TEHRAN, Iran - U.S. academic Haleh Esfandiari and two other Iranian-Americans have been “formally charged” with endangering national security and espionage, Iran’s judiciary spokesman said Tuesday.Given the widespread reports of U.S. covert actions in Iran, do you blame them? I have no idea if these folks are really covert, but who does? And as I've mentioned before, if this were occurring in the U.S. wouldn't the FBI be rounding up "the usual suspects"?
Patrick Fitzgerald, in his sentencing pleading on the Libby case, is all but screaming and pointing at Cheney as the real bad guy. Given Fitz's integrity and the grand jury rules, methinks Fitzy now knows what it's like to scream under water himself.
I hope the judge takes it into consideration that Libby is taking the hit for Cheney, and sentences him accordingly.
Democrats are "holding off" on calling for a special prosecutor in the prosecutorgate mess.
Why?
They claim they need more than the appearances of wrong-doing.
Am I nuts or what? I think there's a whole lot more than the appearances of wrongdoing. It's a good damned thing that the Congressional Dems aren't firemen or they would ignore a house with billowing smoke coming out the windows.
As I wrote earlier, what's the point of oversight if there are no consequences. The job of Congess isn't to hand over a fati accompli case to a prosecutor, that's the prosecutors job. Give a prosecutor the job, money and time to investigate and let it go where it may. Do you really think that if it was a Democratic President and a Republican Congress in this situation, we wouldn't have a hotel load of special prosecutors running around by now?
This is so pathetic I find it difficult to even write about despite it being in the news the last two days:
The Iraq war, which for years has drawn militants from around the world, is beginning to export fighters and the tactics they have honed in the insurgency to neighboring countries and beyond, according to American, European and Middle Eastern government officials and interviews with militant leaders in Lebanon, Jordan and London.Still screaming under water here.
. . . Maj. Gen. Achraf Rifi, general director of the Internal Security Forces in Lebanon, said in a recent interview that “if any country says it is safe from this, they are putting their heads in the sand.”
Last week, the Lebanese Army found itself in a furious battle against a militant group, Fatah al Islam, whose ranks included as many as 50 veterans of the war in Iraq, according to General Rifi. More than 30 Lebanese soldiers were killed fighting the group at a refugee camp near Tripoli.
. . . In an April 17 report written for the United States government, Dennis Pluchinsky, a former senior intelligence analyst at the State Department, said battle-hardened militants from Iraq posed a greater threat to the West than extremists who trained in Afghanistan because Iraq had become a laboratory for urban guerrilla tactics.
“There are some operational parallels between the urban terrorist activity in Iraq and the urban environments in Europe and the United States,” Mr. Pluchinsky wrote. “More relevant terrorist skills are transferable from Iraq to Europe than from Afghanistan to Europe,” he went on, citing the use of safe houses, surveillance, bomb making and mortars.
A top American military official who tracks terrorism in Iraq and the surrounding region, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said: “Do I think in the future the jihad will be fueled from the battlefield of Iraq? Yes. More so than the battlefield of Afghanistan.”
Militants in Iraq are turning out instructional videos and electronic newsletters on the Internet that lay out their playbook for a startling array of techniques, from encryption to booby-trapped bombs to surface-to-air missiles, and those manuals are circulating freely in cyberspace.
WASHINGTON — U.S. military leaders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that most of the broad political goals President Bush laid out early this year in his announcement of a troop buildup will not be met this summer and are seeking ways to redefine success.Never realistic? No shit sherlock. Look for the focus to shift to "local" successes as opposed to reductions in deaths or any sort of real changes.
In September, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, is scheduled to present Congress with an assessment of progress in Iraq. Military officers in Baghdad and outside advisors working with Petraeus doubt that the three major goals set by U.S. officials for the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki will be achieved by then.
...
With overhauls by the central government stalled and with security in Baghdad still a distant goal, Petraeus' advisors hope to focus on smaller achievements that they see as signs of progress, including local deals among Iraq's rival factions to establish areas of peace in some provincial cities.
...
