Well, it's been a while, but I'm back. Nowadays I'm doing most of my blogging over at Non Sum Dignus. I do intend to keep blogging here as well, though. It's just a matter of having enough time in the day.

But enough of that and on to today's post!

The WaPo reports today:

 "A U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship attacked suspected al-Qaeda members in southern Somalia on Sunday, and U.S. sources said the operation may have hit a senior terrorist figure."

Where have we heard this before? Didn't a U.S. drone go after a "senior al-Qaeda figure," last January in Pakistan? Supossedly they were going after Ayman al-Zawarhiri but they wound up missing him and killing 17 civilans, including 6 women and 6 children.

AP reports:

"The airstrike Monday evening was in the town of Afmadow, about 220 miles southwest of the capital of Mogadishu, Somali officials said. It was not immediately clear how many people were killed in the attacks, but Somali officials said there were reports that many were killed."

Yeah, I'd say you'd have to expect as much. If you're going to use a blunt intrument like an AC-130, you've got to expect a lot of "collateral damage." But the families of those killed can rest easy that the U.S. was going after some pretty bad actors.   

The BBC reports the strike was intended to get these three al-Qaeda types: 

> Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, Abu Talha al-Sudani and Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan.

> Fazul Abdullah Mohammed, from the Comoro Islands, was indicted by a US court in New York for conspiracy to bomb the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

> Abu Talha al-Sudani, a Sudanese, was accused by the office of the US Director of National Intelligence recently of leading an al-Qaeda cell in East Africa.

[And] Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, a Kenyan, is on an FBI wanted poster in connection with the bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel and an attempted missile attack on an Israeli airliner in Kenya in 2002.

[End of quote]

The U.S. apparently took care to cut down on the number of bystanders killed. An official quoted in the WaPo article says, "You had some figures on the move in a relatively unpopulated part of the country." Relatively unpopulated? Well hell, that's good enough for me.

The problem I can see with this whole thing, besides the casualties, is the preception a lot of folks are going to be left with. The U.S. has had a hard-on for these al-Qaeda types for a while now and without presenting any evidence they've been pushing the story-line that the Islamic Courts Union was harboring them in Mogadushu.

And, lo and behold, the Ethiopians all on their own decide they have to invade Somalia -- in a defensive operation naturally.  (Kind of like the invasion of Iraq) The U.S. naturally helps them out with intel and in about a week the ICU is routed. Now, some might come to the conclusion that the only reason the ICU was overthrown was because the U.S. wanted three al-Qaeda suspects. The Somalians got about five months of law and order after 10 years of anarachy and then -- here's comes the U.S.

The Ethiopains and the army of the "transitional government [TFG]," which has been barely able to hold on to Bidoa this whole time, is now poised to take over whole country. More than likely what will happen is that the warlords will take over again and we'll be back to square one.

The U.S. has been working on getting a peace keeping force in there, but that's not looking too hopeful. The U.S is probably hoping Ethiopians are going to hang around until the UN can work something out. I wouldn't count on it.

AP reports today:

"Gunmen attacked Ethiopian troops supporting the Somali government Sunday, witnesses said, in the second straight day of violence in a city struggling to emerge from more than a decade of chaos." 

The Ethiopians are probably not interested in getting bogged down in their own version Iraq.

Things would have been so much easier if the CIA had just gone in and yanked these guys of the street like they did to Abu Omar back in 2003. 

Posted by bushmeister0 at 1:44 PM EST

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Well, Rummy's not in jail yet, but getting the sack -- sorry, I mean "resiging" --  is a good start. You know, when the news came out that Bechtel was leaving Iraq, I should have known Rummy would be next in line. 

We all remember the good work Rummy did for bechtel back in 1983 going over to Iraq and meeting with Saddam and Tariq Aziz ( Where is Aziz anyway?). Rummy's job was to try and convince Saddam go along with bechtel's plan to build a pipeline from Iraq to Aqaba Jordan. According to the records, the US and Saddam's Iraq "shared many common interests" and the Reagan administration had a "willingness to do more" for Iraq in its war with Iran.  [NSA] You betcha. And apparently they were intersted in helping out Iran in their war against Iraq, but that's another story. [See Walsh Iran/Contra report on Robert Gates.]

