The Staton Jones Report

February 02, 2007

Munch Redux

Posted by Steven at 06:30 PM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2006

Top 10 Iraq Myths

If you don't read Juan Cole's incomparable blog regularly, then you may have missed his Top Ten Myths about Iraq 2006 . It's a must-read.

Posted by Winston Smith at 11:18 AM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2006

Yow! The PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY is CRYING for an END to BURT REYNOLDS movies!!

Everyone is a-buzz about the Washington Post's interview with America's favorite pinhead, George Bush. The focus of this buzz is on Bush's version of "Yow! Are we winning yet?"

An interesting construct that General Pace uses is, "We're not winning, we're not losing."

The title of the article is "U.S. Not Winning War in Iraq, Bush Says for 1st Time," highlighting the first part of the sentence. The 101st fighting keyboarders, who have fallen back somewhat from their blather-offensive about how great the war is, are now focusing on saving face with whatever positive spin they can wring out of... well, anything. "Blogs for War" (they sound like fun guys) says:

I actually find that statement to be pretty accurate. The current situation may seem intolerable to some but we’re nowhere near losing.

Blog of War is an award-winning weblog that is, "part of the Library of Congress MINERVA permanent historical collection on the war in Iraq," so I'm going to assume that this isn't its best work. Perhaps, though, it is heralded for exemplifying the tragic chasm between reality and pro-war bloggers.

Whatever the case, I'd like to explore the ramifications of agreeing with the President. If we're not winning and we're not losing, then we are not moving towards any kind of end condition, positive or negative. So... does that mean we're going to keep treading blood water indefinitely? Or are we going to wait until there is an unmistakable outcome? If so, what outcome?

As comments to the "Blogs of War" post point out, the situation in Iraq is trending towards bad. If we aren't losing, we'll need to turn that around before we are losing. Rosy predictions from armchair pundits aren't going to help. Consider this post at Military.com — not a haven for anti-military hippies — claiming that pessimistic press coverage of a recent Pentagon report wasn't pessimistic enough.

Maybe it can be argued that we are not currently losing the war in Iraq, but there is abundant evidence that we are headed towards a loss. Sending more troops will solve nothing — note that Iraq reached it's "worst point this year" during Operation Together Forward, a military operation intended to secure Baghdad.

The remaining war cheerleaders don't seem to understand: it is possible for America to lose a war. Let's not prove that, OK? Time to get out of Iraq.

We now return to our 'round the clock "Zippy the Pinhead" commentary on "winning the war." The Preznit says, "I ... don't believe most Americans want us just to get out now." Actually only 32% of Americans want troops to stay indefinitely. Meanwhile, only 11% support sending more troops.

Hiccuping & trembling into the WASTE DUMPS of New Jersey like some drunken CABBAGE PATCH DOLL, coughing in line at FIORUCCI'S!!

Posted by Winston Smith at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2006

I Hate Saddam Hussein, OK?

Do I really have to make this explicit? Apparently, I do.

Now that Iraq has turned into the 21^st Century's first great debacle, many people have made the indisputable, and thoroughly unfortunate, observation that the average Iraqi had a better life under Saddam Hussein than they do under the current Iraqi/American regime. In an obvious attempt to deflect attention from reality, Iraq War supporters reflexively answer this observation with, "Oh! So you would rather have Saddam Hussein in power! You must love Saddam!"

Bullshit.

No, Saddam Hussein was an asshole. He was an asshole the moment his government came to power in 1967 and continued to be an asshole until he was deposed in 2003. Sadly, simply removing assholes from power doesn't guarantee anything. In 1917, the Russian people rid themselves of the repressive and devastating rule of the Tsar — but was life under Lenin and Stalin an improvement? In some respects, Democracy is like a loaded gun: what it accomplishes depends a great deal on where you aim it.

Mohammed, an Iraqi blogger at Iraq the Model, who has been cheering the arrival of his American overlords since 2004, noticed this as well. On "Democracy Day 2006" he lamented the outcome of the 2005 Iraqi elections:

...these results shown that Islamists have the advantage and it shown the humble achievements of the secular/liberals.

Mohammed notes that the religious parties were ready to fill the post-war power vacuum and chides the secular Iraqis for being disorganized. He doesn't seem to notice (or want to admit) that the power vacuum was courtesy Donald Rumsfeld. He fails to mention that the secular establishment was thrown into the street by the Americans and told not to come back. He also misses the fact that the Americans were interested in quantity, not quality in the voting, so they purposely courted the radical religious parties knowing that they could provide impressive turnout numbers — numbers that would make the Republican nation building look successful back home.

As is Iraq the Model's MO, the article ends with a hopeful note that predicts success once just a few more hurdles are cleared. For example:

It is difficult to convince the simple segment of the population that democracy will not allow dictators to appear again and that it guarantees pluralism.

Yes, it is difficult to convince people of this, but in actuality, it should be impossible because it is simply and provably false. Only Americans really believe this because we were lucky enough to have people like Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and James Madison running our post-revolutionary government. Meanwhile, Hitler came to power democratically, and closer to Iraq, Ayatollah Khomeini was voted into power in 1979. Lot's of dictators have been voted into office. In Africa, it's even a continental joke: "One man, one vote, one time."

Rumsfeld and friends set up an environment where only the very corrupt could wield power and only the very violent could keep it, and now the situation is worse than when Saddam ruled. Last week, Kofi Annan had the gaul to point out this obvious fact, and Omar, the other blogger at ITM went all-American on him and accused the departing UN leader of being a Saddam sympathizer. He is nothing of the sort. Omar, like other Iraqis who have hitched their future to the engine of American imperialism, can't bring himself to blame the chaos on the people who instigated it:

But that's the worst part about Kofi; he knows how things are in Iraq right now yet instead of trying to do anything to help us out, and instead of apologizing for the UN's failure to do something good for Iraq, he comes and says he's sorry he couldn't save the dictator!

The same people who dismantled any semblance of modernity in Iraq actively blocked the U.N. from doing anything to help. They were proud of how they had excluded the U.N. Annan was pointing out the folly that occurs when ideologues unilaterally impose their fantasies on a country of 25 million people, without engaging the international community. He was not lamenting the ouster of Saddam Hussein.

Neither are any of us who opposed the invasion of Iraq and criticize its bungled execution. Many of us opposed Bush's version of regime change because we predicted exactly what's happening. Part of Iraq the Model's overarching theme is that what is happening now is all part of process of Iraq becoming a stable democracy. That's possible, but not likely. If history is a guide (and it usually is), what's happening now is part of the process of Iraq becoming a war-torn hell-hole and center for regional conflict for at least the next decade if not longer. To quote Iraqi blogger Salam Pax:

We all know that it got to a point where we would have never been rid of Saddam without foreign intervention; I just wish it would have been a bit better planned. Does this mean that I will be wearing a (I [heart] Bush) t-shirt? NO, because I don’t believe there is any altruism in politics and the way he sees the world scares me.

What if the invasion conducted by smart people, like John Kerry, Bob Dole, Wesley Clark, or Colin Powell? The war would still have been morally unjustified, but a competently-managed post-war environment that lead to a stable and peaceful Iraq would eclipse the abstract moral arguments against the military action. Undoubtedly, this was the scenario that the morons in the Bush Administration envisioned while getting handjobs from Ahmed Chalabi.

Omar raises a challenge to Kofi Annan and others — like myself — who express opinions about life in Iraq without every having lived there, "[you] cannot just come like this and say that Iraqis were better off under Saddam... you didn't live here." This is a valid point, so let me turn this back to some actual Iraqis.

Let's start with Mohammed from Iraq The Model. Last April, Mohammed's brother-in-law was senselessly murdered by unknown assailants. Lot's of people lost family members — or whole families and even whole communities — under Saddam, but how many family members did Mohammed lose? According to the post, the brother had gone abroad — during Saddam's reign — to study medicine. He returned post-war and was tragically killed. Had he returned to an Iraq still ruled by Saddam, he'd probably be practicing medicine today. Is there any reason to believe otherwise?

How about Omar, himself? Recently, he wrote this:

Thursday began differently for me, first thing in the morning I received very troubling news that one of our friends has been kidnapped. His shocked, terrified father came to us looking for any bit of information that might be possibly helpful in the search for his son who vanished a day before. We in turn became anxious because we too would be in danger if that friend fell in the hands of very bad guys.

...

Some news were really bad though, my uncle called on Friday to tell me that he and his family of eight were being forced to leave their neighborhood.

Again, there are people who suffered worse under Saddam, but what about Omar? What about Omar's friends and family? Was life for them ever this bad under Saddam? Omar has discussed some of the badness of life under Saddam, but was it as bad as this? Here, he discusses the defeat of some Ba'thists:

One of my aunts lives in Adhamiya, she told me they received heavy bombardment from mortars. Another friend from the same sector relayed some odd news to me "there's a war raging between the Islamists and the Baathists…the Islamists have near full control now"

Are things better or worse because the Islamists took control? The secular society that was supposed to lift Iraq out of the muck was entirely composed of Ba'thists. Many of these people were loyal to Saddam, but many more were only Ba'th party members because it was required of them. Now the whole lot of them are out of power. Is this an improvement?

Was life for Rosie Make-Yonan this bad under Saddam? Did Raghda Zaid ever feel the need to flee Iraq for her safety under Saddam? Were Nancy's fond memories of Baghdad formed before or after Saddam was in power? (And would she be as upbeat about the future if she was in Iraq instead of the US?) How many times, under Saddam, was "Sunshine" involved in a shooting while waiting for a ride to school?

I could go on. This is just from following the links Omar and Mohammed provide on ITM. Supposedly, these Iraqi's share their support for the American intervention, but most of them have fled the country, didn't live in it in the first place, or have a steady supply of horrible experiences. In response to ITM's Democracy Day post Salam Pax wrote, "Sorry Mohammed but, to repeat a cliché, denial is not just a river in Africa." Seeing that coming, Omar's Kofi-loves-Saddam post includes the disclaimer:

I'm not living in denial, I admit it that living here is so difficult and there's a lot of fear and pain...

But less fear and pain than when Saddam was in power? Really? Omar does provide a specific example:

did [Kofi Annan] consider Kurdish mothers and wives when he made that statement?

Probably he did. After all, under the US "No Fly Zone" Iraqi Kurdistan flourished. Now it faces a brewing civil war to the south and increasing harassment from Turkey — which is routinely sending troops over the border — to the north. How is that better? Yes, Saddam brutalized the Kurds in the 80's, but was that ever going to happen again? If so, how? Who is going to defend the Kurds again Turkish troops or Iranian backed militias? These weren't threats under Saddam's regime. Saddam kept the Iranians at bay, then the Kurds were sufficiently contained to keep the Turks from freaking out.

