UnFairWitness

The Destruction of Najaf

Between Juan Cole's entry from yesterday and what Abbas Kadhim writes, it appears conclusive that Najaf has been destroyed.

Double standards on elections

Alot of bloggers are decrying this Rumsfeldian comment:

"Let's say you tried to have an election and you could have it in three-quarters or four-fifths of the country in some places you couldn't because the violence was too great," Rumsfeld said. "So be it. Nothing's perfect in life. You have an election that's not quite perfect. Is it better than not having an election? You bet."

Asked later by reporters to elaborate, Rumsfeld said: "Is it dangerous? You bet. Will there be elections? I think so. Might there be some portion of the country where the terrorists decide they're going to mess things up? Possibly. Does that mean that there won't be elections? No."

How does that statement stack up against this?

US officials are looking at ways to postpone the 2 November presidential poll should "terrorists" attack the United States near election time, a US magazine is reporting.

Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Friday said: "Al-Qaida is moving forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process." However, he admitted US intelligence had no information about any specific plot.

But unnamed counterterrorism officials told Newsweek on Sunday they were considering a proposal to delay balloting in the event of an attack.

So, it's OK to have elections in Iraq despite the violence and attacks which would leave out large swaths of the country including the capital(!), but in the US...well, that's a different story.

I wish I could say that I find it hard to believe that opposition parties in the US aren't pointing this out, but considering the TweedleDee and TweedleDumb-ness of this election, it isn't at all surprising. I do think many Iraqis noticed the hypocritical double standard.

Saturday Blog Tour

An excerpt from Riverbend's latest:

After Bush finished his piece about the glamorous changes in Iraq, Allawi got his turn. I can't seem to decide what is worse- when Bush speaks in the name of Iraqi people, or when Allawi does. Yesterday's speech was particularly embarrassing. He stood there groveling in front of the congress- thanking them for the war, the occupation and the thousands of Iraqi lives lost... and he did it all on behalf of the Iraqi people. It was infuriating and for maybe the hundredth time this year, I felt rage. Yet another exile thanking the Bush administration for the catastrophe we're trying to cope with. Our politicians are outside of the country 90% of the time (by the way, if anyone has any news of our president Ghazi Ajeel Al Yawir, do let us know- where was he last seen or heard?), the security situation is a joke, the press are shutting down and pulling out and our beloved exiles are painting rosey pictures for the American public- you know- so everyone who voted for Bush can sleep at night.

Allawi actually said "thank you" nine times. Nine times. It really should have been more- at least double that number of Iraqis died yesterday... and about five times that number the day before. Looking back on the last month alone, over 350 Iraqis have been killed either by American air strikes, fighting, or bombs... only 9 thank yous?

The elections are already a standard joke. There's talk of holding elections only in certain places where it will be 'safe' to hold them. One wonders what exactly comprises 'safe' in Iraq today. Does 'safe' mean the provinces that are seeing fewer attacks on American troops? Or does 'safe' mean the areas where the abduction of foreigners isn't occurring? Or could 'safe' mean the areas that *won't* vote for an Islamic republic and *will* vote for Allawi? Who will be allowed to choose these places? Right now, Baghdad is quite unsafe. We see daily abductions, killings, bombings and Al-Sadr City, slums of Baghdad, see air strikes... will they hold elections in Baghdad? Imagine, Bush being allowed to hold elections in 'safe' areas- like Texas and Florida.

Kevin Hayden on this bill: "The monster they created was so bad even some Republicans are saying they can’t support it. I wish they’d just declare martial law, lock up everyone with an IQ above 86 and get it over with. I hate the waiting while they pretend they’re not tyrants."

Raed Jarrar and Rahul Mahajan both highlight this video purportedly of an American attack on civilians in Fallujah.

Rahul: "Listen for the pilot's "Aw, dude!" at the end. I read it as some combination of "Oh, the humanity!" and "Yee-hah!" Not sure about the relative ratios."
Raed: "And, for sure I wasn't amused by the comedian that seemed to be enjoying his time killing people, 'Ohhh, Dude' after the big explosion.
Isn't this one of the most irresponsible things that you can hear?
Doesn't such incidents increase and rationalize brutal reactions to the U.S.?
And, can't the sick dudes in the pentagon remove "ohhh, dude" if they didn't want us to hear it?"

Rodger Payne on Baghdad Bob Bush's latest speech on the Republic of FUBAR(as Hesiod calls it).

Ken Layne on Afghaniraqistan, Land of Armies & Suiciders and don't miss Meet Ayad Allawi.

James Landrith smites the liberventionists: Killing in the Name of Libertarianism. There are some great links at the end of that post as well, one of which sends you back to AntiWar.com blog to read a Matt Barganier post, which you may have missed. Also, here's Landrith (who's been blogging up a storm lately) on the demise of the American National Guard:

Hmm. I wonder if back to back deployments, piss poor planning with regard to an exit strategy in Iraq, being lied to about the reasons for the war, and plans to spread the conflict further into Iran and possibly Syria might have something to do with it.

Or perhaps those men and women choosing to allow their contracts to expire are just plain un-American traitors, unlike those brave souls who support interventionist wars through the use of the twin weapons of a fully loaded mouse and combat ready futon.

