DeLong's notes on a Richard Clarke speech

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

"We are not threatened by something called 'terrorism'. We are threatened by a militant subsect of Wahabism." Saudis are Wahabists. Only a few Wahabists are Jihadists. Necessary to preserve and widen the separation between the two.

Al Qaeda's Shurra Council--2/3 of the members of the Shurra Council as of 9/11 are dead or captured, yes. But they have been replaced. We have not captured 2/3 of Al Qaeda's [current] leaders. It has new leaders.

George W. Bush asked for an organizational chart of Al Qaeda so that he could cross people off as they were killed or captured. A very "MBA" way of looking at it, it seemed to me. I remembered "The Battle of Algiers". At the end, the French have caught and tortured and killed all of the urban guerrilla leaders they had identified at the start. And the French had lost the war.

The transformation of Al Qaeda. Breakup into fourteen more-or-less regional pieces. An ideology, not an organization.

Need good law enforcement, good intelligence, and the ability to strike deep when we have a real target. When we don't have a real target, however...

1.3 billion Muslims
200 million of whom believe now (much fewer on 9/12) they support Al Qaeda and its ilk
100,000 Jihadists.

Control and eliminate the third; woo the second; keep the first from drifting into the second.

How good is our intelligence? SigInt as good as it could be: really good. The spy divisions of our intelligence agencies are broken: we have no good spies. Jordanians have spies, British have spies in the Middle East. We don't--not really.

Intelligence analysis the most important. It was intelligence analysis that really fell down on the job in Iraq. The job of the analyst is to say "we don't know" when we don't know.

Oklahoma City: Connection between Terry Nichols and Ramze Usef? Clarke has been unable to disprove the existence of a relationship.

Intelligence analysts need to have open minds, for the world is a really weird place..

9/11 not a failure of intelligence. We told Bush 44 times that Al Qaeda was determined to attack--"Al Qaeda determined to attack inside U.S."

Praise of Clinton's actions in December 1999--that kind of press would have given us a chance in the summer of 2001. Praise of the State Department's Intelligence Bureau...

Since 9/11 very little has been done inside the U.S. as far as Homeland Security is concerned: no raising of the low-hanging fruit vulnerable to Al Qaeda and its ilk...

Why hasn't Al Qaeda struck again?

--We don't know, we guess.

--The FBI: it has done a lot to disrupt Al Qaeda operations inside the U.S.
--Al Qaeda has regionalized itself: not clear anyone thinks they're responsible for mounting American (as opposed to Indonesian, Mediterranean, et cetera) operations.
--They've set themselves a high bar: the only operations they are considering now are those that are even worse than 9/11.

The invasion of Iraq: an extraordinary strategic defeat for the United States, made worse by the war crimes of Abu Ghraib. The pool of people who really hate us is much greater than it was on 9/11.

You ask what could happen that would be really bad? You don't have to say "could": things are really bad. Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Pervez Musharraf has suffered three assassination attempts this year. The last two regional elections in Pakistan have been won by the Osama bin Laden party. Imagine a successful assassination of Pakistan followed by a Taliban-like takeover.

You want another bad thing? The fall of the House of Saud in a fashion analogous to the fall of the House of Pahlavi twenty-five years ago.

Another bad thing? Iran. Iran had an organizational relationship with Al Qaeda. Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons. But our ability to act is constrained by the fact that Bush and Powell and company lied about Iraq.

...

Bush says he is accepting 9/11 Commission's recommendations, but he isn't--not really...

We should not approve of Putin's policies in Chechnya...

Our worldwide credibility is totally shot...

The decisive battles of the War on Terror cannot be fought not in places like Fallujah or the Hindu Kush. It's a war of ideas. If we mobilize our ideas to split the 200 million who think they support bin Laden off away from the 100,000 Jihadists, we win.

---

Yeah, this is right. Bush is wrong. Sigh.

A brave man writing ...

The New York Times > International > Middle East > School Siege in Russia Sparks Self-Criticism in Arab World

'It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims,' Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, the general manager of the widely watched Al-Arabiya satellite television station wrote in one of the most striking of these commentaries.

---

These are brave commentators. Truth be told, of course, there have been many non-Muslim terrorists - even in recent years. Ireland, Spain, the US ....

