dm, if you mean russ feingold, he and reid just cosponsored legislation that would have the u.s. forces beginning withdrawl from iraq within 120 days of enactment and defunding as of march 2008.

Posted by: conchita | Apr 3 2007 14:55 utc | 4

I post this here, because it is a bloody amazing account of the depthless stupidity of the occupation. it’s from chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City:

McPherson wasn’t involved in drafting the 101-page plan. But he didn’t find anything in it to quibble about. His vision for economic reform in Iraq hewed to the same philosophy. Instead of using government money to create new jobs in an Iraqi version of the New Deal, he favored a supply side strategy: reduce the role of government industry through privatization, eliminate subsidies for electricity and fuel, cut tariffs, lower taxes, promote foreign investment, and enact pro-business [118] laws. Those changes, he reasoned, would draw multinational firms, and even wealthy Iraqis, to set up businesses in Iraq that would create jobs for the unemployed. The key to economic growth, he believed, was “the development of a robust private sector.”
“We need to shrink government employment,” he said to me in that first interview, “not increase it.”
McPherson landed in Baghdad a month after the city’s liberation. He was eager to have BearingPoint get to work as soon as possible, but the company’s consultants were not scheduled to land for several weeks. To McPherson, time was of the essence. He wanted to move forward right away with privatization and the elimination of subsidies. The faster you addressed those problems, he reasoned, the faster you would achieve economic growth. He also had a personal desire for alacrity. He had asked Michigan State’s board of trustees for only 130 days of leave.
McPherson assembled his own brain trust. He brought over the deputy general counsel from the Treasury Department and two bright government economists, one from the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers and the other from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. But McPherson didn’t have the staff to tackle privatization. He had to rely on Corliss and Jackson.
As soon as he arrived, even before asking for the analysis of the state-owned enterprises that Corliss would perform in two weeks, McPherson announced his intention to move forward with privatization. At the Ministry of Industry, Carney, Jackson, and Corliss were still trying to understand how the place worked. On the CPA economics team, everyone was figuring out how to pay salaries to hundreds of thousands of government employees. “Here comes McPherson wanting to talk about privatizing state-owned industries,” one member of the economics team said. “It struck us as so irrelevant.”
There was also a legal roadblock. Article 43 of the second section of the Hague Convention of 1899-the first set of international treaties that attempted to create laws of warfarerequires an occupying power to respect all the laws of the occupied country except when it is necessary to promote public order and safety. Although the United States had the bless [118] ing of the United Nations Security Council, in Resolution 1483, to promote “economic reconstruction and the conditions for sustainable development” in Iraq, CPA lawyers were generally opposed to the sale of Iraq’s industries, on the grounds that such sales violated the Hague Convention. What if a sovereign Iraqi government objected to privatization? You couldn’t reverse the sale of a factory. Better to leave it to a future Iraqi administration, the CPA lawyers said.
Even more significant at the time was a practical challenge. There was no way Corliss, Jackson, and Carney could do it by themselves. Financial records would have to be scoured, offers posted and evaluated, financing arranged. When the trio met with a team of Germans to discuss how factories in the former East Germany had been privatized, the CPA team was told that the Germans had eight thousand people working on the project. “How many do you guys have?”one of the Germans asked. “You’re looking at all of them,” Corliss responded.
The German laughed and asked again. “No, how many people work for you?”
“No, this is it. Three people,” Corliss said. “Don’t bother starting,” the German said.
Corliss quickly came to regard rapid privatization as a fool’s errand. “So let’s say that everyone within the CPA, every single bureaucrat in there, from Peter McPherson all the way down to little guys like me, all say privatization is the way to go. You then step out to the Iraqi ministry and you say’Guess what, guys? We’re privatizing your factories. Starting today and starting with the vegetable oil factory. We’re going to privatize it from our own funding.’ The Iraqis would look at you and say, ‘Really? Okay. Thanks. We’ll get to work on that. We’ll talk to you tomorrow’ And they’d walk off and say,’Stupid, freaking Americans: And they just wouldn’t do it.

stunning arrogance.

