Best of the Blogs

Free at Last

For the past couple of years I have read the English edition of the Oslo newspaper Aftenposten daily--mainly for news of Keiko, the killer whale who starred in "Free Willy." Following heroic efforts to return him to the wild, Keiko adopted a Norwegian fjord as sanctuary and has lived there quietly for the past several years--still looked after by his human minders--although he was free to go if he wanted to. Keiko died yesterday, at about 27, which is old for an orca in captivity. Sayonara, Keiko. Sweet fishy dreams.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:15 AM

Payback time

What’s $61 million dollars these days? Less than half of what former NYSE honcho Richard Grasso got for leaving quietly after turning Wall Street into a thieves’ market. Just about a quarter of Shrubby’s campaign warchest. Maybe twenty minutes of Super Bowl advertising next month.

It’s also the amount that Halliburton overcharged the American people on their Iraq war fuel scam. Our disingenuous president, in his best impersonation of a World Wide Wrestling Federation Referee, told the media that Halliburton must pay back the money if they go to the videotapes and really do find that Dick Cheney's successors got caught with their hand in the cookie jar. For cronies and contributors who violated one of the Ten Commandments, that’s the best justice our born-again leader could met out. Judge Shrub Bush… the law West of the oil patch.

With executives of Halliburton and its subsidiaries shuttling in and out of government it’s difficult to determine to what extent overcharging may be endemic to the company’s business culture. Halliburton and the Army denied any knowledge of improper activity earlier this year. It is puzzling why key Democrats aren’t calling for a full-blown Congressional investigation.

If turnabout is fair play, add the stonewalling on contracting issues by vice president Dick Cheney’s office to the political equation. With James Baker hovering over Iraq in what some have suggested is a damage control mode, one can only wonder if the blowback from Cheney’s connections with Halliburton will make him a political liability and force him off the 2004 GOP ticket. That would be the ultimate payback.

posted by Groom 6:14 AM

Friday, December 12, 2003

The Reviews Are In

"If Bush didn't know what Wolfowitz was about to do, that's incompetence. If Bush knew, and perhaps even saw it as part of a carrot-and-stick policy, that's foolhardy." Los Angeles Times

"Like other puerile taunts delivered by administration officials, the president's words will merely serve to further erode support for his policies in countries that historically have stood with the United States." Washington Post

"Maybe I'm giving Paul Wolfowitz too much credit, but I don't think this was mere incompetence. I think the administration's hard-liners are deliberately sabotaging reconciliation." Paul Krugman, NY Times

"The United States has a mess on its hands in Iraq, and the man who may have done more than anyone else to bring that about shot his own country in the foot yet again this week...It's time for Mr. Wolfowitz to go." Baltimore Sun

"The administration is bringing back former Secretary of State James Baker III to help reduce Iraq's debt. He returns not a moment too soon." Christian Science Monitor

"OK, it was probably bad timing." Wall Street Journal

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:17 PM

Decapitate This

Some 50 "decapitation" strikes on top Iraqi leaders failed to kill any of the intended targets, but instead killed or wounded more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians, says a new report released today by Human Rights Watch. The report--Off Target: The Conduct of the War and Civilian Casualties in Iraq--blames most of the deaths on the use of cluster munitions in populated areas.

“The decapitation strategy was an utter failure on military grounds, since it didn´t kill a single Iraqi leader in 50 attempts,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “But it also failed on human rights grounds. It´s no good using a precise weapon if the target hasn´t been located precisely...the deaths of hundreds of civilians still could have been prevented.”

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:30 AM

And to think that just after September 11 we were loved around the world

When therapists look at abusive relationships, they often find a recurring patterns of "I'll be nice from now on" alternating with a rage-driven desire to punish. The similarity to Bush administration "diplomacy" is striking and, given the macho insecurity behind it, not accidental.

For the gory details see the editorial entitled Boomerang Diplomacy, in today's Washington Post. (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 7:51 AM

On to the Veep Sweepstakes

Okay, now that Al has singlehandedly (sorry, my irony is showing) sewn up the nomination for Dean, who should Howard pick as his running mate?