Speaking of bechtel; they're pulling out of Iraq after three years of living off the largess of the American taxpayer. Thye went in there with one of those fuzzy non-bid contracts the Rummy/Cheney cabal were so fond of giving to their former companies. The Atimes reports that after recieving almost 2.3 billion dollars for US taxpayers to reconstruct Iraq (which we destroyed in the first place):

 "The average household in Iraq now gets two hours of electricity a day. There is 70% unemployment, 68% of Iraqis have no access to safe drinking water, and only 19% have sewage access. . . The group Medact recently said that easily treatable conditions such as diarrhea and respiratory illness are causing 70% of all child deaths, and that 'of the 180 health clinics the US hoped to build by the end of 2005, only four have been completed - and none opened.' . . A proposed $200 million project to build 142 primary-care centers ran out of cash after building just 20 clinics, a performance the World Health Organization described as 'shocking'. "

The same could probably said for Rummy's running of the pentagon over these past 6 years. It's pretty shocking that he didn't feel there was any probelm with all the looting that went on -- the oil ministry was secured -- after the fall of Saddam, or the decision to fire the Iraqi army, or the Abu Ghraib scandal, or the lack of body armor, which could have saved the lives of 80% of the Marines who died fighting in Anbar up until last year.

The list goes on and on, but he's did a "fantastic" job. Helluva job Rummy, now get lost!

Posted by bushmeister0 at 1:39 PM EST

Updated: Friday, 10 November 2006 1:42 PM EST

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For anyone who missed it, I would recommend watching last week's Frontline "The Lost Year in Iraq," which recounted the colossal mistakes made initially by Rummy & Co. in the early days of the occupation. Looking back now you can see how things might have gone differently if Rummy and Cheney hadn't been so amazingly arrogant and self-assured of their own infallibility. If they hadn't ignored experts in the State Department and CIA, who had experience with these sorts of things, we might not be looking at the looming disaster we're faced with now. It is really stunning to see how they made precisely the wrong decision at every single turn. Rummy was wrong 100% of the time, from his saying that he knew exactly where the WMD were to reducing by the half the number of beds at Landstuhl just before the war started.  

Appointing Henry Kissinger's protégé to run the whole show, though, will have to go down in history as the most monumentally damaging one of the entire occupations. The litany of errors and missteps made by L. Paul Bremer highlighted in the Frontline report, from the moment he arrived in the Green Zone, is must see TV for anyone wondering how we got to where we are today. With his first two CPA special orders; firing 20,000 Iraqi government employees with Baathist connections; and then throwing 100,000 Iraqi men with weapons and no income into the streets; he in effect created the insurgency. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to overstate how incredibly incompetent Rummy has been in this entire fiasco. If there was any one person who should serve jail time for Iraq, it's Rummy. It's really all on him.

Posted by bushmeister0 at 1:29 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 21 October 2006 1:30 PM EDT

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While the world gets its panties in a bunch about the North Korean bomb, there'a a little spot of bother in Pakistan that ought to be looked into. As we know, our good friend Pervy Musharraf is supossedly holding al-Qaeda and the Talibs at bey in W.'s "war on terror." That's good because Pakistan also has the bomb -- after developing it unbeknownst to us -- and if this so-called "Islamic Bomb" were to get into the wrong hands . . . well, lets not even think about it.

As bad as the DPRK thing is, Pakistan falling apart is a much more serious threat. The Atimes reports this week that the recent discovery of a rocket launcher in Rawalpindi, the Pakistani military head quarters town, has led to the discovery of a coup plot involving uniformed members of the Pakistani military.

"According to information obtained by Asia Times Online, the coup plot was hatched in the Waziristan tribal area headquarters of al-Qaeda. The conspiracy was uncovered after a mobile phone used to activate a rocket aimed at the president's residence was traced to an air force officer. More than 40 people, both inside and outside the military, were subsequently arrested. The most alarming issue for the Pakistani establishment was not only the involvement of air force officers, but the apparent deep penetration of al-Qaeda into highly sensitive areas." 

