Another recap

For the time being, I'm back on a normal blog schedule.

* E&P reports, "In a startling new analysis, Knight Ridder reporters Tom Lasseter and Jonathan S. Landay, who have done some of the best reporting on Iraq during the past two years, declare that unless something 'dramatic' changes, 'the United States is heading toward losing the war in Iraq.'"

* An Iraqi man and his wife were killed in front of their five children by US soldiers who fired on the car in which the family was travelling. Here are pictures from the scene.

* According to the Sydney Morning Herald, "A former Jordanian government minister has told The New Yorker that an American official confirmed to him that the Iraqi interim Prime Minister, Iyad Allawi, executed six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station last year." The admission is mentioned in profile of Allawi written by Jon Lee Anderson. Recall the July SMH report that broke this story.

* Frank Rich observes in the NY Times that "Since the early bombshells from Abu Ghraib last year, the torture story has all but vanished from television, even as there have been continued revelations in the major newspapers and magazines like The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books and Vanity Fair." Accordingly, he notes, "If a story isn't on TV in America, it doesn't exist in our culture." Plus: Tara McKelvey asks "What happened to the women held at Abu Ghraib?" and HRW's Reed Brody laments that "the United States is doing what every dictatorship and banana republic does when its abuses are discovered: covering up and shifting blame downwards. Indeed, if there is no real accountability for these crimes, for years to come the perpetrators of atrocities around the world will point to the United States's treatment of prisoners to deflect criticism of their own conduct."

* Still waiting: Will the U.S. Senate Endorse Torture?

* The Brits now have their own torture scandal, as damning photos have emerged of detainee abuse under their purview in Iraq.

* Recently, Ali Fadhil, an Iraqi journalist working for the Guardian, described Fallujah as a "city of ghosts" in a UK television documentary and Michael Schwartz called it a "city without a future" in an article written for Tom Dispatch. Dahr Jamail, as usual, fills in the rest of the gory details.

* Expanding on an earlier essay of his, Robert Parry weighs in on the news that the Bushies are debating the "Salvador option" for Iraq.

* Those American postwar failures in Iraq? Dick Cheney says blame 'em on Saddam.

* Riverbend, the famed Iraqi blogger who now has a book deal, offers her thoughts on news that the hunt for WMD in Iraq is finally, officially over.

* "It's a sorry state of affairs in America when you can trust the words of Saddam Hussein more than those of your own President," writes Harry Browne.

* What should the attitude of the anti-war movement be toward the Iraqi election scheduled for the end of January? ZNet has collated some different responses to this question.

* Sharon Smith explains why you should support the Iraqi resistance.

* According to the Guardian, a "damning report" from the British Museum contends that "Troops from the US-led force in Iraq have caused widespread damage and severe contamination to the remains of the ancient city of Babylon."

* Thalif Deen of IPS reports that a preliminary study of the UN's oil-for-food program, including a "series of 58 internal audits," has found "overbilling and management lapses by its U.N. supervisors, but no large-scale fraud." In related news, a joint investigation by the Financial Times and Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian business daily, has discovered that "the single largest and boldest smuggling operation in the oil-for-food programme was conducted with the knowledge of the US government."

* American Leftist introduces the story of Jumana Hanna's "American Dream," which Esquire has exposed as a fraud.

* The NY Times examines the controversy over the pro-American Iraqi bloggers of Iraq the Model, while Tex from Unfair Witness digs a little deeper into the story.

* Here's the latest Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker that caused such a stir last week. Hersh contends that the Pentagon has hijacked "covert ops" from the CIA and is conducting them in Iran, possibly in preparation for a military strike. Plus: More Hersh from Democracy Now! and the Washington Post corroborates parts of the New Yorker piece by noting that the Pentagon is "expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick," giving Rummy "broad authority over clandestine operations abroad."

* In related stories, Chris Toensing reminds us that "Real men want to go to Tehran," Joost R. Hiltermann probes Iran's nuclear posture, and Kaveh L. Afrasiabi explains "How Iran will fight back."

* Chris Floyd dusts off his story about P2OG and ties it directly to Hersh's revelations.

* "Is it conceivable that al Qaeda, as defined by President Bush as the center of a vast and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy, does not exist?" asks Robert Scheer after viewing the recent BBC documentary, "The Power of Nightmares."

* As the Gitmo detention center "is taking on a look of permanence," Jonathan Steele observes that the Bush administration sees itself "not just as a self-appointed global policeman, but also as the world's prison warder. It is thinking of building jails in foreign countries, mainly ones with grim human rights records, to which it can secretly transfer detainees (unconvicted by any court) for the rest of their lives - a kind of global gulag beyond the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or any other independent observers or lawyers."

* The CIA's updated projections in its 2020 report indicate that the war in Iraq bodes ill for the future, as it is likely to spawn a new generation of terrorists. The report also suggests that India and China will rise to challenge the United States' dominant position in the world.

