Monday March 31, 2003
At the BBC News website: Troops' anger over US 'friendly fire'
Three wounded UK soldiers have described how they survived an attack by a US A-10 Thunderbolt anti-tank aircraft that killed one of their troop and destroyed two armoured vehicles.One of the survivors criticised the US pilot for showing "no regard for human life" and accused him of being "a cowboy" who had "gone out on a jolly".
The US A-10 aircraft circled and came around for a second attack
Another survivor said he stumbled out of the burning wreckage of his light tank and waved frantically to the American pilot to try to halt his second attack.The so-called friendly fire incident, 40 kilometres (24.8 miles) north of Basra, left one soldier missing, presumed dead, and another in intensive care on RFA Argus, the UK forces' hospital ship in the Gulf.
Another soldier who had been in one of the two destroyed Scimitar light reconnaissance tanks, manned by the Household Cavalry, escaped without injury.
Nursing shrapnel wounds and burns, the three injured soldiers, Lieutenant Alex MacEwen, 25, Lance Corporal of Horse Steven Gerrard, 33, and Trooper Chris Finney, 18, spoke of their bewilderment and anger.
They said the US pilot apparently failed to recognise that their tanks were a British make, with special coalition identification aids and even a large Union flag on another machine in the five-vehicle convoy.
Via Counterspin Central & Guardian Unlimited...
Three British soldiers sent home after protesting at civilian deaths
Three British soldiers in Iraq have been ordered home after objecting to the conduct of the war. It is understood they have been sent home for protesting that the war is killing innocent civilians.The three soldiers - including a private and a technician - are from 16 Air Assault Brigade which is deployed in southern Iraq. Its task has been to protect oilfields.
The brigade includes the Ist and 3rd battalions of the Parachute Regiment, the 1st battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment, a Royal Horse Artillery regiment, and a reconnaissance squadron of the Household Cavalry.
The three soldiers, based in Colchester, Essex, face court martial and are seeking legal advice, defence sources said yesterday.
The Ministry of Defence said it was not prepared to comment on individual cases. It said it had "no evidence" to suggest the soldiers had been sent home for refusing to fight.
Soldiers could be returned home for a number of reasons, including compassionate and medical, as well as disciplinary grounds, defence sources said.
But it is understood that the three soldiers have been sent home for complaining about the way the war is being fought and the growing danger to civilians.
The fact that they are seeking legal advice makes it clear they have been sent home for refusing to obey orders rather than because of any medical or related problems such as shell shock.
Yet another reason I'm not a Rightist.
You should read this.
Friday March 28, 2003
"American military officers now say that the policy is to strike Iraqi military targets, if necessary, even when Saddam implants them among schools and apartment blocks, and that the responsibility for the resulting casualties lies with Saddam. Such strikes are understandably tempting now, but they will inflame Iraqi nationalism and make postwar Iraq incomparably more difficult to govern. One of the most depressing windows into this surging nationalism occurred on Wednesday when aid workers handed out food to throngs of hungry Iraqis in a coalition-controlled town called Safwan. Some Iraqis simultaneously jostled for food and chanted, "With our blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Saddam."
Even if I were to kill someone in the most clear-cut case of self defense imaginable, I couldn't just pass on the act of that killing to a third party, no matter what circumstance and chain of causality brought me to that point. The fundamental flaw of such morality is that once started, the passing of the buck becomes endless, and while the corpse lies on the street rotting, it's as if it deposited itself there of its own accord, a self-immolating martyr in a cause for which it never enlisted, a cause in which the salute of fealty is a finger pointing at one's neighbor.
Wednesday March 26, 2003
Journalist Joseph Galloway talked on today's edition of Fresh Air:
I'm gonna to ask you to speculate here, but why do you think the military insiders would be willing to share their doubts with you, at a time when the military's usually doing its best to seem as confident as possible?Well, because those doubts and concerns are very real, and they have some fear that if this thing goes wrong, if the casualties are much, much higher than anticipated that Rumsfeld will turn around and blame them, and say "This is your fault. You didn't ask for enough." Well, they know that's a lie, and that is enough reason to say their concerns, to speak those concerns now.
