the 5th Infantry Division, A Company, 1st Battalion. His official death code was "Hostile, Died; Ground Casualty; Gun, Small Arms Fire". The summer after 7th grade during our trip to Washington I took an etching of his name on the Vietnam memorial.

Quang Tri province, near the DMZ and the Ben Hai river that divided the country, saw nine years of fighting, intense bombing, free fire zones, and extensive land mine and Agent Orange contamination. Of the 3,500 villages, only 11 remained by the end of the Vietnam war. (see a 1975 Army study of the Northern Provinces)

Just in time for Memorial Day, a batch of Henry Kissinger's old documents have been released by the National Security Archives. Almost two years to the day after my dad's cousin fell in central Vietnam, Kissinger had a charming and 'loquacious' conversation (PDF)with the Chinese Prime Minister at the Great Hall of the People. It's interesting for a lot of reasons, but this passage got news coverage:

If we can live with a communist government in China, we ought to be able to accept it in Indochina.

Some folks couldn't live with it. These, and a few million more from Southeast Asia. Words can't really wrap around the reality of it. There were worthwhile ventures in the World Wars, perhaps Korea, maybe a bit of the Balkans. And of course keeping the Confederates down. Our citizens (and immigrants trying to become citizens) who stick it out are braver than my imagination can handle. But their commanders are only carrying out the policies of the generals, and the generals are (hopefully) only developing policies under orders from the civilian leadership, with transparent oversight from Congress. These days several links in that chain seem to be shattered, and the result are dead-end policies in places that American troops shouldn't be, and autonomous actions that don't support any kind of realistic goals.

They go without body armor so that privatized military firms can make off with fabulously lucrative contracts. The brass cower under Rumsfeld and look the other way when units in places like Abu Ghraib and Haditha go crazy under the stress and lack of support, among a confusing labyrinth of enemies, spies, mercenaries, contractors and the hapless local population.

The responsibility falls to those of us state-side to go after the military's uniformed and civilian leadership for its policies of deploying depleted uranium and caustic white phosphorus, private mercenaries instead of body armor, picking fights with clans instead of negotiating, its alarmingly delusional pattern of planting Psy Ops fake news stories (such as "Zarqawi's" February 2004 letter) instead of taking responsibility for their failed policies.

The good and honorable folks in uniform are getting left to twist in the wind not by us, but by a leadership that has failed to deploy them responsibly, provision them properly, hand down realistic policies, accept blame for failures or plan adequately. It's on us to fish a way out of this, if Memorial Day means anything at all.

Al Gore says perhaps he'll speak on FL vote fraud someday; Sibel Edmonds tidbits; new 9/11 conspiracy video; the Teflon pharaoh

I am going up to Hibbing to see my aunt's Dylan documentary until Saturday afternoon and probably won't have time to post until Sunday.

A tantalizing nugget: my friend's dad stumbled across a massive embezzlement scheme in the Chicago branch of the Head Start education program. This is only now coming into public view and I will try to get something real on it later.

So the Administration wants to eat reporters who spill classified information. This lends itself to a new strategy: classify everything embarrassing and evil. Now that's your tax dollars at work!

Wednesday night I was hanging out with some folks soon parting ways with Minnesota, and it was a good time. In exchange for a nice old hat, various objects were offered for barter, including a Krazy Kat book. Krazy Kat was a weird old comic from the 1920s that has reached a kind of Major Art status, while really it's just pretty weird. I noticed that Itchy & Scratchy seems to be kind of based on it, including the cat's androgynous quality. Anyway.

Finally a Democrat in the House is getting busted for a scandal. Poor Jefferson was caught taking major cash in a pretty blunt kind of way and they're saying indictments next month, yet there is a big ruckus from Republicans after the FBI searched his Congressional office and took boxes of documents. Due to the bipartisan uproar, Bush has sealed the docs from the FBI, at least temporarily.

It's an interesting case. I feel that Republicans are a bit terrified that a potential future Democratic president could find evidence of all kinds of illegal stuff in their offices. For the whole history of this country, the executive hasn't been able to storm these places (or had the guts to). I tend to think that this is appropriate, that there ought to be a sphere of immunity of some sort to protect Congress from the executive. On the other hand, I would like to see Hastert, DeLay and all the other homies get nailed for all their Abramoff corruption. Just because you're in Congress doesn't mean you're above the law. Laura Rozen asks, is it panic?

But, what if (and certainly this has happened), member X has lots of evidence proving that Gonzales is a lawbreaker himself, that Rummy is a psychopath who permits war crimes, that Cheney helped channel Halliburton contracts and Porter Goss partied with hookers at the Watergate for a decade? In other words, what if I had Sen. Carl Levin's file cabinet? Well, that file cabinet would serve as a crucial check in the pretty corrupt system we've got now, and it seems clear that the founders intended to privilege stuff like that file cabinet. I also think that it should be impossible to charge Rep. Cynthia McKinney for slapping that Capitol police officer (in particular since it's been said that the Capitol police corps have been taken over by southern GOP good-ol-boy sheriff types).

We should note that the great Joseph McCarthy could not be sued for all the crazy slanderous and libelous garbage he puked onto the floor of the Senate during the 1950s, because, well, it was his constitutional right as a Senator to say plainly false and libelous things there. If the legislative branch gets under that kind of pressure, well, they will be 'chilled' in the legal speech sense, and it's curtains for that supposedly equal branch of the government. Never forget that people with their hands on executive power don't necessarily care about the truth, but they'll try to silence those who get in their way. McKinney has been a pretty vocal anti-imperialist (not to mention 9/11 skeptic), despite her silly style, and that whole thing reeks of an effort to kill the messenger. Movin' on.

Al Gore stares into the distance: From New York magazine, via the Brad Blog:

Does he, like many Democrats, think the election was stolen?

Gore pauses a long time and stares into the middle distance. "There may come a time when I speak on that,” Gore says, "but it’s not now; I need more time to frame it carefully if I do.” Gore sighs. "In our system, there’s no intermediate step between a definitive Supreme Court decision and violent revolution."

Later, I put the question of Gore’s views on the matter to David Boies, his lawyer in the Florida-recount battle. "He thought the court’s ruling was wrong and obviously political," Boies says. So he considers the election stolen? "I think he does—and he’s right."

Brad Blog was a leading place for tracking the election fraud in Ohio, and while I don't read regularly, it's well done.

Check out Wot is it Good 4 by Lukery, which has especially followed the case of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds - with its bizarre stories of drug money laundering, 9/11 links, FBI corruption, the whole bit. Sibel herself (official site), under many federal gag orders, has said that Lukery has been able to digest the known facts of the case better than anyone else. There's fresh stuff on a daily basis. For example, if you want to get waist-deep in some weird defense contractor shit, connected laterally with Manucher Ghorbanifar, Rep. Curt Weldon (of Able Danger fame), plus Edmonds' belief that Weldon has been kind of duped about some of the fake Iraq intelligence, well this story is what you need, and this one about some kind of corrupt link between neoconservatives, Turkey and military-industrial defense contractors, which Edmonds is also tied up in, another good one. Read this and trip out: Bing Bang Boom Shazam. The Edmonds case is way under the radar, extremely weird, but it seems to connect to the AIPAC scandal, Chalabi and the fake Iraq intelligence, some kind of secret 9/11 financing arrangements, drug money laundering, Turkish spies, and perhaps illegal money in the campaign coffers of people like Rep. Dennis Hastert. Or maybe not (Hastert is getting sucked into the Abramoff scandal, either way). I think at some point, Sibel Edmonds will finally break out into a major scandal and I'd like to say that we got a bit of the early word out here. SourceWatch on Sibel Edmonds too. (tiny side note: Lukery suggests this woman's skillful negotiation sites)

But who are Sibel Edmonds, Curt Weldon, Able Danger and what do these have to do with 9/11?? Fortunately in the expanding field of 9/11 conspiracy videos, a new one introduces these issues in an accessible way. Check out Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime. I thought it was better than Loose Change, in terms of consisting of actual information and loose ends. However it doesn't have as many fun video clips. It has a pretty good introduction to the Able Danger, the pre-9/11 military intelligence project that apparently pinpointed some of the hijackers, and then was abruptly shut down with its terabytes of records vaporized. But ironically the problem perhaps might have been that it was based on illegal data mining?

Chinese spy update: Pretty cool stuff on the next hurrah about Katrina Leung, a pro-Republican Chinese spy who is basically getting let off by the Justice Department. She admitted tipping off the Chinese to the identities of FBI agents investigating nuclear sales to China (which mighta been tied to Iran-contra - whew). Evidently, she fed disinformation to the FBI to go after the unfortunate scientist Wen Ho Lee.

OS X operating system design: Check out this Flash animation if you want to know how OS X is structured internally. This guy's book will kick ass if you are into kernel hacking.

Israel claims Iran gets nukes in "months": My Ass. Antiwar.com's Raimondo, in a column bitching about the Iran badge story, the peripheral Israeli connections to the fake Iraq intelligence, and new and shiny paranoia from Israel about Iran, notes that well, Israel is definitely going to jerk the U.S. down this path.

AIPAC notes: I thought this was a good writeup about the power of the Israel lobby from Stephen Zunes: FPIF Special Report: The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really? He points out an interesting example of a Congressman, who, when challenged about his heavily anti-Palestinian votes, basically says that the Jews made him do it for fear of losing fundraising, but even after he announces he won't run again, he still votes against Palestinians. The Jews are just - wait for it - a scapegoat for his actual anti-Arab bias. And of course there's the basic fact that Bush depends a lot more on the hardcore rightwing (and often apocalyptic) Christian Zionists that Jewish ones.

Misc notes: Watch Lazy Ramadi, a video from some troops with a video camera. You won't regret it.

Sidney Blumenthal notes Iraq is doomed. Of course, it has literally the most corrupt government ever created (although maybe DC actually wins that right now). Duly noted by the brave Patrick Cockburn:
Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold:

Across central Iraq, there is an exodus of people fleeing for their lives as sectarian assassins and death squads hunt them down. At ground level, Iraq is disintegrating as ethnic cleansing takes hold on a massive scale.
By Patrick Cockburn in Khanaqin, North-East Iraq (20 May)
The state of Iraq now resembles Bosnia at the height of the fighting in the 1990s when each community fled to places where its members were a majority and were able to defend themselves. "Be gone by evening prayers or we will kill you," warned one of four men who called at the house of Leila Mohammed, a pregnant mother of three children in the city of Baquba, in Diyala province north-east of Baghdad. He offered chocolate to one of her children to try to find out the names of the men in the family.

Mrs Mohammed is a Kurd and a Shia in Baquba, which has a majority of Sunni Arabs. Her husband, Ahmed, who traded fruit in the local market, said: " They threatened the Kurds and the Shia and told them to get out. Later I went back to try to get our furniture but there was too much shooting and I was trapped in our house. I came away with nothing." He and his wife now live with nine other relatives in a three-room hovel in Khanaqin.

The same pattern of intimidation, flight and death is being repeated in mixed provinces all over Iraq. By now Iraqis do not have to be reminded of the consequences of ignoring threats.

I liked this list from Juan Cole:

There are now four distinct wars going on in Iraq simultaneously
1) The Sunni Arab guerrilla war to expel US troops from the Sunni heartland
2) The militant Shiite guerrilla war to expel the British from the south
3) The Sunni-Shiite civil war
4) The Kurdish war against Arabs and Turkmen in Kirkuk province, and the Arab and Turkmen guerrilla struggle against the encroaching Peshmerga (the Kurdish militia).

The struggle of the Turkmen is starting to branch out into Turkey. Note how Turkey is now red on the lovely Reuters map, seems ominous:

Kurds say Turkish shells land in Iraq, Turkey denies: By Sherko Raouf
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, May 17 (Reuters) - The government of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region accused Turkish forces of shelling an area inside northern Iraq on Wednesday.
A Turkish government official dismissed the accusation as "total fabrication."
Ankara traditionally launches a spring offensive against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) guerrillas in southeastern Turkey, an area which borders Iraq.
Earlier this month, villagers in Iraq's Kurdistan accused neighbouring Iran of hitting targets inside Iraq, a charge Tehran denied.
Khaled Salih, a senior official of the Kurdish regional government in Arbil, said by telephone that no one was hurt when three shells slammed into a mountainous area close to the town of Kani Masi a few km (miles) inside Iraq.
"A village ... has been bombarded from the Turkish side. There were no casualties, but there was material damage," Salih told Reuters. "This is the second time in a week villages have been bombarded in the north."
"We will report this to the government in Baghdad so that they can contact the Turkish government and ask for an explanation," he said.
Salih said there were no PKK fighters in the area where the shells landed. NATO member Turkey has stationed some 1,500 troops stationed inside northern Iraq since the late 1990s when it launched regular raids into the region to hunt PKK fighters.
In Turkey, a government official told Reuters: "This is not true ... All the measures are on our side of the border." Turkey has sent 40,000 troops to its own Kurdish areas to reinforce the 220,000 already there, the biggest build-up in years after an increase in PKK attacks.
The PKK, seeking a Kurdish homeland including southeastern Turkey, accuses Ankara and Tehran of mounting coordinated operations against the group and its Iranian wing, PJAK.

NSA Total My Phone Bill Awareness: Crusty CIA veteran Ray McGovern rails against NSA monitoring of Americans. Sy Hersh with a few bits and pieces on the NSA situation. Congressional Quarterly reports on mysterious data links between Homeland Security and the NSA. TPMM observes how DOJ sends out TONS of subpoenas for data daily, apparently outside of judicial oversight. National Security Letters. Someday, the Letter will come for you (or more likely, me). TPMM also looks at how there is a cottage industry of companies that handle all our phone records, passing them from the telcos to the government, allowing AT&T to claim that they aren't giving Big Brother the records directly. Check this: Fuck NeuStar, the "scapegoat" for hire.

Billmon hung out in Egypt for some conference. Egypt is autocratic, the Teflon pharaoh. I like that phrase.

As always, Prof. Cole is the go-to man for direct analysis of the situation and Arab media. He also follows up further on the fake Iran Jew Badge story. Firedoglake traces back the root of the fake Badge story. The National Post had to retract the story:

Last Friday, the National Post ran a story prominently on the front page alleging that the Iranian parliament had passed a law that, if enacted, would require Jews and other religious minorities in Iran to wear badges that would identify them as such in public. It is now clear the story is not true. Given the seriousness of the error, I felt it necessary to explain to our readers how this happened.

Then, of course, the bastards require you to register to read the rest. Fuck! (this early, erroneous bit on the badge story struck me for its interesting historical content, but also classic pompous ignorati*-style writing)[ * "Ignorati" has been trademarked by Mordred]

We noted earlier a report about 200,000 AK-47s from Bosnia, that were purchased by the US for the Iraqi security forces, but now there are more reports that the AKs basically vanished and are now in the hands of insurgents because of - you guessed it - private defense contractors!! BBC reports on how the guns that ruined Yugoslavia are getting dumped straight into the Iraqi civil war.

Ah, the irony of how shitty neoconservatism worked out to be.

Murray Waas reports that Rove and Novak may have hatched a conspiracy to cover up the Valerie Plame leak (via TPMM):

On September 29, 2003, three days after it became known that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate who leaked the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, columnist Robert Novak telephoned White House senior adviser Karl Rove to assure Rove that he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation, according to people with firsthand knowledge of the federal grand jury testimony of both men. . . .
Rove and Novak, investigators suspect, might have devised a cover story to protect Rove because the grand jury testimony of both men appears to support Rove's contentions about how he learned about Plame.

Chinese PCs feared to be bugged: There's always time for Sinophobia.

Blockquotes are plagarism?! Plagarism Today (what a name for a site) talks about how the practice of blockquoting from other sources is really the new plagarism. I think that's a bit retarded since if you're naming your source, it's not plagarism at all. However, there are sites that exclusively skim off content and pass it as their own for spamming purposes. There are actually Hongpong.com fragments on spam sites out there. We blockquote a lot here, but damn, no one can read the whole damn Internet themselves! It seems like a silly argument, but on the other hand, the game ought to be about original content. However, I like to put lots of sources in here, since, well, you gotta at least weigh their credibility apart from mine in order for my arguments to sink in. Anyway, slashdot reacts.

Long ass random post. However more than enough stuff to keep anyone busy for a while. True?

Random bits for a fresh week; Oreo rockets; NSA dude says this "one of the darkest eras in American history"

As for me, well this week is pretty much make-or-break in the career department. Quite a few links have piled up that might be interesting:

An Oreo filling-powered rocket and silly Japanese inventions from XFM.net. Cracked.com presents Five Steps to a Horrible Comedy (as well as the less funny acing job interviews). It is kind of funny that Cracked itself is still alive. A.Norman sends along a nice cartoon. Check out the ten highest-radiation cell phones. My Sanyo falls right in the midrange, at about 1.13 watts/kilogram. I swear this shit is going to give me cancer. I have a wireless router next to the head of my bed and I wonder how my brain cells like all those damn packets.

The MacBook has motion sensors that can be used to make light saber sounds. Optical illusions have something to do with your brain only handling one part of an image at once. Both of these via XFM.

A student speaker at New School had the guts to go up against John McCain and generated a small media frenzy about it.

Valerie Plame bits: Newsweek on Cheney's handwritten notes about gittin' Wilson and a Fitz filing. Wayne Madsen seems to admit that he got bamboozled on the matter of Karl Rove's impending/collapsing indictment last week. Tough break. I consider Madsen to be a most unusual source, with a lot of question marks. The stories about the Ohio vote fraud were weirder and more conspiratorial than any other I ever found, as have been the NSA stories. Wild enough to interest me, but I'm just not sure if I can support this guy or not. However, I'll still hold out a little faith that he'll finally get the bombshell he's looking for. (Side bonus: a good old summary of Ledeen's ties to the whole Niger-uranium forgery case. Not fresh though)

Tiny slice of conspiracy thinking: fake a middle solution: The "illuminati strategy", or so they say, is to control both sides of a debate, in order to create the desired political outcome. Thus "left" and "right" are convenient solutions. In some ways that is useful, but in reality, sorry guys, there are a lot of different interest groups in the world that aren't just the illuminati. But then again, it's a pretty good way to look at Hannity & Colmes. I didn't like Pair.com and their fucked-up thinking, but if you want more on the illuminati Third Way illusion, this is it. I meant to post this with Pop Conspiratoria and forgot it. Also here is OpusDeiAlert.com complaining that Opus Dei is really a bunch of evil Jewish guys and Ratzinger is an "Anti-Pope", whatever that means. I promise this is the end of this particularly silly (and somewhat offensive) shit, but Opus Dei is still spooky.

Pixeldusted sent along what he called Stat Porn - area-adjusted statistical maps from Worldmapper.

That guy named Bill from Brooklyn sent a story in the NY Times about a bizarre trick that physicists are doing with light.

There is talk of a certain wobbly quality in the American economy and Pravda has a bit on the looming petrodollar problem. Libertarian Republican Rep. Ron Paul on the declining dollar.

NSA Total Big BrotherGate: Read Billmon on the Leviathan and it's all-consuming total power complex. You won't regret it. William Arkin's WaPo Early warning Blog has some damn good stuff on the NSA spying programs. This Salon interview with an NSA insider is worth reading:

The fact that the federal government has my phone records scares the living daylights out of me. They won't learn much from them other than I like ordering pizza on Friday night and I don't call my mother as often as I should. But it should scare the living daylights out of everybody, even if you're willing to permit the government certain leeways to conduct the war on terrorism.

We should be terrified that Congress has not been doing its job and because all of the checks and balances put in place to prevent this have been deliberately obviated. In order to get this done, the NSA and White House went around all of the checks and balances. I'm convinced that 20 years from now we, as historians, will be looking back at this as one of the darkest eras in American history. And we're just beginning to sort of peel back the first layers of the onion.

Iraq disintegration notes: Power and Interest News Report is pretty dry, solid geopolitical analysis, and they are smart to look at how ''Iraq's Impending Fracture to Produce Political Earthquake in Turkey''. Inside Higher Ed has a feature on the Middle east wars in US Campuses, noting on the plus side:

Macalester College, for example, is receiving a grant to promote work on a dig in Israel and planning “peace summits” on the Middle East, to bring together various thinkers at the college’s Minnesota campus.

AfterDowningStreet.org has a pretty harsh collection of uncensored Iraq images of the dead, dying and wounded. Also their website runs Drupal, which we are (slowly) moving to, so it's helpful to look at for that alone. Middle East Newsline reports insurgents getting bolder in attacks - just going straight for US bases. Sunnis complain of US "atrocity" killing of civilians. Juan Cole says, yep, it's pretty much impossible to save Iraq. A former diplomat says many inside the government want to speak out on the war, but are afraid to. Analysts in the military say that the war has forced the US to be "reactive" to insurgents and abandon the all-important initiative. Palestinian refugees from Iraq accepted into Syria. Saddam tried to help out the Palestinians a bit with housing & aid, and now they're feeling the backlash as Iraq shears itself apart. A pretty fucked up story about 200,000 AK-47s from Bosnia vanishing due to some corrupt defense contractors or something. Oddly, from a UK tabloid, but whatever. Most of these links came from Juan Cole.

Antiwar.com has switched their blog engine to WordPress. Antiwar really does a good job, and Raimondo's latest bit on American Gangsterism is no exception, as well as "Is America becoming a police state?" and the Next World War.

Let's waste some time

For real, I am digging around very seriously for a job today. It's my birthday tomorrow, but I really need to make sure that the coming year has the kind of stability and confidence that the last year just really hasn't had at all. And by that, I mean full time work that will get me away from wasting my time with such really productive hobbies as this site. But hey that ain't yet, so lets waste some time:

Without BAGNewsNotes, where would we get such photos? Since politics is all images these days, its nice such a site specifically checks out the visual side: Psychology Watch: The Obvious Boy For Next Secretary Of Defense:

Nuclear gas release in Prairie Island containment vessel: A story from that new Twin Cities Daily Planet site, which sort of left ambiguous the nature of a recent nuclear leak down in Red Wing:

Prairie Island accident raises questions: A nuclear industry watchdog group Tuesday called the May 5 accident at the Prairie Island nuclear plant in which 100 workers were contaminated with radioactive iodine the most serious release of radiation there in 20 years and raised questions about the federal reporting process.

My understanding from the article is that the gas never got outside the containment vessel... The wording is a bit hazy, but the Daily Planet just started up, so they've got a couple kinks to get out. I admire the clever structure of the new Twin Cities news aggregating / indie features site, though, and I wish 'em the best.

Macalester alumni mag faces Scrotum-gate: I had declined to speak of this on the Internet but then they covered it in the Mac Weekly. Basically one of the Bad Comedy boys got his balls into a group photo that was submitted to Mac's fawning glossy alumni magazine. This was a brilliant maneuver in every sense, and a good (wait for it) extension of Bad Comedy's nudity-tinged oeuvre. I'd heard some rumors of this conspiracy in advance and I'm glad it went off well.

Obnoxious 'faux liberal' Washington Post columnist complains about angry bloggers: complaining about the 'anger' factor is just another way to deflect from the substance. In this case, it was Cohen's whining about how Colbert shouldn't have dared ruffle those mega-eagle feathers, which set off some pissed off emails. Digby: "In case Cohen hasn't noticed nobody on the fucking planet likes squishy faux liberal courtiers." And Salon's Daou Report on that and on the DailyKos.

Random as hell: (but seemed interesting enough): Old Afghan warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar "vows allegiance to bin Laden". Actually I thought this was old news, but it's interesting he's still kicking around since the old days when Reagan helped him fight the commies and pretty much everyone else. Tariq Ali on Iran. Muqtada al-Sadr wants to model the Mahdi Army on Hezbollah, which is a logical progression from boisterous militia to political party with lotsa guns and social services. AlJazeera.com (not affiliated with the TV network): Handicapped U.S. intel. on Iran challenges new CIA man.

This interview with the frontman of Godsmack about why the hell they sold songs into military recruiting commercials is pretty funny, if sad. (via Firedoglake)

"America's Geopolitical Nightmare and Eurasian Strategic Energy Arrangements" by F. William Engdahl from the idiosyncratic Centre for Research on Globalization, which always has interesting things. "The Next World War" from Antiwar.com's Justin Raimondo.

Suddenly all these guys, Joe Biden among them, are saying "let's just break Iraq in three" and feeling clever about themselves. I think that's a bit insane, but hardly surprising. George Packer, a skilled journalist, says in the New Yorker:

The choice in Iraq should not be between the Administration’s failed eschatology and the growing eagerness of most politicians to be rid of the problem.

Nobody likes Joe Lieberman, not even his supporters. Bizarre.

Jews Jeer Mehlman: JTA: Republican chairman booed at AJCommittee event:

The room burst into applause, however, when AJCommittee board member Edith Everett asked Mehlman to “take a message” to President Bush to stop linking Israel and Iran. “It does not help Israel and it does not help American Jews to appear to be stimulators of any action against Iran,” Everett said.

Something about Hitchens and Juan Cole: Noted rightwing drunkard Christopher Hitchens broke into a private email server where one of my favorite academics on the internet, Juan Cole, was explaining that the term "wipe Israel off the map" is an idiom that doesn't actually exist in Farsi, therefore every time you hear it, it's actually a distortion of meaning that serves war propaganda. Basically Hitchens published all these chunks of Cole's reasoning out of context in Slate, and this was a dick thing to do, since no one likes Hitchens, so he does this kind of B.S. hit piece. Anyway here is a bit about it. More here. As always, Cole's site is absolutely key.

Kos calls my boss a "wingnut": Teh sweet. Duly noted on the dailykos:

Last week I opened up in Minneapolis, where I got a ridiculously good reception. I started with a book signing at Arise Books, which is a small indy bookstore run by volunteers. I hadn't ever heard of anything like that before. The place was packed, and in the crowd was Fighting Dem Tim Walz in MN-01, who got a chance to update me on his race (which really is looking good). Also present was CW Wisconsin, who drove three hours for the event and left some great beer behind for me.

I did some radio, including wingnut radio on a show following Hannity. It was the first wingnut radio I'd done, since quite frankly, I'd rather not waste my time talking to people who won't buy my book anyway. But I had a blast batting around callers like a cat toying with a mouse. Seriously, what a bunch of morons.

Counter-AIPAC academics strike back: The Mearsheimer/Walt paper about the Israel Lobby and AIPAC has generated a predictable round of finger-pointing and scurrilous charges of anti-semitism, because they dared to directly dissect with blunt academic Neo-Realist style the way that A) Israel's right-wing policies are fully supported by the United States B) for totally irrational reasons that undermine our real national interests and C) no one is ever ever ever supposed to talk about this. Obviously it is a controversial topic to ramble on about, but not now. Anyway Mearsheimer and Walt wrote a big letter reacting to the reactions. These guys will have to sacrifice a lot in order to take on such a dicey topic, and we owe it to them to look at the matter carefully. But not now, damnit. Also there is an academic Freedom of Speech petition Juan Cole started against the charges of anti-semitism directed towards M&W.

Bits on CIA chief candidate Hayden: For some bizarre reason, Dennis Hastert is lashing out at John Negroponte for trying to do a "power play" by getting his deputy Hayden into running the CIA. I would recommend Steve Clemons' Washington Note stories on this matter, and the counter-intuitive "Misreading Michael Hayden's Role in the Intelligence Bureaucracy Wars: Negroponte Wants Hayden to Battle with -- Not Help -- Rumsfeld" (also noted here). The TPM muckies managed to link Hayden to Wilkes' corrupt MZM contractor. Check out Rozen following the case as well as Marshall. Tuesday, WaPo reports FBI probing Foggo's CIA contracts. The Sun reports Pentagon Is Winner Over CIA. Today, NY Times says Clash Foreseen Between C.I.A. and Pentagon.

Wayne Madsen - a peculiar journalist who used to be in the NSA, (read caveats about him in Wikipedia), well he doesn't like Michael Hayden one bit, and he has a lot of weird goods on the guy and the NSA generally. Check this this this this this and this for quite a trip down the rabbit hole. Madsen was the guy who stirred up that story that John Bolton was improperly reading NSA intercepts of Bill Richardson. Never got disproven.

Big Ol love letter from Ahmadinejad: It is a very interesting thing to read, and it seems to be targeted more at a Middle Eastern audience than the White House as such. NY Times on it here and Le Monde has the full letter here. By the way Steve Clemons also talks about this funny letter gambit. I would include more, but this is interesting by itself:

Mr President,
September Eleven was a horrendous incident. The killing of innocents is deplorable and appalling in any part of the world. Our government immediately declared its disgust with the perpetrators and offered its condolences to the bereaved and expressed its sympathies.

All governments have a duty to protect the lives, property and good standing of their citizens. Reportedly your government employs extensive security, protection and intelligence systems – and even hunts its opponents abroad. September eleven was not a simple operation. Could it be planned and executed without coordination with intelligence and security services – or their extensive infiltration? Of course this is just an educated guess. Why have the various aspects of the attacks been kept secret? Why are we not told who botched their responsibilities? And, why aren't those responsible and the guilty parties identified and put on trial?
All governments have a duty to provide security and peace of mind for their citizens. For some years now, the people of your country and neighbours of world trouble spots do not have peace of mind. After 9.11, instead of healing and tending to the emotional wounds of the survivors and the American people – who had been immensely traumatised by the attacks – some Western media only intensified the climates of fear and insecurity – some constantly talked about the possibility of new terror attacks and kept the people in fear. Is that service to the American people? Is it possible to calculate the damages incurred from fear and panic?
American citizen lived in constant fear of fresh attacks that could come at any moment and in any place. They felt insecure in the streets, in their place of work and at home. Who would be happy with this situation? Why was the media, instead of conveying a feeling of security and providing peace of mind, giving rise to a feeling of insecurity?
Some believe that the hype paved the way – and was the justification – for an attack on Afghanistan. Again I need to refer to the role of media. In media charters, correct dissemination of information and honest reporting of a story are established tenets. I express my deep regret about the disregard shown by certain Western media for these principles. The main pretext for an attack on Iraq was the existence of WMDs. This was repeated incessantly – for the public to, finally, believe – and the ground set for an attack on Iraq.
Will the truth not be lost in a contrive and deceptive climate? Again, if the truth is allowed to be lost, how can that be reconciled with the earlier mentioned values? Is the truth known to the Almighty lost as well?

[snip]........What has been said, are some of the grievances of the people around the world, in our region and in your country. But my main contention – which I am hoping you will agree to some of it – is : Those in power have specific time in office, and do not rule indefinitely, but their names will be recorded in history and will be constantly judged in the immediate and distant futures.

The people will scrutinize our presidencies.
Did we manage to bring peace, security and prosperity for the people or insecurity and unemployment? Did we intend to establish justice, or just supported especial interest groups, and by forcing many people to live in poverty and hardship, made a few people rich and powerful – thus trading the approval of the people and the Almighty with theirs'? Did we defend the rights of the underprivileged or ignore them? Did we defend the rights of all people around the world or imposed wars on them, interfered illegally in their affairs, established hellish prisons and incarcerated some of them? Did we bring the world peace and security or raised the specter of intimidation and threats? Did we tell the truth to our nation and others around the world or presented an inverted version of it? Were we on the side of people or the occupiers and oppressors? Did our administration set out to promote rational behaviour, logic, ethics, peace, fulfilling obligations, justice, service to the people, prosperity, progress and respect for human dignity or the force of guns. Intimidation, insecurity, disregard for the people, delaying the progress and excellence of other nations, and trample on people's rights? And finally, they will judge us on whether we remained true to our oath of office – to serve the people, which is our main task, and the traditions of the prophets – or not?

Well fine, then, Ahmadinejad better damn well figure a way out of this one now, if he is going to talk all altruistic and shit...

Very bad video games: Islamists using US video games in youth appeal (May 4)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The makers of combat video games have unwittingly become part of a global propaganda campaign by Islamic militants to exhort Muslim youths to take up arms against the United States, officials said on Thursday.

Tech-savvy militants from al Qaeda and other groups have modified video war games so that U.S. troops play the role of bad guys in running gunfights against heavily armed Islamic radical heroes, Defense Department official and contractors told Congress.

....Devlin spoke before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, at which contractors from San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp., or SAIC, gave lawmakers a presentation that focused on Iraq as an engine for Islamic militant propaganda from Indonesia to Turkey and Chechnya.

....One of the latest video games modified by militants is the popular "Battlefield 2" from leading video game publisher, Electronic Arts Inc of Redwood City, California. Jeff Brown, a spokesman for Electronic Arts, said enthusiasts often write software modifications, known as "mods," to video games.

"Battlefield 2" ordinarily shows U.S. troops engaging forces from China or a united Middle East coalition. But in a modified video trailer posted on Islamic Web sites and shown to lawmakers, the game depicts a man in Arab headdress carrying an automatic weapon into combat with U.S. invaders.

"I was just a boy when the infidels came to my village in Blackhawk helicopters," a narrator's voice said as the screen flashed between images of street-level gunfights, explosions and helicopter assaults.

Then came a recording of President George W. Bush's September 16, 2001, statement: "This crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while." It was edited to repeat the word "crusade," which Muslims often define as an attack on Islam by Christianity.

I think we all want to know which mods they are running. Are Islamic militants closing the American game-modding gap? Here in America, video games serve Freedom: "America's Army", literally a first-person shooter designed to indoctrinate the youth into joining the military. Better to spend that defense cash on manipulating teen pop culture and upping polygon counts, rather than body armor, I suppose. SAIC is shady, too, but I will let that go for now.

Conspiracy Theory Rock; Zoroastrianism is still with us; War profits & KBR: not that profitable?

Robert Smigel had this awesome cartoon on a March 1998 SNL called "Conspiracy Theory Rock" which was really quite amazing (QuickTime link), as noted in this Times story. It only aired once, and has subsequently been deleted from reruns – instead they run the second Backstreet Boys performance. Basically it conveys, in typical Smigel style, the conflicts of interest and shady military money flows of the major corporate media – and the NBC peacock does embarrassing stuff. More on it here.

Who was Zoroaster? A Persian prophet around 1700 BC who gave us the concepts of cosmological good versus evil, the afterlife and the Judgment Day. The Persian king found this to be a handy way to generate a more coherent and submissive population, so Zoroastrianism became the state religion of Persia. Even though there are fire temples around Asia today, it is still very obscure. The fire temples all have continuously burning fires that are the representations, though not considered supernatural, of Ahura Mazda, the Light. The fires have been burning for centuries. (images from Wikipedia)

Zoroaster's influence went east, where it infused the foundations of Buddhism, and west, where it got into post-Babylonian Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Zoroastrianism is an interesting and under-appreciated pillar of monotheism, and in a sense today you could say we are dealing with a kind of Zoroastrian manichaeism run amok. At least that was the point of this DailyKos entry about the Prisoners of Zarathustra. Also, Zoroastrianism has really freakin' cool Babylon-style art.

War Profiteering ain't that profitable? Slate: War profiteering—harder than it looks. By Daniel Gross. A lot of interesting points about the structure of how KBR works. Also check out this thing from PBS Frontline, it was quite detailed and long, but a fascinating interview about how in the military-industrial complex, contractors beget subcontractors up to six levels deep. Even more interesting, those psychopathic guys from CACI and Titan Corporation who were working as private quasi-CIA interrogators at Abu Ghraib had no government oversight officers inside Iraq at all. In other words, there is some kind of mercenary hydra beast with absolutely no checks on it. And it's stealing your money: Frontline: Outsourcing military services is in vogue. Why? An interview with Steven Schooner. Just a few things to kick around.... Try PrivateForces.com for more on the privatized / mercenary military companies.

Reports of Kurdish rebellion between Marash and Shahrzur; Turkish mortars fall on Iraqi city of Zakho

There are reports of trouble among the restive natives of eastern Anatolia. It seems the Yanks have tried to set up a banana republic down in Mesopotamia. in turn, the quiescent tribal locals of the north, who begrudge their Asian neighbors after many centuries of strife and imposed political submission to the Turk and the Arab, finally see a moment to cut their own path through the highlands.

The Kurds have broken loose of Baghdad's control, and more recently, have taken up arms in great numbers against their Ottoman masters in Constantinople. There's a sense they may yet capture the Kirkuk oil fields from Baghdad, and from there, face their destiny against the Turkish army to liberate their brethren.

Or something like that. (source: check out these maps of the Ottoman empire - thx Texas U!) In reality, any damn fool before the war would have said that Saddam's fall would lead to the Kurds seeking total independence and rebelling against Turkey, as they did in 1920, 1925, 1930, 1937, the 1980s, 1990s.... Apparently, this has escalated into ethnic conflict in Iraq, as the small Turkmen minority – about a quarter of Kirkuk – suffer the ethnic and religious tensions under Kurdish dominion in contemporary Iraq (not to mention getting the shit bombed out of them in Tal Afar). The Turks, meanwhile, will probably "step in" at some point to save their Turkic brethren from Kurdish "consolidation".

Of course, the Kurds have one of the most peculiar distributions of any ethnic group in the world:

This presents the possibility of Turkish military intervention into Iraq – and certainly, they have a presence there. Der Speigel reports:

April 25: Kurdish Intifada? Clashes in Southeastern Turkey on the Rise

Violence is on the rise in southeastern Turkey as the Kurdistan Worker's Party increases its guerilla activity. The government in Ankara is worried about a Kurdish intifada.

It's slowly becoming a regular feature of the news coming out of Turkey these days: clashes between Turkish troops and Kurdish militants in the eastern part of the country. On Tuesday, three Kurdish militants and one Turkish soldier were killed in a skirmish in the Sirnak province near the Iraqi border. Fifteen soldiers, four police officers and more than 40 Kurdish militants have been killed in south-eastern Turkey in recent months. And eight bombings in the past three months have left two dead and 47 injured -- bombings claimed by a group calling itself the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons.
In short, violence is on the rise in Turkey -- and the country's military is concerned that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), together with the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, is trying to begin a Palestinian-style intifada.

Indeed, the Aksam newspaper reported last Friday that a further 10,000 Turkish soldiers have been sent to the border region, bringing the total number of troops in the area up to about 50,000. "As long as the PKK exists, our operations will continue in ever-increasing intensity," General Yasar Buyukanit, the head of Turkey's land forces, told CNN-Turk television in an interview aired on Sunday.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK, which has been fighting for Kurdish autonomy since 1984, frequently launches its anti-government operations from its bases on the Iraqi side of the border. Since the group took up arms in 1984, some 37,000 people have lost their lives in the fighting -- with clashes generally accelerating in the spring time when the mountain passes on the Turkey-Iraq border become more accessible.

Indeed, to help prevent attacks from being launched across the border, some 2,000 Turkish soldiers are routinely stationed in northern Iraq. Turkey has repeatedly called on the United States to crack down on the PKK bases in northern Iraq, but US commanders have been reticent to divert troops from the struggle against Iraqi insurgents.

Now Turkey seems tempted to take matters into its own hands. The chief commander of Turkey's armed forces, General Hilmi Ozkok, has stressed that Turkey has the right to carry out cross-border operations under international law: "If the conditions arise, like every sovereign country, we will use those rights," Ozkok said on Sunday, according to the AP. Still, such a move would be politically sensitive and diplomats argue that it is unlikely Turkey will put its relations to Washington and to the European Union at risk by staging a large offensive in Iraq. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has likewise recently said that neighboring countries should not meddle in Iraq's affairs -- a statement thought to refer to Turkey.

With the armed clashes between the PKK and the Turkish military heating up, the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also stepping up internal repression of groups suspected of supporting the PKK. Last Tuesday, Turkish security forces raided the offices of the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party. Some 50 party members, including five provincial leaders and nine local leaders, were detained, according to the AP. Prime Minister Erdogan had previously urged members of the Democratic Society Party to denounce PKK violence. The leaders of the party have refused to accept the definition of the PKK as a terrorist group, a definition endorsed by Turkey, Washington and the EU.

Other Reporting: The ever-upbeat NY Times says: U.S. Will Help Turks Stop Kurdish Inroads From Iraq. AP: Turkey Deploys More Troops to Contain Kurdish Guerrillas. Juan Cole says:

Turkish military action against the Kurdish Workers' Party along the border with Iraq has heated up, with Turkish mortars falling on the Iraqi city of Zakho, according to this report. That's what we needed, more mortars falling on an Iraqi city from yet another quarter.

This problem is pretty damn obvious, I guess. It's yet another reason why the war in Iraq promised to go regional from day one. Oh wait. Three whole fucking years ago, tomorrow, we had this:

And two years ago, the list of the fallen was "only" this big. Charted today:

The regional war expands, we haven't even gotten to Iran yet, much less the eventually doomed oil terminals of Saudi Arabia...

MPR: Where America gets its strength

From a really good hour-long talk on MPR yesterday that you can catch on RealPlayer:

David Halberstam: Journalist (including in Vietnam) and author, in a speech from the Westminster Town Hall Forum in Mpls. Halberstam recently edited a collection of essays titled "Defining a Nation: Our America and the Sources of its Strength." There was a ton of good stuff about journalism and what actually makes America work.

He advises everyone to see the Battle of Algiers (1966) because if you see it, "you will not want to see American kids go to Iraq." Also he talks about how Iraq is "damaging to the soul of the country." This is crucial - my fuzzy transcription:

Journalists matter when the policy is wrong... When it doesn't work, and that's when journalists really matter in a free society. When I went to Vietnam in 1962 there was a really small group of us and the Kennedy people had upgraded the commitment from 1600 to 18,000 [troops]. They didn't want to send in combat troops but they didn't want - because of what happened in domestic politics - what happened when Chiang Kai Shek fell in mainland China, they didn't want to lose Vietnam as we lost China, as if China was ever ours to own.

So they did this halfway program and it didn't work. And when it didn't work, the people in the field tried to report to their superiors in saigon that it didn't work and when their superiors in Saigon said in effect, don't ever report that way again. Report that we are winning or you will not go from colonel to brigadier general, or light colonel to colonel, which was the backchannel word...

They turned to us, they turned to the journalists, so we became a ventilating system for the bureaucracy. It was not a press struggle, it was a struggle within the United States Army, between those in the field actually fighting the war, and those in Saigon and Washington who were reflecting the political desires of the Kennedy administration. Bad policy, when the policy doesn't work, journalists become infinitely more important.

Anyhow I thought that was pretty damn good. Relevant to the current thing, I gotta say.

Concert at MCTC nixed, student walkout organizers threatened

I'll throw in this bit from Citypages. looks like the news broke that the concert was cancelled yesterday. Fucking weak, it's CheebaDANZA all over again:

City Pages - The Blotter - Kids Don't Follow: April 27, 8:48 PM

Kids Don't Follow

In what is being described by organizers as "the largest youth antiwar demonstration in Minnesota since the Vietnam era," thousands of students are planning to walk out of classes tomorrow in protest of the war in Iraq and military recruitment in schools. But at least two area schools (Central and Jefferson) are threatening students with suspension. The students will hold a press conference this afternoon at 3:30 at Minneapolis Technical and Community College (1501 Hennepin Ave., Mpls.), the site of a proposed peace concert for tomorrow that also got unplugged. Here are the students' statements:

Appeal from Jefferson High students

We are three students from Jefferson High School in Bloomington, MN. We are being threatened with suspension for passing out fliers advertising the April 28 walkout. We aren't allowed to wear shirts that say "I'm walking out for peace." We aren't even allowed to SAY the word walkout.

First we attempted to get posters approved through official ways. We got called in and told that advocating the walkout by distributing any material or voicing any knowledge of it happening was going to cause a disruption to the school learning environment.

We got a National Lawyers Guild lawyer to write a letter to our principal explaining that Tinker vs. Des Moines gives us the right to organize the walkout in school, but this made no difference. In our meeting with the Principal today [4/26] their lawyer had given them a response to the NLG letter, claiming that it does not fall under protected free speech.

Our right to free speech and protest, as well as the rights of our fellow Youth Against War and Racism chapter members, have been denied. Basically we refuse to be censored for our right to practice our political freedoms including telling people an event is going on. We will continue to pass out leaflets and they will probably continue confiscating or suspending people handing them out.

Here's what we'd like for you to do: call our administration. Demand that our rights are supported. Flood their offices with phone calls and emails reminding them that teenagers are people with rights, because they seem to have forgotten. The numbers are below.

Bloomington Schools Superintendent,
Gary Prest
952-681-6402
gprest@bloomington.k12.mn.us

Peace and Love,
Alex Uhrich, Libby Tousignant, Ben Zabel
Jefferson Youth Against War and Racism
Contact us at: nirvanaguy18@gmail.com

Appeal from Central High Students

At St. Paul Central High School, our chapter of Youth Against War and Racism has been planning for the antiwar walkout on Friday, April 28 in solidarity with other Twin Cities YAWR chapters. We are protesting against military recruiters in our schools as well as against the war as a whole.

We have produced a variety of leaflets explaining our cause and encouraging students to join us. Over the past week, we have begun to pass the fliers out more intensely. As a result, our school administrators and our principal, Mary Mackbee, have attempted to prevent us from passing them out.

On Wednesday, April 26, before school, many of our fliers were confiscated by Ms. Mackbee while they were being distributed. We were told that we would be punished if they were found passing out any more fliers. The school staff have been instructed to assign detention to any student caught distributing fliers. Later in the day, when we attempted to get back the fliers that had been confiscated, we were then told that, if we were found passing out leaflets, we would be suspended for "willful disobedience."

Our First Amendment rights cannot be ignored. Regardless of any claims made by the school that we are under their supervision, our fundamental democratic right to freedom of expression cannot be abridged. The schools might claim that we are creating a disruption, however a much greater disruption is being created for us by the military recruiters in our schools and by the loss of funding that our schools must deal with due to taxpayer money being spent on war instead of education.

We cannot allow them to continue to prevent us from expressing ourselves. For this reason, we ask that you help us to protect our democratic freedom and our right to free expression.

We ask that you call or e-mail our District Superintendent, Lou Kanavati, and demand that we be allowed to exercise our basic right to expression and distribute antiwar fliers, brochures, or other documents free of censorship or threats.

Superintendent Lou Kanavati
651/767-8150
Lou.Kanavati@spps.org

Thank you,
Sean Foltin and Shane Davis
Central High Youth Against War and Racism
Contact us at: acolyteofthecpc@yahoo.com

Yet another student walkout Friday in my neighborhood, but does it do any good?

There is another student walkout today and it will wind from the University campus to my very own neck of the woods at Loring Park. I would probably like to take photos, but a certain shady lawyer type has my camera. It's probably just as well, so I can take in the scene, instead of trying to Document it as usual. But the visuals will surely be good.

It is a paradox or something. Street marches are a fairly outdated way of attempting to change policies, and the typical media blackouts – or worse, the caricatures that the participants unwittingly blunder into – really don't move the ball down the field. Just some more fucking students looking for a skip day, as someone put it to me.

But on the other hand, the news is all around us that a war in Iran is already gearing up, the United States has decided to fuck over the Palestinians in another shrewd move, and of course the Iraq meat grinder continues to rip apart families near and far. There has to be a way to transform this crisis into a physical manifestation that can offer resolve and hope to the counter-movements against it.

Some of the people in that crowd will have family and friends inside the machine somewhere, trying to stay alive until the tour is up, and it is the responsibility of those left behind to try to swipe at the war policy. And the protest serves another purpose too: it reminds this oh-so-'radical' – now really a majority – of the American public that we are not alone in this fight, not separate, not just alone, shrouded in the darkness of our computer screens, following the latest disaster.

It reminds us that there is a society with real bonds that can't be broken... Not by recruiters, not by Tony Snow, not by the pervasive fear that blankets this sad nation.

Details from the U AWOL group here:

twin cities antiwar
** W A L K O U T **
Friday April 28

** Noon Rally at University of Minnesota, Northrop Plaza
(map: http://yawr.org/april28/map.html)
** High schoolers: leave class 10:30am. Bus, carpool, or march to U of M rally
* Rally followed by march through downtown Minneapolis to…
* Free Concert at 3pm at MCTC by Loring Park, featuring Desdamona, Kanser, I Self Divine, A New Day, Two Wurds, more. Bring a bag lunch.

We are walking out to demand:
* END the occupation of Iraq NOW! to fund education and social needs
* NO! to military recruitment in our schools
* YES! to equal access to higher education
* YES! to living wage jobs for youth
* STOP racist attacks on immigrants and civil liberties

Last November 2nd, thousands of Twin Cities students - from over 40 schools in 16 districts - walked out to protest the war. Up to 2000 rallied and marched at the U of M, and a new youth movement was born.
But the war has dragged on and the violence in Iraq has increased dramatically. More and more young soldiers are coming home dead or maimed. Conservative estimates suggest over 100,000 Iraqis have been killed in the three years of occupation. Over 70 percent of U.S. troops in Iraq think the occupation should be ended, reflecting the opinion of U.S. workers and youth at home. Yet Congress keeps giving Bush hundreds of billions more for this corrupt war for oil and empire. Meanwhile our schools crumble, tuition rises out of reach, living wage jobs are disappearing, and the politicians are whipping up anti-immigrant racism to deflect the blame for these problems from themselves. Its time to step up our resistance!

Organized by:
** Youth Against War and Racism / 612.760.1980 / http://yawr.org
** U of M Anti-War Organizing League / http://www.tc.umn.edu/~awol/ / umnawol@gmail.com
** Socialist Alternative / 612.226.9129 / http://www.socialistalternative.org/
** MCTC Students Against War and Racism

Endorsed by: La Raza Student Cultural Center, Women's Student Activist Collective, Equal Access Coalition, Belfry Center for Social and Cultural Activities, Anti-War Committee, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Daybreak Newspaper, North Country Co-op, Arise! Books and Resource Collective, Welfare Rights Committee, Twin Cities Peace Campaign, Green Party (4 th and 5 th Districts), Counter-Propaganda Coalition, Jack Pine Community Center

Onward slogging Christian Leader-Man; Net neutrality gets legs; FDA bosses states on pot laws; USAF censors DailyKos

Big Poppa Doom informed everyone that, in a handy and expedient combination of Apocalyptic middle eastern wars and invisible men with booming voices, God is determining our foreign policy. What could go wrong? Catch the video. Editor&Publisher and the WaPo on it.

Bush: I base a lot of my foreign policy decisions on some things that I think are true. One, I believe there's an Almighty. And, secondly, I believe one of the great gifts of the Almighty is the desire in everybody's soul, regardless of what you look like or where you live, to be free.

Also the following statement:

One decision he questions: After the successful invasion, "preparing an Iraqi army for an external threat. Well, it turns out there may have been an external threat but it's nothing compared to the internal threat." He did not explain what external threat the Iraqis were being trained for.

FDA 420 political diktat: Last week the FDA published a fancy condemnation of marijuana medical studies -- and in an odd example of a federal bureaucracy trying to dictate rules to state legislatures, condemned efforts at the state level to reform marijuana laws. It's kind of improper for federal agencies to order state legislatures to Jump. Scientific American on it, and here's the FDA statement.

As more than a few people are noticing these days, this is another example of fake politicized science, like ordering NASA scientists to shut up about global warming (read the damn NASA memo). (don't forget that national parks are falling apart and of course the government doesn't care about global warming) Go hang out at smokedot to compensate, and don't forget all those tax dollars flushed down the toilet for the war on drugs.

Net Neutrality: Couple more articles about the impending cancellation of the internet's egalitarian structure. Fortunately, Nancy Pelosi is supporting an amendment that would save Net Neutrality. You can become a "citizen co-sponsor" about it here. The attempt to fix it is called the Markey Amendment. Despite having a serious uphill battle, the word seems to be spreading:

We now have over 75 coalition partners, everyone from the Parents Television Council to the Texas Internet Service Provider’s Association to Consumer Action, and the blogosphere is on fire. We launched yesterday, and net neutrality is just blowing up.
Comic book collectors, video gamers, librarians, hip hop sites, music fans, more video gamers, designers, small business owners, and nonprofits have heard of the issue and are very angry at the telecom cartel’s move.

And now the tech companies have chimed in with Don’t Mess with the Net.

Iraq for Sale: The liberal documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald (Outfoxed and others) is working on a new film, Iraq for Sale, about corrupt defense contractors, in time for the election this fall. However, they are trying to get $50 donations to finance production. I advised them that the trailer on their website doesn't seem to work on Mac.

