Makeup linkage

After this post, I'll be back on a near-daily posting schedule. At least, that's what I hope.

* Close call? Tom Regan of the CS Monitor rounds up some of the early press coverage of the "Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera" allegations. As Jeremy Scahill points out, the motive for the proposed sorties over Qatar was to eliminate scrutiny of the first American assault on Fallujah, in April 2004. While the Bushies and much of the American press have laughed off the allegations, the British government only gave them added credibility by issuing a subsequent press gag. For running developments on this story, see "Don't Bomb Us - A blog by Al Jazeera Staffers."

* Speaking of Fallujah, the American military finally admitted the obvious: White Phosphorous was used on the city's civilian population in November 2004. Alas, George Monbiot reminds us that "we shouldn't forget that the use of chemical weapons was a war crime within a war crime within a war crime."

* Let us also not forget that the one year anniversary of the second assault on Fallujah -- which reduced it completely to rubble -- just passed. Read retrospectives from Mike Marqusee and Dahr Jamail, then check out Jamail's IPS report on the conditions inside the devastated city today.

* This comparative travelogue by Robin Wright of the Washington Post is a vivid indicator of how the situation in Iraq has gotten worse over the last three years.

* Make way for "our monsters." The LA Times and Guardian report on the revelations of torture in Iraq overseen by the government's notorious security forces. Grisly photos, here.

* Iyad Allawi, the West's preferred strong man in Baghdad, has also chimed in that the human rights situation in Iraq right now is worse than it was under Saddam.

* Video of contractors indiscriminently shooting up Iraq civilians in cars is now spreading around the internet. See here, for example.

* The Independent's Philip Thornton reports on the release of a new study, "Crude Designs," that details the rather blatant theft of Iraq's oil wealth by the West.

* This Washington Post report, citing some of Anthony Cordesman's latest findings, confirms again that there are relatively few "foreign fighters" in Iraq (besides the Americans). Nevertheless, as Jonathan Finer notes, officials have "long emphasized the influence of groups such as al Qaeda in Iraq, an insurgent network led by a Jordanian, Abu Musab Zarqawi" in "an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the insurgency in the eyes of Iraqis, by portraying it as terrorism foisted on the country by outsiders."

* Norman Solomon takes up the hot topic of an Iraq withdrawal: "In the United States, while the lies behind the Iraq war become evermore obvious and victory seems increasingly unreachable, much of the opposition to the war has focused on the death and suffering among U.S. soldiers. That emphasis has a sharp political edge at home, but it can also cut another way -- defining the war as primarily deplorable because of what it is doing to Americans. One danger is that a process of withdrawing some U.S. troops could be accompanied by even more use of U.S. air power that terrorizes and kills with escalating bombardment (as happened in Vietnam for several years after President Nixon announced his 'Guam Doctrine' of Vietnamization in mid-1969). An effective antiwar movement must challenge the jingo-narcissism that defines the war as a problem mainly to the extent that it harms Americans." Mind you, he wrote this a week before Seymour Hersh reported that such a bombing strategy was precisely what was being considered to offset a troop drawdown.

* Seeking to "explain why congressional Democrats had been so reluctant...to push for a serious inquiry regarding the Bush administration misleading the American public on Iraqi WMDs," Stephen Zunes reminds us that, unfortunately, "the Democrats were as enthusiastic about the United States invading and occupying Iraq as were the Republicans and that the WMD claims were largely a means of scaring the American public into accepting the right of the United States to effectively renounce 20th century international legal norms in favor of the right of conquest."

* Gilbert Achcar and Steve Shalom pick apart John Murtha's proposal to withdraw and redeploy some American troops from Iraq, arguing that "the anti-war movement needs to be careful not to confuse Murtha's position with its own."

* The long promised second investigation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which will allegedly probe whether the Bush administration and its allies in the Pentagon manipulated Iraq intelligence, is beginning to take shape.

* Murray Waas reports that, on September 21, 2001, President Bush "was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda." Of course, the Bush administration has been unwilling to disclose this piece of information, in large measure because it's another piece of evidence that confirms they were dishonest in their efforts to "market" the Iraq war to the American public.

* Rolling Stone profiles John Rendon, "Bush's general in the propaganda war." Think Progress has more on the Rendon Group, too.