Military officers said they understood that any report that key goals had not been met would add to congressional Democrats' skepticism. But some counterinsurgency advisors to Petraeus have said it was never realistic to expect that Iraqis would reach agreement on some of their most divisive issues after just a few months of the American troop buildup.
There is a good post about the duplicitious dealings of Cheney, et. al., over at Many Angry Gerbils. (and isn't that a great blog name?)
Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.
This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.
The only thing I know for sure is that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are not going to withdraw from Iraq. They are playing a rough game and would rather see the troops die without bullets and body armor than admit in any way that their occupation is a failure. The Democrats remain somewhat paralyzed in the face of such sociopathic intransigence (who believes Cheney won't pull the trigger?) and the media remain unwilling to report this in any but schoolyard terms. So, the country must debate this under water --- and that makes us feel helpless and panicked as we watch more people dying in this useless ridiculous face saving exercise."So the country must debate this underwater". Doesn't that just sum it all up? I don't know about you, but I often feel that way, as if I'm screaming at someone under water.
I don't know what we can do other than just keep building, building, building the pressure until it's unthinkable for Republicans to win their next election supporting this "war." Making the argument falls mainly on us, the activists and the grassroots --- and we are going to take a beating from the media for our trouble. Maybe, if we're lucky, we'll be able to come up for air in 2008.
Lara Logan let's us know how it is in Iraq after her return from a six week absence.
Two key points made by Logan.
1). The insurgents are adapting faster.
2). American military folks don't really mind more American's dying because fewer Iraqi's are dying.
Now that's progress!
I read this quote today from Henry Waxman:
Waxman explained that “you must ask the questions” and “you must do the oversight if we’re going to keep people honest, if we’re going to provide the checks and balances that our Constitution envisions.” By pressing forward with the investigation, investigators have revealed a disturbing pattern by Doan to mislead and cover-up her true intent regarding these partisan briefings.And I agree with Waxman. But my question is this. Investigations usually result in political pressure = accountability. But what happens when political pressure doesn't do anything? In my lifetime, I only recall the occasions of Clinton and Nixon's impeachment where Congress actually implemented a consequence. I suspect there may others, but in general they are rare. Congress, in general, has historically depended on the cooperation of the Executive in bowing to "pressure".
I keep reading stories like this one today:
[Sessions] indicated Sunday that Republicans will be ready by September to look at bipartisan efforts to draw down the troops that were part of the surge to help secure Baghdad.Statements like this one made by the very conservative Jeff Sessions are being seen as evidence that "the train has left the station" on trying to tamp down expectations for September.
"We have to be realistic," Sessions said on CBS's Face the Nation. "We have to know that we can't achieve everything we'd like to achieve. We have a limited number of men and women we can send to Iraq, and we can't overburden them."
The senator added that, when General David Petraeus is reporting back on the progress of the surge in September, "I think most of the people in Congress believe, unless something extraordinary occurs, that we should be on a move to draw those surge numbers down." [...]
This would make for a bad day:
The NYT talks to "more than a dozen" Delta Company soldiers in Iraq and fronts word that most of them are disheartened by their mission, and many feel they're stuck in a seemingly endless cycle of violence that they're powerless to end. Members of the unit say they became particularly disillusioned when they realized members of the Iraqi army that the U.S. military had trained were attacking them.
This quote to the post I put up the other day by Spencer Akerman:
“‘In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war,’ said Sergeant First Class David Moore, a self-described ‘conservative Texas Republican’ and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. ‘Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.’”Update: Within two minutes, I ran across this:
"Before that fight, there were a few true believers." Captain Rogers said. "After the 29th, I don't think you'll find a true believer in this unit. They're paratroopers. There's no question they'll fulfill their mission. But they're fighting now for pride in their unit, professionalism, loyalty to their fellow soldier and chain of command."Spencer Akerman is no conservative nutbar who's pro-war. He's adamantly anti-war. But his reports of troop morale are in distinct contrast to these two examples.
Isn't it bad enough that American troops are stuck in a crossfire between various factions that make of the anarchy that is Iraq? Now they have to intervene in battles between American contractors and Iraqi government forces?
