One of Ours

Yes, SSG Mejia was a member of my battalion. I don't know the guy personally though.
Mainstream media coverage of the return of SSG Mejia has ranged from straight ahead to simply fawning.

The hands-down winner so far: The Chicago Tribune [link no longer works].

It has nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree with the tone or slant of the Tribune. Any weakie reporter can make two phone calls: one to Mejia's lawyer and one to a Florida Guard spokesman and pretend he's doing his job.

(Oops--did I say two phone calls? The BBC doesn't even do that much. I guess that's what passes for reporting at the BBC these days.)

Of all the Mejia articles I've read, only the Chicago Tribune reporter bothered to check out Mejia's more sensational claims with Mejia's commanders who were actually there. The other news outlets relied on National Guard spokesmen who haven't left the U.S. the whole time, or just avoided those topics altogether.

Hats off to the Tribune for some good old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting.

Learning from ones mistakes, or successes, is one of the less talked about techniques the American military uses to stay ahead of potential battlefield opponents...For generations, learning from past experience was via veterans of past wars, historians and journalists writing books and magazine articles on "the lessons." This was a hit or miss approach...

...Currently, wargames (mostly computer ones, but a few manual games are still used) provide staff officers and planners with an opportunity to revisit recent military operations. This has become a lot easier to do in the last few years, as military wargames became more like commercial wargames. The major improvements have been in ease of use, and the ability to quickly change things and rapidly run through a battle or operation again and again. In this way, operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (and elsewhere) over the past 30 months can be played out in endless variations. This is important, because the next battle may be fought with the same weapons and equipment, but not with the same ideas, opponents, or results...

...These "what ifs?" are also played out for the operations after Saddam's government was run out of business. Irregular warfare can be wargamed as well. Both the Iraqi and Afghan operations are constantly wargamed to see what new equipment or tactics might work better to end the fighting and save American lives...

...Taking the uncertainty out of battlefield "what ifs?" is not as difficult as it appears, if you have the right tools and know how to use them.

...the only thing suicide bombers have been successful at when attacking a military compound is resulting in a loud bang and a few innocent bystanders dead and no damage done to the compound. This is due to the American military being very efficient at keeping bad guys out of their compounds. So, the next best thing is to blow up a hotel full of completely innocent people. I for one, wish they would continue to attack us. Then we could eliminate this much sooner. I can't for the life of me, see how killing innocent people is glorious and will put you in heaven with 72 virgins. I don't see these suicide bombers as anything less then deranged serial killers...

...One of the reasons why I like Bush is his take-no-crap policy. It's about time the USA grabbed it's balls and instead of trying to please everyone else, is doing what she needs to defend herself. I don't necessarily agree with how the country is doing, but I do strongly agree we must defend ourselves. Nothing was done about the many terrorist attacks that had happened in the past. Except with Libya, and when we responded to them, the problems stopped. The War on Terror isn't about Bush and Blair. It's about the world making a stand against terrorism. It's about sacrifice to a cause that is greater than yourself. People have already forgotten the painful lessons of 9/11.

I set off for the internet [cafe]. I’m wearing the poker face I’ve learnt from the Iraqi women to deflect harassment, staring straight ahead, slightly fiercely, not responding to any shouts or remarks, even greetings, because as soon as one man sees you say hello to another, you’re fair game.
The air seems impossibly full for a second and then bursts with a roar, sending a tremor through the ground that shoots up the leg my weight is on, unbalancing me slightly, but the poker face doesn’t flinch. Young men start running past me towards the direction of the explosion. That’s when the shock hits me: I’ve learnt to ignore things blowing up behind me...

...I carry on towards the internet, the old men ask me the same question. “Wayn infijar?”
I tell them the shebab say it was a hotel.
“Al-Sadeer?”
I don’t know, but they say it was a car bomb.
No, they insist straight away. It wasn’t a car bomb. It was a missile. One of them points to the sky and traces the arc of the thing just to make sure I understand...

..It’s weirdly dislocating to find the next street live on TV, Al-Jazeera bring on the scene almost instantaneously because the hotel where they live and work is behind the one blown up. The men in the internet say it was the Funduq Burj Lubnaan - the Lebanon Tower Hotel, an apartment hotel used mainly by families from other Arab countries...

...When they discover I speak a bit of Arabic, everyone wants to talk. I can’t find anyone who accepts that it was a car bomb. The US soldiers say it was a thousand pounds of plastic explosive wrapped in some kind of artillery...

...Unanimously people insist it was a missile. It came from the air. I ask everyone, did you see it yourself? No, no, they all say, but as we’re leaving there’s one who says he saw it. He points to his right, my left, opposite the demolished hotel, but behind the row of buildings which faced it. He says he was standing close to where he is now and he saw it. He thinks it was the Americans, as do all the men around him, all the people who came to talk.

Of course, it could be denial, scapegoating, wanting to blame someone and something else, something foreign for all the problems, to avoid having to address them from within. It could be. Like the Ashura bombing, like dozens of smaller explosions, a lot of people think it’s a tactic by the US troops to foment troubles between Shia and Sunni as a justification for prolonging the occupation...

