Tristero

Saturday, December 13, 2003

Santorum's Victim And His Resilience  

Dave Neiwert, one of my favorite bloggers, is wrong for once. He should know better than to blame the victim. Here's what happened:

A fellow named Eric Blumrich created this flash animation which is, to say the least, a hardhitting condemnation of Bush's war. A dog named Misha saw it, then penned an open letter to Mr. Blumrich which was posted on his blog, The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler:

Here's a hint to you, Eric: The gov't can't do anything to you over that ad, but that's the extent of your protection under the First Amendment.

The rest of us, however, aren't the gov't, in case you've forgotten, and quite few of us would be more than happy to wipe that nervous little grin off your traitorous mug -- with a belt sander.

Not saying anything in specific, mind you, but we'd be damn careful about showing our face in public if we were you. You just never know who that perfect stranger behind you in that alleyway might be. Could be a sibling or other relative of one of the fallen soldiers that you just took a dump on the grave of, and G-d only knows what might happen then.

Eric may not be famous enough to be a pick for the 2004 Dead Pool, but there's another signed Imperial Mug for the first LC to inform me that Eric Blumrich has died in a "tragic" accident.

Accidents DO happen, you know, and that's the kind of news that would definitely make my entire day.

Misha, a resourceful critter, then scampered about the internet where he dug up Mr. Blumrich's home address and also, according to Mr. Blumrich, posted a map of his neighborhood with a red cross superimposed over his house. Also, according to Mr. B, who by this time was getting rather alarmed, Misha posted a second map which detailed the route from a local military base to Mr. B's house.

Dave Neiwert, but even more so for obvious reasons, Eric Blumrich, are outraged over what they perceive as Misha's death threat. After all, Misha wishes Mr. Blumrich dead, offers a prize to the first person who informs him of his death, and helpfully publishes information and maps in case someone wishes to locate Mr. Blumrich's abode.

But both Messrs Neiwert and Blumrich miss the obvious, which puts what would normally be a matter for the FBI in considerable perspective:

1. A dog can read and write English! That in and of itself is astounding but even more amazing is that

2. A dog is using the Internet! This used to be a joke. Remember this great cartoon?

Now, given that dogs are without a doubt very stupid animals, barely more intelligent than rodents or sheep, does it matter what a rottweiler actually writes? The fact that it can simply type should be cause for universal amazement -well, at least among humans.

However, once we get over our astonishment that at least one dog can express itself, more or less, in English, it does behoove us to look at what it actually says. Alas, what we find is more than sobering, but genuinely, pathetically sad.

Misha, the poor mongrel, is obviously insane, obsessed with murderous fantasies by proxy. How could a clearly remarkable animal, a dog that blogs, become so warped? After consulting with noted psychiatriasts such as Dr. Charles Krauthammer, I believe I have the inkling of an answer.

Given his proclivities, patently obvious on his blog, one can't escape the conclusion that Misha has been, shall we say, man's best friend to the likes of Senator Rick Santorum, who so memorably introduced man on dog sex into the national discourse. At the time, Republicans leapt to the defense of the hapless Senator, bravely asserting that what an adult dog and a human do in the privacy of their own kennel is nobody's business but their own.

Frankly, I never bought that argument and Misha is living proof. Clearly, he is not merely a literate dog. He is also a traumatized dog, a rottweiler whose very soul has been seared by the dreadful experience of inter-species homosexual rape. A dog made rabid by the unwelcome violation of his body by a lust-crazed Republican, whose normal doggy desires have been corrupted by a filthy pervert.

Misha's rage, while unmistakably subhuman and indisputably rabid, has all the hallmarks of certain human victims of sexual trauma who have a compelling need to lash back violently, indiscriminately, even murderously. That Misha clearly is not human should not deter us from labelling him from what he is: a victim of unspeakable sexual abuse by someone in the GOP. Perhaps, for all I know, Misha's rapist is Senator Santorum himself, the most prominent GOP leader to associate himself publicly with bestiality.

And so, David Neiwert, and you too Eric Blumrich, I say don't blame Misha The Raped Rottweiler for his murderous rage. Pity him instead, for the terrible memories he cannot escape, helplessly cringing on some Republican floor in some Republican town as some deranged Republican maniac lifted Misha's innocently wagging tail and... Well, I needn't go on for you can get all the details you want simply by visiting The Family Research Institute website, a pro Republican organization from Colorado Springs that distributes this very enlightening report.

But don't only pity Misha. You should admire him, an otherwise dumb dog that had enough, er... spunk to recuperate from its victimization and teach itself the basics of HTML.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:25 AM

Seraphiel's Daily Cartoon Roundup  

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posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:39 AM

Dean Is...William Jennings Bryan????  

Although Andrew Sabi thinks so but I don't, and neither does Southpaw. Southpaw discusses Bryan's travails as a presidential candidate, so go read him (he also says kind things about yours truly). Then, if you think that watching "Inherit the Wind" gave you deep insight into Bryan, Fundamentalism and the Scopes Trial, read Summer for the Gods, a terrific book on Scopes, Bryan, and Darrow. The truth is truly far more interesting and stranger than the fiction.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:24 AM

Science You Can Use  

NY Times:

A plastic bottle of Kabbalah water sells for $3.50. Cartons are stacked in the synagogue, so that when the Torah is read, the water absorbs the Torah's holy energy.

