Troopergate and Palin

Witness flips in troopergate.

A private contractor now admits under oath that she was pressured by Palin's office over Palin's attempt vindictively to fire her ex-brother-in-law.
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Al-Maliki: US Cannot Afford to Stay; Physicians to Carry Weapons

In an interview with the Associated Press, PM Nuri al-Maliki warned that the future is dark if Iraq and the US do not agree on a security pact. And without a pact, he said, all the security progress made in the last year would be at risk. He points out that the alternative is to go back to the UN security council for an extension of Chapter 7 authorization of foreign troops in Iraq, and that UNSC approval is no longer assured because Russia may be in a bad mood after the Georgia tiff. He says Iraq still insists that US troops who are off base and not on a military mission, who commit crimes in Iraq, must be tried in Iraqi courts.

Al-Maliki, who wants a timetable for US withdrawal by the end of 2010, ended the interview with a clever appeal over Bush's head to the American public:

' "If I had enough funds to assist the American economy, I would do all that I can. But unfortunately Iraq cannot solve America's economic problems.

"But what Iraq can do is take up more responsibility security-wise here inside Iraq. And I have told the Americans repeatedly that we are ready to take up responsibility here in Iraq so there are less losses, a decreased number of American lives lost, and I am prepared to present this case before the American people. ...'

Maybe al-Maliki has been reading John Gray, who writes, "The global financial crisis will see the US falter in the same way the Soviet Union did when the Berlin Wall came down. The era of American dominance is over . . ."

Al-Maliki is reminding an economically prostrate America that it cannot afford to buck him on the troop withdrawal timetable. Literally cannot afford! As in, best you go home now and let us take care of security, and save what little money you have left. And, oh, thanks for forking over the $1 trillion while you still had it . . . I guess he is not afraid of McCain's forlorn hope of keeping a US military base on Iraqi soil (expensive!).

To paraphrase T.S. Elliot, "This is the way the [war] ends/ This is the way the [war] ends/This is the way the [war] ends/Not with a bang but a whimper."

The Iraqi government will permit physicians to carry firearms. The decree is a bid to tempt back to Iraq 8,000 medical doctors who have fled the country because they were targeted by guerrillas hoping to destabilize the country by crippling its services. The problem I see with this decree is that many of the physicians have been personally threatened by armed militias. So you'd have to believe you were a quick draw, a good shot, and able to mow down several guys with AK-47s before they could get you, before you would go back.

This sort of stunt, and the situation it is meant to address, both prove how terrible is the situation in Iraq still. If it were 'calm,' the physicians would come back without firearms. If the police and government amounted to anything, the doctors would not have to pack heat themselves. Another thing that works against the physicians' return is that they can survive in Jordan and Syria. Even though they cannot get formal work permits,they can hire on to clinics as 'consultants'. If they have capital, they can also invest locally (in Jordan at least, an investment of $100,000 gets you a residency visa).

Sunday's bombings in Baghdad, and the killing of nearly 100 civilians in Baghdad during Ramadan, raise questions for Iraqis. Is this increase in violence a secular trend, a sign of deterioration, or is it just that guerrillas have more spare time during the month of fasting (when typically people do not work full work days, and lots of people circulate for dinner (i.e. breaking-the-fast) parties. Although this Ramadan was 40% less deadly than last year, it was also more deadly than July and August.

Iraq is buying 12 reconnaissance planes from the US. This purchase is a step toward the Iraqi government regaining control of Iraq's skies. Now that it has more of an armored corps in the army, it needs fighter jets and bombers to provide air cover for them. The US is not ready to relinquish Iraqi air space, but PM Nuri al-Maliki probably sees this purchase as a step in that direction.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Monday:

' Baghdad

- Mortars hit Hurriyah neighborhood (northwest Baghdad). Five people were injured with one house was damaged.

- Mortars hit Ghazaliyah neighborhood (northwest Baghdad) near Um Al-Qura mosque. Three people were injured with some houses nearby were damaged.

- Mortars hit Abu Ghraib (west of Baghdad). One person was injured with two houses were damaged.

- Police found one dead body in Saidiyah in Karkh bank (south Baghdad) today.

Mosul

- Sunday night, a bomb was put under a taxi car detonated in Abu Tamam intersection in Mosul city. Only the taxi driver was injured in that incident.

- Around 5:30 pm a car bomb detonated in Nabi Yunis neighborhood in Mosul before the Iraqi army experts defuse it. Nine people were injured including 5 Peshmerga members of the PDK.'

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Karzai: Civilian Gov't of Pakistan better against Terrorism; Pakistan Bajaur Campaign Leaves 15 Dead

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai believes that the new civilian government will take more effective steps against the Pakistani Taliban on the Afghan border.

This stance is the opposite of that of John McCain, who supported military dictator Pervez Musharraf (who was forced to resign as president in August under threat of impeachment).

Pakistani forces claim to have killed 15 Taliban north of Khar in the Bajaur tribal agency overnight. The fighting in this northernmost of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) is said to have displaced 20,000 individuals to Kunar Province in Afghanistan, as well as hundreds of thousands of local residents to elsewhere in Pakistan.

In a reversal of charges, Pakistan is now saying that Pakistani Taliban in Bajaur are receiving aid and volunteers from Afghanistan. Most often the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments have charged that the Tehrik-i Taliban of Pakistan has aided Afghan Taliban mounting attacks on NATO troops.

Aljazeera English reports on the Bajaur battle:


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Kaptur: Playing Wall Street Bailout

Representative Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) on how the Reality Game, "Wall Street Bailout," is played:



See also Chalmers Johnson at Tomdispatch.com on the Pentagon Bailout Fraud.
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Bombings in Baghdad Kill 34, Wound 100; Arab-Kurdish Violence in Diyala

A wave of deadly bombings and other attacks swept Baghdad on Sunday, killing nearly three dozen persons and wounding over 100.

The attacks on Shiite neighborhoods were likely intended to remind the Iraqi public on the eve of Eid al-Fitr (the celebration of the end of the fasting month of Ramadan) that the Sunni guerrilla movement is still active and has not been defeated.

The situation in Iraq is dire, and the discourse about Iraq in the presidential campaign is often disconnected from reality. McCain is asserting that "victory" is at hand and rewriting his own history of support for Bush's invasion and policies there. Now the McCain people are trying to claim that McCain called for the resignation of former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, which he certainly did not.

And, the McCain call for "victory," meaning an Iraq that can police its own borders, begs the question of what those borders even are. ("Kurdistan" is not a settled place). See below.

The attacks come days after the Iraqi parliament finally approved enabling legislation for provincial elections. The parliamentarians agreed to postpone elections in the disputed oil province of Kirkuk.

I have long been a proponent of early provincial elections. The Sunni Arab provinces have never had proper elections since the January 2005 polls were boycotted because Bush leveled Fallujah. The elections could create a new post-Baath political elite in the Sunni Arab provinces that has legitimacy and actually represents big constituencies. Some of the trouble in Diyala comes from minority Shiite dominance of a majority Sunni province. If the al-Maliki government wants to find a Sunni negotiating partner (which is still unclear), the provincial leaders to be elected next winter could fit the bill. Some of them will go on to national political careers. A lot of Sunnis are still secular, and could begin the process of moving away from religious fundamentalist parties always dominating.

The likely emergence of significant political rivals among the Sunnis would cause the fundamentalist vigilantes to redouble their efforts to destabilize Iraq further.

On the other hand,that parliament had to postpone elections in Kirkuk is a very bad sign, as is the military and paramilitary conflict between Arabs and Kurds.

Kurds are reversing Saddam's ethnic cleansing drive of earlier decades, returning and expelling Arabs. Not all Kurds going to such regions are returnees, and not all the Arabs being forced out are internal migrants.

Iraqi police and Kurdish paramilitary members seem to have had a shoot-out in Jalaula on Sunday that left a Kurdish politician dead.

In nearby Sa'adiya, a Kurdish mayor was wounded in a bombing.

McClatchy reports details of political violence in Iraq on Sunday:

' Baghdad

- Around 8 a.m. a roadside bomb targeted an Iraqi army vehicle in Mansour neighborhood, killing one soldier and injuring two soldiers and a civilian.

- Around 1 p.m. American soldiers searched an empty house in Zayuna neighborhood and shot randomly, injuring two civilians in the area, Iraqi police said. U.S. military said they had no information about the incident.

- Around 5:30 p.m. a parked car bomb exploded in a busy market in Shurta Rabaa neighborhood, southwest Baghdad, killing 12 civilians and injuring 35 others.

- Around 5:30 p.m. a bomb planted in a car exploded on a main road near Al Bayaa neighborhood, killing one and injuring one.

- Around 7 p.m. a parked car bomb exploded in the busy market area of Karrada neighborhood in central Baghdad, followed by a roadside bomb that killed 19 civilians and injured 72 others.

