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posted: 9:39 AM, October 24, 2007
by Harkavy
The convergence of America's pastimes — religious crackpotism, fast food, and immigration — on America's former pastime
Greeley Tribune Future spiritual godfather of radical Muslims Sayyid Qutb (with Hitlerian mustache) poses in Greeley, Colorado, with college prexy William R. Ross in 1949.
Just wait until the World Series, which opens tonight in Boston, shifts to Denver on Saturday. That's when Jesus and Muhammad — and Sayyid Qutb, the spiritual godfather of Al Qaeda — will join the millions of other viewers. Colorado's a great setting for what used to be America's pastime. Our country's real manias about fast food, religion, and immigration have strong roots there. South of Denver lies Colorado Springs, headquarters of Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the godfather of America's religious right-wingers. (See my 1997 story "King James's Version.") North of Denver is Greeley, the slaughterhouse capital for the fast-food industry. Colorado Rockies owner Charlie Monfort owes his good fortune to his daddy's massive abattoirs in Greeley. The family's cattle feedlots are also the stamping grounds for immigrants brought in to deal with the muck and death. (For inhumane treatment of animals, see this. For inhumane treatment of immigrants who perform this inhumane treatment of animals, see this.) And in a weird confluence of human and animal slaughter philosophies, Greeley is the town where Sayyid Qutb lived in 1949, where he learned to hate Americans' "immoral" behavior before he returned to the Middle East and became the most influential 20th century thinker for radical schnooks like Osama bin Laden. (See Mike Peters's 2002 Greeley Tribune story "Roots of Terrorism Reach to 1949 Greeley" and Daniel Brogan's 2003 story "Al Qaeda’s Greeley Roots" in the Denver magazine 5280.) Not that all the strange confluences in Colorado are bad. Northern Colorado is also the home of the amazing Temple Grandin, an ingenious autistic person made famous by Oliver Sacks. Grandin, more attuned to animals than people, revolutionized cattle feedlots by at least making the treatment of cattle more humane before they're slaughtered. Her life story is fascinating — especially the "Squeeze Machine" she invented for herself. You can't make this shit up — except for Charlie Monfort and his family's cattle feedlots. As Eric Schlosser wrote in Fast Food Nation: You can smell Greeley, Colorado, long before you can see it. The smell is hard to forget but not easy to describe, a combination of live animals, manure, and dead animals being rendered into dog food. The smell is worst during the summer months, blanketing Greeley day and night like an invisible fog. Many people who live there no longer notice the smell; it recedes into the background, present but not present, like the sound of traffic for New Yorkers. Others can't stop thinking about the smell, even after years; it permeates everything, gives them headaches, makes them nauseous, interferes with their sleep.
The money from Greeley's feedlots wafted down to Denver, enabling Charlie Monfort and his family to buy the Rockies and feed campaign contributions to right-wing religious wackos like Rick Santorum and Tom Tancredo. As for the Rockies' players themselves, Denver Westword's Michael Roberts pleads, "Please, Don't Play the Jesus Card, Rockies." Today's timid New York Times article reminds the nation that the Rockies are a Christian team by intelligent design: Monfort is born-again, and General Manager Dan O'Dowd is not only a dedicated Christian but purposely recruits other Christians to be his players. Bob Nightengale (a former colleague of mine years ago at the Arizona Republic) broke that story nationally in a piece last summer for USA Today. The Times's Ben Shpigel begins his story today with a denial by a Jewish Rockie that the team's Christianity is forced down his throat. Shpigel, in a typical Times skin-back, then notes: The role of religion within the Rockies’ organization first entered the public sphere in May 2006, when an article published in USA Today described the organization as adhering to a "Christian-based code of conduct" and the clubhouse as a place where Bibles were read and men’s magazines, like Maxim or Playboy, were banned.
The article included interviews with several players and front office members, but team players and officials interviewed this week said it unfairly implied that the Rockies were intent on constructing a roster consisting in large part of players with a strong Christian faith. Asked how his own Christian faith affected his decision-making, General Manager Dan O’Dowd acknowledged it came into play, but not in a religious way. He said it guided him to find players with integrity and strong moral values, regardless of their religious preference. Yeah, right. In any case, I hope the Rockies slaughter the Red Sox — religious nuts like Qutb and Dobson notwithstanding.
categories: Bidness, CHEERLEADERS, COLLATERAL DAMAGE, EXCUSES (FOR TORTURE), EXCUSES (FOR WAR), GOD, GWOT, PRISONERS (SCARED), SARACENS, STUFFED ANIMALS, TRIPS
Posted by wharkavy at 9:39 AM
posted: 9:53 AM, October 19, 2007
by Harkavy
Exclusive: Brooklyn businessman/arsonist endangered NY firefighters, but AG nominee Mukasey offered to tout the felonious goniff's "remarkable character" before sentencing In a previously unreported episode, U.S. Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey praised the "remarkable character" of notorious Brooklyn businessman Nat Schlesinger after Schlesinger was convicted of arson in a blaze that nearly killed a New York City firefighter. After having stood up as a federal judge for a convicted arsonist who reaped millions of dollars from his crimes, Mukasey is on tap to become the country's top law-enforcement official. His hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee has contained no mention of the Schlesinger case. This isn't part of Mukasey's dim past; it happened last year. And Mukasey wasn't the only prominent person to stand up for Schlesinger. Israel's current prime minister, Ehud Olmert, used his government stationery (when he was merely a deputy prime minister) to plead on behalf of the powerful Brooklyn businessman, as my colleague Tom Robbins reported on August 1, 2006. Mukasey was prohibited from directly volunteering a written testimonial because he was a sitting federal judge on New York's Southern District bench. But he scooted around that technicality, and Schlesinger's lawyers bandied about his name — and what he would say about the arsonist — in their June 30, 2006, presentencing memo, which Robbins obtained. The arsonist's lawyers made no bones about it, salting their memo to federal Judge Arthur Spatt of New York's Eastern District with Mukasey's name. They titled a section of the memo with this: Judge Mukasey Indicated that He Would Provide Information Regarding Nat Schlesinger’s Remarkable Character if this Court Makes an Inquiry of Him
And Schlesinger's lawyers wrote: At the outset, we were advised that Judge Michael B. Mukasey knows the Schlesinger family and attended weddings of the Defendant’s children. Based on his history and knowledge of Mr. Schlesinger, it is our understanding that Judge Mukasey is willing to provide information to this Court that may prove extremely helpful at sentencing.
