Happy Halloween

More time away

Yes, I'm still alive; just busy with other stuff. I hope to resume blogging a little later in the week. Maybe Wednesday...

I'm going through my email slowly, so don't fret if you haven't heard from me in a bit. I'll get to you soon.

A Break

I'll be away from my 'puter and blog for about a week. So until then...

On to Syria!

Sayeth the Prince of Darkness:

Pentagon adviser Richard Perle said Tuesday that the recent Israeli attack on an alleged training camp for Palestinian militants in Syria was long overdue and that he would not rule out U.S. military action against the Arab state.

Perle, a close adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, spoke at a Jerusalem conference of conservatives from the United States and Israel.

"President Bush transformed the American approach to terrorism on Sept. 11, 2001, when he said he will not distinguish between terrorists and the states who harbor them," Perle said.

"I was happy to see that Israel has now taken a similar step in responding to acts of terror that originate in Lebanese territory by going to the rulers of Lebanon in Damascus."

...Perle said it would not be difficult to commit forces to Syria despite heavy U.S. troop commitments to Iraq and the Korean peninsula, along with a continued presence in areas such as the Balkans and Liberia.

"Syria is militarily very weak," he said.

And we know the US military only likes to pick on the little guys...

Liberal TV? Not a chance.

Al Gore is trying to start up a liberal news channel, in part as a counter to Fox News' tremendous sway. He is being advised, however, that "Liberal TV is dead on arrival."

Why? Because of the second filter of the propaganda model, of course.

Holy Blown Batcover!

Some quick hits

* The "axis of evil" is back - and in expanded form.

* "A quiet revolution is taking place in US politics," writes the Independent's Andrew Gumbel. "By the time it's over, the integrity of elections will be in the unchallenged, unscrutinised control of a few large - and pro-Republican - corporations."

* Iraqis are losing faith in the US. Amongst the Americans, you can find confused, triggerhappy soldiers, alarming rates of suicide, and a newfound policy of collective punishment.

* Speaking of collective punishment, Israel's latest incursion into the Gaza strip killed 8 Palestinians and has left 1,200+ homeless.

* In related news, Mother Jones reports on the 27 Israeli airforce pilot "refuseniks."

* Yesterday, Bush paid respect to the "sacrifices" of soldiers just before going off to play a nice round of golf with his "buddies." How symbolic.

* Oh, and what's up with Bush's returning halo?

Iran's next on the hit parade?

Israel is planning to launch an attack on Iran's nuclear sites, according to Ha'aretz.

And, just on cue, it's now apparent that Israeli submarines have nuclear launch capabilities.

The Observer notes that this "sea-launch capability gives Israel the ability to target Iran more easily should the Iranians develop their own nuclear weapons."

Update: The AP reports that several Israeli and defense experts have dismissed the idea that Israel is capable of making the nuclear alterations to submarines outlined in the stories above.

Update II: Israel's threats to attack Iran were a bluff in order to "focus the attention of the international community on the dangers of Iranian nuclear weapons development," the Washington Times reports.

Good vs. Bad News

"The latest ploy of the Bush administration is to claim that journalists are presenting a distorted picture of Iraq and that things over there are much better than you would think from the news coverage," writes Charley Reese. "This is clever, because like all good propaganda it contains an element of truth."

He continues,

It's true that some Iraqis like Americans. It's true that some Iraqis hate Americans. It's true that some Americans are doing good deeds. It is also true that some Americans are killing innocent people and stealing personal property in the homes they search. It's true that some Iraqis wave and smile. It's true that some Iraqis give Americans the middle-finger salute. It's true that there is a guerrilla war going on. It's true that efforts are being made to rebuild the Iraqi infrastructure. In short, the "truth" about Iraq is as complex as the country itself and is impossible for one reporter to convey.

To get as complete a picture of Iraq as possible, you have to read reports from many different sources. You can do that on the Internet. You can read British and French accounts. You can read pieces by Arab reporters. You can read reports by American peace activists in Iraq. Don't expect to find a single "objective" source. Objective journalism is another contradiction in terms. All journalism is subjective, because reporters have no choice but to filter what they learn through their own matrix of experiences, knowledge, attitudes and, yes, prejudices, not to mention the prejudices of their bosses.

