UnFairWitness

Wolcott on Taibbi on Time

Mark Gisleson at Norwegianity directed me to this James Wolcott post, What kind of a maniac puts eagles in a Christmas tree?, that I, devoted Wolcott reader though I am, somehow missed. Here are just three sentences of Wolcott on Matt Taibbi's Time Person of the Year article to demonstrate why you should read this post:

The annual Whatzit of the Year allows the editorial brass to rise above the trendy transient and serve as clerks of posterity, judges of History. Without fail we get the same pre-announcement buildup to the big ho-hum moment. Items in the press about the deliberation process, the "lively editorial debate"--a euphemism that implies some hothead wiping the mustard from his mouth, tossing the crumpled napkin on the conference table, and flouncing out at the very idea of enshrining so-and-so on the cover.

Matt Taibbi:

The "Person of the Year" issue has always been a symphonic tribute to the heroic possibilities of pompous sycophancy, but the pomposity of this year's issue bests by a factor of at least two or three the pomposity of any previous issue. From the Rushmorean cover portrait of Bush (which over the headline "An American Revolutionary" was such a brazen and transparent effort to recall George Washington that it was embarrassing) to the "Why We Fight" black-and-white portraiture of the aggrieved president sitting somberly at the bedside of the war-wounded, this issue is positively hysterical in its iconolatry. One even senses that this avalanche of overwrought power worship is inspired by the very fact of George Bush's being such an obviously unworthy receptacle for such attentions. From beginning to end, the magazine behaves like a man who knocks himself out making an extravagant six-course candlelit dinner for a blow-up doll, in an effort to convince himself he's really in love.

Definitely Metaphor of the Year.

New and Improved CYA Torture Memo from the Justice Department!

It seems the looming confirmation hearings of Alberto "Torture is OK" Gonzales may be causing some behind the scenes turmoil, as evidenced by this article by NY Times international editor Andrew Rosenthal today, coupled with a New and Improved CYA Torture Memo from the US Justice Department. (Here's the memo in PDF.) The torture memo, according to Jess Bravin in the Wall Street Journal (locked behind subscription, but Phil Carter quotes it here), "concludes that even under its wider definition of torture, none of the interrogation methods previously approved by the Justice Department would be illegal." In case you were worried that anyone in the Bush administration broke the law or anything.

Rosenthal mentions the JAG controversy of last spring (I wrote about it here, and if you need to refresh your memory of the role of the delightful Mary Walker, see Billmon's post from last spring, Praise the Lord and Pass the Thumbscrews) which makes me wonder if that controversy is still percolating behind the scenes and if they're the ones refusing to go along with the...um, government self-exoneration. Rosenthal writes,

This month, several former high-ranking military lawyers came out publicly against the nomination of the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to be attorney general. They noted that it was Mr. Gonzales who had supervised the legal assault on the Geneva Conventions.

Jeh Johnson, a New York lawyer who was general counsel for the secretary of the Air Force under President Clinton, calls this shift "a revolution."

"One view of the law and government," Mr. Johnson said, "is that good things can actually come out of the legal system and that there is broad benefit in the rule of law. The other is a more cynical approach that says that lawyers are simply an instrument of policy - get me a legal opinion that permits me to do X. Sometimes a lawyer has to say, 'You just can't do this.' "

Normally, the civilian policy makers would have asked the military lawyers to draft the rules for a military prison in wartime. The lawyers for the service secretaries are supposed to focus on issues like contracts, environmental impact statements and base closings. They're not supposed to meddle in rules of engagement or military justice.

But the civilian policy makers knew that the military lawyers would never sanction tossing the Geneva Conventions aside in the war against terrorists. Military lawyers, Mr. Johnson said, "tend to see things through the prism of how it will affect their people if one gets captured or prosecuted."

Well, no one in the White House or Pentagon need worry about getting captured or prosecuted, so their more freewheeling approach to torturing prisoners is at least understandable from that perspective. No wonder Rosenthal says, "Now America has to count on the military to step up when the civilians get out of control." So much for civilian control of the military those old Founding Father types thought was important. They clearly never imagined a Bush Administration or a War on Terrah.

Iraqi Desperation Watch

After reading my post yesterday quoting Lt. Col. Paul Hastings as saying, "The terrorists are growing more desperate in their attempts to derail the elections and they're trying to put it all on the line and give it all they can," the author of the blog Hairy Fish Nuts sent a link to Desperation Watch, his collection of "desperate" quotes. So, there's another thing to start bothering me as I read articles about Iraq. The desperate theme is almost as irritating as "anti-Iraqi forces" used to describe the resistance.

But, another thing about the "desperate" post seemed relevant this morning.

The former regime elements have watched Tikrit . . . slip away from their grasp over a period of time to the point where they have minimal influence over the local situation. They are desperate.

December 29, 2004 - spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division Maj. Neal O'Brien

You'd think that if the resistance had "minimal influence" over Tikrit, the US would use it's stretched-thin manpower elsewhere, wouldn't you? Like in Mosul, maybe.

Elections - Mission Accomplished again

Something Eli said the other day has been bugging me when I read news articles about the Iraqi resistance, because I never really noticed it before.

With MacWorld approaching, I'm reminded of the famous Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. But Jobs has got nothing on the U.S. and Israeli governments, and the Reality Distortion Field they cast on the American corporate media.

Virtually every single attack by Iraqi insurgents these days is heralded in the media as "an attempt to derail the upcoming elections." Not once have I heard an attack described as "an attempt to expel the American occupiers" or, perhaps less provocatively, as "an attempt to weaken the American resolve to continue their occupation of Iraq." Even today, when there were a series of attacks not on elected officials or candidates but Iraqi police and National Guard, a Reuters article links the attacks to bin Laden's message about the elections yesterday, notwithstanding the fact that bin Laden simply called for a boycott of the elections, and did not call for a "holy war" on elections on Reuters claims.