Air Force censors liberal websites: According to someone at the DailyKos, the Air Force is blocking the DailyKos, Atrios Eschaton and TalkingPointsMemo. The roughly equivalent (although more hateful, I would say) rightwing sites FreeRepublic and LittleGreenFootballs are not blocked. More on this. If you are in the military and are trying to circumvent ideologically tainted censorship, try these tips on Peacefire. You can see if a program called SmartFilter is blocking URLs here (we are classed as "personal pages"). There is something odd about how the Air Force seems to be the most fundamentalist branch of the military.

It is also interesting that Armed Forces Radio is extremely tilted towards rightwing commentary that is rebroadcast from civilian sources. It's like 90% conservative. More on Armed Forces Radio bias here and here. This has bad effects, wherein for example, Rush Limbaugh tells soldiers through Armed Forces Radio that the Abu Ghraib torture was basically acceptable to "blow some steam off".

This website is clearly not blocked at many military installations, including the Air Force. However, I have also been sent screenshots of this site being blocked on military internet at a particular place that I won't elaborate on.

MZM meta-scandal: Corrupt defense contractor trying to start a war in Iran, and pretty much everything else too:

Disgraced defense contractor planned to promote democracy in Iran: March 24
By Warren P. Strobel - Knight Ridder

WASHINGTON - In a new example of disgraced defense contractor Mitchell Wade's attempts to exert influence in Washington and beyond, Wade and two business partners formed a nonprofit group in 2004 to promote democracy in Iran, according to documents and interviews.

Wade and the two partners, who have been large contributors to Republican political campaigns, formed the Iranian Democratization Foundation in April 2004, according to incorporation papers filed in Washington.
....In November 2004, Congress approved spending $3 million to promote democracy in Iran. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month asked Congress for a large boost in funding, to $75 million. Behrooz Behbudi, who helped incorporate the foundation, said in a telephone interview that Wade "was supposed to get funds from the Congress" for the project. The two later fell out over business dealings in Iraq, Behbudi said.

Wade, who headed contractor MZM Inc., pleaded guilty last month to bribery-related charges and making illegal campaign contributions. His chief congressional patron, former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, pleaded guilty in November to taking bribes. Wade's dealings, which include contracts MZM received from Pentagon intelligence agencies, are under investigation.

MZM is a fun one. It is interesting how there are so many scandals around Washington, they sort of blend into and overlap each other. MZM was one of Duke Cunningham's corrupt companies, but in the Jack-Abramoff-of-all-trades go-get-em style of DC operators, MZM shadiness has also been a major cause of Katherine Harris' Senate campaign disintegration in Florida, and MZM contractors helped cover up the fake Iraq intelligence in one of the Congressional investigations, by working for the Silberman-Robb Commission for WMD Whitewashing, as TPMmuckrakers have dug up. Isn't DC great? The muckies also said that MZM helped select bombing targets early in the Iraq war:

In addition to its work at CENTCOM, MZM is known to have had contracts to support CIFA, the Pentagon's domestic spying operation; the FBI's Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force; the Department of Energy's Counterintelligence Office; the White House's Robb-Silberman Commission to study WMD intelligence; the Homeland Security Department's watch center; and the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center.

Check out PrivateForces.com for more on privatized military firms, the sector of the economy that's gonna eat all the others.

Gas Temperature Map: You gotta check this out. It's getting hot out there.

Intel agencies using blogs more, Blackwater lawsuit, etc...

WASHINGTON TIMES: CIA mines 'rich' content from blogs
By Bill Gertz April 19, 2006

President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said.

The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin.

"A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to ... people putting information on there that doesn't exist anywhere else," Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.

I'm gonna throw some random stuff at you. It's not a waste of time to look at, but it won't tell you one coherent story, so much as some shades of what went down over the last week while I was wrapped up in all the Macalester festivities... which I will elaborate on later.

Tony Snow for WH press sec.?: Lying water carrier for Republicans + doesn't stammer or sweat so much == why not? Tony Snow's many lies make him an unacceptable press sec'y

New protest album: NEIL YOUNG - Living With War, reviewed positively. Won't be in stores until the beginning of May, but online purchases later this week.

A.Norman sends along the following cartoon:

Spam keywords auto-pass NSA filter?: The odd internet journalist Wayne Madsen offered that

April 20, 2006 -- Beating Bush's NSA e-mail surveillance simple. According to NSA sources, there is a simple method to avoid having one's e-mail captured by NSA Internet filters that have been installed within major Internet exchanges, such as the AT&T facility in San Francisco, which is the subject of a class action suit against AT&T. By typing "Viagra" or "Cialis" in the message text, the filters will automatically identify the e-mail as spam and ignore it. The e-mail could contain the words "Al Qaeda" or "Bin Laden," but as long as Viagra or Cialis are also contained in the text, the e-mail will pass through the filters without being intercepted.

(Madsen's site design now looks much better, BTW)

Execrable writing: Powerline has an odd poop fetish. They use 'execrable' to describe everyone from Rybak to Kofi. I will have to remember to give Scott Johnson a wedgie when I see him.

Earth Day: This House site is fucking crazy: On Earth Day website, House Republican Committee seeks to 'dispel environmental myths'. Really crazy.

Time to kiss some Caucasian ass as the rather autocratic president of Azerbaijan visits the White House. Bush still claims that final Iraq war decisions happened after an ultimatum. Rolling Stone features: is Bush the worst President in History?

A really long article in the American Prospect (a liberal mag) about how the Democrats need to find some values and stuff. It may have been a good article but it was too long even for me.

If you have an online group, try Frappr to map them globally.

Rice is getting roped into AIPAC case: A lot seems to be transpiring in the AIPAC case for this summer, and we'll have to dig into the AIPAC angle a lot later. But for now, AP reports:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice leaked national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence, the lobbyist's lawyer said Friday.

Goss CIA analyst crackdown: RawStory: The CIA announced today that it has fired an employee for leaking classified information to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest. Also a big story in the NY Times on it. Pretty fucked up. Juan Cole compares how in DC these days, it is good to leak Valerie Plame's name, but bad to inform the American public about a network of secret prisons in eastern Europe.

Secret torture flights: There is a global shadow detention gulag of sorts, and all kinds of rumors about it around the Internet. Perhaps we'll stir up a little trouble later with some of those exotic stories, but in the meantime consider: Amnesty International claims CIA used private airlines to hide CIA torture flights (from a couple weeks ago).

Apple lawyers say blogs not journalism: Apple is trying to sue some blogger-type guy at PowerPage.org and say he's not a journalist with journalist-style credentials because of a story about Apple developing a consumer-oriented Firewire-based GarageBand music interface - codenamed 'Asteroid' according to AppleInsider.

Corporate dudes are suing against NSA wiretaps along with the ACLU. NSA wiretaps were a prominent part of Sunday's West Wing episode, wherein President-elect Santos calls up the Chinese premier to do some saber rattling over Kazakhstan – I don't know why the hell Bartlett, or anyone, would place thousands of US troops between the Russian and Chinese armies, but to the West Wing's credit, Santos doesn't like it either.

I loathe that Clifford May and his neocon ways. But "What to make of the anti-antis?" is a pretty sublime exercise in Orwellian labeling and slanders. Also the Zarqawi psyops story makes an angular appearance I don't really understand – but it appears that he supports the psyops because it manipulates perceptions against "anti-antis"... WTF?

The media, too, have more than their share of anti-antis, and I'm not talking here only about the left-wing blogs that compare President Bush unfavorably to Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Recently, the top story on the Washington Post's front page was headlined: "Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi: Jordanian Painted as Foreign Threat to Iraq's Stability."

Is there anyone -- even Ward Churchill -- who would argue that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the commander of Al-Qaida in Iraq, is not a "foreign threat to Iraq's stability"?

A seemingly more cogent reason for the Post to object to what it blasts as a U.S. military propaganda campaign: An American colonel is quoted as saying that Zarqawi and other "foreign insurgents" are only "a very small part of the actual numbers" of those fighting Iraqi government forces and the American-led coalition.

The Moussaoui case distracts from profound problems in the legal system that need to get unraveled.

Is Bush ripping Beatles onto his iPod? The RIAA is arguing in court that turning your own CDs into MP3s is not fair use, which is insane. But since you can't buy Beatles digitally at all, this means that Bush must have been ripping them. Should the RIAA bust his yarblockoes? Well as this guy says, "They nailed Al Capone for tax evasion, didn't they?"

Boston Globe says Bloggers fanning the controversy over Rumsfeld. Describing a few milblogs, the blogs in turn hasten to redefine themselves. I am in favor of military blogs, as they open new and interesting channels of information. Among those mentioned: COUNTERCOLUMN: All your bias are belong to us, and Guidons. OPFOR is apparently the standard bearer these days. Is it part of military.com? Features such bits as "Somalia Remains Free of US Imperialism, Food, Laws, Prosperity, Peace…" under the category "The Long War." Real progressive. The mil blog wire is an aggregator which looks interesting.

The Blackwater lawsuit: Those Defense contractor guys hung on the bridge probably shouldn't have been in Fallujah -- but can their widows sue over it? After the Fallujah hangings, did Blackwater cover up their own negligence and fake documents to protect their Pentagon contract? More on it here in the DailyKos. In the broader context, it's evidence that these private companies treat their employees like shit while causing the military industrial complex to spiral out of control:

The Nation: Blood Is Thicker Than Blackwater by JEREMY SCAHILL [from the May 8, 2006 issue]
It is one of the most infamous incidents of the war in Iraq: On March 31, 2004, four private American security contractors get lost and end up driving through the center of Falluja, a hotbed of Sunni resistance to the US occupation. Shortly after entering the city, they get stuck in traffic, and their small convoy is ambushed. Several armed men approach the two vehicles and open fire from behind, repeatedly shooting the men at point-blank range. Within moments, their bodies are dragged from the vehicles and a crowd descends on them, tearing them to pieces. Eventually, their corpses are chopped and burned. The remains of two of the men are strung up on a bridge over the Euphrates River and left to dangle. The gruesome image is soon beamed across the globe.

In the Oval Office the killings were taken as "a challenge to America's resolve," according to the Los Angeles Times. President Bush issued a statement through his spokesperson. "We will not be intimidated," he said. "We will finish the job." Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt vowed, "We will be back in Falluja.... We will hunt down the criminals.... It's going to be deliberate. It will be precise, and it will be overwhelming." Within days of the ambush, US forces laid siege to Falluja, beginning what would be one of the most brutal and sustained US operations of the occupation.
.....
Shortly after Helvenston left that message, the men left the base and set out for their destination. Without a detailed map, they took the most direct route, through the center of Falluja. According to Callahan, there was a safer alternative route that went around the city, which the men were unaware of because of Blackwater's failure to conduct a "risk assessment" before the trip, as mandated by the contract. The suit alleges that the four men should have had a chance to gather intelligence and familiarize themselves with the dangerous routes they would be traveling. This was not done, according to Miles, "so as to pad Blackwater's bottom line" and to impress ESS with Blackwater's efficiency in order to win more contracts. The suit also alleges that McQuown "intentionally refused to allow the Blackwater security contractors to conduct" ride-alongs with the teams they were replacing from Control Risk Group. (In fact, the suit contends that Blackwater "fabricated critical documents" and "created" a pre-trip risk assessment "after this deadly ambush occurred.")

AP: Israel Preparing to Retake Gaza Strip. Probably saber rattling, but the situation is getting really bad. Some other newsbits:

Senate Bill Shorts Gear for Troops By ANDREW TAYLOR, AP Thu Apr 20, 3:46 PM ET
WASHINGTON - A Senate measure to fund the war in Iraq would chop money for troops' night vision equipment and new battle vehicles but add $230 million for a tilt-rotor aircraft that has already cost $18 billion and is still facing safety questions.

Kyrgyz Leader Threatens to Expel US Troops By KADYR TOKTOGULOV , 04.19.2006, 10:36 PM
Kyrgyzstan's president threatened Wednesday to expel U.S. troops if the United States does not agree by June 1 to pay more for stationing forces in the Central Asian nation.

Some random DailyKos goodies: What is the 'center' in American politics? What of the innocent people in Guantanamo? (and what of that Abbasi guy?) Are we becoming the Republic of Gilead?

Some random Israel goodies: "We could lose the next war" - an interview with idiosyncratic Likud hawk Yuval Steinitz, wherein he suggests that the Israeli military leads its government, not vice versa. Really interesting stuff. He is also paranoid about Egypt. Editorial: The UN versus Hezbollah. Hebron settlers assault two female international aid workers. I had some more links but they disappeared because of that damn Haaretz auto-reload thing.

I promise that the Big Lebowski-themed Iran exegesis is on its way. It's a new week now... Gotta get real before oil goes $80+/barrel.....

Hersh: The Next War is on, apparently. Damn. Better Yet: the Zarqawi media campaign IS a Pentagon PSY OPS operation!!!! Really!!!

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt: "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

I have billed this website to be about spinstorms, Information Operations and latent contradictions. Here are two crucial elements of the current political environment that have to be fully confronted.

One: There are clandestine U.S. military operations in Iran today - which Congress really has no clue about, and are not at all in our country's interests. This is insane.

Two: The military has a specific psychological warfare campaign to manipulate the perception of the "Abu Musab al Zarqawi" figure in Iraq - and the American audience is an official target of this psychological warfare, the Washington Post rather explosively confirms today. This indicates that PSY OPS planning and operations are integrated into the basic structure of how the U.S. media is fed information by the Pentagon. Your brain is currently contaminated with the results of military psychological operations. This is also insane.

Sy Hersh has been telling us for a while that the situation between the United States and Iran is getting hot very quickly. A new report: The Iran Plans: Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb? is decidedly alarming. There are plenty of horrible things in here, but why not mention the beginning:

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

Surely we'll get back to this. But it seemed an appropriate thing to throw in right before I go to bed and start a new week, pondering how these ethnic minorities will be manipulated -- who will be the next Hmong-like ethnic group, used and abused as a tool of American war policy, then left to twist in the wind? Azeris? Baluchis? Turkmen? Kurds?

What could possibly go wrong?!!!? Note Khuzestan, down there next to Iraq. Apparently, since it has many (Shia) Arabs, it is considered a prime area for ethnic fragmentation that will somehow serve American interests.... (And Baluchistan is another key angle for stirring up trouble). Get your popcorn ready, the new Great Game with Nuclear Chips will really be an entertaining one.

By the way, isn't it interesting to live in a country that launches preemptive covert operations into various places without informing Congress or the public it is supposed to serve? What is the appropriate response from Iran? What of this American public, swiftly led into yet another strange and ugly Eurasian trap? What the fuck are we supposed to do?
Now a turn to the even more surreal. Today, The Washington Post confirms that "Abu Musab al Zarqawi", the vaunted evil terrorist, has officially been used as an instrument of psychological warfare by the Pentagon. Last September I posted "Zarqawi == Emmanuel Goldstein". I said:

The image of Senior Demon Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is an essential element of the Bush Administration's strategy to manage perceptions of their disastrous war - diverting blame and creating an attractive 'negative image'. Zarqawi is one of the principle Hollow Lies of the war.

.....Let me offer a theory: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may actually exist, but his "existence" in the media is an essential element of the Bush Administration's Public Relations strategy to manage perception of the war. He is a personification of malevolent intent: if he wasn't around, we are told to believe, things would sort themselves out, so our motive has to be to crush him instead of confronting the Pentagon's essentially racist, disastrous policies.

.....There's probably a real Zarqawi figure out there, but basically, these days I generally believe he is a media construction designed to provide a narrative that Joe Six Pack can understand. The exciting Zarqawi Chase (with, say, captured laptops and narrow escapes) is the kind of story that the NASCAR dad needs to stave off cognitive dissonance.

Now the Washington Post sets this off:

Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi: Jordanian Painted As Foreign Threat To Iraq's Stability
By Thomas E. Ricks, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 10, 2006; Page A01

The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers familiar with the program. The effort has raised his profile in a way that some military intelligence officials believe may have overstated his importance and helped the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The documents state that the U.S. campaign aims to turn Iraqis against Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian, by playing on their perceived dislike of foreigners. U.S. authorities claim some success with that effort, noting that some tribal Iraqi insurgents have attacked Zarqawi loyalists.

For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.

[Sidebar: Two slides from a briefing prepared for Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describe a U.S. military propaganda campaign that was intended to highlight the role of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, in the Iraqi insurgency. By emphasizing his foreign origin, the "psychological operations" effort sought to play on a perceived Iraqi dislike of foreigners and so split the insurgency.]

The military's propaganda program largely has been aimed at Iraqis, but seems to have spilled over into the U.S. media. One briefing slide about U.S. "strategic communications" in Iraq, prepared for Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top U.S. commander in Iraq, describes the "home audience" as one of six major targets of the American side of the war.

That slide, created by Casey's subordinates, does not specifically state that U.S. citizens were being targeted by the effort, but other sections of the briefings indicate that there were direct military efforts to use the U.S. media to affect views of the war. One slide in the same briefing, for example, noted that a "selective leak" about Zarqawi was made to Dexter Filkins, a New York Times reporter based in Baghdad. Filkins's resulting article, about a letter supposedly written by Zarqawi and boasting of suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the Times front page on Feb. 9, 2004.

Leaks to reporters from U.S. officials in Iraq are common, but official evidence of a propaganda operation using an American reporter is rare.

.....It is difficult to determine how much has been spent on the Zarqawi campaign, which began two years ago and is believed to be ongoing. U.S. propaganda efforts in Iraq in 2004 cost $24 million, but that included extensive building of offices and residences for troops involved, as well as radio broadcasts and distribution of thousands of leaflets with Zarqawi's face on them, said the officer speaking on background.

The Zarqawi campaign is discussed in several of the internal military documents. "Villainize Zarqawi/leverage xenophobia response," one U.S. military briefing from 2004 stated. It listed three methods: "Media operations," "Special Ops (626)" (a reference to Task Force 626, an elite U.S. military unit assigned primarily to hunt in Iraq for senior officials in Hussein's government) and "PSYOP," the U.S. military term for propaganda work.

One internal briefing, produced by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, said that Kimmitt had concluded that, "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

Damn, skippy. I have rarely seen better evidence that we will have to defend our brains from military psychological operations directly. The public mood is a battlespace (which of course is exploited for Republican partisan political gains).

I can't wait to see if this gets the proper bounce in the media this week - and better yet, hopefully Republicans will explain why military propaganda is good because it makes us feel good.

Strange times. Stay sharp. We could run out of space real fast.

Technorati Tags: baluchistan, cia, covert, iran, PSYOPS, propaganda, spin, war, zarqawi

Coming along, the Book of Judas

I got a raise at my other part-time job yesterday - while driving down Nicollet with A. Cheng, who returned from China for a few days to deal with immigration matters (such timing). Anyhow this is good news but it means I have stuff to do right now.

I am listening to Unknown Prophets' latest CD, 'The road less traveled'. There is a lot of weird stuff going on right now. HAMAS and the Fatah/Old Guard Palestinian factions are locked in a weird conflict as Abbas tries to set up 'parallel structures', according to a HAMAS guy. Bush authorized Libby to leak, Homeland Security guys are internet child molesting freaks, Carl Pohlad is at CostCo.

MPR had a really good lineup today. Religion, oil, debt and American politics was the subject of a recorded talk from Kevin Phillips (author of American Theocracy and the author of 1969's Emerging Republican Majority) at the Edina Barnes & Noble. He took head-on the financial-services-debt complex, the moral delusions of empire across history, the estimated 55% of Bush voters that believe in the apocalypse, and the weird sense that God speaks through Bush doesn't bother these people (idolators?!). Also mentioned how more extremist Jewish sects like the Lubovitch folks are voting for Republicans - and this is intertwined with Christian apocalyptic views of the West Bank. Reminded us that the Southern Baptists refused to reunify after the Civil War, but have since then taken over Union southern states like Missouri. He talks about the symbolic antichrist and how the Antichrist in Pop Apocalyptica (Left Behind especially) ties into Iraq and oil, thus providing a 'message problem' between the wartime White House, pursuing the oil, and the base, who needed to hear a quasi-apocalyptic or near-eschatological kind of message to rationalize the war.

Which is what we've been saying out here on the internet for a while now... But Phillips really brings it together. With a broad historical scope of the patterns of declining empires, crossing lots of really excellent currents, and a cynicism towards religion that I found extra nice, this one was damn sweet. (RealPlayer stream here)

Midmorning had a segment on the hip-hop nation I heard part of. And of course they were all over the Libby thing today. Thumbs up for another fine day for Minnesota Public Radio.

Lastly the Book of Judas - a testament discovered on papyrus in Middle Egypt - is apparently out and about, turning a good chunk of Christianity sideways. Should he be the most revered disciple because he set the spirit free from the body (which is apparently in this text)??

Oh yeah, Apple is releasing a system called Boot Camp ("enter the Alt Reality" they say) that allows people to boot between OS X and Windows on Intel-based Macs. Suddenly the Windows foundation is missing a pillar. Apple:

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.

As elegant as it gets
Boot Camp lets you install Windows XP without moving your Mac data, though you will need to bring your own copy to the table, as Apple Computer does not sell or support Microsoft Windows.(1) Boot Camp will burn a CD of all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them.

Ah I gotta take care of stuff now. We'll get some more substantive goodies up sooner, rather than later. :-/

Fear the Bear! Russians provide Saddam war intelligence, or is it more DC neo-con perception management? (fear, PSY OPS & energy politics?)

I am going to be in Arizona until April 2. Until then I don't know if anyone is going to post or what, although I'll try to put up some photos and stuff. In the meantime, enjoy a retro-cold war disinformation conspiracy theory... Why not?

March 24: Pentagon report says Russia gave Iraq intelligence (Reuters)

Russia provided intelligence to Iraq's government on U.S. military movements in the opening days of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, a Pentagon report released on Friday said.

The report said an April 2, 2003, document from the Iraqi minister of foreign affairs to President Saddam Hussein stated that Russian intelligence had reported information on American troops plans to the Iraqis through the Russian ambassador.

....Army Brig. Gen. Anthony Cucolo of U.S. Joint Forces Command told a briefing he viewed Russia's decision to give intelligence to Saddam's government as "driven by economic interests." The report noted Russian business interests in Iraqi oil.

Let us take a gander at those oil contracts, via the famous Cheney Energy Task Force Iraq document collection from Judicial Watch (PDF of this page):

And I am putting up this classic Cheney Energy Task Force map (PDF) because it says way more than a thousand words (remember, this is older than 9/11 - March 2001, to be exact). I have fast hosting now and I just love this damn map and its "exploration blocks" that need to get taken away from the damn Russians. With guns. Classic imperialism. Ok, that's old news.
Ok ok, we know about the map, but what does this have to do with these new claims about Russian intelligence in the war? The Russians played some role giving Iraq military goods, including, it has been said, tactical training for soldiers and night vision gear, right up until the low-grade bombing war (10+ years) upgraded to a full invasion in March 2003.

So now the line out of the Pentagon is that the Russians were actively supplying tactical combat intelligence of sorts to Saddam Hussein, and there's some rumor of Russian moles in Qatar or something. It would be interesting if it were true, but I wouldn't really be angry with the Russians because there is no law from God that they couldn't tell Saddam jack shit (and what they did tell, wasn't really helpful, if its true).

However, what we should consider is
A) is this a propaganda front designed to reactivate the classic American hatred of Russians?
B) is this designed to prepare the American public for the dozens of Russian scientists that would be killed if the U.S. or Israel attacks Iran?
C) is this yet another example of some bastards in Washington using petty forgeries (see the Niger Uranium classics) to control perceptions, creating an atmosphere of fear and instability, and in turn offering the ruling party as the solution to the public's constructed fears? (thanks Anti-Flag - the new album fucking rules by the way)

Well, of course Wayne Madsen has a comprehensive claim that this is all a propaganda front from the usual DC bastards that brought us all the original fake Iraq intelligence in the first place. Basically, since the days of Team B scaring everyone about the Russians, they have made a 30-year career of scaring the shit out of people.

Even if this information about the Russians is true, this is exactly the kind of electoral engineering of perception that we have to expect before the election. They call it the October Surprise for a reason!!

Wayne Madsen Report, March 25 2006. Take it for what you will:

The Pentagon's role as a source of media disinformation. First it was the Office of Northern Gulf Affairs, which morphed into the Office of Special Plans. Both served as conduits for neo-con propaganda spewed forth by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Heritage Foundation, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the Hudson Institute, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), among others prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Now the Pentagon has issued an "unclassified report" stating that in the lead up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Russia obtained war plans and planned U.S. troop movements from “inside the American Central Command.” The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) denied the charge, stating that "similar, baseless accusations concerning Russia’s intelligence have been made more than once."

The Pentagon cited as its source two captured Iraqi documents that describe Russian penetration of the US Central Command in Qatar. However, the Pentagon's story later changed. The revised story stated the Russian obtained the war plans from signals intelligence intercepts of pre-war U.S. military communications. In either case, the citing of "captured" Iraqi documents has been used in the past to falsely implicate various anti-war international politicians with being in league with Saddam's "Oil for Food" program. Many of these "captured" documents were forgeries emanating from notorious Iraqi con man Ahmad Chalabi. Bogus Niger government documents were forged by a neo-con cabal based in Rome, Washington, and Jerusalem to justify an attack on Iraq based on non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

The information contained in the two "secret" Iraqi documents could have been obtained from any number of open sources, including Jane's Defence Weekly. The "sic" appearing next to "special forces unit 'Papa'" in the purported Iraqi documents is a clue to a forgery. The standard NATO/DoD phonetic code for the letter "P" is "Papa." Why the authors would indicate a possible misspelling of Papa in the document is curious unless its because the real authors include some of our most noted neo-con draft dodgers who are unfamiliar with U.S. and NATO military nomenclatures. The two secret Iraqi documents are handwritten and contain no official government seal or stamps, another clear indication of a forgery. Update: The memo dated March 25, 2003 is also a likely forgery because of the use of the Western calendar and not the lunar Muslim Hijri calendar used in many Arab and other predominantly Muslim countries. The Muslim date would have been 16 Muharram 1424.

The neo-con stranglehold on the Pentagon continues to permit this cabal of provocateurs and dual loyalists to pump out false charges in an attempt to damage relations with Russia and President Vladimir Putin as Russia continues to push for negotiations with Iran and lay the possible groundwork for Russian casualties at Iranian nuclear facilities in the event of war with Iran. Neo-cons would argue that such casualties were legitimate considering previous Russian support for Saddam against the United States.

In fact, the Pentagon neo-cons now have more power than ever considering the current presence of anti-Russian neo-con-influenced governments in Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia. Polish Defense Minister Radek Sikorski, an AEI alum and colleague of Richard Perle and Michael Ledeen, is married to the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum. All four are virulently anti-Putin, especially since Putin began cracking down on the Russian oligarchs who looted the USSR's treasury and resources and made themselves instant billionaires, at the expense of the peoples of the former Soviet Union.

Over 70 percent of Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs carry Israeli passports. Ukraine President Viktor Yuschenko's wife, Kateryna Chumachenko Yushchenko, is an American citizen and held positions in the Reagan White House that were directed against "the evil empire." She was, and remains, close to the leading neo-con war hawks of the Reagan years, including Perle, Ledeen, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, and Ken Adelman. Georgia's President, Mikhail Saakashvili, in an anti-Putin U.S.-trained lawyer who ousted his predecessor in a U.S.-financed and supported coup backed by oil companies like Halliburton and Exxon Mobil. In addition to the offices of AEI, AIPAC, Hudson, WINEP, and Heritage, in addition to the Pentagon, the embassies of Poland, Ukraine, and Georgia in Washington have become virtual neo-con nesting places, working overtime to formulate all sorts of anti-Russian propaganda aimed at destabilizing Russia and toppling Putin. They are assisted in these efforts by the US Mission to the United Nations, which under arch neo-con John Bolton, has become a favorite off-site meeting place for Washington-based neo-cons right in the middle of Manhattan.

If it's all true, it's one hell of a problem. How do we, as sane Americans and non-Americans, deal with a Pentagon that is attempting to manipulate all these public perceptions? What is the appropriate response to this problem? Maybe this is all too wild. But I just loved how the whole thing was framed by the usual dickheads in DC thinktanks, in this article in the LA Times:

Russians Told Iraqi Regime of U.S. Troop Movements By Peter Spiegel and Greg Miller: March 25, 2006

....But the documents, made public in a study of the Iraqi military's decision-making, are the first to assert that Russia actively passed sensitive military intelligence to Baghdad during the war.

"This is one step short of firing upon us themselves with Russian equipment," said Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst with the Brookings Institution. "It's actively aiding and abetting the enemy tactically. It's hard to get more unfriendly than that."

Kevin Wood, a retired Army officer who served as the senior researcher and chief author of the study, said he was surprised when he learned of the Russian actions...... But Frederick Kagan, a Russia and defense expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the actions would not be out of keeping with other efforts by Moscow to advance Iraq's cause internationally.

"We knew the Russians were opposed to the sanctions; we knew they opposed the war," Kagan said. "I'm not terribly surprised." Analysts also said it would be important to learn whether upper levels of the Russian government were involved, adding that the signals were more likely to have come from diplomatic and intelligence agents in the region rather than from Moscow.

It also was unclear how much of the information was genuine intelligence and how much was educated guesswork.

Regardless, the revelations could undermine efforts to forge a united front against Iran's nuclear program.

"I think we have to assume that we can't trust the Russians to be impartial or even honest with us," Kagan said. "The Russians have ties with the Iranians that are also very worrying."

So Kagan is demanding that you personally should start to hate the Russians on his behalf at the end there. Shocking. Time will tell, if this just fades away, if it is proven to be true. We'll keep an eye on this one. By the way, here is a clip of O'Hanlon saying a crock of shit on CNN in 2003 about Saddam's weapons.

On random yet interesting notes: Global Guerrillas: STARTING AN OPEN SOURCE WAR. This was buzzwordy but interesting. Papers Show Split in Nixon-Iraq Policy

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Nixon administration was split over whether to try to improve relations with Saddam Hussein's Soviet-allied Baathists in Iraq, State Department documents released Thursday show.

Who is Satan? No one trusts the atheists these days. It must be a carryover from the Cold war. I feel like a Russkie!

These pieces won't fit themselves: that's your job: AIPAC finally attacked; Corporate media & pundits suck; Back to the Balkans; Elections gear up in Israel; other bits for the weekend

March 20: CLEVELAND, United States (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said he hoped to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran with diplomacy, but warned Tehran he would "use military might" if necessary to defend Israel.

AIPAC Offensive: Ah what a sublime concept. "Defense". On the same day, news spread of a report by two high-octane professors of international studies criticizing the United States' alliance with Israel, and a detailed dissection of how AIPAC intimidates all opposition to Israeli government policies on Capitol Hill. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt are big wheels in the international politics arena, and not doctrinaire liberals, nor terrorists. Of course Justin Raimondo at Antiwar has his take on this.

This is a pretty big ol' bombshell to put in the beginning: "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," (PDF, 70+ pages)

"The U.S. national interest should be the primary object of American foreign policy. For the past several decades, however, and especially since the Six Day War in 1967, the centerpiece of U.S. Middle East policy has been its relationship with Israel. The combination of unwavering U.S. support for Israel and the related effort to spread democracy throughout the region has inflamed Arab and Islamic opinion and jeopardized U.S. security. This situation has no equal in American political history. Why has the United States been willing to set aside its own security in order to advance the interests of another state?"

I won't spend any more time on that now. But it's a certainly a big deal, and we will stick around the AIPAC case to see what turns up. Also worth considering: WHY IRAN WANTS THE BOMB.

Corporate media sucks: 1) Chris Matthews is taking corporate cash to speak places. Wow, big surprise that MSNBC is in awash in corporate cash. 2) The WaPo really uses sloppy terms a lot, such as:

For months the Democrats have resisted calls from their liberal base to more aggressively challenge President Bush.

...as a way to defuse what Feingold is saying and discredit the majority of the country that doesn't believe in White House policies. And to suck at the Teat. At least the Christian Broadcasting Network has the guts to go with their fanaticism properly.

The WaPo gave this young rightwing RedState jackass a blog on their site. Some negative reactions from the liberal side, since this guy is apparently allowed to pretty much make shit up all day long.

From the sphere of friends with websites: PBG has some new stuff up at InfantFoundation.com. I liked this photo. Something about those gay atheist liberals, via the Norman.

For the occasion of the Fourth Year of the war, it is good to look back and remember the insane propaganda we lived in, that sparked the whole fucking mess in the first place. Fortunately, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting pulled together: "The Final Word Is Hooray!" Remembering the Iraq War's Pollyanna pundits:

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)

"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back."
(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)

"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

And it goes on and on. And for reasons that escape me, these people still control the fucking debate. DAMN IT.

Some random bits: well, conservatives are skittish right now. Duh. Pundits suck. Duh. In an interview, ABC Nightline refuses to acknowledge that Billy Graham's son Franklin is a fanatical hater of Islam.

Antiwar.com, some goodies: How to fix the intelligence process by Charles Peña. Also "Why Libertarians Should be Critical of War," Raimondo: "American Megalomania"; TomDispatch: "Reprogramming the Infinite Loop: The NSA Spying Debate", Solomon: "War-Loving Pundits".

Check out the DailyKos straw poll of 2008 presidential candidates. Feingold's kickin ass!!

It's not impossible: Jim Webb, a conservative Democrat running for Congress, says: “The Reagan Democrats” – and how to get them back. A general criticizes Rummy's total incompetence.

Points in Case: Ten things to believe in. Way to go, Keith Olbermann.

Nasty neocon Max Boot suggests that George Clooney has been pimping the neo-con line throughout his career, noting that Three Kings provides a neocon-certified Moral Basis for attacking Iraq in 2003 (not really true but it reads well), and The Peacemaker alerted people to the hazards of WMD attacks and such.

Bush White House overdoes 'manliness'. But the problem is that they are sort of gay, but weird about it.

Something called the Iraq Study Group has been set up, with a bunch of mostly shady Washington insiders and defense contractors, etc., who are probably going to attempt to whitewash aspects of the war policy, and perhaps some fake intelligence after lunch and tea. And for some of them, keep selling lots of weapons to the government.

Helen Thomas on the Lap Dogs of the Press. Her recent press conference moment with Bush was pretty badass.

Even more random: Top 10 weirdest animals.

A Franz Ferdinand kinda place? Milosevic's death has afforded hawks an opportunity to reminisce about how warm and fuzzy it made them feel to bomb Serbia and stop the ethnic cleansing, although oddly, it seems that the mass graves in Kosovo never really turned up in the kinds of numbers we were led to believe at the time.

Of course, the Kosovo intervention was mainly about gaining more American control over the oil and gas energy pathways leading west from the Black Sea (and the surrounding political structures). The AMBO pipeline (Albania-Macedonia-Bulgaria) and the massive Camp Bondsteel in Southern Kosovo were the two major products of the war in Kosovo. Aside from these goodies the US doesn't much care what happens over there.

Israel Goodies: "Settlers, you have failed" by Aluf Benn. Good to hear. Guess what? Israel has its own dickhead spoiler politician named Lieberman, and better yet, Avigdor Lieberman is a fanatical settler and is the leader of the far-right Yisrael Beiteinu Party. Apparently National Union, pretty much a fascist party that essentially supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, once had a coalition with Yisrael Beiteinu, but they split up a while ago. They are messing around with Netanyahu and maneuvering to his right. "Right-wing parties mull ways to contend with rise of Lieberman". Joe and Avigdor are apparently distant cousins.

Also "Of love and anger" as young Israelis, some of them born and raised ex-Gaza settlers, raise doubts about whether or not the IDF can still be an instrument to bring about the return of the messiah.

Here is a funny story that indicates that "Syria was ready for peace" in the mid-1990s. Bishara acted as Syria-Israel mediator in 1990s talks. Also funny: Saddam Hussein maintained pretense of chemical arms to prevent Israeli attack. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Netanyahu says the next Israeli election will be a kind of referendum on the whole damn mess. "A referendum indeed" by Uzi Benziman. and The cynicism of Olmert and Lieberman By Israel Harel. Nerds for Netanyahu? Augh.

On the left side of the spectrum, see the interview with Meretz leader Yossi Beilin in "'Not afraid of 'autonomy' By Nurit Wurgaft." (there's a bit about Lieberman's ethnic cleansing plans at the end) And don't forget the Israeli Arabs! Not pawns on the board By Nurit Wurgaft.

Some cool thoughts on Islamic Archaism from one of Islam's best writers. I lost the link to a Haaretz story about Lafif Lakdar, but check out: Why the Reversion to Islamic Archaism? (also featured here), and The modern schizophrenia of Islamic integralism. On AnarchistNews.org see the links to "Islam and (communist) Anarchism" as they term it, (far be it from me to try to control their semiotics). And InfoShop.org's page on Iran.

Well that was some stuff I had piled up. Sorry, no pictures. You can enjoy that for the weekend, I think I just want to go watch movies the whole time.

Introducing "The Long War"; Sadr damns Rumsfeld over civil war; French teacher surrenders; DC Dems sux0r; blogs of CIA dudes; Neo-cons favor Iraqi civil war

Juan Cole catches a bitter Muqtada al-Sadr: (UPI)

Young Shiite nationalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr said Monday that Iraq is in a state of civil war. He responded to guerrilla provocations against Sadr City, with bombings and mortars having killed over 50 persons there Sunday, by ordering his Mahdi Militia not to engage in reprisals.

Like many Iraqi and Arab observers, Muqtada was shocked when US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said last week that the US military would not intervene in an Iraqi civil war, leaving that to Iraqi forces.
' "May God damn you," Sadr said of Rumsfeld. "You said in the past that civil war would break out if you were to withdraw, and now you say that in case of civil war you won't interfere." '

The Machine Rages On: Raimondo: Another War for Israel: The amen corner howls for war with Iran, The Shame and the Sorrow. UK Independent: Iraq: The reckoning. (photo via KarbalaNews.net)

Welcome to the Long War: We are moving from the War on Terror®© to the Long War©, a hellish state of perpetual warfare forever, but it will be totally badass according to the Quadrennial Defense Review, a Pentagon planning document prepared every four years. It's called the Long War, and most of the stuff in this article is apocalyptically gloomy and depressing. And they are going to take your money to pay for it too.

On a note that I hope is totally unrelated, from the Antiwar blog, Why are Marines Training in US Neighborhoods? as reported in the Toledo Blade. Let me fetch my tinfoil.

Blunt Honesty Dept: The State Department informs us in "Country Reports on Human Rights Practices" of Iraq's many human rights shortcomings: "The following human rights problems were reported:

• pervasive climate of violence
• misappropriation of official authority by sectarian, criminal, terrorist, and insurgent groups
• arbitrary deprivation of life
• disappearances
• torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment
• impunity
• poor conditions in pretrial detention facilities
• arbitrary arrest and detention
• denial of fair public trial
• an immature judicial system lacking capacity
• limitations on freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and association due to terrorist and militia violence
• restrictions on religious freedom
• large numbers of internally displaced persons (IDPs)
• lack of transparency and widespread corruption at all levels of government
• constraints on nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)
• discrimination against women, ethnic, and religious minorities
• limited exercise of labor rights"

Other than that, it's peachy. There's a ton of stuff in there, worth glancing at. I like how 'Impunity' has its own bullet.

REALLY, IT'S GOOD: CounterPunch: Neocon Advocates Civil War in Iraq as "Strategic" Policy; Daniel Pipes Finds Comfort in Muslims Killing Muslims:

"The bombing on February 22 of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, Iraq, was a tragedy, but it was not an American or a coalition tragedy. Iraq's plight is neither a coalition responsibility nor a particular danger to the West. Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility, nor its burden. When Sunni terrorists target Shi'ites and vice versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt. Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy, but not a strategic one." .... The fact is that the neocons who control U.S. strategy have no interest in preventing a civil war but only in inciting one. Sectarian tensions were virtually unknown in Iraq before the U.S. invasion. And in fact the Iraqi Shia fought loyally as Iraqis against Iranian Shia in the disastrous Iran-Iraq war. So to avoid an Iraqi civil war, the most important step is to get all the U.S. troops home and thus to terminate U.S. provocations. For it is now crystal clear that the neocon strategy is one of civil war to divide and destroy Iraq; and such a strategy amounts to a crime against humanity.

Which will really be a funny notion when the oil ports in eastern (the suppressed Shiite part of) Saudi Arabia get bombed. A real thigh-slapper.

JPost: India is not Iran. But they are Asians with Nukes, which counts for -10,000 points these days.

Fourth Generation Warfare: I have been saying that this is probably the best model to understand America's current strategic and especially tactical situation. It's gaining more notice now. They even care about the concept in Grand Forks. This long essay by Michael Mazarr, a professor at the U.S. National War College, details a crucial problem with the body of 4GW theory so far: it explains the modes of conflict, but not the underlying causes and motivations.

Libertarian critique of war and socialism: Iraq and the Democratic Empire by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

The US spends money, invades countries, sheds blood, and becomes ever more powerful at home and unpopular abroad. In the end, no matter how powerful its weapons or how determined its leaders, it loses. It loses because people resist empire. It loses for the same reasons that socialism and its central plans always fail. Large-scale attempts to force people into predetermined molds founder on the inability of the state to allocate resources rationally and to anticipate change, as well as the ubiquitous and pesky phenomenon called human volition. Mankind was not meant to live in cages.

Why did the US win wars in the past? Because it fought far poorer governments. Today it loses because it fights populations – people acting on their own, forming their own associations, using their brains to outwit bureaucrats, and cobbling together resources from underground markets. The market always outruns the planners for the same reason that guerilla armies usually win over regular armies. Decentralized and spontaneous associations of dedicated individuals are smarter and wiser and more committed than centralized and planned bureaucrats who follow their rule books.

.....Therefore, [Mises] said, war and socialism are both part of the same ideological apparatus. They both presume the primacy of power over property. In the same way, peace and free enterprise are cut from the same cloth. They are the result of a society with a regime that respects the privacy, property, associations, and wishes of the population. The liberal society trades with foreign countries rather than waging war on them. It respects the free movement of peoples. It does not intervene in the religious affairs of people but rather adopts a rule of perfect tolerance.

I'm sorry, this caught my eye and made me laugh:

Former Teacher Surrenders at French School: Armed Ex-Teacher Holds 23 Hostages, Mostly Students, at French School Before Surrendering:
Vilpail had taught at the Colbert de Torcy High School until two years ago, school officials said. He was armed with a gun that fires rubber bullets, police said, adding that the weapon was nevertheless dangerous. He surrendered after hours of negotiations, said Jean-Luc Prigent, a top aide in the local administration.

Even their crazies surrender!! All right, that's a little crass. But it speaks to a certain less-than-subtle difference in the American character. Our paranoid edge goes all the way to the bitter end -- see Falling Down, Fight Club, Glory, Bonnie & Clyde, Thelma & Louise. That key part of the American narrative where the suggestion of violent subversion is transformed into The Real. It is part of our national psychology. We are proud of it: any proper story tends to go this way. Otherwise it seems half-finished.

In this case, well, the French guy wanted to make a symbolic gesture without quite crossing over into the Real. It appears that he wanted to take a little swipe and then step back like a reasonable European. This is part of the reason that the various apocalyptic segments of the population voted for Bush in droves. It's who we are. No surrender.

Pissed off CIA dudes are cool: I still dig Larry Johnson's No Quarter blog, as well as Pat Lang's Sic Semper Tyrannis. Johnson is on point with tidbits about the Plame case, the 'victory' strategy, Libby's legal tactics, etc.

Misc file: Isaac Hayes quits 'South Park'. Hopefully Chef will have a funny death scene. Top 10 strangest Lego creations. Radiohead's 'Just' video brought to life via London graffiti (QT). This is really pretty sweet.

DC Democrats are Bastards & Chickenshits®™: Greenwald lays it out (via Kos - more here):

With very few exceptions, national Democrats in Washington see the blogosphere as composed of uninformed, ranting, dirty masses who need to be kept as far away as possible. While they are willing to take your money, many of the Beltway Democrats see the vibrant activism in the blogosphere as some sort of an embarrassment, while others see it as a threat to their feifdoms.

Here's a tip for DC: Your methods suck. Your fiefdoms are powerless. You guys have no guts (except Feingold). No one better deserves to put up with Howard Dean than you fuckwits that have absolutely no idea how to tread water, let alone win. Go cry with Joe Lieberman about how no one likes you anymore. Go straight to Hell, do not pass Go.

This was in the context of a NY Times review of "Crashing the Gate", a new book from Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.com and Markos Zuniga of DailyKos. It details how the Netroots can revolutionize the power structure in America and DC, and how it makes the Confused DLC Douche-bag Consultant Class (or whatever you care to call them) a little hot under the collar. Order it here from Amazon and I would get a referral kickback. (no one ever does, but hey, its worth a shot)

For his part, Kos has some really good wisdom today on how blogs can generate fundraising seed money for candidates, as well as more on the book & tour.

Oops, I guess [legal] abortion is doomed: "They Mean It" by digby, worth checking.

Inside military trauma units: a first-hand report

Someone anonymous sent me the following story from a doctor inside the U.S. military's medical trauma operations center. I did a quick check and this has already appeared here and here on the Internet, as far back as December. Oh well, enjoy. According to BlackFive, the source is one "Scott D. Barnes, LTC, MC, USA". It's a harsh one, but decidedly all too real...

"Well, as promised, with this letter I have kept my commitment to do better in keeping you informed of what I was doing over here in Iraq. Since I had only sent one letter previously, with this update I have doubled my correspondence. Again, if there is anyone else you think would want to get a copy of this letter, please feel free to pass it along.

I had every intention of trying to get this out just around Thanksgiving but very soon after that holiday, things seemed to pick up at work and I have just been trying to keep pace with the influx.

November has been an interesting month. Certainly not as busy as October but patients would come more in waves than a steady stream. During the month of October, the 86th Combat Support Hospital (CSH) was the 3rd busiest trauma center in the world! You read that correctly, only the trauma centers in Miami and Los Angeles did more work that we did. Just think of all the trauma hospitals in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and those in Europe, Asia, and Central/South America - most of which have 5-10 times the number of staff which we have here. It's amazing what you can get done when you eliminate the burdensome task of JCAHO (hospital regulating organization) and the exponentially expanding administrative tasks that have grown like Kudzu (weed that has overtaken much of the highways in the southeastern US) as they choke off efficient patient care. That and the fact that if you work 24 hours a day and live in the hospital while being locked down to about two square blocks seem to help us see more patients.

This is medical and surgical care practiced the way that many doctors dream. You see problems, diagnose the condition, quickly plan the operation, and you just do it. Patients don't wait, doctors don't wait, OR staff doesn't wait. It is amazing! We all love it and if it weren't for missing our families or dealing with the occasional rocket and mortar attack, most of us would not want to leave.

I have had the privilege of being adopted by the neuro team. We have world class care here. COL Ecklund is the chief of the neurosurgery program at Walter Reed, COL Ling is the only neuro-intensivist in the entire department of defense (he actually works at Johns Hopkins neurosurgical ICU teaching most of the military's critical care and neurology residents as they rotate through), and COL Mork is the anesthesiologist dedicated to the neurosurgical cases. As a number of head injuries involve eye injuries, it is a somewhat natural pairing. This has afforded me an incredible opportunity to be involved in quite a number of neurosurgical cases. COL Ecklund has shown me how to drill some burr holes in the skull and screw on plates to hold the bones after the case as well as closing up the scalp incisions over the craniotomy at the conclusion of the case. I can operate on the eyeball and use suture much finer than human hair, but to be a surgical assist to such a master as COL Ecklund has been inspiring.

These soldiers, civilians, and even prisoners have no idea how fortunate they are to have such skilled hands at work in their case.

More on the flip:

The integration of the whole team approach is one of the greatest factors in setting this experience apart. Within minutes of a patient hitting the doors of the emergency room you have a general surgeon, neurosurgeon, oral-maxillo-facial surgeon, urologist, orthopedic surgeon, and an eye surgeon all examining and conferring on the way to best care for a patient.

The nursing staff, the OR staff, the radiology techs..everything..it all just appears. Sort of like magic, a couple of doctors get called, word starts to get out and the machine starts working. The medics start drawing blood, the radiology techs arrive and start shooting pictures, the administrative personnel (yes we do have some!) start preparing the necessary paperwork, the anesthesia providers coming around like all of the other doctors, blood products from the blood bank starts to appear, and often the chaplain arrives. It really is beautiful to watch if you have a chance to sit back and really see what is going on.

Too often we don't see it because we are knees deep into the moment. We need to be reminded by those outside. Last month, the commander of one of the MP brigades asked to have a service for the OR/ER personnel that have meant so much to this unit over the duration of their deployment. This unit had been hit so hard week after week. Almost 40% of their members have been impacted by injuries. They had been such frequent fliers that we have become brothers in this struggle; the unit commander and sergeant major often join us in the operating room as we work on their men. This closeness and unity of purpose is not commonly seen between the medical corps (docs and the like) and the line units (real soldiers)...but in this setting we are brothers. These line units no longer see us as detached, primadonnas who sit in a luxury white hospital while they train in the mud and dirt. They see us in our environment and see the same faces when they come in on Monday morning as when they come in at midnight on Tuesday and again on Thursday night. They ask if we ever get any sleep and how we can keep going. My answer is always the same, "Sergeant, when you are on combat operations, when was the last time you slept and how do you keep going?"

When the unit Sergeant Major told me that they do it because they don't want to let down their buddy next to them because he is depending on that help and they do it because they know that if they get hurt, they feel sure that the medical machine will not let them down. I told him our answer was similar for how we can operate the way we do. I don't want to let down my neurosurgeon or my general surgeon who depend on me for helping with the eyes (a lot of the neurologic function in an unconscious patient comes from the eye exam and in a severely traumatized eye that can be difficult to asses even for an eye surgeon) and I don't want to let down that soldier who puts his life on the line in part because he put his faith in our ability to put him together if he gets broken.

We work two sides of the same street but when we meet it is under the most difficult circumstances. When those young MPs roll in after having been torn up by IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and their lives are in the balance the family pulls together. The unit leaders come into the OR and the jobs are less defined, you just look for something that needs to be done and you do it. One young sergeant was badly broken and rushed to the OR. The IED had done its intended job and shredded this courageous American everywhere that wasn't covered by body armor. He was dying, but we weren't going to let him go without a fight. He had no immediate eye injury, so I just went to work getting the blood and hanging it on the infusers since those that usually do this were otherwise occupied. We kept pouring unit after unit into him but he was loosing it as quickly as we were able to get it in. The trauma surgeon and the vascular surgeon cracked his chest and started going after his injuries to try to stop the hemorrhaging. His heart stopped a number of times. The trauma surgeon held his heart and kept squeezing to aid in circulation while the anesthesiologists were infusing the medications needed to restart the heart. The two unit commanders were right there voicing their support and praying as they were watching the team. Two major injuries were found in the carotid and subclavian artery but too much damage had been done too much blood had been lost, and too much time had passed before his injuries could be repaired. We went through 45 units of blood. His heart stopped 7 times and we were able to restart it 6 times. When it became clear that we would not win this battle and that this young sergeant had gone into that good night, we turned off the machines and monitors, the chaplain stepped forward, and the unit commanders, nurses and doctors closed into a circle and we asked for the Lord's mercy on his soul and for God's peace with the family that will soon find out what we already know. This hero paid the ultimate price while doing his country's bidding.

I walked out onto the hospital roof which has been my refuge after such cases. I usually stay closer to some cover because I don't want to give snipers any target practice but this time I went over to hang over the rail looking down into the parking lot/patient receiving area. This is where the men usually gather to wait for news on what happened to their buddies (we don't have a waiting room). I will never forget what I saw there. For the strength of the emotion but also because I have seen it now too many times.

About 30 soldiers hanging out in various groups, some talking, some joking, some smoking, some tossing a football, some catching a few winks, but just doing what waiting soldier do. LTC T (their commander) walked out to the group who immediately jumped up and gathered around the boss. I couldn't hear what was said from the roof, but I knew that commander had a difficult message to deliver. I didn't have to hear the words, these warriors' actions said it all. Some just there motionless, some grabbed their buddies and just let the tears run down their dirt-stained faces, others unable to contain their anger, went to find a wall and began hitting it. The commander and sergeant major moved through their guys, reaching out to each one with a hug or supportive arm. Sometimes I can put all the damage and suffering behind me; my years in medicine have introduced me to death and in some ways I can detach myself. But to see this effect on his brothers in arms, transformed my previously detached self and turned on my humanity. In the ER and the OR, I can be the professional doctor, but on the roof, I become a human again. Under the cover of darkness I feel the pain of what I've seen.