However, we are also aware of the constraints imposed in the Commentary to Canon 2B of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges, which provides that a "judge should not initiate the communication of information to a sentencing judge … but may provide to such persons information in response to a formal request." … As a consequence, we ask the Court to make a formal request of Judge Mukasey for any information that may prove relevant to Nat Schlesinger’s sentencing. There's no evidence that Spatt made such a request, which would have been highly unusual, to say the least. But the memo had practically the same effect because it clued in Judge Spatt that one of his colleagues vouched for Schlesinger. Robbins noted at the time that Schlesinger was convicted in 2005 on "charges of arson, mail fraud, and — a particularly tough count under federal law — using fire to commit a felony." The case was broken by fire marshal Bernard "Buddy" Santangelo, sparking a lengthy investigation of suspicious fires and a successful prosecution under U.S. Attorney Roslyn Mauskopf. Judge Spatt was swamped with glowing testimonials from Schlesinger's fellow Jews, many of them Orthodox, as is Mukasey. Mukasey's own status as an Orthodox Jew has been an issue before — and in Jewish publications, as I pointed out this past September 24 in an item about his presiding over a terrorism trial at which he clashed with William Kunstler over whether Mukasey would be able to fairly judge Muslim defendants. In the Schlesinger episode, the arsonist didn't exactly have a clean track record. As Robbins wrote last year: It wasn't his first time before a federal judge. Back in 1978, Schlesinger was sentenced to 18 months in prison for conspiring to bribe a polygraph examiner to submit a fake report on behalf of a diamond smuggler.
Schlesinger faced up to 22 years in prison in the arson case, but it wasn't only his fellow Orthodox Jews who played the religion card. Schlesinger himself played it. Robbins wrote: Standing before Judge Spatt …, Schlesinger made an audacious claim about his circumstances. "I am here because I am a Jew," he said. The statement, according to Newsday’s Robert Kessler, who was in the courtroom, brought a quick and strong response from assistant U.S. attorney Lawrence Ferazani, who tried the case against Schlesinger along with prosecutors Cynthia Monaco and Richard Lunger. Ferazani said he was representing Mauskopf, the daughter of Holocaust survivors. As for Schlesinger, the prosecutor said: "The reason he is here is because he is a thief, because he is an arsonist, and because he is a money launderer."
That apparently didn't faze Olmert. In a letter dated September 11, 2005, Olmert (at the time Israel's vice prime minister of industry, trade, and labor) pleaded with Judge Spatt to show Schlesinger "mercy, compassion, and understanding." (Again, see Robbins's "Burn Job," August 1, 2006.) The only hot air that counted, however, was what a New York City firefighter endured because of Schlesinger's felonious behavior. As Robbins wrote: Schlesinger, who has long been a major figure in Williamsburg and upstate Monsey, where he owns property, was found guilty of having set a fire that took place on December 31, 1998. The New Year's Eve blaze occurred at a huge, block-long industrial building the businessman owned at Wallabout Street and Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, where he manufactured women's clothing for such high-end stores as Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bloomingdale's. The inferno almost felled a firefighter who became lost in thick smoke on the building's third floor, where the fire had been set in a maze of boxes. The firefighter had to send a "Mayday" message before he was rescued, unharmed.
In the end, Schlesinger was sentenced 15 years in prison. Schlesinger's lawyers have appealed. An e-mail to Mukasey at his law firm elicited no reply.
Posted by wharkavy at 9:53 AM
posted: 7:24 AM, September 5, 2007
by Harkavy
Times blows the Bremer-Bush dustup story. Rumsfeld, Cheney roles ignored in 2003 blunder.
The New York Times pulled out of Iraq coverage even before the war started when it sent in Judy Miller to beat the WMD war drums. But five years later, it still hasn't re-entered the battle, judging by its inept handling of the Bush-Bremer dustup over who was responsible for disbanding the Iraq Army back in 2003. Ignoring explosive material published a year ago in the British press and played up practically everywhere in the world but in the major American papers, the Times downplayed SecDef Donald Rumsfeld's role in the tragic blunder of dismantling the army and police, and the paper didn't even mention Dick Cheney. Over the weekend, Robert Draper, peddling his book Dead Certain, said Bush had been taken aback by the tragic decision announced by Bush regime czar Jerry Bremer to disband Iraq's army in the spring of 2003. That was in a September 2 Times story by Jim Rutenberg, who apparently hadn't talked to Bremer about Bush's comments. (Rutenberg's story was just a hack job titled "In Book, Bush Peeks Ahead to His Legacy.") Bremer rushed over to the Times and dropped off a bundle of letters that, he claims, show that Bush knew of the plan and liked what Bremer was doing. Here's how Times reporter Edmund L. Andrews handled the gift from Bremer in the September 4 story: A previously undisclosed exchange of letters shows that President Bush was told in advance by his top Iraq envoy in May 2003 of a plan to "dissolve Saddam's military and intelligence structures," a plan that the envoy, L. Paul Bremer, said referred to dismantling the Iraqi Army.
Mr. Bremer provided the letters to The New York Times on Monday after reading that Mr. Bush was quoted in a new book as saying that American policy had been "to keep the army intact" but that it "didn't happen." The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers and made it more difficult to reduce sectarian bloodshed and attacks by insurgents. In releasing the letters, Mr. Bremer said he wanted to refute the suggestion in Mr. Bush's comment that Mr. Bremer had acted to disband the army without the knowledge and concurrence of the White House. The Andrews story makes it sound as if Bremer was briefing Rumsfeld about this plan, that the plan was something that Bush and Bremer were hammering out. Nothing could be further from the truth. In October 2006, David Blunkett, Britain's Home Secretary during the crucial pre-invasion and immediate post-invasion period, told all in an interview with the Guardian (U.K.) and the serialization of his diaries from that time. Unlike Bremer's book published earlier this year, Blunkett was candid about his screw-ups and about what he did — and didn't do. More importantly, he reveals just who was making the big decisions for the U.S. Here's a hint: It wasn't Bremer and it wasn't Bush. From the Guardian story by Patrick Wintour and Julian Glover: A member of the war cabinet, [Blunkett] reveals that Britain battled with the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, and defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, not to press ahead with dismantling "the whole of the security, policing, administrative and local government system on the basis of the de-Ba'athification of Iraq.