I came across this perfect example of where this is coming from today :

Insurgents tried to ram a truck with half a ton of explosives into a U.S. military post in the northern city of Mosul on Thursday then ambushed reinforcements in a huge gunbattle in which 25 rebels and one American soldier were killed. Warplanes fired missiles and strafed gunmen during the fight.

The assault on the outpost, which U.S. soldiers finally repulsed, appeared to be better coordinated than past attacks, with guerrillas apparently pulling out their strongest assaults in an effort to derail Jan. 30 elections, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Paul Hastings said.

"The terrorists are growing more desperate in their attempts to derail the elections and they're trying to put it all on the line and give it all they can," Hastings said.

Right. It isn't the occupation, it's the elections. That's why they're attacking the US and anyone collaborating with the US. After the "elections," which the US has already admitted will do nothing to stop the resistance, what will the next excuse be? I can already hear it. "They just don't want Iraq to have a constitution," they'll say as they continue to occupy the country, and Americans and Iraqis continue to die. We just go from one Mission Accomplished moment to the next.

Will expatriate Iraqis decide the election?

Various ideas for dealing with Sunni abstinence from the elections slated to be held in Iraq have been floated recently from everyone from the USG to the current Iraqi authorities and Osama bin Laden. The problem seems to flow from the fact that the Iraqi vote, instead of being regional, is national. If the elections were regional, those provinces which were unable to hold elections would be unrepresented until they were able to fill their slots, which would be a reasonable situation to manage. However, the elections are wide open instead, with each individual Iraqi voting for a list of candidates. Each list will be seated depending on the percentage of the vote it attracts - from Iraqis all over the world.

According to Edward Wong in the New York Times, the decision to allow exiled Iraqis to vote in the election, finalized in early November, exacerbated the tensions between the minority Sunnis and the majority Shi`a:

Iraqi electoral officials said Thursday they would allow millions of Iraqis outside the country to vote in the coming election. The decision, made after weeks of anguished debate, appeared certain to increase tensions among the minority Sunni Arabs here, because most Iraqi expatriates are believed to be Shiites.

"We've decided to allow Iraqis abroad to vote, and the mechanism will be worked out in the coming days," said Adel al-Lami, a supervisor for the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, charged with organizing the country's first democratic elections, scheduled for January. "The voting will take place in those countries with a large number of Iraqis." Those 18 and older will be eligible, he added.

The United Nations and the United States had recommended strongly against allowing expatriate voting because such polling is notoriously difficult to organize and because the process is more prone to irregularities and charges of fraud. Such problems arising could threaten the legitimacy of the election, United Nations and American officials said.

But leading Shiite and Kurdish politicians, as well as Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, strongly supported expatriate voting. Carlos Valenzuela, the leader of the United Nations electoral advisory team, said the dangers had been made clear to them. "We've told them from point one that it's a very risky business,'' he said. "People don't realize the potential implications of this. They're huge - practical, logistical, political. And all this has to be done in the time frame allotted."

Clearly, if the elections had been regional, with seats allotted to each province, the expatriate vote would have been impossible. So it seems that once again the Iraqi Governing Council, which drew up the election rules, being mostly exiles themselves, sought to include the exile vote, and that is why there is now no practical answer to the problem of the Sunni boycott, despite all the plans currently being suggested.

There are an estimated 15 million eligible voters in Iraq. There are an estimated 4 million expatriate Iraqis, mostly Shi`a, eligible to vote. Somebody did the math.

Maybe it doesn't even matter if there's an election inside Iraq at all.

Unfiltered Photos From Iraq, Including Dead Iraqis

Posted by Russ Kick at the Memory Hole:

Unfiltered Photos From Iraq, Including Dead Iraqis

Where's the conservative outrage at US torture of prisoners?

Via Matt Welch at Reason, on the recently discovered FBI torture memos:

The FBI memos, which included more graphic descriptions of detainee abuse (including "strangulation, beatings, [and] placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings"), bore an uncanny resemblance to previous accusations made by 10 Gitmo prisoners. They are also consistent with two years' worth of evidence that the Bush Administration has consistently sought legal wiggle-room to expand the limits on what the U.S. military (or the countries it cooperates with) can do to the people it captures.

The news was something of a last straw for a weblogger known as Publius, who on Dec. 21 published a much-linked "Conservative Case for Outrage," which posed a question that's been asked a few times before: Where's the outrage from prominent conservatives?

An excerpt from Publius's insightful post:

If the prisoner torture should piss off anyone, it should piss off Iraq hawks the most. Although my views of the war are well-known, I know that there were many good-faith supporters of the war who believed strongly in the cause and who believe strongly in democracy promotion. But there is nothing – and I mean nothing – that undermines our efforts and our mission more than the torture of Muslims, especially when that torture is coldly calculated to exploit Arabs’ religious views. The whole thing has a level of sophistication far beyond what nineteen-year old reservists from West Virginia could devise. And to those we most need to persaude, it vindicates bin Laden’s claims that we are hostile to Islam.

You can’t defeat an insurgency – whether in Iraq or in the war on terror, which is essentially a global insurgency – by military force alone. That’s because an insurgency isn’t finite. Its numbers and resources expand and contract with public opinion. (This is the main reason why the whole "so-we-don't-fight-them-at-home" line doesn't make much sense, logically speaking. Our efforts have increased the ranks of those that hate us.) We can raze every city in the Sunni Triangle (and we’re well on our way), but we will never defeat an elastic insurgency if we can’t win the hearts and minds of the local population. If you care about the success of this mission, both in Iraq and more globally, logic demands outrage. I mean, imagine if an Islamic army conquered America. Then imagine if you watched your countrymen get raped, tortured, and murdered by a foreign army who you didn’t really like anyway. Do you think you’d sign up for the Iraq 2.0 police squad or would you join the local insurgency with your family and childhood friends?