Once the sergeant's body was prepared, his fellow soldiers came through and paid their last respects. This will always be the hardest part of my time here, to see these rough men break down at the sight of their fallen comrade. These leaders and subordinates file past their brother, touching him and paying their respects, shedding their tears, hugging their surviving brothers. Then in a most amazing display of professionalism, they wipe their tears, put on their gear, and walk out of the hospital back to their unit and start their patrols all over again.

So the Sergeant Major asks how can we go without sleep and how can we operate for hours at a time. After seeing the heart of his soldiers, how can we not?."

Too much drama in the LBC; or I could have had my own Zapruder film

I'm going to toss in some brief bits, but first I have to tell about the recent dicey situation over here by Loring Park. Last week, as many students were milling around the Minneapolis Community / Technical College across the street, some people in a red compact rolled up off Hennepin. According to one anonymous local known as Papa Smurf who witnessed the event, suddenly a number of guys jumped out and started shooting at a group of people on the south end of the parking lot, as portrayed in a somewhat garish way here, from my living room window:

The targets took cover behind cars in the lot (there were more at the time), and the assassins sped off east down Spruce, towards Loring Park. If only I hadn't been working in St. Paul, I might have seen it from my window.

Papa Smurf said that one person was left limping around with an apparent gunshot to the leg, while most everyone else hid until the police showed up less than 5 minutes later. It was not featured on the news.

I told this to a friend, expecting some sort of 'oh wow.' Instead she was like, "Well they shot up the Tires Plus next to my house last night." You just can't impress some people.

Jane Cat, by the way, is fine now. The right ear healed up quite nicely.

On with the miscellaneous: DailySixer presents a sweet Reservoir Dogs poster and a Live Action Simpsons intro.

Alison and I got back to our East Metro roots at White Bear Lake's BearTown Lounge on Highway 61 for some really good cheeseburgers and $1 second beers in Happy Hour. The place is full of sculpted polar bears. This is exactly why East Metro beats the tar out of Edina and the West Metro.

Mordred sent over rrrrrrrrrrrrrnnnnnnnnnnhhhh.blogspot.com, which is a Chewbacca spoof blog, inserting Chewy into such internet pop culture icons as the famous Gary Busey mugshot. Also has a myspace profile. Kind of a sublime exercise in whatever art form this is.

Chewy has a link to mchammer.blogspot.com, wherein MC Hammer has apparently learned how to upload low-quality photos from his Sidekick camera-phone. It seems this is authentic, it looks like him. And, I can't believe I am saying this, MC Hammer is audio blogging.

The Agonist has a really sweet new website now geared up. For organized international news it really rocks. The new NewsWire thing is sweet. Right now, top story is NeoCon allies desert Bush over Iraq, such as William Buckley, Francis Fukuyama, Richard Perle, Andrew Sullivan, George Will. Well fuck you guys. Thanks for joining the regularly scheduled disaster. I hope you hate yourselves.

Sketchy Narcotics conspiracies: NarcoNews.com is featuring, as always, lots of controversial stuff on the drug war. Today we find some of the corrupt Democrat flip side. As with most things of this nature, take it with your grains of salt. Catherine Austin Fitts is someone I would classify as from the same general sector of the infowars as Michael Ruppert (they're tight). So check out Dillon, Read & Co. Inc. and the Aristocracy of Prison Profits: Part IV: The Clinton Years: Progressives for Private Prisons, HUD’s Corrupt Role in Centralizing Debt and Corporate Dirty Tricks.

Scooter your ass to jail:
Along the same lines as attempted homicides outside, the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Trust is pretty fucking great. Because nothing says freedom like outing a CIA agent, to intimidate the Washington bureaucracy into silence over the fake intelligence. Good times. And thanks for providing a list of evildoers such as Francis Fukuyama, Steve Forbes and Evil Emperor James Woolsey. And also apparently Dennis Ross. When the revolution comes, your crew will be first against the wall.

Quick batch of commentary & headlines: U.S. stuck with few options in Iraq. Preventing Iraq's disintegration. Outlook worsens in Afghanistan.

PENTAGON DISMISSES US TROOP POLL Thursday, March 02, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com

The Pentagon has dismissed a poll's finding that 72 per cent of United States troops in Iraq believe the US should pull out within a year or less. "It shouldn't surprise anybody that a deployed soldier would rather be at home than deployed, even when they believe what they are doing is important and vital work," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. The poll by Le Moyne College and Zogby International found that only 23 per cent believed US troops should stay in Iraq "as long as it takes," as US President George W. Bush has insisted.

As If There Were No Tomorrow: Sunnis Leaving Iraq by the adventuresome and indefatigable Iraqi journalist/blogger Khalid Jarrar. Juan Cole: Iraq's worst week -- and Bush's. Deep troubles as Iraq tries to form a new government. Al Ahram: The myth of civil war.

Subtle Irony Department: [via This Modern World and Under the Same Sun]: CommonDreams:

Two Iraqi women whose husbands and children were killed by US troops during the Iraq war have been refused entry into the United States for a speaking tour. The women were invited to the US for peace events surrounding international women’s by the human rights group Global Exchange and the women’s peace group CODEPINK.

In a piece of painful irony, the reason given for the rejection was that the women don’t have enough family in Iraq to prove that they’ll return to the country.

DKos: White House hunting down truth-tellers.
This is what happens when you pay too much of your credit card bill: Pay too much and you could raise the alarm:

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Nothing left to say.

Pawlenty polling weak; "The costs of golden theories will be paid for in the base coin of our interests"

Kind of a grab bag of stuff for the afternoon. We got posted as a City Pages MN blog o the day for Mordred's trip to Las Vegas yesterday. That is Teh Pimp. Thx to Mordred for a day of fame!

Kircher's Cat Piano is plainly the best thing ever. (via GM)

MN Governor Rasmussen Poll (via Kos). 2/20. Likely voters. MoE 4.5% (1/16 results in parens)

Pawlenty (R) 40 (47)
Hatch (DFL) 45 (44)

Pawlenty (R) 42 (46)
Kelley (DFL) 42 (37)

The January results were perhaps an outlier, and of course the third party factor is unknown. But it indicates Kelley is solid - and I keep thinking that Kelley is a better candidate than Hatch, despite the fact that the DFL heirarchy seems to believe that it's automatically Hatch's turn – the same stodgy thinking that got us the Moe candidacy last time. Maybe...

The network news still sucks. ABC' Elizabeth Vargas is a fine example. Thanks to MediaMatters for chipping away at the typical layers of garbage. Such great moments in history as these recent Fox News moments deserve to be recorded: "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" and "CIVIL WAR" IN IRAQ: MADE UP BY THE MEDIA?"

Random: A Rubik's Cube Prank and Mario Cookie from the infinite well-documented prank sphere of the Internet, a genre started by such great exploits as the 1994 Police Cruiser placed on MIT's Great Dome.

"Neo-Isolationists" take heart: 42% of Americans believed the US should "mind its own business" in a October 2005 poll. To the various warmongers of Washington, this is the 'dreaded isolationism' they fear -- or rather, its the natural inclination of the American people to step away from the tangled messes of Eurasia.

Just a third (34%) say Bush's calls for greater democracy in the region are a good idea that will succeed; 36% think it is a good idea that will not succeed; and 22% believe it is a bad idea. ..... Fully 71% say the Iraq war is a major reason that people around the world are unhappy with the U.S. And just 16% – the fewest in over a decade – are satisfied with the way things are going in the world.

Raimondo at Antiwar.com hails this as evidence that 'interventionism' is basically imposed by neo-cons and hawks upon the American public. Thus, Antiwar will keep holding the line. Moment of Truth and On the Road to Empire, indeed. Even Henry Hyde is warning against the arrogance of empire these days:

...by its very nature, the U.S. is a revolutionary power. Its foundational beliefs posit universal truths that permeate all of its actions and perceptions of the world. These have had, and continue to have, catalytic effects on other societies..... [but] Lashing our interests to the indiscriminate promotion of democracy is a tempting but unwarranted strategy, more a leap of faith than a sober calculation.

.....We can and have used democracy as a weapon to destabilize our avowed enemies and may do so again. But if we unleash revolutionary forces in the expectation that the result can only be beneficent, I believe we are making a profound and perhaps uncorrectable mistake. History teaches that revolutions are very dangerous things, more often destructive than benign, and uncontrollable by their very nature. Upending established order based on theory is far more likely to produce chaos than shining uplands.

.....We are well advanced into an unformed era in which new and unfamiliar enemies are gathering forces, where a phalanx of aspiring competitors must inevitably constrain and focus our options. In a world where the ratios of strength narrow, the consequences of miscalculation will become progressively more debilitating. The costs of golden theories will be paid for in the base coin of our interests.

There's even more but I think that gets the point. Seriously, what ever happened to the gruff conservatives of yore preaching caution? ... Tom Tomorrow predicts the future?

House Republicans sense a good time to retire. (Ten or 15 more?! wow) This could help us, of course.

Afghanistan: Opium still big-time as a Taliban spring offensive looms: Guardian: Four years after fall of Taliban, leader's power barely extends beyond the capital. WaPo: Growing Threat Seen In Afghan Insurgency: DIA Chief Cites Surging Violence in Homeland. Traditionally in Afghanistan, the fighters hunker down for the winter as snow closes off mountain valleys. In all likelihood, this spring will see the strongest Taliban offensives since 2001. Opium yields are slightly down this year, apparently because the market is flooded and prices have fallen. However, productivity per hectare is way up, and according to ABC News, a mere 200 hectares were actually shut down through NATO/Western political drug suppression efforts. About one in ten Afghans is directly employed by the opium industry, which makes up between 1/3 and 1/2 of GDP.

Thus, the Pentagon presides over probably the largest organized narcotics economy ever. Always remember that the Taliban's Tajik, Kyrgyz, Kazakh and Uzbek rivals only managed to finance their survival through exporting the raw material for heroin. These are the "good guys" who control the turf, and this is how they do it. The central government can only be a passive framework, at best, in this environment. As I noted earlier, over about 200 years they defeated the British two or three times, and the USSR's great Red Army. That's how they roll. The Kabul prison rebellion (now reportedly crushed) is just the overture for the first movement.

Freedom beckons for the Bluth family: Apparently the rumors were true and Arrested Development got picked up by Showtime, for another 26 episodes. I was watching the DVDs recently and really, it might have been the best comedy on network TV. FOX is dumb for replacing it with more garbage.

How to consider purchasing an LCD monitor: A subtle art: This AnandTech comparison of top-end 20" Apple and Dell LCD displays explains all the factors.

Indian nuclear plans: According to ArmsControlWonk, it appears that only about 65% of India's nuclear plants will be monitored as civilian operations by the IAEA. Why do Americans generally ignore the existence of Israel and India's nuclear weapons, try to forget about Pakistan's and Russia's? Is Iran, which has its own damn uranium mines, really that different? Then again, the 21st century will probably have a nuclear history that will make the 20th look like Daisy picking flowers.

Staring into the abyss for a while; these are some rebellious people

Check out this 50-state composite survey of whether Bush broke the law in the wiretapping scandal. It certainly breaks down along red/blue lines, but it is still good to see that, say 39% in Virginia think he broke the law, to only 36% who think he didn't.

We are this close to starting the apocalypse. Isn't that fabulous?!

Bush Adviser Foresees Iraq Violence Lull
WASHINGTON - President Bush's national security adviser said Sunday that Iraqi leaders had "stared into the abyss" and determined that sectarian violence was not in their interest.

Although bombings and other attacks have surged in the last week, Stephen Hadley expressed optimism in the light of statements from Iraqis who have condemned the attacks and pledged to move forward with building a unity government.

"It is a time of testing for Iraqis," Hadley said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"They've stared into the abyss a bit, and I think they've all concluded that further violence, further tension between the communities, is not in their interest," he said.

The cumulative Iraqi death toll since the shrine situation reached at least 400 today. And yet again this is presented as evidence that "the terrorists are getting desperate." Thanks for that insight.

MySpace machinations. I thought this sounded eerily familiar, as adults spazz out about MySpace, now that the kids have literally nowhere to hang out in RealSpace anymore. Wired on it:

The profile the Hermitage, Pennsylvania, Hickory High School student bestowed on his principal was not kind. For "birthday" he listed "too drunk to remember." And for vital stats like eye and hair color he wrote, simply, "big" -- a poke at the educator's girth that he managed to weave into most of the 60-odd survey questions in Trosch's fictional profile: Do you smoke? "Big cigs." Do you swear? "Big words." Thoughts first waking up? "Too … damn … big."

The teen told some friends at school about the gag. Big mistake.

As a judge would later put it, "word of the parody … soon reached most, if not all, of the student body of Hickory High School," and the fake MySpace profile, along with several less nuanced commentaries crafted by other students, became a monster hit at the school. The administration banned student PC use for six days, canceling some classes, while they traced the profile to 17-year-old senior Justin Layshock, who promptly confessed and apologized.

"We grounded him and didn't allow him on the computer for two weeks," says Layshock's mother, Cherie Layshock. But the school had stronger medicine in mind. Layshock was suspended for 10 days, then transferred into an alternative education program for students incapable of functioning in a regular classroom.

A gifted learner who had been enrolled in advanced-placement classes and tutored other kids in French, Layshock spent the next month in a scaled-down three-hour-a-day program where a typical assignment saw students building a tower out of paper clips as a lesson in teamwork. The punishment led to an ACLU lawsuit that is ongoing, and garnered the school district a slew of critical stories in the local papers.

Wherein they make the point that (public) schools can't really control the speech of students at home. The concept of digital satire, ah, so attractive, the Siren Song of mocking bastards at school. Well I learned that lesson the hard way. Anyway.

Afghanistan is intrinsically rebellious, and that is pretty much all you need to know:

Afghan, Nato and US forces surrounded the main high security prison in Kabul yesterday with tanks after it was taken over by more than 1,500 Taliban and Al-Qaida prisoners during a violent riot. At least 30 prisoners were injured and unconfirmed reports said seven others were killed in fighting after inmates took two women prison guards hostage in protest at new regulations requiring them to wear uniforms.
Bursts of gunfire could be heard throughout the day from Pulicharkhi prison after the Afghan police rapid reaction unit, armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers, entered the complex in an attempt to prevent a mass break-out. Prisoners were heard chanting “Allah-o-Akbar” in between the firing.
Pulicharkhi, which holds around 2,000 prisoners, became notorious during Afghanistan’s Communist era with allegations of torture and secret executions. About 110 detainees held by the US at Guantanamo Bay are expected to be transferred there later this year.
The prisoners had allowed 70 women inmates to be moved to another part of the prison after storming into the female wing from their own. As night fell, negotiations announced by the Interior Ministry to end the stand-off were suspended. Security forces had yet to gain access to parts of the jail under the prisoners’ control.
“I have heard that prisoners have been injured. Taliban and Al-Qaida members from different countries are behind this unrest,” said the Deputy Justice Minister, Mohammad Qasim Hashimzai. “They still control the wing from where they had started the riot. They have demands; we are going to listen to what they want. If we cannot solve it through negotiations, we have our own options.”

If the United States and NATO cannot administer Kabul's main prison, are they really going to be able to check the heroin industry or even deal with (let alone attempt to dominate) the various heavily armed ethnic factions?

The Soviet Union was defeated here, bankrupting them. The British were defeated here (twice - perhaps thrice depending how you score it), expending a huge amount of cash from the India colony, and ultimately helping drag down British-Indian colonization. And now, NATO and the United States cannot control the Afghani equivalent of Abu Ghraib. To me, this is totally in keeping with the pattern of history.

After all, they've had opium since Alexander the Great stopped by. [maybe apocryphal, but sounds good].

And of course America's Iran paranoia is skating off into a dimension all its own. Google News 'Iran Nuclear' search:

Results 1 - 50 of about 64,400 for iran nuclear

A final note. Let me introduce a nice old map from the Great Game. Via Wikipedia's recommended Great Game history, a really subtle HongPong.com geopolitical illustration:

That's Persia in Blue. 1848. Good times. (Also note that Kuwait didn't exist)

A small lesson in threat construction, terror and the psychology of political authority: Iraq, Russia, some phantom WMDs, and an idiot general

RED SCARE, PART 4,394,480: ThinkProgress.org featured a video with a Fox News talking head, who informed us that Russian Spetznaz Teams smuggled Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction into Syria and the Bekaa Valley.

MCINERNEY: Well, I believe that — that [Saddam Hussein] had [WMD] and then the Russians convinced him, because they sent a team in, a Spetsnaz [Russian Special Forces] team in, and they moved those weapons into three locations in Syria and one into Bekaa Valley. And they did it very thoroughly. They were very professional. They were Spetsnaz with GRU. They knew exactly where all the material was, because they were preventing the inspectors from finding it. And then they had a brilliant what they call mass deroka – deception - campaign. When the Iraqi survey group didn’t find anything, then they spread throughout the capitals of Europe and the U.N: “See, there were no WMD.”

O’REILLY: So you believe that the Russians themselves moved the WMD’s?
MCINERNEY: Absolutely, absolutely.

Now this is bullshit, but it reflects how the new order of symbolic logic is being constructed this year. The general's threatening language must focus on Russia, because Russia is starting to make moves with HAMAS and Iran, plus people like McInerney surely see a need to finally kill Russia and steal their energy.

More realpolitik below the fold, but first let's look at the psychological effect of the information, rather than its truth value.

The everyday man on the street thinks "Iran equals The Nuclear" and therefore accepts what is happening. With Iraq, all it took was a small batch of defectors working for Ahmed Chalabi, a demonic press, and the ruling establishment to scare the shit out of this whole country. When you are held in fear, you unthinkingly fork over political power — more precisely, control over a kind of emotion that is pre-political power. The key to this power is found more in the id than the ego.

Generating psychological projection of fear onto Other groups is a crucial form of war propaganda — or psychological warfare performed on the domestic population, in some cases. The mental image of the WMDs becomes a source to project anger and anxiety towards. "We can't let them hit us" becomes a kind of mental crutch, colored goggles laid over the general sense of anxiety. It's not your fault, it comes from the outside, the government reassures us.

But don't think about Abu Ghraib, or any evidence the leadership is incompetent. Thoughts against the leadership endanger the information war! You are not smart or privileged enough to evaluate our performance. You cannot talk about military policy because only the Dark Priesthood (McInerney and his like) can truthfully tell YOU what is going on. This is the only safe way to feel authority and information.

Here in Minnesota, the Republicans are also testing the new "Midwest Heroes" ads from the RNC's 527 ad machine. These ads say: you must believe that distrusting the leadership equals making a dead soldier's mother cry. You must psychologically project motherhood into trusting the authority of the war-makers. (it's quite the cynical inversion of Cindy Sheehan, I have to say) These "mother == trust in war" and "father == the Bush aura of fear" concepts will surely play quite well, all year long, upon millions of fearful and angry American minds. As Progress for America Voter Fund admits:

Some politicians.... policies thwart the ability of American families to support the War on Terror, keep more of what they earn, provide a safe environment for educating their children,... [primal father?]

TV pundits like McInerney perform the intellectual carpet-bombing of absolute gibberish, week after week, so that the average drooling Fox viewer, rendered into a narcotized state from all the whooshing colors and racist theme music, is left with a hazy, angry impression that the fuckers are trying to bring us down. (This is assisted by frequently replaying 9/11 clips on a split screen: video masochism => longing for authority)

The Freudian Trip:
It is quite possible that the average viewer's sense of ego is deactivated or degraded. Their primitive id emotions can be pushed up and down. They experience a kind of 'primal father' longing for order and authority; a need to experience order, sadism, if you will. (Freud thought of Moses as an excellent, benevolent Primal Father figure)

There are shadows in the dark. Only the light can drive this back, das volken are the true people of this country. We are clean, they are dirty... And around and around it goes.

Watch "On the streets of America 3" for the ultimate effect of these things.... Russia's actual role below the fold - this is what they're actually scared of....

Russia is going to do its own thing, and the hawks marketed to morons on Fox will perform Threat Construction to create an aura of fear and instability. Thus, we are soothed on our steady march towards doom. (Thanatos, the sublimated death wish instinct, might really be at the heart of the war, in producing an attraction to achieving a state of calm: the afterlife? Millennialism?)

Ok, ok.... That was a little nuts. But I'm trying to describe the general state of emotional manipulation these days. We need to stick to cold realism to understand more of what's really happening, beyond the tormented imagination of a Fox viewer.

So, more realistically, George Friedman lays it out in a Stratfor email: "The Middle East and Russia's New Game":

And this brings us to Moscow's invitation to Hamas. There are a number of reasons to make the invitation -- the single most important of which was that the United States did not want it to be done. ...... between the lines, the Russians wanted to deliver two messages to Washington.

The first was that Moscow no longer regards itself as a junior partner to the United States in foreign policy -- and, in fact, doesn't regard itself as a partner at all. Second, they wanted to make it clear that, just as Washington is making trouble for Russia in its own periphery, the Russians are equally capable of making trouble in areas that are of fundamental interest to the United States. Moscow's message is this: Do not assume that the failure of Russia to exercise its foreign policy options means that the Russians have no foreign policy options. Nothing Russia is getting from the United States in economic relations compensates for the geopolitical harm the United States is doing to Russia. In other words, this is about 2005, not 1995. A lot happened in the last decade, most of it not good for the Russians. The rules are changing.

There is another, more directly strategic reason for the move. Russia has, and has always had, strategic interests in the Middle East. Given the decay of Russia's strategic position in the formerly Soviet region, these interests -- which today include ties to Syria and a potential partnership with Iran on nuclear enrichment -- have become more important rather than less. The U.S. penetration of Central Asia, the Baltics and Ukraine cannot simply be countered in these areas; it is only by challenging the United States in the Middle East that Moscow can divert American attention from areas of great interest to the Russians. It is not just a matter of bandwidth -- meaning that the more trouble the United States has in the Middle East, the less time it has for the former Soviet Union. It is also the case that if Russia is to contain the American presence along its southern frontier, having influence and a presence to the rear of this region -- in the Middle East -- gives it leverage over some of the former Soviet republics.

......Russia's willingness to speak to Hamas creates a new dynamic in the Muslim world. Syria and Iran are seeking "great power" support against the United States. ....By inviting Hamas and possibly opening a channel between Hamas and the Israelis, Russia is positioning itself to become a mediator in other disputes, and to walk away with relationships that the United States has been unable to manage.

Given the robustness of Russia's arms industry, which is much more vital and advanced than is generally understood, the Russians could return to their role as arms provider to the region and patron of governments that are hostile to the United States. The situation from 1955 to 1990 was a much more natural geopolitical dynamic than the current situation, in which Russia is really not present in the region. Russia is a natural player in the Middle East.

Remember also that Hamas is very close to Saudi Arabia, with which Russia has an intensely competitive relationship in the energy markets. And then there is Chechnya. The Russians have long charged that "Wahhabi" influence was behind the Chechen insurgency as well as insurgencies in Central Asia. In the Russian mind, "Wahhabi" is practically a code word for "Islamist militants," including al Qaeda. The Russians also feel that, while the Americans have forced the Saudis to provide intelligence on al Qaeda, they have not elicited similar aid on the issue of the Chechens. In other words, Moscow perceives the United States not only as having neglected to help Russia on Chechnya, but as actually hindering it.

So what's the lesson? 2006 will have a certain Retro-Cold War tint to it. There may be a kind of vintage comeback for "Daisy" style political ads. Iran fits in as a kind of annex to the Evil Empire. And your id is subject to psychological warfare.

Just another Wednesday afternoon in the Information Age...

Just another Day in the Valley: "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq" is officially my favorite movie of 2006

This is what movies are supposed to do.

We can all agree that Hollywood lacks any guts nowadays. Thus, the best "movie" movie of the year would have to shatter all boundaries of taste and convention — make you laugh, cry. Only Gary Busey and Billy Zane have the guts to get us out of this cinema funk. And they have.

Valley of the Wolves: Iraq (Turkish: Kurtlar Vadisi Irak) is hands-down one of the coolest movies I have seen in a long time. It will be a cult classic, it will cause some angry Christian riots in Cleveland. It's that good. According to Wikipedia, it is the most expensive Turkish movie ever. Actual plot details there - mine are purely visual impressions.

It's more cliche than an episode of Knight Rider, more crass than Jerry Bruckheimer, and it owes debts to Full Metal Jacket, Lethal Weapon, Hong Kong, Kurosawa, Ford's westerns, and every late 80's action flick on FX or USA. Check the website for an English trailer (WMV - ok on Mac) – because the version I downloaded was almost totally Turkish.

Set aside the canned "anti-Semitic" reaction. Busey really has no more than ten minutes of screen time as the evil Jewish doctor stealing organs from Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib and shipping them to Israel. But someone had to play this unique, absurdly comic villain, finally bringing the unreal Abu Ghraib universe into movie culture through wicked Dr. Frankenstein-style High Camp. (Abu Ghraib really is this pointless & random, I think is Busey's subtext)

Billy Zane is Sam William Marshall, the Coalition Provisional Authority messiah-figure / piano-playing murderous psychotic, usually clad in white. He poses as a "white hat" for the savages: get it? (I think Zane figured he owed the Middle East an outlandish villain after The Mummy - fair's fair)

Zane has an entourage of evil mercenaries – the khaki vests, buzz cuts and machine guns are a fair visual representation of a typical Blackwater Personal Security Detail. In the English teaser he seems to say "When the Turkmen are done, the Arabs are next," and the movie mainly follows the travails of the Turkmen minority in northern Iraq.

I got Valley off a Turkish BitTorrent site (here's the Torrent - it works, be patient). For a little clip hit this link and uncompress it. In that early scene, Zane, his mercenaries and the U.S. soldiers raid the Turkish headquarters in Iraq. He tips over a Turkish flag – cue the dramatic music. They lead the personnel out to the truck with bags over their heads, and in the film version, an officer writes a letter, and puts it and a Turkish flag in a bag, and shoots himself. The raid is true, the suicide, not.

I downloaded a version with poor sound, and extreme flickering (the frames are not synced - it strobes really bad). Also, everything was dubbed into Turkish, including Zane and Busey. No subtitles — though the English-language trailer on the website features their lines in English, so hopefully if when the movie is released in the U.S., it will be a little easier to follow.

This film is awesome, and it would be a huge hit in the states. It reminded me of Reservoir Dogs, Apocalypse Now, the insanity of the news, Bollywood, Rambo, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Natural Born Killers, Lord of the Rings, the Chuck Norris flick Delta Force, a bit of The Matrix (roof escape), anything about Compton. Also reminded me of the book "The Ugly American" - as there is a scene with Zane handing out toys and food to the Iraqis while the media captures it.
(and of course Battle of Algiers and Lawrence of Arabia. And Xbox's "Call of Duty 2": the bazaar levels)

A lot of people die in "Valley of the Wolves." They are killed by a suicide bomber, crazed mercenaries with rocket launchers, jumpy U.S. troops, Zane himself. I took quite a few screenshots and so I will lay out a bit of the action. This movie would be huge in the United States – and it might make Rumsfeld's head explode in anger.

And I'm sorry, it's fun. It's revolting. It's utterly insane and packed with tons of Hollywood cliches, starting with the Noir venetian blind trick in the first minute.

Go look at the IMDB comments for a sampling of reactions. A Turk is pissed because the heroes are gangsters. How many ways could this movie make you angry? That's what makes art fit a certain place and time...

A little more of the cast:

Badass Sheikh Abdurrahman Halis Kerkuki. He intervenes in a beheading-video-in-progress and rides a white horse.

Strikingly similar-looking to the Battle of Algiers guy.

The two-bit Turkish gangsters who save the day in their black suits and white shirts. Tarantino heroes, without a doubt.

Leila, the young woman whose groom is killed in the wedding at the beginning of the movie (see English trailer). She kicks a lot of ass.

I started taking screenshots after the flick started, after the initial raid. Spoiler warning: this outlines a lot of what happens. Don't look at this if you want to be surprised. Including dramatic ending. Although I couldn't fully understand it.

There are a few dozen pictures on the flip. By "Turkish guys" some might actually be Turkmen. Again, I had no dialogue when watching.

Some kind of dedication ceremony. Dear Leader poster in back there.

Prisoners (including those captured from the wedding) are deposited at Abu Ghriab. Busey is furious that the mercenary killed a bunch of the Iraqis in the container. Yes, those are the coolers for Israel.

A dramatic conversation between Zane and the Turkish guy I couldn't understand. There was a bomb under Zane's chair. Zane is essentially holding the crowd of children hostage while the bomb is defused.

The evil mercenaries wasting innocent people. Rambo, anyone?

Sniper & suicide bombing type situation. Lots of wounded soldiers & innocent people.

More of the Abu Ghraib situation. German Shepherd & Lynnie England-style. The beginning of this scene is really shocking.

Public Relations - handing out food and goodies as media watches. Hence the subtle "white hat" metaphor.

Dramatic destruction of a minaret with priest inside.

Ethnic cleansing / forcible displacement of Turkmen, I think, as U.S. soldier watches, confused. There is a monologue of sorts, and I distinctly picked out something like "and then what of the Arabs?" This is pretty much the only place you will hear about the ethnic cleansing of minorities in Iraq – which alarms the Turks.

Sweet religious ceremony. This was really cool.

STAB!

Hostage video in progress. Who is that actor??

Zane has a piano moment.

Widow seeks wisdom from clerics and has a dangerous confrontation, handled calmly

Climactic battle - she is good with a knife. Turkish guys gotta save the day.

Classic Hollywood / Shakespearean ending / Nose ring symbolizes lost love & such.

Just another Day in the Valley.

I am sorry if looking at this spoiled some parts of the movie for you. Who knows how long it will take for this to get onto an American screen? If it never does, we are the poorer for it. This is great Saturday afternoon popcorn fare. I just want to actually understand the dialogue.

Just amazing. Just another day in the valley of the wolves.

Mac OS X 10.4.4 runs on generic Intels now; Apple brandishes DMCA to quash links to the hacker's website; plus a Gary Busey Turkish spectacle

Thanks to pixeldusted for the post, it says more about the bureaucracy than I can even convey. Sweetness.

OS X is at 10.4.5 right now, but an intrepid hacker known as Maxxus has developed a hacked version of 10.4.4 that can be set up and operate on ordinary Intel-based PCs. I really wonder what Steve Jobs is really thinking right now. He must surely realize this is the most leet (1337) or stylish way to get people around the world interested in running OS X on PCs. Thus, he's prepped to fight Microsoft Windows on his own turf, and the first attack wave could be the hackers. This would be cool as hell.

On the other hand, the bread and butter that kept Apple solvent through the bad years was hardware sales, not OS sales. Nowadays, the iTunes Music Store has good volume but razor-thin margins, and OS sales are pretty much icing on the cake. (also Apple podcasting is starting to do pay subscriptions, via Slashdot) If Apple tried to license its operating system, they could essentially cannibalize their hardware market share.

Oh wait, that already happened in the days of the Mac Clones, a misstep that nearly killed Apple. So when they saw that Maxxus had posted the hacks to one site, the vaunted packs of carnivorous Apple lawyers sent out a DMCA warning to that site, osx86project.org, which is focused on the possibilities of OS X + x86. The proprietors of that site have no wish to offend Apple, and have removed the links to Maxxus' site and the patches he developed.

As I also have no real desire to receive a DMCA notice from Apple, I will leave it to you to google the matter if you really want the patch, or refer to BoingBoing's coverage, MacSlash on it, or Slashdot. As one internationalist hacker type I know remarked,

Dude, it is illegal to DISCUSS how to go around encryption in the US.

Yes, this is what happens nowadays. But it's nothing new. Consumer electronics like your DVD player are now Black Boxes of Mystery which you, as a mere Owner, are un-Privileged to mess around with. It is a horrifying infringement of freedom that will require a second Revolution to defeat. In the meantime, well damn, the OS X patches are still on the Internet (hosted in more rebellious countries) so you can get them.

Linux is booting on Intel Macs now, even via an external USB drive (via MacSlash). Better yet, it is on Gentoo Linux, the same flavor that powers this very website.

In its infinite loop wisdom, Apple decided to embed a secret message to hackers in the new Intel machines, via CNN, slashdot and OSX86project:

Your karma check for today:
There once was a user that whined
his existing OS was so blind
he'd do better to pirate
an OS that ran great
but found his hardware declined.
Please don't steal Mac OS!
Really, that's way uncool.
(C) Apple Computer, Inc.

There is also a hidden kernel extension, Don't Steal Mac OS X.kext . Apple has never made it very hard to pirate the OS — which I think is actually part of a long-term subversive strategy, rather than some kind of incomprehensibly huge oversight on Jobs' part. They have never required call-in serial activation or any of that shit, for example. Again, the OS was always icing on the cake. Bill Gates is perplexed.

Gary Busey nukes conventional cinema: In other news, Gary Busey plays a crazed American doctor stealing organs of Arabs for Israel in a wildly popular Turkish film, "Kurtlar Vadisi Irak" or "Valley of the Wolves: Iraq". Billy Zane is also in it. Apparently it was on Turkish television for a few seasons before getting turned into a movie.

Fortunately I have ascertained a way to download this film from the Internet, as (somehow) it has not yet found an American distributor. Get it off BitTorrent right here. There are warnings that the sound and video quality are terrible (1 or 2 out of 10), but such a spectacle cannot wait. I will post if i find a better version.

"Midwest Heroes": A Minnesota info bomb from RNC and the Swiftboat guys; Infowar: "What's the big deal?"

Lots of people in Minnesota have seen these "Midwest Heroes" ads by now. They remind us of how Al Qaeda in Iraq is trying to destroy America. Well done. Who is plunking the cash down? The "Progress for America Voter Fund," run by such luminaries as Ken Mehlman, the director of the Republican National Committee, and various Swift Boat conspirators.

Nick Coleman called it the Swift Boating of Iraq, otherwise Swift Boating in reverse. Also a bit here. Hindrocket applauds that "My own guess is that liberals aren't afraid that the Midwest Heroes are wrong. They're afraid they're right."

So the oddity is that on my boss' radio show, one of the guys, Stephenson I think, was on there, and of course Janecek praised him, while Lambert was more critical. But what sort of media transaction is this? Why is this message an ad buy? Who is pushing it?? Well the director of the Republican Party. That simple.

PFA has some really nice Republican attack ads from 2004 on their site. "Why do we fight?" is cheesy. "Finish it" has a really funny part at the end. "John Kerry has a 30 Year Record of Cuts in Defense and Intelligence and Endlessly Changing Positions on Iraq. Would You Trust Kerry up against these fanatic killers. President Bush didn't start this war, but he will finish it."

Which I think is especially amusing because he sure as fuck won't finish it. Well, it would be amusing if it weren't a national disaster. My point is that this is a 527-style wing of the Republican attack machine. And they are using Minnesota as their test TV market for November.

They offer this on MidwestHeroes.com and the PFAVoterFund site:

About PFA Voter Fund
Some politicians are working overtime to push their failed policies on America and distort the accomplished public policy records of conservative leaders across this nation. These policies thwart the ability of American families to support the War on Terror, keep more of what they earn, provide a safe environment for educating their children, and continue to expand employment and grow the economy.

Progress for America Voter Fund ("PFA-VF") is a conservative issue advocacy organization dedicated to setting the issue record straight about these critical issues.

Here are the goals of the PFA-VF:

1. Level the playing field on issue advertisements — it may not be possible out raise even George Soros alone, but the PFA Voter Fund must try to reduce the lopsided advertising advantage that liberal 527s have on the campaign trail today.

2. Reinforce the messages of conservatives across the nation -- we have messages we know will work and energize the base; we just need the resources to deliver these messages.
As a diverse coalition of concerned citizens, nonprofit organizations, and other players in the political process, PFA-VF is dedicated to educating the American people regarding the public policy positions of candidates for federal, state and local office and mobilizing conservative voters. These activities provide the American people with the information they need to see through the misleading public policies and campaign themes of liberal politicians.

Well there ya go. Good times. If only we could get George Soros to keep ruining everything, liberals could finally take over.

Hello to the rest of America, this is like $10 billion dollars in November's generic Republican attack ads distilled to about 30 seconds. Set your brains on "drool" and prepare to be bombarded 600,000 times.

It doesn't get any more pure than this. But wait!! Look at all this fucking progress in Iraq!!!! Thanks MidwestHeroes, for giving us this Stuff that The Bush Hater Liberal Media Wants To Hide!!

“Iraqi Students Now Carry Laptops That Connect At Internet Cafes To The World’s Web Sites And Libraries Where Before They Had To Rely On Pencils, Slide Rules And Outdated -- Often Censored -- School Textbooks.” (Robert M. Kimmitt, “Iraq’s Post-Saddam Economy,” The Wall Street Journal, 12/9/05)
“Iraq Is Laying The Groundwork For A Self-Sustaining, Market-Based Economy.” “Only a year-and-a-half after regaining its full sovereignty, Iraq is laying the groundwork for a self-sustaining, market-based economy which can serve as an engine of growth for that nation and for the broader Middle East.” (Robert M. Kimmitt, Op-Ed, “Iraq’s Post-Saddam Economy,” The Wall Street Journal, 12/9/05)
“Iraq’s economy is expected to grow by nearly 4% this year and accelerate to nearly 17% in 2006.” (Robert M. Kimmitt, Op-Ed, “Iraq’s Post-Saddam Economy,” The Wall Street Journal, 12/9/05)
“Per capita income should soon exceed $1,000 -- nearly double the level in 2003.” (Robert M. Kimmitt, Op-Ed, “Iraq’s Post-Saddam Economy,” The Wall Street Journal, 12/9/05)
“More than 30,000 new businesses have been registered and many have set up shop.” (Robert M. Kimmitt, Op-Ed, “Iraq’s Post-Saddam Economy,” The Wall Street Journal, 12/9/05)

There are also lots of Department of Defense Press releases, and quotes from an editorial in the Indianapolis Star!!

This is some kind of joint project of the "Families United for our Troops and their Mission", whatever precisely that is. I started drifting over their blog and found this chestnut.

Monday, February 06, 2006: Information Warfare
Information warfare, what’s the big deal? Gold Star families are working to tell their stories to anyone willing to listen, including the media. One Gold Star mom said this of her husband, “He would talk to the moon about our son”. One reason we tell their stories is to keep the memories of our loved ones alive. Another reason is to continue to serve our country.

The battle continues to be waged, at home and abroad. Every war is fought on two fronts. Every war must be won on two fronts-the battlefield and the field of public opinion. President Lincoln set down the perimeters of the battle when he said, “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed.”

We will win the War on Terror, on the battlefield. We must continue to share the successes of the war in the media so that the public opinion is not swayed for defeat by misinformation on the home front.

“The American Enterprise” March, 2006, published an article written by John Guardiano. The article entitled, Information Warfare, stated: “Like most veterans of the war, I am amazed and dismayed at the relentlessly negative—and very misleading—media portrait of our efforts.” He cited this example, “Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan is a media cause celebrity; but Diane Ibbotson, Debby Argel Bastion, and countless other mothers who have lost their sons (and daughters) and continue to support the war are ignored. This despite the fact that they are more articulate and serious –minded than Sheehan, with personal stories that are just as compelling.”

So we “soldier on” in the cause that our loved ones gave their lives for, to win the battle on the home front that our Armed Forces are winning on the battlefields. We will continue to tell the stories of America’s fallen heroes, of veterans service and sacrifice, of the resolve of families who support the military and their mission.
Posted by Diane Ibbotson @ 11:55 AM

And Ken Mehlman is master of Information Operations.

Spinstorms as military Information Operations; A Pixeldusted character; HongPong.com traffic ok; a call for more Operators

...I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in...

My condition is: Lots of Wisdom Tooth Vicodin + I hate Valentines Day.I have been laying low and taking Vicodin after my wisdom teeth operation on Wednesday. That's five straight days of codeine, and my moods are kind of weird and raw by this point.

Introducing:
From the depths of the Intarweb comes a shadowy character known only as Pixeldusted. S/He works in the shadows, interacting with the most arcane and mysterious parts of a vast and sprawling industrial complex.

Well sort of. I'll leave it to Dusty to explain. Pixeldusted is not a fictional character, though of course, in the current climate of Information Operations, a reader cannot assume such things.

So currently our stable of contributors includes:

• Chairman Mao - providing esoteric artwork and statements of pining (yet currently fulfilled) love
• Mordred - a bristling rebuke of pretty much everything
• Pixeldusted - unknown factor
• HongPong - the caretaker of this strange and erratic endeavor.

And that's about it. Any of our regular visitors (and irregular confused lookers-on) are invited to contact me at NOdan.feidtSPAM@gmail.com if they would like to get an account here. I am trying to expand the operation a bit here. I have the inklings of long-term plan to design a better site. I would like to get friends contributing. There are no real hard and fast rules about it, because I don't really care that much. But I know a lot of smart people that could add some stuff.

So along with this polite general invitation to the visiting public, please keep my heavy recent course of painkillers in mind when reading the rest of this post.

Because yes, the structure of the site is antiquated and needs to be replaced. The HongWiki is probably not long for this world -- I look towards a better Content Management System setup like WordPress. In my day job, I am designing a new site for Politics in Minnesota's campaign coverage. Once that is done, I will actually have a very useful template for a new HongPong.com. Sweet.

*******

I looked at my web server logs for the first time in a while, and it turns out that well, things are going pretty well on the site. We are averaging 744 visits a day in February, of which I would estimate that 30% are spammers and 30% are search engines, but that's a rough estimate.

Here are the most popular search phrases of the last 13 days: (hits, then percentages)

• good day commander 100 14.5 %
• helicopter video 23 3.3 %
• mohammad bombhead 13 1.8 %
• good day commander email 10 1.4 %
• good day commander spam 6 0.8 %
• mig for sale 4 0.5 %
• mohammed bombhead cartoon 3 0.4 %
• mohamed bombhead cartoon 3 0.4 %
• rice-army helicopter pilot 3 0.4 %
• the minnesota archives of the 1900 s 3 0.4 %
• muhammed bombhead 3 0.4 %
• mohammad bombhead cartoon 3 0.4 %
• just another freak in the freak kingdom 3 0.4 %
• apocalypto subliminal 3 0.4 %
• good day commander e-mail 3 0.4 %
• adalet funny sites 3 0.4 %
• bombhead mohammad 3 0.4 %
• insurgent videos 3 0.4 %
• helicopter kills video 2 0.2 %
• mohammad cartoon bombhead 2 0.2 %
• filetype ppt war iran iraq site mil 1 0.1 %
• bombhead cartoon pictures insult islam 1 0.1 %
• said silakhori 1 0.1 %
• cartoon bombhead mohammed islam 1 0.1 %
• matt norman macalester 1 0.1 %
• var partition destroyed gentoo 1 0.1 %
• world oil crisis gotcha 1 0.1 %
• riot weapons 1 0.1 %
• groupsex movie 1 0.1 %
• mamoon s falafel 1 0.1 %

And i don't even have the damn cartoons. Or a Mamoon falafel. Last month's search phrases were sort of funny:

• helicopter video 57 5.9 %
• jonathon sharkey 17 1.7 %
• insurgent videos 13 1.3 %
• insurgent video 10 1 %
• hippo eats dwarf 7 0.7 %
• dave chappelle conspiracy 7 0.7 %
• good day commander 7 0.7 %
• videos of people being killed 6 0.6 %
• photoshop spoofs 6 0.6 %
• hongpong thomas harens 6 0.6 %
• aethlos 5 0.5 %
• cytherea free 5 0.5 %
• mig for sale 5 0.5 %
• sherman.state.gov 5 0.5 %
• police photography 5 0.5 %
• apocalypto subliminal 4 0.4 %
• dead amendments 4 0.4 %
• jonathon the impaler sharkey 4 0.4 %
• cytherea 1 0.1 %
• mel gibson subliminal frame apocalypto 1 0.1 %
• gentoo 6100 1 0.1 %
• neo-cons 1 0.1 %
• spooks leptin report 1 0.1 %
• lineage 2 which composite armor recipe 1 0.1 %
• amadeus pegasus watchtower 1 0.1 %

"Amadeus Pegasus Watchtower" being the supposed three names of the CIA programs bringing cocaine into the United States, which Ruppert claimed to uncover (as we noted earlier). HongPong.com is now like #5 for that on Google.

U.S. Concludes 'Cyber Storm' Mock Attacks By TED BRIDIS
The Associated Press / Friday, February 10, 2006; 8:37 PM

WASHINGTON -- The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.

Bloggers?

Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.[......]

There was no impact on the real Internet during the weeklong exercise. Government officials from the United States, Canada, Australia and England and executives from Microsoft, Cisco, Verisign and others said they were careful to simulate attacks only using isolated computers, working from basement offices at the Secret Services headquarters in downtown Washington.

[.....]Homeland Security coordinated the exercise. More than 115 government agencies, companies and organizations participated. They included the White House National Security Council, Justice Department, Defense Department, State Department, National Security Agency and CIA, which conducted its own cybersecurity exercise called "Silent Horizon" last May.

An earlier cyberterrorism exercise called "Livewire" for Homeland Security and other federal agencies concluded there were serious questions over government's role during a cyberattack depending on who was identified as the culprit _ terrorists, a foreign government or bored teenagers.

It also questioned whether the U.S. government would be able to detect the early stages of such an attack without significant help from private technology companies. [I sense a Blackwater Offensive Hacking contract in the works -Dan]

Please recall the "Fight the Net" Defense Department concept in the "Information Operations Roadmap" (PDF) from earlier. Let's add a bit from the BBC:

A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.

Bloggers beware.

As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer. From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.
[.......]
The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.

All these are engaged in information operations.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.

"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads. "Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.

The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.

"In this day and age it is impossible to prevent stories that are fed abroad as part of psychological operations propaganda from blowing back into the United States - even though they were directed abroad," says Kristin Adair of the National Security Archive.

So your own [American] brain is a target of military spending.
Accidentally.
Tax dollars >> Military-engineered thoughts.

Now that's what I call a feedback loop of sinister proportions. As for this site, well, it got 57 hits from the military just so far this month.

Jane Cat had surgery to repair his hematoma on the same day as my Wisdom Teeth, and the feline is now kinda tired, and pretty dusty. Tragic that a cat gets dusty when it can't groom its face.

Here, through my hydrocodone haze, Jane Cat is grabbing onto "Crossing the Rubicon" by Michael Ruppert, the conspiratorial work of parapolitical mega-non-fiction leading up to "Cheney did 9/11". I had pulled out this weird book because an old high school friend randomly stopped by today, and we talked about the likelihood that Wellstone was assassinated.

Could he have been Done In?

"People have been killed for less," I said. And Ruppert has an extended conspiracy theory about the subject, included in his book and featured on FromTheWilderness.com (and a followup). I tend to favor the electromagnetic pulse weapon theory – which explains the cell phone anomalies in northern Minnesota that day.

(My photo from a peace march in St. Paul on March 23, 2003)

The leading book on the Wellstone assassination theory, though, is apparently American Assassination by Don Jacobs and Jim Fetzer, a U of M professor. From a review:

Since becoming active in this issue, local residents have contacted Dr. Fetzer and related strange electronic interference in the area at the time of the crash. One experienced an odd cell-phone phenomenon with a form of noise unlike any he had heard before.

Its auditory pattern appears consistent with the use of "electro-magnetic" (EM) weapons developed by the Pentagon to take out computerized systems and wreak harm on human targets. It was part of the plan to bring down the plane using kinds of weapons of which most Americans are unaware.

These weapons can disable radio communications, stall warning systems, course deviation indicator, and electrical switches controlling the pitch of the props, causing substantial loss of control. They can render persons unconscious, incapable of muscle control, or even bring about their death.

In the wake of the crash, 69% of Minnesotans blamed a "GOP conspiracy" for Wellstone’s death.

I want to know where that statistic came from.

I got an oil change today and the mechanic noted my Wellstone bumper sticker. "We were just talking the other day about how great he was," she said. "It's always brought me good luck," I said. "Never been pulled over as long as its been on there."

And it is worth noting again that Wellstone was the only Democratic Senator to vote against the war who faced election that November. His political "survival" — assured in polls just before the election – posed a grave threat to the rationale for war - the rational public of Minnesota threatened to upset the spectacle.

And then there was all that damn bad weather (or not). Wellstone was afraid of planes, that's why he had the bus. And he was once sprayed with coca defoliant in Colombia. Tangle with the Establishment's cocaine friends in the Global South, who even knows what trouble you'd get into...

Amadeus, Pegasus, Watchtower. Information Operations.

The Vice President shoots a man, and they cover it up for 22 hours just for shits and giggles.

Time for another Vicodin. Official candy of Valentine's Day 2006.

All these narcotics make me woozy; but not as woozy as ADVISE's Ultimate Power; Pentagon: 'we must fight the net'; Wilkerson: Powell UN Speech a 'Hoax'

Cheney 'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information
By Murray Waas, National Journal
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.

Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

As we say on the Internet, LOL. Atrios notes it's slightly hypocritical. Another CIA official has come out of the woodwork to accuse the Bush Administration of cherrypicking Iraq intelligence – and guess what, Robert Novak hated him too! Paul R. Pillar, thanks for being a patriot. We need guys like you. WaPo: "Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq":

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.

......Pillar was identified in a column by Robert D. Novak as having prepared the assessment and having given a speech critical of Bush's Iraq policy at a private dinner in California. The column fed the White House's view that the CIA was in effect working against the Bush administration, and that Pillar was part of that. A columnist in the Washington Times in October 2004 called him "a longstanding intellectual opponent of the policy options chosen by President Bush to fight terrorism."

Add these two bits together, and boom, there you go, they smoked Valerie Plame in an attempt to protect all their fake intelligence and swat at the CIA. But why the hell do I bother repeating myself for the 124,639th time?

Fair and Balanced Editing of Applause: Fox "Memory Hole" News edited out anti-Bush applause at the Coretta Scott King funeral, then Morty Kondracke said that the audience obviously didn't like the partisanship. Now that's a reality distortion field. MSNBC was caught in a Harry Reid-Abramoff headline changing dodge. More on yesterday's Reid smear below.

<woozy> What's going on everyone? After my wisdom teeth were yanked, I have been popping Vicodin like candy for the last couple days, but everything seems to be going pretty well so far. No dry sockets yet. I had never been under general anesthesia before, so I was a little nervous because it can supposedly kill you. But it was plainly awesome to wake up with all my wisdom teeth yanked, loaded up with drogas.

Hilarious stuff from Mordred. Well done. </woozy>

ADVISE is the New Total Information Awareness: Yes, this "Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement" program will know your favorite soda and pornography. Of course they will be totally responsible when drunk on Ultimate Power. CSM: "US plans massive data sweep: Little-known data-collection system could troll news, blogs, even e-mails. Will it go too far?" More here.

The CounterTerrorism Blog looks good. They are skeptical of Bush's latest West Coast marquee terrorist conspiracy. So a good place to start.

Israeli Shin Bet director says Israel 'may rue Saddam overthrow' to young Israeli settlers: You can't make this shit up:

The head of Israel's domestic security agency, Shin Bet, has said his country may come to regret the overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Yuval Diskin said a strong dictatorship would be preferable to the present "chaos" in Iraq, in a speech to teenage Jewish settlers in the West Bank.
He also said the Israeli security services and judiciary treated Arabs and Jewish suspects differently.

.....His speech to the students at the Eli settlement as they prepared for military service was secretly recorded and broadcast on Israeli TV.

When asked about the growing destabilisation of Iraq, Mr Diskin said Israel might come to rue its decision to support the US-led invasion in 2003. "When you dismantle a system in which there is a despot who controls his people by force, you have chaos," he said. "I'm not sure we won't miss Saddam."

This goes into my theory that Shin Bet directors are actually quite sane, and are in fact opposed to neo-con bullshit because they can understand that widespread chaos is not really in Israel's interests at all. 1995-2000 Shin Bet director Ami Ayalon was not the only one to speak against this garbage. Also, from the New Yorker, a cynical old Israeli intelligence operator who wasn't surprised that about HAMAS' victory and rising fundamentalism all over the place. Just wait until this gets to Syria and Jordan.

Cryptome.org spills secrets: Cryptome is a totally sweet site and I'd like to throw out a few goodies. One: the somewhat suppressed Official CIA History of the Bay of Pigs Operation. Plausible Deniability. The introduction on Cryptome's front page, and the official history is here. Two: all kinds of weird stuff like this list of MI6 officers that has attracted the attention of FBI Counterintelligence.

