Friday, April 30, 2004
bremer wasn't actionable, I guess
From Reuters:
The head of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, Paul Bremer, warned six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that the Bush administration seemed to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism and appeared to "stagger along" on the issue.
(snip)
"What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?"'
"That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it. Maybe the folks in the press ought to be pushing a little bit."
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sullivan's racism gets loose
Sully quotes this letter from a military chaplain in Iraq.
This country became a welfare state under Saddam. If you cared about your well-fare, you towed the line or died. The state did your thinking and your bidding. Want a job? Pledge allegiance to the Ba’ath party. Want an apartment, a car, etc? Show loyalty. Electricity, water, sewage, etc. was paid by the state. Go with the flow: life is good. Don't and you're dead. Now, what does that do to initiative? drive? industry?
So, we come along and lock up sugar daddy and give these people the toughest challenge in the world, FREEDOM. You want a job? Earn it! A house? Buy it or build it! Security? Build a police force, army and militia and give it to yourself. Risk your lives and earn freedom. The good news is that millions of Iraqis are doing just that, and some pay with their lives. But many, many are struggling with freedom (just like East Germans, Russians, Czechs, etc.) and they want a sugar daddy, the U.S.A., to do it all. We refuse. We don't want to be plantation owners. We make it clear we are here to help, not own or stay. They get mad about that, sometimes. (emphasis added)
Even aside from the monumental absurdities of the letter as a whole, and of Sully in general, check out that highlighted line. What kind of person thinks of slave-owners as sugar-daddies? What kind of person thinks that slavery is easier than freedom? What kind of person thinks freedom must be earned, rather than being, as a wise man once wrote, 'being endowed by [the] Creator' as an 'inalienable right'?
Someone who has never been a slave, first off. Someone who has never been unfree, clearly. But also someone who conceives of America's obscene past as a slave-owning, slave-breeding, and slave murdering power as being the dutiful tutorage of slaves by nice sugar-daddy whites. It's hard to read that passage, and not be reminded of that old conservative line, that blacks in America are looking for a handout from the master'. Because slaves have it so easy.
Racism is not dead in this country, my friends. It lives on, and will never be fully dead as long as whites refuse to own up to our own history.
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money beats brains
Good piece in the NYTimes opinion pages that deals with the increasing disparity between stupid rich kids and smart poor kids in getting into college.
Yet another string of studies confirms what any high school senior or parent who has just weathered the college admissions mating dance already knew — it's a cutthroat competition where money matters more than ever. Teenagers from wealthy families are beating out middle- and working-class youngsters, both at top private colleges and flagship state universities whose historic mission of broad access is receding into memory. The trend means that "smart poor kids," as the educator Terry Hartle bluntly puts it, "go to college at the same rate as stupid rich kids."
Now, anyone who is surprised ot hear this is just hopelessly naive. Universities have been the site of extreme privilege since their inception, and the idea that the poor and lower-middle class should be able to attend is very recent. Universities were historically about training the children of the upper-crust to rule, not about finding the best and the brightest. To a certain extent, intelligence is based more on training and environment than on natural smarts. So, before 1800, Universities were meant to teach the children of the aristocracy. Before WWII, they were meant to teach the children of the Grand Bourgeoisie. Up til now, they were meant to teach the best our country had to offer, 'regardless' of money: in practice, this meant the middle class, with the opportunity (if they worked much harder than the middle classes ever had to) for some working class kids to get taught too. But since we've moved to a market-based ethos, money has become the prime and sole concern. The wealthy can buy test-prep courses, and learn how to beat the exams. They can learn how to game the system, how to dress right, how to speak in the approved manner, and how to write a Statement of Purpose that pleases the admissions committee. And beyond that, by not needing scholarships or tuition remission, the wealthy are sources of profit for the University.
It would be pleasant to think that this is the end of our egalitarian system, but truthfully, we never had one. The system is just getting a lot more unfair. Compare us to Britain, or Ireland, or France, where everyone gets a free education, as long as they pass the various exams that allow them access to the schools. Their system is by no means perfect, but there it's based, in a very real sense, on merit, not money. The rich still get their educations, at private schools that are out of reach of everybody else, but the state schools are really good too. Our dream of an expanding middle class is deteriorating.
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a headline is worth a thousand words
In today's Reuters, this story:
"US Marines Hand Fallujah to Former Saddam General"
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Torture and Rape
Check out this story from the Guardian. Apparently, those contractors we've been hiring have been in charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghra'ib prison in Baghdad, the place where we're holding those thousands of Iraqis who are under suspicion of insurgency.
Graphic photographs showing the torture and sexual abuse of Iraqi prisoners in a US-run prison outside Baghdad emerged yesterday from a military inquiry which has left six soldiers facing a possible court martial and a general under investigation.
The scandal has also brought to light the growing and largely unregulated role of private contractors in the interrogation of detainees.
According to lawyers for some of the soldiers, they claimed to be acting in part under the instruction of mercenary interrogators hired by the Pentagon.
(snip)
Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, speaking for central command, told the Guardian: "One contractor was originally included with six soldiers, accused for his treatment of the prisoners, but we had no jurisdiction over him. It was left up to the contractor on how to deal with him." (emphasis added)
I wonder how much we'll hear about this in the western media.
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Tuesday, April 27, 2004
we're shelling fallujah
And one year since 'Mission Accomplished' as Holden Caufield points out on Atrios' comments board. Check out Reuters for the story so far. What we know, is that a mosque has been hit, AC-130 warthogs are firing their guns at the city, we're using artillery, and one of the bigger explosions set off 2 more explosions, probably in a way that wasn't planned. I don't know what to say. This war is immoral.
Update - OK, so the photo-op was taken on May first. Mayday, mayday indeed.
Further Update (4/30) - Reader Achlis, a true beast of a man, corrects my mistaking of the AC-130 (Spectre) for the A-10 (warthog). As he points out, neither is exactly pin-point-precise.
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oh for god's sake
So the IGC wants to bring the country together, unite the Sunnis and the Shi'ites and the Kurds in a happy family, and demonstrate their own legitimacy at the same time. So they declare Iraq has a new flag:
It was supposed to be the perfect symbol for a new and unified Iraq: an Islamic crescent on a field of pure white, with two blue stripes representing the Tigris and Euphrates rivers and a third yellow stripe to symbolize the country's Kurdish minority.
But the new national flag, presented Monday after an artistic competition sponsored by the Iraqi Governing Council, appears to have met with widespread public disapproval here -- in part because of its design and in part because of the increasing unpopularity of the U.S.-appointed council.
The flag looks a lot like Israel's. It replaces a flag that represented Arab Nationalism with a totally new flag that looks like Israel's. Regular Iraqi's were not consulted, so they all feel just a little taken advantage of. And it's just one more sign for the average Iraqi that the IGC has a) no real power, b) no legitimacy, c) no respect for Arab Nationalism, and d) nothing better to do with it's time. These guys have no idea what they're doing.
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more violence in najaf
As reported in Reuters:
U.S. forces killed dozens of Iraqi fighters near Najaf overnight, hours after Washington issued an ultimatum to a radical cleric to clear his militia from mosques in the holy city.
Local television said Tuesday wounded people were dying for lack of blood and issued an urgent appeal for donors.
(snip)
About 64 militiamen were killed, U.S. military spokesman Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt told a news conference, 57 of them in a night-time air strike after U.S. forces spotted an anti-aircraft gun.
Another U.S. official said an AC-130 gunship -- a massive plane that can spew cannon fire and machinegun fire across wide areas -- was used.
Not all of them were insurgents, the hospitals are reporting. This is really touchy: if they did kill a whole bunch of Sadr supporters, but not many civilians, then it might have a demoralizing effect on Sadr's men. If, on the other hand, a fair number of civilians got killed, it's going to inflame najaf, and convince a bunch of Shi'ites that we are just monsters, without striking a knock-out blow. Not that there is a knockout blow in this situation, short of mass-murder. I think if we do use our military muscle, we'll force the insurgents into 'terror' tactics like bombings and such. That would mean no more direct challenge to the IGC, but a lot more soldiers killed through IEDs and such. Honestly, I think we're making a mistake by going after Sadr: coopting him would ahve been so much easier, and even isolating him wouldn't have been too difficult, but by making him the focus we make him crucial to Iraqi opinion. We'll win the war any day, but peace just seems beyond us.
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Monday, April 26, 2004
woodwards little sins
In Sartrean Existentialism a lot is made of the problem of confession: in confessing, a person also defines his own sins. This can lead to real problems in terms of accuracy and honesty, since the guilty frame the question. For example, a man under suspicion of theft and murder might well plead confess to theft, thus establishing his good faith, and defusing the murder charge. Or think of the man at court saying 'If defending my home is a crime, then I am guilty' after shooting an unarmed burglar.
Now, having thought about that, let's look at Bob Woodward's book. In it Bush comes off as a strong leader who made mistakes. He even reports Bush telling Tenet not to 'stretch the evidence', after Tenet tells him the WsMD reports are a 'slam-dunk'. Now obviously, Woodward wasn't there. His only sources of information are White House principals and staffers, who are hardly unbiased. These sources are not even necessarily on the record. And his reports contradict everything we've seen and heard about how the White House operates. I think Woodward, knowingly or not, is handing us a snow-job: Bush confesses to being mislead by that mean old George Tenet. The script is too perfect in terms of Bush' campaign needs: people will accept a President who is mislead by faulty advisors, but not a President asleep at the wheel, or actively misleading the people.
Why do you think the White House considers the book a must read?
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disturbing reports from the Independant
If what this article says is true, army discipline is evaporating.
Yesterday, a bloody incident in Baghdad in which US soldiers in Humvees killed four Iraqi children after coming under attack further inflamed anti-US feeling. One US soldier had died in an explosion on Canal Street and the four Iraqi children were killed immediately afterwards, shot dead by US troops firing at random, witnesses claimed.
"I saw a child lying on the street with a bullet hole in his neck and another in his side," a driver said. "He had his schoolbag on his back. About 15 minutes later his relatives came and took him away."
The children had just left their school nearby to look at a blazing Humvee. They were dancing around it in celebration when they were shot. At least five other Iraqis were wounded, one critically, with a bullet in his head, officials at al-Kindi hospital said. Several US soldiers were wounded by the blast.
Soldiers who are unsafe, and can not tell civilian from enemy are liable to shoot anyone who moves. Soldiers who are not constantly held to the standards of modern warfare will shoot children too, just as an act of revenge. Civilians in similar circumstances do it too; remember those Mercs in Fallujah. This is tragic; the problems are totally forseeable, but cannot be avoided. And the terrible consequences of US soldiers murdering schoolchildren will not be turned aside simply by saying we're sorry. Heads have to roll, and publicly, for us to gain the trust of the Iraqi populace, but that will not happen. If we can't reestablish discipline among our troops, we're really in for a massacre in Fallujah or (God forbid) Najaf.
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Mylroie and Miller: they're a winning combination! If you like propagandists, that is.
Story in the Washington Monthly on Laurie Mylroie, the academic who has spent the last decade claiming that Saddam was an imminant threat to the US, and behind the first World Trade Center bombing to boot. She's the 'intellectual' basis for the whole Iraq-alQaida connection. Her theories have all been disproved, and most didn't amount to much more than speculation and conspiracy-theory. And she wrote a fucking book with Judith Miller. Yup, that Judith Miller, the one who fooled the readership of the NYTimes into believeing in Saddam's WsMD by reporting Ahmed Chalabi's unsubstantiated claims as fact. The article doesn't focus on their book as much as on Mylroie's influence on the neo-cons, her collaboration with them, and the absolute fraudulacy of her claims. Check out the article for the full story.
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danger in fallujah
There's been a bunch of stories on Fallujah recently, and they're starting to freak me out. Not only has the violence continued, but Bush is still talking about invading. Check out this story from The Miami Herald:
U.S. officials set the stage Sunday for ending a weeks-long standoff with insurgent forces in two Iraqi cities, warning residents of Najaf that they must take action to head off an ''explosive situation'' there and giving insurgents in Fallujah until Tuesday to surrender their weapons.
(snip)
Coalition civilian spokesman Dan Senor warned that militiamen in Najaf are stockpiling weapons in mosques, shrines and schools, and said ''every law-abiding citizen that seeks a peaceful resolution to the situation must speak out'' against the stockpiling. (emphasis added)
Combine this with Bush' statements that we must have the 'will' and 'resolve' to win, and you have a clear indication that we're on the brink. Note the sentence from spawn-of-evil Dan Senor. They're setting up the story-line that we needed to fire on mosques and such. In Najaf. Even if the rebels are stockpiling weapons in mosques, firing on the Imam Ali Mosque would be much more detrimental to our security than not entering the city. Those who oppose this war have to start asking 'why do we need to invade Fallujah and Najaf?' The administration keeps claiming that the rebels are mere thugs who are holding the civilian population hostage, but it's pretty clear that these guys represent the civilians.
Again, if we invade Fallujah thousands of civlians will die, and the honor of the US army will be forever stained. Seriously, it's a war crime. The first invasion did little except kill 400 women and children and convince the broad majority of Iraqis that we are monsters. And Najaf would, quite frankly, open the gates of Hell. The fact that we haven't invaded yet means someone in power is talking sense, but whether or not they can hold out against Bush and the Neocons is another question. Historically speaking, it is exactly in situations like this that atrocities happen, and there's no law that says that US soldiers will be different under these circumstances. This is not to attack our troops; it is to point out that similar circumstances result in similar outcomes. The situation is fucked up, and it's fucking up our soldiers. And if the administration goes forward with this attack, we'll all be fucked.
PS - I was listening to right-wing talk-radio yesterday, don't know which station or which DJ, but he was warning Bush that he could lose his job if he doesn't start killing more Iraqis. They're scared of all the US troops getting killed for their war. The God-Damned chickenhawks don't seem to understand that even good guys die in wars. You have to wonder what exactly they were expecting. Anyway, the right is really on the run now, and it won't be too long until they start revisiting their thoughts on the war, or until their audience starts abandoning them. I hope.
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Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Spotty updating on the way
Sadly, I'm going to be unable to post for the next 4 days, or at least not able to post much. Check in now and then, cause, you know, you never know!
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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
wolfowitz before the Senate foreign-relations committee
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz on Tuesday denied that the Bush administration plotted and secretly financed preparations for the war in Iraq long before last year's U.S.-led invasion of that country.
But Wolfowitz, a primary architect of the war, conceded in response to criticism from Democrats at a Senate hearing that there were still "enormous problems" in Iraq, where the U.S. military death toll jumped to more than 100 this month.
Wolfie denied the Woodward claim that the administration, weeks after 9-11, began war preparations for Iraq, and used $700 million ear-marked for Afghanistan reconstruction to do it. This claim is big, in that it (if true) is a massive misappropriation of funds, it kept Congress in the dark about something they have constitutional jurisdiction over, and generally shows bad faith in the run-up to war. It's impeachable, in other words.
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Bush ahead in latest poll
New poll out today, has Bush ahead by 5 points. Depressing? Yes. Terrible? No. The polls have been evenly divided for a while now, and this is most likely the latest up-tick for Bush, soon to be followed by a Kerry response, etc. The real story here is 'why has Kerry been running such a God-Awful campaign?' I think he's too tied to the 'Anybody but Bush' mantra, figuring we'll have to vote for him, so he should just stay low until Bush sinks himself. I think he's a jack-ass. He has to provide an alternative to Bush, and he has to take some chances here to do it. Instead, he plays to the right-wing with his BS speeches on Israel (he supports it's right to murder suspects and innocent bystanders) and Cuba (now he loves the embargo). Even leaving aside the fact that it's this DLC BS that cost the Democratic party the congress and then the Presidency, this is TERRIBLE politics! Suddenly coming out as a moderate threatens his base (who have done all the work of the democratic renaissance), but it also leaves him totally open to Republican accusations of, you guessed it, flip-flopping! Why is Kerry feeding the trolls like this?
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new study finds scary levels of wrongful imprisonment
Missed this story when it appeared in the NYTimes yesterday, got it instead from Common Dreams, a lefty news-clearinghouse. Anyway, here's the story:
A comprehensive study of 328 criminal cases over the last 15 years in which the convicted person was exonerated suggests that there are thousands of innocent people in prison today.
Almost all the exonerations were in murder and rape cases, and that implies, according to the study, that many innocent people have been convicted of less serious crimes. But the study says they benefited neither from the intense scrutiny that murder cases tend to receive nor from the DNA evidence that can categorically establish the innocence of people convicted of rape.
Yup, who doesn't love our criminal justice system? This article provides a scary look at what we have to do to keep 'order' around here. Before getting to the meat of it, tho, here's the other side's argument:
Prosecutors, however, have questioned some of the methodology used in the study, which was prepared at the University of Michigan and supervised by a law professor there, Samuel R. Gross. They say that the number of exonerations is quite small when compared with the number of convictions during the 15-year period. About 2 million people are in American prisons and jails. (emphasis added)
That's 2,000,000 people. 25% of the entire prison population in the world. We have something like 1-2% of the world's population. We also have the largest prison population in the world, beating even Commu-Fascist China. And the fact that we lock up a HUGELY disproportionate part of our people is supposed to excuse the wrongful imprisonment of tens of thousands. We are a police state, people.
