Shlonkom Bakazay?

Yes we can.

2008-12-16T13:46:00.000-08:00

So, we won the battle...

Now it's time to taste the pudding. As far as I can tell Obama has appointed a lot of old hats not representing the constituency that elected him. But he's built a broad coalition representing the spectrum, which could be the manner we may achieve a new form of politics in DC. So, let's assume for the moment he plans to be the progressive voice on the hill. I'm more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for the first 100 some-odd days, especially with the shit-storm he's inherited.

Hope is alive.
And this is the most important thing at the moment.

Now it's time to get to work.
-Lim

LBF logo

2008-09-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

Obama gonna git yo mamma

2008-06-11T21:02:00.001-07:00

Golly, gee willikers, I think he's a bona-fide Chi-town Hawaiian Kenyan Kansan Compound Identity freakazoid like me.

How sweet is that?

Karma police caught up with karma itself and they had coffee and donuts...or shai ooo erlgeela.

Ha ha.

He's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack...

2007-10-28T19:44:00.000-07:00

You didn't think I was going to let this one slip by, did you?

Col. Steven Boylan , Petraeus' spokesman. "He has a lot of energy."

Yes, indeed, a lotta energy to fuck things up.
And he will continue to fuck Iraq if he is given the opportunity.

Unbelievably, it looks like he's going to get that opportunity by the imbeciles in DC calling the shots still.

After all the damage he's caused...

Wolfowitz is so gangsta

2007-05-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

"If they fuck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to fuck them too."

That's so awesome! He's mad gangsta.
So, now that he's fucked, you think he's gonna fuck them too?
HAHA...

And props for dating the vicious Arab chick...
You got jungle fever baby.

Brown turns his frown upside down.

Peace,
Lim

Pentagon unit ( Office of Special Plans ) defied CIA advice to justify Iraq war

2007-02-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

As if we didn't already know this...

Their plans were so special. So special, in fact, that we are faced with a mounting defecit while people are dying at an ever higher rate... and they still can't even turn the lights on in Baghdad.
So special that throwing 20,000 more troops at this parade of violence cannot possibly make things better. They got themselves to where they are now...where we are all now. And where are these people that created the false intelligence in the lead-up to the war? Running the World Bank, fired or resigned, and trying to hide away...far away...while these many get fat on the interest of their war profiteering.
Where are Chalabi and all the other con-artists and self-deluding neocons?
And recently they passed the oil law, which completed much of the mission of the war. Now they just gotta sit and wait...and watch their crooked money come flowing in.

So special that there is a refugee crisis amounting to upwards of 3.6 million people displaced. 1.6 intra-Iraq, while approximately 2 million have fled the country.
Who is to shoulder this extremely special burden?
What special plans are they coming up with now to solve the endless problems this war has created?
I bet none.

Suzanne Goldenberg reports.

. 'Alternative' agency set up to link Saddam to al-Qaida
· Mainstream intelligence was cast aside, Senate told

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Saturday February 10, 2007
The Guardian

An "alternative intelligence" unit operating at the Pentagon in the run-up to the war on Iraq was dedicated to establishing a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida, even though the CIA was unconvinced of such a connection, the US Senate was told yesterday.
A report presented to the armed services committee by the Pentagon's inspector general, Thomas Gimble, exposes the Bush administration to new charges of manipulating intelligence to make its case for going to war against Saddam nearly four years ago.

Mr Gimble described a unit called the Office for Special Plans, authorised by then Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and overseen by the former policy chief Douglas Feith, to review raw intelligence on Iraq. The main focus of the unit was establishing a link between Saddam and al-Qaida - going against the consensus in the intelligence community that the Iraqi leader had nothing to do with the September 11 2001 terror attacks.

"The office of the under-secretary of defence for policy developed, produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the intelligence community, to senior decision-makers," the report says.

Mr Feith's office was the source for some of the most glaring examples of faulty intelligence during the run-up to the war. In 2002 it promoted the idea that there had been a meeting between the lead September 11 hijacker, Mohammed Atta, and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. The intelligence community has never established this.

To finish article

I like the new season of 24

2007-02-06T22:24:00.000-08:00

Although jingoistic and following particular stereotypes in times past, 24's new season has thoroughly impressed me. I especially like Wayne Palmer, Karen Hayes, and the new Arab-American girl's character. And I love to hate Tom Villars (sp?) for all the obvious reasons. Also, I watched it in HD. Spectacular!

I've got more to say about this, but I'll leave it for later.

Is Iran arming the Sunni insurgency in Iraq?

2007-02-06T20:36:00.000-08:00

Taking a page out of the US book? Speaking clearly about the Iran-Contra affair whereby America armed both Iraq and Iran during the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s...and watched the two countries duke it out. Oliver North, Eliot Abrams...you know.

I wouldn't be surprised. Sure, sometimes some of their Shia "brothers and sisters" in Iraq might get caught in the crossfire on accident...but really, does Iran really care about any Iraqis? Isn't there a little bitterness left over from that war where millions died? Enough to arm the Sunni insurgency and keep Iraq in chaos?

I forgot where exactly I heard about this first, but I did hear about it somewhere.
Food for thought, anyway.

Never Said Better: BRING OUR TROOPS HOME

2007-02-06T10:08:00.000-08:00

I find myself agreeing with so many Republicans.
Please check this out.

And another video: George Bush: Because he says so

While I'm at it...another really funny video

And something Helena Cobban directed me to that was interesting, a political music video.

Choosing the worse of two evils: John McCain offers no insight to anything

2007-02-04T22:11:00.000-08:00

Once, long ago, I had a lot of respect for this man. But now, I can't stay quiet about him any longer. I thought his experience as a POW could offer a person like our current Emperor some insight into the cruelity and folly of war. But I was very wrong. He has toed the line of all the Emperor's ideas as of late. And somebody's gotta start calling him out on this.

John McCain says "War detractors offer no ideas" in this headline. But McCain is a parrot and almost rivals Tony Blair's poodle dogish behavior in the lead up to the war with his current support of Our King's plan. Thus, he offers no insight to anything. Choosing the worse of two evils... more specifically, sending 20,000 some odd troops into Iraq versus not sending them... is folly to the highest order.

So, I propose a vote of No Confidence in John McCain.

How bout you?

Black President

2007-02-04T20:35:00.000-08:00

I'm not talking David or Wayne Palmer here. He's the real thing.
We hope so, anyway. Let's see.

The Obama Revolution

Is Michel Aoun bipolar?

2007-01-22T20:57:00.000-08:00

Just wondering, because that's what I heard tonight from a good source.
Like he's taking some heavy pills for bi-polar disorder.
I'm being totally serious.
Anybody hear the same?

Da Bears in Da Superbowl! DOWN WID DA DOUBTERS!

2007-01-22T02:58:00.000-08:00

Coming to America: "As you know, on the occasion of my daughter's wedding, I cannot refuse a request..."

2007-01-19T20:07:00.000-08:00

Back in the US of A.
My nephew is getting baptized and I'm going to be the Godfather.
I'm already so proud of him. He's impressively fast at learning. Not even 9 months and is he's about to walk!

I've gotta start practicing my Brando impersonation. There was a time I could do it pretty well, but I tried again recently and I don't remember it being that difficult.

What else is cooking?

I saw Apocalypto.
Loved it. The subtleties of symbolism and plot are fascinating.
There are truly not enough films about the indigenous peoples of North America.

At the moment, I'm watching Ms. Collateral Damage (Madeleine Albright) wax holier than thou about the Iraq war on CSPAN.
How obscene! Why do I watch this repulsive pornography?

Speaking of pornography, here's a few things...

In other news, Gen. George Casey said, "I think it's probably going to be the summer, late summer, before you get to the point where people in Baghdad feel safe in their neighborhoods." [source] I don't know about you, but I'm going to remember this and revisit this again in the summer. We'll see if he's full of shit or not...or out of a job.

I'm seeing the phenomenon of blaming the Iraqis for all that is wrong in Iraq, more and more...
Now that brain-drain has effectively cut-out most Iraqis with any sort of western leanings, it is going to be difficult to get Iraq on its feet. Is it their fault that they want to leave a place so violent? I ask all those saying it's Iraqis to blame, why is it so violent after 4 years of war? Who started the war? Why wasn't there any WMD? Why was the war persecuted with so many lies?

Perhaps because they couldn't have had the war without the lies.

So, who's fault is it really?

COP-OUT, please?

2007-01-13T20:03:00.000-08:00

This is how the subtext to the headline today on CNN's website reads, "Rice explores peace in the Middle East":

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice explored opportunities for a fresh start in the stalled effort at a political compromise between Israel and the Palestinians.

At the start of a week-long trip to the region, she warned that an enduring peace cannot be stamped "made in America."

Of course, it's true...but it's the ultimate cop-out and just a way to stave of criticism for all the inaction by the American government regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the last 5 years and heavy bias towards the Sharonian ideal while Israel runs rampant radicalizing the Palestinian territories and Lebanon, much like the US government has radicalized Iraq.

But how convenient for the looney toons in the WH...because now they can have their excuse to have a war on Iran.

The world gone crazy...stoking the flames of extremism seems like one of the objectives of this administration.

Start anew

2007-01-10T07:07:00.000-08:00

I've decided to start blogging again.
Politics has gotten more interesting all of the sudden.
And I've got several snarls left in me yet.
I'll see how it goes anyway.

So, I'm hearing talk about the possibility of democrats being able to block more funding of the Iraq debacle.
Amazing, no?

Why'd it take so damn long? And T.Snow is now saying supporting this stance is unpatriotic.
Is that the last and shortest straw? Almost tantamount to saying John Murtha is a weeny, spineless liberal...
Chabuduo anyway...

We are now entering the densely ironic phase of this very predictable war.
Meaning, I could have predicted (and subsequently did predict) that this war would go this badly.
I mean, that's why I was so against it to begin with.
The possibility of failure was high based on the original premise and all the following premises, as we have seen.
And now, since talk of this troop increase has been discredited by just about every bona fide expert on Iraq...we're at yet the same point again. To be clear, a physical place, a sort of crossroad we've reached many a time...
Which end will the knife turn on?
One ring to rule them all? (Fascism) Or all rings to rule nothing? (Chaos, Anarchy)
Those are the choices Iraq as a complete entity faces now.
Not to say there isn't some grey area.
Point is,
even the best possible one is a bad one.

So, whether or not they put more troops in...doesn't really matter. Because we don't really know which direction to expect if we do, or if we don't.

While it would be better they didn't, they will...and they will see the negative effects of it a couple steps down the road.
And there will be another senate hearing about it that will amount to nothing. Where we'll see more experts discredit the original decision to have the troop increase. Some of course saying, I told you so.
So what? So what? So what?
Iraq's fucked. And the world is so much worse off for it.
Everybody knows this much now.
And believe me, that's enough.

But what do I really think about said troop increase?

20,000??? Are you kidding me?
Are they deliberately trying to make a bad situation worse?
That's what I'll say. Talk about kindling...
It screams disaster. And they are crazy for talking about putting such a small amount in such a manner.
It's foolish to the highest order.

And even trying to fathom the possibility of an exponential increase in troops, say upwards another 100-150,000, to a total of 250,000...would simply be impossible for American Armed Forces to absorb at the moment.

But would putting only 20,000 more troops in make sure Iraq becomes a fascist religious state or a continued chaotic chasm of violence? Lets get down and dirty with this one.
Yes...
There's simply no way of knowing.
In many ways, the fascist secular state appears to have been better compared with the ever-narrowing field of options facing Iraq and Iraqis now. And that's the real travesty of the whole matter. That we've regressed so greatly. One would like to say, two steps backward, then eventually one step foward. But can we now? Can we really expect any improvement with Iraq in the coming years, even if democrats are steering more?

I doubt it.

So, yes...things have gotten more interesting.
And I wanna exhume my thoughts for you in the coming weeks.
haha
Thanks...
bye,
Lim

Mr. Please Please rest in peace

2006-12-26T04:13:00.000-08:00

If there could have been a divine source of musical inspiration walking amongst us, it was James Brown. Now he's left us for greener pastures. Thank you James, for all the good times past and good times to come.

I'm gonna tell you the story of when I saw him live in concert, on accident, sometime.

Peace,
Lim

They lied their way into Iraq. Now they are trying to lie their way out: Gary Younge

2006-11-27T12:41:00.000-08:00

Bush and Blair will blame anyone but themselves for the consequences of their disastrous war - even its victims

Gary Younge
Monday November 27, 2006
The Guardian

'In the endgame," said one of the world's best-ever chess players, José Raúl Capablanca, "don't think in terms of moves but in terms of plans." The situation in Iraq is now unravelling into the bloodiest endgame imaginable. Both popular and official support for the war in those countries that ordered the invasion is already at a low and will only get lower. Whatever mandate the occupiers may have once had from their own electorates - in Britain it was none, in the US it was precarious - has now eroded. They can no longer conduct this war as they have been doing.
Simultaneously, the Iraqis are no longer able to live under occupation as they have been doing. According to a UN report released last week, 3,709 Iraqi civilians died in October - the highest number since the invasion began. And the cycle of religious and ethnic violence has escalated over the past week.

The living flee. Every day up to 2,000 Iraqis go to Syria and another 1,000 to Jordan, according to the UN's high commissioner for refugees. Since the bombing of Samarra's Shia shrine in February more than 1,000 Iraqis a day have been internally displaced, a recent report by the UN-affiliated International Organisation for Migration found last month.

Those in the west who fear that withdrawal will lead to civil war are too late - it is already here. Those who fear that pulling out will make matters worse have to ask themselves: how much worse can it get? Since yesterday American troops have been in Iraq longer than they were in the second world war. When the people you have "liberated" by force are no longer keen on the "freedom" you have in store for them, it is time to go.

To finish reading article...clickity clack.

Republican shit finally hits the fan

2006-11-09T22:55:00.000-08:00

Hallelujah!

Rejoice!

Praise be...

And Americans aren't as dumb as we/you thought they were. Sure, it took long enough, but we ain't that stupid after all. Ha. This is the most important part of this victory. It's a signal to the world...
The giant has awaken and quickly destroyed the hubris of Cheney and Co.

We will see what practical implications this victory has in the coming months, but there has been a notable shift in rhetoric already I think.

Perhaps more later...

CNN surprise: "But I think there is a big possibility ... for extreme criticism and because undoubtedly there was arrogance and stupidity from the US"

2006-10-22T08:49:00.000-07:00

Let me put that up here again...because I simply don't believe CNN has regarded this as news.

Alberto Fernandez, director of the Office of Press and Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of Near East Affairs, made his comments on Saturday to the Qatar-based network.

Shouldn't he be charged with inciting violence? or is he actually quelling it by stating the plain truth?

Here's exactly what was said:

"But I think there is a big possibility ... for extreme criticism and because undoubtedly there was arrogance and stupidity from the United States in Iraq," the diplomat told Al Jazeera.

Straight talking to the Al Jazeera crowd? WOW....talk about change of tactic. It is the appropriate course of action on the PR psyops campaign. Save some soldiers by being real. So, I commend State for cleaning up some of the mess Defense and WH precipitated. See here for more on that.

But of course, this is a drop in the bucket. It won't change the actual course of this war on its own. There needs to be more creative ways to connect people with one another on a human level. There needs to be intelligent people who actually know something about Iraq handling the situation. Not ignorant morons with moral blindfolds...

Small victories are still victories, though. And this is a bit of a watershed moment to me. So we'll see if this is a drop or if it will really rain.

Keith Olberman shlon qawi!

2006-10-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

The guy I used to spend endless hours watching on Sportscenter growing up as a kid....
is now tearing a new asshole in many a person through his 'special comment' feature during the past several months.

I'd like to collect a list of them in this post, but we'll start with the most recent one.

I'll add more later.

The truth about Pat Tillman

2006-09-18T14:35:00.000-07:00

Let his untimely and unfortunate death not go in vain. Learn the truth.

A sidenote: When I was growing up, I watched NFL football. And I watched Pat Tillman play. What a great player...

So, my heart goes out to his family. They've been treated cruelly and deserve some better answers.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

UPDATE:

Published on Friday, October 20, 2006 by Truthdig
After Pat’s Birthday
Kevin Tillman Honors Late Brother's Birthday with Plea to Speak up for Democracy
by Kevin Tillman

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we get out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:

Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin was discharged in 2005.

Senator Lindsey Graham makes the argument for the Geneva Convention

2006-09-18T14:13:00.000-07:00

Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, makes the argument.

Chalabi's INC are first grade con artists or mere vehicles of delusion?

2006-09-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (AP) -- There's no evidence Saddam Hussein had a relationship with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his al Qaeda associates, according to a Senate report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. Democrats said the report undercuts President Bush's justification for going to war.

The declassified document being released Friday by the Senate Intelligence Committee also explores the role that inaccurate information supplied by the anti-Saddam exile group the Iraqi National Congress had in the march to war.

read more

I told you those INC assholes were crooks...chalabi and the other con artists (or vehicles for delusion...depending on how you look at the situation). Meaning--- Were INC doing the con?...or was the WH and Pentagon doing the believing just because the ends would justify the means? Or was it a little of both? That's my question.

UPDATE:

The administration's version was based in part on intelligence that White House officials knew was flawed, according to Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing newly declassified documents released by the panel.

If they knew the intel was flawed, then surely they were willfully deluding themselves.

And this whole Armitage expose stinks to high hell...
who's to say he's not just another foot soldier of the WH. I've been hearing all this talk that he was very independent-minded at State...and that's not what I remember whatsoever.

Chomsky on Lebanon

2006-09-01T01:39:00.000-07:00

To not fully acknowledge the following would be an error. Here's Chomsky's latest piece published in the Guardian.

In Lebanon, a little-honoured truce remains in effect - yet another in a decades-long series of ceasefires between Israel and its adversaries in a cycle that, as if inevitably, returns to warfare, carnage and human misery. Let's describe the current crisis for what it is: a US-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, with only a cynical pretence to legitimacy. Amid all the charges and counter-charges, the most immediate factor behind the assault is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is hardly the first time that Israel has invaded Lebanon to eliminate an alleged threat. The most important of the US-backed Israeli invasions of Lebanon, in 1982, was widely described in Israel as a war for the West Bank. It was undertaken to end the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's annoying calls for a diplomatic settlement. Despite many different circumstances, the July invasion falls into the same pattern.

What would break the cycle? The basic outlines of a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict have been supported by a broad international consensus for 30 years: a two-state settlement on the international border, perhaps with minor and mutual adjustments.

The Arab states formally accepted this proposal in 2002, as the Palestinians had long before. Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that though this solution is not Hizbullah's preference, they will not disrupt it. Iran's "supreme leader" Ayatollah Khamenei recently reaffirmed that Iran too supports this settlement. Hamas has indicated clearly that it is prepared to negotiate for a settlement in these terms as well.

The US and Israel continue to block this political settlement, as they have done for 30 years, with brief and inconsequential exceptions. Denial may be preferred at home, but the victims do not enjoy that luxury.

US-Israeli rejectionism is not only in words but, more importantly, in actions. With decisive US backing, Israel has been formalising its programme of annexation, dismemberment of shrinking Palestinian territories and imprisonment of what remains by taking over the Jordan valley - the "convergence" programme that is, astonishingly, called "courageous withdrawal" in the US.

