PORTOROZ, Slovenia, Sept 29 (Reuters) - Tensions over Georgia boiled over at NATO-Russia talks on Friday as Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov accused some alliance nations of illicitly selling weapons to the ex-Soviet country. "Some members of NATO -- shall we call them the younger generation? -- are supplying Georgia with arms and ammunition of Soviet production," Ivanov told a news briefing after the talks in the Slovenian coastal resort of Portoroz. Ivanov did not name the countries, but he was referring to some of the seven eastern European nations that joined NATO in 2004. He said Soviet arms exports to the region were made under the strict understanding they would not get into the hands of third parties. "It means these countries are breaching world practice," he said.
29 September 2006
fraud, waste and abuse
silliness: A new report from the Government Accountability Office finds that more than 100 laptop computers purchased with cards that the Homeland Security Department issued after hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast last year are missing and presumed stolen. ~~~ Other examples of improper use of the cards included the purchase of a beer brewing kit, a 63-inch, $8,000 plasma TV and “tens of thousands of dollars for training at golf and tennis resorts,” the report states.
28 September 2006
exactly
On the NIE: The report’s few positive notes were couched in conditional terms... and of course the full document won't be declassified. Anyone who honestly thought it would (or could) be is on some other planet.
Taliban: open for business in Waziristan
Post 'truce'... the Taliban have opened up a local office in Miran Shah for the purpose of "curbing crimes and anti-social activities".
"There is complete lawlessness in the area and crimes have increased. So after the peace accord the Taliban have set up office to serve residents of the area and restore peace,” read one pamphlet, apparently referring to the agreement signed between the Pakistani federal government and the Taliban on 5 September in North Waziristan which lies on the Pakistan-Afghan border.
Georgia arrests 4 Russian Army Officers
on suspicion of spying... Russian Foreign Ministry responds: "They have put forward unsubstantiated accusations." More at RIA Novosti.
Saudi Arabia + Israel = a tedious alliance
Jerusalem Post: Analysis: Saudi-Israeli footsie is a sign of need, not love Might be time to fire this "diplomatic official"...
"If you would have asked me three years ago, or five years ago, what country would be the last one in the region to make peace with us, I would have said Saudi Arabia," one diplomatic official said. "So if they are meeting with us now, it shows just how worried they are."Talk about self-destructive! Of all the positive statements he could've made, yet he goes with "they're worried". Not, "we welcome any opportunity to make peace with our neighbors", or "hopefully we can build on this and develop a long term relationship built upon mutual trust and understanding"... or anything constructive, for that matter.
25 September 2006
18 September 2006
to torture or not to torture?
Arms and Influence: Don't stay up waiting for a small number of Congressional Republicans to save the American republic. Their opposition matters, particularly in an election year. However, what would matter a lot more is a broader, organized coalition against immoral, unconstitutional, and ineffective policies. Too bad the press is more interested in continuing their public adulation for McCain, instead of asking how effective his occasional "maverick" stances really are.
17 September 2006
iraq redux
"U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials say Bush political appointees and hard-liners on Capitol Hill have tried recently to portray Iran's nuclear program as more advanced than it is and to exaggerate Tehran's role in Hezbollah's attack on Israel in mid-July," they write.. "President Bush, who addresses the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, has said he prefers diplomacy to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon, but he hasn't ruled out using military force. Several former U.S. defense officials who maintain close ties to the Pentagon say they've been told that plans for airstrikes - if Bush deems them necessary - are being updated." [False Reports on Iran a Replay of Run-Up to Iraq War?]
13 September 2006
Congratulations to Adrian Fenty!
DC residents, meet your new mayor. Though it was only the primary, the general election is a non-factor. Fenty has effectively already won. Good stuff.
Brighter days ahead for the District of Columbia.
12 September 2006
USMC Col. Pete Devlin
"We haven't been defeated militarily but we have been defeated politically -- and that's where wars are won and lost." - in his most recent assessment of Anbar province.