But none of this perspective is part of a wish for Saddam to return. I opposed the war from the start, but I don't regret that Saddam is gone. No, if you want to find people who want Saddam back, you have to turn to war supporters like Bill O'Reilly or Jonathan Chait, along with many other's who have decided Democracy has failed, so we should just install a Saddam replacement.

Those of us who opposed this war and criticize it today do not do so because we love Saddam, but because we wanted the best for the Iraqi people. That, obviously isn't Saddam, but neither is it the bloody chaos wrought by amoral clowns sending in a military force to destroy the backbone of Iraqi society.

Posted by Winston Smith at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)

December 12, 2006

Iraq War Attitude Survey

Neuropolitics.org, which looks like some sort of NLP site has an interesting survey on their site.

I like surveys, so sue me.

Posted by Winston Smith at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

Hillary Guilt

A good friend who lives in Houston Texas noted recently that he's surrounded by conservatives who passionately hate Hillary Clinton but can't explain why. Any mention of Hillary will elicit a torrent of derisive remarks about how awful she is, but asked to simply explain what is so horrible about her, and they are completely stumped.

Over at Free Republic, you will find claims that her memoir is a pack of lies, but not a single one of these "lies" is enumerated. You will also read that she is "ultra-liberal" but that epithet merely means that she is not the kind of pinheaded bigot who Freepers consider one of their own. Just like the claim that the Bible is literally true, and that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs, the idea that Hillary Clinton — or "Hitlery" as the Freepers have cleverly named her — is the most evil politician on the planet is considered so thoroughly established that it bears no further scrutiny for them.

For those of us hoping for a Democratic win in 2008, there is an understandable anxiety about the animosity. States that tipped blue in 2006 could easily go deep red in 2008 due to this pre-existing anti-Hillary bias. In today's Washinton Post, E. J. Dionne Jr. addresses this issue specifically. The conclusion of his Op-Ed is that if Hillary can prevail in the predicted primary battle against Barack, then she will have proven her appeal as a candidate.

Dionne chides those who guiltily dismiss Clinton's candidacy saying:

In public, the doubts are dressed up as substantive concerns -- she's too cautious, she didn't stand up against the war in Iraq, she mishandled that health care reform in the 1990s, she's perceived as too liberal or she's not progressive enough.

Um, E.J.? She didn't stand up against the war in Iraq. In April, 2004, Clinton said this:

No, I don't regret giving the president authority because at the time it was in the context of weapons of mass destruction, grave threats to the United States, and clearly, Saddam Hussein had been a real problem for the international community for more than a decade.

Bullshit. Only pandering idiots bought the WMD rationale (and boy oh boy were there a lot of those). Furthermore, Saddam Hussein wasn't a problem for anyone outside Iraq after 1991. He was contained. The only problem with that containment was that it included containment of all that juicy oil. Oil, and the welfare of the Iraqi people were the only practical reasons to change the situation in Iraq, but the former rationale was vigorously denied and the latter was just as much of a bullshit pretext as the WMDs.

If Hillary Clinton wants to play dumb, she doesn't need to do it in the Oval Office. We've had enough dumb in the Oval Office for the time being. Furthermore, at this time, 62% of the country regrets the fact that Bush was given a green light to invade Iraq. A year and a half after expressing "no regret," in November 2005, she recast her vote as "a mistake." Of course, she couched it in the "if only we knew," excuse. No dice. Ron Paul called bullshit on the Iraq war rationale and he's a Republican. Not only that, but he's been re-elected in the district adjacent to Tom DeLay's despite his unwavering opposition to the Iraq war.

The anti-war position was obvious and she didn't take it — Obama did.

I may feel guilty giving credibility to the Freeper smears again Hillary Clinton, but I don't feel guilty opposing her candidacy.

Posted by Winston Smith at 11:16 AM | Comments (0)

June 20, 2006

Geneva Conventions

Update: Libertarian-ish blogger, Andrew Olmsted, has a rather insightful post pondering the danger of soldiers escalating the atrocities. He rightly points out that this is a critical time for us to remember that we're the Good Guys™. As John McCain pointed out in his opposition to allowing torture, "It's not about who they are, it's about who we are."

By now, you've undoubtedly heard the sad news that the two missing soldiers have been found dead, reportedly dumped on the street. Little more information is available, but already the Freepers have raised the possibility that they were tortured and executed. That is, sadly, a rational suspicion.

What isn't rational — but totally expected from the Freepers — is that after three years of thumbing their nose at the Geneva conventions, they suddenly seem to have realized why they're important:

The Uncle complains there's no "plan" to protect US Forces who are captured?

Like Heck there isn't.

We're part of the Geneva/Hague conventions.

EVERYONE agrees not to kill POWS.

EVERYONE agrees not to TORTURE AND MUTILATE POWS!

Oh, my dear Freeper, not everybody.

Here, Charles Graner poses with a dead guy. The dead guy walked into Abu Ghraib and ended up in a body bag a couple of hours later. We have record that he was interrogated by "Other Government Agency" (probably the CIA), but not about what. There's no record that he actually did anything.

When Abu Ghraib happened, we all tried to impress upon the Chickenhawks what a terrible message it sent to the Iraqis. If non-combatants, not even charged with a crime, aren't safe in US custody, why should we expect our soldiers to be any safer. If we wanted the Geneva conventions to be applied to our soldiers, we should apply them to our enemies. Period.

Predictably, many Freepers whine:

the President will be criticized and blamed for the whole ordeal.

Who's fault is it that we have a national policy that allows torture and execution of prisoners? Not mine. Fault also belongs, in part to the people who supported this policy, who are now outraged that we may be on the recieving end of a similar policy.

Giving credit where credit is due, some Freepers do get it. Freeper Non-Sequitor responds to a question posed by The Sons of Liberty:

Why ahould we extend protections to them, especially when they do this?

Because we are signatories of the Geneva Conventions and we are a civilized society unwilling to reduce ourselves to their levels?

That's the idea. We need leadership that gets it.

Posted by Winston Smith at 09:33 AM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2006

Third Anniversary of "Mission Accomplished"

In case you don't remember the ass-kissing coverage of Bush's infamous landing on an aircraft carrier (kept at sea for just this occasion for the cost of $33M tax payer dollars -- not reimbursed by the GOP), Media Matters has the look-back.

President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln aboard an S-3B Viking jet, emerged from the aircraft in full flight gear, and proceeded to "press[] flesh," as The Washington Post put it, as he shook hands and hugged crew members in front of the cameras. Later that day, Bush delivered a nationally televised speech from the deck of the Abraham Lincoln in which he declared that "[m]ajor combat operations in Iraq have ended," all the while standing under a banner reading: "Mission Accomplished." Despite lingering questions over the continued violence in Iraq, the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction, and the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein, as well as evidence that Bush may have shirked his responsibilities in the Texas Air National Guard (TANG) during the Vietnam War, the print and televised media fawned over Bush's "grand entrance" and the image of Bush as the "jet pilot" and the "Fighter Dog."

Joe Bob sez check it out.

Posted by Steven at 12:00 PM | Comments (0)

April 27, 2006

Iraq War Costs Exceed $320B

Remember the War in Iraq that would "pay for itself"? Today, the Washington Post reports that the cost will exceed $320,000,000,000.

Once the war spending bill is passed, military and diplomatic costs will have reached $101.8 billion this fiscal year, up from $87.3 billion in 2005, $77.3 billion in 2004 and $51 billion in 2003, the year of the invasion, congressional analysts said. Even if a gradual troop withdrawal begins this year, war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to rise by an additional $371 billion during the phaseout, the report said, citing a Congressional Budget Office study. When factoring in costs of the war in Afghanistan, the $811 billion total for both wars would have far exceeded the inflation-adjusted $549 billion cost of the Vietnam War.

"The costs are exceeding even the worst-case scenarios," said Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (S.C.), the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Posted by Steven at 12:22 AM | Comments (0)

March 12, 2006

Remembering Tom Fox and Forgetting Reality

On Friday, Digby wondered if conservatives, were happy about the death of peace activist Tom Fox. The answser, my friend, is blowin' on Free Republic and that answer is: yes.

Celebratory glee can be found all through the responses to the announcement posted on Free Republic. Here are some choice comments:

LoneRangerMassachusetts: Now if we could only get a few million more like-minded leftists to follow suit.

bboop:Pacifists are smarmy and self-righteous. They think their moral code is higher than anyone else's. They think that not doing anything is morally better than doing something. It is an eastern religion sort of mentality, I think. And oh so wrong about the evil lurking in every heart.

goldstategop: Liberal pacifists... get killed. If Muslims had pacifists, the position of Tom Fox and his followers might make sense. In reality, its a death wish harbored by deluded fools. We wouldn't do that to Muslims but if we fell into their hands, there'd be no question about the outcome. Its time for people to wake up!

Of the 69 responses to the post, most Freepers say that Tom Fox got what was coming to him (yay! cake and ice cream in the front hall, next to the Hitler statue!). Among Fox's detractors is one poster who claims that he will be delploying to Iraq soon. Can the anti-war spit on his grave and call him a "moron" who got what he deserved if he comes back in a box? Few of us have that kind of hate.

Digby and others have noted the nauseating shadenfreude exhibited on the right by Tom's death, but the reliable wingnuttery of "goldstategop" highlights the main message from the comments: Fox was not just an idiot for being a peacenik, but for expecting to interact with Iraqis peacefully.

Remember, that the only justification for the Iraq war that has any remaining credibility is that we are liberating Iraq and creating a democracy in the Muslim world. How is that mission going, by the way? Great! It's going great, and any evidence to the contrary are just lies of the "MSM".

What struck me is that the same people who will insist that things in Iraq are really great and getting even better, are branding Tom Fox a fool for thinking he would survive his stay in that country. "Democracy is on the march in Iraq, but for God's sake don't go there!"

In fairness to the Freepers, I should note a comment by N3WBI3, which shows that some of them have working hearts and brains. One of the ideas that cropped up early was that pacifists are "lazy" people who just want to let others do the fighting for them.

Come off of it, these guys went to Iraq and dies for their beliefs, I am not a pacifist but to say they were taking the 'easy route' while they are in Iraq and you're over here opining on a website about how lazy they are is really sad..

The chest-beating pro-war Freepers, who insist that people are fighting to save the lazy pacifists, don't bother to put together a coherent case for the necessity of this "just war." They don't even question it, and since the life and death of Tom Fox compells one to do so, they find it easier to just dismiss Fox's life and work with simple-minded bloviation.

More about Tom Fox.

Update: cali over at Democratic Underground has a nice response to the Freepers.

Posted by Winston Smith at 12:54 PM | Comments (0)

February 08, 2006

NM-3Y: "U.S. Raises Terror Alert to 'High'"

Three years, and three days ago today, Colin Powell gave his humilating performance in front of the U.N. Security Council. The next day, NewsMax provided a summary of the world's reaction. Despite obvious attempts to highlight the positive, the article couldn't hide the global consensus: Globally, a Mixed Reply to Powell Speech.