Once again our intrepid government has botched an execution. This time in Ohio:
The execution team stuck Christopher Newton at least 10 times with needles Thursday to insert the shunts where the chemicals are injected.But here's the kicker:
He died at 11:53 a.m., nearly two hours after the scheduled start of his execution at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The process typically takes about 20 minutes.
"What is clear from today's botched execution is that the state doesn't know how to execute people without torturing them to death," American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio attorney Carrie Davis said Thursday.
But Newton, who had insisted on the death penalty as punishment and made no attempt to appeal, chatted and laughed with prison staff throughout the delay. It took so long that the staff paused to allow Newton a bathroom break.And what caused the delay? Prison officials (in typical form for government these days) blamed Newton who weighs 260 lbs and was a chronic drug user. That's right. It was the victim's fault the government with all of it's abilities and resources was not able to execute and execution effectively.
Let's suppose for a moment that you are a soverign country. Let's further suppose that it's reported in the international press that undercover agents have been sent to your country to destroy industries that you value and to undermine your government.
What would you do? What would Bush do if that country was the U.S.?
Charlie Pierce has a response to President Bush who famously told David Gregory last week that the only thing standing between Gregory's kids and terrorist was our mighty leader:
Look, sport. I'll take care of my kids. One of the ways I'll do it is to make sure that you and your creepazoid vice-president don't send them off to be killed on the basis of lies, trickeration, and the fact that you never flattened Daddy on the front lawn that night you were sockless. Another of the ways I'll do it is to make sure they fight as hard as they can to recapture the constitutional rights -- and the culture of civil liberties -- to which they are entitled by nature and by nature's god, to make sure they never again have to live under a government staffed by legacy idiots and the products of fourth-rate right-wing diploma mills. The last way I'll do it is to make sure they recognize and appreciate those things about this country that actually are worth fighting for -- most of which you wouldn't recognize if they fell off a shelf onto your head. Protect my kids? Ace, I wouldn't hire you to mow my lawn.
Within the last several years, the DFH (dirty f@#king hippies) have consistently predicted no end to the war in Iraq. Despite what Pentagon officials, administration officials, and pundits have been saying, the DFH's have been right. One subset prediction was that the "surge" was nothing more than an escalation. From today's headline:
BAGHDAD - Americans have opened nearly 1,000 new graves to bury U.S. troops killed in Iraq since Memorial Day a year ago. The figure is telling — and expected to rise in coming months.The DFH's were right again ..... unfortunately.
In the period from Memorial Day 2006 through Saturday, 980 soldiers and Marines died in Iraq, compared to 807 deaths in the previous year. And with the Baghdad security operation now 3 1/2 months old, even President Bush has predicted a difficult summer for U.S. forces.
Previously, the military arranged to fly the remains of Sonoma County soldiers and Marines killed in Iraq to San Francisco or Oakland, then had the caskets transported the rest of the way home by hearse.
This time, Santa Rosa Mortuary Eggen & Lance Chapel mortician and military veteran Bill Grafe mentioned to a Department of the Army official in Virginia that Schober's remains could be flown directly to Santa Rosa. The official said, "You have an airport?" [Typical, the Pentagon can't figure out where airports are]
Now that the military mortuary service is aware there's a Sonoma County airport, we hope it won't ever again have cause to use it.
Glenn Greenwald has a terrific post about the biggest myth of ending the war in Iraq. He dissects how conservatives have been successful in equating war defunding with an immediate impact on troops, i.e. if war funding stops then in the middle of a battle troops will run out of bullets or someone will come around and take their body armor. Greenwald explains how this is nonsense and gives us the consequences:
So Alter is correct that Americans became convinced that de-funding constitutes troop abandonment. But that does not excuse what the Democrats did here, because the principal reason that Americans became convinced of that myth is because Democrats themselves embraced and propagated it. And now that myth lies cemented at the center of our political debate, and as a result, the most effective Congressional weapon for ending the war -- the one the Founders designed for that purpose -- has become politically radioactive, all based on a ludicrous notion that literally has no basis in reality.In order for Democrats, and Congress in general, to reclaim their right to stop a war via the power of the purse they will have to re-educate the American public on exactly how it works. And above all, this first begins with discontinuing language that equates funding with supporting the troops.
