It's all about freedom...

The media is falling over itself to figure out what the hell Bush meant in his inaugural speech.

"All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know the United States will not ignore your oppression or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you."

Does he really mean it? Are we going into the world building biz? This from a president who accused Clinton of too much nation building?

The truth is, this is all about laying the groundwork for attacking Iran. They're tyrants right? Somehow we'll find some Iranians somewhere who are hell bent on us bombing the crap out of them.

Remember the tearjerking congressional testimony of the Kuwaiti girl relating the baby being taken out of the incubators story, which was totally bogus? The girl who later turned out to be the daughter of a Kuwaiti diplomat?

The Shah's son lives in Potomic, a very snooty rich part of DC, and he's got a lot of money to throw around. Maybe, we set him up after we "liberate" the Iranians.

If we don't do it Israel will!!!!

While everyone was scratchig their heads over Bush's new plan for world freedom Cheney was scaring everyone. (As usual.)

According to the Jerusalem Post:

"If the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards," Cheney said.

Senior Israeli officials said Cheney's comment was more a warning to the Europeans and the international community that they have to take a more concerted action to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power, than a warning to Israel not to act."

In other words, blackmailing the world with Israel's nukes again.

"One official, who said that Cheney "never misspeaks," said it was telling that the first part of Cheney's statement gave a justification for Israeli action, since he said that Iran's has as a stated objective the elimination of Israel.

"The point of his comments is that he is telling the world that unless they act, there is no telling what Israel would do. And then who knows what the consequence may be," the official said. "His point is that the world should act now, rather than have to deal with a much more difficult situation later."

Of course, it's all about Israel.

Condi Rice also weighed in on the Iranian situation as relates to Israel in her testimony to the senate foreign relations commitee. She told Senator Chefee:

"It's really hard to find common ground with a government that thinks Israel should be extinguished.

It's difficult to find common ground with a government that is supporting Hezbollah and terrorist organizations that are determined to undermine the Middle East peace that we seek."

I should think Ariel Sharon was more of an inpedimrnt, but what do I know? She's going to be the new Secretary of State, right? And she's so well qualified.

She's a good liar anyway.

She went on...

"...a theocratic government that has a view that the mullahs ought to rule, that has no rights -- or has a human rights record that is really appalling and that treats its citizens, its women in that way, is not a regime with which I think we have very much common ground, particularly given the way that we would like to see the Middle East develop."

Was she taling about Iran or Saudi Arabia?

According to the NY Times:

"In a rare public display, the Saudi government announced on Tuesday that a religious court had sentenced 15 demonstrators, including one woman, to public lashings and prison terms for taking part in demonstrations against the government..."


We don't have any problems finding common ground with 14th century mullahs who have lots of oil.


Neocons gone wild.

The point of this whole thing, which the media is missing out on, is that the neocons have totally taken over the White House. Cheney and Rummy are firmly in control.

They have seen no downside to their egregious mistakes so far, in fact they've gotten medals, so they are on to their next disaster.

Anyone who thinks they've learned their lesson in Iraq is dreaming.

Iraq is a great success! They're moving on.

Read the "March of Folly" by Barbara Tuchman!

Cassandra is at Gitmo!

News flash! President: "Bin Laden is hiding."

It appears now that the president has had his "accountability moment" and decided the people want him to continue the good job he's doing in Iraq. According to the WaPo in an extensive interview he said :

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections,"

"The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

Well, that's that.

See David Frommkin's Washington briefing which says to the contrary that:

"...when it comes to Iraq, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that "58 percent disapprove of his handling of the situation to 40 percent who approve, and 44 percent said the war was worth fighting."

It doesn't matter what the facts may be, the president isn't a fact checker, remember?

And he doesn't read papers. We're all viewing things through the "filter."

On to Iran...

Seymour Hersh is at it again, he says in a New Yorker article we've got troops in Iran and we're getting ready for a big strike there.

"In my interviews, I was repeatedly told that the next strategic target was Iran. "Everyone is saying, `You can't be serious about targeting Iran. Look at Iraq,'" the former intelligence official told me.