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao says this is all rubish: "It is totally baseless (the report), the Musharraf government is very strong and faces no threat. . . Why should there be a coup, the baseless report is someone's personal imagination. " Of course, who would want to kill Musharraf? This is just crazy talk.

Hidustan Times reports, though, that after the non-coup attempt became known, "Musharraf . . .instructed that a list be compiled of all retired officers who had been involved in any significant intelligence operations and were suspected of being sympathetic towards the Taliban."

A new Balochistan offensive?

The Atimes also reports that, "Word has filtered out that Islamabad will launch a major action in the next few days in the northwest and southwest (Balochistan). " This is an area pretty much run by the Taliban, so this offensive, if it comes, could blow the whole "truce" thing out of water. Here we apparently have evidence of another attempt by Musharraf to get the Talibs under control within his own borders after yet another coup plot. The last few times haven't been so successful, however, and as I recall he would up losing a bunch of troops and getting embarrassed in front of W..  

Then there was the March 2004 offensive against Nek Mohammed, which led to the Pakistanis getting their asses kicked, vowing not to attack again and then paying for the Talib's expenses.  

According to Musharraf in an interview for Frontline this was no humiliating defeat. Musharraf: "The agreement was that the militants either lay down arms or they are going to be shunted out of the place. And the locals are going to cooperate with the army in asking these militants to either get off Pakistan or lay down their arms."

What really happened according to Frontline was: "In April of 2004, tribesmen from across South Waziristan gathered outside the main madrassa in Shakai. Nek Mohammed agreed, according to the government, to lay down arms and register all al Qaeda militants living in South Waziristan. . . The government sent the 11th Corps commander to Shakai to bless the deal, General Safdar Hussein. . . He questioned why America had gone to war against the Taliban. . . He portrayed the Pakistani army as protecting the tribesmen from American bombs. . ."  

And then the Pakistanis paid the Talibs off. In a Frontline interview, Ismail Khan, Journalist for Dawn Newspaper,  said, "they were paid money also. This was part of the deal because some of these commanders had come up and said, 'Look, you know, we owed a lot of money to al Qaeda because we had borrowed money for logistics, for support.'"

Yes, you read it correctly,  the Pakistani government paid the Talib's so they could repay their debts to al-Qaeda.  And for all this what happened?

Frontline: 'The Shakai agreement broke down almost immediately. Nek Mohammed claimed he had never agreed to identify or hand over any al Qaeda militants. He pledged to renew his jihad against U.S. forces in Afghanistan."  

Sound at all familiar? 

Bomb shell?

Former ISI head Hamid Gul says the US had a hand in the coup that led to Musharraf coming to power. Kaumudi Online reports:

"Commenting on president Musharraf's book 'In the Line of Fire,' former ISI chief Hamid Gul said Musharraf has not stated in his memoirs that Washington was behind his military coup of October 12, 1999. 'It is absolutely true that America played a role in Gen Musharraf's take over of 1999,' Gul has been quoted as saying by Daily Times."

Posted by bushmeister0 at 6:24 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 19 October 2006 6:00 PM EDT

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 [These are some random thoughts I've been cogitating on over the past week or so, but I haven't had to chance to post them.] 

Operation 'Save Rummy's ass':  

I read in the NYT a few days ago that W.'s special Iraq commission, led by James Baker III, won't be reporting to W. or Congress on its findings until after the mid-term elections. We've only been there for three and half years, after all, we don't want to rush into anything. I'm sure the soldiers being held over, long after their tours are up; to fight the "Battle of Baghdad" will appreciate the political realities of the situation. Of course, instead of calling the present operation "Together Forward," a better name might be "Operation Save the GOP Majority." Now that's something worth dying for, eh?  

