biklett,
thanks for that link. very very powerful. I for one will be watching the coverage closely.

Posted by: Hamburger | Jun 15 2005 21:12 utc | 4

reminded again of how prophetic charles laughton was in ‘the night of the hunter’
the preacher = the cheney/bush junta
shelley winters = america
the old folks = the media oligarchy
the children = you
lillian gish = the better angels of your nature
& as in the film – america is being fucked & buried underneath the waters
i am reminded also of that most unamerican of musicals, ‘carousel’ – so full of the elegy of the absent father & again i am reminded that with dolts in your leadership – you are fatherless
& i am reminded of that german crybaby – douglas sirk who wanted to believe there was a better america but his films could never resolve that dilemna

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 15 2005 23:13 utc | 6

THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has criticised the new web-based media for “paranoid fantasy, self-indulgent nonsense and dangerous bigotry”. He described the atmosphere on the world wide web as a free-for-all that was “close to that of unpoliced conversation”.

oooh, dangerous, can’t have unsupervised conversations

Posted by: DM | Jun 16 2005 2:22 utc | 8

I just heard an important story. A Mother called the liberal radio show. She was a very real human being. Said she’d wanted to share her story for awhile.
Her son enlisted in the Army in April ’01. He was to be trained as a lab tech, or something else. He came home for leave on Labor Day wkend. He said: “Mom, they’ve changed my training. We’re now being prepared to go to war in the ME. They’ve cut off the air-conditioning in the barracks (he was in Tx.)…they’re getting us ready for the heat…All the officers – the career guys – I overhear, in the mess etc, have such great disdain for Rums. & Bush.”
A few days later the planes hit. What do you think those kids thought? bet that was great for morale. How many people have stories to tell about 911? How many institutions are being ripped apart by “morale problems” from it & attendant developments?

Posted by: jj | Jun 16 2005 5:58 utc | 10

A house divided against itself cannot stand. A nation where the political opposition stands against our foreign policy, and even secretly (and not so secretly) hopes for its failure, cannot reform a region as recalcitrant as the Middle East.
Billmon cites this sentence, published some two years ago by the National Review, as the gist of an argument being developed (perhaps) by the likes of the risible Friedman, in which the liberal anti-war movement will be scapegoated for the defeat of the American adventure in Iraq. Billmon’s clearly worried about the likelihood a neo-McCarthyite assault, against which a marginalized, and politically innocent (in the sense of “not guilty as charged, because not in a position to act as charged”) group of writers will be targeted by the rather guilty ones, like Friedman, who actually urged our government to fight a pointless and impossible war. Billmon, I say, is clearly worried about this: he cites the treatment of the anti-war movement in Germany after World War I as a precedent, along with the treatment (a lesser instance) of the peace movement in this country in the late seventies and early eighties.
I certainly agree that the likes of Friedman will try to scapegoat the anti-war left. What else can they do, when proven powerless to think honestly and intelligently about politics? But can they actually scapegoat anyone? Really and truly? For example, is there any career diplomat whose career they can destroy, as McCarthy did in the early fifties? Of course not; those diplomats were cut out of the loop long before the war started in earnest.
Going back to that quote at the top of this post, I for one openly hope for, indeed pray for, the failure of American policy in Iraq. If “accused” of wishing this outcome “in secret,” I would have to protest that I have sought it in the open, forthrightly. I want us to fail in Iraq (but I have no means to “reform a region as recalcitrant as the Middle East”). The possibility that this outcome might make Friedman and his ilk look bad is of no great interest to me, because they already look bad. Friedman is risible.
I also think that any attempted scapegoating of the anti-war left at this stage would be very unsatisfying to the pro-war folks, if only because they’ve already done their scapegoating, and done it very successfully. This they did with the trashing of John Kerry’s war record in Viet Nam, the suppression of Bush’s malingering with drugs and booze in the ROTC, and the winning of the election in 2004. You can’t scape the same goat twice. Or you can’t win an argument, and then turn around and say that you lost it, having won it (wrongly and wrongfully) in the first place. The retort, which the war-party can’t refute, is the “pottery barn” argument: you broke it, you own it. Your really do own it, gentleman: you took care to cut out the anti-war folks from the get-go.
And, finally, something else is at stake–the role of AIPAC and the likudites in the war movement. I think that what really bothers Friedman is very simple: he’s not a global visionary, he’s a pro-Likud war-monger who applauded this country’s commitment to a disastrous war. He should be ashamed of himself, and, in the best of circumstances, might stand to profit from his mistakes. In saying this, I don’t scapegoat the man, for the simple reason that I don’t hold writers responsible for the acts of bureaucrats and office-holders, civilian or military. Writers may be wounded to hear this, but they really aren’t powerful. They never were, and that’s why they write (because they lack power, and because they want to lack power). They don’t load guns, point them, and pull triggers. They murmur some of the time, and they rave some of the time, but they don’t make things happen: they merely urge that others do so. Scapegoating cheerleaders is not the rewarding thing: for real satisfaction, you have to go after the coaches, the quarterback, and his team-mates on the field.

