Feds arrest man in 2001 anthrax probe, John Wilkes Booth hunted in connection with Lincoln slaying, Benedict Arnold sought in espionage case, Man on grassy knoll sues state for ‘harassment and defamation of character’, Tigger announces that he ‘…just wants to be left alone to rebuild his life.’ Probably something happening in Iraq too.
American bio-chem defense expert arrested in 2001 anthrax raids case

Posted by: Nemo | Aug 6 2004 7:35 utc | 4

Anna, Old Rummy is very quiet these days too!

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 6 2004 8:03 utc | 6

just a few bad apples – unraveling
LA Times: Testimony Implicates Abu Ghraib Questioners

Until now, interrogators have been largely portrayed as acting professionally at the prison near Baghdad that was once used by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein as a torture chamber.
But several military interrogators and others described for the first time Thursday a variety of harsh treatments they said were meted out by the intelligence squad itself. The torment, they said, ranged from forcing nude prisoners to drag their genitals across a dirty prison floor to scaring prisoners with police dogs and breaking tables in front of them. One interrogator allegedly told a prisoner, “I wish I could kill you right now.”…
Rivera described how an intelligence officer shouted “homosexual slurs” at three rape suspects, and he said the detainees were stripped and forced to drag themselves on their stomachs across the floor. He said intelligence officers, including Cruz, ordered the prisoners to “roll left and roll right” and poured water from a paper cup on them.
“They were put together in a big bundle of bodies and handcuffed together,” Rivera said. “They were made to look as if they were having sex. Cruz stepped on their buttocks to simulate homosexual activities. Krol threw a football at them.”

Posted by: b | Aug 6 2004 8:23 utc | 8

Hmmmmmmmm, Sistani in London for heart treatment, does this explain why Sadr is making a move?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 6 2004 9:25 utc | 10

Sorry:
Link to above got cut off in Transmission:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040806/ap_on_fe_st/scrabble_scramble

Posted by: Johnny Horton | Aug 6 2004 12:25 utc | 12

I found this tidbit at Redstate.org:
“A Rasmussen Reports survey shows that military veterans prefer George W. Bush over John Kerry by a 58% to 35% margin. Those with no military service favor Kerry by ten percentage points, 51% to 41%.”
Interesting.
Speaking as a military veteran, I will say that John F. Kerry inspires zero confidence as a potential Commander-in-Chief and the driver of our foreign policy. Though he’s obtained endorsements from a number of retired senior- level officers, I am not one to laud their judgement.
No military veterans of my acquaintance – Democrat, Republican, or Other – have a good word to say about Kerry. Style-wise he comes off as (to borrow a description from another poster at this site) a pompous ass; on the subject of Iraq, he is a cowardly and fatuous pompous ass. On the prosecution of the Un-War on Terror (that is, the campaign against al Qaeda) he promises to be no more capable than the current occupant of the White House.
But why would military veterans seem to stick to Bush in appreciable numbers? It’s a mystery to me, since I also don’t know any veterans who are going to vote for the guy or who can get more than one sentence into a discussion of his performance without some expression of exasperation or grave contempt.
I’m married to a long-time Republican (from an old, New England, Republican family) who nevertheless is anything but a straight-ticket voter. Though perhaps not representative of the officer corps in general, he would be willing to vote for Kerry if significant policy departures were in the offing; if the criticism Kerry offered on matters of some urgency to the military were credible. They are not.
What I’d really like to know is Bush’s approval ratings among active duty servicemembers. I would expect company grade officers to express widespread favorable opinions of him, with field grade officers and flag officers being less enthusiastic. Among NCOs, I wouldn’t expect high approval; lower enlisted are a big question mark. In any case, I can’t imagine the Kerry candidacy creating a lot of hopeful anticipation or stirring up much excitement in the military. By now I think they know they’re stuck with an unpleasant legacy.

Posted by: Pat | Aug 6 2004 14:04 utc | 14

Makes me think: what does Hackworth plan to do?
Posted by: CluelessJoe | August 6, 2004 10:36 AM
Very good question.

Posted by: Pat | Aug 6 2004 14:39 utc | 16

Soldier in Mosul blogging
Personally, I think this is a bullshit blog.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 6 2004 15:27 utc | 18

What Hack’s saying:
One of the Biggest Heists in History

“Offshore bankers must be burning the midnight oil these days with all the new secret accounts pouring out of Baghdad!
And small wonder that L. Paul Bremer went to ground in June after he turned the running of Iraq over to the Iraqis, closed down the CPA and flew home for an attaboy lunch with President Bush at the White House.”

Posted by: Kate_Storm | Aug 6 2004 15:40 utc | 20

Coalition forces battled militiamen loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in several Iraqi cities Friday, saying they killed about 300 militants in Najaf over two days of fighting. Battles in other Shiite areas of the country have killed dozens more, according to Iraqi authorities.