The Republicans were smart enough in 2000 to know that Bush needed a Washington insider on the ticket to balance his complete lack of international (and national, for that matter) governing experience. Dick Cheney was the experienced insider but his choice for VP was still a bit of surprise, considering his age and health problems.

So what are Dean’s choices? Remember we have said here before that the entire cabinet will be running against the two Democrats, so it’s time for some early planning and closet checking, plus a hint or two would be cool and give us a much-needed insight into how Dean will govern. Here are some thoughts:

1. No Clark. No Washington experience, no Clark. Having two outsiders with NO Washington legislative or insider experience is too risky. Dean is not that strong on the economy and Clark has no economic or domestic administrative experience other than his Army experiences. It's the same reason Powell would have been the wrong running mate for Shrub. Maybe hinting that Clark would go to State, a la Powell, or to the Defense Department to clean house and stop promoting preventive wars would be a smart move? Clark only works if the two work out a “co-presidency,” something new where Clark focuses exclusively on terrorism and foreign policy with Homeland Security, Defense and State reporting to him and Dean focusing on the economy, health, education, environment, etc. The Chairman-CEO model works well in business, it should work equally well in government. And it's not exactly untested; we've had Cheney calling most of the shots now for the past three years.

2. No Blacks. Dean is weak with African Americans (the expressions “Amen brother” and “praise the Lord” do not exactly roll naturally off his lips) and it's too late to start carrying Clinton’s or Carter’s Bible. Picking a Black would be dramatic but probably seen as a sign of overt pandering (think Clarence Thomas). One possible surprise candidate would be Richard Parson, CEO of Time-Warner who has extensive Office of Management and Budget experience. The choice would be spun as an effort to bring real business experience to the economy and business side of domestic issues (think former Goldman Sachs Chairman Bob Rubin, who ended up at Treasury).

3. None of other candidates. Gephardt maybe, the Democrats’ Cheney without the baggage. (Note to Gephardt: lighten up on the criticism unless you want to go back to Missouri hatless.)

4. No women. There is no way Hillary will play second fiddle to another president with a penis. So what women are left without getting another Geraldine Ferraro? Maybe newly elected Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm in a key Midwest state?

5. He needs a Southerner. A smart choice might be Senator Graham, a popular former governor of Florida, an expert on terrorism, a VP candidate that can help the ticket in THE pivotal State of Florida and help keep the Senate seat it in the Democrat’s camp with his coattails. Graham was a gracious candidate who knew when to step aside. And he's no more boring than Cheney.

Whatever the choice Dean should start laying out his cards sooner rather than later. He has no choice but to pick some strong teammates early enough to balance, enhance and juice up the ticket.

One final thought: Don't take any advice about running mates from Al Gore. That's how we got stuck last time with Joe Lieberman.

posted by Josh 12:14 AM

Dean's support all lily white....my ass

Check out the Black Commentator piece titled "Dean Makes Racial-Political History", summed up in the lead as follows:

Howard Dean’s December 7 speech is the most important statement on race in American politics by a mainstream white politician in nearly 40 years. Nothing remotely comparable has been said by anyone who might become or who has been President of the United States since Lyndon Johnson’s June 4, 1965 affirmative action address to the graduating class at Howard University. (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:11 AM

Thursday, December 11, 2003

The Problem in a Nutshell

Asked whether the exclusion of those countries from bidding on construction contracts violates international law, Bush said, "I don't know what you're talking about by international law. I better consult my lawyer." CNN, December 11, 2003

Can you spell arrogant, isolationist asshole, boys and girls?

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:58 PM

Free Yee

For those of us who have long suspected that "military justice" is an oxymoron, the trial of James Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who is charged with mishandling classified data, is instructive. Yee was arrested with great fanfare as a "spy" three months ago and held in solitary confinement for 76 days. Prosecutors even alerted defense attorneys that they should add someone with death penalty experience to their team.