``Drinking it changes you on a molecular level,'' said a clerk standing in front of a wall-high display of the water near the entrance of the center's Manhattan building.

A recent meta-analysis of Kabbalah water studies proved conclusively that it improves the ability to read backwards, thereby increasing the facility of 12 year olds to study Hebrew for their Bar/Bat Mitzvah.

Currently, trials are under way to see if Kabbalah water can also serve as a treatment for dyslexia.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:02 AM

Friday, December 12, 2003

Two More U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq  

Plus attacks on Polish troops:

Insurgents detonated a bomb alongside a U.S. military convoy west of Baghdad on Friday, killing one soldier and wounding two others, the military said. Separately, another soldier died in Baghdad from what was described as a ``non-hostile'' gunshot wound.

The bomb attack occurred at 6:30 a.m. in Ramadi, about 60 miles west of the Iraqi capital, the U.S. Central Command said. One of the injured soldiers was evacuated to a combat hospital and died of his wounds. His name, and the names of the wounded, were withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Also Friday, a bomb made from a land mine exploded on the outskirts of the southern city of Mahaweel as a 19-person Polish convoy drove by Friday, wounding two soldiers.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:30 PM

Americans: Vote Like Canadians  

Robert Cringely has many excellent things to say about electronic voting technology.

Then he comes up with the absolute best solution to using modern technology for voting:

"First, the area where technology might be useful but isn't being used much, as far as I can tell, is voter validation.  This could be a pretty straightforward database application that simply ensures that people are who they say they are, and they only get to vote once.  The Help America Vote Act and its $3.9 billion don't touch this problem.  If I were even more of a cynic than I am, I might suggest that's because it is often easier to disenfranchise specific blocks of voters by losing or corrupting their registration data than any other way. 

As for voting itself, I think we have made a horrible decision to solve this problem with technology.  While the voting technology we have been considering is flawed, the best answer doesn't have to be some other voting technology that is somehow better.  We turn to technology because it supposedly eliminates human error.  I suggest that we add humans to the process in order to eliminate technological errors.  And we'd save a lot of money in the process.

My model for smart voting is Canada.  The Canadians are watching our election problems and laughing their butts off.  They think we are crazy, and they are right.

Forget touch screens and electronic voting. In Canadian Federal elections, two barely-paid representatives of each party, known as 'scrutineers,' are present all day at the voting place.  If there are more political parties, there are more scrutineers.  To vote, you write an 'X' with a pencil in a one centimeter circle beside the candidate's name, fold the ballot up and stuff it into a box.  Later, the scrutineers AND ANY VOTER WHO WANTS TO WATCH all sit at a table for about half an hour and count every ballot, keeping a tally for each candidate.  If the counts agree at the end of the process, the results are phoned-in and everyone goes home.  If they don't, you do it again.  Fairness is achieved by balanced self-interest, not by technology.  The population of Canada is about the same as California, so the elections are of comparable scale.  In the last Canadian Federal election the entire vote was counted in four hours.  Why does it take us 30 days or more?

The 2002-2003 budget for Elections Canada is just over $57 million U.S. dollars, or $1.81 per Canadian citizen.  It is extremely hard to get an equivalent per-citizen figure for U.S. elections, but trust me, it is a LOT higher.  This week, San Francisco held a runoff mayoral election that cost $2.5 million, or $3.27 per citizen of the city.  And this was for just one election, not a whole year of them.

We are spending $3.9 billion or $10 per citizen for new voting machines.  Canada just prints ballots.

No voting system is perfect.  Elections have been stolen and voters disenfranchised with paper ballots, too.  But our approach of throwing technology at a problem with a result that election reliability is not improved, that it may well be compromised in new and even scarier ways, and that this all costs billions that could be put to better use makes no sense at all.

He is 100% right.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:24 PM

Iraq: Is al-Sistani The Big Kahuna? Sure Seems So.  

Here's one that ain't in the NY Times. From English Al Jazeera:

Grand Ayat Allah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's highest-ranking Shia cleric, wants the United Nations to rule if early elections can take place in the country, in a new embarrassment to the US occupation authorities. 

Washington, which has decreed a lengthy delay before proper elections are held in 2005, can ill-afford to snub the religious leader of Iraq's majority community.

Strikes me we need to know a lot more about this fellow than we've been told.

Here's a recent, but sketchy profile. Currently, he's not actively opposed to the US occupation. Bush's hamhanded diplomacy and inability to tolerate a challenge to his authority should change that fairly soon, unfortunately.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:00 PM

Democrat Dean Tells Republicans: 'Bring It On'  

Damn, he's good at this:

Republican advisers regard [Howard Dean] as the probable Democratic nominee, vulnerable to attack as inexperienced in national security and running too far left in the primary campaign to make a credible change of course to win in November.

"If I may quote the president," Dean told reporters with a smirk, "Bring it on." He was paraphrasing Bush's much criticized "bring 'em on" challenge to insurgents in Iraq.

Anyone want to revise their opinion about what the Confederate Flag remark was all about?

