Contractors Are Cited in Abuses at Guantanamo

The FBI’s disclosures, which are based on eyewitness reports, refer several times to contractors directing the Army’s interrogation efforts at the military detention center in Cuba. In at least one case, FBI agents were told that detainees may have been mistreated on orders from a contractor.
Taken together, the documents suggest a greater role for contractors than was previously known, and contracting experts said they indicate a further blurring of the limits on how much responsibility the private sector can carry in doing the public’s work.
…
In the FBI documents, one agent described a 2002 incident involving a “civilian army contractor, who was in charge of the Army’s interrogators.” The agent reported being shown a bearded detainee with duct tape covering much of his head. Asked about it, the contractor “laughed and stated that the detainee had been chanting the Koran and would not stop,” the documents said.

Posted by: b | Jan 4 2007 6:51 utc | 3

ExxonMobil reportedly paid groups to discredit global warming

ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in a coordinated effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 4 2007 10:34 utc | 5

Just want to make sure y’all have seen that Riverbend has again posted soon after last week’s piece — this one’s titled “A Lynching” and starts “It’s official. Maliki and his people are psychopaths…”

Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Jan 4 2007 11:52 utc | 7

Today Speaker Pelosi ushers in a new congress and replaces the 12 year Republican Reich that has reigned terror in America. Only to replace it with terror lite. I consider today a day the whitewash really begins, because the Democrats have taken over both houses of congress.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 4 2007 13:02 utc | 9

More Kremlinology as Negroponte moves to State.
Wayne Madsden thinks Negroponte will be “oversee[ing] an “embedded” unit of private contractors who are preparing for an attack against Iran.”

As reported by the Boston Globe on Jan. 2, the Iran-Syria Policy and Operations Group (ISOG) is setting the stage for a U.S. military confrontation with Iran and Syria and is supported by BearingPoint, the same contractor that provided assistance for the Iraq Policy and Operations Group (IPOG), the group that helped bring about the disaster in Iraq. BearingPoint also had the contract for selling off Iraq state-owned enterprises and was involved in a number of the dubious financial deals of Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

That would seem to align Negroponte with Cheney.
Yet intelligence agencies appear to have exerted some of the pushback to counter Cheney’s push for more aggressive military action in Iraq and Iran. Whether the pushback had a nod from Negroponte, or was part of the discoordination of the various intelligence groups, a source of frustration to Negroponte reportedly (Times of London via Juan Cole), is impossible to say.
Alabama on the Spin thread observes:

As for Big Time….well, since Negroponte’s been Powell’s ally from the start, I expect to see Big Time spend most of the summer in Wyoming, fishing (but not hunting) with Rumsfeld.
And I suppose this was Baker’s idea all along–letting Negroponte negotiate us out of Iraq behind the smokescreen of a military “surge” (and how I love the sudden apparition of that word–it’s as if the Beltway were vomiting up the “insurgency”).

According to NBC, Negroponte’s likely successor as DIA, retired Admiral, and current Booz Allen defense contractor, Mike McConnell “had strong support from Cheney” when Cheney was SecDef. Of course, policy rifts have developed among the defense policy group of Bush41.
While trying to unravel the implications of the policy and personnel reshuffling in this country, Cutler’s 12/23 analysis of competing camps within the Saudi royal house, and how they may line up with Cheney or Baker/ISG, is interesting. (A knowledgeable commenter @ Cutler cautions that the Saudi divisions are not simplistically bipolar, and that there are other powerful Saudi players, who are not well known in the U.S.)

No wonder the White House Iraq Policy Review is delayed. Bush and Condoleezza Rice have to pick sides. They are both in way over the heads.
The obvious question: can Cheney and the Sudairi Seven triumph over Baker and King Abdullah?
Put differently, can Bush choose Baker and break his ties to Cheney? Or is Cheney too powerful to isolate?

Finally, if anyone is still trying to add up so many x values, Juan Cole has a helpful summary of affiliations and tensions among various political factions and militias in Iraq.