When the administration authorized torture, it threatened our troops and it threatened our mission, most likely fatally and beyond any hope of recovery. It is hard to underestimate the damage caused by the ripples of Abu Ghraib.

Read the rest here, and Matt's article at Reason in which he tries to answer the question posed by Publius.

To help begin to locate an answer, I conducted Lexis searches on "Abu Ghraib," "prison," "abuse," and the names of three prominent conservative commentators: William Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and Rich Lowry.

Also, see this post at Matt's own blog where he writes about an interesting interview he ran across while researching the Reason article from the ancient history (last spring) of the first assault on Fallujah.

Kurds present secession petition to UN

There are approximately 3 million Kurds living in Iraq. 1.7 of them have signed a petition requesting independence, which was handed to the UN Wednesday, December 22.

A Referendum Movement in Kurdistan spokesman says a delegation from their organisation has travelled to the United Nations headquarters in New York to hand over the petition.

"The signatures were collected in towns across Iraqi Kurdistan," spokesman Karwan Abdullah said.

The movement's campaign is not supported by Iraq's two main Kurdish former rebel groups - the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan - which have long limited their demands to autonomy within a federal constitution for fear of offending Iraq's powerful neighbours.

The independence campaigners charge that the two factions, which ran three northern provinces in defiance of Saddam Hussein before last year's US-led invasion, are unrepresentative and that most Iraqi Kurds want to break away.

Since early October, they have organised a series of rallies in Kurdish cities in a bid to prove their support.

Emphasis mine.

Israel arrests Mustafa Barghouti

Yesterday the Israelis adopted measures to "facilitate" the Palestinian elections. One might wonder how arresting Mustafa Barghouti fits the Israeli definition of election facilitation. Maybe they mean that they're facilitating the election of a specific candidate? At least they haven't beaten Barghouti up again. Yet.

Gmail

I have 5 4 invitations if anyone wants them. Use the email link on the sidebar and ask for one.

No Happy Holidays for Fallujah

BBC reports: BBC News spoke to Dr Saleh Hussein Isawi, the acting director of the Falluja general hospital, who accompanied some of the refugees into the city.

I was there, inside the city - about 60% to 70% of the homes and buildings are completely crushed and damaged, and not ready to inhabit at the moment.

Of the 30% still left standing, I don't think there is a single one that has not been exposed to some damage.

One of my colleagues... went to see his home, and saw that it is almost completely collapsed and everything is burnt inside.

When he went to his neighbours' home, he found a relative of his was dead and a dog had eaten the meat off him.

I think we will see many things like this, because the US forces have cleared the dead people from the streets, but not from inside the homes.

Link via Jews sans frontieres

From Left I on the News:

In Iraq, less than a thousand residents of Fallujah have returned in two days; an estimated 200,000 had fled. Sure, they'll be ready for elections on January 30...2006. Of course that would be assuming that any of the returnees actually stay, which seems unlikely given the lack of water, electricity...or houses.

Video of Mosul suicide bombing posted on the web

Ansar Al-Sunna has posted a video of the attack on the US base FOB Marez in Mosul. Astonishingly, they filmed the actual explosion, then drove around the base in order to get a good shot of the gaping hole in the tent. They introduce the tape with a segment in which an Ansar al-Sunna fighter uses a map of the base to show how the attack was accomplished. The bomber is shown receiving farewell hugs before departing on his mission.

UPDATE: CBS has posted translation of some of the dialogue on the video:

In the new video, which carried a Dec. 20 date on the footage, three guerrillas clad in black, wearing face masks and carrying AK-47 automatic rifles describe their plans.

One of the men read a statement saying another of the three identified as Abu Omar al-Musali would carry the attack by breaking into the base through the perimeter fence. The man reading the statement later embraced the bomber, who was wearing an explosives-laden vest

``He will take advantage of the change of guards. We have been observing their schedule for a long time. This lion will then proceed to his target and we will take advantage of lunch time. He will storm the dining room where the crusaders and their (Iraqi) allies are gathered,'' said the man.
[...]
The man reading the statement indicated with a rifle bayonet to a hand drawn map of the base. He also addressed a warning to President Bush, and prime ministers Tony Blair and Ayad Allawi of Britain and Iraq.

``Let Bush, Blair and Allawi know that we are coming and that we will chase them all away, God willing,'' the masked man said.

Merry Christmas!

"What Christmas ribbon?"

Rumsfeld sent to Mosul

Wow, they're really trying to get rid of Rumsfeld:

Rumsfeld in Mosul to Spread Christmas Cheer

Ansar al-Sunna rubbing salt in the wound...

Ansar al-Sunna taunts the US:

"First they said it was a mortar or rockets, then they said it was a suicide operation with local materials, and so on," the statement on Ansar al-Sunna's website said.

"Are they really this stupid, that they still don't know how they've been hit, or was it too painful to admit?" it said.

The statement, dated December 23, repeated a claim on Wednesday that one of the group's "martyrs" had carried out the attack.

For a more complete victory Ansar al Sunna needs the Americans to overreact and go on a rampage in Mosul, thus turning more of the locals against them. The US may be obliging.

