While I am not mr. Bush, I will try to answer your question B. It is because speculators have become dominant in global oil markets with their hedge funds and instruments of speculation. They blame instability and bid the prices up, then turn around and bet prices will go down. They make money both ways.
It is pure playing in money. Oil is being minipulated to suck the lifes blood out of the people of the globe. Now, how many speculators are there comepared to the global population. Not many. A minority of poeple are f—— the rest as always.
Until people rebel against Bushie and his speculative friends bend over.
These hedge funds on this scale is a fairly new thing. They are the reason the market has been flat for four years.

Posted by: jdp | Sep 24 2004 22:00 utc | 3

Rememberinggiap:
I’m not intending to be glib, but there are lots of reasons to dislike that smarmy fool Rumsfeld. What exactly set you off? Was it his accidental slip about the Iraqi elections?
JDP:
I believe that oil speculation is only a small part of the rise in prices. Click here for a good article on the issue. One of its most important points:

A near doubling of crude prices over the past 18 months amidst record OPEC production can no longer simply be ascribed to the work of idle investment bankers, simply turning their speculative attentions away from dotcoms and telecoms to “the black gold rush”. The reality is that dramatic changes in underlying fundamentals have gone unnoticed for years by the majority of investors. The world is now losing more than a million barrels of oil a day to depletion – twice the rate of two years ago – according to a new analysis published this month in Petroleum Review, the oil and gas magazine of the Energy Institute in London.

Gotta love that dismal science.

Posted by: Harrow | Sep 25 2004 1:41 utc | 5

(sorry i seem to be typing with my knuckles)
yes, the caligula like remarks he made about the elections are the straw that have broken the camels back
that permanent sneer on bush’s face
the absultely stupid sub sub subhuman version of the already imbecilic gary cooper by rumsfield
that false air of learnedness behind wolfowitz edward teller induced glare
that insufferable bully like form of cheney
those house servants rice & powell as undignified as a human can be & a mockery of the grandeur of a w.e. dubois
the thug administrators garner bremer & the killer negroponte, the sociopaths armitige, ridge & tenet
as groteseque as the worst burlesque imaginable
these people are ugly, very ugly indeed

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2004 2:18 utc | 7

You say it like it is r’giap. It’s what I’ve been feeling and wanting to be able to articulate as well as you just did. Say it again and say it more often. That’s the NLP I’ll welcome.
Except for Iraq’s 200 B barrels of proven untaped reserve, the world has hit the peak where our energy availability, and everything that depends on it, are in a permanent (baring an energy miracle) period of decline. The growing GNP over the era of rising oil production is now reversing and the world is sliding down the inevitable decline slope of the GNP and going to have to endure all the ramifications. If the our empire could only secure Iraq’s reserves we could stave off the inevitable for maybe another 5 years. This is where I think their minds are directed.
The despots are trying to hold on and know that when the oil filled petri dish starts to evaporate, the growing number of peasants with emptying bellies are going to start to react. And not favorably toward them. There’s still far more of us underlings who are being screwed that the elite who are screwing us.
Rising oil prices are anathema to the short sighted oil elite. They hope to be able to keep us at bay until… what then? They don’t know.
But I think we do.
This to me is not totally bleak. We have developed, stored and made available the plethora of information and wisdom gleaned and passed down for eons by our species. We have the potential to affect the direction of this bifurcation. We here on this Moon are a part of that whether we yet realize it or not.

Posted by: Juannie | Sep 25 2004 2:48 utc | 9

Pat,
I find it very puzzling in the midst of war to be ruminating about memorials to it as this young Republican is.
After all, isn’t that ONE memorial you really don’t want to end up on? It seems kind of morbid to me … it seems more appropriate to let a war end, ponder on its meaning (in this case, absolutely none) and then come up with an appropraite design.
I agree with you about the Vietnam Memorial Walls. Very appropriate, very powerful, very moving. But then I may be prejudiced because it was the war of my generation and I have friends listed there.

Posted by: SusanG | Sep 25 2004 3:33 utc | 11

Speaking of Murder Inc i.e. Bushco using NLP they’ve also been using visual hypnotic methods in a way that I have thought was a little too obvious but whatever works; W’s “psychedelic” tie during his infamous press conference a few months ago. the “wallpaper” backgrounds with repeated messages whenever they give public appearances, his opening for miss Bush using the baseball jerseys w/41 on all of them, and way back, w/ the Gore commerical w/ the rat in it…
too many examples to mention at the RNC but the unspeakably weird
background pattern they used during Laura Bush’s speach was pretty amazing.
Even more amazing than the absence of any discussion about these methods by anyone of importance.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 25 2004 4:05 utc | 13

Susan:
After all, isn’t that ONE memorial you really don’t want to end up on? It seems kind of morbid to me …
Not so much morbid, I think, as megalomaniacal. Maybe that’s too harsh… hubristic. Kind of like an ambitious conqueror (or as Pat points out, someone living vicariously through soldiers) planning his glorious monument before the war has even begun. Of course, I assumed this individual was thinking of the Iraqi-Irano-Syrian war. Luckily, for those of us who won’t die in this holy war, the Mall is running out of space for titanic, Albert Speerian monuments. Something more somber and reflective for the Iraq debacle will be necessary.