They've stood up, we're not standing down: 

Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson told reporters that over the past two years 4,000 Iraqi policemen have been killed by insurgents and 8,000 have been wounded. In 2005 alone 1,497 were killed and 3,256 were wounded. Peterson says, "They have paid a great price yet Iraqis are signing up as recruits everyday." So my question is; are they incredibly patriotic or just desperate to have any kind of job at all? Who in their right mind would want to be an Iraqi policeman? [Hear an Anne Garrels report on Iraqi policemen from ATC to find out]  

In any case, supposedly there are some 300,000 Iraqis now trained and ready to go, so why aren't we going?  John Warner, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said after a one-day visit to over there that the situation in Iraq was "drifting sideways." Warner suggests the US should consider a "change of course" in Iraq. Gosh, you think? Now the last time I checked Warner was a staunch supporter of the president and his policies in Iraq, so what's going on here? Besides Rummy, W., Cheney and Henry Kissinger, is there anyone left that thinks we should still be in Iraq?

 Getting ready to fight the last war: 

The US Army has reworked its strategy to fight the insurgency. AP reports that a new field manual to be released later this month "emphasizes the importance of nonmilitary solutions, such as promoting economic development and making sure basic services are restored to deprive insurgents of support. It also urges interaction with the Iraq people." Hey, that's great I'm happy to see after three years of screwing up royally and the deaths of 2,700 US troops we're finally getting around to developing a strategy to deal with the insurgency in Iraq. Of course, the issue now is that the biggest challenge facing us today is the fight against the various battling religious militias. Have we got a strategy for that?  

The NYT reports that there is a worry within the military establishment that all this emphasis on insurgency fighting is taking attention away from fighting regular wars. The NYT: "The Army is stretched so thin and so many units are focused on rehearsing for Iraq and Afghanistan at the training center that concerns have grown that the Army may be raising a new group of officers with little experience in high-intensity warfare against heavily equipped armies like North Korea."      Another problem with the new thinking on fighting the insurgency is that there aren't enough troops to get the job done. Gen. Jack Keane, a former acting chief of staff, told the NYT that, "the Army does not have nearly enough resources, particularly in terms of people, to meets its global responsibilities while making such a commitment to irregular warfare."  

That's alright, if anyone is worried about what might happen next in North Korea, have no fear. Speaking last year on the subject of pulling several thousand troops out of South Korea for redeployment to Iraq, W. said we have "capacity" in Northeast Asia:

"We've got good capacity in Korea. We traded troops for new equipment, as you know: we brought some troop -- our troop levels down in South Korea, but replaced those troops with more capacity."  We don't need no stinkin' heavily equipped army to fight in Korea; we've got "capacity."  I feel reassured, but W. says we're not going to attack the Hermit Kingdom anyway. Just in case, though, perhaps Japan will just go ahead and build a warhead or two, just to be on the safe side.  

[Reuters, 8/7/06: "The United States will lower troop levels in South Korea beyond a previously agreed reduction to 25,000, but the cut will not be 'substantial,' a senior defense official said on Monday. . . The official said the cut was possible due to South Korea's improved capabilities [i.e. they're better cannon fodder], and noted that judgments about the threat posed by North Korea were driving changes in the U.S.-South Korean military relationship.]

The forgotten war?  

It may be difficult to hear the explosions of a US military munition dump blowing up in Baghdad over the rumble of the North Korean nuclear test, but things are going from bad to worse in Iraq again. Not to worry, though, General George Casey, standing with Rummy at a press conference today, says progress is coexisting with chaos in Iraq. Also progressing is the number of US troop casualties. Over the past month we've suffered over 776 injured and over a hundred dead. In just the first 11days of October the number of US dead is 44. 

Of course, I guess this type of thing is to be expected when you're engaging the enemy. So says the pentagon, anyway. From where I'm sitting it looks like we're getting ourselves into a much bigger version of Fallujah.  It is pretty amazing that having taken Baghdad three years ago, having fought two Fallujahs, several Ramadis and a few Tal Afars, we're at the point where we find ourselves again re-fighting the Battle of Baghdad. General George Casey explains that Baghdad: "Is the center of gravity for the country. Everybody knows that. The bad guys know it, we know it, and the Iraqis know it. So we have to help the Iraqis secure their capital if they're going to go forward."  

My question is; which Iraqis exactly are we helping? I mean, we're going after the Sunni insurgents; we're going after al-Qaeda (remember them?); we're battling the Shiites, infiltrated into the security forces -- which we've spent the last two years arming and training -- and we're going after the Mahdi army; so who's left?  There's the Iraqi military which is apparently more or less on the government's side, but the government itself is the problem. What exactly are we spending all this blood and treasure for if the PM of the country is beholden to one of the main militia leaders? How can we be fighting the Mahdi Army at the same time we're propping up the very government the leader of that militia is a part of? 