Powell has since apologized for giving the speech, and his former Chief of Staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, has recently labelled it "a hoax on the American people." Scraping the wingnut barrell, looking for strong supporting quotes, the article cites an editorial from the Austrian newspaper, Die Presse:

"How many 'smoking guns' did foreign countries have before 1945 to prove the existence of German extermination camps?" the Austrian daily asked.

I don't really know the answer to that question, but I do know that it doesn't matter. America entered World War II because Hitler declared war on us and Japan bombed Pearl Harbor.

If we, as a country, had given a damn about the extermination of Jews, we'd had the better part of a decade to demonstrate that. No doubt that Die Presse published that comment in the context of the popular historical fib that the average German (or Austrian) was shocked — shocked, I tell you! — to discover that the Jews were being mistreated by the Nazi regime.

Most people on the planet flipping the collective bird to Powell's speech. Even those who expressed "concern" still unwilling to back military action. What could the Bush Administration do to keep the support of the American public? What about raising the terror threat!

The article, U.S. Raises Terror Alert to 'High' trots out a vague — and ultimately empty — terror threat:

Attorney General John Ashcroft said U.S. intelligence shows al-Qaeda might seek to strike "soft targets" such as apartment buildings or nightclubs at home or abroad.

Anyone remember that happening? Anyone? Well, thank Jeebus for that color-code! It probably saved us all!

With absolute no sense of irony, the article notes this timing:

That warning was issued one day after Secretary of State Colin Powell presented detailed evidence that Iraq was in further material breach of a U.N. resolution requiring the country to disarm, airing in public for the first time detailed evidence of the country's mobile biological weapons labs, research into unmanned aerial vehicles and the mounting of sprayers on Soviet-made MiG fighters.

Wow! Two contrived national security threats in one week! And it wasn't even an election year.

Since NewsMax was on such a laugh-riot roll, hilarity in the guise of a news roundup was published under the headline: Insider Report: Sen. Chris Matthews?.

This "Insider Report" is apparently available as an email subscription and boasts that it is "Special from NewsMax's Most Informed Sources." More accurately, this piece appears to be Informed from NewsMax's Most Special (as in "short-bus special") Sources. Okay, I'm kidding. That comparison was insulting to the mentally challenged, and frankly, it's probably true that this crap came from NewsMax's best sources.

The article enumerates seven "Insider Report" items:

1. Sen. Chris Matthews?
2. Counter Clinton Library Has Terry McAuliffe Browsin
3. Florida's 'Other' Senator for Veep?
4. Russians Like U.S. Less Than Iraq
5. War Date Set for Saudi Convenience?
6. Beijing's Korea Goal: Oust U.S. From Asia
7. Great Deal on John Grisham's Latest

I'll start with #7. This is an advertisement — nothing more — for a way to get a free John Grisham book by purchasing something from NewsMax. It was probably a subscription — the page with the offer is no longer on the site. In any case, that's news you can use, right?

Item #1, predicts that Chris Matthews will run for Senate in 2004. Um, didn't happen.

Matthews had a long career as a staffer to top Democrats including Tip O'Neil and Jimmy Carter. This allows Freepers and NewsMax readers to pretend that Matthews is a staunch Democrat, even though he has become a neo-con wingnut in recent times. Matthew is best known for his talk show, on which he has he has become completely unhinged.

Thus, Matthews did not become a Democratic challenger for Arlen Specter's seat, he became another Bush spokesman with a TV show. Who saw that coming? Certainly not the readers of "Insider Report" or the "best sources" at NewsMax.

Item #2 is also worth re-visiting. The "Counter Clinton Library" was a new-con wet dream: a psuedo-academic institution enshrining all of the vacant Clinton-bashing for which publications like NewsMax were created. NewsMax itself points out that it was the first publication to announce this project. It also calls it a "grassroots effort by several prominent Americans," demonstrating that the right-wing doesn't know what "grass roots" means.

If you Google for "Counter Clinton Library," you will find doezens of rabid right blog posts oozing with glee about the incipient tourist attraction — many going as far as to predict that it would attract more visitors that the official Clinton Presidential Library.

It didn't.

In fact, it drew no visitors. Despite its "prominent" backers, the project folded. Boo hoo.

Item #3 predicts Florida's Bill Nelson to be the front-runner for the Democratice Presidential candidate in 2004. Unfortunately, Mr. Nelson will have to wait until 2008 for his chance to have Karl Rove's minions label him the biggest traitor in America history and a terrorist sympathiser.

Item #4 is based on an actual fact. Most Russians opposed the war in Iraq. This item whines about it. Then again, while 60% of Russians felt that Russia should stay out of it, only slightly fewer Americans (by percentage) felt the same way at the time. Today, roughly that percentage of American's say the war was "a mistake" and think Bush is a lousy president. See, Americans and Russians aren't all that different.

Item #5? Weird. If true, it is further proof that there wasn't any hurry to stop Saddam Hussein. Also points out our desperate need to placate the Saudis to get any support for the war. Given the track record of this peice, I'd say that this item is probably bullshit.

Item #6 is yet another NewsMax entry about how dangerous China is. Again, I ask, why then, are we letting them finance our war against a country that wasn't a threat? Oh, the genius of Bush!

Posted by Winston Smith at 08:18 AM | Comments (0)

February 07, 2006

NM-3Y: "A Short Geostrategic History of Christendom"

Three years ago today was a slow news day for NewsMax. Being a Friday, they wrapped up the weeks news, figuring out how to blame Clinton for everything. Mostly, they were blaming Clinton for the space shuttle disaster earlier in the week, but Lev Navrozov took time out to blame Clinton for everything else in A Short Geostrategic History of Christendom.

I think a better title would have been "An Incoherent Geostrategic Fantasy," but that's why I'm not a NewsMax editor.

Navrozov writes:

Before the 20th century, the Western and Russian statesmen did not have to be intelligent — for about four centuries the West and Russia had firearms and later machine firearms and "colonized" the countries that had no machine firearms or no firearms at all.

...

Even if it is true that Iraq conceals 25 tons of anthrax, this is a puny quantity compared with the former Soviet, possible future Russian or Chinese output. But one U.S. senator has found an image, admired by many of his colleagues. You see, 25 tons of anthrax are 20 million teaspoons of it! That is, 20 million Americans may be poisoned! This is what Iraq can do.

...

Perhaps the future suicidal terrorists would explode themselves with nuclear bombs, and here the sources are many and plentiful, but Iraq is not among them, even according to the CIA.

OK, follow that? Iraq's not really the problem, China is. So why did we invade Iraq while selling the U.S. economy to the Chinese? Well, there's only one answer you'll find at NewsMax: it was Clinton's fault.

Don't bother reading this article. It's monumentally stupid.

Another long, laughable article asks the sabre-rattling question If Not Now, When?. After a great deal of bluster, the article ends with some questions. Its list of "why war is good" rhetorical questions really summarize the appalling ignorance of the author:

• Ask them who got rid of slavery: Harriet Tubman or Ulysses S. Grant?
  
  [Um, it was President Lincoln. -ed]
  
  
• Ask them who got rid of Hitler: Gandhi or the Allied armies?
  
  [See, he should have said "Lincoln or the Allied armies" because neither Lincoln nor Ghandi fought the Nazis. -ed]
  
  
• Ask them what precipitated the fall of the Soviet empire: Jimmy Carter’s appeasement or Ronald Reagan’s defense buildup?
  
  [Historians agree that the Soviet Union was in decline anyway. Reagan's contributions to that decline are debatable, at best. -ed]
  
  
• Ask them who freed Afghan women from Taliban oppression: radical feminists or American soldiers?
  
  [A small, and dwindling, number of Afghans are free of Taliban oppression, so radical feminists were nearly as successful at this as were American soldiers. -ed]
  
  
• Ask them who is dismantling al-Qaeda: obstructionist Democrats or the U.S. armed forces?
  
  [Osama bin Laden is issuing fresh threats. Al Qaeda is killing more people than it ever has. I'd say it's pretty evident that no one is dismantling al Qaeda. -ed]
  
  
• Then ask them who will remove the threat of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction: Kofi Annan and Sean Penn, or George W. Bush and Tommy Franks?
  
  [Hey! How about Harry Potter! Or Superman! After all, why not send a fictional character after a fictional threat — fewer American soldiers die that way. -ed]
  
  

'Scuse me. Gotta go puke.

Posted by Winston Smith at 01:12 PM | Comments (1)

NM-3Y: "Pondering War"

Three years ago yesterday, NewsMax readers were introduced to a new definition of the verb ponder: to ramble on about paranoid delusions. This new definition was courtesy of an editorial by Chris Ruddy entitled Pondering War. This article was the second in a series, and Ruddy frames the need for war thus:

The importance of acting early is underscored by remembering Bill Clinton.

Had Clinton taken steps during the 1990s, even small ones compared to President Bush, we would not be in the crisis with Iraq and North Korea.

That’s right, on February, 6, 2003 — at a time when no one thought the situation in Korea was dire, and only the easily-duped thought Iraq was a threat — Chris Ruddy was saying the situation in Korea was dire and that Iraq was a threat. Nowhere in the article does Ruddy substantiate this, rather he uses a form of coded language to tell the typical NewsMax reader that his assertions require no further verification; he says "Clinton did it."

Clinton acquiesced to Saddam after Saddam failed to abide with U.N. resolutions. Clinton even lifted some of the embargo restraints that had been in place to enforce the U.N. sanctions against Iraq.

Should there be any surprise that Iraq is still playing games and acting defiantly?

That’s right: thanks to Bill Clinton screwing up, Saddam Hussein is going to destroy us all with nukes and nerve gas! I mean, what the fuck kind of mental patient would actually have thought this:

Still, so much time has elapsed, I wonder if Saddam now has pre-positioned mass-destructive weapons here in the United States or has already given assistance and aid to al-Qaeda to strike us shortly before this war begins, or after.

Yeah, Chris, no doubt some of Osama bin Laden’s brothers dropped off the WMDs on their way to visiting Bush in Crawford.

Ruddy does express some surprise that the U.S. is still essentially funding the regime by buying some much oil from it. We don't hear much about that in NewsMax these days, thanks to the "Oil-for-Food Scandal" investigation finding its way to the White House and Bush oil industry cronies.

At the bottom of the article is an "Editor’s Note," that explains Ruddy’s bizarre thesis: he’s hawking a book about how 9/11 was Clinton’s fault. At the time, Bush’s excuse for not taking the blame was "I just got here." Now we know that the attack, just 8 months into his presidency, was an indication of what an aggressive failure Bush is. We also know that Saddam Hussein had no WMDs and Iraq posed no threat. Iraq is now embroiled in violence, the entire region is destabilizing, and we’re now worried about nuclear adversaries that were barely on the radar in 2003.