Posted by: Harrow | Sep 25 2004 4:09 utc | 15

From The Interrogators, by Chris Mackey and Greg Miller:
A few days later, when I was following up on some questions with the Runner, I brought him a book from a collection our troops had retrieved from a house in Kandahar. They were tourist books about Afghanistan, from the mid-1979s, older than most of the soldiers I was surrounded by. The faded color pictures depicted an Afghanistan before Soviet intervention. There were pictures of the Hotel Intercontintential, with its bar and pool. There was a picture of an Afghan tour guide wearing a New York Mets hat. One photo showed a line of Wesern tourists riding donkeys down a moutain path. Ther were also photos of bazaars, uniformed schoolchildren, and the Bedouin-esque “belly dancer restaurants,” all relics of a formerly energetic, optimistic society. I didn’t know much about the troubles that led the Russians to invade, but the book left me with the perception that this crappy place ahd been derailed from a brighter future.
I let the Runner look at the book while I was jotting down some information he had provided. He was taken by it, asked me all kind of questions about it that I couldn’t answer. Long after our interrogation, when I would pass by the main cages late at night, he would spot me and approach the wire. “Can I see the book again?” he would ask in Pashtu, motioning his hands as if her were flipping through a book’s pages. One time, in a fit of compassion, I had the guards take him upstairs. I sat in a chair and wrote a report, unrelated to him, while he flipped through the pages again. There was no translator, so I could not undrestand the questions he asked me. I used that old book several other times, and it always provoked a response that demonstrated to me these people had a desire to be part of a real country. They wanted lights that worked and food on their plates and hotspitals with doctors and medicines. Instead, they had gotten swatted by the wreching ball of history and their own self-inflicted wounds. Some of them were the enemy, full of hate for Americans like me. But often it was easier to feel sorry for even those guys than it was to hate them back.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 25 2004 6:13 utc | 17

The Financial Times via NYT is debasing the myth of Zarqawi The devil America knows

apart from reports that he once lived in an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, no concrete evidence to prove Mr Zarqawi’s involvement with al-Qaeda – or that is even alive – has emerged.
Jordanian-born Mr Zarqawi and his group have undoubtedly committed atrocities. But experts say their powers are exaggerated and a Zarqawi myth is being deliberately created.
…
Islamist experts in London who are familiar with al-Qaeda figures say they know little about Mr Zarqawi and regard his growing notoriety as “an American story”

Posted by: b | Sep 25 2004 7:17 utc | 19

anna missed, thanks for your comment. I can to a certain degree emphasize when you explain it this way: In some ways its an almost rational response to their dilemma, if did’nt only dig their hole deeper.. What is so challenging is not their digging their own holes. I could accept that, but that they may pull us down in to their hole. I think this creates this ‘damn’ feeling of helplessness, not being able to vote or influence the elections in anyway and though, it becomes easier to declare all Americans as stupid.
As I said in my former post, what keeps me from falling in the same trap as my friend is posts like yours and other posters here on MoA and the Annex.

Posted by: Fran | Sep 25 2004 8:53 utc | 21

It’s getting even worse!
DISEASE IN IRAQ – Hepatitis Outbreak Laid to Water and Sewage Failures

Posted by: Fran | Sep 25 2004 10:26 utc | 23

There we go again, the sky is falling and we are running out of oil. While we may be falling a million barrels a day, underlying reasons exist.
First, speculators are the main reason oil prices are high. Second, many large areas of oil in the middle east are untapped. The southwest coast of Saudi Arabia has not ben explored completely. When Iraq is statble, which it will be someday, it has 180 billion barrels of “known” reserves, and the rest unexplored. There could be 300 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the canadian oil sands. That doesn’t include untapped deep water sources, the continent of Africa, on and on and on. Another reason oil is up is China is buying and storing oil without need (they still have massive reserves), pushing
up world prices.
Peak oil is a red herring at this time. And any article saying we’ve hit peak is just a shill for speculators.