Three: famed national security writer James Bamford writes about his involvement with the NSA lawsuit. Talks about Nixon's illegal Operation Minaret, which sounds pretty similar to things these days. Four: Also consider the Pentagon's declassified "Information Operations Roadmap" they published:

We Must Fight the Net. DoD is building an information-centric force. Networks are increasingly the operational center of gravity, and the Department must be prepared to "fight the net." [1 line redacted.] but be fully prepare to ensure critical warfighting network functionality and to [1 line redacted].

.....In particular, PSYOP must be refocused on adversary decision-making, planning well in advance for aggressive behavior modification during times of conflict. PSYOP products must be based on in-depth knowledge of the audience's decision~making processes and the factors influencing his decisions, produced rapidly at the highest quality standards, and powerfully disseminated directly to targeted audiences throughout the area of operations.

....We Must Improve Network and Electro-Magnetic Attack Capability. To prevail in an information-centric fight, it is increasingly important that our forces dominate the electromagnetic spectrum with attack capabilities.

I'll drink to that. Actually, I think I'll drink a lot to that. Five: Cryptome.cn publishes information censored by the Chinese government, as well. This is really what the Internet is all about.

OSS.Net: Way too cryptic: "Commercial Open Source Intelligence, Risk Mitigation, and Security for the Seven Tribes. Global, New Craft, Tribal & Sub-State, in 29 Languages with Integrated IT and Underlying Geospatial." Whatever that means, I want to get a job there.

Tabs on John Bolton: Check BoltonWatch at the TPMCafe. All right. Clemons is on point here too.

The latest smear on Harry Reid doesn't really have anything behind it: Trying to tie him to the Abramoff mess, but there's no there there.

Another reason to slash PBS funding: Evidence of a "hoax" & "cabal": on NOW with David Brancaccio, they did an excellent job explaining the shady mysteries of Iraq pre-war intelligence and interviewing Lawrence Wilkerson. Brancaccio was gutsy and far more accurate than any cable news garbage. It was a great primer to Intel-gate for the un-initiated. It must make Bush's skin crawl to realize that government cash is being used to shatter their grand tale:

DAVID BRANCACCIO: We've been talking grand policy. The then director of the CIA, George Tenet, Vice President Cheney's deputy Libby, told you that the intelligence that was the basis of going to war was rock solid. Given what you now know, how does that make you feel?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: It makes me feel terrible. I've said in other places that it was-- constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. My participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in my professional life.

I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing.

DAVID BRANCACCIO: A hoax? That's quite a word.

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, let's face it, it was. It was not a hoax that the Secretary [Powell] in any way was complicit in. In fact he did his best-- I watched him work. Two AM in the morning on the DCI and the Deputy DCI, John McLaughlin.

And to try and hone the presentation down to what was, in the DCI's own words, a slam dunk. Firm. Iron clad. We threw many things out. We threw the script that Scooter Libby had given the-- Secretary of State. Forty-eight page script on WMD. We threw that out the first day.

And we turned to the National Intelligence estimate as part of the recommendation of George Tenent and my agreement with. But even that turned out to be, in its substantive parts-- that is stockpiles of chemicals, biologicals and production capability that was hot and so forth, and an active nuclear program. The three most essential parts of that presentation turned out to be absolutely false.......

DAVID BRANCACCIO: ....You've said that Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld somehow managed to hijack the intelligence decision making process. You called it a cabal. And said that it was done in a way that makes you think it was more akin to something you'd see in a dictatorship rather than a democracy. Now those are strong words. Why a cabal?

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, the two decisions that I had the most profound insights into and which I have spoken to are the decision to depart from the Geneva Conventions and to depart from international law with regard to treatment of detainees by the Armed Forces in particular. But by the entire US establishment, now including the CIA and contractors in general.

And the post-invasion Iraq-- planning, which was as inept and incompetent as any planning I've witnessed in some 30-plus years in public service. Those two decisions were clearly-- made in the statutory process, the legal process, in one way and made underneath that process in another way. And that's what I've labeled secret and cabal-like.

Nice.

War is a Racket: I found Major General Smedley Butler's classic Anti-war, anti-imperialist screed, War is a Racket, on the Veterans for Peace website. (interestingly, Butler also testified about a secret fascist conspiracy to overthrow FDR). This was his classic statement, which was not part of War is a Racket:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested.

Nothing Works: It is really funny that the White House set up this grand website, expectmore.gov, to provide an evaluation of all the federal government's programs. Among the list of programs that are apparently busted (via first-draft.com):

Dept of Defense-- Military Defense Communications Infrastructure
Dept of Homeland Security Border Patrol
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Aids to Navigation
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Drug Interdiction
Dept of Homeland Security Coast Guard: Search and Rescue
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Air Cargo Security Programs
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Aviation Regulation and Enforcement
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Baggage Screening Technology
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Federal Air Marshal Service
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Flight Crew Training
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Passenger Screening Technology
Dept of Homeland Security Transportation Security Administration: Screener Workforce
Federal Election Commission Federal Election Laws - Compliance and Enforcement
Office of Natl Drug Control Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign
Department of Energy National Nuclear Infrastructure

To make a long story short via AmericaBlog: Wash Times: 1) Bush is spying on American-American phone calls IN THE US; 2) Known Al Qaeda agents are running free inside US; 3) Spy program useless. Der WaPo says:

"Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use ... Fewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well. That step still requires a warrant from a federal judge, for which the government must supply evidence of probable cause."

And by the way, FISA Court really streamlined after 9/11 so why no warrants? Gonzales: NSA may tap 'ordinary' Americans' e-mail.

BitTorrent evolves to avoid packet shaping: Internet service providers are apparently starting to try to filter down BitTorrent. So the BT developers are implementing encryption so they can't see Torrent traffic. leet.

Nazi mysteries: Some of the weird esoteric stuff within Nazism. Includes really disturbing stuff about Nazi research scientists and their "Holy Grail" style hunts for items of folklore and mystic significance... Somehow our cartoonish enemies these days just can't quite measure up to the Teutonic standard.

Funny t-shirts. Will they never end?

Bush stays two steps ahead of secret Stalinist animal-human hybrid program; but Soviet electromagnetic conspiracies surface

Today's News of the Weird by Chuck Shepherd:

Recently opened archives in Moscow show that in the 1920s, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered his top animal breeding scientist to create interspecies "super warriors." Stalin's half-men, half-apes would be "invincible," "insensitive to pain" and "indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

Scotsman UK reported that

Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist, Ilya Ivanov, was ordered to turn his skills from horse and animal work to the quest for a super-warrior.

According to Moscow newspapers, Stalin told the scientist: "I want a new invincible human being, insensitive to pain, resistant and indifferent about the quality of food they eat."

In 1926 the Politburo in Moscow passed the request to the Academy of Science with the order to build a "living war machine". The order came at a time when the Soviet Union was embarked on a crusade to turn the world upside down, with social engineering seen as a partner to industrialisation: new cities, architecture, and a new egalitarian society were being created.

Well this spurred me down the strange path of gibberish and esoterica on the Internet about the mysterious projects of the Soviet Union. One elaborate story about Soviet electromagnetic research leading to scalar EM weapons was quite an exotic tale. Soviet weather control, applied Tesla Death Ray stuff. It's kind of like Pop Sci Fi from the Cold War, Red Dawn meets electrical engineering. For example, take "Historical Background of Scalar EM Weapons" by Lt. Col. T.E. Bearden (retd.), 1990, which relates

The peculiar "nuclear flashes" seen by the Vela satellites in September 1979 and December 1980 could have been due to a testing of a scalar EM howitzer in the pulsed exothermic mode. In the mode, scalar EM pulses meet at a distance, where their interference produces a sharp electromagnetic explosion (hence the "flash", very similar to the initial EMP flash of a nuclear explosion. Even in the vacuum of space, such an explosive eruption of energy from within the local spacetime vacuum itself may be expected to lift matter from the Dirac sea, producing a plasma. Prompt absorption and re-radiation of energy from this sudden plasma may be expected to present nearly the same "double peak" profile as does a nuclear explosion. This was the profile presented by the flashes. Note that the second flash detected was apparently of an "explosion" primarily in the infrared, almost certainly ruling out a conventional nuclear event. It does not rule out, however, pulsed distant holography using pumped EM giant time-reversed wave transmitters.

He also says that the Challenger explosion was caused by Soviet energy weapons. It is really a compelling kind of story, but of course I'll trust it as far as I can throw it. Also offers this:

In the late 1960's, Lisitsyn reported that the Soviets had broken the "genetic code" of the human brain. He stated the code had 44 digits or less, and the brain employed 22 frequency bands across nearly the whole EM spectrum. However, only 11 of the frequency bands were independent. This work implies that, if 11 or more correct frequency channels* can be "phase-locked" into the human brain, then it should be possible to drastically influence the thoughts, vision, physical functioning, emotions, and conscious state of the individual, even from a great distance.

It may be highly significant that
(1) up to 16 of the giant Soviet woodpecker carriers have been observed by Beck and others to carry a common, phase-locked 10-Hz modulation, and

(2) such a 10-Hz signal has been demonstrated by Beck, Rauscher, Bise, and others to be able to physically entrain or "phase-lock" the human brain, if stronger than the Schumann resonance of the Earth's magnetic field.

This, in turn, leads to Total Conspiracy on the old tinfoil hat - schizophrenic model. But who can deny the mystique of Soviet energy weapons scientists in some secret military city, hunched over their experiments, trying to extract energy from the ether, playing chess and swilling vodka on break? Why not? And what about how the Soviets cooked the U.S. Embassy in Moscow with lots of microwave radiation, the twisted bastards? (this is pretty weird, medical studies of State Dept. staff and Moscow radiation)

And the terrible stories about radioactive contamination around the USSR are also part of this weird backstory to the nuclear apocalypse of the cold war.

Presenting: Stalin's Plan: Neo-monkey-humanoids and Tesla Weapons:

Ok I feel silly right now. But just think: what if the Russians are applying their considerable SAM and directed energy expertise towards Iran? Surely, if Iran would pay, Russia would be down with it.

This guy says that the US military is experimenting with energy weapons that manipulate Iraqis in Iraq. Sounds fanciful, but hey, when in Babylon, do crazy shit like Nebuchadnezzar, right?

And don't forget the classic story of Tesla and the Tunguska Explosion.

One final tidbit: check out the mysterious HAARP, some kind of Alaskan energy device that the U.S. military has set up to muck around with the ionosphere or something. And, um, someone blamed Hurricane Katrina on it. Which goes to show that all this shit about electromagnetic technology is a really great wildcard for any given conspiracy theory. CONTRAILS ARE REAL!!!

Lieberman Sucks the Donkeyballs; 'Why We Fight'; Public photography & reducing oil. Or Not.

A quick tour of goodies mostly from DailyKos. Via here and here, we discover that Joe Lieberman was the first person in the whole damn building to jump to his feet and applaud Bush's comments on Iraq. What the fuck? (the comic is mine - I need to offer something to match Jon tonight)

Stick up for photography in public places, it's your right: Australian snappers to defy police ban - NEWS.com.au. Via Slashdot.

Why we spend $400,000,000,000 EVERY YEAR: Raimondo checks out 'Why We Fight', a really sweet sounding documentary about the Military Industrial Complex, starring Richard Perle and Billy Kristol, Karen "Hey I saw the Office of Special Plans" Kwiatkowski, good ol' Chalmers Johnson, McCain, and other stars of the heady days of 2003-2004 spoofed intelligence wars. Also talks about the pro-war thinktank matrix and how the military industrial complex spreads cash around many congressional districts, to keep on Going and Going. Good old Eisenhower:

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

Because pressing 'Delete' is not really the best way to exonerate your SMTP-based crimes against America: Fitzgerald thinks someone is tampering with the White House email logs pertaining to the Valerie Plame scandal. Well done guys.

CNN Money: Visions of Future Google. Bankrupt, or the entire media, or else God & consciousness in your DNA. Why not?

Easy Cowboy:

Administration backs off Bush's vow to reduce Mideast oil imports
By Kevin G. Hall
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.

(Via DailyKos) Also from the Kos, in TX-22, Tom DeLay just can't pull cash like he used to:

Rep. Tom DeLay has just $150,000 more in the bank than challenger Democrat Nick Lampson, the most recent election filings show.

DeLay's campaign committee reported having $1.44 million on hand and Lampson's campaign $1.29 million, according to year-end reports that were filed late Tuesday with the Federal Election Commission. The reports include all funds received up to Dec. 30, 2005, and also include a swing-for-the-fences fundraising dinner in Houston for DeLay with Vice President Dick Cheney on Dec. 5. DeLay's office called the fundraiser "the most successful of the congressman's career."
"In one night alone, the congressman took in more than $500,000," said campaign spokeswoman Shannon Flaherty. "It was a very strong fourth quarter."

Keith Olbermann rips apart Bill O'Reilly. And Chris Matthews is still telling absolute horseshit about Domestic Spying.

Augh I am bored of this hack shit but maybe someone cares. Thank you DailyKos.

Gear it up: Canadian conspiracy in Haiti, Hamas claims 1967 borders for truce; Iran chills & ills; October Surprise revisited; Global Guerrillas decidedly at hand

This post is spilling all over the place. I want to get this stuff out there for this week, which will surely be an interesting one for me personally, and probably the rest of the world as well.

Misc bits: Alternet sets up The Echo Chamber to track what's cracking on the Left. Their website is set up really well. BillMonk will do all these mysterious things to split restaurant tabs for you and keep track of cash that people owe other people socially.

Because Spin can stop global warming: NY Times: Climate Expert Says NASA Tried to Silence Him.

Vote for the 2006 Bloggies awards.

Time to Drink like there's no tomorrow: Dear Leader will have to explain himself on Tuesday then. Probably the usual batch of veiled threats towards Muslims and promises of eschatology-based improvements for the everyday nuclear family. China is building a Tokamak fusion reactor apparently. I wish we would have the guts to try stuff like that these days.

An important internet advisory not to shave your ass hair.

Improbable visit: A Canadian-based Iranian named Hossein Derakhshan, of Hoder.com, is on his way to go see what's happening in Israel, cutting through all these layers of intrigue. Good for him.

Hillary's war pandering is sickening. Raimondo is right. Sy Hersh is saying there are American covert ops going on in Iran. Via DefenseTech.org, a really hilarious discussion of nuclear targeting technology that would hypothetically be involved in an insane first strike.

A return to Global Guerrilla theory and fourth generation warfare. I am not going to elaborate some complete 21st Century Clauswitzian doctrine. But I will say that current American military doctrine is pathetically outdated, poorly led, and really doesn't even recognize its own roots in the guerilla tactics of the Revolutionary War (and KTCA's sweet portrayal in Liberty! lately have reminded me of this).

I think that Global Guerrillas is a site full of useful information, even though its love of buzzwordery gets a little annoying. There is a glaring need for a less stupid jargon around this whole field, and GG is good stab at the problem. Certainly the connection between the 'Open Source' model of software development, and the curious 'bazaar' of violent action in Iraq is really interesting. Consider "The Bazaar of violence in Iraq," "The Bazaar's Open Source Platform," "Target: The Fallujah TAZ [Temporary Autonomous Zone]," "A Shadow OPEC," "Guerrilla Entrepreneurs" (especially), "Weak, failed and collapsed states," "Iraq's security system meltdown" featuring swarming tactics, the "Loyalist Paramilitaries" option (which sucks), based on "Primary Loyalties," "Homemade Microwave weapons." Also useful: "SWARM: Fuel and Oil Disruption in Iraq." And the Open Source War.

One really interesting tie-in from T.E. Lawrence "of Arabia" about the value of "Partial vs. Complete System Disruption." The lesson: Throwing monkey wrenches into the system is a better way to weaken the enemy than outright destruction, because attempting to restore a damaged system (or complete an impossible goal, i.e. 'democratizing Iraq') really saps the energy of the occupier over the long term. Lawrence and the Arabs hassled the Turks to pin them down without forcing a retreat, because if the Turks retreated from Arabia they would go fight the British farther north. Far better to harass them, tie them up in the desert, and still get freedom of movement, as they are distracted by defending their rail lines. Sweet.

And by the way, thanks also for "AL QAEDA'S GRAND STRATEGY: SUPERPOWER BAITING". Correct, sir.

I am opposed to fanatical visions of militaristic conquering, installing 'rule sets' and expecting some kind of 'global sys-admin force' to come in and generate compliant countries. What the hell am I talking about? Thomas Barnett's vision of The Pentagon's New Map, which I read and it scared the shit out of me. William Lind, a paleoconservative expert of fourth-generation warfare, explains why this is a hellish idea.

Yet I fear that the USAID/IRI/NED are the sort of evolving foreign policy complex that wants to do just this crazy kind of shit. What? Where? Look at Haiti to see Barnett's vision in action, I would say.

Suspicious actions in Haiti: I don't really know what the hell is happening in Haiti, but it seems shady, and it seems that sketchy international organizations like the International Republican Institute, some bizarre shadow branch of the United Nations called the United Nations Office for Project Services, USAID and others are attempting to cement the rule of mean anglicized elites in Haiti right now.

According to Anthony Fenton, a Canadian independent journalist, on Democracy Now! there was a conspiracy between the U.S., Canadian officials and others to depose Aristide. And apparently an Associated Press writer was on the take with the National Endowment for Democracy, a sketchy as hell organization. Check out that interview for some serious insanity.

Also check out InTheNameofDemocracy.org which is a new group monitoring the global shadow groups like NED, IRI and USAID's various tentacles.

There is a broad outline here of these huge organizations having funds channeled into them from the CIA, State Department and nasty corporations. Basically, it looks like a spinning sawblade of Washington-consensus foreign policy, managing the little countries under a new Monroe Doctrine. Right-wing Cubans are involved. There was a really complex yet enlightening article in the NY Times Sunday about how the IRI is sort of a shadow government-forming thing that essentially helped get Aristide deposed.

To analyze how far the Iranian Bomb is along, check out these posts at ArmsControlWonk.com, very good. How Close is Iran? Part 2: The Missiles. Shorter: Don't Panic.

Lurking Koppel: Ted Koppel, of all people, pops up to make some salient points about the horrible dynamics of TV news in the NY Times:

Most particularly on cable news, a calculated subjectivity has, indeed, displaced the old-fashioned goal of conveying the news dispassionately. But that, too, has less to do with partisan politics than simple capitalism. Thus, one cable network experiments with the subjectivity of tender engagement: "I care and therefore you should care." Another opts for chest-thumping certitude: "I know and therefore you should care."

Even Fox News's product has less to do with ideology and more to do with changing business models. Fox has succeeded financially because it tapped into a deep, rich vein of unfulfilled yearning among conservative American television viewers, but it created programming to satisfy the market, not the other way around. CNN, meanwhile, finds itself largely outmaneuvered, unwilling to accept the label of liberal alternative, experimenting instead with a form of journalism that stresses empathy over detachment.

It's worth looking back to January 20, 1980 for a moment, when the election of Ronald Reagan somehow transformed itself into the release of the Iranian hostages. "You could see then that the fix was in, somehow," as someone older than me once put it. So was there an "October Surprise" arrangement that brought this about, a secret conspiracy between Reagan's political campaign, and the newly arrived radicals in Tehran? Well, Robert Perry says that the was a conspiracy, and he's been kicking around this one for a while. (And guess what, I bet Iran will do something exciting this October, too)

The Imperium's Quarter Century By Robert Parry. January 20, 2006

If there is a birth date for today’s American Imperium, it would be Jan. 20, 1981, exactly a quarter century ago, when Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President and Iran released 52 American hostages under circumstances that remain a mystery to this day.

The freedom of the hostages, ending a 444-day crisis, brought forth an outpouring of patriotism that bathed the new President in an aura of heroism as a leader so feared by America’s enemies that they scrambled to avoid angering him. It was viewed as a case study of how U.S. toughness could restore the proper international order.

That night, as fireworks lit the skies of Washington, the celebration was not only for a new President and for the freed hostages, but for a new era in which American power would no longer be mocked. That momentum continues today in George W. Bush’s “preemptive” wars and the imperial boasts about a “New American Century.”

......What’s now known about the Iranian hostage crisis suggests that the “coincidence” of the Reagan Inauguration and the Hostage Release was not a case of frightened Iranians cowering before a U.S. President who might just nuke Tehran.

The preponderance of evidence suggests that it was a prearranged deal between the Republicans and the Iranians. The Republicans got the hostages and the political bounce; Iran’s Islamic fundamentalists got a secret supply of weapons and various other payoffs.

Though the full history remains a state secret – in part because of an executive order signed by George W. Bush on his first day in office in 2001 – it appears Republicans did contact Iran’s mullahs during the 1980 campaign; agreements were reached; and a clandestine flow of U.S. weapons followed the hostage release.

Impending death of the Petrodollar: Nowadays Iran is planning to open an oil exchange market priced in euros, not dollars. This is a really big deal that makes up a major undercurrent driving all the current hostilities. This Iranian 'bourse' would be a huge blow to the stability of the U.S. dollar. It will prove really hilarious to the Russians and others to sit back and watch as America flails around trying to defend the almighty Petrodollar. This is the kind of stuff that gives Dick Cheney the cold sweats. Really a big deal, and there's a lot more to be said on it.

Iran continues its strange and menacing manipulation of Holocaust symbols with new claims that "Iran mission to UN: More study needed to prove Nazi Holocaust". Meanwhile the neo-cons and alumni of Iran-Contra today hail Ahmadinejad as a really great guy for them: The Demogogue Neocons Love to Hate By Jim Lobe:

“Let us state the obvious,” wrote Reuel Marc Gerecht, the resident Gulf specialist at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in the Weekly Standard's feature article Monday. “The new president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a godsend.”

“Thank goodness for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,” wrote Ilan Berman, the neoconservative author of a hawkish new book, Tehran Rising: Iran's Challenge to the United States, in the National Review Online last week.

.......Ahmadinejad's declarations, which are seen by many experts here as related at least as much to his domestic political strategy as to his foreign policy worldview, have not only been manna from heaven for neoconservatives, who have long had Tehran in their gun sights.

.....That the administration, which promulgated and then implemented a doctrine of preventive war against presumed enemies allegedly bent on acquiring weapons of mass destruction, should come under attack from all these sources [AIPAC etc] for excessive passivity is ironic. But it is also testimony to the degree that it has been forced by its Iraq adventure to adopt what can only be described—to the disgust of the neoconservatives, in particular—as both a new humility and a new realism with regard to Tehran.

A nugget of wisdom from The Agonist about how Iran works in Central Asia. We need to get off the crackhead rhythm of the 24-hour news cycle and look at this in terms of centuries.

Iranians making a play for their own back-yard? At least, that's what I take away from this pretty good article in the Washington Post about Central Asia. The author of the piece, Nick Schmidle writes:

[T]he Iranians hope that big-money investments in the region, coupled with a successful nuclear fuel cycle, will elevate their status in the Muslim world.

One thing you have to keep in mind about the history of Iran in Central Asia is this: since the 6th century BC when Cyrus crossed the Oxus to subdue Queen Tomyris and the Massagetae the Persians have been fixated on influencing and stabilizing the lands to their immediate north. Only twice in Persia's three millenia of history have they been overrun from the West (Alexander and the Arabs). All the others came from the East and North (Mongols, Hepthalites, Turks, Uzbeks, Russians).

Kadima & The Alon Plan vs. HAMAS & 1967 Borders??: The Allon or 'Alon' Plan was the 1967 scheme to annex a big swath of the West Bank. The dimensions are roughly laid out in this map from IsraeliPalestinianProCon.org. Now, apparently HAMAS is advocating the full 1967 borders as a basis for a truce. We will see how horrible the U.S. media makes such an argument sound.

Ariel Sharon's basic strategy was to solidify the Allon Plan and make it palatable to the American public, or at least get Congress to swallow it.

Hamas hints at truce in return for '67 borders
By Arnon Regular, Haaretz Correspondent and Haaretz Service

A long-term truce (hudna) with Israel is possible if Israel retreats to its pre-1967 borders and releases Palestinian prisoners, Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar told CNN on Monday.

"We can expect to establish our independent state on the area before '67 and we can give a long-term hudna," Zahar told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

Zahar laid out a series of conditions that he said could lead to years of co-existence alongside Israel. He said that if Israel "is ready to give us the national demand to withdraw from the occupied area [in] '67; to release our detainees; to stop their aggression; to make geographic link between Gaza Strip and West Bank, at that time, with assurance from other sides, we are going to accept to establish our independent state at that time, and give us one or two, 10, 15 years time in order to see what is the real intention of Israel after that."

Asked about Hamas' call for Israel's destruction, Zahar would not say whether that remains the goal. "We are not speaking about the future, we are speaking now," he said. Zahar argued that Israel has no true intention of accepting a Palestinian state, despite international agreements including the Road Map for Middle East peace.

Until Israel says what its final borders will be, Hamas will not say whether it will ever recognize Israel, Zahar said. "If Israel is ready to tell the people what is the official border, after that we are going to answer this question." Asked whether Hamas would renounce terrorism, Zahar argued that the definition of terrorism is unfair.

Israel is "killing people and children and removing our agricultural system -- this is terrorism," he said. "When the Americans [are] attacking the Arabic and Islamic world whether in Afghanistan and Iraq and they are playing a dirty game in Lebanon, this is terrorism." He described Hamas as a "liberating movement."

.....Hamas will not oppose Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas if the latter decides to negotiate with Israel, the deputy head of Hamas' political bureau, Musa Abu-Marzouk, said Sunday.

Ok then, those are promising signs from a shadowy group (a pretty good history from MidEastWeb) that is suddenly blinking in the limelight. Not sure what the hell it means, but I don't know if they do either.

Lots of things are happening. Former CIA dude Pat Lang reacts to the election with typical CIA sarcasm. Hamas leader: 'Palestinian army' possible. Haaretz: Umm Mohammed talks politics By Amira Hass, "Hamas deputy says resistance to 'occupation' will continue". "Turning from Terror / A Green Dawn is on the rise." "Hamas' next step / In search of a united force".

The Observer | Focus | The Hamas revolution:

'East Jerusalem,' he intoned dryly from the podium, 'six seats.' And with each successful candidate he named, he listed their party. 'Change and Reform,' he read out first, the banner under which Hamas, an organisation better known for its dozens of suicide attacks against Israel, was standing. And again: 'Change and Reform'. And yet again. Four times out of six.

He turned to Hebron, a clean nine-seat sweep for Hamas. So he continued through Nablus, North Gaza, Tulkarm, Jenin and Gaza City. Even the largely Christian area of Bethlehem saw two of its four seats fall to Hamas. Among the Gaza winners was Um Nidal, also called Mariam Farah, a gun-toting woman known as the 'Mother of Martyrs' who ordered three of her sons to their deaths as suicide bombers.

As Hanna Nasser spoke, mentally the crowded room coloured in a map of Gaza and the West Bank, from the flat and crowded slums of Gaza's Khan Younis to the hilly cities of the West Bank, painting it in Hamas green. Only wild and dangerous Rafah at Gaza's southern tip voted unanimously for the old order.

With each result history was gyrating more wildly about the auditorium with its stone-faced electoral commission members sitting bleakly in a row. Everything had been transformed.

Observations from Gilbert Achear on JuanCole.com:

4. The irresistible rise of Ariel Sharon to the helm of the Israeli state resulted from his September 2000 provocation that ignited the "Second Intifada" -- an uprising that because of its militarization lacked the most positive features of the popular dynamics of the first Intifada. A PA that, by its very nature, could definitely not rely on mass self-organization and chose the only way of struggle it was familiar with, fostered this militarization. Sharon's rise was also a product of the dead-end reached by the Oslo process: the clash between the Zionist interpretation of the Oslo frame -- an updated version of the 1967 "Alon Plan" by which Israel would relinquish the populated areas of the 1967 occupied territories to an Arab administration, while keeping colonized and militarized strategic chunks -- and the PA's minimal requirements of recovering all, or nearly all the territories occupied in 1967, without which it knew it would lose its remaining clout with the Palestinian population. The electoral victory of war criminal Ariel Sharon in February 2001 -- an event as much "shocking" as the electoral victory of Hamas, at the very least -- inevitably reinforced the Islamic fundamentalist movement, his counterpart in terms of radicalization of stance against the backdrop of a still-born historic compromise. All of this was greatly propelled, of course, by the (very resistible, but unresisted) accession to power of George W. Bush, and the unleashing of his wildest imperial ambitions thanks to the attacks on September 11, 2001.

5. Ariel Sharon played skillfully on the dialectics between himself and his Palestinian true opposite number, Hamas. His calculation was simple: in order to be able to carry through unilaterally his own hard-line version of the Zionist interpretation of a "settlement" with the Palestinians, he needed two conditions: a) to minimize international pressure upon him -- or rather U.S. pressure, the only one that really matters to Israel; and b) to demonstrate that there is no Palestinian leadership with which Israel could "do business." For this, he needed to emphasize the weakness and unreliability of the PA by fanning the expansion of the Islamic fundamentalist movement, knowing that the latter was anathema to the Western states. Thus every time there was some kind of truce, negotiated by the PA with the Islamic organizations, Sharon's government would resort to an "extrajudicial execution" -- in plain language, an assassination -- in order to provoke these organizations into retaliation by the means they specialized in: suicide attacks, their "F-16s" as they say. This had the double advantage of stressing the PA inability to control the Palestinian population, and enhancing Sharon's own popularity in Israel. The truth of the matter is that the electoral victory of Hamas is the outcome that Sharon's strategy was very obviously seeking, as many astute observers did not fail to point out.

Haaretz has lots to mull over. I think "hostile rabble" is a tad racist, but that's what appears to be on their minds right now. Analysis: Wave of democracy pits Israel against 'Arab street':

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent

The Palestinian Authority election marks the beginning of a new period in the region that could be termed "the era of the masses." Henceforth Israel will have to factor into its foreign policy something it has always ignored - Arab public opinion.

Israel has always based its regional policy on arrangements and terror-balances with the Arab dictators. They understood force and Israel could do business with them. Their authority was seen as a barrier protecting Israel from the rage of the hostile rabble in the "Arab street." That was the basis of the peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, Yasser Arafat and his heirs and the game rules vis-a-vis Syria and Lebanon.

But those days are over. The democratization process that U.S. President George Bush has triggered and the open debate promoted by Arab satellite networks are causing the old frameworks to crumble. The mass demonstrations that led to the Syrians being driven from Lebanon, the elections in Iraq and those in the territories are merely the beginning. As far as Israel is concerned, the worst stage will come when the democratic wave washes over Jordan, its strategic ally; Egypt with its modern army and F-16 squadrons, and Syria and its Scud and chemical warhead stores.

The mess continues. Shadowy times ahead.

Welcome to HAMAStan; That's Democracy for you

HAMAS Charter, Article 17:

Therefore, you can see [the Zionists] making consistent efforts [in that direction] by way of publicity and movies, curricula of education and culture, using as their intermediaries their craftsmen who are part of the various Zionist Organizations which take on all sorts of names and shapes such as: the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, gangs of spies and the like. All of them are nests of saboteurs and sabotage. Those Zionist organizations control vast material resources, which enable them to fulfill their mission amidst societies, with a view of implementing Zionist goals and sowing the concepts that can be of use to the enemy. Those organizations operate [in a situation] where Islam is absent from the arena and alienated from its people. Thus, the Muslims must fulfill their duty in confronting the schemes of those saboteurs. When Islam will retake possession of [the means to] guide the life [of the Muslims], it will wipe out those organizations which are the enemy of humanity and Islam.

Another fine mess we're in today. Rotary Clubs are marked for death. The Palestinian militant organization HAMAS unexpectedly finds itself in command of the Palestinian Authority, whatever that means these days. Meanwhile, Ariel Sharon lies in a vegetative state, and Israel's Kadima Party is essentially a political platform without any organization behind it.

So within the space of a few weeks, the leading political formations have shifted from Likud + Labor vs. Fatah, to a likely Kadima vs. HAMAS arrangement. No one saw this coming, from the Israeli intelligence services to the high officials of the Terrorist Organizations in Damascus. Only this act of supreme petulance from the Palestinian public could make everyone else look so stupid.

HAMAS was expecting to play the minority spoiler to Fatah. Instead, it's very much like in 1977, when the Likud Party unexpectedly took Israel, even though Likud seemed like an unsavory band with a history of armed gangsterism, and a maximalist view of controlling the Holy Land, as this brilliant piece from Haaretz, "Introducing HAMAS - the New Likud" clearly explains. (In less than a year, Likud PM Menachem Begin cut a Peace Treaty with Egypt and got out of the Sinai. So hardliners can be flexible, let's please remember).

Let us also remember that Israel actually helped build up HAMAS as an anti-Marxist, anti-PLO alternative within the territories in the 1980s. Talk about your golems run amok. In 1978, Begin approved Sheik Yassin's charter that started the HAMAS seed organization Mujama. Raimondo reflects on the irony of this. Robert Dreyfuss explains in this Podcast, as well as Richard Sale in UPI:

"Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. Israel 'aided Hamas directly – the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization),' said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic [and International] Studies. Israel's support for Hamas 'was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative,' said a former senior CIA official."
[.....]
Israel was certainly funding the group at that time [in the 1980s]. One U.S. intelligence source who asked not to be named said that not only was Hamas being funded as a "counterweight" to the PLO, Israeli aid had another purpose: "To help identify and channel towards Israeli agents Hamas members who were dangerous terrorists."
[.....]
Violent acts of terrorism became the central tenet, and Hamas, unlike the PLO, was unwilling to compromise in any way with Israel, refusing to acquiesce in its very existence.

But even then, some in Israel saw some benefits to be had in trying to continue to give Hamas support: "The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place," said a U.S. government official who asked not to be named.

(Does this remind anyone of the CIA-ISI-Taliban connection? Oh wait, it's immoral and paranoid to suggest that intelligence agencies set up Islamic militant organizations. Sorry.)

Well, thanks a lot, George W. Bush. You thought that you could ignore the substance of the Palestinians' calls for a real state in the West Bank and Gaza, you thought that when the United States officially approved of "Israeli population centers" in the West Bank, it was a really fucking shrewd move.

Here's some advice, Mr. President. Fire your advisers. They're all a bunch of fucking morons who have turned most of the world against you. I don't know how much of this is really your fault, but I know that so many of our problems come from their staggering incompetence, and fanatical, ignorant and militant racism towards so much of the world (especially Arabs).

And now, it turns out to be a huge surprise that people in the Middle East will vote for well-organized hard-core theocrats when they get the chance. That's Democracy for you. The Muslim Brotherhood, the root organization from which HAMAS sprang, is now the most powerful opposition in Egypt (with 88 of 454 Parliament seats - and the potential for many more). Hezbollah is decidedly successful in Lebanon.

Lo and behold, in Iraq, the Shiite fundamentalists turned out to be the best organized. Who would have thought that groups like SCIRI and the Dawa Party would be able to marginalize everyone else, and seize control of Iraq's security ministries? Now southern Iraq will effectively be a satellite state of Iran. It was so goddamn predictable that this would happen, and now it has.

But I respect the Israeli public right now. After the madness of the last few years, they are feeling pretty damn raw about life, but according to the polls, they actually seem a lot more sane than the Cheney Administration. Right now, it appears that Kadima would get about 44 seats in the Knesset, Labor about 21, and Netanyahu's Likud around 13. This shows that Netanyahu's dangerous fanaticism has been discredited in Israel, and that's great news. On the other hand, here in the U.S., Netanyahu gets to pimp his racial chauvinism, on, for example, MSNBC's Hardball, saying disgusting things about his future plans:

If we make additional unilateral retreats, they'll simply fire rockets into our airports and Khassam projectiles into our cities and so on. So I think we have to establish a security belt around the Palestinian areas. This doesn't annex any population [LAND?! -Dan], it doesn't do anything except provide for stability and security, which is the first foundation of peace.

...... [MATTHEWS:] And then [Sharon] said the demographic situation, whereby there's so many more Arab people living within the territory under Israeli control that Israel had to avoid becoming a colonizer by stepping back and only claiming land that it where the Jewish people were in the majority. How's your view different?

NETANYAHU: Well no, we didn't disagree on that and I don't want to go back into the Palestinian towns, I don't want to go back to Gaza and I certainly don't want to go back into the Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

I have no intention whatsoever—we won't do that. But the territories that are in dispute are largely empty of Palestinians, or anybody, for that matter. [WHAT A SON OF A BITCH -Dan] Yet they could be used as launching ground for more Hamas terrorist attacks against us.

So I say first of all, provide a security cordon of these largely empty territories. Don't annex and don't re-enter the Palestinian-populated areas. Leave that to the Palestinians.

But build, if you will, a real defensive perimeter around the Palestinians. Tell them that they will be rewarded for peace-making and they will be punished for terror-making. I think that's a pretty sound policy. I practice it as prime minister and I brought terror to its lowest level in the last decade. It wasn't because the Hamas and Arafat became Zionists, believe me, Chris. It was because this policy of strength and deterrence works to restore hope and peace.

Madness. In Israel they don't buy his bullshit anymore, but on American cable news, he's a goddamned patriot. Insane. And of course Matthews doesn't call him on it. Netanyahu has to sell it here because the rest of Israel doesn't trust his shady ass one bit.

"Strength and Deterrence" is pretty much equal to the old neoconservative advice for Netanyahu, telling America that "peace through strength" is the way to victory, as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser advised Netanyahu in the famous 1996 neo-con manifesto, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm", which suddenly seems more relevant than ever. Oh, by the way, let me put what Feith wrote in June 1996, according to the "Peace through Strength" Neo-con Center for Security Policy:

Likud's position on settlements reflects the peace-through-strength principle. The diplomacy of Israel's outgoing Labor Party government confirmed a lesson with long roots in Zionist history: Israel is unlikely over time to retain control over pieces of territory unless its people actually live there. Supporters of settlements reason: If Israelis do not settle an area in the territories, Israel will eventually be forced to relinquish it. If it relinquishes the territories generally, its security will be undermined and peace will therefore not be possible.

(So that was the intellectual foundation of the key architect of the Iraq war. Feith also made lots of money as a lawyer for Israeli arms dealers with his settler/partner Marc Zell, but that's a tangent. The Occupation is profitable for some interests — a crucial point always missed)

I find it amazing that now Bush says he won't talk to the Palestinians until they swear off violence. We should say that we won't talk to the French until they ban croissants, won't talk to the Afghans until they swear off narcotics, won't talk to Wisconsin until they destroy the cheese, won't talk to the Pentagon until it swears off corrupt contracts, won't talk to the Chinese until they quit trading goods, won't talk to Iran until they stop being Iran, won't talk to the Israelis until they swear off building their FUCKING INSANE settlements. Sorry, why the fuck don't people get it?

George W. Bush, you need to actually be a Man for once in your life, and go talk to these people personally. Get everyone in a tent in the desert, lock it down and give everyone tea until there's a peace deal. Why the fuck is it considered so brave to refuse to talk to people, like some pissy teenager?

I would like to throw in an additional FUCK YOU to Bob Shrum, who bears a lot of personal responsibility for this disaster. On the same Hardball episode, Shrum, who was John Kerry's senior campaign director, offered the following enlightened bit:

Well I think we have to be realists about this. I mean, democracy has led in the Palestinian territories now to the rise of Hamas. And I thought Benjamin Netanyahu, who was on your show just a few minutes ago, did a very good job of giving his basic stump speech, which is “I told you so, I told you so, I told you so.”

I think you're going to see the Kadima party of Sharon move to the right, there's a very real prospect that Netanyahu is going to win [wrong yet again, you idiot. -Dan] because Israelis are going to say, “Why in the world should we negotiate with or make any kind of settlement with people who only want to negotiate our destruction? Why should we turn over territory to people who are going to let Hamas use it as a base from which to launch terrorist attacks?”

I will always bitterly remember the day in 2004 that Bush declared that "Israeli population centers" in the West Bank were a fabulous fucking idea. My bitterness doubled when the Kerry campaign chimed in, "Oh yeah, that's a great fucking idea," because Bob Shrum is too much of a racist to understand that the settlements are a principal source of hatred towards America in the Middle East. And too much of a coward to even dare trying to have Kerry explain this to the American people.

And so now the flyers of the green flags have seized the territories through legitimate democratic methods.

Way to go, you geopolitical geniuses, you guys are so fucking smart. We invaded Iraq to make Iran more powerful, we paid Israel to build settlements to make apocalyptic American Christian Zionist fundamentalists and their fanatical Likud friends happy. Now we are broke, the U.S. Army is wedged between Kurds, Sunnis and Shi'a as low-level ethnic cleansing breaks out, the Iranians are happily building the Bomb, our Afghan allies are pumping out most of the world's heroin, and everyone in the world hates us.

Thanks, Washington. Obviously no one is as smart as the War Party.

Today's quote from Thucydides

See if you can pick up the historical metaphor. Around and around we go. (Thucydides, by the way, is considered 'the father of history'. --Dan)

In the winter [416-15 BC] the Athenians resolved to set sail again against Sicily with larger forces... They were for the most part ignorant of the size of the island and its inhabitants, both Hellenic and native, and they did not realize that they were taking on a war of almost the same magnitude as their war against the Peleponnesians...

Nicias had not wanted to be chosen for the command; his view was that the city was making a mistake, and on a slight pretext which looked reasonable, was in fact intending to conquer the whole of Sicily—a very considerable undertaking.

So he came forward to speak, hoping to make the Athenians change their minds: "...I think that we ought not to give such hasty consideration to so important a matter and on the credit of foreigners get drawn into a war that does not concern us... [T]his is the wrong time for such adventures and the objects of your ambition [gold, treasure and military bases] are not to be gained easily. ..."

"[E]ven if we did conquer the Sicilians, there are so many of them and they live so far off that it would be very difficult to govern them... The right thing is that we should spend our new gains at home and on ourselves instead of on these exiles who are begging for assistance and whose interest it is to tell lies and make us believe them ... who leave all the dangers to others and, if they are successful, will not be properly grateful, while if they fail in any way they will involved their friends in their own ruin. ..."

When the news reached Athens [of defeat], for a long time people would not believe it. ... And when they did recognize the facts, they turned against the public speakers who had favored the expedition ... and also became angry with the prophets and soothsayers and all who had, by various methods of divination, encouraged them to believe that they would conquer Sicily.

--Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War, Books VII and VIII

This quote was in John K. Cooley's recent book, "An Alliance Against Babylon: The U.S., Israel and Iraq" (2005). The book is excellent, really an unparalleled account of an old hand in the Middle East over many decades, and I recommend you check it out (and if you buy it through the Amazon link, I get bling!).

More later. I have to run around and do a lot of stuff today.

Osama bin Laden statement of January 19

The latest tape was released today. This would appear to cast pretty strong doubts on Michael Ledeen's recent claim that some wise and trustworthy Iranians claimed he was dead. Wouldn't be the first time that some Iranians manipulated a neocon for their own purposes (such as overthrowing Saddam). But oh well. Here is Bin Laden's complete statement, as offered by the Associated Press.

It is instructive that on CNN they don't talk about bin Laden's comments about the American military industrial complex and its 'merchants of war', the 'patient' strategy against the Soviet Union, the polls that show wide American skepticism about the war, but of course, only highlighting threats on the American homeland if the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq are not cancelled.

Bin Laden is surprisingly forthright about his general strategies, and this one is no exception. He is certainly an expert in the paradigm of fourth-generation warfare; right now, the United States seeks tactical victories while defeating itself on the moral plane. Bin Laden is making moral arguments directly to the American public about how the subjugation of Muslims will ultimately prove self-defeating. And tellingly, as always, the media does not report or contextualize pretty much anything about this.

For all the big talk, it is amazing that no one really reads his full statements, which make much more clear the al Qaeda strategy. (Qaeda is Arabic for 'base,' by the way)

It should be noted that bin Laden uses a sort of antiquated dialect of Arabic, so surely there will be some dispute over the translation of key phrases. Nonetheless, bin Laden's many previous public pronouncements have proven to be rather direct and useful explanations of his general strategy.

Background:

• Pre-election statement, nov. 1 2004.
• BBC: claiming credit for WTC attacks on 7 October 2001
• 3 November 2001.
• Text of Fatwah Urging Jihad Against Americans: Febuary 23, 1998.
• Here is an index of many Bin Laden statements from RobertFisk.com.
• More al Qaeda primary sources from the Federation of American Scientists.

No one should talk about Al Qaeda without understanding their concept of the near enemy (local apostate regimes of the mideast) and the far enemy (that props them up - the U.S.).

Associated Press: Update 1: Full Text of Bin Laden Tape - at Forbes.com:

The following is the full text of a new audiotape from al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. Parts of the tape were aired on Al-Jazeera television, which published the entire version on its Web site. The text was translated from the Arabic by The Associated Press.

Bin Laden appears to be addressing the American people:

My message to you is about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and how to end them. I did not intend to speak to you about this because this issue has already been decided. Only metal breaks metal, and our situation, thank God, is only getting better and better, while your situation is the opposite of that.

But I plan to speak about the repeated errors your President Bush has committed in comments on the results of your polls that show an overwhelming majority of you want the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. But he (Bush) has opposed this wish and said that withdrawing troops sends the wrong message to opponents, that it is better to fight them (bin Laden's followers) on their land than their fighting us (Americans) on our land.

I can reply to these errors by saying that war in Iraq is raging with no let-up, and operations in Afghanistan are escalating in our favor, thank God, and Pentagon figures show the number of your dead and wounded is increasing not to mention the massive material losses, the destruction of the soldiers' morale there and the rise in cases of suicide among them. So you can imagine the state of psychological breakdown that afflicts a soldier as he gathers the remains of his colleagues after they stepped on land mines that tore them apart. After this situation the soldier is caught between two hard options. He either refuses to leave his military camp on patrols and is therefore dogged by ruthless punishments enacted by the Vietnam Butcher (U.S. army) or he gets destroyed by the mines. This puts him under psychological pressure, fear and humiliation while his nation is ignorant of that (what is going on). The soldier has no solution except to commit suicide. That is a strong message to you, written by his soul, blood and pain, to save what can be saved from this hell. The solution is in your hands if you care about them (the soldiers).

The news of our brother mujahideen (holy warriors) is different from what the Pentagon publishes. They (the news of mujahideen) and what the media report is the truth of what is happening on the ground. And what deepens the doubt over the White House's information is the fact that it targets the media reporting the truth from the ground. And it has appeared lately, supported by documents, that the butcher of freedom in the world (Bush) had decided to bomb the headquarters of the Al-Jazeera in Qatar after bombing its offices in Kabul and Baghdad.

On another issue, jihad (holy war) is ongoing, thank God, despite all the oppressive measures adopted by the U.S Army and its agents (which is) to a point where there is no difference between this criminality and Saddam's criminality, as it has reached the degree of raping women and taking them as hostages instead of their husbands.

As for torturing men, they have used burning chemical acids and drills on their joints. And when they give up on (interrogating) them, they sometimes use the drills on their heads until they die. Read, if you will, the reports of the horrors in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.

And I say that, despite all the barbaric methods, they have not broken the fierceness of the resistance. The mujahideen, thank God, are increasing in number and strength - so much so that reports point to the ultimate failure and defeat of the unlucky quartet of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Declaring this defeat is just a matter of time, depending partly on how much the American people know of the size of this tragedy. The sensible people realize that Bush does not have a plan to make his alleged victory in Iraq come true.

And if you compare the small number of dead on the day that Bush announced the end of major operations in that fake, ridiculous show aboard the aircraft carrier with the tenfold number of dead and wounded who were killed in the smaller operations, you would know the truth of what I say. This is that Bush and his administration do not have the will or the ability to get out of Iraq for their own private, suspect reasons.

And so to return to the issue, I say that results of polls please those who are sensible, and Bush's opposition to them is a mistake. The reality shows that the war against America and its allies has not been limited to Iraq as he (Bush) claims. Iraq has become a point of attraction and restorer of (our) energies. At the same time, the mujahideen (holy warriors), with God's grace, have managed repeatedly to penetrate all security measures adopted by the unjust allied countries. The proof of that is the explosions you have seen in the capitals of the European nations who are in this aggressive coalition. The delay in similar operations happening in America has not been because of failure to break through your security measures. The operations are under preparation and you will see them in your homes the minute they are through (with preparations), with God's permission.

Based on what has been said, this shows the errors of Bush's statement - the one that slipped from him - which is at the heart of polls calling for withdrawing the troops. It is better that we (Americans) don't fight Muslims on their lands and that they don't fight us on ours.

We don't mind offering you a long-term truce on fair conditions that we adhere to. We are a nation that God has forbidden to lie and cheat. So both sides can enjoy security and stability under this truce so we can build Iraq and Afghanistan, which have been destroyed in this war. There is no shame in this solution, which prevents the wasting of billions of dollars that have gone to those with influence and merchants of war in America who have supported Bush's election campaign with billions of dollars - which lets us understand the insistence by Bush and his gang to carry on with war. [sounds like Eisenhower attacking the military industrial complex! -Dan]

If you (Americans) are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book "Rogue State," which states in its introduction: "If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all."

Finally, I say that war will go either in our favor or yours. If it is the former, it means your loss and your shame forever, and it is headed in this course. If it is the latter, read history! We are people who do not stand for injustice and we will seek revenge all our lives. The nights and days will not pass without us taking vengeance like on Sept. 11, God permitting. Your minds will be troubled and your lives embittered. As for us, we have nothing to lose. A swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain. You have occupied our lands, offended our honor and dignity and let out our blood and stolen our money and destroyed our houses and played with our security and we will give you the same treatment.

You have tried to prevent us from leading a dignified life, but you will not be able to prevent us from a dignified death. Failing to carry out jihad, which is called for in our religion, is a sin. The best death to us is under the shadows of swords. Don't let your strength and modern arms fool you. They win a few battles but lose the war. Patience and steadfastness are much better. We were patient in fighting the Soviet Union with simple weapons for 10 years and we bled their economy and now they are nothing.

In that there is a lesson for you.

Afghans also defeated the British Empire twice in the 1800s. Surprised he forgot to throw that in.

The Shadows around Sibel Edmonds: Plame spied on neocons? Turkish agents, Special Plans teams, Afghan heroin, 9/11 intel & funding: is it for real?

Antiwar.com's blog returns to the story of former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, (her official site) a strange post-9/11 shadow case that Ashcroft helped gag. Her case involves, at the least, illegal cash getting moved around and Turkish spies. Edmonds, trying to act as a whistleblower, still can't speak freely about what she wants to say; however, what she has said is bombshell, decidedly off-the-charts paranoid intrigue.

Maybe she's a disinformation agent, but more likely she's another random person dragged into a shadowy geopolitical nightmare. I've previously posted about her here and here, wherein she alleged that Dennis Hastert was getting secret cash from Turks.

So consider the post 'sibel edmonds, brewster jennings, edelman and grossman' on the blog 'wot is it good 4' that pulls together the rich-sounding threads of this tale. Take it as you will, with as many grains of salt as needed (posted about on DailyKos):

Sibel makes 2 specific related claims
a) Sibel claims that she has information which proves that senior officials knew that there were plans to attack America months before 9/11.

Specifically:
"There was general information about the time-frame, about methods to be used but not specifically about how they would be used and about people being in place and who was ordering these sorts of terror attacks. There were other cities that were mentioned. Major cities with skyscrapers."
and
"President Bush said they had no specific information about 11 September and that is accurate but only because he said 11 September," she said. There was, however, general information about the use of airplanes and that an attack was just months away."
b) Sibel claims that she has evidence of a global multi-billion dollar smuggling/dealing network of weapons and drug which is hidden in plain view. Of course, there is also the requisite money-laundering infrastructure. She claims that the network comprises senior american government officials, terrorists, and 'unsavoury regimes.'

and they merge, giving us:
“drug trafficking, money laundering, foreign names and American names directly involved in the financing of the 9-11 attacks on WTC (World Trade Center) and the Pentagon.”

But also consider this good caveat from xymphora:

"Edmonds sometimes makes me a bit nervous as she seems overly adept with the terms and arguments of conspiracy theory for someone who is supposed to have been a lowly FBI translator (it's like she's been reading Peter Dale Scott!). Is she part of the battle in Washington between the Bush Administration enablers involved in the drugs/arms business who don't mind directly or indirectly supporting al Qaeda if it is good for business, and those old-fashioned types who still consider that dealing with American enemies is treason?"

