Hurricane Relief

The real lesson of Katrina, though, is that the scenes we’ve been watching in New Orleans could be repeated in many other places in the decades ahead, if the worst-case scenarios generated by the global climate change models become realities.

When the Levee Breaks

Q.2. Why did the levees fail?

A.2. What failed were actually floodwalls, not levees. This was caused by overtopping which caused scouring, or an eating away of the earthen support, which then basically undermined the wall.

These walls and levees were designed to withstand a fast moving category 3 hurricane. Katrina was a strong 4 at landfall, and conditions exceeded the design.

Q.3. Why only Category 3 protection?

A.3. That is what we were authorized to do.

Answers from Army Corps of Engineers on unwatering New Orleans

More down the thread …

Now the city is really in trouble. Having seen and worked against flooding I doubt those breaches in the levees can be closed by dropping sandbags from the air.

Cont. reading: New Orleans

After all the lines written about the evangelical infested Air Force Academy one would expect the Air Force to finally regulate for a secular environment. But no, not really.

Now the Air Force issues religious guidelines, but it orders even less than what should be a matter of course:

Cont. reading: Self Fulfilling Prophecy

Open thread …

Mr. Warner, a Virginia Republican who is one of the most important Congressional voices on military policy, said mounting numbers of dead and wounded Americans, the contentious process of drafting an Iraqi constitution and the economic cost of the war were adding up to new anxiety in Congress.

"The level of concern is, I think, gradually rising," Mr. Warner said in an interview on Friday. "Our nation has given so much to the Iraqi people, and what are they giving us in return?"

NYT: Senator Will Ask Rumsfeld to Testify to Panel on Iraq

The boys of 2005 (and their American sponsors), on the other hand, are just pygmies pretending to be giants. And the Iraqi people are going to be footing the bill for those pretensions — in blood — for a long time to come.

The Philadelphia Experiment

One has to have priorities:

"We are facing a storm that most of us have feared," [Mayor] Nagin said. "I do not want to create panic, but I do want the citizens to understand that this is very serious and it’s of the highest nature. About 70 percent of New Orleans is below sea level, and is protected by a series of levies.
Katrina could inundate New Orleans, August 28, 2005

Cont. reading: Katarina and the Iraq Constitution

Lasseter also doesn’t paint the troops as the kind of heroic, larger-than-life action figures that make the fighting keyboarders drool with barely suppressed homoerotic envy.

Notepads on the Ground

II. The Rumsfeld Guarantee

I. Another Satisfied Customer

Of course, I could be entirely wrong about Robertson’s motives here. Who knows? In his warped universe, maybe threatening to kill a democratically elected leader because you don’t like his politics qualifies as an act of Christian charity.

Bring Me the Head of Hugo Chavez

News, views, …

As Johnson points out, there simply aren’t enough troops available for a fight-to-the-death counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq — not without bringing back the draft. Fat chance of that. If it turns out that drafting middle-class kids is what it takes to win in Iraq, you can bet that failure will become an option real fast.

What He Said

An Iraqi Process

After at least six month of serious debate, the majority of states at the U.N. was prepared to agree on some pretty serious reform points. Then Bolton arrived. Steve Clements, (currently at TPM), has the evidence and posts some of the points Bolton wants to change, after the U.S. had agreed on them,  in a last minute drive:

In short, the document does the following:

  ~ knocks out entirely the Millennium Development Goals

  ~ continues to undermine collective efforts against climate change

  ~ knocks out targets and timetables for all goals and objectives

  ~ guts any efforts toward further disarmament objectives and focuses exclusively on non-proliferation, while both had always been important objectives in the past

  ~ strikes the section that states that countries will use force only as last resort

  ~ and oddly, strikes out the need to establish a legal definition of terrorism, which the Bush administration has previously stated is a requirement before proceeding towards a U.N. Convention on Terrorism.

WaPo had a lame piece on this today, while the NYT was asking for permission to ream Bolton’s ass.

Why would you want a legal definition of terrorism when it is your justification to do whatever you like to do?

Bolton does not want a U.N. at all (because Cheney dose not want it) so he will sabotage any U.N. action, may it be reform, elimination of poverty, food-aid or genocide-intervention, as long as it does not further his (Cheney’s) position.

He will lose furthering his points but he will also block the U.N. from any relevant action in the years to come. Unfortunately this at a moment where concerted U.N. action is, unlike in the 70’s, really possible and could be valuable.

In the end, this will diminish the U.S. position in the U.N. and the world opinion for the  generation to come. But maybe that’s the way things will, and should, evolve anyhow.

But what happens if Sunni nationalists and Shi’a nationalists (Sadr’s people) form a more effective alliance — not just to campaign against the constitution, but to wage guerrilla war against the ruling coalition and the American forces supporting it? The U.S. Army proved last year it can wipe the floor with Sadr’s militia in a head-on battle, but what if the Sadrists adopted the same sneak-and-run tactics as the Sunni insurgents?

Only Make Believe

Well, let’s just say it’s not a good day to be associated with the Barzini family.

Settling All Family Business

also

Shit Happens

We associate ourselves together for the following purposes:

..  to inculcate a sense of individual obligation to the community, state and nation; to combat the autocracy of both the classes and the masses; to make right the master of might; to promote peace and goodwill on earth; to safeguard and transmit to posterity the principles of justice, freedom and democracy
Preamble to the Constitution of The American Legion

Delegates to the nation’s largest wartime veterans organization meeting here in national convention today vowed to use whatever means necessary to ensure the united support of the American people for our troops and the global war on terrorism.

".. public protests against the war here at home while our young men and women are in harm’s way on the other side of the globe only provide aid and comfort to our enemies.” ..

“.. we hope that Americans will present their views in correspondence to their elected officials rather than by public media events guaranteed to be picked up and used as tools of encouragement by our enemies,“ Cadmus said.
Legionnaires Condemn War Protests, Pledge

 

 

Veteran Job Resources

Update:

Billmon:

Aid and Comfort

But not as expected: Christopher Allbritton reports

Earlier this evening, Najaf police units, led by a Badr Organization commander, descended on Moqtada’s office in Najaf, located on the main street approaching the Imam Ali Shrine. In the clash, Moqtada’s office, only four meters from the shrine, was burned to the ground, according to Abu Hazzim, who worked in the Najaf office and fled for his life to Sadr City.

Further fights between SCIRI and al-Sadr followers have started.

Next al-Sadr will join with the Sunni, the Kurds with the Turkmen, the Salfists with the Dawa party, the Persians with the Saudi – and all of them will join against "The West"  –  whatever that may be.

Huntington’s wet dreams finally arrive.

Will her betrayal simply be pushed down the media memory hole with yesterday’s garbage? Are we really that far gone?

Is Anybody Listening?

Down the River