After one day of testimony--not in any way related to espionage but focused on an affair with a fellow officer and some dirty pictures on Yee's government computer--the prosecutors were forced to make an incredible admission: they didn't know which, if any, of the documents that Yee had were classified. The trial was re-set for January 19 so they could review the documents. Should it turn out (as now appears likely) that the documents really weren't that sensitive after all, the Army needs to issue Yee an administrative reprimand (for those "crimes" that many of the rest of us are also guilty of), leave justice to his wife, and move on.

The larger issue, of course, is what does all this say about the ability of the military to deliver fair trials to the captured alleged "terrorists" who face the prospect of military tribunals and the death penalty?

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:45 AM

BREAKING NEWS!

Not a big story, but one I have to share. Just finished a Democrats Abroad telephone conference call with Governor Dean. There were people from 34 countries participating in this call. It was very cool, indeed, hearing Governor Dean respond thoughtfully to specific policy questions (the war on drugs, from Colombia; China policy, from Shanghai; energy policy, from Cameroon). But what really touched me was the way in which the Governor conducted himself on line.

Calls with other candidates usually begin with a flunky who announces that the
important man is ready to begin the call. Here we got the beep that signals that
someone is coming on line and "Hello, this is Howard Dean."

Then, as the call progressed, we got a bad echo on the line. Howard said, "How do you want to handle this?" When our chair, Rachelle Valladares said, "Could you hang up and call back?" there wasn't a moment's hesitation. "Sure, I can do that."

And these are just two examples of the overall tone of the call: No talking down, no smarmy sales talk, an adult talking to other adults in a warm, straightforward
manner. Gotta love the man. (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:57 AM

Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?

If you need further proof that the Bush administration couldn't run a high school in Goose Creek, South Carolina, consider yesterday’s bonehead follies in which the Shrubster finds himself calling up his bonne amies Jacques, Vladimir and Gerhard to ask them to receive Jim Baker to discuss restructuring Iraq’s debt--just after they’d found out that the Pentagon had barred their countries from American-financed Iraq reconstruction projects. Quelle embarrassment if, in fact, the Bushies were capable of such a thing.

The New York Times reports that Shrub was “distinctly unhappy” at the timing and tone of the Pentagon directive which was signed by Paul Wolfowitz, deputy secretary of defense, and posted on a Defense Department Web site just hours before the scheduled calls. Not that the White House didn’t sign off on the policy, which was designed to punish France, Germany and Russia for being right about the war; it did. Shrub’s unhappiness is that the lads found out he had screwed them before he had a chance to ask for his little favor.

With the Pentagon’s usual crudeness and tin ear for international relations, the memorandum explained that the restrictions were required "for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States," which insulted every country left off the list—including Canada, which has actually contributed some money for reconstruction but isn't likely to give any more.

There are already signs of retreat. In the most mealy-mouthed damage-control statement of the week, the Times quotes Larry Di Rita, spokesman for Donald Rumsfeld as saying: "Nobody had the intent of being punitive when this was being developed...This is not a fixed, closed list. This is meant to be forward looking and potentially expansive."

You have to wonder how many strikes the Wolfman has left.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:33 AM

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

A very tough question

...the Supreme Court can't police "soft money"... the Bush administration underfunds the FEC

The Supreme Court has ruled 5-4 supporting the legality of the McCain-Feingold bill, which places controls on “soft money” contributions to political parties. Howard Dean opted out of federal funding in large part to obtain financial parity with our incumbent president who raised huge “soft money” contributions for his 2000 campaign and has raised more than $200 million to date.

In their majority opinion upholding the law Justices John Paul Stevens and Sandra Day O’Connor said that the “overall effect” of limiting the soft money contributions has more to do with preventing corruption and the appearance of corruption and the eroding confidence in the electoral process than with imposing restrictions on 1st Amendment free speech rights. They suggest that the system is healthier when more people participate in the political process as voters and contributors. Coincidentally, this is exactly the kind of energy that Howard Dean is generating.