And here is her Grand Conspiracy of Everything, salacious!!

SIBEL: Essentially, there is only one investigation – a very big one, an all-inclusive one. Completely by chance, I, a lowly translator, stumbled over one piece of it.

But I can tell you there are a lot of people involved, a lot of ranking officials, and a lot of illegal activities that include multi-billion-dollar drug-smuggling operations, black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes, you name it. And of course a lot of people from abroad are involved. It's massive. So to do this investigation, to really do it, they will have to look into everything.

CD: But you can start from anywhere –

SIBEL: That's the beauty of it. You can start from the AIPAC angle. You can start from the Plame case. You can start from my case. They all end up going to the same place, and they revolve around the same nucleus of people. There may be a lot of them, but it is one group. And they are very dangerous for all of us.

There is a lot more exciting stuff. I am assuming every American arms contractor and high-ranking person at State Department will have to be arrested. Marc Grossman and Eric Edelman are two guys the blog suggests have played a role in illegal activities in "the 'Stans" of Central Asia, WMD trafficking with Islamic militants, and anything else we could think of.

My intuition tells me that the scope of this tale perfectly fits a 'negative narrative,' i.e. the exact inverse of what we are 'supposed to believe', so it is designed to be an attractive view for anti-Bush folks. In other words, it has the markers of a 'decoy conspiracy theory,' or one of those 'information operations' we've heard so much about.

On the other hand, it seems an obvious geopolitical necessity that all that heroin getting created by the Tajik and Uzbek 'Northern Alliance' warlords now running Afghanistan must be getting moved somewhere through the 'Stans of Central Asia & Pakistan, and probably some very clever guys from the State Department have been dealing with it. And in all probability, it was old hands that knew the major regional hustlers during Clinton's term -- such as Marc Grossman and Eric Edelman.

Edelman, for his part, has now replaced Douglas Feith as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, a high honorary post for fucking maniacs. In a fine look at many of the background neo-cons, Chris Deliso noted in 'Lesser Neocons of L'Affaire Plame',

Although Grossman "has not been as high profile in the press" FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds cryptically told me the other day, "don't overlook him – he is very important." She was not speaking about the Plame affair, though Grossman did indeed have a key role there, as we will see.

According to her, Grossman was one of three officials – the other two, she says, are Richard Perle and Douglas Feith – who had been watched by both Valerie Plame's Brewster Jennings & Associates CIA team, and by the major FBI investigation of organized crime and governmental corruption on which she herself was working until being terminated in April 2002.

Marc Grossman has served in a number of interesting countries and positions over the past 29 years. From 1976-1983, at a pivotal point in the Cold War, he was employed at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan – America's key regional ally, through which millions of dollars in weapons and other "aid" were delivered by Pakistan's ISI intelligence service to the mujahedin following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Yow!!! Talk about your heroin-connected State Department guys!! In a final twist for Grossman, he happened to meet up with Pakistani ISI director General Mahmoud Ahmed just before September 11 — and Ahmed has been linked to sending cash to lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. Wot is it good 4 adds a few more bits in a handy bio:

Edelman left Libby's [employ] on June 6, 2003 "'to begin language training in preparation for a posting as ambassador to Turkey." This is a week after 'Libby asks Bolton, and Grossman for information about news report about CIA's secret envoy to Africa in 2002"

According to Fitzgerald, 2 weeks later (June 19, 2003, before Wilson's NYT op-ed), Edelman "asked LIBBY whether information about Wilson's trip could be shared with the press to rebut the allegations that the VP had sent Wilson. LIBBY responded that there would be complications at the CIA in disclosing that information publicly, and that he could not discuss the matter on a non-secure phone line."

In Central Asia, Everything is Permissible: The plain truth is that, especially out in Central Asia, the concept of 'corruption' does not exist, and there is no real barrier between the legitimate economy and the 'shadow economy' of weapons, drugs and other contraband. Controlling your turf means controlling the passage of all goods, especially the really good goods. And that's how it's been for centuries.

So perhaps Edmonds represents a kind of domestic blowback against this staggering corruption of American institutions and secretive misuse of executive power. Although, maybe it is all purely symbolic. With a little luck, this weird case will finally get the top-level media attention it deserves, perhaps as Libby's court date approaches...

Douglas Feith: His Business is the Turks: wot is it good 4 also informs that Richard Perle used to consult for some shadowy Turkish concerns, and Douglas Feith, of all people, was a registered foreign agent of Turkey from 1989-1994!! This certainly adds a shade to the whole Turkey/neo-con model - and Grossman was recently ambassador to Turkey.

This seems to tie into the Valerie Plame matter, somehow: As long as we are fishing in these murky waters, Sibel Edmonds has implied that her case is closely tied to the Plame affair and the American Turkish Council. there has been some speculation that Valerie Plame was actually burned by Libby and the neo-cons not because of Wilson's Op-Ed, but because her CIA front company, Brewster Jennings, may have been getting 'too close' to exposing illegal WMD activities that someone like Libby might have been tied up in.

Perhaps even Libby's longtime former client, billionaire fugitive Marc Rich, is involved. Rich's partner in intrigue, Russian mogul Boris Berezovsky, has been tied up in some exotic deals, including nuclear trafficking with the Chechens.

Secret Office of Special Plans units going around in Iraq to fabricate WMD?! On a parallel track, here is a story from Larisa Alexandrovna in RawStory which details apparent secret military units dispatched under the authority of Feith and the Office of Special Plans, with the apparent intent of coming up with some WMDs in Iraq, faking their origin if necessary. However it failed, if the story is to be believed. "Secretive military unit sought to solve political WMD concerns prior to securing Iraq, intelligence sources say":

Sources say the Office of Special Plans deployed several extra-legal and unapproved task force missions prior to and after combat operations began. Under the supervision of Doug Feith, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, the OSP ran largely unsupervised and operated in secrecy. According to those familiar with the plans, the off-book missions were approved by Feith -- himself currently under investigation by the FBI for allegations of passing US secrets to Israel and Iran -- Cambone and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
[......]
One intelligence source says the Office of Special Plans’ off-book team was using [missing US pilot] Speicher and WMD as a pretext for whatever their real objective may have been.
[.....]
This smaller unnamed team was tasked with interviewing former Iraqi intelligence officers in hopes of securing help with a “political WMD” problem, a source close to the UN Security Council says.

During the summer of 2003 through the fall of 2003, the team, whose members who were not named by sources, is said to have interviewed many Iraqi intelligence and former intelligence officers. The UN source says that the political problem discussed had more to do with solving the lack of WMD than anything else.

Ok, then. Grains of salt etc.

Brewster Jennings and the Planted WMD: I will add one more bit to this mix of really quite paranoid stuff: Maverick/'highly untrustworthy' internet journalist Wayne Madsen raised the possibility that Brewster Jennings and Valerie Plame got burned because they intercepted a WMD that some in Turkey were trying to sneak into Iraq — but the twist is that neoconservatives were trying to get the weaponry into Iraq, because they wanted to stage its exciting discovery there, thus providing the casus belli to drive the American public into a belligerent, fearful frenzy. A fun theory...

Since we are really out on a kick here, why not add what Madsen put out on Nov. 11 (again, many grains of lysergic acid salt recommended):

"According to U.S. intelligence sources, the White House exposure of Valerie Plame and her Brewster Jennings & Associates was intended to retaliate against the CIA's work in limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. WMR has reported in the past on this aspect of the scandal. In addition to identifying the involvement of individuals in the White House who were close to key players in nuclear proliferation, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002. The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network."

So, under possible motives to out Plame, we can tentatively consider that her CIA team wouldn't help stage WMD in Iraq to justify a war. Again, this sounds much too delicious to be true, but if it were true, it would help make some sense of Libby's motive. (Madsen also posted some other stuff about Brewster Jennings going after Libby, nuke traffickers and the Russian mob on Oct. 25 - again, many salt grains)

There's plenty of speculation here, and I don't want to make conclusions yet. Except for one: It's nobody's business but the Turks!!

Oil spikes; Mel Gibson's Apocalypto subliminal madness; Germans speak of US attack plans in Iran

Mel Gibson tries subliminal maniacal grin: Apple - Trailers - Apocalypto. Look at about 1:46 in the trailer for this bizarre film. For a single frame, Mel Gibson is chomping on a cigarette, leaning on the clay-encrusted native. Best weird subliminal moment of the year, so far.

Oil prices climb on speculative buying. Chinese claim to develop first live vaccine against bird flu.

Peter Bartz Gallagher has struck up InfantFoundation.com. Thus far it's a few thumbnails of the crew and such, but it's a fine start.

Strib: Older story, but a fun fantasy: Trolleys may be jolly, say Minneapolis officials.

How evil are you? I came up Evil. Must be because I got an ex-stripper on a Clear Channel station today.

National Security bits: Urban design + war on terror = National Security Sprawl. NSA Web Site Puts 'Cookies' on Computers.

Aljazeera.Net - US increases air attacks in Iraq. Antiwar.com: Two False Options - by William S. Lind

Victory is not an option, and it never was. The strategic objectives the Bush administration set for this war – a peaceful, democratic Iraq that would be an American ally, a friend of Israel, a source of unlimited oil and of basing rights for large American forces – were never attainable, no matter what we did. Strategies invented in Fairyland cannot be implemented in the real world. Pity the military that is ordered to try.

Defeat is an option. In my last column I described one way that could occur, an Israeli and/or American attack on Iran that leads Iraqi Shi'ites to join the Sunni jihad and cut our lines of supply and retreat through southern Iraq. There are additional scenarios that could lead to a dramatic American defeat, a defeat we could not disguise to anyone, not even ourselves.

German media suspects US strike in Iran: UPI: German media: U.S. prepares Iran strike

...the respected German weekly Der Spiegel notes "What is new here is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year."

The German news agency DDP cited "Western security sources" to claim that CIA Director Porter Goss asked Turkey's premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide political and logistic support for air strikes against Iranian nuclear and military targets. Goss, who visited Ankara and met Erdogan on Dec. 12, was also reported to have to have asked for special cooperation from Turkish intelligence to help prepare and monitor the operation.
[....]
It is possible that leaks from NATO and German security sources are part of a ploy to convince the Iranian government that the Americans and their NATO allies are in dead earnest when they say a nuclear-armed Iran would not be tolerated, and that Iran had better start negotiating seriously.

But the German media speculation about the supposed U.S. plans has been fueled by a number of high-profile visits to Turkey this month, including trips by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, by the CIA's Porter Goss and by the FBI Director Robert Mueller, who also delivered U.S. intelligence reports on Iranian backing for PKK operations aimed against Turkey. There have also been some significant Turkish visits to Washington, as reported by Der Spiegel.
[the PKK Kurdish faction, with Iran, against Turkey and Iraqi Sunnis?! Oy!....]
The original story in the German press which provoked the wider media furore was written for the DDP agency by a veteran reporter on security and intelligence matters, Udo Ulfkotte, who has in the past been criticized in the German media for being "too close to sources at Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND" (Bundesnachrichtendienst).

Anti-Imperialists Beware – Bush Is Reading Again - by Jim Lobe. Lobe has been a close follower of the neo-cons since the 1980s as UPI's Washington DC. This makes the point that Bush seems easily swayed by cheesy imperialist writing — these guys really do deceive themselves with breathless talk of empire. Don't miss Robert Kaplan's characterization of the entire Islamic world as "Injun Country." Bush friggin' loves Kaplan, as Lobe details why:

[Kaplan] describes the presumed thoughts of a Filipino in Zamboanga, presumably a descendant of Moro who resisted, at the cost of tens of thousands of their lives, U.S. imperialism 100 years ago: "His smiling, naïve eyes cried out for what we in the West call colonialism."

Good stuff from Raimondo (the anti-war libertarian) at Antiwar.com for how to Beware the New Year:

.... conservatives often pave the way for more government spending and centralized controls in the name of "national security" by supporting war and preparations for war. The same principle operates – in reverse gear – in the case of ostensibly antiwar liberals. As history shows, they are all too often persuaded that the domestic "benefits" of operating in a wartime atmosphere – conducive to economic and social planning – outweigh the moral and material costs of war.

The War Party is counting on this kind of opportunism to quash antiwar dissent in the Democratic party and marginalize the candidacy of Russ Feingold. The Senator from Wisconsin voted against the Iraq war and was the only member of that august body to cast his vote against the PATRIOT Act. On domestic policy, he is the quintessential liberal, well to the left of the determinedly "centrist" Hillary. One can easily imagine the Democrats being persuaded that Feingold is too "extreme" to even think about carrying a single "red" state. If the Democratic "Leadership" Council can successfully invoke the specter of "McGovernism" – convincing Democratic delegates to ignore the antiwar grassroots for "pragmatic" reasons – the War Party can sell Hillary as The Only Alternative to four more years of Republican misrule.

He's right that the Democratic hawks will try to eat Feingold. DLC is almost worse than the Republicans. However, Feingold seems to actually be the most 'vigilant patriot,' if I can wield that phrase. Meanwhile, from the disgruntled old Dem Dept., Sidney Blumenthal: The Long March of Dick Cheney:

The hallmark of the Dick Cheney administration is its illegitimacy. Its essential method is bypassing established lines of authority; its goal is the concentration of unaccountable presidential power. When it matters, the regular operations of the CIA, Defense Department and State Department have been sidelined. [this is what I am talking about!!]

Richard Nixon is the model, but with modifications. In the Nixon administration, the president was the prime mover, present at the creation of his own options, attentive to detail, and conscious of their consequences. In the Cheney administration, the president is volatile but passive, firm but malleable, presiding but absent. Once his complicity has been arranged, a closely held "cabal" - as Lawrence Wilkerson, once chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, calls it - wields control.

Within the White House, the office of the vice president is the strategic center. The National Security Council has been demoted to enabler and implementer. Systems of off-line operations have been laid to evade professional analysis and a responsible chain of command. Those who attempt to fulfill their duties in the old ways have been humiliated when necessary, fired, retired early or shunted aside. In their place, acolytes and careerists indistinguishable from true believers in their eagerness have been elevated.

Says it all. Crush the bureaucracy with political appointees. Drink the Kool Aid, we've got New Realities to make here! Study it, judiciously, as you will.

Tom Tancredo is scary; Booz Allen got its mitts in; Chomsky on conspiracies; IRC's Right Web helps track these cats

These days many of us (ok, me in particular) think about dark currents in the body politic which might rise up and topple whatever remains of this country's best traditions. And in the 21st century, xenophobia is hardly dead. While 'immigration reform' seems a benign label for a huge and messy set of issues, some quasi-mainstream politicians of the right-wing are cutting to the bone and forming coalitions among the far right, white supremacist and militia movements.

Tom Tancredo is one of these, evidently. The International Relations Center puts out material that I find often aligns with my concerns, and they do a good job of stressing how the left really needs to put together a focused policy before all these think-tank trolls eat us. IRC's Right Web, in particular, puts out useful policy papers and excellent profile pages of many in the constellation of neo-cons and shady establishment operators who otherwise can't easily be pinned down. It also lists their many corporate and think-tank ties.

This helps make more sense of the conflicts of interest, of, for example, James "World War IV" Woolsey, former CIA director, a leading war propagandist and neo-conservative of sorts who said about 345,000 times on network TV in 2002 that Mohammed Atta had been spotted with an Iraqi agent in Prague — thus unifying the perceived enemy images of the Baath government and the 9/11 conspirators. But Woolsey also is an executive at Booz Allen Hamilton, which despite the crunked name, is a huge and shady defense contractor that makes millions whenever the U.S. gets tied up forcing its will somewhere. More wars == more cash for this niche industry, and without Right Web it's hard to decipher. (Booz was contracted to get $62 million for helping designing the not-so-dead Total Information Awareness program, according to DoD. Booz defense revenues alone totaled $536,641,000 in 2004 - the #10 federal contractor! Yes, Virginia, war ==> cash. )

Without Right Web, no one would even know what David "Clean Break" Wurmser, of Office of Special Plans fame looks like (high in the pantheon of defense bureaucrats who helped start the war with manipulated WMD intel). Right Web's explanation of the Office of Special Plans is really pretty good:

In the days after September 11 terrorist attacks, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith started cooking intelligence to meet the needs of the radically new foreign and military policy that included regime change in Iraq as its top priority.

To bolster the Iraq war party, they needed intelligence that would persuade the U.S. public and policymakers that Saddam Hussein’s regime should be one of the first targets of the war on terrorism. Convinced that the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the State Department would not provide them with type of alarmist threat assessments necessary to justify a preventive war, they created their own tightly controlled intelligence operation at the top levels of the Pentagon bureaucracy.

The day after the September 11 attacks Wolfowitz authorized the creation of an informal team focused on ferreting out damaging intelligence about Iraq. This loosely organized team soon became the Office of Special Plans (OSP) directed by Abram Shulsky, formerly of RAND and the National Strategy Information Center (NSIC). The objective of this closet intelligence team, according to Rumsfeld, was to “search for information on Iraq’s hostile intentions or links to terrorists.” OSP’s mission was to create intelligence that the Pentagon and vice president could use to press their case for an Iraq invasion with the president and Congress.

The OSP played a key role in providing Rumseld, Cheney, and the president himself with the intelligence frequently cited to justify the March 2003 invasion. By late 2003 the OSP was closed down, having accomplished its mission of providing the strategic intelligence cited by the administration in the build-up to the invasion. OSP’s staff and operations were folded back into the normal operations of the NESA and into its Office of Northern Gulf Affairs.

Like some sleazy Georgetown party, in the circles of power, Frank Carlucci, Ahmed Chalabi, John Bolton, Gary Bauer, Natan Sharansky are all lurking. All of these sorts of cats are better understood with Right Web.

I should add something classic that Noam Chomsky said about all these goofy committees and seemingly conspiratorial little foundations and groups. I think it's an excellent point. Chomsky:

"It's the same with the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, all these other things the people are racing around searching for conspiracy theories about—they're 'nothing' organizations. Of course they're there, obviously rich people get together and talk to each other, and play golf with one another, and plan together—that's not a big surprise. But these conspiracy theories people are putting their energies into have virtually nothing to do with the way the institutions actually function."
(Understanding Power, 348)

(This has infuriated many conspiracy theorists) The point is not tracking this or that secret committee, it's recognizing that many have a shared world-view we should oppose. I would add that they are trying to monopolize and privatize the defense and intelligence decision-making processes while getting rich.

But let's get back to xenophobic (and highly organized) reactionaries, who paint Mexican infiltration as the Clash of Civilizations. Essentially they project flaws outward. Now that the ever-malleable symbol of 'The Jew' is not available as a rhetorical target, the General Other has gotten top billing from the latest demogogues.

Tom Tancredo: Leader of the Anti-Immigrant Populist Revolt
By Tom Barry | December 30, 2005
IRC Right Web

Rep. Tom Tancredo, who has represented Colorado's Sixth District since 1999, has in the last six years succeeded in rallying an anti-immigrant populist revolt that brings together the nativists, religious right, cultural supremacists, militia movement, and anti-immigration policy institutes with a new anti-immigration wing of the Republican Party.
[.....]
Describing himself as a “devotee” of Samuel Huntington and the thesis of his Clash of Civilizations treatise, Tancredo like many on the right—from social conservatives to neoconservatives—base their restrictionism less on economic reasons than on cultural and racial ones. “I believe that what we are fighting here is not just a small group of people who have hijacked a religion, but it is a civilization bent on destroying us.”
[.....]
“The threat to the United States comes from two things: the act of immigration combined with the cult of multiculturalism,” argues Tancredo. “We will never be able to win in the clash of civilizations if we don't know who we are. If Western civilization succumbs to the siren song of multiculturalism, I believe we are finished.”

Like many other Republicans in the West, Tancredo takes a hard line toward China , and is a strong supporter of Taiwan. Linking China and immigration, Tancredo told a crowd of immigration restrictionists that the Chinese government is “trying to export people” as a “way of extending their hegemony.”

Concerning Iran, Tancredo advocates U.S. support for the Mujahedin-e Kalq (MEK), the armed wing of the National Council of Resistance. Although identified as a terrorist organization by the State Department, Tancredo says “we should be aiding them, instead of restricting their activities. We can use the MEK, they are in fact warriors. Where we need to use that kind of force, we can use them.”

Funny, I always believed that multiculturalism and the act of immigration were two fundamentally American gestures that once helped us become the strongest and richest country in the world. How naïve.

White cultural purity and Iranian zealots (more MEK here and here). Is this really conservatism?

Palestinian truce off for New Year; Kurds planning to grab Kirkuk; Shiites lock down

Palestinian militants say truce ends at midnight

By Arnon Regular and Nir Hasson, Haaretz Correspondents, Haaretz Service and News Agencies

Militant Palestinian factions said on Saturday that as of New Year's Day they would no longer be bound by a truce that has brought the most peaceful spell since the start of the five-year-old uprising.

Meanwhile, Israel Air Force fire killed two Palestinians in the no-go area of the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday night, according to Palestinian security sources.

Haaretz: A waiting game
By Amir Oren

According to his strategic adviser, Eival Giladi, Sharon's time frame for a permanent settlement is approximately 2025: only 19 years from Sunday. The new year, 2006, is already shaping up as a wasted one, a year of treading water, unless a different Palestinian leadership arises, replacing Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) or displacing him. Absent such a leadership, the terrorism will continue, including the launching of Qassams. And if no new leadership emerges, a generation will pass before new leaders appear.

The cruel choice that is becoming constantly clearer is between Hamas and Marwan Barghouti. Anyone who does not want to see Hamas in power will have to accept Barghouti as the prime minister of a Palestinian government until the end of the Abbas presidency, and accept him as president afterward.
........

At the beginning of the month, a senior General Staff officer was invited to represent Israel in a joint course of about 30 generals from the Western armies that are mired in Iraq and Afghanistan. The topic under discussion was urban combat against insurgents and terrorist and guerrilla elements. At the meeting in which lessons were drawn, the IDF representative agreed with the accepted view that dealt with the importance of intelligence and command-and-control systems, but in his view the true challenge facing the governments, armies and intelligence agencies of the advanced countries is more conceptual than operational or technological. The gist of the challenge involves shattering the regular format of military behavior, to the point where terrorist groups will be unable to predict the behavior of the state system they are facing.
.......
The officers and Shin Bet personnel who always aspire "to close a circle" - to see, identify and shoot before the target disappears - know that the substantive difficulty does not lie in their sphere. With the Palestinians - and with the Lebanese, too, until the Syrian and Iranian influence on them is annulled - there is no way to close a political circle of give-and-take, agreement, upholding and domestic enforcement.

Meanwhile In Iraq... the Kurds seem to be preparing to make a move in 2006.... We were told that Ambassador Negroponte would bring some of that 'Salvadoran Option' death squad tactics to Iraq. And indeed, he did with his practiced, masterful skill from the salad days in Honduras. Fortunately, many of the new Death squads / 'freedom fighters of free Iraq' were trained (and are still paid) from Iran, lending a certain Persian texture for those now chafing under the Badr Corps and other various militia.

Turning (much of) Iraq into something of an Iranian satellite state was an obvious effect of an invasion that anyone could see coming. Why the hell was that in vital American interests? Tell me, you hawks, what does that get us?

US-Shiite Struggle Could Spin out of Control
Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Dec 26 (IPS) - The George W. Bush administration has embarked on a new effort to pressure Iraq's militant Shiite party leaders to give up their control over internal security affairs that could lead the Shiites to reconsider their reliance on U.S. troops.
.....

For Shiite party leaders, U.S. pressure to share state power with secular or Sunni representatives -- especially on internal security -- touches a raw nerve. They regard control over the organs of state repression as the key to maintaining a Shiite regime in power.

If Abdul Aziz al-Hakin and other SCIRI leaders feel they have to choose between relying on U.S. military protection and the security of their regime, they are likely to choose the latter. They could counter U.S. pressures by warning they will demand a timetable for withdrawal of U.S. troops if the United States continues to interfere in such politically sensitive matters.

That would not be an entirely idle threat. Last October, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani was reported by associates to be considering such a demand. The implication of calling for a relatively rapid U.S. withdrawal would be that the Shiite leaders would turn to Iran for overt financial and even military assistance, in line with their fundamental foreign policy orientation.

The Bush administration's strategy of pressure on Shiite leaders over the issue of control over state security organs thus has the potential to spin out of control and cause another policy disaster in Iraq and the entire Middle East.

Kurds in Iraqi army proclaim loyalty to militia
By Tom Lasseter
Knight Ridder Newspapers

KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan.

Five days of interviews with Kurdish leaders and troops in the region suggest that U.S. plans to bring unity to Iraq before withdrawing American troops by training and equipping a national army aren't gaining traction. Instead, some troops that are formally under U.S. and Iraqi national command are preparing to protect territory and ethnic and religious interests in the event of Iraq's fragmentation, which many of them think is inevitable.

CSM:Iraq's micro parties could play key role
Shiites and Kurds look to be big winners of this month's vote, but tiny parties could emerge as power brokers.

NY Times: G.I.'s to increase U.S. Supervision of Iraqi Police
The increase is seen as a way to exert firmer control over the commando units, which are suspected of carrying out widespread atrocities against civilians in Sunni Arab neighborhoods. Human rights groups here say the units may be guilty of murdering and torturing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Sunni Arab men of military age.
........
American officials say it is unclear whom the units are taking orders from, the ministry or militia commanders. The minister of the interior, Bayan Jabr, is a senior member of the Badr Brigade.

Mr. Jabr is fighting the American plan to place more advisers in the Iraqi commando units, according to the senior American commander. "We'd know exactly what they are doing, and we'd have some more control," the commander said.

Momentarily, a summing of the year 2005, such as it was.

The Equation of Life; the Olive Branch is Quaint; 5% vote fraud rate in Iraq asserted as blogs propagandize?

Some scientists determined that apparently, across the scale from bacteria to whale, the basic unit of life is energy and metabolism -- not time. A Master Equation for All Life Processes? Check out the 10 little-known sweet science stories. A Swedish bio-gas (cow poo) train, pillows are laden with fungi, French scientists figured out how to slow down & speed up light, (!!!) leading the way to future all-optical data routers (!!!!!), a robot with square wheels, and of course they are training honey bees to find land mines! (also 50 greatest robots ever - via GM)

The Eagle faces the olive branch: Dear Leader recently addressed the nation about that war thing, and someone told me that it was interesting how the olive branch on the Great Seal of the United States is hidden.

(Bush has also been pressuring newspaper editors a lot lately, including trying to prevent the CIA European prison stories in the WaPo, and the Times NSA story, by summoning the editors to the Oval Office in a vain effort to intoxicate with the fearful trappings of power)

I found out that on the Presidential Seal, the eagle used to face the arrows until 1945:

This one-time change has given rise to the myth that the eagle's head changes position to indicate wartime or peacetime, but that is obviously not true. The eagle faced right from 1880 to 1945, and has faced left ever since. It is nevertheless true that, when the change was made in 1945, the announcement referred to the symbolism of the eagle facing peace instead of war, and this symbolism has been alluded to many times since, although it was not the motivation for the change.

Make no mistake; when the Duke makes a televised address, every visual detail is carefully managed. The fascinating Brian Springer film "Spin", which was made primarily with intercepted satellite signals — open video feeds from the White House and other political and media operations. There's one funny part when they remove a photo from behind Poppa Bush's seat, because it is thought to resemble a recent photo of when he passed out in Japan.

So make no mistake, the selection of the arrows was 100% intentional, in a White House as image-conscious as this one.

(evil witch Peggy Noonan observed Bush talking about the way the eagle faces pre-9/11)

Windy: Energy issues in MN. Apparently the vast majority of windmills around Buffalo Ridge are not owned locally according to an interesting Strib article. Let's think about the means of production here people!

They don't like the vote: Guardian: Religious parties deal blow to US hopes for Iraq. Apparently an official level of 5% vote fraud in Iraq has been accepted, Juan Cole says:

The Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq admitted on Sunday that voting fraud occurred in approximately 5 percent of the ballots cast, but said that this level of fraud would not affect the over-all outcome. Still, the IECI announcement will certainly fuel Sunni Arab anger and conviction that the election was stolen.

Bizarre. The Sunnis think that Shiites ganked their votes, and there have been mass protests in Fallujah. KR: "Iran now enemy No. 1, Sunnis say". Violence resumes apace as Sunni Arab student leader killed in Mosul after protesting vote -- Shiite militias and Kurds accused of killing him.

AP reports that US airstrikes are escalating, although of course it is hard to tell how many civilian casualties this generates, or whether they are the 'right targets,' or whether it is strategically useful at all. Such urban bombardments have not been seen in years, but due to 'perception management' techniques, the US public is blissfully unaware. A Steel Curtain for their bodies and our eyes, indeed.

RJ Eskow: Voting Confirms: Iraq Is a Red state. We have generated a fundamentalist theocracy, aligned against Israel, towards Iran, while 45% of the country supports attacking US troops. Why was this such a brilliant fucking idea again? Robert Scheer cackles: Iran's victory revealed in Iraq election.

Ethnic/sect structure of iraqi forces is doomed, man: One of the measuring sticks of how propagandizing a perspective on the Iraq war is how the difference between Sunni & Shiite groups is framed. When Sunnis are "rat's nest terrorists" while the Shiites are "Free Iraqis come to Battle for Freedom" in the northwest of the country, you are looking at some obfuscation.

Consider this first: SF Chronicle: Various private armies still exist, threatening Iraq's national security:

Residents of Samarra, the scene of bloody clashes between U.S. soldiers and insurgents, said they feared a Shiite militia being unleashed on the city. Interviewed in their homes this week, they said they were unaware of a Mahdi Army presence, but claimed they had already suffered when commandos affiliated with al-Sadr's militia were dispatched to the city earlier this year.

Ibrahim Farraj, who lives in the Sikek district, said, "The Interior Ministry forces are very strong. The insurgents are afraid of them, but they are corrupt and we cannot trust them. The last time the Interior Ministry was here, they were al-Sadr -- people are scared of them and the Mahdi Army."

U.S. Army Capt. Ryan Wylie, of the 3rd Infantry Division serving in Samarra, said he had heard rumors that the Interior Ministry was conducting a private war, but had seen no evidence.

These bloggers that have been embedded with US troops in the northwest Euphrates river valley are all about exaggerating this difference. In particular, Bill Roggio at Threatswatch (where the map above came from) explains how Rats Nests are obliterated in Steel Curtain Unmasked, and other interesting dehumanizing euphemisms. See if you can find the subtle twist of meaning here:

Throughout the operation, the 1/1/1 of the Iraqi Army and the Desert Protection Force worked in conjunction with the U.S. Forces, and proved to be an instrumental part of the operation. The Iraqi Army battalion participated in combat operations, and they and Desert Protectors were able to identify foreign fighters and local insurgents.

I wonder if Roggio can wrap his head around the concept that 'identifying' is not a neutral act of observation, but a conscious change of political identity (by Shiite militia, no less) leading straight to violence.

Roggio is not happy about a Washington Post article that characterized his role in Iraq as a military-supported Information Operation. He says that all the cash to get him there was raised independently, and that the military has not 'influenced' his writing. But his main sources are military personnel, and his perspective is deeply enmeshed with the same terminology and concepts that Pentagon spokespeople attempt to beat into our heads. Here's his core point:

Equating military information operations with al-Qaeda propaganda efforts is a form of moral equivalence of the worst sort. The U.S. military is conducting an influence campaign to draw attention to the news which is missed by the media on a daily basis. Their belief (and one that I share) is the portrayal of events in Iraq do not reflect the actual situation on the ground. While the articles may be viewed as “favorable” to the Coalition, the question is, are they accurate and factual? The Washington Post does not address this issue, nor does it provide evidence that the military is running a disinformation campaign.

Misrepresenting the source (such as the placed Iraqi newspaper stories) is a form of disinformation because it manipulates the perception of where it's coming from. The military's justification is that there is a metaphysical or ontological gap between (all?) portrayals and reality, according to him. Well isn't there always? How far can this go? Also consider this ironic statement:

al-Qaeda is running a sheer disinformation campaign which uses human beings as props in events such as beheadings and execution styled killings. It manufactures events, such as the faux uprising in Ramadi in the beginning of December. The truth is not relevant to al-Qaeda’s propaganda operations, only results matter.

The administration has 'manufactured' all sorts of symbolic events and concepts, such as the Statue Toppling, the mysteriously Satanic Terrorist Singularity in Fallujah that needed to be nuked after the 2004 Presidential election, etc. There have been plenty of symbolic constructions. Look at how Pat Tillman died -- that event was manufactured beyond the truth (it was a friendly fire fatality) to burnish the war narrative. Oh by the way, here's what Tillman's dad said:

"They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up," Patrick Tillman said. "I think they thought they could control it and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to hell in a hand basket if the truth about his death got out."

Al Qaeda is not the only force at hand here seeking to 'sharpen the contradictions' through symbolic action. What is Shock and Awe, if not a symbolic gesture? (Roggio also said that lots of Sunnis voted for Allawi in Anbar. That's fucking ridiculous!)

But what can I say about a worldview with ideas like "Samarra, a city once ripe for a Tal Afar styled assault."

By the way, here's a by-the-numbers orthodox propaganda tale about the Terrorists in Mosul. Of course it comes from the American Forces Press Service, part of the 'American Forces Information Service.' Use this to set your propaganda index, I guess.

Sadr City has a good deal of reconstruction, after decades of neglect. A story in the rightwing UK Telegraph claims that Tal Afar is totally ballin' these days:

Their commander, Col H R McMaster, is a counter-insurgency specialist who wrote a book about the Vietnam War, in which he criticised the US military's failure to understand the enemy's culture.

Before deployment, his men were given extensive Arabic classes and intensive lessons on Iraqi history, customs and religion. Proper efforts were made to woo local tribal sheiks with banquets in which goats were slaughtered and concerns listened to.

"The enemy is really good at disinformation and propaganda. We have to win the battleground of perception," he said.

Big Brother & Crying Wolf: People are more willing to believe the right yarn at the right time these days. A student at Dartmouth claimed that Homeland Security questioned him after he got Mao's Little Red Book through inter-library loan. But apparently it was a hoax. This story shows that people are expecting to hear these kinds of things... so stay sharp, we can hit spin real fast here.

Scratch the Checks and/or Balances: How sad is it that Sen. Rockefeller gets to jot secret handwritten notes of concern to the White House like a high school sweetheart, and that is supposed to be his total constitutional role? WTF?

AIPAC says Jump! WaPo: "Pro-Israel Group Criticizes White House Policy on Iran:"

AIPAC, which describes itself as nonpartisan, has criticized nearly every administration's Middle East policies, often speaking out when Israeli government officials express private frustration with U.S. policies.

But the news releases mark the first major criticism of the Bush White House and come as the administration is focused on problems in Iraq and has no clear path on Iran.
[.....]
Ross said the criticisms, though serious, are unlikely to lead to an all-out rift between AIPAC and the administration. "At the end of the day, every administration does what it needs to do, but obviously they will have to pay attention to this," he said.

Which again suggests that AIPAC should be registered as an agent of a foreign power. Well, that, and some of their (former) personnel have been indicted on espionage charges (more info here via the New Yorker).

Biochemical roots of the Munchies: Cannabinoid receptors around the hypothalamus.

In their studies, the researchers concentrated on the lateral hypothalamus (LH) of the brain, known to be a center of control of food intake. Their studies involved detailed electrophysiological measurements of the effects of specific neurons that they had identified in previous studies as being important in endocannabinoid signaling.

Their studies revealed that activation of CB1 receptors, as by endocannabinoid molecules, induced these neurons to be rendered more excitable by a mechanism called "depolarization-induced suppression of inhibition" (DSI).

What's more, they found that leptin inhibits DSI. However, they found that leptin did not interfere with the CB1 receptors themselves. Rather, leptin "short-circuits" the endocannabinoid effects by inhibiting pore-like channels in the neurons that regulate the flow of calcium into the neurons. Such calcium is necessary for the synthesis of endocannabinoids.

Some dead Amendments, as that Police State beckons. Plus Siskel vs the WASPs

(The Dead Letter Formerly Known As) Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

TDLFKAA4. It made it a fairly long time.

NY Times: F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show

The documents indicate that in some cases, the F.B.I. has used employees, interns and other confidential informants within groups like PETA and Greenpeace to develop leads on potential criminal activity and has downloaded material from the groups' Web sites, in addition to monitoring their protests.

In the case of Greenpeace, which is known for highly publicized acts of civil disobedience like the boarding of cargo ships to unfurl protest banners, the files indicate that the F.B.I. investigated possible financial ties between its members and militant groups like the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front.

A weird and sinister cast to these holidays. Not just because I'm trying to recalibrate my worldview to a dead friend, but hey, it pretty much looks like everyone is the Enemy at Home these days. As Sean-Paul put it,

I just don't feel . . . like there is much point to blogging or doing much of anything right now. Our president clearly broke the law and no one gives a shit. The DC press corps thinks it's a joke. ... Color me depressed and deeply saddened. Merry Christmas America.

That last link is the Daou Report. Says it all pretty much, but I feel like side-stepping my proscribed part (italic) today:

The Dynamic of a Bush Scandal: How the Spying Story Will Unfold (and Fade) - The third button on the Daou Report's navigation bar links to the U.S. Constitution, a Constitution many Americans believe is on life support - if not already dead. The cause of its demise is the corrosive interplay between the Bush administration, a bevy of blind apologists, a politically apathetic public, a well-oiled rightwing message machine, lapdog reporters, and a disorganized opposition. The domestic spying case perfectly illuminates the workings of that system. And the unfolding of this story augurs poorly for those who expect it to yield different results from other administration scandals.

Here's why: the dynamic of a typical Bush scandal follows familiar contours...

1. POTUS circumvents the law - an impeachable offense.

2. The story breaks (in this case after having been concealed by a news organization until well after Election 2004).

3. The Bush crew floats a number of pushback strategies, settling on one that becomes the mantra of virtually every Republican surrogate. These Republicans face down poorly prepped Dem surrogates and shred them on cable news shows.

4. Rightwing attack dogs on talk radio, blogs, cable nets, and conservative editorial pages maul Bush's critics as traitors for questioning the CIC.

5. The Republican leadership plays defense for Bush, no matter how flagrant the Bush over-reach, no matter how damaging the administration's actions to America's reputation and to the Constitution. A few 'mavericks' like Hagel or Specter risk the inevitable rightwing backlash and meekly suggest that the president should obey the law. John McCain, always the Bush apologist when it really comes down to it, minimizes the scandal.

6. Left-leaning bloggers and online activists go ballistic, expressing their all-too-familiar combination of outrage at Bush and frustration that nothing ever seems to happen with these scandals. Several newspaper editorials echo these sentiments but quickly move on to other issues.

7. A few reliable Dems, Conyers, Boxer, et al, take a stand on principle, giving momentary hope to the progressive grassroots/netroots community. The rest of the Dem leadership is temporarily outraged (adding to that hope), but is chronically incapable of maintaining the sense of high indignation and focus required to reach critical mass and create a wholesale shift in public opinion. For example, just as this mother of all scandals hits Washington, Democrats are still putting out press releases on Iraq, ANWR and a range of other topics, diluting the story and signaling that they have little intention of following through. This allows Bush to use his three favorite weapons: time, America's political apathy, and make-believe 'journalists' who yuck it up with him and ask fluff questions at his frat-boy pressers.

8. Reporters and media outlets obfuscate and equivocate, pretending to ask tough questions but essentially pushing the same narratives they've developed and perfected over the past five years, namely, some variation of "Bush firm, Dems soft." A range of Bush-protecting tactics are put into play, one being to ask ridiculously misleading questions such as "Should Bush have the right to protect Americans or should he cave in to Democratic political pressure?" All the while, the right assaults the "liberal" media for daring to tell anything resembling the truth.

9. Polls will emerge with 'proof' that half the public agrees that Bush should have the right to "protect Americans against terrorists." Again, the issue will be framed to mask the true nature of the malfeasance. The media will use these polls to create a self-fulfilling loop and convince the public that it isn't that bad after all. The president breaks the law. Life goes on.

10. The story starts blending into a long string of administration scandals, and through skillful use of scandal fatigue, Bush weathers the storm and moves on, further demoralizing his opponents and cementing the press narrative about his 'resolve' and toughness. Congressional hearings might revive the issue momentarily, and bloggers will hammer away at it, but the initial hype is all the Democratic leadership and the media can muster, and anyway, it's never as juicy the second time around...

Rinse and repeat.

It's a battle of attrition that Bush and his team have mastered. Short of a major Dem initiative to alter the cycle, to throw a wrench into the system, to go after the media institutionally, this cycle will continue for the foreseeable future.

The big wheel keeps on turning.

Siskel: Stop the WASPS: There's an old video of Siskel and Ebert bitching at each other, and subsequently Siskel plots to have the Jews and Catholics take all the wealth that the WASPs have seized for themselves in this country. Really.

There is an information war going out there. But propagandizing everyone can be funny too.

It's been a terrible week, although time with the Fam was all right. I will make some real posts tomorrow. There's a ton of links I've piled up, all across that Info War we've heard so much about. I have to give my roommate a ride to work early tomorrow morning because his car keys got stolen at 2 AM on Christmas Eve Eve, and then his car was towed. What the hell?

'PWNED,' by the way, is a funny google image search. See here for ridiculous internet argument about definition of 'pwned'. I always thought it meant between Owned and 'Pawned', in other words, in a shooting game you got turned into a dead pawn.

Iraqi blogstorm; $100 laptop developed for developing world; Iraqi bloggers vs the 'Iranian horde'; Diebold CEO quits under fire; Horatio Alger was a pedophile

The One Laptop Per Child nonprofit organization is supporting the distribution of a Linux-based $100 laptop, which will soon go out to children in Brazil, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria. It also has a hand-cranked power generator, which is a brilliant idea.

Forbes: Intel's Barrett Dismisses $100 Laptop As 'Gadget'
LONDON - It's a crank. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett has dismissed a WiFi-enabled, Linux-based, full-color, full-screen laptop aimed at bringing computers to developing economies as a "$100 gadget". The lime-green devices run on electromotive energy from a wind-up mechanism--thus allowing the machines to be used in areas lacking a regular power supply.

Bit of a jackass, then. See also PCWorld.com - Kids' Laptop Hits World Spotlight. Pic source from the oddly negative article carried in Vermont Guardian.

By 2007, five to ten million of these laptops will have been shipped to developing countries. By the year after that, the number is expected to have grown ten-fold. What is not known is whether this project will mark a new phase in the spread of knowledge, or whether hundreds of millions of children will become slaves to their little green boxes instead of playing in the backyard.

The Man was Here: WaPo: "CIA scours blogs for useful intelligence: Some `secrets' can be found in plain view." Well at least I know the CIA has already been here a couple times. So it's not breaking news.

Ten stoner ideas for peace in Iraq: Brilliant. Air conditioners, kind bud, Xbox 360s with extra controllers, Madden 2006, Marshmallows, kegs of Budweiser, acoustic guitars and whores. Shrewd strategy. "I guarantee this much: Give a 16-year-old Sunni the choice between killing himself and spending his life playing videogame football, and he’ll make the right choice every time." BSnews.org also features the "Bush War Plan Clearly Written In Crayon."

DeLay is hurting Republicans in vulnerable districts. Ouch. Sweet.

The blogosphere may be unreasonably carried away with Paul Hackett's chances in the Ohio senate race, given his low name ID. Rep. Sherrod Brown seems to be leading in polls.

Polls in Iraq seem oddly positive. I doubt their scientific value. "'Failure' Most Popular Term Sending Traffic From Google To US White House Site".

Bite the patting hand: Rightwingers are angry when the NY Times Magazine carried a story titled "Conservative Blogs are more Effective." Weird.

Elections in wars may not work: Haaretz/Reuters: Gaza gunmen fire on PA security compound, storm election HQ. "The Wall of Hate" is a film about the West Bank partition wall that Israel is constructing.

Iraq blogstorm and the 'Iranian occupation': Check out Iraq Blog Count for an index. A friend of mine was saying that all these blogs and Internet things complicate the situation, but I strongly disagree because I think we get a real good sense of the mentality and the situation of Iraqis, just by looking through a few of them. Baghdad Burning by Riverbend is of course well-known now, and excellent. The Iranian Occupation bit is interesting:

The agony of the long war with Iran is what makes the current situation in Iraq so difficult to bear- especially this last year. The occupation has ceased to be American. It is American in face, and militarily, but in essence it has metamorphosed slowly but surely into an Iranian one.

It began, of course, with Badir’s Brigade and the several Iran-based political parties which followed behind the American tanks in April 2003. It continues today with a skewed referendum, and a constitution that will guarantee a southern Iraqi state modeled on the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Of course all this talk about the US dropping chemical weapons makes it more 'complicated.' Would the Baghdad Burning book -- now on its way -- seem more credible somehow? Truth-about-iraqis.blogspot.com has a anguished rant whose tone rings very true. And this one too:

This is not Iraq. The only Iraq I can identify with is the Iraq that rages in the hearts of those who defend its honor, who die defending its honor, those who fight the Iranian horde, the US oppressor.

.....In any case, everything is coming tumbling down. The war lies, the GOP, right wing radio, the illusionists, the nazis and their WASP allies, the zionist war machine, and the racist white-hood wearing commentators.

The Iraq lie is simply too heavy a burden.

Sow it buddy, then drink the rotten milk of human waste.

Nefarious is as nefarious will do.

I think it makes a major, positive, difference -- although the terrible experience of Khaled Jarrar when he was captured by the Interior Ministry, and his additional troubles because they found out about his blog, were an example of how it can hurt the writers. But we wouldn't know about what it's really like inside the New Security Organs of Iraq without people like him.

For more, consider Aunt Najma's A Star from Mosul (with many relatives blogging too), Treasure of Baghdad, Free Iraq ("The US's pre-emptive occupation of Iraq will see to it that the Lion of Babylon rises again" sweet) and Iraqi Rebel.

David Ignatius likes the eschatological-conspiracy angle in "Breaking the Assassins." Thanks for obfuscating reality with a bunch of grand gibberish. Can Rummy defeat the Cult of the Assassins? Sure!

Ethnically pure militias: Bloomberg service: Bush's Strategy, Iraq's New Army Challenged by Ethnic Militias

The Defense Department's intelligence agency says there are dozens of loosely organized Shiite armies in southern Iraq, Kurdish militias in the north that function like a regular army, and as many as 20,000 Sunni fighters who are part of the violent insurgency in Iraq's four central provinces.

..... ``The situation continues to deteriorate,'' said Anthony Cordesman of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. ``It's a matter of the militias, new political organizations, Shiite groups'' and Iraqi security forces becoming ``forces for revenge or reprisal.''

....Leslie Gelb, former assistant secretary of state and former president of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations, said most of the militias pay first allegiance to their ethnic or tribal group. ``It's not an Iraqi army,'' said Gelb, who visited Iraq for 10 days earlier this year. Kurds are loyal to Kurds, Shiite militias resembling ``mafia operations'' run the south, ``the central region has the insurgency, and Baghdad is all mixed up,'' he said.

Patrick Lang, former chief analyst for the Middle East at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said Iraq's different ethnic groups ``will not serve together'' in national army units. ``They tried it and it didn't work, and now they're going back to ethnically pure units,'' he said, citing Defense Department officials he declined to identify. Lang, a retired colonel in the Army's Green Berets, is now president of Global Resources Group, a Washington-based consulting firm.

"Islamic leaders unveil action plan to rescue a 'nation in crisis'." Baghdad Press Club investigated as a central node of paid military propaganda.

Cheney visits Auschwitz and secret CIA Poland camp on same trip? Oy vey. FT: Allegations of secret US jails in Europe are 'credible'. Guardian: Investigator links Europe's spy agencies to CIA flights. Ireland On-Line 'Signs suggest US illegally held detainees in Europe' especially Poland and Romania. Take it with a grain of salt, but Wayne Madsen's report on Cheney visiting secret camps in Poland (Dec. 13) around his visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi extermination camp last January. Not sure if it's a true report, but if it is true, a very dark irony.

Iran talks a big game: But this Haaretz article makes it all too clear that their economic situation is excellent, and they can count on Russia and China to help them in the UN if things get hairy. Ahmadinejad can continue to smile while the world argues. True.

The Horatio Alger NAMBLA chapter: Larry Beinhart's "Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin" looks interesting. In particular, for example, he establishes that Horatio Alger was a pedophile, and was a pedophilic minister before he got chased out of Brewster, Massachusetts, and admitted to it. That's established, then the spin dissection starts. Weird. And maybe that's more widely known, but I never heard of it. Also claims that the NYC chapter of NAMBLA is the Horatio Alger chapter. Creepy.

Vote Spoofing: The War at Home: Diebold chief executive Wally O'Dell resigns, as more questions about company conduct and illegal trading have come up. There are lawsuits happening as people claim that Diebold failed to get its modified voting machine software correctly certified on some occasions. In North Caroline, the EFF has filed a lawsuit. O'Dell was the guy who claimed he would help 'deliver' Ohio's electoral votes to Bush.

DeLay bit for Texas Gerrymandering; CBS producer defends National Guard memo story; no time for Tookie

1UP for Russ: Russ Feingold is chilling around the Internet while fighting the renewed Patriot Act. Now that's class. Also he speaks in favor of withdrawing from Iraq. So Quadruple Infinity Bonus Points -- he's trying to kill Bowser and save the Princess. The Odds are Slim but entirely worth it.

While Iraq prepares for another round of 'something', (and election irregularities around Mosul are apparently expected) a memo (PDF) from the Department of Justice indicated that career Justice lawyers believed that redistricting Texas would illegally marginalize minorities. Meanwhile a Crips co-founder is going to get injected. And who says minorities are oppressed in this free country?

(fortunately the DOJ's new policy has "barred staff attorneys from offering recommendations in major Voting Rights Act cases, marking a significant change in the procedures meant to insulate such decisions from politics." - thx Marshall.)

Charting sleaze: This big ass Abramoff chart is almost big enough to encompass the mega-scandal. Marshall on this as well. There are quite a few Democrats on there. Where are the House ethics complaints anyway? Polls show that corruption is a leading concern in America nowadays.

Secret laws? The Bush Administration apparently claims that secret regulations require people to present IDs at the airport. Why secret? Secret courts, secret evidence, secret prisons. Laws too? And they call us on the Internet obsessed with conspiracies! :-D (via Kevin Drum)

It's a really big information war: I don't feel like putting a lot more words in. But this NY Times article, "Military's Information War is Vast and Often Secretive," reaches into great detail about psychological operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Although really, I have to think that most of the locals see right through this stuff and scoff at it. Even if it's supposedly hidden through private contractors, I suspect they aren't really taken in that easily.

It also makes me wonder about psy ops dimensions to such things as "Shootout! Battlecry Iraq: Ramadi" coming Dec. 14 to the History Channel.

Meanwhile dead US soldiers apparently back come as commercial freight. So much for honoring the heroes. If it were my kin, I would be crushed.

Juan Cole reflects on Iraq in our Strib. Background on activities of the Badr Corps, now the de facto Inner Militia of the Interior Ministry. Tactics seem to escalate in Afghanistan, no matter how many radio stations we control. Damn. Juan Cole's site will be a good spot to follow the election results, and i think this bit pretty much sums up the evolving problem:

Al-Zaman/ AFP: Muntadhar al-Samarra'i, the former commander of the Iraqi special forces, said Sunday that the Minister of Interior, Bayan Jabr Sulagh, appointed 17,000 fighters from the Badr Militia as police officers in his ministry at a time when they still receive their salaries from Iran. Al-Samarra'i accused the Badr Corps [the paramilitary of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq] of employing torture on detainees in prison. He showed AFP a film he himself had shot of torture in Iraqi prisons. He said all of the high officials in the Ministry of the Interior are from the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and Dawa (Shiite parties), whereas the detainees are Sunni Arabs. Al-Samarra'i also said that the special police speak Persian with one another (the Badr Corps fighters had been expatriates in Iran). He spoke of several secret prisons, some with as many as 600 inmates, and said there were also jails for women.