Naturally, Ruddy has to attempt to compare the NATO intervention in Kosovo with the upcoming invasion of Iraq:

Even Bill Clinton, when he declared his "wag the dog" war on Yugoslavia used the full power of NATO without ever going to the United Nations for support.

Shouldn't it make one a little suspicious that Bush can't even get NATO to help him with the "serious problem" of Iran. Besides, Clinton’s war in the former Yugoslavia actually succeeded in bringing peace and has cost the U.S. very little. Ruddy suggests a great way to cut down on the cost of regime change in Iraq:

Wouldn’t a $1 billion reward for the elimination of Saddam be so much more practical and sensible than spending $25 billion to $100 billion on a war?

$25 billion to $100 billion?! Try half a trillion, motherfucker. I hope Chris sold a lot of fucking books.

Also good reading for that day was Rumsfeld Defends War Commander, an article about how CENTCOM chief, General Tommy Franks was facing a corruption probe (oh who can keep track of all the corruption in the Bush Administration?).

Posted by Winston Smith at 12:06 PM | Comments (0)

February 05, 2006

NM-3Y: "Exposed: Iraq's Biological, Chemical and Nuclear Weapons"

Three years ago today, then Secretary of State Collin Powell embarrassed himself and the United State of America in front of the U.N. Security council and other gathered delegates. He did this by promoting an insultingly hokey case supporting the allegation that Saddam Hussein was a great threat to anyone outside of Iraq.

NewsMax dutifully published Powell's speech as gospel truth in two segments titled "Exposed: ...".

In the same issue, there was also a feeble attempt to invoke the just war doctrine. This screed first misquotes the position of Catholic theologians on the subject, and then proceeds to state, as fact, that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. I guess the author figured that after Powell's speech — which he later repudiated — it would be a foregone conclusion.

We now know that the war was a foregone conclusion, and therefore, there was no need to entertain any serious doubts about Saddam Hussein's WMDs, because they were just a pretext.

Posted by Winston Smith at 11:04 PM | Comments (0)

NM-3Y: "Arrests of al-Qaeda Terrorists Disrupt Iraqi Attacks on U.S."

On February 3rd, 2003, the Moonie-run Washington Times wrote a front-page article entitled "Arrests of Al Qaeda Terrorists Disrupt Plans for Massive Attack." According to reporter, Bill Gertz:

Al Qaeda is planning a mass-casualty attack to rival September 11, but preparations have been disrupted by arrests of terrorists during the past several months, according to U.S. intelligence officials.

The article goes on to cite vague statements by the usual array of anonymous "intelligence sources":

"The attack will be large-scale," one official said.

Additionally, the intelligence reports stated that any major attack is likely to be preceded by smaller-scale strikes, including assassinations of prominent people in the United States, the official said.

Ooh. Scary.

Say, do any of you remember any of these things happening? No? How about anyone being arrested for plotting or attempting any of these things. None? Hmmm. Well, maybe Al Qaeda is only just now finishing their preparations since Osama bin Laden — who hasn't been arrested — supposedly just issued a rather brazen threat.

In any case, the Washington Times — tireless Bush Administration cheering section that it is — went on to elaborate on how well the war on terror was going. You'll find a lot of crap in Gertz's article, if you care to look it up. What you won't find in it is the word, "Iraq." Why is this significant?

Well, three years ago today (well, yesterday — I fell behind), NewsMax Magazine's online edition published some startling news: Arrests of al-Qaeda Terrorists Disrupt Iraqi Attacks on U.S. .

Um. What?

So, does the article link arrested Al Qaeda terrorists with Iraqi plots? Yes it does: right in the title. Isn't that enough? The body of the article begins with this:

Plans for a mass terrorist attack have reportedly been disrupted through the arrest of terror suspects, and U.S. officials plan to subvert other such threats by detaining suspected Iraqi agents should a war in Iraq begin.

Two newspapers today reported the anti-terror moves. Al-Qaeda plans a series of smaller assaults, including assassination of political figures, before launching a large-scale attack, the Washington Times said. The Washington Post reported that the CIA and foreign intelligence agencies were tracking suspected Iraqi agents and planned to forestall any retaliatory acts should the United States go to war with Iraq.

OK, we've already looked at the Times article, it mentions nothing about Iraq. The Post article? It's about tracking Iraqi agents as a defensive measure. How are these two articles linked?

The are only linked in the title of NewsMax article, and therefore, the tiny mind of every NewsMax reader. Undoubtedly, mentally-challenged war supporters all over the Internet linked to that article to combat war opponents who questioned the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. There's your link, liberal!

Did it matter that the article itself doesn't really draw a meaningful connection? No. Three years ago, nothing mattered. We were going to war with Iraq regardless of anything anyone had to say. This article implies that Al Qaeda was linked with Iraq, but really says nothing to back that up, and that, my friends, was the level of discourse that war opponents have been offering since then.

In regards to the link between Al Qaeda and Iraq, I'll quote Saddam Hussein himself, from an interview published in the same issue:

If we had a relationship with al Qaida and we believed in that relationship, we wouldn't be ashamed to admit it. Therefore, I would like to tell you directly and also through you to anyone who is interested to know that we have no relationship with al Qaida.

Most of what Saddam Hussein says in the interview is true. Of course, if NewsMax readers cared about the truth, NewsMax wouldn't have left it on the site.

Posted by Winston Smith at 10:53 PM | Comments (0)

February 03, 2006

NM-3Y: "Iraq: The Last Republican Hurrah"

Three years ago today, online right-wing tabloid NewsMax magazine published an that article begs the question, "Why the hell did NewsMax, of all publications, publish this?" The article is Iraq: The Last Republican Hurrah and its main premise is that if the US military doesn’t find WMDs in Iraq, the Republicans are going to suffer from a terrible backlash.

Yes, that was in NewsMax.

The article also bitches about their lenient "anti-white" immigration policy, which certainly makes it fit in the NewsMax setting, but how did the loyal Bushies who take NewsMax seriously miss this stuff:

An invasion of Iraq is likely the most thoughtless action in modern history. It has the support of only two overlapping small groups: neoconservatives infused with the spirit of 18th-century French Jacobins who want to impose American "exceptionalism" on the rest of the world, and foreign policy advisers who believe that the primary aim of U.S. foreign policy is to make the Middle East safe for Israel.

No one else sees the point of the pending conflict. Abroad there is no meaningful support. Nuclear powers Russia and China are in opposition, as are NATO allies Germany and France. The Bush administration is reduced to boasting of support from Hungary and Poland.

What is the invasion all about? The administration’s answer strains credulity: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction that threaten the U.S.

These weapons are yet to be discovered by the U.N. inspectors who are combing the country. The paucity of evidence caused the Bush administration to declare a few empty artillery shells found in a bombed-out bunker to be the evidence necessary to launch an invasion.
The backup excuse is that Saddam Hussein is a bad man. No doubt he is a brute, but any secular ruler who has to sit on three separate groups (Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds) ready to split Iraq apart, is likely to resort to harsh measures.

With or without casualties, U.S. military forces can overthrow Saddam Hussein. But what comes next? What government takes over? How does that government remain in power? How do we get out?

OK, we probably lost the Freepers at "Jacobins," but what does hindsight tell us about what this author says? All of his observations were accurate and his concerns valid; and they were all assiduously ignored by the NewsMax faithful. Still, what about these predictions:

An American invasion of Iraq can succeed easily, but the aftermath can go terribly wrong. When it does, Democrats will hold the neoconservatives and the Republicans responsible. The same media that are helping Bush whip up war against Iraq will help Democrats whip up war against Bush.

The first one is true, the second, not true. The media continued to stumble along in a stupor of complicity with Bush talking points. A year later, when U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said that the claims about WMD were "dead wrong," NewsMax promptly began broadcasting the "new messages" which were:

• Everyone thought Saddam Hussein had WMDs.


• There was no political pressure on agencies to "cook" the intelligence to say there were WMD.


• And let’s not forget vague references to "proof" that was 10 years out of date, and the hilarious "WMD related program activities" that were supposedly rampant in Iraq.

On February 3, 2004, NewsMax carried two articles, WMD Estimates Wrong?, and the even more delusional Kay Vindicates Bush. The latter article — claiming that David “Dead Wrong” Kay vindicated Bush — could only have come from someone related to Rush Limbaugh, in this case, David Limbaugh.

How about a year later? Well, the Democrats were finally beginning to make some noise, as reported in Democrats Hit Bush on Iraq, Soc. Security:

Congressional Democrats hit President Bush on Wednesday for his Iraq policies and planned Social Security overhaul, hoping a vigorous response to his State of the Union speech will fuel a turnabout from their election setbacks last fall.

So, two years after an article in NewsMax predicted that Bush would fail in Iraq, and that the Democrats would call him on the carpet for it, NewsMax reports that very thing — in the context of partisan electioneering. This cleverly links criticism of Bush to pro-Democrat leanings, stigmatizing Republicans who might call for a change within their own party.

Also on that day, February 3, 2005, two Marines were killed. Today, I believe, we lost five more.

Posted by Winston Smith at 05:28 PM | Comments (1)

February 02, 2006

NM-3Y: "Trap Set for Powell at U.N. Speech"

Welcome to the first installment of what I hope will be a daily feature, "NM-3Y." This stands for "NewsMax Minus 3 Years."

NewsMax is one of the "news" outlets set up by Richard Mellon Scaife during the Clinton years, to serve as an outlet for slanted news coverage. If a right-winger backs up his or her claim with a link to "newsmax.com," you can pretty much assume the claim is bullshit. I'm not saying that NewsMax lies. In fact, their articles can be surprisingly factual.

Today, we look at Trap Set for Powell at U.N. Speech.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell arrives at the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday to present new evidence on Iraqi weapons violations, he may get more than he bargained for.

Diplomatic sources tell NewsMax that Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz may come to the meeting to personally challenge the Powell presentation.

If you have the infantile brain of the average Freeper, this is as far as you read. This told you all you wanted to hear: "old Europe" and other terrorist allies will roll out the red carpet for Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz to attend Colin Powell's dog and pony show in front of the U.N. Security Council — spoiling it for everyone, no doubt.

The article provides further detail about the possibility that Tariq Aziz would attend, but there's a lot more. Here's one rather revealing tidbit:

Nobody (including U.S./U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte) raised any objections.

OK, so basically, this line, which is early in the article essentially admits that no one really cares whether Tariq Aziz attends. Not really much of a trap, now is it? Also, the article makes it clear that Tariq Aziz hasn't made a firm decision to attend, so what's up with the title?

Well, the title is what NewsMax wanted the Freepers to be talking about three years ago. What NewsMax didn't want them to talk about was stuff like this:

[Iraqi U.N. Ambassador] Aldouri, who just returned from an extended "homeleave" in Baghdad does not think the Powell presentation will change any minds:

"The decision (for war) has already been made by the United States. Now, they are they just trying to justify it," Aldouri told NewsMax.