The Bush administration’s Iraq “redevelopment” contracts smell of corruption so bad they could put America on skunky beer alert for life. The Christian right folks who own the voting machine companies, among the investors one US Senator Chuck "I keep my voting machine investments in a blind trust" Hagel (R-NE) are all big time “soft money” contributors and recently formed their own lobby to gloss over known flaws in their security and electronic tabulation methods.

With a Federal Election Commission deliberately underfunded by the Bush administration how will McCain-Feingold be enforced? Or will enforcement of the law be a fad, like term limits, or the metric system ?

As Rick in Casablanca might say from afar, what about all the pols in all the elections in all the states and cities across America?

posted by Groom 5:04 PM

Out of the Mouths of Demented Old Men

Donald Rumsfeld on the recent epidemic of child manslaughter in Afghanistan:

"We would be happy to have them surrender. And if they don't, we would be happy to kill them," Mr Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon briefing on Tuesday.

Okay, okay, maybe he was talking about something else. Who ever said blogs have to play fair.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:47 PM

Patty-Cake, Baker-Man

Shrub Bush is a man who has spent his entire life being picked up after so the appointment of Bush-family consigliere James Baker to obstensibly straighten out the Iraq debt situation is predictable. Clearly, there is more here than meets the eye. The administration has a Treasury Department and a perfectly mediocre Treasury Secretary to handle things like debt restructuring. Baker's mandate is to get Junior out--as quickly and gracefully as possible--of the mess that he allowed Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz to create for him in Iraq.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:27 AM

Notes on Moral Narcissism

Americans suffer from a level of moral narcissism that seems to many people of other cultures to border on the psychotic. We are rich therefore we are good. God—the Christian one, the one who told Shrub Bush to liberate Iraq—loves us best; otherwise why would he give us so many big cars and endless highways and malls filled to the rafters with the “treasury of virtue,” to borrow a phrase from Robert Penn Warren.

Even in matters of war—the sad but sometime necessary unpleasantness of blood and guts and rotting corpses and friendly fire and dead children and the horribly burned or maimed young people who will spend the rest of their miserable lives dragging themselves in and out of Veterans hospitals —Americans bring an especially refined touch. Mostly, we turn out heads away from these things and pretend they don’t exist. Or, we wrap them in patriotic parables that testify to our essential goodness, and ignore the very real stench of death.

The late Stephen Ambrose, the Norman Rockwell of military historians, was particularly adept at elevating what was for many young American men in World War II simply a matter of slaughter or be slaughtered into an epic struggle for “democracy against tyranny.” One of his most frequently-repeated observations (Draft dodger Dick Cheney’s favorite—he’s used it in several speeches) concerns the superior behavior of Americans in combat:

In the spring of 1945, around the world, the sight of a twelve-man squad of teenage boys, armed and in uniform, brought terror to people's hearts. Whether it was a Red Army squad, ... or a German squad ... or a Japanese squad ... that squad meant rape, pillage, looting, wanton destruction, senseless killing. But there was an exception: a squad of GIs, a sight that brought the biggest smiles you ever saw to people's lips, and joy to their hearts.

It’s a lovely story and perhaps even relatively true. It is also true that thousands of startled wives, fathers and mothers received packages from the South Pacific containing bleached and boiled skeletons of Japanese soldiers’ heads. Cheney hasn’t mentioned that one yet. Nor is he likely to bring up the hundreds of My Lai-like incidents where that famous American discipline has given way to fear and barbarism.

Real soldiers—people who have faced actual combat and the prospect of immediate death—will tell you that there is nothing heroic or virtuous about the experience. The object is to survive by doing what you have to do, which—as General Patton famously pointed out—“is not to die for your country but to make some other poor bastard die for his country.”

For those of us who would like to believe in Ambrose’s story of the “good” GIs (and I suspect most of us would), the news that Israel is now working with the Army to train an assassination squad to “neutralize” Iraqi insurgents is dispiriting for several reasons—not least of which is it is against all international laws of combat. Extrajudicial murder is still murder.

