FYI

I'm busy entertaining family around the holidays, so I won't be able to post anything until I can get the vultures out of my hair. Soon, hopefully.

Giving gov't a blank check

James Bovard examines some of the curious press reaction to last week's killing of Rigoberto Alpizar. After noting the remarkable degree to which the media was willing to swallow the government's line and the lack of attention given to dissonant details, he concludes:

Perhaps if Alpizar had regularly attended Georgetown dinner parties, the media would show more curiosity about his fate. In the old days, Americans were taught that the media would serve as a check and a balance on government powers. The same media docility that helped the Bush administration sell the war in Iraq is still there, now serving Leviathan on the homefront.

Yeah, you'd think somebody would start connecting the dots between Alpizar, Al-Arian, Padilla, torture and rendition, DoD/NSA spying, etc.

We have a government clearly drunk on power and out of control. It's been obvious to many that this has been going on for a long time, but now there's a perfect storm of stories screaming that All's Not Well In The Beltway and yet our beloved media institutions have trouble raising even the mildest of rebukes.

Iran nearing "internal crisis"

Jim Lobe tackles an increasingly difficult question to grapple with: what the hell is going on in Ahmadinejad's head?

Iraq's election and beyond

Robert Dreyfuss and William Rivers Pitt look beyond the heartening images of smiling Iraqis with purple index fingers and don't like what they see on the horizon.

As much as the media and war cheerleaders try to spin yesterday's election as yet another "turn of the corner" for the better, the simple fact is that virtually every indicator suggests the election is going to precipitate the dissolution of Iraq's fragile federal system, with ominous, untold consequences at this point.

If this doesn't happen, excellent. I'd rather not see more Iraqis crushed to death as a consequence of US policy. But optimism is hard to muster at this point, no matter how well things seemingly went.

The New Chalabi on the Block

Sometimes you just can't make this stuff up. Ahmed Chalabi's daughter is apparently lining up a career as a pundit in the US, and an outlet like Slate is actually willing to run her stuff with a straight face.

Someone please inform Benador Associates they have a bright, shining prospect to add to their stable. Of course, I have no doubt that the gears are already well in motion...

"In the Kingdom of the Half-Blind"

Bill Moyers, summarizing the ethos of the Bush administration and its supporters: "It's an old story: the greater the secrecy, the deeper the corruption."

Bush authorizes spying

From today's NY Times:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

These guys don't have a monopoly on the abuse of power, but they are doing a good job, at least, trying to corner the market.

Blatant fear mongering

"The caliphate is coming! The caliphate is coming!" scream the Bushists.

Bullshit, screams Haroon Siddiqui.

Recovery?

Pentagon rolls out propaganda

You know, it takes a lot of chutzpah for the US military to announce it's going to ramp up propaganda efforts abroad when it's just recently been caught with a hand in the cookie jar.

The Great War for Civilization

Here's a nice review of Robert Fisk's new book, which, much to the chagrin of my groaning book shelves, tops my holiday gift wish list.

Justin Podur's recent interview with Fisk is a good read, too.

War spending creeps up on $500 bn

Looks like we're on target for Iraq war spending. I sure miss those carefree days when we heard the whole enchilada was going to be funded by a boost in oil revenues.

Killing the Polar Bears

Enjoy those cute polar bears in your Coke commercials while you can, because at this rate they'll probably be extinct in a few decades.

The Aerial Occupation

Citing Sy Hersh and Norman Solomon's recent missives, Dahr Jamail warns that "if current trends continue, the end of the U.S. occupation in Iraq may more closely resemble the ending in Vietnam."

The political climate at home may force a decrease in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq, but the compensatory upswing in air power meant to offset this will be inevitable and will inevitably lead to unexpected problems. Why? Because the Bush administration will still be committed to permanently hanging onto a crucial group of four or five mega-military bases (into which billions of construction and communications dollars have already been poured) along with a massive embassy, directing political and military "traffic" from the heart of Baghdad's Green Zone -- and that means an unending occupation of Iraq, something that, air power or no, can only mean endless strife.