Syria's ambassador Mikhail Wehbe says Damascus has seen nothing yet from Washington that has provided justification for a military campaign.
...

The director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei speaking in New York City, said his agency has yet to uncover any evidence that Baghdad has resumed atomic weapons research or production.

As we know now, the Bush Administration was claiming that they knew Iraq was pursuing banned weapons programs. In his upcoming speech, Powell would show satellite imagery purporting to show the specific sites. What Powell was after was an authorization to use force to search those sites because Iraq wouldn't give us access. Right?

Last month, Aziz said that Baghdad would allow Washington to send its own arms inspectors to Iraq to search for hidden weapons.

The White House ignored the offer.

Oh.

Remember, the mantra now is that "everyone in the world thought Saddam Hussein had WMDs." The mantra then was that "we don't want to invade Iraq, and we will try anything to avoid it." Lies. Lies, lies, lies yeah-ah.

The fact is that the White House had pre-determined to invade Iraq and didn't really care whether it found WMDs or not. This isn't a revalation that required reading the information on After Downing Street, it would have been obvious to anyone reading NewsMax for fuck's sake.

Well, anyone with a working brain.

There was nothing false in the NewsMax article, but what truth it did contain was cradled in the theme that the U.S. was a beleaguered underdog in its noble cause against Saddam Hussein, and was beset at every turn with lies and indifference. To wit, the closer:

The looming prospect of a Powell-Aziz confrontation has some Council diplomats talking:

"It could become quite dramatic," explained one ambassador.

That may prove to be the understatement of the month.

So what, in this article was informative? The allegation that Bush was bullshitting about the WMDs and was going to war regardless of any opposition, or even reason itself.

What about the "topic" of this article? Nothing came of it. (This is typical for NewsMax articles.) I can't recall if Tariq Aziz attended the session or not, but if he did, he sat in stony silence with the rest of the delegates.

Posted by Winston Smith at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)

December 09, 2005

Krauthhammer: Bush Has Bungled Saddam's Trial

I love it when the right-wing press tears Fearless Leader a new one, like Charles Krauthhammer did today over the handling of Saddam's Trial.

Why have we given him control of the stage? We all remember the picture of him pulled out of his spider hole. That should be the Saddam Hussein we put on trial. Instead, with every appearance, he dresses more regally, emerging from cowering captive to ordinary prisoner to dictator on temporary leave. Now he carries on as legitimate and imperious head of state. He plays the benign father of his country, calling the judge "son," then threatens the judge's life. Hussein shouts, defies, brandishes a Koran. The judge keeps telling him he's out of order. He disobeys with impunity, the guards not daring to intervene.

What kind of message does that send to Iraqis who have been endlessly told that Hussein and his regime were finished? "The performance has heartened his followers," writes The Post's Doug Struck from Baghdad. "In Tikrit . . . a large crowd of demonstrators chanted their loyalty on Tuesday. Several marchers said they were emboldened by his courtroom bravado."

This is absurd. If anything, Hussein should be brought in wearing prison garb, perhaps in shackles, just for effect. And why was he given control of the script? He shouts, interrupts and does his Mussolini histrionics unmolested. Instead of the press being behind a glass wall, it is Hussein who should be. Better still, placed in a glass booth, like Eichmann, like some isolated specimen of deranged humanity, symbolically and physically cut off from the world of normal human values.

Both President Bush and his opponents in Congress are incessantly talking about "benchmarks" to guide any U.S. withdrawals from Iraq. But there is one benchmark that is always left unspoken: We cannot leave until Saddam Hussein is dead, executed for his crimes. No one will say it, but everyone knows it. As long as he is alive and well-dressed, every Iraqi will have to wonder what will happen to him and his family if Hussein returns. Only Hussein's death will assure them that he will not return.

Which is why the lateness of this trial is such a tragedy. And why its bungling is such a danger. Our only hope, as always with Hussein, is that he destroys himself with his arrogance and stupidity. He has stupidly walked out of his own trial. This is our opportunity. He should not be allowed back, certainly not without a glass booth. Only Saddam Hussein can save us from our own incompetence. We should let him.

I have to admit that it scares me that I agree with Krauthhammer. Saddam should not be allowed to perform the histronics he has during this 'trial', which is a joke since everyone in the West, at least, expects him to be found guilt and shot at some point. Now I wonder, is it possible he will not meet this fate? It must be awful for his victims to see him carry on like this. His definance (even onto the end) will leave painful wounds that our military presence will only fester. Bush has truly screwed the pooch on this one. If he was half the "man" he thinks he is, he'd shoot Hussein himself. On TV.

Posted by Steven at 12:41 PM | Comments (0)

November 29, 2005

Wild, Wild Iraq

Remember your poor, lamented booglemeter? It's about to explode.

One of the "security agencies" that runs amok in Iraq, literally runs amok.

From the "Can It Get Any Worse?" Department comes news of what appears to be a trophy video of somebody firing an automatic weapon at drivers in Iraq, all set to the tune of Elvis Presley's "Mystery Train."

The Sunday Telegraph broke the story yesterday, saying that the discovery of the video on a Web site "unofficially linked" to a major private security contractor operating in Iraq has prompted investigations by both the contractor and the British government.

Last year, the Bush administration granted the contractor, Aegis Defense Services, a $293 million contract for security work in Iraq. The contract was controversial at the time it was granted because of questions about the past of Aegis chief executive Tim Spicer, a former lieutenant colonel in the Scots Guard. Among other things, Spicer was accused of selling weapons to Sierra Leone in violation of United Nations sanctions.

While it's not clear whether Aegis employees were involved in making the video, the Telegraph says voices with Irish or Scottish accents can be heard on the tape as somebody fires rounds out of the back of a car. A spokesman for Aegis tells the Telegraph that there is "nothing to indicate" that the film clips are connected to the company. At the same time, however, the Web site on which the video was found also contains what appears to be a notice from Spicer in which he notes the "media interest in the site" and reminds "everyone of their contractual obligation not to speak to or assist the media without clearing it with the project management or Aegis London."

Posted by Steven at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

Trapped

Posted by Steven at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2005

Told You So

From the Washington Post:

The Harris Poll is out today, showing President Bush's approval rating down sharply over the past two months to 40 percent. Just two days ago, the American Research Group also found it down sharply, to 36 percent.

In both cases, those are all-time lows for Bush that put him in dangerously unpopular territory. And the results lead inescapably to the conclusion that the American people are deeply unhappy with the war in Iraq and blame the president.

Hey, Turdblossom! Can't you come up with some way to blame 9/11 on Cindy Sheehan?

Posted by mjones at 01:55 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2005

Axis of Incompetence

From the Washington Post:

President Bush's campaign against what he once termed the "axis of evil" has suffered reverses on all three fronts in recent days that underscore the profound challenges confronting him 3 1/2 years after he vowed to take action.

First, multilateral talks orchestrated by the United States to pressure North Korea to give up nuclear weapons adjourned last week after 13 days without agreement. Then Iran restarted its program to convert uranium, in defiance of the United States and Europe. Finally, negotiators in Iraq failed to draft a new constitution by Monday's deadline amid an unrelenting guerrilla war against U.S. forces.

...Whereas Bush in his first term vowed to reinvent foreign policy with a new doctrine of military preemption to deal with rogue states, he has largely dropped such talk since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

That's because we are now much weaker than we were before. The neocon foreign policy of projecting our might onto the world has essentially made us into a paper tiger.

"These are difficult issues," national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley said in an interview last week after the Iran and North Korea setbacks. "They're going to take some time. But the main thing is to keep the international community focused."

Hmm. It might also have helped if you were'nt such a dumbfuck in the first place.

The unexpected difficulties endured in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 have colored the broader efforts against the "axis of evil" states. Tehran and Pyongyang have felt freer to flout American pressure, secure in the knowledge that the U.S. military is tied down in Iraq, analysts said.

"The situation in Iraq is sufficiently sober [that] I think this has given the Iranians a boost of confidence that they didn't have two years ago," said Geoffrey Kemp, a Reagan administration national security official who is now a scholar at the Nixon Center. "They're not scared of us as they once were."

Nice.

Posted by mjones at 11:26 PM | Comments (0)

August 10, 2005

Did the U.S. Have Intel on Mohammad Atta Before 9/11?

It's looking that way.

The Sept. 11 commission will investigate a claim that U.S. defense intelligence officials identified ringleader Mohamed Atta and three other hijackers as a likely part of an al Qaeda cell more than a year before the 2001 hijackings but did not forward the information to law enforcement.

Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), vice chairman of the House Armed Services and Homeland Security committees, said yesterday that the men were identified in 1999 by a classified military intelligence unit known as "Able Danger." If true, that is an earlier link to al Qaeda than any previously disclosed intelligence about Atta.

Lee H. Hamilton, co-chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, said the information warrants a review. He said he hoped the panel could issue a statement on its findings by the end of the week.

"The 9/11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohamed Atta or of his cell," Hamilton said.

The commission's final report, issued last year, recounted numerous government mistakes that allowed the hijackers to succeed in their attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Among them was a failure to share intelligence within and among agencies.

Draw your own conclusions about this.

Posted by Steven at 05:55 PM | Comments (0)

July 29, 2005

Gitmo and Abu Ghraib

Editorial from the Washington Post:

FOR 15 MONTHS now the Bush administration has insisted that the horrific photographs of abuse from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were the result of freelance behavior by low-level personnel and had nothing to do with its policies. In this the White House has been enthusiastically supported by the Army brass, which has conducted investigations documenting hundreds of cases of prisoner mistreatment in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but denies that any of its senior officers are culpable. For some time these implacable positions have been glaringly at odds with the known facts. In the past few days, those facts have grown harder to ignore.

The latest evidence has emerged from hearings at Fort Meade about two of those low-level Abu Ghraib guards who are charged with using dogs to terrorize Iraqi detainees. On Wednesday, the former warden of Abu Ghraib, Maj. David DiNenna, testified that the use of dogs for interrogation was recommended by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, the former commander of the Guantanamo Bay prison who was dispatched by the Pentagon to Abu Ghraib in August 2003 to review the handling and interrogation of prisoners. On Tuesday, a military interrogator testified that he had been trained in using dogs by a team sent to Iraq by Gen. Miller.

In statements to investigators and in sworn testimony to Congress last year, Gen. Miller denied that he recommended the use of dogs for interrogation, or that they had been used at Guantanamo. "No methods contrary to the Geneva Convention were presented at any time by the assistance team that I took to [Iraq]," he said under oath on May 19, 2004. Yet Army investigators reported to Congress this month that, under Gen. Miller's supervision at Guantanamo, an al Qaeda suspect named Mohamed Qahtani was threatened with snarling dogs, forced to wear women's underwear on his head and led by a leash attached to his chains -- the very abuse documented in the Abu Ghraib photographs.