Heh, heh.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:35 PM

Two Countries, Two Stories  

From the United States:

Afghan President Confident About Keeping Taliban at Bay

From England:

Video reveals Taleban regrouping.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:28 PM

Two Papers, Two Stories  

New York Times

Despite threats from the Taliban, thousands of people participated in selecting the 500 delegates from around the country who have gathered in Kabul this week for the constitutional convention, or loya jirga, [President Hamid Karzai] said.

"How come terrorism could not affect the participation of people in the elections of the loya jirga?" Mr. Karzai said. "How come they did not persuade them not to attend?"

LA Times

Sarobi is as populous as some of Afghanistan's smallest provinces, yet it has no delegates registered for the loya jirga , or grand assembly, that is due to begin Saturday. As in several other districts, many of the people chosen to elect Sarobi's delegates instead voted for candidates outside their district, sparking allegations of widespread vote buying...

Such disputes over the election of delegates and allegations of vote buying and intimidation are undermining the loya jirga 's credibility before it even begins to debate a draft constitution that is itself the subject of heated argument.

Afghan officials have reacted quickly to try to stem fears that the constitutional process will be viewed as illegitimate. An executive committee is investigating allegations of various irregularities and interim President Hamid Karzai has ordered that any improperly elected delegates be removed, even after the assembly begins its work, said Baheen Sultan Ahmad, head of media operations for the loya jirga commission...

Kabul's Dehsabz district, where at least 200,000 people live, also failed to get a delegate elected to the loya jirga even though it sent 51 electors to choose between just two candidates.

One of them was retired police officer Abdul Akbar Shahagha who, unlike others too frightened to speak, railed at warlords that he said stole votes from him with cash bribes to his district's electors.

"I saw people taking money in front of everybody, in broad daylight," Shahagha said. "I also saw people taking $50, $100, $150. I didn't bribe anyone. Otherwise I would have been the delegate myself."

Shahagha blamed the vote buying on warlords whom he wouldn't name because, like many Afghans, he fears they will come after him.

"The reality is that four warlords have created the situation and circumstances in order to get voters from other districts, since they didn't have anyone from their own to vote for them," Shahagha charged...

In Kabul's District 8 — a neighborhood of at least 160,000 people who live along rutted dirt streets, without electricity or running water — some claim that a mysterious Afghan American woman paid electors $300 each to vote for candidates outside their district.

District 8 sent about 78 electors, about 30 fewer than it could have, to Kabul's Ghazi Stadium on Monday to choose between two candidates, according to two electors who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.

The district's full quota of electors and candidates didn't show up, either because they were afraid or were paid not to, the two electors said.

The electoral rigging was led by two groups, the Jamiat-i-Islami of the Northern Alliance, headed by Defense Minister Mohammed Qassim Fahim, and radical Islamist Ustad Abdur Rasul Sayyaf's faction, the men charged. The factions took most, if not all, of Kabul's seats at the loya jirga , the men said...

The commission's failure to publicize even a tentative list of delegates only feeds Afghans' suspicions that their fates are in the hands of powerful puppet masters manipulating the loya jirga behind the scenes.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:23 PM

Same Day, Two Headlines  

U.S. General Says Coalition Is Choking Funds to Insurgency

Bremer Expects Rise in Violence as Iraq Builds Democracy
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:08 PM

Turkey Day Was Controlled Down To The Last GI And Giblet  

The Left Coaster alerts us to this Dana Millbank piece in WaPo:

Stars and Stripes, the Pentagon-authorized newspaper of the U.S. military, is bucking for a court-martial.

When last we checked in on Stripes, it was reporting on a survey it did of troops in Iraq, finding that half of those questioned described their units' moral as low and their training as insufficient and said they did not plan to reenlist.

With the Pentagon just recovering from that, Stars and Stripes is blowing the whistle on President Bush's Thanksgiving visit to Baghdad, saying the cheering soldiers who met him were pre-screened and others showing up for a turkey dinner were turned away.

So nothing was left to chance. Which means that during Mission Accomplished Day, probably nothing was left to chance either, despite what Bush claimed.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:58 PM

Iraq Contract Dispute: Why Shouldn't We Punish The Surrender Monkeys?  

Because it's just plain stupid, that's why:

Some folks seem to be under the misimpression that there's some clever bargaining going on here. There's not.

Think about it. The whole pot is about $20 billion. Let's imagine the French and the Germans both got fabulously lucky and their companies managed to land contracts for a billion a piece. Does anyone think that Germany or France are going to write off billions of dollars in Iraqi loans or invite a backlash from their anti-Iraq war publics by sending in some troops all for the privilege of having the French or German versions of Halliburton or Bechtel make a few million dollars?

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 2:46 PM

LA Times Gets It About Diebold  

Took everyone a while, didn't it?

Voters' rights cannot be guaranteed merely by installing jazzy machines with shiny new buttons. One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to recognize that the gadgets — as well as the people who build, program and operate them — need vigorous oversight.

If the owner of Diebold was a Democrat who said "I am committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the Democratic nominee next year," you'd be able to hear the Republicans howling "voter fraud!" even in Antarctica.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:29 AM

Is Bush Unelectable  

Pandagon believes that Bush is unelectable. I also believe he is unelectable.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:16 AM

Krugman Thinks Wolfowitz Is Deliberately Sabotaging Baker  

Maybe, but I think it looks more like simple incompetence.

Of course it could be both...