And if you aren’t into niceties, what about the fact that we’ve been down this road before. Remember the “hamlet” pacification program in Viet Nam called Operation Phoenix in which special forces murdered an estimated 41,000 people—many of them innocent victims of corrupt Vietnamese officials and unreliable informants. We not only lost the “hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people; we lost the war. Despite what the generals tell you, we can lose Iraq.

In this age of special forces and CIA paramilitary types dressed like Afghan sheepherders and a professional Army and shadowy enemies who operate as guerillas and live among civilians, I suppose it’s inevitable that the rules of engagement become murkier. The Bush administration has already made it clear what it thinks of the Geneva Conventions.

But, if we’re going to scrap all the rules of war—and with it all the sweetness and virtue and innocence symbolized by Ambrose’s parable of the good GIs--we also have to drop the notion that our soldiers are angels bearing candy bars, nylons and democracy. As Robert Penn Warren also pointed out: "Moral narcissism is a peculiarly unlovely and unloveable trait.”

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:50 AM

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Pretty Soon We'll Find Out That Saddam is Running the Oil Ministry

Let me see if I have this right. All but eight of the dozens of Iraqi scientists who have been questioned or detained as part of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction have been released by U.S. intelligence. And many Iraqi scientists who claimed for years that Iraq no longer had WMDs have been rehired by the Science Ministry--including Alaa al-Saeed, who oversaw stockpiles of the deadly nerve agent VX--who has been promoted and is now in charge of other weapons scientists. Surely, you remember the dreaded VX program? In his State of the Union address this year, Shrub mentioned it by name: "Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemical agents could also kill untold thousands."

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:35 PM

How Dean Can Win...

William Kristol reminds Republicans that Okalahoma was supposed to beat Kansas State (who, by the way, were beaten earlier this year by my alma mater, Marshall, who then lost to somebody called Troy State the following week). Bottom line: Bush can be had.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:20 AM

It’s All About Me: Gore 3.0

There he goes again: Gore just reinvented himself for the umpteenth time. This endorsement of Dean is Gore’s last chance to make himself relevant. Not giving his loyal running mate, Joe Lieberman, a heads-up is unconscionable and shows that this stealth move is all about Al, not about the Democratic Party. This is a backroom brawl between Clinton and Gore, and Bubba was just sucker punched.

For Dean, Dr. Outsider, this means he has just become Tonto to the Democrats’ Lone Ranger. This endorsement only works if the two ride together—and that is just what Rove wants. Dean now is saddled with the good, bad and ugly of the Clinton/Gore years, taking us back rather than forward.

This is the beginning of Dean 2.0 and the beta of Gore 3.0.

Gore’s endorsement splinters the Party, not because of what he did, but how he did it. If Gore had lead a team of heavyweight endorsers that would be one thing—a good thing. But, Gore, TKOed in 2000, wants another round, whatever it takes.

posted by Josh 7:58 AM

Gore trumps the old guard

DLC apparatchik Al From looked like a raving old yente on NBC last night talking about “the endorsement.” But, like the MC-5 said at Lincoln Park during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, that’s what happens “when you’re part of the problem instead of being part of the solution.”

Ditto Gephardt, Lieberman, Edwards, and (with all the Clinton insiders running his campaign), Clark. All seek to build on a vague notion of “the Clinton legacy” swerving back and forth close to the middle of the road until they get t-boned by Shrubby and Rove's hit below-the-belt campaign tactics in the usual born-again Christian wrapper. While the media characterizes Howard Dean as having a short fuse, Shrubby has a mean temper... the classic "zeal of converts" rage. His "Just watch" comment about what his $200 million war chest is going to do is just the tip of the iceberg... we've already seen what its doing with the attack ads that even Tom "the senator from Citicorp" Daschle ("D"-SD) calls repulsive.

What’s happening right now is a sea change. A paradigm shift. Al Gore, by endorsing Howard Dean, becomes titular head of the “new” Democratic party. For the Froms, McAuliffes, Daleys, Cantors and Daschles, it’s either on the bus or off the bus. You wonder how these guys can run a party when they don't even bother to make sure that every state party organization issues party cards to remind and re-validate those average Americans who wonder what the party has done for them lately... are you listening Governor Bill Richardson in New Mexico, the state with the lowest per-capita income in the US?