Anbar is a key province; it encompasses Ramadi and Fallujah, which with Baghdad pose the greatest challenge U.S. forces have faced in Iraq. It accounts for 30 percent of Iraq's land mass, encompassing the vast area from the capital to the borders of Syria and Jordan, including much of the area that has come to be known as the Sunni Triangle. The insurgency arguably began there with fighting in Fallujah not long after U.S. troops arrived in April 2003, and fighting has since continued. Thirty-three U.S. military personnel died there in August -- 17 from the Marines, 13 from the Army and three from the Navy. A second general who has read the report warned that he thought it was accurate as far as it went, but agreed with the defense official that Devlin's "dismal" view may not have much applicability elsewhere in Iraq. The problems facing Anbar are peculiar to that region, he and others argued. But an Army officer in Iraq familiar with the report said he considers it accurate. "It is best characterized as 'realistic,' " he said. "From what I understand, it is very candid, very unvarnished," said retired Marine Col. G. I. Wilson. "It says the emperor has no clothes."
08 September 2006
Iraq: not a quagmire
BAGHDAD, Sept. 7 -- Baghdad's morgue almost tripled its count for violent deaths in Iraq's capital during August from 550 to 1,536, authorities said Thursday, appearing to erase most of what U.S. generals and Iraqi leaders had touted as evidence of progress in a major security operation to restore order in the capital.
ha... how... unscary
Iran deploys locally-manufactured warplane
Iran deployed its first locally-manufactured fighter bomber plane on Wednesday during large-scale military exercises, state-run television reported.
"The bomber Saegheh or lightening is similar to (the American) F-18 but more powerful. It was designed, optimised and improved by Iranian experts," the report said.
c/o Opfor.
pentagon lawyers vs The White House
WASHINGTON - The Defense Department's top uniformed lawyers took issue Thursday with a key part of a White House plan to prosecute terrorism detainees, telling Congress that limiting the suspects' access to evidence could violate treaty obligations. Their testimony to a House of Representatives committee marked the latest time that military lawyers have publicly challenged Bush administration proposals to keep some evidence - such as classified information - from accused terrorists. In the past, some military officials have expressed concerns that if the U.S. adopts such standards, captured American troops might be treated the same way. [more]
07 September 2006
today's wrap up...
Chicago Sun-Times
05 September 2006
New State Department Releases on the "Future of Iraq" Project
available online at GWU's National Security Archive and... more from PR Watch:
"Newly-available documents detailing the early work of the "Future of Iraq Project," the U.S. State Department's massive planning effort for post-regime change Iraq, have been posted online by the National Security Archive, a non-profit research institute. The new documents "provide a behind-the-scenes look at the formation of 17 working groups consisting of 'free' Iraqis and experts, 14 of which met throughout 2002 and early 2003 to plan for a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq," according to the National Security Archive. "The first planning meeting with Iraqis took place at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. from April 9-10, 2002." In other Iraq news, Mother Jones magazine has launched "Lie by Lie," a timeline seeking to answer the question, "What did our leaders know and when did they know it?" The online reference currently covers from August 1990 to March 2003."