Posted by: alabama | Jun 16 2005 7:54 utc | 12

@b
In fact, incredibly foolhardy … *sigh*, so like Vietnam, when all is lost, escalate !
In the meantime back home …

ANTI- TERROR ABSURDITY IN AMERICA
Hemorrhaging Money for Homeland Security
Fear can be a lucrative business. That, at least, is what American companies selling security gadgets are finding out as the US government continues to spend billions of dollars on a variety of different Homeland Security programs. The only problem? Most of them are useless…

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 16 2005 9:55 utc | 14

G8 draft climate text watered down

A new draft communique on climate change for next month’s Group of Eight summit has removed plans to fund research and put into question top scientists’ warnings that global warming is already under way.
The text seen by Reuters, titled Gleneagles Plan of Action and dated June 14, has been watered down from a previous draft which itself had no specific targets or timetables for action.
…
The new draft starkly illustrates the weakening process that has gone on in just six weeks.
An introductory paragraph has moved the statement “our world is warming” into square brackets and has given the same treatment to a statement from the world’s top scientists that climate change is already under way and demands urgent action.
RESEARCH FUNDING DISAPPEARS
All references in a draft dated May 3 to unspecified dollar funds for research and development into new, clean technology and fuels have been excised from the latest version.
References in the May 3 draft to “setting ambitious targets and timetables” for cutting carbon emissions from buildings has completely disappeared from the June 14 text.
Even a suggestion that the developed world has a duty of leadership in combating global warming is given the square bracket brush off.
A section on managing the impacts of climate change which previously talked about global warming happening and bringing with it more floods, droughts, crop failures and rising sea levels now contains just one reference to the global crisis.
And even that is in square brackets, indicating that there is deep disagreement over its inclusion.
Campaign group Friends of the Earth said the latest draft lacked “any sense of urgency or genuine commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions”.
Bryony Worthington, a climate campaigner with the group, said: “We have to conclude that attempts to keep the United States happy are preventing real progress on this issue.”

Posted by: b | Jun 16 2005 10:04 utc | 16

Dad To My Honorable Son
From: Jack
Sent: June 15, 2005
Subject: Dad – to my honorable son
My son is a Major in the U.S. Army. He has been in Iraq once in 2004 and may go back.- Officer Jack McLamb, Ret.
From: Jack
To: Jack
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 10:12 AM
Subject: Dad to my honorable son
You probably already know this history son, but it is a most important history every soldier should know.
At 17 years of age the government told me that I should go to Vietnam and “kill little oriental people to save our nation and it’s freedoms for all my countrymen.” It was a lie then….as it is today in Afghanistan, Iraq, and it will be a lie when we are in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, etc., etc..
One of my favorite quotes is H.L. Menckens – “To die for an idea is unquestionably noble, be how much more noble it would be if men died for ideas that were true.”
I pray that one day we soldiers will once again serve, and if need be die, for ideas that are true.
Son, I am proud of you for your earnest service and dedication to our nation and it’s people.
Love and prayers,
Dad

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 16 2005 10:16 utc | 18

The big Iraqi famine of 2005/2006 has started:
Food Shortages Gnaw at Iraqis’ Stomachs, Morale