Posted by: small coke | Jan 4 2007 17:36 utc | 11

alabama
perhaps you have more information at your disposal but i would have thought that negroponte would deepen & extend the conflict as is his habitude rather than negotiate a retreat, of any kind
perhaps too, i am being naive – in thinking that with bolton gone – that there is a necessity for a hardman with negroponte’s record
interesting to note today – that with the f o i releases – that we find out john bolton as assistant a g was used as an attack dog on the opponents of that fraud of jurisprudence, rehnquist
in fact, i do not see any lessening of attack in this administration but on the contrary a refocusing.
hopefully you are correct

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 4 2007 18:47 utc | 13

Rattled America will find it can’t spin itself out of this one
Bob Ellis
January 5, 2007
GEORGE Bush will be hard put persuading three, four or five thousand American soldiers, marines and reservists who have already been there to go back to Iraq this year, to face 4 million Sunnis displeased by the Saddam hanging. Hard put too to persuade Nuri al-Maliki to stay in office, and stay alive, till they get there.
In the meantime the spinning of the killing of Saddam continues. The US had nothing to do with it; we merely guarded him for three years, then took him to the house of death and flew his coffined body to Tikrit. We tried to stop it happening so soon. We would have “handled it differently”. What’s all this fuss? The last 60 seconds of a tyrant’s life matter less than the first 60 years. We’ve killed his two sons and his 14-year-old grandson and we’ll kill his half-brother tomorrow, so the “process of national healing” can begin. Has any “process of national healing” been so mismanaged in world history? Has any filmed event won fewer hearts and minds? JFK’s killing perhaps, though it pleased a good few Southern schoolboys, who cheered at the news.
If we only look at the politics of lynching a warrior-hero, abusing him on the gallows, keeping him awake the night before by banging on his cell door and flaunting before his bleary eyes the hangman’s rope, we can see just how dim the whole plan was. What Sunni will pose beside Maliki now? What Arab leader, Sunni or Shiite, will praise his political skill?
And who will trust the Americans now, after this and Abu Ghraib and hurricane Katrina, to get any process right in any country including their own? Not the British soldiers on the ground in Helmland Province, Afghanistan. Not the Australian “security guards” in downtown Baghdad. Not the Iraqi dentists, doctors, nurses, restaurateurs and university lecturers daily fleeing the country. Not the children with toothache. Not the pregnant women with nowhere to go to give birth. Not the grandmothers of dead babies in humidicribs whose electricity gave out. Not the middle-class parents afraid to put their children on school buses lest they never see them again.
And who in the US will trust the American Army, the State Department and the current American rulers of Baghdad either? Not the 30,000 boys and girls wounded, nor their families. Not the 13,000 or 15,000 parents and siblings bereaved. Not the mayors of the towns the 3000 dead kids came from. Not the Democrat local members Bush is now asking for more soldiers, more weapons, more money, more patience, more time in a Long War as long, perhaps, as the Cold War.
The US is facing outright defeat — and worldwide contempt as never before — because of the Saddam gallows Grand Guignol and the secular Golgotha his jeering, black-hooded captors turned it into. And none of this need have happened. All the cluey US spin-men had to do, after consulting a few legal experts, was yield him up to lengthy trial by the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague; let him give big speeches the media would soon tire of; and let him grow very old and sad in jail.
But they didn’t, and the consequences are dire and daily mounting. Soon they’ll have Tariq Aziz to deal with. He’s a Christian, a friend of Pope John Paul, and literate, well-spoken, Anglicised evidence of how broad-based a secular government Saddam ran, and how much 4 million university graduates, civil servants, medical professionals, lawyers, judges, soldiers, police and schoolteachers miss him now, in a world of veils and checkpoints and daylight kidnappings and suicide bombings and 10,000 policemen killed in two years.
Will Tariq Aziz hang? Will his breaking neck and open eyes and slowly swinging corpse be telerecorded too? Will he be allowed his beloved P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie paperbacks in his cell on death row? Will he get a final press conference? Will he be allowed to wear a suit and tie? What questions will he be allowed to answer?
In freedom’s name we have helped the US start this barbarous process. In freedom’s name we too are called barbarians now, by fairly civilised peoples who may have a point.
And we Australians are in the thick of it. Staying on, to “finish the job”. The job may not be all that’s finished by the time we’re done.
Bob Ellis is an author and commentator.
(source : theagecom.au)

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 4 2007 18:58 utc | 15

has anyone hear read anything about henry paulson having been arrested by german authorities on a subpoena issued
by the international court of justice, and brought before an ‘ad hoc’ tribunal accused of money-laundering, misappropriation/diversion of colossal amounts of money, and non-payment/non-performance on the $4.5 trillion wanta plan settlement? the work of the amazons? nope, they didn’t arrive till the 31st. the source i link to, http://www.worldreports.org, is to say the least a tad hysterical, but just wondering – anybody know if there any truth to this?
http://www.worldreports.org/news/38_paulson_and_cheney_s