Terrorism has pioneered new depravities recently -- when Muslims happened to have their dark time. The next set of terrorists (from failed nations in Africa?) may or may not be Muslim, but they will dig deeper yet.

Could Cheney be LESS competent than Bush?

RollingStone.com

As vice president, Cheney has been the decisive force pushing America into war. In the inner councils of the administration, it was he who emasculated Colin Powell, cut the State Department out of effective policymaking, foisted fake reports on the intelligence agencies and supplanted the National Security Council. It was also Cheney who placed appointees personally loyal to him, including Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, in charge of the Pentagon and speckled the warmaking bureaucracy with desk officers culled from neoconservative Washington think tanks -- ideologues with no military experience.

"They were like cancer cells," says retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked on the Defense Department's Near East and South Asia desk during the buildup to the Iraq war. "They didn't care about the truth. They had an agenda. I'd never seen anything like it. They deformed everything."

Even within the State Department, officials of Cheney's choosing -- not Powell's -- controlled the key positions when it came to maneuvering the United States into the Iraq war. "Even when there was a show of Defense listening to State, it was just one Cheney operative talking to another," says Greg Thielmann, a former member of the State Department Intelligence Agency. "We were simply bypassed from the start."

Over at Defense, competent intelligence professionals were purged in order to ease the way to war. Douglas Feith, brought in under Rumsfeld to serve as undersecretary of defense for policy, applied an ideological test to his staff: He didn't want competence; he wanted fervor. Col. Pat Lang, a Middle East expert who served under five presidents, Republican and Democratic, in key posts in military intelligence, recalls being considered for a job at the Pentagon. During the job interview, Feith scanned Lang's impressive resume. "I see you speak Arabic," Feith said. When Lang nodded, Feith said, "Too bad," and dismissed him.

---

Bad and worse.

Salon.com News | Sen. Graham: Bush covered up Saudi involvement in 9/11

Salon.com News | Sen. Graham: Bush covered up Saudi involvement in 9/11

In his book, Graham asserts that the White House blocked investigations into Saudi Arabian government support for the 9/11 plot, in part because of the Bush family's close ties to the Saudi royal family and wealthy Saudis like the bin Ladens. Behind the White House's insistence on classifying 27 pages detailing the Saudi links in a report issued by a joint House-Senate intelligence panel co-chaired by Graham in 2002 lay the desire to hide the administration's deficiencies and protect its Saudi allies, according to Graham...

...[Q] In the book, you describe being furious with the FBI for blocking your committee's attempts to interview that paid FBI informant. You write that the panel needed the bureau to deliver a congressional subpoena to the informant because he was in the FBI's protective custody and could not be located without the bureau's cooperation. But the FBI refused to help. What happened? And what do you think the bureau was trying to hide?

[A] We had just finished a hearing and had asked various representatives of the FBI to come into a conference room and discuss our strong interest in being able to interview the San Diego informant. It was clear that the FBI representatives were not going to voluntarily allow that to happen, and we had already prepared a subpoena, which I had in my coat pocket. I walked over to the principal representative for the FBI, Ken Wainstein, and I was approaching him with this subpoena, he clasped his hands tightly behind his back. I tried to hand him the subpoena, but he acted as if it were radioactive. Finally he said he didn't want to take the subpoena, but he would get back to us on the following Monday. Well, nobody ever got back to us. It was the only time in my senatorial experience that the FBI has refused to deliver a legally issued congressional subpoena.

Later, the FBI congressional affairs officer sent a letter to [co-chairman] Porter Goss and me, saying, "The administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source, nor did the administration agree to allow the FBI to serve a subpoena on the source." What that tells me is the FBI wasn't acting on its own but had been directed by the White House not to cooperate.

...[Q]Do you believe the White House manipulated the intelligence to persuade the public to back the invasion? "Manipulate" may be too strong a word for you. But it took a request from you and Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to get the intelligence community to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on the danger posed by Iraq, a step that would seem an obvious one to take, considering the stakes to the nation.

[A]I am comfortable with the word "manipulate." There was a chapter that did not become known until three or four months ago that occurred in May 2002. Various leaders of the CIA were called down to the White House and told that the White House wanted to have a public document that could be released under the CIA's label but which would make the case for going to war with Iraq. I think one of the reasons they didn't want to do a formal National Intelligence Estimate was because it would be done not by the CIA alone but by all of the members of the intelligence community, and it was likely to reach a different conclusion. At least it would contain dissenting opinions and caveats that wouldn't be in a CIA public document.