* The story of "Curveball," the notorious Iraqi informant, just got a little more detailed.

* Gary Leupp's timeline of the Niger Uranium deception and the Plame case is pretty comprehensive, if admittedly incomplete.

* Russ Baker weighs in on the latest revelations about Bob Woodward being implicated in the Plame case. Woodward was allegedly told by an "senior administration official" (probably Stephen Hadley) of Plame's identity before the Rove/Libby smear campaign picked up full speed. See also: "Is Woodward's Revelation a Bombshell or a Smokescreen?" and Joan Didion's excellent take on Woody from a few years ago.

* In related news, Patrick Fitzgerald has moved for a new grand jury, much to Karl Rove's chagrin.

* "They had to destroy American democracy at home in order to save the world for democracy." Judith Coburn says that's what happened with Vietnam and Watergate, and it's no surprise that's what's happening today.

* Not to be outdone by the Iraqi police, ABC News recently shined some light on the preferred torture techniques of the CIA.

* The Washington Post reports that, under the guise of fighting terrorism, the Pentagon is getting deeply immersed in domestic spying.

* Tom Regan runs down press coverage of the Padilla indictment and Democracy Now! asks the obvious question, "Why did the Bush Administration Hold Jose Padilla for 3 Years as an Enemy Combatant?" The "Dirty Bomb" charge was dropped, suspiciously, because the evidence allegedly produced against Padilla was obtained via torture.

* Europe's reportedly in an "uproar" over the CIA's torture flights and hidden prisons. Good.

* The Guardian reports that some reality is leaking out of the British government: "A confidential Foreign Office document accuses Israel of rushing to annex the Arab area of Jerusalem, using illegal Jewish settlement construction and the vast West Bank barrier, in a move to prevent it becoming a Palestinian capital."

* To much acclaim, Condi Rice brokered a deal on turning over a Gaza border crossing to the Palestinians. Ramzy Baroud explores the meaning of this move.

* Peter Hirschberg of IPS speculates about what Sharon's defection from Likud may mean.

* Michael Neumann responds to Jeff Halper's recent essay on the links between Israel and American empire. Both authors make several excellent points.

* Ominous news: Pakistani earthquake victims now face the winter, head on.

* The UN says hunger is killing more than 6 million children a year. What a pity. If only we had the resources to do something about this.

* In climate change news, a handful of new studies suggest, independently, that: 1) sea levels are "rising twice as fast as they were 150 years ago and man-made greenhouse emissions are the prime cause"; 2) the negative effects of climate change will be felt, disproportionately, in the Third World; 3) water vapor is contributing to the greenhouse gas effect; and 4) Greenland's ice cap is melting at an alarming rate, with potentially disastrous consequences for Europe.

* "None of us want to live in a country that allows something like Katrina to happen," writes Tom Andre in a recent dispatch from New Orleans. "We may very well have lost the soul of a great American city, and it was preventable. I think we might have all lost a bit of ourselves, too: this is America, and it did happen here. My hope is that the long-term legacy of the hurricane is that now there will be enough people who shout loud enough to make sure that it doesn't happen again." Unfortunately, that's turning out to be wishful thinking, as last week's Frontline made clear.

* Joseph Kay and Barry Grey provide some perspective on the recently-announced 30K job cuts by GM.

* "Those who still feel that welfare reform was a bad idea should also recognize that there is no going back," writes Christopher Jencks in a review of American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare. "America will not revive welfare 'as we knew it' in the lifetime of anyone reading this article. For that we can thank Bill Clinton."

* "A slew of new essays and studies show that fighting against inequality is the battle of our time," says David Moberg in In These Times.

* Ken Tomlinson, the CPB's former director and noted scourge of Bill Moyers, has gotten himself in a fair bit of trouble for being a partisan hack and abusing his power. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

* Michael Massing looks at some of what's wrong with the media in a two-part NYRB eulogy feature.

* Media Lens dissects the pathetic tale of the Guardian's smear job on Noam Chomsky.

* Michael Klare weighs the odds of the most likely "wag the dog" option for Bush.

* Louis Menand's review of Tony Judt's post-war history of Europe is a good read.

* Lastly, I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.