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 3 2007 16:18 utc | 6

some more:

Agresto was a lifelong Republican. The son of a Brooklyn dockworker, he was the first in his family to go to college. He went on to earn a doctorate in political science from Cornell University. After a brief teaching career, he joined the National Endowment for the Humanities during the culture wars of the rg8os. Along with Lynne Cheney and William Bennett, he hectored the higher-education establishment as liberal and lazy. After leaving the NEH, he spent eleven years as president of St. Johns, a small, classical liberal arts college known for its Great Books curriculum. In Woo, he retired and set up a consulting company. In his spare time, he prepared homemade Italian sausage and relaxed with his wife in their cabin near the Pecos River in New Mexico.
A few weeks after U.S. troops rolled into Baghdad, Agresto got a call from his predecessor at St. John’s, Edwin Delattre, who asked if he’d be interested in going to Iraq. A professor of philosophy at Boston University and an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Delattre had been approached about the Iraq job by John Silber, BU’s president emeritus, who had been contacted by Jim O’Beirne, the White House liaison at the Pentagon. O’Beirne had figured that Silber, one of the few social conservatives in American academia, could recommend candidates who supported President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. Agresto most certainly did. He described himself as a “strong supporter” of the war.
…
Agresto knew next to nothing about Iraq’s educational system. Even after he was selected, the former professor didn’t read a single book about Iraq. “I wanted to come here with as open a mind as I could have,” he said. “I’d much rather learn firsthand than have it filtered to me by an author.”

hehe.

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 3 2007 16:28 utc | 8

annie, in another universe i would be tempted to argue with you that these democrats want us out of iraq and that is the goal of this legislation – particularly because it is feingold – but i can’t read minds and, like you, i question who we can trust in congress. it doesn’t help that in conversation with blitzer over the weekend about the supplemental funding resolution, presidential hopeful obama said:

OBAMA: Right. I think that we continue to put a series of votes up and try to convince our colleagues on the Republican side that the only way that we are going to change circumstances in Iraq is if you see a different political dynamic; that there are, at this point, no military solutions to the problems in Iraq; that what we have to do is get the Shia, the Sunni, the Kurd to come together and say to themselves “We, in fact, are willing to start making some compromises around oil revenues, around the arming of militias and so on.”

Posted by: conchita | Apr 3 2007 17:28 utc | 10

jeez. it is posts like that i wish we had some function to delete. how embarrassing.

Posted by: annie | Apr 3 2007 17:48 utc | 12

conchita, that was the headlines of 2 big newspapers here yesterday. i was there, i took jess to experience it.
it was very well organized. the key arena was packed to capacity. groups had come from all over the world as well as huge turnout of unions some complete w/hardhats, full native costumed tribal groups from SA ,africa, asia. tibetan monks, you name it. there was a long period of speeches and then we all marched downtown from seattle center (space needle) to westlake (near the convention)meeting another group from the federal building.
the cops just couldn’t handle it by the end of the day. huge turnout.

Posted by: annie | Apr 3 2007 18:35 utc | 14

brief kenyan editorial expressing doubts about what they got themselves into in agreeing to partner w/ the north americans in the GWOT
Is Kenya Now the 53rd State?

THE NEWS THAT THE KENYA GOVERNMENT is surrendering its own citizens to foreign countries without the due process of law and without bothering to inform their families, is causing dismay among citizens who look to the government for protection.
It appears the government has been turning over suspects arrested while fleeing Somalia to the United States, Ethiopia and the transitional Somali government.
It is understandable that Kenya, having been a victim twice, should wish to be in the forefront of fighting terrorism. But the danger is that the Muslim community that has borne the brunt of these arrests is feeling increasingly disillusioned and excluded from the Kenyan judicial system.
Parliament has yet to debate and pass the Anti-Terrorism Bill into law. So, under which law is the government arresting these suspects? Worse still, why is Kenya handing over its citizens to Somalia, which doesn’t even have a functioning justice system?
It is time the government acted to dispel the impression that Kenya has surrendered its sovereignty to the US at least in as far as the war against terror is concerned.