Mr. Wolfowitz's official rationale for the contract policy is astonishingly cynical: "Limiting competition for prime contracts will encourage the expansion of international cooperation in Iraq and in future efforts" — future efforts? — and "should encourage the continued cooperation of coalition members." Translation: we can bribe other nations to send troops.

But I doubt whether even Mr. Wolfowitz believes that. The last year, from the failure to get U.N. approval for the war to the retreat over the steel tariff, has been one long lesson in the limits of U.S. economic leverage. Mr. Wolfowitz knows as well as the rest of us that allies who could really provide useful help won't be swayed by a few lucrative contracts.

If the contracts don't provide useful leverage, however, why torpedo a potential reconciliation between America and its allies? Perhaps because Mr. Wolfowitz's faction doesn't want such a reconciliation...

[M]any insiders see Mr. Baker's mission as part of an effort by veterans of the first Bush administration to extricate George W. Bush from the hard-liners' clutches. If the mission collapses amid acrimony over contracts, that's a good thing from the hard-liners' point of view.

Bear in mind that there is plenty of evidence of policy freebooting by administration hawks, such as the clandestine meetings last summer between Pentagon officials working for Douglas Feith, under secretary of defense for policy and planning — and a key player in the misrepresentation of the Iraqi threat — and Iranians of dubious repute. Remember also that blowups by the hard-liners, just when the conciliators seem to be getting somewhere, have been a pattern.

There was a striking example in August. It seemed that Colin Powell had finally convinced President Bush that if we aren't planning a war with North Korea, it makes sense to negotiate. But then John Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control, whose role is more accurately described as "the neocons' man at State," gave a speech about Kim Jong Il, declaring: "To give in to his extortionist demands would only encourage him and, perhaps more ominously, other would-be tyrants."

In short, this week's diplomatic debacle probably reflects an internal power struggle, with hawks using the contracts issue as a way to prevent Republican grown-ups from regaining control of U.S. foreign policy. And initial indications are that the ploy is working — that the hawks have, once again, managed to tap into Mr. Bush's fondness for moralistic, good-versus-evil formulations. "It's very simple," Mr. Bush said yesterday. "Our people risk their lives. . . . Friendly coalition folks risk their lives. . . . The contracting is going to reflect that."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:07 AM

What Is The Plural of Madrasa?  

William Dalrymple, in a thoughtful and troubling essay about Pakistan in The New York Review of Books, alludes to a theme that I've been obsessing over since the 9/11 attacks: The ignorance of the non-Islamic world of Muslim countries.

Why is this important? I assume the reasons are obvious, but here's a problem I hadn't thought of, frankly. It is possible that the president of the United States met with people who have ties to groups the US has classified as terrorist organizations. To say the least, this level of ignorance is dangerous. *

Dalrymple lists many basic inaccuracies in a new book, Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, by Bernard-Henri Levy (known in the press as BHL) and points out, with justified indignation, to Levy's stereotyping of the Pakistani and his woeful ignorance of the complexities of Pakistani politics. He concludes:

It is an alarming reflection of how widespread is the ignorance of Islam in general and of Pakistan in particular that only one of the many reviews of the book that I have seen in the US, by a Pakistani writer, has called attention to BHL's errors and elisions, or even bothered to note his disturbing expressions of contempt for ordinary Pakistanis. If Islamic terrorism is to be defeated, its causes and terrorists themselves must first be clearly and objectively understood. Instead, Who Killed Daniel Pearl? is not only an insult to the memory of a fine journalist who refused to accept the sort of crude ethnic stereotyping that Lévy indulges in, and who was notably rigorous in checking his facts. It also shows the degree to which, since September 11, it has become possible for a writer to make inaccurate and disparaging remarks about Muslims and ordinary Pakistanis as if it were perfectly natural and acceptable to do so.

If only ignorance of Islamic issues was the province of pretentious French authors, I wouldn't be so worried. But, alas, that is not the half of it.

In an essay on neocon strategist Laurie Mylroie, Peter Bergen does a very good job of debunking her bizarre ideas. To be kind, Mylroie is paranoid in the way old style anti-communists were paranoid. Without a shred of real evidence, she believes that Saddam Hussein was behind such acts as the original truck bombing of the WTC as well as 9/11. She thinks that al Qaeda is little more than a front group for Saddam's efforts to destroy the US. Would that she was merely a kook; her views have been praised by folks like Perle, Woolsey, and many others in a position of power and influence.

What caught my attention was that Bergen makes a point of describing Mylroie as an important expert on Iraq and the Middle East:

Mylroie has an impressive array of credentials that certify her as an expert on the Middle East, national security, and, above all, Iraq. She has held faculty positions at Harvard and the U.S. Naval War College and worked at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as serving as an advisor on Iraq to the 1992 Clinton presidential campaign. During the 1980s, Mylroie was an apologist for Saddam's regime, but reversed her position upon his invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and, with the zeal of the academic spurned, became rabidly anti-Saddam. In the run up to the first Gulf War, Mylroie with New York Times reporter Judith Miller wrote Saddam Hussein and the Crisis in the Gulf, a well-reviewed bestseller translated into more than a dozen languages.