...A year after the war, where is the truth? Bulldozed and arranged for the camera, dead and buried under the rubble.

I am beside myself with rage. Perhaps I should not post today and wait a bit until I can think in a more dispassionate way. But I cannot wait really. Mr. Sharon: Usama Bin Laden and his friends are delighted and send you their best regards. This stupid and senseless killing of an old invalid is a Godsend to all the terrorists in the region and has been timed at exactly the right moment. It is a stab in the back aimed at the U.S. and allied efforts and a direct attack on all their friends in the region...

...Around 2-3 Million Kurds are living in Syria (just like Iraqi Kurdistan, there is North Eastern Syria (which Kurds call Western Kurdistan) [see map].. Arabs in these areas backed by Syrian army and security and intelligence forces have killed hundreds of Kurds in the last 7 days of what is called now as "The Kurdish uprising in Syria".

Kurds are not allowed to have Kurdish educations in Syria and are deprived from almost all of their basic human rights. It is the 21st century and there are still people who can not speak their own language [WAKE UP KOFI ANNAN AND THE UNITED NATIONS...WHAT ARE YOU FOR..THE WORLD IS ASLEEP I guess]...

...Killing won't create the proper example for democracy to flourish. But we are here now, so what will we do with this moment? Allow for the status quo of the last several years to continue? Or learn that hearts and minds are more important than money, prestige, power...and geostrategic control of resources and land-masses...
...They spell out some things that politicians and power-brokers don't want people to understand...

...Second, could we all agree on acheiving a better degree of transparency in matters of nation states and the workings of a few extremely powerful puppetmasters...What is all this, "We don't do body counts" talk? That is like saying "we don't be human"..."we don't care" "we don't have mothers" "we don't have loved ones" "we don't exist"...Is having prostitutes taunt Muslim men for information on an ISLAND in the Carribean the most bright thing at the moment...

...Will propping up puppets of Iraqi and Afghani blood be in the best interest of each of these supposedly soveriegn states? Of course, there are people with very harmful agendas out there. And perhaps the puppets are good...but if you get rid of ONE DICTATOR, shouldn't you GET RID OF THEM ALL?...Who are Americans to say that we are democratic?...Is this the Brave New World Huxley warned us of? Why do we invite it so willingly?...

...WHO IS ACCOUNTABLE? Read my lips...no new wars...

When I saw the anti-war rallies that took place in many parts of the world in the annual anniversary of the war against Saddam, I couldn’t help thinking again, why are they doing this!? There were some but considerably smaller one or two demos. In Iraq (few hundreds led by some religious fanatics who no one could've known about them if it wasn't for the watchful eyes of the media) which was supposed to be the country those pacifist were defending.

I’ve had some difficulty in understanding the motives of the pacifists to stop this war and now to stop the coalition led by the USA from helping, rebuilding and promoting democracy in Iraq, and I’m sure there were many of those who were paid off or simply misled, but that doesn’t cover even the majority of the pacifist, as I’ve always thought that those were good people with a great sense of humanity and were noble enough to dismiss bribery and more intelligent than can be misled.

The answer to this question became less obscure as time and events revealed much of what was difficult for me to perceive from my place at the first look. The way the majority of the pacifists reacted to those events showed some of the missing part of the picture...

...I think that most agree that when we talk about the (true pacifists) then we are pointing to those living in the free world, as the 3rd world people are either disinterested and busy in trying to feed their children and find an appropriate shelter for their families, while they struggle to stay as far as possible away from the tyrannies that control their fate...

...Which peace are you seeking? Yours or that of the world, and which order you are trying to maintain? That of your countries or of the whole world? Do you really think that it’s such a wonderful and peaceful world that no one should be allowed to mess with?...

...did you ever fear that your children might starve to death? Or did you live your life with the horror of a kick that break your doors open, in the middle of the night, to take you or one of your family members to the unknown? And worse than that- which seems to you not a big deal- did you have to bend your heads and fix your eyes to the ground and never raise it fearing it may meet those of a security guard and get misinterpreted as a challenge!!?...
...Again my stupid question: where do you live? As we, who support this war against dictatorship and terrorism, live in this world, this ugly world we are trying to change as persistently as you try to keep it as it is with the same strength and persistence. So… where do you live?

It’s very cozy and comfortable to drink the tea in the morning, getting out of your first-class houses, driving your fancy cars, speaking loudly against your governments, criticizing your prime ministers and presidents, saying “ I want this thing”, “ I don’t agree on this decision”, “ I hate Blair and Bush”…..etc.

Look you coddled pampered people… why don’t you want us to do what you’re doing now ? why don’t you want us to live like you ? Are you idiots? Selfish? Or what ?