I'm wondering... you're delivering some not-very-good news to us about how the military is unprepared for what they're facing and how there's disagreement behind the scenes in the Pentagon, and I wonder how you feel about reporting information that can get some Americans to lose confidence and feel more insecure and if... how you feel about it is informed at all from your experiences reporting on Vietnam?
Well, first off Terry, I want to say that I never said our military is unprepared, they're magnificently prepared. I think we have the finest military in the world, and I go out among soldiers all the time, I see them training, they work hard six days a week, 12, 14 hours a day and nobody knows it in this country. They are magnificently prepared. There's just not enough of them in the plan. They didn't send enough to do the job with safety. You know we are now marginal in some areas where the doctrine says we would be stacked up, we would have more than we need, because, you know, there's a Soviet proverb, an old Russian proverb in fact that says "You'd rather have five divisions too many than one division too few." And I don't have a problem talking about the fears and the deficiencies in our planning process. I hope that this will lead to some swift, corrective action, that we will move now those things that should have been two months ago. It's an on-the-edge situation.
Tuesday March 25, 2003
Jon Stewart on the news that Halliburton, Dick Cheney's old haunt, just secured the first Iraq reconstruction deal without bidding:
"The good news is that I did win the office pool. But it did make me feel like the government just took a shit on my chest."
Sunday March 23, 2003
The CBC broadcast on CSPAN just pulled back to show the big picture behind Rumsfeld's claims of new Iraqi war crimes regarding videos of the American prisoners: they showed numerous examples of how the American (embedded) media has done the same, parading bound and cowed Iraqi troops in front of the camera.
Saturday March 22, 2003
Andrew Sullivan lambastes Joe Conason for his anti-war stand:
"It's really wonderful to watch apologists for inaction now have to watch as action defeats evil. They will change the subject; they will attack those who got this entire story right while they got it entirely wrong. But they will never reconsider. That would require the kind of open mind that Conason jettisoned years ago."
And in one paragraph, Mr. Sullivan tacitly legitimizes every action of the Bush administration leading up to the conflict.
But can we even trust his simplest of judgements? In the news item that precedes that piece, he's taken in by this image.
His response after learning it was a hoax? "I apologize." But he keeps the title the same, and the link the same, perpetuating the thing.
And then he has this.
The sad thing is that the Right is just chock full of brain-light hypocrites like this.
Tuesday March 18, 2003
Josh Marshall on how the Bush administration changed its own interpretation of 1441 to fit its need for war:
[T]he wording which the other countries demanded and received was wording which they believed put them in charge of deciding when or if there would be war. At the time, Ireland's Ambassdor to the UN said the word changes kept "the hands of the council members as a whole on the steering wheel of the resolution in the future. It's of enormous significance."
...
The problem for the United States is that we pretty clearly went on the record validating this other interpretation. Here's what America's UN Representative John Negroponte said at the UN on the day the resolution passed ..."There's no 'automaticity' and this is a two-stage process, and in that regard we have met the principal concerns that have been expressed for the resolution. Whatever violation there is, or is judged to exist, will be dealt with in the council, and the council will have an opportunity to consider the matter before any other action is taken."
...
Here, though, we get to the bigger point. Setting aside enforcement, what was being signed on to? As I say, I think the others countries thought they were signing on to old-fashioned inspections, or some jazzed-up version of them.Did we have a different understanding?
This point is more speculative. But I don't think we did. I don't think the administration really had a particular understanding at all. I think what happened is that they got muscled into going to the UN (largely by domestic political pressure -- little-noticed polls showed the president's foreign policy numbers dipping hard late last summer). Then once they got to the UN they could only get their resolution by agreeing to what was outlined in 1441. But pretty much immediately they decided that they'd paid far too high a price to get their resolution and tried to wriggle out of it.
The rest of the Council didn't like being wriggled. And that's how we got where we are. They felt like they'd been played. And, to a real degree, they had.
Here's a link to RealPlayer video of Robin Cook's resignation speech yesterday. Thanks to Eschaton for the link.
Monday March 17, 2003
It's official: the Bush administration is blaming the French for their inability to secure a majority of the Security Council. Again denying any culpability. Cowards.
Yet more proof that the Rightists are one step away from fascist thuggery. Are lynchings next?
Apparently "deadline for diplomacy" has a different meaning coming from the lips of Bush.
How to get the US economy going? Rebuild Iraq!