[Q]This description of the CIA is one that is under the complete control of the White House, an agency that is not independent but highly politicized.

[A]That's right. It is the expression of the leadership of the intelligence agencies, trying to placate their masters in the administration...

---

I'd thought similar accusations were too much like conspiracy nuts. I've since learned better. Bush exceeds every expectation. This is beginning to make Watergate feel like a minor exploit.

The last statement does explain why Tenet and Bush were so loyal to one another. Will Tenet start to talk?

Update: The Washington Post media page is covering all the Bush bad news stories; The Kitty Kelly bio, the 60 minutes expose, the Graham book, the deficit, Cheney threatening terrorist actions if Kerry is elected, etc. Wow. What a bright and cheery day it is today.

Bush is caught in the big Lie ...

The New York Times > Opinion > Kristof: Missing in Action

President Bush claims that in the fall of 1972, he fulfilled his Air National Guard duties at a base in Alabama. But Bob Mintz was there - and he is sure Mr. Bush wasn't.

Plenty of other officers have said they also don't recall that Mr. Bush ever showed up for drills at the base. What's different about Mr. Mintz is that he remembers actively looking for Mr. Bush and never finding him.

Mr. Mintz says he had heard that Mr. Bush - described as a young Texas pilot with political influence - had transferred to the base. He heard that Mr. Bush was also a bachelor, so he was looking forward to partying together. He's confident that he'd remember if Mr. Bush had shown up.

I've steered clear until now of how Mr. Bush evaded service in Vietnam because I thought other issues were more important. But if Bush supporters attack John Kerry for his conduct after he volunteered for dangerous duty in Vietnam, it's only fair to scrutinize Mr. Bush's behavior...

..."The record clearly and convincingly proves he did not fulfill the obligations he incurred when he enlisted in the Air National Guard," writes Gerald Lechliter, a retired Army colonel who has made the most meticulous examination I've seen of Mr. Bush's records (I've posted the full 32-page analysis here). Mr. Lechliter adds that Mr. Bush received unauthorized or fraudulent payments that breached National Guard rules, according to the documents that the White House itself released.

Does this disqualify Mr. Bush from being commander in chief? No. But it should disqualify the Bush campaign from sliming the military service of a rival who still carries shrapnel from Vietnam in his thigh.

---

So Bush will learn the risk of fighting dirty. It opens the field to serious responses. This will come up in the debates.

Bush is a very good liar. He's a better liar than Clinton, who always came across as phony when he was lying. Bush comes across as genuine and open. Now that's a good liar.

Jimmy Carter rips Zell Miller - up and down

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall: September 05, 2004 - September 11, 2004 Archives

This is apparently the true text of a letter Carter sent Zell Miller. It was a private letter, but the text got out. Zell Miller is pond sucking scum; but somewhere inside he might shrivel just a bit more on reading this. From Joshua Micha Marshall's site, emphases mine:

You seem to have forgotten that loyal Democrats elected you as mayor and as state senator. Loyal Democrats, including members of my family and me, elected you as lieutenant governor and as governor. It was a loyal Democrat, Lester Maddox, who assigned you to high positions in the state government when you were out of office. It was a loyal Democrat, Roy Barnes, who appointed you as U.S. Senator when you were out of office. By your historically unprecedented disloyalty, you have betrayed our trust.

Great Georgia Democrats who served in the past, including Walter George, Richard Russell, Herman Talmadge, and Sam Nunn disagreed strongly with the policies of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and me, but they remained loyal to the party in which they gained their public office. Other Democrats, because of philosophical differences or the race issue, like Bo Callaway and Strom Thurmond, at least had the decency to become Republicans.

Everyone knows that you were chosen to speak at the Republican Convention because of your being a “Democrat,” and it’s quite possible that your rabid and mean-spirited speech damaged our party and paid the Republicans some transient dividends.

Perhaps more troublesome of all is seeing you adopt an established and very effective Republican campaign technique of destroying the character of opponents by wild and false allegations. The Bush campaign’s personal attacks on the character of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 was a vivid example. The claim that war hero Max Cleland was a disloyal American and an ally of Osama bin Laden should have given you pause, but you have joined in this ploy by your bizarre claims that another war hero, John Kerry, would not defend the security of our nation except with spitballs. (This is the same man whom you described previously as “one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend.")