You ‘protestors’ I’m sure you didn’t use your mind when you got out of your houses.. just let me tell you something: when you want to refuse something or say that’s wrong, first of all you should study the whole case and discuss it thoroughly before saying it’s wrong, and when you say it’s wrong, GIVE A PROPOSAL to solve the case, now when you said “ No war….” What is the right thing to do to get rid of Saddam and build democratic countries in the region? Tell me …

I guess most of you have heard about the Basrah bombing incident on thursday by now. I was pretty close to the area of the explosion that day. Around 3 in the afternoon there was an enormous blast which violently shaked the windows of the Internet cafe where I was sitting comfortably cursing the connection speed. It came as some sort of a surprise since you would rarely ever hear explosions in Basrah...

...All of a sudden there was a commotion. Two bearded guys were being dragged amidst the crowd by the police. It seemed that they were suspects. The mob got enraged and someone shouted "Don't let the British take them away! Kill the Wahhabi bastards now!". Everyone stormed forward and slippers and shoes were thrown at the two bewildered men. Someone sprang out of nowhere and stabbed one of them in the back, and that was that. He got trampled by the angry crowd, and I saw knives, sticks, and qamat (long blades) flashing...

...At one point I felt the ground was slippery, so I looked down and almost got sick. I was walking on a pool of blood. Some bystanders pointed out something, I thought that I would better not look, but curiosity beat me. It was half a human head. It belonged to a once bald person, and his brain and what looked like his guts were all over the place and on the walls. He was the old man that sold groceries in front of the hotel. I recalled buying bananas from him once with Omar and AYS when we used to stay at these hotels at the time we first visited Basrah two months ago...

...3 people were killed and 20 injured. It could have been much more worse if the timing was different...people mentioned that a British patrol was meant to be targetted by the explosion.

...Later that night, we were alone, me and my friend, the Christian dentist, after a dinner of tikka, we were feeling very content, smoking cigarettes and having tea. We smiled at one another. There was a cool breeze outside and life suddenly felt good. When you are vulnerable and have death waiting around the corner at any moment, it's only better that you try hard to make the most of what you have.

Today is the 20 March 2004! One year ago like this day the coalition forces led by the US dropped the first rockets on Baghdad aiming at Saddam and his thugs...

...Any way it is only 3 month to go for handing the power to an Iraqi government. It is very short time and lot of things have to be done to make things go well after that date.

Thanks to the friends of the free, democratic and prosperous Iraq and down to the terrorists and the hypocrites and their ideologies.

...A year later and our electricity is intermittent, at best, there constantly seems to be a fuel shortage and the streets aren't safe. When we walk down those streets, on rare occasions, the faces are haggard and creased with concern… concern over family members under detention, homes raided by Americans, hungry mouths to feed, and family members to keep safe from abduction, rape and death...

...We're watching with disbelief as American troops roam the streets of our towns and cities and break violently into our homes... we're watching with anger as the completely useless Puppet Council sits giving out fat contracts to foreigners and getting richer by the day- the same people who cared so little for their country, that they begged Bush and his cronies to wage a war that cost thousands of lives and is certain to cost thousands more...

I hope someone feels safer, because we certainly don't.

...The $1 trillion cost estimate is wrong. It is based upon a completely inaccurate reading of historical data and deeply flawed mathematics. But the problems are worse than this. Not only was an inaccurate number repeated endlessly by the media without confirmation, but the flawed calculations were repeated again and again by various people with their own agendas. Reporters also appear to have ignored or evaded obvious weaknesses with the original source of the information, preferring to repeat an inaccurate number that they saw repeated endlessly rather than seek out better information. The story of the $1 trillion cost estimate raises some troubling questions about how modern journalism is conducted...

Police in Brussels arrested Hans-Martin Tillack on the orders of the European Union today’s Telegraph reports.

The Brussels correspondent for Germany's Stern magazine and leading investigative journalist seizing his computers, address books and archive of files.

Mr Tillack is the author of a recent book on EU corruption, he has the greatest archive of investigative files of any journalist working in Brussels. He is currently investigating fraud and cover ups at [the European Anti-Fraud Office] OLAF.

OLAF was created to replace the old fraud office UCLAF, which was accused of covering up abuses by the disgraced Santer Commission.

The police, who held Mr Tillack for twelve hours without access to a lawyer, demanded to see his journalistic sources.

A clear breach of his human rights that the EU are so fond of.

In July 2003...En route from Washington to Dakar, Senegal, Secretary of State Colin Powell met privately with Bush aboard Air Force One to discuss North Korea. It was a fraught subject for Powell. Shortly after taking office in 2001, he had told reporters that Bush planned to continue the Clinton administration's policy of engagement, only to be forced by the White House to eat his words the very next day: Any policy that carried the taint of Clintonism was to be reversed, and Bush did not do business with evil regimes...Powell felt the time had come to try to get Bush to take a more constructive approach to the simmering crisis in East Asia. During the meeting on Air Force One, Powell made the case for opening bilateral talks with Pyongyang...Surprisingly, Bush agreed...But seven weeks later, when six-party talks on North Korea began in Beijing, James Kelly, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the lead U.S. negotiator, went with instructions not to enter into bilateral discussions...Colin Powell had lost another one...

...Powell's vanishing act is a source of curiosity and not a little sadness. More importantly, it's obvious overseas...