The Bush administration's audacious plan to rebuild Iraq envisions a sweeping overhaul of Iraqi society within a year of a war's end, but leaves much of the work to private U.S. companies, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported. The Bush plan, as detailed in more than 100 pages of confidential contract documents, would sideline United Nations development agencies and other multilateral organizations that have long directed reconstruction efforts in places such as Afghanistan and Kosovo. The plan also would leave big nongovernmental organizations largely in the lurch: With more than $1.5 billion in Iraq work being offered to private U.S. companies under the plan, just $50 million is so far earmarked for a small number of groups such as CARE and Save the Children.
Why not institute the new century's equivalent of the WPA? Send all those unemployed to Iraq to rebuild the country (they're all America-hating-lesbo-communists, anyway!)
Sunday March 16, 2003
BusinessWeek: The High Price of Bad Diplomacy
For the business perspective on the Bush diplomacy debacle, here's Bruce Nussbaum of BusinessWeek:
The U.S. has already lost the prewar battle over Iraq, whatever the outcome of a further U.N. vote. Even if it wins a fig-leaf majority vote in the Security Council, America will be entering its first preemptive war faced with opposition from nearly all of its allies and much of the rest of the planet. A world that rallied to America's side in unprecedented demonstrations of support after September 11 increasingly perceives the U.S. itself as a great danger to peace. How did things come to this? The failure of the Bush Administration to manage its diplomacy is staggering, and the price paid, even if the war ends quickly, could be higher than anyone now anticipates.The political effect of this foreign policy imbroglio is already obvious. It can be measured in tattered alliances and global tensions, eroding support for President George W. Bush, and big changes throughout the Middle East. What remains unclear are the economic consequences. In the end, they may be far more significant.
Uncertainty is anathema to investment and growth. Much of the current weakness in the U.S. and the global economy is due to the immediate questions surrounding an Iraq war. Yet the Bush foreign policy of unilateral preemption is so ill-defined and open-ended that it could weigh heavily on the global economy well after the bombing stops. Look at the Administration's agenda. The war in Iraq will be followed by an occupation that could last years, cost many billions of dollars, and involve tens of thousands of occupying troops. That's a big price to pay if bungled diplomacy means that the U.S. bears most of the financial burden. Then there's dealing with North Korea's rush to build nuclear bombs. And Iran's play for nukes.
Another Mogadishu? Let's hope not
With anti-war sentiment at an all-time high throughout the world, it seems to me that one aspect of the coming war has been neglected in the media: the potential for Iraqi civilians to take up arms against U.S. troops.
A few months ago, it was predicted that the masses of Iraq would be dancing in the streets once liberated. But now ammunition sales are high throughout Baghdad (according to this article in the NYTimes, most Iraqis have at least one gun in the house already) as people prepare for the inevitable. What happens if our troops arrive in Baghdad and find themselves under attack from the very people they expected to cheer their arrival? Will they feel obligated to return fire on civilians? Would these civilians be fighting for Saddam or fighting for their national sovereignty? Remember, the propaganda that they're getting at this point barely needs to be spun by Saddam. Bush has done such a poor job at prosecuting the pre-war diplomacy that all he's left is huddling on an island off of Portugal with the 2 allies he's managed to secure. To paraphrase from Tom Friedman's latest column, we lost the PR war to a dictatorial madman.
The administration was hoping for a "moral victory" in the Security Council, securing 9 votes but getting vetoed by France. Now it's clear that they won't even get that. That is a moral failure, no? How do the Iraqi people view this? How do we think that this is being projected through the lens of the Iraqi media? We're left with this grim reality: we're going to roll into Baghdad without the support of the world; even the Pope is calling it a "crime against peace". What do we think the Iraqi people who are about to be bombed feel about this? How will they feel after the first civilian casualty reports surface? Remember, they're not going to be watching CNN. We might not see the civilian casualties, but the Iraqi people are going to see it and hear about it.
Could the troops find themselves in a Mogadishu-like situation, entering a city full of civilians armed to the teeth? How will they react if they find themselves being fired upon by children, and what will be their personal assessment of their mission if that happens?
I have the distinct feeling that the warplan isn't being reassessed in light of the diplomatic failure of the administration, and our troops could be entering a difficult situation made worse by the administration's bumbling.