What the endorsement of Gore means for Dean is that his agenda will incorporate, in part, some of visions and programs Gore sought to put forward in his bid for the presidency and during his eight years as vice president that got railroaded, or reinvented by the Clinton crew. Gore, having served in Viet Nam even though he opposed the war, brings that sense of legitimacy to the Dean camp.

If Howard Dean seeks to build on a Democratic party legacy, it will be that of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman; the vision and politics that rescued the United States from fear and unilateralism the last time the Republicans bankrupted the country. The only thing we’re missing is the Dust Bowl.

Memo to Andrea Mitchell and Chris Wallace: if you’d stop asking those stale questions about the “Confederate Flags and the pickup trucks” and “the sealed files,“ Howard Dean will tell you he is a pragmatist, not a leftist. Can’t find any new trash on Dean except the bad back and the ski lodge… try Shrubby's deserting the Texas Air Guard, or embargoing the phone and financial transactions of major US and international companies and folks like the Bin Ladens (and their friends) in the period that bracketed 9/11. Or maybe Hillary embargoing the senior paper she wrote while at Wellesley. Or maybe even all that stuff I see about her and Susan Thomases in the tabloids at the super market check-out line… the kind of true lies that might keep Hilla the Hun from being a candidate in 2008.

posted by Groom 2:30 AM

Monday, December 08, 2003

Gore For Dean

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press is reporting that Al Gore intends to endorse Howard Dean for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Gore, who lost to President Bush in the disputed 2000 election, has agreed to endorse Dean in Harlem in New York City on Tuesday and then travel with the former Vermont governor to Iowa, sight of the Jan. 19 caucuses which kickoff the nominating process, said a Democratic source close to Gore.

You want to know what really bothers me about this news? The fact that the Associated Press doesn't know the difference between "sight" (something you see) and site (a location). What are they teaching in journalism school these days anyway?

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:50 PM

Reasons to Hate Shrub Bush, Part 612:
The Qala-i-Janghi Murders

The administration may blame the recent deaths of nine children on the fog of war, but the line between "collateral damage" and outright war crimes has been crossed in Afghanistan in at least two buried and nearly forgotten events.

After the negotiated fall of Kunduz, Taliban fighters who were Afghanistan citizens were released but hundreds of foreign-born Taliban—estimates vary between 400 and 800—were trucked on November 23-24, 2001 from Kunduz to the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif and then herded into the Qala-i-Janghi fortress, which was serving as the military headquarters of the notoriously brutal warlord General Rashid Dostum.

The decision to not release the foreign fighters came directly from Washington. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had told FoxNews on November 22: “It would be most unfortunate if the foreigners in Afghanistan — the Al Qaeda and the Chechens and others who have been there working with the Taliban — if those folks were set free and in any way allowed to go to another country and cause the same kind of terrorist acts.”

He was also quoted in The Times on November 20 as saying: “The United States is not inclined to negotiate surrenders, nor are we in a position, with relatively small numbers of forces on the ground, to accept prisoners. … Any idea that those people in that town who have been fighting so viciously and who refuse to surrender should end up in some sort of a negotiation which would allow them to leave the country and go off and destabilize other countries and engage in terrorist attacks on the United States is something that I would certainly do everything I could to prevent. They’re people who have done terrible things. … The idea of their getting out of the country and going off to make their mischief somewhere else is not a happy prospect. So my hope is that they will either be killed or taken prisoner.”

Most of the foreign Taliban were shocked at being detained because they had believed the Northern Alliance has agreed to their release as part of the surrender. During the night of November 24, a Taliban prisoner about to be searched detonated a hidden hand grenade, killing himself and a couple of Dostum’s soldiers. A handful of other POWs followed suit, blowing themselves up with hand grenades.

The next day, Northern Alliance forces began tying the hands of prisoners behind their backs. About 250 POWs had been tied up when CIA agent Johnny Spann and a second agent, identified only as “David,” who were “advisers” to Dostum, apparently decided to do the Rambo-thing and start interrogating some of them. (They are the cocky jerks seen on film playing mindgames with American Taliban John Walker Lindh.)