U.S.: 300 Militants Killed in Two Days
Sounds like the old number game from the Viet Nam era. The Sadr´s say 16 dead.
Now Sistani is in London, Sadr declares revolution, only few trucks with supplies for the US army …

Posted by: b | Aug 6 2004 15:46 utc | 22

@ Pat
The ‘Mosul expert’ seems to have had a job done on him today, judging from his uncritical acceptance of the (alleged) briefing from a senior officer that the ‘Men in Black’ engaged in recent firefights in Mosul were ‘Al-Qaeda’ warriors.
Given the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of photographs of Muqtada al-Sadr’s militia – the al-Medhi (sometimes spelled ‘Mahdi’) army on parade in their all black uniforms it seems bizarre that US troops are being told of an Al-Qaeda (stiffened with cadres from Iran of course) uniformed presence in Iraq, when as any serious scholar of al-Qaeda will attest it is a loosely-knit federation of groups whose members are given to operating in strict secrecy.
It would be easy to dismiss the blog as the writings of a semi-informed grunt, but if it is true that American troops are being fed specific information about alleged Al-Qaeda / Iranian links to the fighting in Iraq, information they then disseminate to family and blog readers, then it appears that the US military has become yet another extension of Karl Rove’s office and the troops in Iraq are being galvanized into believing that they actually are combatting uniformed battalions of the force alleged to have carried out the 9/11 attacks.
Just read the comments on the blog to see how gullible conspiracy theorists ‘knew’ the ‘Men in Black’ were al-Qaeda, and ‘know’ that something must be done about Iran.
I had assumed that psy-ops were directed against the perceived enemy, as well as public opinion, but it would appear that they are now being directed against American troops by their own officers.
Someone, somewhere, should be highly alarmed that American soldiers are being manipulated into becoming conduits for Bush’s al-Qaeda / Iran lies. If the information is actually believed by the officer who supposedly transmitted it then it displays a staggering ignorance of the politics and make-up of the resistance in Iraq. Is the US military really so uninformed about the people it is engaged in conflict with? Is American local intelligence really so weak that a fairy story can be circulated to enlisted men by senior military personnel?
If that is the measure of American understanding of who is who in the current phase of the Iraq debacle then wiser counsels have to accept that America is beaten. When transparently false propaganda is used to deceive and motivate your own people (not for the first time!), the inevitable defeat is only being delayed as a completely false picture is being used to retain support for the failing mission not only among the men and women in the US forces in Iraq (who are bleeding and dying and being rendered blind and limbless on a daily basis) but also among the American population at large.
The lies told to the units in Mosul will presumably be lost amongst the chatter of the blogosphere but the implications of circulating such tripe to the soldiers in the field and, via their accounts, back into US public opinion, are highly significant.
Away from the TV screens, away from the radios, away from the newspapers an insidious lie is still being peddled to Americans, a lie that continues to blur and distort the truth about the reality of Iraq and Iraqi resistance. Perhaps the most obscene thing about it is that it is being peddled to the very men and women who will die and be disabled fighting for a lie, a lie that is being kept alive solely to protect not the American people but the current incumbent of the White House.
The Mosul soldier’s blog is as you say it is, but in today’s entry lies a bomb that should be exploded in Bush’s face. And if there are Americans who care about their forces and their well-being they should be calling for an inquiry into the way that US forces in Iraq are being lied to by their own officers solely to preserve the reputation of a man who is surely not worth the spilling of a drop of American or Iraqi blood.
The heavily armed Men in Black that fought in Mosul are not al-Qaeda they are, as is well documented, al-Sadr’s militia
It is cruel enough for the American people that Bush wishes to steal an election based upon lies, it is sick that the US military and public is being prepared for a confrontation with Iran based upon lies but it is surely obscene that their comrades, sons, daughters and loved ones will bleed their lives away in Iraq with minds that have been deliberately brainwashed by officers of the US army acting as election agents for George W. Bush.

Posted by: Nemo | Aug 6 2004 18:55 utc | 24

Nemo
Your point drives the larger question, thanks.
Might be worth reading this guy for awhile, with
a grain of salt.

Posted by: anna mist | Aug 6 2004 19:18 utc | 26

To all:
Anybody remember the photo on the carrier in the lead-up/start of Iraq war of sailors doing a “FUCK IRAQ” formation on the deck?
I think I read later that it was a photoshop job, now I doubt it, given the blog we are discussing now?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 6 2004 20:40 utc | 28

Pat, that last comment sounds very bleak to me. Killing until one party goes home? What kind of job is that? I am thinking of an ex-Wehrmacht type I knew, and he came up with similar statements about war and doing one’s job. I didn’t get it then, and I still don’t get it. You know I am not attacking you here – it is just that there is some resignation to the fate of having to kill others which I find very disturbing.