Posted by: conchita | Jan 4 2007 19:08 utc | 17

conchita
that site seems to be more than a little wacky

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 4 2007 19:30 utc | 19

Pelosi, Bush, Clinton, it does not matter. Unfortunately it took segregationist Governor Wallace to reveal the truth that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between” Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats willingly went along with the War in Iraq, suspension of Habeas Corpus, detaining protesters, banning books like “America Deceived’ from Amazon, stealing private lands (Kelo decision), warrant-less wiretapping and refusing to investigate 9/11 properly. They are both guilty of treason. Now the Democrats put ‘Hate Speech” laws back on the table (fancy words for CENSORSHIP). Look at the bright side, when we have to vote the Democrats out, we’ll have no choice but to vote for a Third Party.
Support indy media.
Last link (before Google Books bends to gov’t Will and drops the title):
America Deceived (book)

Posted by: Jack D | Jan 4 2007 20:51 utc | 21

Gak! Will you leave us alone with your little vanity press piece-of-shit book you keep hustling? Nobody here is interested in a book that is suppossedly banned, but not really, or whatever. Counterpunch already wrote a “Dime’s Worth of Difference” book. If I ever see your stinking piece of crap book, I swear I will rip it up and throw it in the trash before I ever look at it.
Now go away, you bedraggled little homunculus. Read your own friggin’ book and laugh to yourself at your cleverness. We’ll all feel better that way.
Begone, poxy little hack, begone.

Posted by: Bob M. | Jan 4 2007 21:35 utc | 23

Prelude to the next 911 since the surge wil fail.

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman on Thursday dismissed the chief of the country’s nuclear weapons program because of security breakdowns at the Los Alamos, N.M., laboratory and other facilities.
Linton Brooks will submit his resignation this month as head of the National Nuclear Security Administration, the department said.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 4 2007 22:40 utc | 25

remembereringgiap (#13): Negroponte has never been an initiator, so far as i can tell. Whatever his “hardness” may be, he takes instruction from others at the top of the bureaucratic food-chain. And of course he’s truly skilled at the game of diplomatic maneuver with foreign governments. And so, as small coke (#11) puts it, it’s mainly a question of who’s summmoning Negroponte, and what deals he’s being asked to negotiate. And since Bush and Condi are too clueless to imagine any deal on their own, I can only surmise that it was Baker who issued the call–must have told Bush that he had to make the appointment, and told Negroponte that his skills were indispensable for the job at hand. And told him the job at hand.
As Scowcroft openly declares in that NYTimes piece I cited earlier, the U.S. has to engage all of the Middle East to accomplish anything in Iraq–anything at all, in any direction. For example, everyone’s going to have to chill out the insurgency. But how in the hell do you beat a winning team?
Negroponte will have to ask all the Sunnis in the Middle East to persuade the insurgents to stop embarrassing the U.S. But what can the Saudis (for example) offer the Baathist survivors currently running the insurgency? I have absolutely no idea, and I doubt that Negroponte does either. If any ideas on the subject actually exist, they exist in the minds of the Sunni community alone. So Negroponte has to enlist the Sunnis to do this particular thing on his behalf. It might, for all I know, involve a promise of safe conduct out of Iraq, and a promise that all who leave iraq will live happily thereafter on the French Riviera.
But the point to bear in mind is that it’s all for naught, because the Baath insurgents don’t need to negotiate, and don’t want to be spared the torments of massacres here, there and everywhere at the hands of the Shiites. The insurgents want to expel the Americans, and in this I believe that they’ll succeed. At which point the Americans (pushed by the very Sunnis they’ve tried to enlist to neutralize the insurgency), will end up having to recognize those guys as the true leaders of Iraq. Which is exactly what they were in March of 2003.
Baker and Negroponte understand this, and Bush will have to do as they say. And of course he’ll call it a “victory,” and claim that he thought it up all by himself.
As to how he’s going to pacify the neo-cons….well, maybe he’ll try to let the Israelis drop some atomic bombs on Iran. But this won’t make any difference either, at least where the insurgency is concerned.

Posted by: alabama | Jan 5 2007 1:47 utc | 27

A rather real politic take on the current situation, #27.