Body count wars: 

A new Johns Hopkins University study published in the British magazine The Lancet says the number of Iraqis killed as a result of our invasion of Iraq is in the hundreds of thousands. [NYT] The exact amount isn't known for sure but it could be anywhere from 300,000 to 900,000. Naturally, W. has an answer for that: "the methodology" used in the study "is pretty well discredited." They're just "guessing" about these numbers he says. Of course, how would he know anything about the methodology used, in the first place, and who is he to talk about credibility?  All the information he gets about the war is filtered through Cheney and when he does get bad news the barer of that news is shown the door, so who am I going to believe: The guy who told us Saddam had nukes or a group of scientists who risked life and limb to go door to door in the hellhole W.'s lies created to count the dead?  

Posted by bushmeister0 at 11:56 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, 13 October 2006 12:04 PM EDT

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What, with all the talk about congressman Mark Foley and his IM trysts with young male pages, it's difficult to hear the gunfire from Baghdad these days. While we wait to see whether the House GOP leaders send fat old Dennis Basstert off the glue factory to save their own sorry asses there's a war going on. (Actually two wars. . . or is it three?) As bad as this scandal might be for the GOP in the upcoming elections, however, I'm sure there's a sigh of relief at the White House. Karl Rove is probably thinking right now: 'Maybe if the media keeps obsessing about Foley and the Amish until November, no one will notice the body count in Operation Together Forward.'  Because we all know Iraq is the third rail for W. & Co and any news is good news as long as it's not about Iraq.   

If, by chance, you've been focused on the Foley escapade to the exclusion of all else, here's a round-up of the news in Iraq over the past three days: As usual, dozens of bodies are continuing to pop up all over Baghdad, many from recent large scale military-style abductions; the court trying Saddam Hussein is afraid to release the verdict of his previous trial for fear of stoking even more sectarian violence; car bombings, suicide bombings, mortar attacks, IED attacks and gun battles rage apace around the city; and since Saturday, hundreds of Iraqi civilians have died along with 17 US troops; 8 on Monday alone. This is the highest total of troops killed in a single day since late August. (You see, we are making progress!) The NYT reports that "four soldiers died in a roadside bomb attack; the four others were killed by small-arms fire in separate incidents."    

I'm sure all these stats and deaths are being closely followed by what I'm now calling Rummy's "Fruit Bowl Rubric. This referees to a paragraph in Bob Woodward's new book "State of Denial" in which Rummy tells the shocked reporter that this latest upswing of 900 or so attacks a month is due to "categorizing more things as attacks." Rummy tells Woodward that now, "a random round can be an attack all the way up to killing 50 people somewhere. So you've got a whole fruit bowl of different things - a banana and an apple and an orange." There's no word yet on what Rummy is calling the deaths of the four soldiers who died in the IED attack; was it a banana or were the four killed in the small-arms fire incidents an orange? Who knows, but you can be assured Rummy is on the ball.

After all, he's in charge right?  No? Woodward writes that he told Rummy of the Robert McNamara quote that, "Any military commander who is honest with you will say he's made mistakes that have cost lives," and then he waited for Rummy's response."  

Rummy: "Um hmmm.... 

Woodward: "Is that correct?" 

Rummy: "I don't know. I suppose that a military commander . . . 

Woodward: "Which you are . . ." 

Rummy: "No I'm not." 

Woodward: "Yes, sir" 

Rummy: "No, no well . . ."  

Woodward: "Yes, yes. It's the commander in chief, secretary of defense, combatant commander. . . " 

Rummy: "I can see a military commander in a uniform who is engaged in a conflict having to make decisions that result in people living or dying and that would be a truth. And certainly if you go up the chain to the civilian side to the president and to me, you could by indirection, two or three steps removed, make the case." [Newsweek] 

At which point Woodward fell off his chair and called loudly for the man with the butterfly net. Actually that didn't happen, but talk about denial! This Rummy character won't even admit he's responsible for running the pentagon at this point. Farid Zacharia was right, he is a potted plant!  