The court evidence strongly suggests that Gen. Miller lied about his actions, and it merits further investigation by prosecutors and Congress. But the Guantanamo commander was not acting on his own: The interrogation of Mr. Qahtani, investigators found, was carried out under rules approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Dec. 2, 2002. After strong protests from military lawyers, the Rumsfeld standards -- which explicitly allowed nudity, the use of dogs and shackling -- were revised in April 2003. Yet the same practices were later adopted at Abu Ghraib, at least in part at the direct instigation of Gen. Miller. "We understood," Maj. DiNenna testified, "that [Gen. Miller] was sent over by the secretary of defense."

Posted by mjones at 12:25 AM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2005

Iraq, GIS and IEDs

Check out this website for one of the most dramatic uses of GIS (geographic information systems) I've seen in a while.

Posted by Steven at 04:06 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2005

Reject Twisted Logic! Heck, Reject All Logic!

Two thirds of British citizens believe that Tony Blair deserves at least some responsibility for the London terrorist bombing, due to his decision to participate in the invasion and occupation of Iraq. A poll just published in the UK Guardian newspaper, shows that only 28% of Brits reject any connection between the Iraq war and the London bombing. This 28% includes Prime Minster Tony Blair.

It really should come as no surprise that Tony Blair is a vocal member of the "it's not Tony Blair's fault," faction, but the other constituents of the 28% are a little more baffling.

The day of the bombings, one fellow 28%-er, Christopher Hitchens, delivered another in his continuing series of comically obtuse opinion peices. In this article, he weakens the case for an Iraq war connection by offering some genuinely plausible alternative motivations. Hitchens' article is certainly interesting, but there really isn't any need to speculate about the terrorists' agenda.

Shortly after the bombings, a radical Islamist web site published a statement from the perpetrators that explicitly cited British military action in Iraq and Afghanistan as the primary provocation for their actions. This shouldn't have come as surprise to anyone.

Since the start of the Iraq war, there has been a geometric increase in the frequency and intensity of terrorist attacks worldwide. It is only logical that this increased threat would affect the countries responsible for that war, and many analysts, including those in MI6 and the CIA, predicted terrorist reprisals exactly like the London bombing. Why shouldn't we accept a conclusion that is both obvious and explicit?

Because that's just what the terrorists want you to do!

During a a press conference with Bush-selected Afghan leader, Hamid Karzai, Blair explained the folly of giving in to rational thought:

Of course these terrorists will use Iraq as an excuse. They will use Afghanistan.

Sept. 11 happened of course before both of these things, and then the excuse was American policy, or Israel. They will always have their reasons for acting. But we have got to be really careful of almost giving in to the perverted and twisted logic with which they argue.

Really, the bottom line is that you never know when your logic might turn out to be perverted and twisted, so it's best to avoid logic entirely.

Blair recites one of the favorite "no connection" talking points, reminding his audience that the terrorists found excuses for their actions before they had Iraq. An obvious British example would be IRA terrorism which clearly had no connection to Iraq. Of course, that would be a bad example, because Britain ended 30 years of Irish terrorism by finally agreeing to address some of those "reasons" the separatists kept bringing up. Instead, Blair hopes that throwing Israel in the mix will underscore his assertion that terrorists' stated agendas are irrational and arbitrary.

Blair wants people to see that linking terrorist attacks in London to British Middle East policy, is just as absurd as linking terrorist attacks in New York to American Middle East policy. When you look at it that way, you are forced to conclude that the 28% of the British public who agree with Blair are complete imbeciles.

Posted by Winston Smith at 06:15 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 15, 2005

Bush Admin Exposed Al-Qaeda Mole Who Knew London Bombers

Over at Ameriblog there is a comprehensive explaination of the Bush Administration's connection to the London Bombing.

ABC News just reported that the British authorities say they have evidence that the London attacks last week were an operation planned by Al Qaeda for the last two years. This was an operation the Brits thought they caught and stopped in time, but they were wrong. The piece of the puzzle ABC missed is that this is an operation the Bush administration helped botch last year.

I.e., last year Bush botched the effort to thwart the London subway attacks.

1. The London bombers, per ABC, are connected to an Al Qaeda plot planned two years ago in Lahore, Pakistan.

2. Pakistani authorities recovered the laptop of a captured Al Qaeda leader, Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan, on July 13, 2004. On that laptop, they found plans for a coordinated series of attacks on the London subway. According to an expert interviewed by ABC, "there is absolutely no doubt that Khan was part of a worldwide Al Qaeda operation, not just in the United States but also in Great Britain and throughout the west."

So basically, in their zeal to show a trophy Al-Qaeda head just in front of the DNC, they ruined the only reliable mole in Al-Qaeda we had. And now the result is we could have prevented the Bombing in London. I wonder how well this will go down with Tony Blair's constituents?

Posted by Steven at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)

July 12, 2005

Al Qaeda's Nuclear Family

In January 26, 2003, Bill Whittle, one of many pro-war pundits, posted his latest work on his web site, where it was lauded by his loyal fanbase. Following its one-word title, “War,” was a passionate and personal reiteration of the case for invading Iraq, in which Whittle centers on a specific, terrifying scenario:

Let us then examine the evidence and motivation that firmly places Iraq as the key component in an alliance of terror directed against the West in general and the United States in particular.

We should begin by having the honesty and integrity to admit that the direct connections between Iraq and Al Qaeda prior to the events of 9/11 are tenuous and murky at best. ... But to say that this is enough to prevent them from allying themselves against the United States is self-delusion of the highest order.

...

Anyone who doubts the willingness and ability of Al Qaeda to deploy and use [a portable “briefcase” nuclear weapon] has frankly not been paying attention and is unworthy of this debate.

...

A finished nuke can fit in a suitcase, but to build one takes a factory, indeed, takes a nation: money, massive equipment, large work areas, armies of scientists. These things, unlike suitcases, can be found, targeted and destroyed.

There can be no question whatsoever that Saddam Hussein has been desperately seeking the means to build such a weapon.

Ironically, it turns out that there is no question whatsoever that Saddam Hussein wasn't at all interested in developing such a weapon. Furthermore, despite no new information connecting Iraq and Al Qaeda, the pro-war partisans are no longer admitting that the connection is tenuous. In fact, in Whittle's most recent work, “Sanctuary (part 1),” he describes Iraq as, “a nation awash in Ba’athist murderers, Al Qaeda savages and former Saddam secret policemen.” (On a side note, it's worth reading the prose I deleted for brevity — it's hilarious.)

The most compelling case linking Al Qaeda and Hussein's Iraq is presented in The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America by Stephen F. Hayes. According to the write-up from Publishers Weekly, the case is still murky, but compelling, “Hayes allows that some of these stories may prove unreliable. But he contends that the number, consistency and varied provenance of reports of high-level contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq throughout the past decade allows one to 'connect the dots' into a clear pattern of collaboration.” Reader reviews suggest that the perceived credibility of Hayes' dots and their connections closely correlates with the reader's enthusiam for the Iraq War.

Even if you accept all of Hayes' allegations, you end up with a link between two entities with almost nothing to gain from an alliance. Although it's arguable that Saddam Hussein may have supported Osama bin Laden's anti-American activities, there wasn't anything that Iraq had to offer Al Qaeda that it didn't already have — particularly nuclear weapons.

Even Laurie Mylroie's discredited theory connecting Iraq to the 1993 WTC bombing, fails to connect Al Qaeda to an Iraq that had nuclear weapons, so why would anyone have concluded that the was a threat of Iraq passing nuclear weapons to Al Qaeda? Even the case allegeding a risk of chemical and biological weapon transfer is weak.

As it turns out there is not only a well-documented, albeit indirect, connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, but a connection which could have brought Iraqi nuclear weapons into the hands of Osama bin Laden himself. Was this what drove the concern?

No, the connection I'm talking about has gotten almost no exposure at all. Dire predictions of the certain doom we faced should America ignore the urgent need to invade Iraq — like Whittle's above — were born of simple ignorance and fear.

Let's start there.

The Farcical Mushroom Cloud

Before I introduce some new elements, let's get a clear picture of the reality of Saddam Hussein's post-1991 Gulf War nuclear program.

Prior to the invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, proponents of military action underscored the urgency of toppling the Hussein regime with ominous assessments of Iraqi nuclear capability. One of the quintessential examples, is the October, 7^th, 2002 “Mushroom Cloud” speech by President Bush:

The inspectors discovered that Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a workable nuclear weapon, and was pursuing several different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.

Before being barred from Iraq in 1998, the International Atomic Energy Agency dismantled extensive nuclear weapons-related facilities, including three uranium-enrichment sites.

That same year, information from a high-ranking Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected, revealed that despite his public promises, Saddam Hussein had ordered his nuclear program to continue. The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahedeen" — his nuclear holy warriors.

Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past.

Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly-enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year.

Even when it was delivered, the claims made by the speech were not credible. Just a few months earlier — with the full cooperation of Iraqi officials — the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) conducted an inspection tour, which found no evidence of any active Iraqi nuclear program.

Bush apologists might counter that the Iraq had hidden programs, missed by the IAEA, there is still the fact that the survey audited sites cataloged as “part of its nuclear program in the past,” yet saw none of the renovation Bush claims is visible in the satellite images.

The omission of such compelling, contrary evidence is dishonest, and the misleading implication that Iraq had been refusing to comply with the IAEA since 1998 is doubly so. Eventually, nearly every single claim in this excerpt would prove to be conclusively false, and the dishonest character of the speech makes it easy to believe that the Administration knew that at the time.

No Nukes

At the end of March, 2005, the the credibility of an Iraqi nuclear threat suffered a final knockout from a one-two punch in the form of two final reports from Bush-sanctioned working groups. The report from the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, concluded that. “that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.” Big surprise.

This report detailed the ineptitude that contributed to this debacle, including the extensive reliance on a source codenamed “Curveball,” who wasn't considered trustworthy to begin with. Although it received less media fanfare, the second publication revealed that claims of any viable Iraqi nuclear program could not have possibly been corroborated by any authentic source.

In their terminal publication, Addenda to the Comprehensive Report, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) addressed lingering proliferation issues, including the dispersal of Iraq's nuclear engineering talent. A large part of this exodus was the result of low morale; Iraq was no longer capable of pursuing either peaceful or military nuclear projects and the scientists had nothing to do. The narrative detailing Saddam Hussein's efforts to improve morale, and retain this talent, included this anecdote:

Early in 1998, Huwaysh said Saddam ordered him to take over what remained of Iraq’s nuclear power generation program. According to Huwaysh, he strenuously disagreed, finally convincing Saddam that to do so would further isolate Iraq’s nuclear scientists from their international counterparts, by creating the impression that Iraq’s nuclear program was focused primarily on military applications. Saddam rescinded his order.