Something troubled me about this description when combined with Mylroie's ideas. So I wrote Peter Bergen and asked him whether Mylroie knew Arabic and, in particular, whether she knew how to read and write the dialects in use in Iraq. He was gracious enough to write back and said that while he didn't know for certain as she declined to be interviewed, he suspected that she could not. I suspect he is right.

Think about it. A person described as an "expert" on the Middle East, who deeply influences American foreign policy, cannot, in all likelihood, read or speak the languages of the countries in which she claims a high level of expertise.

If, perchance you think this is unimportant, that responsible translators can provide whatever a scholar needs, I can tell you that there is no possible way that someone else's translation would provide any real scholar with genuine knowledge of the original text, especially in a language so radically different from English as Arabic. In researching a piece that required English translations of the Qur'an, I consulted four different translations and acquired two concordances of the text. The differences in each version, both in nuance and substance, were profound.

It is inconceivable that a scholar who cannot read the Qur'an in the original language would have any idea of how to interpret it in a sophisticated manner, no matter how reliable and how often s/he relies on a translator. In the case of modern texts, such as goverment documents, speeches, newspapers, broadcasts and the like, the problem is compounded. Since Arabic sounds quite different than English and uses a script very different than the Roman alphabet, a person illiterate in Arabic simply has no way, without a mediator, to know whether a given newspaper article has a sentence that could be useful, or if a broadcast on, say, a relatively minor event like a shortage of parts for tractors in a province, points to wider economic problems.

Even more to the point, interpersonal communication at a sophisticated and/or informal level is all but impossible, especially with Arabic speakers who cannot speak English. Anyone who has gone abroad and conducted business through translators knows that understandings can be reached, but that crucial information about intentions, emphases, etc. are often entirely missed.

A Middle East "scholar" who cannot speak Arabic cannot honestly claim to be an expert on the Middle East, any more than a person blind from birth can claim expert knowledge about Vermeer's art.

I believe that there is no American that influenced Bush administration policy in Iraq that has even a passing acquaintance with the Arabic language, including Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith, Shulsky, Bolton and of course their superiors, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell, and Bush himself. As far as I know, the only high level official who can speak Arabic is General John Abizaid, who didn't assume his duties as Central Commander until July of this year. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that their assistants and aides are, for the most part, illiterate in Arabic. And I'd wager that none of them have troubled to read the Qur'an and, in addition, the crucial Hadith, without which one cannot even begin to understand Islam or Islamism, even in translation.

But it gets worse, believe it or not.

I know of only two major journalists, Tom Friedman, and Christiane Amanpour, who can speak Arabic. The American-born Friedman admits his knowledge is imperfect while Amanpour, who was born in Iran, is presumably fluent.** Apparently, even Peter Bergen, who certainly has some serious credentials including an interview with bin Laden in 1997 and much research in situ, uses a translator.

I'm sure there are other journalists and lower level people in the government familiar with Arabic. However, the number of Arabic- literate people in the military and in our intelligence agencies is woefully small.

What is most troubling, however, is that US foreign policy in the Middle East, South Asia and the rest of the Islamic world relies upon the opinions of experts who are experts in only one thing: English translations whose accuracy they are incapable of verifying for themselves.

Knowledge of Arabic, of course, is not sufficient to claim expertise on Islam and Arabic matters. But like it or not, it is vitally necessary. Dalrymple is right: The Western world's ignorance, and especially the US's ignorance, is cause for alarm.


PS And what is the plural of madrasa? It's madaris but English journalists typically write madrasas. If you don't know what a madrasa is, go read the Dalrymple piece linked to at the beginning of this post.

*Admittedly, Frank Gaffney is less than reliable; even I could find a serious problem of fact in his article: his description of the charges against the Gitmo chaplaim, James Yee, are inaccurate. However, that there should even be any question that people who met the president might have terrorist ties is beyond the pale of acceptable security.

**[UPDATE:] A correspondent - who will hopefully give permission to print the entire letter - informed me that while Iran uses Arabic script, they speak Farsi and that knowledge of Arabic is not to be assumed of Iranians. This, of course, illustrates my own ignorance about Iran and I am very glad to be corrected. Unfortunately, I suspect that Ms. Mylroie and Messrs Perle and Wolfowitz are capable making the same error. The difference is that they are in a position to create serious problems for the world while I, thankfully, am not.

[UPDATE]: Apparently, I'm not the only one who noticed accuracy problems with Gaffney's article:

The essays condemning Grover Norquist as a "fifth columnist" have suddenly vanished from David Horowitz's Front Page Web site. I could find no explanation on the site for their sudden disappearance. But a Norquist associate told me yesterday that Horowitz admitted he hadn't "fact-checked" the voluminously detailed charges made by Norquist's would-be nemesis, Frank Gaffney.

Stay tuned...
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:11 AM

Well! Finally Someone Woke Up.  

Barbara Boxer will introduce a paper receipt for electronic voting bill.

There are legitimate difficulties in getting this up and running by 2004, mainly because no one took this seriously until this fall, but so what? It has to happen.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:35 AM

Thursday, December 11, 2003

The Anti-Terror March In Baghdad Had Lotsa Commies  

Great job, Kynn. This has become a cause celebre of the right: how come the mainstream media didn't cover the anti-terror demo in Baghdad y'day?