- Police found two dead bodies throughout Baghdad, one near Al Rasheed Camp and one in Hurriyah.

Diyala

- Around 9 a.m. a roadside bomb targeted Ahmed Samir Zargush, the mayor of Al Saidiyah town, about 50 miles east of Baquba. Zargush was injured along with three of his bodyguards and two civilians.

Nineveh

- Gunmen killed one citizen, a Christian, in Al Baladiyat neighborhood and in another incident gunmen killed a man and injured his brother in Mosul.'

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Daragahi: Damascus Bombing Payback from Radical Sunnis

These bombings in Baghdad follow a major such attack in Damascus, Syria, which was probably carried out by radical revivalist Sunnis ("Salafis") to punish the Syrian regime for cracking down on their movements, both into Iraq and between Lebanon and Syria. The Syrian regime, as Borzou Daragahi points out, is also a strong backer of the Shiite Hizbullah militia and at the same time has been negotiating with Israel via Turkey. The Baath leaders of Syria, as secularists from an Alawi (heterodox Shiite) background, were already seen as infidels worthy of death by the radical Sunnis. But this list of charges against them would drive radical Salafis to violence.

Aljzaeera English reports on the Damascus bombing:



Joshua Landis has more.
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Obama Won: Gallup/USA Today Poll; 52% Say Obama best to Fix Problems, vs. 35% for McCain

In addition to those two snap polls done just after the debate on Friday by CNN and by CBS, there is now further evidence that Obama won the first debate handily.

A Gallup/ USA Today poll of 701 viewers of the debate done on Saturday found that 46% of viewers said Barack Obama did better; 34% said McCain did. Obviously, there is still a big group of viewers who saw it as a tie or could not decide.

But it is not so important who they thought was the better debater. The big news in this poll is about economic competence, on which over half of viewers gave the nod to Obama while only a little over a third did to McCain

Obama picked up 16 points on the question of how favorably the public views him, whereas for McCain it was a wash. And in this poll viewers were overwhelmingly more enthusiastic about Obama as a steward of the US economy than about McCain

Other scores:

Which candidate offered the best proposals for change to solve America's problems?

Obama 52%
McCain 35%

Obama made great strides in public acceptance according to this poll. Although a little over half of viewers said their view of him did not change, 30% said they became more favorable toward Obama after seeing the debate. He lost ground with only 14%

The poll did not advance McCain's campaign. 56% said it did not change their view of him, and 21% said it gave them a more unfavorable view of him, while he improved with another 21%. Since McCain was already behind in the polls going into the debate, this result is very bad for him.

While McCain was dead in the water on favorability, he actually lost ground on perceived economic competence. %37 percent said they had less confidence in his ability to fix the economy after saying the debate, while only 24% said they had more. These figures were almost the reverse in Obama's case, which is to say, he gained 8 points on this issue while McCain lost 15.

On national security issues it was a tie, which is, again, very bad news for McCain! Not so long ago the Republicans were attempting to portray Sarah Palin as having more executive and foreign policy experience than Obama! It was their hope that McCain would come across as a wise elder statesman and Obama as uninformed and naive. Instead, Americans see Obama as McCain's peer on foreign policy issues!

The poll has a plus or minus margin of error of 4%. That means that the overwhelming margin of victory for Obama on competence in problem-solving and ability to deal with the economy, and the massive loss of confidence in McCain on the economy, are very solid findings.

It seems to me likely that the stunt McCain pulled, of trying to cancel the debates, raised questions in the public's mind about his competence. His pick of Palin as running mate (about which he unwisely boasted in the debate) might have shored up the Republican base a little, but that is now only 33% of the electorate, and she will hurt him with everyone else. That 52-35 spread on competence in my view is the big takeaway from this poll.

Gallup is a fine polling agency and I am sure it did its best to weight the respondents by age, income and region. The USA Today article did not provide that information. But the likelihood is that they in fact over-represented the Republicans, because youth and African-Americans are harder to poll, with many of them first-time registrants, and they may well come out for Obama this year, voting in unprecedented numbers because they now finally feel they have a stake in the system, with this candidate.

These results should not make Democrats sanguine. Kerry won his debates with W., but W. went on to destroy Iraq further and then bring down the whole American economy around our ears.

We could still be at war with Iran next year this time, with Captain McCain lobbying nukes at Isfahan from his sub in the Persian Gulf, with all the unpleasant backlash that would entail.
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Saudi Oil Moguls fear Hybrid Cars

Saudi Arabia wants lower petroleum prices. As a country with enormous reserves, Riyadh would like to preserve their value. In contrast, countries like Algeria with relatively shallow reserves want to get top dollar for their petroleum while it lasts.

Businessweek provides the telling quote:

' Any threat to oil's leading role as a source of energy is a big worry for a country that sits on reserves of some 260 billion barrels. "We are concerned about the permanent destruction of demand," says a senior Saudi official. "Those who buy hybrid vehicles are not going back to SUVs." '

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Iraqi Hopes for US Troop Withdrawal

One of the things that struck me about Friday night's debate on the time line for troop withdrawal was that McCain appeared to believe that how long US troops remain in Iraq and at what strength is a unilateral matter dictated by Washington. The government of prime minister Nuri al-Maliki is already trying to negotiate a timetable for US withdrawal as part of the proposed security agreement. A majority of parliament certainly supports a timetable.

Indeed, the Iraqi government wanted a 2010 deadline for withdrawal. Bush pushed for a delay until 2015 in part because he was afraid that agreeing to 2010 would make McCain look bad. The Iraqis were forced to accept 2011.

There is even less tolerance for a long term foreign troop presence among ordinary Iraqis, thousands of whom have lost relatives to US military operations. Aljazeera English reports on the death of a respected Iraqi academic in Baquba, shot at a US checkpoint.



One exception to this yearning to see the Americans go is the some of the Kurds, who as a minority trying to remain independent of Baghdad and able to confront Turkey. Some Kurds would very much like to keep US troops in Iraq. This Kurdish aspiration explains Iraqi foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari's continual announcements about there being no timetable in the security agreement. Clearly, the Shiite Arabs do want a timetable.

It is not just Iraqis. About 60 percent of Americans want a timeline for US troop withdrawal from Iraq.

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Palin Says She did Not Have Money to Travel in Youth; But She went to College in Hawaii!

On seeing this part of the Couric interview of Palin, I suddenly remembered something about her:

' Couric: In preparing for this conversation, a lot of our viewers … and Internet users wanted to know why you did not get a passport until last year. And they wondered if that indicated a lack of interest and curiosity in the world.

Palin: I'm not one of those who maybe came from a background of, you know, kids who perhaps graduate college and their parents give them a passport and give them a backpack and say go off and travel the world.

No, I've worked all my life. In fact, I usually had two jobs all my life until I had kids. I was not a part of, I guess, that culture. The way that I have understood the world is through education, through books, through mediums that have provided me a lot of perspective on the world.'

Video here:



But, but . . .

she went to college for a while in Hawaii!. Do you know how long it takes to fly to Hawaii from Alaska? And do you know how expensive it is to live in Hawaii? Milk is $5 a gallon (not many places to put cows on the islands, so it is imported).

It is a five and a half hour flight from Anchorage to Honolulu, i.e. an hour less than the flight from JFK to London.

So Palin seemed to have money to gallivant around plenty, hopping from college to college over 6 years. Maybe she held down part time jobs as an undergraduate. So do lots of people. Studies show that such students get better grades because they have to organize their time.

I just don't think she was interested.

And, if you think she ever read any books about foreign countries, raise your hand.
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Debate Fact Check 5

About that claim by McCain that he warned about the mortgage crisis:

McCain: "But -- but let me -- let me point out, I also warned about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and warned about corporate greed and excess, and CEO pay, and all that. A lot of us saw this train wreck coming."

In fact, he has already admitted that he did not see the financial meltdown coming.

"But I don't really know of anybody,with the exception of a handful, who said, 'wait a minute, this thing is getting out of hand and is over-heating.' I'd like to be able to tell you I anticipated it, but I have to give you straight talk, I did not."


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Debate Fact Check 3

Did Henry Kissinger advise direct talks with Iran at the highest levels?

Yes.

Kissinger gave an interview with Bloomberg Television News Service on March 14, 2008:

' "One should be prepared to negotiate, and I think we should be prepared to negotiate about Iran," Kissinger . . . said in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Asked whether he meant the U.S. should hold direct talks, Kissinger, 84, responded: "Yes, I think we should." . . . '

Not only did he advocate such talks, he personally engaged in them!

' "I've been in semi-private, totally private talks with Iranians," he said. "They've had put before them approaches that with a little flexibility on their part would, in my view, surely lead to negotiations." '

Kissinger added:

' "It's not really the willingness to talk, it's so far the inability to define what we are trying to accomplish," Kissinger said. "The negotiations depend on a balance of incentives and penalties. Have we got those right at every point? Not at every point." . . . The Nobel Peace Prize winner said any direct talks between the U.S. and Iran on issues such as the nuclear dispute would be most likely to succeed if they first involved only diplomatic staff and progressed to the level of secretary of state before the heads of state meet.'