In consequence, the Palestinians are facing national destruction. The most meaningful support for Palestine is from Hizbullah, which was formed in reaction to the 1982 invasion. It won considerable prestige by leading the effort to force Israel to withdraw from Lebanon in 2000. Also, like other Islamic movements including Hamas, Hizbullah has gained popular support by providing social services to the poor.

To US and Israeli planners it therefore follows that Hizbullah must be severely weakened or destroyed, just as the PLO had to be evicted from Lebanon in 1982. But Hizbullah is so deeply embedded in society that it cannot be eradicated without destroying much of Lebanon as well. Hence the scale of the attack on the country's population and infrastructure.

In keeping with a familiar pattern, the aggression is sharply increasing the support for Hizbullah, not only in the Arab and Muslim worlds beyond, but also in Lebanon itself. Late last month, polls revealed that 87% of Lebanese support Hizbullah's resistance against the invasion, including 80% of Christians and Druze. Even the Maronite Catholic patriarch, the spiritual leader of the most pro-western sector in Lebanon, joined Sunni and Shia religious leaders in a statement condemning the "aggression" and hailing "the resistance, mainly led by Hizbullah". The poll also found that 90% of Lebanese regard the US as "complicit in Israel's war crimes against the Lebanese people".

Amal Saad-Ghorayeb, Lebanon's leading academic scholar on Hizbullah, observes that "these findings are all the more significant when compared to the results of a similar survey conducted just five months ago, which showed that only 58% of all Lebanese believed Hizbullah had the right to remain armed, and hence continue its resistance activity".

The dynamics are familiar. Rami Khouri, an editor of Lebanon's Daily Star, writes that "the Lebanese and Palestinians have responded to Israel's persistent and increasingly savage attacks against entire civilian populations by creating parallel or alternative leaderships that can protect them and deliver essential services".

Such popular forces will only gain in power and become more extremist if the US and Israel persist in demolishing any hope of Palestinian national rights, and in destroying Lebanon.

Even King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, Washington's oldest ally in the region, was compelled to say: "If the peace option is rejected due to the Israeli arrogance, then only the war option remains, and no one knows the repercussions befalling the region, including wars and conflict that will spare no one, including those whose military power is now tempting them to play with fire."

It is no secret that Israel has helped to destroy secular Arab nationalism and to create Hizbullah and Hamas, just as US violence has expedited the rise of extremist Islamic fundamentalism and jihadi terror. The latest adventure is likely to create new generations of bitter and angry jihadis, just as the invasion of Iraq did.

Israeli writer Uri Avnery observed that the Israeli chief of staff Dan Halutz, a former air force commander, "views the world below through a bombsight". Much the same is true of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rice and other top Bush administration planners. As history reveals, that view of the world is not uncommon among those who wield most of the means of violence.

Saad-Ghorayeb describes the current violence in "apocalyptic terms", warning that possibly "all hell would be let loose" if the outcome of the US-Israel campaign leaves a situation in which "the Shia community is seething with resentment at Israel, the US and the government that it perceives as its betrayer".

The core issue - the Israel-Palestine conflict - can be settled by diplomacy, if the US and Israel abandon their rejectionist commitments. Other outstanding problems in the region are also susceptible to negotiation and diplomacy. Their success can never be guaranteed. But we can be reasonably confident that viewing the world through a bombsight will bring further misery and suffering, perhaps even in "apocalyptic terms".

· Noam Chomsky's most recent book is Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy; he is emeritus professor of linguistics and philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology www.chomsky.info

And the opening salvo is...

2006-08-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

Sy comin' atch ya with some new investagative report. This one doesn't have pictures, but it's pretty revealing. Adds up...told you so about it being a pretext, but it makes sense that they'd want to take out Hezzie positions before striking Iran. It's tactically sound preparation for the new war. Don'tch ya think ;?

UPdate: Here's Hersh's original article in full.

Published on Monday, August 14, 2006 by the Independent / UK
Bush 'Viewed War in Lebanon as a Curtain-Raiser for Attack on Iran'
by Andrew Buncombe

The Bush administration was informed in advance and gave the "green light" to Israel's military strikes against Hizbollah with plans drawn up months before two Israeli soldiers were seized it has been claimed.

The US reportedly considered Israel's actions as a necessary prerequisite for a possible strike against Iran. A report by a leading investigative reporter says that earlier this summer Israeli officials visited Washington to brief the government on its plan to respond to any Hizbollah provocation and to "find out how much the US would bear".

The officials apparently started their inquiries with Vice-President Dick Cheney, knowing that if they secured his support, obtaining the backing of President Bush and Condoleezza Rice would be easier.

The report by Seymour Hersh quotes an unidentified US government consultant with close ties to the Israelis who says: "The Israelis told us it would be a cheap war with many benefits. Why oppose it? We'll be able to hunt down and bomb missiles, tunnels, and bunkers from the air. It would be a demo for Iran."

A former intelligence officer, also quoted, says: "We told Israel,'Look, if you guys have to go, we're behind you all the way. But we think it should be sooner rather than later. The longer you wait, the less time we have to evaluate and plan for Iran before Bush gets out of office'."

Both Israeli and US officials say that the Israeli military operation against Hizbollah was triggered by the seizing of two Israeli soldiers, apparently to be bargained with for a possible prisoner swap. But Hersh's report, published in today's issue of The New Yorker, adds to evidence that Israel had been anticipating a Hizbollah provocation for some time and planning its response a response that was widely condemned for being disproportionate.

Last month the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "Israel's military response by air, land and sea to what it considered a provocation last week by Hizbollah militants was unfolding according to a plan finalised more than a year ago". The report said that a senior Israeli army officer had been briefing diplomats, journalists and think-tanks for more than a year about the plan and it quoted Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at [Israel's] Bar-Ilan University, who said: "Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared." Last week the New Statesman magazine reported that Britain had also been informed in advance of the military preparations and that the Prime Minister had chosen not to try to stop them "because he did not want to".

This latest report is the first to tie the Israeli operation to a broader framework that includes a possible US strike against Iran.

Unidentified officials said a strike could "ease Israel's security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American pre-emptive attack". Shabtai Shavit, a national security adviser to the Knesset, said: "We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America's requirements, that's just part of a relationship between two friends. Hizbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time."

An anonymous Middle East expert claimed that while the State Department supported the plan because it believed it would help the Lebanese government assert control over the south, the White House was focussed on stripping Hizbollah of its missiles.

The expert added: "If there was to be a military option against Iran's nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hizbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the 'axis of evil', and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hizbollah as part of his interest in democratisation."

Last night the White House denied the allegations contained in Hersh's piece with a brief statement from the President describing it as "patently untrue". Mr Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, added: " The suggestion that the US and Israel planned and co-ordinated an attack on Hizbollah and did so as a prelude to an attack on Iran is just flat wrong."

Neocon Democrat Leiberman loses grace and the CT primary

2006-08-10T22:49:00.000-07:00

Or is it the CT primary and grace?

This is a semi-watershed moment in the circus that is American politics.

Dick Cheney's favorite son has been vanquished...washed ashore, found out, and pegged by CT voters. Sore Loserman will run as an independent. But this will serve as a commercial to the failure of America's Iraq policy. So, as Senor Bush once said so famously, bring it on Bodies-man.

Whether or not people will be as smart as CT voters elsewhere is highly unlikely. I believe, if I'm not mistaken,
Connecticut has a higher ratio per capita of advanced degrees than any other state in the union.
Stupid America, in other words, could still yet not figure out the Iraq-con. But lets just hope this snowballs into an informing avalanche. And now that Hillary has called for Rummy's resignation, all bets are off.

On other fronts, the terror plot that was foiled so remarkably by the diligence of Met Police of London shall change the equation for midterm elections. The problem for GOPers now is that they can't really claim to having a good track-record on national security issues. They haven't made the world any safer. And now that 60 percent of Americans are against the Iraq war, their platform just became a bit more shaky...as evidenced and indicative by Loserman's loss.

A veritable feed-back loop of HALLELUJAHs!

Sitting on the bluff while bluffing

2006-08-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

How can we save Israeli face? This is the million dollar question now.
Olmert has a 7 & 2 off-suit and is betting before the flop.

The bluff has arrived. The threat has been issued.
If you don't figure it out soon, we will make Lebanon dark for a few years. The sequence of events in the last day or so cannot be clearer as to what the situation is developing as.

The cabinet has approved a 30 day escalation of violence. Therefore the Abyss-simulator has been presented to the Lebanese and the world. I know for sure Lebanese won't buy this. The world, on the other hand, always buys Israeli BS. Israel then quickly said it could wait to the weekend for a diplomatic solution. Does the mixed message remind you of any tactic that, say, the US used when prosecuting the war on Iraq initally? The pressure of the psychological mix-up waiting-game is upon us. Plainly, Israel is bluffing on the bluff.

When you're already in the Abyss, it's hard to convince others that you have a bigger Abyss to put them in...isn't it?

I'm only afraid of what will happen when the Hezzies call Israel's bluff. It would be the equivalent of Israel getting up from the poker table and leaving while refusing to pay up. We didn't win...so we're not going to play by anybody's rules. And we remember the last time that happened on the world stage (hint hint, Iraq). And look at the intractable mess we're in Iraq because of the mere attittude put on by the neocons. Admitting failure is not an option. Pffff...

So, if you see somebody sitting on a bluff while bluffing...please give him or her a compliment and some assurances.
As you can see, I don't mind saving Israeli face as long as we can save lives in both Lebanon and Israel.
And now that Lebanon is all but destroyed and having its true spirit sucked out of it by extremists both within and without, there's really nothing else left worth saving but lives.

What can I say, I'm a pragmatist peace-mongerer. If the Hezzies call Israel's bluff without any sort of agreement, all parties will be dreading the following months and years to come. This much I'm sure of...

Advice to Israel: Settle the Chebaa Farms issue and Hizbollah will have no other legitimate reason to be armed to the tooth. Thus you will undermine them best by giving back this land to Lebanon. Don't continue the war regardless. Because even once you occupy southern Lebanon again, the Hezzies will have taken over the rest of Lebanon and you will just be targeted from there. It will be another endless cycle of violence, which I know you are such experts at propelling. Though most would agree that expertise in such matters is as futile as a castrated man trying to father a child.

Advice to Hezzies: Don't call the bluff, because it will only mean more innocent civilians will die on both sides. Take the hard-ons you get from firing missles randomly at Israel and put them to better use. And anyway, you've shown the world that you're a formidable force that cannot be defeated and earned the respect of your enemy. You don't need to save face, but they do. I venture to say that it wasn't worth the destruction of Lebanon, but parts of me believe that the Israeli response was always going to be as brutal and indiscriminate as it was.

All parties engaged in this conflict have the maturity of a bean sprout with none of the nutrition.
And thus, there will never be a real solution.
I'm fed-up.
Bye bye,
L.

More (updated) maps of Lebanon

2006-08-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

Go here for them.

There's one for Locations bombed and Transport and Vital Sites bombed.

Wow George, u really drove the point home. + rant

2006-08-09T00:58:00.000-07:00

Norm, thanks again...

Just go here and watch this 9 minute interview...where Georgey Galloway rips a new you-know-what in the interviewer.

One thing that rang in my ear loudest was the last thing he said to the Sky News reporter.

"You believe, whether you know it or not, that Israeli blood is more valuable than the blood of Lebanese or Palestinians. That's the truth."

And yes, indeed I agree, racism is what a lot of this boils down to...but honestly, I really am in no mood to get to that right now. This is a flaw of the most basic part of human nature. Racism is a scourge that will never ever be lifted from the human family no matter how many million WO/man marches are held. The saddest thing now for Lebanon is that their million man march was instigated by Israeli terrorism. That's right. Now approximately 1 million Lebanese are homeless, marching into the unknown. Fitting, I guess, since this situation looks like it is also marching in that direction. And after the most recent emergency Security Council meeting...it is safe to say Israel has no intention of stopping.

Oh, but now I'm going on...and I'm really in no mood to speak my mind here.
Simply because it's all so depressing. I feel like the spirit of Lebanon is being murdered...not just its innocent women and children. And I know the peace and security of Israelis are now in danger as well, and I'm not happy about that because; one, I value all human life equally...and two, I don't want perpetual war. All any progressive/moderate Lebanese want is peace. But these dinosaurs and their warmongering ways and plans are still alive and kicking. Instead of nurturing the moderate voice, the Israeli and American governments have allowed for the nurturing of terrorists through their insane knee-jerk reactions (or excuses) to carry out their "master plan" for the "new middle east". It almost appears as if they wish to create more terrorists, doesn't it?

When will these animals just die-out so that the younger generation can absolve the region of this situation. That's the other thing, because of this latest episode of death I believe this possibility is less likely. Essentially, we're Fucked with a capital F.

The longer this thing goes on, the more obvious all this will become.
I believe we are now in the Abyss.

Hezzie Coup d'Etat: Michael Young

2006-08-09T00:10:00.000-07:00

I ran across this on the WaPo blog.
It's very disconcerting to me because I agree with it.
If this is what the future really might hold for Lebanon, then I'm one sad puppy.
Regression never disgusted me more.

Hezbollah's Coup d'Etat

Beirut, Lebanon - There is real danger today that Hezbollah will inherit Lebanon after the war. If it does, an uncontainable civil war will probably ensue.

Militarily, Israel has not scored a decisive victory that would compel the militia to disarm. Hezbollah will use this "triumph" to defeat its adversaries inside Lebanon who want it to surrender its weapons.

At the same time, the Israelis have devastated the Shiite community. They have broken down any Lebanese consensus around the party and have neutralized Hezbollah's military deterrence capability (there to serve Iran) since the party cannot possibly put its coreligionists through another catastrophe similar to the one faced today. These setbacks, in turn, will encourage the party to go on the offensive domestically to refocus the anger of its supporters away from its own responsibility for the disaster and toward its domestic foes.

What will this mean for the Middle East? It will be a severe setback for a rare liberal outpost in the region and may carry Lebanon into a new civil war since no one will longer accept Hezbollah's hegemony. It will heighten Sunni-Shiite tension in the country and the region. It will be another nail in the coffin of the Bush administration's ambition to create a democratic Arab world. It could transform Lebanon into a new version of Gaza, proving that Israel is remarkably adept at ensuring that its worst foes inherit power on its borders. And it will mean the death of a country that, for all its faults, nonetheless tried to recreate a formula for peaceful coexistence between its religious communities in 1990 when that Lebanese civil war ended.

Looks like they have their pretext for the Iran war

2006-08-06T18:48:00.001-07:00

And it goes a little something like this...

Two birds, one stone?

Hizbullah is still being armed and re-supplied by Iran and Syria, so we (America) have to address the root causes of this cancer on Lebanese and global society by attacking these two countries and enforcing our (oft-used) policy of regime change in the "New Middle East." Democracy by the barrel of a gun. We will either kill them or democratize them, whichever comes first.

It seems to me they're going to have their war with Iran in 6 months (if not less) whether the world likes it or not.

Of course, this is insane...and could precipitate in the collapse of the global economy when Iran blocks all oil from leaving the gulf. But I wouldn't get this one past them for a moment. And now they're realizing that the Maliki "government" are on the side of the Hezzies and they've lost it. They wonder, is it too late to switch sides and support the Sunni Iraqis?

What a pickle.

I'm looking at the situation now...and I'm both saddened and pessimistic for all parties involved.

This thing is only beginning. It could get much much worse. And I mean much much worse.

When I think of it, Israel is quickly uniting a people that could never in a million years have been united otherwise. They have done what millions of Lebanese could not do themselves under any circumstance. They have created the circumstance where unification was not a choice, but the only possibility.

And it looks like the counter-attack to Qana was the rocket attack on Haifa, which has struck an Arab neighborhood (in Haifa). Killing three innocent people, wounding 120 more. Talk about ignoble fate...Imagine being the Arab family in Israel, explaining to your children what happened when your Arab brothers in Lebanon have delivered such a fate to you.

Welcome to the "New Middle East"...
We like our irony thick.

And poor poor Lebanon is still dying. For what? For their pretext? For their war.
Is this how it's going to go down?

I still find it hard to believe, but it's clear as day. They'll have their war if they want it.
They always will.

So sad, so so sad...

I have one wish today.
And that is, I hope peace will prevail over the minds of warmongerers in this eleventh hour. The killing of innocents must stop. All parties that conduct their war in this dispicable way are enemies of peace. The parties that kill more innocents are more guilty. This is logic. But as long as innocents are killed, the cycle of violence will not end. So, I implore upon Bush and Co to think twice about what they are doing to their childrens' future if and when they begin the new war.

If only B&Co took the high road, valued all human life equally, and tried they're best to prevent all innocents from dying immediately. Instead, they send more bombs to Israel to drop on Lebanon each day. How are America's friends in Lebanon in the New Middle East, supposed to react? React by saying thank you for destroying our country that was just getting on our feet from a decade of civil war?

Have I made my point?
Stop ushering in this apocalyptic moment, you freaks of war.
Stop now.

Half of Americans are still Idiots

2006-08-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

Half of U.S. Still Believes Iraq Had WMD

People tend to become ``independent of reality'' in these circumstances, says opinion analyst Steven Kull.

The reality in this case is that after a 16-month, $900-million-plus investigation, the U.S. weapons hunters known as the Iraq Survey Group declared that Iraq had dismantled its chemical, biological and nuclear arms programs in 1991 under U.N. oversight. That finding in 2004 reaffirmed the work of U.N. inspectors who in 2002-03 found no trace of banned arsenals in Iraq.

Despite this, a Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents - up from 36 percent last year - said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003, an attack whose stated purpose was elimination of supposed WMD. Other polls also have found an enduring American faith in the WMD story.

``I'm flabbergasted,'' said Michael Massing, a media critic whose writings dissected the largely unquestioning U.S. news reporting on the Bush administration's shaky WMD claims in 2002-03.

``This finding just has to cause despair among those of us who hope for an informed public able to draw reasonable conclusions based on evidence,'' Massing said.

..to read more

UPDATE: Related to the previous story is this Krugman piece in the Times.

Paul Krugman: Reign of Error

Reign of Error
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: July 28, 2006

Amid everything else that's going wrong in the world, here's one more piece of depressing news: a few days ago the Harris Poll reported that 50 percent of Americans now believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when we invaded, up from 36 percent in February 2005. Meanwhile, 64 percent still believe that Saddam had strong links with Al Qaeda.

At one level, this shouldn't be all that surprising. The people now running America never accept inconvenient truths. Long after facts they don't like have been established, whether it's the absence of any wrongdoing by the Clintons in the Whitewater affair or the absence of W.M.D. in Iraq, the propaganda machine that supports the current administration is still at work, seeking to flush those facts down the memory hole.

But it's dismaying to realize that the machine remains so effective.

Here's how the process works.

First, if the facts fail to support the administration position on an issue - stem cells, global warming, tax cuts, income inequality, Iraq - officials refuse to acknowledge the facts.

Sometimes the officials simply lie. "The tax cuts have made the tax code more progressive and reduced income inequality," Edward Lazear, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, declared a couple of months ago. More often, however, they bob and weave.