Posted by: #28 | Jan 5 2007 1:59 utc | 29

“You just have to read what’s in the Israeli press. The Jewish community is divided but there is so much pressure being channeled from the New York money people to the office seekers.” — Wes Clark
http://tinyurl.com/wt4b8

Posted by: Thrasyboulos | Jan 5 2007 2:09 utc | 31

yes, i too have worried and wondered about jfl – and debs too. been a very long time since he has graced this bar.

Posted by: conchita | Jan 5 2007 5:42 utc | 33

Dan of Steele (post 20): ”looking for the Wanta/Paulson connection brings this story from a home owners association. the author of that article says that Paulsen was flown from Germany to the Ford funeral on an English plane for whatever that means.
Dan, I know Elizabeth McMahon and her husband personally, they host this HOA News Site. (I don’t know about this particular story as I have been traveling for the last 24hrs, just got back home, and haven’t even read it all), and this web site is 100% genuine although some articles may not have been checked thoroughly by the authors or web hosts. I live in one of the most rural areas of the country, yet over 90% of the homes or home lots for sale here are now in Homeowner Associations.
I urge everyone to check out these excellent sites cited in what follows, especially Shu Bartholomew’s Web site. Shu is also a personal friend of mine and I can assure you that she is 100% genuine and first class.
Beanie Adolph, along with her son who is an attorney, has researched Harris County in Texas for foreclosures and her results are frightening. . I met Beannie, and many other advocates for reform, in Las Vegas around the turn of the millennium at a State Senate hearing. I was asked to testify by Nevada State Sen. Mike Schneider at this hearing and brought with me reference materials from a local professor who teaches law here in North Carolina. Concerning the Las Vegas area, these “private governments” sometimes consist of tens of thousands of homes in a single homeowner association. At this particular Senate hearing, there was not a dry eye in the audience as one after another testified how they lost there homes or life savings because of such Corporate Institutions which are nothing more than feeding troughs for lawyers, developers, management companies and what have you. The history of Community Associations Institute (CAI) is almost unbelievable … this lobbying effort has moved from one State to the next (with the assistance of the State Bar Associations) in enacting laws enabling and protecting these nightmare enablers. The cancer is now moving into the global environment as I heard HOA’s are being introduced into China.

Posted by: Rick | Jan 5 2007 5:56 utc | 35

meet Leo Wanta, an appointed trustor of TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS by President Ronald Reagan, intended to be distributed to America?
c’mon, here. Let’s fine tune our critical thinking ability a bit.
The ENTIRE GDP of the US is around $12 Trillion; back when Reagan was President, it was far less than $3 Trillion (US GDP (1998 dollars): $2784.20 billion, according to infoplease).
The entire fiasco in the Middle East is projected to cost between $1 – 2 Trillion (in current dollars, worth up to four times as much as 1980 dollars), over twenty years, including lifetime disabilities for up to half a million ex-soldiers, materiel, bloated “defense” budgets, Crony Capitalism, Cheneyburton, Swiss Bank accounts, Emerald City embassy, etc.
Now that we have conquered our innumeracy, and put the amount claimed into perspective, how many people think that the senile dupe, Reagan, would even be able to entrust an amount greater than the entire annual GDP of the country to one single person, much less a person who comes up with no google hits (but this stupid story which has been making the rounds for a month or two, in various versions, on all the crank sites)? We’re not even talking a Kissinger here, or a Pete Peterson, or some sort of trusted Wall Street ultimate-insider – we’re talking a complete cipher, somehow given the keys to an amount exceeding the entire GDP of the US, without anyone knowing at the time. If this were true, it would dwarf the ULTIMATE cost of 41’s S&L banking scandals by a factor of about 40 or more, and ALL in absolute secrecy – except for this one story making the rounds. Where has “Mr. Wanta” stashed all of this loot? In two extra-large briefcases in the hall closet behind his golfclubs? Remember, the largest bank in the world has total assets barely exceeding $1 Trillion.
This kind of tale should key everyone into which websites print this kind of absolute rubbish conspiracy crap disinformation, in order to deflect attention from the real concerns of the world today — and, caveat emptor, the reader should beware of getting sidetracked from the real conspiracies perpetrated by the rich and powerful every day, in blatant defiant daylight, right before our very eyes. (Bush has managed to transfer approx. $1 Trillion in wealth from the middle class and poor to the rich over eight years through his tax cuts. And this doesn’t include the aforementioned stealth wealth transfer of the “war on terror” maguffin. Not to mention the daily increasing restrictions to our rights, documented so well by Uncle $cam here.)
So let’s try to use MOA as a place in which to develop critical thinking skills, as well as a place in which to share our daily “shock and awe” as events spin beyond our wildest fears. Actual events are unreal enough without mindless maunderings.
“<"/rant">”

Posted by: Bob M. | Jan 5 2007 7:10 utc | 37

I suspect Debs really is dead. But I’m really worried about Malooga. Maybe Annie will fill us in….

