Organizers Fear Terrorist Attacks On Upcoming Al-Qaeda Convention

The Onion | Organizers Fear Terrorist Attacks On Upcoming Al-Qaeda Convention

The al-Qaeda International Convention will open Friday with a keynote speech from Zell Miller, the Democratic senator from Georgia who raised hackles by throwing his support behind al-Qaeda during this year's election.

Where were the WMDs? An insider's summary -- relatively objective?

The New York Times > Opinion > MAHDI OBEIDI: Saddam, the Bomb and Me

The emphases below are mine. I find this fascinating in many dimensions. It agrees with my prejudices, but adds some new agnles.

While the final report from Charles A. Duelfer, the top American inspector of Iraq's covert weapons programs, won't be released for a few weeks, the portions that have already been made public touch on many of the experiences I had while working as the head of Saddam Hussein's nuclear centrifuge program. Now that I am living in the United States, I hope to answer some of the most important questions that remain.

What was really going in Iraq before the American invasion last year? Iraq's nuclear weapons program was on the threshold of success before the 1991 invasion of Kuwait - there is no doubt in my mind that we could have produced dozens of nuclear weapons within a few years - but was stopped in its tracks by United Nations weapons inspectors after the Persian Gulf war and was never restarted. During the 1990's, the inspectors discovered all of the laboratories, machines and materials we had used in the nuclear program, and all were destroyed or otherwise incapacitated.

By 1998, when Saddam Hussein evicted the weapons inspectors from Iraq, all that was left was the dangerous knowledge of hundreds of scientists and the blueprints and prototype parts for the centrifuge, which I had buried under a tree in my garden.

In addition to the inspections, the sanctions that were put in place by the United Nations after the gulf war made reconstituting the program impossible. During the 1980's, we had relied heavily on the international black market for equipment and technology; the sanctions closed that avenue.

Another factor in the mothballing of the program was that Saddam Hussein was profiting handsomely from the United Nations oil-for-food program, building palaces around the country with the money he skimmed. I think he didn't want to risk losing this revenue stream by trying to restart a secret weapons program.

Over the course of the 1990's, most of the scientists from the nuclear program switched to working on civilian projects or in conventional-weapons production, and the idea of building a nuclear bomb became a vague dream from another era.

So, how could the West have made such a mistaken assessment of the nuclear program before the invasion last year? Even to those of us who knew better, it's fairly easy to see how observers got the wrong impression. First, there was Saddam Hussein's history. He had demonstrated his desire for nuclear weapons since the late 1970's, when Iraqi scientists began making progress on a nuclear reactor. He had used chemical weapons against his own people and against Iran during the 1980's. After the 1991 war, he had tried to hide his programs in weapons of mass destruction for as long as possible (he even kept my identity secret from weapons inspectors until 1995). It would have been hard not to suspect him of trying to develop such weapons again.

The Western intelligence services and policy makers, however, overlooked some obvious clues. One was the defection and death of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, who was in charge of the unconventional weapons programs in the 1980's.

As my boss, Mr. Kamel was a brutal taskmaster who forced us to work under impossible deadlines and was the motivating force for our nuclear effort. The drive for nuclear weapons began in earnest when he rose to a position of power in 1987. He placed a detail of 20 fearsome security men on the premises of our centrifuge lab, and my staff and I worked wonders just to stay out of his dungeons. But after he defected to Jordan in 1995, and then returned months later only to be assassinated by his father-in-law's henchmen, the nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs lost their top promoter.

In addition, the West never understood the delusional nature of Saddam Hussein's mind. By 2002, when the United States and Britain were threatening war, he had lost touch with the reality of his diminished military might. By that time I had been promoted to director of projects for the country's entire military-industrial complex, and I witnessed firsthand the fantasy world in which he was living. He backed mythic but hopeless projects like one for a long-range missile that was completely unrealistic considering the constraints of international sanctions. The director of another struggling missile project, when called upon to give a progress report, recited a poem in the dictator's honor instead. Not only did he not go to prison, Saddam Hussein applauded him.

By 2003, as the American invasion loomed, the tyrant was alternately working on his next trashy novel and giving lunatic orders like burning oil around Baghdad to "hide" the city from bombing attacks. Unbelievably, one of my final assignments was to prepare a 10-year plan for military-industrial works, even as tens of thousands of troops were gathering for invasion.

To the end, Saddam Hussein kept alive the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission, staffed by junior scientists involved in research completely unrelated to nuclear weapons, just so he could maintain the illusion in his mind that he had a nuclear program. Sort of like the emperor with no clothes, he fooled himself into believing he was armed and dangerous. But unlike that fairy-tale ruler, Saddam Hussein fooled the rest of the world as well.