Posted by: jdp | Sep 25 2004 12:46 utc | 25

@jdp – I disagree on your oil arguments
Speculators:
(I am one of them, but on a very, very small scale) can not move markets over days and month against fundamentals. Speculators try to anticipate were markets are going and put bets on their guesses – sometimes it works out, most the times it does not (hedge fonds in 2004 have overall lost). For a speculator a market going down is just as profitable as a market going up – if his guess is right and if he knows his tools.
Medium Term High prices:
The reason prices are high is because supply currently can hardly fulfill demand. Oil demand is not immediate elastic. If prices increase it takes quite a long time before demand goes down (i.e. people shred their SUV and buy a hybrid). It even takes longer before supply goes up, as new field development takes up to ten years. These time lags are working now. Increased demand in China and India was not anticipated by the producers. There was no money invested in new explorations. The consequences will be average oil prices in the $50 region for the next 5 years or so.
Short Term High Prices:
One third of the platforms in the Gulf of Mexico are still offline due to hurricane Ivan, some were destroyed. An important supply source has thereby been reduced and will stay so for some weeks or month.
Another reason for high prices is increased risk through US action in the Middle East (Iran).
One suspected reason is that Saudi Arabia has promised to increase production but has not really done so, either because the have no spare capacity, or because they want a different US president – both plausible – your choice.
Strategic Reserve:
The strategic oil reserve build in China has not even started. China decided to build a strategic reserve only in spring this year. The first depot will be up next year, the other two depots are planed for 2006. On the other side the US is still adding some 110,000 barrels/day to its reserve (without need? because the ME will get pieceful in future years? because Irak will be stable?).
Peak oil:
It is not important if world production peaks now or in five years. It will peak in the this decade. There are more reserves and alternatives but they come at a higher price and thereby with a need for the economy to adopt to higher prices.

Posted by: b | Sep 25 2004 15:08 utc | 27

I wish the myriad sordid revelations of the Bush family’s historic avarice would mean something. For slightly most americans, everything that condemns Bush is a lie. I’ve spent 8 years studying media and culture, and my own foxnews-watching parents dismiss my claims about Bush/Iraq et al. as my own baseless opinions. For them, like so many americans, the only truth is that which can only be justified by insisting that everything else is a lie.
We live in the most wicked times, and those for whom the ‘truth’ will be an increasing harm, demand more of their own destuction. They deserve it.

Posted by: slothrop | Sep 25 2004 15:52 utc | 29

——More Rummy——-
“It’s a tough part of the world,” he said, adding that nowhere — and certainly not major American cities — is entirely peaceful. “We had something like 200 or 300 or 400 people killed in many of the major cities of America last year. . . . What’s the difference? We just didn’t see each homicide in every major city in the United States on television every night.”
———————–
Someone call an exorcist please.
Everytime this guy opens his mouth he spews vomit.
Obviously he is possessed.
Comparing American urban violence to Iraqi cities?
Bless his black heart.

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 25 2004 16:44 utc | 31

I’ve mentioned this before, possibly on the old Billmon site, and I hardly ever post over here, because I’m not nearly on the intellectual level of most of the brilliant people who post here on a regular basis. Hats off to all of you. This site is truly a blessing. But I feel that there is an aspect to this argument that is not mentioned enough. Perhaps I am incorrect or off-base, but —–
Regarding the oil crisis in general, have we forgotten how the Bushies and most of those in his administration have made most of their money? Most of them are/were oilmen. I think it’s naive to believe that these guys aren’t manipulating prices and swimming in profits. I understand, of course, that there are some other factors, and they’re all legitimate (instability in Iraq and Middle East in general, supply and demand, peak oil, etc…), but people were fooled into thinking that there was actually an energy crisis in the summer of ’02 (or was it ’03?) with California and Enron. We only recently found out that they were actually manipulating the market and supply to make a shitload of money. I think we are seeing (at least to some extent) a encore performance here. We all know that it’s not below their moral compass to do something like that.
This group of assholes has been trying to establish a foothold in the Middle East for decades (see this article for details on the “thirty year itch.” It’s pretty fascinating. Most of you have probably already read it. Anyhoo —–
Any thoughts?

Posted by: dc | Sep 25 2004 17:19 utc | 33

so sorry when the syphlitic simians speak from the white house. their dementia is deadening. literally & metaphorically.
you tell me, really if there is a qualitative difference between their maladorous ejaculations & those within the elites in the time of nazi germany
in the same way that the dwarf goebbels could cry for total war without ever having to pay the cost (&in his case suicide constituted yet another vanity), in the same way that speer could speak highly of his work in war production hid the reality of slave workers dying in their tens of thousand in the worst way imaginable, in the way that the ‘intellectual’ rosenberg could speak of the ‘east’, the prfessor, the lawyers, the diplomats the doctors within that elite were allowed to articulate their niezschean hatred of the herd
& so too today, the neoconservatives are given free access in their hatred of the people & of the state
& to remind that the opposite exists the judges falcone & borsellino – became the state were the state in absence of the state – & you can read their utterances as a love for the people. a love for the people for which they would die – while the ganster andreotti will die in his bed gloating over his sins
so too bush & co. they gloat. gloat like unimaginable animals that appear in our nightmares. animals that roam through the worst aspects of our character. in this life i think the great majority of us struggle against this venality, this corruption of the soul & because we are not buddha – we do not succeed but these monsters drown in their own corruption
& as each week passes it appears more hallucigenic -these nightmares that these criminals force upon us
at this moment – i apologise – for any incoherence in my posts – but i’m running from one side of the hyperglycemic to the other with increasing does of insulin – it is so early in the treatment that i feel like i have lived physically like a warrior for fifty years & at the moment i feel a little caged – even without the vertiginous side effects i’m feeling for the insulin
but as i sd these criminals seem to embody actuellement the darker feeling i am experiencing
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2004 17:53 utc | 35