Yeah, thats probably it.

Libertarian Jackass on non-violence, here and here.

On the subject of liberventionism (did Stromberg invent that term?) David Beito found an interesting argument at Crooked Timber. The author of the post to which Beito points is Belle Waring, who starred in last week's Blog Tour with this post: Why I Was So Totally Wrong About Iraq.

Terrorists from Fallujah targeted by an American precision strike:

In its daily battle against insurgents, the US military said its air force "conducted a strike inflicting a blow to the Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi terrorist network by conducting a precision strike on a known terrorist meeting site in central Fallujah."

Where are the women held hostage by the US in Iraq?

Is the US still holding Al-Douri's wife and daughter hostage? The US admits to having two women prisoners and it is for these two women's release that the Tawhil wal Jihad is currently beheading their American and Briton hostages. Scotsman.com reports that Dr Rihab Taha and Dr Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash are the only known women prisoners of the US. If so, what happened to Al-Douri's family?

Just asking.

American Eugene Armstrong beheaded by Tawhid wal Jihad.

American Eugene Armstrong beheaded by Tawhid and Jihad. Video here.

Please be aware that this is by far the most horrific beheading video so far.

A quote I like

I can do this because this is my blog.

Fafnir: "It's not so bad bein lost," says me. "Bein lost is like takin a vacation from knowin what you're doin."

Who is Iraq's #1 enemy?

From Abbas Kadhim's blog:

The residents of Baghdad do not agree with al-Sha'lan and al-Alusi about their #1 enemy. Here are the numbers in response to the only question in the survey, "Whom do you think is Iraq's #1 enemy":

1. Israel 32%


2. USA 23.2%


3. Extremist Islamic groups 12.3%


4. Saddam and his supporters 11.4%


5. Iran 8.8%


6. Al-Qa'ida 8%


7. Al-Zarqawi 4.3%

Are Kurds being targeted in reprisal?

Reportedly 3 Kurds labeled as "KDP party members" have been beheaded and the video posted on the web. At the same time, it is reported that 25 "Iraqi National Guard members" have also been abducted. Considering that the "Iraqi National Guard" which fought alongside US forces in Fallujah, Najaf and Tal Afar were almost completely made up of Kurdish peshmerga, it is possible that these 25 abducted Iraqis are Kurds.

After the bloody siege and assault on Fallujah, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karl Vick reported in the Washington Post:

Guerrillas coming out of Fallujah have complained bitterly that Kurdish militiamen known as pesh merga are deployed against them. The Kurds are members of the 36th Battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps built from several exile-based militias that supported the U.S.-led campaign against Saddam Hussein. Commanders of another, overwhelmingly Arab Iraqi arm battalion refused to fight alongside the Marines.

"Worse than pigs, thieves and tramps," read lines a poem circulating on fliers in Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq where Kurds are accused of pushing Arab families off land claimed by both groups. The fliers condemned the leaders of Iraq's two Kurdish parties. It is not known who produced the fliers, which were also seen in Baghdad.

The Kurdish leaders were condemned in chanting that followed Friday prayers at a major Sunni mosque in Baghdad.

"When the fighting is over in Fallujah, I will sell everything I have, even my home," said a resistance fighter who gave his name as Abu Taif Mashhadani. He wept as he recalled his 8-year-old daughter who he said was killed by a U.S. sniper in Fallujah a week ago. "I will send my brothers north to kill the Kurds, and I will go to America and target the civilians. Only the civilians. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. And the one who started it will be the one to be blamed."

During the attack on Najaf, London based Asharq al-Awsat reported:

An assistant to Muqtada al-Sadr, Husam al-Moosawi, yesterday threatened to attack US troops violently if they enter Najaf. He also accused Kurdish peshmerga fighters of helping the US troops. Moosawi described a barrier built by the Americans between Kufa and Najaf as a provocative step aiming at isolating the two cities. "Any American patrol in Najaf is liable to attacks because we consider this an encroachment upon the holy city. We have the right to defend ourselves, the religious authorities, and the cities," said Moosawi, who added that he had hard evidence of Peshmerga participation with US forces near Najaf. He said Peshmerga elements are in Najaf’s al-Askari quarter.

After the siege of Tal Afar, Patrick Cockburn writes:

The Americans claim that Tal Afar is a hub for militants smuggling fighters and arms into Iraq from nearby Syria. Turkish officials make clear in private they believe that the Kurds, the main ally of the US in northern Iraq, have managed to get US troops involved on their side in the simmering ethnic conflict between Kurds and Turkmen.

"The Iraqi government forces with the Americans are mainly Kurdish," complained one Turkmen source. A Turkish official simply referred to the Iraqi military units involved in the attack on Tal Afar as "peshmerga", the name traditionally given to Kurdish fighters.
[...]
There has been tension, sometimes boiling over into gun battles, between the Kurds and the Turkmens since last year. As Saddam Hussein's regime fell apart Kurdish troops, aided by the US air force, advanced to take Kirkuk and Mosul. The Kurds felt they at last had a chance to reverse 40 years of ethnic cleansing which had seen their people massacred or driven from their homes.