In the case of rape, they found that race was a factor, to put it mildly.
Some 90 percent of false convictions in the rape cases involved misidentification by witnesses, very often across races. In particular, the study said black men made up a disproportionate number of exonerated rape defendants.
The racial mix of those exonerated, in general, mirrored that of the prison population, and the mix of those exonerated of murder mirrored the mix of those convicted of murder. But while 29 percent of those in prison for rape are black, 65 percent of those exonerated of the crime are.
Interracial rapes are, moreover, uncommon. Rapes of white women by black men, for instance, represent less than 10 percent of all rapes, according to the Justice Department. But in half of the rape exonerations where racial data was available, black men were falsely convicted of raping white women.
"The most obvious explanation for this racial disparity is probably also the most powerful," the study says. "White Americans are much more likely to mistake one black person for another than to do the same for members of their own race." (emphasis added)
This is one of the reasons why eye-witness testimony is such a fragile construct. Memory is really tricky. But white people are also terrified of black people. Race-rape has a very interesting history in this country: it was usually the 'charge' that lynchers used during the KKK days. It signified a huge fear of black power, racial inferiority-complexes, and miscegination. One wonders how much of this mistaken identity is racially based. This is not to imply that rape-victims were deliberately perjuring themselves to convict black men, but one wonders if there were any cases where the charges were trumped up as a way of convicting black men. A community scared of criminality might well collectively lock up black men as a scapegoat, and use rape-charges to do it. If this seems far-fetched, remember that this actually happened, and was excused by both political parties, from the 1890s to the 1960s.
But if rape exonerations are heavily tied to race, murder exonerations were not. Instead, the exonerated tended to be convicted on the basis of false confessions. They are extremely common, and there have been lots of studies showing that the easily intimidated will confess to anything if you threaten them enough. Think about this next time you watch Law and Order:
(...) the study found that the leading causes of wrongful convictions for murder were false confessions and perjury by co- defendants, informants, police officers or forensic scientists.
A separate study considering 125 cases involving false confessions was published in the North Carolina Law Review last month and found that such confessions were most common among groups vulnerable to suggestion and intimidation.
"There are three groups of people most likely to confess," said Steven A. Drizin, a law professor at Northwestern, who conducted the study with Richard A. Leo, a professor of criminology at the University of California, Irvine. "They are the mentally retarded, the mentally ill and juveniles." (emphasis added)
Yup. Cops lie sometimes. Experts lie sometimes. Sometimes the desire to 'solve' a case takes the form of getting someone the system considers 'criminal' to confess, so at least one more scumbag is off the streets. Because, you know, if that (member of group you don't like) didn't do this crime, he probably did something else. This is why defendants have rights (see the Gitmo case before the Supreme Court, and the list of exonerated Gitmo detainees).
I think the real issue is summarized in the following excerpt:
In Astoria, Ore., Joshua Marquis, the district attorney for Clatsop County, (...) added that even the error rate suggested by the study was tolerable given the American prison population.
"We all agree that it is better for 10 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be convicted," Mr. Marquis said. "Is it better for 100,000 guilty men to walk free rather than have one innocent man convicted? The cost-benefit policy answer is no."
At the University of Michigan, Professor Gross said that was the wrong calculus.
"No rate of preventable errors that destroy people's lives and destroy the lives of those close to them is acceptable," he said.
Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project, said Mr. Marquis's analysis ignored another point.
"Every time an innocent person is convicted," Mr. Scheck said, "it means there are more guilty people out there who are still committing crimes." (emphasis added)
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presenting Antonin Scalia and the Supremes!
FYI, the Supreme Court is hearing the Gitmo detainees' case today (story available at Reuters). The US is arguing that Gitmo, since it is part of Cuba, is not US territory, and so the constitution does not apply there, even to US citizens. The danger of this argument is clear: it allows the US to have gulags, as long as they're not on US soil. The argument is specious too. We occupy Gitmo by treaty, after invading and setting up a puppet government in the Spanish-American War; if that's not US territory, then what is? And anyway, shouldn't the constitution follow the flag? The constitution makes no mention of aliens, immigrants, or anyone else being barred from constitutional protection, and it does explicitly state that trial by jury, etc., is to be extended to all persons in US jurisdiction. But for all that, it's gonna be close. Pray Bush doesn't win this one.
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gee, do you think?
The fact that this didn't strike anyone as really, really obvious points out a real problem of perception for medical theory on infants. As reported in Retuers:
Having skin-to-skin contact with mom immediately after birth may help to ease a newborn's arrival into the world, according to a new study.
Known as "kangaroo care," such skin-to-skin contact is believed to give babies a sense of security that provides a buffer against the bombardment of sensory stimuli around them.
The method was developed in Colombia as an alternative to placing premature, low-birth-weight newborns in an incubator. Research since then has suggested kangaroo care is not only safe for these tiny babies, but may also lead to less severe infections, encourage breast-feeding and aid in infant development. (emphasis added)
Quick question: Why are we putting babies in incubators at all? If studies are showing that having direct contact with the Mother is good for babies, and that's how things were done since the beginning of time, then why did we start putting babies in incubators? I imagine a lot of this goes back to the Victorian era, when Europe, altogether, decided that women were not to be trusted with either themselves, or with childbirth. Female midwives were shut out of the profession to make way for male Obstetricians, most of whom did not know what they were doing, leading to an increase in infant mortality. Apparently, that base distrust has survived.
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MY MAN KRUGMAN'S GOT MY BACK
New Krugman column out today. He provides the numbers to back up my ridiculous claims regarding the economy. Debt's a problem, interest rates are gonna rise, and soon, and will really hurt a lot of people financially, and Greenspan's a dope for recommending Variable-rate Mortgages. It's always nice to be right. :)
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Daschle gets it
For those of you following the Daschle run in S Dakota, you already know about Giago and his independant bid for Senator on an Indian Rights platform. The Native Community is about 10% of the population, and Giago was certain to cost Daschle the election if he ran. He has now pulled out and endorsed Daschle. The story comes from the WaPo, by way of Taegan Goddard's Political Wire. Basically, Giago ran to force Daschle to put up or shut up on Native issues. Daschle recognized the problem (that he was in danger of losing the Native vote through inaction and ignoring them) and he made a deal to address the Native community's concerns, and Giago withdrew. This is exactly what Nader is and was up to. This is what 3rd party candidates do in a 2 party system. It's no good to yell at them for interfering in the system: our system is so unrepresentative that 3rd party candidacies are the only way to influence the proceedings. If Kerry really starts to worry about Nader, all he has to do is start addressing some of our concerns. The Left, like the Native community, is starting to get sick of being taken completely for granted. The Dems have to woo us, like they woo Cubans, Jews, and (finally) Natives. We swear, we'll kiss back!
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Monday, April 19, 2004
5 years since columbine
Just a moment of reflection please. What sickness courses through our veins, that it happened, and that we went on as if it hadn't. Still no sensible argument on gun-control, or on violence in our society, or on ostracism in our schools, or even on the militia groups that have been spouting this hatred of the federal government for years, and occaisionally blowing people up. Bowling for Columbine was brilliant for exactly the way it examines the strains in our country that may have lead to this. If some of his answers were BS, he was at least asking questions, and even using logic and reason to flesh out his arguments. More than you can say for the Right.
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Negroponte new Iraq mabassador
That's good. I was worried he didn't have enough to do. I remember back in the 80's, you couldn't schedule a lunch with him, he was so busy funding death-squads and encouraging the use of torture against a civilian population in El Salvador. Now, tho, he's stuck running our mission to the UN. Sure, it's higher level, and he gets respect and money for it, but he misses the good old days, when he knew the assassinos by name, and always remembered to get the torturers a birthday card, to let them know how much he appreciated them. But now, he's back in control of a country, and this time he's got a whole private army of mercenaries to direct, not to mention the US army. You just can't keep a horrible, bloody, arch-bishop murdering, terrorist-coddling abomination down!
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interesting editorial
from Vali Nasr, of the Naval Postgraduate School, in today's WaPo. The short of it is, the US shouldn't invade Najaf because it will inflame Shi'ite opinion, increase support for Sadr (or whatever radical cleric takes his place), isolate Sistani, and kill the possiblity of a more democratic Shi'ism. It's quite good, especially the reference to the Amritsar battle in India. The Indian Army invaded the Golden Dome in Amritsar, sacred to Sikhs, and killed a bunch of Sikh terrorists, and got a wide-spread rebellion of Sikh troops in the Indian Army, followed by the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (yup, daughter of THAT Gandhi) by her Sikh body-guards. However, he does try to present Sistani as a pro-US, or at least pro-democracy voice, and I don't think that's quite accurate, or at least, irrelevant. Regardless of Sistani's political philosophy, he's not going to support a US attack on the Imam Ali Mosque, and he's not going to go out on as limb for us on anything. He survived Saddam, and it wasn't by throwing in with lost-causes. Again, Sadr and Sistani are not enemies, even if they do represent different factions and sectors of society: Sistani doesn't want Sadr's radical pro-poor group to control Iraq, but he's more than willing to include Sadr in a new power-structure, at least unofficially. We can't pretend that Sistani can be pressured into denouncing Sadr. Sadr is not allied with Sistani, but they are definately on the same general side: the 'get the US troops the hell out of Iraq as soon as humanly possible' side. They just differ on methods.
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another key republican demographic bites the dust!
This is a marvelous story, not for ideological reasons, but because it really paints a precise picture of what's going on in rural America. From the LA Times, who are rapidly becoming a favorite of mine:
Like much of rural America, this isolated community south of the Columbia River Gorge is a place where people — like their parents before them — vote Republican when they pick their presidents. They went with George W. Bush four years ago. And most are likely to support him again this year.
But cracks have surfaced in President Bush's once-solid rural constituency. From places like Sherman County to Montcalm County, Mich., and Mahoning County, Ohio, some Republicans are so concerned about crop prices and high unemployment that they're considering voting Democratic for the first time.
The problem with rural areas, for Democrats at least, is that rural areas are full of farmers, who are self-reliant because they own land. They may sink into poverty due to low prices, but they always have land, and the ability to make a living; city-folk, on the other hand, have no recourse but government if there are no jobs available. Because of this economic independance, they don't need the government to level the playing field for them, so they don't see the need for a government to do anything but promote business and trade, and keep their conservative values dominant in the country. They've been living a life entirely different from that which we lead: dependant on the government and unions to keep businesses from exploiting the living hell out of us. For Liberals, government is the only hope to counter-balance extremely concentrated economic power. For the autonomous farmer, whose only economic enemy is the bank, government is merely a machine to siphon off their hard-earned money to pay for social programs for the lazy-shiftless poor. The fact that these programs maintain a market for their produce, and that rural communities suck up MUCH more government money in subsidies than they give in taxes, is hidden by their independance. Land-owners have always been on the conservative side: the bulwark of the French Absolutist Monarchy during the Revolution was the small peasant farmer.
It's easy to just get angry at farmers for their isolation, lack of sympathy for the poor, and the outsized electoral influence that the rural areas have in our system thanks to the Electoral College (making their votes worth a lot more than yours or mine), but Liberals haven't really thought about the Farmers' needs in this country, and have not given them any reason to cast their vote with us. It's time to start doing that. Sound economic policy, guided by a strong state, will not only help out the rural areas in terms of prices, but is also necessary to keep smaller family-farms from being eaten by large farm-Corporations. The Repugs, up until now, have kept such policies in place (in the face of their free-trade, small-government rhetoric), while the Democrats (not counting people like Daschle) have been aligned against small farmers in favor of bigger concentration for thugs like Monsanto.
The question is: can small-scale farming provide low-enough food prices to make it worth-while to subsidize them the way we do. Is the cost of subsidies simply too much for the rest of the nation to bear for the farmers? If it is, do we allow food-production to be concentrated in a few companies, and counter their influence in the US with a strong state? Either way, a strong state is necessary, because the rules of the market-place have already declared family-farms to be slated for destruction.
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good news, at last?
Let's hope so. From the LA Times:
Leaders in this besieged city and representatives of the U.S.-led occupation coalition have called for insurgents to turn over their weapons in order for U.S. soldiers to loosen their grip here.
In what appears to be the first significant agreement during several days of discussions, the two sides affirmed they will take several steps to implement a true cease-fire. Fighting frequently has occurred between the U.S. military and insurgents despite a U.S.-led effort to establish a cease-fire more than a week ago.
Residents will be called upon to turn in mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, sniper rifles and other illegal weapons and materials without prosecution, Dan Senor, spokesman for the U.S. led coalition, said today at a news conference in Baghdad.
"The parties agreed that coalition forces do not intend to resume offensive operations if all persons inside the city turn in their heavy weapons," Senor said.
We still need to see if this will bear fruit, but it's certainly a hopeful sign. If we can reach an understanding with Fallujah, we'll be in a much better place to calm Iraqi fears about Najaf. The negotiations are working, and as long as Bremer, et al, remember that this is real life, not an action movie, we should be alright.
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national guard
Something occurs to me: how is it legal to send National Guard troops outside of the country? When did that become acceptable? I'm pretty sure there are some rules against that. Anyone got an answer?
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romani eunt domus! or is that domun?
The Spanish are going home. And a shit-load of the Coalition of the Willing are no longer willing. And guess who has to replace them with soldiers we don't have? US! Yay! We don't have any soldiers left! So we'll hire more mercenaries! Cause there's nothing to quell the role of private militias in Iraq lkike the use of a private militia.
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more proof the sharon plan is gonna suck
As reported in NYTimes:
As Palestinians massed in Gaza City to vent rage at Israel over its killing of a top militant leader on Saturday night, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon picked up crucial support on Sunday from right-wing leaders for his plan to withdraw from the Gaza Strip without a peace agreement.
The endorsements, including one from former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, meant that Mr. Sharon would almost surely prevail in a May 2 referendum on his plan within his dominant right-wing faction, Likud, Israeli political analysts said.
(snip)
In pledging her support for the unilateral withdrawal plan, Ms. Livnat, the Education Minister, said she had received a commitment from Mr. Sharon not only to finish the West Bank barrier but also to build it well inside the West Bank. She said that, according to Mr. Sharon, "the Ariel bloc will be inside the fence."
The reference was to a large settlement, Ariel, and its satellites in the heart of the northern West Bank. The Bush administration had resisted Israel's plan to build the barrier around that bloc, because doing so would consume much West Bank land and obstruct Palestinians moving through the territory. (emphasis added)
The Gaza-pullout is really a recognition that Israel can't control Gaza without ethnically cleansing the place: rather than do that, they're pulling out. But in exchange, Israel is annexing a big fucking piece of the West Bank. And Bush has agreed to it. Now, this annexation is 100% against international law, and is convincing the Palestinians, and everyone else paying attention, that the US is simply on Sharon's side. There goes our sympathy in the Muslim world. Bush just fully alienated a billion people.
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your a dumb one, mr. bremer
Alright, kidlings, this is where my powers of prognostication come into play. I said that the grown-ups were in charge in Iraq now, and that negotiations were a sign that the grown-ups knew that attacking Najaf would end the game. But then I read today's NYTimes. As you can guess, I'm a little concerned:
With no sign of a breakthrough in talks with rebels in Falluja and Najaf, the leader of the American occupation appeared to move closer on Sunday to a military showdown, saying that the rebels' failure to submit to American demands would require decisive action against those who "want to shoot their way to power."
"They must be dealt with, and they will be dealt with," the administrator, L. Paul Bremer III, said, breaking a week of silence on the confrontation with Moktada al-Sadr, an anti-American Shiite cleric, in Najaf and Sunni Muslim insurgents in Falluja. Mr. Bremer spoke of the need to bring an early end to the standoffs, to return Iraq to the political path the United States has mapped out, starting with the formal return of sovereignty on June 30. (emphasis added)
Great word choice, there. I can only pray that the word 'submit' did not leave the lips of anyone connected with the CPA. 'Submit', is of course, the verb used for what a Muslim does for God. A Muslim 'submits himself' to God, and to do so to anyone else is blasphemy. Like asking a democratic Christian to have a King besides Jesus. This is where knowing something about words is important: we all remember the reaction when Bush called for a 'crusade', now don't we.
But that's relatively minor, compared to the fact that Bremer apparently feels negotiations are taking too long. Why would he think that? What deadline could possibly be approaching that would ... , oh wait. The 'handover!' Of course! They're going to risk starting a wide-spread revolution (it would be a revolution) and risk convincing the vast majority of Muslims that we are out to get them, so that we can have stability for our 'handover'. Now, you may wonder why they would do this, since it's not like we're fooling any Iraqis on this one; they know they're just getting an Iraqi face on a US-dominated body. We're sure as hell not fooling the UN, either. Bremer is going to get HUNDREDS of US soldiers, and THOUSANDS of Iraqis killed for an election-year publicity stunt.