Iraq names Virginia supply house as source of biotoxins
The New York Times has the story:
Iraq has identified a Virginia-based biological supply house and a French scientific institute as the sources of all the foreign germ samples that it used to create the biological weapons that are still believed to be in Iraq's arsenal, according to American officials and foreign diplomats who have reviewed Iraq's latest weapons declaration to the United Nations. Advertisement
The American supply house, the American Type Culture Collection of Manassas, Va., had previously been identified as an important supplier of anthrax and other germ samples to Iraq.But the full extent of the sales by the Virginia supply house and the Pasteur Institute in Paris has never been made public by the United Nations, which received the latest weapons declaration from Iraq in December.
Saturday March 15, 2003
Big Dumb Brother is watching (and fiddling with your undies)
Via Counterspin Central, this news from The Seattle Times: Suitcase surprise: Rebuke written on inspection notice:
Seth Goldberg says that when he opened his suitcase in San Diego after a flight from Seattle this month, the two "No Iraq War" signs he'd picked up at the Pike Place Market were still nestled among his clothes.But there was a third sign, he said, that shocked him. Tucked in his luggage was a card from the Transportation Security Administration notifying him that his bags had been opened and inspected at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Handwritten on the side of the card was a note, "Don't appreciate your anti-American attitude!"
"I found it chilling and a little Orwellian to have received this message," said Goldberg, 41, a New Jersey resident who was in Seattle visiting longtime friend Davis Oldham, a University of Washington instructor.
Friday March 14, 2003
Roger Ebert on Bush's theology:
There are of course many theologies in the world, but the two involved here have different theories of prayer. Bush prays in the tradition of a dialogue with God, in which God hears Bush and Bush hears God. This is the tradition preached by the Rev. Billy Graham, who helped inspire Bush to become born again after Bush turned to him for help with alcoholism.The pope prays in a tradition where he asks God for the grace to make the right decision for himself, based on his own values and best effort. In this tradition, the pope has free will and the responsibility that comes with it. Free will must be absolute or it is not free. God is not a coach who allows the quarterback to make most of the decisions, but sometimes sends in a play from the sidelines.
These notions may help explain Bush's tone at the press conference. The questions and answers were beside the point, because Bush knows he is doing the right thing. ''The choice is Saddam's,'' he said more than once. Whether that is true or not, the choice is no longer Bush's. The problem with being sure that God is on your side is that you can't change your mind, because God sure isn't going to change His.
You should also check out Roger Ebert's other recent essay on prayer, "Public prayer fanatics borrow page from enemy's script" .
Thursday March 13, 2003
College head charged with growing pot. So, what's news about that? Ohh.... college head.
As to the question of giddiness, one simply can't compete with the young war-hawks of the right in this department. I mean, it's just not possible, is it? Speaking for myself, and perhaps for some other internationalists who feel as I do, part of our frustrated anger over the current impasse is watching the present administration traduce and plow under the work of half a century and seeing the administration's acolytes greet every new disaster and *&$#-up as a grand confirmation of their beliefs and principles. It's like we've been transported into some alternative reality where the debate about international relations is some awful mix of The McLaughlin Group and Lord of the Flies. As these folks should be starting to realize about now, months of this arrogant mumbo-jumbo eventually draws a response -- at home and abroad.
Wednesday March 12, 2003
Flash considered inane
Throughout my career I've developed using C++, Java, PHP, Perl, Cold Fusion, used all kinds of design applications, multimedia tools, etc., and I have to say that to this day the worst experience that I've had is trying to do something -- anything -- with Flash.
The Flash application is a nightmare. A nightmare! The underlying paradigm that the developers chose is so non-user-friendly that every moment using it is torture. Things that Director did smoothly and simply Flash does in a 2 or 3 step process. Yet the wise developers at Macromedia decided to make the Director application *more* like the Flash application.
Practically every step of Flash development is absurd. I am at this moment trying to create a simple game using Flash. In Director, I had the game completed in a day. In Flash, it's going to take a week at least, just dealing with the horror of a user interface. It seems to me that instead of looking at the Flash UI paradigm and saying, "Gee - people want to do a lot of things that this current UI just can't accomodate with any ease. Let's change it to make it more sensible," they instead decided to take a bad design and squeeze even more shit into it. I had to buy a book by Gary Rosenzweig just to see how someone found ways to deal with the inadequacies of the Flash development environment. The book has been a great help, but Gary doesn't stand up and say, "Why do they make you go through all these hoops to accomplish something so simple?"