I, myself, never claimed to have been a war hero, but I served in the navy from 1942 to 1953, and, as president, greatly strengthened our military forces and protected our nation and its interests in every way. I don’t believe this warrants your referring to me as a pacificist.

Zell, I have known you for forty-two years and have, in the past, respected you as a trustworthy political leader and a personal friend. But now, there are many of us loyal Democrats who feel uncomfortable in seeing that you have chosen the rich over the poor, unilateral preemptive war over a strong nation united with others for peace, lies and obfuscation over the truth, and the political technique of personal character assassination as a way to win elections or to garner a few moments of applause. These are not the characteristics of great Democrats whose legacy you and I have inherited.

Who is/are Putin's "They"?

BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Excerpts from Putin's address

We showed weakness, and the weak are trampled upon. Some want to cut off a juicy morsel from us while others are helping them.

They are helping because they believe that, as one of the world's major nuclear powers, Russia is still posing a threat to someone, and therefore this threat must be removed.

---

Ooookaaay. So who is "they"? The US? Europe? China? Chile?

Putin is moving into increasingly nasty territory.

Not surprising. 9/11 has put the US into a persistent psychotic state (how else to explain Bush up 11% over Kerry?) -- and, as fragile as we are, Russia is much worse off.

These terrorists may be well on the way to taking the world back to the 14th century.

Kerry in Vietnam, Bush debauches in Alabama

Salon.com News | George W. Bush's missing year

"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."

Linda Allison's story, never before published, contradicts the Bush campaign's assertion that George W. Bush transferred from the Texas Air National Guard to the Alabama National Guard in 1972 because he received an irresistible offer to gain high-level experience on the campaign of Bush family friend Winton "Red" Blount. In fact, according to what Allison says her late husband told her, the younger Bush had become a political liability for his father, who was then the United States ambassador to the United Nations, and the family wanted him out of Texas. "I think they wanted someone they trusted to keep an eye on him," Linda Allison said.

... Personal history aside, Allison's recollections of the young George Bush in Alabama in 1972 are relevant as a contrast to the medals for valor and bravery that Kerry won in Vietnam in the same era. An apparent front group for the Bush campaign, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has attacked Kerry in television ads as a liar and traitor to veterans for later opposing a war that cost 58,000 American lives. Bush, who has resisted calls from former Vietnam War POW John McCain, R-Ariz., to repudiate the Swift Boat ads, has said he served honorably in the National Guard.

Allison's account corroborates a Washington Post investigation in February that found no credible witnesses to the service in the Alabama National Guard that Bush maintains he performed, despite a lack of documentary evidence. Asked if she'd ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way." Allison also confirmed previously published accounts that Bush often showed up in the Blount campaign offices around noon, boasting about how much alcohol he had consumed the night before.

---

GWB escaped Vietnam through his family connections, didn't fulfill his Guard application, and was hidden from public view because of his multiple substance abuse problems. Nothing new or surprising here. His experiences could have given him wisdom. They didn't.

Google Search: "zell miller" "barking mad"

Google Search: "zell miller" "barking mad"

---

There are only 16 hits for Zell Miller and "barking mad". I guess Google hasn't run its index today.

Zel is a great poster child from the new Fasc... Republican party.

Iowa Republicans are changing the name of their party to 'Hezbollah'

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Republicans Change Name to 'Hezbollah'

Amy Sullivan reports in the Washington Monthly that the Iowa Republicans are changing the name of their party to 'Hezbollah':

The Washington Monthly: Guest: Amy Sullivan:

'God's Official Party'?....That's what the good souls in the G.O.P. are apparently calling themselves these days, according to Mike Crowley's report from a morning meeting of the Iowa Republican delegation in New York. Ah, humility...

---

A lovely translation by DeLong.

The demise of the Falluja Brigade and the rise of Zarqawi

The New York Times > International > Middle East > Insurgency: In Western Iraq, Fundamentalists Hold U.S. at Bay

INSURGENCY
In Western Iraq, Fundamentalists Hold U.S. at Bay
By JOHN F. BURNS and ERIK ECKHOLM

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 28 - While American troops have been battling Islamic militants to an uncertain outcome in Najaf, the Shiite holy city, events in two Sunni Muslim cities that stand astride the crucial western approaches to Baghdad have moved significantly against American plans to build a secular democracy in Iraq.