...Outgunned, undermined, and frequently humiliated, Powell is expected to step down next January whether or not Bush wins a second term...resigning out of pique or principle is not the Powell way, and his willingness to conspire in his own diminishment is entirely in character...

...Powell's tenure at Foggy Bottom has not been completely devoid of successes. He negotiated a peaceful, face-saving resolution to the crisis with China over a downed American spy plane in April 2001. He played a key role in back-channel discussions that led to Libya's recent decision to give up its nuclear ambitions and cooperate in the fight against terrorism. He was also instrumental in persuading Bush to dispatch U.S. Marines to Liberia last summer and to earmark more money for Africa's AIDS crisis...But measured against the expectations that greeted his appointment, these are puny achievements...

...Yet it's the fact that those differences are never strongly held that mainly accounts for Powell's inaction. He has opinions but few, if any, real convictions, and there's no ground he won't cede in the interest of expediency and ambition. Says Richard Kohn, "He's a man with no core of ideology, vision, or principle other than to serve the United States."

The Supreme Court hears oral argument this morning in the "drunken cowboy" case, a privacy dispute that has the conspiracy nuts in a tailspin and me in trouble with my Civil Procedure professor.

Just think: all that happened here was that his refund got cut. He'd probably really be pissed if, say, his $200 refund magically turned into a $600 payment.

As I recall, this advance tax credit was generally thought responsible for some portion of last year's economic growth. If that's the case, that should turn into a negative effect this year, right?

Even worse for the party in power, it's just bad PR for lots of people to get IRS letters telling them they owe more taxes than they thought. It doesn't seem like a good thing to be happening a few months before an election.

I wonder why the Bushies did it?

After reading Kenneth Timmerman's condemnation of France's $100 billion profiteering from Saddam's cruel regime (The French War For Oil), and my own recent article (From Madrid to Paris), some commentators expressed the view that France is just an ordinary country defending its interests and is no different than any other country, including the U.S. Indeed, for some in the anti-war camp France is even assumed to be necessarily a morally superior nation.

This view is so thoroughly ignorant of French foreign policy realities that it should really be put to rest once and for all...

...The French naturally assume that everybody else is at least as cynical and morally depraved as they are, the only difference being that, in their view, the U.S. plays the game more viciously than they do, acquiring an unfair advantage...

Is President Bush a big meanie? A writer at Salon says yes:

[Bush and I] were both at. . . [a] church picnic in Philadelphia, designed to help George W. Bush promote his faith-based policies . . . when I had the chance to shake Bush's hand, I said, "Mr. President, I'm very disappointed in your work so far. I hope you only serve four years."

His smiling response was swift: "Who cares what you think?"

Would Al Qaeda have been shut down sooner / more thoroughly if Iraq hadn't drawn our attention and resources?

...There is reason to believe that in fact the process of pursuing al Qaeda would not have been any faster or more successful if we had not invaded Iraq. The struggle against al Qaeda involves different resources, and it wasn't actually necessary to divert any resources from the shadow war against al Qaeda in order to invade Iraq.

In fact, it's arguable that the invasion of Iraq may have had the opposite effect, and reduced the number of al Qaeda attacks elsewhere. For one thing, the invasion of Iraq, and Saddam's capture while hiding in a septic tank, led to Qaddafi's decision to capitulate in December. His decision appears to have been genuine, and Libya has totally opened the books to the UK and US. Part of that was exposure of Libya's involvement in a furtive multi-nation effort to develop nuclear weapons. Another part which has gotten less publicity involves Libyan intelligence giving us everything they have about various terrorist groups in the Islamic world, and it is virtually certain some of that information has helped us in the shadow war against al Qaeda.

A more important consequence of the invasion of Iraq was that it has served as a "honey pot" for Islamic militants. Militants and resources which could have been applied elsewhere by al Qaeda and similar terrorist groups have instead gone to Iraq to attack our military, which is best prepared to defend itself and to destroy those who attack...What critics affect not to grasp, is that the soldiers are now replacing targets that otherwise would be provided by defenceless civilians, both in Iraq and at large. The sore thumb of the U.S. occupation -- and it is a sore thumb equally to Baathists and Islamists, compelling their response -- is not a mistake. It is carefully hung flypaper. If we had not invaded Iraq, what would they have attacked instead? How would those resources have been applied? There's no way of knowing, of course; and it might well not have been Spain. But it seems likely at least some of it would have been directed against the west.

...the assumption is, "The goal of this war is to eliminate al Qaeda." That's wrong. That's part of what we're trying to do, but it is not the primary goal. The real goal is to eliminate the true source of the danger which faces us, the root cause, as it were. Al Qaeda arose out of that true source, but is not the actual source. Since al Qaeda represents an imminent threat, it must be dealt with. But if we only deal with al Qaeda, then something else will emerge to take its place and more of us will die in terrorist attacks...