So Kissinger envisaged the heads of state meeting. N.B. that would be the US president and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (Ahmadinejad as president is a lesser figure in the Iranian system.)

He explicitly said that the talks should begin "without conditions."

Kissinger did advise a progression from lower level to higher level, despite his call for no pre-conditions.

Kissinger didn't seem embarrassed at all by the kind of considerations McCain instanced in the debate, of legitimating the Iranian government and the way it talks dirty about Israel by a US president's meeting with its top leaders.

The difference is that Kissinger is a foreign policy realist and McCain is surrounding himself with Neoconservatives.
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Debate fact-check 2: The Surge

In the debate, McCain promised 'victory' in Iraq and praised the surge.

First of all, it isn't 'victory' if Baghdad's best hospital doesn't even have working elevators any more.

Second of all, the violence fell in Baghdad because the Sunnis were massacred or chased to Syria, leaving few mixed neighborhoods, not because of 'take, clear, hold' (which is in fact a tactic, not a strategy). Satellite pictures show Sunni Baghdad dark now.
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Fact-Checking 1

Fact-checking the debate (transcript available here).

For Pakistan and the controversy over McCain's ridiculous assertion that Pakistan was a 'failed state' in 1999 when Musharraf made his coup, see my "McCain's Holiday from History" from last February (the terms of the debate between McCain and Obama on these issues, interestingly hasn't changed).

But one thing that has changed is that Pakistan made its transition from military to civilian rule, a transition McCain was not enthusiastic about-- he supported military dictator Pervez Musharraf.

By the way, Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister against whom Musharraf made the coup, is the leader of the major opposition party in parliament, the Muslim League. Isn't McCain dissing Nawaz Sharif big time, equating his term as prime minister with Somalia? Moreover, Musharraf kept the current president of Pakistan, Asaf Ali Zardari, in prison for several years and threatened his wife, Benazir Bhutto, with a jail sentence as well, as a way of keeping civilian politicians out of power.

Given this 'failed state' allegation against the civilian politicians now in power in Pakistan, hasn't McCain just screwed up any chance he had of a close working relationship with the new government?

I mean, it would be like saying that dictator Leonid Kuchma of the Ukraine was doing his best and had to act as he did in cracking down on dissent in the Ukraine because it was a failed state, and then saying you hope to have a good working relationship with dissident activist and now president Viktor Yushchenko today! (McCain probably would have adopted that stance if Kuchma had been a right-wing dictator instead of a Soviet holdover.

And, imagine, McCain accused Obama of poisoning relations with Pakistan by saying he'd take the shot at Bin Laden if we found him!
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Debate Fact Check 4

McCain said in the debate:

' So we have a long way to go in our intelligence services. We have to do a better job in human intelligence. And we've got to -- to make sure that we have people who are trained interrogators so that we don't ever torture a prisoner ever again.'

Last winter, McCain voted against a bill that would have disallowed waterboarding by the CIA.

US Intelligence Chief Mike McConnell has essentially admitted that waterboarding is torture.

The bill McCain rejected would have constrained CIA operatives from violating the interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual, a public document.

McCain wanted the CIA to continue to be able to deploy secretive interrogation techniques not mentioned in the Army manual. Of course, we don't know what those are or whether they meet the definition of torture. In any case, McCain had a chance to force Bush to stop waterboarding and he declined to take it.

McCain continues to say he is against waterboarding, which makes his vote hard to understand.

Here is McCain on Bill O'Reilly last May:

'CHANNEL "THE O'REILLY FACTOR" INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN
(R-AZ) INTERVIEWER: BILL O'REILLY SUBJECT: WATERBOARDING, IRAN, IRAQ WAR, PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN TIME: 8:37 P.M. EDT DATE: FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2008

(Begin videotaped interview.)

MR. O'REILLY: Let's take war on terror first. You're opposed to waterboarding.

SEN. MCCAIN: Yes.

MR. O'REILLY: And I disagree with you on that. I think the president of the United States, just the president, should have the legal authority to order waterboarding in extraordinary circumstances. Now, according to Tenet and to President Bush, used three times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, al-Nashiri and Abu Zubaydah. All three times, the men broke when they were waterboarded, and they gave out information, according to the Bush administration, that saved thousands of lives.

SEN. MCCAIN: Well, first of all, the scenario you're talking about is one million to one. Second of all, well, you know that when torture anybody, we know, that they'll give you things only that that they want you to --

MR. O'REILLY: These people gave up very good information.

SEN. MCCAIN: They gave up very bad information, too, according to some sources. But the point is, do you want to abrogate the Geneva Conventions? In the next war that we're in, if you want an American tortured, a service man or woman, by some foreign country when we're in another war and because we did it to the people in our captivity --

MR. O'REILLY: (Inaudible) -- not soldiers, though. They're not entitled to Geneva Conventions.

SEN. MCCAIN: Yes, they are.

MR. O'REILLY: No, not a one.

SEN. MCCAIN: The Geneva Conventions apply -- oh, in all due respect, I'll send you the information. Geneva applies to every person who is held in captivity by another country.

MR. O'REILLY: Even criminals?

SEN. MCCAIN: Even criminals if they are in combat. Now, there's a difference between uniformed combatant and non-uniformed combatant.

MR. O'REILLY: Do you think 9/11, they were combatant soldiers, though?

SEN. MCCAIN: I think we're in a war against radical Islamic extremism, and I think that war is all over the globe. And I believe, as Colin Powell does and these military officers who have spent an entire career, that the Geneva Conventions call for a prohibition --

MR. O'REILLY: They apply to everybody.

SEN. MCCAIN: -- a prohibition for inhumane, cruel and degrading treatment. And their concern is what happens to Americans in future wars if they are held captive.

MR. O'REILLY: Now, we're not fighting a nation now.

SEN. MCCAIN: We are fighting a conflict. And the Geneva Conventions have clear applications.

MR. O'REILLY: We'll have a gentleman's disagreement on that one. Dick Morris wants me to ask you this question.'

(Uh, O'Reilly cannot have a gentleman's agreement with anyone; he is not a gentleman. Even if it weren't for the Great Loofah Scandal, he obviously supports torture.)
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CBS Poll of Independents: Obama Won

Keith Olbermann just read out the results of a snap poll of 500 uncommitted voters commissioned by CBS News just after Friday night's presidential debate:

(The snap poll is here):

Obama won: 40%

Tie: 38%

McCain won: 22%


46% of independent voters said their opinion of Obama had improved

55% said McCain would make the right decisions about Iraq

49% said Obama would make the right decisions about Iraq

And:

' Forty-six percent of uncommitted voters said their opinion of Obama got better tonight. Thirty-two percent said their opinion of McCain got better.

Sixty-six percent of uncommitted voters think Obama would make the right decisions about the economy. Forty-two percent think McCain would.'

That's a pretty impressive 20-point lead for Obama on the economy, now the most important issue in the race!

I have to say I thought the debate was closer than that and am surprised these uncommitted voters gave it so lopsidedly to Obama.

TPM has a CNN snap poll of a mixed audience that was watching the debate:

These were the statistics from this snap poll that seemed to me most interesting:

' Next, regardless of which presidential candidate you support, please tell me if you think Barack Obama or John McCain would better handle each of the following issues:

• The war in Iraq: Obama 52%, McCain 47%

• Terrorism: McCain 49%, Obama 45%

• The economy: Obama 58%, McCain 37%

• The current financial crisis: Obama 54%, McCain 36%

Thinking about the following characteristics and qualities, please say whether you think each one better described Barack Obama or John McCain during tonight's debate:

• Was more intelligent: Obama 55%, McCain 30%

• Expressed his views more clearly: Obama 53%, McCain 36%

• Spent more time attacking his opponent: McCain 60%, Obama 23%

• Was more sincere and authentic: Obama 46%, McCain 38%

• Seemed to be the stronger leader: Obama 49%, McCain 43%

• Was more likeable: Obama 61%, McCain 26%

• Was more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you: Obama 62%, McCain 32% '

This audience trusted Obama much more on the economy than McCain, saw him as almost McCain's equal on security issues, and found Obama far more likeable and intelligent and strong.

Gee, maybe this really is a win for McCain.

Of course these snap polls are really flawed as social science instruments, and it will be the middle of next week before we get something more reliable. Unfortunately, the further polling will be contaminated by the bad economic news if there isn't a deal in congress soon.
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Palin's Russian Roulette

On being a Russia expert by virtue of contiguity:

"We have trade missions back and forth," Palin told Couric. "We, we do, it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America, where, where do they go? It's Alaska."

Putin rears his head and comes into US air space? Is she Dr. Strangelove?