Was Iraq a potential threat to the United States and the world? Threat is always a matter of perception, but our nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein's fingers. The sanctions and the lucrative oil-for-food program had served as powerful deterrents but world events - like Iran's current efforts to step up its nuclear ambitions - might well have changed the situation.

Iraqi scientists had the knowledge and the designs needed to jumpstart the program if necessary. And there is no question that we could have done so very quickly. In the late 1980's, we put together the most efficient covert nuclear program the world has ever seen. In about three years, we gained the ability to enrich uranium and nearly become a nuclear threat; we built an effective centrifuge from scratch, even though we started with no knowledge of centrifuge technology. Had Saddam Hussein ordered it and the world looked the other way, we might have shaved months if not years off our previous efforts.

So what now? The dictator may be gone, but that doesn't mean the nuclear problem is behind us. Even under the watchful eyes of Saddam Hussein's security services, there were worries that our scientists might escape to other countries or sell their knowledge to the highest bidder. This expertise is even more valuable today, with nuclear technology ever more available on the black market and a proliferation of peaceful energy programs around the globe that use equipment easily converted to military use.

Hundreds of my former staff members and fellow scientists possess knowledge that could be useful to a rogue nation eager for a covert nuclear weapons program. The vast majority are technicians who, like the rest of us, care first about their families and their livelihoods. It is vital that the United States ensure they get good and constructive jobs in postwar Iraq. The most accomplished of my former colleagues could be brought, at least temporarily, to the West and placed at universities, research labs and private companies.

The United States invaded Iraq in part to end what it saw as a nuclear danger. It is now vital to reduce the chance of Iraq's dangerous knowledge spilling outside of its borders. The nuclear dangers facing the world are growing, not decreasing. My hope is that the Iraqi example can help people understand how best to deal with this threat.

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Let's count the insights.

1. The sanctions worked. (They were collapsing though, both France and Russia wanted to abandon them.)
2. Western intelligence missed the large role of Kamel, an evil man who met an evil death at the hands of an evil man.
3. It takes about 4-5 years for a nation like Iraq to build a nuclear weapon. That's supposedly without Khan's help. Post-Khan I'd guess two years. I think that makes "containment" all but impossible. I wonder how long ago US intelligence decided that containment would no longer work.
4. He hid the centrifuge parts under a tree. So when were they found? By whom?
5. Saddam really was insane by the end of his reign.
6. The 'Oil for Food' bribes had a bright side. They incented Saddam to keep the sanctions going.
6. For Iraq the reasoning is simple. Iran has a bomb, therefore Iraq must have a bomb. This reasoning applies irregardless of who Iraq's tyrant is. It will be ironic if America's tyrant completes the program Saddam began.

The state of Iraq -- worse than was ever imagined, and getting worse yet

War and Piece

The diplomatic editor if the UK Times is, incredibly, still in Baghdad. He writes a description of life there. It's a bit different from the fantasy American's are ingesting.

Kerry finds his honest voice

Shrillblog: Yet Another Member of the Shrill

The administration told us we’d be greeted as liberators. They were wrong. They told us not to worry about looting or the sorry state of Iraq's infrastructure. They were wrong. They told us we had enough troops to provide security and stability, defeat the insurgents, guard the borders and secure the arms depots. They were wrong. They told us we could rely on exiles like Ahmed Chalabi to build political legitimacy. They were wrong. They told us we would quickly restore an Iraqi civil service to run the country and a police force and army to secure it. They were wrong. In Iraq, this administration has consistently over-promised and under-performed. This policy has been plagued by a lack of planning, an absence of candor, arrogance and outright incompetence. And the President has held no one accountable, including himself. In fact, the only officials who lost their jobs over Iraq were the ones who told the truth.

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I've seen the electoral college projections. Barring a miracle, Kerry has lost this election -- and so has America. There's no claim for innocence here -- every voter who cared a whit had the evidence in front of them.

It's too bad the world has to suffer for our failings.

At least Kerry will go down swinging hard. He must feel at this point that he has nothing to lose. He may wish History to testify that he spoke truth to power.

PSA. HRT. SSRIs. Houston, we have a problem.

News

Professor Stamey first suggested that a blood test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA) could indicate the presence of cancer in a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1987. The discovery spawned a vast prostate screening industry - nearly a quarter of a million men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer in the US this year - and a huge growth in the number of men treated for the condition. Now, he has recanted, and suggests that the test merely indicates the size of the prostate and may do more harm than good by encouraging over-treatment. Many of the cancers detected by it are too small to be clinically meaningful and many men may have been unnecessarily treated. 'The PSA era is over,' he said in The Journal of Urology.

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Ten years ago, when I was actively practicing medicine, I was among those on the front line who were very unsure about the value of the PSA test. I give full credit to my internist colleagues for their deep and abiding suspicion of the PSA. Then Dear Abby/Ann began pushing it, then Bob Dole, then resistance became futile.