After his American employers left, and monthly food rations began to shrink, Hussein Hadi started selling his furniture. His bed was the last thing to go.
Now Hadi, his wife, sister, mother, two brothers, three children and a nephew sleep on his living room floor in Baghdad, their blankets sewn from flour sacks.
…
The U.N. World Food Program, which monitors the distribution of rations, recently reported “significant countrywide shortfalls in rice, sugar, milk and infant formula.” Families in Baghdad haven’t received sugar or baby milk since January. Newspapers have also begun reporting that the tea and flour handouts contain metal filings and that people have fallen ill after consuming food rations.
…
Like the Hadis, many Iraqi families rely on the heavily subsidized rations, which were previously distributed under the United Nations’ oil-for-food program to mitigate the effect of sanctions after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. After the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the program was handed over to the Ministry of Trade.
More than half of Iraq’s population lives below the poverty line. The country’s median income fell from $255 in 2003 to about $144 in 2004, according to a recent U.N. survey. Families buy the food baskets for a few dollars at special state-licensed shops.
…
Zainab Hadi said she and other women have been forced to buy food at the market, pushing prices up. The cost of tea and flour has almost tripled. At local food markets, a 35-pound can of vegetable oil, which just a few months ago cost $4 — a little more than an average day’s wage — now costs $12.
…
“The food basket is shrinking, and the people’s hopes are also shrinking,” said Amir Huseini, who dealt with social issues in an office affiliated with the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. “These one or two missing items have become three, four and five, until this point when the really vital item — the flour — is also missing.”

and a link from yesterday
Mr. Bush, Thanks for the Spoiled Food

Posted by: b | Jun 16 2005 13:39 utc | 20

Anyone paying attention to GOP’s takeover of PBS?
NYT’s today says…
Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are examining $15,000 in payments to two Republican lobbyists last year that were not disclosed to the corporation’s board, people involved in the inquiry said on Wednesday.
One of the lobbyists was retained at the direction of the corporation’s Republican chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, they said, and the other at the suggestion of his Republican predecessor, who remains on the board.
The investigators, in the corporation’s inspector general’s office, are also examining $14,170 in payments made under contracts – which Mr. Tomlinson took the unusual step of signing personally, also without the knowledge of board members – with a man in Indiana who provided him with reports about the political leanings of guests on the “Now” program when its host was Bill Moyers.
MediaMatters has been on this for a while. I can’t turn the TV to PBS since Gigot got a gig there… it’s a visceral thing. sigh…
I wonder if there is detailed accounting of all…
* the traditional fed gov programs W’ has “privatized”
* who was awarded “contracts”
* before/after cost comparison
There is a rapidly accumulating trail of evidence condemning GOP’s “privatization” mantra as the mother of all frauds. Seems to me a useful project to undertake.
Hypothetically Speaking has been doing a very nice job parsing rapidly expanding Coingate drama. Amazingly (at least to me), the fund management firm was short selling on a bet that interest rates were going up fast.
They didn’t. Oops.
To my eye, this more or less resembles entire GOP econ policies.

Posted by: JDMcKay | Jun 16 2005 15:20 utc | 22

Bernhard,
I don’t blame you.
Anyway I’ve two fingered this so I’ll post it. Pull it if you wish.
Annie,
You are of course correct, and I apologize.
Much of the supporting evidence is in that thread. I guess the right thing to have done was to re-organize that material and tie it in to my post here. I’m sorry, I’ll do it right next time.
The problem is that you have a perfectly closed loop. In order to understand the loop you have to get inside. But it is closed. So the only external evidence trace tends to be inferential, such as the glaring ommission on Mr Major.
In order to get hard evidence you have to get inside the system. It so happens that I have been inside, and have defended myself in person at the Royal Courts of Justice. As a result I have such hard evidence. But it is personal. By that I do not mean I am shy. I mean that the names and events will not be familiar to many. If I go into the personal, I thought, I will drive everyone to sleep.
The decision I made was to try to look at the big picture.
That didn’t seem to work.
I’ll give you some of the personal.
My last job was with Anglia Television.
There was a notorious insider dealing scandal involving both Lord and Lady Archer. At the time (January to July 1994) the prime minister was John Major. When John Major stood for leader it was Archer that went to Huntingdon to collect his papers and submit them to the Speaker. Inside the Archer residence is a prominent plaque dedicated by John Major when Chancellor of the Exchequer. (I’ve seen it)
Lady Archer was a Director at Anglia Television. MAI plc made a takeover bid, and Lady Archer, as part of the Board, accepted.
Over the next three days Lord Archer bought a bundle of shares.
When the bid was announced he sold, and made a pile of money.
But he got caught. And the Department of Trade and Industry launched an inquiry (by Roger Kaye QC and Hugh Aldous FCA)
I gave evidence to that inquiry.
When the Inspectors submitted their report the public was told simply this
“No action is to be taken against any of the parties”
One of the Inspectors, Hugh Aldous, lived in France and did not hear the announcement. So an enterprising reporter went to France to tell him and get his reaction. And it turned out to be worth it, for Aldous said
“Oh well. If they want to let him off…”
The report was never published. It was, and remains, a State secret. At the beginning of this year the Guardian made an application for the report under the Freedom of Information Act. They were rebuffed.
That report contains hard evidence of crime.
Now none of this impinges on me. The trouble is that Lord Clive Hollick (Managing Director of MAI) knew about this inquiry. But the rest of the world did not. The very fact that an inquiry was under way did not leak out until June 1994. And Hollick found a way to cheat three hundred employees, myself included, by using that secret inquiry.
The story of the last eleven years has been fighting those ultimately behind this fraud. They have destroyed everything I ever had. I have not seen my two daughters since Christmas Day 1994.
I’m sorry. I’ll stop here.