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Friday, April 16, 2004
let them eat job training! (with apologies to Bob Somerby)
Economists talk a lot about how gov't should only interfere in the working of the market place to compensate some of the losers in an economic reorganization. What they mean is, if a worker gets laid off because his industry is being outsourced, he should get job-training to help him get a better job in whatever industry is experiencing growth. So an unemployed auto-mechanic can retrain to become a computer-engineer, and huzzah for the market. Except, of course, for when it doesn't work:
After Jerry Nowadsky lost two machinist jobs in a row, watching as his employers in Iowa moved the work to other countries, he decided to go back to school to study computers.
The coursework was hard for a middle-aged former factory worker who hadn't been in a classroom for decades, recalled Nowadsky, now 49. But he earned a certificate and set out a year ago to find work in computer systems maintenance and assistance.
Instead he found a job market awash with unemployed computer workers.
(snip)
"I've basically given up on computer jobs because they're all going overseas," [Nowadsky] said in an interview, adding that he now feels the training was "a waste, because there are no jobs out there."
(snip)
(...) some analysts say worker retraining, whatever the merits, shouldn't be offered as a short-term solution to the current problem of a weak job market.
"We're awash in underutilized skilled workers," said Jared Bernstein, senior economist with the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that focuses on labor issues.
Now, anybody paying attention saw this one coming. First we off-shore our manufacturing jobs to Mexico, and expect everyone to retool and become, I don't know, web-designers or something. The, we off-shore the web-designing jobs to India. Suddenly, there's a problem for the Middle Class too. The Market-uber-alles crowd tells us that the magic of the marketplace will create great jobs for us all to replace the old ones, but what on earth makes them think those jobs can't get out-sourced too?
A lot of this BS is based on a belief in inherent US superiority when it comes to educated Middle Class jobs: because we are on the cutting edge of technology, we'll always come up with something to beat other countries. But that belief is grounded in the EXTREMELY atypical situation the US has been in since WWII. We were for 50 years the only powerhouse economy besides the Soviets, and US capital concentrated on extracting raw materials from the rest of the world to feed the manufactories in the US. But then came Japan, out of nowhere. Suddenly, there was another Capital-intensive country with a strong manufacturing sector. Then Europe really began to recover. The even little Ireland started competing with us for good manufacturing jobs. And all these countries were also investing heavily in education. We are rapidly entering a phase where there is more than one highly-educated tech-driven information-economy country, and we're about to see our very favored position slip. The free-marketeers don't understand this: to them, those brown people will never learn how to use a computer like us Americans, so they see nothing to worry about.
Needless to say, that's bullshit. The global economy is restructuring. Thanks to the globalization of Capital, a corporation can build its labour-intensive factories in the Third World, where labour is cheap. It can build Tech-intensive factories in China, where the exchange rate keeps the Yuan favorable to the Dollar. And it can out-source it's tech-service jobs to India, where exchange rates and a huge supply of educated workers keep wages low. There is nothing to keep us from seeing a real degradation of our standard of living in the next 20 years.
And really, how much job training do you need to work at McDonald's?
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China is having problems too
According to the NYTimes, China's growing economy is having some inflationary trouble.
As managers of businesses across China opened booths here on Thursday at the nation's biggest trade fair, the common refrain was that prices of everything from rice to steel were rising sharply, and that prices of exports to the United States, Europe and elsewhere would have to follow.
The prices for orders placed now will not show up in most American indexes for months, when goods are actually shipped. But as prices begin to rise in the United States, concerns are growing that China will become an exporter of inflation. Even though its goods account for a small percentage of total American purchases, China has played an oversize role in worldwide prices, with low labor costs that allow it to set prices in many industries.
(snip)
The prices of steel and other materials are major culprits. Another is energy costs. A motorcycle manufacturer in east-central China said he has had to close a factory for three days each week because of electricity blackouts, forcing a 4 percent increase in prices, with more planned.
While those of us who worried about China's ability to undercut other global producers may find a little comfort from that, it's gonna cause us trouble too. China is heavily influential in setting global prices, and if they get hit with inflation, other global producers can raise prices and recoup some of the lost marketshare at the same time. All this adds up to higher import prices for the US in a couple of months. That would be fine if we had enough domestic industry to supply our own markets, but free trade is still gonna make India and China more attractive places to produce than the US. Then again, maybe this will stimulate more manufacturing jobs in the US.
Whether the trend will be sustained depends on many variables. Chinese leaders have taken steps to slow the economy and brake inflation, raising reserve requirements for banks twice in less than three weeks. By next year, the many steel mills now under construction could start easing the acute shortages that are driving up steel prices. New power plants over the next five years should curb blackouts if coal mines can increase output fast enough to supply them.
But then since China's inflationary problems could be eased in a few months when their steel and power factories come online, who would invest in a factory here that could get swamped again so quickly? And one last fun little statistic:
China also has more unemployed people in rural areas than the entire American work force (...).
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woodward makes a little noise
Bobby boy's book on Bush is big. Front page NYTimes big.
President Bush secretly ordered a war plan drawn up against Iraq less than two months after U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan and was so worried the decision would cause a furor he did not tell everyone on his national security team, says a new book on his Iraq policy.
Bush feared that if news got out about the Iraq plan as U.S. forces were fighting another conflict, people would think he was too eager for war, journalist Bob Woodward writes in ``Plan of Attack,'' a behind-the-scenes account of the 16 months leading to the Iraq invasion.
(snip)
The book says Gen. Tommy Franks, who was in charge of the Afghan war as head of Central Command, uttered a string of obscenities when the Pentagon told him to come up with an Iraq war plan in the midst of fighting another conflict. (emphasis added)
Boy oh boy. None of this is gonna do much damage, but it's gonna keep Iraq pinned on the Bush campaign at a time when there is no good news coming out of Iraq. If this starts getting viewed as a war of choice that was badly planned and went horribly wrong and ended in failure and disgrace, that will be all to the good.
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from the department of 'just because you keep saying we're winning doesn't make it so'
So people are starting to whisper about the possibility of failure in Iraq. Not a hopeful sign, I can tell you that. From the San Francisco Chronicle:
President Bush warned the nation Tuesday night of the "unthinkable" consequences of failure in Iraq. But amid escalating violence and a crackdown by U.S. forces, Washington analysts expressed rising concern about the chances of success.
"I think we run a serious risk of disaster in Iraq if what we find on June 30 is a turnover of sovereignty to some kind of governing body that lacks legitimacy," said Bathsheba Crocker, co-director of the post-conflict reconstruction project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "I don't yet know what the plan is for avoiding that kind of disaster. ... We need a Plan B, and I'm not sure we yet have a Plan B." (emphasis added)
Fun fun fun.
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damn kerry. damn his hide
Well, so much for a revolution. Or even a little move to the Left. You would think that a campaign where most people would vote for a deaf, blind mule over Bush would allow Kerry to offer a real alternative vision for the country, but I guess Kerry is being run by the Clinton people. From the NYTimes:
Declaring that he is "not a redistribution Democrat," Senator John Kerry told a group of wealthy and well-connected supporters on Thursday that he would soon start an aggressive campaign to define himself as a centrist, in hopes of peeling moderate Republicans from President Bush.
Tacitly acknowledging his vulnerability to harsh portrayals in a barrage of Mr. Bush's advertisements over the past month, Mr. Kerry urged Democrats at a $25,000-a-plate breakfast at the "21" Club in Manhattan to help him paint his own portrait. He promised to begin "a positive affirmative advertising campaign" in "the next days," although his aides said there were no specific plans or timetables. (emphasis added)
I'd accuse him of selling out, but he's a blue-blood to begin with. We need a discussion on our economy in this country, and we need to start moving back towards a redistributive, consumer-based economy. Bush has radically changed the way our economy works with his tax-cuts, redistributing massive amounts of social wealth, and wealth generating ability, to the very richest. State and local taxes are increasingly being piled on the Middle and Working Classes, and the current restructuring of the economy towards low-paying service jobs has got to be halted, or unionization has got to increase to offset this. Kerry will end up sailing us right off the brink on Bush' own ship unless he offers a real alternative. By saying things like this, he makes me wonder about his willingness to roll-back the Bush tax-cuts, and stand up for the working class.
But, what am I gonna do, vote Nader?
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more bad news that initially looks like good news
Once again, from the lovely people at Reuters:
Oil futures slipped on Friday after hitting some of their highest levels since just before the U.S.-led war on Iraq a year ago, as record-breaking gasoline prices plummeted amid profit-taking.
Oil prices have dropped! Woohoo! Economy saved, Liberal chicken-littles proved wrong, a great day for our Preznit!
Despite gasoline's profit-taking slide, traders said security concerns in the world's largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, and continued unrest and violence in Iraq underpinned the crude market.
On Thursday, the United States ordered non-essential diplomats out of Saudi Arabia and warned all Americans they should leave, citing fresh signals that attacks were planned on U.S. and Western interests.
Oil analysts interpreted the development as a warning of possible supply disruption from the world's leading oil exporter.
"What's happening in Saudi that's making the U.S. send people home?" was the way Adam Sieminski of Deutsche Bank put it.
Oh. So this is actually the calm before the storm. Great. And what's all this about the US sending people home from Saudi Arabia? Apparently, bin Laden is planning a hit on our interests there. What with that and Iraq, the Supply situation looks tenuous (never a good thing), but apparently we're gonna get hit from the Demand side too:
Meanwhile, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries raised its demand forecast for its crude oil this year on expectations that China's economic expansion will push world consumption growth to a four-year high.
Damn you, you sneaky Chinese! Always expanding your economy, and such!
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more uncertainty in Iraq
From Reuters:
Shi'ite guerrillas clashed with U.S. troops near Kufa on Friday as their leader, rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, defied demands that he disband his militia to spare Iraq's shrine cities from bloodshed.
A Syrian-born Canadian aid worker kidnapped on April 8 was brought to Sadr's office in the nearby city of Najaf and set free after the fiery cleric urged the release of foreigners not involved in the U.S.-led occupation. (emphasis added)
At least this means non-occupation aligned foreigners should be a little safer. The people who are doing real good over there need protection, and the irony is that as-Sadr offers more protection through his influence than the US does through it's army. I've also heard stories about a possible deal to exile Sadr until the handover, at which point he will (apparently) give himself up to the new Iraqi authority for trial. I don't know where that stands, or even how much chance of success it has. I think the arrest warrent is a creature of the CPA more than anything else, and how do you prove incitement in a court of law when there is no effective police presence? Even assuming a trial, I predict that Sadr will go free.
And the US position is rapidly deteriorating in the negotiations with Sadr. He knows we're weaker than we're letting on, and he knows we can't afford to force him out or kill him, so he's playing hardball.
There was no sign military action was imminent in Najaf, home to some of Shi'ite Islam's holiest shrines. Any attack in Najaf could inflame Iraq's Shi'ite majority whose support is vital to U.S. plans for the country's political future.
Lebanon's top Shi'ite cleric said Washington would fan fury across the Muslim world if it invaded Najaf or attacked Sadr.
"All of this will set the ground burning beneath their feet, not just in Iraq, but in the whole of the Islamic world," Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah said in a sermon.
Meanwhile, our contractors are running out, as are the Russians, and our support dwindles. Kos has a good post on a site called Soldiers for the Truth, run by Col. David Hackworth (ret.). Check it out for the Military's perspective on Iraq. Quick hint: they're not pleased.
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see, this is what I'm talking about
Interesting story on Reuters today:
U.S. industrial production unexpectedly dropped in March while consumer sentiment slipped this month, but economists downplayed the two disappointing reports and said the economy's solid expansion remains on track.
Strong data this week on regional factory output and retail sales have boosted forecasts for overall economic growth in the first half of the year. Some economists are now looking for gross domestic product of about 5 percent, up from the 4.1 percent pace in the fourth-quarter last year.
Yet Federal Reserve officials have sought to play down worries they will be eager to lift official interest rates from 46-year lows in response, even with an surprising jump in consumer price inflation in March.
This sounds like mixed news, but let's look at it a little closer. The good news is, the Economy (as a phenomenon) is recovering nicely. Profits are up, and (supposedly) jobs are gonna start rebounding. The bad news is, Consumer confidence dropped again, and so did Industrial Production. Further darkening the outlook is the fact that most of the increases in profits are going to the top tenth-of-one-percent of Americans - very little going to wages. But the jump in prices is a problem, and it might trigger inflation fears and higher interest rates. The Fed is downplaying this, as they have to, but it's there. If jobs don't continue to recover, and at a much larger rate than 300,000 a month and at better pay than lower service-sector jobs, that softness will drag down consumer confidence and drag the recovery down too.
The boom is riding on two wheels here: consumer spending (beholden to consumer confidence) and the housing bubble. Housing starts were up again, but that's due to a drop in the mortgage rate. Again, the second rates increase (as they're going to have to to keep the dollar from a sell-off) this bubble will burst. This increase in housing starts could very well become surplus housing in such a situation, dropping housing prices, and (conceivably) locking over-stretched Middle-Class families into paying mortgages they can't afford for a property they can't afford to sell. That's a recipe for bankruptcy on a significant scale. Basically, we're praying for job growth here, but I'm not too optimistic: Bush' tax plans are still going into effect, and could contribute to Capital going overseas if interest rates remain so low. And low interest rates are a problem for us since we need constant Capital inflow to finance the trade deficit.
This all makes my head hurt.
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Thursday, April 15, 2004
trump is a jack-ass
He hires Bill instead of Kwami. Bullshit. Kwami was WAY more qualified. And damn Trump for sucking me in.
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90 more days in the sun and sand! Boy, aren't our troops lucky duckies?
From the BBC:
Some 20,000 US troops now serving in Iraq will have their tour of duty extended, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has announced. Mr Rumsfeld said they would spend another 90 days in Iraq beyond their original one-year deployment.
If I were a soldier in Iraq, who had been told repeatedly that I was going home, that I had done my duty, that my wife and kids, who I had not seen in over a year, would finally be by my side, and had just been told that these promises were all baloney, I don't know what I would do. But I sure as hell wouldn't vote these bozos back into office.
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the independant lays it out for ya
Good story, if quite scary, in the Independant on who, exactly, is calling the shots in the CPA. I had assumed that the idiocy was emanating from Bremer and the Repuglican Civilians in the CPA, but according to the story, it's the Army who's having trouble seeing reality. The quotes from Army brass indicate that they think they can work a military solution, but on the other hand, they haven't invaded Najaf yet. I hope they're saying these things for domestic consumption, but then again, who knows?
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and Friedman proves he's an idiot
In the annals of terrible orientalist bull-sh*t, Thom Friedman has always been a star player. Whether patiently explaining that the problem with the Palestinians is that they lack 'accountability', or that they need a non-violent protest movement while the Israelis are happily conducting airstrikes on densly-poplated cities, Friedman could always be counted on to see the Arabs in a paternalistic and deeply patronizing light. But fuck me, this takes the cake:
(...) an intriguing article on Tuesday in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz point[ed] out that Yasir Arafat's Palestinian Authority and Hamas, longtime rivals, had "made a great deal of progress" toward setting up a new administration to run Gaza after Israel's unilateral withdrawal. The article quoted Hamas leaders as saying that they were willing to participate in the administration of Gaza now that it is being "liberated" — for which Hamas claims credit — and not being turned over in the context of the Oslo peace accords.
Here's the message I take from this: There is nothing like the burden of responsibility to promote accountability.
Here's the message I take from Friedman: the PA having to take Hamas into a Gaza government is a good thing, because the PA really needs that 'drive the Israelis into the sea through suicide attacks on civilians' perspective. There's making lemons into lemonade, but this is making lemonade with lemon-scented bleach. If Friedman knew the first thing about Sharon's plan, he would recognize that Sharon is pulling out of Gaza in order to solidify his hold on the West Bank. In fact, the AP says this about the agreement:
In a historic policy shift, President Bush on Thursday endorsed Israel's plan to hold on to part of the West Bank in any final peace settlement with the Palestinians. Bush also ruled out Palestinian refugees returning to Israel, bringing strong criticism from the Palestinians.
An elated Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said his plan to pull back from parts of the West Bank and Gaza, hailed by Bush, would create "a new and better reality for the state of Israel."
But Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia - with whom the Bush administration deals while boycotting leader Yasser Arafat - called Bush "the first president who has legitimized the (Israeli) settlements in Palestinian territories." (emphasis added)
Friedman is willfuly mistaking the reality of this agreement. He thinks this is about Sharon finally taking real steps towards peace, and those ungrateful Arabs will finally have to put up or shut up about Israel's failure to ensure even a modicum of basic rights for the Palestinians. He's not stupid, he's blind. But let's let Friedman speak for himself:
Ariel Sharon has declared his intention to withdraw Israeli forces and settlements from the Gaza Strip — without any formal agreement with the Palestinians. Mr. Sharon has given up on negotiating with Arafat, let alone Hamas, but he finally understands that Israel cannot go on controlling all these Palestinian lands and remain a Jewish democracy. So he is unilaterally pulling out of Gaza, just as his predecessor, Ehud Barak, pulled out of South Lebanon: you want it, it's yours.