Consider, for example, Condoleezza Rice's response a few months ago, when pressed to explain why the administration always links the Iraq war to 9/11. She admitted that Saddam, "as far as we know, did not order Sept. 11, may not have even known of Sept. 11." (Notice how her statement, while literally true, nonetheless seems to imply both that it's still possible that Saddam ordered 9/11, and that he probably did know about it.) "But," she went on, "that's a very narrow definition of what caused Sept. 11."

Meanwhile, apparatchiks in the media spread disinformation. It's hard to imagine what the world looks like to the large number of Americans who get their news by watching Fox and listening to Rush Limbaugh, but I get a pretty good sense from my mailbag.

Many of my correspondents are living in a world in which the economy is better than it ever was under Bill Clinton, newly released documents show that Saddam really was in cahoots with Osama, and the discovery of some decayed 1980s-vintage chemical munitions vindicates everything the administration said about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. (Hyping of the munitions find may partly explain why public belief that Saddam had W.M.D. has made a comeback.)

Some of my correspondents have even picked up on claims, mostly disseminated on right-wing blogs, that the Bush administration actually did a heck of a job after Katrina.

And what about the perceptions of those who get their news from sources that aren't de facto branches of the Republican National Committee?

The climate of media intimidation that prevailed for several years after 9/11, which made news organizations very cautious about reporting facts that put the administration in a bad light, has abated. But it's not entirely gone. Just a few months ago major news organizations were under fierce attack from the right over their supposed failure to report the 'good news' from Iraq - and my sense is that this attack did lead to a temporary softening of news coverage, until the extent of the carnage became undeniable. And the conventions of he-said-she-said reporting, under which lies and truth get equal billing, continue to work in the administration's favor.

Whatever the reason, the fact is that the Bush administration continues to be remarkably successful at rewriting history. For example, Mr. Bush has repeatedly suggested that the United States had to invade Iraq because Saddam wouldn't let U.N. inspectors in. His most recent statement to that effect was only a few weeks ago. And he gets away with it. If there have been reports by major news organizations pointing out that thatss not at all what happened, I've missed them.

It's all very Orwellian, of course. But when Orwell wrote of 'a nightmare world in which the Leader, or some ruling clique, controls not only the future but the past,' he was thinking of totalitarian states. Who would have imagined that history would prove so easy to rewrite in a democratic nation with a free press?

He doesn't want the killing to stop, until he's sure it will stop. So there will be more killing until the President is convinced that there will...

2006-08-04T02:24:00.000-07:00

...be no more killing.

God bless Jon Stewart over and over and over and over...

How does General Abizaid feel about what's happening in Lebanon?

2006-08-04T01:26:00.000-07:00

I woke up today thinking about this question.

As America's most influential General, Commander of U.S. Central Command, and a Lebanese-American...I wonder how he really feels about the mass destruction being layed upon the land of his parents and grandparents.

Visitors to this site may speculate, but I want to hear from the General himself.

Would he respond if I wrote him a letter asking him this?
Would he even respond truthfully? Could he respond truthfully?
Or would his job depend on his response?

And it makes me wonder...(hat tip to Led Zepplin)

Monbiot: The king of fairyland will never grasp the realities of the Middle East

2006-08-01T00:14:00.000-07:00

U.S. President George W. Bush gathers with the top nine American Idol 2006 finalists in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, July 28, 2006.

***

A US leader in his second term should have the power to rein in Israel. But George Bush is no ordinary president

George Monbiot
Tuesday August 1, 2006
The Guardian

Of all the curious things that have been written about Israel's assault on Lebanon, surely the oddest is contained in Paddy Ashdown's article on these pages last Saturday. "There is only one solution to this crisis, and it is the same solution we have to find in Iraq: to go for a wider Middle East settlement and to do it urgently. The US cannot do this. But Europe can."

The US cannot do this? What on earth does he mean? At first sight his contention seems plain wrong. While Israel intends to sustain its occupation of Palestinian territory, a wider settlement is impossible. It surely follows that the country that has the greatest potential leverage over Israel is the country with the greatest power to broker peace. Israel's foreign policy and military strategy is dependent on the approval of the United States.

Though Israel ranks 23rd on the global development index - above Greece, Singapore, Portugal and Brunei - it remains the world's largest recipient of US aid. The US government dispensed $11bn of civil foreign assistance in 2004. Of this, Israel received $555m; the three poorest nations on earth - Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone and Niger - were given a total of $69m. More importantly, last year Israel also received $2.2bn of military aid.

It does not depend economically on this assistance. Its gross domestic product amounts to $155bn, and its military budget to $9.5bn. It manufactures many of its own weapons and buys components from all over the world, including - as the Guardian revealed last week - the United Kingdom. Rather, it depends upon it diplomatically. Most of the money given by the US foreign military financing programme - in common with all US aid disbursements - is spent in the United States. Israel uses it to obtain F-15 and F-16 jets; Apache, Cobra and Blackhawk helicopters; AGM, AIM and Patriot missiles, M-16 rifles, M-204 grenade launchers and M-2 machine guns. As the Prestwick scandal revealed, laser-guided bombs, even now, are being sent to Israel from the United States.

Many of these weapons have been used to kill Palestinian civilians and are being used in Lebanon today. The US arms export control act states that "no defence article or defence service shall be sold or leased by the United States government" unless its provision "will strengthen the security of the United States and promote world peace". Weapons may be sold "to friendly countries solely for internal security, for legitimate self-defence [or for] maintaining or restoring international peace and security".

By giving these weapons to Israel, the US government is, in effect, stating that all its military actions are being pursued in the cause of legitimate self-defence, American interests and world peace. The US also becomes morally complicit in Israel's murder of civilians. The diplomatic cover this provides is indispensable.

Since 1972 the US has used its veto in the UN security council on 40 occasions to prevent the passage of resolutions that sought either to defend the rights of the Palestinians or to condemn the excesses of Israel's government. This is a greater number of vetoes than all the other permanent members have deployed in the same period. The most recent instance, on July 13, was the squashing of a motion condemning both the Israeli assault on Gaza and the firing of rockets and abduction of an Israeli soldier by Palestinian groups. Over the past few days, the United States, supported by Britain, has blocked all international attempts to introduce an immediate ceasefire, giving Israel the clear impression that it has a mandate to continue its assault on Lebanon.

It is plain to anyone - and this must include Paddy Ashdown - that Israel could not behave as it does without the diplomatic protection of the United States. If the US government announced that it would cease to offer military and diplomatic support if Israel refused to hand back the occupied territories, Israel would have to negotiate. The US government has power over that country. But can it be used?

A paper published in March by the US academics John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt documents the extraordinary influence the "Israel lobby" exercises in Washington. They argue that the combined forces of evangelical Christian groups and Jewish American organisations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee ensure that "Israel is virtually immune from criticism" in Congress and "also has significant leverage over the executive branch". Politicians who support the Israeli government are showered with funds, the paper contends, while those who contest it are cowed by letter-writing campaigns and vilification in the media. If all else fails, the"great silencer" is deployed: the charge of anti-semitism. Those who oppose the policies of the Israeli government are accused of hating Jews.

All this makes an even-handed policy difficult, but not impossible. Standing up to bullies is surely the key test of leadership. A US president in his second term is in a powerful position to demand that Israel pulls back and negotiates.

But if Ashdown meant that it is impossible psychologically and intellectually for the US government to act, he might have a point. At his press conference with Tony Blair last Friday, George Bush laid out his usual fairy tale about the conflict in the Middle East. "There's a lot of suffering in Lebanon," he explained, "because Hizbullah attacked Israel. There's a lot of suffering in the Palestinian territory because militant Hamas is trying to stop the advance of democracy. There is suffering in Iraq because terrorists are trying to spread sectarian violence and stop the spread of democracy." The current conflict in Lebanon "started, out of the blue, with two Israeli soldiers kidnapped and rockets being fired across the border".

I agree that Hizbullah fired the first shots. But out of the blue? Israel's earlier occupation of southern Lebanon; its continued occupation of the Golan Heights; its occupation and partial settlement of the West Bank and gradual clearance of Jerusalem; its shelling of civilians, power plants, bridges and pipelines in Gaza; its beating and shooting of children; its imprisonment or assassination of Palestinian political leaders; its bulldozing of homes; its humiliating and often lethal checkpoints: all these are, in Bush's mind, either fictional or carry no political consequences. The same goes for the US invasion and occupation of Iraq and the constant threats Bush issues to Syria and Iran. There is only one set of agents at work - the terrorists - and their motivation arises autochthonously from the evil in their hearts.

Israel is not solely to blame for this crisis. The firing of rockets into its cities is an intolerable act of terrorism. But to understand why the people assaulting that country will not put down their arms, the king of fairyland would be forced to come to terms with the consequences of Israel's occupation of other people's lands and of its murder of civilians; of his own invasion of Iraq and of his failure, across the past six years, to treat the Palestinians fairly. And this he seems incapable of doing. Instead, his answers last Friday suggested, Bush is constructing a millenarian narrative of escalating conflict leading to the final triumph of freedom and democracy.

So I fear that Paddy Ashdown may be right. The United States cannot pursue a wider settlement in the Middle East, for it is led by a man who lives in a world of his own.

Comic relief

2006-07-31T16:52:00.000-07:00

Monsters: Democracy by Massacre

2006-07-30T19:07:00.000-07:00

Qana Massacre video
Warning: Strong images

Let the Israeli and American government save face, but this war must be over right now.
It cannot continue after Qana. We'll really know the idiots and psychopaths have come home to roost on Capitol Hill, if after 48 hours there is resumption of air attacks on Lebanon.

Robert Fisk: The Empire Leaves Beirut tp Burn...again

2006-07-24T08:02:00.000-07:00

The Empire Leaves Beirut to Burn
by Robert Fisk

In the year 551, the magnificent, wealthy city of Berytus -- headquarters of the imperial East Mediterranean Roman fleet -- was struck by a massive earthquake. Then, the sea withdrew several miles and the survivors, ancestors of the present-day Lebanese, walked out on the sands to loot the long-sunken merchant ships revealed in front of them.

That was when a tidal wall higher than a tsunami returned to kill them all. So savagely was the old Beirut damaged that the Emperor Justinian sent gold from Constantinople as compensation to every family left alive.

Some cities seem forever doomed. When the Crusaders arrived at Beirut on their way to Jerusalem in the 11th century, they slaughtered everyone in the city. In World War I, Ottoman Beirut suffered a terrible famine; the Turkish army had commandeered all the grain, and the Allied powers blockaded the coast. I still have some ancient postcards I bought here 30 years ago of sticklike children standing in an orphanage, naked and abandoned.

An American woman living in Beirut in 1916 described how she "passed women and children lying by the roadside with closed eyes and ghastly, pale faces. It was a common thing to find people searching the garbage heaps for orange peel, old bones or other refuse, and eating them greedily when found. Everywhere women could be seen seeking eatable weeds among the grass along the roads ... "

How does this happen to Beirut? For 30 years, I've watched this place die and rise from the grave and die again, its apartment blocks pitted with so many bullets they looked like Irish lace.

I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore.

They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-colored skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis -- in some of their cruelest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside -- tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties -- 240 in all of Lebanon at the start of last week -- with Israel's 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.

And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel's "disproportionate" response to the capture of its soldiers by Hezbollah.

I walked through the deserted city center of Beirut last week and it reminded more than ever of a film lot, a place of dreams too beautiful to last, a phoenix from the ashes of civil war whose plumage was so brightly colored that it blinded its own people. This part of the city -- once a Dresden of ruins -- was rebuilt by Rafiq Hariri, the prime minister who was murdered a mile away last year.

The wreckage of that bomb blast, an awful precursor to the present war in which his inheritance is being vandalized by the Israelis, still stands beside the Mediterranean, waiting for the last U.N. investigator to look for clues.

At the empty Etoile restaurant -- where Hariri once dined with Jacques Chirac -- I sat on the pavement and watched the parliamentary guard still patrolling the facade of the French-built emporium that houses what is left of Lebanon's democracy. So many of these streets were built by Parisians under the French mandate, and they have been exquisitely restored, their mock Arabian doorways bejeweled with marble Roman columns dug from the ancient Via Maxima a few meters away.

Hariri loved this place and, taking Chirac for a beer one day, he caught sight of me sitting at a table. "Ah, Robert, come over here," he roared and turned to Chirac like a cat that was about to eat a canary. "I want to introduce you, Jacques, to the reporter who said I couldn't rebuild Beirut!"

Now it is being unbuilt. The Martyr Rafiq Hariri International Airport has been attacked several times by the Israelis, its glistening halls and shopping malls vibrating to the missiles that thunder into the runways and fuel depots. Hariri's wonderful transnational highway viaduct has been broken by Israeli bombers. Most of his motorway bridges have been destroyed. The Roman-style lighthouse has been smashed by a missile from an Apache helicopter. This small jewel of a restaurant in the center of Beirut has been spared. So far.

It is the slums of Haret Hreik and Ghobeiri and Shiyah that have been leveled and "rubble-ized" and pounded to dust, sending a quarter of a million Shiite Muslims to seek sanctuary in schools and abandoned parks across the city. Here, indeed, was the headquarters of Hezbollah, another of those "centers of world terror" that the West keeps discovering in Muslim lands. Here lived Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Party of God's leader, a ruthless, caustic, calculating man; and Sayad Mohamed Fadlallah, among the wisest and most eloquent of clerics; and many of Hezbollah's top military planners -- including, no doubt, the men who planned over many months the capture of the two Israeli soldiers 10 days ago.

But did the tens of thousands of poor who live here deserve this act of mass punishment? For a country that boasts of its pinpoint accuracy -- a doubtful notion in any case, but that's not the issue -- what does this act of destruction tell us about Israel? Or about ourselves?

In a modern building in an undamaged part of Beirut, I come, quite by chance, across a well-known and prominent Hezbollah figure, open-neck white shirt, dark suit, clean shoes. "We will go on if we have to for days or weeks or months or ... " And he counts these awful statistics off on the fingers of his left hand. "Believe me, we have bigger surprises still to come for the Israelis -- much bigger, you will see. Then we will get our prisoners and it will take just a few small concessions."

I walk outside, feeling as if I have been beaten over the head. Over the wall opposite there is purple bougainvillea and white jasmine and a swamp of gardenias. The Lebanese love flowers, and Beirut is draped in trees and bushes that smell like paradise.

As for the huddled masses from the bombed-out southern slums of Haret Hreik, I found hundreds yesterday, sitting under trees and lying on the parched grass beside an ancient fountain donated by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul-Hamid. How empires fall.

Across the Mediterranean, two helicopters from the USS Iwo Jima could be seen, heading through the mist and smoke toward the U.S. embassy bunker complex at Awkar to evacuate more citizens of the American Empire. There was not a word from that same empire to help the people lying in the park, to offer them food or medical aid.

Across them all has spread a dark gray smoke that works its way through the entire city, the fires of oil terminals and burning buildings turning into a cocktail of sulphurous air that moves below our doors and through our windows. I smell it when I wake. Half the people of Beirut are coughing in this filth, breathing their own destruction as they contemplate their dead.

The anger that any human soul should feel at such suffering and loss was expressed so well by Lebanon's greatest poet, the mystic Khalil Gibran, when he wrote of the half million Lebanese who died in the 1916 famine, most of them residents of Beirut:

My people died of hunger, and he who
Did not perish from starvation was
Butchered with the sword;
They perished from hunger
In a land rich with milk and honey.
They died because the vipers and
Sons of vipers spat out poison into
The space where the Holy Cedars and
The roses and the jasmine breathe
Their fragrance.

And the sword continues to cut its way through Beirut. When part of an aircraft came streaking out of the sky over the eastern suburbs at the weekend, I raced to the scene to find a partly decapitated driver in his car and three Lebanese soldiers from the army's logistics unit. These are the tough, brave non-combat soldiers of Kfar Chim who have been mending power and water lines these past six days to keep Beirut alive.

I knew one of them. "Hello, Robert. Be quick because I think the Israelis will bomb again, but we'll show you everything we can." And they took me through the fires to show me what they could of the wreckage, standing around to protect me.

A few hours later, the Israelis did come back, as the men of the small logistics unit were going to bed, and they bombed the barracks and killed 10 soldiers, including those three kind men who looked after me amid the fires of Kfar Chim.

And why? Be sure -- the Israelis know what they are hitting. That's why they killed nine soldiers near Tripoli when they bombed the military radio antennas. But a logistics unit? Men whose sole job was to mend electricity lines? Then it dawns on me. Beirut is to die. It is to be starved of electricity now that the power station in Jiyeh is on fire. No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive. So those men had to be liquidated.

Beirutis are tough people and are not easily moved. But at the end of last week, many of them were overcome by a photograph in their daily papers of a small girl, discarded like a broken flower in a field near Ter Harfa, her feet curled up, her hand resting on her torn blue pajamas, her eyes -- beneath long, soft hair -- closed, turned away from the camera. She had been another "terrorist" target of Israel and several people, myself among them, saw a frightening similarity between this picture and the photograph of a Polish girl lying dead in a field beside her weeping sister in 1939.

I go home and flick through my files, old pictures of the Israeli invasion of 1982. There are more photographs of dead children, of broken bridges. Yes, how easily we forget these earlier slaughters. Up to 1,700 Palestinians were butchered at Sabra and Chatila by Israel's proxy Christian militia allies in 1982 while Israeli troops, as they later testified to Israel's own court of inquiry, watched the killings. I stopped counting the corpses when I reached 100. Many of the women had been raped before being knifed or shot.

Yet when I was fleeing the bombing of Ghobeiri with my driver, Abed, a week before last, we swept right past the entrance of the camp, the very spot where I saw the first murdered Palestinians. And we did not think of them. We did not remember them. They were dead in Beirut and we were trying to stay alive in Beirut, as I have been trying to stay alive here for 30 years.

I am back on the seacoast when my mobile phone rings. It is an Israeli woman calling me from the United States, the author of a fine novel about the Palestinians. "Robert, please take care," she says. "I am so, so sorry about what is being done to the Lebanese. It is unforgivable. I pray for the Lebanese people, and the Palestinians, and the Israelis." I thank her for her thoughtfulness and the graceful, generous way she condemned this slaughter.

Then, on my balcony -- a glance to check the location of the Israeli gunboat far out in the sea-smog -- I find older clippings. This is from an English paper in 1840, when Beirut was a great Ottoman city. "Beyrouth" was the dateline. "Anarchy is now the order of the day, our properties and personal safety are endangered, no satisfaction can be obtained, and crimes are committed with impunity. Several Europeans have quitted their houses and suspended their affairs, in order to find protection in more peaceable countries."

On my dining-room wall, I remember, there is a hand-painted lithograph of French troops arriving in Beirut in 1842 to protect the Christian Maronites from the Druze. They are camping in the Jardin des Pins, which will later become the site of the French embassy where, only a few hours ago, I saw French men and women registering for their evacuation. Outside the window, I hear again the whisper of Israeli jets, hidden behind the smoke that drifts 20 miles out to sea.

Fairouz, the most popular Lebanese singer, was to perform at this year's Baalbek festival, cancelled like all Lebanon's festivals. One of her most popular songs is dedicated to her native city:

To Beirut -- peace to Beirut with all my heart
And kisses -- to the sea and clouds,
To the rock of a city that looks like an old sailor's face.
From the soul of her people she makes wine,
From their sweat, she makes bread and jasmine.
So how did it come to taste of smoke and fire?