"The issue was: 'What the hell do you do about it?' All we could do as a nation of 60 million off the coast of mainland Europe was to seek to influence the most powerful nation in the world. We did seek to influence them, but we were not in charge, so you cannot say that if only the government recognised what needed to be done, it would all have been different. The government did recognise the problem." He admits: "We dismantled the structure of a functioning state," adding that the British view was: "Change them by all means, decapitate them even, but very quickly get the arms and legs moving." This 2006 story wasn't totally ignored in the U.S. press. The Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum summed it up well on October 8, 2006: DE-BAATHIFICATION....Former British Home Secretary David Blunkett, whose diary will begin serialization in the Guardian on Monday, says that it wasn't Paul Bremer who favored dismantling the Iraqi military after the invasion. …
I don't suppose this is really surprising news or anything — did we ever really think Bremer made this decision on his own? — but it's nice to see confirmation. Yet another disastrous miscalculation from the dynamic duo of Cheney and Rumsfeld. Have these guys ever gotten anything right? Drum's right. It wasn't surprising in 2003 that the decision was being made by Rumsfeld and Cheney, not Bremer, and it certainly wasn't surprising in 2006. So why was the Times story so clueless? This isn't the first time Times reporter Andrews has mishandled a big story. Back in 2004, Andrews blew a vital news angle about corporate tax breaks. Read my October 12, 2004, post, in which I wrote: Regarding the corporate tax bill, the Times's Andrews naively writes that George W. Bush "has indicated he will sign the measure despite White House concerns that it is overloaded with special-interest provisions." That's malarkey about White House "concerns." The Bush regime, which includes leaders of the GOP-controlled Congress, knew that senators of both parties would waddle over to the trough and slurp up the bill's "surplus" so they could excrete it as a steaming pile of pork-barrel projects. The structure of this session's two major tax bills is all part of the White House's shrewd strategy to reward corporations at our expense.
If you want something beyond my immature screed, read this October 2004 measured analysis of the corporate tax cuts, courtesy of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities' Joel Friedman. Regarding the Bremer-Bush dustup and the blunder of dismantling the Iraq Army, the New Yorker's George Packer parses it and takes the long view. Packer also shrewdly notes that it's not wise to give the Bush regime too much credit for being orderly enough to make decisions. Bush's White House and Pentagon were, and are, a dysfunctional family. Writing about the blunder of dismantling the Iraq Army, Packer notes: No one has ever been able to explain the history of that crucial decision, which countless Iraqis have told me was the biggest mistake of the American occupation and a huge factor in the growth of the insurgency. When I was researching The Assassins' Gate I learned that, just before Bremer went to Iraq, in early May, 2003, he had discussed the issue at the Pentagon with Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, and Walt Slocombe (who became Bremer's adviser on Iraqi security forces in Baghdad), and then he cleared the decision with Donald Rumsfeld. This account was later borne out in Bremer's book. Did Condi Rice know? Dick Cheney? Bush himself? It's been impossible to be sure, and a former Administration official once told me that this fact alone shows what a dysfunctional policymaking process it was.
A history-changing decision, upending a previous policy, was made on the fly by a handful of officials at the Pentagon who consulted with no one else in Washington, let alone in Iraq. (In The Assassins' Gate, I describe the disbelief of a U.S. Army colonel, Paul Hughes, who at the time was knee-deep in the effort to organize and pay soldiers of the defeated Iraqi army; his outrage is the high point of the powerful new film No End in Sight.) Bremer's letter to Bush proves that the President was told at the last minute and gave the O.K. — but that's it. He had nothing to do with the decision either way and seemed barely aware of it. Meanwhile, the exchange between the two of them — which took place when Iraq was already slipping away — reminds me of Lear talking to his fawning daughters at the opening of the play. "As I have moved around, there has been an almost universal expression of thanks to the US and to you in particular for freeing Iraq from Saddam's tyranny," Bremer assures his boss. "The dissolution of his chosen instrument of political domination, the Baath Party, has been very well received." The President answers in kind: "Your leadership is apparent. You have quickly made a positive and significant impact. You have my full support and confidence." Unless hard drives are destroyed and archives sealed, one day we'll be able to read thousands more such documents of the war. The details will be damning.
Posted by wharkavy at 7:24 AM
posted: 6:19 AM, September 4, 2007
by Harkavy
Troops still there. George W. Bush's unannounced, but not surprising, visit to Iraq on Labor Day was the kiss of death to Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. If you're Maliki, it's one thing for Philip Zelikow to work behind the scenes to oust you; it's another thing altogether to have the word get out that Bush took you aside and told you, "You're my friend." That little tale with which Bush regaled the press corps afterwards should make Maliki even more popular with his countrymen. As Beirut's Daily Star opines this morning: Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq on Monday, but neither he nor visitors from any other foreign capital can make up for weak leadership in Baghdad. Washington has expected too much of its Iraqi partners in many respects, but it has also tied their hands on many issues over which they should have been turned loose. Maliki needs more of this brand of American "support" like he needs a proverbial hole in the head.
The only way Maliki can survive is if he's seen as strong, independent, decisive. A visit from Bush is not what he needs. U.S. papers fell right in line by treating this trip seriously. But as the Star notes:
[Maliki] can only improve his authority and legitimacy if his actions are manifestly aimed at dealing with realities on the ground in Iraq and the wider Middle East, not the ebbs and flows of America's electoral comedies or the shortsighted tribalism that inspires some of his allies and their sponsors.
By the way, you see that Bush landed in Anbar province, not in Baghdad. Those days of of surprise visits to Baghdad are over. Too dangerous. But meeting officials and troops 100 miles of Baghdad works just as well. Newspaper headlines are blaring, "Bush Hails Anbar Gains."
categories: BODY COUNTS, BODYGUARDS, CHEERLEADERS, CHILDREN (LEFT BEHIND), COLLATERAL DAMAGE, PET GOATS, THUMBS (UP), TRIPS
Posted by wharkavy at 6:19 AM
posted: 2:29 PM, August 29, 2007
by Harkavy
The Bush library architect is selected, but it's not too late to suggest epigraphs for his and the building's facades.
Artist's rendition of the George W. Bush Presidential Libary (front view).
George W. Bush's grandest reinforced-concrete legacy — except for the billion-dollar U.S. Embassy in Baghdead being built by shanghaied Filipinos — finally has an architect. No surprise that it's a New York City firm hired to design Bush's presidential library and museum. The name behind Robert A.M. Stern Architects is Yale's architecture dean, and it's a hoity-toity firm. Besides, Bush's New York chum Roland Betts was on the selection committee. As much as the POTUS library handlers are trying to burnish diffident reader Bush's image for future generations, the president's only certain legacy so far is the one he used to get into Yale because his daddy went there. The George W. Bush Presidential Libary, however, will be a monument in 3-D, and it's not too late to suggest that its name and a suitable epigraph from Bush's own words be carved on its front facade. I'm thinking of Bush's August 5, 2004, speech as he signed that year's defense bill: Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
For that bone mot, go to this White House page for the transcript, video, and audio. That quotation probably won't pass muster with Bush's crew. But it has to be something memorable and/or important, like this August 4, 1822, quotation by James Madison, which is inscribed on the Library of Congress building bearing his name and which was dedicated by Ronald Reagan: Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
In the alternative, here's a modern-day quotation that seems apropos: Who has the strength these days to remember the beginning, the root of the matter, the circumstances, the fact that what we have here is occupation and oppression, reaction and counter-reaction, a vicious circle and a bloody circle, two peoples that are becoming corrupt, violent and crazy with despair, a death trap in which we are suffocating more with every passing day?