No mention of the West Bank settlements that Sharon now has US backing for keeping. In fact, no mention of the West Bank in the whole article. No mention of the actual number of settlers who are being removed. It's not like those numbers aren't available. The Washington Post reports:
Sharon proposes to withdraw 7,500 Jewish settlers from 21 Gaza settlements. He has also said he would close four small settlements with a total population of about 500 on the West Bank, where more than 200,000 Israelis have settled since Israel seized the land during the 1967 war. (emphasis added)
So, legitimizing 200,000+ Israelis living on stolen (and highly strategic) land in the West Bank, minus 500 in tiny (and non-strategic) settlements is supposed to be good compensation for taking 7,500 settlers out of Gaza. Friedman is fooling himself if he thinks this is a step towards piece. But his foolishness does not stop there. He wants to make a larger point about Iraq:
America's Baghdad boss, Paul Bremer, is absolutely right when he insists that we must turn over sovereignty to Iraqis on June 30, as promised. Why? Because we may have trained thousands of Iraqi policemen, but without a government of their own, they are defending America — which they will never do with vigor. The only thing they might defend is a government of their own. Moreover, right now many Iraqi leaders blame the U.S. for what is going wrong in Iraq. The Bush team deserves much blame, but not all. Iraq's nascent leaders will act in a concerted and responsible fashion only when they — like Hamas, Arafat and Hezbollah — have the burden of responsibility.
I'm not advocating unilateral withdrawal from Iraq. I am advocating putting every ounce of energy we have behind the U.N. effort to replace the current Iraqi Governing Council with a legitimate, broad-based caretaker government to run Iraq from July 1, 2004, until elections in January 2005. Hard, but not impossible.
You see, if we can just find 'responsible' Iraqis willing to step up to the plate, willing to govern themselves, all will be well! 'But Mr. Friedman,' you well may ask, 'the Iraqis are really into governing themselves, so much so that they are shooting us to make us stop ruling them!' But you mistake his meaning! By 'responsible,' he means 'willing to do whatever we tell them.' The problem is not that Iraqis want freedom from the US, it's that they want an Iraqi face issuing our orders!
Friedman's total misunderstanding of reality becomes clear in his last 2 paragraphs:
After decades of colonialism and misrule, and then a traumatic dictatorship in an already tribalized society, Iraqi national identity is weak — and insecurity only weakens it more by prompting people to fall back on their tribal units. But there is an Iraqi identity. It takes security, though, for it to emerge. Even Iraqis don't know how strong it is, and they won't know until they are handed the keys.
Only then can we gradually shift the burden for Iraq's self-construction or self-destruction to Iraqis themselves. Only then will they begin to be accountable — and accountability is the mother of both self-restraint and self-government.
So the Iraqis have no national identity. Never mind the broad-based insurgency that has untied Sunni and Shi'ite in the language of nationalism. Never mind that Shiites, Christians, and Turkomen have all declared solidarity with the sunnis in Fallujah.
Never mind the truth, Friedman has an ideology to expound.
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see, this is why the US doesn't count iraqi civlian dead
There's a good article in the Washington Post about how the US and foreign media have been reporting on the number of civilians killed in Fallujah during our hideously ill-thought-out offensive. The funny thing is, the numbers themselves, when reported, all say basically the same thing: 600 or so dead, 300-400 of them women and children and elderly. That's the number given out by everyone but the cable news media, who don't like to upset us with such things. So at least half, maybe 2/3rds of the dead were innocent. Fallujah was worse than a crime; it was a mistake.
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more mixed news from Iraq
From Reuters:
Three Japanese hostages were freed in Iraq Thursday, but the murders of an Iranian diplomat and an Italian captive were chilling proof of the risks foreigners face as rebels battle the U.S.-led occupation.
(snip)
The three Japanese, apparently well, were handed over to a Sunni organization in Baghdad which has been facilitating hostage releases, then driven to the Japanese embassy.
The two men and a woman were captured last week. Two more Japanese civilians have been reported missing near Baghdad.
A leader of the Muslim Clerics Association, Harith al-Dari, said the group had no direct links with the kidnappers and was seeking the release of all foreign civilian hostages.
The good news is that Harith ad-Dari seems to be doing a good job talking the hostage-takers back from the brink, although an Italian hostage was murdered recently, with the kidnappers threatening to kill the three remaining Italian hostages. It's very touch and go. Buit on the bad side:
Underscoring the lawlessness sweeping Iraq, an Iranian diplomat was killed near the Iranian mission in Baghdad. Iran state television named him as first secretary Khalil Naimi.
A Reuters correspondent saw a body slumped in a car with at least two bullet holes in it, smashed against a lamp-post. "We have been told that he was driving his car to go to the embassy and three men drove up and shot him," an Iranian official said.
This pretty much proves that the neo-cons got it totally wrong once again. The Iranians are not behind all this; in fact, the Iranians are becoming targets by associating with the CPA. Of course, there's always the possiblity that the murderers were not Iraqis. Maybe some Mercs decided to engage in their own little foreign policy.
And lest anyone remain convinced that more force is needed to quell the uprising, check out this paragraph:
Iraq's top Shi'ite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has warned Bremer via Shi'ite members of Iraq's Governing Council that Najaf is a "red line" which U.S. troops should not cross. (emphasis added)
Sistani will call for an uprising if we invade Najaf. That would be the end of Georgie's little crusade, and probably the end of many of our soldiers lives as well. Sure, we've got the guns and the ability to kill a million people, but they have 23 million people, and if Sistani says so, we'll have a million and a half coming after us.
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padraig goes awol
As much as I love being well-informed on all and sundry, I have to admit I'm deliberately ignoring the SHaron-Gaza deal. I know Sharon is a bastard, that the Palestinians are calling this the end of the Peace Process, and that Bush has broken with 40 years of US policy by declaring that Israel should keep part of the West Bank. I know this is probably one of the more crucial stories out there, but honestly, I can't bring myself to read the news about it. I'll try to educate myself about it over the next few days, but I'm just too tired and sad right now.
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Kaplan hits 'em where it hurts
Via Atrios, a great column from Slate's own Fred Kaplan:
On March 19 of this year, Tenet told the 9/11 commission that the PDB had been prepared, as usual, at a CIA analyst's initiative. He later retracted that testimony, saying the president had asked for the briefing. Tenet embellished his new narrative, saying that the CIA officer who gave the briefing to Bush and Condi Rice started by reminding the president that he had requested it. But as Rice has since testified, she was not present during the briefing; she wasn't in Texas. Someone should ask: Was that the only part of the tale that Tenet made up? Or did he invent the whole thing—and, if so, on whose orders?
The distinction is important. If Bush asked for the briefing, it suggests that he at least cared about the subject; then the puzzle becomes why he didn't follow up on its conclusions. If he didn't ask for the briefing, then he comes off as simply aloof. (It's a toss-up which conclusion is more disturbing.) (emphasis added)
So, under oath Tenet says some damaging things. Not under oath, he says he misspoke and says something which is verifiably untrue, and is confirmed by Rice's testimony under oath. And the things he says he didn't mean to say, while under oath, directly contradict the President, who will not appear under oath. At some point, doesn't the appearance of malfeasance and impropriety start to amount to something? When there's this much smoke, shouldn't someone be trying to put out the fire?
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Wednesday, April 14, 2004
having trouble occupying your neighbors? Let Msnbc's own fareed zakaria show you how!
Fareed Zakaria has become a big hit with the media since 9-11, by virtue of being extremely intelligent, an effective writer, and having absolutely no soul. He is less a purveyor of Realpolitik than an Orientalist and Imperialist who, unlike some I could mention, understands exactly what Imperialism is and what it entails. Anyway, he's doing a lot of writing for Newsweek, and he's not been very happy with the Bushies, and who could blame him? He wants a Middle East made safe for Capitalist Democracy, and look at the administration he has to work with! Check out his latest column, which is (as usual) brilliant and correct, and as close to a real strategy as we're likely to get this election season. My only criticism is that he seems to think Sistani is a moderate who is opposed to Sadr. In reality, Sistani has nothing to fear from Sadr, because he represents the Shi'a community in Iraq, while Sadr represents a narrower group: the desperately poor and fucked-over. Sistani is using Sadr, in the sense that he's letting Sadr play bad cop to his good cop. He'll reign in Sadr only if he feels certain that the US is not gonna fuck him and the Iraqis over. Sistani is not on our side, he's on Iraq's side, and that's simply not the side we're on.
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Positive news on the Sadr Showdown
Once again, from the fine people at Reuters:
Iraq's radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has dropped his conditions for entering into negotiations with U.S. authorities who have vowed to kill or capture him, his spokesman said Wednesday.
"At the start there were specific conditions for entering into negotiations, which were the withdrawal of military forces from residential areas and the freeing of detainees," Sadr's spokesman Qays al-Khazali told a news conference in Najaf.
"But after the intervention of the religious authorities, Sayyid Moqtada al-Sadr has lifted these conditions and will negotiate without them being met." (emphasis added)
This is good. But don't start thinking that Sadr is surrendering, I don't think that's in the cards. The key to this story is that Sadr dropped his demands after talking with religious leaders. Sistani is telling him to cool it while he works on the CPA, I think. Sadr is no fanatic, he's a political leader with an army. He is willing to negotiate, and because we are in a VERY precarious position here, we should take him up on it.
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oh shit, inflation is starting
Caution: children, small animals, and those prone to panic at the first sign of economic collapse should not read this post. From Reuters:
U.S. consumer prices logged an unexpectedly sharp rise in March as the cost of energy, clothing and lodging jumped, according to a government report on Wednesday suggesting long-dormant inflation may be rearing its head.
A separate report showed the U.S. trade gap narrowed in February as the weak dollar and stronger economic growth propelled both exports and imports to record levels.
(snip)
The report added to growing concerns that a long period of historically low interest rates could be drawing to a close.
Expectations that the Federal Reserve could raise interest rates from 1958 lows sooner than had been thought pushed Treasury bond yields to their highest level this year and boosted the dollar.
"It looks as though core inflation is back," said John Lonski, chief economist at Moody's Investors Service in New York. "We have the core CPI now growing at an average monthly rate of roughly 0.3 percent thus far in 2004. That adds up to a rate hike happening sooner rather than later."
(snip)
A third report showed worker wages were not keeping up with the quickened pace of inflation. The Labor Department said real average weekly earnings fell 0.7 percent in March and were essentially unchanged over the past 12 months. (emphasis added)
This, combined with yesterday's fall in stock prices reveals a real sense of weakness in terms of our economy. Remember: low interest rates allow for consumer debt to finance consumer spending. Inflation means a cut in people's disposable income, cutting demand for consumer products. This, combined with a rate hike, means a lot less money is gonna get pumped into the recovery.
The problem here is, low rates lead to borrowing, which leads to an over-supply of money, which leads to devaluation of the dollar. The Fed has to raise rates sometime, and probably soon. Once that happens, my prediciton is that it will trigger the housing bust, as people are no longer able to finance the high housing prices. Those with Variable mortgages, like ol' Greenspan's been selling us, are gonna get hit the worst, and we'll probably see a rash of bankruptcies among the middle class, probably some dispossesion too. This isn't gonna kill the economy by itself, but at best it means the end of the American middle class and its standard of living. We're gonna get a whole lot less equal.
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Tuesday, April 13, 2004
and the president strikes out
Miserable performance on the address, worse still on the Q&A. Many lies, many non-sequitors, and no follow up questions allowed. If the networks and CNN don't flay him for this, then there truly is no independant media here.
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marry me, shiela massey!
Check out this letter to the NYTimes editorial pages. It's just about right:
To the Editor:
Your April 12 editorial "The Silent President" rightly emphasized judgment instead of prescience.
Nobody has perfect information. Yet some people come to the right conclusions, while others don't. The difference is judgment.
For years, many have warned that cold-war missile defense shields are useless against individuals who can easily gain entry and destroy us from within. Some got it right; the Bush team got it wrong.
Before going into Iraq, many warned that it would breed terrorism instead of quelling it and that we would get mired down in the aftermath.
Some got it right; the Bush team got it wrong.
The best leaders (and top executives) all have good judgment, not prescience.
SHEILA MASSEY
New York, April 12, 2004
Damn, you go girl.
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boy howdy, was i wrong on the grown-ups being back in charge
The CPA doesn't think enough US soldiers are dying, apparently. They feel that Iraq has just been too quiet recently, and that the Shi'ites need to be slapped around a bit. Apparently, having only as-Sadr against us isn't enough. Now they want to turn as-Sistani too. From Reuters:
American troops massed outside the holy Shi'ite city of Najaf Tuesday, ready for a possible move against rebel cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his militia.
It would be an operation fraught with the risk of enraging Iraqis, who warn soldiers not to defile their sacred shrines.
Seriously, they had better be saying this for show. They had better be saying this in conjunction with serious negotiations. They had better not be making a threat that is either completely idle (no sane person would touch off a revolution) or completely insane. If it's idle, if they're not serious, then Sadr will call our bluff. If it's insane, we'll call his and then reap the whirlwind for our trouble. And it's not like negotiations are getting nowhere:
(...) a delegation of clerics from Iraq's majority Shi'ite community who met Sadr said he had hinted he would disband his militia if religious authorities instructed him to do so.
This isn't just Sadr blowing smoke. Sadr can't call for a revolution without Sistani's public backing; he's just not powerful or legitimate enough. The legitimate religious leader in Iraqi Shi'ism is Sistani, and even Sadr has to acknowledge that. If Sistani tells Sadr to disarm, he must or face a rift with the majority of Shi'ites who back Sistani. He can't risk that. Our problem is, Sistani won't tell him to disarm unless he knows the US is gonna play ball. This is exactly where negotiations are effective, and where force only does Sadr's bidding.
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we lost another chopper today
As reported in the NYTimes:
A Sikorsky H-53 helicopter was hit by groundfire today near the city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, and made a crash landing, the chief spokesman for the American command said. Three crewmen were injured in the incident, the spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said during a news conference in Baghdad.
A member of a quick-reaction squad sent to rescue the crew members was killed during the operation, The Associated Press reported. The H-53 series helicopters, among the largest in the United States military fleet, are used for a variety of missions, including troop transport and special operations.
Note that the Sikorsky H-53 is a transport chopper. Those things are what we have to use for reinforcements and such while the rebels threaten our supply lines. They can bring them down. We dodged a bullet this time, only losing one soldier, but what happens if they start shooting them while they're carrying passengers? The modified RPG would seem to be a good reason to reconsider Rumsfeld's slimmed-down army: without the robustness of heavy supply troops to keep the lines open, our suddenly crucial choppers can be hit by rebels with those RPG. You would have thought some more thought would have been given to just such a scenario after Somalia, but hey, what do I know. I'm just a civilian.
Update (4:37 EST) Well, it looks like the civilians at the CPA are not going quietly into that good night:
Before the cease-fire, American authorities were trying to enter Falluja to ferret out suspects in the murders of four American contractors in that city two weeks ago. Dan Senor, the chief spokesman for the top American administrator in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, said today that American authorities also believe that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian Sunni Muslim terrorist who American officials say has led attacks on coalition targets, may be hiding in the city. (emphasis added)
az-Zarqawi is hiding in Fallujah, now? Maybe he's looking for his leg there ...
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contractors ready to bail on Iraq
Via Atrios, another contractor story, this one from the Financial Times:
Many of Iraq's reconstruction projects are being put on hold after a spate of foreign kidnappings and attacks on convoys in Baghdad grounded foreign and Iraqi contractors.
"We'll give it another week. If it doesn't improve, we'll have to leave," says Trevor Holborn of the Amman-based Shaheen Group, one of hundreds of foreign workers who have suspended their operations and headed for shelter inside the walls of the Green Zone, the heavily fortified enclave where the occupation has its headquarters.
"We still have people in Iraq, but we may not able to work on a day to day basis," said a contractor with a big US energy company. "Right now Iraq is not a safe place to work, and the safety of our staff comes first."
So Iraq is officially too dangerous to steal from. The Bushies aren't just terrible at the things they say they want (say, bringing Democracy), they're terrible at the shady things they won't admit they want (like auctioning off Iraq's state-run businesses and such). This is just not gonna help.
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ashcroft, meet justice. Justice, ashcroft.
The 9-11 Commission has earned its dinner once again, this time by pointing out that, because the DOJ did not list counter-terrorism as anywhere near a top priority, it's reasonable to assume that they didn't consider it a top priority. From Reuters:
The commission on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on Tuesday broadly criticized the Justice Department and the FBI for failing to meet the threat from al Qaeda and said Attorney General John Ashcroft did not see counterterrorism as a top priority before it was too late.
