I am not so pessimistic anna missed The Huffington Post is very much on the inside.
Anyways the US is no longer in a position to act unilaterally, but are forced to react multilaterally to preserve their (whose?) interests in a complex world.
they will not be able to talk away the economic crisis very much longer.

Posted by: outsder | May 12 2009 9:15 utc | 3

Aijaz Ahmad, US policy makes things worse in Pakistan.
Pakistan war fuels international tensions.

Posted by: andrew | May 12 2009 9:43 utc | 5

Those damn evil doers, them thar Talibanners and Al Caders have the chemical weapons!(bushspeak) We need to enhance interrorgate em pronto!
torture news roundup:al-Libi Found Dead in Libyan Prison

The Arabic media is ablaze with the news that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the emir of an Afghan training camp — whose claim that Saddam Hussein had been involved in training al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons was used to justify the invasion of Iraq — has died in a Libyan jail. So far, however, the only English language report is on the Algerian website Ennahar Online, which reported that the Libyan newspaper Oea stated that al-Libi (aka Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri) “was found dead of suicide in his cell,” and noted that the newspaper had reported the story “without specifying the date or method of suicide.”
It was al-Libi who was tortured by the CIA, subjected to mock burial in a box 20 inches high, in order to “confess” to a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, just days after the start of the Iraq War. Al-Libi later recanted. Afterwards, he was disappeared.

—

Alexandre Herculano, a famous writer of the 19th century, mentioned in his “Fragment about the Inquisition”: “…The terrors inflicted on pregnant women made them abort…. Neither the beauty or decorousness of the flower of youth, nor the old age, so worthy of compassion in a woman, exempted the weaker sex from the brutal ferocity of the supposed defenders of the religion….”
“…There were days when seven or eight were submitted to torture. These scenes were reserved for the inquisitors after dinner. It was a post-prandial entertainment. Many a time during those acts, the inquisitors compared notes in the appreciation of the beauty of the human form. While the unlucky damsel twisted in the intolerable pains of torture, or fainted in the intensity of the agony, one inquisitor applauded the angelic touches of her face, another the brightness of her eyes, another, the voluptuous contours of her breast, another the shape of her hands. In this conjuncture, men of blood transformed themselves into real artists!!”

They shoulda offered him cake… or Eddie Izzard’s inquisition

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 12 2009 13:18 utc | 7

From the 3rd link above, “Consequences – Young Pakistan Army Officers May Be Turning to Taliban, Insiders Say – (CQ),” the writer is Jeff Klein, who broke the anti-Jane Harmon stories.
This article could perhaps be part of the buildup to more military actions within Pakistan by the US: To protect our forces in Afghanistan and the Homeland from “religious extemists” getting control of Pak’s nukes.
Intriguingly and thinly sourced.

A retired Pakistani general confided a deep worry to a friend in Washington last week: that some young officers in Pakistan’s regular army have become increasingly sympathetic over the past few years to the Taliban and their brand of radical Islam.
While he had no numbers or percentages of officers sympathetic to the Taliban, the possibility of any defections raises questions about the reliability of these officers during any sort of push against the Taliban by the Pakistani army.
Concern over the reliability of Pakistan’s officer corps has heretofore focused on the ISI, or Inter-Services Intelligence service, which was wedded to CIA-backed fundamentalist Afghan rebels fighting to oust the Soviet Red Army during the 1980s. A faction of ISI officers is said to remain loyal to the fundamentalists.
The defection of regular army officers to fundamentalist rebels advancing through the Swat Valley toward Islamabad would add another wild card to various nightmare scenarios for Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation. (My emphasis)

The column is titled “Spy Talk,” so rumors may be the usual fodder. Interesting, but how to really interpret?

Posted by: jawbone | May 12 2009 14:51 utc | 9

hear hear Cynthia
what can the outcome be? Obama is beholding to the banks just as much as w was. the same people are calling the shots now as before. the only chance we have, and it is a damn long one, is that Obama is clever enough to give these bastards enough rope to hang themselves.
he has the political savvy to do it. we just have to be lucky enough that there is a shred of decency in his body and that he wants to.
sad thing is, if he should succeed, no one will thank him and the rabid right will howl like banshees.

Posted by: dan of steele | May 12 2009 19:09 utc | 11

b, and cynthia @10,
Is it true that any unsympathetic remark about Israel and its actions now can get you thrown in jail in the US?

Posted by: lambent1 | May 12 2009 22:05 utc | 13

lambent1, you won’t go to jail for making unkind remarks about Israel in the U.S., at least for now. You’ll be ignored or called a terror apologist or worse. But things are changing and further down the road, criminalizing speech critical of Israel seems a definite possibility. But only antisemites have anything to fear, right?

Posted by: bluegenebop | May 12 2009 22:58 utc | 15

Colin,
I really wouldn’t mind the US being a superpower, just so long as the US uses all of its power in responsible ways and for the benefit of the nation (and the world) as a whole. The US being a superpower wouldn’t be all that objectionable to me if the US could also maintain a strong social safety net for most, if not all, of its citizens and if it could carry a debt load that doesn’t eat us out of house and home, so to speak.
But since none of this is so, when the US does fall off its perch as the world’s top superpower, it isn’t likely to rest comfortably on its laurels as a developed nation whose military has been nicely stripped down to a skeleton crew and whose economy is sound enough to maintain a strong and vibrant middle class. Instead, the US is likely to face large-scale misery and hardship, existing as a third world nation whose military is so damn fat and bloated that it causes the social safety net for its citizen to collapse into ruin and whose economy is so damn skewed to the super-rich that it causes America will become a land of only haves and have-nots with little to nothing between.
Because of this, I really wish that the US had never evolved into a superpower! I really do wish that America had remained as a nation whose military was kept on a tight leash, but whose economy made the world green with envy — and green with other things, of course!

Posted by: Cynthia | May 13 2009 15:46 utc | 17

goddamn it… that’s fucking it, I’m done posting here until typepad either fixes their shit or you change something b, this is fucking ridiculous…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 13 2009 19:24 utc | 19

U$ you might try dropping the link into the box under URL: and then tell people to click on your name. it will do only one link but may be a work around for you. frankly I have no problems whatsoever posting links and when something does not come up it is because i forgot to use quotes or close a tag.
clicking on my nic should take you to Politico

Posted by: dan of steele | May 13 2009 20:59 utc | 21

yeah, Rick all the names are now linked to that same nowhere link. hopefully b can get that fixed. as for O, I am as sceptical as you but I really want to believe.
politics is a strange line of work and it is never easily apparent what is really happening.

Posted by: dan of steele | May 14 2009 6:26 utc | 23