In all seriousness, this is the man most responsible for the horrific mess we find ourselves today in Iraq and Afghanistan and he's playing semantic games with Bob Woodward. This man's hands are drenched in rivers of American and Iraqi blood and he's denying that he even knows who's in charge. If the president was anyone else besides George W. Bush this man would be out of a job and looking for a lawyer. The inmates have truly taken over the asylum. Unfortunately, all the other inmates are too busy watching "Entertainment Tonight" to notice.    

Condi's big adventure:

Condi Rice is off on another trip to the Middle East, this time to show her concern for the Palestinian people.  The last time she made the trip, she was just back from a hot piano playing gig in Kuala Lumpur where she was desperately trying to keep the war between Hezbollah and Israel going. Something tells me Abu Mazen having Condi over for a cup of tea and sympathy isn't exactly going to endear him to his people. Hamas is bad enough, but at least they're not dining with the devil.   

Since she and W. decided to punish the Palestinian people with crushing sanctions for choosing Hamas in free and fair elections last January, the situation in the territories has gone from desperate to Darfur. Now, she's back to visit the scene of the crime. "The Palestinian people deserve calm," she says as Hamas and Fatah fight in the streets over the last few scraps of food. Why do I get the feeling not too many Palestinians are really going to appreciate her visit?   

What exactly does she think she's going to accomplish anyway? What is this all about? Since when does anyone outside of the White House think W. & Co. really care about what's going on in Palestine? If they were really interested in finding a lasting peace settlement they would have done something about it five years ago. Instead, they decided that anything Clinton did they would do the opposite. If Bubba worked his fingers to the bone to try and negotiate an enduring peace deal, they would issue platitudes, call Sharon a 'man of peace' and do little else. (By the way, whatever happened to the idea that the road to Middle peace led through Baghdad?)  

In the absence of any American involvement over the past five years we've gone from dealing with Arafat to dealing with Hamas. Arafat wasn't prince charming but he was a Palestinian, he was a realist, he was his own man and what he said went. By contrast, now you have a bunch of religious whackos running the show. They're fanatically devoted to destroying Israel, they're amazingly boneheaded and no one knows who exactly is calling the shots. Is it Syria, is it Iran, who knows? How do you deal with these people?   

Now, here comes Condi come-lately saying Israel should open up a few border crossings and Hamas in turn should surrender before negotiations can even begin. I'm not a Hamas fan -- in fact, I think they've been an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians -- but in the real world no one should expect them to just lay down their arms and recognize Israel, which is the Condi's starting point for any change in the situation. It's not going to happen. Again we see the same old Bush administration state of denial. 'We just best scenario everything, threaten everybody and things will work out.'  

Not going to happen.

This approach has worked out well in other places, too. Taking the "diplomatic route" with Iran, offering talks on suspending their uranium enrichment program, but only after they suspend it, has really produced positive results. Calling North Korea the 'axis of evil' and threatening them has sure kept them from throwing out the IAEA inspectors and building bombs which they didn't have before.  

And now North Korea says it's going to test a bomb and Condi says such a move would be considered "provocative." I'm wondering what precisely she plans to do about it if they go through with a test. Is she going to threaten to play piano for them or make them watch one of her workout tapes? I don't see many other options, because our military is on the brink of extinction, we don't talk to the current government in South Korea and the Chinese aren't particularly helpful when it comes to North Korea. Or anything else for that matter, beyond lending us money. 

Posted by bushmeister0 at 7:35 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 4 October 2006 7:38 PM EDT

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So, things are once again going swimmingly in Iraq. This week there have been over 150 bodies found scattered all over Baghdad showing signs of torture; suicide bombings are at an all time high; Muqtada al-Sadr is losing his grip on the Madhi Army, because he's too moderate; we've lost 20 US troops since last Sunday; and the new judge overseeing the "trial" of Saddam has lost his brother-in-law, who was shot on a Baghdad street yesterday.  