Both of the cities, Falluja and Ramadi, and much of Anbar Province, are now controlled by fundamentalist militias, with American troops confined mainly to heavily protected forts on the desert's edge. What little influence the Americans have is asserted through wary forays in armored vehicles, and by laser-guided bombs that obliterate enemy safe houses identified by scouts who penetrate militant ranks. Even bombing raids appear to strengthen the fundamentalists, who blame the Americans for scores of civilian deaths.

American efforts to build a government structure around former Baath Party stalwarts - officials of Saddam Hussein's army, police force and bureaucracy who were willing to work with the United States - have collapsed. Instead, the former Hussein loyalists, under threat of beheadings, kidnappings and humiliation, have mostly resigned or defected to the fundamentalists, or been killed. Enforcers for the old government, including former Republican Guard officers, have put themselves in the service of fundamentalist clerics they once tortured at Abu Ghraib.

In the past three weeks, three former Hussein loyalists appointed to important posts in Falluja and Ramadi have been eliminated by the militants and their Baathist allies. The chief of a battalion of the American-trained Iraqi National Guard in Falluja was beheaded by the militants, prompting the disintegration of guard forces in the city. The Anbar governor was forced to resign after his three sons were kidnapped. The third official, the provincial police chief in Ramadi, was lured to his arrest by American marines after three assassination attempts led him to secretly defect to the rebel cause.

The national guard commander and the governor were both forced into humiliating confessions, denouncing themselves as "traitors" on videotapes that sell in the Falluja marketplace for 50 cents. The tapes show masked men ending the guard commander's halting monologue, toppling him to the ground, and sawing off his head, to the accompaniment of recorded Koranic chants ordaining death for those who "make war upon Allah." The governor is shown with a photograph of himself with an American officer, sobbing as he repents working with the "infidel Americans," then being rewarded with a weeping reunion with his sons.

In another taped sequence available in the Falluja market, a mustached man identifying himself as an Egyptian is shown kneeling in a flowered shirt, confessing that he "worked as a spy for the Americans," planting electronic "chips" used for setting targets in American bombing raids. The man says he was paid $150 for each chip laid, then he, too, is tackled to the ground by masked guards while a third masked man, a burly figure who proclaims himself a dispenser of Islamic justice, pulls a 12-inch knife from a scabbard, grabs the Egyptian by the scalp, and severs his head.

The situation across Anbar represents the latest reversal for the First Marine Expeditionary Force, which sought to assert control with a spring offensive in Falluja and Ramadi that incurred some of the heaviest American casualties of the war, and a far heavier toll, in the hundreds, among Falluja's resistance fighters and civilians. The offensive ended, mortifyingly for the marines, in a decision to pull back from both cities and entrust American hopes to the former Baathists.

The American rationale was that military victory would come only by flattening the two cities, and that the better course lay in handing important government positions to former loyalists of the ousted government, who would work, over time, to wrest control from the Islamic militants who had emerged from the shadows to build strongholds there. The culmination of that approach came with the recruitment of the so-called Falluja Brigade, led by a former Army general under Mr. Hussein, and composed of a motley assembly of former Iraqi soldiers and insurgents, who marched into the city in early May, wearing old Iraqi military uniforms, backed with American-supplied weapons and money.

But the Falluja Brigade is in tatters now, reduced to sharing tented checkpoints on roads into the city with the militants, its headquarters in Falluja abandoned, like the buildings assigned to the national guard. Men assigned to the brigade, and to the two guard battalions, have mostly fled, Iraqis in Falluja say, taking their families with them, and handing their weapons to the militants.

The militants' principal power center is a mosque in Falluja led by an Iraqi cleric, Abdullah al-Janabi, who has instituted a Taliban-like rule in the city, rounding up people suspected of theft and rape and sentencing them to publicly administered lashes, and, in some cases, beheading. But Mr. Janabi appears to have been working in alliance with an Islamic militant group, Unity and Holy War, that American intelligence has identified as the vehicle of Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born terrorist with links to Al Qaeda whom the Americans have blamed for many of the suicide bombings in Baghdad, which is just 35 miles from Falluja, and in other Iraqi cities.