Laura Rozen at warandpiece.com offers Richard Beeston’s observations on Iraq (published in The Spectator):
So why is it that the snuff movies, which are being deliberately distributed by the killers, are being snapped up in their thousands on DVDs across Iraq? A year ago Iraqis liked nothing better than buying illicit pornography or video footage of Saddam Hussein’s henchmen torturing and killing their victims. It was assumed that this lurid fascination would wear off now that, after 40 years of state television, Iraqis have access to 24-hour satellite television.
But no, something more disturbing is at work here. In the latest video to hit the streets an Egyptian man, accused of spying for the Americans, is paraded before a camera and has his head severed in a matter of seconds by a powerfully built executioner. Before the murder the video shows footage filmed from the camera of an American warplane that fires a missile into a crowded street; and then pictures of Iraqi civilian victims of the fighting.
The unmistakable message, sent by the fanatical Tawhid wal Jihad (Unity and Holy War) group, is clear. All non-Muslims and even their Muslim collaborators deserve to be executed in the most brutal manner conceivable as punishment for occupying Iraq. A year ago most Iraqis would dismiss these actions as the work of fanatics bent on plunging the country into civil war. After all, the same group is responsible for blowing up the United Nations building a year ago and killing scores of Shia Muslims during their pilgrimage earlier this year in an attempt to spark sectarian strife.
Worryingly the group, led by Abu Musab al-Zarkawi, a Jordanian with links to al-Qa’eda, is no longer a fringe movement but is finding a receptive audience for its message. This month, when heavy fighting erupted on Haifa Street — a main artery through central Baghdad where the old British embassy is located — the group’s distinctive black flag with a yellow circle suddenly sprang up on balconies and lampposts throughout the neighbourhood. Where once the group was accused of being a front for foreign fighters from Syria and Saudi Arabia,
now it is clear that Iraqis too are joining the call, or at least adopting the same tactics.
Beheadings and executions of Nepalese contract workers, Turkish truck drivers, American civilians and ordinary Iraqis accused of collaborating with the Americans are now commonplace. The lucky ones are shot, but many turn up with their severed heads bound to their bodies.
The brutality of this struggle, which seems likely to intensify as the date approaches for the first elections in January, completely dominates working life. Correspondents no longer bother writing about the failure of reconstruction, electricity cuts or even attacks on American troops. There is no reconstruction to speak of and the chronic crime, grinding traffic and other grim aspects of life go largely unnoticed. A colleague came within a second of being blown to pieces by a roadside bomb detonated in front of his car on a major motorway in the city earlier this week.
The incident was simply another delay to his journey and he did not even bother writing about it. Although several Americans and Iraqis were injured in the blast, it no longer makes news. The car bombs, which explode almost daily and have killed more than 100 Iraqis in the past week, are barely worth a mention unless the death toll climbs into double figures.
Today, living in Baghdad is a simple fight for survival, particularly for the small band of Westerners who still inhabit the city alongside the Iraqi residents. In a year the response to a foreign face in Baghdad has evolved from a smiling “hello, Mister”, to a sulky stare and the odd obscene gesture, to today’s look of disbelief or even open hostility.
A Westerner walking the street in Baghdad today is a conversation-stopper…

Posted by: Pat | Sep 25 2004 18:06 utc | 37

@Pat
If Beestons is right, I don´t doubt him, as a side effect we will soon have no reliable reporting from Iraq anymore. Qui bono?
I am afraid these snuff movies of beheadings will create a wave of follow ups in the western world in future years. They are distributed now on ogrish.com with huge download numbers and no, you don´t really want to watch them.
It´s all getting worse and will get much more worse than we think today.
The US did dig itself into a hole in Iraq and now it starts digging faster to come out.
The third round of US occupation troops, OIF-3, will go into Iraq “heavy” in the next two month or so. “Heavy” means with their battle tanks and artillery which were mostly left at home by OIF-2. This will increase civil casualties and other costs by a magnitude.
This winter Iraq will see rationated heating kerosine, lack of food with probable famines in some places and serious desease waves with some thousands children dying. All will be underreported because nobody will dare to use a camera anymore.