Posted by: teuton | Aug 6 2004 20:53 utc | 30

“Pat, that last comment sounds very bleak to me. Killing until one party goes home? What kind of job is that?”
That’s war, teuton. And war is what we have.
It IS about killing until one party gives up, and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. In the end, it’s a brutal, bloody, unmerciful business.
Be careful where you might start it, earn it, or ask for it.

Posted by: Pat | Aug 6 2004 21:13 utc | 32

@Teuton et al.
What if Kerry wins and gives Germany and France a proper slice of the pie?
Meanwhile all over the fucking UK media is a transexual winning Big Brother.
I’m going to get drunk.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 6 2004 21:31 utc | 34

@Cloned Poster
We eat kraut – we do not like oily pie – cheers.

Posted by: b | Aug 6 2004 21:42 utc | 36

I’ve seen this quotation before, maybe even posted it, but to me it sums it all up, really:
Darby quoted Graner, a prison guard in civilian life, as telling him: “The Christian in me knows it’s wrong, but the corrections officer in me can’t help but love making a grown man piss himself.”
I know it’s petty and vindictive, but I hope someone makes him piss himself every day for the rest of his miserable life. There is no Christian in that man whatsoever.

Posted by: æ | Aug 6 2004 22:01 utc | 38

Teuton: well, what US troopes don’t get is that THEY are the foreign invaders far from home, not the Iraqis, even if they are “men in black”. But I’m pretty sure many Iraqis are saying the same as the Afghan mujahid, “we’ll kill Americans as long as they don’t leave, because when we’ll have killed enough of them, they will leave.”
“What if Europe got its share?” Well, first, to give a part of the pie, you have to actually *own* the pie. Bush doesn’t. He has a tiny part, and it’s been greatly reduced in the last days. France, Russia and Germany will deal with the next power in charge of Iraq. Chances are, it’ll be Iranian-backed. In case any American wonders why Bliar is hawkish with Saddam but panders to the Iranian mullahs, you have here the obvious answer.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Aug 6 2004 23:08 utc | 40

@ looks as if part of the media is waking up! at least part of it.
Democrat’s speech draws hearty cheers at journalists’ convention

Posted by: Fran | Aug 7 2004 4:44 utc | 42

The CIA World Factbook estimates that the military mannpower available in Iraq ages 15-49 is around 6,547,762. The manpower fit for service, in Iraq, is 3,654,947. Those reaching military age annually is 304,527. Since the US occupation began,close to 1.5 years ago, the # of men reaching military age is
somewhere around 450,000. If we deduct 20% Kurdish, we get 400,000 Sunni/Shia have reached military age since the occupation begain. Those fit for service generally with the-20% would be around 3,000,000, and the general manpower # around 5,000,000.
If the general unemployment figure is around 30%, then around 1,300,000 men 15-49 are unemployed, 850,000 from the fit for duty, and most importantly, 150,000 young men entering the workforce,since the occupation began, have not found work.Put another way, every 18 months another 150,000 men join the 5 million already unemployed.
The CPA, during their 12 month tenure, worked tirelessly to exasperate this situation.The highlights being 1) disbanding the Army, 2) using Iraqi oil revenues to finance US/Western contracts of supply and “reconstruction” that used virtually no Iraqi labor, 3) the withholding of the 18.6 billion allocated for “reconstruction” by the US(5% spent).
This would all be bad enough if an insurgency had not materialized, if all the Saddam loyalists had just givin it up, and enrolled in community college. The problems with occupation, while many, essentially revolve around the needs of the people on an everyday domestic level i.e. employment,security,education, and services and the deeper issues of national identity, religion,etc. It would seem that the US occupation has failed on all these levels, and is in fact responsible for the growth of the insurgency itself. By ignoring the basic needs of the people, concetrating instead on the forces directly opposed to it, the occupation has set the stage for cultural repulsion.Occupation, on its face, is an alien intrusion, and infiltrates every level of culture.Worse still, it becomes part of the culture, more-so the longer it goes on. From nightly, distant gunfire, unexpected checkpoints, helicopters always overhead, to the children taking candy one minute and throwing rocks the next, not to mention fear of carbombs, being swept up in a military operation, or ending up in prison. At some point, its not hard to imagine, an unemployed young man being lured to the resistance, to show his resolve and allegiance to religion, family, tribe, and country. Every month thousands of these men will make this decision.
The failure of the occupation to understand that the resistance is not only homegrown but cultivated by our actions is simply unfathomable.

Posted by: anna mist | Aug 7 2004 9:18 utc | 44

And now for the good news – ‘lost’ island of Atlantis found
Atlantis found!
Mind you – it could be a lot of Blarney!