(snip)
One report drew attention to a May 10 Justice Department document that set out priorities for 2001. The top priorities cited were reducing gun violence and combating drug trafficking. There was no mention of counterterrorism.
When Dale Watson, the head of the counterterrorism division, saw the report, he "almost fell out of his chair," the report said. "The FBI's new counterterrorism strategy was not a focus of the Justice Department in 2001."
Then-acting FBI Director Thomas Pickard said he appealed to Ashcroft for more money for counterterrorism but on Sept 10, 2001, one day before the attacks, Ashcroft rejected the appeal.
(snip)
A second staff report issued before the afternoon session said Ashcroft was briefed on terrorist threats by then-FBI Director Pickard in late June and July 2001.
"After two such briefings, the attorney general told him he did not want to hear this information anymore," the report quoted Pickard as saying. (emphasis added)
Wow.
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bush had better start shooting his mouth off if he wants the gun-owners' support
And another key demographic gets edgy. From the LA Times:
(...) some gun owners have grown so disenchanted with President Bush that they may cast a protest vote for a third-party candidate, stay away from the polls, or even back the likely Democratic nominee, gun-control advocate John F. Kerry.
It's unclear how many gun owners could be counted as activists, but they are affiliated with a variety of organizations, from the NRA and Gun Owners of America to smaller state and regional organizations around the country. And they could play a pivotal role in the outcome of this year's presidential race.
Surprisingly, the issues that have most alienated many gun groups from the Bush administration have little to do with firearms, but rather with the Patriot Act and other homeland security measures instituted after Sept. 11. Opposition to such laws has aligned gun-rights activists with unlikely partners, such as liberal Democrats and the ACLU. (emphasis added)
Hallelujah! May there now be peace between the anti-state left and the libertarian right! The Lion does indeed lie down with the Lamb!
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oh! who called it right? stick with the kid, baby!
Well, it looks like the doom-and-gloom crowd was right again. I'd break out the champagne, but I'm broke too. From Reuters:
U.S. stocks sagged on Tuesday, after a robust retail sales report stirred worries that the Federal Reserve may raise interest rates earlier than previously expected.
The markets' declines came despite solid earnings from blue chips like brokerage Merrill Lynch & Co. and drugmaker Johnson & Johnson.
Interest rate-sensitive stocks, like financial and home builders, fell sharply after the retail sales report. Citigroup Inc., the world's largest financial services company, was one of the biggest drags on the Standard & Poor's 500.
(snip)
The report underscored the economy's robust recovery, but also increased the likelihood the Fed may raise overnight interest rates from historical lows earlier than most had expected. (emphasis added)
And we all know what happens when the interest rate goes up, now don't we. Boy, I hate being right sometimes.
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well geez, if you can't trust halliburton, who can you trust?
Halliburton feels Iraq is not safe enough for its private army, uh, I mean security specialists (yeah, that's the ticket). So they're not gonna support our troops. They'll take our money, mind you, but the risk is just unacceptable. I'm torn between hating their cowardly guts (the execs, not the mercs) for leaving our troops in the lurch, and hating the Bushies for having less concern over the safety of our own army than Halliburton over their Mercs. From the LA Times
Halliburton Co. has suspended some convoys delivering supplies to the military in Iraq due to escalating violence, U.S. Army and company officials said Monday, raising the danger of shortfalls in food, fuel and water supplies if the situation continues.
The company said the decision was made after supply trucks protected by U.S. soldiers were attacked Friday by Iraqi insurgents just outside Baghdad, resulting in the death of one employee from Halliburton subsidiary KBR, formerly known as Kellogg Brown & Root. Seven other employees are missing or held hostage. A soldier was also killed in the incident, and two others are missing.
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yet another development the Bushies did not see coming
Abizaid has broken the unwritten law: never mention that more troops are needed in Iraq. After all, Shinseki got fired over daring to state the obvious. I think this is another sign that our Iraq campaign is no longer being run by the political operatives in the CPA, but rather by the Military. This goes along with the sudden willingness to negotiate with Sadr and the truce in Fallujah. Our army is being run by the grown-ups again.
From the LA Times:
As his troops regrouped after the deadliest week since the fall of Baghdad, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq acknowledged Monday what many critics had been saying for months: The American-led force needs more troops.
An expected deployment of thousands more troops for duty in Iraq answers congressional calls for backup and comes as administration officials work to prevent allies from following Spain's planned withdrawal of its forces.
(snip)
U.S. officials had hoped to draw the occupation force down to 110,000 this spring as the coalition prepares to transfer authority to a still-unnamed interim Iraqi government on June 30.
Instead, the Pentagon is planning to have as many as 140,000 American troops in Iraq if the new units arrive soon or 120,000 if the soldiers now pulling extended duty are allowed to leave within several months, defense officials said.
(snip)
Current and former Army officials have noted that when then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki warned Congress before the war that 225,000 U.S. troops then poised for attack around the Persian Gulf would be needed for years, Pentagon officials called his estimate wildly inaccurate.
"This is what Shinseki was talking about. This is what everybody's been talking about," retired Maj. Gen. William Nash said. "The failure to do it right at the beginning means that we're going to have to do it at the end with a lot of deaths and a lot of trouble and it's going to be much harder now. The insurgents are building momentum." (emphasis added)
Yup. We all told you so.
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oh please, oh please!
A wonderful article on the concern in the Bush camp over Dear Leader's re-elect numbers:
"It's a significant matter of concern to people who are involved in the campaign and people who are concerned about the political future of the president," a senior Republican close to the Bush campaign said. "It's less of a concern for the policy people. The difficulty is that political people do not like events outside the campaign that are beyond their control."
"We're stuck with the incumbent strategy," this adviser added. "Unless he steps down, it's going to be hard to run as anything but as an incumbent." (emphasis added)
(in best Eric Cartmann voice) sweet
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see, this is what I'm talking about!
From Reuters:
Merrill Lynch & Co. Tuesday reported its quarterly profit almost doubled and hit a record, on continued strength in debt markets and an upswing in merger advisory and stock and bond underwriting. (emphasis added)
Now, I'm not enturely certain I know what I'm talking about, but it would appear that strong debt markets would indicate an increased demand for credit. This is based on the assumption that strong debt markets include consumer debt. I'll try to find out more about how the whole sytem works, but this is, I think, a sign that my thinking is not off the track.
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9-11 commision wants some answers
According to the Washington Post, the 9-11 Commission wants to interview the author of the 8-06 PDB:
The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, rebuffed once previously, asked again yesterday to interview the CIA analyst who wrote the Aug. 6, 2001, intelligence briefing given to President Bush on al Qaeda's threat to the United States, according to administration sources.
(snip)
The commission wants to interview the author of the article in the now-famous President's Daily Brief to determine her purpose in assembling the document and how much information she sought in doing so.
Basically, this is potentially big. The main dispute about the PDB (aside from whether or not 'Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside US' counts as a warning that bin Laden was trying to strike inside the US) is whether or not the President (or whatever he is) was given this PDB, or asked for it. If he asked for it, then the memo was a recounting of where things stood. If, however, it was given to him, then it was new information that should have been acted on. The question is, was the PDB new information to Bush. Bush says no, but the 9-11 Commission and the author say yes it was. This could be the straw that breaks the Camel's back.
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Consumer spending rises
In the interests of fairness, I have long held the position that the recovery, being based on consumer spending, and financed largely by home-remortgaging, was in immiment danger of slowing down as new credit lines were tapped out and the lack of expanding job opportunities depressed consumer confidence. That said, here's some direct proof to the contrary:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. shoppers turned out in force in March, pushing retail sales to their strongest gain in a year, according to a government report on Tuesday that may prompt economists to raise forecasts for first-quarter growth.
Separate private-sector reports on weekly chain store sales showed that this momentum carried into early April, helped by the Easter holiday.
"The implications of these data are massive. Off the top of my head, I would say that we just moved from 4 percent GDP growth in Q1 to something like 5 percent," said Steven Stanley, chief economist at RBS Greenwich Capital. The economy expanded at a 4.1 percent pace in the final three months of 2003.
(snip)
In another report Tuesday, the Commerce Department said February business inventories posted a stronger-than-expected gain. The department said inventories rose 0.7 percent in February, the biggest monthly rise since August 2000.
Steven Wood, chief economist with Insight Economics in Danville, California, called the inventories data "very positive news."
"I think the fact that consumers have actually been carrying the economy over the past couple of years has finally forced businesses to start rebuilding inventories," he said.
So this would seem to be good news. Perhaps I, like chicken little, have been too frightened and predictive of disaster, when I should have been calm and collected. One could certainly make the argument. But, in the face of this news, I retain my pessimism. The fundamental weaknesses of the economy remain, the danger of a hightened interest rate is still there, as is the danger of increased out-sourcing driving down wages and standards of living. I would bet that a lot of this consumer spending is being driven by increased credit lines, made possible by low interest rates. I still predict trouble, but if jobs start coming back, and I mean good jobs, we might see a way out of this predicament. If Bush can pull that off, I might even consider voting for him. For mayor of Crawford, or something safe like that.
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Monday, April 12, 2004
from 'today in iraq'
It looks like the media is starting to question Bremer's abilities as headman in the CPA. From the Seattle Times, via Today in Iraq:
Several U.S. and Iraqi officials now regard Bremer's move to close the newspaper as a profound miscalculation. Foremost among the errors, the officials said, was the lack of a military strategy to deal with al-Sadr if he chose to fight back, as he did.
"We punched a big black bear in the eye and got him angry as hell but had no immediate plan to disable him, so of course he struck back in a very vicious way," said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University who has been serving as a senior adviser to the U.S.-led occupation authority in Baghdad.
(snip)
Bremer also chose to pursue al-Sadr at the same time tensions were boiling over in Fallujah, a Sunni-dominated city west of the capital. Two days before the newspaper closure, U.S. Marines had killed 15 Iraqis during a raid there, accelerating a cycle of violence that intensified later that week, when a mob murdered four American security contractors and mutilated at least two of the bodies.
In the aftermath, Iraq has been convulsed by a week of tumult in which more than 50 U.S. and allied troops and hundreds of Iraqis were killed, four cities were taken over by al-Sadr's militias, and many Shiites threw their lot in with rival Sunni Muslims in opposing the U.S. occupation.
(snip)
But as with the campaign against al-Sadr, the military plan to quell Fallujah appears to have been based on faulty assumptions. Instead of disgorging the insurgents, many residents rallied to support them by joining the fight against the Marines. People in other cities, including Shiites who used to regard Fallujah's residents as the hillbillies of Iraq, rushed to donate blood and money. Sunnis in Fallujah and elsewhere in central Iraq who had deemed al-Sadr a troublemaker began to laud him as a hero.
All of a sudden, Bremer did not just have a two-front war on his hands, but one in which each side was drawing strength from the other.
(snip)
"Did we have to go after him right now?" the official said. "It should have been delayed. Dealing with both these problems at one time is crazy, if not suicidal."
That last line says it in a nutshell.
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supply lines? we don't need no stinkin' supply lines!
Analysts and Pundits talk a lot about terrorists being fish swimming in a civilian ocean, or as mosquitos in a swamp of the populace. The idea is to 'drain the swamp' by reducing the populaces sympathy for the terrorists, making it much harder for them to operate. What goes unremarked is that the same holds true for Armies: without at least basic legitimacy, an army's maneoverability suffers, and popular distrust can make it hard to keep a force at fighting capacity. You lose things like supply lines:
The military has been trying to regain control of supply routes after several convoys were ambushed and at least 10 truck drivers kidnapped. Nine were released, but an American — Thomas Hamill of Macon, Miss. — remained a captive.
On Monday, a convoy of flatbed trucks carrying M113 armored personnel carriers was attacked and burned on a road in Latifiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad. Witnesses said three people were killed.
A supply truck was also ambushed and set ablaze Monday on the road from Baghdad's airport. Looters moved in to carry away goods from the truck as Iraqi police looked on without intervening.
This is exactly the problem the US faced during the drive to Baghdad. The fighting units got so far ahead of the supply units that several were cut off, and there was a real danger for a while to US troops. The insecurity that resulted lead, for instance, to the death of Laurie Piestewa and the capture of Jessica Lynch. When the supply troops caught up, Rumsfeld lambasted us leftists for being so chicken-shit. Well, it turns out he still hasn't learned the lesson. Without secure supply-lines, what happens if our troops in Fallujah run out of ammo? We'd have to start reinforcing by chopper, but that leaves us open to RPG attacks. We've got military superiority, and will have it, but tactical superiority, much less strategic, is a real wild card here.
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oh kerry, you wildman
Kerry gave a speech calling for a National Service for college students in exchange for more gov't funding on student aid. From the AP
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites) on Monday renewed his call for a comprehensive commitment to national service by Americans of all ages, telling college students that "change starts with you" as he proposed to tie aid for college tuition to national service.
I totally agree with the State's responsibility to ensure a college education for the public, and with tying that to a service program, but honestly, I think our educational system needs to be rethought. There are not enough jobs for the college-kids that currently exist, and the highly-skilled jobs they're seeking are contracting and being replaced by low-level service jobs. Expanding educational opportunities without expanding vocational opportunities is a recipe for disaster, I think.
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good news!
From the AP News Wire:
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Kidnappers have released up to 12 foreigners taken hostage in Iraq, a member of the U.S.-appointed Governing Council said Monday.
(snip)
"Twelve foreign hostages have been released today and we hope that the rest of the hostages will be released soon," said Abdul-Hamid, a Sunni Muslim, who is also the head of the Iraqi Islamic Party.
Earlier, Muthanna Harith, spokesman for Islamic Clerics Committee, said insurgents have released nine hostages of various nationalities, including Turks and Pakistanis. It was not clear if he and Abdul-Hamid were referring to the same hostages.
This is a good sign that the negotiations are working. If the IGC and the 'moderate' Iraqi groups can get hostages released, it means the insurgents are not aiming at killing westerners, but at ending the occupation. Hopefully, the CPA will get its head out of its ass, and stop playing tough guy. But I doubt it.
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propaganda
Here's a particularly damning report from Reuters on the disconnect between the official press statements of the Army in Iraq and the independant sources on the ground.
[...] gaps between statements read from the briefing room podium and information coming from the ground has widened in recent weeks. Many queries to the army press office remain unanswered, and official reports sometimes emerge days after an event.
(snip)
Deflecting questions about civilian casualties, the army's chief Iraq spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, has described the Falluja operation as "tremendously precise, tremendously circumspect and well within the rules of engagement."
The few independent pictures that have come out of the besieged city of 300,000 would suggest otherwise. Reuters footage that took a day to make it from Falluja to Baghdad showed dead children and old men and women lying wounded in packed makeshift clinics.
Hospital directors in Falluja estimate about 600 people have been killed in the past week, many of them civilians. More than 1,000 have been wounded. Doctors say ambulances have been shot at. Residents say airstrikes have killed families.
The simple fact that the two don't match up is hardly conclusive, but when the US claims that '95%' of the 600 dead in Fallujah are insurgents but Reuters has actual pictures of dead women and children, it's hard not to think that the US is simply lying. But try telling this to Gen. Mark Kimmet:
Kimmitt said he had no accurate information about the civilian casualties and denied the United States withheld information about its military activities. "We have never actively held back information. The only thing I hold back are those things that are classified. I think we run an extremely transparent operation here," he said.
He told a news conference Sunday that news outlets that said American forces were responsible for large numbers of civilian casualties should simply be ignored.
"On the images of American and coalition forces killing innocent civilians, my advice to you is change the channel. ... The stations that are showing Americans killing women and children are not legitimate channels," he said. (emphasis added)
It's a good thing Kimmet's not spreading propaganda, because that last little line is not gonna win any hearts or minds in Iraq.
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Karen Kwiatkowski
Via a certain Scottish Beasty, a link to a Libertarian site that runs Karen Kwiatkowski's editorials for Military Week. She is a retired Lt. Colonel in the USAF who worked in the Pentagon for the last 4 1/2 years. She's not a leftist by any means, but she is also no friend of this administration, and her reasoning is quite good. Worth checking out.
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dear god, not another invasion?
I've already posted on this, but the sheer profusion of neo-con rhetoric on Iran's supposed funding of the intifada in Iraq is getting me a little worried. Are the Neo-cons trying to sucker us into another invasion? My head says 'no', but my fears say 'maybe'.
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dean on nader
If you are or were a Deaniac, read his piece in the NYTimes Op-Ed pages today. I voted for Nader last time around, and in Florida no less. I love what the man has done for our country, for consumers, and for the left. But I agree with Dean: people like me will not vote for him in the election because getting rid of Bush is just that important. Nader's power has diminished, his moment is over. If he can push Kerry to the left, wonderful. And even he knows that Bush is public enemy #1, and won't run if it looks like he'll hand Bush a victory. But his effectiveness is gone. To those disaffected leftists out there, grab a beer, and toast his work and his life. We will weep into our beer, and we will vote Kerry.
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If we can just capture or kill uday and qusay, i mean saddam, i mean as-sadr, i mean ...