This is something to keep an eye on. Predictably, you don't hear anything about this outside of dissident media sources. And you won't likely anytime soon, especially with all of the tearful reporting about tomorrow's elections dominating coverage in the corporate press.

Averting a collision with China

As Chalmers Johnson argued earlier this year, the US is likely on a collision course with China unless someone can get the messianic militarism out of the US government and flesh out a less antagonistic vision for relations with that rapidly developing behemoth.

Now, a few months later, James Pinkerton throws out some fresh, and not-so-fresh, ideas about how to accomplish this.

(via informed dissent)

Pentagon spying on dissidents

NBC News reported yesterday, citing a "secret 400-page Defense Department document," that the Pentagon is spying on anti-war activists as part of a wide-ranging domestic intelligence operation.

Not only does this again raise the spectre of COINTELPRO, a very worrying development in its own right, but compiling information in this matter is undoubtedly stupid as a counter-terrorism tactic, which is the excuse the Pentagon gives for the program (and just about everything else it does nowadays).

Not as bad as...

Jeebus. Talk about setting the bar low. When court historians have to play the "Stalin card," you know there aren't any good excuses left for America anymore.

Lowballed

In Salon, Mark Benjamin takes up the sporadic charge, now being floated by Democratic congressional reps, that the Pentagon is lowballing its Iraq casualty figures. He writes,

Pentagon casualty reports show 2,390 service members dead from Iraq and Afghanistan and over 16,000 wounded. By far the vast majority of the wounded and dead are from Iraq.

But by Dec. 8, 2005, the military had evacuated another 25,289 service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries or illnesses not caused directly by enemy bullets or bombs, according to the U.S. Transportation Command. That statistic includes everything from serious injuries in Humvee wrecks or other accidents to more routine illnesses that could be unrelated to field battles.

Yet those service members are not included in the Pentagon's casualty reports.

An accurate toll from the war is better reflected in these numbers, Benjamin claims:

The Department of Veterans Affairs provides soldiers with medical care after leaving the military. An October V.A. report shows that 119,247 service members who fought in Iraq or Afghanistan -- and are now off duty -- are receiving health care from the V.A. Presumably, some of those health problems are unrelated to the war.

But the statistics seem to show that a lot of those health problems are war-related. For example, nearly 37,000 have mental disorders, including nearly 16,000 who have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. Over 46,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan receiving benefits from the V.A. have musculoskeletal problems. These are all veterans who within the last four years were considered by the military to be mentally and physically fit enough to fight.

That puts things in a much different light, now, doesn't it?

The Fate of Gaza

Following in Sara Roy's footsteps, Conn Hallinan re-examines the fallout from Israel's withdrawal from Gaza.

Reframing Immigration

Another issue that we tend to discuss in the US at a 3rd grade level is immigration. The IRC has put together a compendium of articles to rectify this and "reframe" the debate. Check 'em out.

Another notch

Professor Kim has much of the relevant round-up material on the Tookie Williams execution.

Frankly, I don't quite understand how anyone can justify capital punishment. The court system is full of serious flaws (see, for example, Illinois); the vast majority of criminological studies show it's hardly a deterrence for other criminals; the legal process to obtain an execution is exorbitantly expensive, typically more than it would cost to lock someone up for life; it's morally dubious for the state to claim a right to kill its citizens -- even if certain citizens gravely harm society as a whole -- when there are more humane and effective solutions readily at hand...this list could go on, obviously.

About the only reason I can see for keeping the death penalty around is vengeance. And, gosh, we all know how Americans need their vengeance now, don't we?

Throwing Iraq against the wall

As the war's 1,000th day passes, Patrick Cockburn again peers into Iraq's future and sees a good deal of pain to come. After noting the great sway the Badr militia now holds, he concludes,

The ability of the US and Britain to determine the fate of Iraq is growing less by the month. The US is trying to reach out to countries such as Egypt, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which it was ignoring two years ago. There is no more talk of changing the Middle East. British troops have largely withdrawn to their bases around Basra. The Sunni will take part in the election but will continue to try to end the occupation.