This anecdote demonstrates that the Iraqi nuclear program was not only moribund, but that Saddam Hussein was making an effort to avoid any appearance to the contrary.

Iraqi Nuclear Reality

As the ISG report repeated states, a combination of 1991 Gulf War air strikes and UNSCOM-ordered demolition, completely dismantled Iraq's nuclear program circa 1991. With Saddam Hussein actively avoiding anything resembling a nuclear weapons program, was there any reason to suspect that he had one? Well, we had been surprised before.

In the aforementioned speech, President Bush explains, “Before the Gulf War, the best intelligence indicated that Iraq was eight to 10 years away from developing a nuclear weapon; after the war, international inspectors learned that the regime had been much closer. The regime in Iraq would likely have possessed a nuclear weapon no later than 1993.” This, ladies and gentlemen, is an actual fact.

In 1976, France — the nuclear sluts of the late 20^th Century — contracted to build Iraq's Osirak nuclear power plant. In1981, an intelligence analyst named Jonathan Pollard noticed the Osirak facility on a satellite image, and passed the image to Israeli intelligence which had been granted blanket access to U.S. satellite intelligence. The Israelis promptly dispatched bombers to destroy the Osirak plant, which pissed everyone off.

The U.N. called on Israel to submit to monitoring of its nuclear program, which it refused to do. Pollard was convicted of spying for an friendly government, a crime that usual nets a seven-year prison sentence. Pollard got a life sentence which he has been serving in solitary confinement for the last 25 years.

After the loss of the Osirak plant, intelligence assessments echoed the common conclusion that Iraq's nuclear program had been effectively destroyed. A declassified 1983 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment speculates that Iraq might be able to fabricate a working nuclear warhead by “the 1990's,” but finds no evidence of a viable nuclear program at the time. So what happened between 1983 and 1990? Obviously, Iraq beefed up its program, but how did it manage to do this without drawing attention from the U.S. or IAEA?

The answer is in the dots that connect Iraq, nuclear weapons and Al Qaeda. These dots, and their connections, were reveled in 1994.

Connect the Dots

In July 1994, then secretary of the Saudi mission to the United Nations, Mohammed Khilevi, defected from Saudi Arabia. Khilevi proceeded to furnish the IAEA with 10,000 pages of documentation relating to Saudi Arabia's attempts to obtain nuclear capability. The documentation revealed a long-standing nuclear collaboration between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan in which the Saudis provided Pakistan funding in the form of cash outlays, and free oil, in return for access to nuclear capability.

These dots, backed up by Khilevi's 10,000 page disclosure, connect Al Qaeda's Saudi backers with Al Qaeda's Pakistani backers, raising concerns of terrorist access to nuclear weapons that are both alarming, and realistic. Further details of this disturbing state of affairs can be found in this Asia Times article. The article cites a particularly interesting arrangement that existed from 1985 to 1990.

At this time, the Saudi/Pakistani nuclear connection was a successfully-kept secret. Any attempt to transfer actual devices from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia included a substantial risk of detection, particularly by the U.S.

Not all countries were subject to such scrutiny. Just to the north of Saudi Arabia, was a country that was engaged in all sorts of nefarious weapons production, and the U.S. was deliberately turning a blind eye. In a declassified State Department memo from Spring 1984, Dick Gronet, a State Department official responsible for anti-proliferation issues, dispatched a memo calling for easing of restrictions so that Iraq could legitimately procure “dual-use” nuclear technology. I don't believe that Gronet's suggestion was approved, but it is irrefutable that from 1985-1990, Iraq's nuclear program made considerable progress toward the development of a nuclear weapon.

The advanced state of the program was revealed by UNSCOM inspection. The fact that Iraq's amazing progress began in 1985 was revealed by Mohammed Khilevi. Among the revelations found in his pilfered Saudi papers, was that from 1985 to 1990, Saudi Arabia paid Saddam Hussein's regime over $5 billion to develop a nuclear bomb.

Since 9/11 many dots have lead back to Saudi Arabia, and time and time again, Saudi involvement in what is supposedly America's number one threat — terrorism — is swept under the carpet by the Bush Administration.

Epilogue

Another thing happened in the mid-1990's that casts Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions into utter irrelevance. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, along with the United Arab Emirates, recognized a new faction as the legitimate government of Afghanistan: the Taliban. Additionally, Osama bin Laden, now exiled from the Arabian Peninsula, became an honored guest in the Taliban's regime. While the Iraqi “dot” in the nuclear puzzle was erased in 1991, all the other dots remain intact and there's no evidence that George W. Bush is going to do anything about it.

Posted by Winston Smith at 07:46 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

July 05, 2005

Buckley Reinvents the Illuminati as “The Talibanate”

On July 1^st columnist and editor of The New Republic, William F. Buckley Jr. showed disturbing signs of encroaching senility as he wandered aimlessly out of the select company of the conservative cognoscenti, only to be found ambling through Ann Coulter's neighborhood muttering paranoid gibberish.

In the latter half on his essay, Iraqi Doubts, Buckley quote san otherwise anonymous “student of the war,” who poses the following rhetorical challenge , “Surely we know that hardly any of the insurgents (if any at all) that we are now fighting in Iraq had any connection whatsoever to 9/11. The claim that we are fighting today the same war that began on 9/11 makes sense only on the assumption that in some more-than-metaphysical sense, the entire Arab-Muslim world was complicit in the 9/11 attacks. Perhaps this assumption is defensible, but it is at the very least not obvious, and needs to be spelled out."

Buckley addresses this question with only three paragraphs — one only a single line — in which he coins the term “Talibanate.” This term co-opts the near-universal support for the use of American military force against the Taliban and attempts to extend it to Iraq.

It's readily apparent that Bill was “phoning it in” on this composition; as described, “The Talibanate” are the same aggregation of foes — both real and imagined — that the rabid right has dubbed “Islamo-fascists.” Although it has gained some popularity, this latter term is the kind of combination of ungainly verbiage and overwrought implication that makes it a shibboleth of mindless ideologues. With public opinion turning against the war, Buckley's contrivance will meet the growing need for pro-war opinions that sound like they came from genuine smart people. As an added bonus is that it avoids confusing its intended subject — uncooperative Muslims — with Muslim Nazis, such as Iraq's Yunis Al Sabawi.

Of course, the prospects of Talibanate entering the lexicon ultimately rest on the credibility of its link between the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Here, again, Buckley illustrates the benefits of a classical education by employing a tried and true rhetorical mechanism: the conspiracy theory.

The Conspiracy Theory As Artform

Manufactured from fact, legend and specious induction, these mythologies are so ubiquitous in American culture that many Americans automatically dismiss anything they don't already believe as a “conspiracy theory.”

The belief that all criticisms of President George W. Bush are cynical inventions of his political enemies inspired one web site to create The George Bush Conspiracy Theory Generator assist people in emulating Bush critics such as Michael Moore and Al Franken. In a June 21^st, 2005 Slate article, entitled Conspiracy Theory (no less), essayist and social critic, Christopher Hitchens dutifully acknowledges the suspicious convenience associated with dismissing an accusation as a “conspiracy theory”:

I am not one of those who uses the term "conspiracy theory" as an automatic sneer of dismissal. Conspiracies do occur. I spent a lot of my life at one point trying to show that William Casey of the Reagan-era CIA had made a private deal with the Iranian hostage-takers in 1979, inducing them to keep their prisoners until the Carter administration had been defeated, and I still firmly believe that something of the sort (which eventually culminated in the Iran-Contra underworld) was at least attempted. So do many senior members of both parties in Washington, with whom I am still in touch.

To illustrate the degree of absurdity he considers characteristic of a legitimate conspiracy theory, Hitchens references the explicitly fictional conspiracies detailed in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code as well a couple of the latest additions to the canon of far-fetched 9/11 scenarios. The point of this amusing foray into the fringes of American culture is to lend an air of authority to Hitchens' attempt to dismiss the furor surrounding the so-called Downing Street Memo as a conspiracy theory.

The ensuing case is incoherent and condescending, and becomes what I can only hope is deliberate self-satire when it confidently asserts, “the English employ the word 'fix' in a slightly different way.”

Even if this were true, the meaning of “fix” in the Downing Street Memo is unambiguous given the surrounding context. Freakishly selective analysis and contortionist semantics are hallmarks of the B-grade conspiracy theory, and Brits have understandably met the “English meaning of fix” theory with well-derserved derisive ridicule.

Returning to the Talibanate, I'm hoping to succeed at what Hitchens attempted: to illustrate the characteristics of a conspiracy theory and then demonstrate why my subject — Buckley's essay — fits the pattern. Hitchens' fundamental misapprehension — a common one — is that conspiracy theories support unlikely, often absurdly unlikely, beliefs. Without a doubt, applying Occam's razor to most conspiracy theories inflicts upon them fatal injury, but they do not have to irrational or silly, just unfalsifiable.

To understand the prominence of the conspiracy theory in American culture, and to recognize its true form, you have to return to America's first decade as a fully-formed nation, and examine how American politics were impacted by the very first conspiracy scare.  This incident, dubbed the “New England Illuminati Scare,” became a blueprint of the modern American conspiracy theory, as well as remaining a component of many of them.

The 1790s

With the turmoil surrounding the French Revolution serving as a fertile incubator, 1790's Europe cultivated what became a series of successive conspiracy theories that dominated 19^th Century European politics.

One of the recognized progenitors of these paranoid tales was authored by James Robinson, a Scottish University professor, under the title Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe, Carried on in the Secret Meetings of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Reading Societies.

After his original publication, Robinson discovered nearly identical claims in the the work of the Abbé Barruel, a member of the Jesuit Society, who published a four-volume work entitled "Mémoires pour servir a l'histoire du Jacobinisme." In 1798, after Barruel published his fourth volume, Robinson essentially appended the concurring portions of it to his work and issued a new edition.

This book found its way to America and fell into the hands of Jebediah Morse, a preacher in New England. In 1798, many New Englanders were unhappy with the direction being taken by the nascent American government, and suspicions that the Revolution was being betrayed provided fertile ground for conspiracy theories. Over the next two years Morse delivered three sermons, and published about a dozen newspaper editorials promoting the allegations made by Robinson's book.

More was greeted with ridicule, scorn and copious citations of European publications that had already thoroughly debunked Robinson and Barruel's works. In 1799, Morse conducted a hunt for the Illuminati Lodges that Robinson claimed to exist in Virginia. Morse, a fiercely partisan Federalist, was eager to uncover Illuminati subversion in the home state of Democrats such as Thomas Jefferson, but his entire campaign collapsed when his trip found nothing whatsoever.

Josaih Parker, a Virginia Congressman who had been pestered by Morse, noted:

Henceforth, the reverberations of the controversy, with a single exception, were to be of the nature of jibes and flings on the part of irritated and disgusted Democrats who adopted the position that the controversy over the illuminati had been introduced into American politics to serve purely partisan ends.