In the latest proof that the CPA is run by idiots, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez announced that "[t]he mission of U.S. forces is to kill or capture Moqtada al-Sadr." You have to wonder what they're thinking here. Sadr has a large militia, a lot of wide-spread sympathy (if not active support) among the Iraqi populace, he's controlling several towns, and he's made Najaf his headquarters. Capturing or killing Sadr would be about the worst thing we could do. Capture him, and the demonstrations will never end. Kill him, and we turn many more people actively against us. The CPA has got to wake up and recognize that this is not a problem of perception, of convincing the world we are not weak, and so should never allow a sign of weakness to show. We ARE weak now, we are in a terrible position, and it's the CPA's fault. By denying the obvious we just compound our weakness with proof of our unwillingness to deal with reality. And I'm sorry, but inability to engage with the difficulties of reality is a MUCH bigger sign of weakness than negotiating.
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dupont to cut 3,500 jobs
Or 1/6th of its global workforce. From Reuters:
DuPont Co., the No. 2 U.S. chemicals maker, on Monday said it will cut 3,500 jobs, or 6 percent of its work force, as part of a previously announced plan to reduce costs by $900 million in the face of high raw material prices.
The Wilmington, Delaware, company, catching up with larger rival Dow Chemical Co. (DOW.N: Quote, Profile, Research) in the cost-cutting department, said about 70 percent of the job cuts will come in the United States and Canada and 30 percent overseas, mostly in Western Europe. A spokesman declined to say which businesses would be hit hardest.
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tax enforcement falls under bush
OK, a hypothetical situation. You're the President of the world's largest economy. Your goverment is facing an unprecedented budget shortfall. The size of your deficit (around $500,000,000,000, but who's counting?) is a direct threat to global economic stability. Do you:
A) raise taxes on large corporations who have largely avoided paying any for years?
B) rescind the tax cuts you passed for the wealthiest people in America?
C) do not a goddam thing?
Would you chose any of those answers? Not if you were Bush! If you were the President of the United States, you'd stop enforcing taxes on corporations altogether! As revealed by the NYTimes:
Since taking office, the Bush administration has repeatedly promised to get tough with tax cheats, saying it has ended a long slide in enforcement of tax laws.
But an independent analysis of new Internal Revenue Service data released today shows that tax enforcement has fallen steadily under President Bush, with fewer audits, fewer penalties, fewer prosecutions and virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes. The audit rate for the 11,200 largest corporations, which pay nearly all corporate income taxes, has fallen by almost half over the last decade, as has the audit rate for unincorporated businesses. (emphasis added)
To be fair, I didn't expect anyone to get that one right.
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white house releases 8-06 PDB
Nothing too extraordinary in there, no dire warnings of immediate attacks by al-Qaida, which makes it all the more puzzling that the administration is still lying about it. Courtesy of Kos, David Sirota, and the Washington Post
The CIA now says that a controversial August 2001 briefing summarizing potential attacks on the United States by al Qaeda was not requested by President Bush, as Rice and others had long claimed. The Aug. 6, 2001, document, known as the President's Daily Brief, has been the focus of intense scrutiny because it reported that Osama bin Laden advocated airplane hijackings, that al Qaeda supporters were in the United States and that the group was planning attacks here.
Why is this important? Because yesterday Bush claimed exactly the opposite. To whit, Bush' statement from 4/11/04:
Q: Mr. President, could you tell us, did you see the presidential -- the President's Daily Brief from August of '01 as a warning --
THE PRESIDENT: Did I see it? Of course I saw it; I asked for it.
Q: No, no, I'm sorry -- did you see it as a warning of hijackers? And how did you respond to that?
THE PRESIDENT: My response was exactly like then as it is today, that I asked for the Central Intelligence Agency to give me an update on any terrorist threats. And the PDB was no indication of a terrorist threat. There was not a time and place of an attack. It said Osama bin Laden had designs on America. Well, I knew that. What I wanted to know was, is there anything specifically going to take place in America that we needed to react to?
As you might recall, there was some specific threats for overseas that we reacted to. And as the President, I wanted to know whether there was anything, any actionable intelligence. And I looked at the August 6th briefing, I was satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into. But that PDB said nothing about an attack on America. It talked about intentions, about somebody who hated America -- well, we knew that. (emphasis added)
2 lies in 2 minutes. He's going the distance! He's going for speed! As Big Daddy would'a said:
Mendacity!
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truce in fallujah
From the Washington Post:
Gunfire was largely silenced Monday in the second day of a truce in Fallujah, where Iraqi doctors said 600 people, including many civilians, were killed. The top U.S. military spokesman said about 70 Americans and 700 insurgents had been killed since April 1.
Additional U.S. forces have been maneuvering into place, and the military has warned it will launch an all-out assault on Fallujah if talks there between pro-U.S. Iraqi politicians and city officials -- which were continuing Monday -- fall through.
So the US is getting a chance to sit back and collect its collective breath. 70 US and 700 Iraqi dead in Fallujah in a week. That's a lot. Mind you, the problems in Fallujah go beyond simple battle: a lot of those 700 Iraqis were innocent civilians. There certainly weren't 700 Iraqis in the mob that desecrated those Mercenaries. 770 people are now dead to avenge 4 mercs who were where they shouldn't have been. But that's not all:
The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, acknowledged that a battalion of the Iraqi army refused to fight in Fallujah -- a sign of Iraqi discontent with the siege.
Asked about the battalion's refusal on NBC's "Meet The Press," Sanchez said, "This one specific instance did in fact uncover some significant challenges in some of the Iraqi security force structures ... We know that it's going to take us a while to stand up reliable forces that can accept responsibility."
The Iraqi Security Force we've been training is refusing to turn their guns on Iraqis. You would think the CPA would have seen that one coming. The Brits managed to get a repressive Iraqi army, but only by dividing (Shiite from Sunni) and conquering. The US is working in exactly the opposite direction.
You may be wondering why the US Army, the most advanced army on the planet, has called a truce with the poorly equipped insurgency in Fallujah and in 2 other cities. The reason is, there is only one way to crush a popular uprising, and that's mass-murder. We're already hearing calls on the right for collective punishment (one of the war-crimes the Nazis were guilty of) and for the destruction of Fallujah. If we did it, not only would we be guilty of a war crime, we would lose all legitimacy in Iraq and in the world, probably suffer economic sanctions (just what we need), and become outcasts. That's the thing about Occupation: legally speaking, we're responsible for the safety and welfare of the Iraqi people, even when they're shooting us. That may not seem fair to the right-wing, but that's so that countries don't go around occupying other countries for the hell of it.
On the plus side, the fact that Sadr is negotiating means that he knows his militia has done as well as it can without getting massacred. In other words, I think he'll deal. The question is, will Bremer?
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Friday, April 09, 2004
white house working really, really hard on releasing 8/06 PBD
From Reuters, again:
Under pressure from the 9/11 commission, the White House on Friday worked to declassify an intelligence memo that was used to inform President Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, that Osama bin Laden wanted to launch attacks inside the United States.
(snip)
The memo's title -- "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" -- was revealed on Thursday in public testimony by Rice, and was a subject of close questioning.
The memo, called the President's Daily Brief and referred to as a "PDB," was dated Aug. 6, 2001, and was given to Bush while he was vacationing in Crawford.
Democratic commissioners demanded to know why the document was not seen as a warning of the attacks little more than a month later when al Qaeda hijackers crashed two airplanes into the World Trade Center in New York, one into the Pentagon and seized another that appeared headed toward Washington but crashed in Pennsylvania.
(snip)
"This is what the August 6 memo said to the president -- that the FBI indicates patterns of suspicious activity, and I'd say it's consistent with preparations for hijacking," [Commission member Bob] Kerrey said.
(snip)
White House communications director Dan Bartlett told ABC's "Good Morning America" the CIA document "cited many things that happened back in the 1990s, instances in 1998, 1997, in 1993. This was not specific threat information about a specific hijacking plan in the United States of America."
"Trust me, I know this president. If he had information that there was going to be attacks in Washington or New York, he would have moved heaven and Earth to make sure it didn't happen," Bartlett said. (emphasis added)
Umm, Danny boy? I think trust is sorta the issue to begin with.
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howard stern fired after fcc ruling - clear channel clearly aping the CPA
The FCC fined Clear Channel $500,000, the BBC reported today, leading it to fire Howard Stern. The Bushis, who are I believe behind this, have made a huge mistake. Stern was already an enemy, but this will add Clear Channel to the list. Maybe he'll go after them too, and maybe we'll start seeing some attention payed to the massive media concentration that has gutted our ability to get real information and make rational choices. It's time for media concentration to go the way of the dodo.
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the IGC is beginning to fall apart
From Reuters
Bloody turmoil reigned in Iraq Friday, the first anniversary of Saddam Hussein's fall, with Sunni and Shi'ite rebels battling U.S.-led forces and holding three Japanese and several other foreign hostages.
(snip)
Marines launched "Operation Iron Resolve" in Falluja after last week's killing and mutilation of four U.S. security guards. The ferocity of the crackdown has angered Iraqi politicians working with Bremer's administration.
"We are seeing the liquidation of a whole city," Governing Council member Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar told Al Jazeera television, saying he might resign to protest the treatment of Falluja.
A Shi'ite in the 25-member Council, Abdul Karim al-Mohammadawi, has already suspended his membership. (emphasisadded)
Of course, if the IGC starts seeing its members defect, who will we get to run the country? Even our own hand-picked puppets are angry at us. At this point, the IGC represents Ahmed Chalabi and the White House, and not a damn person else. And in a lovely (tongue in cheek) bit of irony:
In Baghdad, new razor wire barriers blocked streets around Firdaws Square where U.S. Marines and Iraqis dragged down Saddam's statue a year ago. Loudspeaker messages warned the public to stay away. The measures appeared designed to foil possible anniversary protests against the U.S.-led occupation.
Posters of Sadr fluttered on a green sculpture symbolizing a new Iraq erected where Saddam's statue once stood. A U.S. soldier later climbed a ladder to pull down the Sadr pictures in an eerie echo of last year's iconic images.
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Today in Iraq
Check out this website; it's all war news, timely delivered, and it frees us forever of having to second-guess what CNN and FOX and MSNBC decide to tell us. It's not a good day there. we've had our supply-lines from Baghdad to Fallujah cut, we've retaken Kut but withdrawn from Sadr City, we've had US hostages taken, we've lost several soldiers, and the coalition is falling apart.
Read Today in Iraq a lot, make this guy famous, he's providing a real service.
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and before I forget
Happy Good Friday. Let us remember that, as bad as things may seem right now, there is always the possibility of a miracle. So lets get to work on deserving one, and oust Bush.
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and the cpa fucks it up again
Give props to Holden Caufield on the Atrios message board for this one.
As reported by Islam on-line, the US is asking al-Jazeerah to leave Fallujah as part of the negotiations. If this is true, it's a monumental mistake. Like shutting down al-Hawzah, it will convince Iraqis that the US does not care about freedom fo the press, and raise the suspicion that the US is doing things in Fallujah that it doesn't want people to know about. Occupation is about perception, and the CPA is seemingly incapable of seeing a bad publicity move if it bit them in the ass. So, consequently, everything they do tends to bite them in the ass.
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consumer confidence not so confident
Via Atrios, a lovely report from the Porterville Recorder:
WASHINGTON - Consumer confidence sank during the past month, weighed down by worries about job security and concerns about local economic conditions in the months ahead. The AP-Ipsos consumer confidence index dropped to 84.8 this week, from a reading of 97.7 in early March, when Americans' feelings about the economy had shown an improvement from the previous month.
Consumer spending is the major prop to our economy right now, and this is a bad, though not terrible, sign. If the job growth continues, we'll see consumer confidence go back up too, but if the new jobs are as low-paying as the ones we saw last month, there'll still be a lot of discontent. If, however, job growth slackens this month (which is, let's not kid ourselves) a distinct possibility, consumer confidence is gonna stay soft, slow down the economy, and possibly lead to melt-down. Pray for better jobs.
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a not very hopeful sign, too
From the ever popular NYTimes:
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 8 — When the United States invaded Iraq a year ago, one of its chief concerns was preventing a civil war between Shiite Muslims, who make up a majority in the country, and Sunni Muslims, who held all the power under Saddam Hussein.
Now the fear is that the growing uprising against the occupation is forging a new and previously unheard of level of cooperation between the two groups — and the common cause is killing Americans.
(snip)
"Sunni, Shia, that doesn't matter anymore," said Sabah Saddam, a 32-year-old government clerk who took the day off to drive one of the supply trucks. "These were artificial distinctions. The people in Falluja are starving. They are Iraqis and they need our help."
(snip)
According to several militia members, many Shiite fighters are streaming into Falluja to help Sunni insurgents repel a punishing assault by United States marines. Groups of young men with guns are taking buses from Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad to the outskirts of Falluja, and then slipping past checkpoints to join the action. "It's not easy to get in, but we have our ways," said Ahmed Jumar, a 25-year-old professional soccer player who also belongs to a Shiite militia. "Our different battles have turned into one fight, the fight against the Americans."
Of course, the bad news is really bleeding into the good news. The stronger the resistance, and the clearer it is that this is not a localized insurgency but a broad-based rebellion, and the harder it is to crush militarily, the easier it is to get the CPA (and Sadr) to negotiate. And the closer the Sunnis and Shiites identify themselves, the better the chances of a democratic Iraq after the occupation ends. And, as we all know, a democratic Iraq is what we're going for. Thanks to the fuckup-ery of the Bushies, defeat and victory are now almost identical: we have to lose to win. And since historically these sorts of insurrections are only destroyed by mass-murder and extreme barbarity, if we 'win', we lose. Holy Ironic Paradoxes, Batman!
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a hopeful sign at last
Lets hope this makes a difference. From the Washington Post:
FALLUJAH, April 9 -- After five days of intense fighting in this besieged Sunni city, U.S. authorities announced a temporary suspension of offensive operations Friday for humanitarian reasons.
U.S. Marines in the densely packed city were allowing women and children, but not young men, to make an exodus from Fallujah, where Marines have used air strikes and heavy ground fire against entrenched insurgents armed with automatic weapons, mortars and rocket propelled grenades.
The Marines also were permitting food and medicine to enter Fallujah. Negotiations aimed at possibly stopping the fighting were underway among insurgents, members of the Iraqi governing council and local leaders. (emphasis added)
If there are negotiations going on, it means that we don't think we can take Fallujah without doing more harm that good. I think the military, who are quite smart about these sorts of things, have over-ridden the political appointees in the CPA. We're about to see if the rebellion is willing to settle, and what they're willing to settle for.
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us retakes kut, najaf and kufa still lost
From the NYTimes:
BAGHDAD, Iraq — U.S.-led coalition forces have retaken control of the southern Iraqi city of Kut, a military spokeswoman said Friday.
(snip)
Ukrainian troops in Kut abandoned their base Wednesday in the face of mortar fire and gunbattles, allowing Mahdi Army fighters to sweep in, seizing weapons stores and planting their flag.
The militia also has full control over the southern cities of Kufa and the central part of Najaf. Police in the cities have abandoned their stations or stood aside as the gunmen roam the streets. (emphasis added)
The obvious problem here is the weapons. We're facing exactly the problems the Brits faced during our war for independance: we can take a city, but the second we leave, we've lost it. And we don't have enough troops to hold every city. And whenever we leave a city, we either have to take everything with us, or lose it to the rebels. The rebels are arming themselves with us bought weapons, and weaponry from the old Iraqi army. We will win every battle, or at least kill many more than we lose, but we cannot win this war the way we're going. There is either a political solution, or defeat.
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what's the neo-con solution to a war gone wrong? Why. another war, of course!
Off the IPS news service:
WASHINGTON, Apr 9 (IPS) - Neo-conservatives close to the administration of President George W Bush are pushing for retribution against Iran for, they say, sponsoring this week's Shiite uprising in Iraq led by radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Despite the growing number of reports that depict the fighting as a spontaneous and indigenous revolt against the U.S.-led occupation, the influential neo-cons are calling on Bush to warn Tehran to cease its alleged backing for al-Sadr and other Shia militias or face retaliation, ranging from an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities to covert action designed to overthrow the government.
But independent experts say that while Iran has no doubt provided various forms of assistance to Shia factions in Iraq since the ouster of former President Saddam Hussein one year ago, its relations with Sadr have long been rocky, and that it has opposed radical actions that could destabilise the situation.
”Those elements closest to Iran among the Shiite clerics (in Iraq) have been the most moderate through all of this,” according to Shaul Bakhash, an Iran expert at George Mason University here.
Oh those wacky neo-cons! Facts, truth, probability, all those niggling little details just get in the way of a rousing good fight! For others to fight for them, that is. One imagines Wolfowitz and Perle traveling to Tehran and punching the Ayatollah in the nose. Of course, one has to have a pretty active imagination, since both those twits are old and fat and cowards to boot. Where were they during Vietnam? Well, not in the goddam military, that's for sure.