Posted by: b | Sep 25 2004 18:34 utc | 39

Zarqawi’s Palestinian No. 2 Dies in US Targeted Assassination
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
September 25, 2004, 6:54 PM (GMT+02:00)
US eliminates high value Zarqawi operative, Palestinian Omar Yusef Juma`a aka Abu Anas, in Baghdad
On Thursday, September 23, US forces resorted to targeted assassination to dispose of Abu Anas al-Shami, a senior aide of the Jordanian al Qaeda mastermind, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in Baghdad.
His real identity, we reveal here, was Omar Yusef Juma’a, a Palestinian terrorist operations expert from the West Bank town of Tulkarm. DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources report that al-Shami was killed by an American missile in Baghdad’s Shiite slum district, Sadr City. However, the American military in Iraq is more sparing than Israeli forces with the specifics of a targeted assassination, and it is not clear if the missile was fired from a helicopter, a drone or one of the US special force units which patrol and mount ambushes in Baghdad, Fallujah and other insurgent hotbed towns.
No one knows exactly how many lieutenants Zarqawi has, probably 4 or five. But locating and killing a high-profile member of Zarqawi’s organization a few days after the capture of another top Zarqawi aide, known as Omar Baziyani (an alias), is a considerable American feat in its relentless offensive against the group behind the deadly suicide bombings and hostage-taking atrocities afflicting Iraq.
[A considerable feat. A relentless offensive. U-huh, you bet. Who demanded the op AFTER two American beheadings made their way onto the front page? Gee, could it be that worthless SOB Rumsfeld? Or was it Bush himself this time? Whichever. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: This administration, with its comical-tragic likeness to the al Sauds, will respond to headlines and little else. Responding to headlines means you’re a day late getting off your ass, but what do Bush and Rumsfeld care? It’s not their heads coming off, after all.]

Posted by: Pat | Sep 25 2004 18:59 utc | 41

perhaps only the deranged progeny of jesus christ & j edgar hoover roy cohn & joseph mccarthy – in the form has a blacker heart – john ascroft

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2004 19:15 utc | 43

& the criminal conspiacy continues
the body count will mount infinitely
& the criminals will dine out in washington with their clients footting the bill & they will laugh amongst themselves how they have swallowed the people whole
& as in the fifties all they have to do is offer them forms of information & entertainement that empty the human soul
& rupert will be there laughing at them undertstanding that human affairs are not shakespearean & so he wasted all that time at oxford – he understands in his dotage that political leaders are created of cruder stuff & that it is within his power to make it cruder & he will
`
& they wander in & out of discussions that are not worth having while the people bleed in iraq, while the people bleed as the prick rrumsfield so rightly points out on the streets of america & so he will give his pals in the n r a the right to semiautomatic weapons so they that they can fill the streets with them
as in their genocide of african americans – wiping out future leaders from that community & they will dream of their consulting jobs at the end & their invitations to cnn to speak pompously of those that bleed
oh fuck them
fuck them all
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 25 2004 19:38 utc | 45

@Pat – not really 6 month early – some parts of OIF-3 are already in Iraq. Expect some troops going in earlier than planed for the announced November attacks on Fallujah, Ramadi etc. and the “elections” in January. Some on tour now, especially the Marines, will have it prolonged. That will create an overlap of coming and going troops that puts maybe 200.000 pair of boots on the ground to stomp around. Not enough – when Shinkesi talked of “several 100,000” needed he didn´t mean 200,000. With the infested guerilla 500,000 could probably get an upperhand.
GlobalSecurity

As part of the rotation, OIF units will be deploying ‘heavy’.
…
An article in the Wall Street Journal published on Sept. 24, reported that the Pentagon was planning on a temporary increase in the number of US troops in Iraq ..
…
Gen. John P. Abizaid, CENTCOM, was quoted as telling reporters on Sept. 24, 2004, that more forces were expected to be needed for Iraq , in anticipation of coming elections there,…Such [contingency] planning would be partly contingent on the strategy to be adopted in offensive operations to be conducted in the Sunni Triangle, and would likely rely on extending the tours of unit already deployed in country.
…
On Sept 23, 2004, DoD announced the death of a soldier from the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment in Iraq. The deployment of that unit had not been previously noted.

There are already more troops in Iraq than the 140,000 that are officially mentioned. Also you do have to count the 30,000 GIs in Kuweit who are essentially the supply chain for OIF as is the air force in Incirlik and the Navy in the Gulf. The generals know that this is insufficient as well as unsustainable.

Posted by: b | Sep 25 2004 20:36 utc | 47

Bernhard, I want you and jdp to be nice to each other now. You are both right IMO, at least on some points. I don’t claim to know the ins and outs of market and political economies but we have to admit that we have a weird mixture of both here.
The Fat Boys are manipulators, and whenever and however they can, they will manipulate. It has become easier to do this lately with the ballooning Orwellian public stance (war is peace, lies are the truth) and it looks to me like we have to face the fact that things are not necessarily as you were taught in school.
Secret agreements are made among those who should be seen as competitors, in trade, govt, war, etc. These deals are not intended to be seen or understood by observers.

Posted by: rapt | Sep 25 2004 20:52 utc | 49

A strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me, but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.