"But they say, `We've got some lessons learned--not militarily, but how we did it politically. We're not going to rely on agency pissants.' No loose ends, and that's why the C.I.A. is out of there."

Hear an interview at democracynow.

The pentagon is naturally poo pooing the notion but they haven't denied it.

Where's Osama?

In case you were wondering what ever happened to Osama, by the way...

Asked why Bin Laden hadn't been found yet, you remember him, the one who actually attacked us?

Bush answers "Because he's hiding."

Cheap bastards!

The U.S. first announced they would give $15 million in disaster relief for the Southeast Asia's Tsunami victoms.

But when some questioned the level of the commitment of the U.S., the administration got touchy.

NYT:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - Rejecting a United Nations official's suggestion that it had been a "stingy" aid donor, the Bush administration on Tuesday announced another $20 million in relief for victims of the Asian earthquake and tsunamis and dispatched an aircraft carrier and other ships to the region for possible relief operations. [They meant to do that all along, I'm sure.]

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, displaying irritation with the suggestion of American stinginess, said the United States had been the most generous of aid donors in recent years and that, in any case, the sums announced so far were "just a start" of a larger sustained effort.

According to the Congressional Research Service, an independent agency, the United States is the largest aid donor in terms of dollars, but its record of donating two-tenths of 1 percent of its national economy for foreign aid makes it among the smallest donors as a proportion of what it could theoretically afford.

Countering that argument, the State Department acknowledges on an official Web site that its direct economic aid is "the smallest among government foreign assistance programs" but that the "true measure" of American generosity should include private money.

80 Billion more for Iraq:

If we could have only bombed the crap out of that damn tidal wave...

AP:

US President George W. Bush is expected to seek authorisation for spending of an additional 80 billion dollars in Iraq , the head of a visiting congressional delegation said.

"In early February, there will be ... a supplemental appropriation in addition to the 2006 budget for defence submitted to Congress," Jim Kolbe, Republican congressman from Arizona, told reporters.
He estimated the extra funding to range between 75 to 80 billion dollars.

If we only had to money to lend, really we would, but...

Currently Iraq has cost us somewhere in the range of...

$147,393,300,000

Torture A-okay.
At his year end press conference Bush waxed poetic on Rummy and his love for the troops...

"I know Secretary Rumsfeld's heart," Bush said..."Sometimes, perhaps, his demeanor is rough and gruff, but beneath that rough and gruff, no-nonsense demeanor is a good human being who cares deeply about the military, and deeply about the grief that war causes," Bush said.

Right, grumpy old grandpa just doesn't care too much about human rights or the rule of law.

The NYT reports today:

"...documents, released Monday in connection with a lawsuit accusing the government of being complicit in torture, also include accounts by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents who said they had seen detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, being chained in uncomfortable positions for up to 24 hours and left to urinate and defecate on themselves.

An agent wrote that in one case a detainee who was nearly unconscious had pulled out much of his hair during the night.

One of the memorandums released Monday was addressed to Robert S. Mueller III, the F.B.I. director, and other senior bureau officials, and it provided the account of someone "who observed serious physical abuses of civilian detainees" in Iraq.

The memorandum, dated June 24 this year, was an "Urgent Report," meaning that the sender regarded it as a priority. It said the witness "described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings and unauthorized interrogations."

But it's all okay because the Wall Street Journal says:

Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

The advice was part of a classified report on interrogation methods prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional methods they weren't getting enough information from prisoners.

The president, despite domestic and international laws constraining the use of torture, has the authority as commander in chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture, the report argued.

The Sgt. Schultz defense

Civilian or military personnel accused of torture or other war crimes have several potential defenses, including the "necessity" of using such methods to extract information to head off an attack, or "superior orders," sometimes known as the Nuremberg defense: namely that the accused was acting pursuant to an order and, as the Nuremberg tribunal put it, no "moral choice was in fact possible."

Evidence abtained by torture a-okay too

Evidence gained by torture can be used by the U.S. military in deciding whether to imprison a foreigner indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an enemy combatant, the government says.