the ceasefire in mogadishu continued on tuesday, strengthened by futher agreements b/t the hawiye clan & ethiopian forces, including meeting again on thursday. the u.n. is reporting that nearly 100,000 residents have fled the capital city in a little over a month-and-a-half of fighting. shabelle is reporting that one human rights group put the civilian death toll from the three-days of heavy fighting at “around 381.” no numbers of ethiopian & interim govt troop deaths yet, though dead soldiers are still laying in the streets.
for a bit of levity, perhaps, in the news from somalia, i did find something humorous in this story — or at least the way it was reported — of the adventures of some journos traveling to cover an object that recently fell out of the sky in a remote part of the country. locals said of the object, which struck & killed a camel, that “in the daylight it glitters and but in the nighttime, it turns lights and speaks a strange language which can’t be understood by the villagers”. (no, i doubt it’s the arrival of dyncorp)

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today condemned the attack on five journalists whose car was ambushed by armed men as they went to cover a story in Hiran region in central Somalia.
…
On Thursday morning the journalists were ambushed by five armed men as they were heading to Bule Burde district of Hiran Region to cover a story about an object that reportedly fell from space.
According to the National Union of Somali Journalists (NUSOJ), unknown gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying Mohammed Sheik Nur, a stringer for Associated Press, Mohammed Ibrahim Isak, a stringer for New York Times, Abshir Ali Gabre, a journalist for Radio Jowhar and two freelance journalists. The car was forced to pull over and the gunmen stole six cameras, six mobile phones and some money from the journalists. They also spanked Nur.

Posted by: b real | Apr 3 2007 23:15 utc | 16

that was a typo in the transcript where lone obviously said “terrorism” and it was transcribed as “tourism”

Posted by: b real | Apr 4 2007 0:11 utc | 18

Holy shit! Alert alert…There has been a billmon spotting: I spotted him today here.
Perhaps, one can not not write too? hehe…maybe he’s testing the waters.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 4 2007 2:21 utc | 20

Pelosi Threatening Progressives to Stop Impeachment?
A Movement of One (Or Maybe a Million)
I Quit

In fact, the leadership of my party is doing worse than nothing. They are actively blocking efforts to bring President Bush to ground. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has is known to have threatened key members of Congress, notably Judiciary Chairman John Conyers, and other early backers of impeachment hearings, with punishment-the loss of key committee and subcommittee chairs or postings, problems with any bills they might submit, and the like–in order to keep them from submitting bills of impeachment.
She and other leading Democrats in Washington have also unconscionably interfered with efforts in state legislatures to pass resolutions which would demand that the House of Representatives take up impeachment.
The cynical motive behind these actions is to try and win bigger majorities in Congress in 2008 by doing nothing-the idea being that Bush and his cronies and their Republican backers in Congress have made such a hash of running the country, and of their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that Americans will abandon them and turn to the Democrats.
The problem with this strategy-even if it were to work, which is highly dubious–is that by 2008 there won’t be much left of the Constitution, or of tri-partite government, thanks to Democratic inaction and cowardice.
Only the impeachment of Bush and the other criminals in the current administration offers any hope or restoring the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the tradition of separation of powers that has provided the underpinning of American democracy for over two centuries.

Imagine my (utter) lack of shock…
From the above: The cynical motive behind these actions is to try and win bigger majorities in Congress in 2008 by doing nothing
Or that’s their excuse, and they’re sticking with it. The motive behind stopping attempts to impeach is to keep Bush happily in power until the next election. It’s as simple as that, and you can work out all the consequences accordingly.
If there’s ever going to be a serious attempt to move away from 2 party politics, then surely it must happen in America within the next 5 years. And it’ll happen because people realise that the 2 party politics we’ve got is really 1 party politics. That the Democrats aren’t falling over each other trying to win the contest over which particular method of impeachment will be used is all the evidence you need. It just doesn’t happen in 2 party politics that the opposition party will forgo gift opportunities to impeach the sitting President (ergo: this is not 2 party politics we are witnessing). They can make Bush and the Republicans look like shonky crooks from here on in, and they expect people to believe their story that they’ll win more votes if they don’t take the opportunity to make the Republicans look shonky?! That’s why a two-party politician gets out of bed in the morning – in the hope that on that day they’ll be able to throw some muck that actually sticks to the other guy!!
Coke or Pepsi.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 4 2007 3:20 utc | 22