Excellent points, of course.

It's nonetheless hard to spin news like the retraction of aid workers, the growing discontent amongst Shi'ites, and the further collapse of Iraq's economy as positive developments. Pro-warriors can look for gems amongst the rubble, but I suspect that this call for positive spin is driven more by their inability to come to grips with the overwhelming tenor of the poor news coming out of the country.

Red Cross criticizes Guantanamo holdings

The International Committee of the Red Cross has issued a challenge to the way the Guantanamo Bay prison facility is being run by the US government, specifically criticizing the fact that more than 600 prisoners are being held for open-ended terms without access to formal legal channels.

Global warming kills 160k a year

A joint study by the WHO and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has found that nearly "160,000 people die every year from side-effects of global warming ranging from malaria to malnutrition and the numbers could almost double by 2020."

U.S. May Expand Access To Endangered Species

More Orwellian policy: wildlife exploitation is in the best interest of wildlife, according to the Bush administration.

Astroturf from soldiers

A Gannett News Service investigation has found a bunch of identical letters to the editor in local newspapers allegedly from soldiers in Iraq. The letters describe the situation over there in generally rosy terms, at one point asserting that the "quality of life and security for the citizens has been largely restored, and we [the US military] are a large part of why that has happened."

As of now, it's not clear who is behind this campaign to publish the letters.

Update: This story has since blown up and made its way into the mainstream media. Apparently, the commander of the 503rd Infantry has fessed up to authoring the letter.

Plamegate, cont'd

Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan has asked Karl Rove to resign over the Plame scandal.

Conyers charges in a letter addressed to "Bush's Brain" that "while you may or may not have been the source of the Robert Novak column which revealed the status and name of a covert operative...you were involved in a subsequent effort to push this classified information to other reporters and give it even wider currency. This itself may be a federal crime, but regardless of that fact, your actions are morally indefensible. In my view, it is shameful and unethical that an Administration that promised to govern with 'honor and integrity' and 'change the tone' in Washington has now engaged in an orchestrated campaign to smear and intimidate truth-telling critics, placing them in possible physical harm and impairing the efforts and operations of the CIA."

In a related story, Warren P. Strobel of Knight Ridder elaborates on just how much damage the Plame leak might have caused.

Update: The Washington Post keeps on top of the Plame scandal with this story from Sunday's edition. Amongst a variety of clarifying details, the piece again confirms the point that 6 journalists were solicited by "two top White House officials" with Plame's identity before Bob Novak's now infamous column.

Taking aim at Chavez?

Is the US plotting to murder Venezuela’s president? That's what many people affiliated with Hugo Chavez are concerned about.

Chavez has already cancelled a trip to NY in recent weeks, allegedly over concerns that his plane might be brought down, and his supporters are growing more vociferous in their accusations that the CIA is trying to subvert his government and foment violence within Venezuela.

Impeach Bush Now

"Why aren't Americans talking seriously about impeachment?" asks John MacArthur.

"After all, Mr. Bush now stands plausibly accused of the lofty crime of subverting the Constitution of the United States -- that is, lying to Congress about an imminent danger to the American people in order to collect enough votes to authorize his corporate/imperial project in Iraq. Yet, outside of a few brave remarks from Senator Robert Graham, and the considered opinion of Watergate stool pigeon John W. Dean, almost nobody dares speak the 'I' word."

A "war in search of a reason"

Set your VCRs!

As the White House launches its latest PR blitz to convince Americans that all is going well in Iraq -- no matter what the media say -- along comes "Frontline" to spoil things. PBS's eminent investigative series kicks off its new season tonight with a devastating documentary on how the Bush administration sold the war and got rid of Saddam Hussein (well, almost) but seems to have overlooked the need for a plan after declaring victory.

"Truth, War and Consequences" (check local listings) paints administration officials as dissemblers as well as arrogant conquerors who paid no heed to warnings about the collapse of security after the Iraq war. Whatever your politics and opinions about the war, this documentary is must viewing for those who seek to understand why the early scenes of liberation have given way to nearly daily reports of attacks against occupying troops.