nursing home owners sue over katrina
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Two nursing home owners who were arrested after 34 of their patients died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are suing the government, saying federal, state and local officials failed to keep residents safe and evacuate vulnerable citizens as the storm approached. An attorney for Salvador and Mabel Mangano said Tuesday that the lawsuit was filed last week, just before the anniversary of the storm. The Manganos own St. Rita's nursing home in St. Bernard Parish, a coastal suburb of New Orleans badly flooded by Katrina. Louisiana's attorney general had them booked for negligent homicide last fall after investigating the 34 deaths there, but the couple wasn't formally charged by a grand jury. No grand jury has been convened because damage to St. Bernard Parish government buildings and the displacement of the parish's residents have hobbled the court system, the attorney general's office said. One is expected to be convened this month. Attorney James Cobb said any liability in the deaths should be shared by governing agencies that failed to make appropriate evacuation preparations before the storm. "Gov. (Kathleen) Blanco had an obligation to make sure the state was in compliance with its own emergency operations plan," Cobb said. The Manganos have argued that their hurricane plan _ to keep frail residents in place with food, water and generators rather than risk moving them _ was a responsible course of action, and if the levees had held, the tragedy would have been avoided. So far, more than 30 lawsuits have been filed against the couple by patients injured at the nursing home and the families of people who died there, Cobb said. The lawsuit filed by the Manganos on Aug. 28 also accused the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of failing to build adequate flood protection, subjecting the nursing home to 13 feet of flood waters. The property sits 12 feet above sea level, higher than most of the parish downriver from New Orleans, Cobb said. Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles Foti, said the office hadn't yet seen the lawsuit and declined to comment on the case. A call for comment from the governor's office wasn't immediately returned Tuesday.
03 September 2006
Bush's war on FEMA and his fundamental misunderstanding of disaster relief programs
Bush decided to enter Labor Day weekend, 1 year after Hurricane Katrina destroyed an entire city, displaced hundreds of thousands of Americans and (so far) has cost the US government more than $100 Billion, by "getting out in front" and issuing an Executive Order to "Improve Assistance for Disaster Victims". The most substantive action taken by the administration by virtue of this EO is the creation of another beaurocratic layer of government; a special Task Force on Disaster Assistance Coordination. So, what's the problem? FEMA HAS NO REPRESENTATION on this task force, despite the fact that FEMA (and ONLY FEMA) is responsible for administering disaster assistance programs for both victims and local and State governments. Following Katrina's landfall, the Federal government suffered from beaurocratic paralysis. FEMA Director Michael Brown, having to work through an incompetent surrogate in Michael Chertoff, was never given the authorities or the tools necessary to rapidly respond to the needs of those who were affected. Yet, the administration's most significant policy adjustment on the 1 year anniversary of Katrina manages only to further cripple the one agency capable of fixing what the Bush administration themselves broke. Mr. Bush has shown (again) that his administration would prefer to hackishly strengthen the amorphous nothingness otherwise known as DHS to the detriment of anyone who may suffer from a future disaster. Incompetence. There's no other word.
bing bong
c/o No Quarter... some choice excerpts:
From Melanie Sloan, Executive Director, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
Response to Wash Post Editorial of 9/1/06
Allegation: It is untrue that the WH orchestrated leak of Plame’s identity to ruin her career and punish Joe Wilson
- According to Washington Post article of 10/12/03: “two top White House officials disclosed Plame’s identity to at least six Washington journalists.” An administration source told the Post: “officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson . . . It was unsolicited . . . They were pushing back. They used everything they had.”
- After Novak’s column appeared Rove called Chris Matthews and told him Mr. Wilson’s wife was “fair game” (Newsweek 7/11/05)
- Mr. Fitzgerald, who has long been aware of Mr. Armitage’s role, stated in court filing: “there is ample evidence that multiple officials in the White House discussed [Valerie Wilson’s] employment with reporters prior to (and after) July 14, “ and further that “it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish’ [Mr.] Wilson.” (Washington Post 4/7/06)
Allegation: Mr. Wilson’s charge that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger is false
- The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Assessment of Iraq describes Mr. Wilson’s role:
- The CIA’s decision to send Mr. Wilson to Niger was part of an effort to obtain responses to questions from the Vice President’s Office and State and Defense on “the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal” (p. 39)
- Two CIA staffers debriefed Mr. Wilson upon his return from Niger and wrote a draft intelligence report that was sent to the CIA Director of Operations (“DO”) reports officer. (p. 43)
- The intelligence report based on Mr. Wilson’s trip was disseminated on March 8, 2002, and was “widely distributed.” It did not identify Mr. Wilson by name to protect him as a source, which the CIA had promised Mr. Wilson. (p. 43)
- According to the report, the CIA’s DO gave Mr. Wilson’s information a grade of “good” “which means it added to the IC’s body of understanding on the issue.” (p. 46)
- After Mr. Wilson’s July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed, the Administration acted as if he had made a major revelation:
- The day after a spokesman for the President told The Washington Post: “the sixteen words [“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”] did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union.” (NY Times 7/8/03)
- On July 11, 2003, CIA Director George Tenet said “These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.” (LA Times 7/12/03).