Robert Fisk, who writes for The Independent of Britain, has lived in Beirut 30 years.

© 1998-2006 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

###

Billmon: Bush and Cheney help fill the fresh mass graves of Lebanon

2006-07-24T00:43:00.000-07:00

This is another really important jab at American collusion with Israel in filling the fresh mass graves in Lebanon. Thanks again B.

I suppose we can call this the cradle-to-grave approach to Middle East diplomacy:

As Toll Rises, Lebanese Resort to Mass Graves

This what I don't like about President Bush -- the way he flip flops. First he was against mass graves, and now he's helping fill them:

The Bush administration is rushing a delivery of precision-guided bombs to Israel, which requested the expedited shipment last week after beginning its air campaign against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, U.S. officials said Friday.

No doubt for use in "precision" strikes such as this one:

I mean, where's the clarity here?

Billmon: Spot-on analysis

2006-07-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

Twelve days in, and even Ralph Peters thinks the Israelis are losing:

"Israel is losing this war. For a lifelong Israel supporter, that's a painful thing to write. But it's true. And the situation's worsening each day."

...

it's clear from many other sources that things aren't going so well with Operation Midwife:

The Israeli Army -- which dashed across the Sinai in two days in 1967, and surrounded an entire Egyptian army in 1973, has spent the past three days trying to secure Maroun al-Ras, a village about 500 meters inside Lebanon.
Securing that modest objective (and it may not be secure even yet) has cost the Israelis at least 20 soldiers KIA.

The number of rockets falling on northern Israel has been reduced only minimally, if at all, and Israeli civilians are still dying, despite 11 days of bombing and round-the-clock Israeli air cover over southern Lebanon.

U.S. military sources say that IDF claims to have destroyed a significant percentage of Hizbollah's missiles are significantly "overstated."

Jane's Weekly reports that Hizbollah has emulated the Viet Cong and honeycombed the border area with underground tunnels and command posts that are virtually impervious to artillery fire and the Israeli Air Force's existing stock of bombs. (It looks like those "precision" munitions the Pentagon is rushing to the front may be bunker busters.)

...

It hardly matters at this point. The main thing is that yet another bold neocon gambit seems to have fallen flat on its face -- leaving the realist cleaning crew to sweep up the pieces.

The problem is that a cease fire agreement that doesn't result in the complete, verifiable disarming of Hizbollah (which hardly seems likely at this point) would give a truly enormous boost to the group's status and prestige. It would amount to a virtual recognition of Hizbollah as a sovereign entity. (A prisoner swap to retrieve the two Israeli POWs would give it an even bigger boost.) A cease fire deal without disarmament would also leave Israel vulnerable to the group's rockets, if and when a bigger war with Iran and/or Syria breaks out.

To read a complete version of this concise entry, click here.

Big up yo'self Billmon!

Uri Avnery: The real aim

2006-07-23T23:05:00.000-07:00

Install an Israeli puppet in Lebanon? Perhaps perhaps...but there is no way this could become a reality now. Right now it's sex with sandpaper condoms...not gonna work and don't feel good at all. Lube it up ye gentlemen of war!

THE REAL aim is to change the regime in Lebanon and to install a puppet government.

That was the aim of Ariel Sharon's invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It failed. But Sharon and his pupils in the military and political leadership have never really given up on it.

As in 1982, the present operation, too, was planned and is being carried out in full coordination with the U.S.

As then, there is no doubt that it is coordinated with a part of the Lebanese elite.

That's the main thing. Everything else is noise and propaganda.

ON THE eve of the 1982 invasion, Secretary of State Alexander Haig told Ariel Sharon that, before starting it, it was necessary to have a "clear provocation," which would be accepted by the world.

The provocation indeed took place--exactly at the appropriate time--when Abu-Nidal's terror gang tried to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London . This had no connection with Lebanon , and even less with the PLO (the enemy of Abu-Nidal), but it served its purpose.

This time, the necessary provocation has been provided by the capture of the two Israeli soldiers by Hizbullah. Everyone knows that they cannot be freed except through an exchange of prisoners. But the huge military campaign that has been ready to go for months was sold to the Israeli and international public as a rescue operation.

(Strangely enough, the very same thing happened two weeks earlier in the Gaza Strip. Hamas and its partners captured a soldier, which provided the excuse for a massive operation that had been prepared for a long time and whose aim is to destroy the Palestinian government.)

THE DECLARED aim of the Lebanon operation is to push Hizbullah away from the border, so as to make it impossible for them to capture more soldiers and to launch rockets at Israeli towns. The invasion of the Gaza strip is also officially aimed at getting Ashkelon and Sderot out of the range of the Qassams.

That resembles the 1982 "Operation Peace for Gallilee." Then, the public and the Knesset were told that the aim of the war was to "push the Katyushas 40 km away from the border."

That was a deliberate lie. For 11 months before the war, not a single Katyusha rocket (nor a single shot) had been fired over the border. From the beginning, the aim of the operation was to reach Beirut and install a Quisling dictator. As I have recounted more than once, Sharon himself told me so nine months before the war, and I duly published it at the time, with his consent (but unattributed).

Of course, the present operation also has several secondary aims, which do not include the freeing of the prisoners. Everybody understands that that cannot be achieved by military means. But it is probably possible to destroy some of the thousands of missiles that Hizbullah has accumulated over the years. For this end, the army chiefs are ready to endanger the inhabitants of the Israeli towns that are exposed to the rockets. They believe that that is worthwhile, like an exchange of chess figures.

Another secondary aim is to rehabilitate the "deterrent power" of the army. That is a codeword for the restoration of the army's injured pride that has suffered a severe blow from the daring military actions of Hamas in the south and Hizbullah in the north.

OFFICIALLY, THE Israeli government demands that the Government of Lebanon disarm Hizbullah and remove it from the border region.

That is clearly impossible under the present Lebanese regime, a delicate fabric of ethno-religious communities. The slightest shock can bring the whole structure crashing down and throw the state into total anarchy--especially after the Americans succeeded in driving out the Syrian army, the only element that has for years provided some stability.

The idea of installing a Quisling in Lebanon is nothing new. In 1955, David Ben-Gurion proposed taking a "Christian officer" and installing him as dictator. Moshe Sharet showed that this idea was based on complete ignorance of Lebanese affairs and torpedoed it. But 27 years later, Ariel Sharon tried to put it into effect nevertheless. Bashir Gemayel was indeed installed as president, only to be murdered soon afterwards. His brother, Amin, succeeded him and signed a peace agreement with Israel , but was driven out of office. (The same brother is now publicly supporting the Israeli operation.)

The calculation now is that if the Israeli Air Force rains heavy enough blows on the Lebanese population--paralysing the sea--and airports, destroying the infrastructure, bombarding residential neighborhoods, cutting the Beirut-Damascus highroad, etc., the public will get furious with Hizbullah and pressure the Lebanese government into fulfilling Israel 's demands. Since the present government cannot even dream of doing so, a dictatorship will be set up with Israel 's support.

That is the military logic. I have my doubts. It can be assumed that most Lebanese will react as any other people on earth would: with fury and hatred towards the invader. That happened in 1982, when the Shiites in the south of Lebanon , until then as docile as a doormat, stood up against the Israeli occupiers and created the Hizbullah, which has become the strongest force in the country. If the Lebanese elite now becomes tainted as collaborators with Israel , it will be swept off the map. (By the way, have the Qassams and Katyushas caused the Israeli population to exert pressure on our government to give up? Quite the contrary.)

The American policy is full of contradictions. President Bush wants "regime change" in the Middle East , but the present Lebanese regime has only recently been set up by under American pressure. In the meantime, Bush has succeeded only in breaking up Iraq and causing a civil war (as foretold here). He may get the same in Lebanon , if he does not stop the Israeli army in time. Moreover, a devastating blow against Hizbullah may arouse fury not only in Iran , but also among the Shiites in Iraq , on whose support all of Bush's plans for a pro-American regime are built.

So what's the answer? Not by accident, Hizbullah has carried out its soldier-snatching raid at a time when the Palestinians are crying out for succor. The Palestinian cause is popular all over the Arab word. By showing that they are a friend in need, when all other Arabs are failing dismally, Hizbullah hopes to increase its popularity. If an Israeli-Palestinian agreement had been achieved by now, Hizbullah would be no more than a local Lebanese phenomenon, irrelevant to our situation.

LESS THAN three months after its formation, the Olmert-Peretz government has succeeded in plunging Israel into a two-front war, whose aims are unrealistic and whose results cannot be foreseen.

If Olmert hopes to be seen as Mister Macho-Macho, a Sharon # 2, he will be disappointed. The same goes for the desperate attempts of Peretz to be taken seriously as an imposing Mister Security. Everybody understands that this campaign--both in Gaza and in Lebanon --has been planned by the army and dictated by the army. The man who makes the decisions in Israel now is Dan Halutz. It is no accident that the job in Lebanon has been turned over to the Air Force.

The public is not enthusiastic about the war. It is resigned to it, in stoic fatalism, because it is being told that there is no alternative. And indeed, who can be against it? Who does not want to liberate the "kidnapped soldiers"? Who does not want to remove the Katyushas and rehabilitate deterrence? No politician dares to criticize the operation (except the Arab MKs, who are ignored by the Jewish public). In the media, the generals reign supreme, and not only those in uniform. There is almost no former general who is not being invited by the media to comment, explain and justify, all speaking in one voice.

(As an illustration: Israel 's most popular TV channel invited me to an interview about the war, after hearing that I had taken part in an anti-war demonstration. I was quite surprised. But not for long--an hour before the broadcast, an apologetic talk-show host called and said that there had been a terrible mistake--they really meant to invite Professor Shlomo Avineri, a former Director General of the Foreign Office who can be counted on to justify any act of the government, whatever it may be, in lofty academic language.)

"Inter arma silent Musae"--when the weapons speak, the muses fall silent. Or, rather: when the guns roar, the brain ceases to function.

AND JUST a small thought: when the State of Israel was founded in the middle of a cruel war, a poster was plastered on the walls: "All the country--a front! All the people--an army!"

Fifty-eight years have passed, and the same slogan is still as valid as it was then. What does that say about generations of statesmen and generals?

July 21, 2006

Gideon Levy: The cracks are opening

2006-07-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

The cracks are opening

Israel can gain nothing more from this war than a bloody reputation. It is the right time to stop

Gideon Levy
Monday July 24, 2006
The Guardian

This war must be stopped immediately. From the start it was unnecessary, even if its excuse was justified. Every day raises its price, taking a toll in blood that gives Israel nothing in return. This is a good time to stop because both sides can claim they won: Israel harmed Hizbullah and Hizbullah harmed Israel. History shows that no situation is better for reaching an arrangement.
Israel went into the campaign on justified grounds and foul means. It claims it has declared war on Hizbullah but, in practice, it is destroying Lebanon. It has got most of what it could have out of this war. The aerial "target bank" has mostly been covered. The airforce could continue to sow destruction in the residential neighbourhoods and empty offices, dropping bombs on real or imagined bunkers, and kill innocent Lebanese, but nothing good will come of it.
Those who want to restore Israel's deterrent capabilities have succeeded. Hizbullah and the rest of its enemies now know that Israel reacts with enormous force to any provocation. An international agreement could be achieved now, and it won't be possible to achieve a better deal in the future.
Israel's other goals - returning the captured soldiers and the elimination of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah - will be more difficult to achieve if the war goes on for weeks and months. The Israeli Defence Force is asking for "two more weeks"; in two weeks it will ask for "another two weeks". A decisive victory is not in the offing.
On the other hand, the price is skyrocketing. Every day increases international criticism of Israel - not only in the streets of the Arab world, but also in the west. Not only hundreds of thousands of Lebanese but tens of thousands of westerners fleeing from Lebanon are contributing to the depiction of Israel as a violent, crude and destructive state.
The fact that George Bush and Tony Blair are cheering Israel might be consolation for Ehud Olmert and the media in Israel, but it is not enough to persuade millions of TV viewers who see the destruction and devastation, most of which are not shown in Israel. The world sees entire neighbourhoods destroyed, thousands of refugees fleeing in panic, and hundreds of civilians dead and wounded, including many children. A lethal summer will exact a much greater price. Slowly, the cracks will open and Israel's citizens will begin to ask why we are dying and what we are killing for.
We've been here before, more than once. Wars began with national approval and ended with a great crisis. When it becomes apparent that the airforce is not enough, the ground invasion will intensify. The cliche about the Lebanese quagmire will be revalidated, and when soldiers are killed, the protests will rise and divide society.
Now Israel is hoping for the elimination of Nasrallah. It is worth reminding ourselves of the dozens of people Israel assassinated in Lebanon and the territories, from Sheikh Abbas Musawi to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, each replaced by someone new - usually more talented and dangerous than the predecessor. The goals of war should not be dictated by dark impulses, even if they come in response to the wishes and demands of the mob. The other desired goal, the return of the prisoners, will only be achieved through negotiations. Israel could have done that before the war.
Continuing the war guarantees a heavy price without any guarantee of reward. Israel must cease and desist. The president of the US can push us to continue the war, the prime minister of Britain can cheer us, but in Israel and Lebanon the blood is being spilt, the horror is intensifying, the price is rising, and it is all for naught.

· Gideon Levy is a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz; this is an edited version of his latest article

Cracking Lebanon

2006-07-23T22:36:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart explains the logic behind Israeli attacks.

Thanks Norm

And here's some pictures of what's going on, thanks Chris.

Democracy flowering in Lebanon

2006-07-23T04:44:00.001-07:00

Shooting Bruce Lee down with an F16

2006-07-20T13:21:00.000-07:00

Destroying Lebanon like they are doing (and sanctioning), is like shooting Bruce Lee down with an F16. Don'tch ya think? There's no honor in it. No honor at all...for making all Lebanese people suffer for the crimes of few.

View this Bruce Lee interview.

Democracy Flowering in Lebanon

2006-07-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

Democracy flowering in Lebanon

2006-07-18T22:25:00.000-07:00

The Cowards of Assymetric Warfare

2006-07-15T19:32:00.000-07:00

Got bombs? Drop em'
Got guns and planes? Fly em' crash em'
kill kill kill, make the meditterranean ill

What is the meaning of assymetric warfare?
Who are the cowards participating in these crimes?

First, I am not a fan of Hizbullah. But lets examine the laws of assymetric warfare.

Hizbullah kidnaps two Israeli soldiers near the Lebanese-Israel border.
Of course, then, Lebanon deserves to be destroyed...the entire population
must suffer. It's only a natural reaction, right?

No! That's a perfect example of assymetric warfare.

When you're sittin real pretty, and you know you'll be winning
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you're bombin' the city, and you kill fifty or sixty
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you have no soul, and blindly bomb buildings whole
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you blame an entire population for something they didn't do
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you destroy a country again, for no reason...only to sin.
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you bomb a minibus, filled with civilians
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

When you bomb Lebanon, while Bush roots you on
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]
assymetric warfare [clap, clap]

That was fun

The cowards of assymetric warfare will limp with damaged souls for destroying Lebanon again and for driving Lebanon back into Syria's hands.

Bush you're just an idiot for standing by like you are.
So, many regrets...you should have.

And once again, Lebanon is the arena for the battles of others.

Leave Eskimo-Americans alone

2006-06-19T12:21:00.000-07:00

Stop the destruction of rural Eskimo-America!

Eskimos Face Hard Times After Iraq Call-Up

Monday June 19, 2006 7:31 PM

By MARY PEMBERTON

Associated Press Writer

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Military families across America often endure hardship when a loved one ships out. But there are not many places in the U.S. where those left behind have to chop ice out of the tundra for drinking water and make sure the freezer is well-stocked with walrus and seal meat.

The first major call-up of National Guard reservists from rural Alaska since World War II could mean sacrifice and upheaval for Eskimo villages that practice subsistence hunting and gathering in some of the most remote and unforgiving spots in the nation.

Eric Phillip's job in the small Yup'ik Eskimo village of Kongiganak in southwestern Alaska is to hunt walrus, seal, mink, otter, geese, ducks and other animals to provide food for his immediate family and other relatives. With Phillip shipping out, his wife and their two young sons will be moving to the city of Bethel, about 70 miles away.

``Out here it is harder for them to live alone,'' Phillip said. ``In the village we don't have water. We have to go to the tundra and chop ice for water and melt it, and we don't have flush toilets. It is hard for a single parent to live around here in the village.''

Similar stories are being told in Eskimo villages across the vast state, in places with names like Alakanuk, Emmonak and Manokotak, as 670 soldiers from some of the most hard-to-reach places in the nation head to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Six men headed to Iraq are from Scammon Bay, a Yup'ik Eskimo village of about 520 people in western Alaska where residents rely mostly on subsistence hunting and fishing. Families left behind will now rely more on each other, another time-honored tradition in rural Alaska. The village will take care of them.

``Everybody shares food really well out here. It is a custom,'' said Darlene Cholok, whose husband, Thomas, is one of those going to Iraq. ``Our community is so close-knit and everyone is practically related in some way that there is a lot of support.''

While Alaska's National Guard does an excellent job of helping its military families, it will be particularly tough for these soldiers and their families, because they live in such inaccessible areas, said Pete Mulcahy, executive director of Armed Services YMCA of Alaska. That makes it more difficult to arrange help for them, he said.

``These guys have a bigger challenge,'' he said. ``Even a remote village in Texas is still on the road grid.''

Amy Chikigak of the Yup'ik Eskimo village of Alakanuk is preparing to say goodbye to her husband, Vernon. She said she is not worried about food. Their freezers are full of seal, whale, fish, geese, swans and berries. The village store also is pretty well-stocked.

``We have vegetables and stuff like that, mashed potatoes for our fried moose,'' she said. ``We have macaroni and cheese, and that always helps, too.''

She and the three children, ages 12, 9 and 7, are going to remain in the village. If she runs short of anything, her mother and father and brothers will provide, she said.

Chikigak is more concerned about learning how to use the chainsaw to cut wood to heat the steam bath. She also wants to be able to run the boat so she can take the children on summer picnics: ``I will have to force myself to learn and I will still panic.''

Before leaving for Iraq and Afghanistan, the troops will get three months of training, which will include getting used to hot weather at Camp Shelby in Mississippi.

Maj. Stephen Wilson, who returned from a one-year stint in Iraq in 2005 and is overseeing the deployment of seven soldiers from Barrow, 340 miles north of the Arctic Circle, said the Alaskans should do well once they adjust to the 120-degree heat in Iraq. In Barrow - the northernmost city in the United States - the temperature doesn't get much higher than the low 50s in the summer, and often drops below freezing at night.

Maj. Mike Haller, a Guard spokesman in Anchorage, said about 35 percent of the approximately 4,000 National Guard members in Alaska are Native, well above their 19 percent share of the state's population.

Being in the National Guard is a rite of passage for many young Alaska Natives, Haller said, a tradition that started during World War II when Alaska was still a territory. In that war, the state's National Guard troops fought in both Europe and the Pacific, and some were stationed in Alaska's Aleutian Islands to guard against the Japanese.

Besides honor and tradition, service in the Guard brings in money that comes in handy in the villages, where jobs are hard to come by and food and other goods are expensive.