The 90-minute program, reported by Martin Smith, essentially concludes this was a war in search of a reason. The terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, delivered one. In Smith's telling, a secretive unit in the Pentagon slanted the intelligence on Hussein's alleged weapons of destruction, relying on less-than-objective reports from Ahmed Chalabi's exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which has been agitating to overthrow Hussein's government for more than a decade.

Update: For anyone interested, or those that didn't get a chance to catch it, you can watch the full program online, here.

Lying about Iraqi reconstruction

"The Iraq reconstruction will pay for itself." This was the line parroted before the war, in order to shush away any questions about how much the invasion and occupation would cost. This has since been unveiled as totally unrealistic and -- surprise, surprise -- fraudulent.

The NY Times reports:

The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials.

The task force, which was based at the Pentagon as part of the planning for the war, produced a book-length report that described the Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent, panel members have said.

Despite those findings, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that "we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Taking over

The White House is now going to micromanage the reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the NY Times.

Selling to the terrorists?

Oh, this is classic:

The Pentagon could inadvertently be providing terrorists with special equipment that would enable them to make biological weapons, according to a draft report from the General Accounting Office obtained by ABCNEWS.

According to the report, which is due to be released Tuesday, Congress ordered the GAO — its investigative arm — to set up a phony company to see how easy it would be to buy surplus lab equipment from the Pentagon.

Using fake names, GAO investigators went to a Web site that sells Pentagon surplus and ordered items needed to produce bacteriological weapons, including evaporators, centrifuges, bacteriological incubators amd protective clothing.

In its report, the GAO found that the "Department of Defense has not attempted to determine who is buying excess biological equipment or how these items were being used."

The Spin is Not Holding

In his most recent column, David Corn does an excellent job taking the Bushies to task on their Plamegate spin and links the recent deceptions to the larger lies about the Iraq war, something most commentators have failed to do.

Let's not forget that Corn deserves extra-special applause because he broke the Plamegate story back in July while the rest of the media slept on it...err...for more than two months.

Some reminders on Syria

"Israel can shape its strategic environment...by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions."
-- "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," 1996 policy paper for the incoming Netanyahu government, authored by, amongst others, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith

"Iraq, the hawks argue, is just the first piece of the puzzle. After an ouster of Hussein, they say, the United States will have more leverage to act against Syria and Iran, will be in a better position to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and will be able to rely less on Saudi oil."
-- "Iraq War Hawks Have Plans to Reshape Entire Mideast," Boston Globe, September 10, 2002

"Top Pentagon and White House officials...have mulled a 'post-Saddam pivot' that would make Syria — also on the U.S. list of terrorist-sponsoring states and a longtime enemy of Israel — the next focus of U.S. action in the Middle East, said the officials, most of whom requested anonymity."
-- "Attack on Iraq may only be start," Knight Ridder Newspapers, October 21, 2002

I have little patience for the argument that Israel is doing what it needs to defend itself with its attack on Syria today. If it has evidence that Syria is participating or supporting attacks against its sovereignty, then Israel should bring those grievances before the United Nations. There should be no tolerance for acts of aggression directed at any state.

Whether Sharon is trying to start a larger confrontation in the region is anyone's guess at this point, but the above reminders suggest that we should be very suspicious about what's going on here.

The Politics of White Resentment

Not surprisingly, Tim Wise has the best piece I've seen thus far on Rush Limbaugh's use of the race card.

4,000 U.S. non-combat evacuations in Iraq

Mark Benjamin of UPI follows up on the story about the ~4,000 evacuated soldiers from Iraq for non-combat reasons.

A total of 3,915 evacuations from the region have been for non-combat medical problems. A combination of what the Pentagon is calling evacuations for "psychiatric" and "neurological" problems make up 22 percent of the total, with 478 and 387 evacuations, respectively.

Another 544 evacuations have been for "general surgery," 290 for gynecological reasons and 118 for orthopedic problems.