The big trench the Iraqis are building around Baghdad is almost complete and the government has issued another one of its famous curfews banning not only vehicular travel, but also pedestrian traffic. That's a new one. In a puzzling development, the commander of US forces in Anbar province told the press that the insurgency will be defeated but not by the US military. Army Col. Sean B. McFarland said,” An insurgency is a very difficult thing to defeat in a finite period of time. It takes a lot of persistence --- perseverance is the actual term we like to use. If we get the level of violence down to a point where the Iraqi security forces are more than capable of dealing with it, the insurgency's days will eventually come to an end. And they will come to an end at the hands of the Iraqis, who, by definition, will always be perceived as more legitimate than an external force like our own." [Inquirer] 

Wow, you know, with unlimited time and resources we could beat the insurgency, too. Of course, if we just wait long enough, these insurgents we're fighting now will simply die of old age; we just have to wait them out. Rummy says, "ultimately they will fail. It's going to take time, and its going tot take a lot of hard work by people who believe in freedom." Unfortunately, the people he's relying on to keep up the fight are the same few hundred thousand that he keeps sending back there to fight again and again.  

But, there's good news on the horizon. AP reports that the UN issued a report this week saying that "al-Qaeda's activity will diminish as violence escalates and distinctions blur among sectarian attacks, criminal acts and the fight against Iraqi and non-Iraqi forces."  Boy, that's good to know. [AP] 

As bad as things are though, Bob Woodward tells 60-Minutes this week that it's worse than we know. Surprisingly, it turns out that the Bush Administration is covering up just how bad things are in Iraq and he says we should expect it to get much worse next year. "It's getting to the point now where there are eight-, 900 attacks a week. That's more than a hundred a day. That's four an hour attacking our forces. The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse, and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon saying, 'Oh, no, things are going to get better.'" [AP]  

How could that be? I don't believe it! This administration wouldn't lie, would they? Sounds like the enemy's propaganda to me.

Posted by bushmeister0 at 1:32 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 30 September 2006 1:33 PM EDT

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Boy, wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall as W. sits down to dinner with Pervez Musharrif and Hamid Karzai? [No food fights boys!] What on earth are they going to talk about? Musharraf's new book? Perhaps not. Musharrif has already caused a stir by saying that former US undersecretary of State, Richard Armitage, told him the US would bomb Pakistan into the Stone Age unless he got onboard with the WOT.  That was bad enough, but now the press has taken W.'s advice and 'bought the book’ -- though they probably got comped for it -- and more is coming out about what went on in those early days of the WOT.  Musharrif says the US paid Pakistan millions of dollars in bounties to round up suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda types. (One presumes that whether they were actually guilty of anything wasn't all that important.)

Just this one little tidbit of information ought to give W. some indigestion over dinner. Here's he's on the verge of getting cart blanc to do whatever he pleases at Gitmo from Congress and now this comes out! It won't be too much of a stretch for W.'s detractors to draw a direct line between those bounties and the hundreds of "enemy combants" being held at Gitmo who were all supposedly 'captured on the battlefield' and who have never been charged with anything. [Laura, where's the BC power?]    Musharrif also writes that the US, Pakistan and the Saudis created an "Islamic Monster" by aiding the Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Seriously, does this guy have a death wish? I can already see Rummy and Cheney fitting Musharrif for a Fred Flintstone suit right now. I don't know what Musharrif is up to, but you've got to figure he's not the vice-president's favorite dictator nowadays.  

As I've written before, though, I'm guessing he doesn't care that much about what W. or Karzai has to say about these revelations or his turning a blind eye to the Taliban setting up shop in his country. He's gambling the US has too much on its plate to doing anything about it. And if we were to go for regime change in Pakistan, right now, we'd be looking at the Pakistani version of Mullah Omar replacing him. Better to forget about Musharrif and his Taliban for now and focus on the real threat.  

We'll deal with him later, because, if -- I mean, when -- we launch "Operation Second Coming" against Ahamdinejad & Co. we're going to need Musharrif onboard and in charge in Pakistan. We're tilting to India presently, but if they give us any guff over messing up their business plans in Iran, we can just tilt right back towards Pakistan in the blink of an eye. [Keep that in mind Macaca] Although it’s completely insane, you can imagine the Brains Trust in the vice president's War Bunker calculating that if everything goes according to plan -- which naturally it will -- we can then roll up the Taliban in a matter of weeks, solving that problem once and for all. After we set up a democratic regime in Tehran,  India will calm down once they see who'll they'll be doing business from now on and we have Musharrif sitting on their eastern border just in case. 