The videotapes showing the killing of the guard commander, the humiliation of the governor, and the beheading of the Egyptian all display the black-and-yellow flag of the Zarqawi group as a backdrop, and the passages of the Koran chanted as an accompaniment to the killings are drawn from passages of the Muslim holy book that have accompanied some of the videotaped pronouncements by Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden. Iraqis who have watched the Falluja tapes say the Egyptian's executioner speaks in a cultured Arabic that is foreign, possibly Jordanian or Palestinian.

A Severe Blow in Falluja

Perhaps the harshest blow to the American position in Falluja came with the Aug. 13 execution of the national guard commander, Suleiman Mar'awi, a former officer in Mr. Hussein's army with family roots in Falluja. In the tape of his killing, he is seen in his camouflaged national guard uniform, with an Iraqi flag at his shoulder, confessing to his leadership of a plot to stage an uprising in the city on Aug. 20 that was to have been coordinated with an American offensive. For that purpose, he says, he recruited defectors among the militants' ranks and met frequently with Marine commanders outside the city to settle details of the attack.

American commanders in Baghdad acknowledged ruefully that Mr. Mar'awi had been killed, but they denied that there was any plan for an offensive. Still, Marine commanders at Camp Falluja, a sprawling base less than five miles east of the city, have been telling reporters for weeks that the city has become little more than a terrorist camp, providing a haven for Iraqi militants and for scores of non-Iraqi Arabs, many of them with ties to Al Qaeda, who have homed in on Falluja as the ideal base to conduct a holy war against the United States. Eventually, the Marine officers have said, American hopes of creating stability in Iraq will necessitate a new attack on the city, this time one that will not be halted before it can succeed.

Some of those officers have also acknowledged that Iraqi "scouts" working for the Americans, some disguised as militants, others working for the national guard and police, have been a source of intelligence on militant activities in Falluja, and on the location of bombing targets. The American command says it has carried out many bombing raids since the Marine pullback from the city in May, killing scores of militants. One such raid that was reported this week in a popular Baghdad newspaper, Al-Adala, said that 13 Yemenis had been killed in an air raid in Falluja as they prepared to carry out suicide bombing attacks in Baghdad, and that the Yemeni government was negotiating to bring the bodies home.

Among militants in Falluja, there has been one point of agreement with the Americans - that many of the bombing raids have hit militant safe houses, and with pinpoint accuracy. A clue as to how this has been possible is given in the tapes of the beheadings of Mr. Mar'awi, the national guard commander, and of the Egyptian, a man in his mid-30's who identifies himself on the tape as Muhammad Fawazi. Both men confess to having planted electronic homing "chips" for the Americans. As they speak, the tapes show a man wearing a red-checkered kaffiyeh headdress holding a rectangular device, colored green and encased in clear plastic, about the size of a matchbox....

... American commanders confess they have no answers in Anbar, and say their strategy is to curb the militants' ability to project their violence farther afield, especially in Baghdad. A recent meeting between Iraq's interim prime minister, Dr. Allawi, and a delegation of tribal sheiks from Falluja who have pledged fealty to Mr. Janabi is said to have reached a standstill accord, with Dr. Allawi promising not to sanction large-scale American attacks on the Anbar cities, and the sheiks conveying Mr. Janabi's pledge to halt militant attacks on the Americans...

---

I remember when snuff films were a rumor of extreme perversity. Now they sell for 50 cents in Iraqi markets. The march of progress.

In these cities the Sunni fundamentalists are popular. Removing these men would mean killing most of the inhabitants.

Ok George, what now?

The Fall of Robert Dole (from a Nixon Republican)

When Bob Dole Said No (washingtonpost.com)

Bob Dole spent little time in combat. But as a result of the time he did spend, he lay on his back for years, recovering, and helping others to recover.

I spent a year in Vietnam and came home without a scratch. My brother served two tours in Vietnam, earned three Purple Hearts (and was hospitalized, and does draw disability -- weird yardsticks used to measure John Kerry's alleged shortfall), and yet spent far less time than I did in-country. Indeed, his first 'tour' lasted about 15 minutes, ending on the beach near Danang in the midst of the U.S. Marines' first amphibious assault in Vietnam.