Posted by: John | Jun 16 2005 15:41 utc | 24

@ b
It seems that “quagmire” isn’t just a metaphor.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 16 2005 16:13 utc | 26

Well, technically that’s true: it is an absurd question. Of course there’s a bloody connection.

Posted by: Colman | Jun 16 2005 16:27 utc | 28

To: billmon@billmon.org
I don’t write to you as often as I should. You’re doing exceedingly well.
Balanced, level, erudite, logical, learned and easy to follow.
Stupendous work, much needed and much admired. Truth and Consequences was
exceptionally good.
Wolf DeVoon

Posted by: fkelly | Jun 16 2005 21:05 utc | 30

US lied to Britain over use of napalm in Iraq war

American officials lied to British ministers over the use of “internationally reviled” napalm-type firebombs in Iraq.
Yesterday’s disclosure led to calls by MPs for a full statement to the Commons and opened ministers to allegations that they held back the facts until after the general election.
…
But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. “The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you,” he told Mr Cohen. “I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position.”
Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003. They were used against military targets “away from civilian targets”, he said. This avoids breaching the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW), which permits their use only against military targets.

Posted by: Fran | Jun 17 2005 6:58 utc | 32

b, I know, but it is still amazing that they even admit that it has been used, first time I see that admitance. And anyway as we learned in the meantime the entire Iraqi population is a military target – unfortunately.

Posted by: Fran | Jun 17 2005 8:12 utc | 34

Oops, that should read:
“… and certainly still a deliberate and known breach of the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and the Laws of War.

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 17 2005 8:42 utc | 36

Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW)
The relevant section is Protocol III

Protocol III: Incendiary Weapons
Protocol III regulates the use of weapons designed to set fire to or burn their target. The protocol proscribes targeting civilians with incendiary weapons and restricts the use of air-delivered incendiary weapons against military targets in close proximity to concentrations of noncombatants. It also prohibits parties from targeting forests or other plant cover unless the vegetation is being used to conceal military forces. The protocol only covers weapons created intentionally to set fire or burn, such as flamethrowers. Weapons that ignite fires or burn as a side effect are not subject to the protocol.

As with any International treaty or Convention enterd into force by law (i.e. Congress) the worlds sole remaining superpower unilaterally deems itself exempt at will …

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 17 2005 8:59 utc | 38

@Hannah K. O’Luthon
Quite so, we and the Brits only ever tend to enforce them against a defeated/conquered foe … as we never expect to lose and exempt ourselves from the ICC we therefore don’t need to be ‘scrupulous ourselves …
A simple and easy to read list of the Laws of War (1899 Hague II)conventions with which we led the prosecution of the Nazi’s at the Nuremberg trials …

Sources of the laws of war
The laws of war, foremost the United Nations
Charter, the Geneva conventions and the Hague conventions bind consenting nations and have achieved practically universal consent.
There are also customary rules of war, many of which were explored at the Nuremberg War Trials. These laws define both the permissive rights of states as well as prohibitions on their conduct when dealing with irregular
forces and non-signatories.

In addition, the Nuremberg War Trial judgment on “The Law Relating to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity”[1] held, under the
guidelines Nuremberg Principles, that treaties like the
Hague Convention of 1907, having been widely accepted by “all civilised nations” for about half a century, were by then part of the customary laws of war and binding on all parties whether or not the party was a signature to the specific treaty.
Law concerning acceptable practices while engaged in war, like the Geneva Conventions, is called jus in bello. Law
concerning allowable justifications for armed force is called Jus Ad Bellum.

Posted by: Outraged | Jun 17 2005 9:32 utc | 40

Also see: FALLUJAH NAPALMED

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 17 2005 11:25 utc | 42

That was Hannah talking about Viktor Bout.