No, that's not about Iraq; it's from a January 6, 2002, essay by Israeli novelist David Grossman, concerning the Arab-Jew death dance. Don't expect to see that quote in either the Israel or Iraq wings of the Bush Libary, though historians will remember the disastrous road to death in Israel as one of Bush's legacies. You could pick just about anything from Martin Luther King Jr., but here's a morsel from King's 1967 anti-war speech at Riverside Church in New York City. Taken out of context, it's also perfectly in context, in a Vietraq sort of way, as a description of Bush: … some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war …
Maybe carving an epigraph like that into a building is just too old-fashioned for the computer age, and the Bush Libary simply needs something for people to click on, like this:
All you have to do is click. It's a Windows command, so it should work perfectly.
Posted by wharkavy at 2:29 PM
posted: 9:10 AM, August 28, 2007
by Harkavy
Hackneyed headline fits: Ex-Iraq czar Bremer peddles armor technology to military while armor contracts go unfilled.
This morning's New York Times story on the widening weapons scandal in Iraq is shocking — the biggest shock is that the Pentagon's special investigator has been saying this for a long time and we're just now sending teams of investigators from numerous agencies to check it out. Still awaiting investigation is war profiteering related to weapons and armor. One of the people planning to profit from the continuing Iraq war is ex-czar and Medal of Freedom winner Jerry Bremer, and not just from his book tours. Meanwhile, we never have found out what happened to the $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenue that Bremer's regime oversaw but which can't be exactly accounted for. Just one of many oil-for-slush scandals in Iraq, that story was broken by the British NGO Christian Aid in June 2004 Back to the present: The latest quarterly report by Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, revealed that numerous contracts for weapons and armor have gone unfulfilled. An audit last October by Bowen's office revealed that we weren't even keeping track of — or prepared to maintain — the thousands of weapons we were handing out to Iraqi and U.S. soldiers. Just about the same time, Bremer, the Bush regime's former head man in Iraq when the country started descending into civil war, joined the board of directors of BlastGard, which sells a reinforced wrap to protect Humvees from mines and homemade bombs. He's also a lobbyist for BlastGard. An enthusiastic article by Philip Siekman in April's Fortune Small Business accented Bremer's value to the company in one paragraph: In November, BlastGard announced that it had signed a $186,000 deal to provide its products to the U.S. Marine Corps for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. The company also named L. Paul Bremer, former administrator of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, to its board.
The article explains just what the company does and how its prospects are truly "explosive": Military forces around the world are a major target of opportunity for BlastGard. A pad of BlastWrap on the bottom of a Humvee, for example, would complement the vehicle's armor plate. Conventional armor is pretty good at blocking the shock wave and shrapnel from a mine or from the homemade explosives that litter roads in Iraq. But armor plate also compounds the jolt that tosses the vehicle, often causing serious injury to its occupants. BlastWrap would reduce that bone-breaking whump. …
Amid the good news lurks the risk that this small company could choke on the sheer variety of its opportunity. BlastGard's SEC filings and marketing materials catalog a multitude of possible Blast-Wrap applications, few of which have yet attracted customers. For the first nine months of 2006, BlastGard posted an operating loss of $1.2 million on just $197,000 in sales. Numerous competitors are developing alternative blast mitigators, including metal alloy mesh and foamed metals. And the company's easily fabricated material is certain to attract knockoff artists. [BlastGard execs James Gordon and John Waddell] have filed a patent application to protect their multimillion-dollar investment in BlastWrap. But if the duo can overcome the near-term challenges, their company's potential, in this era of terrorism and war, would be explosive. Meanwhile, inspector Bowen's report last October showed that of a $531,000 contract for reinforced armor for the Iraqi Army, $424,800 hadn't even been spent. The Pentagon has, however, completed a $76,955.50 contract to put decals on the Iraqi Army's Hummers. Back when he took over in Iraq in the spring of 2003, Bremer obviously never foresaw that he would be joining a company like BlastGard that has such exciting and explosive prospects. As Deputy SecDef Paul Wolfowitz told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on May 22, 2003: We are making progress. In my most recent conversation with Presidential Envoy Bremer, he reports that, while the security situation is serious — and still imposes severe restrictions on our ability to move freely — Baghdad is not a "city in anarchy," shops are open, and the city is bustling with traffic.
Now Bremer is working to make a profit off the chaos of Baghdad. BlastGard itself proudly points to a November 15, 2006, Wall Street Journal article saying that Bremer will be a "director and lobbyist with an eye on opportunities within the government and Defense Department." You can't say exactly the same thing about Bremer's predecessor in Iraq, Lieutenant General Jay Garner. Garner has also joined BlastGard, but only as a "military advisor," not a director.
Posted by wharkavy at 9:10 AM
posted: 8:32 AM, August 23, 2007
by Harkavy
Hell, no, we won't go.
Phuoc Vinh and the Diyala River Valley, 40 years apart.
Speaking to veterans sure not to boo the president, George W. Bush's handlers have launched a new offensive in the Vietnam War, which has been over for 30 years. Offensive is right. In essence, if you take a look at our soldiers patrolling in Phuoc Vinh, Vietnam, in 1967-68 and in Iraq's Diyala River Valley in August 2007, Bush is telling 21st century America: "Phuoc you." It's now the Vietraq War. Forty years ago, we were telling a president, "Hell, no, we won't go!" Now we have a president telling us, "Hell, no, we won't go!" Even though Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who really has no choice if he wants to keep his job and his life, is telling us, "Go." Over here, we'd better run for cover, because we're likely to hear this rat-a-tat-tat from Bush for awhile. Dick Cheney's regime launched this new war Wednesday in Kansas City at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, having Bush say: Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility — but the terrorists see it differently.
Bush's handlers plan more of the same next week at the American Legion gathering in Reno. As Maura Reynolds and James Gerstenzang reported this morning in the L.A. Times: Aides said the president felt it was necessary to revamp his message in the weeks before Army Gen. David H. Petraeus delivers a progress report that Congress mandated.