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yeah, that's gonna work
Fun little story in the NYTimes - Rwanda will outlaw ethnicity. You may remember that, back in the 90s, the Hutus started massacring the Tutsi population. The Tutsi, a minority, were left in charge by the British when they 'freed' the colony, and the Hutu massacre was based in that. The Tutsi are back in charge, tho, and they've decided that being recognized as different from the people they rule is just asking for trouble. Now, the funny thing here is that Iraq had much the same problem: the minority Sunni were left in charge by the Brits, and so it's precisely the Rwandan massacre that the Sunni were afraid will happen if the Shiites got power. Now, of course, the Sunni and the Shiites have joined forces against us, and have created a new nationalism for themselves. Whether that can work in Rwanda is another story. After all, look how successful the Turks were in outlawing Kurdishness.
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Thursday, April 08, 2004
finally, an indictment over the California Energy Crisis (remember that one? So many scandals, so little time)
Back in the day, before 9-11, CA was hit by a massive energy crisis that sent energy rates sky-rocketing and caused black- and brown-outs throughout the state, costing the good people of CA billions. And it was a crisis manufactured by energy companies like Reliant Resources:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A federal grand jury on Thursday returned an indictment charging a unit of energy company Reliant Resources and four of its officers with manipulating the California energy markets.
(snip)
The company and officials were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and commodities manipulation; wire fraud; and manipulation and attempted manipulation of the price of a commodity in interstate commerce.
The indictment alleged that in June 2000, Reliant Energy Services and its officers and employees intentionally drove up the price of electricity in the state by shutting off its power generation to create the false appearance of a shortage. (emphasis added)
Dig a little deeper on this one, and one finds Enron making an appearance, as well as significant problems with the Bush administration's response to the crisis. I don't have a relevant link yet, but I'll post one as soon as I find one.
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9-11 commission transcript now available
Follow this link to the NYTimes.
Also available here (PDF format).
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this could be trouble ...
A day or two ago I mentioned that the SNAFU in Iraq could be calmed by dealing with Sadr as a political, and not military, enemy? Well according to this story in the NYTimes that window may have just closed.
United States forces are confronting a broad-based Shiite uprising that goes well beyond supporters of one militant Islamic cleric who has been the focus of American counterinsurgency efforts, United States intelligence officials said Wednesday.
That assertion contradicts repeated statements by the Bush administration and American officials in Iraq. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they did not believe the United States was facing a broad-based Shiite insurgency. Administration officials have portrayed Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric who is wanted by American forces, as the catalyst of the rising violence within the Shiite community of Iraq.
But intelligence officials now say that there is evidence that the insurgency goes beyond Mr. Sadr and his militia, and that a much larger number of Shiites have turned against the American-led occupation of Iraq, even if they are not all actively aiding the uprising.
And from the Guardian:
Meanwhile, thousands of Iraqis - from both the Sunni and Shia communities - marched 60km from Baghdad to Falluja to bring food and medical supplies to the besieged citizens there.
The marchers - carrying colourful flags and banners reading, "Sons of the great Falluja, we are with you on the road of jihad and victory" - arrived at the marine roadblock at the western entrance to the city earlier today.
After searching the vehicles for weapons, the marines allowed two ambulances full of medical supplies, two minibuses carrying food and a dozen cars with Sunni clerics and officials to enter the city.
If this is true, and non-Sadrist Shiites have started to join, or at least support, the rebellion, then the problem can't be dealt with simply by pacifying Sadr. New reports from Iraq are also telling of hostage-taking (7 S. Koreans, later released, and 3 Japanese and 2 Israeli-Palestinians under threat of death) from a new group calling itself the 'Mujahedeen Brigades'. From the BBC
Elsewhere in Iraq, three Japanese civilians and two Arab Israelis were also kidnapped by gunmen.
The Arab TV station al-Jazeera aired footage of the three Japanese, whom it said were being held captive by a previously unknown Iraqi group.
The group, the Mujahideen Brigades, threatened to burn the hostages alive if Japanese troops remain in Iraq.
This could be, well, trouble.
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more from the posters at Kos
This one courtesy of 'JoelK in AZ', a link to a Washington Post article on the investigation into Bush' withholding of Clinton'era papers from the 9-11 commission.
The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks announced yesterday that it has identified 69 documents from the Clinton era that the Bush White House withheld from investigators and which include references to al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and other issues relevant to the panel's work.
The White House turned over 12 of the documents to the commission yesterday, officials said. But 57 others, which were not specifically requested but "nonetheless are relevant to our work," remain in dispute, according to a commission statement. The panel has demanded the documents and any similar ones from the Bush administration.
What do you wanna bet there's somthing the Bushies aren't telling us?
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God damn it.
From the 9-11 commission by way of CNN:
"I don't remember the al Qaeda cells being something that we were told we needed to do something about"
-Condoleezza Rice, National Security Advisor to the President of the United States of America
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atrios sets the media straight (hopefully)
Go read atrios's post today titled 'August 6 PBD', regarding the briefing that warned Bush about al-Qaida, and was titled 'Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US'. Bush got this briefing the day before he left for Texas on a month-long vacation. He's got more too, but that single fact throws everything the administration has been saying into doubt. The Center for American Progress has the full on take-down of Rice's testimony.
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Dostum rebels, takes provincial capital in Afghanistan
Brought to our attention by 'binturong' on the Kos comments board:
KABUL (Reuters) - Forces of a renegade adviser to President Hamid Karzai overran the capital of a northern province on Thursday, creating a fresh security headache for Afghanistan's Western-backed government.
General Abdul Rashid Dostum's largely ethnic Uzbek militia invaded Faryab from neighboring provinces on Wednesday, prompting the central government to send national troops there on Thursday in an attempt to maintain control.
Anyone who knows the relative strength of Dostum's party vs. Karzai knows that this could be a real problem. Is Dostum taking advantage of US weakness and distraction in Iraq? Has he simply decided to extend his personal fiefdom while remaining a part of the government? Is he angling for a takeover? Who knows?
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rice in a pressure cooker (hee hee)
Rice is right now testifying to the 9-11 commission. Reuters has the story:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - National security adviser Condoleezza Rice clashed sharply with Democratic members of the commission on Sept. 11 on Thursday over how seriously the Bush administration treated the al Qaeda threat in the weeks before the attacks.
Not surprisingly, the repugs on the commission are rolling over, but the Dems are putting the screws on. Quite frankly, this may be the only chance we get to nail these guys on their total lack of preparedness, or even concern over bin Laden and terrorism. Keep your fingers crossed. More on this as it develops.
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Thomas l. friedman will you please leave this room?
More fun with punditry! Tom Friedman has a tough new opinion piece, decrying the lack of 'Iraqis' who identify themselves as Iraqis, and not as Sunni or Shia.
We are at a perilous juncture in Iraq. Two things are clear, and there's only one question left to be answered. What's clear is that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there are no Viet Cong in Iraq. The key unanswered question is: Are there any Iraqis in Iraq?
When I say that there are no Viet Cong in Iraq, I mean that the Iraqi "insurgents" opposing the U.S. today cannot plausibly claim to be the authentic expressions of Iraqi nationalism — as the Viet Cong claimed to be in the Vietnam War. The forces killing Americans and Iraqi police are primarily Sunni Muslims who want to restore the rule and privileges of their minority community and Baath Party, or foreign and local Islamists who are trying to undermine any prospect of modernism, pluralism and secularism in Iraq.
Umm, Mr. Friedman, I may be a little prezumshus here, but perhaps you have not seen this article? It's in another news paper after all, and I know how much you hate reading things that don't agree with you, but I really recommend it. In fact, to quote from it:
On the streets of Baghdad neighborhoods long defined by differences of faith and politics, signs are emerging that resistance to the U.S. occupation may be growing from a sporadic, underground effort to a broader insurrection by militiamen who claim to be fighting in the name of their common faith, Islam.
(snip)
That drift toward the young cleric appeared to challenge another critical calculation of U.S. commanders and officials. Occupation overseers have counted on the well-known tension between the revered Sistani and the upstart Sadr as a check on Sadr's influence. But the rivalry apparently is being overtaken by a more immediate conflict -- the scores of clashes since Sunday pitting occupation forces in Baghdad and several southern cities against militiamen who claim to be fighting in the name of a common faith.
"We send you this letter from your brothers in al Anbar governate and the city of Fallujah, to say that we are with you under the banner of 'God is Greatest' and the mantle of Islam." So began a letter read over loudspeakers Monday outside Sadr's headquarters in the Shiite slum named for his late father and uncle, clerics who held the same rank as Sistani when they were killed, reputedly by Saddam Hussein's forces.
Mr. Friedman, you are either not paying attention, or you are blind. Our occupation has united the Shiites and the Sunnis against us. They are fighting in the name of Iraq, and they're fighting against us. The Iraqis are not ignorant of what freedom means, and freedom can not be imposed at the point of a gun, and those who resist are not against-freedom, but against servitude. How can Freedom be imposed? This is not to say that I support Sadr, but it is to say that he did not begin this battle, the CPA did by deciding to arrest him. You should be asking why they did.
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Wednesday, April 07, 2004
all we need for victory in iraq is a triumph of will!
You simply must read Bill Safire's latest in the NYTimes. That Safire is a jack-ass is clearly no surprise, but the sheer inability to see the easily verifiable truth should be a little disheartening to those hoping for intelligent conservatism.
(...) now that the Saddam restorationists and Islamic fundamentalists have made their terrorist move on both fronts, we can counterattack decisively.
"In war, resolution." Having announced we would pacify rebellious Baathists in Falluja, we must pacify Falluja. Having designated the Shiite Sadr an outlaw, we must answer his bloody-minded challenge with whatever military force is required and with fewer casualties in the long run.
First off, he sees the Sunni insurrection a continued pro-Saddam act. Secondly, he sees Muqtada as-Sadr as an Islamist. In the first case, to claim that the Sunnis are simply trying to resurrect Saddam is ridiculous on its face: they have just aligned themselves with the radical Shiites, who were (as Safire himself has repeatedly noted) massacred under Saddam. Why on earth would a radical Shiite like as-Sadr unite with pro-Saddam elements? Saddam killed the man's father, for Christ's sake. Secondly, as-Sadr is not an Islamist like bin Laden is an Islamist: he's not calling for jihad against the west, he wants the west out of Iraq. If he was an Shiite Islamist, why would he ally with Sunnis? The fact is, this insurrection is nationalist, and the alliance between Shiite and Sunni, while great news for those looking for a united Iraq (as Safire clearly is not) is terrible news for the CPA. The insurrection has not identified itself in a way that would keep us from killing civilians in going after them, and every dead civilian feeds the insurrection. That's what the Greeks called a Hydra. The answer to killing a Hydra is, firstly, to stop cutting off heads. But what of the Kurds, you ask? How is Mr. Safire's noted intellect handling them?
We should take up the Turks on their offer of 10,000 troops to fight on our side against two-front terror. The Kurds, who have patched things up with Ankara and know which side of the two-front war they and we are on, would withdraw their ill-considered earlier objection.
Yes, his answer to keeping the Kurds on our side is to bring in Turkish troops. Turkey is well known for its support of armed Kurdish militias after all, almost as well-known as the Kurds are for accepting Turkish troops in Kurdish territory.
His last howler is to think that Sadr is connected with the Ayatollah in Iran. They're both, you know, Shiites, right? Not that there's any, you know, evidence to support that, but hey! In Safire land, all Muslims are the same anyway, and there's simply no reason to learn any different. This would be funny if it were simply propaganda, but I think Safire actually believes this stuff.
Lastly, he has a few words for those nervous nellies who are asking if we're doing the right thing, or even doing the wrong thing in a well-thought out way:
(...) we should coolly confront the quaking quagmirists here at home.
Does Ted Kennedy speak for his Massachusetts junior senator, John Kerry, when he calls our effort to turn terror-supporting despotism into nascent liberty in Iraq "Bush's Vietnam"?
Do the apostles of retreat realize how their defeatism, magnified by Arab media, bolsters the morale of the insurgents and increases the nervousness of the waverers?
Does our coulda-woulda-shoulda crowd consider how it dismays the majority of Iraqis wondering if they can count on our continued presence as they feel their way toward freedom?
Does Bill Safire really think that our not thinking good thoughts is what's driving the insurrection? You betcha! Does he think if we just clapped a little louder, that the Iraqi's would drop their arms and sing Kumbaya? Of course! Does he think that killing a whole shit-load of people is the way to win hearts and minds? In the sense that, having shot them out and mounted them on your wall, you have 'won' them, then Hell yes!
This is the best they can do.
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why we have a budget shortfall 101
So, via Tom Tomorrow we get this lovely little number from CNN.
WASHINGTON - More than 60% of U.S. corporations didn't pay any federal taxes for 1996 through 2000, years when the economy boomed and corporate profits soared, Tuesday's Wall Street Journal reported, citing the investigative arm of Congress.
(snip)
Despite the rising rate of tax avoidance among corporations, collections from the federal corporate income tax rose to more than $200 billion in 2000, from $ 171 billion in 1996. But over the next three years they fell each year, reaching $131.8 billion in 2003 -- the lowest annual total since 1993. They are projected to reach $168.7 billion this year.(emphasis added)
And this figure comes from the GAO, our government. What more evidence do we need that Clinton was good for the country (in a very biased-towards-the-middle-class way) and that Bush is bad? No WONDER we're running a $500,000,000,000 deficit. Check my previous entries for why the deficit threatens the economy as a whole, and your mortgage rates in particular.
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ed wood for congress! in texas!
From Reuters:
DALLAS (Reuters) - What started as a dull runoff race to field a Republican candidate for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives has heated up due to a controversy over cross-dressing.
The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on Tuesday photographs of candidate Sam Walls dressed in women's clothes have circulated among political leaders in Johnson County, south of Fort Worth. Local Republican leaders confirmed separately that they had seen the photographs of Walls in a wig, dress and high heels.
Walls, who has the endorsement of several leading Republicans in the state and was expected to win the run-off, was not available for comment. He said in comments printed in the Star-Telegram that he will not drop out of the race due to a campaign of blackmail.
"Through intermediaries, my opponent told me to drop out of the campaign or the private information would be released," Walls told the paper. "Now my opponent is using the information in an attempt to intimate that I am a homosexual, which I am not."
Walls, 64, who describes himself as a fervent Baptist, told the paper his family had "dealt with" the issue of his cross-dressing and that he asked for forgiveness.
The opponent in question is Rob Orr and his campaign officials said they have not distributed the photos.
Jeff Judd, the county chairman of the Republican party, said it was too late for Walls to drop out of the April 13 runoff.
"It would have been much better judgment for him not to have run," he said.
My brother first mentioned this to me. This is how Repugs treat their own. Ghastly. With any luck, though, Walls will win and cross-dressing will stop being shunned as beyond the pale.
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as-sistani berates us handling of as-sadr
Not that this is a big surprise, or anything. as-Sistani can hardly support the killing of fellow Shiites, even if they are political enemies and threats to his own influence. The Pentagon's attempts to claim that the Shiite community lives in fear of as-Sadr is just propaganda. I think as-Sistani is staying out of it until one side or another is likely to win. This condemnation is a warning to the US that if we don't stop bombing and killing, and start treating this situation diplomatically, that he'll pull support from the CPA and the Interim Council, which would remove our last shred of legitimacy, and give the OK to the millions of Shiites who stand with him to join the insurgency. If we lose as-Sistani, we lose Iraq.
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hold on to your mortgage rates, it's going to be a bumpy ride
Via Reuters:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. import prices rose by much more than expected in March as the cost of imported fuel jumped, while home refinancings were dampened by higher mortgage rates, new data showed on Wednesday.
It's been said many times that this recovery is being powered (or rather kept alive) by consumer spending, which is kept going only by low mortgage rates that allow for refinancing. This frees up money that then get's pumped into the economy. However,
(...) the Mortgage Bankers Association said its measure of demand for refinancings, the refinancing index, declined 15 percent to 4,126.7 from the previous week's 4,857.6.
(snip)
Average 30-year mortgage rates, excluding fees, increased 26 basis points to 5.75 percent, the MBA said.
This could well be the beginning of some economic trouble for our old Republic. Be CAREFUL when getting a mortgage, and if you do, get a fixed percentage. Rates are gonna go up pretty soon, and you don't want to suddenly not be able to afford your own house.
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why, yes! bush is in trouble!
Latest Rasmussen poll has Kerry at 48% to Bush' 42%, the lowest score for Bush since Kerry becam,e front runner. This despite the job numbers. Iraq is the big concern, and Iraq is no longer a help to Bush. I predicted long ago that foreign policy and the Iraq war, far from being a boost to his election chances, would end up being his undoing. While it's great to be right, it fucking sucks that well over 600 american soldiers are dead because Bush was wrong. When we hit 1,000 dead US soldiers, that's curtains for Bush. My fellow Americans, hope and pray that Bush keeps his numbers just high enough that he doesn't think he needs to steal the election, or that his numbers drop so low that it's impossible to steal. 'Cause they'll try it if they can.