The LAT blog notes,

'In fact, a veteran reporter from her home state, Hal Bernton, reported in the Seattle Times this month how Russian politicians had sought more contact with Palin, but in vain. The governor cut funding and her office's participation, it seems, in the Northern Forum, which promotes relations between regional governments in the Northern Hemisphere.'

Note that Russia is not in the top 20 trading partners of Alaska.



I am not sure if it is the witch of deceit or of inarticulateness that is afflicting her,but I don't think this guy finished the job:


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US Helicopters Fired on By Pakistani Troops

Pakistani troops fired on US military helicopters on Thursday. Pakistani officials insisted that the helicopters, which were not hit, had strayed into Pakistani territory. The Pentagon denied this charge. President Asaf Ali Zardari, meeting with US Secretary of State Condi Rice, attempted to paper over the incident, asseting that the Pakistani troops had only been firing flares to mark the border for their American colleagues.

If the Pakistani troops had managed to hit the US helicopters, the latter would have fired back, creating a serious international incident.

In fact,such an exchange of fire took place this past summer between the US and Pakistan, leaving 11 Pakistani troops dead. The cover story at the time had been that the Pakistanis were killed accidentally.

Apparently, along the border there has been a hot war going on for some time between US and Pakistani forces, since Pakistani border patrols support the Taliban over the foreigners.

These incidents do not affect cordial US-Pakistani relations, since everyone knows they are not ordered by the prime minister or president in Islamabad.

Afghanistan has called for joint patrols with Pakistan along their mutual borders.

Aljazeera English reports on the Afghan reaction to the US presidential elections. AFghan elders advise against increasing the number of foreign troops in the country.



NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer answers questions about the mission in Afghanistan. Scheffer disagrees with the Afghans interviewed above, and wants more troops in Afghanistan. He predicts that Afghanistan will be a central issue for the next American president.


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McCain Rushes Campaign to Nowhere

Mao Zedong announced the adage by which John McCain is clearly living now: "The enemy advances, we retreat. / The enemy camps, we harass. / The enemy tires, we attack." Mao was describing not a conventional but a guerrilla war, and McCain is now unexpectedly playing the Filipino insurgents of 1899 to Obama's America. Guerrilla wars are waged by the weak but wily. McCain has all but announced that his conventional campaign has crashed and burned. We do not know if the prepping for the debate was a disaster, or it turns out you really can't let Palin be interviewed freely by normal people, or whether terror set in that a second great depression will turn the country starkly to the left for the foreseeable future.

Far from challenging Obama in swing states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Colorado, McCain is suddenly behind substantially in all three (McCain 45% to Obama's 49% in Colorado; McCain 44% to Obama 51% in Michigan).

McCain thus threw off his stiff officer's uniform and donned the silky black pyjamas of the guerrilla, beating a hasty retreat before the Obama surge. The retreat was dressed up as a "suspension" of the campaign and a "postponement" of the debate (a debate that would have been McCain's Waterloo. Forced to debate a charismatic policy wonk on top of economic issues on the very week of the financial meltdown, the economically challenged McCain would have gone down flaming to decisive defeat.

Thus McCain's Long March back to Washington and his suspension of a campaign he cannot win by conventional means.

The panic of Wall Street and its Republican ventriloquists is palpable. What must be running through their heads? Is this another 1929? Will they lose everything? Is Obama another FDR, with a New Deal in his coat pocket, which the public is now primed to demand? Is the Iraq gravy train really finished? Is universal health care an assured thing? What will happen to their vacation homes in the Hamptons, or the pieds-a-terre in Jamaica, or the private jet for spontaneous partying in Rio? How will they ever get ahead again if they have to pay their fair share of taxes? Could Obama and Biden preside over 16 years of Democratic Raj? Could their entire fate for decades have been sealed as early as Friday night?

Nothing is more difficult than to execute an orderly retreat in the face of superior enemy firepower. The troops are constantly tempted to break and run, in which case the army is lost. Mustafa Kemal (later Attaturk) pulled off a fighting retreat in northern Syria as the Ottomans withdrew to Anatolia, thereby saving his army.

McCain made several perhaps fatal mistakes on his Long March. He allowed Sarah Palin to be interviewed on television again, this time by Katie Couric. It is therefore McCain's fault that Palin was permitted to respond to a question of whether the US faces a second Great Depression, "Unfortunately, that is the road that America may find itself on."

It is not a message that from a Republican party strategic point of view, should, in such stark terms, have been delivered to an already anxiety-ridden public here is the video:



The greatest calamity of all struck the McCain camp on the David Letterman show, when David found out that contrary to his assurances, McCain was not on his way to Washington. Rather, McCain had deliberately substituted a serious interview by tv news anchor Couric for a more light-hearted appearance on Letterman.

David Letterman, among the more feared interviewers on television, who has reduced Cindy Crawford and Paris Hilton to tears for the fun of it and went mano-a-mano with Madonna over their respective headgear, was not a man to be trifled with.

He actually got hold of video of McCain getting made up for the Katie Couric interview, having not left for the airport in any case. It was one thing for McCain to cancel, it was another for his campaign to blow off Letterman in favor of Couric.



McCain's retreat has been hasty and poorly planned, so that it looks more like a rout than a clever guerrilla movement. Not all guerrilla wars succeed, after all-- the Philippines was subdued by US forces with long hard fighting. McCain, having lost to a guerrilla war, may now face the irony that he is not only not successful in conventional struggles, but has not mastered the form of his greatest enemies.

And the American public, who had expected him to stand his ground and fight, had been expecting an Eisenhower, not a Ho Chi Minh, will hardly be delighted.
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Cole in Salon: Bashing Ahmadinejad

My column is out at Salon.com:

"Obama goes over the top in bashing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad:"

Once again, U.S. politicians, including both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama, pile on the Iranian president. Why does Larry King (!) sound like the adult in the room?

excerpt:

'As for the imposition of economic sanctions on Iran, it might be worth considering for a moment whether the U.S., with its faltering economy, is even able to cause a major oil exporter such as Iran much harm through a unilateral boycott. The law passed by Congress at the insistence of the Israel lobby, placing sanctions on firms doing business in Iran, does not punish those who merely distribute or import Iranian petroleum. Does Obama want to go even further with sanctions? If Congress really could close down Iran's production of 4 million barrels a day, it would cause the price of petroleum to soar and throw the U.S. into a deep recession or depression. From the point of view of a reality-based foreign policy, this sort of step is known as "cutting off your nose to spite your face." Russia and China are now balking at placing any further sanctions on Iran via the United Nations Security Council. (Russia is not exactly in a cooperative mood after the drubbing it took from U.S. politicians over its intervention to protect South Ossetia from Georgia.)

The sanctions have in any case had no effect on Iranian policy, though they are keeping Iran's gas fields from being developed by American and European firms, a task that may fall to Russia's Gazprom or its Chinese counterpart instead. (One would not advise a President Obama to threaten to cut off economic cooperation with China over its Iran investments, given how much U.S. debt Beijing holds.) Since natural gas is a global market, this boycott of Iran harms American consumers twice, causing the price of gas to be higher than necessary and making sure that the development of Iranian gas creates no jobs for Americans and brings no profits into this country. '

Read the whole thing.
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McCain admits Country has no current President

McCain says he will suspend his political campaign on Thursday morning and is calling for a cancellation of the debate.

Joe Barton (R-Texas) just came on CNN and said there are not 50 votes in the House for the Paulson plan. In otherwords,the financial markets are flying on one engine for a while, with no guarantee of swift government intervention.

Isn't McCain's desperate move an admission that there is currently no president? I mean, why does everything hang on a senator from Arizona? Shouldn't it be Bush who is handling this? We've long known that the emperor has no clothes, but McCain is making a "Republicans Gone Wild" video with this grandstanding.

Very suspicious that as soon as Obama is up 9% in the polls, all of a sudden the mess the Republicans made is so important that McCain can't go on competing with his rival.
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Palin wasTalking with Karzai about his Son!

You know those ballyhooed meetings of Sarah Palin with world leaders? What if they weren't even talking about foreign policy? Since the press was kept out, how would we know? But the press did get one glimpse:

'The first meeting was with Afghan President Hamed Karzai, and the content was hardly diplomatic dynamite. According to a CNN producer who was let into Mr Karzai's hotel suite after earlier being barred, Mr Karzai was talking about his son. Ms Palin was nodding, and asked his name. Mr Karzai replied his name was Mirwais, meaning "light of the house". The media were escorted out after about 40 seconds.'

He was talking about the meaning of his son's name? So this conversation mints her as a foreign policy expert?

Then I heard some guy on tv today saying that Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili had remarked after meeting her that Palin had 'asked the right questions.'

Isn't that the guy who launched an aggressive attack on South Ossetia, provoked a Russian response, started a war and then got his behind handed to him by Putin?