Bonjour Tristesse
French literary icon Sagan dies

Posted by: b | Sep 25 2004 21:07 utc | 51

thx uncle – a realy good one.

Posted by: b | Sep 25 2004 22:55 utc | 53

@Uncle$
have been following your tracks, just have’nt caught up enough to comment — keep a goin’

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 26 2004 0:05 utc | 55

From IntelDump:
Saturday, September 25, 2004
Al Qaeda 4.0?
Sunday’s Los Angeles Times has an outstanding article on the evolution of Al Qaeda since Sept. 11 — to borrow Peter Bergen’s typology, its upgrade from the organization that hit us to Al Qaeda 4.0. By and large, the terror organization has evolved in response to U.S. actions out of a desire to survive and perpetuate its ideology and mission. The result is a network which is far more dispersed, loosely connected, and survivable than the one in Sept. 2001 — and one which will probably be harder for us to dismantle.
“Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Qaeda was a loosely organized network, but core leaders exercised considerable control over its operations. Since the loss of its base in Afghanistan and many of those leaders, the organization has dispersed its operatives and reemerged as a lethal ideological movement.
“Osama bin Laden might now serve more as an inspirational figure than a CEO, and the war in Iraq is helping focus militants’ anger, according to dozens of interviews in recent weeks on several continents. European and moderate Islamic countries have become targets. And instead of undergoing lengthy training at camps in Afghanistan, recruits have been quickly indoctrinated at home and deployed on attacks.
“The United States remains a target, but counter-terrorism officials and experts are alarmed by Al Qaeda’s switch from spectacular attacks that require years of planning to smaller, more numerous strikes on softer targets that can be carried out swiftly with little money or outside help.
“The impact of these smaller attacks can be enormous. Bombings in Casablanca in May 2003 shook Morocco’s budding democracy, leading to mass arrests and claims of abuse. The bombing of four commuter trains in Madrid in March contributed to the ouster of Spain’s government and the withdrawal of its troops from Iraq.
“Officials say the terrorist movement has benefited from the rapid spread of radical Islam’s message among potential recruits worldwide who are motivated by Al Qaeda’s anti-Western doctrine, the continuing Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the insurgency in Iraq.
“The Iraq war, which President Bush says is necessary to build a safer world, has emerged as a new front in the battle against terrorism and a rallying point for a seemingly endless supply of young extremists willing to die wherever they wage jihad, or holy war.
“Intelligence and counter-terrorism officials said Iraq also was replacing Afghanistan and the Russian republic of Chechnya as the premier location for on-the-job training for the next phase of violence against the West and Arab regimes.
“‘In Iraq, a problem has been created that didn’t exist there before,’ said Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere of France, dean of Europe’s anti-terrorism investigators. ‘The events in Iraq have had a profound impact on the entirety of the jihad movement.'”
Political Analysis: If the Democrats could exploit this, it could have profound implications for the 2004 election. The most fundamental question is this: Has the Bush administration made us more or less secure since Sept 11? A subsidiary question is: Has the war in Iraq made us more likely, as likely, or less likely to be attacked by terrorists? To win in November, the Democrats must turn this election into a referendum on the Bush White House’s national security policies — on everything from the war against Al Qaeda to the war in Iraq and the bumbling efforts of the Department of Homeland Security. It must do so with simple messages like this — the rhetorical equivalent of the old refrain about whether you’re better off today than you are four year ago. And the Democrats must find a way to communicate points made in articles like this — that in fact, America may be less secure today because of its missteps in the war on terrorism. And when you screw up as badly as this administration has screwed up on so many fronts, you simply don’t get to keep your job. That’s something that the average American can wrap his or her head around, and I think it’s the way the Dems need to package their pitch to win in November.
Why isn’t the Kerry team doing this? Who knows. Perhaps it’s his penchant for nuance, honed during years of elite schooling and years in the Senate. Perhaps it’s the desire to leave wiggle room for policies after the election, should he be elected. Perhaps it’s that these issues really are complicated, and it’s hard to simplify them into terms that are black and white. Nonetheless, the Kerry team must realize two things. (1) Politics is the art of the possible — if you don’t win the election, nothing is possible. (2) The Bush White House is extremely good at simplifying (perhaps oversimplifying) these things for the public into matters of right/wrong and good/evil. Nuance simply won’t cut it in response to these positions.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 26 2004 2:05 utc | 57

@B:
Bonjour Tristesse:
Always suspected you were a lacrymose closet Frog.
@Rapt:
Thanks for pointing out that armor and arty are being brought in to secure the perimeter. WTF endgame do these assholes have in mind I wonder.
Must be “the New,New Thing” that Rummy and Wolfie just dreamed up on the spur of the moment.
These guys are true genuises, I have no doubt.
@Pat:
Whole “corrected” post above. Seems like it’s
12 months too late. But the approach is Army doctrine, and we haven’t seen too much of that in evidence in the last three years, have we, eh? From Tora Bora on forward.