Director is a gem by comparison. Their UI was designed from the beginning to handle complex interactions of a wide range of media elements. People knew what they needed to accomplish, and came up with a reasonable plan for how to create a UI to accomodate their goals. There are some missteps (puppetting), but in general they did a good job.
Macromedia, fix Flash. I know that thousands of people use it, but at least 3/4 of them have to be bitching and complaining as they do. You created such a poorly designed tool that chances are at any 5-second interval somewhere in the world some Flash developer is saying "What the hell?" while attempting to accomplish a simple task using your application.
Tuesday March 11, 2003
Jake Tapper has more on the Bush vs. Bush story that I mentioned yesterday. He goes into more detail on what Bush said at Tufts University (some apparently in a question and answer period after his planned remarks). From the article:
The differences between father and son were on rare display at Tufts two weeks ago. The speech offered a unique window into the former president's own Iraq policy, as well as the ways it diverged -- and still diverges -- from the current president's. Bush the elder was asked to address "the difference between your policy of coalition building and respect for the United Nations, and that of the current administration," which some found "striking." Significantly, the former president essentially refused to answer whether or not he was "troubled by the willingness of the U.S. to act unilaterally without broad-based international support." No one expected Bush to denounce his son, but his support sounded a little weaker than some Bush watchers expected.George H.W. Bush insisted that he and his son agree that "it would be much better to act with as much international support as possible." But remarkably, he seemed less than solidly supportive of the U.S.'s goals in attacking Iraq, as well as his son's assertion that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. He spoke far more forcefully when defending his own decisions 12 years ago than in explaining his son's moves today.
"The difference between '91 and today is that the objective was clearer, in a way, back when I was president," the elder Bush said, because Iraqi soldiers had invaded Kuwait, committed atrocities against the Kuwaiti people, and seemed poised to attack Saudi Arabia. "Today it's less clear." While it's indisputable that Saddam Hussein has violated myriad U.N. resolutions, Bush said, "the question is, how much does he have in a way of weapons of mass destruction? That could be debated."
Today on 24OreTV, a commentator stated: "Bush can't prosecute the war without Blair, and Blair can't without the UN." What happens if the UN balks at a second resolution, and Bush decides to go in anyway? Will Blair strap on his chaps and spurs and ride into Badgad with Bush? Or will he weigh the potential fallout of Britain contraindicating the UN, and decide not to join him? What happens at that point? Maybe we'll replace the British counterpart of Tommy Franks with Diane Sawyer at the daily war briefings. With the already high ratings of the war, coupled with Diane's charming "realness", I could see the war sticking around for two or three seasons at least.
Building the set for the war podium
As our planet lists ever further into the surreal, we get news of the studio set being developed for the war briefings:
The Pentagon has enlisted Hollywood to help to present its daily briefings to the world.Fresh from the latest Michael Douglas film, one of Tinseltown’s top art directors has been hired to create a $200,000 (£125,000) set for General Tommy Franks and other American commanders to give daily updates.
George Allison, 43, who has designed White House backdrops for President Bush and worked with the illusionist David Blaine, has been flown into the US Central Command base in Qatar as part of a reputed $1 million (£625,000) conversion of a storage hangar into a high-tech hub for the international media.
Mr Allison’s credits include the set for ABC’s Good Morning America as well as Hollywood productions for MGM and Disney such as the Kirk and Michael Douglas film It Runs in the Family, due to be released next month.
And in the background will be a window peering out onto the desert, where Iraqi refugees will gather and press their precious noses to the glass.
Monday March 10, 2003
More on the leaked NSA memo
A woman from Britain's GCHQ, the British equivalent of our NSA, was arrested following the leak of the classified memo from the NSA's Frank Kosa requesting a stepping-up of surveillance on UN Security Council members.
Oh, right. That's the memo that was never leaked because it never existed. The one that, even though never denied by the Bush administration, must not have existed because Drudge had a headline with some infantile, ill-conceived mumblings about its apparent inauthenticity.