Is he the one we really want vetting our politicians for how sharp they are?
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McCain's Aide's Lobbying for Criminal Failed Mortgage Firm

Michael Tomasky writes:

'The lobbying firm of Rick Davis, the manager, was being paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac until last month. That fact is a direct contradiction of words McCain had spoken Sunday night. At that time, responding to a Times story being prepared for Monday's paper revealing that Davis had been the head of a lobbying consortium led by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae until 2005, McCain said Davis had done no further work for either mortgage giant. Someone's lying – either Davis to McCain, or McCain to the public. I trust you see the problem here.'

What I cannot understand about the Obama campaign is that when I turn on the television I see McCain blaming Obama for the real estate melt down (which is of course ridiculous) but I have to read a British newspaper to see this item put bluntly. I mean, it is not as if it is an unfair smear or something. There are two big issues: 1) big money going to a McCain aide to lobby for firms now under FBI investigation, which helped destroy the US economy and 2) lying about it. Where's the Obama ad making these points?

I don't get it.
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US-Iran Relations

Riz Khan on US-Iranian relations, interviewing Gary Sick.



Veteran diplomat Edward P. Djerejian also weighs in on US-Iranian relations:

'You negotiate peace with your adversaries and enemies, not with your friends. That is what diplomacy is all about. With current sanctions and talks under the aegis of the United Nations making little progress in impeding Iran's nuclear program, concerns are mounting and there is a steady drumbeat of possible resort to military options. Under these circumstances, and on the eve of our presidential elections, there could be no more urgent need than to address the overall United States-Iranian relationship. '

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Royal Dutch Shell Deal in Iraq

Aljazeera English on the Shell deal with Iraq to develop natural gas.



Critics of the deal say there was no competitive bidding. Supporters say it will help the British, Dutch and Iraqi economies.

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GI Killed in Baghdad by Guerrillas; Mass Grave near Baquba with Dozens of Bodies; $13 Bn. in Taxpayer Money Embezzled or given to 'al-Qaeda'

Reuters reports that "A U.S. soldier died after a small-arms fire attack on his patrol in Baghdad."

Near Baquba, Reuters says, "Police found three mass graves containing tens of bodies in two areas south of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, the government said in a statement. . . "

Iraqi auditor Salam Adhoob told Congress on Monday that $13 billion in American aid was embezzled by Iraqi politicians or ended up being wasted. Some of the money actually made its way from the Iraqi Defense Ministry to 'Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)." Iraqi officials also stand accused of coordinating petroleum theft from the Baiji refinery with AQI.

A webcast of the hearing is available at this site

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Monday that he was worried that it was entirely possible that there will be no security agreement between the Iraqi government and the Bush administration. He said that in that case, there would be no choice but to ask the United Nations Security Council to authorize foreign troops in the country for a further year. Most Iraqis want to become independent of the UN.

The Shiite-dominated Iraqi government will take over responsibility for the Sunni Awakening Councils or "Sons of Iraq" militias in Baghdad next week. Created by the US to fight radical Muslim vigilantes, they contain many former guerrillas in their ranks who agreed to take $300 a month from the US. The Shiite government does not want to bring them wholesale into the Iraqi security forces lest they prove a Sunni Trojan Horse.

Shell has opened a Baghdad office in connection with its new contract to develop Iraqi natural gas. It is the first time a Western energy Major has opened such an office since the early 1970s when the Iraqi government nationalized its fossil fuels.

Reuters reports other political violence in Iraq on Monday:

'
* BALAD RUZ - Police arrested seven members of a suicide cell near Balad Ruz, 90 km (55 miles) northeast of Baghdad, the government said in a statement...

BAGHDAD - The Iraqi army killed two gunmen and arrested 81 others in the last 24 hours in different parts of the country, the Defence Ministry said.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb killed at least two people and wounded five others in the Karrada district of central Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A mortar bomb killed one person and wounded four others in western Baghdad, police said.

BAGHDAD - A car bomb wounded two people when it exploded near an Iraqi army patrol in Jamiaa district in western Baghdad, police said.

MOSUL - Gunmen killed two brothers and wounded a third when they opened fire in a market in Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, on Sunday, police said. . .

MOSUL - A morgue in the city of Mosul received two bodies with gunshot wounds, police said. . .

SUWAYRA - Police recovered a body showing signs of torture from the Tigris River in Suwayra, 50 km (30 miles) southeast of Baghdad, police said. . . .'

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Chorev Reviews Hafez on Suicide Bombers

Suicidal Ambitions: Human Bombs and the War in Iraq

By Matan Chorev

Review of Mohammed M. Hafez

Suicide Bombers in Iraq: The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom

(Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2007)

285 pages, $17.50 hardcover.


Since 2003, according to the United States Library of Congress, over 800 books on the Iraq war have been published in the U.S. alone, each of which aspires to provide some explanation for the seemingly inexplicable patterns of violence in Iraq. Any contribution to this mountain of printed knowledge faces the increasingly ambitious task of adding a semblance of clarity to the exceedingly complex conflagration that is Iraq’s Hobbesian reality.

In "Suicide Bombers in Iraq: The Strategy and Ideology of Martyrdom," Mohammed M. Hafez applies his earlier research on Palestinian suicide bombers and the causes of rebellion in the Islamic world to analyze the patterns of suicide attacks in Iraq. His goal is twofold. First, Hafez assesses whether existing theories on suicide terrorism offer an analytic lens capable of explaining the phenomenon in Iraq. Second, he endeavors to explain the nature and goals of the insurgency, what it portends for the future of Iraq and the United States’ objectives, and its global repercussions.

In the book, Hafez examines conflict data from March 22, 2003, to August 18, 2006. Naturally, this timeframe disappoints. It predates important moments in the conflict, including the implementation of the latest effort at “victory,” the Baghdad Security Plan (i.e., “the surge”) announced in January 2007. Nonetheless, the study’s findings remain relevant in spite of the author’s rightfully modest insistence that they be viewed as “preliminary and subject to further research.”

During the period in question, approximately 514 suicide attacks took place—a figure greater than the number of suicide attacks reported in all other conflicts combined. Hafez argues that although they constitute a small proportion of insurgent activity in Iraq, “suicide attacks have a disproportionate impact on political developments in Iraq because of their targets, lethality, and psychological potency.”

To be sure, the book is an invaluable resource for understanding who exactly is volunteering to fight and die in Iraq and why they are willing to do so. The author’s analysis makes important advances to existing theories that try to explain the existence, spread, and use of suicide bombings. Overall, however, the reader is left unconvinced as to whether the analytic prism of suicide terrorism advances, rather than distracts from, efforts to analyze the Iraqi conflict.

Hafez demonstrates that suicide terrorism in the Iraqi insurgency differs in important respects from its use in other conflicts. First, most of the suicide bombers are foreigners. Of the 102 known suicide bombers in Iraq listed by Hafez, 44 came from Saudi Arabia, by far the leading exporter of human bombs to Iraq. Second, suicide attacks primarily target fellow Iraqis, typically Shi‘a civilians and members of Iraq’s security services, and thus have been a major precipitating factor in Iraq’s civil war. Finally, rather than nationalists fighting to expel occupying forces (the argument evinced most persuasively by University of Chicago’s Robert Pape in Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism), the plurality of Iraq’s suicide bombers are affiliated with a “Jihadi Salafist” movement championed by al-Qaeda and its associated movements mobilized by informal networks. The book aptly demonstrates that the existing theories are insufficient in explaining the Iraqi case.

Hafez expounds upon social movement theory to offer a persuasive multi-causal explanation to those who wonder why so many volunteer to fight and die in Iraq. His narrative includes the well-documented grievances of the insurgents, as well as the abysmal administration of the postwar political and security environment. Its main contribution, however, is its prescient analysis of the essential role of transnational networks that linked Arab, as well as European, Muslim jihadi aspirants with the necessary persons and know-how to make it to Iraq to fulfill their dreams of martyrdom.

It is here that Hafez’s regional expertise and ability to sift through the Arabic press, as well as the bottomless “jihadosphere,” helps color the book with distinctive analysis and insight. Readers will learn about how the ideology of martyrdom is framed and promoted, and how horrific violence—even against fellow Muslims—is justified. It reveals the significant fissures that exist within the Islamic world. It is this struggle that will likely determine the progress of conflict in the region. It is also a confrontation on which the United States has minimal direct influence.

Hafez reserves the most intriguing analysis for the end of the book. He methodically demonstrates that the conditions which gave rise to the “second generation of jihadists” – those that succeeded the mujahedeeen in Afghanistan and brought down the towers in New York – are replicating in are replicating in Iraq and will give birth (if they haven’t already) to a third generation of glob- al jihadists with access to ever-deadlier weapons, more formidable transna- tional networks, and a new safe haven in Iraq. This finding is widely shared but has rarely received a sophisticated and well-substantiated treatment.