Posted by: FlashHarry | Sep 26 2004 2:30 utc | 59

@FlashHarry
My husband’s biggest constant beef with the DoD leadership is the practice of eschewing doctrine. We have it for a reason, he says in exasperation. Try it out sometime.
“From Tora Bora forward.” Indeed.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 26 2004 3:06 utc | 61

At the UN President (Dictator General) Musharraf of Pakistan sounds a general alarm and pledges for new priorities:

Too many fronts have been opened, too many battle lines drawn.
…
Justice must be offered to Islamic peoples in the form of resolution of all outstanding international disputes which affect Muslims. There is no time to lose. Action has to be taken before an iron curtain finally descends between the West and the Islamic World.
…
The tragedy of Palestine is an open wound inflicted on the psyche of every Muslim. It generates anger and resentment across the Islamic World.
…
The US can and must play the role of a just broker of peace. Peace must succeed in the Middle East; failure … is no more an option.

Frightening

Posted by: b | Sep 26 2004 10:00 utc | 63

LA Times America the Conservative – Europe is in the 21st century, but we remain locked in the 18th

Whether President Bush is reelected or Sen. John F. Kerry prevails, the United States will be the most conservative developed nation in the world. Its economy will remain the least regulated, its welfare state the smallest, its military the strongest and its citizens the most religious.
…
It wasn’t always so. At the start of the 20th century, the U.S. looked progressive compared with Europe’s empires. The big difference between the U.S. and Europe is that the U.S. kept its 18th century Constitution, while most European countries discarded theirs. In a wave of revolutions and quasi-revolutionary general strikes, European countries, one by one, replaced their older conservative constitutions with ones often designed by socialist or labor leaders.
…
The sharp racial division that runs through American society makes it possible to castigate poor people in a way that would be impossible in a homogeneous nation like Sweden, where the poor look the same as everyone else.
…
Increased immigration to Europe is making those societies more heterogeneous, and we have already seen opponents of social welfare, such as Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, Joerg Haider in Austria and Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands, use inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric to discredit generous welfare payments. We may like to believe that human beings are colorblind, but the reality is that American diversity has always made redistribution less popular here than in more ethnically and racially homogeneous places.

Posted by: b | Sep 26 2004 15:54 utc | 65

Sorry…tried to shortcut those links.

First one: Online 9/11 memorial

Second one: 1000 men and woman.

You will eventually want to mute your puter at the second site.

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 26 2004 17:20 utc | 67

The Long Hunt for Osama – Peter Bergen – October issue – The Atlantic via The Agonist
Where has he been? How did we ever let him get away? Our correspondent–one of the few Western journalists ever to have met Osama bin Laden–traces the al-Qaeda leader’s footsteps in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and describes the sometimes hapless American pursuit.
Take some time and read this article. This is an important article if you want to stay informed, and Bergen is one of the most legit terrorism experts out there. jnh.
Very, very interesting article.

Posted by: b | Sep 26 2004 19:36 utc | 69

I just found this site and cannot believe that the “Whiskey Bar” commmunity still lives. I was an avid reader back in the spring, until the comments section was shut down, and there’s nothing else like it out there. And… here you are!
So I have a piece to contribute to this thread. It’s one I just discovered today, and I think it’s one of the most important things I’ve read about the Iraq war so far. It’s from this month’s (Sept) Harper’s Magazine Baghdad Year Zero, by Naomi Klein. It’s about the economic motivations for the war and the various measures taken by the administration, Bremer, and the neocons to try and force shotgun privatization through in the aftermath of the war. Full of all kinds of first-hand details that are so rare from Iraq. And it sheds a LOT of light on why certain decisions evolved as they did.
I’d love to see a discussion on this article here.

Posted by: Bea | Sep 26 2004 23:39 utc | 71

Hi flies.
Just popped by the old same place.
New sign up.
I’m guessing he was waylaid by pirates.
Still,
A positive sign,
If a little grim.

Posted by: sasando | Sep 27 2004 2:47 utc | 73

Shutting Up Sibel Edmonds, Again
Andrew Buncombe has an update on the Sibel Edmonds story in today’s Independent. A group of family members of victims of 9/11 are taking legal action against banks and two powerful Saudis that allegedly aided al-Qaeda. The family members’ representation, the law firm Motley-Rice, subpoenaed Edmonds but the Bush administration is attempting to use the “state secrets privilege” to keep her from testifying.
It’s my understanding that Ashcroft has already successfully used the state secrets privilege to foil Edmonds attempt to acquire, via the Freedom of Information Act, the controversial documents that she claims to have seen as an FBI translator. So the Justice Department’s action this time around will likely succeed.
It’s interesting that two of the defendants in this case are members of the Saudi Royal family. In Amy Goodman’s interview with Edmonds, Edmonds made the following statement regarding the Justice Departments’ previous invocation of the state secrets privilege:
[The Justice Department says] this privilege is very rare and is asserted to prevent certain information from becoming public or hurting diplomatic relations and I would underline this phrase ‘diplomatic relations’ several times.
Couldn’t “hurting diplomatic relations” mean embarrassing two members of the Saudi Royal family?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 27 2004 5:25 utc | 75

Hey Uncle!
You’ve been on top of this SEdmonds thing from the beginning.
How about contacting Bernhard and writing us a top to bottom post so that we can have everything in one place to refer to?