Both Arabs and Turkmen fear ethnic cleansing in reverse. In Tal Afar, a poor city with high unemployment, there was friction from the beginning. Days after the fall of Saddam the Kurdistan Democratic Party appointed its own mayor called Abdul Haleq in the city. He ran up a yellow Kurdish flag outside his office. He was told by local people to take it down or die. He refused and was killed the following day. His office, along with the yellow flag, was burned by an angry crowd.

This, of course, was the danger inherent in the US's use of peshmerga against Arab Iraqis, as I have tried to point out as these developments became known. The Israeli involvement in Kurdistan, as reported by Seymour Hersh, surely would not help matters.

3 KDP Kurds beheaded in Iraq

Apparently 3 Kurdish KDP party members have been beheaded in Iraq. Video here.

Is zeyad at Healing Iraq a fake or just uninformed?

zeyad, a pro-occupation blogger purportedly living in Basra has posted once again a bizarre thesis, which raises many questions - such as, to what news does this guy have access? Is he oblivious or deliberately posting misleading and outright wrong information? and, Why, out of 172 comments currently posted to the thread on this entry, does not one person point out that his entire premise is wrong? Who are these people?

I have to shed light on something that has been bothering me for quite some time. Events over the last six months or so seem to indicate a developing pattern of the violence in Iraq. Simply put, when there is a surge of violence in the south, it completely ceases in other areas of Iraq, and vice versa. In other words, whenever Sadr takes a rest, Zarqawi comes into action again.

There were zero suicide attacks during Sadr's revolt last April and May. They resumed when the situation was clear, as did activities of militants in certain Baghdad areas such as the old Karkh (Haifa street, Talayi' square and Khudhr Al-Yass) and Adhamiya. They ceased again all together during the second Sadr uprisal last month, and now they look as if they are just starting again.

It also looks as if it applies to US military actions as well, taking turns at Najaf, Sadr city and Fallujah, but that can probably be attributed to military tactics such as the reluctance to fight on several fronts at the same time. Furthermore, insurgent activities have worryingly spread to areas that are usually peaceful, such as Talafar and Haifa street in Baghdad. Even more confusing is the fact that some areas usually not peaceful (Adhamiya in Baghdad, Hawija), are unusually peaceful now, that is if you disregard the occasional mortar attack.

I posted a refutation to his last assertion that during al-Sadr's second Najaf uprising, attacks elsewhere ceased.

One more comment on Zeyad's post. At the end he sends another unwarranted accusation Al Sadr's way:

Something else has been bothering me for a while. How come there are NEVER any suicide bombings whenever there is trouble in the south with Sadr? And why do the Sunni areas seem so peaceful?

I didn't think Iraqis got Fox News. How else to explain how clueless zeyad is about events in Iraq? There was a suicide bombing yesterday that killed two Iraqis and wounded eight and it was in Baquba, a city in the Sunni area.

Al-Sadr's second Najaf uprising began approximately August 5 and ended with a peace deal approximately August 25. Let's see what happened in Iraq during that time frame. From handy link collections in Today in Iraq:

August 6 & 7:

• Bring ‘em on: One US soldier killed in Baghdad ambush.
• Bring ‘em on: Sixteen US soldiers wounded in four Baghdad attacks.
• Bring ‘em on: Italian and Romanian troops in firefights near Nasiriyah.
• Bring ‘em on: British troops fighting Madhi Army insurgents in central Basra.
• Bring ‘em on: US helicopter shot down in Najaf. Two US soldiers wounded.
• Bring ‘em on: US convoy ambushed near Samarra.
• Bring ‘em on: British troops fighting insurgents in Amarah.
• Bring ‘em on: Twelve killed in fighting between Iraqi police and insurgents in Mosul.
• Bring ‘em on: Oil, culture and youth and sports ministries mortared in Baghdad.
• Bring ‘em on: US hostage reportedly executed in Iraq.
• Bring ‘em on: Heavy fighting continues in Sadr City.
• Bring ‘em on: Insurgents attack governor’s residents in Basra with mortar and small arms fire.
• Bring ‘em on: Two Turkish hostages executed.
• Bring ‘em on: Five Iraqis wounded by mortar fire in Baghdad.
• Bring ‘em on: US troops launch anti-insurgency operation in Samarra. Heavy fighting reported.

August 8:

• Bring ‘em on: Danish patrol ambushed near Qurnah. Two Iraqis killed, seven wounded.
• Bring ‘em on: Iraqi soldier killed by roadside bomb near Baquba.
• Bring ‘em on: Twenty-two Iraqis killed in continued fighting in Sadr City.
• Bring ‘em on: Iraqi child killed by roadside bomb near Kirkuk.
• Bring ‘em on: Insurgents and Iraqi police fighting in Amarah.
• Bring ‘em on: US convoy ambushed near Samarra, one driver missing.
• Bring ‘em on: Iranian diplomat kidnapped in Iraq.
• US soldier dies in “non-combat related incident” near Baghdad.