"Hajjis" and Exploding Body Armor

More information is surfacing about the Mosul suicide bomber:

"I am concerned about ... copycat attacks," said Brigadier General Carter Ham, the U.S. commander in Mosul where the bomber killed 18 Americans and three Iraqi National Guards on Tuesday in a pre-Christmas lunchtime blast at a crowded base mess tent.
[...]
He said the bomber probably wore an Iraqi uniform of the kind increasingly common on U.S. bases as Americans train local forces that they hope will allow them to go home.

The blast creates a nightmare dilemma for troops battling insurgents bent on disrupting a January 30 election. They not only see increasingly sophisticated ambushes while on patrol but now also face a deadly threat to the bases where they eat and sleep.
[...]
It seemed possible the explosives and ball bearings were disguised as body armour.

To get an idea of how FOB Marez is run, see this post by Jeff Taylor at Hit and Run, who quotes a soldier describing the various services there, like what they call "Hajji Shops" run by Iraqis. While I was reading through blogs, I came across another soldier who adds this intriguing bit of information:

There are a lot more hagi shops here on Marez as well. Hagi is of course the nickname, derogatory or otherwise, for the Iraqis. There are barbers shops, tailor shops, gift shops, and miscellaneous overpriced stuff shops. They will sell you anything, and it's all priced at about ten times its worth. The thing about the hagi shops here on Marez is that they aren't run by Iraqis, most of them are Turkish. We have learned that there used to be Iraqis from Mosul that came into the FOB to work, but not anymore. Apparently the insurgents would target these civilians. So after a number of them were murdered and or decapitated, no one wanted to work here anymore. And so it goes.

All this to say that it seems more likely that the bomber had infiltrated the Iraqi National Guard. It's a devastating blow for the US, not only because of the immediately apparent casualties, but in the wedge driven between the US forces and the Iraqis in the Guard. The trust level was hardly high in the first place and now every soldier will be wondering which Iraqi Guard will explode next. The news is full of US military commanders talking about how to thighten up security, but the reality is that tightened security isn't possible without a change in mission. As long as the American exit plan is all about "training" Iraqi security the risk exists that the troops are exposed to resistance infiltrators. Background checks, etc. to "vet" trainees are next to useless in chaotic Iraq.

Mosul attack was a suicide bomber

If it is true, as now seems likely, that a suicide bomber is behind the carnage at the US base in Mosul yesterday, the fact that the troops were eating in a tent rather than a hardened facility may have actually saved lives, since the force of the explosion escaped upward rather than being contained.

A Tent?

An interesting comment from Abbas Kadhim:

As I recall it from my days in Mosul, Al-Ghizlani is one of the largest military facilities in Iraq. It has all kinds of places to have a dining room. Why would anyone have a tent for such gatherings?

Explosion at US Base in Mosul

Multiple casualties being reported. Atrios posts that CNN says 22 killed. Developing.

UPDATE:Reuters: The Pentagon says 22 people have killed in a blast at a U.S. military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, CNN has reported.

UPDATE: (Reuters) - At least 22 people were killed and 50 others wounded in a rocket and mortar attack against a U.S. military base in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, a defense official at the Pentagon said on Tuesday.

UPDATE: AP - The Ansar al-Sunnah Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on the Internet. It said the attack was a "martyrdom operation" targeting a mess hall in the al-Ghizlani camp.

Most reports claim that the dining hall came under rocket or mortar attack, so it's unclear how this was a "martyrdom" operation.

Pictures the media won't show

Last April, Russ Kick of the Memory Hole broke the embargo on showing the flag-draped caskets of America's war dead as they return home.

Now, in his series The Purple Heart Project, Aaron Huey tells the rest of the story.

Bookmark the Purple Heart Project because it is an ongoing project which will be updated as Aaron takes new photographs.

US out of Iraq?

Justin Logan has an intriguing take on why the neocons are suddenly piling on Rumsfeld:

Rumsfeld wants out of Iraq, and the neocons are scared to death that he'll succeed.

Go here for the rest of his argument.

Dramatic photos from Iraq

From Reuters, December 17, 2004, Fallujah

Combination handout pictures released on December 17, 2004, (Upper L frame) showing U.S. Marine Platoon Gunnery Sergeant, Ryan P. Shane, from the 1st. Battalion of the 8th. Marine Regiment as he pulls a fatally wounded comrade to safety while under fire during a military operation in the Iraqi western city of Falluja. (Upper R frame) Shane and another member of the 1/8 pulled their fatally wounded comrade under fire. (Lower L frame) Shane (extreme, L) is hit by insurgent fire and (Lower R frame) lies wounded (L). REUTERS/HO/USMC/Cpl. Joel A. Chaverri

On the same day this was happening in Fallujah the Iraqi "government" was saying Fallujah was all ready for the refugees' return. The Marines were forced to issue a denial.

From Baghdad today, Sunday, December 19, 2004:

A gunman, left, shoots and kills a man lying in Baghdad's Haifa Street after being pulled from a car Sunday, Dec. 19, 2004. The man at right on his knees was executed moments later, along with another man not shown in picture. About 30 militants hurling hand grenades and firing machine guns attacked a car carrying five people employed by the commission's Baghdad office and tried 'to drag them out,' said Adel al-Lami, a member of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq. (AP Photo/Str)

Related story: Three electoral employees killed in Iraq

This happened, obviously, in broad daylight near the Green Zone (Haifa street is in downtown Baghdad.) Reuters describes the scene:

Witnesses said insurgents opened fire on the vehicle before dragging three people from it and shooting them. The car was set on fire and the bodies left lying near the burning wreckage.

Guerrillas armed with AK-47 assault rifles and pistols then set up a roadblock on the street, stopping and searching every car that passed, pointing their guns in through the windows.

Fierce gunbattles ensued, witnesses said, as police tried for several hours to get to the scene of the attack. U.S. military helicopters flew low overhead scanning the area, which echoed with gunfire and small explosions, residents said.