Iraq will still remain a name on the map. Baghdad will be difficult to divide, though it is largely a Shia city. Most Iraqi Arabs say they would like to be part of a single country. But the most likely future is for Iraq to become a loose confederation.

I hope I'm not the only one who continues to find this ironic. I know that such a dissolution will probably be messy and unpredictable -- subsequently raising the odds of a regional war in the Middle East -- but surely some Likudniks have to take solace in how easily Iraq has split on its fault lines. Right?

Anyway, there's a good deal of quality reading on the Iraqi election here.

Parry's insight

Check out some of Bob Parry's latest stuff, including his take on the hilarious claims of a "war on Christmas" and the never-ending smear campaign against the late Gary Webb.

Biden' their time

Marines killed in Iraq shipped home as baggage on commercial flights

This is appalling.

Iraqi election on horizon

Yet another corner is about to be turned with this week's election in Iraq -- an election that provides a "Masque of Democracy," according to Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives.

N.O. cuts its poor adrift

The Observer's Peter Beaumont files this report from New Orleans:

When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans it was the city's poor - almost exclusively African Americans - who were left to fend for themselves as the city drowned in a lake of toxic sludge. Now, three months on, the same people have been abandoned once again by a reconstruction effort that seems determined to prevent them from returning. They are the victims of a devastating combination of forced evictions, a failure to reopen the city's public house projects, rent gouging and...a decision to write off whole neighbourhoods.

They are victims too of a reconstruction effort that, while its funding remains stalled in Congress, and lacking proper leadership, has been left to the care of the private sector with little interest in the city's poor. As a rapacious free market has come to dominate the rebuilding of the Louisiana city, it has seen spiralling prices and the influx of property speculators keen to cash in on the disaster. The result is one of the most shocking pieces of urban planning that black and poor America has seen: reconstruction as survival of the wealthiest.

Sitting in the back of the pick-up truck of union activist Jim Prickett, Aaron is on fire with anger. A young black man in his twenties in dreadlocks and a Veterans for Peace T-shirt, he flares out at all around him. 'My grandpa died at the airport [during the evacuation]. Now me and my mama can't get into our home. There is a notice on the door. If we try, we are looting. Do you understand how that must feel?' he shouts. 'Do you understand? I live how I can. It has jumbled me up here,' he points to his head. 'It is genocide and ethnic cleansing. It's the return of Jim Crow.'

The cynic in me says, "Could it be any other way?" Not in these neoliberal times.

Elite bias

Robert McChesney and John Nichols historicize and examine some of the pitfalls of having a media system dependent on "professional" journalism, as we do today.

Unravelling the Syrian Gambit

Get Syria? Justin Raimondo says the usual suspects are trying -- desperately.

Prepping for Iran

From today's Sunday Times:

ISRAEL’S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.

The order came after Israeli intelligence warned the government that Iran was operating enrichment facilities, believed to be small and concealed in civilian locations.

Iran’s stand-off with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over nuclear inspections and aggressive rhetoric from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who said last week that Israel should be moved to Europe, are causing mounting concern.

The crisis is set to come to a head in early March, when Mohamed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, will present his next report on Iran. El-Baradei, who received the Nobel peace prize yesterday, warned that the world was “losing patience” with Iran.

Oh, goody. As Ray McGovern put it a few months back, "I Know It Sounds Crazy, But..."

Alpizar shooting

All the details aren't out yet, but the shooting of Rigoberto Alpizar on an American Airlines flight in Miami needs to be scrutinized heavily and not just pushed to the side as a "regrettable error," much like the de Menezes killing in London was at first.

Relevant background from the WSWS, here and here.

All the news that's fit to buy

While the NY Times fleshes out some aspects of the Bush administration's reliance on propaganda in the "war on terror," Alex Cockburn reminds us that planting stories and targeting journalists is, of course, nothing new.

I/P Poverty

Via Cursor:

A UN report finds 'Two-thirds of Palestinians living in poverty,' and a poll identifies a more "pressing problem" than security in Israel, which 'leads West in child poverty.'