But do the figures about suicide terrorism in Iraq reveal anything more broadly about the complex warfare in Iraq? Hafez believes so. He attributes the majority of suicide attacks to “Jihadi Salafists” and “ideological Ba’athists” who are committed to a system collapse strategy—“the complete dismantlement of public order, governing political and economic

institutions, and state security forces.” The ensuing failed state will allow global jihadists associated with al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) to establish “a new safe haven to replace the one al-Qaeda lost after the collapse of the Taliban in 2001.”

The major Sunni insurgency in Iraq, however, is led by Islamic nationalists committed to a “system reintegration” strategy. Groups like the Islamic Army in Iraq share with AQI the goal of ousting the American occupiers, but they do not seek to dismantle the Iraqi government. Their goal, rather, is to reverse their marginalization in the postwar Shi‘a Arab-and Kurdish-dominated political arrangement and to guard against regional federalism.

This taxonomy is well within the consensus judgment of the analytic community. It is remarkable only because it counters the Bush administration’s imagined, if not fabricated, view of reality. In an effort to link the insurgency in Iraq with Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, President George W. Bush consistently blames AQI for carnage in Iraq. As noted by Andrew Tilghman’s provocative “The Myth of AQI” in the October 2007 issue of Washington Monthly, the President mentioned al-Qaeda 95 times in a single speech last July. The strategy works. The New York Times Public Editor Clark Hoyt, in a July 8, 2007, article, censured his newspaper for wholesale adoption of the administration’s rhetoric that, through its uncritical journalistic practices, gave credibility to what Anthony Cordesman has understatedly called the “almost absurd” notion that AQI is a central element of the insurgency.

Hafez makes the case that suicide bombers have “dragged Iraq into civil war.” This analysis exaggerates the degree to which this tactic is a precipitating factor in Iraq’s civil war. Sectarian conflict is the inevitable outcome of the Bush administration’s bungling war effort to superimpose itself on the most inauspicious of preconditions. The Shi‘a insurgency, which unfortunately is largely untreated by Hafez (if only because of the dearth of Shi’a suicide bombers), and parasitic local militias struggling for power and spoils likely to play a greater role in fanning the flames of sectarianism in Iraq. As the August 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) notes, “Iraqi society’s growing polarization the persistent weakness of security forces and the state in general, and all sides’ ready recourse to violence are collectively driving an increase in communal and insurgent violence and political extremism.” In Iraq, human bombs are but one ingredient in a most unsavory stew of violence.

There is little doubt in Hafez’s finding that the Iraq war has served as a “field of dreams for jihadists seeking training, expertise, and experience in the ways and means of terrorism and guerilla warfare.” The Iraq war never had a thing to do with the war on terror, except, of course, that it went a long way in setting back its objectives. The new generation of terrorists and the millions of hearts and minds lost as a cause of this war will undoubtedly prove to be one of the most tragic of its innumerable negative consequences.

Decreased U.S. influence in the region will necessitate a return to the Cold War primacy of stability approach and thus sustain the very conditions that allow radical Islamic groups to mobilize support. Hafez correctly argues that the Iraqi petri dish is not likely to offer Jihadi Salafis a campground as favorable as the one they enjoyed in Taliban Afghanistan. For one, this chafes against the country’s secular tradition. Second, Iraq’s Shi‘a majority is hardly a prospective bedfellow for Sunni Salafist ideology.

But how does one contend with the fallout of U.S. failure in Iraq? On this point, the author is unsatisfactorily mum. Were one to follow Hafez’s analysis to its natural conclusion, it would reveal two important observations. The first is that continued U.S. occupation will slow, not accelerate, AQI’s demise. This debunks the Bush administration’s last great reason for staying the course in Iraq. The second is that al-Qaeda has been rescued from extinction after the war in Afghanistan and has now, as the

July 2007 NIE assessed, restored the “key capabilities it would need to launch an attack on U.S. soil.” To refocus the fight against al-Qaeda will require quickly extracting ourselves from the Iraq morass. Hafez’s valuable study rings the alarm bells on the difficult challenges just over the horizon. We can only hope someone is listening.

Reprinted from The Fletcher Forum with kind permission of the author.

==

Matan Chorev is a researcher at the Belfer Center of Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

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A Nation of Masochists

"I send my tormentor hurrying
hither and thither in the
service of my
suffering and desire."
- Mason Cooley (d.2002)

I have concluded that Americans, who pretend in public to be straitlaced, are in fact rabid masochists addicted to whips, black leather and the application of fists. It turns out that large numbers of people throughout the world are accidentally asphyxiated every year because they need to be choked for maximum pleasure.

The diagnosis of national masochism is the only thing that can satisfactorily explain the poll numbers in the presidential race.



Let's get this straight.

The Republican Party came to Washington, DC, in 2000 with a solid majority in both houses of Congress and on the Supreme Court, allowing them to steal the presidency, as well. If you wanted to know what a pure Republican-Party government unhindered by the Democrats, Libertarians, Greens or Socialists might look like, this was the moment.

So they came to power when there was a budget surplus bequeathed by a Democratic president.

They immediately ran up a big deficit every year since, doubling the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. You don't run big deficits of $300 and $400 billion a year in good times according to Keynes. You save the the deficit spending for a recession, when the economy needs a jolt. If you're already racking up a big deficit every year in a good economy, you have no way of making a difference during a significant downturn except by then going for a truly mega-deficit, which risks destroying the value of your currency abroad. In a service economy like that of the US, a dollar with a declining value might not even help the economy via exports very much, since the manufactured goods are being made down in Mexico now, anyway.

Note that Clinton had been talking about using the surplus to pay down the debt or to fix the looming crisis in social security.

With the government encumbered with $5 trillion in new debt before September, and now with another trillion and a half (probably when it is all said and done with), how exactly will social security be fixed?

(Hint: Republican leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich hated social security, because the people are grateful to the Democrats for it. Bush tried to privatize it and McCain would have helped him; you wonder if they are trying deliberately to destroy it. Social security is the main reason for which the elderly are not now, as they were in the 1930s, the poorest and most miserable section of society.)

Then many of the Republicans came to Washington with a crooked plan to use fraudulent methods to ensure that campaign financing went almost exclusively to them through super-lobbyists like Jack Abramoff. Grover Norquist's K-Street Project aimed at guaranteeing big corporate dollars for the Republicans in exchange for their granting the corporations the right to write the legislation affecting their industry. Thus, laws governing pharmaceuticals were written by the pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and just signed off on by the Republicans.

This scam goes beyond Marx's fear that government in a business society was just a "managing committee" for the business classes. Tom Delay, from 2002 the Republican Party majority leader in the House, was too lazy even to be the managing committee! The K-Street crowd just let the business classes run the legislature directly, themselves, having the regulatory laws written to suit them.

So Abramoff, Delay, the K-Street crowd are busted. Once upon a time such a thing would have been a huge political scandal and would have haunted the party that produced it. But because US Big Media is mostly Republican-owned, it just quietly subsided as a story.

It is not just that the rap sheet against the Class of 2000, 2002, and 2004 among the Republican politicians is longer than a trans-Atlantic cable, it is that so much of the corruption took the form of a conspiracy.

All parties have people in them looking to get rich on the side. But the K Street Project and various other such scams weren't just about individual aggrandizement. They were about fixing the whole American system permanently to kow-tow to the super-rich without so much as a whimper, and to positively punish the middle classes.

After the 2002 mid-terms, even George W. Bush wanted to do a tax cut for the middle classes. But Cheney over-ruled him, insisting on another deep tax cut for the very wealthy. We won the mid-terms, Cheney said. This is our due. Deficits don't matter. "Our" due? Cheney is saying that the Republican Party is the party of the super-rich, of the 3 million at the top of American society who own 45% of the privately held wealth (as though we were Brazil), and they are the ones that will be exclusively benefited by Republican rule.

Of course, there were many other conspiracies by the pirouetting pirates of plunder.

There was the Iraq War, one of the great criminal conspiracies of modern times. Barton Gellman has how related the story of how Dick Cheney lied to Dick Armey before the vote on the war, telling him that Saddam's family was all al-Qaeda and that Saddam's evil scientists had made a suitcase nuclear bomb that he would certainly turn over to Bin Laden, and such rank horse manure as that. Dick Armey weeps, says he deserved better than to be bullshitted by the vice president of the United States.

They took us to war against a country that had not attacked the United States; they killed or maimed 33,000 Americans, and turned a whole Arab Muslim country into a burned-out hulk, displacing millions and continuously bombing the very cities that they had conquered and occupied, killing and disfiguring.

They propagandized us with implausible lies about mobile biological weapons labs and Baathist al-Qaeda, and our journalists and their corporate bosses bought them hook line and sinker, as did the public.