Posted by: jj | Jan 5 2007 8:05 utc | 39

Lawerence of Cyberia has a poem to start the new year.
IMAGINE THE ANGELS OF BREAD

Posted by: Bill Galt | Jan 5 2007 8:50 utc | 41

And the drums beat on…
Iranians ‘up to no good’ in Iraq

Posted by: the Ghost of Saddam Hussein | Jan 5 2007 10:33 utc | 43

William J. Fallon selected to lead US Central Command.
Some of Adm. Fallon’s words from an interview earlier this year:

The principal weapons in this conflict are IEDs, improvised explosive devices. The intent is to maim and kill as many human beings as possible. The other weapon of choice is the suicide bomber. Interestingly, the key tool of this war is something very different than what has been used in other conflicts–the Internet. Enemy leaders have stated openly that the most important tool for them is the ability to communicate ideas and thoughts, and shape opinions using the Internet. That ought to be of high interest to all of us.

Posted by: mats | Jan 5 2007 16:51 utc | 45

An addedum to my last post/comment: If it were not for the Internet, so many here in America – myself included, would have almost no clue as to what is happening in the Middle East.
Not just the Middle East, but even what is happening here in the U.S. as my post about Homeowner Associations attempts to illustrate.

Posted by: Rick | Jan 5 2007 17:15 utc | 47

More on Pyrrho’s comment: (post 22)
Bush Warned About Mail-Opening Authority
Recent ‘Signing Statement’ Seen as Stretching Law
link
Dan Eggen should not have paraphrased Bush’s signing statement in this article.
To be precise (quoting not just Pyrro’s NY Daily News article, but from an Associated Press article by Randall E. Schmid regarding where the ACLU is planning to file a request for information), Bush used the phrase “exigent circumstances” in his signing statement. What the hell does exigent really mean as pertaining to the opening and reading of a citizen’s private correspondence? Imagine if the founders of this Country used such ambiguous words in writing the U.S. Constitution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exigent_circumstance: The existence of exigent circumstances is a mixed question of law and fact.
Such legal vagueness appears to be a constant theme with the Bush White House.

Posted by: Rick | Jan 5 2007 18:02 utc | 49

Dems showing some spine? WaPo reports that Reid and Pelosi oppose escalation in a letter to the Decider:

“Adding more combat troops will only endanger more Americans and stretch our military to the breaking point for no strategic gain,” the top two Democrats wrote in a letter to Bush. “Rather than deploy additional forces to Iraq, we believe the way forward is to begin the phased redeployment of our forces in the next four to six months, while shifting the principal mission of our forces there from combat to training, logistics, force protection and counter-terror.”

McCain and Lieberman, of course, continue to beat the drums of war with Lieberman:

The United States cannot afford to withdraw its troops from Iraq until it concludes that “everything in Iraq has been lost, that there is no hope,” said Lieberman, who is also a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Just how much carnage will it take? Shame to the Dems for enabling his victory in Connecticut. Shame.

Posted by: conchita | Jan 5 2007 20:36 utc | 51

Your mail can now officially be read by US authorities?
Welcome to Germany/USSR 1938. I hope you like dark, because it’ll get darker soon.
Someone should just print the Constitution on toilet paper, it’s not worth more than that nowadays.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Jan 5 2007 20:45 utc | 53

ouch! sorry, I forgot how clueless typepad can be. it was I who messed up the page width.
B, please can you put on your God hat and insert a few carriage returns in that last post of mine…
apologies

Posted by: DeAnander | Jan 5 2007 21:17 utc | 55

for a rundown on how many times bill kristol has been wrong in the last few years, Glen Greenwald has a well referenced post.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 5 2007 22:21 utc | 57