Well, I hate to tell you this, Mr/Miss/Mrs. Rightypants, but the February 15 anti-war marches around the world, and the follow-up on the eve of war in March, weren't covered very well either. In fact, Fox pointedly ignored American demos, as did many of the talk shows on the networks. And I caught the NY Times, that liberal/pinko rag shrinking the number of protestors as their coverage of it continued.

Anyway, there were communists involved in the anti-terror march in Baghdad. The right objected loudly to commies when they marched against the war. They don't mind them now that they're on the same side as the Bushies. Kynn has the whole story so go there.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:45 PM

New Koufax Awards Are Out  

These are blogging awards for Left Blogistan. The info on them is here. I sent my nominations in. By the way, I didn't nominate myself for two reasons. One, it seems like an icky thing to do. Two, there are so many better people writing. If I come up with an occasional insight that others can use, great, but folks like Atrios, Jeanne d'Arc, Digby, and Kevin Drum are the gold standard in my book. Not to mention all the other fine writers who I haven't mentioned.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:38 PM

Et Tu, Wall Street Journal?  

I've been dying to post about the "awkward position" that those masters of foreign policy, the Bushites, have found themselves in. But I saw something in the Wall Street Journal this morning about it which was by far the funniest article on the topic. You can't get it online, so I had to wait to get it. Finally, MSS, who has an online subscription, emailed it to me. Herewith some excerpts. Check out this lead: the reporters can barely contain their (justifiable) contempt for Bush.

The Bush administration says it wants help in Iraq, but somehow it can't stop infuriating the countries that could shoulder more of the load.

The latest provocation came this week, with the Pentagon's decision to bar Iraq-war opponents including France, Germany, Russia and Canada from bidding on $18.6 billion in prime contracts for Iraq reconstruction. The reaction from those governments, which said they hadn't been briefed on the decision, was one of unalloyed fury.

And here, heh heh, they nail the Bushite mindset perfectly; Bush and Co. truly believe they are the parents who have to teach the rest of the world a lesson:

The White House scrambled to defend the policy Wednesday as part just deserts [sic] and part inducement for better behavior.

And with the sociopathic lack of concern for other peoples' views that characterizes everything Bush does, he was apparently surprised by the reaction of the other countries' leaders:

President Bush heard the complaints first hand when he called the leaders of France, Germany and Russia to ask them to forgive Iraq's official debt. Speaking privately, officials said that the timing and tone was disastrous and certain to make it much harder to pry troops, aid or debt-forgiveness out of furious allies.

And yes, they all thought it was a good idea to punish the naughty children who said the Emperor had no clothes. Even the designated reasonable Bushie agreed:

U.S. officials said Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz drove the decision, but that the rest of the Bush national-security team, including Secretary of State Colin Powell, signed off on the general idea with little objection.

Bush wasn't the only one caught offguard; they're all clueless:

Officials acknowledged Wednesday that they were surprised by the fierceness of the European response...

Now, look, the countries that didn't go along with Bush aren't stupid. They knew they wouldn't get any spoils from the war. But the Bushites went out of their way to humiliate these countries:

[The Pentagon memo] portrayed the exclusion of U.S. allies as "necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States." Some officials said that the wording was intended to head off any legal claims. But others said that Pentagon aides had argued in private meetings that they couldn't be sure that French and Russian contractors -- some with a long history of dealing with Saddam Hussein -- wouldn't be infiltrated by anticoalition spies, although no one expected the Pentagon to even hint at it publicly.

It was that purported threat to security that seemed to trouble European officials most. "The decision itself is not a surprise," said Karsten Voigt, coordinator of U.S.-German relations in the German Foreign Ministry. "But to announce it in such a way, with such argumentation, I find not only strange, but not the best expression of political wisdom."

That is quite the understatement.

So why did they behave so stupidly? Simple. They think they have nothing to lose:

U.S. officials say they aren't sure whether that fundamental trust between Mr. Bush and the French, in particular, can ever be restored.

Probably true, but one would wonder why any country should have a "fundamental trust" in the US ever again. Given that a George W. Bush became president once, what's to stop the US from doing the same in the future? (See here for longer discussion of this point.)

And finally, the sentence that caused me to spew coffee about the kitchen table this morning:

Some of the international furor may be a bit overblown.

Get it?

"Some" of the furor "may" be "a bit" overblown. But in fact, some of the furor with Bush is well deserved.

By the way, Bush has a habit of infuriating everyone. And for the most part, no one outside the US wants to play ball with him. Remember this one? Or this?

What a joke.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:26 PM

Dean's Importance  

Kos is absolutely right. This op-ed by Harold Myerson gets the Dean phenomena exactly right. The whole thing is worth reading but here are some choice nuggets:

Disastrously, it's been the Democrats in Congress who've been the slowest to pick up on their new marginality. Some of the Democrats who voted to authorize the Iraq war in October 2002 did so -- or say they did so -- in hopes of prodding Bush to embrace a more multilateral approach toward Iraq.

Call this the Tony Blair Fallacy -- both the prime minister and our own legislators failed to realize that Bush wanted only their permission, not their advice.