Here's the interestinging part of the article:
If GCHQ acted on the memo - by eavesdropping on targets simply to strengthen the US and British governments' negotiating position in the UN, on an issue itself disputed on legal grounds - it could be found in breach of the 1994 Intelligence Services Act.
In the Intelligence Services Act of 1994, here is the part I think they're referring to:
The functions of the Intelligence Service shall be exercisable only—(a) in the interests of national security, with particular reference to the defence and foreign policies of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom; or
(b) in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom; or
(c) in support of the prevention or detection of serious crime.
Via Eschaton, news that even Bush Sr. isn't on board the war train:
Drawing on his own experiences before and after the 1991 Gulf War, Mr Bush Sr said that the brief flowering of hope for Arab-Israeli relations a decade ago would never have happened if America had ignored the will of the United Nations.He also urged the President to resist his tendency to bear grudges, advising his son to bridge the rift between the United States, France and Germany.
“You’ve got to reach out to the other person. You’ve got to convince them that long-term friendship should trump short-term adversity,” he said.
The former President’s comments reflect unease among the Bush family and its entourage at the way that George W. Bush is ignoring international opinion and overriding the institutions that his father sought to uphold. Mr Bush Sr is a former US Ambassador to the UN and comes from a family steeped in multi-lateralist traditions.
Saturday March 08, 2003
Dick Cheney's Halliburton
Two news items on Halliburton: First, a subsidiary of Halliburton will oversee the oil fields once Iraq is bombed to fuck and back:
The Pentagon said it is tapping a subsidiary of Halliburton Co., Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, to oversee efforts to control oil-well fires, should Saddam Hussein torch Iraq's oil fields in the event of a U.S. attack.The Pentagon said it intends to use a plan developed by Kellogg Brown & Root Inc., a unit of Houston-based Halliburton, if Mr. Hussein sabotages his fields. The plan also addresses assessing damage to oil facilities, the Pentagon said.
Mr. Cheney served as chief executive of Halliburton until 2000, when he stepped down to become the running mate of President Bush.
The development positions Kellogg Brown & Root as a leading candidate to win the role of top contractor in any petroleum-field rehabilitation effort in Iraq. The job could involve coordinating dozens of smaller specialty contractors that do everything from helping clear mines and build roads to putting out fires and repairing damaged wells.
Next, it seems that an oil-field device containing radioactive material was stolen from Halliburton's site in Nigeria:
Halliburton Co. (HAL) says an oil-field device that contains radioactive material was stolen in early December from its operations in Nigeria, Thursday's Wall Street Journal reported.Atomic-watchdog officials are concerned that the material -- americium 241 -- could be used to create a so-called dirty bomb, an explosive to scatter radioactive agents in a densely populated area.
The disappearance is being investigated by officials from the Nigerian and U.S. governments and from the International Atomic Energy Agency. Halliburton, a Houston oil-field services company, said it is cooperating. IAEA investigators have been in the west African nation for two weeks but have been unable to determine how the device was stolen, said Mark Gwozdecky, a spokesman for the United Nations agency.
Mozilla needs a Flash blocker
With news of the latest Flash security flaw, I hope the Mozilla team will seriously consider the possibility of an effective, simple, and thorough Flash blocker, similar in form to the latest incarnation of the popup blocker.
Friday March 07, 2003
Yeah, apparently they do really make this shit up as they go along
On the heels of the comments in Joe Conason's Journal today (" More faked 'intelligence'? "), the Washington Post has this story:
Some Evidence on Iraq Called Fake
A key piece of evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear weapons program appears to have been fabricated, the United Nations' chief nuclear inspector said yesterday in a report that called into question U.S. and British claims about Iraq's secret nuclear ambitions.Documents that purportedly showed Iraqi officials shopping for uranium in Africa two years ago were deemed "not authentic" after careful scrutiny by U.N. and independent experts, Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), told the U.N. Security Council.
...
Knowledgeable sources familiar with the forgery investigation described the faked evidence as a series of letters between Iraqi agents and officials in the central African nation of Niger. The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away -- including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said.
...
A spokesman for the IAEA said the agency did not blame either Britain or the United States for the forgery. The documents "were shared with us in good faith," he said.