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jun 17 2005 15:33 utc | 44

Opoeration Pointy Spear-tip.
One wonders what mix of the taming of this Sergio Leone-like Anbar frontier is the practical containment of “terrorists” and the deliberate provocation of Syria?
I think provocatory “missions” like this throw some weight into the view the administration very much wishes to widen the conflict; Syria a kind Laos in the war on terror.
Of course, nothing about these developments tells us why the Americans choose to destroy. Again, I say the motivation is to create (“reconstruct”) a fractured Iraq, and later the same for Syria.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 17 2005 20:43 utc | 46

Is this their plan for Iran escalation?
Iraq threatens Iran with military action as tensions flare Yes, that must be joke. But:

Fears are emerging in the Middle East of the prospect of military conflict between Iraq and Iran.
Friday’s front page story in the Gulf News, the widest circulating English newspaper in the region, says tensions between Iran and Iraq have escalated in recent weeks.
The newspaper says threats of military action have been made, attributing its source to a senior member of Iraq’s security forces.
General Nazim Mohammad, chief of Iraq’s Border Police in Muntheria, told Gulf News in an interview at his headquarters, on the Iraq-Iran frontier, his forces had come under small arms fire from Iran. Iranian troops had also fired mortars which exploded on Iraqi soil, he said.

So the “Iranians are attacking Iraq” and while, unfortunatly, the Iraqi army is not available in any number or form, they ask the US to chip in?
Interesting storyline…

Posted by: b | Jun 17 2005 22:52 utc | 48

bignewsnetwork?

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 18 2005 0:17 utc | 50

Ditto for Gwen Ifill’s Washington Week. Nada.
I know PBS’s news/public affairs programming is a ghetto (NewsHour‘s audience share too tiny measure), but nothing on DSM?
I mean, weird.

Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 18 2005 1:28 utc | 52

dark as i am b i cannot believe they would be so stupid
stupid is as stupid does …
and they have a pretty good track record on stupid.

Posted by: DM | Jun 18 2005 1:32 utc | 54

US to loose UN membership and face arms and trade embargoes !

.. any member engaged in acts of genocide or crimes against humanity would lose its UN membership and face arms and trade embargoes.

Posted by: DM | Jun 18 2005 1:46 utc | 56

stan goff’s been cranking out some really cogent writing over the last couple of days at feral scholar. i’ll recommend two articles in particular — stuff to do… to help stop the war, how do we respond to the statement.., and it’s worth checking out his exchange in the comments section of this thread w/ an active officer.

Posted by: b real | Jun 18 2005 5:01 utc | 58

.. and for those of you still worried about the housing bubble – this UPI article reminds me of the good old days. What was it you had in America? Duck and Cover? (In the UK, I think they were talking about a 2 minute warning, so they never bothered trying to strike the fear of god into 8 year olds.)

The easiest way to paralyze the entire U.S. space satellite system in so-called Low Earth Orbit, or LEO, they warn, is by detonating a nuclear weapon above the Earth to produce a radiation belt at the altitude where the satellites orbit. Satellites built to function for 10 years will then all die a slow death over just a few weeks as they pass through the most irradiated areas.
“Given the inherent vulnerability of space-based weapons systems (such as space-based interceptors or space-based lasers) to more cost-effective anti-satellite, or ASAT, attacks, China could resort to ASAT weapons as an asymmetrical (defense) measure,” Hui Zhang, an expert on space weaponization and China’s nuclear policy at the John F, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University told United Press International in a recent interview.
Also, if China, Russia or even North Korea were to detonate a single nuclear weapon in the upper atmosphere it would produce an electric magnetic pulse, or EMP. One nuclear weapon detonated in near space would therefore melt down the entire electronic communications network of the United States. That could ruin the U.S. economy and utterly disrupt society
China has repeatedly made clear that it would vastly increase the size of its intercontinental ballistic missile force, building hundreds more nuclear armed ICBMs if necessary to swamp America’s new ABM defenses. That could include producing as many as 14 or 15 times as many ICBMs with a range of more than 7,800 miles that are able to threaten the United States, Zhang said.

Posted by: DM | Jun 18 2005 7:14 utc | 60

.. and for that, the Democrats should be truely ashamed. Are there no redundancy entitlement laws whatsoever in America? What good are the Democrats to anyone? I know that there are a lot of die-hard ‘Democrats’ around MoA but the lesser of two evils doesn’t cut it with me. Bastards.

Posted by: DM | Jun 18 2005 9:17 utc | 62