An interview with Sy Hersh, if you want more gory details. He puts in this fun bit about rigging the last Iraqi election:

...the three provinces that – according to the actual rules, the three provinces voted against the constitution – you had to have a two-thirds majority against it – it was defeated, and there is no question that in two of them this happened, and the third, Mosul province, the amount of fraud and jiggering of election ballots and manipulation was just outlandish. I do know, at least I have been told that, before the… if you remember the election day, I think it was initially supposed to be August 15th. The election day…
Horton: October 15th, I think, right?
Hersh: Right, right, October 15th. It was extremely quiet, and it's my understanding that the resistance actually had been talking to the UN – the UN had an advisory role in the election process, which it still has – and they had made it quiet not because intimidation of coalition forces and the American government but because they decided, they said, "The UN will do it straight. Because if it's a straight, honorable election, you won't get your constitution through. We'll defeat you in three provinces." There was a great, a great deal of agitation among the Sunni resistance about the fraud that was involved. I don't know what's going to happen. Nobody knows. I think the Sunnis… I think the election will take place. That won't be spoiled by rioting and distress and disturbances, but I think afterwards – I think the Ba'athists are sort of curious, the Sunnis, to see what happens – but afterwards, I think we could even see a significant escalation, already, of the kind of damage we're having.

So Talabani will probably play the Katherine Harris role in the coming production. All right. Hersh also has lots of info about the insanity of the air war ramping up -- as airstrikes replace American soldiers, and no one's around to film all the civilian casualties.

You are looking, if you break it down, to, oh, roughly 100 bombs being dropped an hour. Twenty four hours a day for the last 15, 16 months. That's a hell of a lot of bombs.

Indeed. And that's only estimated from one section of the airborne military forces. And also this: after the election,

we could end up with Iranian operatives helping to guide and direct American bombs against targets that are against our interests. This is all in the realm of possibility. Yes.

Oh yah, also this:

The Israelis are investing in their good partners the Kurds, they support an independent Kurdistan, or at least a strong Kurdistan. And for sure, there are operations going on, Israeli-led operations are going on inside Kurdistan into Iran, Syria, absolutely. The Israelis have a platform there.

Not terribly shocking. But I'm sure it will work itself out. A final bit, on dear Michael Ledeen and the Niger forgeries:

The one thing that makes me a little skeptical is Michael Ledeen is certainly, really smart, I disagree with everything, you know, he and I are on the other ends of the world, but it is such a bad forgery, I mean, it is such a bad forgery.

Well that's true. We ought to expect more finesse from him. Anyhow, lots of quotes, but Hersh is still the Dude on these matters.

Syria talks tough: I missed this one. About a month ago Assad said that Syrians had to stick together and fight, as the US has a plan to crush the Arab nations. It was basically a pretty hard statement from a country that the US has been openly belligerent towards for years now. But it suggests that Assad is not going to fold... With a little luck the neo-cons will fall in Washington before they can generate a Tonkin Gulf incident in the Syrian desert, as Raimondo put it. Syria accuses US of launching lethal raids over its borders.

The National Security Agency reflects on Tonkin Gulf: they put together a nice website with lots of original documents on the incident that got spun up to spark the Vietnam war, in an attempt to provide clarity. Good for them.

Venezuela and USAID operations against Chavez: This bit by Tom Barry from the International Relations Center talks about USAID and its various means of influencing politics in Venezuela. Part of the shadow boxing between Chavez and Washington. Also the ever-altruistic National Endowment for Democracy pops up as supporting 'democratic organizations.' Mysterious.

Former CBS producer stands by Texas National Guard documents: Right wing bloggers rode Dan Rather's battered remains to glory last year, but it might turn out that (surprise!) they're full of it. Mary Mapes, the producer supposedly responsible for acting as a Kerry henchwoman, has returned to tell the tale of the National Guard documents. Lo and behold she found that many Guard docs have the same features that everyone said made Bush's docs forgeries. She wrote a book "Truth and Duty" about it. There was a good interview with her on DailyKos exploring all this stuff. Here's the documents she dug up.

Florida logic: Robert Novak says that Florida Republicans are trying to get Katherine Harris to duck out of the Senate race. Also interesting stuff about how in Florida the Dems are starting over from scratch, all over.

To Live and Die in CA: They say that the man from the Crips, Stanley 'Tookie' Williams, is getting executed about now. I oppose the death penalty for anyone (including hapless Iraqi soldiers), and in this particular case, it strikes me as especially harmful to kill a figure who has managed to find a peaceful political strategy to defuse violent gang conflicts. (Possibilities of rioting. Only a massive LA riot could round out this ridiculous year.)

When steroid-sodden leaders, with quite soft support of their own, need to shore up that sense of solidarity among the Base, well why not get rid of a 'lead gangster'? Perhaps that's not fair because clemency ought to rest on the case itself. But I heard the same tone when a radio talk show host on CNN suggested that even if more than a hundred innocent people have been let off death row, it's still better to kill because they are plotting to kill more people in prison. Why not just shoot everyone? Horrible.

Drunk Trashy White Power, Mate: Elsewhere, in Australia there's been riots after some Lebanese immigrants were accused of assaulting a lifeguard. Naturally the Australian far-right has apparently latched onto the situation as an opportunity to demonize immigrants. Mean right wing lady Lucianne Goldberg said "Finally, a WASP riot as beer soaked beefy Aussies bash Muslims at beach" (via nomoremisterniceblog). Something to be proud of when neo-Nazis are circulating videos about 'the Battle for Cronulla'. Even more horrible. 12thharmonic is following this. Radio host Alan Jones is whipping things along:

The riot was still three days away and Sydney’s highest-rating breakfast radio host had a heap of anonymous emails to whip his 2GB listeners along.
"Alan, it’s not just a few Middle Eastern bastards at the weekend, it’s thousands. Cronulla is a very long beach and it’s been taken over by this scum. It’s not a few causing trouble. It’s all of them."

Froomkin's getting Posted: I think everyone knows how lame the Washington Post usually is these days. Somehow they seem to be getting upset about how all over the Internet people spit at them. Now one of their better writers, Dan Froomkin, is getting a bunch of crap from the WaPo editors because his column, the "White House Briefing", is perceived as too liberal, and by too liberal, they mean it is not always buried in the torrent of spin and propaganda masquerading as 'balance'.

Political Editor John Harris is a jackass here. Marshall and Firedoglake with more on it. Since Froomkin might go down over this, lets give him a couple paragraphs to explain himself:

Regular readers know that my column is first and foremost a daily anthology of works by other journalists and bloggers. When my voice emerges, it is often to provide context for those writings and spot emerging themes. Sometimes I do some original reporting, and sometimes I share my insights. The omnipresent links make it easy for readers to assess my credibility.

There is undeniably a certain irreverence to the column. But I do not advocate policy, liberal or otherwise. My agenda, such as it is, is accountability and transparency. I believe that the president of the United States, no matter what his party, should be subject to the most intense journalistic scrutiny imaginable. And he should be able to easily withstand that scrutiny. I was prepared to take the same approach with John Kerry, had he become president.

This column’s advocacy is in defense of the public’s right to know what its leader is doing and why. To that end, it calls attention to times when reasonable, important questions are ducked; when disingenuous talking points are substituted for honest explanations; and when the president won’t confront his critics -- or their criticisms -- head on.

The journalists who cover Washington and the White House should be holding the president accountable. When they do, I bear witness to their work. And the answer is for more of them to do so -- not for me to be dismissed as highly opinionated and liberal because I do.

Cheers dude, cheers. How the hell did you ever get that column anyway? Perhaps I'm not being totally fair with the Post. They did hook us up with the Abramoff chart and DeLay memo above. But why are they still such punks?

Viveca Novak twist in the Plame scandal: Weird. Digby if you want the ugly details. NextHurrah, E&P, Atrios, needlenose, Talkleft, & the firedoglake again for more. Apparently VandeHei suddenly said that Hadley was Rove's source on Hardball (a slight bombshell) and no one even noticed, probably because they have all gotten aneurisms by now. She tries to explain herself but its shady. Eccch whatever.

Hong Kong activists ask for quiet at WTO: According to the Guardian, the stalwart crew of rebels against the Communist order in those parts distributed notices:

In what passes for Hong Kong's alternative press, a cut-out-and-keep rioters' guide to Hong Kong was hardly a call to arms. Under R for Rioters, it said: "This is a peaceful place and your shenanigans will only make it harder for us once you leave, so leave the rocks at home." G for Globalisation noted: "While we are on the topic, what is your beef anyway?"

Could be some of that neo-Communist Propaganda though.

Wikipedia hoaxer apologises. The guy says it was a workplace prank. Old story about a Mac SE 30 made into a bong. The worst video game art ever. Hilarious.

Clinton messed with Bush at the global warming thing in Montreal. It is actually really good Clinton is wielding his residual 'soft power' to pressure the US on global warming, while saving a tiny bit of dignity for Sane America with the rest of the world.

Wake Up Neo, the screensaver. When you are listening to Massive Attack's Dissolved Girl and your mescaline-toting hipster friends show up for warez, you know you need to follow the white rabbit.

Star and stripe resign: A spoof. Rove's on the case. The little dog is a nice touch.

Al Qaeda Santa Connection - via elf torture: Sam Seder and Bob Knight from Air America's Majority Report point out the value of a war on Christmas (video here):

SEDER: Listen, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it's almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists and I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas. And hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

PHILLIPS: Is it a war on Christmas, a war Christians, a war on over-political correctness or just a lot of people with way too much time on their hands?

SEDER: I would say probably, if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands, but I'd like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and al Qaeda.

PHILLIPS: I don't think that exists. Bob? Help me out here.

SEDER: We have intelligence, we have intelligence.

PHILLIPS: You have intel. Where exactly does your intel come from?

SEDER: Well, we have tortured an elf and it's actually how we got the same information from Al Libbi. It's exactly the same way the Bush administration got this info about the operational ties between al Qaeda and Saddam.

... Yes, well, Kyra, I mean, listen, I would like Bob to tell me who is the person who has been offended by someone saying Merry Christmas to them? I've never met that person. I don't celebrate Christmas. But if someone says "Merry Christmas" to me, I either think, well, it's a little bit odd, it's like me saying happy birthday to you on my birthday, but no one cares.

But I will tell you this, as we wage the war on the war on the war on the war on Christmas on our radio show. News Corp., Fox News, those people who have started this entire war on Christmas mean, fake war, they're having a holiday party.

President Bush saying "Happy Holidays." Tokyo Rose, Laura Bush, saying "Happy Holidays" to her dogs in the video, I'm sure you've seen it. I mean, these are the things that we should be talking about when we are waging this war in Iraq, we should be equating it to the war on Christmas.

Scandal breakfast: Speeding up the war; Duke scandal reaches into CIA; Diebold revelations; GOP war-dialing in New Hampshire; More mercenaries

I have plenty of scandals for you today. But I'll try to keep it concise.

Texas gerrymandering: Justice Staff Saw Texas Districting As Illegal.

DIEBOLD insider speaks out on Vote Spoofing: One of my reliable spies sent this in. Diebold insider alleges company plagued by technical woes, Diebold defends 'sterling' record. This talks a lot about how Diebold may have manipulated the Georgia 2002 Senate race, among other things. Basically it indicates that Diebold should not be trusted at all. And they are diabolical.

New probes in the prewar intel, but Those Italians mighta done the forgery! Spicy Meat-aball! So yah, Lewis Libby attacked Wilson because he called out the yellowcake uranium thing, which turned out to be a forgery. The hot rumor -- supported in the Italian media -- is that Michael Ledeen and some other neo-cons channeled the stuff into Washington. And now it seems like they might finally get nailed for it. Congress Opens New Front In Iraq-War Probe. Treasongate: The Niger Forgeries v. the CIA Intel Reports - Preliminary Conclusion: An Italian Job. Consult Raimondo for more. FBI Is Taking Another Look at Forged Prewar Intelligence. Marshall's take on that, check it out.

Marshall adds that Scooter Libby's legal defense fund is being run by Mel Sembler, the US Ambassador to Italy "when all the secret meetings took place and when the forged uranium papers showed up at the US Embassy in October 2002." However he sees no evidence Sembler was involved.

New Hampshire scandal: via Marshall, blogger Betsy Devine is covering the court case of NH Republicans phone hacking -- more like phreaking -- no, wardialing. Yeah, wardialing on election day is illegal.

Bomb Jazeera-Gate: Clemons promises news from London on the Bush Bombing Al Jazeera memo, so check that later.

SAVE XMAS: Oh great, another holiday video from the White House. And holiday cards. Where is our Jesus??! Conservatives are really disappointed that Bush surrendered Christmas -- really!

SAVE BORAT FROM KAZAKHSTAN: Kazakhstan shows the world tyranny is not dead. And not only that, they threatened to sue Sasha Cohen for his fine Borat portrayal on MTV. Borat, for his part, "fully support my government's decision to sue this Jew" immediately, in a response video on his site.

SAVE NIXON: 'I Didn't Like Nixon Until Watergate': The Conservative Movement Now. Interesting reflections on a weird philosophy.

Meth for Iraqi insurgents: When you need to conduct a war, it is a good idea to get your forces sped up with pharmaceuticals, as we learned from the Stim Packs in Starcraft. The UK Mirror reports that methamphetamine has been found in pills around Basra -- and claims that Mahdi Army irregulars have used it fearlessly. However, it is also official US government policy to give speed to pilots sometimes -- which was blamed as a cause for the deaths of several Canadians in Afghanistan. Meth or dextro -- which is the ethical War Stimulant??

IRAQ: Why no army & how to get out: What? Dems dont know a strategy? James Fallows' recent bit on Why Iraq Has No Army from the Atlantic. Interesting column from E&P about White Phosphorus and the media spin that followed. Armando on the Kos suggests that we need to stick with criticizing Bush, since theoretical Democratic plans (a fuzzy mess nowadays) don't really do as much as discrediting Dear Leader (which is something that Lieberman attempted to attack this week. Fuck you, Lieberman!! Why articulate when obscenities express it better?)

"Donald Rumsfeld Is Mad As a Hatter" Funny how that victory strategy was written by some shady professor. US Rep. Adam Smith (D) on the ground in Iraq.

Shrewd people are thinking about getting out. Via the solid Steve Clemons, some good strategies. Politicians square off against each other. Republicans try a bizarre two-handed trick, claiming that the Dems are treasonous for demanding it more quickly, while still claiming that withdrawal is going to happen, sooner rather than later.

The Hard Nosed Realists are worth consulting. Lt. Gen. William Odom is one of these. He was merely director of the National Security Agency and was the Army's senior intelligence officer for a time. I am hardly such a damn fool as to not appreciate the kind of wisdom that only one of these old, battle-tested characters could give you. Odom: Want stability in the Middle East? Get out of Iraq!

On the flip side, journalist Nir Rosen has kicked around Iraq a lot, so he's got a pretty solid view of why the hell we need to get out.

The Insurgencies Are Winning by Dreyfuss, always good. Ten ways to argue about the war. Well at least Sunnis and Shiites are praying together a bit. "Profusion of Rebel Groups Helps Them Survive in Iraq".

Wes Clark, still Big Pimpin with war plans here. Clark-Mentum. Drum is confused. There seems to be a lot of enthusiasm for Clark in the Democratic netroots, but I feel ambivalent.

Death squads instead! Billmon sighs about the execution squads now deemed to be Iraq's Last, Best Hope, characterized as Salvadoran Option, Pt. II. And his bit about the Lincoln Group and its organized efforts to propagandize for the military in Iraq was interesting. More below...

Marketing the Dogs of War: Mercenaries are always interesting. So here is a pile o links. Private Security Guards in Iraq Operate With Little Supervision. American Security Firm Implicated in Iraq Killings. Triple Canopy investigation. This PDF is interesting because it indicates that they kill Iraqis and lie about it. Booman Tribune on the Aegis Security Corporation and Tim Spicer. Also more about Triple Canopy.

A NY Times story about these forces, with some random Nazi thing attached to it.

PERU: Veteran Soldiers, Police Recruited for Iraq by U.S. Contractors.
Mercenaries Guard Baghdad Green Zone. Green zone security switch increases risk.
Sandline mercenaries: from Sierra Leone to Iraq.
CPI: Marketing the Dogs of War: Making a Killing.

As earlier reported, "Trophy Video" of Civilian Shootings By Contractors Emerges and guess what folks, here is the actual video. Creepy. Crooks and Liars has more on Spicer.

I wrote a big paper for Wendy Weber about these private military firms and their role in geopolitical developments. Actually my view is not 100% negative, but I mostly worry that they are used to A) cover up covert foreign policy, like DynCorp spraying herbicide in Colombia, and B) destroy the chain of command -- and in turn our adherence to international treaties, etc. More later.

Pentagon Propaganda Matrix. For some conspiracy stuff, see the PropagandaMatrix. For a real Matrix of Propaganda, look at Iraq these days. In the so-called Serious Media:

Williams: Bush administration has "right" to buy media coverage
Appearing on the December 4 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams told host Howard Kurtz that the Bush administration has "the right" to pay a columnist to tout its views in his column. Williams also condoned the "politiciz[ation]" of programming on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

Bastard. Let me just put in these DAMN links.
WaPo: Pentagon Funds Diplomacy Efforts / Military Says It Paid Iraq Papers for News
NYT: U.S. Is Said to Pay to Plant Articles in Iraq Papers
SourceWatch: Burson-Marseller's BKSH Gets Piece of Pentagon Psy-ops Pie
Forbes.com: Military Explains News Propaganda in Iraq
Freepaz: U.S. propaganda effort described
KR Washington Bureau: U.S. military pays Iraqis for positive news stories on war
LA Times: Secret Program May Have Erred, Pentagon Says
GovExec.com: What's Lincoln Group?
LA Times: U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press
Military Says It Paid Iraq Papers for News
DO YOU FEEL SAFER FROM TERROR YET? MUST BE THAT WARM AND FUZZY 'PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATION' FEELING!! (sorry that was tacky. This pisses me off)

Bribery scandal has many tentacles! Rep. Harris to donate contributions linked to Cunningham. Florida schemes? Of course! The Cunningham bribery scandal extends into the area of Pentagon defense spending -- and shadowy contributions leading to classified spending contracts (MZM gives cash to Duke, Duke hooks up open-ended contracts). Josh Marshall recently insinuated that people 'looked the other way' at what Cunningham was doing, while their own machinations around Defense sailed forth. Money quote:

The Pentagon's classified budget for buying goods and services has increased by nearly 48% since 9/11 — from $18.2 billion in fiscal 2002 to $26.9 billion this year — according to figures compiled by the non-partisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

......Harold Relyea, who studies government secrecy at the Congressional Research Service, says even if lawmakers had the time to study classified programs, most are not inclined to question the pet projects of their colleagues. And within the defense industry, "there is a coziness that sometimes builds up. You are familiar with the company and their people, it's easy to go back to them" for more work. "It's a new phase of what we used to call the military-industrial complex."

Neither Congress nor the executive branch regularly produces reports on oversight of classified spending. ... "We don't have the manpower or time to look into this, so we take it on faith that all of the companies working the black world are basically honest."

One of Porter Goss' boys at the CIA is apparently implicated in the Cunningham scandal, and other guys at the CIA are talking to the media about it. (Goss brought in a bunch of nasty national security punks to push people around at the Agency, and perhaps it will backfire since they were somewhat corrupt. Office politics from hell!) Jason Vest reports on this for GovExec.com about the details, including CIA executive director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, who ought to go down on this.

Josh Marshall's on it too, as well as Laura Rozen. Marshall adds that legislative spending 'earmarks' have been used to provide patronage / funding for favored companies, maintaining the Power Structure.

BIG RED: China: Boom or Boomerang?

CFR: Council of Frickin' IDIOTS: Bush speaks at the CFR yesterday, and they were weak about it. Atrios mocks.

Psychological & economic damage of war: Coping with Combat. "Has 'War' become a leading brand for United States? How Bush's imperial policies are being linked to economic woes and CEO angst in America".

Wiki bad! To spoof Wikipedia's latest problems, consider Uncyclopedia and its fine CNN, Nostradamus and German grammar entries.

Misc file: Dems still polling damn well. Haaretz says, OK Sharon, what about the damn West Bank outposts!? Guess I finally found the vast right wing conspiracy. Pointers from Hunter on how to write massively for the DailyKos. Ah, good stuff. Hunter is always pretty cool.

Spin Charting for Fun! Part of the new liberal institutions' priorities are to track the subtle points of spin. For example, ThinkProgress got Bush Knew 10 Marines Had Died Prior To Rose Garden Remarks, Didn’t Mention It because he wanted to keep the happy spin going.

Alito in trouble. Don't really care.

Torture vs the media: Project Censored presents Hard Evidence of US Torturing Prisoners to Death Ignored by Corporate Media. Even the WaPo says Rice offers a weak defense of torture.

Skyscrapers and carbon sequestration schemes may cause earthquakes. The world's tallest tower in Taipei may have cracked open a fault line. Ouch.

Microsmish: IE flaw lets intruders into Google Desktop. Xbox 360 is lacking in some good features. SO much damn hype.

Persian Atom Smash: Iran Plans to Build Two More Reactors. Look to Khuzestan for the potential "FIRST FRONT IN THE WAR ON IRAN."

Now we've got some mothafuckin' scandals. Have fun kids.

Madsen: Discreet top political / intel torture meeting today in DC

Posted at the DailyKos. I wonder if it will get any bounce, or just slide through the torrent of diaries...

Wayne Madsen (maverick/somewhat conspiratorial) DC journalist, reports that a major meeting of defense and intelligence personnel, including John McCain, are quietly meeting later today to come up with some kind of answer on the torture problem. This in turn has sparked investigation from the Pentagon, according to Madsen.

Retired generals and admirals subject to special investigation by Pentagon surveillance/ intelligence team. Retired top U.S. generals and admirals planning to attend a December 7 meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Pentagon City, an office and hotel complex next to the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, have drawn the interest of a special investigation by special agents of the Department of Defense. According to informed sources, the meeting, described as a "retreat," is to be attended by a number of former members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former heads of intelligence agencies, and key members of the U.S. Congress, including Sen. John McCain...

I offer this with some caveats, below....

The generic subject of the meeting is torture and detaining of prisoners. The meeting is strictly a "no media" event, according to individuals familiar with its planning. Pentagon agents have called individuals who have been invited to the meeting and inquired about details and the involvement of active duty officers. One agent, Special Agent Fred Shaw, said to be with Defense Department security and coordinating his activities with Pentagon Inspector General Steve Anthony, also made contact with local police departments asking for assistance in tracking the movements of some of the invited attendees. The Rumsfeld Pentagon is clearly interested in the meeting and the identities of the some 40 invited attendees.

Personally, I always take his stuff with a grain of salt, but I think this guy has kicked around long enough to come up with some weird and deep sources. He has been around for a while.

Supposedly, diaries involving Madsen stuff have been banned because they are unreasonably conspiratorial -- and he's vented a bit at the DailyKos community. Is this true? What does this say about DailyKos faith in the 'marketplace of ideas'? Indeed, such pieces as "Texas to Florida: White House-linked clandestine operation paid for "vote switching" software" are difficult for anyone to believe, but we live in really weird times.

I would say that when the Pentagon has totally been exposed attempting to run psychological operations against the Iraqi public, and in turn Americans, then at the least we ought to give a moment's more thought to the weird world of intelligence disinformation and info warfare. I'm genuinely interested if anyone can tell me how to really prove that someone like Madsen is just not worth paying any attention to.

In this case, well someone should get digging and see if this secret meeting checks out -- and see if the Pentagon routinely spies on high officials.

Finally, I'll add that he's published a number of pieces about hard-working Americans in the intelligence community that have been squashed -- in a sense he is charting the slow purging of intelligence professionals by neo-cons and other nasty types; for example, the Porter Goss CIA purges. There is also an interesting story (Dec. 3) about how MZM (the Cunningham bribers) were tampering with databases at the NSA to exaggerate threats, including the famous Aluminum Tubes.

Even if he is fabricating a lot of stuff, I can't help but feel that the general direction of his reporting reflects something real. Can we please dig into this and find out?

Thanks, Bumiller: "I am here to tell you [Bush] reads the newspapers"

MediaMatters redesigned their excellent website and now it's still excellent. If 'the good guys' are ever going to get a grip on the spin cycle, sites that apply Fair Use to capture and reapply video clips are crucial.

In this case, they caught NY Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller informing Chris Matthews that she was 'here' to let him know that Bush actually skims newspapers. In any other country the host might scoff about that.

We have a lot of catching up to do before the Kool Kids get it. WaPo's Dana Milbank spoke in Minnesota the other day, and it was rebroadcast on MPR today. The audience questioned Milbank about how long she thought it would take before people fully understood how this war started. Milbank responded that she still hadn't seen anything that indicated they had manipulated intelligence -- most of The Mistake was already clearly understood. Besides, she said, this Office of Special Plans thing was sooo small, how could it have manipulated the Big American Government (and the infallible Dinner Party Junta that runs the country)?

She claimed that the CIA's National Intelligence Estimate to Congress proved it was mainly the Agency's fault for hyping the intel (which they only hyped because they low-balled Iraq's WMD in the 1990s).

Again, whenever these establishment types refer to the Silberman Report or the Senate Intel Committee Report, they are making a basic 'appeal to authority' argument that absolves everyone in the Bush Administration from how they systematically, mendaciously exaggerated the Saddam Threat. Likewise, the NIE sort of pins the blame on the CIA, but in reality the NIE was but one slice of the broad War Selling effort.

So there are two main, competing narratives: the "war intel was spoofed mainly by Iraqi exiles and neo-cons" narrative that I've tried to illustrate on this site, and DC's shiny answer, "the CIA was a little bit stoned, and then we invaded. Oops," narrative.

The problem is that over the past couple months, the whole 'innocent mistake' narrative has been dissolving, and the 'war intel was spoofed' narrative is now much stronger. Scooter Libby's indictment was fallout from the 'dirty fight' that the neo-cons and the war's partisans fought in 2002 and 2003, the somewhat esoteric 'information war' that Rove, Cheney, Libby, the 'White House Iraq Group,' Woolsey, Perle, Feith & the Office of Special Plans, and media pawns like Robert Novak fought to defend the old "Saddam == Al Qaeda == Teh Satan!! OMG!!" narrative.

More later...

Post-Holiday Situation: world's still jumbled, the cat is watching. "Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

This was an excellent holiday weekend for me, caught up with lots of people, found out who is far-flung and to where. I will not gossip about the details, but I feel like I'm properly in touch with most of my circles of friends nowadays, which makes me feel much more comfortable in my skin.

Drunk fun with the office copy machine -- who has to fix it afterwards?

NATIONAL JOURNAL: Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel
Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The hit parade continues. More via Booman Tribune and DKos. The details are ugly and incriminating.

Tony Blair is going to pieces.

Smokin in the coal mine: Peter Gartrell wrote a story carried in quite a few papers about a program to get coal miners to quit smoking. Their lungs must be in terrible shape anyway...

Air Power in Iraq: Sudden talk that the US will withdraw ground forces and perhaps grant Iraqis the power to call in airstrikes, as Sy Hersh put in the New Yorker put it (as covered by the Guardian, Stygius, DailyKos - with terrifying bits from a CNN Hersh interview, and as always Juan Cole). Bush is having some messianic visions again, but hey, at least Ahmadi-Nejad is too.

More headline chunks: US says Iraq insurgents can be 'part of solution': US 're-evaluates' its position after initially expressed dissatisfaction with Cairo meeting statement 'right of people to resistance'. Juan Cole talks about what the insurgents told the CIA in Cairo.

In the broader context, Bush really did want al-Jazeera gone when he purportedly suggested bombing it. Crazed old neo-con Frank Gaffney approves of bombing al Jazeera. And Michael Jackson blames the Jews for his money woes.

Interesting site: DefenseTech. With regards to the Syria thing, UN chief: Arab leaders worried Syria could become the next Iraq. 19 different UAVs operate in Iraq, but how many can solve the situation? On the plus side, a UAV to deliver medical supplies has been invented.

Zarqawi-Goldstein, part 239: the great terrorist is a cartoon character. It was doubted last year. And Marshall puts a bit in on that. Less skeptical, the Zarqawi dilemma.

The Pentagon said that White Phosphorus was a chemical weapon, when Saddam was using it. How ironic. (this is the declassified doc) JawaReport on Iraq Gun Porn: Which Guns Suck, Which Guns Rock. The Rummy-Blitzer exchange is amazing.

This is sort of funny. The Weekly Standard is going to save the day and prove that Saddam had WMDs and was in fact, Osama's boyfriend. Good work. Daou gives us the ten major pro-war fallacies in case we forgot.

For the obsessively detail oriented, Lesser Neocons of L'Affaire Plame (featuring our man 'Clean Break' Wurmser). Fortunately I merely skimmed it. Raimondo cackles about the Feast of Scandal for Thanksgiving.

Raimondo also pokes around the waters of anti-Semitism that apparently are now getting somehow spun towards Chris Matthews -- as an excuse for Scooter leaking him Valerie Plame's name. I am not sure this makes sense. However, Raimondo adds that Wilson once said the following:

"The real agenda in all of this of course, was to redraw the political map of the Middle East. Now that is code, whether you like it or not, but it is code for putting into place the strategy memorandum that was done by Richard Perle and his study group in the mid-90's which was called, 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm.' And what it is – cut to the quick – is if you take out some of these countries, some of these governments that are antagonistic to Israel then you provide the Israeli government with greater wherewithal to impose its terms and conditions upon the Palestinian people – whatever those terms and conditions might be. In other words, the road to peace in the Middle East goes through Baghdad and Damascus. Maybe Tehran. And maybe Cairo and maybe Tripoli if these guys actually have their way. Rather than going through Jerusalem."

So the anti-Clean Break Conspiracy was also anti-Semitic, which legitimatized leaking Plame's name?

Crazed Mercenaries and their video cameras: There is apparently some creepy video of Iraqi civilian cars getting blown up by the good folks at Aegis Defence Services, a privatized military firm set up Lt Col Tim Spicer -- the former director of Sandline International, a defunct company that used to sell arms to the guys in Sierra Leone, along the shadier side of geopolitics. AegisIraq.co.uk was the site the video was on. (CSM on the story)

There is of course pretty much no congressional oversight of the vast mercenary army in Iraq. (more on Aegis, Sandline and Executive Outcomes - here's even more!) The more one thinks about private armies, the more it seems like an amazingly self-reinforcing arrangement. Capitalism-squared, you might say.

Kurt Vonnegut said that terrorist die for their own self-respect. That is fairly insightful, but of course draws flack from much wiser keyboard commandos.

"What George Bush and his gang did not realise was that people fight back. Peace wasn't restored in Vietnam until we got kicked out. Everything's quiet there now."
There's a long pause before Vonnegut speaks again: "It is sweet and noble - sweet and honourable I guess it is - to die for what you believe in."
....I ask one more question: "But terrorists believe in twisted religious things, don't they? So surely that can't be right?"
"Well, they're dying for their own self-respect," Vonnegut fires back. "It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's [like] your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing."
There's another long pause and Vonnegut's eyes suggest his mind has wandered off somewhere. Then, suddenly, he turns back to me and says: "It must be an amazing high."

The CIA wants Dr. Phil's tactics for Guantanamo. Well, maybe it's an improvement.

The UK Ministry of Defense complains that farmers are shining lights at their Apache helicopters around Dorset -- and they think this could could cause a crash. Huh.

Iran Spring?? (Foreign Policy) Realists Tighten Grip as Talks Open with Iran by Jim Lobe. Why bother getting into the gory details? But I will say that Lobe is really an excellent source on this stuff & the neo-cons. Basically the point is that the neo-cons have been discredited, and the 'realists' are getting the upper hand finally.

Washington's growing reliance on and support for regional diplomacy marks a serious setback to neo-conservatives who, long before the Iraq war, had championed the unilateral imposition of a Pax Americana in the Middle East that would put an end to what in their view constituted the chief threats to Israel's security -- Arab nationalism and Iranian theocracy.

Now, two and a half years after invading Iraq to put that peace into place, the administration finds itself seeking the support of both forces, just as the realists had warned.

Check out this huge statement that Iran purchased in the NY Times. In particular that they haven't started a war of aggression against their neighbors in 250 years. I think that the way that various parties have managed the ethnic groups on the periphery was not exactly polite over that time... either way the demonization will continue.

BBC: Doubts grow over US Afghan strategy.

Internet hug transmission: Scientists in Singapore are developing a way to 'transmit hugs' over the Internet through vibrating jackets.

The Drunkard's Guide to Poker. What if hackers ruled the world? New Firefox. Something in the ocean goes Boing.

Big Bang in Israel: It's very big news that Sharon has decided to quit the Likud Party and go for elections. Alongside this, there is a younger leftist in charge of the Labor Party now, so suddenly the meanest part of the Israeli right-wing -- the faction that opposed even the Gaza pullout -- will likely find itself without any power in the next Israeli government.

Let me press all these Haaretz headlines together into one mush. 11 Israelis injured, at least 4 Hezbollah gunmen killed in failed kidnap attempt. Hezbollah releases video footage of [last] Monday's fighting. PM to offer PA independence for security. Eyeing Likud leadership, Mofaz, Shalom lambaste Netanyahu. Israel maintains its strategic advantage, says Jaffee Center. Poll: 25% of settlers east of fence prepared to leave homes.

Oh Sharon: graphic from excellent Haartez article. "Sharon knows the Likud was not a done deal." Palestinians hopeful after political volcano. Analysis / Where politics and security meet: A very interesting bit about when Israeli internal politics and the Hezbollah thing collide in real-time. Sharon aides: PM planning far-reaching diplomatic initiatives. Ariel Sharon's new faction is a one-term party.

Settlers throw stones at Palestinian homes in Hebron. Palestinians reported that settlers cut down 200 olive trees near Nablus. Nothing quite like olive tree-based warfare.

In Israel, it's the end of the Ashkenazi era? Peretz is a Sephardi. But this I thought most interesting:

At the same time, will the end of the era of generals arrive, as well? Will the time come when the top political rank does not originate in the security forces? If the conflict with the Palestinians were to end, the entire agenda would change, and the relative advantage of the generals would be eliminated. Generals would no longer be able to move so easily between the highest echelons of the army, Mossad and Shin Bet, to the political leadership.

This is one of the reasons why the generals are in no rush to end the conflict. They know that one of the most powerful factors influencing the voters is fear. Which is why they try to frighten, to pump up the volume on threats, to brandish the Iranian missiles, to carry out targeted assassinations and to always, but always, keep the finger close to the trigger. Conversely, a civilian leader does not view the other side through the gunsight, and his chances of resolving the conflict are therefore better.

Private prisons are coming to Israel. What could go wrong? The article notes that private prisons are second only to America's high tech sector as a growth industry. A parallel thought:

"Private prisons are not the only reason for this increase, but there is no doubt that their lobbying activity is one of the reasons for the increasing stringency of punishment and the increase in the number of prisoners," says attorney Aviv Wasserman, the head of the human rights division at the Academic College of Law in Ramat Gan, whose petition to the High Court of Justice against the decision to establish a private prison here is still pending.

The UK's Foreign Office and the EU leaked a document harshly critical of expanding Jewish settlements in the Jerusalem area. The EU heads of mission around there believe that all these settlements could radicalize local Palestinians, and indeed likely cause more terrorism to occur. Yet another logical reason that settlements are totally insane. Israel calls the Foreign Office 'unrelentingly pro-Palestinian.' The document, which reflects the views of many European diplomats, specifically bears a lot on the E1 Ma'ale Adumim settlement that I detailed here a while ago.

Russian missiles: You have to love the Russians and their missiles. They have made a new one that can change around in midflight and deploy decoys. Nice.

Wow, Cunningham really knew how to take bribes with gusto. Lots of spreading probes.

Banning foreigners that the Bush Administration doesn't like: Believe it or not, a huge proportion of America's most valuable inhabitants were not born here, nor did they march in an acceptably quiet lock-step with the Nixon, Ford or Reagan Administrations when they got here.

Indeed, a common theme of American history has been blaming foreigners for their weird and subversive politics poisoning our fair landscape, so now we must understand why it was a terrible idea to let the Jews, Italians and Irish in here in the first place.

Nowadays, the Muslims threaten to pray at weird times of day here, and lecture university students on ancient battles and esoteric organizations like the Cult of the Assassins. THIS SHALL NOT STAND. And when the Irish, Hebrews, Muslims, Italians, Chinese and the Cajun French and the Koreans and the Mexicans are all finally gone, we will look around at a desolate land and wonder where all the good restaurants went.

So I heartily approve that the US is banning academics and accusing them of supporting terrorism. If we do not maintain the purity of our precious bodily fluids, then the terrorists win.

(here's a link purporting an Assassin-Al Qaeda conspiracy link, at Rotten.com of all places! Ha! Oh wait, the Assassins were Shi'a, so it's nonsense - but the structure of the secret society is interesting. Nothing's True, everything is permitted :-) )

Hersh: Covert War extends into Syria

Ah, for the longest time I have been speculating that they were going to let the war spill into Syria, under the ridiculous assertion that this would somehow improve the Situation. Finally Sy Hersh has said that we have gone in... Oh boy, what ever the fuck could go wrong? (and who approved of Attacking Syria, exactly? Congress??)

There is a lot of terrible stuff in here.

UP IN THE AIR
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Where is the Iraq war headed next?

....“The President is more determined than ever to stay the course,” the former defense official said. “He doesn’t feel any pain. Bush is a believer in the adage ‘People may suffer and die, but the Church advances.’ ” He said that the President had become more detached, leaving more issues to Karl Rove and Vice-President Cheney. “They keep him in the gray world of religious idealism, where he wants to be anyway,” the former defense official said. Bush’s public appearances, for example, are generally scheduled in front of friendly audiences, most often at military bases. Four decades ago, President Lyndon Johnson, who was also confronted with an increasingly unpopular war, was limited to similar public forums. “Johnson knew he was a prisoner in the White House,” the former official said, “but Bush has no idea.”
......

Meanwhile, as the debate over troop reductions continues, the covert war in Iraq has expanded in recent months to Syria. A composite American Special Forces team, known as an S.M.U., for “special-mission unit,” has been ordered, under stringent cover, to target suspected supporters of the Iraqi insurgency across the border. (The Pentagon had no comment.) “It’s a powder keg,” the Pentagon consultant said of the tactic. “But, if we hit an insurgent network in Iraq without hitting the guys in Syria who are part of it, the guys in Syria would get away. When you’re fighting an insurgency, you have to strike everywhere—and at once.”

Another part of the article points out the fears among many in the military if American air power is provided to the Iraqis, meaning the "Iraqi government" -- and whichever tinpot tribal leader is in control that Thursday -- will be able to order American airstrikes on whichever 'terrorist' sect they choose.

So in both instances, force spiraling out of control. But what else is new?

Why did the case crack now?

Josh Marshall asks the million dollar question:

This is one of those media questions for which there is no real way to provide a concrete answer. But it is at least worth asking: How many of the stories coming out now under the very broad heading of botched or manipulated intelligence could have been reported and written at more or less any time over the last two years? I suspect the answer is, the great majority of them.

They're getting written now because the president's poor poll numbers make him a readier target.

I know I'm not saying anything most of you don't know. And better late than never, of course. But all working reporters and editors should consider what that says about the profession.

Damn media. More tomorrow.

"I knew the answer in the beginning:" Phosphorus chemical weapons: from U.S. weapons into Iraqi buildings & people; Fake Intel battle finally takes hold

ExplodingDog comic says it all. "I knew the answer in the beginning." The poor stick figure works through it now, too late -- the war was rationalized in terrible ways, turned now to mist. The righteous American stands alone, confused, as the world smolders with conflict, blood all around. The US has apparently introduced White Phosphorus chemical weapons into the arena of Iraq, apparently using them around Fallujah to kill targets and surrounding people:

White phosphorus results in painful chemical burn injuries. The resultant burn typically appears as a necrotic area with a yellowish color and characteristic garliclike odor. White phosphorus is highly lipid soluble and as such, is believed to have rapid dermal penetration once particles are embedded under the skin. Because of its enhanced lipid solubility, many have believed that these injuries result in delayed wound healing. This has not been well studied; therefore, all that can be stated is that white phosphorus burns represent a small subsegment of chemical burns, all of which typically result in delayed wound healing.
..... Phosphorus burns on the skin are deep and painful; a firm eschar is produced and is surrounded by vesiculation.

White Phosphorus shells apparently react with human flesh by sort of melting it, giving victims a carmelized, melted appearance while the clothes remain intact. There are reports that it's a developed Marine tactic, used in Fallujah.

The US Army itself admitted that it uses WP in Iraq, in their own "Field Artillery Magazine", as a DKos diarist pulled it together. The military said (PDF):

"WP [i.e., white phosphorus rounds] proved to be an effective and versatile munition. We used it for screening missions at two breeches and, later in the fight, as a potent psychological weapon against the insurgents in trench lines and spider holes when we could not get effects on them with HE. We fired 'shake and bake' missions at the insurgents, using WP to flush them out and HE to take them out."

When Paula Zahn introduced the exciting Suicide Bomber Woman Video the other day, they couldn't resist throwing in this horrible theatrical music, that kind of "Islamic Threat" theme, heavy with throbbing drums and synth strings, the stuff that keeps FOX News so jazzy and amusing. The thrill of the chase! Vicarious pursuit! Who can stop these Arabs before they come down the street!?

For some reason there are tornadoes ravaging the country today - the atmosphere is weird right now. Why are there so many Lockheed-Martin and Boeing feelgood promotional ads on CNN? What are they even selling?

"The End of News?" by Michael Massing - as rightwing dominance settles over much of the news landscape. This pretty much sums up the toxic information swamp we're in:

Through the Internet, commentators can channel criticism of the press to the general public faster and more efficiently than before. As became plain in the Swift Boat campaign against John Kerry, to cite one of many examples, an unscrupulous critic can spread exaggerated or erroneous claims instantaneously to thousands of people, who may, in turn, repeat them to millions more on talk radio programs, on cable television, or on more official "news" Web sites. This kind of recycled commentary has become all the more effective because it is aimed principally at a sector of the population that seldom if ever sees serious press coverage.

On the other hand, there's been this change in the political wind over the last month or so, with Libby's indictment, Harry Reid's recalcitrance -- forcing the long-suppressed investigation into the spoofed intelligence. It's been a treat to see Wolf Blitzer asking everyone about it, over and over, while Cafferty cackles. It seems the elite crew finally smell blood.

James Fallows runs through the basic points of the whole case. When every chattering head on TV claims "the Senate Intelligence report PROVES this intelligence manipulation never happened", and yet, that's pretty much their only firm point, it signals that a great many pillars of the pro-war case have finally been knocked away.

Another major defense of the war was the National Intelligence Estimate on October 1, 2002 that the CIA produced about Iraq - which they claim showed that the CIA and other intelligence agencies was dumb as anyone about the matter. There was a classified version that only a limited circle of politicians could read, and the unclassified version. The classified one had lots of things like "The State Dept thinks this WMD is not really certain", while the version that they deigned to permit Congress to read lacked the statements of doubt. Small catch. Lots of details on the NIE here and here.

RUMSFELD STRIKES BACK read the CNN title bar today, as he cited the Dems who'd talked about Iraq's threat in the past. He says that the decision to invade was based on the same stuff they had, they were all seeing, before 2000. He implies that the quality and quantity of information available to the Dems in 2002 and 2003 was the same as what the President saw, as 'everyone knew.' But even the Washington Post can't take that seriously anymore:

But Bush and his aides had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions.

Rummy even trotted out the Orwellian classic "Islamofascists: we just gots to kill 'em!"
Nothing quite as handy as merging political identities for a quick & lazy ethnic demonization -- see 'Judeo-bolshevik' for how these things work out.

They keep saying, "How dare we have this discussion now, when the war is still happening and the troops need moral support?" Well, three arguments:

First, the American public ought to see the difference in Iraq intelligence between what Democrats in Congress, Bush himself, the various intelligence agencies, and the shady guys around Cheney and Rumsfeld saw. The stuff from Chalabi should be on the public record, one piece at a time.

Second, because I believe that things were willfully manipulated (and aggressively defended when attacked - the Plame case a key symptom), the people who did that shit should lose their security clearances and go play golf with their devious friends. They don't have some intrinsic right to government paychecks, even if firing them would embarrass or fragment Bush's sad White House more than it has already. It has been widely said, especially in recent weeks, that people like Michael Ledeen were running around in 2002, helping move the specific Niger forgeries that scared the hell out of the American people. Some of this was dug up by Josh Marshall and Laura Rozen in "Iran Contra II?" Larry Franklin and the AIPAC scandal fold right into this stuff, as well.

Third, it is plenty patriotic to believe that the American people should pressure the government to have a realistic, honestly weighed and "not murderously insane" view of the world. The Bush Administration has no short-circuit to infallibility or the Wisdom of God. The embattled ranks of the U.S. military need to know that the pencil-pushers in DC will actually have to pay a price for their nonsense, and their evasion of disasters like the torture policy. The blame here resides near the top of the chain of command -- we have to help out the lower rungs by getting them out of the system. The armed forces have to know that we are going to protect them from being forced to commit such terrible acts as torture.

From an article in the Miami Herald, Leonard Pitts:

In the name of fighting terror, we have terrorized, and in the name of defending our values, we have betrayed them. We have imprisoned Muslims in America and refused to say if we had them, why we had them, or even to provide them attorneys. We have passed laws making it easier for government to snoop into what you read, who you talk to, where you go. We have equated dissent with lack of patriotism, disagreement with treason. And we have tortured.

Meanwhile, Lindsey Graham attempts to suspend Habeus Corpus for people detained as terrorist suspects. (If you permit yourself to believe that they're all known, proven terrorists, well, that just isn't true of any jail or shadow detention network - sorry)

Fortunately there are lots of military veteran Democrats, many from Iraq, who are getting into the elections less than 12 months from now. While I can't demand their politics align with my own perfectly, they'd be a hell of a lot better than the chickenhawks at understanding the terrible price of war and violence (as well as treating veterans decently).

The blowback against the Right is reaching far and wide.

Jordan bombing: Juan Cole reflects on the death of Moustapha Akkad, a Syrian movie producer who was involved with the Halloween movies, among others. Akkad was on track to produce a film about Saladin, but now it won't happen:

The guerrilla war in Iraq has claimed a unique cinematic voice of transnational modernity, who had explored the terror of psychopathology and the angst of alienation, as well as the history of anti-colonial movements.

The Iraq conflict has become a bad horror film. It has killed the grandfather of the "Halloween" movies. And it has snuffed out the man who wanted to bring real Muslim heroes such as the Prophet Muhammad, Omar Mukhtar and Saladin to American film-going audiences. Now, his last project will remain unachieved. Saladin was a Kurd from what is now northern Iraq, and he defeated the Crusaders with a legendary chivalry that inspired their respect.

Zarqawi's henchmen inspire only horror, not respect. They have no chivalry, only bloodthirstiness. They are Michael Myers, not Saladin.

Moustapha Akkad was an American voice as well as a Muslim one. We needed his ability to communicate one culture to the other. His death diminishes us all, and signals the nightfall of a decade-long "Halloween" of the horrific sort for Iraq and for the United States.

New Israeli Labor Party leader wants to pay settlers to leave West Bank: Condi Rice managed to cut a deal to fully open the Gaza-Egypt border for the Palestinians, a major step forward towards independent operations. This is good, but also the new leader of the Israeli Labor party, Amir Peretz, said that he wants to compensate settlers who want to leave the West Bank.

Peretz, who accuses the government of neglecting the poor and wants to restart peace talks with the Palestinians, also told Israeli television on Saturday he would back any bid "to give back parts" of the West Bank.
Wegner said Peretz agreed with Sharon that Israel should keep large Jewish settlement blocs in the occupied land. But, Wegner said, Peretz wanted the "billions" Israel spends on building those enclaves to be diverted to help the country's poor.
.....Wegner said Israel was in effect holding settlers not protected by the barrier as "political hostages".

This is true. It is unethical to force Jewish people to live in an occupied territory when they simply can't afford to move out. Perversely, market forces keep impoverished Jewish settlers trapped there, deprived of the choice to leave -- trapped by tax incentives and poverty, they're hapless pawns in the Israeli right-wing's absurd land game.

November 2 Antiwar rally at University

I arrived in the middle of an antiwar rally at the University of Minnesota yesterday, as approximately 1000 people, mostly students, came to mark the 2000th US military death, the indictment of Lewis Libby, and a rapidly shifting national political situation.

When the newly-formed Youth Against War and Racism group met at the Loring Park Coffee House in March to plan a fall student protest, they couldn't have foreseen how America's view of the war would shift by then: the Downing Street Memos showed the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invasion, I. Lewis Libby was indicted for damaging national security while trying to discredit a war critic, and worst of all, more than 2000 American service personnel were killed.

On Wednesday afternoon, activists staged dozens of protests nationwide, as about 1000 people, including hundreds of Minneapolis high school students, rallied on the U's East Bank to mark the strange year that's passed since Bush's re-election. YAWR students demanded that Minneapolis schools ban military recruiters (as a Minnesota Daily video documents), though such a move could endanger their federal funding under the No Child Left Behind Act. "War leaves every child behind," read one protester's sign.

As the protest spilled off the Mall into Washington Avenue, turning east towards the military recruiting offices, Minneapolis City Councilman Dean Zimmermann was spotted standing high atop a utility box, attempting to count the crowd. More than a dozen counter-protesters lined up in front of the offices with signs such as "Peace through Strength" and "The leaders of tomorrow should be in class today!" Protesters responded by shouting that "the leaders of tomorrow are getting practice today!"

Across the spectrum, America is becoming a majority anti-war country. 53% of Americans believe that the administration "deliberately misled the public" on WMD issues, a Gallup/CNN poll discovered last week. Meanwhile, reports in the Italian media suggested that before the war, Italian military intelligence and the Pentagon's secret Office of Special Plans channeled these lies, including the Niger uranium forgeries, into the White House.

Who could blame high school students for war anxiety? The same Pentagon bureaucracy that ruthlessly targets Sunni tribesmen selects students based on intelligence like their grades, ethnicity and income. What student could believe a war with 27 rationales? They see their friends and family disappear, only to return injured, psychologically damaged, exposed to depleted uranium and IEDs, or worse, draped under a flag.

One anonymous black-clad protester, masked with a bandana, told me that he and his associates represented the Minnesota branch of the Anarchist Black Cross organization. His principal reason for protesting? "Revolution," he said, revealing the core of our nation's spirit - to rebel, grow, prosper. It still flourishes: in October, Ipsos Public Affairs found that 50% of Americans agreed that "if President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him."

After the street protest, at the Oak Street Cinema a teach-in was held to teach students how to challenge recruiters in their schools. The protest was also organized by the Anti-War Committee, Socialist Alternative and the Anti-War Organizing League.

The Anti-war case breaks wide open at the Senate; Ledeen-Niger forgery speculation continues

A major day in American history. Well there's been a lot of those lately. For the first time in decades, the Senate was abruptly shifted into a closed session. Unfortunately I have a bunch of stuff to deal with tonight so I'm not sure how much I can post. So why not cut to the chase with an article from the American Conservative by ex-CIA officer Philip Giraldi, detailing how Michael Ledeen, SISMI (the Italian military intelligence agency), and the Office of Special Plans worked to help channel that spoofed intelligence, including the Niger forgeries so ardently defended by Libby, Rove et. al.

This was posted on ex-CIA officer Larry Johnson's website, No Quarter. Johnson is a strong supporter of Joe Wilson. This was posted in the morning. I wonder if it came up in the Senate.

Forging the Case for War
Who was behind the Niger uranium documents?

by Philip Giraldi

From the beginning, there has been little doubt in the intelligence community that the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame was part of a bigger story. That she was exposed in an attempt to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, is clear, but the drive to demonize Wilson cannot reasonably be attributed only to revenge. Rather, her identification likely grew out of an attempt to cover up the forging of documents alleging that Iraq attempted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.

What took place and why will not be known with any certainty until the details of the Fitzgerald investigation are revealed. (As we go to press, Fitzgerald has made no public statement.) But recent revelations in the Italian press, most notably in the pages of La Repubblica, along with information already on the public record, suggest a plausible scenario for the evolution of Plamegate.

Information developed by Italian investigators indicates that the documents were produced in Italy with the connivance of the Italian intelligence service. It also reveals that the introduction of the documents into the American intelligence stream was facilitated by Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans (OSP), a parallel intelligence center set up in the Pentagon to develop alternative sources of information in support of war against Iraq.