Run, Jim, Run! Jim Capozzola for Senate, Pennsylvania 2004
Jim Capozzola, if you decide to run for the Senate against Arlen Specter, I want to be part of your campaign.
Reader René Seindal informed me that I had forgotten one very significant resignation: that of career diplomat John Brady Kiesling. Below are some quotes from his letter of resignation.
It is inevitable that during twenty years with the State Department I would become more sophisticated and cynical about the narrow and selfish bureaucratic motives that sometimes shaped our policies. Human nature is what it is, and I was rewarded and promoted for understanding human nature. But until this Administration it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my president I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer.The policies we are now asked to advance are incompatible not only with American values but also with American interests. Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is driving us to squander the international legitimacy that has been America's most potent weapon of both offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective web of international relationships the world has ever known. Our current course will bring instability and danger, not security.
...
We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary. We have over the past two years done too much to assert to our world partners that narrow and mercenary U.S. interests override the cherished values of our partners. Even where our aims were not in question, our consistency is at issue. The model of Afghanistan is little comfort to allies wondering on what basis we plan to rebuild the Middle East, and in whose image and interests. Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own advice, that overwhelming military power is not the answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow where we lead.
...
I am resigning because I have tried and failed to reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the current U.S. Administration. I have confidence that our democratic process is ultimately self-correcting, and hope that in a small way I can contribute from outside to shaping policies that better serve the security and prosperity of the American people and the world we share.
Doesn't get much worse than this
The Washington Post's Tom Shales on Bush's speech last night:
George W. Bush kept seeming to lose interest in his own remarks last night as the president did that rarest of rare things -- for him -- and held a prime-time news conference. Televised live on all the major networks from the East Room of the White House, the occasion found Bush declaring this to be "an important moment" for America and the world, yet he spoke with little urgency and no perceptible passion.Have ever a people been led more listlessly into war? It's tempting to speculate how history would have changed if Winston Churchill or FDR had been as lethargic as Bush about rallying their nations in an hour of crisis. There were times when it appeared his train of thought had jumped the tracks.
Occasionally he would stare blankly into space during lengthy pauses between statements -- pauses that once or twice threatened to be endless. There were times when it seemed every sentence Bush spoke was of the same duration and delivered in the same dour monotone, giving his comments a numbing, soporific aura. Watching him was like counting sheep.
...
On the other hand, it hardly seems out of order to speculate that, given the particularly heavy burden of being president in this new age of terrorism -- a time in which America has, as Bush said, become a "battlefield" -- the president may have been ever so slightly medicated.He would hardly be the first president ever to take a pill.
There were brief interludes during the news conference -- especially the long languid pauses -- when some viewers might have flashed back to the presidency of Richard Nixon. That is, the Nixon Years at their most tumultuous and Twilight Zoney, when the old Trickster would come on TV and you'd sit there not just fascinated but a trifle terrified of what he might say, who he'd accuse of persecuting him, and whether he might come completely unglued or just melt into a hideous puddle right before your horrified eyes.
Wednesday March 05, 2003
Bush, in a speech Monday, said that the administration would be "disappointed" if Mexico voted against the second Iraq resolution, but there would probably not be "significant retribution" from the government. But there's more (quoting now from the Times Reporter article):
His emphasis was on the word “government,” raising the possibility of adverse reaction to Mexico from the American business community and average citizens.Making that point, he cited what he called “an interesting phenomena taking place here in America about the French.”
With many Americans unhappy at French resistance to a war in Iraq, the president said there has developed “a backlash against the French, not stirred up by anybody except by the people.”
If Mexico – or other countries – oppose the United States, he said that “there will be a certain sense of discipline.” But he quickly added, “I expect Mexico to be with us.”
All those unhappy Americans who are now eating "Freedom Fries" (TM - patent pending)! Take that Frenchie! I suppose that if Mexico refuses to go along they'll what? Stop eating tacos? Or will they have some novel new name for them? Crispy Precious Freedom Folds? Liberty Fried Corn Pockets? Golden Homeland Handfuls? I have a prediction: for every one person who eats one fewer taco in protest of Mexican intransigence, there will be two drunk college students imbibing extra shots of liquor on some beautiful Mexican beach during Spring Break. Go for it, Mexico!
At least we don't have to stop eating Spaghetti-O's. Thank god for Berlusconi!