August 9:

• Bring ‘em on: One US Marine killed in fighting in al-Anbar province.
• Bring ‘em on: Eleven Iraqis wounded in six mortar and rocket attacks in Baghdad.
• Bring ‘em on: British base mortared near Basra.
• Bring ‘em on: One Iraqi child killed, seven Iraqis wounded in Baghdad mortar attack.
• Bring ‘em on: Six Iraqis killed, 16 wounded by car bomb in Baquba.
• Bring ‘em on: US helicopter shot down in Baghdad.
• Bring ‘em on: Three US soldiers wounded in attack on district council building in Baghdad.
• Bring ‘em on: One US soldier wounded in patrol ambush near Muqdadiyah.
• Bring ‘em on: US patrol ambushed by roadside bomb, small arms fire near Samarra.
• Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis killed by bus bomb in Baghdad.
• Bring ‘em on: British patrol ambushed near Amarah; one Iraqi killed, two wounded.
• Bring ‘em on: Explosions reported in Baghdad.
• Bring ‘em on: Four Iraqis killed by roadside bomb near Khaldiyah.
• Bring ‘em on: Incoming mortar fire reported at three Polish bases near Karbala.
• Bring ‘em on: Insurgents capture Iraqi police chief in Baghdad.
• Interim government declares emergency 4:00 pm to 8:00 am curfew in Sadr City.

Is this enough? August 10. 11. 13 & 14. 15. 16.

Some suicide bombs: August 5, Baghdad * August 9, Khalis * August 9, Baquba * August 22, Baquba * August 24, Baghdad, 2 incidents

As for Sunni areas being peaceful, Fallujah was bombed almost daily during the Najaf crisis. Samarra was bombed, August 14.

My last posting on zeyad's apparent cluelessness generated speculation in the comments about the possibility zeyad was a fake and not an Iraqi at all. Maybe they were right.

Saturday Blog Tour

How the Flypaper Theory is working. If you don't understand it you're just unenlightened, like Jim Henley.

Via Micah Holmquist, Mickey Z. on Osama bin Laden vs. Pat Tillman

zeynep zeroes in on the essential question for the US military, which tried to justify firing missiles into a crowd on Haifa Street in Baghdad last weekend:

Simply put, if you cannot tell "insurgents" and "civilians" apart then you're in the wrong country. Something is very wrong if the "civilians," "natives," or "non-combatants" --however you want to name the people on whose behalf you claim to be fighting-- are indistinguishable from your "enemies."

Laura Rosen says the neocons are creating an "enemies list." Tristero says:

Two thoughts:

1. Huh? They only got around to it now? More proof of their clueless incompetence.

2. If I'm not on that list, I'll like totally never live it down. Where do I apply?

The competition to be on the list will undoubtedly be fierce.

Some "I was Wrong About the Iraq Invasion" posts, here and here. If anyone knows of more that should be gathered into a Hall of...well, let's be kind...Bad Judgement or something, let me know. And anyone who feels even the slightest bit of enthusiasm for any war should read this again, and maybe this, especially the ones who are saying they're surprised at how the Bushistas botched every thing possible, even botching things no one thought botchable. For example, who would have ever thought any bureaucrats could botch spending billions of dollars? That's got to be a first in the history of the state.

Scandalette updates: Ken Layne on Rathergate, Rising Hegemon on FatherFReeper of the Year (see William Rivers Pitt on this one, too plus I still think the whole thing is funnier if you read some of this first) and I think we have everything on the Protest Warrior here.

The Emperor is Naked. I've been looking for a good place to post this picture that I stole from Sadly, No!

And don't miss Chris Deliso's interview with Scott Taylor, the Canadian journalist taken hostage by Ansar Al Islam just before the US attacked Tal Afar - it's an eye opener!

If the US pulled out of Iraq....

Matt Yglesias says that if the US pulled out of Iraq, the following would ensue:

Many people would die. Oil supplies disrupted. Regional powers get involved. Instability. Terrorism. Death. Chaos. Destruction.

That's different from the last year and a half how, exactly?

Update on Scott "Kicking Women for Bush" Robinson

It looks like Julian Sanchez has got the goods on the guy at the RNC who kicked the female protester who was already on the ground. Turns out he's a hard-core Republican Bushista who interns at the National Taxpayers Union. Check out the links in Julian's post, especially the one that shows how the NTUF just cropped Scott "Kicking Women in the Ribs for Bush" Robinson out of the intern picture on their website.

UPDATE:Jerralyn Merritt of TalkLeft receives the following email from the alleged RNC Kicker:

Ms. Merritt,

I'm Sorry, but you must have the wrong person. (This is a little strange.) Please inform your sources. Thanks.

Scott

Julian Sanchez posting on Reason's Hit and Run blog receives a rather more elaborate denial, complete with alibi:

Yesterday, I reported that numerous people believed that they knew the identity of the person who appears in this video, purportedly kicking a restrained protester: They believe the person on the tape is Wharton student Scott Robinson, who interned in Washington, D.C. this summer. At this point eight of them, seven D.C. interns and a University of Pennsylvania political science student who says he lived across the hall from Robinson for a year, have provided comments for attribution, claiming to be certain the person on the convention video is the student and intern they know. (Various others have sent anonymous statements to myself and other bloggers to similar effect.)