Now it looks bad for the PSA.

Hormone Replacement Therapy had a similar path. SSRIs are looking shaky -- primarily because an emergent (unconscious?) de facto collusion between manufacturers, researchers, academics and publishers produced a biased publication base. (One UK researcher clinician emerges as a hero in the SSRI debacle -- a lesson about the need to resuscitate the dying breed of clinician-researcher.)

Medicine has a problem. I think it's a research funding, tenure, promotion and publication problem, compounded by issues with professional identity and severe stress and distress among primary care physicians. The situation isn't quite hopeless; some of the steps being taken with electronic publication (advertising free!) and clinical trials registrations are very important. I think we need the AHRQ to be fully alive again -- it was badly wounded about 10 years ago by an unfortunate alliance between libertarian ideologues, anti-science politicians and fearful subspecialists. Maybe orthopods could do penance by resuscitating the AHRQ.

The younger George Bush

Salon.com News | The dunce

Recollections of a GWB business school prof:

Students who challenged and embarrassed Bush in class would then become the subject of a whispering campaign by him, Tsurumi said. "In class, he couldn't challenge them. But after class, he sometimes came up to me in the hallway and started bad-mouthing those students who had challenged him. He would complain that someone was drinking too much. It was innuendo and lies. So that's how I knew, behind his smile and his smirk, that he was a very insecure, cunning and vengeful guy." ...

"I used to chat up a number of students when we were walking back to class," Tsurumi said. "Here was Bush, wearing a Texas Guard bomber jacket, and the draft was the No. 1 topic in those days. And I said, 'George, what did you do with the draft?' He said, 'Well, I got into the Texas Air National Guard.' And I said, 'Lucky you. I understand there is a long waiting list for it. How'd you get in?' When he told me, he didn't seem ashamed or embarrassed. He thought he was entitled to all kinds of privileges and special deals. He was not the only one trying to twist all their connections to avoid Vietnam. But then, he was fanatically for the war."

Tsurumi told Bush that someone who avoided a draft while supporting a war in which others were dying was a hypocrite. "He realized he was caught, showed his famous smirk and huffed off."

Tsurumi's conclusion: Bush is not as dumb as his detractors allege. "He was just badly brought up, with no discipline, and no compassion," he said.

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Apparently Bush demonstrated even then a remarkable facility for the bald faced lie. It is his genius.

Senior US military leaders speak-up: Bush has brought us to unprecedented disaster

Guardian Unlimited | Sidney Blumenthal | Far graver than Vietnam

Or, as I've been saying lately, rather like Checknya with oil.

...But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."

W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute - and the top expert on Iraq there - said: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency". According to Terrill, the anti-US insurgency, centred in the Sunni triangle, and holding several cities and towns - including Fallujah - is expanding and becoming more capable as a consequence of US policy.

"We have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."

After the killing of four US contractors in Fallujah, the marines besieged the city for three weeks in April - the watershed event for the insurgency. "I think the president ordered the attack on Fallujah," said General Hoare. "I asked a three-star marine general who gave the order to go to Fallujah and he wouldn't tell me. I came to the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House." Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist radicals gained control, using the city as a base.

"If you are a Muslim and the community is under occupation by a non-Islamic power it becomes a religious requirement to resist that occupation," Terrill explained. "Most Iraqis consider us occupiers, not liberators." He describes the religious imagery common now in Fallujah and the Sunni triangle: "There's talk of angels and the Prophet Mohammed coming down from heaven to lead the fighting, talk of martyrs whose bodies are glowing and emanating wonderful scents."

"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."

General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."

Terrill believes that any sustained US military offensive against the no-go areas "could become so controversial that members of the Iraqi government would feel compelled to resign". Thus, an attempted military solution would destroy the slightest remaining political legitimacy. "If we leave and there's no civil war, that's a victory."

General Hoare believes from the information he has received that "a decision has been made" to attack Fallujah "after the first Tuesday in November. That's the cynical part of it - after the election. The signs are all there."

He compares any such planned attack to the late Syrian dictator Hafez al-Asad's razing of the rebel city of Hama. "You could flatten it," said Hoare. "US military forces would prevail, casualties would be high, there would be inconclusive results with respect to the bad guys, their leadership would escape, and civilians would be caught in the middle. I hate that phrase collateral damage. And they talked about dancing in the street, a beacon for democracy."

General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic.

Slate - Does God endorse George Bush?

Heaven Sent - Does God endorse George Bush? By Steven Waldman

Of course, it's always possible God did put George W. Bush in the White House. But if He did, it doesn't theologically follow that He wants him to have a second term.

Where is George Bush's genius?

Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog: Wow! Francis Fukuyama Is Shrill!

George Bush must have a peculiar genius. He couldn't have gotten where he is without a fantastic gift.

