To push through, and possibly increasing, the recent U.S. arms and cash gift to Israel, some prop-aganda effort is needed. Following one aspect of this effort, I found this amusing trail.

In June 2007, during the Paris Air Show, the air industry publication ‘Aviation Week’ reported in a side story on a rumor: With Its U.S. Jets Aging, Iran Appears to be Close to a 250-Sukhoi Order. As the publication remarked, major components of the Sukhoi SU-30 plane in question come from Thales, a french arms producer, and Paris would have to give its okay for the deal. While the standoff about Iranian uranium enrichment continues, such a green light from France, and thereby such a deal, would be unlikely.

There are always such sales rumors at any industry show and in this case even hard facts not to believe in it. So everybody soon forgot about this rumor but some smart folks in Israel.

Cont. reading: Prop-aganda – Follow The Trail

My bet is currently on Gore vs. Thompson(?).

Your mileage will vary. Why?

In yesterday’s piece about NSA data-mining and the Gonzales lies the NYT notes:

The first known assertion by administration officials that there had been no serious disagreement within the government about the legality of the N.S.A. program came in talks with New York Times editors in 2004. In an effort to persuade the editors not to disclose the eavesdropping program, senior officials repeatedly cited the lack of dissent as evidence of the program’s lawfulness.

The NYT editors at that time swallowed the administration’s lies and only reluctantly published the story that unveiled the NSA spying in December 2005 when the author James Risen threatened to break it in his book.

But now, as the editors have to eat another major craw fed to them by Cheney/Bush (the Judith Miller plant being the first), they decided it is payback time.

Cont. reading: Tit For Tat – NYT vs. Cheney

In an otherwise good article about the Rice and Gates travel to the Middle East, McClatchy’s Nancy A. Youssef and Warren P. Strobel write:

The Bush administration also is divided over Iran, with Vice President Dick Cheney’s office pushing for an aggressive military response to Iran’s reported aid and training for Shiite militias attacking U.S. troops in Iraq, senior officials said.

For something to be ‘reported’ an actually reporter would have put some leather to the streets. Facts would have been researched and witnesses asked. That reporter would doublecheck and  analyse the collected facts and build a theory or reach some conclusions. Those would be tested against independent expert opinions. All of this written down and packed into a decent format is a journalistic report. Its content could be characterized as ‘reported’.

Cont. reading: On ‘Reported’ Issues

Congratulations the Iraqi nation and the Iraqi soccer team, for the 1:0 final victory over Saudi Arabia and for winning the Asian Cup!

News & views & whatever …

Situation:
Pilot and copilot are patrolling over Helmand, Afghanistan at 15,000ft. The copilot is monitoring the look-down camera picture.

Dialog:
C: There is a person next to a hut at 2 o’clock.
P: Okay, about time something happens. Let’s start with the key questions. Does that person wear civilian clothes?
C: That seems to be the case.
P: Is that person in civil clothes a male person?
C: Well, looks male to me.
P: Is that male person in civil clothes between 7 and 70 years old?
C: That could very well be so.
P: Ok, that’s a Talib. Release the bombs now, now, NOW.

One of the raids by NATO hit houses in the Girishk district of Helmand province on Thursday evening, killing up to 50 civilians, a group of some 20 residents reported to journalists in Kandahar, the main city in the south.

[…]

"We have no reports of any such incidents in Girishk yesterday at all. There have been no people taken to the hospital … in relation to anything around Girishk," said [a spokesman for British forces in Helmand,] Lieutenant-Colonel Charlie Mayo.

"Because the Taliban don’t wear uniforms like us, as soon as they are killed, they are called civilians, the key is are they male or female and if they are male, what age are they?"
Dozens of Afghan civilians die in air raids: residents

Defense Undersecretary Eric Edelman responded (pdf) to Senator Clinton’s request for the Defense Department to draw up proposals for a retreat from Iraq:

Premature and public discussion of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq reinforces enemy propaganda that the United States will abandon its allies in Iraq, much as we are perceived to have done in Vietnam, Lebanon and Somalia.

Clinton was pissed and demanded that Secretary of Defense Gates punishes Edelman.