The first suggestion that Iraq was seeking yellowcake uranium to construct a nuclear weapon came on Oct. 15, 2001, shortly after 9/11, when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his newly appointed chief of the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (SISMI), Nicolo Pollari, made an official visit to Washington. Berlusconi was eager to make a good impression and signaled his willingness to support the American effort to implicate Saddam Hussein in 9/11. Pollari, in his position for less than three weeks, was likewise keen to establish himself with his American counterparts and was under pressure from Berlusconi to present the U.S. with information that would be vital to the rapidly accelerating War on Terror. Well aware of the Bush administration’s obsession with Iraq, Pollari used his meeting with top CIA officials to provide a SISMI dossier indicating that Iraq had sought to buy uranium in Niger. The same intelligence was passed simultaneously to Britain’s MI-6.

But the Italian information was inconclusive and old, some of it dating from the 1980s. The British, the CIA, and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research analyzed the intelligence and declared that it was “lacking in detail” and “very limited” in scope.

In February 2002, Pollari and Berlusconi resubmitted their report to Washington with some embellishments, resulting in Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger. Wilson visited Niamey in February 2002 and subsequently reported to the CIA that the information could not be confirmed.

Enter Michael Ledeen, the Office of Special Plans’ man in Rome. Ledeen was paid $30,000 by the Italian Ministry of the Interior in 1978 for a report on terrorism and was well known to senior SISMI officials. Italian sources indicate that Pollari was eager to engage with the Pentagon hardliners, knowing they were at odds with the CIA and the State Department officials who had slighted him. He turned to Ledeen, who quickly established himself as the liaison between SISMI and Feith’s OSP, where he was a consultant. Ledeen, who had personal access to the National Security Council’s Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley and was also a confidant of Vice President Cheney, was well placed to circumvent the obstruction coming from the CIA and State.

The timing, August 2002, was also propitious as the administration was intensifying its efforts to make the case for war. In the same month, the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) was set up to market the war by providing information to friends in the media. It has subsequently been alleged that false information generated by Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress was given to Judith Miller and other journalists through WHIG.

On Sept. 9, 2002, Ledeen set up a secret meeting between Pollari and Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley. Two weeks before the meeting, a group of documents had been offered to journalist Elisabetta Burba of the Italian magazine Panorama for $10,000, but the demand for money was soon dropped and the papers were handed over. The man offering the documents was Rocco Martino, a former SISMI officer who delivered the first WMD dossier to London in October 2002. That Martino quickly dropped his request for money suggests that the approach was a set-up primarily intended to surface the documents.

Panorama, perhaps not coincidentally, is owned by Prime Minister Berlusconi. On Oct. 9, the documents were taken from the magazine to the U.S. Embassy, where they were apparently expected. Instead of going to the CIA Station, which would have been the normal procedure, they were sent straight to Washington where they bypassed the agency’s analysts and went directly to the NSC and the Vice President’s Office.

On Jan. 28, 2003, over the objections of the CIA and State, the famous 16 words about Niger’s uranium were used in President Bush’s State of the Union address justifying an attack on Iraq: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” Both the British and American governments had actually obtained the report from the Italians, who had asked that they not be identified as the source. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency also looked at the documents shortly after Bush spoke and pronounced them crude forgeries.

President Bush soon stopped referring to the Niger uranium, but Vice President Cheney continued to insist that Iraq was seeking nuclear weapons.

The question remains: who forged the documents? The available evidence suggests that two candidates had access and motive: SISMI and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans.

In January 2001, there was a break-in at the Niger Embassy in Rome. Documents were stolen but no valuables. The break-in was subsequently connected to, among others, Rocco Martino, who later provided the dossier to Panorama. Italian investigators now believe that Martino, with SISMI acquiescence, originally created a Niger dossier in an attempt to sell it to the French, who were managing the uranium concession in Niger and were concerned about unauthorized mining. Martino has since admitted to the Financial Times that both the Italian and American governments were behind the eventual forgery of the full Niger dossier as part of a disinformation operation. The authentic documents that were stolen were bunched with the Niger uranium forgeries, using authentic letterhead and Niger Embassy stamps. By mixing the papers, the stolen documents were intended to establish the authenticity of the forgeries.

At this point, any American connection to the actual forgeries remains unsubstantiated, though the OSP at a minimum connived to circumvent established procedures to present the information directly to receptive policy makers in the White House. But if the OSP is more deeply involved, Michael Ledeen, who denies any connection with the Niger documents, would have been a logical intermediary in co-ordinating the falsification of the documents and their surfacing, as he was both a Pentagon contractor and was frequently in Italy. He could have easily been assisted by ex-CIA friends from Iran-Contra days, including a former Chief of Station from Rome, who, like Ledeen, was also a consultant for the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress.

It would have been extremely convenient for the administration, struggling to explain why Iraq was a threat, to be able to produce information from an unimpeachable “foreign intelligence source” to confirm the Iraqi worst-case.

The possible forgery of the information by Defense Department employees would explain the viciousness of the attack on Valerie Plame and her husband. Wilson, when he denounced the forgeries in the New York Times in July 2003, turned an issue in which there was little public interest into something much bigger. The investigation continues, but the campaign against this lone detractor suggests that the administration was concerned about something far weightier than his critical op-ed.

Developing!!! What nice days...

White House refused to fork over docs to Senate indicating they spoofed Iraq intelligence; Iraq schemers sold Zarqawi lies to U.S.

Libby got indicted. Tomorrow is another day. In the low light & very low shutter speed my camera made some weird effects. From the peace vigil on the Lake Street bridge last night:

"Miami: Emergency Supplies Are Dwindling" / "Aide to Cheney Appears Likely to Be Indicted; Rove Under Scrutiny"

I feel that life will never have such interesting sets of headlines simultaneously.

Well hey, it was already pretty much Bush's worst week ever, and now Fitzmas is upon us! Pat Fitzgerald has his own website. Expect indictment PDFs for Libby soon. Raw Story said that some indictments have already been secured. Antiwar.com has even more bits about it. More fake documents suddenly come spilling out of the woodwork. As they note, get this, the myth of Zarqawi was peddled to American intelligence agents and Washington lapped it up! UK Telegraph reported last year (via Antiwar):

US military intelligence agents in Iraq have revealed a series of botched and often tawdry dealings with unreliable sources who, in the words of one source, "told us what we wanted to hear".

"We were basically paying up to $10,000 a time to opportunists, criminals and chancers who passed off fiction and supposition about Zarqawi as cast-iron fact, making him out as the linchpin of just about every attack in Iraq," the agent said.

"Back home this stuff was gratefully received and formed the basis of policy decisions. We needed a villain, someone identifiable for the public to latch on to, and we got one."

The sprawling US intelligence community is in a state of open political warfare amid conflicting pressures from election-year politics, military combat and intelligence analysis. The Bush administration has seized on Zarqawi as the principal leader of the insurgency, mastermind of the country's worst suicide bombings and the man behind the abduction of foreign hostages. He is held up as the most tangible link to Osama bin Laden and proof of the claim that the former Iraqi regime had links to al-Qa'eda.

However, fresh intelligence emerging from around Fallujah, the rebel-held city that is at the heart of the insurgency, suggests that, despite a high degree of fragmentation, the insurgency is led and dominated not by Arab foreigners but by members of Iraq's Sunni minority.

Clemons floats a rumor that John Bolton's former Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz might be a hidden link in the Plame case, perhaps the source of the leak itself. But it's just a rumor. Tomorrow will tell!! The world according to former Powell aide Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. I linked this before but I like it a lot. And his bit in the LA Times. Clemons also had excerpts from a new New Yorker article interviewing Scowcroft, publicly leveling on how he's been exiled from this Administration and how nasty they've been.

The Indian Techie flamewar. Excellent. Some people are suing because they don't like that you can scratch an iPod nano.

Iranians not happy about a computer simulation of American war on Iran.

Good news for the Weed, Man! "Pot not a major cancer risk: report". "Study says high doses of marijuana stimulate brain cell growth:"

"Dr. Zhang commented on the chronic use of Marijuana based on the results of their research saying, "Chronic use of marijuana may actually improve learning memory when the new neurons in the hippocampus can mature in two or three months."

Spark it, yo.

Wal-Mart is some evil shit! Labor blog:

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, [the memo] suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for "all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering)."...

"It will be far easier to attract and retain a healthier work force than it will be to change behavior in an existing one," the memo said. "These moves would also dissuade unhealthy people from coming to work at Wal-Mart."

Read the whole thing (PDF) - thanks, NY Times.

Former CIA dude Pat Lang had an couple photos showing how fast Dubai is growing. His site, Sic Semper Tyrannis, has a lot of interesting bits on the Plame scandal, and whatever else suits an old spook.

Part III of the translated La Repubblica Niger-yellowcake investigation. More fun stuff filling in the timeline with SISMI chief Niccolo Pollari passing the forgeries to Stephen Hadley on Sept. 9, 2002. DC-area reporter Laura Rozen has been following this mess as well. As she summarizes:

You have an ex-Sismi agent (Rocco Martino), a current Sismi vice captain (Antonio Nucera), and a long-time Sismi mole in the Niger embassy Rome involved in assembling the Niger forgeries. You have a former Sismi agent (Rocco Martino) trying to selling them, to the French, to the British, to an Italian journalist. Sismi itself issued reports to the CIA and MI6 with the information on Iraq supposedly contracting to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake from Niger that turned up in the forgeries. You have the head of Sismi Nicolo Pollari admitting to Repubblica in an interview published Monday that Sismi knew what Rocco Martino was up to in 2001 and offering to show them a photo of Martino passing the dossier to British intelligence. I am not sure how the Berlusconi government can plausibly deny that Sismi didn't have a direct role in the Niger yellowcake claims to western intelligence, and a very cozily indirect role to the forgeries themselves. Unless it's the kind of denial that Rove and Libby meant when they told the grand jury that they hadn't told journalists about Wilson's wife or her place of employment.

She also tells us that Ahmed Chalabi will make a triumphant return to Washington to meet with Hadley in November. Perhaps they shall arrest him for espionage as well.

Murray Waas in National Journal reporting on Libby and Cheney suppressing info to the Senate, which subsequently whitewashed their manipulation of Iraq intelligence and blamed it on the CIA. Let's get into the details of the spoofed intel and the Cover Up:

Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.

Cheney had been the foremost administration advocate for war with Iraq, and Libby played a central staff role in coordinating the sale of the war to both the public and Congress.

Among the White House materials withheld from the committee were Libby-authored passages in drafts of a speech that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered to the United Nations in February 2003 to argue the Bush administration's case for war with Iraq, according to congressional and administration sources. The withheld documents also included intelligence data that Cheney's office -- and Libby in particular -- pushed to be included in Powell's speech, the sources said.

The new information that Cheney and Libby blocked information to the Senate Intelligence Committee further underscores the central role played by the vice president's office in trying to blunt criticism that the Bush administration exaggerated intelligence data to make the case to go to war.
[.......]
The Intelligence Committee at the time was trying to determine whether the CIA and other intelligence agencies provided faulty or erroneous intelligence on Iraq to President Bush and other government officials. But the committee deferred the much more politically sensitive issue as to whether the president and the vice president themselves, or other administration officials, misrepresented intelligence information to bolster the case to go to war. An Intelligence Committee spokesperson says the panel is still working on this second phase of the investigation.

Had the withheld information been turned over, according to administration and congressional sources, it likely would have shifted a portion of the blame away from the intelligence agencies to the Bush administration as to who was responsible for the erroneous information being presented to the American public, Congress, and the international community.

In April 2004, the Intelligence Committee released a report that concluded that "much of the information provided or cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency for inclusion in Secretary Powell's [United Nation's] speech was overstated, misleading, or incorrect."

Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee say that their investigation was hampered by the refusal of the White House to turn over key documents, although Republicans said the documents were not as central to the investigation.

In addition to withholding drafts of Powell's speech -- which included passages written by Libby -- the administration also refused to turn over to the committee contents of the president's morning intelligence briefings on Iraq, sources say. These documents, known as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB, are a written summary of intelligence information and analysis provided by the CIA to the president.

One congressional source said, for example, that senators wanted to review the PDBs to determine whether dissenting views from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Department of Energy, and other agencies that often disagreed with the CIA on the question of Iraq's programs to develop weapons of mass destruction were being presented to the president.
[......]
A former senior administration official familiar with the discussions on whether to turn over the materials said there was a "political element" in the matter. This official said the White House did not want to turn over records during an election year that could used by critics to argue that the administration used incomplete or faulty intelligence to go to war with Iraq. "Nobody wants something like this dissected or coming out in an election year," the former official said.
[......]
Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as chief of staff to Powell as Secretary of State, charged in a recent speech that there was a "cabal between Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense [Donald L.] Rumsfeld on critical decisions that the bureaucracy did not know was being made."

In interagency meetings in preparation for Powell's U.N. address, Wilkerson, Powell, and senior CIA officials argued that evidence Libby wanted to include as part of Powell's presentation was exaggerated or unreliable. Cheney, too, became involved in those discussions, sources said, when he believed that Powell and others were not taking Libby's suggestions seriously.

Wilkerson has said that he ordered "whole reams of paper" of intelligence information excluded from Libby's draft of Powell's speech. Another official recalled that Libby was pushing so hard to include certain intelligence information in the speech that Libby lobbied Powell for last minute changes in a phone call to Powell's suite at the Waldorf Astoria hotel the night before the speech. Libby's suggestions were dismissed by Powell and his staff.

John E. McLaughlin, then-deputy director of the CIA, has testified to Congress that "much of our time in the run-up to the speech was spent taking out material... that we and the secretary's staff judged to have been unreliable."

All right, good stuff. Let's go on. According to the Nelson Report via Agonist:

[T]his may be obsolete before you read it, but as of late this afternoon, the rumor hot line had achieved a consensus that indictments have been approved against the right-hand men of both President Bush and Vice President Cheney...White House political chief Karl Rove, and VP chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby. But where this reaches historic proportions...rumors that a "Constitutional officer is an unindicted co-conspirator". That is, Cheney himself.

Seeya Miers: Billmon, in a fine post rehashing the late great Miers nomination, notes the idea of 'critical legal studies.' I'd never heard of that but I should have assumed it's out there. This Hotline roundup of why it collapsed is funny.

Paul Begala visits TPMcafe to relate what it's like to be in a White House under siege. Awesome comic. TIME's Mike Allen said that there were likely plea offers from Fitz. Hotline hints that there the grand jury won't get extended.

Someone named DC Insider on the rightwing RedState.org said that indictments are probably coming for Wilson and Plame. Hilarious! Bill O'Reilly's Coward list. Also funny.

The DLC sucks. Hardcore. They keep giving this Peter Beinart guy way too much space. I hate their nasty anti-anti-war vibe. They have done nothing but screw things up.

Biological electricity and hurricanes. This writeup by a watcher of the weather about the electrical dynamics of hurricanes was a bit mysterious and interesting - via Slashdot:

"In a story at the new Open Source Energy Network site, Paul Noel says: "Energetically speaking, the vortex that forms in these storms is also a natural particle accelerator, and a massive capacitor bank. As the harmonic circuit develops, it resonates acoustically and functions as a capacitor, extracting the heat from the storm and transmitting it away. Without this electrical circuit, the storm would fail almost instantly due to the accumulation of heat from condensation of water." He also asserts that understanding these phenomena better could help us harness the power of nature, seen and unseen."

Meanwhile Norm Coleman continues his groundbreaking work at the Senate Un-American Activities and Scapegoating Committee.

More coming........

I hope for a Merry Fitzmas; a peace vigil on the bridge

I'll try to make it out to the peace vigil on the Lake Street bridge, tonight at 7 PM. This seems like a gratifying moment to the anti-war, anti-Bush set, but it's no so fucking pleasant if your family or friends are over there, or injured, or dead. This is a hell of a lot worse than Watergate.

LibertyThink (because who else will encourage cognitive liberty in an age of statist propaganda?):

On the 12th day of Fitzmas Fitzgerald gave to me...



Twelve traitors hanging, eleven warrants serving, ten resignations, nine Bushbots spinning, eight gays a-outing, seven rats a-squealing, six spooks a-spying, five indictments, four neo-cons, three high crimes, two Plame leaks and one heroic grand jury

ThinkProgress:

CBS’ JOHN ROBERTS: Lawyers familiar with the case think Wednesday is when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will make known his decision, and that there will be indictments. Supporters say Rove and the vice president’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, are in legal jeopardy. But they insisted today the two are secondary players, that it was an unidentified Mr. X who actually gave the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame to reporters. Fitzgerald knows who Mr. X is, they say, and if he isn’t indicted, there’s no way Rove or Libby should be. But charges may not focus on the leak at all. Obstruction of justice or perjury are real possibilities. Did Rove or Libby change statements made under oath? Did they deliberately leave critical facts out of their testimony or did they honestly forget? Some Republicans urged Rove to step down if indicted. Not a happy prospect for president Bush.



Any guesses on the identity of Mr. X?



UPDATE: This bit from the CBS segment is also interesting –



SCHIEFFER: John, I am very interested in Mr. X. Is there any clue or hint as to whether he be - maybe someone who outranks Libby and Rove or would he be a lower-ranking official?



ROBERTS: The best guess is that Mr. X, even though his name is not known and some people are just speculating on who he might be or she might be, is somebody who is actually outside the White House, and in that case would be of a lower rank that both Rove and Libby.

It has been a long time coming to this point -- a great many people have been waiting to see if all the efforts to expose this monstrous thing will pay off. It gets down to that murky intersection of policy, politics and intelligence work. I'm a young guy so I haven't seen that many scandals go down in Washington, but this one has had all the elements slowly cooking for a long time. I don't really know what I can add to the cacophony of leaks and counterleaks, artfully constructed blogger timelines, posturing Washington establishment liberals and shrieking neo-cons, bemoaning this sad, sad 'criminalization of politics.' But I'll probably try. Even Alec Baldwin is on the train these days.

Well guys, you shouldn't have invaded that country based on fake intelligence, and you shouldn't have broken the law to crush honest people that tried to stand against the lies. And also you shouldn't have let Ahmed Chalabi get away with selling so many national secrets to Iran.

Paralleling the politicial scandal, corruption runs throughout the military system now. The Abu Ghraib Brigadier General Janis Karpinski gave a weird interview with Alex Jones in which she alleged that orders for torture came down from the top, with teams of private contractors working under their own command in Abu Ghraib. She believes that she's been made the Fall Guy in the scandal, and she doesn't intend to shut up about it.

Such a situation illustrates why the Bush Administration was never able to purge any of these incompetent neo-cons, despite their continuous and ever-expanding mistakes about the war. To cast any of them out (say, Wurmser or Hannah, for example), they would publicly turn on the Administration, exposing the whole rotten core, the once-esoteric truth that this war was sold on nothing but a bunch of hustled lies. If they were to sing about the Office of Special Plans and the White House Iraq Group, like Karpinsky wants to sing about super-torture now, it would have shattered the whole artificial mythos of the war.

Fortunately, we happened to get a special prosecutor willing to shake them loose by force.

It's widely expected that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald will issue indictments for Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, at a minimum, for their roles in the Valerie Plame case and subsequent shady cover-up. The LA Times reported that he is still sifting through Rove's role in this. But the Italians are definitely getting tangled up now, as well:

As anticipation swirled in Washington of potential indictments — and what it would mean for a Bush administration already beset by low approval ratings, the Iraq war and an embattled Supreme Court nomination — a related controversy was brewing in Italy over how the Niger allegations made their way into the intelligence stream.



Italian parliamentary officials announced Tuesday that the head of Italy's military secret service, the SISMI intelligence agency, would be questioned next month over allegations that his agency gave the disputed documents to the United States and Britain, according to an Associated Press report. A spokeswoman said Nicolo Pollari, the agency director, asked to be questioned after reports this week in Italy's La Republica newspaper claiming that SISMI sent the CIA and U.S. and British officials information that it knew to be forged.



The newspaper reported that Pollari met at the White House on Sept. 9, 2002 with then-Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. The Niger claims surfaced shortly thereafter. A spokesman for Hadley, now the national security advisor, confirmed that the meeting took place, but declined to say what was discussed.

For more on the Italian angle coming out yesterday, see these English translations, which talk about the Office of Special Plans, Michael Ledeen and the whole bit! (Parts 1 and 2) (some more fun background on Michael Ledeen from DailyKos diarist Pen)

But if the case branches further into the actual forgeries themselves, it's possible that an entire pillar of pro-war ideology will be vaporized as the American public learns what some of us sensed a long time ago -- that the war was fundamentally a fraud perpetrated on the American public, using the most shameless methods of disinformation and propaganda -- psychological warfare, of a sort -- against our country. Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com said that someone from the CIA let him know that Fitzgerald was on the Italian track:

Even as the FBI was following the trail of the forgers, the Italians were looking into the matter from their end. A parliamentary committee was charged with investigating, and they issued a heavily redacted report: now, I am told by a former CIA operations officer, the report has aroused some interest on this side of the Atlantic. According to a source in the Italian embassy, Patrick J. "Bulldog" Fitzgerald asked for and "has finally been given a full copy of the Italian parliamentary oversight report on the forged Niger uranium document," the former CIA officer tells me:



"Previous versions of the report were redacted and had all the names removed, though it was possible to guess who was involved. This version names Michael Ledeen as the conduit for the report and indicates that former CIA officers Duane Clarridge and Alan Wolf were the principal forgers. All three had business interests with Chalabi."



... my source tells me that "Fitzgerald asked the Italians if he could share the report with Paul McNulty," the prosecutor in the AIPAC case.



.... Before Fitzgerald is done, we'll see the warlords of Washington hauled before a court of the people. We'll hear the whole sordid story of how a band of exiles, at least two foreign intelligence agencies, and a cabal of neoconservatives inside the Pentagon and the vice president's office bamboozled Congress and the American people into going to war. As the indictments come down, so will the elaborate narrative so carefully constructed by the War Party in the run-up to war be exposed as a tissue of fabrication, forgery, and fraud.

Cheney was certainly at the core of it, and the Times article on Tuesday, "Cheney Told Aide of CIA Officer, Lawyers Report," certainly has damaged him (lots of commentary on this -- although why was he told in the first place?). Cheney's actions to prop up the constructed nuclear threat have been well-documented by now (I'd recommend IPS's Jim Lobe's work on the Cheney Nuclear Drumbeat as a good place to start). He has certainly now been caught in lies about whether he knew Wilson at all.

KRT: "CIA leak illustrates selective use of intelligence on Iraq". Newsweek: "Prelude to a leak." The Raw Story | Cheney aide passed Plame's name to Libby, Hadley, those close to leak investigation say.



A roundup: There is pretty much an infinite vortex of noise right now, so much spin that the world is getting wobbly. Or maybe they're just all on acid. Either way, here I will put some bits that reflect a certain angle of things. Eh. Who even knows where the bar is anymore?

Arianna summarizes how it's a worse Gate than Watergate. Her little icon pisses me off.

Steve Clemons says:

Indictments Coming Tomorrow; Targets Received Letters Today

An uber-insider source has just reported the following to TWN (since confirmed by another independent source):

1. 1-5 indictments are being issued. The source feels that it will be towards the higher end.

2. The targets of indictment have already received their letters.

3. The indictments will be sealed indictments and "filed" tomorrow.

4. A press conference is being scheduled for Thursday.

The shoe is dropping.

There were very harsh words from one of Colin Powell's former aides at the State Department, Lawrence Wilkerson, who finally came around to call out what he called the 'cabal':

In President Bush's first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security -- including vital decisions about postwar Iraq -- were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.



When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New America Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.



But it's absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.



Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."



But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well.

Although of course others say "where the hell were you guys like a year ago?!" There has been a back-and-forth between Miller and Keller. Niall Ferguson comments that it's going to be a Hurricane in DC. Newsweek has finally gotten around to telling its part of the real story.

Firedoglake is just having a hell of a time. Let's note the classic Mother Jones piece "The Lie Factory" from January 2004. Turns out they were pretty much right. This graphic was sweet too.

Combat boots Miller. What a strange figure.

Well I've got my popcorn and my Summit Oktoberfest. Come tomorrow, we shall toast the Beginning of the End of the Empire. And for that, I can finally sleep soundly, because we might just finally turn the corner.

Two thousand lost for a really big pack of lies; My money's on Michael Ledeen

I would be more amused by all these breaking scandals if not for the essential context. They started a war, and honest American soldiers and Marines have paid the price in blood. Losing them to the Mess was reified into this kind of great sacrifice for freedom and apple pie. But we're going to find that the purposes of our leaders was far more sordid.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

This suggests the inquiry by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame has now widened to embrace part of the broader question about the way the Iraq war was justified by the Bush administration.

...Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated. This was the same charge that imperiled the government of Bush's closest ally, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, after a BBC Radio program claimed Blair's aides has "sexed up" the evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

There can be few more serious charges against a government than going to war on false pretences, or having deliberately inflated or suppressed the evidence that justified the war.

I've got a lot of stuff stashed on the computer here that I think pulls the case together. Tomorrow will probably be a major day in this country's history - the day we'll come face to face with

The busted server gave me a few days to look at the ups and downs of this media spinstorm, as leaks and counterleaks have been placed in the media, some to paint Libby as the demon, perhaps to help protect the others.

For example, Josh Marshall cited this LA Times story as an example of a demonize-Libby-to-inoculate-the-rest strategy: "Bush Critic Became Target of Libby, Former Aides Say."

Now, I don't doubt that there's a good deal of truth in this story. Indeed, the point in what I'm about to say is not to cast doubt on the accuracy of anything in it. But if you read the LAT story closely you see that the authors were able to interview multiple White House staffers (seemingly all or most former ones) and were apparently provided with a sheaf of documents illustrating Libby's near-obsessive Wilson-monitoring.
If I read the article right it seems they were provided with a copy of this dossier ...

The result was a packet that included excerpts from press clips and television transcripts of Wilson's statements that were divided into categories, such as "political ties" or "WMD."
The compendium used boldfaced type to call attention to certain comments by Wilson, such as one in the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student newspaper, in which Wilson was quoted as calling Cheney "a lying son of a bitch." It also highlighted Wilson's answers to questions from television journalists about his work with Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.
The intensity with which Libby reacted to Wilson had many senior White House staffers puzzled, and few agreed with his counterattack plan or its rationale, former aides said.

So, a lot of access to former White House staffers in on key meetings and actual documentary evidence of what Scooter was up to, what his efforts produced. That sort of access ain't easy to come by and it's seldom accidental.
This certainly seems like an attempt to pin this whole thing on Libby.
Leaks like that won't affect Fitzgerald; they're not intended to. They're aimed at shaping perceptions of indictments if they come down. If Libby and Rove are indicted, then, yes Rove got caught up in it. And it shouldn't have happened. But the whole unfortunate mess was spawned by the bitter Libby-Wilson antagonsim. It wasn't something that involved the whole White House team, not something characteristic of how it functions.
That would be the argument.
And it's one everyone should have their eyes out for, since the key players in the White House appear to have decided that Libby is already a fatality in this battle.

SO WHAT ABOUT THE FORGERY ITSELF?

Two Josh Marshall tidbits tied to this UPI article about cross-connections between the Plame and AIPAC cases. Marshall and Laura Rozen did an article, "Iran Contra II?" about secret meetings with Michael Ledeen, Iranian arms dealer Ghorbanifar, the chief of Italian military intelligence service SISMI, Rhode and Larry Franklin. Walker's UPI article had a number of interesting bits about the sources of the Niger forgeries. I loved this paragraph:

In July 2003, [Wilson] wrote an article for The New York Times making his mission -- and his disbelief -- public.
But by then Elisabetta Burba, a journalist for the Italian magazine Panorama (owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi) had been contacted by a "security consultant" named Rocco Martoni, offering to sell documents that "proved" Iraq was obtaining uranium in Niger for $10,000. Rather than pay the money, Burba's editor passed photocopies of the documents to the U.S. Embassy, which forwarded them to Washington, where the forgery was later detected. Signatures were false, and the government ministers and officials who had signed them were no longer in office on the dates on which the documents were supposedly written.
Nonetheless, the forged documents appeared, on the face of it, to shore up the case for war, and to discredit Wilson. The origin of the forgeries is therefore of real importance, and any link between the forgeries and Bush administration aides would be highly damaging and almost certainly criminal.
The letterheads and official seals that appeared to authenticate the documents apparently came from a burglary at the Niger Embassy in Rome in 2001. At this point, the facts start dribbling away into conspiracy theories that involve membership of shadowy Masonic lodges, Iranian go-betweens, right-wing cabals inside Italian Intelligence and so on. It is not yet known how far Fitzgerald, in his two years of inquiries, has fished in these murky waters.
There is one line of inquiry with an American connection that Fitzgerald would have found it difficult to ignore. This is the claim that a mid-ranking Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, held talks with some Italian intelligence and defense officials in Rome in late 2001. Franklin has since been arrested on charges of passing classified information to staff of the pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Franklin has reportedly reached a plea bargain with his prosecutor, Paul McNulty, and it would be odd if McNulty and Fitzgerald had not conferred to see if their inquiries connected.
Where all this leads will not be clear until Fitzgerald breaks his silence, widely expected to occur this week when the term of his grand jury expires.
If Fitzgerald issues indictments, then the hounds that are currently baying across the blogosphere will leap into the mainstream media and whole affair, Iranian go-betweens and Rome burglaries included, will come into the mainstream of the mass media and network news where Mr. and Mrs. America can see it.
The Italian newspaper La Repubblica had a major (Italian only!) article about the activities of the Italians. To put it succinctly, at the very time that war propaganda was heating up, the chief of SISMI was meeting with Stephen Hadley, probably in an effort to persuade him to use the Niger forgeries.

As I have noted in quite a few posts, well-known neoconservative scholar Michael Ledeen has been cited by a number of government officials as the key forgery connection. So he might get indicted tomorrow too. More later. I feel a little bad that I haven't given out some more info... It's coming along, oh it's coming.

Looks like tomorrow will likely be Fitzmas. I have my Summit Oktoberfest and microwave popcorn at the ready.

A post that's about a week late!

This was a set of stuff which I should have posted like a week ago. Well, enjoy. :-/

Some Minnesota blogs: I do not usually pay enough attention to blogs around the Twin Cities although it's a rich territory these days. City Pages big index. I think Kennedy vs. the Machine is amusing because, well, it just is. Anything idolizing Mark Kennedy is sort of like praising ketchup for daring to be different than mustard. Freedom Dogs is another right wing local one.

Then there are a couple college guys running MN Publius, which is pretty good. They are watching the upcoming election from afar. MN Lefty Liberal holding it down.

Secret Phone Numbers: escape the Labyrinth. Dial up real humans in corporate voice mail hell! This has the secret customer service numbers for many corps, including Amazon, which I used today.

Example of media manipulation & gullibility. FOX blimp tricks WCCO into covering it.

Scott McClellan Says Helen Thomas Opposes 'War on Terrorism' (featured on CrooksAndLiars). Har har har!!

[Helen Thomas]: What does the President mean by "total victory" -- that we will never leave Iraq until we have "total victory"? What does that mean?
[......]
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, Helen, the President recognizes that we are engaged in a global war on terrorism. And when you're engaged in a war, it's not always pleasant, and it's certainly a last resort. But when you engage in a war, you take the fight to the enemy, you go on the offense. And that's exactly what we are doing. We are fighting them there so that we don't have to fight them here. September 11th taught us --
Q It has nothing to do with -- Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, you have a very different view of the war on terrorism, and I'm sure you're opposed to the broader war on terrorism. The President recognizes this requires a comprehensive strategy, and that this is a broad war, that it is not a law enforcement matter.
Terry.
Q On what basis do you say Helen is opposed to the broader war on terrorism?
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, she certainly expressed her concerns about Afghanistan and Iraq and going into those two countries. I think I can go back and pull up her comments over the course of the past couple of years.
Q And speak for her, which is odd.
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I said she may be, because certainly if you look at her comments over the course of the past couple of years, she's expressed her concerns --
Q I'm opposed to preemptive war, unprovoked preemptive war.
MR. McCLELLAN: -- she's expressed her concerns.

Who knew the CIA had a journal? Studies in Intelligence: VOL. 49, NO. 2, 2005 featuring Understanding Terror Networks and The Intelligence Officer's Bookshelf. Nice. Interestingly, the CIA defends itself from charges that they gave bad intelligence by an article published in this declassified journal. Here is an article about Goss crushing CIA analysts under political pressure.

Israel, Iran and nuclear war. Unpleasant thoughts that make me want to play computer games instead. WOPR knows you can't win Global Thermonuclear War anyway. But this article about how the US is prepping for the attack is spooky. US selling Bunker Bombs to Israel. They got some sweet jets too. Bush: "America would back Israel attack on Iran." Good old Cheney:

"Given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards," Cheney said. In 1981, Israel sent warplanes to destroy Iraq's nuclear reactor.

More on this later. Gotta love Threat Construction in the mideast.

Global: What is China Up to in the Western Hemisphere? Big things!

"Former U.S. ambassador in Bolivia Manuel Rocha recently remarked, 'Your children may have to start learning Mandarin ... if you wish to see them involved in business in the Americas.'"

UNPO: I like the idea of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization, which is set up for the various smaller ethnic groups (From the Lakota Nation to Georgian Abkhazia, the Assyrians of Iraq and the Levant - who do not support the new constitution. Sweet flag too! - and the formerly independent Arabic Ahwaz people of southwestern Iran)

Talk about some pandemic. Personal Pandemic Preparedness Plan. "ASSUME FOOD AND SUPPLIES WILL BE UNAVAILABLE". Here is yr bird flu map over time. Uh oh! Rich people should be saved in disasters first, says yr typical rightwing idiot.

Syria under pressure, ringed by an Iron Wall. More details on this later.

New Service to Coordinate US Overseas Espionage. Oh good, more for Goss, less for Negroponte. Or not. Dammit!

Rebels in Russia! They are getting serious out in those quiet Caucasus areas. Also covered here but these sites may be some rightwing gibberish. Well DEBKA should bring an air of Sanity to the affair. (they say it was mostly locals, shocking). The choice quote:

Most of the province’s inhabitants are ethnic Circassian Muslims. The unrecorded chapter of the Chechen intelligence war of the 1990s relates how the Circassian community of Jordan, which was the security buttress of the Hashemite throne, was used by US, British and French intelligence as a pipeline into the Chechen breakaway movement for close surveillance of its conflict with Russia. Al Qaeda, which tracks and meets every American intelligence move connected with the global war on terror, countered by going into the remote and relatively affluent Kabardino-Balkaria to quietly acquire its own Circassian asset.

Iraq Boom. Bush is really alone. It would be funny if it wasn't such a horrible and devastating problem. 'The worst possible policy for Iraq'. The good news: perhaps Iraq's violence not yet civil war. Journalist Chris Albritton has the latest on the election results and suspicious indicators of electoral fraud in Nineveh province. Here comes sectarian warfare. Ah, Bush's staged Potemkin army.

Great moments in strategy, revisited: Vanquished Iraqi military disbanded; U.S. occupying force to set up new army. What a classic. How did that turn out?

Terror Letters O Love: We got this exciting Zawahiri letter. Jazeera: Al Qaeda claims US faked Zawahiri letter.

Condi still has some fucked up spin:

The fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al Qaeda…or we could take a bolder approach.

Vikings. Ouch. Talk about bumblefucking your way out of a new stadium, and then getting crushed by the Bears. Bitter Reusse:

As to what action Wilf should take in the wake of this aquatic Sodom and Gomorrah, the most popular suggestion has been to fire Tice now, rather than at season's end.
That's an idea worth serious consideration, but until nightfall today, Zygi has a higher priority:
Repenting for using the family fortune to buy this no-class operation.

Plame Flood [week-oldd news - sorry]! Plenty of news on this in the last couple days. I am glad it's become a major scandal again. Judith Miller certainly played things the nasty, dishonest and venal way she's handled them so far. No real admission from her great tell-all in the Times about how Libby mercilessly spun the war against intelligence community - with the Plame scandal as only a branch of the fallout. (AIPAC/WINEP and Chalabi being two other major branches yet to break off the tree)

But the tone of media coverage still doesn't fully link the fake intelligence with the attack that Libby et al. tried against Wilson. Miller's particular role in that fake intelligence, I would say, means that she was probably protecting Chalabi's people, "defending her other sources" ± as she seemed to put it in her article. But lets get to the Main Story, as the "other" Roger Ailes puts:

In today's column, Howie Kurtz illustrates what's wrong with most of the newspaper and television coverage of the New York Times' role in Traitorgate, including Kurtz's:

"Leave aside the criticisms of her WMD reporting."

The newspaper's purported coverage of WMD and Miller's relationship with the White House are inextricably intertwined. Miller's dealings with the White House and her agenda cannot be separated.

Howie can't seem to understand why the Times' reporting on its own reporter is so weak. He mentions the obvious conflict of interest, but doesn't address the equally obvious fact -- that the paper knew how corrupt Miller was and ran her articles anyway.

The paper either knew Miller's unnamed sources in the Administration and the INC, and published her articles anyway, or it published Miller's propaganda without knowing. In either case, the paper knowingly permitted Miller to lie to its readers. And that's why the paper's coverage of Traitorgate is not only weak -- it's non-existent. The paper can't publish the truth about Traitorgate without exposing its own role in the scandal and the parallel scandal of its own reporting on Iraq. It can't report the truth of Traitorgate and simulataneously maintain the fiction -- illustrated in the article quoted below -- that it was misled by the Administration and self-interested Iraqis and therefore can't really be faulted for its faulty reporting.

And that's why you can't "leave aside" Miller's WMD reporting when you consider the Times current coverage of Traitorgate. Howie is smart enough to understand this -- why he doesn't credit his readers with the same intelligence is an interesting question.

Ailes also has a good timeline of the various NY Times stories that Miller spewed forth for the trusting American public.

Ok there are a ton of links. Arianna (again and again). Judy made some obvious mistakes in her notes about Plame's role. The AntiWar blog is jolly these days. E&P are pissed. "The Law is on the Side of Valerie Plame," by pissed off ex-CIA dude Larry Johnson. Johnson also has some pieces about SISMI, the apparent original entry point of the forgeries into western intelligence communities. He alleges a prominent neo-con (Michael Ledeen in all but name) concocted the damn things. Nice! (also, why Fitz gets it) Pat Lang pissed off at that horrible Cohen column (as is Atrios and everyone else).

"My money is on the company, Pt. II". Victoria Plame? A fine reference to the whole case via the Left Coaster. Time for the Frog March? The Times newsroom has been tense. Fire Miller, dammit!

AIPAC still simmers: Raimondo considers the possibility that Israeli ambassador Danny Ayalon is one of the parties of espionage in the AIPAC indictments.

Texas two step: These guys have been making a Ronnie Earle documentary. Interesting.

GOP dissolves? Sure why not?

White House breakdown: psychological warfare gets ya in trouble; plus things always weird in Damascus

Crony Jobs - Choice government careers for the taking. No experience necessary.

ABC News: Gore: I Don't Plan to Run for President

Reuters: Judy Miller testifies.

AntiWar.com picked up a couple new columnists. Charles Peña starts up with "A New York State of Mind" pointing out the various fallacies in the GWOT these days.

Rove looking doomed: Is there some kind of rebellion or conflict between Bush's Chief of Staff Andy Card and Karl Rove, as Howard Fineman was speculating on Hardball? Billmon reflects, after meeting Card quite a few times over the years, and finding him dense and basically a patsy, asks if that's not what he's going to be now.

How did we get to this point? Fitzgerald got appointed when some Justice lawyers on the Plame case raised concerns that Rove wasn't being entirely truthful, and they pointed out that Ashcroft and Rove had an old history of helping each other out in politics. They managed to force Ashcroft to appoint Fitz, the special prosecutor. The investigation seems to be going wider into WHIG - the White House Iraq Group, an organization I suppose I've ignored relative to the more attractive Office of Special Plans. Either way... Libby withheld key info from investigators. Some rumors that Fitzgerald is trying to get the Grand Jury extended. Wilson directly accused the WHIG group of being the center of the effort (via Corrente):

Wilson: [The White House Iraq Group] would be the natural group because they were constituted to spin the war, so they would be naturally the ones to try to deflect criticism. Now, some of those people would have very high security clearances.

Naturally word is caroming around the blog world that finally the circle on the war lies might be closed. Digby puts out a timeline of exposures (the late David Kelly in the UK, Wilson here) against the lies of the war's architects, prompting their retaliation. Josh Marshall has done a lot on exposing how the White House propped up the original Niger yellowcake forgeries themselves.

He's added links to ex-military analyst Sam Gardiner's "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management,
Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations
in Gulf II," [PDF parts 1 2 3 4 5 6] essentially making the case that weapons of psychological warfare - information warfare, disinformation etc. - were turned on the American public for the first time in the leadup to this war. And the anthrax stories distorted to amplify fear. Well I think that it's a little bit far to say it was the first time - it seems to happen a lot. Gardiner says that the US and UK fabricated or distorted at least 50 identifiable stories about the war. Yeah. As Digby quotes:

According to Gardiner, "It was not bad intelligence" that lead to the quagmire in Iraq, "It was an orchestrated effort [that] began before the war" that was designed to mislead the public and the world. Gardiner's research lead him to conclude that the US and Britain had conspired at the highest levels to plant "stories of strategic influence" that were known to be false.

The Times of London described the $200-million-plus US operation as a "meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress, and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein."

The multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign run out of the White House and Defense Department was, in Gardiner's final assessment "irresponsible in parts" and "might have been illegal."

"Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to the right decisions," Gardiner explains. Consequently, "Truth became a casualty. When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage." For the first time in US history, "we allowed strategic psychological operations to become part of public affairs... [W]hat has happened is that information warfare, strategic influence, [and] strategic psychological operations pushed their way into the important process of informing the peoples of our two democracies."

Meanwhile on CNN today, they were running the hell out of an Amanpour interview with Bashar Assad, and I found that the excerpts selected from the whole thing were interesting... I had the TV on in the background much of the day, and they changed bits of the excerpts around, but it isn't surprising the stuff they focused on - the direct accusations about loose borders, the Hariri assassination, avoiding any talk about the Palestinians.

Bush keeps threatening Syria over and over. Right after the interview the Syrian interior minister turned up dead in his office with a gunshot to the head. SyriaComment.com by academic Joshua Landis is very much worth looking at. Was it suicide or murder?

Was Ghazi Kanaan setting himself up to be Bashar's alternative? Could he have been the Alawite "Musharrif" that some American's and Volker Perthes suggested would take power from the House of Asad and bring Syria back into America's and the West's good graces. I have heard from several people that "high ranking Syrians" have been complaining to people at the National Security Council and elsewhere that they are very distressed by the mistakes Bashar al-Asad has made and the terrible state of US-Syrian relations.

Could Ghazi have been setting himself up as the alternative to Bashar? Could the Syrian government believe he might have been? We don't know, but here goes the possible speculation. He is known to have had good relations with Washington, when he held the Lebanon portfolio. He visited DC. Two of his four sons went to George Washington University in DC.

Kanaan was reported to have been one of the "Old Guard" who spoke out against the extension of Emile Lahoud's presidency in Lebanon, which set the stage for Lebanon's Cedar revolution and the assassination of P.M. Rafiq Hariri. He had been one of the Syrians responsible for cultivating Hariri and building up his position in Lebanon. He was also accused of having significant business relations in Lebanon which tied him to Hariri. It is unlikely that he was involved in Hariri's murder, having been a Hariri and not Lahoud supporter.

His relations with Lahoud were strained, and Lahoud reportedly was one of the people who insisted that he be removed from the Lebanon file and replaced by Rustum Ghazali. (Told me by Nick Blanford of the Christian Science Monitor, who is writing a book on Hariri.)

Since the June Baath Party Conference, it has been rumored that Ghazi would lose his Cabinet position as Minister of Interior, where he had been causing quite a ruckus.

Kanaan was the most senior Alawi official left in government of the Hafiz's generation. He had served as an intelligence chief and minister of interior giving him influence over and knowledge of all branches of the security forces - intelligence and police. If Washington were to turn to anyone to carry out a coup against Bashar, it would have to place Ghazi Kanaan on the top of its list.

Also there is a very interesting "note from a Syrian dissident" about why a coup in Syria is unlikely. And three interesting views on what the Bush Administration might be plotting, including reports that the Pentagon is secretly planning to bomb Syrian villages along the Euphrates River.

Oil production in Iraq has collapsed to 1.9 million barrels/day, down from 2.6 million before the war. Guess who profits?

Condi gets a GF? There was a weird thing on Fox News where an anchor interviewing Condoleeza Rice encouraged her to check out another anchor (another story here), Lauren Green, who used to be on Channel 5 here in Minnesota, as well as Miss Minnesota. There was a funny story in Radar about "Bush's closet heterosexuals." I didn't realize that Ken Mehlman refused to go on record saying that he liked women. It comes up in the context of California Rep. David Dreier, who was apparently pushed aside from the Republican leadership because people had the perception he was gay, which the major local media in California refuses to address. As the story concludes:

It would be the height of hypocrisy for a conservative to embrace her party’s most extreme views while simultaneously embracing a member of the same sex. The GOP rank and file takes its values seriously. Just imagine the outrage were Rush Limbaugh revealed to be a drug addict, William Bennett a compulsive gambler, Gary Bauer a philanderer, Strom Thurmond the father of a illegitimate black child, or George Bush a coke fiend. They’d never work in this town again.

Former Marine spokesman Josh Rushing, who is getting a reporter gig at the new English Al Jazeera, was labeled "TRAITOR?" by Fox on-screen. Hilarious. Thanks, MediaMatters.

Miss Universe contestants are full of national/ethnic contradictions reflecting our modern globalized world. Huzzah. What did world leaders look like as children (via IranDefence.net, oddly enough)? In your random Internet style humor JeffK's Brand New Hoempage!!! Thanks, SomethingAwful. Also The Onion tells us that 92 Percent of Souls in Hell There on Drug Charges.

Frank Rich: The Faith-Based President Defrocked. At least we can still get NY Times columnists through devious bastards like TruthOut.

TShirtHell announces that if you get kicked off a plane wearing one of their T-Shirts, they'll take care of transporting you! This in response to a woman that was kicked off a plane for wearing an anti-Bush shirt on Southwest Airlines in Reno.

That Kurdish sense of humor; Espionage indictments a-coming for Rove, Bolton, Wurmser?; plus Pentagon tries to get on spying in the US

(this fun animated GIF via aethlos.com - why is that blog's author in jail? He doesn't explain..)

Spotted an interesting story on the Agonist about the future of Canada (apparently secession moves in Quebec and Alberta may come to the fore - in particular because of Alberta's rich energy reserves). Anyway, Kurdish joke on someone's .sig: "Our past is full of horror, our present is miserable, fortunately, we have no future." I like it.

When you need an Apocalypse: Left Behind III: World at War is coming out in Churches Nationwide around October 21st. Lots of them in Minnesota. Fortunately the previous Left Behinds are available via BitTorrent - send yourself to hell while finding out How it will Happen! A Double Devil Deal! On the other hand, energy policy seems to be enough to freak everyone out -- this DKos diary about Playing Chicken with the Apocalypse, about the dwindling energy resources leading to Chaos. It's ugly. For some terrible reason ever since I was little I would worry about this, so I guess you could say this problem is deeply built into my weltanschauung.

Rove might be going down over the CIA leak case. There is a lot of chatter among the rightwing guerrilla networks about indictments coming along in the next couple weeks - my guess would be Libby and Rove might get nailed for conspiracy or perjury. Bill Kristol, of all people, said this on Fox News Sunday:

Criminal defense lawyers I’ve spoken to who are friendly to the administration are very worried that there will be one or more indictments in the next three weeks of senior administration officials, just looking at what Fitzgerald is doing and taking him at his word, you know, being a serious prosecutor here. And I think it’s going to be bad for the Bush administration.

Rove is definitely sweating hard right now. He promised Bush that he hadn't spilled anything about Plame, but it seems that he neglected to mention his conversation with TIME Magazine's Cooper to Bush -- and it had to be added to his grand jury testimony in a new session. Murray Waas on the story for National Journal:

In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson, according to sources familiar with the president's interview. Bush said that Rove never mentioned the conversation with Cooper. James E. Sharp, Bush's private attorney, who was present at the president's interview with prosecutors, declined to comment for this story.
Sources close to the leak investigation being run by Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald say it was the discovery of one of Rove's White House e-mails-in which the senior Bush adviser referred to his July 2003 conversation with Cooper-that prompted Rove to contact prosecutors and to revise his account to include the Cooper conversation.
......
Rove on Thursday agreed to appear a fourth time before the federal grand jury, as federal prosecutors warned him that they could not guarantee that he would not be criminally charged, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
According to outside legal experts, it is rare for prosecutors to seek to question a witness before the grand jury so late in the course of a high-profile investigation and after the witness has already testified three times, unless criminal charges are being considered.

As Steve Clemons observes, Judith Miller was decidedly a huckster and a war-profiteer, (maybe worse for the Times than Jayson Blair). Clemons' saying:

As has been widely reported, she seems to have unnecessarily gone off to jail as she was protecting a source who never wanted protection. . .or she strong-armed a deal with Prosecutor Fitzgerald in which she didn't have to tell anything beyond her interactions with Vice President Cheney's Chief-of-Staff Scooter Libby.

That is, perhaps she sat in jail to protect either Ahmed Chalabi, or perhaps people around Chalabi that were channeling the fake WMD/Al Qaeda intelligence - in other words, Miller's actions might have everything to do with the dark, conspiratorial lies that got the war rolling (which Miller marketed to the American public). It seems that Judy Miller "found" some notes about early conversations with Libby - before Wilson's column seemed to trigger the Grand Plot. Lawrence O'Donnell had a couple things to say about Rove going to the grand jury again (across two posts):

What this means is Rove's lawyer, Bob Luskin, believes his client is defintely going to be indicted.
So, Luskin is sending Rove back into the grand jury to try to get around the prosecutor and sell his innocence directly to the grand jurors. Legal defense work doesn't get more desperate than this. The prosecutor is happy to let Rove go under oath again--without his lawyer in the room--and try to wiggle out of the case. The prosecutor has every right to expect that Rove's final under-oath grilling will either add a count or two to the indictment or force Rove to flip and testify against someone else.
.....
Prediction: at least three high level Bush Administration personnel indicted and possibly one or more very high level unindicted co-conspirators.

w00p w00p!!! Billmon is cackling about the possibilities of Espionage indictments.

There's a whole mesh of people that might go down over this - parts of the neo-con "core" around John Bolton, the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, and the Office of the Vice President - in other words the core of people that sold the War Lies. John Hannah, a Cheney/Bolton aide, has been under pressure and might have been flipped by the FBI. As Juan Cole put it:

Libby and Hannah form part of a 13-man vice presidential advisory team, sort of a veep NSC, which helps underpin Cheney's dominance in the US foreign policy area. Hannah is a neoconservative and old cold warrior who is really more of a Soviet expert than a Middle East expert. But in the 90s he for a while headed up the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), a think tank that represents the interests of the American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Hannah is said to have been behind Cheney's and consequently Bush's support for refusing to deal with Yasser Arafat. But he was also deeply involved in getting up the Iraq war.

So there is your hypothetical Plame-to-AIPAC-via-WINEP scandal link. Nice!

Let's have Joe Wilson and Joe Conason bring the Office of Special Plans into the affair. (even Clean Break author David Wurmser comes into this!) Wurmser and Hannah worked for John Bolton - what if they all got indicted? From Wilson's interview this summer in Salon (via Raimondo):

[Wilson:] "Gleaned from all those crosscurrents of information, the most plausible scenario, and the one that I've heard most frequently from different sources, has been that there was a meeting in the middle of March 2003, chaired by either [Cheney's chief of staff] Scooter Libby or the vice president – but more frequently I've heard chaired by Scooter – at which a decision was made to get a 'work-up' on me. That meant getting as much information about me as they could: about my past, about my life, about my family. This, in and of itself, is abominable. Then that information was passed at the appropriate time to the White House Communications Office, and at some point a decision was made to go ahead and start to smear me, after my opinion piece appeared in the New York Times."

"Salon: You mention two other names: John Hannah, who works in the Office of the Vice President, and David Wurmser, who is a special assistant to John Bolton, the undersecretary of state for arms control and national security. Last Wednesday, their names both appeared on a chart that accompanied an article in the New York Times about the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans and the war cabal within the Bush administration. Did these people run an intelligence operation against you?"