* According to the Washington Post, a "scathing new report" by Jeffrey Record of the Army War College "broadly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, accusing it of taking a detour into an 'unnecessary' war in Iraq and pursuing an 'unrealistic' quest against terrorism that may lead to U.S. wars with states that pose no serious threat." Record also "warns that as a result of those mistakes, the Army is 'near the breaking point.'"

* Abderrahman Ulfat critiques the 2003 Arab Human Development Report. Meanwhile, Nader Fergany, the chief coordinator of the 2004 edition of the report, is accusing the US and Egypt of delaying its publication because it "criticizes the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the state of democracy in Egypt."

* The Associated Press and the Economist summarize the UN's Millenium Development goals to alleviate world poverty, which were overseen by Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University.

* Writing for Dissent, Eric Reeves looks at the ongoing genocide in Darfur.

* Tom Barry says the US isn't "stingy" with foreign aid, just strategic.

* Ali Abunimah says another "historic day" for the Palestinian people passed with Abu Mazen's election. In another essay, he and his father write that the election "has been hailed as a great democratic achievement and breakthrough for the region. It is actually no more than a thin layer of light shaving foam which will soon be blown away by the strong winds of reality."

* Why was the US so concerned about the state of democracy in Ukraine? Because of the geopolitics of oil, says William Engdahl.

* Tony Judt looks at the ideological and cultural differences of Europe vs. America in a NYRB review essay.

* Neocons -- divided or back out of hiding?

* In his NY Times column, Paul Krugman links Bush's "crisis-mongering" over Iraq with efforts to convince voters to "reform" social security. Krugman also urges his readers to check out Roger Lowenstein's article in the NY Times Magazine, which examines the conservative assault on the New Deal, including Bush's efforts to privatize social security.

* Jim Lobe breaks down Bush's "ambitious" -- or "hollow" -- inaugural address.

* The NewStandard's Brendan Coyne and Ariella Cohen report from the streets of DC on last week's Counter-Inaugural protests. On a related front, Karen Loew wonders, "What’s the Point of Protests?"

* "You can say what you like in the US media, as long as it helps a Republican president," announces George Monbiot. "But slip up once while questioning him, and you will be torn to shreds." Similarly, Robert Parry notes that the mantra of "Don’t take on the Bushes" is "an unwritten rule in American journalism."

* Writing for Salon, Peter Dizikes lays out 34 scandals from Bush's first term, "every one of them worse than Whitewater."

* In Salon, Leonard Steinhorn punctures, yet again, the myth of "moral values" being an adequate barometer of recent electoral politics.

* Tom Mertes reviews Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? in the New Left Review.

* In an essay for Dissident Voice, Paul Street invokes Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assessment of the "the triple evils that are interrelated" -- war, racism, and poverty.

* As hip hop celebrates its 30th birthday, the Black Commentator points to the vibrancy of that cultural form as an indication that MLK's dream is not dead.

* Sharon Lerner ruminates on the 30th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, while Benjamin Wittes says it's about time to let go of Roe.

* There's little doubt as to why Marxists are concerned about the state of health care. Kenneth Rogoff says the next great battle between socialism and capitalism will be waged over this issue.

* "Uncle Sam has reneged and defaulted on up to 40% of its trillion-dollar foreign debt, and nobody has said a word except for a line in The Economist," observes Andre Gunder Frank in a two-part feature for the Asia Times Online. "In plain English that means Uncle Sam runs a worldwide confidence racket with his self-made dollar based on the confidence that he has elicited and received from others around the world, and he is a also a deadbeat in that he does not honor and return the money he has received."

* In These Times weighs in on current debates within the AFL-CIO and the general state of the labor movement.

* In an article for Dollars & Sense adapted from his new book, Gar Alperovitz searches for an America beyond capitalism.

* National Geographic offers some fast facts on global warming and Brandi Neal asks: "Has Environmental Abuse Finally Gone too Far?"

* The CBC reports that new scientific research suggests that global warming, not an asteroid collision, may have caused the "biggest mass extinction in the planet's history, known as the 'Great Dying,' [which] eliminated 90 per cent of marine life and nearly three-quarters of all plants and animals on land."

* Varying reviews in The Nation explore affirmative action, the rebuilding of the WTC, and American torture. All are worth reading.

* The Seattle Times has launched a special series on the failed case against Guantanamo Army Chaplin Captain James Yee.

* Foreign Policy outlines the Top Ten Stories You Missed in 2004.

* Ignacio Ramonet explores some of the factors that are destroying critical, incisive journalism in Le Monde diplomatique.

* Mark Morford asks, "Do You Suffer News Fatigue?"

* "First they came for Tinkie Winkie and I did not speak out because I was not a Teletubby," writes Jill Rachel Jacobs. "Then they came for Barney and I did not speak out because I was not a happy go lucky, carefree overweight purple reptilian children’s show star. Then they came for Spongebob Squarepants..."

* Steve Twomey of CJR profiles Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler.