FBI to Open Cases via Profiling;
MI5: Don't Bother
Bush is trying to permanently widen FBI prerogatives in opening investigations of US citizens before leaving office. His new guidelines would allow an investigation to begin on the basis of data-mining and profiling, with no evidence of suspected wrong-doing.
See my Salon.com article on this issue.
This, at a time when the British MI-5 is finding that profiling is useless for identifying potential terrorists there. Those who turn to terror are not usually religious, or well-trained religiously, are not necessarily young or single, and don't belong to particular ethnic groups.
How profiling can turn bad is illustrated by this pilot who is on a watch list, with his livelihood threatened, for no reason.
Given how pusillanimous most telecom companies have been in the face of demands that they cooperate with illegal surveillance requests on their clients that privacy mode in browsers may become important.
From Reddit.com:
Dear CNN: Please stop calling evangelicals 'values voters.' I have values, too.
Buchanan accuses 'McCain's neocon warmonger' of treason (rawstory.com)
The view from 2016 at Tomdispatch.com.
posted by Juan Cole @ 8/24/2008 01:55:00 AM
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Re McCain connection to top advisor Randy Scheunemann's big-league lobbying for Georgia's Saakishvilli:
Chase the connection a bit further, between Likud and Georgia's current Defense Minister. Davit Kezerashvili is a former Israeli who has brought in 1000 Isreali military advisors, and fast-tracked substantial arms purchases.
Kezerashvilli has been known to address Isreali radio audiences with his fluent Hebrew, and was publicly (prematurely) thanking israel for Georgia's stunning victory and destruction of Russsian tanks and jets. When Georgia exhorts Israel to apply pressure on Russia, exactly which lever is Likud being asked to pull? Olmert's red phone goes to our Veep, and McCain's AIPAC friends, not Moscow.
But wait, there's more! Isreali press is carrying strong rumors that Israel was advancing plans to transport Caspian oil (via Georgian-Black sea pipeline) to an Isreali-Indian Ocean pipe, feeding the hungry oriental appetite.
The Israelis were training Georgians in Special Forces scouting/blocking ops, and urban war/COIN, skills that were key to the Georgian gambit to retake Ossetia.
All this brings me to my question, which is who in our government knew what, and when? The US Marines conducted a major joint-force military exercise in Georgia just last month. We were commanding 2,000 Georgian troops in Iraq, and provided airlift to rush them home after Russia crossed into Georgia. Former Isreali officers doing advanced training in Georgia had to be operating with US approval, some level of US oversight, possibly on US funding.
There's more to the story of disaster in Georgia than Russian revanchism. Preventing FSU Russia from emerging as a great power, or even a critical-region power, is foundational to the Cheney PNAC goal of unipolar world domination. Keeping nuclear Russia from wielding it's energy clout might tempt someone inspired by the 1967 war into a high-risk adventure.
We have a smoking gun. Let's do the rest of the forensics. Follow the money, motivation and opportunity. If only there was a co-equal branch of gov't watching over our executive...
PS:
Georgia president denies Israel halted military aid due to war
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1011298.html
It turns out that there is a second Israeli cabinet minister in Georgia, according to Saakishvilli, as reported in Haaretz. State Minister for Territorial Integration Temur Yakobashvili was in charge of peace negotiations, until he says he recommended an armed response.
Haaretz denies Yakobashvilli had dual citizenship like the defense minister, but credits him as a zionist leader, fluent in Hebrew.
Daily Saakishvilli contacts with VP Cheney also makes it into the Georgian narrative in this now-dated article.
Curiouser and curiouser
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