Tony Blair: Woof! Woof, woof!

Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert to Tony Blair:

Sit! Down! Good doggie. Now, beg!

The Havana Billboard War

In Havana, Cuba vs. the US Billboard Competition

The American entry:

The Cuban entry:

Advantage: Cuba

HAVANA, Dec 17 (AFP) - Cuba on Friday put up pictures of US soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison across the street from Christmas decorations at the US mission that highlight Cuban dissidents.

An enormous billboard put up on the road in front of the US special interest section offices said: "Fascists Made In USA".

Cuba complained this week to the chief US representative in Havana, James Cason, after the mission put up Christmas decorations which included a neon 75 -- a pointed reference to 75 Cuban dissidents detained by the communist authorities last year.

UPDATE: A reader requested more detailed pictures of the Cuban billboard, saying that the ones being shown in the US media are oblique shots that obscure the pictures and message, so here they are, from the Sydney Morning Herald and the UK Telegraph. (click to enlarge)

Questions about the Iraqi Elections

Brendan at Stand Down asks some interesting questions about the Iraqi elections:

The key question are these. Amidst all the prattling about influences of 'foreign powers' the influence of one very important foreign power has been minimised.
But there are important questions to be asked.

• Will the US be allowed to channel funds to its preferred candidate(s)? (ie. Allawi).
• Current UN resolution 1546 states unequivocally that the current mandate for the 'multi-national force' expires in June next year, and that in order to prolong this mandate this has to be done via the Iraqi government, such as it is. The mechanism for how this might be the case, however, has not been made clear, and the question remains; will a simple majority of Iraqi parties/politicians suffice to pass a motion to ask the troops to leave, or will minority parties be able to halt any such move?
• Where do the Kurds stand in all this? Will it be legal for the troops to be asked to leave the rest of Iraq, but not Kurdistan?

I have a couple more questions. In light of this:

"This election, for me, will be the happiest moment in my life, because it means we will end the occupation," said Ahmad al-Asadi, who sells mobile phones from a little store alongside the Kadhimiya mosque, a Shiite shrine.

That's how Shiite leaders are pitching the vote: as a chance to end America's military presence in Iraq peacefully, through the ballot box. It also is a chance for Iraq's long-downtrodden Shiites, who account for 60 percent of the population, to throw off centuries of oppression by the Sunni minority and take a commanding role in the country's government.

What is the US planning to do when the Shiites either 1) Vote for the troops to get out, or 2) Rise up in frustrated anger when they find out the US has some sort of plan to block the new parliament from asking them to leave? What will the Kurds do if the Shiites tell the US to get out?

Another question: What if the Shiites declare Basra the capital of the New Iraq? Why would they want it to be in Baghdad, after all? Is there any law that says that the capital of Iraq must be Baghdad, smack in the center of the resistance? Basra would be so much more convenient for the majority Shia, and much easier to secure. What's left in Baghdad that qualifies it as the capital, the American Embassy Fortress in the Green Zone? So what?

Missile Defense Dud

Upon seeing the news of the missile defense system test failure, I of course rushed over to Defense Tech to see how they characterized this monstrous boondoggle:

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY: MISSILE DEFENSE BOOSTER FAILS TO RISE TO THE OCCASSION

US Soldiers show off their Hillbilly Armor

From the film "Gunner Palace" here's a film clip showing what US soldiers think of their Hillbilly Armored Humvees.

QuickTime movie clip.

Link via Political Animal

A message from the Iraqi Resistance.

Here.

Judge it for yourself.

"And to George W. Bush: You have asked us to "Bring it on." And, so have we, like never expected.

Have you another challenge?"

WMV downloadable file here. Please download rather than hotlink.

Yuschenko: Don't investigate poisoning

Yuschenko isn't interested in finding out who tried to murder him until after the election.

Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko called for a serious investigation to determine how he was poisoned by dioxin, but urged it be conducted after the December 26 presidential run-off election to avoid influencing the results.
[..]
"I don't want this factor to influence the election in some way - either as a plus or a minus," Yuschenko said in Russian as he left the clinic and headed back to Kiev.

"This question will require a great deal of time and serious investigation. Let us do it after the election - today is not the moment."

Maybe it's just me, but I think if someone tried to kill me, I'd want to know who it was. Also, I'm trying to imagine how an investigation would affect the election. It's kind of central to the election already, isn't it?

Fallujah Reconstruction Report

I thought I'd do a report on Fallujah Reconstruction:

American warplanes pounded Fallujah with missiles Sunday as insurgents fought running battles with coalition forces in the volatile western Iraqi city. The U.S. military said two troops died in separate incidents.

Well, OK then!

Power Out across Iraq

Fire at power plant knocks out power to much of Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) _ Electricity is out across a wide region of Iraq after a fire broke out in a power plant north of Baghdad.

The capital went dark in the late afternoon, and power was still out three hours later. The only lights are in the Green Zone and the few other place with their own generators.

Witnesses in several other parts of the country -- including Basra to the south and Najaf to the southwest -- also are reporting blackouts.

In Iraq, the front line is everywhere at once

Via the indispensable Yankeedoodle at Iraq Today, we find this interesting article by Phil Carter in the NY Times. Phil argues that the Great Armor Crisis is due to the US military fighting a conflict in which there are no front lines with equipment designed for support behind the front lines.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, however, the military has slowly recognized that its fundamental assumptions about warfare are being rendered obsolete. In Somalia, American troops faced guerrillas adept at trapping military convoys in ambushes in urban areas. In Bosnia, partisans on both sides used land mines to great effect, making every road a potential hazard. And now in Iraq, the insurgency has transformed the battlefield into one that is both nonlinear and noncontiguous, with sporadic fighting flaring up in isolated spots around the country.