Army Surgeon General spokeswoman Virginia Stephanakis, who supplied the data, said on Friday that she had few details, but that the Pentagon had not detected any "red flags" indicating troubling or unexpected health patterns.

Very well. But what about the other 2,506 soldiers?

Dear Bob

Josh Marshall says:

I've avoided the rush of Novak-bashing that's swirled around this story [Plamegate]. But his stance as a journalist simply trying to report out a story is being rapidly and severely diminished by his desperate effort to advance the agenda of those who leaked to him in the first place, i.e., to smear and discredit the Wilsons. (It's also being diminished by his far from credible efforts to exonerate the leakers by again and again revising what he's said on the subject.)

Amen to that.

I've been absolutely astonished at the amount of spin and outright propaganda being projected by the Republican party and its supporters in the media to diffuse this story. I'm normally no fan of the right-wing machine, but it's amazed me to see the lengths some have gone to try to turn the issue around on Wilson and label this affair as simply political shenanigans by opportunistic Dems. And, to my slight surprise, Novak has been parroting the administration line as much as anyone. Rather than owning up to his complicity in this affair, he continues to try to spin it into an innocuous story.

Just to recap, go back and read the article which started this brouhaha. Read it once, noting the controversial paragraph:

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

Ok. Now read it again, this time skipping the above paragraph. What happens? Well, to me, not much. It's clear the paragraph about Plame adds nothing of substance to the article.

The inescapable conclusion is that Novak pushed the leak for the sake of pushing the leak. It was not newsworthy, other than to advance the agenda of the leakers (again, "Two senior administration officials"). What Novak should have done, as John Roberts of CBS News suggested, was devote an article to the fact that someone affiliated with the White House was actively trying to blow a CIA agent's cover, emphasizing that this broke the law.

Lastly, it's worth noting that John Dean, of Watergate fame, thinks this alleged crime is worse than anything affiliated with the scandal that took down Tricky Dick; in his words, "Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people." The chairman of the RNC even agrees, admitting in an appearance on MSNBC's Hardball that the crime would be "worse than Watergate" if proven true.

This is the type of story the beltway eats up, even though it has little effect on the way the world functions for average Americans. It does, however, cast even more doubt on the nature of the regime currently occupying the White House, further unveiling it as being populated by thugs and criminals. Unfortunately, we are also learning that many of administration's supporters in the media, including Mr. Novak, are not much better for their willingness to defend the indefensible.

Update: Dana Milbank of the Washington Post has an interesting story about Novak's role in past leaks.

"Awful days"

"Awful days"

So far, 19 people have been killed, including 5 members of a single family, and more than 60 wounded in a Palestinian suicide bombing in Haifa, Israel.

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Israeli response will be "harsh," while Danny Rubinstein of Ha'aretz speculates that this could mean the end for both Arafat and the PA.

Amidst the carnage, Ha'aretz has issued an amazingly measured and cogent editorial calling for a "return to sanity." Hopefully all sides will heed the appeal, although that looks far from likely at this point.

We report, you get it wrong

We report, you get it wrong

If only...

If only...

...the US government was run more like a business right now.

Israel's demographic time bomb

Israel's "demographic time bomb"

A single state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be Israel's greatest fear. Why? Because demographic changes over the coming decades would render Jews as a distinct minority within its borders.

Update: Tony Judt actually calls for a single state solution in this week's NYRB. "The time has come to think the unthinkable," he writes. "The two-state solution— the core of the Oslo process and the present 'road map'—is probably already doomed. With every passing year we are postponing an inevitable, harder choice that only the far right and far left have so far acknowledged, each for its own reasons. The true alternative facing the Middle East in coming years will be between an ethnically cleansed Greater Israel and a single, integrated, binational state of Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians."

It's the US policy, stupid

It's the US policy, stupid

"A blue-ribbon panel on United States public diplomacy is calling on President George W Bush not only to sharply increase funding to more effectively explain US policy to an increasingly hostile Islamic world, but also to narrow the gap between US values and what Washington actually does in the region," Jim Lobe reports in the Asia Times.

That is the distinct - albeit partially hidden - message of a new report on how better to communicate with Muslim populations from North Africa to Southeast Asia, released at the State Department on Wednesday by former president George H W Bush's top Middle East advisor, Edward Djerejian.