- According to a Washington Post article, the National Intelligence Council stated in a January 2003 memo that “the Niger story [that Iraq had been caught trying to buy uranium from Niger] was baseless and should be laid to rest.” (Washington Post 4/9/06)
- According to a Vanity Fair article of July 2006, there was a last-minute decision before the President’s State of the Union Address to attribute the Niger uranium deal to British intelligence even though “the CIA had told the White House again and again that it didn’t trust the British reports.”
- On March 7, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the IAEA, publicly disclosed that the Niger documents which formed the basis for reports of a Iraq-Niger uranium transaction were false. He stated that “the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.”
Allegation: Mr. Wilson “ought to have expected . . . that the answer [to why he was sent to Niger] would point to his wife.”
- A July 22, 2003 Newsday article cites a senior intelligence officer who confirmed that “she [Valerie Plame] did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.”
- Joe Wilson’s July 15, 2005 letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence explains that Valerie Wilson was not at the meeting at which the subject of him traveling to Niger was raised for the first time and then only after a discussion of what the participants at the meeting did not know about Niger. This is confirmed by SSCI report at p. 40.
CSM on Israel's internal struggle
JERUSALEM – Soon after Israel's war with Hizbullah came to a halt with a tenuous cease-fire, Israel's internal war began.
Now, amid widespread disappointment over how the war was waged, the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under pressure to set up a state commission of inquiry on various aspects of a war in which Israelis see innumerable mishaps.
Sixty-four percent of Israelis, according to an Israeli Radio poll released Thursday, want an independent inquiry into the war - not unlike the 9/11 Commission in Washington. Such high figures serve an embarrassing blow to Mr. Olmert, who has tried to downsize the issue by appointing two lower-level committees Monday to investigate the handling of the war.
The possibility of a wider probe evinces the degree of disillusionment with the war, but also the extent to which Israelis are now willing to put the decisions of a sitting government and even the country's near-omnipotent military under a critical microscope.
Internal critique over the war appears to be making its impact on both sides of the border: Olmert has acknowledged that there were shortcomings, while Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview this week that had he known how Israel would retaliate, he would not have ordered the kidnapping attack.
Commissions of inquiry have only been held at grave moments in Israeli history, such as the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and after the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
"The public impact of a commission of inquiry is much greater than any other. The public confidence in officials who direct a commission of inquiry is huge," says Prof. Stuart Cohen, a political scientist at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv.
"They also have judicial powers which no internal committee possesses," he explains, meaning that the commission has the power to hold officials personally responsible for civil or criminal offenses, order them dismissed from their positions, and ban them from holding similar positions in the future.
The crux of the controversy focuses on how the war was conducted, and not whether it should have been waged at all. But even those questions have the potential to sway policy, and an inquiry could have a lasting impact on the military options Israel exercises in the future.
Israelis also want an investigation into the government shortcomings in protecting civilians during the war. Volunteer organizations and not government officials, critics say, did most of the aid work. A decision to evacuate bombarded northern towns did not come until a month into the war.
"The rights and wrongs are not the issue - nobody here disputes the justice of the use of force," says Dr. Cohen. Israel began bombing Lebanon soon after Hizbullah staged a cross-border attack on July 12, killing eight soldiers and kidnapping two. The men are still being held.