...The real root cause is Arab failure, Arab shame at that failure, and Arab anger lashing out at us because our success makes their failure starkly clear...Human beings do not always take reversals of fortune gracefully. Still less can those who were once on top quietly accept seeing others leaving them far behind economically, intellectually, and militarily. Those in the Islamic world have for centuries been taught to regard themselves as far superior to the "infidels" of the West, while everything they see with their own eyes now tells them otherwise...

...There are only two ways we can eliminate the true danger we face: we can "destabilize" the entire region by inducing liberal reforms, in the traditional sense of the word "liberal" (i.e. liberation of individuals), or we can commit nuclear genocide. Obviously the latter is something we really do not want to do. It is truly a "last resort". And it would be nearly as much of a disaster for us as for them. But if we don't actively work to bring about liberalization of Arab society and liberation of Arabs as individuals, then it will eventually come to that. If we refuse to face the real root cause of this war and refuse to work on correcting it, then eventually we'll face the stark choice of either committing genocide or being victims of it. The problem won't go away simply because we ignore it or refuse to admit that it exists..

And that is why the invasion of Iraq was necessary. The invasion had very little to do with WMDs, even though that was the core of the public debate in the UN. The real reason we needed to invade Iraq was because we needed to take control of one core Arab nation so we could establish something like a western liberal government and society there, with equal rights for the women, with a truly free press, with the right of free speech and free assembly and free exercise of religion, and a government which served the people rather than trying to rule them. If we are even partially successful in doing that, it will seed those ideas into the entire region, and bring about reforms elsewhere more indirectly...

..And even with our active involvement, it will take a long time. Inducing this kind of broad reform is a process ultimately measured in decades or even centuries, not in months or days. In some cases it can require generational turnover...

...To expect that there be no enemy successes whatever is unreasonable. It either demonstrates ignorance of the reality of war, criminal naïveté, or a deliberate attempt to set the bar so high as to make it impossible to reach. The attack in Spain was an enemy operation which was very successful, both tactically and strategically. It was a strategic victory for our enemies because it caused one of our allies to change sides and to align against us. That's the kind of thing that happens in war. But that doesn't prove that our overall strategy is a failure, nor does it mean we're losing...

...Even granting that we might have been more successful in hunting down al Qaeda had we not invaded Iraq, adopting such a strategy would still have been wrong.

The al Qaeda terrorist network posed a threat to the United States for almost a decade before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Throughout that period -- during the eight years of the Clinton administration and the first eight months of the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11 -- the U.S. government worked hard to counter the al Qaeda threat...

...Through the spring and summer of 2001, the national security team developed a strategy to eliminate al Qaeda -- which was expected to take years. Our strategy marshaled all elements of national power to take down the network, not just respond to individual attacks with law enforcement measures...This became the first major foreign-policy strategy document of the Bush administration -- not Iraq, not the ABM Treaty, but eliminating al Qaeda...

...Despite what some have suggested, we received no intelligence that terrorists were preparing to attack the homeland using airplanes as missiles, though some analysts speculated that terrorists might hijack airplanes to try to free U.S.-held terrorists...

...Once advised that there was no evidence that Iraq was responsible for Sept. 11, the president told his National Security Council on Sept. 17 that Iraq was not on the agenda and that the initial U.S. response to Sept. 11 would be to target al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan...

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was headed for a landslide election win on Sunday as unofficial results showed his brand of moderate Islam had vanquished the Islamist opposition...Abdullah pitted his own moderate, progressive views on Islam against the dogma of PAS -- a party which wants to turn the country into a conservative Islamic state even though 40 percent of the 25 million people are non-Muslims...

...Dubai-based news channel Al Arabiya says two of its journalists, traveling in a small all-terrain vehicle, were shot by US troops near a military checkpoint on Thursday night after another vehicle drove through the road block.

But a US military spokesman said as far as the US Army could ascertain, its troops were responsible only for shooting and killing the driver of the vehicle that went through the checkpoint.

"There are discrepancies between what has been reported...and the facts on the ground," said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt...

The United States says Iraq will be sovereign, no longer under military occupation, on June 30. But most power will reside within the world's largest U.S. Embassy, backed by 110,000 U.S. troops..."We don't expect them to enact any laws unless there is absolute need for them," Iraqi Governing Council member Adnan Pachachi said Sunday. "We're not going to enter into any big contractual obligations — either diplomatically or economically — because those things should be done by an elected government."...

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was proposing to remove Love Canal from its Superfund list, the federal roster of the most contaminated toxic waste sites in the country...Delisting Love Canal is a way of saying that the area is clean, the event over, history done, though the agency has promised to monitor the site and intervene with additional cleanup if necessary...It should be made a kind of national historic toxic waste site, a reminder of just what can go wrong — and what can go right — when corporate, governmental and community interests collide...

...Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said Sunday he doesn't believe Clarke's charge that the Bush administration - which defeated him and former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election - was focused more on Iraq than al-Qaida during the days after the terror attacks.

"I see no basis for it," Lieberman said on Fox News Sunday. "I think we've got to be careful to speak facts and not rhetoric."

And Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week" that while he has been critical of Bush policies on Iraq, "I think it's unfair to blame the president for the spread of terror and the diffuseness of it. Even if he had followed the advice of me and many other people, I still think the same thing would have happened."...