It's not his raw IQ. Based on his SAT scores his raw IQ is probably about 120. Average to above average for college.

It's not his insight, wisdom or judgment. Those have been catastrophic.

It's not his choice of allies. Cheney? Rumsfeld?

And yet ...

He has many followers. He exerts iron control over many who are far more capable, in naive terms, than he.

My guess he has a genius for four related things:

1. Lying. I think he has a capacity for deception beyond everyday imaging. I would NEVER play poker against George Bush.

2. Raw leadership -- the peculiar gene that persuades others that he should be followed, that he is competent and wise.

3. The ability to project the appearance of wisdom, confidence, and considered judgment.

4. Rewarding his allies and punishing his enemies -- thereby imposing an iron loyalty and discipline. This requires the an incredible capacity to carry a grudge.

Combine the above with an insatiable lust for power over others, and we have a recipe for disaster -- GWB, father of the American Chechnya.

Iraq is not Vietnam....

Back to Iraq ...

I had one of those nasty revelations last night, on reading an Economist article on the state of Chechnya. It's obvious in retrospect, and I'm sure it's a common observation everywhere in the world ... except in America.

We've been blinded by our history in Vietnam. So blinded we've chosen the wrong lens for viewing our predicament.

Iraq is not Vietnam.

It is Chechnya.

Back to Iraq 3.0: It's Worse Than You Think...

Back to Iraq 3.0: It's Worse Than You Think...

Anyone who asks me to tell the “real” story of Iraq — implying all the bad things are just media hype — should refer to this post. I just told you the real story: What was once a hell wrought by Saddam is now one of America’s making.

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This guy was once a relatively optimistic observer. I think he might once have been Republican, or at least an independent.

It sounds like we've lost. Bush, Rumsfeld and their kin have cost us, and Iraq, so very, very much.

Rumsfeld and Fallujah

Key General Criticizes April Attack In Fallujah (washingtonpost.com): "The comments by Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, made shortly after he relinquished command of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force on Sunday, amounted to a stinging broadside against top U.S. military and civilian leaders who ordered the Fallujah invasion and withdrawal."

Rumsfeld "termination justification" file is about six inches thick.

The Shrill Blog: Martin Sieff Scores the Neocons at Zero for Twenty-One

The Shrill Blog: Martin Sieff Scores the Neocons at Zero for Twenty-One

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These are 21 major neocon predictions that have been proven wrong.

Did they make ANY predictions that have been proven correct?

If these guys were ball players they'd have been retired by now. Instead they are making new plans.

Fidelity voted against expensing stock options

The New York Times > Business > Your Money > Gretchen Morgenson: A Door Opens. The View Is Ugly.

Most disturbing, some of the biggest fund companies - including Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and MFS Investment Management - cast votes with executives and against the views of most investors on the subject of expensing stock options this year.

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I want to know how Vanguard voted on this one. I'll write Fidelity and let them know I'm moving my money elsewhere.

The stories not told: Al Qaeda's chemical bombs in Jordan and Pakistan

ABCNEWS.com

In early April, authorities in Jordan disrupted what would have been an even bigger chemical attack. Officials said that terrorists linked to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi managed to smuggle three cars — packed with explosives, a chemical bomb and poisonous gas — into the capital city, Amman.

Authorities in Jordan estimate that 80,000 people would have been killed if the chemical bomb had gone off at its intended targets — the Jordanian intelligence headquarters, the U.S. Embassy in Amman, and the Jordanian prime minister's office.

'It looks quite thought-through,' said David Siegrist, director of Studies for Countering Biological Terrorism at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies. 'They have about 800 kilos of explosive and tons of chemicals for oxidation. They also have about a ton of cyanide, which added a little extra pinch to whatever they were about to do.'

The captured leader of the plot, Jordanian Azmi al-Jayussi, told authorities that a Russian scientist had provided the chemical recipe.

And as seen on a tape obtained by ABC News, when Jordanian authorities conducted a test explosion using the same combination of chemicals, with smaller portions, it produced a toxic plume that killed rabbits placed 200 yards away.

'The kind of weapon that al Qaeda procured in Jordan anyone can buy in the United States commercially,' said Clark. 'Anyone in the United States, if they knew the right formula, could make this kind of chemical bomb that would kill thousands.'

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The story unfolds as predicted. Technologic expertise is increasingly distributed. The cost of mass murder falls faster than the cost of defense.

The 9/11 attack succeeded because the attackers got lucky -- very lucky. Yes, the US had weak defenses. Yes, we have serious problems with the quality of top and mid-level management at the FBI and CIA. Yes, we have an imcompetent government. Despite all that, the 9/11 attackers ought to have failed -- but they got lucky.

The good guys have had some luck too. These two attacks were disrupted in party by good fortune.

Luck is not a strategy. We need a better government here and better approaches abroad.