Tristero

Saturday, August 23, 2003

David Neiwert Hits One Out Of The Ballpark  

Dave's subject: the so-called "Bush haters."Just read it. Every single word of it. And it's all true.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:47 PM

U.S.-based Preachers Fanning Muslim Fundamentalism, Warns Bishop  

Here's one story that is destined to fall under the radar, despite the fact that in the spring a fellationic article praising "Christian" missionaries appeared as a Time Magazine cover story. As the the Bishop makes abundantly clear below, those missionaries are damn fools:

Preachers from U.S.-based religious sects are triggering a backlash of Muslim fundamentalism in Iraq, says the Latin-rite Catholic archbishop of Baghdad.

Archbishop Jean Benjamin Sleiman, who has stayed close to his people before, during and after the war, said that "Christian preachers have arrived … who want to convert the Muslims."

"They are those groups that harangue people on the streets and want money. They put a notice up anywhere and open a church," he told the Misna missionary agency. "They don't realize that they are creating an impossible atmosphere which, by offending the sensibility of the people, fosters the development of Shiite extremism..."

"I cannot see a political solution," Archbishop Sleiman said. "Despite all their analysts, Americans have not realized that Iraq is a much more complicated country than they imagined."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:38 AM

Blackout of '03 From Space  

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 12:54 AM

Must Read Article In The New York Observer  

There have been precious few cultural heroes during the Bush years. Colleen Rowley, Sherron Watkins, Brady Kiesling...Who else? I'm exempting the reporters who didn't sell out to Bush from consideration because as great as Krugman, et al are, they are doing their job. And professional politicians like Byrd are so compromised, it is impossible to divine their motives. No, I mean people who forthrightly stood up and said "No" to Bush's nonsense when they didn't have to and who are making a difference by being so principled. Here are four more heroes, a group of extraordinary women whose husbands died at WTC who are daring to ask the questions that everyone should have been asking within 24 hours of 9/11. as the article says, "They have no political clout, no money, no powerful husbands—no husbands at all since Sept. 11—and they are up against a White House, an Attorney General, a Defense Secretary, a National Security Advisor and an F.B.I. director who have worked out an ingenious bait-and-switch game to thwart their efforts and those of any investigative body." What they do have is intelligence and guts. Let's wish them the best of luck. For not only they, but the country deserves answers to the questions they are asking.

The director himself narrated a PowerPoint presentation that summarized the numbers of agents and leads and evidence he and his people had collected in the 18-month course of their ongoing investigation of Penttbom, the clever neologism the bureau had invented to reduce the sites of devastation on 9/11 to one word: Pent for Pentagon, Pen for Pennsylvania, tt for the Twin Towers and bom for the four planes that the government had been forewarned could be used as weapons—even bombs—but chose to ignore.

After the formal meeting, senior agents in the room faced a grilling by Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow whose cohorts are three other widowed moms from New Jersey.

"I don’t understand, with all the warnings about the possibilities of Al Qaeda using planes as weapons, and the Phoenix Memo from one of your own agents warning that Osama bin Laden was sending operatives to this country for flight-school training, why didn’t you check out flight schools before Sept. 11?"

"Do you know how many flight schools there are in the U.S.? Thousands," a senior agent protested. "We couldn’t have investigated them all and found these few guys."

"Wait, you just told me there were too many flight schools and that prohibited you from investigating them before 9/11," Kristen persisted. "How is it that a few hours after the attacks, the nation is brought to its knees, and miraculously F.B.I. agents showed up at Embry-Riddle flight school in Florida where some of the terrorists trained?"

"We got lucky," was the reply.

Kristen then asked the agent how the F.B.I. had known exactly which A.T.M. in Portland, Me., would yield a videotape of Mohammed Atta, the leader of the attacks. The agent got some facts confused, then changed his story. When Kristen wouldn’t be pacified by evasive answers, the senior agent parried, "What are you getting at?"

"I think you had open investigations before Sept. 11 on some of the people responsible for the terrorist attacks," she said.

"We did not," the agent said unequivocally.

A month later, on the morning of July 24, before the scathing Congressional report on intelligence failures was released, Kristen and the three other moms from New Jersey with whom she’d been in league sat impassively at a briefing by staff director Eleanor Hill: In fact, they learned, the F.B.I. had open investigations on 14 individuals who had contact with the hijackers while they were in the United States. The flush of pride in their own research passed quickly. This was just another confirmation that the federal government continued to obscure the facts about its handling of suspected terrorists leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks.