The War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007

Sen. Leahy (D-VT) introduced a bill today, simply called The War Profiteering Prevention Act of 2007, targeting fraud by gov’t contractors supporting the occupation of Iraq and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Such profiteering would be a felony under Leahy’s legislation, punishable by up to 20 years in prison and fines of $1 million…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 6 2007 4:33 utc | 59

Little back history on my #60
Original Source. Mirrored here in small medium and large sizes. The largest is about 4.4 megabytes and you can clearly make out each face. It’s also good to take a step back from the screen.
Scroll down to War President or use your browser’s ‘find on this page’ tab

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 6 2007 4:53 utc | 61

man, nothing much to say. reading thru the media is depressing & seemingly a waste of time. see what you’ve started, billmon 🙂
the insane people have way too much influence. and way too many imbeciles getting air time. here’s what passes for analysis among those possessing influence/access to establishment figures – from the lead in to a cfr interview w/ cordesman

Anthony H. Cordesman, a prominent analyst of the Iraq war, says if President Bush does not produce a credible, persuasive plan in his Iraq policy speech, “he is going to be perceived relatively quickly as a failed president heading a failed presidency.”

methinks they have the word “prominent” confused w/ something else, but, given that it’s at the cfr site, i just probably got lost of a bit, took a wrong turn somewhere while looking for signs of intelligent life on the internets.

Posted by: b real | Jan 6 2007 5:57 utc | 63

So, what happened to the amazons? All of a sudden no posts from hambuger? Helloooo???????
No exciting missives of late, is there anybody out there???

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 6 2007 7:21 utc | 65

thanks peedee, that is the one I was looking for. I saw it on Blob last night and was impressed by the geekiness of it. I had the first one that U$ referenced some time ago and had printed it out and kept it in my office. It was kinda weird in that no one would comment on it.
as for the amazons, I am deeply resentful of the fact that I have to work. it would have been so much fun to spend some time with them in Berlin.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 6 2007 8:51 utc | 67

Even knowledgeable Israelis, unlike the rabid ideologues running the show, have figured it out:
Jerusalem – Although few tears were shed in Israel over Saddam Hussein’s death last week, a small but growing chorus — including government officials, academics and Iraqi émigrés — is warning that Israel could find itself in more danger with him gone, and that it might even regret having welcomed his toppling.
“If I knew then what I know today, I would not have recommended going to war, because Saddam was far less dangerous than I thought,” said Haifa University political scientist Amatzia Baram, one of Israel’s leading Iraq experts.
…
“Retrospectively, justice has been done,” Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh told Israel Radio this week. Still, he cautioned, Israel must now be concerned “about what is liable to happen in the future.”
Saddam’s death, Sneh warned, could lead to “a reinforcement of Iranian influence in Iraq.” He said that Iraq had turned into a “volcano of terror” following the war, with “destructive energies” that could spill over into Jordan and Israel.
Such misgivings, though rarely aired publicly for fear of offending Washington, reach high into Israel’s security establishment. Yuval Diskin, director of the Shin Bet security service, told a group of students in a military preparatory program last May that Israel might come to regret its support for the American-led invasion in March 2003.
“When you dismantle a system in which there is a despot who controls his people by force, you have chaos,” Diskin said, unaware that the meeting was secretly recorded. “I’m not sure we won’t miss Saddam.” The tape was later broadcast on Israeli television. link

Posted by: jj | Jan 6 2007 9:48 utc | 69

Uncle $ @ 65,
How nice to have my absence noticed! Been lurking and recovering from all the fun the last coupla days. Wow – haven’t been out late so much since I lived in Australia. This group is an intense bunch. Mon night 10 moonbats invaded for beef stew at my place, which comfortably seats 4. Hilarity and some live blogging ensued. Wed night at Café Buenos Aires: small, crowded, smoke-filled, good Argentinian steak and wine and Jana’s voice and accordion – wonderful!
And catlady tickled the ivories as we all warbled

Oh, show us the way to the next whisky-bar
Oh, don’t ask why, oh, don’t ask why!
For we must find the next whisky-bar
For if we don’t find the next whisky-bar
I tell you we must die!
Oh, Moon of Alabama
We now must say good-bye
We’ve lost our good old mamma
And must have whisky
Oh, you know why.