And Bush thought he was just being extra-polite to ask, because he never thought he had to ask anybody for permission to go to war. But to return to Mr. Myerson:

While the nation's Democratic leaders were unable to understand just how marginal they'd become, however, millions of rank-and-file Democrats and just plain disgruntled Bush-haters intuitively grasped what was going on. Bush was bent on repealing the New Deal and replacing the internationalist order that the United States had erected after World War II with a more nationalist vision of his own. If you weren't with him, you were against him. And he was against you.

Howard Dean's initial appeal has been to those Americans who always knew they were on the margins of George Bush's America. Not the socioeconomic margins, not the African American and Latino communities, but the political, cultural and existential margins -- the young, urban, white middle class in particular...They shared a set of beliefs on which they'd never before had an opportunity to act collectively...

Alone among the serious Democratic candidates [Dean] understood that the party was shirking its obligation to oppose -- indeed, that the grass roots was furious at the failure of its leaders to realize this...

Can a band of outsiders beat George W. Bush? Clearly, the congressional wing of the Democrats can only benefit from embracing its outsider status, but is the same true for the aspiring presidential wing? There are limits to the Meetup approach to building a presidential majority, but no one's ever tried it before, and we don't know what those limits are.

Indeed there are limits, so what Dean has done simply must be supported by the rest of the party.

If they don't, if the Democrats cannot retake the House, the Senate or the presidency, given the atrocious record of the Bush administration to run against, then this grass root will never vote for a Democrat qua Democrat again. I will only vote for a candidate endorsed by MoveOn or a similar organization - who may or may not have ties to a particular party.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:22 PM

Bad Medicine  

Guess who's gonna get rich off the new medicare bill? Why none other than longtime Bush friends and contributors. CAP has the skinny:

Bush is close friends with David Halbert – CEO of AdvancePCS. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on 8/18/02 "before starting what would become AdvancePCS, David Halbert helped clean up a deal with Harken Energy that had prompted an SEC investigation of George W. Bush." After the investigation, Halbert then invited Bush to become one of the original investors in AdvancePCS – a transaction that made the President up to $1 million .

BUSH NOW PAYS BACK HIS COMPANY IN KIND: Soon after assuming the Presidency, Bush paid Halbert back in kind – soliciting his help in writing the 2001 drug discount card proposal that is now part of the new Medicare law. Halbert brags about the complicity, saying the White House specifically asked him to help write parts of the plan...

The drug discount cards may not be great news for seniors – but they are terrific news for giant PBMs [pharmaceutical benefit management companies]. AdvancePCS, along with four other companies, controls " 80% of the PBM market and up to 90% of the mail-order pharmacy business...

AdvancePCS has already faced lawsuits over market manipulation in the past, "by failing to disclose the extent of their financial ties with manufacturers." And the AARP sued them last year, accusing "AdvancePCS in court of not only 'illicitly diverting' seniors from its drug-discount plan, but of actually putting them at risk for potentially dangerous drug interactions ..."

Despite these lawsuits, the White House is further rewarding AdvancePCS by refusing to require that they pass along any savings on drug prices to seniors...

According to the Center for Public Integrity , "in 1986... Harken's CEO introduced Bush, the company's new director and consultant—as well as son of then-Vice President George Bush--to a little startup health-care company. He put in a modest investment, and a few years later walked away with a six-figure windfall." That company was David Halbert's, and eight years later, when Bush was running for Texas governor and scrambling for campaign cash," the company came through. "In 1994, when the company was known as Advance Health Care and Bush was making his first run for Texas governor, those insiders gave him $23,700 for his first gubernatorial run, including $14,500 from Halbert, his brother, Jon, their father and their wives."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:37 PM

Unelectable  

Unelectable.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:22 PM

The Party Of Terrorism, Formerly The Party Of Liberalism  

Dave Neiwert points us to an ugly meme that is being circulated by the right:

Of course, Al-Qaeda and every other major terrorist organization are also rooting for a Democratic victory over President Bush. Do we see a disturbing pattern here? A vote for the Democrats in 2004 is a vote for Al Qaeda.

Now the self-styled "American" Daily is a far right publication, but this is not the first time this kind of nastiness has surfaced, trying to draw parallels and associations between al Qaeda and the Democratic Party.

The National Review, considered for some reason to be a "respectable" magazine published comments by Jed Babbin, deputy undersecretary of defense from Bush I. He insinuated that Democrats are rooting for an al Qaeda attack by preparing to take political advantage of it, should it occur:

We are vulnerable, and any new attacks will be designed to do two things. First, they will be planned to interfere with Mr. Bush's reelection. That means the terrorists will attempt to cause very large numbers of casualties again, or a land a huge blow on our economy, or both. The most recent warnings that al Qaeda may be able to use WMD against us in the continental U.S. is simply a recognition of reality.


If such an attack succeeds, the Democrats have been positioning themselves to benefit from it. All the talk of inadequate funding for homeland security — as if pouring money on Rainbow Tom Ridge will solve anything — is a predicate to their strategy. Bush will be blamed for protecting us inadequately. If the damage is sufficiently severe, and the economy tanks, they may even try to impeach him. If you think they can't do that, think again. [emphasis added]

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:40 AM

From Marshall To Friedman, Via Jack And Shelley  

In 1953, George Marshall, he of The Marshall Plan, won the Nobel Peace Prize. Today in the Times the fellow who helped draft General Marshall's acceptance speech wrote a fine essay, with a superb quote from from the speech:

Never one to shy from controversy, early in the speech Marshall addressed the issue of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a soldier, which had generated some comment in the press. "I know a great deal of the horrors and tragedies of war," he said, noting that he was chairman of the commission that supervised the construction of American military cemeteries overseas. "The cost of war in human lives is constantly spread before me, written neatly in many ledgers whose columns are gravestones."