Everyone knows that the conditions in the West Bank and, particularly, Gaza are horrible. But I was surprised at how poorly things have gotten in Israel.

And can you guess which country Israel has surpassed in child poverty figures? Who else? The US, of course.

They're like two peas in a pod -- robust "Spartas" that spare no expense when it comes to planes and tanks, but not when it comes to adequately taking care of their most vulnerable citizens.

Never Before?!

In The Nation, Naomi Klein wonders why even the most ardent critics of the Bush administration's fondness for torture

subscribe to an antihistorical narrative in which the idea of torturing prisoners first occurred to US officials on September 11, 2001, at which point the interrogation methods used in Guantánamo apparently emerged, fully formed, from the sadistic recesses of Dick Cheney's and Donald Rumsfeld's brains. Up until that moment, we are told, America fought its enemies while keeping its humanity intact.

...Other cultures deal with a legacy of torture by declaring "Never again!" Why do so many Americans insist on dealing with the current torture crisis by crying "Never Before"? I suspect it has to do with a sincere desire to convey the seriousness of this Administration's crimes. And the Bush Administration's open embrace of torture is indeed unprecedented--but let's be clear about what is unprecedented about it: not the torture but the openness. Past administrations tactfully kept their "black ops" secret; the crimes were sanctioned but they were practiced in the shadows, officially denied and condemned. The Bush Administration has broken this deal: Post-9/11, it demanded the right to torture without shame, legitimized by new definitions and new laws.

Excellent points. You can review in greater detail some of the relevant background on the CIA's past use of torture here.

I'd also like to point out that the uproar over torture since Abu Ghraib has conveniently obscured greater crimes. Especially, as I noted at the time, what's been done to Fallujah.

Suicide Before Dishonor

If you missed the tragic LA Times story on the apparent suicide of Col. Ted Westhusing the first time around, check in with Gary Leupp's artful summary of its meaning.

War Crimes Made Easy

Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith ask, and begin to answer, the burning question: "How has the Bush administration gotten away with such apparently illegal acts as hiding intelligence reports from Congress, creating secret prisons, establishing death squads, kidnapping people and spiriting them across national borders, and planning unprovoked wars?"

Pinter lets loose

Here's the text to Harold Pinter's Nobel lecture. You can also watch it here.

The most biting part is where he starts to "go Chomsky," explaining his understanding of "United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War." Definitely worth a gander.

Talk of the nation

"Just another day in an increasingly sick America." Yeah, I'd say so.

Extreme weather costs

It's pretty clear that the American political system has trouble digesting ominous warnings about the threat of global climate change. Perhaps we'll get some much needed action if some of the "costs" are translated into dollars.

Most tsunami victims still homeless

Reuters:

Nearly a year after the Indian Ocean tsunami, almost all of the aid recipients in villages hit by the waves are still living in temporary shelters or camps, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

...In Indonesia, 100 percent of the respondents still lived in camps or temporary shelters run by the government or by aid groups, as did 92 percent in India and 78 percent in Sri Lanka, the survey found.

Some had moved from tents into makeshift shelters with thatched roofs or open sides, while others were staying with relatives but "almost nobody in our survey was in permanent shelter," said Dr. Anisya Thomas, the institute's managing director, who oversaw the survey.

The End of the World, Part III

Matt Taibi, in Rolling Stone:

The age of the International War on Terror seems to have turned itself into an unusually grim time in world history, an era of awesome and unforeseeable catastrophes, giant steps backward in the journey of civilization, ruinous and far-reaching political blunders and violently disillusioning confrontations with man's limitations. Even the most godless among us has to tremble before the biblical scale of the past twelve months' headlines: the tsunami that swallowed south Asia, the deadly lady named Katrina (also known as America Not Immune) and now this. We do not seem to be going forward very much, but every few months we lose, somewhere, a big piece of the world map, a mysterious and enervating process that is becoming like an ominously steady drip that can be heard all over the planet.