White House counselor Ed Gillespie and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove worked with the president on the speech. There was a sense in the White House that the president's rhetoric on Iraq, though consistent, was also becoming somewhat repetitive. "The repetition is necessary and by design," White House communications director Kevin Sullivan said in an interview, adding that the language is usually fresh to every new audience. "However, the president was aware of wanting to set the table for the upcoming report and the discussion that will follow it in a new way that was both compelling and illustrative. We've done this work before, and it was beneficial to the American people." Both speeches were planned for veterans groups, guaranteeing that audiences would respond enthusiastically to the president's calls to support the troops. On Wednesday, VFW members repeatedly interrupted Bush's speech with applause and standing ovations. Rove, whose name (as I've pointed out) doesn't rhyme with "dove," will go hunting for real doves when he leaves the White House at the end of the month. But he's still on patrol in the West Wing, and we're his pigeons. All the propaganda isn't coming from the White House. We already knew that, but here's fresh proof. While the excellent McClatchy D.C. Bureau (formerly the Knight-Ridder Washington Bureau), headlined its story "Bush Steps up Sales Push to Sustain His Surge in Iraq" (accurately depicting Bush as the regime's salesman), the L.A. Times story carries the softer headline "Bush Has a New Angle on Iraq Debate" (not really accurate because it's his handlers' angle). And the POTUS-pushers didn't write the L.A. Times's sub-headline: In anticipation of progress report, the president is addressing veterans groups and setting up new effort to cast war in historical light.
Even the White House's Kevin Sullivan didn't use the adjective "progress." But newspapers and TV are already calling the upcoming Petraeus report, which will be written by the White House, a "progress report." Considering the debacle that is Iraq, how about just calling it a "report" and mentioning that it will be written by the White House? Instead we'll be inundated in the next couple of weeks — before the report is released on super-jingoistic 9/11 Day — with the words "progress" and "Vietnam." Those words never did quite fit together when JFK, LBJ, and Nixon used them.
categories: BUSHSPEAK, CHEERLEADERS, Cheney, EXCUSES (FOR WAR), GWOT, REPORTERS (EMBEDDED), REPORTERS (NON-EMBEDDED), THUMBS (UP), Vietraq
Posted by wharkavy at 8:32 AM
posted: 4:59 PM, August 22, 2007
by Harkavy
Oh, by the way, the White House will be writing Petraeus's report. "Words convey ideas," the late, great John Bremner told me once and as I've now told you twice. Actually he told me that a thousand times. I'd like to add that words are particularly good for expressing harebrained ideas. In addition to my own work, here are two Pentagon maps of Iraq. The black-and-white one is from August 2002, and the only reason we can even look at it is that the National Security Archive pried it out of the U.S. government. The nice color one is part of the Pentagon's slide-into-hell show, freely available at a May 31, 2007, press briefing.
August 2002: Page 17 of "Tab K," the formerly secret map of Iraq from the U.S. military's August 2002 invasion plans.
May 2007: A slide from the Pentagon's May 31, 2007 briefing. Nice job by the military on the colors, huh?
On the August 2002 map, I count four "exploits," three "protects," one "fix," one "isolate," two "seizes," one "gain control," and one "suppress." Oh, and one "shock and awe." On the May 2007 map, we've got only one "protect," but we have three "disrupts," two "extremists," two "defeats," and two "transitions." Instead of "shock and awe," we've got an "expand progress." Draw your own conclusions, but this is just dangerous and misleading wordplay, though I do like maps and I perversely like the way the Pentagon throws around words. I can't wait for the wordplay in General David Petraeus's September report to Congress, which, as Bush Beat reader Frances Lynch points out, via this recent Los Angeles Times story, will be written by the White House — yes, you heard me: Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.
And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data. Those astounding paragraphs are the story's 28th and 29th. I know you didn't read that far down. So much dirty laundry that the government needs an extra-long spin cycle, so the current plan is to reveal Petraeus's "report" on the anniversary of 9/11. Watch out for that government spin. But as is often the case, reporters and editors do enough of their own spinning: Waiting until way, way down in a story about Petraeus's upcoming report to mention that, oh by the way, Petraeus's upcoming report is actually going to be written by the White House is one example. Maybe numbers are the best way to see the war, though they're likely to make you not just dizzy but sick. Here are only a few numbers — they're also freely available from the Pentagon, but you won't see these flashed on a screen for reporters:
Posted by wharkavy at 4:59 PM
posted: 5:11 PM, August 21, 2007
by Harkavy
Shock and awful: Turn to page 17 of your haven't-got-a-prayer book (otherwise known as "Tab K") for this exciting and formerly secret map of Iraq from the U.S. military's August 2002 invasion plans.
We already knew that the government of Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, was grinding to a halt when cabinet members stopped showing up. Now U.S. pols want to kick out Maliki himself, papers are reporting this morning. The only question is whether this stooge will flee before he's kicked out. That's because we're in the strange situation of having stooges over there in chaotic Iraq but not being able to control anything — even them. It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Hey, in August 2002, our top leaders were being told what they wanted to hear: that we were supposed to have only 5,000 troops in Iraq by December 2006. Instead, we have more than 25 times that number in August 2007. In any case, Maliki had better have his affairs in order. From this morning's Times (U.K.) story by Tim Reid: The Iraqi Prime Minister is facing public calls for his ousting from US military officers and senior senators on Capitol Hill, amid fears that he is incapable of forging political reconciliation among Iraq’s warring factions.
US regional commanders in Iraq and senior Democrats and Republicans in Washington believe that the military gains achieved by President Bush’s surge strategy in recent weeks will prove worthless unless Nouri al-Maliki is replaced. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, returned from Iraq yesterday and declared the Maliki Government "non-functional". He added: "I hope the Parliament will vote the Maliki Government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less-sectarian and more-unifying prime minister and government." Although a long-time opponent of Mr Bush and the war, Mr Levin’s comments were given considerable bipartisan weight as they came after a joint report on Iraq that he released with John Warner, his widely respected counterpart on the Armed Services Committee and a key Republican voice on the war. Interesting, but there are big questions (here and here) about whether the "surge" is working. And if we pressure al-Maliki to leave, who'll be our next stooge in Baghdead? As Reid's story notes: General David Petraeus, the US ground commander in charge of the surge, is expected to voice his support for Mr al-Maliki in his progress report to Congress, which will probably be delivered on September 11, the sixth anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks on the United States.
The dilemma in Washington is that, should Mr al-Maliki fall, there is no clear replacement. Moreover, any perception in Iraq that Mr al-Maliki was ousted because of pressure from Washington would be the "kiss of death" for any successor, said Dick Durbin, another senior Senate Democrat recently returned from Iraq. "Imagine if we have to step in with a brand new leader and a new government," Mr Durbin said. "How many more months would we have to wait?" You mean we're still waiting? According to the August 2002 plans presented to Don Rumsfeld's Pentagon and Dick Cheney's White House by the Cardassian-sounding U.S. Central Command, we were supposed to have only 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by December 2006. It took until February 2007 to pry that "Top Secret Polo Plan" from the government, and that was thanks only to Joyce Battle and Tom Blanton, among others, at the plucky National Security Archive. Check out the plan's "Tab K" (which includes the above slide) for a look at the 2002 map of Iraq overlaid with U.S. generals' testosterone. It's all full of "shock and awe" and "exploit" and "gain control" and "seize oil." Brother.