Statements produced under torture have been inadmissible in U.S. courts for about 70 years. But the U.S. military panels reviewing the detention of 550 foreigners as enemy combatants at the U.S. naval base in Cuba are allowed to use such evidence, Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Brian Boyle acknowledged at a U.S. District Court hearing Thursday.

About 70 years ago, the Supreme Court stopped the use of evidence produced by third-degree tactics largely on the theory that it was totally unreliable," Harvard Law Professor Philip B. Heymann, a former deputy U.S. attorney general, said in an interview. Subsequent high court rulings were based on revulsion at "the unfairness and brutality of it and later on the idea that confessions ought to be free and uncompelled."

Leon asked whether U.S. courts could review detentions based on evidence from torture conducted by U.S. personnel.

Boyle said torture was against U.S. policy and any allegations of it would be "forwarded through command channels for military discipline." He added, "I don't think anything remotely like torture has occurred at Guantanamo" but noted that some U.S. soldiers there had been disciplined for misconduct...

Of course, always the lowly soldier never the 'Gruff" old secretary of defence.

Meanwhile at our closest ally's own gitmo.

The British Law Lords ruled indefinite detentions are more dangerous than terrorists.

BBC:

Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, in his ruling, said: "Indefinite imprisonment without charge or trial is anathema in any country which observes the rule of law.

"It deprives the detained person of the protection a criminal trial is intended to afford."

In a blow to the government's anti-terror measures, the House of Lords ruled by an eight to one majority in favour of appeals by nine detainees.

The Law Lords said the measures were incompatible with European human rights laws..." [That must be old Europe.]

Iraqi borders secure, security forces in control.

What was Bush thinking with the Bernard Kerik nomination for Homeland [Die Heimat!] security?

NYT reports today:

"Mr. Kerik, Republicans said, was just the kind of plain-talking law-and-order man held in awe by the president.

"The president loves cops," said a Republican close to the White House who insisted on anonymity because he did not want the president and his advisers to know he was talking about an embarrassing blow-up of a cabinet nomination.

"They're not pretentious, they do a hard job, they don't get paid a lot of money [Just like Bush!], they're real people and they live in a world that is fairly black and white, with good guys and bad guys. And that's the way President Bush looks at the world."

Mr. Bush was especially grateful, White House officials said, that Mr. Kerik agreed to train a police force in Iraq in the summer of 2003..."

Yeah, that went well. He said at the time "I will be there at least six months - until the job is done," but left just three months later. Soon after, the UN compound was blown up. Mission Accomplished.

Read Sidney Blumenthal's take on this issue. It's hillarious. This guy has got his head so far up his tuchus...oy! Unglaub'

We want Rumsfeld's head!

It's bad enough John McCain says he has "no confidence" in Donald Rumsfeld, but when William Kristal turns on you, you know your goose is cooked.

He says in an Op-Ed in the WaPo:

"All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments. Some have stubbornly persisted in their misjudgments. But have any so breezily dodged responsibility and so glibly passed the buck?

...Contrast the magnificent performance of our soldiers with the arrogant buck-passing of Rumsfeld.

...These soldiers deserve a better defense secretary than the one we have."

Pretty strong stuff. But wait, there's more. Now Trent "the confederacy yet lives!" Lott is out to get him...

AP reports:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld should be replaced sometime in the next year, Sen. Trent Lott says.

"I'm not a fan of Secretary Rumsfeld," Lott told the Biloxi Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. "I don't think he listens enough to his uniformed officers."

War Criminal too?

We already know Henry Kissinger can't go to certain countries, such as France, because he might wind up under arrest, but it is a surprise to find out Rummy might be canceling his trip to another "old Europe" country-namely Germany-because of all things, he might be indicted:

Democracy Now reports:

"Donald Rumsfeld is considering canceling a planned trip to Germany after U.S. lawyers filed a lawsuit against Rumsfeld in German courts. This according to a report in the German magazine Focus.

The center for constitutional rights filed a complaint accusing Rumsfeld of war crimes and torture in connection with the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib.