"Wilson: I don't know if it's the same unit, but it's very clear, from what I've heard, that the meeting in March 2003 led to an intelligence operation against my family and me. That's what a work-up is – to try to find everything you can about an American citizen."

Hoax Hax0rs Subway Security - for Bush PR needs?: The recent terror alert in New York City was a hoax and NYC officials have to try spinning it. This of course is sparking a lot of cynical conspiracy-theorizing that the Bush Regime is yet again manipulating the level of fear in the public for political purposes. Those level-headed guys at Alex Jones' PrisonPlanet note an article from Capitol Hill Blue that suggests terrorism alerts are based more on political need than fact, according to the ever-popular Disgruntled Insiders. Fear's Empire is an interesting thing like that. Also reported here.

Some more espionage in the White House. Aside from AIPAC excitement and the Plame case, there was a guy on Cheney's staff spying for the Philippine opposition political figures:

Officials say the classified material, which Aragoncillo stole from the vice president's office, included damaging dossiers on the president of the Philippines. He then passed those on to opposition politicians planning a coup in the Pacific nation.

DeLay has a lasting impact on Washington: Vast networks of influence peddlers and patronage distribution systems built over the better part of a decade don't blow away overnight. DeLay Inc. still has a lot of keys to the palace. There is a KStreetProject.com that seems to be part of the DeLay machine, but I'm not sure... It claims to be nonpartisan.

Bush can get testy with uppity reporters: There was an interesting column by WaPo's Froomkin about Bush getting hassled by NBC's Matt Lauer about photo-ops, while appearing at some kind of home rebuilding photo-op. Also he had an interesting followup about "plucky" Irish TV reporter Carole Coleman, who had a really funny interview. Coleman had a column in the UK Times about it. "I wanted to slap him," a great headline. Excellent:

“You were given an opportunity to interview the leader of the free world and you blew it,” she began.
I was beginning to feel as if I might be dreaming. I had naively believed the American president was referred to as the “leader of the free world” only in an unofficial tongue-in-cheek sort of way by outsiders, and not among his closest staff.
“You were more vicious than any of the White House press corps or even some of them up on Capitol Hill . . .The president leads the interview,” she said.
“I don’t agree,” I replied, my initial worry now turning to frustration. “It’s the journalist’s job to lead the interview.”
It was suggested that perhaps I could edit the tapes to take out the interruptions, but I made it clear that this would not be possible.
As the conversation progressed, I learnt that I might find it difficult to secure further co-operation from the White House. A man’s voice then came on the line. Colby, I assumed. “And, it goes without saying, you can forget about the interview with Laura Bush.”

Miers: The New Cipher: I can't really believe that things are flaking apart so badly on the right-wing side. "As Bush slips, GOP faces major shift in '08 vote". Agonist has a bit of the Nelson Report on Miers:

More pragmatic conservatives read the nomination of the President's personal lawyer, a Texas associate with no judicial experience, as a confession of weakness by a White House political operation which is still floundering in the wake of months of bad news from Iraq, Republican scandals on Capitol Hill, then Katrina, followed by more scandals. Bush can't win a really divisive fight with Congress, this reasoning goes...nor, at this point, does he want one. With three years still to go, he is already at risk of being written-off as a "lame duck" by his own Republicans, most of whom plan to run for reelection.
The Dems definitely smell opportunity come 2006, and you can see a leading indicator...attractive candidates are emerging to challenge Republican incumbents, while presumably strong Republicans are refusing to risk fights to unseat potentially vulnerable Democrats: see prime examples in West Virginia, where the almost 88-year old Sen. Robert Byrd won't face a popular GOP House member, and similarly strong Republicans have been scared-off in North Dakota, Washington, State, Florida, Michigan and Missouri.

Everyone gets apoplectic about these judicial selections but I just can't bring myself to worry about it that much. Let this link to some sort of relaxed reporting from PrisonPlanet indicate how much I care. Anyone who covered up Bush's National Guard behavior is square with me!!

Pentagon domestic spying measures sneak into a bill: Maybe all these visits to my site from the DoD, the CIA and DHS will finally make something happen. Newsweek reports (via WarAndPiece - there's an official PDF report along with it):

...the Senate Intelligence Committee recently approved broad-ranging legislation that gives the Defense Department a long sought and potentially crucial waiver: it would permit its intelligence agents, such as those working for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), to covertly approach and cultivate “U.S. persons” and even recruit them as informants—without disclosing they are doing so on behalf of the U.S. government. The Senate committee’s action comes as President George W. Bush has talked of expanding military involvement in civil affairs, such as efforts to control pandemic disease outbreaks.
The provision was included in last year’s version of the same bill, but was knocked out after its details were reported by NEWSWEEK and critics charged it could lead to “spying” on U.S. citizens. But late last month, with no public hearings or debate, a similar amendment was put back into the same authorization bill—an annual measure governing U.S. intelligence agencies—at the request of the Pentagon. A copy of the 104-page committee bill, which has yet to be voted on by the full Senate, did not become public until last week.
At the same time, the Senate intelligence panel also included in the bill two other potentially controversial amendments—one that would allow the Pentagon and other U.S. intelligence agencies greater access to federal government databases on U.S. citizens, and another granting the DIA new exemptions from disclosing any “operational files” under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). “What they are doing is expanding the Defense Department’s domestic intelligence activities in secret—with no public discussion,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil-liberties group that is often critical of government actions in the fight against terrorism...

Total dysfunction between DHS and local police? DHS 'hi-jacked' state police intel network? Another bad day for the National Insecurity State. UPI reports that local law enforcement are breaking off their connections from the Department of Homeland Security (via WarAndPiece):

Relations between the Department of Homeland Security and some key big-city and state police forces have sunk to a new low, CQ Weekly reports. The magazine's "Spy Talk" column, says the flow of intelligence data between the department and many local forces has been at a virtual standstill since May.
At the center of the row is a previously undisclosed May 7 letter to the department from Ed Manavian, chairman of the Joint Regional Information Exchange System, or JRIES -- a state and local police intelligence and information-sharing network.
In the letter, addressed to the director of the Homeland Security Operations Center, retired Marine Gen. Matthew Broderick, he called the decision to cut ties "unfortunate."
"[W]e must inform you that the Board unanimously voted to discontinue our relationship with the (Homeland Security Operations Center)," wrote Manavian, who is also chief of the California Department of Justice's Criminal Intelligence Bureau. The letter added it was a "difficult, but necessary, decision."
"The consensus of the Board is that the (Homeland Security Operations Center) has 'hi-jacked' the system and federalized a successful, cooperative, federal, state, and local project," Manavian wrote. "The failures . . . are a direct result of ignoring the concerns expressed by this Board on numerous occasions."

Perpetual Emergency Spending: The Katrina thing just illustrates that the Bush folks label everything as emergency spending to duck pressure about blowing through our cash and writing treasury notes to the Chinese as fast as they can.

Emergency Spending as a Way of Life:
In approving Mr. Bush's request for $51.8 billion in emergency assistance, Congress passed a three-page law with fewer than 700 words.
Here are the details: $1.4 billion would go to the military, $400 million would go to the Army Corps of Engineers and $50 billion would go for anything else tied to what was described only as "disaster relief."

TheBigPicture talks about Federal Off Balance Sheet Funding - it keeps going up and up! Also government oversight functions seem to have deteriorated badly as reflected by Katrina.

Iraq: Democracy == War: "Iraqis' Broken Dreams". "Hiding as police, militias hold the power in Basra." "Constitutional vote could spell the end for Iraq's unpopular premier". I would recommend this talk on CSPAN with Yosri Fouda, Al Jazeera's London Bureau chief (RealPlayer). It is a long one but full of the interesting shades of gray and so forth. Jazeera, by the way, is starting up an English language satellite international news service with the BBC's David Frost. Josh Rushing, the former Marine spokesman as seen in the documentary Control Room, is joining as a reporter. Nice.

LA Times: "A Central Pillar of Iraq Policy Crumbling:"

Senior U.S. officials have begun to question a key presumption of American strategy in Iraq: that establishing democracy there can erode and ultimately eradicate the insurgency gripping the country.

The expectation that political progress would bring stability has been fundamental to the Bush administration's approach to rebuilding Iraq, as well as a central theme of White House rhetoric to convince the American public that its policy in Iraq remains on course.

But within the last two months, U.S. analysts with access to classified intelligence have started to challenge this precept, noting a "significant and disturbing disconnect" between apparent advances on the political front and efforts to reduce insurgent attacks.

Now, with Saturday's constitutional referendum appearing more likely to divide than unify the country, some within the administration have concluded that the quest for democracy in Iraq, at least in its current form, could actually strengthen the insurgency.

Indeed. NewsDay has the sad headline: "Iraq struggling to survive: Doubts about the future of the war-torn country are growing as citizens prepare to vote on a constitution". I am cynical about Mr. Makiya because it seems as if he may have been tied to the INC's fake intelligence (his house was raided when the Pentagon finally turned on Chalabi), but he seems to get it these days:

"Sectarianism and ethnic self-interest" have led to the writing of a document that divides Iraq along ethnic lines, "perhaps even dealing the death blow to the idea of Iraq that had sustained the opposition for so many years," Kanan Makiya, a Brandeis University professor and Iraqi exile, said at a conference in Washington last week.

It was Makiya, a former ally of Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi, who President George W. Bush chose to join him in the Oval Office to watch as a statue of Saddam Hussein was pulled down after the invasion in 2003. Iraq's problems, driven by the relentless insurgency, have produced "so many dashed hopes and fledgling dreams" that they may have destroyed "the very idea and the very possibility of an Iraq," Makiya said.

Rahim, once the public face of the new Iraq in Washington, said at the AEI-sponsored conference that she agrees with Makiya. The new constitution is so full of ambiguities and creates such a weak central government that it may "spin the state out of control," she said.
........
What it does make clear is that a weak central government in Baghdad would have little control over three regions likely to be carved out for Kurds in the north, Shia in the south and leftover Sunnis in the center. This structure is bitterly opposed by the Sunnis, who would be left with no natural resources or means of support, and threatens to drive even moderate Sunnis into the arms of the insurgency, the experts say. The regions would have the power to veto most national laws, and the central government would not have the authority to enforce its own laws or the constitution, according to experts.

Perhaps most importantly, the ambiguity extends to what many experts describe as the most important issue of all: how Iraq's oil riches would be divided. According to some interpretations, current oil reserves would be divided nationally, but newly discovered oil would belong to the regions, likely providing a windfall for the Shia in the south.
.......
Phebe Marr of the U.S. Institute of Peace, considered by many the leading U.S. expert on Iraq, said in an interview that the creation of a "Shiastan" region of the nine provinces in the south could lead to "an arc of instability" through the Sunni center and the eventual dissolution of Iraq.
.......
Despite Pentagon claims of an emerging Iraqi military force that will soon be capable of taking over the nation's defense, "there is no integrated army. What is there is [ethnic] militias," she said.

Marr said many Iraqis believe that Hussein's Baath Party supporters will one day reclaim the Sunni center of the country by promising stability and honest government. "I am frightened to death of this scenario," Marr said.

On the Zarqawi fact v. fiction line, consider this bit of an interview with Iraq's Vice President (via Juan Cole):

[Tu'mah] How do you see the security challenges facing Iraq, and is [Abu-Mus'ab] Al-Zarqawi fact or fiction?

[Abd-al-Mahdi] Al-Zarqawi is not a myth. He is real. This man is wanted first of all by the Jordanian government. He issues statements. He has a known history and his name was used. He is real, and the actions he commits are not fiction: the killings, death and explosions. The security challenge is really great since it has ramifications and complications, foremost among which are the remnants of the former regime who form the basic infrastructure of terror and sabotage, in an attempt to put the clock back and stop the political process by resorting to the methods of the former authorities, terrorizing people and holding them hostage.

One of those things that seems less true the more you hear it. Cole also notes:

Iraq issued indictments against 27 officials of the government of Iyad Allawi, charging them with over $1 billion worth of fraud. The accused include the Minister of Defense, Hazem Shaalan, and 4 other cabinet ministers. Most of these former officials, installed by old-time CIA asset Iyad Allawi when he was shoe-horned in as prime minister by the US and the UN in late June 2004, have fled the country.

In the same post he adds that 59% of the American public wants the troops out as soon as possible.

Jon Stewart mocks the magazine industry while making $150,000 and asking the publisher of Men's Health why his mag is "so gay?" Hahah nice.

Bob Woodward predicts Cheney Vs. Hillary 2008. And that alone is worthy of picking up a serious heroin habit.

'Ashton Kutcher Hacked' Hoax: apparently the recent Ashton Kutcher Hacked incident was as much of a hoax as the latest NYC subway alert. Fortunately the perpetrator (of zug.com) has explained what fun he had in generating a huge media storm, and subsequently planting the widespread rumor that Demi & Ashton were faking their proposed marriage.

ECONOMICS sux0rs! This Delphi bankruptcy thing is sketchy. Some analyst at Banc of America is now saying that there's around a 30% chance that GM will declare bankruptcy within a few years. Steve Clemons notes that top Delphi executives are going to try to make off with lots of Golden Parachute cash while leaving bondholders screwed. Morgan Stanley guy says (via the Agonist):

Delphi's bankruptcy is a big deal. It is emblematic of a new set of pressures bearing down on the US. The global rebalancing framework that I continue to embrace suggests that the world's growth and asset return dynamic has only just begun a major tilt away from the US and dollar-based assets. If that's the case, America will have little to offer in a low-return world for risk-averse and yield-hungry investors. Could Delphi be the long awaited wake-up call that drives this realization home?

We'll have some more econ stuff later...

Total disease paranoia: What would quarantines look like? Enforced by military firebombs a la Outbreak? Times UK notes that the leaked disaster plan indicates that we are DOOMED.

No bid, bitches! Cheney still has some fat stock options with Halliburton - more than 433,000! Nice. He receives more than $200,000 a year in that deferred compensation, and the stock options have increased in value 3,281%, up to $8.17 million. NICE (via Agonist)

That's Fucked Up: The War Porn guy got arrested for distributing obscene material - the dead bodies and so forth. Which begs the question of whether killing those people was in fact, a much worse, criminal obscenity.

It's up to Fitzgerald to now prove that the real criminal obscenity was the war itself, and the way its architects ruthlessly crushed anyone who tried to stop them.

The Dark Crest of Corruption Breaks: DeLay; Franklin/AIPAC GUILTY; "covert propaganda"; Libby nailed for Valerie Plame leak. Feeling Fat & Happy, moving to MPLS.

There have been so many scandals breaking this week that I've really got Intrigue Fatigue:

Frank Luntz, who helped develop the "Contract With America" message that swept Republicans to power in 1994, was on the Hill last week warning the party faithful that they could lose both the House and the Senate in next year's congressional elections.

Har har har... Blogs for Bush darkly rambles about Democrats wishing for civil war. Fortunately, I scored a new apartment at the edge of downtown Minneapolis with Colin Kennedy. The apartment windows are just above the street signs in this photo. It's at Apartment 200, 32 Spruce Place, the "Haverhill Apartments", which is around the Laurel Village area. Basically to get there, you drive up Hennepin past the Minneapolis Community & Technical College and take a left onto Harmon Place, then go a block. It is right there on the first corner in. Not bad!

First, the Covert Propaganda. Let's put that in bold. Covert Propaganda. It is not getting much bounce on the TV news because there is too much going on. But I like it. See AFP or NY Times:

Federal auditors said on Friday that the Bush administration violated the law by buying favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.
In a blistering report, the investigators, from the Government Accountability Office, said the administration had disseminated "covert propaganda" in the United States, in violation of a statutory ban.

Then, Valerie Plame and the War Propaganda. Meanwhile they started a war based on fabricated propaganda. I think I know which is worse. But they didn't like it when uppity ponks like Joe Wilson tried to deflate some of their more outlandish claims, so they smeared him by outing his wife as a CIA operative, which in their demented cocktail-party worldview somehow was thought to be a good idea. But who did this? Michael Ledeen? (well he quite possibly involved with the Yellowcake forgeries themselves, but...) Joe Wilson wasted no time in insinuating that Karl Rove and I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby were involved, and I had this thing fairly well pegged back in 2003. Nearly two years ago, October 4, 2003, 'Everyone's National Disaster' I said:

The leaker went after Wilson to intimidate anyone else who might attack the Bush folks falsification of war intelligence. Let me offer a prediction about who was probably behind the leak: the Vice President's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby. There have been insiders saying that the bad guy works in the Executive Office Building, where Cheney's people are. If I'm right about this, I definitely win a cookie.

(although on antiwar.com they had it pegged back then too - that was certainly one of my sources) I will award myself a cookie now. A fine headline from the WaPo: "Role of Rove, Libby in CIA Leak Case Clearer: Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony Contradicts Earlier White House Statement". And so now they are saying, let's look at bringing in CONSPIRACY charges. Har har (via a happy Billmon)!

A new theory about Fitzgerald's aim has emerged in recent weeks from two lawyers who have had extensive conversations with the prosecutor while representing witnesses in the case. They surmise that Fitzgerald is considering whether he can bring charges of a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by a group of senior Bush administration officials. Under this legal tactic, Fitzgerald would attempt to establish that at least two or more officials agreed to take affirmative steps to discredit and retaliate against Wilson and leak sensitive government information about his wife. To prove a criminal conspiracy, the actions need not have been criminal, but conspirators must have had a criminal purpose.

Naturally folks are drooling over the opportunity to see who in the White House could actually be indicted. Dkos writer DC Poli Sci outlines how back in the Watergate days, the prosecutors wanted to avoid setting a precedent of indicting the President, so fortunately they had bi-partisan support for impeachment, an option not open these days. A very good place to start looking at the matter. An (actual) psychoanalyst looks at Bush's general destructive tendencies - and how he might lash out if Karl Rove et al. are threatened by Fitzgerald's CIA probe:

Why this matters now is the possible reaction of Bush to Fitzgerald's next serious move. My fear is that the inner emptiness in Bush will respond with absolute panic to the potential loss of Rove and his other pals. Panic in a sadist who believes in the apocalypse is something serious about which we all should be worried.

It would be funny if it weren't so obviously alarming. So would Fitzgerald bring charges against Libby? Froomkin in the WaPo has many bits about Miller's Big Secret.

Haaretz: U.S. officials eye possible Assad successors in Syria:

The sources added that senior American officials, in recent conversations with their Israeli counterparts, have expressed interest in Israel's assessments of Assad's possible successors, asking who Israel thought could replace him and still maintain Syria's stability. American officials said that their impression from these conversations was that Israel would prefer to have a weakened Assad, vulnerable to international pressure, remain in power, and is unenthusiastic about the possibility of a regime change in Syria.

The Israelis' impression was that America's main concern is the flow of terrorists into Iraq via Syria, rather than the threat posed by the Syrian-backed Hezbollah organization in Lebanon. But Washington, like Jerusalem, is eagerly awaiting the results of the Hariri investigation, and will not decide what to do about Syria until the findings have been published.

AIPAC Your ass, bitches!!! Funny stuff. Former Pentagon analyst (under Douglas Feith and the Office of Special Plans, part of the time) Larry Franklin is going to plead guilty to passing classified defense intelligence to AIPAC staffers, who in turn passed it along to Israeli intelligence agents at the embassy in Washington. AP story on it:

Rosen, a top lobbyist for Washington-based AIPAC for more than 20 years, and Weissman, the organization's top Iran expert, allegedly disclosed sensitive information as far back as 1999 on a variety of topics, including al-Qaida, terrorist activities in Central Asia, the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and U.S. policy in Iran, according to the indictment.

Presumably this means that he could really spill some beans on how AIPAC has operated as an agent of a foreign power (and probably as an espionage channel) while lobbying in DC. Justin Raimondo makes the 'maximalist' case that the Israeli government has, to some extent, been manipulating US policy. I think that "Israel's secret war on the US" goes a ways too far, but we are certainly looking at a serious Rabbit Hole of mysterious proportions. Raimondo puts his favorite pieces together in "AIPAC and Espionage: Guilty as Hell":

The chief beneficiaries of the conquest of Iraq, and subsequent threats against both Iran and Syria, have been, in descending order, Israel, Iran, and Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaeda has used the invasion as a recruiting tool and training ground for its global jihad against the United States. Iran has extended its influence deep into southern Iraq and has penetrated the central government in Baghdad. In the long run, however, Israel benefits the most, as a major Middle Eastern Arab country fragments into at least three pieces and the U.S. military is ineluctably drawn into neighboring countries.
While the U.S. imposes an occupation eerily reminiscent of Israel's longstanding occupation of Palestinian lands and prepares to deal with Israel's enemies in the region, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon makes major incursions into the West Bank, even while supposedly "withdrawing" from Gaza. In the meantime, the political and military bonds between the U.S. and Israel are strengthened, as the two allies present an indissoluble united front against the entire Muslim world.
Except the alliance is far from indissoluble, as the AIPAC spy scandal reveals. The U.S.-Israeli relationship, often described as "special," is rather more ambiguous than is generally recognized, both by Israel's staunchest friends and its most implacable enemies. This has come out in Israel's funneling American military technology to China, and the threat of American sanctions, but was also made manifest earlier by indications that Israel was conducting extensive spying operations in the U.S. prior to 9/11 – suspicions that are considerably strengthened by the AIPAC spy brouhaha.
Israel's secret war against America has so far been conducted in the dark, but the Rosen-Weissman trial will expose these night creatures to the light of day. Blinking and cursing, they'll be confronted with their treason, and, even as they whine that "everybody does it," the story of how and why a cabal of foreign agents came to exert so much influence on the shape of U.S. foreign policy will be told.
In the course of bending American policy to the Israelis' will, they had to compromise the national security of the United States – and that's what tripped them up, in the end.

Again, this is not my basic opinion about the situation, but it ought to be considered. On the flip side, Juan Cole reacts to Raimondo by pointing out that in Washington, it is ALL interest group politics, but when there is no wealthy counter-interest group to given foreign countries (like pro-Likud groups or anti-Castro Cubans) then U.S. policy gets incredibly one-sided and stupid. With the memorable headline "A Government of War Criminals, A Press of Agents Provocateurs, A Bureaucracy of Foreign Spies:"

I wish the argument were more nuanced, and there are many things in it with which I disagree (David Satterfield is likely to have been a relatively innocent bystander in this train wreck, e.g.). But because Raimundo pulls no punches, he forces us to consider the degree to which Congressional foreign policy on the Middle East in particular has become virtually captive to the Zionist lobby (just as US policy toward Cuba is captive to the Cuban-American community and its lobby). He clearly goes too far, but how far should an analyst of this case go? Billmon is almost equally scathing.

One thing must be said, which is that there is no sinister cabal, that all this is just single-interest politics. The American system is one of checks and balances, and takes it for granted that there will be lobbies on both sides of an issue. But because there are no wealthy, organized, well-connected lobbies on the other side of AIPAC or the Cuban-American National Foundation (e.g.), US government policy ends up being unbalanced and often irrational on those issues. And, AIPAC functions as a foreign agent in the US without having to register as such, and some of its major officers clearly have been deeply involved in espionage for Israel for years. The last two points are uncontestable. Is this really a situation that serves the American people? Franklin, the "go-to" man at the Pentagon for then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, was trying to get up a US war against Iran, and was soliciting AIPAC's help. We already know that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has tried as hard as he could to get the US into a war against Tehran. Do the rest of us, who already have one military occupation of a Middle Eastern country we're not comfortable with, have any say at all in this? Don't we need a PAC for Middle East Peace that could begin offsetting AIPAC, the War PAC? If the pro-Israeli lobby or the Israeli prime minister want wars in the Middle East, why don't they fight them themselves? By the way, AIPAC has for several years been attempting to get Congress to pass a law that would put it in charge of the Middle East professors, like myself, and in a position to punish our universities financially if any of us criticize it or Israeli policy. The most dangerous thing about key elements of the Zionist lobby is that they really do want to gut the US First Amendment when it comes to Israeli interests.

I hope everyone who reads this will consider writing their Congressional representatives and senators and asking them to work to see that AIPAC is made to register as the agent of a foreign power, given the repeated pattern whereby it acts as such.

So yeah, Billmon has had a couple things to say about the matter. I also liked this UPI bit "Analysis: Netanyahu: US Opposes? So what?" which talks about Netanyahu's campaign to capture some more settlements as part of his bid to take over the Likud Party. I won't quote it now, but if you want evidence of how an insane racial chauvinist campaigns in favor of territorial expansion, you've got it. On the flip side, reflections about the peace movement in the broader Jewish community.

To hell with Des Moines: Finally the oh so productive 'retail politics' of Iowa and New Hampshire are finished as Dems to Add Contests to 2008 Calendar (via the Kos). So two more states will join IA and NH in the early set of primaries. I hope it's New York and California, or maybe Oregon and Montana. Or Mississippi and Kentucky. Whatever. Anything would be an improvement. Montana governor Brian Schweitzer was named the nation's 2005 "Hot Governor" by Rolling Stone but his story got axed. "'Since Hunter S. Thompson left, Rolling Stone hasn't been worth reading,' Schweitzer said," according to the article.

Able/Danger mystery continues: Newsday writes that the Pentagon had some sorts of leads on lead 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta before the attack, but the defense intelligence program Able/Danger was shut down and huge amounts of data got deleted. I've got an exciting conspiracy linked below about this, naturally!

Shaffer explained in a telephone interview that although Able/Danger never had knowledge of Atta's whereabouts, it had linked him and several other Al Qaeda suspects to an Egyptian terrorist, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, who had been linked to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and later was convicted for conspiring to attack the U.S. Atta arrived in the U.S. some seven years after that bombing. But Shaffer and his attorney, Mark Zaid, emphasize that Able/Danger never knew where Atta was, only that he was connected to Abdel-Rahman and Al Qaeda.

"Not to say they were physically here, but the data led us to believe there was some activity related to the original World Trade Center bombing that these guys were somehow affiliated with," Shaffer said.

...[Senator] Specter sharply criticized the Pentagon for refusing to allow Shaffer, Phillpott, Smith and others who recall seeing the chart to appear and answer the committee's questions. "It looks to me as if it could be obstruction of the committee's activities," the senator said. Specter added that he was especially "dismayed and frustrated" by the committee's inability to hear from Shaffer and Phillpott, whom he described as "two brave military officers [who] have risked their careers to come forward and tell America the truth."

Pentagon to permit testimony: Following the hearing, Specter announced that the Pentagon had agreed to allow Shaffer, Phillpott and three other witnesses to testify in public next month, though a Specter aide said Tuesday that the Pentagon now insisted the hearings be closed.
.....Able/Danger was an experiment in a new kind of warfare, known as "information warfare" or "information dominance." One of the program's missions was to see whether Al Qaeda cells around the world could be identified by sifting huge quantities of publicly available data, a relatively new technique called "data mining."

The data miners used complex software programs, with names like Spire, Parentage and Starlight, that mimic the thought patterns in the human brain while parsing countless bits of information from every available source to find relationships and patterns that otherwise would be invisible.

Weird. Anyway the article also features some classic pre-9/11 bits such as the Phoenix memo and the arrest of Zacharias Mussaoui (so on the day of 9/11, the Minneapolis FBI had Nicholas Berg's email password inside Mussaoui's laptop. Random but interesting......)

War Porn: A very disturbing site called nowthatsfuckedup.com features images sent in by U.S. soldiers of dead people, blown to bits and so forth, from overseas, and this has been characterized as "the new pornography of war" (also The Porn of War at The Nation). Like any incredibly shady site, it's hosted in the Netherlands, so it's unlikely that lawyers can really get to them. It is very disturbing.

It seems like this is part of a very disturbing glorification of violence, using the aesthetic of death to provide meaning -- in other words, a surface manifestation of the inner emotional state that drives wars and murder. In contrast are the (warning: very graphic links) other photo galleries that can be found online that are intended to illustrate the horrors of Iraq, in order to encourage an end to the conflict. And there are those photos of flag-draped coffins coming into Dover Air Force Base in the United States that Bush was always obsessed with hiding from us. (thememoryblog, by the way, is excellent for more news on censored and concealed news like this)

Zarqawi-Goldstein update: I found another story about the ghost-like, eerie quality of how the Abu Musab al Zarqawi figure continues to generate media reports, while everyday Jordanians doubt he's still alive at all. This was by Dahr Jamail, who also has the Iraq casualty photo galleries linked above.

IRAQ MESS - time to grab our marbles and book it: Reuters: "Reuters says US troops obstruct reporting of Iraq." Now they are saying there is ONE fully functional Iraqi battalion. Great. Time to produce some kind of really important strategic benefit by blowing the hell out of some town (Sadah) eight miles from the Syrian border. I'm sure this will produce the same fine effects as the fourth time that the U.S. captured Samarra. Classified documents are talking about withdrawal strategies. "US Generals Now See Virtues of a Smaller Troop Presence in Iraq." as in:

"the generals said the presence of U.S. forces was fueling the insurgency, fostering an undesirable dependency on American troops among the nascent Iraqi armed forces and energizing terrorists across the Middle East."

The WaPo says that well, Bush is under pressure because Iraq is dissolving, and the Saudis are getting more vocal about noting this in public, which is not their usual style at all:

For all the public confidence, however, the Bush administration in private is nervous about this sensitive last stage, which will establish whether Iraq’s disparate religious and ethnic factions can stay together in a single nation — and whether civil war can be avoided, according to U.S. officials and experts on Iraq.

The administration has come under growing pressure at home and abroad over the past two weeks, with dire warnings from Arab allies and a prominent international group about the looming disintegration of Iraq. In an unusual public rebuke of U.S. policy, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister called a news conference in Washington last week to predict Iraq’s dissolution. He said there is no leadership or momentum to pull Iraq’s Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds back together and prevent a civil war. Other countries have expressed similar concerns in private, according to U.S. and Arab diplomats.

IRAQ Withdrawal Options Summary: Retired Lt. General William Odom adds that the Iraq war was "greatest strategic disaster in United States history". I mentioned Odom's analysis of What's really wrong with 'cutting and running' earlier. Michael Schwartz had a widely read reflection on why immediate withdrawal would be the better option now. Juan Cole's list of ten war demands for Congress, Billmon's sullen yet wise perspective and Robert Dreyfuss' view represent an excellent cross-section of thinking about the options for getting the U.S. away from this sorry vortex. Billmon's view of the War Porn site finally pushed him over the edge about the war, giving him the mental picture of growing, incipient Fascist tendencies in this country:

So I've been promising myself for a while now that I would break cover and at least admit that I'm not sure withdrawing from Iraq is the morally right thing to do, and have deep doubts about the arguments in favor of it.
But something happened on my way to a confession: I came across the Nation article on nonwthatsfuckedup.com, which meant I had to take a good, hard look at the psychopathic side of the American spirit, and consider its implications not just for the war on terrorism and the occupation of Iraq, but its role in the emergence of an authentically fascist movement in American politics, one which feeds on violence and the glorification of violence, and which has found an audience not just in the U.S. military (where I think -- or at least hope -- it's still a relatively small fringe) but in the culture as a whole.
I don't have time at the moment to explain fully why and how this peek at the banality of evil changed my thinking, although I'll try to cover it in a future post. Suffice it to say that my visit to nowthatsfuckedup.com was a reminder of the genocidal skeletons hanging in the American closet. It left me with the conviction -- or at least an intuitive premonition -- that an open-ended war in Iraq (or in the broader Islamic world) will bring nothing but misery and death to them, and creeping (or galloping) authoritarianism to us.

Jim Lobe had an excellent article about whether "Can the US Military Presence Avert Civil War?" This article is required reading. (Also it's worth recalling that Niall Ferguson was at my table when I had lunch with Michael Ledeen):

The growing spectre of a full-scale civil war in Iraq -- and the likelihood that such a conflict will draw in neighbouring states -- has intensified a summer-long debate here over whether and how to withdraw U.S. troops. Some analysts believe that an immediate U.S. withdrawal would make an all-out conflict less likely, while others insist that the U.S. military presence at this point is virtually all there is to prevent the current violence from blowing sky-high, destabilising the region, and sending oil prices into the stratosphere.

The Bush administration continues to insist it will "stay the course" until Iraqi security forces can by themselves contain, if not crush, the ongoing insurgency. But an increasing number of analysts, including some who favoured the 2003 invasion, believe Washington will begin drawing down its 140,000 troops beginning in the first half of next year, if for no other reason than the Republican Party needs to show voters a "light at the end of the tunnel" before the November 2006 elections.

.....In fact, some of these analysts believe that a civil war -- pitting Sunnis against the Kurdish and Shia populations -- has already begun. "A year ago, it was possible to write about the potential for civil war in Iraq," wrote Iraq-war booster Niall Ferguson in the Los Angeles Times. "Today that civil war is well underway," he asserted. While that remains a minority view, the likelihood and imminence of civil war in Iraq is no longer questioned by analysts outside the administration.

Ferguson blames the situation on Washington's failure to deploy a sufficient number of troops in Iraq to crush any insurgency. But a report released Monday by the International Crisis Group (ICG) pointed the finger at the U.S.-sponsored constitutional process, which will culminate in a national plebiscite Oct. 15, as having further alienated Sunnis from the two other major sectarian groups. Barring a major U.S. intervention to ensure that Sunni interests are addressed, according to the report, "Unmaking Iraq: A Constitutional Process Gone Awry", "Iraq is likely to slide toward full-scale civil war and the break-up of the country."
......"We created the civil war when we invaded (Iraq); we can't prevent a civil war by staying," Odom wrote last month in an essay entitled "What's Wrong with Cutting and Running?" He and Bacevich both argued that, instead of creating a vacuum in Iraq that would draw in neighbouring powers, Washington's withdrawal would force neighbours and other great powers -- who have been relegated to the sidelines by the Bush administration's high-handedness -- to form a coalition to ensure a conflict would not get out of hand.

Some of the administration's critics, however, argue that an immediate withdrawal will indeed make things far worse, particularly for Iraqis. "I just cannot understand this sort of argument," wrote University of Michigan Middle East expert Juan Cole on his much-read blog (www.juancole.com). "The U.S. military is killing a lot of Iraqis, but whether it is killing more than would die in a civil war would depend on how many died in a civil war," he wrote. "A million or two could die in a civil war, and that's if the war stays limited to Iraq, which is unlikely."

"A U.S. withdrawal would not cause the Sunnis suddenly to want to give up their major demands; indeed, they might well be emboldened to hit the Shiites harder," wrote Cole, who favours both the withdrawal of most U.S. ground troops and, in the absence of NATO or U.N. peacekeepers, the maintenance of Special Forces and U.S. airpower in the region precisely to prevent sectarian forces from escalating the conflict into a conventional civil war, as in Afghanistan.

Bing West reporting from Fallujah for Slate.com talks about the Emerging Iraqi Army and life in Fallujah in a series of articles. He was a Pentagon official, so the tone is towards "Rah-Rah!!" but it's still well-done. Ah, the Berg/Zarqawi story pops up here too. Anyway. 'C', an anonymous officer who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, related to Human Rights Watch how he couldn't get those in the chain of command to do anything about widespread torture practices. This quote says it all:

[At FOB Mercury] they said that they had pictures that were similar to what happened at Abu Ghraib, and because they were so similar to what happened at Abu Ghraib, the soldiers destroyed the pictures. They burned them. The exact quote was, “They [the soldiers at Abu Ghraib] were getting in trouble for the same things we were told to do, so we destroyed the pictures.”
....My company commander said, “I see how you can take it that way, but…” he said something like, “remember the honor of the unit is at stake” or something to that effect and “Don’t expect me to go to bat for you on this issue if you take this up,” something to that effect.

"Officials Fear Chaos if Iraqis Vote Down the Constitution". The suspicious sentiment of the moment:

"Nobody will be surprised to lose Anbar, and maybe one other province," one Pentagon official said. "We're not going to lose three."

Juan Cole reflects on the recent war protests and spineless Democrats. Fred Kaplan in Slate writes that the damned Constitution coming down the line in Iraq will be a disaster, and he hopes it's defeated:

The basic fact about Iraqi geography is that the Kurdish north and Shiite south have lots of oil, while the Sunni center does not. Read in this context, the basic fact about the Iraqi Constitution is that it strengthens the north and south, lets them form semiautonomous regions and expand them into super-regions—in short, it lets them dominate the country's politics and economics—while leaving the Sunnis with nearly nothing. It leaves the very faction that needs to be assimilated, if Iraq is to be a secure and viable nation, unassimilated.

Former Iraqi Army officers sat around and discussed why they wished that the old Army was still in existence, by Patrick Cockburn:

It was meant to be a moment of reconciliation between the old regime and the new, a gathering of nearly 1,000 former Iraqi army officers and tribal leaders in Baghdad to voice their concerns over today's Iraq. But it did not go as planned.
General after general rose to his feet and raised his voice to shout at the way Iraq was being run and to express his fear of escalating war. "They were fools to break up our great army and form an army of thieves and criminals," said one senior officer. "They are traitors," added another.
.....The meeting, in a heavily guarded hall close to the Tigris, was called by General Wafiq al-Sammarai, a former head of Iraqi military intelligence under Saddam who fled Baghdad in 1994 to join the opposition. He is now military adviser to President Jalal Talabani.
His eloquent call for support for the government in his fight against terrorism did not go down well. He sought to reassure his audience that no attack was planned on the Sunni Arab cities of central Iraq such as Baquba, Samarra and Ramadi, as the Iraqi Defence minister had threatened. He said people had been fleeing the cities but "there will be no attack on you, no use of aircraft, no bombardment by the Americans". The audience was having none of it.
......The meeting was important because the officer corps of the old Iraqi army consider themselves as keeper of the flame of Iraqi nationalism. One of them asked General Sammarai to stop using the American word "general" and use the Arabic word lewa'a instead.
In conversation, the officers made clear that they considered armed resistance to the occupation legitimate. General Sammarai told The Independent that he drew a distinction between terrorists blowing up civilians and nationalist militants fighting US troops.

One of the Senior Fuck-Ups, Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers, is finally retiring to somewhere else that he can pointlessly bomb. Alex Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair bitterly lament the spinelessness of Democrats as they "Sink Deeper into the Ooze." A final bit about the AIPAC == War Party meme today:

For those interested in some of the reasons for this incredible abdication [of Democrats avoiding the recent war protest], we can cite former National Security Agency staffer and muckraker Wayne Madsen who reported two days after the rally that "according to Democratic insiders on Capitol Hill AIPAC put out the word that any member of Congress who appeared at the protest, where some speakers were to represent pro-Palestinian views, would face their political wrath."
Madsen wrote that three members of Congress had been scheduled to speak at the rally ­ McKinney, Woolsey and John Conyers. "Word is that AIPAC will direct its massive campaign to Wolsey's neo-con and pro-Iraq war primary challenger, California state assemblyman Joe Nation, who has strong connections to the RAND corporation."

USS Cole-Wayne Madsen conspiracy time: Meanwhile Wayne Madsen has a new really exciting conspiracy theory involving the famous Israeli art students, John O'Neill, September 11, Douglas Feith and Marc Zell, Able/Danger, Islamic militants in Bosnia, Plame's Brewster Jennings front company, Sibel Edmonds, Michael Chertoff, the USS Cole bombing (actually an Israeli missile, according to Madsen's unnamed CIA source) and the rest. Not worth betting the lunch money on, but a very entertaining counter-narrative about the ideologies and paranoia of our times. Time for Deep Politics, Comrade. But Madsen takes heart with all the breaking scandals, as I do on his site:

After almost five years of incessant outrages by the Bush regime, I have never been more optimistic that the tide may be beginning to turn.

UK Times: "Iraq's Relentless March of Death." Via lies.com (love the banner pic) we get a bit about Statements from the Leaders (via Kevin Drum):

Asked whether the insurgency has worsened, Casey said it has not expanded geographically or numerically, “to the extent we can know that.” But he noted that current “levels of violence are above norms,” exceeding 500 attacks a week. “I’ll tell you that levels of violence are a lagging indicator of success,” he added.

So he is having trouble fully vaulting into lie territory, unlike Rummy. Lies.com also notes that surprisingly, adept liars' brains are built differently - with more white matter and less neurons in the prefrontal cortex.

Boeing and Bell Helicopter have apologized for running an advertisement for the V-22 Osprey aircraft that features soldiers invading a mosque. "It descends from the heavens. Ironically it unleashes hell... Consider it a gift from above." That's pretty fucked up. Apparently the building in the image says "Muhammed Mosque" in Arabic. Wow. Almost as ill-conceived as the boondoggle Osprey itself.

Abu Ghraib Photo Bomb: We are set for another batch of Abu Ghraib media to be released, much to the chagrin of the Pentagon leadership, who prefer to frame the issue as destabilizing and pointlessly inflammatory media. However, it is also excellent evidence for the American people that the Pentagon leadership does not deserve to keep their jobs, which is obviously the most important thing in the fucking world.

Former CIA dude Ray McGovern notes that the chain of command is constantly ducking responsibility for torturing people and all that. Stories of the 'New Boss' Iraqi security agencies are really scary, such as the story from Khalid Jarrar's detainment that I mentioned a while ago. You can almost taste the insanity and paranoia now generating inside those new Iraqi government agency buildings (actually, like Abu Ghraib, they're the same buildings as Saddam's day).

Paul Craig Roberts summarizes your basic reasons that Bush is stirring up some more wars with Iran and North Korea.

The Misc File: "India loses political credibility in anti-Iran vote" (IPS):

India, a country that aspires to be a superpower in Asia, lost its political credibility among the world's developing nations last week when it voted against Iran at a meeting of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. 

The headline in a leading Indian national newspaper said it all: "India's shameful vote against Iran." The criticism kept snowballing, as the media, academics and mainstream and left-wing politicians in New Delhi crucified the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for abandoning one of its longtime political and economic allies in Asia.

Well that's enough fun for today. With a little luck, let this post stand as this website's high water mark of charting the World's Sordid Affairs, the sinister inverse point, the final crest of the high and terrible wave we've been on. The opposite of this:

And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right sort of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Time is on our side. I'm moving to Minneapolis.

Some kind of DeLay situation; dipping Uzbekistan; Machiavelli in the 21st century; Hey Arianna, we're #1 for "Bolton fake intelligence"

Yeah, I can't bring myself to write any more about the whole arrest incident. So I won't.

Start with Machiavelli for the Twenty-First Century from New Left Review. I liked this.

It is true that Bush sounds like LBJ in 1967 with staying the course. Tom DeLay got indicted, what fun. They are screaming partisanship but the Democratic Texas prosecutor has hit a lot of Democrats in the past.

In Ohio they are trying to un-gerrymander the legislative districts. Good luck folks.

Robert George, a self described "Catholic, West Indian black Republican" asks himself "Why Am I (Still) A Republican?" Indeed. There is a good deal of gloating on the left-blogosphere these days, as conservatives seem to split in all directions and run for cover. Stygius and Laura Rozen note that such luminaries as Andy Sullivan, Dan Drezner and Robert "the ghoul" Novak are running for cover.

I might have the sniffles. I wonder if it is H5N1 KILLER FLU. Which is spreading rapidly.

Arianna is saying what I said a while ago, that John Bolton is quite likely connected to the Valerie Plame CIA case. (antiwar.com was on it a while ago as Raimondo quickly puts on the comments). For more old bits, consider "They Knew" the intel was spoofed in In These Times, Aug 2004. Oh by the way, HongPong.com has the top Google ranking for "bolton fake intelligence," for the excellent post: "More stories of the fake intelligence and John 'the Moustache' Bolton". Hey, not bad!

The US is really leaving Uzbekistan. I really enjoyed this lengthy New Left Review profile about the history and situation of Chechnya. It very astutely points out that no legitimate Chechen leader has ever agreed with the Russians to be part of Russia or the USSR. Also the article adds that the FSB and Putin were widely suspected of orchestrating the 1999 apartment bombings subsequently blamed on Chechen rebels - terror99.ru is a sweet Russian site elaborating on some "conspiracy theories" about why a beam of shining light like Putin would ever dare do such a thing as bomb some buildings to freak out the Russian public.

Check out Arms Control Wonk. It's just cool. They have good info about North Korea among other things.

Oddly, Arlen Specter accused the Pentagon of blocking an investigation in the pre-9/11 "Able Danger" Pentagon intelligence project that people are now saying somehow identified Mohammed Atta, and other weird stuff. NY Times on it as well as CNN. I will spare you the billions of weird theories that could spring from this. Sorry - use your imagination.

The NY Times Company is cutting out 500 jobs.

An American diplomat characterized the depth of Shiite fundamentalist organizations taking solid control of southern Iraq as "our dirty little secret." If you are looking for a more realistic summary of Islamic militant movements and "the far enemy" check out this review of The Far Enemy on the Agonist. Some are arguing that Iran is not a global threat. Try "Give Iranian Nukes a Chance" by Slavoj Zizek (Aug. 2005), a lot of stuff about how the state projects its threat perceptions onto foreigners, justifying ongoing 'security measures' that are in fact the real threats to Democracy & Freedom. I think the truth lies in between, but it certainly is true that MAD logic may get the Iranians peace in the end - or a large glass parking lot. I hope for peace, and I am not a paranoid racist who thinks that Iranian civilization is totally suicidal and irrational.

Slavoj Zizek also wrote this bit about how the WMDs were MacGuffins in the narrative. Old but funny.

The Afghan heroin kingpins / warlords did quite well in the elections. Juan Cole noted that the British agents captured in Basra were apparently active in trying to intercept arms coming into Iraq from Iran. Basra is wack these days (FT adds to this, and Raimondo remarks that we're on the war road to Damascus and Tehran via Basra). Cole adds:

Among the more powerful Iranian arms merchants is Manucher Ghorbanifar, this one with friends in high places in Washington, who is trying to pull the United States into a war against Iran. War is good for arms merchants.

There is also some info about how much be-Baathification has really happened.

Check out this new film, Occupation Dreamland, about how some US troops handle their situation in Fallujah. There are sweet trailers. It looks amazing. Also check out this story about Turkey and its social conflicts.

Some commentary about Katrina's economic effects. The "Fog of Katrina" is being used to obscure unrelated economic information, they say. MorganStanley economist talking about how and when the global economy will get rebalanced. Richard Cohen at the WaPo says choose, dammit, Guns or Butter.

As always, between Israel and Palestine there is plenty of violence and even more spin. The Israelis got mighty angry when Hamas fired a bunch of rockets from Gaza into southern Israel, which Hamas justified by claiming that Israel blew up a vehicle at a militant rally, killing lots of people. It seems reasonable to me that the vehicle blew up on its own, but it is certainly possible that Israel did it. So Israel attacked Gaza and arrested a bunch of people in the West Bank. The 'militants' supposedly captured in the West Bank were to some extent part of the militant organizations' "political wings" and some of the more moderate elements, including those that favor reconciliation and intend to run in the upcoming Palestinian elections. I found the following on some kind of rightwing Israeli site, unitedjerusalem.org, where the text was loaded into some kind of interactive bias-judging webpage. Weird. But here is the "political" vs "militant wing" bit, which seems to be on Haaretz's print page here but not here or here. Thanks google.

In the largest arrest sweep since Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, the IDF apprehended 207 leaders of Hamas´ political wing, along with a number of Islamic Jihad activists in the West Bank early yesterday. Most of those arrested are not on the list of wanted men from the two organizations´ military wings, but rather their accomplices or activists in the political and civilian wings.

Palestinian sources said that among those arrested were several local leaders considered key figures in the upcoming third round of municipal elections to take place Thursday in 105 local authorities in the West Bank and in the fourth round of elections scheduled to take place in December, which include the major cities.

Among key activists arrested yesterday were several expected to run on Hamas´ ticket for the Palestinian Legislative Council elections on January 25. Prominent among the detainees is Sheikh Hassan Yusuf, along with his two sons. Yusuf, who was released from prison six months ago, and Muhammad Ghazal, a senior Hamas leader in the Nablus area, is considered a leader of the moderate camp espousing Hamas´ involvement in the political process.

But such a move was probably deemed necessary by Sharon for his own sordid domestic political reasons: On the other side, Sharon narrowly won his battle with Netanyahu over the Likud premiership and primaries, managing to retain the later Likud primary date and blunting Netanyahu's ever-intrigiuing conspiracy to take over the state. In a humorous twist, Sharon couldn't give his speech to the Likud Central Committee because his microphone went dead. This sparked a huge controversy between both sides, with the Netties claiming that Sharon did it himself to posture as a victim. Akiva Eldar always has interesting things to say about "Sharon's Cheerleading Squad", that is, the Israeli Left that now finds themselves in a strange political alliance.

I would like to believe that it was Sharon's idea, but Netanyahu actually approved it, to suit their weird personalities.... Anyway, also Likud members accused each other of ballot manipulation and voting fraud (as has happened in the past).

Israel would like a seat on the UN Security Council. The director of the Shin Bet security service says he expects more attacks from the West Bank now, which seems true as far as it goes tactically, but then again I think we can expect the settlers to Amp their Land Grab up now as well. The settlers are on a mission to persuade Likud Central Committee members of how freakin great they are.

I just found informationwar.org, a UK peace project. Nice name. Did you know that Winston Churchill once praised dropping poison gas on the Kurds? Funny story.

MiG for Sale; Martial Law scares me; Queen Elizabeth I: "We have quite forgot the fart"; Rove: "there is no real anti-war movement"

One of the side effects of looking at Fark is that you come away with a bunch of links that seem like they should be passed along to everyone. You can get a "mint" condition Mig 21 aircraft for a mere $225,000 on eBay. It would appear this seller has all kinds of weird military hardware, and no, foreigners can't buy. No bids yet.

They are putting USB connections into Volkswagens. What could go wrong? Could I drive by mouse? PC World offers 20 tidbits about tech that manufacturers don't really want you to know about. Overclocking, bad warranties, sucking the Windows registration number out of your computer, hacking cell phones and game consoles, worthless product specs made up for marketing.

Some author is getting rich writing about straight girls going for lesbian hookups. Surely everyone will find this fascinating. Apparently the title alone, "The Straight Girl's Guide to Sleeping with Chicks", was good enough that she got a mountain of cash from Simon & Schuster without having to write a word. Nothing like Insane Homophobes protesting at Rehnquist's funeral (via Dailykos).

Martial Law seems to be in the air. Bush called for expanding the role of the military in disaster situations. William Arkin in the WaPo says that this is Real Bad:

I for one don't want to live in a society where "a moment’s notice" justifies military action that either preempts or usurps civil authority.



What is more, nothing about what happened in New Orleans justifies such a radical move to give the military what bureaucrats call "a lead role" in responding to emergencies.



In the wake of Katrina, the military was standing by awaiting orders, as it should be. The White House and the federal government were for their part either on vacation or out to lunch. The problem wasn’t the lack of resources available. It was leadership, decisiveness, foresight. The problem was commanding and mobilizing the resources, civil and military.

Yeah. For more try this really excellent bit on Social Militarization, characterizing it as a "fascist move." Yeah. So this leads to a unnerving discussion of how Liberal Democracy is not good enough to confront the State of Exception (such as catastrophic disasters), and Social Militarization is offered as a kind of illusory panacea. I need to quote this:

The charismatic leader is indeed historically necessary for successful, final-stage fascist movements (i.e. movements that actually lay claim to political power). But there remains a more fundamental and contemporary pressing facist concern, an earlier stage in which the rhetorical structure of fascism is laid by celebrating (Robert Paxton's recent Anatomy of Fascism is quite good on this point) the necessary failures of liberal democracy to respond to the exigencies of the present day. For four years we have been told that a new type of war must be waged, that new types of laws must be passed (even if those laws short-circuit the freedoms they ostensibly protect), that the old conventions by which we fight illegalities and terrorism must be scrapped in favor of more proactive solutions. In effect, we have been told that the liberal democratic state was simply ill-prepared to handle the threat of terrorism, and so something else, something new, defined by a Bush doctrine and a rethinking of our constitutional protections, would be needed. Now we are told that the liberal state can no longer handle the constant challenges of nature, and that now, again, something new is needed: social militarization.



For the facist movements that eventually came to power in Italy and Germany, and that also surfaced in Spain, Poland, and the majority of countries, the supposed failure of liberal democracy became apparent with the ravages and duration of World War I, the Great War. Its intensity seemed so unfitting civilized society, so anethema to the vision of evolved, Enlightened, European culture. For the fascists, it was evidence that the liberal state was weak, that it lacked the necessary will to power to do right by it citizenry. I fear that history is repeating itself.