As for the dangers that await the troops in the Mideast, Staff Sgt. William F. Brown, the leader of the Barrow troop and 29-year guard veteran, said he has faced fear before and beaten it.

Brown recounted a whaling trip about 10 years ago when a polar bear came within about 30 feet. Brown was about to grab his gun when the whaling captain told him to relax.

``He said, `Don't show no fear, don't be scared. They're like dogs, they pick up your scent and take advantage of your fear,''' Brown said. The polar bear ``just stood up, sniffed and walked away. Ever since then I've been teaching myself not to be scared, to show no fear.''

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead! Rejoice!

2006-06-09T21:19:00.000-07:00

Whether or not he's a ghost, I am hella-happy that Zarqawi has finally reached the burning cinders of hell. And I don't venture far in saying that who ever pulled the trigger that made this a reality is a hero just as much as Watada. He's a symbol that deserved to perish. For he caused the misery of thousands of innocent Iraqis and their families. That this current illegal war is what brought Zarqawi and his ilk into Iraq in the first place...many people will choose to omit in their proclamations of success regarding this matter. I'm just happy he's dead. Please understand this exception I make...because I'm not one to wish death on many.

Also, the fact that it came on the heels of the announcement (or rumorS) that the defense and interior ministry posts had been filled does not seem to be a coincidence. It's similar in scope as what happened in Italy a few months back when Bernardo Provenzano (notorious mob boss) was captured just when Prodi's center left government wrestled power from the clutches of the most legitimate mob boss in history, Silvio Berlusconi.

Sure, it's not quite the most precise and prescient analogy, but it's damn close.

I am in agreement with Chris Allbritton's assessment that there must have been some back room maneuvering which could be cause of celebration.

Anyway, I just wanted to shout-out these few words and go along my way.

Ehren Watada: American Hero

2006-06-07T19:05:00.000-07:00

Exactly where is the protest against the war coming from these days?

Yes, from a commissioned officer himself...

I salute you Lt. Watada for standing up for what you believe in. You are an American Hero.

Professor Juan Cole: Critique of US Policy in Iraq

2006-05-23T20:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, you read something and agree with it so much that you yourself could have said it. This is the case with Professor Cole's latest installment at Informed Comment. Here it is quoted in full...

Critique of US Policy in Iraq

Bush Administration policies in Iraq have largely been a failure. It has created a failed state in that country, which is in flames and seething with new religious and ethnic nationalist passions of a sort never before seen on this scale in modern Iraqi history. The severe instability in Iraq threatens the peace and security of the entire region, and could easily ignite a regional guerrilla war that might well affect petroleum exports from the Oil Gulf and hence the health of the world economy.

The relatively small number of US fighting troops that the US has in Iraq, some 60,000 to 70,000, cannot possibly hope to provide security to a country of 26 million under such conditions of ethnic and political civil war. The much smaller British presence in Basra appears not to have been effective in halting that city's spiral down into insecurity, with tribal and militia grudge fights and assassinations having become common.

The inauguration of a new Iraqi government was marred by the enormous amount of time it took to form it (5 months!), by open US imperial intervention in the choice of prime minister and in other negotiations, by the walk-out of over two dozen parliamentarians from both the Shiite (Virtue Party) and Sunni (National Dialogue Front and Iraqi Accord Front) parties, and by the failure of the new prime minister to name three key cabinet ministers central to the country's security-- Defense, Interior, and National Security. The Iraqi government is among the more corrupt in the world, working by bribes and a party spoils system.

The new parliament is virtually hung, and Prime Minister al-Maliki governs as a minority prime minister, being able to count on less than 115 MPs from his own party, in a parliament with 275 members. He is therefore hostage to the Kurds, who want to move Iraq in the direction of having a very weak central government, a degree of provincial autonomy unknown in any other country in the world, and who want to unilaterally annex a fourth province, oil-rich Kirkuk, to their regional confederacy, despite the violent opposition of Kirkuk's Turkmen and Arab populations to being Kurdicized.

The Bush administration reconstruction project in Iraq has largely failed. In part, it was foiled by sophisticated guerrilla sabotage, so that billions have had to be diverted from actual reconstruction to security. And nor has security been achieved. In part, it was foiled by a degree of corruption, cupidity, embezzlement, lawlessness and fraud that is unparalleled in US history since the Gilded Age. And in part is has been foiled by a US insistence on making most often unqualified US corporations the immediate recipient and major beneficiary of funds, so that Iraqi concerns get much less lucrative sub-contracts and relatively little of the money benefitted the Iraqi economy directly.

Military engagements between Sunni Arab guerrillas and US troops of some seriousness have been fought at Ramadi in the past week, though little noticed by the mainstream US press. Fallujah is dangerous again. Neighborhoods of the capital, Baghdad are blown up every day. A nighttime hot civil war produces some number of corpses daily, sometimes dozens, to the extent that morning corpse patrol has become a central duty of Iraqi police. A lot of us suspect that some units of the police themselves are involved in these kidnappings and killings, so that often they know just where to look for the corpses.

The main US military tactic still appears to be search and destroy, a way of proceeding guaranteed to extend the scope and popularity of the Sunni Arab guerrilla movement. The guerrillas appear more well-organized, determined, and effective than ever, and no lasting and effective progress appears to have been made in counter-insurgency anywhere in the Sunni Arab heartland. The human toll of the war has been deeply depressing. The number of Iraqi dead in the war and its aftermath (killed in political violence by any side) cannot be estimated, but certainly is over 100,000 and could easily be more. The 30,000 figure often cited comes from counts of reports of deaths in Western wire services, which are demonstrably a fraction of the true total. None of the nearly 1,000 Iraqis assassinated in Basra during the past month, possibly with police involvement, appears in such statistics.

The US has lost over 2400 troops dead, and the number of wounded in action is over 17,000, some significant proportion of them seriously wounded, with long-term disabilities. Some Iraq War vets are suffering mental problems and were discharged because of them under circumstances that make it difficult for them to get VA care. Some Iraq War vets are showing up homeless in US cities already. Meanwhile, Halliburton is back from the brink of bankruptcy. US troops have fought bravely in unfamiliar terrain, and have often done unheralded community developoment work. Their enemies have included ex-Baathist serial murderers and Salafi Jihadi terrorists. Their sacrifices for the sake of removing Saddam and his regime, and attempting to stabilize Iraq, must be honored. But some of their enemies have been honorable resistance fighters, as recognized by the present Iraqi government itself, and US troops have had the profound misfortune of being ordered into an illegal war and then becoming caught up in a series of guerrilla wars for local autonomy, of a sort that no imperial power has been able to win since about 1960.

There is no evidence of the new Iraqi army and security forces proving themselves effective against the guerrillas. The security forces with the possible exception of the new army are heavily infiltrated by partisan militias. A recent news article quoted an approving US officer as saying that Iraqi troops in Baqubah fought a guerrilla attack right down to the point where the troops ran out of ammunition. These were almost certainly Shiite and/or Kurdish troops fighting Sunni guerrillas, so this was actually another battle in the Civil War. No wonder they fought to the bitter end. But what I take away from this anecdote is that the guerrillas have more ammunition than do the poor s.o.b.'s in the Iraqi army, and I don't see that as a good sign. A unified military is almost impossible to achieve in conditions of civil war, in any case. Lebanon had an army when the civil war broke out there in the mid-1970s, but President Elias Sarkis was unable to commit it, for fear it would split along ethnic lines. The same problems now exist in Iraq, and are unlikely to be resolved for some years, if ever.

Iraq cannot be stabilized without the active help of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, the neighboring countries. But the Bush administration has actively attempted to alienate Iran and Syria, threatening them with regime change or military attack, and guaranteeing that they would be hostile to US success and continued presence in Iraq. The US has also alienated Turkey by allowing the violent leftist Kurdish guerrilla movement, the PKK, to base itself in northern Iraq and to attack Turkey and Iran from that safe haven. The US has alienated Saudi Arabia in a whole host of ways, from insinuations that the Wahhabi form of Islam is in an unqualified way a source of terrorism, to US insensitivity to Saudi fears of the rise of a Shiite Crescent.

Bush administration ineptitude, ignorance, and often stupidity is matched by some regional players. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud El Faisal came to the US in fall of 2005 and castigated the US for allowing Iraq to fall into the hands of the Iranians (i.e. pro-Iranian Iraqi Shiites), provoking a severe diplomatic tiff between Baghdad and Riyadh. Instead of being helpful to a fellow Arab country, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt alienated the Shiite south of Iraq by saying that Arab Shiites are more loyal to Iran than to their own countries. After these incidents, which enraged the Iraqi Shiites, the prospect for a fruitful role in Iraq for the Arab League have receded substantially, since Shiite Iraqis cannot see it as an honest broker.

The Bush Administration trumpets that a defeat of "al-Qaeda" in Iraq would be decisive for defeating terrorism in the world at large. But Bush and his policies led to there being anything like an effective Islamic radical terrorism in Iraq in the first place. The tiny Ansar al-Islam group that operated in the north before 2003 had been hunted by the Baath security and only survived because of the US no-fly zone that prevented Iraqi armor from being deployed against it. Bush has not shown any particular ability to put this genie, which he unleashed, back in the bottle. His war in Iraq has been an enormous boon to the international Salafi Jihadi movement, encouraging angry youths from all over the world to join it to fight to the US. Bush by his aggressive and inept policies is creating the phenomenon he says he is fighting, and so can never defeat it.

The prospect lies before us of years, perhaps decades of instability in the Gulf and eastern reaches of the Middle East. There is a danger of it doubling and tripling our gasoline prices. There is a danger of it forming a matrix and a school for anti-US terrorism for years to come. Are people in Fallujah, Tal Afar and Ramadi really ever going to forgive us? And there is no guarantee of the Shiites remaining US allies for very long, either. Many, of course, already have conceived a new hatred of America as a result of over-reaction of green National Guardsmen, who often have killed innocent civilians in the south, and as a result of iron fist policies when US troops were fighting the Mahdi Army.

The Bush administration has pushed us all out onto a tightrope in Iraq, 60 feet up and without a net.

Thank you Viceroy Khalilzad!

2006-05-21T08:19:00.000-07:00

God save the American empire for delivering such a wonderful gift as the new and highly competent Iraqi government. I mean, I'm breathless at the effective transition in the last 5 months, from the concrete accomplishments of election to formation of our new democracy.

I'm sure now that we've got a taste of democracy in the last few years, we'll quickly see an end to everything bad happening in Iraq. Of course, we couldn't say how long this would be...but looking at how fast our newly elected lists formed the government (a mere 5 months!!!) I believe within another 12 years or so, we'll have functioning institutions and concerts in the park. I can't wait. But I know I'll have to...

It won't be long!

And I know I have you, Viceroy Khalilzad, to thank for this :D

God bless Iraq being included in the neo-imperialist (and neo-liberal) project I'd like to call Pax Americana. You can plunder our oil fields, but you'll never take away the intoxicating feeling of freedom via elections. Screw running water, give me a ballot.

Ballots for the pawns of empire! Ballots for the pawns of empire!
Yipeeee yeaaaaaa! yipeeeee yoooooooo!

And I'd like to add one more thing. Because I know I have this platform to express important ideas and discuss pressing issues. And I must use it responsibly. So...Please world, pay attention to what is happening in Africa. Air drop some ballots of love on Darfur! Stop the madness! I can't stand those poor people dying there any longer. A travesty, I tell ya.

Good night and happiness to all...

Thought riot & back to Oblivion

2006-05-18T22:29:00.000-07:00

First in

Big UP to Thought Riot...
Reminds me of myself when I first started blogging at the Agora.
[via Where Date Palms Grow - which is another great new blog]

I'm back and feeling good. We've had a new addition to the family. I'm a proud uncle once more! I believe Najma's sister had a baby recently too. So congratulations to her and all her family too!

peace out,
lim

A myriad of myopic bits of crap

2006-05-08T08:34:00.000-07:00

Q: What do Mother Teresa and Bernardo Provenzano have in common?

Take a deep breath. And count to ten.

Time to go Joe: Joe Leiberman's a mole.
Russ Feingold points out that Democrats don't have balls. And we all already knew Barbara Boxer has more balls than all other democrats on the hill combined.
Hillary is one sketchy biatch for bunking with Rupert Murdoch.
Fundamentalism 101: Fundamentalists don't speak to other fundamentalists.
David Blaine is a dickhead.
Fatal Irony: The Dead Sea is dying. I'm glad I visited it this past winter.
The most consistent thing in life with death: Iraq. Sadly, yes.
And it seems Lebanon ain't never gonna change. What a bunch of tools.

A: They both have black and white pictures of when they were young on the internet.

Iraqi Film-maker describes the female experience in Iraq today

2006-05-07T22:04:00.000-07:00

Because it's such a neglected issue and seldom spoke of in the new Iraq, I want to bring some attention to the following article in the Guardian. Women are the newly repressed lot in the new Iraq. Never before have women been so crushed there. And their plight be told by "Zeina" in a new film...

The film-maker, who lives in Baghdad, wants to keep her identity secret because she fears reprisals, so I'll call her Zeina. When I spoke to her by telephone, the first first thing I asked her was why it is that she feels she has to hide her identity, and in her answer she does not distinguish between the government and the insurgents, in the way that we are taught to do here. "I feel the threat from the government and from the sectarian militias," she says. "The danger in Iraq comes from the Americans, from the sectarian militias - and, of course, it also comes from the crime, the gangs, the random kidnappings."

She decided she wanted to make this film because the things she saw every day were not being seen by the outside world. "No one sees what we are going through. All Iraqis are psychologically traumatised by what is happening. I have seen an eight-year old child who has involuntary tremors, whenever she hears an aeroplane or sees soldiers. I have seen families displaced. I have seen women forced into prostitution because of the poverty of their families."

Zeina was not a supporter of Saddam Hussein's regime. During his rule, she worked as a journalist and a translator of literary criticism. "Politically, before the war, I was not happy," she says. "So many things were not right. We had no freedom of speech, no freedom of expression. But I never imagined the change would be this way, so bad. I never imagined that at all."

Click to read more.

Stephen Colbert: American Hero

2006-05-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

Hats off completely to Stephen Colbert for confronting the president!

Here's the video (26 minutes) or here: part one & part two or the torrent

Here's the 60 Minutes piece on Colbert.

Here's the Daily Show recap on Colbert's speech.

Here's Stephen Colbert's audition for WH press secretary.

Divide and Conquer...

2006-05-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

...is one of the oldest tactics in the book!

I suggest Iraq is already split up and will get much worse as time passes, unless something concrete and effective is done immediately. And was making Iraq split what was meant by the "Mission Accomplished" speech 3 years ago? Was a chaotic Iraq a mission objective? If so, it's a success based on creating ethnic tensions, which leads Iraq further down the current path of destruction, which creates a climate allowing for theives and terrorists both professional and not to run amok in Iraq doing whatever they like at will...while conveniently and so coincidentally undercutting this possible natural enemy of Israel by causing more instability??? I'm sorry. How is this success? As far as I'm concerned, the entire project of invasion and occupation is just fanning the flames and creating more problems for both America and Israel later down the road...and new problems now! I'm getting off-subject but...

But if you split it up correctly, Iraq's integrity as a nation might be saved. Starting on that basis, Professor Cole recently offered some possible solutions on his blog that I found interesting. More on the debate by the following people: Senators Biden & Gelb (still uninformed about Kirkuk) and Anthony Cordesman (whom I agree with...I am also against Iraq splitting up, for the record.)

I implore US officials to look into the most level-headed of the recommendations offered by such accomplished persons above. That is, unless you would enjoy Iraq turning into another Iran...which you so ironically created too!!!

I look at the situation now...and I just laugh with dread at knowing what really happened...and what's happening now. So painfully similar to, say, Lebanese sectarianism...and never before has the cliche , history repeats itself , been made so fresh with so much blood since,,,well, since Darfur last week...Congo last year....and Rwanda in the mid 90s.
Face it...so disgusting, huh?
Humanity is cruel.
Enjoy yourself.

Hooray for evolution! Hooray for Tiktaalik!

2006-04-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

And to hell with intelligent design...

Take that you foolish socio-pathetic evangelicals!

Here are some excerpts from the Guardian piece:

Tiktaalik - the name means "a large, shallow-water fish" in the Inuit language Inuktikuk - shows that the evolution of animals from living in water to living on land happened gradually, with fish first living in shallow water.

The animal lived in the Devonian era lasting from 417m to 354m years ago, and had a skull, neck, and ribs similar to early limbed animals (known as tetrapods), as well as a more primitive jaw, fins, and scales akin to fish.

The scientists who discovered it say the animal was a predator with sharp teeth, a crocodile-like head, and a body that grew up to 2.75 metres (9ft) long.

The near-pristine fossil was found on Ellesmere Island, Canada, which is 600 miles from the north pole in the Arctic Circle.

When Tiktaalik lived, the Canadian Arctic region was part of a land mass which straddled the equator. Like the Amazon basin today, it had a subtropical climate and the animal lived in small streams. The skeleton indicates that it could support its body under the force of gravity.

Here is the article from Nature magazine.

Why do people have to die everyday for things to stay the same?

2006-03-31T00:04:00.000-08:00

And get even worse...

It is undeniable that the Iraq war is a debacle of immense proportions. Every time I try to write something, I simply can't. And after all the blank spots have been filled in with vivid color by my family members with whom I was re-united with during the winter break, I do not have the words to express anything...much less my disgust for the situation.

But, Eric Haney, the founder of the infamous American Delta Force does not have the same such problem.

Eric Haney, a retired command sergeant major of the U.S. Army, was a founding member of Delta Force, the military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit. He culled his experiences for "Inside Delta Force" (Delta; $14), a memoir rich with harrowing stories, though in an interview, Haney declines with a shrug to estimate the number of times he was almost killed. (Perhaps the most high-profile incident that almost claimed his life was the 1980 failed rescue of the hostages in Iran.) Today, he's doing nothing nearly as dangerous: He serves as an executive producer and technical adviser for "The Unit," CBS' new hit drama based on his book, developed by playwright David Mamet. Even up against "American Idol," "The Unit" shows muscle, drawing 18 million viewers in its first two airings.
Since he has devoted his life to protecting his country in some of the world's most dangerous hot spots, you might assume Haney is sympathetic to the Bush administration's current plight in Iraq (the laudatory cover blurb on his book comes from none other than Fox's News' Bill O'Reilly). But he's also someone with close ties to the Pentagon, so he's privy to information denied the rest of us.

We recently spoke to Haney, an amiable, soft-spoken Southern gentleman, on the set of "The Unit."

Q: What's your assessment of the war in Iraq?

A: Utter debacle. But it had to be from the very first. The reasons were wrong. The reasons of this administration for taking this nation to war were not what they stated. (Army Gen.) Tommy Franks was brow-beaten and ... pursued warfare that he knew strategically was wrong in the long term. That's why he retired immediately afterward. His own staff could tell him what was going to happen afterward.

We have fomented civil war in Iraq. We have probably fomented internecine war in the Muslim world between the Shias and the Sunnis, and I think Bush may well have started the third world war, all for their own personal policies.

Q: What is the cost to our country?