German laws allows the trial of war crimes regardless of where they are carried out. Rumsfeld said he won't go to Germany for the Munich Security Conference if the government indicates it will investigate the war crime complaint."

See more on this issue at Scoop.

Of course, the more incompetent you are the more likely you are to get a Medal, just like George "slam dunk" Tenent and L. Paul "fire the Iraqi army" Bremer.

Gary Webb dead and still discredited.

Today the L.A. Times reported on the death of Gary Webb author of "Dark Alliance" a book investigating the Contra/CIA/cocaine connection during the eighties.

The Times said:

"His 1996 San Jose Mercury News series contended that Nicaraguan drug traffickers had sold tons of crack cocaine from Colombian cartels in Los Angeles' black neighborhoods and then funneled millions in profits back to the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras.

Three months after the series was published, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it conducted an exhaustive investigation but found no evidence of a connection between the CIA and Southern California drug traffickers. [Well, there you go, case closed!]

Major newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, New York Times and Washington Post, wrote reports discrediting elements of Webb's reporting.

"But the available evidence, based on an extensive review of court documents and more than 100 interviews in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington and Managua, fails to support any of those allegations," The Times reported." [All bow down to the TIMES!]

Because of Webb's reports in the San Jose Mercuriy News, from which he left after they demoted him, the CIA's Inspector General launched an investigation about which Robert Parry writes at consortiumnews.com:

"In secret congressional testimony, senior CIA officials admitted that the spy agency turned a blind eye to evidence of cocaine trafficking by U.S.-backed Nicaraguan contra rebels in the 1980s and generally did not treat drug smuggling through Central America as a high priority during the Reagan administration.

"In the end the objective of unseating the Sandinistas appears to have taken precedence over dealing properly with potentially serious allegations against those with whom the agency was working," CIA Inspector General Britt Snider said in classified testimony on May 25, 1999.

He conceded that the CIA did not treat the drug allegations in "a consistent, reasoned or justifiable manner."

Still, Snider and other officials sought to minimize the seriousness of the CIA's misconduct - a position echoed by a House Intelligence Committee report released in May and by press coverage it received. In particular, CIA officials insisted that CIA personnel did not order the contras to engage in drug trafficking and did not directly join in the smuggling.

Deep in the report, the House committee noted that in some cases, "CIA employees did nothing to verify or disprove drug trafficking information, even when they had the opportunity to do so. In some of these, receipt of a drug allegation appeared to provoke no specific response, and business went on as usual."

Parry's interview on democracynow.org

The CIA Inspector General said more than 50 Contras and Contra units were implicated in the cocaine trade, that the CIA knew about it in real time, that it hid the evidence, that it obstructed justice. All of these things were admitted by the CIA itself, by 1998, in response to Webb's series.

The great tragedy, I suppose, of the personal tragedy and professional, is that despite these admissions, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the L.A. Times still refused to deal with the facts. It seemed almost like the editors had more of a stake in covering up the truth than the CIA did. So, Gary Webb's career was allowed to be ruined.

The people who were involved in these -- in protecting the CIA from those major papers, their careers blossomed. Jerry Seapost, the executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News, who sold out Webb and his series received an award from the Society of Professional Journalists for ethics because of what he did.

So, it seemed like all of the people that did the wrong thing got the benefits, and Gary Webb and people who -- including John Kerry, who did honorable work on this topic, received no benefits at all, and in fact were damaged."

It should also be noted at the time when all the media was gunning for Webb the major papers like the New York Times and the L.A. Times were writing about blacks like they were some sort of idiots for believing the government was behind crack.

See This Modern World's take on this issue. Very funny!

Crazy blacks! It's not like General Claire Chennault, of the famous WWII "Flying Tigers" wasn't flying heroin out of China and flying prostitues back in. And it's not like he had anything to do with CIA airlines during Vietnam, flying heroin out in body bags.

See Drug Fallout: by Alfred McCoy for more on this.