So afraid is the Bush administration of what could be revealed by inquiries into its failures to protect Americans from terrorist attack, it is unabashedly using Kremlin tactics to muzzle members of Congress and thwart the current federal commission investigating the failures of Sept. 11. But there is at least one force that the administration cannot scare off or shut up. They call themselves "Just Four Moms from New Jersey," or simply "the girls."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 12:40 AM

So, Womens' Rights Are Better In Afghanistan?  

Tell it to the 250 girls whose school was just burnt down:

Islamic extremists burned down a school for girls south of the capital and distributed letters threatening to kill anyone working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government, a senior Afghan military official said Friday. The Abu Sofian school, which was housed in a tent, was torched on Wednesday night in Logar province, 30 miles south of Kabul, said Gen. Hatiqulluh Luddin, a regional military commander. The school was closed for a monthlong holiday at the time and nobody was hurt.

He said authorities were still investigating the incident but blamed unnamed extremists in nearby villages.

Luddin said that another tented girls' school was burned down in a neighboring district two weeks ago.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 12:15 AM

Friday, August 22, 2003

Tomasky: Eight Major Iraq Lies  

A succinct list, in case one forgets, of what the Bush administration said:

1. It said Saddam Hussein was an imminent threat to the United States. He was not.

2. It said he sat on massive caches of weapons of mass destruction, which he was ready to employ at a moment's notice. He apparently did not and he obviously was not (or he would surely have used them when the infidels hit his soil).

3.It said regime change would be a cakewalk. It was for two weeks -- during which time the administration naturally showed the tastelessness to gloat about it -- but it sure isn't now.

4. It said our soldiers would be greeted as liberators. They were for about two days; now they're 'greeted' as occupiers.

5. It said it had a solid postwar plan. It didn't.

6. It said toppling Hussein would hem in terrorism. Instead, for now at least, terrorism has spread, as extremists of all stripes swarm into Iraq, where our soldiers are paying the price (four more were injured Wednesday morning, after the United Nations bombing).

7. It said the death of Hussein's sons would slow the bloodletting. Violence has increased (and the same will surely happen if Hussein himself turns up dead or captured).

8. It said we don't need more troops on the ground. A pipeline bombing and a hotel bombing later, it's pretty obvious that, as depressing as it is to contemplate, we need more troops on the ground.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 7:58 AM

Thursday, August 21, 2003

You Go, Girl!  

Straight to heaven:

When Sally Baron's family wrote her obituary, they described a northern Wisconsin woman who raised six children and took care of her husband after he was crushed in a mining accident.

She had moved to Stoughton seven years ago to be closer to her children and was 71 when she died Monday after struggling to recuperate from heart surgery. Her family had come to the question of what might be a fitting tribute to her.

'My uncle asked if there was a cause,' her youngest son, Pete Baron, said.

Almost in unison, what her children decided to include in the obituary was this: 'Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush.'

'She thought he was a liar,' Baron's daughter, Maureen Bettilyon, said.

A tip of the propeller to dear Atrios. How on earth does he find these things?

PS In case of my demise, in lieu of flowers go thou and do likewise.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 6:33 PM

MoveOn Raising $$ For The Texas Dems  

The Texas 11 are the Dems who are "in exile" to avoid an utterly unethical ploy to redistrict Texas in favor of the Republicans. MoveOn's raising money for ads to support them. They're nearly 43% towards their goal. Contribute as much as you can.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:10 PM

JoCo Has The Big Liars Running Scared  

First of all, pick up a copy of Joe Conason's great book, Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth. Do it now! Then read on:

Care of Kos comes this deliciously amusing tidbit

Tough-talking Ann Coulter wouldn't say a word last night.

At the last minute, the conservative pundit canceled her appearance opposite best-selling 'Big Lies' author Joe Conason on CNBC's 'Kudlow & Cramer' - this after having programmers change the debate to fit her schedule.

One might think the roundtable, which featured Wall Streeter James Cramer and Reaganite Lawrence Kudlow, would be a breeze for Coulter. Could she have been afraid of facing Conason, whose book presents evidence that her arguments are ill-researched and calls her lifestyle hypocritical?

Coulter didn't answer our E-mail.