Interesting OpEd in LAT: Overselling capitalism

Capitalism is stymied, courting long-term disaster. We still work hard, but only so that we can pay and play. In order to turn reluctant consumers with few unsatisfied core needs into permanent shoppers, producers must dumb down consumers, shape their wants, take over their life worlds, encourage impulse buying, cultivate shopoholism and invent new needs. At the same time, they empower kids as shoppers by legitimizing their unformed tastes and mercurial wants and detaching them from their gatekeeper mothers and fathers and teachers and pastors. The kids include toddlers who recognize brand logos before they can talk and commodity-minded baby Einsteins who learn to shop before they can walk.
Consumerism needs this infantilist ethos because it favors laxity and leisure over discipline and denial, values childish impetuosity and juvenile narcissism over adult order and enlightened self-interest, and prefers consumption-directed play to spontaneous recreation. The ethos feeds a private-market logic (“What I want is what society needs!”) and combats the public logic fashioned by democracy (“What society needs is what I want to want!”).

Posted by: b | Apr 4 2007 9:03 utc | 24

AP: U.S. interrogating at Africa’s secret prisons

NAIROBI, Kenya – CIA and FBI agents hunting for al-Qaida militants in the Horn of Africa have been interrogating terrorism suspects from 19 countries held at secret prisons in Ethiopia, which is notorious for torture and abuse, according to an investigation by The Associated Press.
Human rights groups, lawyers and several Western diplomats assert hundreds of prisoners, who include women and children, have been transferred secretly and illegally in recent months from Kenya and Somalia to Ethiopia, where they are kept without charge or access to lawyers and families.
The detainees include at least one U.S. citizen, and some are from Canada, Sweden and France, according to a list compiled by a Kenyan Muslim rights group and flight manifests obtained by AP.
…
More than 100 of the detainees were originally arrested in Kenya in January, after almost all of them fled Somalia because of the intervention by Ethiopian troops accompanied by U.S. special forces advisers, according to Kenyan police reports and U.S. military officials.
Those people were then deported in clandestine pre-dawn flights to Somalia, according to the Kenya Muslim Human Rights Forum and airline documents. At least 19 were women and 15 were children.
In Somalia, they were handed over to Ethiopian intelligence officers and secretly flown to Ethiopia, where they are now in detention, the New York-based Human Rights Watch says.

Posted by: b | Apr 4 2007 11:18 utc | 26

Got this in my box today…
Indeed.com Daily Job Alert
What:
Where: Iraq
The first 5 of 5 new jobs are displayed below.
See matching results on Indeed.com since: yesterday – past week – all results
CI Agent
Espial Services – Iraq, IA
Espial Services, Inc. CI Agent Espial Services is seeking Counterintelligence Agents (CI) for deployment to Iraq. Based in Pinellas Park, Florida, Espial…
From Intelligencecareers.com – April 3, 6:26 PM
Senior Interrogator
Espial Services – Iraq, IA
Espial Services, Inc. Senior Interrogator Espial Services is seeking a Senior Interrogator for deployment to Iraq. Espial Services Incorporated, based in…
From Intelligencecareers.com – April 3, 6:24 PM
Senior Intel Analyst
Espial Services – Iraq, IA
Espial Services, Inc. Senior Intel Analyst Espial Services Incorporated is seeking Senior Intel Analysts for deployment to Iraq. Espial Services Incorporated…
From Intelligencecareers.com – April 3, 6:24 PM
Help with the rebuilding of Iraq
SM Consulting – Iraq, IA
SM Consulting, Inc. Help with the rebuilding of Iraq We are currently recruiting for skilled Arabic speaking professionals to assist in the rebuilding efforts…
From Intelligencecareers.com – April 3, 6:24 PM
Arabic Linguist US Citizen or Green Card or I-94 for Overseas
Design Staffing – Iraq, IA
Design Staffing, LLC Arabic Linguist US Citizen or Green Card or I-94 for Overseas Company is currently looking for Arabic Linguist to work with other linguist…
From Intelligencecareers.com – April 3, 6:26 PM
First 5 matches shown – see results since: yesterday – past week – all results
This Daily Job Alert is brought to you by Indeed.com.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Apr 4 2007 14:10 utc | 28

on newshour last nighht, leherer referred to the situation in somalia as “battles against remnants of islamic extremists.”