Also, includes background on our involvment with the opium trade in Afghanistan in the Soviet invasion era. God knows what they're up to now.

I'm sure we're doing our best to irradicate that scurge! That's why Afghani opium is the #1 source of heroin in Europe.

News from Fallujah, the

On Sunday we lost 8 more marines in Fallujah and we dropped 10 "precision" bombs on insurgent positions.

Its pretty obvious we've broken their will to fight.

One soldier was killed today and a number were injured.

According to the AP:

"In the northern city of Mosul, a car bomb blast struck a U.S. Stryker brigade patrol Monday, wounding two American soldiers. U.S. troops and gunmen fought gun battles after the blast.

In Tarmiyah, on Baghdad's northern outskirts, three more U.S. troops were wounded in a car bombing that wrecked two Humvees, pieces of which were raised into the air by jubilant Iraqi men who danced around their charred hulks and a large crater blown into the road."

McCain on Rummy:

PHOENEX- U.S. Sen. John McCain said Monday that he has "no confidence" in Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, citing Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq and the failure to send more troops.

McCain, speaking to The Associated Press in an hourlong interview, said his comments were not a call for Rumsfeld's resignation, explaining that President Bush "can have the team that he wants around him."

Like Bernard Kerlik?

The WaPo reports beside the nanny issue there were about a zillion other problems with this nomination:

And although Kerik's nanny problems are what officially sunk him, it turns out there were several other controversies erupting -- or about to erupt -- that the White House either missed or wasn't concerned about.

"Newsday reported that Kerik just last week was forced to testify in a civil lawsuit about an alleged affair with a subordinate. The New York Daily News reported Sunday that Kerik accepted thousands of dollars in cash and gifts without making proper public disclosures.

Newsweek on Friday Web-posted a story that a New Jersey judge had issued a warrant for Kerik's arrest in 1998 in a civil dispute over unpaid condominium fees.

And this morning, the New York Times describes a "web of relationships Mr. Kerik developed with officials of a New Jersey construction company long suspected by New York authorities of connections to organized crime."

Democracy Now adds this is just the tip of the iceberg.:

"The Washington Post reports that nine employees of the hospital Kerik worked at providing security in Saudi Arabia accused him of using his policing powers to pursue the personal agenda of his immediate boss.

Questions have also been raised about Kerik's misuse of police power while the head of the New York police department. In one example, he was fined for using the services of three police officers to help research his autobiography "The Lost Son." He was also accused of sending homicide police officers to question Fox News journalists after the book's publisher, Judith Regan, lost a mobile phone after an interview at the Fox studios. It turned out to have just been misplaced.

Kerik has also coming under close scrutiny for his windfall profit from stock options in stun-gun manufacturer, Taser International. He netted over $5.5 million on the options, without ever having invested any of his own money.

Questions have also raised about his failure in Iraq to train a new Iraqi police force. Kerik went to Iraq for a six month tour of duty to help rebuild the Iraqi police force but he abruptly left after just three months.

On Thursday, the day before he withdrew his name from contention, Kerik was forced to testify in a civil lawsuit about an alleged affair with a subordinate.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a close friend of Kerik who reportedly pressed hard for his nomination, apologized to the President Bush Sunday for the problems with his nomination.

Do these guys read the newspapers?

The NYT reports:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 - Senior administration officials on Sunday defended the White House review of Bernard B. Kerik's background before his nomination as secretary of homeland security. One official said that even "controversial" material uncovered in a weeklong review had not appeared to endanger Mr. Kerik's confirmation. [Ha!]

In interviews, the officials denied that the White House review of Mr. Kerik's background had been rushed. Scott McClellan, President Bush's press secretary, called it "a very thorough vetting process" that "looked at all the issues relating to his public, financial and personal background."

The review of Mr. Kerik's record was centered in the office of the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, who is himself in the midst of the preconfirmation process as the president's nominee to succeed John Ashcroft as attorney general."

Nice work Alberto! Lets hope he has better luck with Bin Laden.

Fallujah and the new Strategic Hamlet Program.
There has been very little news lately of what is going on with the refugees of the fighting in Fallujah.

