This week's catch-up

I'm hoping to resume more regular posting some time next week. 'til then.

* Two years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Guardian's Gary Younge observes, "the death toll keeps rising, the size of the 'coalition' keeps shrinking and global public support for this reckless occupation has maintained its downward spiral from a low base. Indeed, the only thing that changes is the rationale for starting the war, where the sophistry of the occupying powers keeps plumbing new depths and selective amnesia has attained new highs."

* As an Iraqi poll marks a high point for optimism, Iraqi citizens "strike back" at insurgents, and the US military claims the scalps of 85 insurgents, Tom Engelhardt analyzes the war on the cusp of its third year.

* Protests marking the war's anniversary went down around the US last weekend, which the media of course dutifully downplayed.

* In his syndicated Media Beat column, Norman Solomon cites the reporting of David Enders and takes another shot at MoveOn before laying out the case for an Iraq withdrawal.

* Is Iraq Becoming the World's Biggest Cash Cow? Emad Mekay of IPS reports on the release of Transparency International’s Global Corruption Report 2005 following news that Halliburton beefed up a Pentagon fuel bill, charging $27.5 million to ship $82,100 worth of LPG to Iraq.

* The Independent's Patrick Cockburn reports that the US is routinely letting criminals run free in Iraq if they promise to spy on insurgents, a development that no doubt contributes to soaring rates of crime and violence.

* An Al Jazeera article retells the horrors of Fallujah, teasing together the brutal evidence collated by, amongst others, Dahr Jamail and Naomi Klein. Additionally, Chris Floyd links Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli's ignored Fallujah revelations to the media's penchant for "filtering" and a Knight Ridder piece quotes one Iraqi's analysis of Fallujah's current tranquility: "It's the safest city in Iraq because it's a prison."

* Digging deep into a survey of journalists involved in reporting the Iraq conflict conducted by American University's School of Communications, E&P's Greg Mitchell unearths "some very revealing, if buried, comments by some of the unnamed respondents." In particular, Mitchell cites a recurring concern about the American media's inability or unwillingness to report the grisly reality on the ground, and its tendency to present an overly-sanitized and rosy picture of the war. Also see another analysis of the survey from CJR's Paul McLeary, "How War News Is Really Shaped."

* A BBC Newsnight investigation by Greg Palast charts the battle between neo-cons and Big Oil over Iraq, a struggle Palast says predates 9/11 and was eventually won by Big Oil. You can watch the program here and then head over to Palast's site for additional background.

* In related pieces, Michael Klare addresses the role oil played in the decision to invade Iraq and the potential impact of "peak oil."

* A Salon article by Robert Bryce says a leading energy analysis firm, John S. Herold Inc., is predicting that seven of the world's major oil companies will hit their production peaks by 2009. "Herold's work shows that the best minds in the energy industry are accepting the reality that the globe is reaching (or has already reached) the limit of its own ability to produce ever increasing amounts of oil," Bryce contends.

* Is Bush spreading democracy in the Middle East? Juan Cole, Dilip Hiro, Phyllis Bennis, and Bill Blum examine the historical and contemporary evidence and answer with a collective, resounding "no!"

* While Syria completes the "first phase" of its pullout from Lebanon and the London Times claims to have "clear evidence" of Syrian involvement with Hariri's assassination, Stephen Zunes argues that "the complexity of Lebanese politics and the new dynamics on the ground in reaction to Hariri’s killing precludes any premature claim of American credit for whatever positive developments have emerged in that war-ravaged country challenging the undue influence of Syria. Furthermore, it is unlikely that the widespread anti-American sentiment in Lebanon will change as long as U.S. demands that Lebanese sovereignty be respected appear to be limited only to situations where the violator of that sovereignty is not allied with the United States."

* Fear not, says Gary Leupp. The neocon plan to institute regime change in Syria, Iran, and Lebanon is still on track.

* In the American Prospect, Laura Rozen and Jeet Heer say the neocons' favorite Iran-contra stooge, Manucher Ghorbanifar, is being called upon to provide damning evidence against Iran, much in the same way Ahmad Chalabi built a case against Iraq.

* Calling it "the major question for the twenty-first century," Chalmers Johnson asks: can the US and Japan peacefully adapt to the rise of China? "Or is China's ascendancy to be marked by yet another world war, when the pretensions of European civilization in its U.S. and Japanese projections are finally put to rest?"

* While Israel touts disengagement from Gaza, it continues to throw resources behind the construction of settlements in the West Bank, recently adding 3,500 new housing units in a block just outside of Jerusalem. On a related front, Gary Sussman wonders if Sharon is again considering the "Jordan option," a plan to reconfigure the Hashemite Kingdom by merging the federal structure of Palestine with Jordan.