So, in a very literal sense, the New England Illuminati Scare of 1798-1799 was the "Swift Boat Smear" against Thomas Jefferson's campaign.  Of course, in that time, Presidential elections were decided by learned men in state legislatures, not by propaganda-dazed electorates unwilling or unable to exhibit a capacity for critical thought, so this smear failed to stop Jefferson from winning.

When the English-language edition of Barruel's work, entitled “Anti-Social Conspiracy” arrived in later in 1799, it was greeted with indifference. Shortly before he was sworn in as America's 3^rd President, Thomas Jefferson made the following comment in a letter to Bishop James Madison of Philadelphia:

I have lately by accident got a sight of a single volume (the 3d.) of the Abbe Barruel's "Antisocial conspiracy," which gives me the first idea I have ever had of what is meant by the Illuminatism against which 'illuminate Morse' as he is now called, & his ecclesiastical & monarchical associates have been making such a hue and cry.

Barruel's own parts of the book are perfectly the ravings of a Bedlamite. But he quotes largely from Wishaupt[sic] whom he considers as the founder of what he calls the order. As you may not have had an opportunity of forming a judgment of this cry of "mad dog" which has been raised against his doctrines, I will give you the idea I have formed from only an hour's reading of Barruel's quotations from him, which you may be sure are not the most favorable. Wishaupt[sic] seems to be an enthusiastic Philanthropist.

Jefferson continues his favorable review of Adam Weishaupt's Illuminism and speculates that the climate of political and theological repression in Bavaria forced the Illuminati to pursue their agenda in secret, which ultimately fed the suspicions about them. This was, in fact, an accurate assessment, as Weishaupt reacted to a 1784 prohibition against secrecy societies by make a complete disclosure of the Illuminati's practices to Bavarian authorities. His candor was summarily rewarded with a 1785 decree outlawing the Illuminati explicitly.

Clearly, Hitchens could benefit from a study of this episode. In fact, a through study of the many events in Jefferson's life that reinforced his dedication to open and accountable government might spare Hitchens from authoring another apoplectic apologetic for the crypto-fascist behavior of the Bush and Blair administrations.

Then again, maybe not.

Just over a month ago, HarperCollins published Hitchens' Thomas Jefferson : Author of America, about which Publishers Weekly gushed:

Presenting countless excerpts from Jefferson's writings, Hitchens closely analyzes the President's words to reveal the Enlightenment ideas that shaped American policy, such as the separation of church and state and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. This opinionated, lively narrative sheds light not only on Jefferson's complex personality but on the politics of his time, making it both a fascinating character study and an excellent review of early American history.

Reader reviews suggest that Hichens' book focuses on Jefferson's relationship with slavery, and to one slave in particular. My favorite reader comment, though, argues that the actual author of America is Jon Stewart and that Jefferson only wrote the foreward.

Well, back to actual American history.

By the time of Jefferson's letter to Bishop Madison, Reverend Morse had completely dropped the issue of the Illuminati, their alleged infiltration of the American government and its subversion to their evil plans of world domination. It's hard to imagine how the Illuminati scare could have been more thoroughly discredited, yet the conspiracy story re-emerged in the 1830's and has continued to maintain a devoted following into the 21^st Century.

This seems an obvious vindication of P.T. Barnum's famous observation that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” but it turns out that the endurance of this particular myth may be due to the fact that much of what Barruel and Robinson say about the Illuminati is based in actual fact.

The 1780s

The Illuminati was chartered on May 1^st, 1776 by a Adam Weishaupt, a professor at the University of Ingolstadt. Original dubbed the “Society of Perfectibles,” it proposed to reform society by creating a path to “illumination” which would bring its practitioners to a state of unblemished virtue. In this enlightened condition, they be so reliably moral, that no system of laws or external authority would be needed to govern them. Weishaupt believed that by promoting rationalism, science and equality among all people (including women), humankind would advance to a point where nationalism and religion would become obsolete.

As Jefferson observes in the previously-quoted letter, these views weren't substantially different than those expressed by British proto-anarchist, William Godwin, in his work An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.This isn't entirely accurate; though Godwin was convinced that government did more harm than good, he never suggested that adopting his world view would result in all governments being replaced by a mystical global “order.” Hence, Godwin's efforts didn't produce any conspiracy theories, although he did produce a daughter who later wrote the classic novel, Frankestein.

Weishaupt's secret society attracted about 2000 notable — and notorious — Europeans before being disbanded by decrees against secret societies in 1784 and 1785. Adam Weishaupt lost his position at the University, and spent the rest of his life in exile (with pension).

In the latter 1780's, Weishaupt published a series of books detailing his beliefs, but these were largely ignored, particularly by Jesuit scholars who were busy claiming that the French revolution was the result of an Illuminati scheme to overthrow all world governments.

Weishaupt's Illuminati had infiltrated the Freemasons hoping to use the network of Masonic Lodges as a vehicle to spread their doctrine. The Freemasons were the subject of intense — and largely unfounded — speculation that their network of lodges was used to organize the French revolutionaries and facilitate the insurrection. Expanding on this widely-held suspicion both Robinson and Barruel established a connection between the French Masons and the Bavarian Illuminati through a visit to Paris by known Illuminati, Johan Joachim Christopher Bode.

In 1787, more than a year after the Bavarian Illumanti had ceased to exist, Bode attended a conference at the Masonic Lodge Philalèthes in Paris where he presented a paper denouncing the study of alchemy and the occult. Robinson and Burreul allege that during this visit, Bode met with noted French revolutionaries and imparted Illuminati orders concerning the Revolution. Each account, however, presents an entirely different set of participants and locations, and even dates — Robinson places it in early 1798.

Attempts to verify these meetings using Lodge membership rolls revealed that the authors had confused Masons who were declared loyalists with Revolutionaries that have similar names. Further glaring inaccuracies in both accounts leave little reason to believe that Bode's brief visit to Paris had any connection with, much less effect on, the French Revolution.

I should note that a contributing factor to the credibility of the American Illuminati conspiracy theory is that Thomas Jefferson was also in Paris from 1784-1789.  He was first dispatched as a trade negotiator, but soon took over as ambassador from Ben Franklin.  The fact that Jefferson's time in Paris exactly overlaps the years between the ending of the Bavarian Illuminati and the start of the French Revolution is, naturally, cited as proof positive that Weishaupt's agents conspired with and subverted Jefferson.  Perhaps Andrew C. McCarthy can churn out another 4-page polemic on that topic.

Back in 2005

So when William F. Buckley Jr. claims, “The involvement of the government of Iraq with the Talibanate was at many levels,” what the hell is he talking about? Buckley's short exposition cites “a 4-page essay on al-Qaeda and Iraq in National Review Online,” written by “former federal prosecutor,” Andrew C. McCarthy. So what does that put forth?

McCarthy's essay is a tedious, updated retelling of the mysterious tenure of a certain Ahmad Hikmat Shakir Azzawi, an Iraqi national, as Malaysian airlines “facilitator” tasked with helping foreign VIPs find their way around the airport in Kuala Lumpur.

U.S. intelligence first became aware of Azzawi, when he was identified as the recipient of a phone call placed from the New Jersey headquarters of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers. Considering the lengths to which the FBI went to pursue the 1993 bombing suspects, the fact that Azzawi garnered no further interest might be an indication that he wasn't involved in anything particularly interesting.

It could also be possible that the FBI is both too apathetic and too incompetent to follow an obvious lead. This is McCarthy's favored explanation and he labors to establish it in pretty much everything he's written on the subject. In fact, it's a critical component of his arguments.

Whatever the case, in 1999, someone at the Iraqi Embassy secured Azzawi the “facilitator” position with Malaysian airlines. In January 2000, Azzawi greeted two of the 9/11 hijackers, and unexpectedly joined them on the trip to their hotel, where he was last seen entering with the pair. Azzawi disappeared a couple of days later and was not seen again until he was arrested in Qatar just days after 9/11.

Much of this detail is actually found in the writings of Weekly Standard editor, Stephen Hayes, who published a book detailing Iraq/Al Qaeda links. McCarthy's essay spends half of its verbiage “updating” a statement he made in a June 17^th, 2004, article: “[Azzawi] is also the Iraqi who now appears, based on records seized since the regime's fall, to have been all along an officer in Saddam's Fedayeen.” As it turns out, that conclusion was based on a listing that named a Lt. Colonel with a similar-sounding name, but, in fact, was not the same person. Sound familiar?

McCarthy's wordy re-iteration of the Malaysian mystery seeks to frame the loaded question that Buckley uses to characterize his essay, “'Do you have any good answer to what Ahmed Hikmat Shakir' — an Iraqi intelligence officer — 'was doing with the 9/11 hijackers in Kuala Lumpur,' at the meeting where 9/11 was plotted?”

Of course, the damning weight of this unanswered question depends on the fact that Ahmed Hikmat Shakir [Azzawi] is an Iraqi intelligence officer and that he attended the 9/11 planning meeting.

Does McCarthy assert these things? Pretty much. On what basis? On the basis of Stephen Hayes' investigation. So Hayes says these things? Well, he finds them the only logical conclusion.  McCarthy would no-doubt gleefully point out — were he on my side of this issue — that this isn't the same thing as claiming that Azzawi is an Iraqi agent or that he attended the planning meeting.

In fact, while Hayes clearly seeks to strengthen support for claims of an Iraq/Al Qaeda connection, he makes a visible effort to be honest about what he can and can't state with certainty; he even supplies plausible alternative conclusions.  For example, he admits the possibility that Azzawi was asked by the hijackers to accompany them because he was familiar with the city, so that his suprising departure from the airport was actual part of his regular job.

But didn't Azzawi attend the 9/11 planning meeting?

No one really knows; the last tangible piece of information is a surveillance cameras image showing Azzawi entering the hotel with the two terrorists, but he could very well have split off and left the hotel through an side exit.

So was he an Iraqi agent?

McCarthy repeatedly notes that Azzawi was placed in his Malaysian Airlines position by a suspected Iraqi intelligence agent, working at the Iraqi embassy. Furthermore, McCarthy compulsively reiterates — in a manner much like that of paranoid schizophrenics — that it was the embassy staff, and not Malaysian Airlines, who controlled Azzawi's work schedule. That certainly seems strange, but if it is, in fact, strange, why did Malaysian Airlines permit it? Is Malaysian Airlines in cahoots with Al Qaeda, too? I'm just speculating, but it seems possible to me that the services of someone tasked with meeting inbound foreign VIPs might be provided by the airline, yet coordinated through the embassies.

A CIA analyst who is identified as a subject-matter expert on Iraqi intelligence service (ISS) concluded that the pattern in this case did not fit the profile of an operation initiated on behalf of the ISS. Perhaps — and, again, I'm speculating — the position was pursued by Allawi, who naturally used contacts at his own nation's embassy