Posted by wharkavy at 5:11 PM
posted: 7:08 AM, August 20, 2007
by Harkavy
The former senior White House adviser (remember this newsmag cover from April '94?) really set it up well in the show, which aired yesterday on ABC: We want to cover the economy, health care, education, and of course the war.
But let's start with the two questions that have really been dominating this race so far. I think Democrats across the country are struggling with these questions. It comes up in the dialogue between your campaigns. And the first one is: Is Barack Obama ready to be president, experienced enough to be president? And can Senator Clinton, Hillary Clinton, in part because of your experience, bring the country together and bring about the kind of change that all of you say the country needs? Heads I win, tails you lose. You'd never guess that Stephanopoulos was Bill Clinton's former senior adviser, would you? The first question, about whether Obama is experienced enough, was legit — assuming you count Bill's stint as Arkansas governor, while Hillary was Wal-Mart's First Lady, as experience. The second question was ludicrous, nothing more than a slam at Obama — not to mention the bit about who can "bring the country together" — pap left over from Stephanopoulos's long stint as a political operative. His intro avoided the real questions about Hillary: For one thing, what is her experience? Has she done much during her years in the Senate? Other than vote in October 2002 for the Bush regime's war, that is. The only thing she's run is the health-care task force during the first Clinton administration, and she handled it in the same secretive and business-friendly way that Dick Cheney handled the energy task force during George W. Bush's first term. The first thing Hillary did when Bill gave her health care to futz with was take the idea of national health care off the table and lock in the heavy, bureaucratized participation of the insurance industry. So here's another question: Is Hillary anything more than just the carefully groomed and handled representative of the right-of-center Democratic Party establishment? As for "bringing the country together": It's a democracy. We're not all supposed to agree. And as a republic, we're supposed to hammer out solutions and deals. That's supposed to be the beauty of it. Stephanopoulos is still a political operative, and he's still marketing the Clintons.
categories: CHEERLEADERS, Cheney, Demos, EXCUSES (FOR WAR), HACKS, Hillary, LOOTING (BY CORPORATIONS), Obama, REPORTERS (EMBEDDED), VOTING
Posted by wharkavy at 7:08 AM
posted: 9:18 AM, August 16, 2007
by Harkavy
In what the GOP hopes will be a boost for next year's elections, General David Petraeus has broadly hinted in the wake of the worst massacre of the war that the U.S. will be able to start withdrawing troops from Iraq next summer.
Like Colin Powell at the U.N. in early 2003, Petraeus is being a good and loyal soldier. After the war, Petraeus will no doubt tell it like it was. Who can wait that long? Unfortunately, the story in today's Times (U.K.), a morsel of good news for the White House and the frantic legacy-building of Bush's handlers, hints that master builder Karl Rove hasn't left the building yet. But hundreds of Iraqis have left this mortal coil, as the Times (U.S.) reports: The toll in a horrific quadruple bombing in an area of mud and stone houses in the remote northern desert on Tuesday evening reached at least 250 dead and 350 wounded, several local officials said Wednesday, making it the deadliest coordinated attack since the American-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The New York Times story simply included a statement from Petraeus condemning the bombings. The Times (U.K.) story went deeper, putting Petraeus's broad hint in the context of Tuesday evening's horror: The US general overseeing President Bush's surge strategy in Iraq said last night that he would recommend troop reductions by next summer, but cautioned against a significant withdrawal.
General David Petraeus, in comments that appeared to lay the ground for his pivotal report to the US Congress next month, said that the US footprint in Iraq would have to be "a good bit smaller by next summer". But he also signalled that the surge would continue into next year, and gave warning against a quick or hefty withdrawal that could surrender "the gains we have fought so hard to achieve". General Petraeus said that the "horrific and indiscriminate attacks" on the Yazidi community in northwestern Iraq on Tuesday night were the work of al-Qaeda fighters. The bombings occurred near the Syrian border, and US officials charge the Damascus regime has not done enough to police the frontier against infiltration by foreign fighters who dominate al-Qaeda. Those bomb attacks would bolster his argument, General Petraeus said, against drawing down the 30,000 additional US troops that have made up the surge too quickly. "We know that the surge has to come to an end, there's no question about that. I think everyone understands that by about a year or so from now we've got to be a good bit smaller than we are right now". Petraeus praises the involvement of Sunnis in the battle against terrorists. But for a more objective appraisal — and details beyond Petraeus's pap — read the Institute for War and Peace Reporting's package on "Security in Iraq," which I mentioned in an earlier post. Those stories make clear that this is a Sunni vs. Shia civil war. Throw in the Kurds, assorted holy wars, mix with oil from southern Iraq, and you've got an explosive mixture—and fires that won't go out. The question is when we're going to get out. Petraeus's latest hint of pullouts is nothing more than al-yada-yada-yada to placate the American public.
categories: BODY COUNTS, BUSHSPEAK, CHEERLEADERS, CHILDREN (KILLED), COLLATERAL DAMAGE, GWOT, PET GOATS, SUICIDE, TRIPS, VOTING
Posted by wharkavy at 9:18 AM
posted: 11:45 AM, August 15, 2007
by Harkavy
Harkavy/White House
Endangered species: Karl Rove shares a photo-op embrace with the Bushes yesterday before heading to Texas to shoot some animals with his shotgun, which I've graciously placed in his hand.
Karl Rove's not really changing jobs. Instead of mowing down doves from the White House with his BlackBerry, he'll be killing doves in the Texas countryside with his $2,073 Beretta Silver Pigeon II Over-and-Under 20-gauge shotgun. The gun (shown above) was a gift, according to Rove's 2005 financial disclosure report, from a small group of people including lobbyist Katharine Armstrong, owner of the property on which Dick Cheney blasted one of his own cronies in early 2006. The gun-totin' Rove got his start in national politics by devising "Generation of Peace" bumper stickers for Richard Nixon in the 1972 campaign — in the middle of the Vietnam debacle. He still believes in peace, sort of. Now that he's out of the White House, you won't see him pack up his shotgun and head to Iraq. No, he's going to Texas, where the animals are unarmed. To get the full flavor of Rove's blood lust, go back to his February 17, 2005, speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The speech was covered, but the transcript is no longer freely available. I did, however, save a copy of it. Introduced by National Rifle Association chief Wayne LaPierre, Rove told the crowd: It is great to be introduced by Wayne. He has done so much to protect the constitutional rights of the American people for so long, and he is a great man.