Tuesday March 04, 2003
Karen Hughes wanted to spend more time with her family.
Mary Matalin wanted to spend more time with her family.
Paul O'Neill resigned. Larry Lindsey resigned.
Harvey Pitt resigned.
Janet Rehnquist resigned today.
Any others?
On my scale of comedic genius, Dennis Miller never rated higher than Martin Mull.
No denial of the bugging story
In another amazing misfire for the Bush administration's PR group, the official line on the alleged bugging of UN Security Council members has been "no comment". Unfortunately, the news has been picked up all over the world (and intentionally ignored by our news organizations here at home). Here are some excerpts from Jake Tapper's new piece at Salon:
According to the LexisNexis news database, the only U.S. media outlet to bring the memo up by Monday was Fox News Sunday anchor Brit Hume. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., a member of the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, told Hume that he hadn't seen the memo, but theoretically such surveillance "would be very aggressive" and might be "a topic of a hearing on the Intelligence Committee which probably would take place in the very immediate future." But no major American newspaper had run with the story.That wasn't the case overseas. "It's a big story in Russia and it led the French news today," said Martin Bright, the Observer's home affairs editor. Bright, who helped write the story, was reached on his cellphone as he drove home from an interview with Canadian TV. Bright said that he had agreed to interviews with NBC, CNN, and Fox News Channel -- and that all three had called and canceled. But the report that the U.S. is spying on U.N. Security Council members -- and seeking allied intelligence agencies to do the same -- has quickly spread throughout the world. "U.S. Spying on U.N. Delegates to Win Vote on Iraq War: Paper," headlined a newswire in Japan; "Uncle Sam Spies on U.N. Delegations," said the Australian; "U.S. in 'Dirty Tricks' Battle to Win Vote on Iraq War: Report," said Agence France Presse.
What might be most telling about the episode, however, is not that the U.S. is spying on U.N. Security Council members in search of information "that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises," as the memo states. Spying at the United Nations is nothing new, nor is it necessarily nefarious. Rather, the story is significant in that it reveals much about the way that the Bush administration has handled its foreign policy: clumsy or arrogant or righteous, depending upon your point of view, but indisputably alienating to most of the rest of the world. The media maelstrom the memo has set off as far away as Sydney and Moscow is indicative of how much the U.S.'s reservoir of goodwill has dried up.
...
The official tied this story to the revelation that much of the fabled 19-page British intelligence dossier -- hailed at the U.N. by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell as a "fine paper ... which describes in exquisite detail Iraqi deception activities" -- was plagiarized from a graduate student writing in the Middle East Review of International Affairs (and reproduced the student's grammatical errors and typos). "It's just characteristic of how poorly the administration has made an arguable case," the former official said. This, too, is a "bad story," and the fact that no one in the Bush administration seemed to be doing anything to counter it -- even by just pointing out how common such information gathering at the U.N. is -- was typically arrogant. "Silence is not the way to handle this."
Saturday March 01, 2003
Catch 'em with their pants down?
Just seen at Eschaton, this story from The Observer:
Revealed: US dirty tricks to win vote on Iraq war
The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq.Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer.
...
The memo describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations 'particularly directed at... UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)' to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq.The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia.
The memo is directed at senior NSA officials and advises them that the agency is 'mounting a surge' aimed at gleaning information not only on how delegations on the Security Council will vote on any second resolution on Iraq, but also 'policies', 'negotiating positions', 'alliances' and 'dependencies' - the 'whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises'.
Dated 31 January 2003, the memo was circulated four days after the UN's chief weapons inspector Hans Blix produced his interim report on Iraqi compliance with UN resolution 1441.
It was sent by Frank Koza, chief of staff in the 'Regional Targets' section of the NSA, which spies on countries that are viewed as strategically important for United States interests.
Koza specifies that the information will be used for the US's 'QRC' - Quick Response Capability - 'against' the key delegations.
Suggesting the levels of surveillance of both the office and home phones of UN delegation members, Koza also asks regional managers to make sure that their staff also 'pay attention to existing non-UN Security Council Member UN-related and domestic comms [office and home telephones] for anything useful related to Security Council deliberations'.
Like Atrios, I'm speechless. This is what happens when "diplomacy" devolves into bullying.