Israeli helicopter gunships have fired missiles at Shaikh Ahmad Yasin as he left a mosque before dawn, killing the Hamas leader and at least six other people.

A Reuters reporter who rushed to the scene on Monday after hearing three loud explosions found the blown-up remains of Yasin's blood-soaked wheelchair...

...Mark Kleiman, musing about the problem of drunk driving, suggests that instead of revoking a person's driving license, why not revoke their drinking license instead?..

...when a driver's license starts becoming overtly more than just a driver's license, where does it end? Once people get the idea that it can be used to regulate more than just driving, why not use the same card to regulate and track sex offenders? Or resident aliens? Or handgun licensing? Or criminal records? It would be mighty handy to have all that stuff in one place, wouldn't it? Would this happen? Who knows?

Does it count as "concrete" harm? I guess it depends on your outlook. I'm not normally much of a fan of slippery slope arguments, but I suspect that if Mark's idea were ever implemented, drinking wouldn't be the last thing that ended up getting regulated by your driver's license. Ditto for a national ID card...

Political correctness has caught up with sign language for deaf people. Gestures used to depict ethnic and religious minorities and homosexuals are being dropped because they are now deemed offensive.

The abandoned signs include "Jewish", in which a hand mimes a hooked nose; the sign for "gay", a flick of a limp wrist; and "Chinese", in which the index fingertips pull the eyes into a slant. Another dropped sign is that for "Indian", which is a finger pointing to an imaginary spot in the middle of a forehead...

...Polly Smith, the acting chairperson of the British Council for Disabled People, said that the changes were a form of discrimination. "The programme makers at Channel 4 are interfering with deaf people's language, culture and view of society, and that is a form of discrimination," she said...

So we finally have a rationale for our attack on Iraq.

One proposed rationale--that we attacked Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people and establish democracy in the Middle East--would work fine for a normal American government, but not for this Bush administration that sneered at the idea of "nation building" in 2000 and has dropped the ball so completely in Afghanistan.

A second rationale--that we knew that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to us--never made sense.

A third rationale--that Saddam Hussein was allied with Al Qaeda--never passed the laugh test.
But here we have a fourth rationale--"there are lots of good targets in Iraq."
Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Do it now.

A reader e-mails,
Why you haven’t commented on the upcoming testimony before the 9/11 committee or the 60 minutes spot with Richard Clarke...

..So, what do we learn from [Clarke's] story?

1. The Bush team considered Saddam Public Enemy#1.

2. Clark claims he knew all along that al Qaeda was the great threat but no one listened to him. (Of course, he held the same post under the Clinton Administration, and no one there listened to him, either.)

3. Clark is trying to sell a book about this.

Of the three, the third is the only one that’s news to me

The intelligence documents declassified last Friday by the Spanish government prove that the initial allegation that ETA was the likely author of the attacks was not only supported by the consensus of Spain's intel community (and foreign terrorism experts), but that the Interior minister and other officials supplied all relevant information to the public as soon as new clues emerged, including the possible implication of the al-Qaeda network...

...The results from absentee ballots (cast up to March 7 -- four days prior to the terrorist attacks, and which) give the Popular Party a sweeping 13-point lead over the Socialist party who finally took the victory. It should be noted that absentee ballots in past Spanish elections historically lean slightly to the left. The clear conclusion is that Aznar's People's Party was going to win the election until the terrorist attacks and the accusation of a government conspiracy from the opposition.

Those traditional conservatives among you who find laudable or even applaud that I and many others who comment on this weblog have broken with our "old ideas" concerning Republicans and foreign policy, might consider what it would take for you to break with your "old ideas" concerning Gay Marriage (assuming you oppose it). You might find interesting the yearning for a more normal domestic and emotional life expressed by homosexuals in this article from this morning's Los Angeles Times: Nothing but 'I Do' Will Do Now for Many Gays.

The most memorable (and frightening) image for me of the entire War on Terror was the shaky video tape of the woman in the burqa being shot in that soccer stadium in Kabul by the Taliban at point blank range. It crystallized for me that what we are fighting against is psychotic intolerance and that the aggression against women and homosexuals is at the forefront of that.

Hey, don't blame me for lumping together the Communists, Saddamite Fascists, American flag burners, anti-Semities, and peaceniks. I know they all have different ideas. But they all marched on the same day for (supposedly) the same "cause." And Yahoo grouped them together in the same "anti-war" slideshow.

If I were against the war, I wouldn't have a damn thing to do with these people. This seems to me a lot like marching against affirmative action with the Ku Klux Klan.

Sunday's New York Times has the second installment of final letters home from American servicepersons who have died in Iraq. The feature carries the title "The Things They Wrote," which is undoubtedly an allusion to Tim O'Brien's 1990 novel The Things They Carried. O'Brien, who saw combat as an infantryman in Vietnam, wrote the book as both a criticism of the war and a tribute to those soldiers who fought it. One gets the same impression today from the New York Times -- that it means to praise the brave men and women who serve in the military, while simultaneously showing the cost of war and the folly of America's leaders. I'm somewhat uncomfortable with the use of soldiers' personal letters for this purpose, although I think it's a great tribute to have these soldiers' thoughts forever memorialized on the NYT op-ed page. Read the letters, and come to your own conclusions.