Simply put, there are no more front lines. In slow recognition, the Army purchased light armored vehicles in the late 1990's for its military police to conduct peacekeeping, and more recently spent billions of dollars to outfit several brigades with Stryker medium-weight armored vehicles, which are impervious to most small arms and rocket-propelled grenades and can be deployed anywhere in the world by airplane.

But the fact that there is no longer a front line also means there aren't any more "rear" areas where support units can operate safely. Support units must now be prepared to face the same enemy as the infantry, but are having to do so in trucks with canvas doors and fiberglass hoods because Pentagon procurement planners never expected they'd have to fight. Remember that Pfc. Jessica Lynch, the Iraq invasion's most celebrated prisoner of war, was a supply clerk with a maintenance company.

Americans who have never served in the military may not realize the scale of the problem. Napoleon's army may have marched on its stomach, but ours requires a juggernaut of mechanics, medics, logisticians and truck drivers carrying everything from ammunition to underwear to keep moving. As a general rule, these support troops outnumber combat soldiers by about seven to one.

Phil has additional commentary on his own article on his blog, Intel Dump.

However, there remains a giant elephant in the room: equipment. The Army's "MTOE's" — "modified table of organization and equipment" — have not changed much, except for organizational changes such as the move to create "units of action" that are more flexible and modular. Unfortunately, these units still contain much of the same flawed equipment allocations, such as light-skinned vehicles with no armor to protect the crew and too few crew-served weapons for force protection. These MTOEs were drawn up a long time ago. Though they have been revised many times, they have not been changed to incorporate the new realities of warfare. That's a real problem, and it's one that must be fixed.

For more detail on the problem, visit Noah Schachtman at Defense Tech, here and here. Those posts point out the issues involved in acquiring new equipment and armor kits for equipment already deployed. Considering the unexpected levels of wear and the enormous resupply effort required for simply keeping the equipment already in Iraq running, one wonders how the addition of some 12,000 troops, many light infantry (i.e. no armored vehicles - the 82nd Airborne currently deploying is an example) will affect the current crisis. More troops mean not only more possible targets for the resistance, but also far more supplies.

Marwan's demands from Fatah

Marwan Barghouti has released a set of demands for withdrawing from the Palestinian election. See them here. A couple of them are conditions on Israel, so it looks like Marwan will be running in the election.

Bernie's "Nanny Problem"

More than you ever wanted to know about Bernie Kerik, from Doug Ireland.

Link via Jesse Walker at Hit and Run

Kevin Drum gets snarky:

But wait — that's not the funny part. Newsweek's Mark Hosenball reports today that Kerik actually had more serious problems:

Kerik, who recently made millions in the private sector, once filed for personal bankruptcy as a New York cop. And just five years ago he was in financial trouble over a condominium he owned in New Jersey. More serious trouble than anyone realized: Newsweek has discovered that a New Jersey judge in 1998 had issued an arrest warrant as part of a convoluted series of lawsuits relating to unpaid bills on his condo.

Still not laughing? Here's what's amusing: apparently nanny problems are now so common and well accepted that they've become a standard excuse to cover up more serious offenses. Heck, it almost makes you a martyr, since the chattering classes unanimously agree that nanny issues are trivial — it's just so hard to find good help these days — and are used mostly as political payback anyway.

Remember that the next time you think the cops are closing in on you for selling secrets to the Russians or something. Just confess to a nanny problem! Everyone will believe you, the cops will suddenly understand why you've been acting shifty, and you might even get some sympathy in the bargain. It's perfect!

It'll take some real effort for the Bushies to come up with someone even worse than Bernie, but they do have a talent for that sort of thing.

The giraffe in the kitchen

zeynep at Under the Same Sun is in Venezuela looking for good news, but Jonathan Schwartz has the keys to the blog. As zeynep says, Johnathan " also writes about the scary stuff but he's funny."

Read Jonathan on the giraffe in the kitchen.

Chalabi: The Energizer Bunny of Iraq

Chalabi interview over at Pipeshaven. It's like listening to two ventriloquists' dummies having a conversation.

Chalabi: Elections are a prerequisite for peace and security in Iraq now.

He found that out by taking a poll in Fallujah.

Chalabi: The days of using violence to hold this country together are over.

Apparently, he didn't read Rumsfeld's latest pronouncement.

Read it here, if you can stand it.

The Nightmare that is Fallujah

I ran across this picture from Fallujah last night. I'm going to make it a thumbnail image, so those who can't bear looking at a photo of a dog dining on an Iraqi, please just don't click on it. I think everyone should look at it, though, because this is the result of the US military's Fallujah Solution.

That picture, and the accompanying story describing how dogs eating corpses has created a rabies threat in Fallujah, is horrifying enough, but now we have Dahr Jamail's gallery of photos from Fallujah. I'm just going to quote Helena's reaction to viewing them and ask everyone to read her post before viewing the album.

I'm weeping inside of me. What can we do about this? How can we explain to that majority of US citizens that seems still to support this war the depths of depravity to which it has led?

This is only the beginning of the exposure of the Fallujah horrors.

Dahr Jamail's Gallery

"Abducted" Marine charged with desertion

Remember this guy?

Apparently his getaway didn't work out very well:

'Abducted' Marine's desertion charge

A US Marine who was reported abducted in Iraq and later turned up in his native Jordan was charged today with desertion.

Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun was charged following a five month investigation into his June disappearance from a US military camp near Fallujah, Iraq, according a statement from the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

Corporal Hassoun, of West Jordan, Utah, is accused of taking unauthorised leave from the unit where he served as an Arabic interpreter.