It's all so perfect. Sure there may have been some hiccups along the way in Iraq, but once we get Iran squared away, everything will fall into place. If it doesn't, well you know what W. says about history; we're all going to be dead anyway, so who cares?

Posted by bushmeister0 at 7:41 PM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 26 June 2007 2:44 PM EDT

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You know, it was shocking enough when I read yesterday that Pervez Musharraf said that Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan into the stone age if they didn't thelp us out with the Taliban. [AFP] But Musharrif tells W. today that his recent deal with the talibs and al-Qaeda is "intended to reject the Talibanization of the people and that there won't be a Taliban and there wont be al-Aqaida (in Pakistan)."  W. standing right next to him then says: "I believe him."

Boy, I've got some land in Florida I'd like to sell you W.  

Posted by bushmeister0 at 12:35 PM EDT

Updated: Saturday, 23 September 2006 1:25 PM EDT

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AP reports today: "The Iraqi conflict is changing from a fight against U.S.-led coalition forces to an internal power struggle, the top U.S. general in Iraq said yesterday." General George Casey says, "We’re starting to see this conflict here transition from an insurgency against us to a struggle for the division of political and economic power among the Iraqis." Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the very definition of a civil war?

Meanwhile, the building of the 60-mile trench around Baghdad continues apace, the AP story reporting that, "Viewed from the air, the network of irrigation canals and ditches almost completely ringing the capital is clear." Casey says, "The notion is push the bad guys out, and then gradually go back and reclear areas so that people feel safe in their own neighborhoods."  But, aren't the bad guys already in the city? I mean, they're not coming in from outside.  The main culprits in all the killing going on are the Shiites, specifically the Mahdi army, which controls most of the east of the city. It is all well and fine to chase the Sunni insurgents from one Sunni neighborhood to the other and block infiltration from Anbar, but the biggest concern is still the Shiites.  

The UN reported this week that 5,106 Iraqis were killed in July and August. And that was only in Baghdad! [AP] Killing is up in other regions of the country as well. The UN report says, though, it's difficult know exactly what's going on in some parts because the security situation is so bad. For example, Anbar province reports 0 deaths during July. Now, you know the Marines may be doing a great job at holding their own against al-Qaeda and the insurgents in Anbar, but no enough to keep the body count to zero!  

What is most shocking about how many these people are dying at the hands of Shiite death squads in Baghdad is the pure viciousness of the tactics they're using. The NYT reported this week that it's not only the death squads and criminal gangs that are responsible for the killing and torture but the security forces are also involved. (Well duh'!)

"Torture remains widespread, not only by death squads but also in official detention centers, according to UN officials. The report said some detainees showed signs of beating 'using electrical cables, wounds in different part of their bodies, including in the head and genitals, broken bones of the legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns. Bodies found in Baghdad, the report added, often show signs of torture that include 'acid-induced burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones (back, hands and legs) missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails."  

A UN official, in fact said yesterday that the torture going on now is worse than during Saddam's regime. By the way, wasn't US AG Albero Gonzales just in Baghdad to help the government figure out what are and aren't permissible techniques for torture? We already know that back here in the US the White House can't figure out what all those vague prohibitions in Common Articel 3 of the Geneva Conventions really mean. Gonzales says in Iraq it's "difficult to decide what is appropriate," and it's equally "a difficult decision as to where to draw the line." But rest assured, he says, this "government has not engaged in torture," despite all the evidence to the contrary. [BBC]

You don't think Gonzales was there to give the Iraqi government the green light to torture, do you? Who, after all, would know better about what torture is? The torture memo Gonzales signed off on in 2003 outlined that waterboarding and live burials were A-OK with the then White House Counsel. It sure reads  like a how-to manuel for the Iraqi security forces. I don't know. . . 

Posted by bushmeister0 at 12:18 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 22 September 2006 12:20 PM EDT

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