You may also not know this. Wayne has a caring, generous, compassionate heart. He invited me originally to speak tomorrow, and I said — I accepted. And then I had something come up, and I called him up and I said, "I've got an important seminar that I need to go to; is there any chance that I could speak on Thursday?" And he said, "Sure, what's the seminar you're going to?" And I said, "It's a seminar on the practical application of essential protections of the Bill of Rights and their impact on the happiness of organized family activity." He said, "You're taking your boy hunting, isn't that right?" I said, "Yes, sir, I am." So tomorrow I'll be in Kennedy County, Texas, hunting the wily South Texas quail with my 20-gauge over-and-under Silver Pigeon Beretta. I'd invite you to join me but there aren't enough birds for the two of us. God, the guy just loves the Constitution, doesn't he? Rove's forced exit from the White House — don't think for a minute that it was anything but that — is so mordantly funny that it even evoked a sense of humor from the hardliners at PETA. As the Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers reports this morning, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk fired off a letter to Rove after learning that he planned to go dove hunting over the Labor Day weekend. Akers tells the rest of the story: "Dear Mr. Rove," began the letter from President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "From your frequent hunting trips to your bizarre little rap at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association dinner ("I like to go home, get a drink, and tear the tops off of small animals"), it is clear that you lack the ability to empathize with other living beings. You consistently prove that you care less about animal welfare than Alberto Gonzales cares about habeas corpus."
And if that isn't enough to make you think Ingrid needs to spend some time in anger management, wait 'til you hear the rest. Newkirk notes that the first thing Rove plans to do upon leaving the White House at the end of his month is "go dove hunting, i.e., kill little birds who are the international symbol of peace. You will leave politics to spend more time with your family only to destroy the families of other species." Her last line could well set off alarm bells at the Secret Service: "I have just one suggestion: Please take Dick Cheney along on your hunting trips." And plenty of beer and bourbon.
categories: BODY COUNTS, CHEERLEADERS, COLLATERAL DAMAGE, Cheney, INVESTIGATIONS (CONGRESS), STUFFED ANIMALS, TRIPS
Posted by wharkavy at 11:45 AM
posted: 8:54 AM, August 14, 2007
by Harkavy
Harkavy
Monument to failure: DeLay and Abramoff are long gone. Now Rove is almost gone, and only Cheney (right) is left.
George W. Bush nicknamed Karl Rove "The Architect," but the POTUS isn't much of a reader, so we need a better definition of the guy who always relished his role as Rasputin. My dictionary says "rove" is the past tense of "rive": 1. To tear apart or in pieces by pulling or tugging; to rend or lacerate with the hands, claws, etc.; to pull asunder.
(Yes, I know that "My dictionary says …" is a hackneyed device, but my dictionary is the OED on CD-ROM, and Rove himself is a hackneyed device, so do me a favor and keep reading.) The fact is that Rove is definitely not past tense on Capitol Hill, as I noted early yesterday. Later in the day, New York senator Chuck Schumer spoke the obligatory words: Karl Rove's resignation will not stop our inquiry into the firings of the U.S. attorneys. He has every bit as much of a legal obligation to reveal the truth once he steps down as he does today.
That ship has sailed. As a verb by its intransitive lonesome, "rove" takes on another meaning: To practise piracy; to sail as pirates.
Unfortunately, this political plunderer's shredder is probably overheating right now. We already know that thousands of juicy e-mails describing his plots are out there. But shredding is Rove's name, if you believe the OED, and I do: To tear up (a letter, document, etc.), so as to destroy or cancel.
For the sake of history, though, Rove is "rove" in a broader sense: To commit spoliation or robbery; to reave; to take away from. Now dial.
What's the use. Rove's already in transit out of D.C. If issues make you reach for tissues, this definition (of "rive" and thus "rove") is for you: To rend (the heart, soul, etc.) with painful thoughts or feelings.
Whether or not he's ever called back from Texas to testify — and it would probably take a stint at Gitmo to get him to do it — Rove could very well end up as a memorable, if improper, noun. This 15th century usage fits, but it's obsolete: 1. a. A scabby, scaly, or scurfy condition of the skin. b. A scab; the scaly crust of a healed or healing wound.
No, forget "architect," scabs, and all other nouns. To me, Rove will always be a verb, especially in this sense: To shoot with arrows at a mark selected at pleasure or at random, and not of any fixed distance.
Kind of a Robin Hood, except that Rove, as I pointed out yesterday, robs the poor to give to the rich. What a con he pulled on us marks. Yes, that is true "roving." The OED elaborates: The object of roving was evidently to give practice in finding the range of the mark, while shooting at the butts and pricks taught accuracy of aim.
Posted by wharkavy at 8:54 AM
posted: 9:53 AM, August 10, 2007
by Harkavy
Harkavy/Pentagon
Weekly report: There's no fuel, but flames intensify. We're probably too busy getting killed, but couldn't we spare the time to drag ex-SecDef Don Rumsfeld back up to Capitol Hill to answer more questions about Iraq? We certainly can't wait for General David Petraeus to file his progress report next month with Congress — the "coalition" commander promises he won't "pull any punches." But the current Iraq Weekly Status Report — reports prepared by the State Department that I've written about many times and that try to put the best possible light on the situation — already contains some staggering blows. Especially to Iraqis. Keep in mind that an increasing number of Iraqis are getting blown up or otherwise killed. The Washington Post's Meg Greenwell rounded up those figures in her August 6 story, "Spike in Mass Bombings Against Civilians." My favorite paragraph of spin — not by Greenwell but by the Pentagon: US military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Garver said the relatively high number of people killed in large-scale attacks in July belied the significantly larger number of times security forces had been able to prevent bombings.