On Thursday evening (technically very early Friday), I spoke with Robinson. He conceded that he was in New York at the time, volunteering at the Republican National Convention, but says that he was not at the Andy Card speech where the incident took place around noon that Wednesday. He said he had been out late Tuesday night and didn't wake up before midday, as he was only working evenings. He also gave me the name of the Wharton fraternity brother with whom he stayed that week, with whom he said he'd been at the time of the Card event. That person, whose name I'm omitting at his request, declined to say anything on the record when contacted via email.
Posted by Julian Sanchez at September 17, 2004 04:12 PM

A person claiming to be from the NTUF has posted on Julian's original Hit and Run thread, as well as my blog the following disclaimer:

For the record, Scott Robinson left NTU Foundation's internship program well before the GOP convention. Whether or not Mr. Robinson is indeed the same person depicted in the convention video, National Taxpayers Union and National Taxpayers Union Foundation repudiate violence in all forms.

Mr. Robinson was a summer intern with NTU. He participated in a fellowship program, which was sponsored by an outside organization. That program brought him to Washington in mid-June of this year. That internship ended--as planned--in early August, several weeks before the alleged incident in New York City.

If you have additional concerns, you should contact the law enforcement agencies that may be involved to determine the status of any legal proceedings.

It is a shame that the original source of this story, Reason Hit and Run, didn't adequately clarify the fact that Mr. Robinson was long gone from our organization before the GOP convention and this chain of blogged events occurred.

Pete Sepp
Vice President for Communications
National Taxpayers Union and Foundation

Posted by: Pete Sepp | September 16, 2004 10:55 PM

The above post by Mr. Sepp is from my blog. The post on Hit and Run is substantially the same, but Hit and Run doesn't have permalinks to comments, so you'll have to find it in the thread. As you page through the Hit and Run thread, you might watch for a poster who claims to be Dave Stanley, CEO of the NTUF, saying Sepp was the photo cropper who trimmed Mr. Robinson right out of the intern group photo on the NTUF's website - before - after. From this, we might suspect Pete of believing the intern in the picture was the kicker.

Anyway, researching Mr. Robinson has been educational. Did you know there's a group called The Protest Warriors, motto: Fighting the left....doing it right. Robinson belongs to the Penn chapter of this organisation:

Anyone who wants to is welcome to join our U of Penn chapter for the periodic updates. There are numerous other towns and colleges with chapters. You can browse by state. Just go to this link and click on "register". There are no obligations and if you decide to, I'm sure that you will be glad that you did. Pass this on the word to fellow anti-protesters....."
posted by Scott Robinson at 12:35 PM | 0 comments

which has this to say on it's homepage about the RNC:

Operation Liberty Rising

On August 29th, the RNC will begin, and ProtestWarrior will be there to take on the hordes of leftists whose entire goal is to silence, to hate, to scream out of existence the idea that freedom can flourish throughout the world. Details to come...

Who knew?

The Protest Warriors have a manly logo that prevents anyone mistaking them for lefty peacenik types.

So, just because a Protest Warrior was at the RNC convention and a bunch of his friends and coworkers say they think it's him in the kicking video doesn't mean it's true.

Fun with fakes and Drama Queens

OK, read this 1,500 post FReaker thread until you feel your lunch start to come up and then go here. Really, you need a dose of hysterical FReaks before you can fully appreciate the second link.

Oops. Original post on the subject at Rising Hegemon.

WMD-related dormant program inactivities

Here's what Bush's WMD hysteria is reduced to:

U.S. weapons inspector to find Iraq had no WMD, only intentions

Drafts of a report from the top U.S. inspector in Iraq conclude there were no weapons stockpiles, but say there are signs the fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had dormant programs he hoped to revive at a later time, according to people familiar with the findings.

So, I guess this quote from the ScareMonger-In-Chief: "....dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities..." should properly read ....dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related dormant program inactivities.

George Bush, lying hypocrite

Michael Dixon of the Libertarian Political Party says that THE lesson we should learn from the Bush AWOL scandal is: When governments wage futile, unnecessary wars -- such as Vietnam and Iraq -- young Americans will try to avoid them. I would take issue with the implication that governments are capable of waging non-futile, necessary wars, but even aside from that, I think Dixon misses the entire point of the scandal, as he explains here:

"The scandal isn't that so many Americans tried to avoid going to Vietnam; it's that their government tried to send them there in the first place," said Michael Dixon, Libertarian Party national chair. "The fact that Bush is sending troops to Iraq proves he hasn't learned that lesson."

The scandal is is that Bush is a hypocrite for supporting the war in Vietnam. He was all for other people fighting it, rah rah. So, he didn't duck going to Vietnam for reasons of conscience, but because he was a priveleged little princeling who had parties to attend. Now, as a libertarian (but not a Party Animal), I'm all for people avoiding wars for whatever reason, but lying about your reasons later for political expediency and then being a big fat hypocrite who calls himself the "War President" and gets thousands of people killed in a militaristic orgy of violence is a scandal that has nothing to do with Mr. Dixon's "lesson."