Do you have a business idea, but are unsure how to get the word out? In the first of an occasional series of articles for the business-minded geek, Boardroom moderator MrSmith has written an introductory guide to online marketing.

A growing number of large U.S. corporations are offering services to register their employees to vote and mounting get-to-the-polls drives that advocates hope will swell the ranks of pro-business voters this election year...

...In Iraq the most important thing is the lack of security which becomes worse by large number of unemployment and influx of terrorists from the regional countries. The Iraqis are happy about their freedom from Saddam but there are a lot of problems leading to unsettled Iraq with a lot of economical and other problems. A year after the war and Iraq still has no one functioning airport to link it to the world. The Iraqis are calling for the security to be in their hands. The presence of the coalition forces in the cities and marginalization of the IP forces or lack of their power during the presence of the CF make a lot of problems regarding the security issue.

Saying that there are many improvements and a prospect for future development that could be moved quickly. Above all there is freedom to talk without fearing that the security will take you away to disappear for ever...

... For Bush's critics, they offer a ripe comic target--routinely excerpted in such diverse venues as Joshua Marshall's TalkingPointsMemo.com Web log and "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. And yet even the most determined Bush haters will find that, as they watch the hapless McClellan beaten about the head almost every day by the White House press corps, their schadenfreude eventually gives way to pity. It doesn't matter whether you think the media's questioning is fully justified or, indeed, long overdue. You can't help but feel compassion for a man so plainly unequal to the competition.

McClellan's ineptitude is made all the more noticeable by the contrast it poses with Ari Fleischer, his syrup-tongued predecessor. Fleischer could spin elaborate webs of obfuscation, leaving the press corps mystified and docile, albeit somewhat resentful as well. Every sentence he uttered came out in the same bored affectation. The most outrageous lie sounded, in his telling, like a truism so obvious it barely deserved mentioning.

...While computer hardware seems to advance according to the exponential upward curve known as Moore's Law (doubling in speed -- or halving in cost -- every year or two), software, when it advances at all, seems to move at a more leisurely linear pace.

As Lanier said, "Software inefficiency can always outpace Moore's Law. Moore's Law isn't a match for our bad coding." ...

....Not content with announcing that he will retreat under fire in Iraq, [prime minister-elect, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero] on Wednesday called the situation there a "fiasco" and said he hoped Kerry would win. Friends like that Kerry doesn't need.

...So what's a Democratic candidate to do? It's a no-brainer if you ask me:

Kerry should give a speech outlining a muscular approach to fighting the war on terror, in which he explicitly rejects Zapatero's support and calls the comments of people like him and European Union chief Romano Prodi (he of "[U]sing force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists" fame) unhelpful and irresponsible. True, Kerry has already said he disagrees with Zapatero's decision to pull out of Iraq. But actually picking a fight would go a long way toward demonstrating he's not going to take guff from any weak-kneed Europeans--and, needless to say, would go over pretty well in middle America...

Kerry knew this was coming. “Bring it on,” he said so often it became his battle cry. Well, now they’ve brought it on, and what is Kerry doing? He’s going on vacation in Idaho, leaving behind the festering story of his unholy bond with foreign leaders. “Before long they’ll be calling him Jacques Kerry,” says a Republican strategist. “It’s only a matter of time...”

The harsh tone of the attacks this early in the campaign indicates that Bush is willing to drive up his own negatives in order to raise doubts about Kerry. The good news for Kerry is that he fights better when he’s behind, and the way things are going, he’ll soon be behind.

You may all remember that several years ago the IRS came under a lot of criticism, some of it justified, for the highhanded way it handled audits and collections. Congress subsequently ordered the IRS to shift its focus from enforcement to taxpayer service, and since then both the number of audits and the rate of collection have dropped dramatically. Here's the result:

Struggling with rising workloads and stagnant staff levels, the Internal Revenue Service walked away from more than 2 million delinquent tax accounts last year, totaling nearly $16.5 billion, according to the Treasury Department.

....The median size of the delinquent accounts was $14,000. The largest account not being pursued involved more than $50 million.

French policy is still vigorously criticized by Iraqis. Contrary to the common perception among Europeans, the fact of having opposed the American occupation has absolutely not increased Europe’s popularity, or that of any country, among Iraqis ...

It’s virtually impossible, save among defunct Baathist leaders, to find anyone who supports Paris’ stance on the crisis. No more in the local market than anywhere else: “I want the American invaders out as quickly as possible, but I’m happy that they got rid of the bloodthirsty Saddam for us!” affirmed Hamid, a Shiite fabric salesman. “I’m disappointed, me, an admirer of General de Gaulle and Victor Hugo, that Chirac did nothing to help the Iraqi people.” “We’d like to be friends with the French,” added his friend Majid, “but they supported Chirac who himself defended Saddam right until the end. I’ve never understood why. It’s utterly bizarre ...”