A: For the first thing, our credibility is utterly zero. So we destroyed whatever credibility we had. ... And I say "we," because the American public went along with this. They voted for a second Bush administration out of fear, so fear is what they're going to have from now on.

Our military is completely consumed, so were there a real threat - thankfully, there is no real threat to the U.S. in the world, but were there one, we couldn't confront it. Right now, that may not be a bad thing, because that keeps Bush from trying something with Iran or with Venezuela.

The harm that has been done is irreparable. There are more than 2,000 American kids that have been killed. Tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed ñ which no one in the U.S. really cares about those people, do they? I never hear anybody lament that fact. It has been a horror, and this administration has worked overtime to divert the American public's attention from it. Their lies are coming home to roost now, and it's gonna fall apart. But somebody's gonna have to clear up the aftermath and the harm that it's done just to what America stands for. It may be two or three generations in repairing.

Q: What do you make of the torture debate? Cheney ...

A: (Interrupting) That's Cheney's pursuit. The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does.

I've argued this on Bill O'Reilly and other Fox News shows. I ask, who would you want to pay to be a torturer? Do you want someone that the American public pays to torture? He's an employee of yours. It's worse than ridiculous. It's criminal; it's utterly criminal. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I'm saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. ... The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what's legal and what we believed in. Now we're going to throw it away.

Q: As someone who repeatedly put your life on the line, did some of the most hair-raising things to protect your country, and to see your country behave this way, that must be ...

A: It's pretty galling. But ultimately I believe in the good and the decency of the American people, and they're starting to see what's happening and the lies that have been told. We're seeing this current house of cards start to flutter away. The American people come around. They always do.

THE UNIT

What: Action-adventure about special-ops unit.
Where: CBS (Channel 2).
When: 9 p.m. Tuesdays.

What's the matter with me...

2006-03-21T04:07:00.000-08:00

You might be asking this just about now. And I don't blame you. I've been MIA quite some time...and for a number of reasons. First, every time I actually try to sit and write about the current situation and all that's happened to me in the past couple months I'm met face to face with some serious questions that concern my identity and my changing priorities in life and I'd just rather avoid such questions for the meantime in order to gain focus. I've become more pragmatic and see how little affect I've actually got on the whole ball of wax which melts, runs, and withers in every which way at the whims of the flaming sharameeet on all sides who bi' ya'khrab for sport. That sport is making money and grabbing power. Over the course of one's life, we each dabble in this sport at various degrees. But the degree in which current leaders and former leaders in the new and "democratic" and American/Irani Iraq (and this includes leaders of the occupation as well) partake in such sport is beyond any sane person's wildest imaginations. We can safely say at this point that nobody wants Iraq to be a success, even anti-war Europeans and Americans. I realize I'm citing FF in this link, but he makes some damn prescient points in today's Guardian. And he makes the point I've made over and over about how Democrats and Republicans are essentially a different face leading to the same bullshit. But I think FF is being a bit too much of an apologist for the GOP in this article, because I do not believe Al Gore would have necessarily taken this country into such an ill-advised war. But we're already here, so no need to harp on about the past, right? Wrong!

What's another reason why nobody wants Iraq to be a success?

If Iraq had some securtiy and essential services, the theives are were there before the elections and the theives who are there now could not steal as efficiently as they do. Add a chalabi or two and you have expert Theive Trainers spreading around the cash...because there's tons to go around. Unfortunately, there isn't enough power to spread around to all the terminally corrupt and inept asswipes who think they have some control over the current situation. The situation is out of control, but the president tells you to look past the bloodshed and not lose your nerve. On the other hand, the Iranian Iraqis tell you that they want the US out soon because there's no need for them there because the current Iraqi "government" has everything under control. And if we were to believe the rosy outlook the White House continues to take on Iraq, we might even begin to believe the Iranians and withdraw, right? WRONG!

And with this, the true Iraqi's delemmna is thus presented...And I guess I can only speak from the Iraqi Christian perspective when I point the following out. The troops cannot stay and they cannot go.

But I firmly believe that this is America's dilemma now. Every American's dilemma actually. And America won't leave Iraq...and they won't interfere with all-out civil war, according to Squire Rumsfeldio. But I bet you a bottom dollar Americans side with Sunnis and Saddamites in the coming months and years and try to grab back some of the power that the Shiites have taken. Not interfering in an all-out civil war reeks of some of the reality that quite literally gushes out so often onto our television sets and web browsers...meaning, the occupation has come to protect America's oil underneath Iraq's soil, even if innocent Iraqis continue to die because of the American and Iranian presence. The 51st state indeed. How many states get a 500 billion dollar budget over three years?

So, we know what they won't do...but what will they do to stay in Iraq?

I'm sure they don't even know what the long-run has in store. But lying to the American people is a pre-req of seemingly everything the cabal on the hill do. It's important to note that there are other cabals in other places who are also meddling with Iraq's fate. And knowing this makes me the saddest. It is truly an arena for other people to fight their wars. I need not mention Lebanon's or Algeria's similarities any longer. This is a much more formadable monster. And it will be Bush's legacy whether he likes it or not.

Personally, I hope he succeeds. But I know he won't because of his miserably poor performance to date. Success is something you build one brick at a time, not something you imagine.

My internet is back

2006-03-13T12:19:00.000-08:00

First, my apologies...

I was supposed to do so much, but for over a week now my internet has been down. Good news is that it works again. Bad news is that I don't have the time now to get to anything. I just wanted to say hello and let people know that I will return to the fold shortly.

I've got a thing for elephants.

P ea C e

A great poet once wrote, 'too much is too much'...

2006-02-26T16:41:00.000-08:00

Lebanon, Food Poisoned, Amman, Reunion with Family, back to school...

That's the order of things that happened. A particularly nasty case of food poisoning as well...5 days of fever etc et

Sorry I couldn't fulfill my plan to blog. Too much has happened, but I'll try to catch up this week.

Peace to the peoples with both brain and heart.

Steering away from one's nature is a most difficult thing to do.

2006-01-27T08:51:00.001-08:00

ALLLLLLLLLLLLoooooooooooooooooooo,

I'm going to try my best to steer a bit clear from politics in the coming days and weeks because I notice how it just gives me a big headache. I'm far too concerned about things out of my control and I wish to just live my life with a modicum of peace. I know this is the recipe for apathy that many governments implement in order to muzzle their populations from complaining about real problems that may have real solutions if only people organized and spoke-out against things such as injustice and inequality. As you see... my problem is I'm really political by nature...can't help myself. In a way, this blog serves as a manner by which I release all the political coodies I catch while going about my day. Instead I wanna catch some culture coodies and spread em around to ya. Anyway, I'll try my best to turn my attention to things more pleasant while in Lebanon. Because I know I'll only get into trouble if I really speak my mind.

PEACE OUT !

LIM

The Irony: Bushies wanted Hamas to win

2006-01-27T01:58:00.000-08:00

Here comes the big irony...

It doesn't help Bush and his agenda in the ME for a moderate anything to exist. Because that would mean he'd have to do what our founding-fathers did so well...COMPROMISE. So, I along with many others believe that Bush is in cahoots with extremists stretching all along region. Many in Leb. believe this, too, as I've had this conversation with several already. And these are the Christians that Georgey claims to represent in his religio-pulpit at the WH. You cannot fool most Lebanese. They're extremely agile political beings(at least the ones i know)...the complete opposite of the average apathetic SUV-driving American.

So the Bushites wanted Middle Eastern democracy and coupled with his illegal war in Iraq which radicalized populations across the board, they sure-well got it fanatic-style. What they themselves know best... I don't want this to sound like an "I told you so", but it's the frickin truth. We saw this coming miles and miles away. The morons with power in Washington have successfully fucked up the world. Because their designs will never ever work. And I'm sure in the next year or two we'll begin to see exactly why.

OUT,
LIMmmmmmmmm

Back 2 Lebanon

2006-01-27T00:56:00.000-08:00

I got here and didn't realize how bent out of shape I was. It's true, I hadn't been sleeping well for months and I was emaciated from the lack thereof good zaytoon and leban among other delectables of the Lebanese variety. Oh, it's been too long...

My body was broken by the time I arrived a week ago. One of my little cousins was a little under the weather, so I caught a bit of it. But after being fed and getting some real rest, today I've completely recovered and I'm ready for some Lebanon...The weather has been a downer the past couple days here in Beirut, but I'm sure the mountains have lots of snow. I can't wait to go skiing!!!

Sorry I was gone so long. I'm going to be blogging heavily in the next few weeks. So check back in often.

Now, some general commentary as I have been gone since all what happened during the past year. I sincerely thought things would get better here...people would become more united and so on. But now that I've taken in things a bit, it just looks to me as if things are more divided and becoming more divided than ever. All the political dinosaurs/warlords are still welding power in Lebanon...no new faces (really) to date. Why are Lebanon's youth so complacent? Are traditions spoiling the political ambitions of our generation? Should we remain on the yoke of the archaic?

I say no. Lets get together and figure out how to make a principled-stand instead of continuing the zombie-walk to oblivion that is occuring in so many other neighboring nations.

Peace out my brothers and sisters...it's great to be back!

Big fat liar

2006-01-05T04:34:00.000-08:00

Bush while in Buffalo, New York, for his reelection campaign in April 2004:

There are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.

And a seemingly ever-prescient question posed to Bee Dubya Diddy in a recent news conference where he's defending his NSA program,

I wonder if you can tell us today, sir, what, if any, limits you believe there are or should be on the powers of a President during a war, at wartime? And if the global war on terror is going to last for decades, as has been forecast, does that mean that we're going to see, therefore, a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive in American society?

link

Big up to the thoughtful and crazy Farris Hassan

2005-12-30T03:54:00.000-08:00

It's all very poetic, even though crazy. I mean, you're 16 dude. Chill.

Maybe it was the time the taxi dumped him at the Iraq-Kuwait border, leaving him alone in the middle of the desert. Or when he drew a crowd at a Baghdad food stand after using an Arabic phrase book to order. Or the moment a Kuwaiti cab driver almost punched him in the face when he balked at the $100 fare. But at some point, Farris Hassan, a 16-year-old from Florida, realized that traveling to Iraq by himself was not the safest thing he could have done with his Christmas vacation.

And he didn't even tell his parents.

Immanuel Wallerstein: The U.S. has lost the Iraq war

2005-12-30T02:15:00.001-08:00

Yale geopolitical guru, Immanuel Wallerstein, registered this opinion back in August of this year. I missed it completely, so I'm posting it in its entirety now. Following his August opinion is another short commentary piece from a couple weeks ago.

Commentary No. 167, Aug. 15, 2005

"The U.S. Has Lost the Iraq War"

It's over. For the U.S. to win the Iraq war requires three things: defeating the Iraqi resistance; establishing a stable government in Iraq that is friendly to the U.S.; maintaining the support of the American people while the first two are being done. None of these three seem any longer possible. First, the U.S. military itself no longer believes it can defeat the resistance. Secondly, the likelihood that the Iraqi politicians can agree on a constitution is almost nil, and therefore the likelihood of a minimally stable central government is almost nil. Thirdly, the U.S. public is turning against the war because it sees no "light at the end of the tunnel."

As a result, the Bush regime is in an impossible position. It would like to withdraw in a dignified manner, asserting some semblance of victory. But, if it tries to do this, it will face ferocious anger and deception on the part of the war party at home. And if it does not, it will face ferocious anger on the part of the withdrawal party. It will end up satisfying neither, lose face precipitously, and be remembered in ignominy.

Let us see what is happening. This month, Gen. George Casey, the U.S. commanding general in Iraq, suggested that it may be possible to reduce U.S. troops in Iraq next year by 30,000, given improvements in the ability of the Iraqi government's armed forces to handle the situation. Almost immediately, this position came under attack from the war party, and the Pentagon amended this statement to suggest that maybe this wouldn't happen, since maybe the Iraqi forces were not yet ready to handle the situation, which is surely so. At the same time, stories appeared in the leading newspapers suggesting that the level of military sophistication of the insurgent forces has been growing steadily and remarkably. And the increased rate of killings of U.S. soldiers certainly bears this out.

In the debate on the Iraqi constitution, there are two major problems. One is the degree to which the constitution will institutionalize Islamic law. It is conceivable that, given enough time and trust, there could be a compromise on this issue that would more or less satisfy most sides. But the second issue is more intractable. The Kurds, who still really want an independent state, will not settle for less than a federal structure that will guarantee their autonomy, the maintenance of their militia, and control of Kirkuk as their capital and its oil resources as their booty. The Shiites are currently divided between those who feel like the Kurds and want a federal structure, and those who prefer a strong central government provided they can control it and its resources, and provided that it will have an Islamic flavor. And the Sunnis are desperate to maintain a united state, one in which they will minimally get their fair share, and certainly don't want a state governed by Shia interpretations of Islam.

The U.S. has been trying to encourage some compromise, but it is hard to see what this might be. So, two possibilities are before us right now. The Iraqis paper over the differences in some way that will not last long. Or there is a more immediate breakdown in negotiations. Neither of these meets the needs of the U.S. Of course, there is one solution that might end the deadlock. The Iraqi politicians could join the resisters in a nationalist anti-American thrust, and thereby unite at least the non-Kurd part of the population. This development is not to be ruled out, and of course is a nightmare from the U.S. point of view.

But, for the Bush regime, the worst picture of all is on the home front. Approval rating of Bush for the conduct of the Iraqi war has gone down to 36 percent. The figures have been going steadily down for some time and should continue to do so. For poor George Bush is now faced with the vigil of Cindy Sheehan. She is a 48-year-old mother of a soldier who was killed in Iraq a year ago. Incensed by Bush's statement that the U.S. soldiers died in a "noble cause," she decided to go to Crawford, Texas, and ask to see the president so that he could explain to her for what "noble cause" her son died.

Of course, George W. Bush hasn't had the courage to see her. He sent out emissaries. She said this wasn't enough, that she wanted to see Bush personally. She has now said that she will maintain a vigil outside Bush's home until either he sees her or she is arrested. At first, the press ignored her. But now, other mothers of soldiers in Iraq have come to join her. She is getting moral support from more and more people who had previously supported the war. And the national press now has turned her into a major celebrity, some comparing her to Rosa Parks, the Black woman whose refusal to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama a half-century ago was the spark that transformed the struggle for Black rights into a mainstream cause.

Bush won't see her because he knows there is nothing that he can say to her. Seeing her is a losing proposition. But so is not seeing her. The pressure to withdraw from Iraq is now becoming mainstream. It is not because the U.S. public shares the view that the U.S. is an imperialist power in Iraq. It is because there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Or rather there is a light, the light an acerbic Canadian cartoonist for the Calgary Sun drew recently. He shows a U.S. soldier in a dark tunnel approaching someone to whose body is attached an array of explosives. The light comes from the match he is holding to the wick that will cause them to explode. In the month following the attacks in London and the high level of U.S. deaths in Iraq, this is the light that the U.S. public is beginning to see. They want out. Bush is caught in an insoluble dilemma. The war is lost.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu; fax: 1-203-432-6976.

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

Here's the more recent commentary from Wallerstein. You can find many other short pieces written by him in the last 7 years right here. They are translated into 31, yes thirty one, languages.

Commentary No. 175, Dec. 15, 2005

"Losing One's Nerve in Iraq"

In response to the ever-growing sense that the United States is doing poorly in Iraq, indeed in the view of many is actually losing the war, the U.S. government has launched a campaign to persuade everyone that this is not so. In November, 2005, the U.S. National Security Council published, with great fanfare, a document entitled "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq." And President Bush has been pushing its line vociferously in public speeches.

What this document argues is that victory is occurring, but occurring in stages, that victory is a vital U.S. interest, that the U.S. has a quite clear strategy for victory, but that this victory will take time. The key sentence in this wordy document, which evades all concrete analysis of what is actually going on, is a quote from President Bush's speech on Oct. 6, 2005: "In Iraq, there is no peace without victory. We will keep our nerve, and we will win that victory."

We will keep our nerve, says Bush. But his Rasputin, Vice-President Cheney, is not so sure, since he constantly asserts that U.S. critics of the Bush administration, however mild their criticism, are undermining this "nerve" and risk making the U.S. lose its resolve. The number of Republican Congressmen and Senators who are worried that the voters have already lost their "nerve" and might vote against them seems to be increasing at a very rapid pace, and seems to be having a great impact on the "nerve" of these Republican politicians.

When Rep. John Murtha, ex-Marine and longtime stalwart hawk, called for pulling out of Iraq, most commentators felt he was the unofficial voice of large numbers of senior military officers who were unable to voice their concerns publicly. Is this loss of their nerve? Neither Murtha nor the hidden senior military officers would define it this way. They see a situation in which the U.S. will not at all be able to win the kind of victory Bush is talking about, and by staying in Iraq they believe that the U.S. armed forces are being weakened as a military force able to do its work elsewhere in the world. They want to cut their losses before the U.S. armed forces lose even more.

It seems clear now that virtually every member of the U.S. coalition that has military forces in Iraq intends to reduce its number, if not fully withdraw them, in 2006. It seems fairly clear that the U.S. itself will do this. Nobody of course admits to losing their nerve, but public opinion at home and impending elections are taking their toll.

What about the Iraqis? There are two main groups of Iraqis - those who are energetically fighting the U.S. forces and any Iraqis thought to be cooperating with them, and the others. Those who are energetically fighting the U.S. are said, in this U.S. document, to be composed of three groups: rejectionists (Sunni Arabs who have not "embraced" the changes); Saddamists (who wish to restore the old regime), and terrorists affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaeda. The U.S., according to this document, has more or less given up on the latter two categories but hopes to persuade "many" of the first group to reduce their opposition. There does not however seem to be much evidence that this is happening. In short, those whom the U.S. calls its "enemies" do not seem to have lost their nerve, or their competence in fighting.

But what about the other Iraqis? Here the U.S. seems to be counting on the new Iraqi security forces, presumably under the authority of the new Iraqi government. I say presumably because it is obvious that these security forces are deeply infiltrated both by the "enemies" of the U.S. and by various militias - two kinds of Kurdish militias, and at least three kinds of Shi'a militias - who are pursuing their own objectives under the cover of being the national army. The U.S. says it is counting on these security forces to take over its task of fighting the "enemy" - that is, those who reject all legitimacy to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But is the objective of those who control various parts of the new security forces really the same as those of the Bush regime? Do they intend to be "a full partner in the global war on terrorism" - the longer-term goal of the U.S. according to this document? Is this credible over the longer run? Even if those who are in the new government now are still there two years from now (itself a dubious proposition), why would they want to play this role when it can only make it more difficult to create even a moderately stable political situation in Iraq?

And finally, among winners and losers, more attention is being paid by observers today to the possibility that the big winner will be Iran. It is not that even a Shia-dominated government in Iraq will be in any sense a stooge of the Iranians. It is simply that they will not in any way want to play a role of being hostile to Iran, and therefore could not, will not, be sympathetic to U.S. objectives vis-a-vis Iran.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls in Iraq. They toll for George W. Bush, and the United States. Bush claimed the U.S. went into Iraq so that it would not have to fight this "war" on U.S. soil. But the contrary is happening. The turmoil is coming to U.S. soil with a vengeance. One of the claims as to why the U.S. should not immediately withdraw from Iraq is that it might result in an Iraqi civil war. But no one discusses what kind of civil war might be in the process of developing in the United States.

by Immanuel Wallerstein

[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein, distributed by Agence Global. For rights and permissions, including translations and posting to non-commercial sites, and contact: rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically, or e-mail to others, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To contact author, write: immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu.