Posted by: slothrop | Apr 4 2007 15:50 utc | 30

In memoriam Tom Hurndall.
He went to a local school where my neighbour’s kids go.
Jocelyn Hurndall’s book about her son, and the aftermath of his shooting by the IDF.

Posted by: Dismal Science | Apr 4 2007 17:58 utc | 32

Just want to endorse b real’s recommendation @#17 of Salim Lone intervewed on Democracy Now yesterday. Thoughtful, informative, reasoned, beautifully articulated.
Bits:
– Africa has been trying to get the rest of the world to establish meaningful engagement with Africa for decades. The last thing Africa needs is a new Western military command.
– The UN has lost much credibility in the Islamic world because everything the UN knew about Iraq was used by the US when it attacked.
Everyone should hear the full interview.
I was listening while driving. Arrived at destination and remained in the car 10min more, until Lone finished.

Posted by: small coke | Apr 4 2007 21:13 utc | 34

uncle, the plot thickens

The White House incident sparked controversy after Beltway bloggers incorrectly described Sanford as a reporter for the Air America radio network. At the time, he was associated with Watsonville radio station KOMY, an Air America affiliate, and Sanford told reporters he never claimed to work for Air America.
Sanford eventually filed suit against station owner Michael Zwerling after Zwerling was reported as saying Sanford had not been authorized to represent the station as a reporter, a statement Sanford refuted.
Mills represented Sanford in that suit, which was scheduled to begin in Santa Cruz County Superior Court in February. Mills said he did not know if the case will continue after Sanford’s sudden death.

imagine the attention a trial like this might garner on the topic of treason.
the pavement seems like a traumatic choice for suicide.

Posted by: annie | Apr 5 2007 0:30 utc | 36

FOX News makes perfectly clear its news policies.
Seriously, this is so perfect its funny.

Posted by: citizen | Apr 5 2007 5:03 utc | 38

Warning – OT and totally irrelevant to this thread. You may have read this one currently doing the rounds of email jokes …

Here is a funny joke about an Indian boy on his first day at school in the USA
It was the first day of school and a new student named Chandrasekhar Subramanian entered the fourth grade.
The teacher said, “Let’s begin by reviewing some American History.
Who said “Give me Liberty, or give me Death”?
She saw a sea of blank faces, except for Chandrasekhar, who had his hand up: “Patrick Henry, 1775” he said.
“Very good!”
Who said “Government of the People, by the People, for the People, shall not perish from the Earth?”
Again, no response except from Chandrasekhar. “Abraham Lincoln, 1863” said Chandrasekhar.
The teacher snapped at the class, “Class, you should be ashamed. Chandrasekhar, who is new to our country, knows more about its history than you do.”
She heard a loud whisper: “Fuck the Indians,”
“Who said that?” she demanded. Chandrasekhar put his hand up. “General Custer, 1862.”
Now furious, another student yells, “Oh yeah? Suck this!”
Chandrasekhar jumps out of his chair waving his hand and shouts to the teacher , “Bill Clinton, to Monica Lewinsky, 1997!”
Now with almost mob hysteria someone said “You little shit. If you say anything else, I’ll kill you.”
Chandrasekhar frantically yells at the top of his voice, “Gary Condit to Chandra Levy, 2001.”
The teacher fainted. And as the class gathered around the teacher on the floor , someone said, “Oh shit, we’re fucked!”
And Chandrasekhar said quietly, “George Bush, Iraq , 2005.”

Posted by: DM | Apr 5 2007 18:27 utc | 40

You gotta laugh. This one (link to article below via anti-war.com) is quite funny.
Who said American comedy was no good? It’s just a deadpan version of Monty Python.

Both Iraqis and Americans alike were stunned by the audacity of Senator John McCain’s heavily publicized (and heavily armed) excursion through Baghdad’s Shorja market last weekend. There was the leading proponent of the war on Capitol Hill, setting out to confirm his recent claim that the escalation of U.S. forces is greatly improving conditions on the ground, accompanied by a handful of Congressional colleagues. He seemed to think nobody would notice that their little shopping trip also included a platoon of soldiers, three Black Hawk choppers and two Apache gunships.

Posted by: DM | Apr 6 2007 0:12 utc | 42