Posted by: Nemo | Aug 7 2004 11:14 utc | 46

@nemo
Bejaysus and Begoorah!
Re Aljazeerah
Nothing on their site about the closure!

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 7 2004 12:29 utc | 48

So Nemo, do you think that Nick Berg might have just said “Oh shit!, they are on to me”?

Posted by: Dan of Steele | Aug 7 2004 14:24 utc | 50

Turncoats for Bush make move
Lousiana Democrat Congressman defects to GOP
@ Dan of Steele
Not sure what to make of the story – it looks like the guy went a little crazy and lost his head for a while….
….but it’s OK, he has it back now.
😉

Posted by: Nemo | Aug 7 2004 14:53 utc | 52

Incoming!
It’s Saturday night and in Baghdad the Green Zone’s rocking.
Ten explosions shake Baghdad

Posted by: Nemo | Aug 7 2004 19:09 utc | 54

Riverbend, female Iraqi computergeak is writing again:

The images flash by on the television screen and it’s Falluja all over again. Twenty years from now who will be blamed for the mass graves being dug today? …
Sistani has conveniently been flown to London. His ‘illness’ couldn’t come at a better moment if Powell et al. had personally selected it. While everyone has been waiting for him to denounce the bombing and killing of fellow-Shi’a in Najaf and elsewhere, he has come down with some bug or other and had to be shipped off to London for check-ups. That way, he can remain silent about the situation. …
It’s the new Cold War to frighten Americans into arming themselves to the teeth and attacking other nations in ‘self-defense’. It’s the best way to set up ‘Terror Alerts’ and frighten people into discrimination against Arabs, in general, and Muslims specifically… just as this war is helping to breed anger and hate towards westerners in general, and Americans specifically. …

This hurts!
Riverbend is correct, but does not do the final analyse – no wonder, if one is in the middle of the mess, it is hard to do any analyse.
There is a commodity resource shortage in this world if everybody wants to live an US style life. This could be solved by measures to strictly reduce resoure usages without much harm to lifestyle, but the US political class has decided to go a different way. They play “Last Man Standing”. Control as many resources as soon as possible and nobody will have the ability to challenge you because of her/his lack of resources. This calculation is provable wrong in the long term, but the US ruling class is following Keynes words “In the long term we are all dead.” I am living in another century of slaughter and I have no idea how to turn this ideologic tide.

Posted by: b | Aug 7 2004 20:28 utc | 56

Nemo, interesting interpretation re banning of al-Jazeerah. My underinformed guess: If that is their plan, it won’t work. In the age of digital technology, there is always someone there to take a pic – or some people taking a couple of hundred pics. If only a small fraction of those reaches the world public, the shit will once more hit the fan for Bushco, and harder than ever.
Their credibility wordwide is close to zero anyway, and the fact that the US media are not doing their job does not mean that there are no good journalists or courageous publishers left on the planet. One problem is probably that they still think they can spin it, which may well mean the death of lots of people. But then, they are not US-citizens, and therefore not deserving of sentimentalization or even mention. Solipsism in the twilight of the empire: It it hasn’t got the stars and stripes painted all over it, it is not important.

Posted by: teuton | Aug 7 2004 20:36 utc | 58

@Nemo
You are a News Station! Make a Website like “Today in Iraq”
Regarding the Turncoat Democrat, what’s your bet on Lieberman being next?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 7 2004 20:47 utc | 60

I’m watching the Shawshank Redemption on C4 at the moment (the n’th time) is there an American who can redeem the USA now?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 7 2004 22:23 utc | 62

@Kate Storm, I will check that out.
Night all

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 7 2004 23:10 utc | 64

RossK
Now that you mention it, there does seem to be a sort of dialectical dancing going on with regards to al-Sadr and the media, that is reminiscent of the Black Panthers. Recent publicity, while mixed, has shown their attempt to wrestle political control by taking direct control of social services including security in a way that undermines the “new government”. This seems to have worked pretty well in Sadr city, less so in Najaf.
So, under the current crisis, does the “new government” do what was done to the Panthers…that is kill him? Judging from the general policy of we are the Great Boogy Man Slayer That Solves All Problems I suppose thats what they have in mind. However, the blowback from this action could be significant. While the administration would likely frame this as a victory against terrorism I think this is far from the truth. Juan Cole has pointed out that Sadr is a sworn enemy of al-Zawahiri (the real Islamic terrorist in Iraq) and has vowed to kill him. Also, Cole has pointed out that the Sadr movement is also resentful of the Iranian domination of Shiitesm. Finally, Allawi and the VP Ibraham Jafari, in recent statements, condem this notion. While these reasons alone should press for a more comprehensive and legible understanding on the part of all partys, I wouldnt be suprised that we just go in there and splat the guy all over the wall.
And then wonder why these people here are so pissed off?

Posted by: anna mist | Aug 8 2004 8:01 utc | 66