And this, the massive earthquake that rocked Kashmir on October 8th, is the worst by far of the troika. It is a calamity the dimensions of which the world so far has completely failed to appreciate or understand. Coupled with the geopolitical nature of the misfortune -- testing the nerve of two antsy nuclear antagonists and the political health of a somewhat notorious but also critically important American ally regime -- the continuing disaster known as the Kashmiri earthquake threatens to be a world-shaping event as important as the Iraq War itself.

"Doing Plessy" again

Jonathan Kozol says that Americans, wittingly or not, have come to embrace "Apartheid education."

US Given Failing Grades By 9/11 Panel

The Washington Post reports:

The federal government received failing and mediocre grades yesterday from the former Sept. 11 commission, whose members said in a final report that the Bush administration and Congress have balked at enacting numerous reforms that could save American lives and prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

The 10-member bipartisan panel -- whose book-length report about the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks became a surprise bestseller -- issued a "report card" that included 5 F's, 12 D's and two "incompletes" in categories including airline passenger screening and improving first responders' communication system.

The group also said there has been little progress in forcing federal agencies to share intelligence and terrorism information and sharply criticized government efforts to secure weapons of mass destruction or establish clear standards for the proper treatment of U.S. detainees.

"We believe that the terrorists will strike again," the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, a former Republican governor of New Jersey, told reporters in Washington. "If they do, and these reforms that might have prevented such an attack have not been implemented, what will our excuses be?"

I hope this isn't a surprise. Terrorism only seems to be a concern of this administration when it can be used to stoke fear and funnel anxiety behind certain policies that might have been politically untenable before 9/11.

Obviously, there are people in government and ancillary institutions that take the threat seriously and gravely lament the trajectory of current events, but these individuals, surely, are not the ones driving the bureaucracy.

Rachel's parents

Michael Blanding profiles the Corries for Alternet.

To their credit, they've really done an amazing job of turning a great personal tragedy into something that might bring a little good to the world.

The practice of "disappearances"

Nacht und Nebel. Operation Condor. Two labels are already taken. So what shall we call the contemporary American system of "rendition" and torture? Any ideas?

Resident apologists

Ed Herman, on point as usual, regarding the NY Times:

The veteran Times reporter John Hess has said that in all 24 years of his service at the paper he “never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or a rent increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a raise for underpaid workers. And don’t let me get started on universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the Times is liberal?” The paper is an establishment institution and serves establishment ends.

(via FAIR)

Fallows on the Iraq tragedy

James Fallows is typically worth reading when you come across his stuff. His latest Atlantic Monthly article, "Why Iraq Has No Army," is a case in point.

And, if you have any teeth left to grind, go back and read his article from November 2002, "The Fifty-first State?" The Pentagon should just substitute that article for any of the "official histories" currently being pulled together. It was devastatingly prescient.

Narnia

I remember reading some of Lewis when I was a kid, but wasn't overly sensitive then to any of the overdrawn Christian imagery.

Now that Narnia's hitting the big screen, it might be a good time to understand what's going on. See, for instance, what Bill Berkowitz and Polly Toynbee have to say.

Arguing about the War

Michael Schwartz tackles some of the popular refrains you might hear from people who think the war in Iraq isn't going all that poorly, in part because the alleged "good news" is being hidden by a malicious "liberal media."

Doing well, for some

How's the economy doing? Paul Krugman takes a look, and explains the apparent disjuncture between the raw numbers and popular sentiment.

A glimpse into media politics

Modern day communication politics, writ large:

Hours after New Orleans officials announced Tuesday that they would deploy a city-owned, wireless Internet network in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, regional phone giant BellSouth Corp. withdrew an offer to donate one of its damaged buildings that would have housed new police headquarters, city officials said yesterday.

According to the officials, the head of BellSouth's Louisiana operations, Bill Oliver, angrily rescinded the offer of the building in a conversation with New Orleans homeland security director Terry Ebbert, who oversees the roughly 1,650-member police force.

City officials said BellSouth was upset about the plan to bring high-speed Internet access for free to homes and businesses to help stimulate resettlement and relocation to the devastated city. Around the country, large telephone companies have aggressively lobbied against localities launching their own Internet networks, arguing that they amount to taxpayer-funded competition. Some states have laws prohibiting them.