* Michael Scheuer, the veteran CIA officer and author of Imperial Hubris, argues in an antiwar.com piece that it is in the best interests of both the US and Israel to restructure their relationship as soon as possible. "It is in neither nation's interest to delay debate until Americans have begun to evaluate their relationship with Israel through a lens ever more heavily smeared with the blood of their sons and daughters," he advises.

* Long-term bases for Afghanistan? Check. Long-term bases for Iraq? Most likely another check. Rest assured, the American military footprint in Central and West Asia is taking on the look of permanence.

* After several delays, parliamentary elections in Afghanistan are now set for September 18, a year later than initially scheduled.

* The Washington Post's N.C. Aizenman reports from Kandahar, where a spike in crime has brought a "growing local nostalgia for the Taliban era of 1996 to 2001, when the extremist Islamic militia imposed law and order by draconian means."

* Of the approximately 65,000 prisoners taken by the US during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, at least 108 died while in custody, many of them due to violent causes, and at least 26 of these deaths were homicides.

* Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark of the Guardian visit American controlled jails in Afghanistan, which function as the "hub of a global network of detention centres" containing some 10K "ghost detainees."

* The CS Monitor's Tom Regan rounds up some abuse at Gitmo news, in particular claims that videotapes exist of torture there, a la Abu Ghraib, and the intelligence being pried out of detainees is "suspect at best."

* "The crucial lesson of the Pentagon Papers and then Watergate was that presidents are not above the law," writes Anthony Lewis in a NYRB essay. "So we thought. But today government lawyers argue that the president is above the law - that he can order the torture of prisoners even though treaties and a federal law forbid it. John Yoo, a former Justice Department official who wrote some of the broad claims of presidential power in memoranda, told Jane Mayer recently that Congress does not have power to 'tie the president's hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.' The constitutional remedy for presidential abuse of his authority, he said, is impeachment. Yoo also told Ms. Mayer that the 2004 election was a 'referendum' on the torture issue: the people had spoken, and the debate was over. And so, in the view of this prominent conservative legal thinker, a professor at the University of California law school in Berkeley, an election in which the torture issue was not discussed has legitimized President Bush's right to order its use."

* Jim Lobe weighs in on the surprising appointments of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank and Karen Hughes to head US public diplomacy efforts.

* While Wolfowitz's appointment is meant to secure the economic pillar of hegemonic power, the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler says that Condi Rice, in her parallel project to consolidate power in Washington, is doing a bang-up job turning the State Department "into an adjunct of the White House communications machine."

* Michel Chossudovsky and Jim Lobe break down the Pentagon's recently-released "National Defense Strategy of the United States of America," which was first reported by the Wall St. Journal.

* Reuters reports that Jan Egeland, the UN's emergency relief coordinator, has stated that the Eastern Congo is "suffering the world's worst current humanitarian crisis, with a death toll outstripping that in Sudan's strife-torn Darfur region." Recently, Egeland claimed that 180K may have died within the past 18 months from illness and malnutrition in Darfur.

* The Independent summarizes Kofi Annan's proposals to revamp the UN.

* David Usborne of the Independent reports on the recent World Water Day as an estimated billion plus people face drastic shortages of the elemental substance.

* Tom Reeves takes a detailed look at the possibility of a future draft.

* Can secrecy coexist with academic openness? David Glenn investigates the controversy over the Pat Roberts Intelligence Scholars Program in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

* From Cursor: "The AP reports that a Pentagon document states as a fact that a Guantanamo Bay detainee 'assisted in the escape of Osama bin Laden from Tora Bora,' undermining assertions made last fall by Gen. Tommy Franks in an op-ed and repeated by President Bush and Vice President Cheney on the campaign trail." And in related news, the US and Pakistan admit that Bin Laden's trail is now cold.

* The Star Tribune has a special section devoted to the school shooting in Red Lake, Minnesota.

* The "Culture of Life" indeed. Witness the "Islamization of the Republican Party," says Juan Cole, as the Bush apparatus seizes on the plight of Terri Schiavo to advance its own political agenda.

* "Democrats and progressives make the mistake of thinking that today's Social Security debate is about Social Security," writes Thom Hartmann. "It's not. It's about creating single party rule for a generation or more. To do that, Republicans believe they need only to grab the hearts and minds of the generation currently under 30 - and they can do that, win or lose, by properly framing the Social Security debate."

* Reuters reports that the "budget deficit has overtaken terrorism as the greatest short-term risk to the U.S. economy, and concern about the current gap is rising, a survey of U.S. businesses shows."

* Do ads still work? Ken Auletta evaluates philosophical and practical changes in the PR and advertising industry in the New Yorker.

* Steve Perry's interview with Gore Vidal is worth checking out.

* This is a good, explanatory article on the NHL's financial meltdown.