“Tell me the story of your life” in between songs. Great, great time – and many toasts to moonbats world-wide!
Here’s a good link for today’s reading

It’s entirely possible that when Bush does present us with “the plan” next week, few will be listening. Until he makes it clear that he has returned from Planet Neo-Con by announcing concrete steps to end the war in Iraq, it’s unlikely that American voters will tune in. As of January 1, every American could find at least 3,000 reasons not to believe that Bush had suddenly found a way to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.
…
Nearly pornographic in his fondling of the surge, Kagan, another of the neo-con crew of armchair strategists and militarists, makes it clear that size does matter. “Of all the ‘surge’ options out there, short ones are the most dangerous,” he wrote in the Washington Post last week, adding lasciviously, “The size of the surge matters as much as the length … The only ‘surge’ option that makes sense is both long and large.”
Ooh – that is, indeed, a manly surge. For Kagan, a man-sized surge must involve at least 30,000 more troops funneled into the killing grounds of Baghdad and al-Anbar province for at least 18 months.

Other good bits on the main page, as well.
Looking forward to ASKOD’s return to our crash pad this evening – Lentil soup with lamb and mint on the boil.
Love and happiness to all moonbats everywhere. You people have enriched my life more than I can say.
Hamburger
good wishes to all as well from bun

Posted by: Hamburger | Jan 6 2007 14:22 utc | 71

OK, @ 71 – here is the link!
I keep forgetting dan of steele’s tip.

Posted by: Hamburger | Jan 6 2007 14:43 utc | 73

apparently having trouble meeting quotas Army asks dead to sign up for another hitch
sorry, I know it is in bad taste but as you can see the Army has some incompetents and they are not all generals.

Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 6 2007 16:15 utc | 75

I’ve been away from internet access for a few days and am trying to catch up with all that I’ve missed here. If I am re-porting something that someone has already offered, I apologize.
Here are two items to share for a start:
Navy Admiral goes to CENTCOM: Be Very Afraid
And a very interesting follow-up piece on those various documents issued by Palestinians in Israel last month. This one has a lot of context and is worth reading for anyone interested in this subject.
We Didn’t Disappear
~Snip

The official political leadership of Israel’s more than one million Palestinian citizens issued a manifesto in Nazareth last week demanding a raft of changes to end the systematic discrimination exercised against non-Jews by the state since its creation nearly six decades ago.
Included in the manifesto — the first ever produced by the community’s supreme political body, known as the High Follow-Up Committee — are calls for Israel to be reformed from a Jewish state that privileges its Jewish majority into “a state of all its citizens” and for sweeping changes to a national system of land control designed to exclude Palestinian citizens from influence.
The document is likely to further increase tensions between the Israeli government and the country’s Palestinian minority, and has already been roundly condemned in the Hebrew media.
Although individual Arab political parties have made similar criticisms of the state before, it is the first time in its history that the High Follow-Up Committee — a cautious and conservative body, mainly comprising the heads of Arab local authorities — has dared to speak out. The committee is seen as setting the consensus for Israel’s one in five citizens who are Palestinian.
The most contentious issue raised in the document, called “The Future Vision of the Palestinian Arabs in Israel”, is Israel’s status as a Jewish state. The authors — leading academics and community activists — argue that Israel is not a democracy but an “ethnocracy” similar to Turkey, Sri Lanka and the Baltic states.
Instead, says the manifesto, Israel must become a “consensual democracy” enabling Palestinian citizens “to be fully active in the decision-making process and guarantee our individual and collective civil, historic and national rights.”
An editorial in Israel’s liberal Haaretz newspaper denounced the document as “undermining the Jewish character of the state” and argued that it was likely its publication would “actually weaken the standing of Arabs in Israel instead of strengthening it”.
The campaign among Israel’s Arab parties for a state of all its citizens began in the mid-1990s after it was widely understood that under the terms of the Oslo Accords Israel’s Palestinian population would remain citizens of the State of Israel. Until then the minority had kept largely out of the debate about its future, fearing that expressing a view would prejudice negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian leadership.

Posted by: Bea | Jan 6 2007 17:38 utc | 77

Bea: is Israel a democracy, where members of all faiths are accorded all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship, or is it a theocracy, where citizenship is restricted, at least in part, to members of a particular faith? (Embarrassing, this ignorance of mine…).

Posted by: alabama | Jan 6 2007 20:20 utc | 79

But Hamburger, don’t the faithless believein the rightness of their own rights? Atheists, agnostics and freethinkers certainly do….

Posted by: alabama | Jan 6 2007 23:17 utc | 81