Beneath the shiny gloss of media companies "breaking down barriers" and "connecting people" lies a darker side: the thirst for profits from an aspect of human activity that, in the coming future, desperately needs to be framed as a public good if the world is to chip away at the growing "digital divide" that promises to make the planet an even uglier, unjust, unequal one.

Modern bondage

Mario de Queiroz reminds us that slavery's not just a thing of the past.

Facing the winter, alone

Hundreds of thousands of people face a good chance of dying this winter in Pakistan.

If you thought this was a major story, particularly since a boost in international aid could mitigate the disaster, you'd be wrong. That is, judging by the media attention this receives here in the US...

Hollow rhetoric

Reality sort of sucks, especially when you're trying to wave the pom-poms:

Bush, in his speech at the U.S. Naval Academy, spoke of progress toward independence, of land restored to Iraqi control, of gains in stability and democracy, and of the "skill and courage" of newly trained Iraqi security forces.

But on the streets of Baghdad, such optimistic rhetoric contrasts sharply with the thunder of suicide bombs, the scream of ambulance sirens, the roar of racing police cars bearing men with masks and machine guns, and the grim daily reports of assassinations, murders and hostage-taking.

On the same day Bush spoke, nine farmworkers were killed when gunmen opened fire on a bus near Baqubah, snipers fired on the office of a National Assembly member in the capital, and three Iraqi army officers were wounded when a bomb went off near their patrol. In Fallujah, 20,000 people marched in a funeral for a Sunni cleric shot while leaving prayers.

For Iraq, that was a quiet day.

...The horror stories of Iraqis are supported by the tabulations gathered from police blotters and daily reports. Statistics are slippery here, but almost every attempt to quantify the violence shows a grim trend.

Multiple-death bombings reached an all-time high of 46 in September, a record likely to be broken this month. More than 400 people have died in bombings this month, compared with 91 a year ago. Every day, according to an estimate by the Brookings Institution in Washington, there are roughly 100 attacks, double the rate of a year ago, and each month between 200 and 300 Iraqi policemen and soldiers are killed. Ninety-three U.S. troops died in October, the fourth-highest monthly toll since the invasion of Iraq.

Broadsides from the shadows

Norman Solomon has probably the best take on the recent Lawrence Wilkerson "revelations" that I've seen.

"Now," Solomon writes, "after so much clear evidence has emerged to discredit the entire U.S. war effort, Colin Powell still can't bring himself to stand up and account for his crucial role. Instead, he's leaving it to a former aide to pin blame on those who remain at the top of the Bush administration. But Powell was an integral part of the war propaganda machinery. And we can hardly expect the same media outlets that puffed him up at crucial times to now scrutinize their mutual history."

Taking out civilians

Juan Cole summarizes the issues surrounding the "Bush wanted to bomb Al Jazeera" claims well:

Despite the smokescreens that politicians and diplomats are attempting to throw up by suggesting that Bush was just joking, there is every reason to suspect that he was deadly serious and that Blair barely managed to argue him out of this parlous course of action. First, the Kabul and Baghdad offices of al-Jazeera had already been bombed by the US military. In each case the action was called a mistake. One such bombing might indeed have been an error, but two arouses suspicion. And now we know there was talk of a third.

The reaction in the Arab world to the Daily Mirror report has been a firestorm of outrage. Some Qataris are calling for the government to end US basing rights in that country. Others are lamenting the hypocrisy of a superpower that represents itself as the leading edge of liberty in the Middle East but has so little respect for press freedom that its leader would cavalierly speak of wiping out hundreds of civilian journalists. If the British documents surface and the story's seriousness is borne out, whatever shreds of credibility Bush still has in the Middle East will be completely gone. After all, the current phase of US involvement in the Middle East, and the two wars Americans have fought in the region, came in response to the terrorist bombing of innocent civilians in downtown office buildings.

Also see Wadah Khanfar's commentary in the Guardian today.