This is an interesting and informative article, written by experts in the field (By Major John Voorhees and First Lieutenant Adria Toth) detailing everything that took place in the first year of the war, from the Road to Baghad to Civil Affairs operations.

Neil Lewis has a report from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where American intelligence officers say they are collecting valuable, actionable intelligence from the detainees we have housed there. It appears from this story that the White House and Pentagon are trying to rebut fierce criticism of American policy at Gitmo by arguing that these detentions are producing results. I don't think this will necessarily sway the Supreme Court when it opines on Gitmo in Al-Odah v. United States, but it may help the administration score some points in the court of public opinion.

Atrios and readers have raised an impressive sum for John Kerry, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to what Bush has. Even if Kerry meets his target of $10 million in 10 days and keeps up that pace every day until the convention, he's still going to be in trouble. We still don't really know where all the GOP soft money has gone, and believe me, there's going to be a lot of it. Also keep in mind that they'll be out-fundraising the Democrats in every contested Senate, House, and Governor's election; the RNC will have more money than the DNC; the state Republican Parties will have more money than the state Democratic Parties.

...Anyone who thinks the GOP strategy of launching factually bogus attacks that Kerry can’t afford to respond to won’t work is living in a dream world...

Actually, the Democrats have had a huge advantage in soft money in recent years. The GOP does a much better job of getting small donations, contrary to the conventional wisdom. Indeed, when McCain-Feingold passed, most observers thought it would really hurt the Democrats for precisely that reason—because it would exacerbate the Republican advantage in hard money. Thanks to organizations like MoveOn.org that has not been the case.

I still find it difficult admitting to myself (and to others) that I could possibly be agreeing with George Bush on anything. Just last night I ran into a friend I hadn't seen in years, a rather well known writer, and he was wearing a large John Kerry campaign pin on his jacket. (I mean a big one that you couldn't miss from across the room.) And I thought, amidst the usual how-are-ya small talk, do I want to go into this? Do I want to discuss my transformation with this man and make him either dislike me or think I've gone crazy? Of course, I took a pass.

But when I read that the administration is serious about pushing democracy, that it isn't all rhetoric and that Powell just visited Riyadh to press the Saudis to get their dissidents out of jail and that heavy economic pressure on Syria is imminent (scroll down on this link), I wonder why it is I have become open to supporting people (Republicans) I wouldn't have in the past, but many others have not. I honestly don't know.

That's a planning failure of the most basic kind -- the failure to anticipate the threat. And I find it quite hard to believe, honestly, that the Army could fail to appreciate this kind of warfare after watching all of the brushfire conflicts of the 1990s. From Somalia to Chechnya, it was clear what kinds of wars we'd be fighting in the next century to anyone with a clue about history and the population trends that were moving towards urban centers. Moreover, as one of my NSRT colleagues points out, the Army recognized these trends and incorporated them into exercises at the Joint Readiness Training Center as early as 1993.

Roadside IEDs were a known threat, and the Army trained for it -- it just didn't buy the gear it needed to have to meet this threat effectively.

...Last Saturday and Sunday there were demonstrations in Baghdad. Students weren't allowed into Baghdad University because the university guards (ironically appointed by the Americans) wouldn't let anyone in. They are part of Sistani's gang and since Sistani's followers have diligently been objecting the TAL document signed by the Puppet Council, the guards decided that college would be closed for a couple of days. The students had to watch the dean of the engineering college beg to be let in, and refused...

...Mustansiryia University (another major university in Baghdad) is full of student protests because the dean of the college of science requested that after the arba'een (40th day after the death of Imam Al-Hussein), the students take down the black flags and pictures of Al-Sadr and Sistani. The more conservative Shi'a students immediately took offence and decided that they wouldn't attend classes until the dean was fired. In retaliation, Sunni students decided they would organize a *protest* to the strike organized by the Shi'a students.
We also heard that one of the assistant deans of the college of engineering in Baghdad University was assassinated recently...It's like Iraq is suffering from intellectual hemorrhaging. Professors and scientists are being assassinated right and left- decent intelligent people who are necessary for the future of Iraq...

...And it doesn't stop with the scientists. Doctors are also being assassinated by some mysterious group. It started during the summer and has been continuing since then. Iraq has some of the finest doctors in the region. Since June, we've heard of at least 15 who were killed in cold blood. The stories are similar- a car pulls up to the clinic or office, a group of men in black step down and the doctor is gunned down-sometimes in front of the patients and sometimes all alone, after hours. One doctor was shot brutally in his house, in front of his family...

Bombs make the news but are decreasing in volume and regularity. The good news is emerging but slowly, losing journalistic coverage to the bombs of a few maniacs.

...The allocated $18 billion in economic aide is just staring. Once it catches, employment will soar and people will have a true vested interest in their jobs and their country. Those who threaten the economic recovery will be seen as a personal threat, not some theoretical anomaly that hurts others. Right now, even the friendly Iraqis seem to think that the violence affects others, not themselves...