He is also is charged with the loss of government property and the theft of a military firearm for allegedly leaving the Marine camp while still in possession of his 9mm service pistol, as well as theft and wrongful appropriation of a government vehicle.

UPDATE: An alert reader points out that Hassoun is a native of Lebanon, not Jordan.

Military Care for the Wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan

There have been a quite a few reports in the news the past day on the higher survival rate of US soldiers due to superior body armor and trauma care based on the report in the New England Journal of Medicine, Casualties of War — Military Care for the Wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan

Each Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Defense provides an online update of American military casualties (the number of wounded or dead) from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.1 According to this update, as of November 16, 2004, a total of 10,726 service members had suffered war injuries. Of these, 1361 died, 1004 of them killed in action; 5174 were wounded in action and could not return to duty; and 4191 were less severely wounded and returned to duty within 72 hours. No reliable estimates of the number of Iraqis, Afghanis, or American civilians injured are available. Nonetheless, these figures represent, by a considerable margin, the largest burden of casualties our military medical personnel have had to cope with since the Vietnam War.

Read the rest here. The accompanying pictures, Caring for the Wounded in Iraq — A Photo Essay,(warning...they are very graphic) are also available here.

Al-Sadr may not be on Sistani's Shiite list

AFP is reporting that Moqtada al-Sadr is not on the list assembled by Ayatollah al-Sistani's United Iraqi Alliance.

The United Iraqi Alliance, backed by highly revered Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, includes the Dawa party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, Dawa's Ali Adib said.

But Moqtada al-Sadr, whose militia battled US-led forces in Baghdad and Najaf before calling a truce, "is not on the list" after not registering his movement for the elections, said Hussein Shahrastani, a member of the coalition's organising committee.

Oddly, several reports still claim that the Sadrists are on the list.

Roasted Rumsfeld

Spencer Ackerman has the whole transcript of Rumsfeld's Kuwait Roasting, in addition to the armor issue the US media focussed on. A sample:

Q: Yes, sir. I was wanting to know why I cannot enlist as a single parent in the regular Army, but I can enlist in the National Guard and be deployed?

...

Q: Specialist Skarwin (Sp?) HHD 42nd Engineer Brigade. Mr. Secretary [Cheers] my question is with the current mission of the National Guard and Reserves being the same as our active duty counterparts, when are more of our benefits going to line up to the same as theirs, for example, retirement? [Cheers] [Applause]

...

Q: Good morning, sir. Staff Sergeant Latazinsky (sp) 1st COSCOM (sp), Fort Bragg, [Cheers] North Carolina. Yes, sir. My husband and myself, we both joined a volunteer Army. Currently, I'm serving under the Stop Loss Program. I would like to know how much longer do you foresee the military using this program?

Read the rest...

Hey, Rumsfeld, you disgusting, pitiful excuse for a human being, at least you can't lie to Spc. Cody Wentz of Williston, N.D. anymore.

Fallujah - a US Prison Camp?

Chris Albritton critiques one of George Paine's Warblogging posts which analyzes the authoritarian utopia planned for Fallujah

A comparison to the Warsaw Ghetto is tempting, but is perhaps a bit too extreme. We can only hope and assume that the residents of Fallujah, under their new American police state, will enjoy sustenance and somewhat adequate medical care. I think that the more appropriate analogy may be to a massive 300,000-strong Miami-sized prison camp.

The American occupation authorities in Iraq are creating a massive city-sized prison camp for Fallujah. They realize that they can't arrest every resident of Fallujah because they don't have enough space in Saddam's old prisons. So instead, being the problem solvers that they are, they have decided to turn the entire city into one big prison. With this prison being a "model", the other cities of Iraq can't be far behind.

This is the liberation of Iraq?

Chris tosses off George's horrified revulsion at the idea of an American-run prison camp in Fallujah and explains that there is really no option other than stamping out freedom in pursuit of liberation. Here's the US party line on the Fallujah, via Chris:

George, and others, compare this to the Warsaw Ghetto in World War II, along with all the Nazi imagery you can imagine.

I’m not so sure I buy this. While I think the solution proposed is distasteful and highly unlikely to improve Americans’ rock-bottom standing in Iraq, I fail to see any realistic alternative. The problem is this: Fallujah was a nerve center of an insurgency that has killed U.S. soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqis. (It wasn’t the brain or the hub, but it was an important staging area.) How do you let the citizens back while keeping the insurgents out while keeping it a free and open city? Well, after some thought, I think that you just can’t let it be a free and open city.

Is this a violation of Fallujans’ rights? Or course. But does the good it might do for the rest of the country outweigh the bad that is done in Fallujah? That’s the question. I’m not sure what the equation is, but allowing insurgents back into Fallujah is not really an option.

Set aside for a moment the cognitive dissonance inflicted by the rhetoric of "liberation" and "freedom" sanctimoniously delivered by Emperor Junior and the reality of a planned slave labor prison camp for Iraqis and consider the implications of Chris's contention that there is "no realistic alternative" to the Fallujah Solution. If that is true, the US is finished in Iraq, because once again the Plan (such as it is) will founder on the rocks of Reality.

It is impossible to take seriously the idea that Fallujah can be cordoned off when even now, the military admits that Iraqis are returning to fight Americans in the rubble of Fallujah. Just yesterday the US ordered the Red Crescent out of Fallujah because the battles still rage. The Brits already pulled back to Basra, so their part of the cordon is gone, not that they were ever successful in stopping the infiltration of Fallujah, either. Weeks after the rubblizing of Fallujah the military announced yesterday (!) "reconstruction to begin."

Mounds of rubble choking the scorched streets caused the small six-vehicle convoy of Humvees to wind around, dodging potholes, remnants of buildings, and power lines drooping in tangles or lying on the ground.