"People are upset but they're not saying, 'My son died for no reason.' He died because somebody made a mistake," he adds. "The mistake was not to have gone to war, but not to have conducted the war properly." [more here]
02 September 2006
this administration's jig is up
the divisive up-is-downism has become entirely transparent:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Rumsfeld betrays his own cynicism and moral confusion when he attacks the patriotism, courage and moral fiber of millions of his fellow Americans, then bewails those who try to divide this country ~ It is not patriotism to sit in silent submission to those who have led this country into the most serious foreign policy blunder in our history. It is not moral confusion to point out that with its embrace of torture as a legitimate weapon, and with its refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions, it is the Bush administration that has undercut the moral standing of the United States in a struggle in which moral standing is of utmost importance. And it is neither appeasement nor surrender to search for a better way, because it is clear to many that the road we have taken so far does not lead to victory.Wake the hell up America.
US healthcare... a National disgrace
an editorial in yesterday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch
01 September 2006
bill arkin nails Rumsfeld
ouch Either Rumsfeld has delivered one of the most important speeches of the modern era, or he's gone crazy. I think the latter, not just because I think the secretary is wrong on his intellectual characterization of terrorism, and not just because he is wrong about the media and its intentions, and not because he is so pugnacious, or because he has been wrong so many times before. Rumsfeld is so wrong about America. His use of World War I history and the specter of fascism and appeasement, and his argument about moral weakness or even treason in any who oppose him, is not only polarizing but ineffective in provoking debate and discussion about the proper course this country must take to "fight" terrorism. This is not the first time that Rumsfeld has shown himself to be so out of touch, so contemptuous of America. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense has displayed a contempt from long before 9/11 for anyone who disagrees with him, particularly in his initial wars against those in the uniformed military. Moreover, Rumsfeld's declaration of war yesterday follows from his basic view that the Defense Department has to do it all: He has created an intelligence bureaucracy because he is distrustful and contemptuous of the CIA and all others. He has built up a secret army and covert capabilities in special operations forces because he wants to control and to rely only upon his own warriors. He has created a homeland security apparatus that looks over the shoulder of the Department of Homeland Security and is the ultimate arbiter of security. He has created his own FBI in the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), and fought to ensure that the NSA stays under Pentagon control. He has created his own law and his own human rights policy. He has subverted Congress through unexamined supplemental budgets and super-secret programs. Even as a military strategist, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld pushed a losing strategy in Afghanistan. This is not just because he went to war with an initially small force. After all, the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda began just weeks after 9/11 and that was what could be mobilized in that short period. The tragic error was that Rumsfeld continued to think that the terrorist threat existed in the form of a small army to be routed by his fabulous "transformed" warriors. It is Rumsfeld who declared "mission accomplished" long before President Bush stepped on to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Rumsfeld has been wrong in fighting and too quick to declare victory thereafter. Rumsfeld declared victory in Afghanistan, in addition, because he was twitching to move on to the next enemy, and the next and the next. But even when the weaknesses and problems became apparent about how the Afghanistan war had been fought, Rumsfeld still pushed an identical military strategy in Iraq, brushing aside any criticism as naïve and appeasing and out of touch with the new gathering storm of weapons of mass destruction. And even as Iraq has become one of the biggest hornets' nests in history, the secretary has convinced himself over and over that progress is being made and victory is just around the corner. America, Rumsfeld says, is not to blame, conflating a just war with a preemptive American strike. America is not to blame and therefore Rumsfeld is not to blame: no missteps, no errors of judgment. The secretary just wants his soldiers to believe now that he anticipated all along that the enemy was totalitarian and fascist and that Iraq was part of the big plan. If I were the conspiratorial type, I'd say Rumsfeld was a particular menace to America because in his view of a monolithic and totalitarian terrorist enemy, and in his analysis of the weakness of American society, he can only come to the messianic conclusion that he indeed needs to takeover the country in order to save it.