I'm assuming at least 200,000 people are without homes as the fighting seems to have destroyed pretty much every building standing.

Where are they?

Here's some dated info from late November:

Abel Hamid Salim, spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent (IRC) in Baghdad told IPS that "while the MOH (ministry of health) gave their approval to transport aid to the refugees of Fallujah, they had provided the IRC no support of materials." He said they had no word yet when refugee families will be allowed to return to Fallujah.

Musir Khasem Ali who heads the public relations department of the health ministry says there are more than 400,000 refugees from Fallujah. He was unable to provide any details about how his ministry was assisting the refugees who are now spread all over central Iraq.

Fellow Iraqis rather than the government or even non-governmental organisations are providing most of the aid the refugees need.

The ministry claims to have done the necessary. "We provided everything the refugees needed," says Shehab Ahmed Jassim who is in charge of managing the refugee crisis for the ministry of health. "We sent 20 ambulances to the general hospital in Fallujah."

But none of these ambulances actually entered the city area. The Fallujah general hospital remained a no-go zone for people in the city trapped in their homes until very recently.

The refugees meanwhile continue to suffer. "We are aware that in the camps now there are severe problems of diarrhea, colds, flu and lack of electricity and clean water," Jassim said.

Welcome Home!

When the refugees do get to go home, they will have a big surprise in store!

The WaPo:

FALLUJAH, Iraq, Dec. 9 -- When the residents of Fallujah begin trickling back to their devastated city, they will be routed through sandbagged checkpoints where U.S. and Iraqi troops will take their fingerprints, issue ID cards and in some cases scan their irises, part of an elaborate plan to keep insurgents out of the former radical militant stronghold.

Five checkpoints have been set up leading into Fallujah, with roads south of the city blocked by sand berms, said Sattler, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

All men of military age will be processed using a central database; they will be photographed, fingerprinted and have iris scans taken before being issued ID cards. The entire process should take about 10 minutes per man, Sattler said.

No civilian vehicles will be permitted within city limits as a precaution against car bombs, which, along with roadside bombs, are the deadliest weapons in the insurgent arsenal, Sattler said. All cars will be left on the outskirts of Fallujah, and residents will be bused to their homes, district by district.

Dhar Jamail adds:

Another example of the winning of hearts and minds of Iraqis is being formulated for the residents of Fallujah. The military has announced the plans it is considering to use for allowing Fallujans back into their city.

They will set up "processing centers" on the outskirts of the city and compile a database of peoples' identities by using DNA testing and retina scans. Residents will then receive a badge which identifies them with their home address, which they must wear at all times.

Another idea being kicked around is to require the men to work for pay in military-style battalions where these "work brigades" will reconstruct buildings and the water system, depending on the men's skills.

There will also be "rubble-clearing" platoons.
The intent of the US commanders and Iraqi leaders is to make Fallujah a "model city."

Stratigic Hamlet Program '04

From the 'where have I heard this before' department...

In Vietnam they got the bright idea of locking up entire villages to keep the population away from the Viet Cong.

From All Reference:

"The cornerstone of the counterinsurgency [U.S.] effort was the strategic hamlet program, which called for the consolidation of 14,000 villages of South Vietnam into 11,000 secure hamlets, each with its own houses, schools, wells, and watchtowers.

The hamlets were intended to isolate guerrillas from the villages, their source of supplies and information, or, in Maoist terminology, to separate the fish from the sea in which they swim.

The program had its problems, however, aside from the frequent attacks on the hamlets by guerrilla units. The self-defense units for the hamlets were often poorly trained, and support from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was inadequate.

Corruption, favoritism, and the resentment of a growing number of peasants who were forcibly being forced to resettled plagued the program. It was estimated that of the 8,000 hamlets established, only 1,500 were viable."

Sounds like the whole of Iraq.

The Great game is back with petro dollar hegemony included. (Some assembly required.)

With every passing day this government looks more and more like a banana republic. We have the trade deficit, the buget deficit and the crushing national debt and now W and Co. want to borrow another 2 trillion dollars to privitize Social Security.