Oh, and for everyone who thinks that a criticsm of Lying George is an automatic endorsement of Kerry, here's my obligatory same-post criticism of Kerry. Kerry is a hypocrite for volunteering to go halfway around the world to kill Vietnamese people for the government when he believed it was wrong. Or did he? Was his antiwar position a pose or his gung-ho Silver Star gook-killer phase? Where's the honor in killing people the government points you at? Only state-worshippers who get all misty-eyed and reverent over the prospect of "serving" their masters could give credence to that notion. It's even worse when you know you're fighting under false pretenses. I'd prefer to believe that the antiwar Kerry was the real one, but if it was, I despise him even more now for opportunistically abandoning his antiwar convictions. The truth of the matter is likely that Silver Star Kerry, Antiwar Kerry, and Pro Iraq Invasion Kerry are all politically motivated fakes.

Bush and Kerry: Dominating the Full Spectrum of Hypocrisy.

Commemorating 9/11 in Fallujah

Riverbend:

September 11… he sat there, reading the paper. As he reached out for the cup in front of him for a sip of tea, he could vaguely hear the sound of an airplane overhead. It was a bright, fresh day and there was much he had to do… but the world suddenly went black- a colossal explosion and then crushed bones under the weight of concrete and iron… screams rose up around him… men, women and children… shards of glass sought out tender, unprotected skin … he thought of his family and tried to rise, but something inside of him was broken… there was a rising heat and the pungent smell of burning flesh mingled sickeningly with the smoke and the dust… and suddenly it was blackness.

9/11/01? New York? World Trade Center?

No.

9/11/04. Falloojeh. An Iraqi home.

They were all dead....

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad:

Yesterday, sitting in the office, another photographer who was looking at my pictures exclaimed: "So the Arabiya journalist was alive when you were taking pictures!"

"I didn't see the Arabiya journalist."

He pointed at the picture of the guy with V-neck T-shirt. It was him. He was dead. All the people I had shared my shelter with were dead.

Read about the US Apache assault on Iraqi civilians in Haifa Street, Baghdad.

Here's the BBC video of the Mazin Tumaizi killing on live television.

Israel: Setting your own hair on fire and putting it out with a hammer

Lawrence of Cyberia writes an interesting argument about the genesis of HAMAS, why Al Qaeda has never been involved in the Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation and why Israel's tactics might bring Al Qaeda into Palestine in the future. He introduces this excellent post with this intriguing quotation that you may not have seen:

The Israelis are their own worst enemies when it comes to fighting terrorism. The Israelis are like a guy who sets fire to his hair and then tries to put it out by hitting it with a hammer. They do more to incite and sustain terrorism than curb it.

-- Larry Johnson, Deputy Director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, 1989 - 1993.

Read Careful What You Wish For

Kurdish Follies

In keeping with the US policy of leaving no aspect of the invasion or occupation of Iraq unbotched, the American military is currently assaulting and laying siege to the Turkmen city of Tal Afar. In order to provoke maximum opposition and outrage, they are being assisted in this by the Kurdish peshmerga militia. Patrick Cockburn writes:

American and Iraqi government forces last week sealed off Tal Afar, a city west of Mosul belonging to Iraq's embattled Turkmen minority. The US said it killed 67 insurgents while a Turkmen leader claims 60 civilians were killed and 100 wounded. The massive and indiscriminate use of US firepower in built-up areas, leading to heavy civilian casualties in cities like Tal Afar, Fallujah and Najaf, is coming under increasing criticism in Iraq. The US "came into Iraq like an elephant astride its war machine," said Ibrahim Jaafari, the influential Iraqi Vice President.

The Americans claim that Tal Afar is a hub for militants smuggling fighters and arms into Iraq from nearby Syria. Turkish officials make clear in private they believe that the Kurds, the main ally of the US in northern Iraq, have managed to get US troops involved on their side in the simmering ethnic conflict between Kurds and Turkmen.

"The Iraqi government forces with the Americans are mainly Kurdish," complained one Turkmen source. A Turkish official simply referred to the Iraqi military units involved in the attack on Tal Afar as "peshmerga", the name traditionally given to Kurdish fighters.

The US army account of its aims in besieging Tal Afar is largely at odds with that given by Turkmen and may indicate that its officers are at sea in the complex ethnic mosaic of Iraq. The US says that in recent weeks the city was taken over by anti-American militants who repeatedly attacked US and Iraqi government forces.

"Tal Afar is a tribal city and its people were not patient with the presence of American forces," said Farouq Abdullah Abdul Rahman, the president of the Iraqi Turkmen Front, in Baghdad yesterday. He agreed that there was friction with US forces but denied that anything justified the siege, with many Turkmen close to the front line fleeing into the countryside. "More than 60 people have been killed, including women and children, and 100 wounded."

While igniting the tinderbox of Kurdish-Turkmen ethnic antipathy might seem counterproductive to those of us lacking in counterinsurgency strategery, the prospects for the Kurds must be even more alarming, surrounded as they are by Iraqi Arabs whose resentment of Kurdish collaboration with the US is already smoldering for their participation in the assault on Sunni Fallujah and Shi`ite Najaf.

The turning of massive, indiscriminate fire on cities, especially Turkman cities, has further outraged and infuriated the Turks. Diplomatic ties were already shredded by all around American arrogance as well as the American policy of making promises they have no intention of keeping, as with the repeated vows to do something about the PKK, a rebel group which makes raids into Turkey from their bases in the northern Iraqi mountains. Attacks on the PKK would anger Iraqi Kurds whose 60,000 strong peshmerga militia is needed to augment the insufficient US forces, especially considering the agenda Colin Powell was trotted out to put forth on the talk shows today:

Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that the United States has a plan to quash the insurgency raging in several Iraqi cities and bring those areas under control in time for national elections in January.