Cable and satellite television "news" tells us nothing of elections in India or constitutional crisis in Thailand, and barely mentions a major workers strike at Boeing. Dozens of car bombs go off in Iraq and we are told it is "calm" now. It is a vast electromagnetic form of bread and circuses, wherein hapless celebrities and philandering politicians are fed to the lions before millions of cheering plebes, by corporate moguls desperately hoping that the marks will not notice the legion of pickpockets in the arena, relieving them of their purses.

This crew in Washington thought nothing of assiduously attempting to induce the press to out a covert CIA operative working against Iranian nuclear proliferation, Valerie Plame. Their culture of lies is such that they attempt to divert attention from all the phone calls to journalists by Irv Lewis Libby and Karl Rove trying to get the press to print her name by saying that those two did not succeed. As if the attempt were not dastardly!

Why is trying to inform the Iranians of the identity of a CIA field officer assigned to spy on Iran not an act of treason? After all, you can't inform the world without also informing the Iranians. Isn't the punishment for treason hanging?

The Republican Party conducted a vast illegal spying operation on Americans and on foreign diplomats. We still don't know why exactly, and that the operation had domestic political motivations cannot be ruled out.

They imposed on us this so-called PATRIOT act that gutted the Constitution. The peaceful protesters in St. Paul at the RNC were actually charged with being terrorists, in this Brave New World.

By their incompetence and cupidity the Republican politicians deeply damaged the relief effort for one of America's great cities, New Orleans, which will never see the $33 billion pledged for its reconstruction. Not to mention that levies and bridges are breaking and falling down all around us because Cheney did not want to tax his billionaire friends to pay for the country's infrastructural upkeep.

And then they so radically deregulated and removed any oversight from the banking system that they came within hours of presiding over a 1929-style absolute meltdown of the entire financial and securities system. To cover the criminal activities of their cronies, they are now proposing to impose a fine of one trillion dollars on the middle class, to ensure that their partners in crime will receive their $25 million Christmas bonuses and be held harmless for their misdeeds.

And in the wake of the greatest and most sustained act of systematic plunder since the Mongol hordes appropriated to themselves the riches of everyplace in Asia from Beijing to Isfahan, the reaction of the supine and slave-like American voting public is to scratch their heads and have a hard time deciding if they would like more of the same.

Despite his aristocratic prerogatives and connections in high society, even the Marquis de Sade himself was brought down by a lowly maid, who complained to the police of his cutting her while having his way with her, leading to his arrest.

In contrast to that plucky domestic servant, the American public appears to enjoy being lacerated while being badly used, moaning with delight at each new act of abuse and abasement, while, blue-lipped, gasping for air.

One worries for our children, threatened with the fate of the homeless street children so common in the sort of third world country into which we are being turned by our managing committee.

But, well, if you are determined to bend over on November 4, at least I hope you enjoy pain. In that case, you are going to be ecstatic.

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8 Killed, 82 Wounded in Bombings, Attacks; Benchmark Laws Still Stalled

The guerrilla war continues in Iraq. On Sunday, guerrillas blew up the general manager of the Ministry of Finance, Ihsan Ridha, and a Brigadier General, Adel Abbas, who was a manager of the ministry of the interior (which has FBI-like functions in Iraq). Ridha was injured; Abbas was killed. Police and army patrols were bombed in Baghdad, and police stations were bombed in the major northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk. One of the police patrols in Baghdad was attacked in the Sunni enclave of al-Adhamiya (the police are mostly Shiites), suggesting that the sectarian war is still going on.

There is no point in targeting high ministry officials and security forces on the ground like that unless you are trying to cause the government to collapse. The pattern of the attacks shows that the guerrillas have by no means given up and that they are still engaged in a concerted and effective attack on the institutions of the Iraqi government.

CNN Arabic says that 8 persons were killed and 82 persons were wounded in these various attacks (see below).

Al-Zaman reports in Arabic that the parliamentary session scheduled for Sunday on the enabling law for provincial elections had to be cancelled because the Arab and Turkmen members of the committee set up to reconcile the wording of the law walked out. Kurdish MP Fu'ad Ma'sum complained bitterly that the walkout was an insult given all the extensive concessions the Kurds have made. Monday is seen as a last chance for parliament to pass the law if the elections are to be held this year.
The law has been held up because parliamentarians cannot agree on how to treat the disputed oil province of Kirkuk.

Al-Zaman also reports that Oil Minister Husain Shahrastani is complaining that the independent deals struck by the Kurdistan Regional Government with a Norwegian firm have impeded the passage in the federal parliament of an oil law.

Al-Zaman says that former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi says he insists that any security agreement between the Bush administration and the al-Maliki government be submitted to 'public opinion' in Iraq (presumably via a national referendum). He added that when he was in Washington 2 months ago he had told the Americans that they had as well give up on getting a bilateral security agreement passed. He also said he was considering pulling his party out of the Iraqi national security council, on which all major parties have seats, since it had utterly failed to deal with Iraq's problems.

McClatchy reports political violence in Iraq on Sunday:

'Baghdad

- A bomb was planted under the car of the general manager of the Ministry of Finance, in Kindi street in Harthiya neighborhood on Sunday morning. Ihsan Ridha, the manager was injured in that incident.

- Gunmen assassinated Brigadier General Adel Abass, a manager in the ministry of interior in Adel neighborhood around 7:30 am. He was killed with his driver.

- Gunmen opened fire on an officer in the general inspector office in New Baghdad neighborhood. Raad Amar, the officer, was wounded and he was transferred to hospital to be treated.

- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol at the Maghrib intersection of Waziriyah in north Baghdad. Five people were injured, including one policeman.

- A roadside bomb targeted an army patrol in Waziriyah neighborhood in northern Baghdad near the Turkish Embassy. Seven people were injured including three soldiers.

- A bomb was planted under a car in Tahriyat intersection in Karrada neighborhood in downtown Baghdad. Four people were wounded, including one policeman.

- A roadside bomb targeted the Bayna newspaper building in Nidhal street(downtown Baghdad). Two people were injured.

- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol in Zafarniyah neighborhood (east Baghdad). Six people were wounded including three policemen.

- A roadside bomb targeted a police patrol near the in downtown Baghdad. Seven people were wounded, including three policemen.

- Police found three dead bodies in Baghdad neighborhoods today: two were found in Karkh bank; one in Dora and the other was in Amil. While the third one was found in Fudhailiyah on Risafa bank.

Mosul

- A bomb planted under an oil tanker detonated near an army check point in Arabi neighborhood in Mosul city around 3 pm. Two people were wounded including one soldier.

- A suicide truck bomber targeted the emergency police headquarter in New Mosul neighborhood in Mosul city around 6:15 pm. Two policemen were killed and 45 others wounded, including 15 policemen. Also 50 houses got damaged in that explosion.

Kirkuk

- A suicide car bomber targeted a police check point near the fourth bridge in Ghazala neighborhood in downtown Kirkuk. Five policemen were killed and twenty three were wounded.

Salahuddin

- A bomb planted under a parked car detonated near a restaurant in Tikrit. Three people were injured.'

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Baghdad Mayor: US Tanks Run Amok and There'll Never be a Street Named for Bush in Baghdad

The USG Open Source Center translates a recent interview with Baghdad mayor Sabir al-Isawi in a Czech newspaper. The mayor 1) denies that the US troop 'surge' is the major reason for the reduced violence in Iraq; 2) complains bitterly that US armored corps drivers continually run their tanks over lampposts, gardens and other things in Baghdad streets instead of going around them; and 3) says that that the US military too often goes in with guns blazing unnecessarily and arbitrarily detains too many Iraqis, treating them in ways that contravene human rights standards.

He also says plainly that there will never be a street in Baghdad named after George W. Bush!

Mayor al-Isawi seems to be more cordial toward Iran than toward the US. The Shiite Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim won the January 2005 provincial elections in Baghdad, so I presume al-Isawi is a member of ISCI, which was formed in exile in Iran in 1982 under the guidance of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Baghdad Mayor Criticizes US Troops' Insensitiveness, Human Rights Abuses
Interview with Baghdad Mayor Sabir al-Isawi by Teodor Marjanovic in Prague; date not given: "'I Have Survived Four Assassination Attempts:' Baghdad Mayor Says Americans Are Often Hard To Deal With and Explains What Has Calmed Down Sectarian Killing in His Country"
iDnes.cz
Saturday, September 20, 2008
OSC Translated Excerpt

. . . (Marjanovic) What has caused the improvement of the situation in Iraq?

(Al-Isawi) There are two reasons. The uprising of the Sunnite tribes against Al-Qa'ida as a result of its unending bomb attacks. Initially, Al-Qa'ida had enjoyed those tribes' support. The other cause is Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's resolve with which he crushed the Shiite militias in Basra and Baghdad's Sadr City. Even without the help and, at the beginning, knowledge of the United States.

(Marjanovic) They used to say that Al-Maliki was in cahoots with these militias.

(Al-Isawi) Yes, and he proved that it was not true. The political parties, then, finally began to approach the government. It became evident that the prime minister did not want to have anything in common with these Iran-supported armed groups.