Posted by: RossK | Sep 27 2004 6:29 utc | 77

In the WaPo Jackson Diehl asks, “Will it be the West Bank or Lebanon?”
From Jenin To Fallujah?
Monday, September 27, 2004; Page A19
Two and a half years ago this week, the Israeli army launched an offensive against the Palestinian towns of Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and Bethlehem — which, it said, had become havens for extremist groups and suicide bombers who made daily life in Israel unbearable. Images of flattened houses and civilian casualties soon filled the world’s television screens: Palestinian spokesmen claimed, falsely, that thousands were being massacred. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan declared himself “appalled.” President Bush publicly called on Israel to withdraw “without delay.” Some editorial writers — such as this one — argued that the offensive would do more harm than good.
As Americans and Iraqis now debate what to do about insurgent-held Iraqi towns, it’s worth revisiting that Israeli campaign — because what followed offers a counter to some of the conventional wisdom. Yes, there are innumerable differences between the West Bank and Iraq. And yet the salient point is that through the robust use of military force, Israel has succeeded in reducing the level of violence it faces by more than 70 percent.[…]

Posted by: Pat | Sep 27 2004 7:09 utc | 79

The Guardian A European superstate is inevitable

The world’s largest economy with a stable common currency and a successful single market is … bound to pursue policies that conflict with the interests of the US.
That makes the two “superpowers” competitors but not enemies. It also means that “core Europe” – the Franco-German alliance which Britain should join and make into a troika – is certain to lead the way towards distinctive defence and foreign policies. Only people who share the Bush belief that America has a divine right to global supremacy can complain about that.

Posted by: b | Sep 27 2004 8:36 utc | 81

Gott mit uns!
Onward Christian Soldiers…
For King God and Justice…
In the next few months you will likely hear quite a bit about Iranian nuclear ambition. You will hear about the Iranian nuclear facilities at Arak and Natanz that Warblogging wrote about in December of last year. You will hear a lot about Iranian efforts to influence Iraqi politics. You will hear a lot about Iranian sponsorship of terrorism, including allegations that Iran in some way supports al-Qaeda. You will hear ever more along these lines.
Those are exactly the noises we are hearing now from BushCo. The only impediments to that action right now are the Nov 2 election and the fact that our troops are over engaged in the hopeless “pacification” effort in Iraq. If BushCo wins, disemberment would be a very logical step, both freeing the resources and increasing the “justification, for action against Tehran. Do you feel that Draft?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 27 2004 11:02 utc | 83

@Dan of Steele
Diehl goes on to compare the numbers of terror victims (killed) within Israel from 2002, ’03, ’04. If you recall just how bloody 2002 was, then you can appreciate, even without exact numbers at your immediate disposal, how comparatively quiet it is now.
I do not know the extent to which the wall has contributed to the drop-off in major terror incidents – and I don’t know how much of the wall has been completed to date – but you can hunt around for analyses.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 27 2004 11:58 utc | 85

Now For Something Completely Different!
Danse Macabre
Or A DAY IN THE LIFE OF BRAVO COMPANY
Or 11B Meets 92M

Posted by: Walter Crankcase | Sep 27 2004 13:16 utc | 87

Anna & Ross:
I guess I don’t dismiss Naomi Klein’s theory entirely, but in my opinion the economic utopianism was a secondary motivation. As for the re-
Baathification and inability in spending the aid money, I always assumed that was because the security situation had gotten so god-awful. But my opinion isn’t set in stone – I’ve heard claims that part of the reason
for the delay in aid is to give the US more leverage over the elected Iraqi government. I’m sure movements towards free market reforms would
“clear the bureaucratic backlogs” or whatever. (Come to think of it, I likely read that first on the Whiskey Bar!)
Pat:
You’re quite right, and I was wrong: an interrogation that does not defeat an imminent plot is hardly useless. Nor do I disagree with your conclusions, except to note that your scenario in the original post
may be too optimistic, given what we know about treatment of al-Qaeda
suspects in Gitmo. Of course, threatening torture by Pak police and the actual application of it by CIA interrogators might go together just fine.

Posted by: Harrow | Sep 27 2004 15:55 utc | 89

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
–Paul Valery–
Which would seem to explain a lot about the strategy our ‘conservatives’ are employing. And our place is to enlighten ourselves and then others till we realize how much these affairs really are our business. Skillfully and patiently.
Affection and best wishes to Billmon getting his patience back.

Posted by: Citizen | Sep 27 2004 22:19 utc | 91