Cont. reading: The Fine Humor of Sec.Def. Gates

The U.S. military’s new ‘strategy’ in Iraq is to arm and pay ‘neighborhood watch’ groups in mainly Sunni areas. The Iraqi government does not want these groups and denies them any legitimacy.

One wonders what the U.S. really wants to achieve here. This is either utter stupidity or a well grounded plan of fomenting the next stage of a civil war and more massacres. Which is it?

From today’s Post article: U.S. Widens Push to Use Armed Iraqi Residents:

Cont. reading: Arming The Sunni Resistance

Has last week has seen a major turn in U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East?

This is quite speculative, but there are some data points that suggest a big shift has happened.

The Bush administration may have turned away from its Sunni allies in the wider Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and towards some rapprochement with Iran.

Consider:

• The main agitator for an attack on Iran in Cheney’s office has been removed.
• Bush himself moves the blame for U.S. problems in Iraq away from alleged Iranian insurgency support and towards al-Qaida.
• Information leaked to newspapers emphasizes the connection of al-Qaida in Iraq and Saudi financing and highlights Pakistan’s lack of action against al-Qaida in Pashtun-land.
• High level U.S. officials press the Saudis to retract support for the Sunni side in Iraq.
• Bush’s intimate relation with the Iran friendly Maliki in Iraq is pointed out.
• Recent talks between the U.S. and Iran seem to expand.

Some details below the fold:

Cont. reading: A Strategic ME Shift?

by Bea

In the Holocaust thread, Bernhard wrote: "Ethnic cleansing, killing a group of somehow assumed "lesser value" people, has happened before and after the 1940s and such still happens today. Such has been tried or done by about each ruling powers of their time and area."

It just so happens that I am presently reading a book on this very subject, and I feel compelled to contribute a post about it. At the risk of stepping into a pot of boiling oil, I would just like to share some passages from this book, which is unbelievably powerful and important. It’s written by Israeli historian Ilan Pappe, who has meticulously combed official Israeli archives to put together the picture that he paints here. I will excerpt only a very few passages which can no means do this remarkable book or very loaded subject justice. I will also post links to some interviews with Pappe elsewhere on the web.

The ‘Red House’ was a typical early Tel-Avivian building…towards the end of 1947, it became the headquarters of the Hagana, the main Zionist underground militia in Palestine….

Cont. reading: Shedding Light on a Forgotten Case of Ethnic Cleansing

Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee voted for contempt charges against Joshua Bolten, White House chief of staff, and former Bush counsel Harriet Miers. The Washington Post reports:

The vote represents the first concrete step toward finding Bolten and Miers in criminal contempt of Congress. The issue will next be considered by the entire House, and if a similar vote occurs there, the citations could be referred to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. But a floor vote appears unlikely before the end of next week, when the House recesses for a five-week summer break.
[…]
A Pelosi aide confirmed that a floor vote is unlikely until after Labor Day, giving Congress and White House counsel Fred F. Fielding another month and a half to negotiate a settlement of the legal standoff.

For a long time the White House has made it abundantly clear that it will risk a confrontation with Congress and a constitutional crisis. It hopes to avoid this inherent risk though, but not for the price of giving up on Cheney’s legal fantasies of a unitary executive. Instead, like with any Iraq retreat, the White House simply tries to run out the clock.

A confrontation is in Congress’ best interest. If this administration gets away with its assertion of unitary executive, and executive privilege, the next presidencies will build on those rights and Congress’ role will forever be diminished. Any short term gain in voters opinion in 2008 by holding back on a confrontation now is much smaller than a long term loss in congressional authority.

The White House will not cave in here. There is nothing left to negotiate. Pelosi has all rights and means to set the House agenda. The process following a House vote on contempt charges will already be slow and intentionally slowed down further when it hits the courts.

So why are Democrats delaying the process now? Bush wants to run out the clock. Don’t let him do so.

Why wait?

Two weeks ago there was a meeting at President Putin’s home in Moscow. High powered delegations of U.S. and Russian foreign policy and business establishment discussed global policy.

The Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported:

The panel called "Russia-USA: A Look Into the Future," led by former U.S. Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, declined to comment on the first Moscow session, but said it was a successful beginning to a series of high-level meetings.