Clearly, these two guys were neither too bright nor too professional. Prisoners greatly outnumbered guards, the atmosphere was still extremely tense from the previous day’s incidents, and Spann and “David” were wandering around among them, lightly armed, with no American backup. Both were wearing Afghan robes, had grey beards and spoke Persian badly enough to be pegged as Americans. When one of them charged Spann, it touched off a revolt that quickly spread panic throughout the camp. Some press accounts say that Spann was able to kill four of the attackers before being overwhelmed and killed.

“David” hauled ass and called for American assistance. US and British special forces raced to the fort and began directing an all-out assault on the POWs inside, most of whom were not armed and not taking part in the rebellion and many of whom still had their hands bound. The assault soon escalated to massive air strikes. Over the next two days, nine or ten bombs were dropped directly on the compound.

As the carnage piled up, U.S. special forces and British SAS watched as Northern Alliance troops roamed the complex shooting at bodies to make sure there were no survivors, looting the bodies of the dead, stealing their rifles, boots, clothing and even gold fillings from their teeth. The special forces also instructed Northern Alliance troops to pour diesel fuel into a basement where terrified prisoners—none of whom were participating in the revolt, including John Walker Lindh—were hiding and set it on fire.

After the fighting was over, only 86 prisoners had survived. Press reports said Northern Alliance forces executed all Taliban prisoners who managed to escape from the fort.

When the dead Taliban’s “arsenal,” was tallied, the prisoners had only 30 guns, two anti-tank weapons and two grenade launchers. An Associated Press photographer said he saw the bodies of up to 50 Taliban whose hands had been bound, laid out in a field inside the fortress. Don Rumsfeld's Geneva Convention-flaunting take-no-prisoners message had clearly made it down the chain of command.

Next: The Cargo Container Murders

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:04 PM

Spendthrift Conservatism

President George W. Bush is presiding over the biggest growth in U.S. government spending since 1990, as a Republican-led Congress provides money for programs ranging from the fight against terrorism to a dried plant exhibit at the New York Botanical Garden.

Federal spending rose 7.3 percent to $2.2 trillion in fiscal 2003 and 7.9 percent the year before, the most since George H. W. Bush was in the White House. Congress will vote this week on a $328 billion bill to fund such projects as an $18 billion loan guarantee for an Alaska gas terminal that may benefit ConocoPhillips Co. and Exxon Mobil Corp. Bloomberg, December 8, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:14 PM

The Clark Conundrum... uptown demographics

In Arizona, retired General Wesley K. Clark is running a TV ad positioning himself as everyone’s candidate. But the net result is that his campaign is attracting mainly heavily white, upper income voters, the Los Angeles Times reports. The limousine liberal tag is an indication that Clark’s pro-DNC/Clintonite handlers are painting him into a corner as a top of-the-food-chain candidate. Hardly the way to win in the nation’s most ethnically diverse primary state.

posted by Groom 1:57 AM

Ashcroft is Soft on Terror

As any good rightwinger will tell you, America is a lot safer today than it was two years ago thanks to the hardnosed, lock ‘em up and throw away the key, enforcement job that John Ashcroft and his merry band of prosecutors at the Justice Department have been doing. Right?

Well, wrong actually. An analysis of case-by-case Justice Department data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a non-partisan data gathering, research and data-distribution organization associated with Syracuse University, released this morning, shows that while Federal investigators are recommending far more terrorism-related prosecutions than before 9/ll, the outcomes—as measured by the length of sentences—are ridiculously small.

How small? Of the 6,400 individuals the government concluded had committed terrorist acts or should be charged with some crime because doing so might "prevent or disrupt potential or actual terrorist threats" since 9/11, only five have so far been sentenced to 20 years or more in prison. For those categorized as “international terrorists” the median sentence--half got more, half got less --was 14 days.