"'Spin' and manipulative public relations and propaganda are not the answer," according to Djererian's report. "Foreign policy counts. Surveys indicate that much of the resentment toward America stems from real conflicts and displeasure with policies, including those involving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Iraq," the report said. "Sugar-coating and fast talking are no solutions ... ", the 80-page report advised.

The message appears to be a direct challenge to neo-conservative and right-wing hawks in and around the administration who have been arguing that Washington's policies are simply misunderstood and that the key to winning hearts and minds in the Islamic world is to implement more imaginative ways of expressing them.

...Publication of the report, entitled "Changing Minds, Winning Peace", comes amid growing concern among US policy elites about a rising tide of anti-US feeling in the Islamic world.

Just last week, a second task force of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York reported that the rise in anti-Americanism in Muslim countries and beyond was so great that it was "endangering our national security and compromising the effectiveness of our diplomacy".

For an interesting example of how the US is attempting to win hearts and minds, check out the appeal to young Arabs being projected in Hi Magazine.

Iraq: That other scandal

Iraq: That other scandal

For Bush, every cloud has a silver lining. His administration may be under immense pressure because of "Intimigate," but it is helping to deflect criticism away from some of the recent revelations regarding the Iraq war.

Writing in USA Today, Walter Shapiro warns that "there is a danger of losing sight of the real scandal amid the search for the administration leakers. And that is the president's continued inability to explain why we invaded Iraq based on seemingly faulty intelligence and unarguably without a well-developed plan for reconstituting a war-torn nation."

Let's not overlook these three developments, says Shapiro:

* According to media reports, the interim report of the American weapons-search team headed by David Kay is expected to acknowledge the inability to locate Saddam Hussein's purported arsenals of chemical and biological weapons. Because George W. Bush and his top advisers have consistently justified the Iraqi war as needed to eliminate these weapons of mass destruction, the failure of the four-month search should call into question the validity of the administration's claim that Saddam posed an imminent threat.

* Republican Porter Goss and Democrat Jane Harman, the leaders of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter last week to CIA Director George Tenet criticizing "significant deficiencies" in the intelligence gathering before the invasion of Iraq. This bipartisan critique, based on a four-month examination of 19 volumes of classified intelligence information, further undermines the administration's stated case for war.

* The New York Times reported Tuesday that Joe Allbaugh, Bush's 2000 campaign manager, and two top Republican lobbyists have formed a new firm to advise companies on how to win contracts to rebuild Iraq. This legal buck-raking -- along with the contracts awarded to Halliburton, the company that Dick Cheney headed before he was picked as Bush's running mate -- suggests an eagerness to turn Iraq into a profit center.

The Plame scandal leads back to Niger

The Plame scandal leads back to Niger

Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff, seems to be the insider's bet on who leaked Plame's identity. Justin Raimondo speculates that, if true, this could prompt a reexamination of the Niger yellowcake scandal, and lead to even more unpleasant questions.

The "Nascar Dads" Factor

The "Nascar Dads" Factor

"George W. Bush is sinking in the polls," observes Arlie Hochschild, "but a few beats on the war drum could reverse that trend and re-elect him in 2004. Ironically, the sector of American society now poised to keep him in the White House is the one which stands to lose the most from virtually all of his policies -- blue-collar men."

Israel's Wall

Human Rights Watch and the United Nations have both come out with strongly worded statements challenging the separation barrier being built by Israel in and along the West Bank.

HRW charges that "the barrier's path and operating arrangements violate the freedom of movement of Palestinians, endangering their access to food, water, education, and medical services. With every mile the barrier cuts into the West Bank, towns, villages, and residents become separated from their lands, crops, services, water, and jobs."

The criticism from the UN comes in the form of a scathing report by John Dugard, the UN's Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

"Like the settlements it seeks to protect," the report argues, "the Wall is manifestly intended to create facts on the ground. It may lack an act of annexation, as occurred in the case of East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. But its effect is the same: annexation. Annexation of this kind goes by another name in international law - conquest."