Powell acknowledged that the U.S.-led coalition faces a "difficult time," but he said the Bush administration is committed to making Iraq stable.

"This is not the time to get weak in the knees or faint about it, but to drive on and finish the work that we started," he told NBC's "Meet the Press."

The secretary of state said U.S. commanders are working with Iraqi military leaders and the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi to put down the extremists in control of Fallujah and other cities.

The insurgency "will be brought under control," Powell said. "It's not an impossible task." Apparently the US intends to be the first country in history to bomb a guerilla movement into peace, because that what's happening, along with the siege of Tal Afar. Sharon and Putin are undoubtedly watching to see how Bush will succeed where they've failed to crush their anti-occupation guerillas by bombing densely populated urban areas. With much more at stake--like staying alive--are the Kurds, now wholly dependent on the American presence in Iraq. It must be hell to be surrounded by Arabs increasingly hostile to the Kurdish collaboration with the occupation and Syria, Turkey and Iran, all committed to preventing an independent Kurdistan when your only "friends" have not only had no problem selling you out in the past, but are clearly increasingly more desperate as they lurch from failure to violent, bloody failure.

A new approach is needed for protests

I think Matt Taibbi has a great idea here:

In the conformist atmosphere of the late 50s and early 60s, the individual was a threat. Like communist Russia, the system then was so weak that it was actually threatened by a single person standing up and saying, "This is bullshit!"

That is not the case anymore. This current American juggernaut is the mightiest empire the world has ever seen, and it is absolutely immune to the individual. Short of violent crime, it has assimilated the individual's every conceivable political action into mainstream commercial activity. It fears only one thing: organization.

That's why the one thing that would have really shaken Middle America last week wasn't "creativity." It was something else: uniforms. Three hundred thousand people banging bongos and dressed like extras in an Oliver Stone movie scares no one in America. But 300,000 people in slacks and white button-down shirts, marching mute and angry in the direction of Your Town, would have instantly necessitated a new cabinet-level domestic security agency.

Why? Because 300,000 people who are capable of showing the unity and discipline to dress alike are also capable of doing more than just march. Which is important, because marching, as we have seen in the last few years, has been rendered basically useless. Before the war, Washington and New York saw the largest protests this country has seen since the 60s—and this not only did not stop the war, it didn't even motivate the opposition political party to nominate an antiwar candidate.

Read the rest. Any of you who marched in the huge yet futile anti-war protests pre-Iraq invasion will identify with Taibbi's description of the various protester MO's and costumes and the reality of being in a crowd of hundreds of thousand people making a statement that is totally ignored. I know libertarians debated whether it was even counterproductive to march with a bunch of fruitloops and commies and people carrying banners for a variety of pet causes that had nothing to do with opposition to the war. If nothing else, protests have to be focussed to have any effect. It would be interesting to see how many people would have the discipline to turn out to protest in uniform.

Saturday Blog Tour

If you aren't reading James Wolcott's blog, you're missing elegant bullseyes like this.

Elections are about the future. Or so we're constantly told.

But the future has barely made a guest appearance during this election campaign. And not the recent past of no WMDs, Abu Ghraib, and the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden. But in a hazy three-decades-old flashback in which John Kerry is/isn't spending Christmas in Cambodia and George Bush is/isn't showing up for National Guard duty. The entire scuffle between Kerry and Bush's surrogates is stuck in the past and mired in the old, the political operatives and pundits picking through bureaucratic garbage for anything resembling forensic evidence of buried shame. To anyone under the age of forty, these controversies must seem as far-off as the quiz show scandal.

RT figures out Chechnya so you don't have to.

Remember the Iraqi flag flap? Spencer Ackerman points out an interesting item on the Kurds' resentment of the all-Arabic language interim Iraqi national council processes, as well as the fact that the old Saddam-era Iraqi flag is exclusively present at the council meetings, while the Israeli-ish new flag adopted by the first Puppet Council with its Kurd stripe is missing. All this violates the Transitional Administrative Law that the Kurds worked so hard to pass, but apparently the TAL died when it wasn't approved by the UN Security Council.

As long as you're at Spencer's place, his next post is fairly amusing, being a long and involved analysis of a poll of Iraqis that basically demonstrates that Iraqis know what democracy is (Two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner) better than Americans. For example, Spencer highlights the following poll results: Asked which type of government would best secure their individual interests, almost 57 percent chose a "strong, central government," contrasted with 26.7 percent support for "a government in Baghdad made up of representatives from different regions, tribes and sects." [...] Over 60 percent of Iraqis want elections without delay, and nearly 50 percent consider a delay of just one month to be "very unfavorable." Uh, what was the breakdown of Iraqi ethnic groups again? Shiites are 60% of the population? Hmmmm.....