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us bombs mosque, killing 40, in well thought out plan
From the AP
FALLUJAH, Iraq - U.S. Marines in the third day of a battle to pacify this Sunni Muslim city fired rockets that hit a mosque compound Wednesday, and witnesses said as many as 40 people were killed. Shiite-inspired violence spread to key cities in Iraq
Apparently, insurgents were hiding in the mosque and firing at US troops and had wounded 3 of them when the regimental commander gave the OK to bring in air support. The air strike apparently came in the middle of Friday prayers, tho, so the likelihood is that a bunch of civilians just got blown up in a mosque. This is going to increase support for as-Sadr, for the insurrection, and increase muslim alienation towards the US. Kos has a bunch of good stuff on this, and don't forget to check Juan Cole for the big picture.
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Tuesday, April 06, 2004
the problem with the shah was that he was just too nice ...
By way of Matthew Yglesias, a fun op-ed from Mr. John O'Sullivan, saying that the current problem in Fallujah is that we're not killing enough people. The Iraqi's don't fear us enough, you see. We need to be like the Shah, before he got all wussy on us, and allowed a simple thing like the vast majority of his country and armed forces to overthrow him. Yes, children, Col. Kurtz is alive and well, and he writes for the National Review.
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Tiger force
Go read the Pulitzer prize winning series in the Toledo Blade on 'Tiger Force', a SpecOps unit in VietNam that killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent civilians. They decapitated a baby, regularly cut off ears of dead civilians and wore them on necklaces, shot old farmers, and much more. It's chilling, and more than a little relevant, what with the desecrated mercenaries in Fallujah. I wonder if the war-floggers have ever given a thought to just what war is.
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najaf falls
Proof if proof were needed that this is a serious rebellion:
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Supporters of maverick Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr controlled government, religious and security buildings in the holy city of Najaf early Tuesday evening, according to a coalition source in southern Iraq.
The source said al-Sadr's followers controlled the governor's office, police stations and the Imam Ali mosque, one of Shia Muslim's holiest shrines.
Iraqi police were negotiating to regain their stations, the source said.
The source also said al-Sadr was busing followers into Najaf from Sadr City in Baghdad and that many members of his outlawed militia, Mehdi's Army, were from surrounding provinces.
Najaf is the Holy City of Shiism, and as-Sadr has taken up residence at the Imam Ali Mosque. He's made it his capital, and he's busing in fighters from the surrounding provinces. We're gonna have to retake it, and every Shiite in the world is gonna be pissed. Imagine a rogue bishop taking the Vatican in the absence of a pope, and a Muslim army invading Rome to take him out. There is no way to make that sound palatable to a Catholic, even a Catholic who did not support the bishop. Negotiation is really our only hope, but it ain't gonna happen. This, THIS, is a tragedy, folks. Hubris has lead our administration into a trap, and hubris is keeping them there. Of course, they're not the ones dying for it, now are they?
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so long, strong dollar
From the LA Times:
HONG KONG — A massive buildup of U.S. dollars held by Japan, China and other Asian countries is fueling increasing unease among analysts and policymakers, who fear it poses risks to the fragile American economic recovery and global financial stability.
China, as an example, keeps its Yuan undervalued next to the dollar in order to sell its goods cheaply in the US. It doesn't get payment in Yuan, tho, it gets paid in dollars. If China then sold those dollars to buy Yuan, that would push the price of Yuan up, cutting into its advantage in the US market. So, what do they do with this money? They buy US securities at 1.5% interest. That's pretty low interest for a LOT of money. China and Japan between them hold something like 33% of our debt, in dollars. That's where the trouble starts.
A) they own our debt, so if they ever call it in, we've got trouble.
B) By buying dollars, they finance our trade deficit (allowing us to get farther into debt), keep the dollar strong and undercut our products in the world market.
C) If they ever pull out, the dollar might collapse, fucking up the entire global economic order.
D) They're gonna have to pull out sooner or later if we don't raise interest rates a LOT.
E) If we raise interest rates, our recovery stops and we're back in either a recession, or a full-blown depression.
F) If they don't pull out, they're at risk of a sudden sell-off in dollars which would leave them broke, and fuck up the global economic order.
Read the article for more. Basically, we're damned if we do, damned if we don't, and getting further damned by the minute. We've got maybe 8 months to deal with this before shit begins its merger with the fan.
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bush is a betting man ...
From the LA Times:
Washington - In seeking the arrest of radical Iraqi cleric Muqtader Sadr, the Bush administration is gambling that the Shiite leader still has a limited following that can be neutralized without disrupting U.S. plans to hand sovereignty over to a fledgling Iraqi government in three months.
Anyone who's been following the situation in Iraq knows that as-Sadr is not a minor cleric. His father was a huge hero to the Shiites, and was martyred by Saddam. He has tens of thousands of armed followers who are fighting us right now, and his base of support is in the area of 1-2 million. If he had been small fish, the US wouldn't have a reason to take him out, and there would not currently be violent demonstrations against our forces. If this is how Bush gambles with our soldiers lives, then I'll make a bet with him right now: George, you'll lose this election and destroy the current Republican party, and force the religious right back into isolation and apolitical millenialism. I bet you a million dollars. :)
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Bush' requiem for the dead
Pweznit Bush gave an actual press conference yesterday, and this is what he said:
THE PRESIDENT: I just met with Specialist Chris Hill's family from North Carolina. You know, I told the family how much we appreciated his sacrifice -- he was killed in Iraq -- and assured him that we would stay the course, that a free Iraq was very important for peace in the world, long-term peace, and that we're being challenged in Iraq because there are people there that hate freedom. But the family was pleased to hear that we -- its son would not have died in vain. And that's an important message that I wanted to share with you today. (emphasis added)
Wow. I'm sure that helped a lot. 'Your son died because some arabs hate freedom'. That kind of shit worked after 9-11, because we had been attacked, out of the blue, and we needed a way to understand why. This war, however, was not out of the blue, and we know exactly why it happened: because Bush wanted it that way. If Bush had not sent our troops to Iraq, their son would still be alive today, and that's all there is to it. But Bush and co. don't know the times have changed. I don't think rhetoric like this can work anymore, and it's great that they're too blind to find a better line of attack. They're going down.
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This is why I love ted kennedy
Sen. Kennedy gave a speech on monday attacking the administration. By way of Reuters:
Kennedy went after the Bush administration for pushing what he called misleading policies, as well as for attacking critics of those policies.
"Iraq. Jobs. Medicare. Schools," Kennedy said. "Issue after issue. Mislead. Deceive. Make up the needed facts. Smear the character of any critic."
"It is undermining our national security, undermining our economy, undermining our health care ... undermining our very democracy," Kennedy said. "We need change. November can't come soon enough"
God bless that man.
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7 more US troops dead in Iraq
7 more dead. So, that's over 15 troops killed, not counting Salvadorans, Ukrainians, and Italians. The CPA does not seem to have a plan for all this, except arresting Sadr, which is about as blind as one can get. If these people had half a brain, they'd know now was not the time to look tough and piss off the Sadrists. The sad truth is that he is a very strong iraqi player, he's got an armed militia, and he's now got control of several cities. He is not, however, another Knomeini, at least not yet. He's trying to push us into accepting his influence in whatever new government arises after we leave. He can't count on pure electoral politics yet, since as-Sistani remains more popular and more moderate, but if we make him the focus, the new bad guy, he's gonna be able to unite a lot of Shiite support. Better by far to back off now, make peace with him, assure him that he's untouchable, and try to get back to transfering power. From the Guardian:
Mr Sadr adopted a defiant tone, saying that he was willing to shed his own blood for Iraq and denouncing the US president, George Bush.
"I would like to direct my words to the father of evil, Bush," he said. "Who is against democracy? Is it the one who calls for peaceful resistance, or the one who bombs people, sheds their blood and leads them away from the leaders under feeble and dirty pretexts?"
A second statement from one of Mr Sadr's aides said that fighting would continue until their demands - which were not immediately clear - were met
So Sadr is not going for full-on rebellion: he's trying to assert his factions dominance, and he'll stop when he feels secure. The problem with the bushies, tho, is that they can't take a hit to their image, because image is all they have. They'll try to bludgeon Sadr, and end up making him the new iraqi hero. Sad, really.
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Monday, April 05, 2004
and Iraq decends into chaos
Atrios, billmon, and others have now pointed out this little gem from the Sydney Morning Herald. The US is making a huge mistake by using hard force here. I think Sadr wants proof that the US doesn't intend to assasinate him, and won't stand in the way of an electoral victory for his group, should it occur. The US, or course, will make no such promise, and so has to invade the territory he's holding. The fight, however, is not going our way.
Thousands of people, some of them armed, gathered outside Sadr's offices in Sadr City to take part in the funeral of people killed in Sunday's fierce fighting.
"There is only one God. America is the enemy of Allah," the crowd chanted as a coffin was carried through the streets. The uprising by Sadr's supporters also raged on elsewhere as they seized the governor's office in the British-controlled southern port city of Basra, an AFP correspondent on the scene said.
Dozens of armed Mehdi Army militiamen stormed the governor's office at dawn today, raising a green Islamic flag on the roof, he said.
Four hours later British troops were no longer in the area while policemen who had been inside the building when it was overrun were seen deployed alongside the Medhi Army militiamen.
So now we're in the process of losing Basra too. That's not good, but it isn't even the worst. Those turn-coat policemen were not alone:
US Apache helicopters sprayed fire on the private army of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr during fierce battles today in the western Baghdad district of Al-Showla, witnesses and an AFP correspondent said.
"Two Apaches opened fire on armed members of the Mehdi Army," said Showla resident Abbas Amid.
The fighting erupted when five trucks of US soldiers and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps (ICDC) tried to enter the district and were attacked by Sadr supporters, Amid said.
Coming under fire, the ICDC, a paramilitary force trained by the Americans, turned on the US soldiers and started to shoot at them, according to Amid.
The soldiers fled their vehicles and headed for cover and then began to battle both the Mehdi Army and the ICDC members, he said. Their vehicles were set ablaze.
Now the people we've armed to take over security from us are using their US-equipped rifles to shoot us. There is no good way out of this. Watch for Sistani to declare his support for Sadr if Sadr gets too popular. When that happens, it's game over.
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Jesus is coming, run! RUN!!!!
NYTimes post again, this one a story on Tim LaHaye's 'Warrior Jesus', who returns in the latest 'Left Behind' book, 'Glorious Appearing', and then melts the eye-balls of the unholy before drowning the world in blood. I'm not exaggerating. Quite frankly, this is not just obscene, but blasphemous. This is not Christianity - I don't think there's ever been a Christian movement that not only killed in Jesus' name (there have been more than enough of those), but actually expected Jesus himself to do the killing. Usually these things are theologically out-sourced to the Angel of Death, or to the Papal armies. The right-wing religio-facscists have now declared slaughter, the act of murder, to be holy. And they say HAMAS has a 'culture of death'.
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Rice is cooked
From the NYTimes:
It wasn't until after Sept. 11 that most of us realized that for the first time in human history," Mr. Blacker [friend and colleague of Rice] said, "a nonstate actor, a group of religious extremists at the very bottom of the international system, had the capability to inflict devastating damage on the very pinnacle of the international system.
Well holy shit. They simply didn't know that terrorism could be important. It's not that they were negligent, heavens no, it's that they were stupid! Again, Gary Hart knew. Richard Clarke knew. Clinton knew. The people of Oklahoma City knew. The Israelis knew, the British knew, the Irish and Palestinians certainly knew, the USS Cole knew too. In fact, I think EVERYONE knew terrorism was capable of this, because we've been making movies about it for years. And this is their defense, people.
Of course, the administration is worried about her impending testimony to the 9-11 commission, where Clarke's warnings about terrorism are going to make her life difficult.
[snip]
Directly contradicting [Clarke], her colleagues fear, would exacerbate the politically polarizing debate that has captivated Washington for more than two weeks.
As opposed to opening her up to perjury charges.
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Bob Herbert is a Socialist, bless his heart
Great column from Herbert today. What the neo-liberals don't get is that without Government intervention, economic increase goes straight to the top, and doesn't help anyone else. Kennedy was right about a rising tide lifting all boats, but that's because, from the 30's to the 70's, the government made sure every american had a boat. After Reagan, and the neo-con/neo-liberal/christian millenialist revolution, that basic assurance from the gov't was recinded: unions broken, taxes cut, jobs off-shored, Capital free to flit hither and yon across the face of this earth, and an increased police force to keep us little folk in line. Clinton tweaked the system a bit to keep the middle class, at least, on the gravy train, but now that gravy goes right to Dick Cheney's fattened lips. Yes, our government is the Forman Grill, and we, mes enfants, are the meat.
Return to the New Deal, and let's get back to prosperity.
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Safire to Sartre: the past is dead, long live the past!
Bill Safire is truly one of my favorite conservative columnists: rather than bother with things like truth or empirical data and such, he can lead an inquiry into The Very Nature of Time Itself! It seems that:
The architect Frank Lloyd Wright warned of the floo floo bird, "the peculiar and especial bird who always flew backward . . . because it didn't give a darn where it was going, but just had to see where it had been."
That's us. With our eyes fixed on our rearview mirror, we obsessively review catastrophes past when we should be looking through our windshield at dangers ahead.
Sartre made much the same point: the past, unless remembered, is annihilated. The problem for Safire, and I would argue most con commentators, is that we remember. We remember, for instance, Clinton putting his staff on red alert and catching the LAX bomber before he killed anyone. We remember arresting Nichols and McVeigh, putting them on trial, executing McVeigh, and all without starting a civil war in our own country. We remember Gary Hart warning the US public repeatedly about the dangers of terrorism before 9-11, and we remember Bush not doing a God-Damn thing about it. To continue with Bill's little metaphor, rather than watching the road for more accidents, perhaps we should pull over and let someone who isn't (ideologically) blind take the wheel.
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Preznit give us job twaining
A link on Atrios tells of Bush' amazing plan to get us all back to work: he'll double the number of people in job training programs! Which is great and a fine thing, no doubt, for the private companies and faith-based orgs that are officially accepted as job-trainers, but not so much for the unemployed; the problem here is not that we don't have enough trained workers to fill the hig-tech jobs that are just begging to be filled, but rather that we don't HAVE any well-paying jobs opening up for the MANY highly trained unemployed out there. And really, who needs job training to work at McDonalds? Chalk this up under 'Does not even understand the nature of the problem', alongside Terrorism and Iraq.
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Sunday, April 04, 2004
as-Sadr to Australia - "Thank You and Get Out."
Juan Cole has an interesting post about an interview that Imam Amer al Husseini, the leader of the as-Sadr mosque in Sadr City, gave to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
PETER CAVE: One final question, could you [the interpreter] explain [to al Husseini] that there is a debate in Australia about removing Australia's 850 troops. Has he got a message for the Australian Government, about Australia's troops who are here?
AMER AL HUSSEINI (translated): Well we hope that Australia will follow Spain, or their decision to withdraw from Iraq, but we should also say we thank very much the Australian for helping us and we through your TV want to tell the Prime Minister, the Australian Prime Minister, that thank you for your helping, but please withdraw from Iraq.
This is hopeful, I guess: the Sadrist are willing to seperate their resistance to the Occupation and to the CPA from their views of the Western powers. Not that this will do any good, of course - Rummy and Bush/Cheney are hardly going to withdraw just because Sadr is willing to threaten the CPA graciously. I think he's really banking on a rebellion here, believes he's going to win it, and is trying to signal his reasonableness to the coalition, as long as he's left in charge. The US cannot let as-Sadr remain influential without risking a popular victory for the Sadrists in the coming elections, and we know that Bush/Cheney cannot risk a radical Islamic government, even a popularly elected one, without coming off as failures. Not to mention the very real possibility of civil war if the Sunnis think the radical Shiites are going to wield power. This can only end badly.
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as-Sadr Declares War on the CPA
So the CPA has managed to make a bad situation worse . This all started with the closing of as-Sadr's newspaper 'al-Hawzah' last Sunday, and according to Juan Cole, as-Sadr's militia, the 'Army of Mahdi', today engaged in prolongued battles with CPA forces, with a total of 9-10 US soldiers killed, dozens wounded, and who knows how many dead Iraqis. The CPA has been forced out of Kufa, a city of 120,000 near Najaf, isolated and nearly expelled from Sadr City, a neighborhood of 1,000,000 in Baghdad, and seen further unrest in Nasiriyah and Najaf, the Holy City of Shi'ism where 8 Iraqis were killed. The terrible thing here is the fact that the Sadr represents a whole lot of people in Iraq, and his militia has thousands of armed soldiers who have now turned their sights on our troops. They have declared that the occupation has ended, in effect. This is our intifadeh: our troops are simply to be pushed out. We were just in the process of reducing our troop numbers, too. Now we can't even declare victory and leave.
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