Meanwhile, we hear fellow right-wing tough guy Bill O'Reilly won't even let Conason on his show.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:46 PM

Baghdad Is The Iliad Redux  

Dave Neiwert explains:

One of the key points to remember is the ease with which American forces took Baghdad and conquered the fleeing remnants of Saddam's army -- even at the time, many in the military thought this was 'surprising.' What has become self-evident since then is that it will be impossible to guard both the power lines and the pipelines that are essential to getting Iraq back up and running.

The picture of conflict that is beginning to emerge now suggests that this may have been Hussein's strategy all along: Draw the invaders in and let them believe they have conquered easily. Spread out and hide your forces. Then begin a steady trickle of guerrilla warfare. Attack the infrastructure, which will force the invaders to spread out their forces and thin them. When they become vulnerable, distracted and complacent, strike back and drive them out.

The notion that the fall of Baghdad was a Trojan Horse occurred to me a while ago as well. I expected the attacks to be more dramatic, however. Nevertheless, Saddam, and bin Laden, have the US military exactly where they want them: sitting ducks on hostile territory, with nary a friend in sight.
"
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:34 PM

Janklow Must Resign  

He was 20 mph over the speed limit when he killed a biker.

Rep. William J. Janklow (R-S.D.) was driving about 20 miles per hour over the speed limit, state police reported today, when he ran a stop sign and collided with a motorcycle, killing its rider, a military veteran.

Under intense media pressure to release its findings about last Saturday's fatal crash, the South Dakota Highway Patrol made public a post-accident report that concludes Janklow was driving his Cadillac at 70 to 75 mph at the time of the collision. The Harley-Davidson was moving at 50 to 55 mph, the police report said. The speed limit on the isolated rural roads where the crash occurred is 55 mph.

I wonder how long it will be before the Teddy comparisons start?
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 2:06 PM

Oh My Gawd  

TBOGG has the skinny:

Students in Texas public schools will be required to recite a pledge of allegiance to the Texas flag beginning in the 2003-2004 school year.

A new Texas law mandates that students recite the Texas pledge after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag.

link via Atrios
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:22 AM

Brady Kiesling  

Via the indispensable Cursor comes word of a new letter from Brady Kiesling printed in a Greek newspaper. I wonder how much play it will get in the United States.

[Kiesling] described US President George W. Bush as a "very weak" man led by the hand into battle by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld...

Kiesling -- whose warning that US aims in Iraq were "incompatible with American values" struck a chord with the predominantly anti-war Greeks -- described Bush as "a politician who badly wants to appear strong but in reality is very weak."

He said Rumsfeld led Bush by the hand into war, marginalized the secret services who had doubts about the war, and emerged as the top politician in Washington.

"Easy to convince, (Bush) blindly believed in Rumsfeld's assurances that the occupation of Iraq would pay for itself," Kiesling said.

"The longer we remain in Iraq, the more the resistance to the American presence is going to be a source of legitimacy for the extremists," he said. He called for an expanded role for the United Nations and the European Union in the reconstruction of Iraq.

Kiesling said he regretted that US intelligence services had not spoken out about untruths concerning Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which he added had humiliated the United States and damaged its closest ally, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

As of early morning, August 21, the entire text of the letter was not available online. If anyone finds it, I will post the entire letter.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:56 AM

Bob Herbert Channels Bob Dylan  

How long is it going to take for us to recognize that the war we so foolishly started in Iraq is a fiasco — tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much time and how much money and how many wasted lives is it going to take?

The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Update: Atrios weighs in on the Herbert article with a summary of his thoughts. I felt somewhat differently, namely that the US would conquer Iraq and drive Saddam out quickly, that it was a disaster from the getgo, that it would be impossible to win hearts and minds "Friedman style", no matter how many dollars Bush poured into Iraq, that the US would get bogged down in a guerilla war, and that Iraq would serve as a magnet for al Qaeda and other kinds of terrorists.

There is one thing I got spectacularly wrong, however. I more than suspected that Saddam was hiding vast quantities of WMDs which would be discovered within days of the invasion. (Obviously, I have no idea now as to whether any WMDs may be discovered. Neither does Bush. The difference is that Bush doesn't care.)
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:41 AM

Wednesday, August 20, 2003

MoDo On The Nose  

Oh, Mo, why couldn't you and yours seen what all of us who aren't professionals saw from the moment Iraq became a Bush obsession?

The Bush team has now created the very monster that it conjured up to alarm Americans into backing a war on Iraq...

We can't leave, and we can't stay forever. We just have to slug it out.

There's a word that sums up Iraq today with admirable succinctness.

Quaqmire.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:33 AM