Cont. reading: U.S. – Europe: Nothing Left to Provide

Sorry for little posting – busy days – but there is always interesting News & Views …

Open thread …

The classified plan, which represents the coordinated strategy of the top American commander and the American ambassador, calls for restoring security in local areas, including Baghdad, by the summer of 2008. “Sustainable security” is to be established on a nationwide basis by the summer of 2009, according to American officials familiar with the document.
…
The latest plan, which covers a two-year period, does not explicitly address troop levels or withdrawal schedules. It anticipates a decline in American forces as the “surge” in troops runs its course later this year or in early 2008.
U.S. Is Seen in Iraq Until at Least ’09 as recorded by NYT stenographer Michael Gordon

Some thoughts:

• This was the plan all along, the "surge" talk was just the marketing as is the "sustainable security" slogan.
• The new marketing gimmick "sustainable security" is right out Fred Kagan’s, original architect of the "surge", pen and published in the Weekly Standard some weeks ago.
• This was decided on in the White House, not in Baghdad.
• For the soldiers this will mean several additional 18 month tours with less than 12 months breaks in between. Expect some mutiny.
• Possible chance of success in Baghdad: Zero
• Possible chance to kick the ball to the next president: One hundred

by remembereringgiap
(lifted from a comment)

one hundred and fifty one
& we were/joined by subversives/in foolish moves/we might have
made a fortune/while discussing milton/with the saints/who swore black
& blue paintings/were sold easily/to wellwishers/who wore waste
& always spoke/from the corners/of their mouths/like elegant gangsters
from forties films/where everyone was/on the take/& went down
nightly to harlem/to get fix/from art pepper/perhaps imitating black
man on other/side of city/sitting in studio/painting pretty picture
before he became/married to museum/of modern art/he was poor
mark rothkowitz/who really wanted/to be scholar/of the torah
reading a chapter/or a verse/in private place/where he’d worship
to whatever god/was left after/city of riga/fell to kingdom/come with all
stories of scherezades/that used to/fill that town/even during pogroms
a dirty joke/was always told/at the bootmakers/to one of/his gentile friends
of whom himmler/once spoke clearly/when he was/speaking of good
jew he said/when planning final/solution he sought/this perfect pedagogue
who preffered chickens/even though vegetarian/like his master
he was once/asked if perhaps/there was good/jews to be/had he thought

Cont. reading: A Poem

All is well in Iraq and getting better by the day. The "surge" is working and only needs to be prolonged a bit and reinforced here and there to finally gain U.S. control over a peaceful country with lots of valuable liquids underneath.

That is more or less the official administration story.

But if that is so, why would Iraqi collaboraters press for U.S. visas?

Cont. reading: Getting Out Of Iraq?

– With Bush’s additions to the Supreme Court it now has a solid conservative majority that will likely sign off any nutty theory Cheney/Bush will present to it.

– The Department of Justice is so politicalized that there is no way it will ever act against any crime the current presidency commits.

– For yet unknown reasons Congress has taken impeachment off the table but prominently put nuking Iran on the table.

– An executive order issued this week threatens to take away anything material – house, car and toothbrush – away from:

Cont. reading: Taking the Constitution Down – Step by Step

Reflecting on comments in this thread, here is a personal view on the Holocaust I’d like to discuss.

Ethnic cleansing, killing a group of somehow assumed "lesser value" people, has happened before and after the 1940s and such still happens today. Such has been tried or done by about each ruling powers of their time and area. There are certainly comparable deeds in history that at least, relatively to general population numbers, reached or even exceed the numbers of the Holocaust.

The historic difference of the Holocaust, the German (and cooperating others) systematic killing of their Jewish bethren, is the total amorality of using industrial methods to do so.

Evacuation orders and train schedules synchronized to be ‘just in time’ for the furnaces being ready again and cleaned from the last round of burning corps – optimization of throughput in killing – that is unique.

As a German and even an industrial engineer, that is what really personally hits me right in the stomach. To me technology must carry a promise of moral use, of some progress for mankind’s well being.

Designing a system for maximum throughput of killing people is outside of any otherwise compareable and equally despicable behavior.

That is the uniqueness, and guilt, of the Holocaust.