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

Another Christmas...and Jesus is stifled once more.

2005-12-29T07:48:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas to you!

IF you celebrate it for the right reasons! Some of the wrong reasons are illustrated in this video quite eloquently. I left town and forgot my charger, so I couldn't send my well wishes on time.

Not that I'm an authority on anything religious, but I think there needs to be a movement to focus Christianity on the humanity of Jesus. This is the essence of the Nestorian faith, which my family follows. And on that note, sometimes I wish even members of my family would re-calibrate their focus on this exact thing...so I'm not just complaining aboutsome lunatic evangelicals.

Hallelujah Links:

Wizard of Oil: a short play-spoof with pictures
Best of the Chappelle Show & another place to find the videos.
Black Bush: my favorite Chappelle Show skit
Shock, awe and Hobbes have backfired on America's neocons

2005-12-23T11:15:00.000-08:00

But seriously...

2005-12-22T23:43:00.000-08:00

The alarm is sounding. The game is over. Iraq is disintegrating.

Iraq a religious state...or for you'z who are caught up in details, Iraq as a state run by de facto religious edict. Iraq has become ironically like America. And America more like Iraq, one could argue.

So, Iraq as a religious state...for a while at least. How depressing.

And imagine, I was hoping Allawi the Unjust would win. But King George has indeed lost his grip on Iraq...which is why he has renounced defeating nationalist Iraqis having nothing to do with terrorists. What he's done is become a self-fulfilling prophecy by making Iraq into this hellish fundamentalist nightmare. And that's all he seems to know, fundamentalism. Like I said many times before...these two groups supposidly fighting each other, are really just helping one another radicalize their respective populations.

Bush will only be remembered in history for creating the second Islamic republic in the region. The Islamic Republic of Iraq.

I voted for Charles Darwin

2005-12-22T11:28:00.000-08:00

That's right. In America I voted for Charles Darwin and in Iraq's election I did the same.

Why? Because here's a list of the Iraqi academics murdered in frigid blood since the war began.

Who said it? "Darwin was the most important person to live on earth."

Who said it? "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier...just as long as I'm the dictator."

Who said it? "I take an oath of office to the Constitution. I don't take an oath of office to the vice president, a president or a political party. My obligation and responsibility are to the people I represent and the country I serve. I do what I think is right for the people I represent and the country I serve." [user id/password= dailykos/dailykos]

Who wrote it?

"While U.S. President George W. Bush continued to claim a strategy for "victory" in Iraq in recent speeches, his administration has quietly renounced the goal of defeating the non-al Qaeda Sunni armed organisations there.

The administration is evidently preparing for serious negotiations with the Sunni insurgents, whom it has started referring to as "nationalists", emphasising their opposition to al Qaeda's objectives.

The new policy has thus far gone unnoticed in the media, partly because it has only been articulated by U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad and the spokesman for the U.S. command in Baghdad.

The White House clearly recognises that the shift could cause serious political problems if and when it becomes widely understood. The Republican Party has just unveiled a new television ad attacking Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean for suggesting that the war in Iraq cannot be won.

Renouncing victory over the Sunni insurgents therefore undercuts the president's political strategy of portraying his policy as one of "staying the course" and attacking the democrats for "cutting and running".

good website: http://www.infidels.org/

read charles darwin online now

and vote for him in your next election.

darwin help us all.

King George, we want some congressional hearings. Your attendance is required.

2005-12-19T22:00:00.000-08:00

We thought you had changed for a split second by admitting the Iraq war was based on faulty intelligence (well, not really). But you hadn't. What's more, you summoned the editor and publisher of the NY Times (pictured below) to the Oval Office to try to talk them out of running the NSA spying program story! And why oh why were those punks at the Times holding on to this story for a whole year?

How can you claim to be establishing a constitutional democracy in Iraq when you do not even respect the constitutional democracy of which you are supposidly the commander-in-chief of?

Why do you reject the fact you have circumvented the constitution and claimed such supreme authority over all Americans by virtue of your NSA spying program?

You are operating above the lawKing George. This is why Arlen Specter and I want some congressional hearings. You cannot camoflauge this any longer with your script writers at the Times and the Post. BTW have you ever even read 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillence Act? Get somebody to make you an mp3 and stick it in your rotation of the Geneva Convention and the Bill of Rights...right there on your iPOD.

Update: Now there are reports that a member of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court resigns amid worry that Bush-authorized domestic surveillance program would taint court's efforts. I bet you anything he's immensely pissed off.

Listen to this in an article just published by the Post (by a journalist who is presumably not a Woodward. Because Bobby "Big Bucks" would never write hurtfully about our Great King).

Two associates familiar with his decision said yesterday that Robertson privately expressed deep concern that the warrantless surveillance program authorized by the president in 2001 was legally questionable and may have tainted the FISA court's work.

Ok, any person with at least, and i mean at least, three brain cells would know that"...privately expressed deep concern..." are code words for "furious with the rage of everything that is holy"...or something to that effect. If you have only two, I'm afraid this will make no sense to you.

Chomsky on Iraq: An interview by Andy Clark

2005-12-19T07:51:00.000-08:00

A very good way to spend an hour receiving a reality-check.

Iraq on the Record: Cataloguing the lies...

2005-12-19T07:38:00.000-08:00

...on the quest to control the world's energy sources.

Iraq on the Record is exactly the starting point one needs to bring greater perspective on most (if not all) the bald-faced lies told by members of the current administration to America and the world.

Thanks to Keld and LBird for the link.

TUrkish gENocIDe = ARmeNiaN HoLocAUsT: learn history punks

2005-12-16T02:20:00.000-08:00

oh ok sure so you say something which is historic fact, that one and a half million armenians and thousands of others from various ethnic groups were killed and dont forget scores of thousands more persecuted out of modern turkey into various periphery areas (including northern iraq), and you're told you're going to jail. animals. this by a turkish government whose human rights record rivals the worst of modern man...and this by a turkish government who wants to enter the EU. GRRRRR, free up your speech and make us think you really want it baby. get fit with the right to say whatever you like you bloody wankers. speech crime in the EU? what are we in frickin saddam's iraq? mubarak's egypt? america circa 2003?

this is a future nobel peace prize winner to boot. yea, go for the gold ottoman kumquats for brains.

The Dick is defeated: torture legislation passed

2005-12-15T21:09:00.000-08:00

It's hard to believe, but Dick Cheney and his underlings have been soundly defeated as John McCain's torture legislation banning the use of torture passed in the US Congress. Bush obviously can't afford to thumb his nose at the world any more. He ran out of that specific sort of "political capital" a while back.

What I don't like is when they had the press conference to confirm its passage, McCain was behaving as if the ban was in place since the war on a concept (which is terror) began. So lets be clear as McCain says:

We've sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists

Ok. If we believe Senator McCain, before today the United States was precisely like the terrorists because they did, in fact, torture people. Don't get me wrong, though, this is a necessary step and I commend Mr. Captured and Tortured in Vietnam While Bush and Cheney Chickened-out for forcing the Cheney hand. Thankfully the political climate allowed for an easy passage of the measure.

You GOT, No where to run to...No where to hide....lalala

On a more collectively locked-down note, the elections appear to be going swimmingly. And people have been able to walk down their street for the first time since the last couple votes. But seriously, I suggest we have one election per week to give Iraqis one sorely deserved break per week while living-in and dealing-with the daily violence. Also, I'll find out how my family voted, but I suspect they have laid it down for Allawi or some secular party that won't win. You know, an Iraqi Ralph Nader I guess. I wonder who the equivalent would be. I've been unable to read up on the more obscure candidates because of my studies.

I will have a longer post on the elections l8r on.

PEACE OUT
Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Bush to his base: "You might not have a job or insurance, but I'll make sure those gay people don't marry for you. Because I am the conduit of God."

2005-12-13T00:55:00.000-08:00

...the Bush version, the rich again provide the cash and religious conservatives provide the votes. The wealthy have been rewarded with tax cuts, the evangelicals with hard-line conservative policies on abortion, gay rights and a school prayer.

Because the universe of Bush the younger would not be possible without evangelicals. Then we may conclude the fact that some people are so ignorant and narrow-minded in America is the reason why Bush/Cheney are still in power. How everybody, the rich industrialist and the usually poor evangelical, thinks they are really being rewarded in this is beyond me.

This is why I am suspect as to whether it is indeed true that Bush is left in a separate religious world as some people associated with the white house have claimed. But if the previous conclusion is true, then Bush gets the best of both worlds. He gets to be ignorant and make money.

And that's simply unacceptable for any commander in chief to use his clout to enrich himself and his friends while spreading ignorance. Is that what the so inextricably honorable office of the White House is for? And Bush wanted to bring values back into the WH? All he's brought is an unhealthy dose of CRAZY to the world while proving the White House is only a mechanism by which to make his friends richer and the poor poorer through spreading intolerance and ignorance.

Here are some others' thoughts about his first 5 years.

Richard Pryor RIP

2005-12-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

One of my absolute favorite comics of all times...

Leiberman founds new political party

2005-12-10T00:59:00.000-08:00

Some rumors have been floating around since Ariel Sharon split off from the Likud Party to form a more centrist party in the 51st state of Israel. They're having to do with Joseph Leiberman splitting off the Democratic Party to form a more hardline conservative party. Sources say he wants to call it the Bushkud Party. The only prerequisite will be that you must agree with everything Bush says about Iraq. Famous for doing this, Leiberman is finding himself isolated with about 99.9 percent of his current party. Many of these members think he already switched sides and was (and perhaps still is) actually a spy for the influential Neoconservative cult, in the off-chance they would not have been able to steal the 2000 elections. And most inside the beltway know that the Neocons are all spys for Likud. So, it's a curious step creating the new Bushkud party.

Nobel Prize acceptance video: Harold Pinter speaketh

2005-12-09T11:33:00.000-08:00

Must see/read: Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture on December 7, 2005 given in Börssalen at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. Click for high bandwidth, low bandwidth.

Update: This link works if you want to watch the video now! Thanks Merry!

Various articles of interest and some rumination

2005-12-05T00:50:00.000-08:00

Of course the bombshell is Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker that US Commanders in Iraq believe the insurgency is spinning hopelessly out of control and will slowly disintegrate into the inevitable violence of an air campaign. This is the cue that the White House has its tail between its legs. And you need not look too closely, but they're cutting and running. Of course, few might say, "No they aren't. They're gonna bomb the hell out of Iraq from 30,000 feet once the troops begin to withdraw. That's not cutting and running." But the plain truth is that this WH, this incompetent government has lost this one miserably. And it seems more and more apparent that there's collusion between American and Iranian interests to tame the flames ignited by the occupation. There is no other choice. This was a war of choice...and now notice the irony of there being no choice on the part of the Crazies' cabal but accept the fundementalists in Iran (and elsewhere) taking control of most if not all Iraqi institutions. It makes me wonder, though, isn't that what they wanted all along? To remove Saddam, set up a confrontation with Iran, and try to pressure Syria into reducing itself to a Chalabified hallucination/vision of the currently secular regime of Bashar Al-Assad (who I'm not a fan of) which happens to support groups like Hizbullah and has close connections with Iran. I mean it seems as though the planning for the Iran war has continued. Because imagine once America acheives a posture whereby they know most in the world realize that A) Iraq has become a proxy for the Ayatollahs in Iran B) Iran is closer than it already is to getting a nuclear weapon...they can then possibly try to start another war with Iran by saying (or hearing) all the same or similar lies that Chalabi and Co. funnelled to the mentally challenged in the WH in the lead-up to the most recent war. And the signal and perhaps even the synthesis of Americans and Iranians working together to set out on this path might be seen if and when Chalabi joins the Allawi coalition before the December 15 elections. Previously, Chalabi and Allawi have been bitter rival puppets. THE irony thickens quickly, don't it?

And this is only one of many possibilities I've pondered. I am sometimes operating under the assumption that the chaos is so unexhaustably terrible it can't be random.

And screw irony...I've had enough of it, really. I'm sick of seeing all these scenarios in my head which could possibly play out. I'm a lot more optimistic than some, though. But I'm still hung up on matters like the constitution granting women and minorities too few rights to pay to close attention to other shocking discoveries of videos of private contractors shooting civilians for fun, WMDs used by Americans, and the unabating violence caused by the confrontations between disparate sides. All this blood for nothing as we head back towards the dark ages

Moving on and on a related note... Professor Cole writes on related matters in his recent article at a new website TruthDig: How Bush created a theocracy in Iraq. It's a clever little rundown about the history of this event. Go check it out if your facts are fuzzy.

On a different note, here's a concise article about the commercialization of all things Shaolin. Bad or good? I believe adaptation and its role in advancing innovation and wisdom was roundly ignored in eons past and that it is vitally important to rescue certain art forms from extinction. And if using modern tools of communication is what it takes to accomplish this, then so be it!

I've had some very bad news from back in Lebanon recently. And I'm yet again behind in school. It's so cold outside. And I don't feel like doing anything.

Iraqi Rebel: Taxi Conversation somewhere in Iraq

2005-12-04T23:57:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Najma for getting me familiar with another interesting new blog: Iraqi Rebel.

Taxi driver: Wow. Look at all these posters. They must have spent fortunes on all this
advertising.
Me: (Thinking *Oh, not again*)
Taxi driver: What do they get in return once they're in?
Me: (resigning to my fate) Well, the pension is more than worth it. A retired parliament
member gets $5000 a month for the rest of his life.
T.d.: (whistles) That's a lot of money.
M: It is.

*long pause*

T.d: So you're gonna vote or what?
M: depends.
T.d: Oh, I see.

*another pause*

T.d: So who do you think would be best?
M: (not falling for it) depends on how you see things.
T.d.: I know. I think we should vote for the secular lists.
M (shrugging)
T.d: (Probably thinking I might get him wrong) Look, I have all the respect for sayyids but
I don't think that's what we need at this moment.
M (nod)
T.d: (gesturing at a nearby poster) You know. I think Mithal al Alusi is a good choice. I
mean he has the courage to say the truth. No complimenting and all that.
M: (more interested in reading car registration numbers than the conversation) true.

to continue reading...

Liberating the Universe

2005-11-30T01:21:00.000-08:00

America wants to liberate space according to former Canadian Defence Minister. He states,

"I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

Hellyer revealed, "The secrecy involved in all matters pertaining to the Roswell incident was unparalled. The classification was, from the outset, above top secret, so the vast majority of U.S. officials and politicians, let alone a mere allied minister of defence, were never in-the-loop."

Hellyer warned, "The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. He stated, "The Bush administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

I'll try to follow up on this story. Weaponizing space is perhaps one of the scariest things for the next generation. Liberating space from extraterestrials is altogether another matter we'll leave up to Christian Fundamentalists and their Zionist masters. Since they've done so profoundly well with the terrestrial project in Iraq, I'm sure they'd have no trouble with the rest of the Universe. Though I'm secretly hoping the Aliens come to save us from ourselves.

Lord Goldsmith: You can't handle the truth!

2005-11-23T14:04:00.000-08:00

Coming close to doing something possibly similar to what Saddam would have done...and did, most literally.

Bomb the media that doesn't say what you want to hear! Rub out the journalists that don't follow the script...

But lets not forget Tariq Ayoub being killed in Baghdad by a US air striike, which, btw, seems to be a precociously intentional act. So, in effect, it was done on a smaller scale. Taking out the headquarters of Al Jazeera in Qatar verges upon insanity in ways we haven't seen in the entire lifespan of the unfolding Iraqi tragedies.

And so it only begs the question to be answered truthfully; were the bombings of the Al Jazeera offices in Baghdad and Afghanistan deliberate?

Inquiring minds wanna know.

Britain has warned media organizations they are breaking the law if they publish details of a leaked document said to show U.S. President George W. Bush wanted to bomb Arabic television station Al Jazeera.

The government's top lawyer warned editors in a note after the Daily Mirror newspaper reported on Tuesday that a secret British government memo said British Prime Minister Tony Blair had talked Bush out of bombing the broadcaster in April last year.

And I can't help but ask the simplest of questions...

If the story has no merit, why would the Brittish government threaten newspapers with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act?

Or better yet...

Why is Blair (via Lord Goldsmith) saving Bush&Co's face after being shit upon so royally?

Too bad truth has no currency in the current conflict.

Dept of WTF: Dick the dangerous illusionist allows others to entertain "illusions"

2005-11-22T12:44:00.000-08:00

"You can express your opinion now that we've done gone and destroyed the place and turned it over to the jihadis." -Shrub's essence

After several years of arrogance, blood, and 220 billion dollars and counting, we've been given permission by Bush and Dick to criticize their lunacy. One thing i've noticed when examining the veep's words is that most terms he used like "corrupt and shameless" and "dangerous illusion" are terms that I and many others could easily deploy upon him in a variety of ways.

This clearly shows a strategy change on the part of the chicken-hawk ok corral cabal of crazies. (In the words of Vietnam Veteran John Murtha: "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done. I resent the fact, on Veterans Day, he [Bush] criticized Democrats for criticizing them.")

Mr Cheney said calls for a quick withdrawal were built on a "dangerous illusion" that it would satisfy the US's jihadist enemies.

Yo Dick! I'm afraid you already satisfied the jihadis by invading Iraq to begin with...and becoming a veritable al-qaeda recruitment officer.

So, brilliant job you've done. Really. And nice back-pedal, but make it more believable next time.

The destruction of Iraq was purely deliberate and orchestrated to steal the oil of Iraqis amid the chaos and to gain a foothold in the region to stage further attacks (Iran & Syria). Instead, all it has done is sow hatred and misery. American "foreign policy" is a complete and utter failure. In the tiniest nutshell...this is how many Iraqis are feeling at the moment.

See...Iraq's Oil: The Spoils of War, by Philip Thornton in the London Independent

Iraqis face the dire prospect of losing up to $200bn (£116bn) of the wealth of their country if an American-inspired plan to hand over development of its oil reserves to US and British multinationals comes into force next year. A report produced by American and British pressure groups warns Iraq will be caught in an "old colonial trap" if it allows foreign companies to take a share of its vast energy reserves. The report is certain to reawaken fears that the real purpose of the 2003 war on Iraq was to ensure its oil came under Western control.

Yes...caught in an old colonial trap indeed. Used and abused. An arena for other peoples' wars is what I envision it becoming. Much like Lebanon on a grander scale...

And just now we have been afforded the right to point out the fallacies? Oh, splendid... golly gee thanks. I recall the likes of Delay and Cheney equating people against the war with terrorists as recent as the last few months. Now Delay & Libby have been indicted, Frist will be soon (if he hasn't been already), and Cheney's on deck with Rove.

The more attention drawn towards the Plame affair, the better. The spin might not even matter. Now that the ranks of the anti-war have been thickening, the enemies are many more for this administration (even Republicans are outraged)...so undergoing some damage control is the order of the day.

Net result: The WH's recent strategy of attacking detractors has backfired (see Schmidt the Retard) and they've been forced back on the defensive. And I'm still laughing and crying. Status quo is sOOOO 2003. At least some things have changed, though.