Time in-country, how often a man was wounded, how much blood he shed when he was wounded -- it is hurtful that those who served in Vietnam are being split in so vile a fashion, and that the wounds of that war are reopened at the instigation of people who avoided serving at all. It is hurtful that a man of Bob Dole's stature should lend himself to the effort to dishonor a fellow American veteran in the service of politics at its cheapest.

There was a time when he would have refused. I know. I was there.

---

Bob Dole was a man of conscience. Until he Fell.

The Bush administration has this effect on good people. Colin Powell, of course, is exhibit A. Some men, such as O'Neill, save their souls. Most lose them. What is it about that man?

Maybe all those Christian Fundamentalists campaigning for Bush should reread their Apocrypha. Perhaps Clinton wasn't holding the place they assigned to him ..

Backstory to the latest scandal: Salon.com | The new Pentagon papers

Salon.com | The new Pentagon papers

A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.

---

I missed this in March. It's important back story now that the 9/11 committee has delivered and the Feith/Franklin story is breaking.

The mainstream media needs to revisit this. How deep does the rot go?

The National Scream: 9/2/04 @ 9:58 pm ET - "Fuggedaboutit".

Boing Boing: Nationwide scream when W speaks at the RNC

On September 2nd, 2004, at approximately 10 pm, George W. Bush will appear on television screens nationwide. For some of our fellow citizens, this will be a moment of joy. But for most of us, it will be the low point of an incredibly exasperating week.

Until now, there have been only two options: miss the speech (either by screaming at the television or turning it off), or bottle up the frustration within us, causing irreparable psychological harm. The first option is unbecoming of citizens in a democracy. The second option is just terrible. But now, for the first time, we have a better way. At the moment we see the president on our television screens, we will rise. We will throw open our windows. And, as George W. Bush moves to the podium in New York City, we will send him a message about his bid for reelection: we will yell, 'fuggedaboudit!'

This will be a peaceful, non-disruptive protest. We will stop yelling before the president starts speaking. Our goal is not to drown him out, but to communicate. (And vent.)

---

The post omits the key factor -- the timezone of the speech. Maybe we could make this a neighborhood event. We need a more precise start time however. Maybe a counter running on a web site could coordinate everyone.

Inside scoop on the Rumsfeld/Feith/Israel spy scandal

The Agonist | thoughtful, global, timely

For months, I have been working with my colleagues Paul Glastris and Josh Marshall on a story for the Washington Monthly about US policy towards Iran. In particular, it involves a particular series of meetings involving officials from the office of the undersecretary of defense for Policy Doug Feith and Iranian dissidents. To that end, we have pursued and cultivated numerous sources with knowledge of those officials, those meetings, and more broadly, Feith's office's seeming attempts to forge a rogue US foreign policy to Iran out of the Pentagon.

As part of our reporting, I have come into possession of information that points to an official who is the most likely target of the FBI investigation into who allegedly passed intelligence on deliberations on US foreign policy to Iran to officials with the pro-Israeli lobby group, AIPAC, and to the Israelis, as alleged by the CBS report. That individual is Larry Franklin, a veteran DIA Iran analyst seconded to Feith's office.

---

First, this is an amazing story. The reason it's so interesting is because Feith/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld led a rogue intelligence op prior to the Iraq invasion. Lately, they've seemed to be doing the same with respect to Iran.

Now we discover that one of the actors deeply involved in that effort may be spy for Israel. (Or a double-triple-quardruple agent -- or nothing -- these spy guys seem to love bizarre games.)

I wonder how this will play in the middle east. Probably pretty much what they'd expect.

In terms of Israel, they're just doing their job. Congratulations are deserved. The Israelis and Iranians are two of the best intel orgs in the business. Maybe we could outsource our Intel to Israel and Iran.

Hmmm.

On second thought, maybe we did outsource our decision making to Israel and Iran. Both Israel and Iran wanted the US to conquer Iraq -- each for their own reasons. Both appear to have substantially penetrated the Pentagon and Rumsfeld's organization; Iran via Chalabi and, if one believes the FBI, Israel via ? Franklin.

Rumsfeld shouldn't resign. He should remain in office forever, as a living reminder of the risks of arrogance, ignorance, and the perils of a Bush presidency.