These words are about as perfect an image as have been written about war; the use of the driest of metaphors, an accounting ledger, is imbued with suffering and tears. And there is an association, clearly intentional, with the economics of the reconstruction of Europe, over which Marshall presided. There is an implication of sorts of an attempt not to balance the books of war with financial aid - an impossibility - but to acknowledge and address a moral and emotional deficit the conquerors owed the conquered, no matter how worthy the conqueror's cause.

O, Discourse, how Protean thy character, who fits Herself so admirably to the glories or cruelties of an epoch! For, on the same page, Tom Friedman reaches for a very different metaphor to describe a very different war:

Whenever I think of President Bush's invasion of Iraq, the image that comes to mind is that famous scene in the movie "The Shining" where Jack Nicholson, playing a crazed author, tries to kill his wife, played by Shelley Duvall, who's hiding in the bathroom. As Ms. Duvall cowers behind the locked bathroom door, Mr. Nicholson takes an ax, smashes it through the door, and with a look of cheery madness peers through the splintered wood and announces, "Heeeere's Johnny."

That's the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Indeed it is.

And, appallingly, Marshall's eloquence has no place in discussing it.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:53 AM

The Perfect Christmas Present  

A totally authentic, gold-plated Bush coin:





posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:37 AM

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Delusions in Baghdad  

Superb roundup of what's going on in Iraq from Mark Danner in The New York Review of Books
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:54 PM

Iraq: New Top Dog Named Blackwill  

I usually link only to major news sources, but if Debka is right, Bremer has a new Bremer, Robert D. Blackwill, deputy national security adviser:

It is a well-kept secret in Washington and Baghdad that the silver-haired, bespectacled Blackwill (whose name is often misspelled Blackwell), actually outranks Bremer. He was entrusted with providing the President with a direct assessment feed on the situation in the Red Zones – or Iraqi areas – as well as on the performance level of the US-appointed Iraq Governing Council and of Bremer himself....

[Blackwill] is the fifth strategist the administration has put into Iraqi this year. Former Central Command head General Tommy Franks led the way, followed by Bremer’s predecessor, Jay Garner, General John Abizaid, who succeeded Franks and Bremer himself. Vice President Dick Cheney, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, have all tried their hand. None have come up with a fast cure for the ongoing and increasingly complex Iraq war...

Bush... moved forward with a step that has begun the process of eroding the authority of Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz in the conduct of civic and political issues in Iraq.

Within days of his arrival in Baghdad, Blackwill made two major recommendations to the President and Bremer, according to DEBKA-Net-Weekly ’s Washington and military sources.

The first , that the US administrator’s handpicked 25-member Iraqi Governing Council served no useful purpose and should be dissolved forthwith, ahead even of the transfer of sovereignty next June.

The second , that the US military command’s tactics for fighting the pro-Saddam insurgency and its imported allies including al Qaeda and associated terrorists, are misconceived and should be revised.

While minimizing casualties is necessary and laudable, that alone is no way to win a war, said Blackwill. He went on to put his finger on what he regards as the real problem: Not just American losses, but the increasing number of Iraqis killed and maimed every day, both at the hands of Saddam’s guerrillas and marauding criminal gangs. This figure while unpublished is staggering. Blackwill finds that the steeply rising Iraqi civilian casualty toll is instilling in the country the sense that the United States is incapable of bringing security to Iraq. More and more Iraqis are consequently volunteering to join up with Saddam Hussein’s forces.

His advice therefore was for American troops to spread out in large units in the streets of the towns and villages to protect the Iraqi population and enforce law and order. As long as they sit behind concrete blast walls, American forces cannot expect to be respected or obeyed, he concluded.

The time has come, says Blackwill, to start counting how many Iraqis are dying for lack of order and security – not just Americans.

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly ’s military sources, Bremer sat down with Sanchez to try and persuade him to turn over a new tactical leaf in line with Blackwill’s recommendations to the President. The furious general refused point blank.

Assuming that Debka's story is accurate -not necessarily a foregone conclusion, as they have been less than accurate in the past, but sometimes they are highly accurate - there is so much wrong with Blackwill's plans that the mind boggles.

First, if the IGC is dissolved, there is not even the pretense of a government beginning to be formed.

As for GI's as Iraqi cops, let's just say that Blackwill's nuts. They are not trained to be cops and don't know how to do that job without over - or under- reacting. Second, with GI's spread far too thin as it is, to spread them even thinner is to place them in extreme jeopardy with absolutely no chance whatsoever that the situation will get safer.

And that doesn't touch on all the other problems, like the fact that you can't be an effective cop unless you know the neighborhood you're patrolling and speak the language. Neither of which is true of most GI's in Iraq.

What is the solution? Well, you know my answer by now.

No solution has a chance to work until Bush is out of office and the UN or some other agency is actively involved. Both must happen. Until then, meaning January 2005 at the earliest, we just have to wait and pray that the situation doesn't get even worse.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:27 PM