The good professor's magnificent insolence

2005-11-21T14:14:00.000-08:00

Taken from The Angry Arab News Service

Monday, November 14, 2005

Ahmad Chalabi's Advise on Syria. Ahmad Chalabi has been making the rounds in DC. He met with Rumsfeld and Rice. Mostly, he was asked for his opinions of Syria. Ahmad Chalabi gave the most sober and rational analysis of Syrian politics. He advocated a US invasion of Syria because he believes that Syrian WMDs are dangerous to world stability. He said that Judith Millers will be writing about Syrian WMDs soon once she finds a newspaper to write for. But he assured US officials that the Syrians would not resist US occupation forces, and that they would in fact welcome them with "sweets and flowers" (he even identified the sweet: the Syrian cookie known as Barazi', a sesame cookie). Only a small number of US troops would be needed for the job, he insisted, and Bush would be able to give a "mission accomplished" speech within weeks after the start of the invasion. When asked about the Washington, DC-based Syrian opposition groups, he assured them that they would be hugely popular in Syria, and that the secular liberal and pro-American Syrians would run the place, and that religion and clerics would disappear from Syrian life. Chalabi went even further: he said that Syria would emerge as a democratic and liberal model, and that Arabs would rush to emulate it, and that the invasion would produce a domino effect in the region. He dismissed reports that a resistance movement would emerge under an American invasion of Syria. Having listened to his evaluation of Syrian politics, US officials felt very optimistic.

the slow growing rumble...

2005-11-15T13:51:00.000-08:00

...can be heard in the background... even in good ol' knoxville, tennessee.

The slow growing rumble has many a sound...

The slow growing rumble can force you downtown
to be indicted and tried for the casus belli of war crime(s)

The slow growing rumble can make the shallow lies used to cover up the deep lies
run away in relevency like waning of high tide.

The slow growing rumble says its high time for the facade of deciet to crumble
beneath the twisting and reaping tendrils of popular justice's conundrum.

Once this same popular opinion was wishing the war upon the world because it's existence was threatened by its very own government...with nuclear weapons that didn't exist. Imagine a government threatening its own

The hollow confidence captured by that captivated audience marched the world to war too quickly when the democrats in congress backed the (vice) president's malfeasance.

But can the slow growing rumble make the deck of cards tumble?

If it does, I will be humbled to have taken part in...

the slow growing rumble.

(((i did this too quickly, but i wanna go ahead and put it up)))

out,

liminator

Speeches for Zionism: Chalabi speaks at the American Enterprise Institute

2005-11-12T00:58:00.000-08:00

Arriana Huffington once linked me from her blog...albeit incorrectly (because the link was dead), she did include me on a short list of Iraqi bloggers to check out. I appreciated the sentiment and have recognized her increased astuteness regarding Iraq and Middle Eastern politics by dropping one of her latest articles here:

Ahmad Does D.C.: An Alternative Chalabi Itinerary
by Arianna Huffington

Fresh off this past weekend’s return trip to Tehran, neocon darling Ahmad Chalabi hits Washington today -- his first visit to the nation’s capital in over two years.

He’s got a very busy schedule planned, including meetings with Condi Rice, Treasury Secretary John Snow, and national security advisor Stephen Hadley.

There is also talk of a possible private meeting with his longtime champion, Dick Cheney.

No word on where the Cheney/Chalabi reunion might take place. Perhaps at one of the Veep’s undisclosed locations. Or maybe the St. Regis. I hear they have a nice breakfast.

According to administration sources, Chalabi won’t be meeting with President Bush. Not because he deliberately and repeatedly provided the U.S. government with false intel, convinced Cheney our troops would be greeted as liberators, tried to sabotage the UN’s efforts to put an interim government in place, and was accused by the Bush administration of spying for Iran. No, all that has apparently been forgiven. Bush just doesn’t want to appear to be playing favorites by meeting with any Iraqi candidates until the December 15 election is over. I guess the meetings with Bush’s cabinet members -- and the $340,000 a month the White House gave to Chalabi in the lead up to the war -- is endorsement enough.

But Chalabi’s trip won’t just consist of cozy tête-à-têtes with administration big-shots. He’ll also deliver a speech to the American Enterprise Institute -- an organization, according to its mission statement “dedicated to preserving and strengthening the foundations of freedom”. No, the topic of his talk isn’t “The Rebirth of Irony”. It’s “An Insider’s View: Democratic Politics at Work in Iraq”. On second thought, maybe it is on the rebirth of irony after all. Among the questions Chalabi will be addressing: “Will the constitution provide the foundation for a democratic system that can be a model for the Middle East?” According to Matthew Yglesias: “That’s easy. The answer is no.”

So it looks like Chalabi is pretty booked up. But, with all due respect, I’d like to suggest some additions to Mr. Chalabi’s D.C. itinerary.

1. FBI Headquarters. Chalabi is currently under investigation, suspected of telling the Iranian government that America had broken the code it used for secret communications -- an offense the administration said could “get people killed”. When this information came to light 17 months ago, Condi Rice promised a criminal investigation of the charges. But close to a year and a half later, the FBI has still not questioned Chalabi. Now seems like a perfect time. Condi can walk him over to the Hoover Building after their meeting and make all the necessary introductions.

2. United States Congress. I’m sure the Senate intelligence committee (or at least its Democratic members) would like to speak to Chalabi as part of the Phase II investigation into the Bush administration’s use of false and misleading intelligence to help sell the war -- false and misleading intelligence that Chalabi, after all, played a central role in supplying. I’d love to see Dick Durbin grill Chalabi under oath about his relationship with the White House Iraq Group, his relationship with Curveball, and his predictions of a problem-free occupation. Members of the House, including John Conyers, are also very interested in talking to him. It might be very useful for the Deputy Prime Minister (and wanna-be PM) to get “An Insider’s View of Democratic Politics at Work in America”.

3. New York Times Washington Bureau. I’m sure that Bill Keller and Jill Abramson would fly to down for the chance to talk to Chalabi about his relationship with Judy Miller and find out exactly how he managed to convince her to write utterly bogus front page stories like the one about the engineer who swore he had personally seen 20 different WMD sites (Miller’s story on the engineer, whom Miller deemed “reliable” and “credible”, came just three days after he had failed a CIA lie detector test). (Note to Chalabi: don’t be surprised it Pinch Sulzberger declines to fly down for the meeting).

4. Arlington National Cemetery. And finally, how about a quick meet and greet with the families of the over 17,000 U.S. soldiers killed or wounded in a war Mr. Chalabi was central in selling to our leaders? Maybe he can reminisce about the Pentagon meeting held a week after 9/11 during which he made the case for taking on Iraq. He can also explain what he meant in 2004 when he shrugged off charges he had deliberately trumped up claims about Saddam’s WMD by saying, “We are heroes in error”. He can then lead a discussion about who are the bigger heroes, Chalabi or the 2,057 American soldiers who have died in Iraq.

So what do you say, Ahmad? You up for a little detour from your planned comeback tour? I’ve got a feeling it would prove very educational -- if not for you, then certainly for the American public.

Chalabi is the "missing link" in several of the scandals currently brewing. I'd say he's perhaps the "missing link" in the grand scheme of evolution as well. Not to say Homo Erectus was less civilized than him.

Professor Cole also wrote something related.

SMOKING CLOUD, MUSHROOM GUN

2005-11-10T02:40:00.000-08:00

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Office of "Special" Plans

2005-11-10T02:01:00.000-08:00

Let's cast some intensified light upon Feith and his Libbified ilk.

Then there are those chemical weapons occupation soldiers used on Iraqis. Ah yes! I think they finally found the WMD! They were using them on Fallujans. White phosphorous! Essentially, NAPALM. Well, at least we know the truth now. TOO BAD THE TRUTH CAN'T BRING SECURITY OR ESSENTIAL SERVICES TO IRAQIS IN NEED.

And those secret gulags in Eastern Europe...aint that a thang?

more soon...

Rosa Parks Rest in Peace

2005-11-05T22:10:00.000-08:00

While Iraqis struggle under one of the ultimate violations of basic human rights--an occupation--Rosa Parks has died. She was the spark that ignited a sweeping civil rights movement in America. She was and still is a symbol of everything that makes America good. Unfortunately, a few bad apples high up the food chain in Washington are hijacking the entire country into policies that make peace-loving people like Rosa Parks cringe and sigh in disbelief and disgust.

Thank you for everything Mrs. Parks. Your spirit moves mountains.

Bush free fall

2005-11-04T09:24:00.000-08:00

Entertainment for the entire family...

The architects of defeat must be held responsible.

2005-11-03T10:07:00.000-08:00

The Blame Game

By Stephen M. Walt

Foreign Policy: November/December 2005

Who will be blamed for Iraq? It’s easy for politicians to point fingers at each other. But ultimately, the buck stops at the Oval Office.

The United States’ involvement in Iraq just keeps getting messier every day. The insurgency is as potent as ever, and U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians are dying at a higher rate than they were a year ago. Efforts to reconcile Iraq’s ethnic and religious divisions have failed, and progress on building competent security forces has been painfully slow. A series of supposedly decisive “turning points” have come and gone—including the transfer of sovereignty in June 2004, national elections in January 2005, and the drafting of a new constitution in August 2005—but the country is no closer to stability. Public support for the war is plummeting in the United States, and current U.S. troop levels cannot be sustained without breaking the Army, the Reserves, and the National Guard. Once U.S. forces withdraw, a full-blown civil war is likely. Although our armed forces have fought with dedication and courage, this war will ultimately cost us more than $1 trillion, not to mention thousands of lives. And what will the United States have achieved? Remarkably, we will probably leave Iraq in even worse shape than it was under Saddam Hussein.

“Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” Those famous words penned long ago have a special resonance today. If the United States loses the war in Iraq, there will inevitably be a bitter debate over who is responsible. With prospects for victory fading, the people who led us into this bastard conflict are already devising various rationales to explain the failure and deny their paternity. As the debate over “who’s losing Iraq” heats up, the American people should not be hoodwinked by these after-the-fact alibis. The architects of defeat must be held responsible.

Moderates who backed the war, including a number of prominent Democrats, now argue that they did so only because they were misled by the cia’s faulty intelligence and deliberately deceived by President George W. Bush’s administration. This line of reasoning was Sen. John Kerry’s defense during the 2004 presidential campaign. Similar explanations have been offered by other pro-war Democrats and repentant pundits such as the Brookings Institution’s Kenneth Pollack, whose prewar book The Threatening Storm made the moderates’ case for war. The problem with this alibi, however, is that there was already plenty of evidence that cast doubt on the administration’s case, information that was publicly available before the fighting started. Invading Iraq was not their idea, but the moderates who went along deserve no credit for being so gullible.

Pro-war hawks offer a different set of excuses. Some assert that going to war was the right idea, but the operation was bungled by incompetent leadership in the Pentagon. William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, wants Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign, yet the pundit simultaneously claims that the debacle in Iraq vindicates his earlier call for vast increases in U.S. defense spending. In this view, we are losing because we don’t have a big enough army to run an empire and because civilians at the top were never serious about winning.

This excuse suffers from two glaring weaknesses. First, the war may not have been winnable no matter what we did, because Iraq was a deeply divided society from the onset, and occupying powers almost always face fierce resistance. That the occupation was badly executed is indisputable, but it is by no means clear that any occupation would have succeeded. Second, if hawks such as Kristol thought we needed a bigger military to perform a global imperial role, they should have withheld their support until adequate forces were available. Instead, they did everything they could to get us into the regime-changing business as quickly as possible.

For their part, Secretary Rumsfeld and other administration officials blame our problems on Baathist “dead-enders” and radical jihadis, aided and abetted by Syria and Iran. It’s not the Bush administration’s fault we’re losing, we are told; it’s our enemies’ fault. That is no defense at all, of course, because it merely reminds us that the Bush team failed to anticipate what would happen once Saddam was gone and we “owned” Iraq. And given that the Bush administration has repeatedly threatened Syria and Iran with regime change, it is hardly surprising that these regimes are now happy to see us bogged down in Baghdad. U.S. leaders should have considered these possibilities before they went to war, and their failure to do so is hardly a reason to excuse them now.

The most scurrilous alibi, however, blames our difficulties on eroding public support at home. Grieving antiwar mother Cindy Sheehan gets pilloried by right-wing commentators such as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, and President Bush declares that Americans who favor withdrawing “are advocating a policy that would weaken the United States.” Similarly, neoconservative pundit Max Boot recently maintained that Iraqi democracy would survive its birth pangs only “if we don’t cut and run prematurely.” So, we are told, “staying the course” will work, unless we are forced to pull out by weak-willed critics back home.

This argument is a clever bit of political jujitsu, because it in effect blames any future defeat on the people who have long contended that the war was unnecessary and unwise. But it is also a bogus excuse. In a democracy, a commander in chief who wants to go to war is responsible for building and maintaining public support for sending our sons and daughters into harm’s way. President Bush sold the war brilliantly before the fighting started, but his sales pitch could not survive the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, the embarrassing revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib, the bungled occupation, the mounting list of dead and wounded, and the rising economic toll. Most of all, this rationale highlights the conspicuous lack of a plausible theory of victory now. We are not losing because our troops lack public support. The war lacks support because we are losing.

If our Iraq adventure ends badly, there will be ample blame to go around. But the buck should stop, as President Harry Truman famously said, in the Oval Office. President Bush was quick to claim credit when things were going well, and he cannot escape blame when things turn ugly. This is President Bush’s war, and America’s failure will be his legacy.

Stephen M. Walt is academic dean at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. His latest book is Taming American Power: The Global Response to U.S. Primacy (New York: Norton, 2005).

Why Iraq could get more Iranian

2005-10-17T01:02:00.000-07:00

[T]he final and most important amendment, setting up a Parliamentary committee to suggest a one-time set of changes or amendments to the Constitution after the elections in December, will likely not bring any of the changes to the Constitution Sunnis are demanding. Even if every eligible Sunni voter had voted on Saturday and in the parliamentary elections scheduled for December, they will remain too small a minority to change the Constitution in a manner that would shift significant resources, revenues or political power away from Kurds and Shiites and to their communities.

Mark LeVine re-states what I think quite clearly. So, we've given the puppets a chance to fashion Iraq into more of an Islamic state than it already is becoming with the Iranian Iraqis at the helm.

There's so much more to this, but I can't take it anymore. I'm beat.

The Nineveh vote was rigged.

2005-10-16T23:47:00.000-07:00

I'd like somebody to prove to me otherwise.

IIP is not popular in Mosul. It has a mere fraction of support from people. So, please...

American law outside of America and inside of Iraq (i.e., occupation law) is shoot to kill, torture aimlessly, and guilty until proven innocent if you're brown and beautiful. So I'm not surprised we are staring in the face of implausible results in Nineveh which will only increase the levels of violence...as the neocon lunatics would prefer! They don't want Iraq to get better, even now. Yes, I argue yet again they don't mind if things get worse. And now you have the exact result that will allow for the situation to deteriorate. I'm not going to sit here and pretend even in the slightest bit anymore because, for instance, I'm worried about affecting the mind-state of those of my family and friends inside Iraq. How much more depressing can things possibly get? Sure, it's important to be hopeful and compassionate about matters, but we need to prepare ourselves. Put the support systems in place. Things are going to get much much worse now before it gets any better. I hope I'm wrong, though.

Bringing democracy to Iraq via an occupation and a corrupt puppet oligarchy switching ballot boxes!

Just one question: If the vote is indeed rigged...what did the fools who rigged it think they could gain from doing so? Lets think about that for a minute and discuss later.

Rove, the constitutional referendum, Kanaan & Lebnaan, and natural disasters

2005-10-16T00:08:00.000-07:00

Hey, how's it going? I've been in patchy internetting this past month because of my drive frying and lack of an internet connection for a few weeks. Now everything seems to be working, but I have about 6 hours of studying a day...outside of class. The mild suffering pays dividends, though. I only managed to blog when at a friend's place. I noticed I'm not as addicted to it as before, but as you know the itch comes in waves.

I fixed my television...perhaps I should have left it broken. For some time I had no TV and no internet. What a peaceful and unrealistic existence. The news, as usual, makes me more and more angry and depressed. The whole hulaballoo surrounding the constitution is sickening. Those in my family outside Iraq and I were not allowed to voice our opinion concerning it. We were not allowed to vote because the 4-5 million Iraqis living outside of Iraq would have decidedly voted against the constitution. They know this, so they deliberately prevented Iraqis outside from voting.

Moving on to more slimy creatures...

Karl Rove is being grinded for the 4th time in court. It was a 4 hour session. This indicates something's afoot. Libby hasn't been called back, so...perhaps he's in better shape than Herr Karl. It will be interesting to see if the law works in America when the dust settles on this very serious matter. Iiiiiiiit's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in jail for Mr. Rove. (UPDATE: Libby is hardly out of hot water. )

Lebanon gears up for the release of the Hariri report as the criminal, Ghazi Kanaan, (supposedly) ends his life. The political drama continues... And I cannot wait to read the report. I'll be sure to have links to it as soon as it goes up. Be sure to check out our new look at Lebanese Blogger Forum!

Hurricaines & earthquakes...God must be angry. Here's conspiracy theory for you religious wing nuts. The Almighty strikes Kashmir because Bin Laden is hiding there. And Lord hits America because...well, lets just say it was a decision based on an aggregate of sins.

Do you ever wonder what God's axis of evil would be?

For some odd reason, I think it would be different than Shrub's.

Fixate on this you creeps

2005-10-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

First off, it's not that I'm particularly fixated upon letters and whatever other bullshit comes out of these invisible (and perhaps non-existant) pricks. But I must say that this is especially interesting. I've always thought that America or whomever else would have an almost impossible time fabricating things Iraqi. And here's an example having nothing to do with real Iraqis (Zawahiri is egyptian and zarqawi is jordanian), which illustrates the real possibility of this simply being an American black-ops project. Professor Cole calls it out, and I second the motion. In fact, this is more obvious than figuring out where shit blows when directed into a fan. Follow the smell morons. And stop shitting in the fan. OF COURSE IT'S UNCLE SAM PSY-OPs or Iran Dr. Cole! And yes, it could also perhaps be a Shia group trying to manipulate America! OOOOOOO ooooo, that's such the surprising possibility! But I'm afraid as long as the corporate media (that banks on the "war on terror") picks this fan-shitting up, it doesn't matter what is fact or fiction.

Take your freakin pick. It doesn't matter to Iraqis suffering on a daily basis. If America thinks it is the ultimate manipulator, and continues to think it can play God in Iraq...wait, just wait until it steps into this new reality. In fact, the west and America is in sincere danger of tanking morally and economically (in fact it's been over for some time if you listened to Wallerstein) while completely illegitimizing itself in the Arab world. No, nevermind that sort of talk. It's already done. If it weren't for Hollywood, there would perhaps not be the generally widespread notion of American perception in the East. And you know how much I adore the box office.

My gut tells me that the letter is a forgery. Most likely it is a black psy-ops operation of the US. But it could also come from Iran, since the mistakes are those a Shiite might make when pretending to be a Sunni. Or it could come from an Iraqi Shiite group attempting to manipulate the United States. Hmmm.