The TRAC report goes on to note:

Putting the anti-terrorism matters to one side, the government's case-by-case records show that in the post-9/11 period there were three and a half times more suspects convicted for what the government said were terrorist acts than in the pre-9/11 period. Despite this jump -- the number of convictions went from 96 to 341 -- the government's enforcement effort has not resulted in putting more terrorists behind bars for significant periods of time. Curiously, in fact, the number of defendants sentenced to five or more years in prison actually declined. There were 24 such sentences in cases initiated in the two years before the attacks, 16 in the two years after.

A similar decline was found even when the data analysis focused only on individuals that the government had classified as international terrorists. For this special group, in the two years before the attack, a grand total of six persons were sentenced to five or more years. In the two years after, only three received such sentences.

In other words, Ashcroft and the lads have been pumping the numbers to make it look like they’re really on top of the terrorism thing by prosecuting a lot of bullshit cases that cost the taxpayers millions of dollars on charges so petty that the so-called “international terrorists” involve walk in two weeks or less.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:16 AM

Sunday, December 07, 2003

A Brutal Reminder

The manslaughter of nine children by an American warplane near Ghazni yesterday is only the latest in a string of “tragic mistakes” made by American-led forces that have resulted in the deaths of dozens of Afghan civilians since the start of the campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in October 2001. Among the incidents that the military has copped to are the bombing of a convoy of tribal elders in December 2001 that left 65 dead; the “friendly-fire” killing of four Canadian soldiers in April 2002; the wedding party bombings in July 2002 that left 48 people dead—25 of them from the same family; the 11 people killed by a bomb in Shkin in April 2003, and now the Ghazni massacre. There are many other incidents that are in dispute; for example, eight nomads who were killed in September in a strike on suspected militants.

As always, the military says it was acting on “extensive intelligence” and that it regrets the loss of civilian life. Like the grey incidents before (and those still to come) the Ghazni killings will wind up forgotten in a folder marked “collateral damage.”

All this is a reminder that there is still a brutal, unresolved, far from “mission accomplished,” war going on in Afghanistan, the forgotten battlefront in the administration’s policy of all war, all the time.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:54 PM

The Democrats dilemma

it’s not Dean… it’s the deity…

Lately the New York Times has been devoting a tithe-size portion of its editorial budget to the religious beliefs of Democratic presidential hopefuls and the need for the party to regain ground on moral issues. DLC chairman Al From was quoted as saying “we went for years in the Democratic party without recognizing god and we pay a price for that.”

What that price might be is not clear. What is perfectly clear, however, is that the electronic voting industry is controlled by born-again Christians and other members of the radical Christian right. That we have a born-again Christian president who had no qualms about jacking the 2000 presidential election and lying to the American people and Congress to start his war in Iraq. And that “Kenny Boy” Lay and Bernie Ebbers, who ran Enron and MCI respectively, have been strong supporters of the religious right. And lest we forget tarnished icon and outed degenerate gambler Bill “Book of Virtues” Bennett. All these folks recognized god big time. The foibles of these men present serious moral issues, but it doesn't seem like they are the ones the The New York Times is fishing around for. If anything, the New York Times is using the religious issue to front points for the likes of Al From and other machers in the party who seek to exclude Dean.

So what’s in it for the Dems, desperately seeking that elusive “centrist” identity? As Josh has pointed out in previous posts, the Christian Right does not vote in a bloc, and more than half of those who define themselves as members of this group (Christian Evangelicals, Born-Again) were non-voters in the 2000 presidential election.

Howard Dean’s spokesman responded to the New York Times’ questions about religion by saying “he doesn’t wear it on his sleeve.” This response, if amped up to include the concept of the separation of church and state, can appeal to a broader group of Republicans. Growing numbers of moderate Republicans and traditional conservative Republicans are growing concerned with the mendacity of the Bush clique and the twin towers of runaway government spending and the burgeoning trade deficit. They just need one good reason to cross over on election day and dump Bush.

Gephardt, Clark and Lieberman and the likes of Al From and Bill Clinton pandering to the god-squad aren’t likely to give it to them.

posted by Groom 7:50 AM