The news for Iraqis who are still alive is almost as bad. Why the press — especially in the U.S. — ignores the State Department's own weekly reports is beyond me. From the August 8 status report: • Fuel: The bad news is that oil production is falling. The good news is that we've lowered the target for oil production. Oil-rich Iraq imports 58 percent of its gasoline, 27 percent of its natural gas, and 26 percent of its diesel. Current fuel supplies? The target is 15 days' worth of fuels. Diesel supplies have fallen from 3 days' worth in June and July to only 2 days' worth in August, kerosene from 4 days' worth previously to 3, and gasoline from 3 days' worth in June to 2 days' worth in July to 1 day's worth of gasoline on hand right now. Thankfully, supplies of LPG (natural gas) have held steady: There was 1 day's supply in June, 1 in July, and 1 in August. • Electricity: The August 1-7 daily demand is 20 percent higher than during the same period last year. The daily supply is 12 percent lower. 43 percent of the total electricity demand is being met this year, compared with 58 percent last year. While temperatures are triple digit, Baghdad residents have only 4.9 hours of electricity a day right now, compared with a whopping 6.3 hours a day last August. Nationwide, Iraqis get 9.3 hours of power a day, compared with 10.7 last year. Imagine the political hell that's raised in this country when the trains stop running, the bridges fall down, or the power goes out. Multiply that by a thousand and you'll understand why outside of Baghdad, major trouble is brewing, especially in the Shi'ite stronghold of Najaf. Even the U.S. State Department's deliberately sunny weekly reports can't put a smile on what's going in northern and southern Iraq, where all the oil fields are. Quoting from the August 8 report: Najaf's unplugging of its power station from the national grid was a sign of provincial dissent over claimed unequal electricity distribution. The Shiite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), is leading the charge to form an autonomous "South of Baghdad Region", but 45 tribal notables in Najaf signed their own pact that envisions creating "the self-rule government of the unified Iraqi south."Regardless of which group wins out, Baghdad faces a challenge that could affect not just electricity, but also revenue from the region's ports and oil fields.
What about north of Baghdad, in the supposedly more stable Kurdish areas? More from the report: The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) parliament unanimously approved the autonomous region's oil law August 6, signaling that the Kurds are moving forward with their own petroleum policy as Iraq's federal oil plans languish in Baghdad. Kurdish Oil Minister Ashti Hawrami is quoted as saying the legislation will now go to the Kurdistan Regional Government's Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani. The minister said the petroleum law was done within the federal framework of the constitution and added that he remained hopeful that Baghdad would move forward with its long-stalled federal oil law, possibly in September.
The power outages and oil struggles are helping cause Iraq's government to short out. Once upon a time, Iraq's central government officials in Baghdad were firing subordinates. Now they're firing themselves. • Government: Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government is grinding to a halt. It can't even summon a minyan. Ayad Allawi, the ex-prime minister, announced August 7 that three of his party's cabinet ministers would no longer attend meetings. From our own State Department's August 8 report: This move brings to 15 the number of Iraqi ministers who have withdrawn from Maliki's cabinet, almost half of the 37 cabinet members, dealing a major setback for Maliki's efforts to achieve national reconciliation among the county's Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.
We've spent $450 billion on the Iraq Debacle — wait a sec, it's closer to $451 billion. Now climb aboard the Wayback Machine and go back just before the invasion of Iraq. These are the first two paragraphs of a February 28, 2003, New York Times story by Eric Schmitt: In a contentious exchange over the costs of war with Iraq, the Pentagon's second-ranking official today disparaged a top Army general's assessment of the number of troops needed to secure postwar Iraq. House Democrats then accused the Pentagon official, Paul D. Wolfowitz, of concealing internal administration estimates on the cost of fighting and rebuilding the country.
Mr. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, opened a two-front war of words on Capitol Hill, calling the recent estimate by Gen. Eric K. Shinseki of the Army that several hundred thousand troops would be needed in postwar Iraq, "wildly off the mark." Pentagon officials have put the figure closer to 100,000 troops. Mr. Wolfowitz then dismissed articles in several newspapers this week asserting that Pentagon budget specialists put the cost of war and reconstruction at $60 billion to $95 billion in this fiscal year. He said it was impossible to predict accurately a war's duration, its destruction and the extent of rebuilding afterward. In those heady days, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld displayed hubris that took your breath away. Now it's taken thousands of lives away. Neither would brook any criticism: Enlisting countries to help to pay for this war and its aftermath would take more time, [Wolfowitz] said. "I expect we will get a lot of mitigation, but it will be easier after the fact than before the fact," Mr. Wolfowitz said.
Mr. Wolfowitz spent much of the hearing knocking down published estimates of the costs of war and rebuilding, saying the upper range of $95 billion was too high, and that the estimates were almost meaningless because of the variables. Moreover, he said such estimates, and speculation that postwar reconstruction costs could climb even higher, ignored the fact that Iraq is a wealthy country, with annual oil exports worth $15 billion to $20 billion. "To assume we're going to pay for it all is just wrong," he said. At the Pentagon, Mr. Rumsfeld said the factors influencing cost estimates made even ranges imperfect. Asked whether he would release such ranges to permit a useful public debate on the subject, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "I've already decided that. It's not useful." Now, however, it's useful.
Posted by wharkavy at 9:53 AM
posted: 11:16 AM, August 8, 2007
by Harkavy
An ex-Little Leaguer's personal crusade.
Harkavy
If only Al Qaeda spokesman Azzam the American had been a good baseball player when he was growing up on a goat farm in California. That might have diverted his attention, and maybe he wouldn't have converted to a fanatical brand of Islam that led him overseas to become Al Qaeda's version of Tokyo Rose. Born Adam Gadahn in 1978 to a Jewish hippie originally named Phil Pearlman who had embraced Christianity, the kid was home-schooled in rural Riverside County. Get the details in a fascinating New Yorker profile of Gadahn by my ex-colleague Raffi Khatchadourian. Adam was a smart kid, but don't let that fool you. Ezra Pound, a brilliant hero of fellow writers, was also a crackpot anti-Semite. As for baseball, well, young Adam apparently wasn't very good, but at least he was faithful: When Adam was twelve or thirteen, he played Little League baseball. Carol Koltuniak, whose son was on the same team, remembered that Gadahn was quiet and easygoing but not a natural athlete. "He definitely didn't want to be doing what he was doing," she said. "He was very much a loner." But he was also persistent. Adam attended every practice and every game, accompanied by his family.
Years later, Gadahn is still striking out. This time he's swinging at "those infidels," meaning us. In a video released Sunday (only the latest of several from him since 9/11), Gadahn said: The killing of those infidels and the targeting of their dens [diplomatic missions] is a religious duty.
And from this supremely self-hating Jew — his grandfather, urologist Carl Pearlman, with whom he spent time, was a board member of the Anti-Defamation League — here's some more religious doody: The amount of respect we have for your international law is even less than the respect you hold for defined Sharia, and our observance of it is comparable to your observance of Sharia.
How can we comply with a law which contradicts divine law in whole and in part? How can we recognize a law which states that the embassy or consulate is for all intents and purposes an inviolable fortress which the host country has no right to enter or monitor and when our Sharia commands us to liberate every handspan of Islamic land occupied by the unbelievers? What is this, the Four Questions?
Posted by wharkavy at 11:16 AM
posted: 8:05 AM, August 7, 2007
by Harkavy
The performance of Britain's new PM gives a hint of what the post-Bush era may be like.
George W. Bush's British manservant, Tony Blair, i | |