What if the Republican, far-right and warflogger chunk of the blogosphere were as interested in tracking down the mystery of the forged Niger uranium documents as they are in the Killian memos? On the subject of the memos, I think Steven Horwitz is wrong. What this means for his larger point about the blogosphere being a force for liberty, I'm not sure. I do think it's a mistake to take the baying of the warfloggers seriously. Really, The Editors have the right attitude toward the crowd that screamed forgery.

The Angry Arab: "Powell: Key to Mideast progress is stripping Arafat's power. Now Arafat is a certifiable and corrupt buffoon, but how stupid is this statement? Does Powell really think that an end to Arafat would bring about peace? As'ad, I don't see the word "peace" anywhere in Powell's statement. Has anything the Bushie Administration done indicated that it equates "progress" with "peace?"

Via Jim Henley, who got it from Hit & Run, here's George Bush singing sunday bloody sunday.

Ah, zeynep has the links as well as an excellent post on how the CPA ordered the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Health Minister to stop counting Iraqis killed by the invaders. I was looking for that when I wrote this post. Also, see zeynep's next post on a recent callous statement from the ghoul Rumsfeld.

UPDATE: Another excellent post on Rumsfeld's comments here, by Arthur Silber.

Food for thought. That's what you get for being in my referrers, Dan.

Some lovely photos of Compassionate Conservatives at Republican events.

UPDATE: Uh....Okie dokie, then.

What was the name of the 1,000th dead Iraqi killed in the American invasion?

I understand the sentiment and the political message behind demonstrations like this, but every time I see a news account about Americans mourning the "grim milestone" of over a thousand dead in the Iraq War-of-Choice, I can't help but resent the fact that no Americans mourned the 1,000th or even the 10,000th Iraqi killed in the invasion. Americans never even knew when the 1,000th Iraqi was killed because as Tommy Franks famously said, "We don't do body counts."

Michael Badnarik, oxymoron man

Michael Badnarik, the antiwar libertarian candidate for President, manages to issue a statement that's neither anti-war nor libertarian.

Sunni and Shi`a and Kurds, Oh my!

Oh, this is just wonderful.

Via Abu Aardvark, we read:

Two intense military insurgencies in Iraq, with the Sunnis and Shia, not enough for you? Do you agree that everyone wants to fight in Fallujah, but only real men want to go to Kirkuk? Do you think that if a spot of war is good for the soul, then even more must be even better? Do you think that the greater the violence, the more evidence that our policies are working? Then good news for you!

Al Hayat reports that Masoud Barzani, leader of the KDP, has chosen this calm and peaceful moment to re-open the question of the Kurdish identity of Kirkuk and has threatened to "wage a war to defend the Kurdish identity of the city."

Kurdish Leader Ups The Ante Over Disputed Iraqi City

Iraq's Kurds are ready to fight to preserve the identity of the ethnically-divided and oil-rich city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq, one of their historical leaders told AFP Thursday.

"Kirkuk is the heart of Kurdistan and we ready to wage a war in order to preserve its identity and to sacrifice ourselves for what Iraqi Kurds have already achieved," said Massud Barzani.

As I was saying.....

Al-Zawahri: US defeated in Iraq and Afghanistan

Speaking of Al Qaeda, Al Jazeera is playing a new Ayman Al-Zawahri video, in which he taunts the US:

Al-Qaida number two Ayman al-Zawahri has forecast a US "defeat" in Iraq and Afghanistan, in a videotape aired on Aljazeera television.

"The American defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan has become just a question of time, God willing" he said in the tape telecast on Thursday.

"In the two countries, the Americans are between two fires: if they remain there they will bleed to death, and if they withdraw they will have lost everything."

The Mujahidin are in a strong position in Afghanistan and have turned US plans in Iraq "head over heels", al-Zawahri said.

Hiding

In Afghanistan, the Mujahidin have driven US forces to "hide in their trenches", he said.

Al-Zawahri, the right-hand man of al-Qaida leader Usama bin Ladin, was seen wearing a white turban with a machine gun at his side in the videotape.

In the tape, shown two days before the third anniversary of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States, he said, "east and south Afghanistan have become an open arena for the Mujahidin. The enemy is limited to the capitals."

Defence

"The Americans are hiding in their trenches and refuse to come out to face the Mujahidin, as the Mujahidin shell them, fire on them and cut roads off around them," he said. "Their defence is only to bomb by air."

Imaginary "security forces" arrest imaginary terrorists

I love stories like this:

Iraqi Security Forces Detained 4 Al Qaeda Members

Baghdad. Iraqi Prime Minister Allawi announced that security forces have detained four members of international terrorist group Al Qaeda, MIG News announced. According to him, they have been detained yesterday but he has not given any details on the operation.

What were these guys doing, wearing their Al Qaeda team jerseys? These stories also require one to believe that the Allawi puppet government has suddenly developed "security forces," when the available evidence shows that the "Iraqi police" and "Iraqi National Guard" exist more in the imaginations of the puppets and the Occupation than in reality, kind of like the imaginary Al Duri arrest. Call me cynical, but when I read something like this, I envision the US arresting some Syrian wedding singers or Saudi Wahabbi clerics or something and then telling Allawi to announce the capture of "Al Qaeda operatives" by "Iraqi police."

Cosmic justice?

Israel's Ofek-6 is spat out of the sky like a big metal loogy.

The Qalqilya Arab pen