What is the world to think?

From Defense Talk comes this startling story:

Oct 11, 2003, 14:50
President Vladimir Putin said Thursday Russia could switch its trade in oil from dollars to euros, a move that could have far-reaching repercussions for the global balance of power -- potentially hurting the U.S. dollar and economy and providing a massive boost to the euro zone.

"We do not rule out that it is possible. That would be interesting for our European partners," Putin said...

Putin's words come in the wake of a protracted drive by the EU to attract more countries' trade and currency reserves into euros, in a bid to chip away at U.S. hegemony over the global economy and money supply.

A move by Russia, as the world's second largest oil exporter, to trade oil in euros, could provoke a chain reaction among other oil producers currently mulling a switch and would further boost the euro's gradually growing share of global currency reserves.

The BBC reports:

"Russians are buying more euros than dollars for the first time since the new European currency became available, according to the central bank.

The swing may signal the weakening grip in Russia of the US currency which has dominated the economy here for most of the past decade.

It comes after a 15% fall of the dollar against the euro this year."

The Furguson Report notes this is a much deeper problem than it might appear. It's all about the new "Great Game."

"This past February, a French intelligence-connected newsletter, Intelligence Online, wrote a piece, 'The Strategy Behind Paris-Berlin-Moscow Tie'. Referring to the UN Security Council bloc of France-Germany-Russia to try to prevent the U.S.-British war moves in Iraq, the Paris report notes the recent efforts of European and other powers to create a counterpower to that of the United States.

Referring to the new ties of France with Germany and more recently with Putin, they note, 'a new logic, and even dynamic seems to have emerged. An alliance between Paris, Moscow and Berlin running from the Atlantic to Asia could foreshadow a limit to U.S. power. For the first time since the beginning of the 20th Century, the notion of a world heartland -- the nightmare of British strategists -- has crept back into international relations.'

Mackinder, father of British geopolitics, wrote in his remarkable paper, 'The Geographical Pivot of History' that the control of the Eurasian heartland, from Normandy France to Vladivostock, was the only possible threat to oppose the naval supremacy of Britain. British diplomacy until 1914 was based on preventing any such Eurasian threat, that time around the expansion policy of the German Kaiser eastwards with the Baghdad Railway and the Tirpitz German Navy buildup.

World War I was the result. Referring to the ongoing efforts of the British and later Americans to prevent a Eurasian combination as rival, the Paris intelligence report stressed, 'That strategic approach (i.e. to create Eurasian heartland unity) lies at the origin of all clashes between Continental powers and maritime powers (UK, U.S. and Japan) ...

It is Washington's supremacy over the seas that, even now, dictates London's unshakeable support for the U.S. and the alliance between Tony Blair and Bush.'

Iraq started it: (And paid for it.)

Until November 2000, no OPEC country dared violate the dollar price rule. So long as the dollar was the strongest currency, there was little reason to as well.

But November was when French and other Euroland members finally convinced Saddam Hussein to defy the United States by selling Iraq's oil-for-food not in dollars, 'the enemy currency' as Iraq named it, but only in euros.

The euros were on deposit in a special UN account of the leading French bank, BNP Paribas. Radio Liberty of the U.S. State Department ran a short wire on the news and the story was quickly hushed.

This little-noted Iraq move to defy the dollar in favor of the euro, in itself, was insignificant. Yet, if it were to spread, especially at a point the dollar was already weakening, it could create a panic selloff of dollars by foreign central banks and OPEC oil producers.

In the months before the latest Iraq war, hints in this direction were heard from Russia, Iran, Indonesia and even Venezuela.

An Iranian OPEC official, Javad Yarjani, delivered a detailed analysis of how OPEC at some future point might sell its oil to the EU for euros not dollars. He spoke in April, 2002 in Oviedo Spain at the invitation of the EU.

All indications are that the Iraq war was seized on as the easiest way to deliver a deadly pre-emptive warning to OPEC and others, not to flirt with abandoning the Petro-dollar system in favor of one based on the euro."