Sporadic gunfire could be heard, but it was difficult to know from which direction it was coming, or how far away. Aside from the gunfire though, Fallujah appeared to be a ghost town. Occasionally, another small convoy passed on a cross-street, but no where were there any local people.

This was the scene that greeted Brig. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, commander of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Gulf Region Division, and Rear Adm. Raymond K. Alexander, commander of the Marine Engineer Group, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, as they surveyed the damage in the war-ravaged town of Fallujah.

If the US can't manage any reconstruction a month after their invasion, how likely is it they can implement the plan George describes:

Most residents of Fallujah are currently refugees without homes. Under the plans being drawn up, these refugees would be funnelled into Fallujah through "citizen processing centers". Once at a citizen processing center the Fallujan would have a DNA sample taken and their retina scanned. They would then receive identification badges displaying their home address. Those ID badges will be required. They must be worn and visible at all times.

Inside Fallujah — again, a city the size of Miami — cars will be banned. Buses would be used to transport ID-marked, retina-scanned Fallujan citizens through the city.

The destruction of Fallujah and wildly unrealistic plans for its reconstruction and recreation as an American-run prison camp is the failed invasion and occupation of Iraq in microcosm. It didn't work the first time and it won't work this time. If the only "realistic alternative" is more of the same, then the only question left is when and how badly it ends. Clearly, when it ends will not be a part of the American Plan, as you can see here.

I suppose that the good news is that the horror of an American prison camp as described by George can't happen according to my calculations, though there is little comfort in knowing that the US would surely make it happen if it were possible.

"My Name is Rachel Corrie"

Via Mark Elf at jews sans frontieres: Perdition II - this time it's personal

"ALAN RICKMAN is about to become the latest Hollywood star to light the blue touchpaper on the powderkeg that is Arab-Israeli politics." Or should that say "the latest ex. -Hollywood star" since "he is thought to be sympathetic towards the Palestinian cause". Anyway, Alan Rickman is directing a play titled My Name is Rachel Corrie. which is due to open at the Royal Court in 2005.....but will it open at the Royal Court next year?

Read the rest....

Blair asked to reveal death count in Iraq

It will be interesting to see how Tony squirms out of this one:

Diplomats and peers have joined scientists and churchmen to urge Prime Minister Tony Blair to publish a death toll in the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

In an unusual open letter to the premier made available to Reuters, the 44 signatories said Blair had rejected other death counts from the war -- figures span 14,000 to 100,000 -- without releasing one of his own.

Any totalling of the Iraqi war dead could embarrass Blair ahead of a general election expected in months in a country that opposed the U.S.-led war.

The group urged Blair to commission an urgent probe into the number of dead and injured and keep counting so long as British soldiers remain in Iraq alongside their American allies.

"Your government is obliged under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population during military operations in Iraq, and you have consistently promised to do so," they wrote in the letter to be published on Wednesday.

"However, without counting the dead and injured, no one can know whether Britain and its coalition partners are meeting these obligations."

The inquiry, they added, should be independent of government, conducted according to accepted scientific methods and subjected to peer review.

"Illuminating an Iraqi's face" - Approved!

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Senior officers at the SEALs headquarters said other photos are "consistent with the use of tactics, techniques and procedures in the apprehension of detainees," Navy Cmdr. Jeff Bender said. He cited as an example a photo in which a uniformed man is holding the head of a prisoner to pose him for a picture for "identification purposes." A gun with an attached flashlight is being used to illuminate the detainee's face for the photograph, Bender said.

Holiday Greeting from the White House

"This holiday season, as we remember our blessings, our entire nation prays for our brave men and women in uniform — many of whom will spend the holidays far from home," Bush said. "Do you know anybody who wears the uniform of the United States. Any of them your moms and dads?"

Leaked Letter: FBI witnessed Gitmo torture

FBI agents witnessed "highly aggressive" interrogations and mistreatment of terror suspects at the US prison camp in Cuba starting in 2002 - more than a year before the prison abuse scandal broke in Iraq - according to a letter a senior US Justice Department official sent to the US army's top criminal investigator.

In the letter obtained by The Associated Press, the FBI official suggested the Pentagon didn't act on FBI complaints about the incidents, including a female interrogator grabbing a detainee's genitals and bending back his thumbs, another where a prisoner was gagged with duct tape and a third where a dog was used to intimidate a detainee who later was thrown into isolation and showed signs of "extreme psychological trauma."

One US Marine told an FBI observer that some interrogations led to prisoners "curling into a foetal position on the floor and crying in pain," according to the letter dated July 14, 2004.

Thomas Harrington, an FBI counterterrorism expert who led a team of investigators at Guantanamo Bay, wrote the letter to Major General Donald J Ryder, the army's chief law enforcement officer who's investigating abuses at US-run prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and at Guantanamo.

Harrington said FBI officials complained about the pattern of abusive techniques to top Defence Department attorneys in January 2003, and it appeared that nothing was done.

How many times can they point to "bad apples" and "isolated incidents" before the people running this horror show are held accountable? How about holding the real bad apples accountable:

Bad apples courtesy of Tom Tomorrow

US Navy Seal torture photos added

I added the US Navy Seal abuse photos to an album. There's a link on the sidebar.

That "broken" resistance in Iraq

"Gliding" toward elections in Iraq:

In the second major assault on Baghdad's police force in two days, two car bombs -including at least one detonated by a suicide attacker -exploded next to an Iraqi police station just outside Baghdad's Green Zone on Saturday, killing seven people and wounding 59, mostly police. Insurgents killed 16 officers in an attack the day before.

The U.S. military announced that four American