(Marjanovic) Here in the West, the reports go that the crucial role was played by the increase of American soldiers last spring.

(Al-Isawi) This was a partial reason for the calming down. Another such partial reason was that the Iraqi armed forces are now working much better. But the two things I mentioned are certainly the most important.

(Marjanovic) When you look back, do you think that the Iraqis should be grateful to the Americans for something?

(Al-Isawi) Yes and no. As Iraqis, we should feel gratitude that the Americans brought down the hated Saddam regime for us. But -- and I wish to say it very strongly -- so long as the Americans continue to be stuck in their ruts, the last remainder of gratitude will evaporate. They ought to be able to be liberators and not act as occupiers.

(Marjanovic) Be concrete.

(Al-Isawi) During detentions, they do not heed human rights. They carry out raids without reason. They shoot more than necessary. They shrink from quickly determining the exact relations between the two states so that the situation no longer is that one occupies while the other obeys.

(Marjanovic) And how do they complicate the life for you,as the City Hall?

(Al-Isawi) They are driving their heavy vehicles and tanks insensitively, through people's gardens. They crush sidewalks. They demolish lampposts. They are driving, there is a post, but they will not go around it.

(Marjanovic) Can you complain?

(Al-Isawi) Yes, we call them and sometimes they pay for repairs. But this is not just the question of money. One example: it took us six months to build an orchard. Then arrived a tank, and the six months' efforts were destroyed within a moment.

(Marjanovic) But you are aware of the thousands of Americans who perished in Iraq.

(Al-Isawi) Of course, they must not be forgotten.

(Marjanovic) Can you imagine a street or a square in Baghdad being named after George W Bush one day?

(Al-Isawi) No. (passage omitted on Baghdad citizens' daily troubles)

(Description of Source: Prague iDnes.cz in Czech -- Website of best-selling, independent, center-right daily; most popular print source among decisionmakers; URL: http://idnes.cz)

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Truck Bomb Caught on Tape

Aljazeera English shows and analyzes a just-released security tape from the Marriott in Islamabad, showing the bomb-laden truck ramming the security perimeter. There were two initial explosions on the truck, probably to prime the big bomb and security personnel were trying to put out the fire on the truck . . .


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Islamabad Bombing puts Pressure on US-Pakistan Ties

Bloomberg argues that Saturday's bombing of the Marriott in Islamabad will likely put pressure on US/ Pakistani relations. The bombing was a clear signal from militants that the Pakistani government must back away from its American alliance.

Newly elected president Ali Asaf Zardari gave an address to the parliament in which he called for the uprooting of terrorism and the prevention of cross-border raids on Pakistan by Pakistani militants. He also demanded, however, that Pakistani sovereignty be respected, veiled reference to US military incursions into his country.

Zardari also called for a scaling back of the president's powers,and for more fiscal and administrative semi-autonomy for Pakistan's provinces. (A few opposition party parliamentarians are disappointed that he did not just decree the abolition of the martial law amendments to the constitution, which boost his own power. Likewise they had wanted to hear him say something about the restoration of the justices and judges who had been arbitrarily dismissed by military dictator Pervez Musharraf when he was in power last year.

Hasan Askari-Rizvi argues that the Bush administration's odd mixture of unilateralism and insistence on alliances 'of the willing' produces a key contradiction that is destabilizing Pakistan.

Dawn asks if the real target of the bombing was Zardari's presidential mansion.
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German Left Stands up to anti-Muslim Fascists; Clashes in Cologne

3,000 progressives in Cologne clashed Saturday with far rightwing protesters trying to stop the building of a mosque. There are about 3.3 million Muslims in Germany, about 4 percent of the population. The Jewish population of the US is 2%, so this would be as though American rightwingers tried to stop a synagogue from being built. The far right said they were upholding the 'Western values and Christian traditions' as the heritage of Europe.

Isn't that where we came in? That sort of blinkered thinking, whereby Europe just has one master tradition, is not only wrong, it led to genocide. Europe has been multicultural. It has been pagan and Jewish, Christian and Muslim. Muslim Spain was some 800 years of European history (more if the history of the Moriscos is taken into account). Muslims were for some time in Sicily, Sardinia and southern Italy. Muslims of Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria and Greece were 600 more centuries, in the eastern reaches of the continent (There were Muslim villages even in Hungary and Poland). The Ottoman Empire was in important respects a European empire, even though it stretched deeply into the Middle East as well. If anything Istanbul was more intertwined with Europe than was Kiev and the Ukraine, or St. Petersberg & Russia. It is no accident that even today, Turkey is in NATO.

For that matter, why reify Europe? When was Egypt not a source of grain for 'Europe'? When were not her ports dominated by Europeans? Did the French in Algeria not declare it 'European soil'? Why is the Right so fickle? Either Algerians are European or they are not. Is it only when they are firmly under the jackboot that they count as such?

I am proud of my German cousins for making a stand against this ugly recrudescence of religious bigotry and racism (the mayor of Cologne rightly used the latter word).
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40 Killed in Massive Bombing of Marriott in Islamabad

Guerrillas in Pakistan set off an enormous bomb blast at the Marriott in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad Saturday morning EDT. It left a 30 foot crater and set off a conflagration that was still burning brightly hours after the bombing.

Aljazeera English reports on the explosion:



The Pakistani military has been bombing the tribal territory of Bajaur intensively, forcing 300,000 people from their homes and killing scores,including civilians. And the US has made incursions in South Waziristan recently against the Wazir tribe there.

Just logically speaking, an attack on the Marriott where international businessmen and US government personnel tend to stay, would likely be a response by the Pakistani Taliban to these attacks on them and their people.

For the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where the Tehrik-i Taliban is based, see this link.

The tribes are not necessarily the same as the Taliban and sometimes fight them, and each is different from the foreign operatives that have gravitated to these remote regions.

The FATA areas are only 3% of Pakistani territory and have only 2% of its population, about 3 million people.

John Robertson has more and links to

Pamela Constable on the new, improved Taliban in Afghanistan.
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Sunni Baghdad Dark on Satellite; Kagan Proved Wrong Again

Fred Kagan has once more been proved wrong. He called the ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs in Baghdad a 'myth.' For all their arrogance and academic credentials, the Neoconservatives keep having trouble with that reality-based thing.

Satellite imaging that shows Sunni Arab neighborhoods in Baghdad dark gives evidence that the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis by Shiite militias accounts for the fall in violence in Baghdad, not the extra troops Bush sent, called the 'surge.'

'Night light in neighborhoods populated primarily by embattled Sunni residents declined dramatically just before the February 2007 surge and never returned, suggesting that ethnic cleansing by rival Shiites may have been largely responsible for the decrease in violence for which the U.S. military has claimed credit, the team reports in a new study based on publicly available satellite imagery. "Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning," said lead author John Agnew, a UCLA professor of geography and authority on ethnic conflict. "By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left." The night-light signature in four other large Iraqi cities — Kirkuk, Mosul, Tikrit and Karbala — held steady or increased between the spring of 2006 and the winter of 2007, the UCLA team found. None of these cities were targets of the surge. Baghdad's decreases were centered in the southwestern Sunni strongholds of East and West Rashid, where the light signature dropped 57 percent and 80 percent, respectively, during the same period.'

I've been saying this for some time. US officials more or less admitted it to Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post last December (and reading between the lines they also seem not to have been so disturbed by the ethnic cleansing and seemed to have hoped that those people would just find someplace else to live.

I visited some of these displaced Iraqis in one of the 'some place elses,' i.e. Amman, in August; 50,000 of them are considered 'vulnerable' by the aid agencies and their situation is desperate. Some Iraqis in exile told me that they could never return. They were Sunni and their own neighborhoods were now 100% Shiite. Or their spouse was a Shiite and they were Sunni, and there was no mixed neighborhood left where they would feel comfortable. Some 25% had had a child kidnapped. Many had received personal threats from militias that they are convinced are still in their old neighborhood.(E.g. 'If Ahmad Adib shows his face in this neighborhood again he will be shot on sight .. .') Indeed, sometimes the militias track them down in Amman and threaten them there again. A lot of Iraqis in Jordan move from apartment to apartment frequently so as to avoid the long arm of the militias.

As noted, Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute has denied the ethnic cleansing even took place. US military propagandists sometimes point to continued small Sunni enclaves such as Adhamiya in Baghdad as proof that there was no ethnic cleansing. But neighborhoods near Adhamiya that used to be mixed are almost all Shiite now. I'd guess that 700,000 or 800,000 Sunnis were ethnically cleansed from the capital from June 2006-September 2007. Imagine, to lose everything, to huddle dispossessed in a foreign land worrying where your next meal is coming from, and then to have the powerful and wealthy Kagans deny your very existence.

Oh. It isn't the first time for that sort of thing, is it?
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