Well, it's glamorous and exciting but I'm doing my laundry and going to a birthday party...and being the designated driver...so no posts tonght.

But I wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year (and short, mellow hangover, if applicable).

Please be safe and see you Next Year! The year we say bye-bye Miserable Failure!?!

The Year has come to an end. In less than 24 hours it will be the year we get to quit bitching and start voting. Finally. Over at Atrios, I think that the most disturbing image I have yet encountered from the War to Make George Happy is in a story about a young soldier blinded in Iraq. The mental image I have is not of him. His story, while certainly one which never needed to happen is not the one which has been on my mind today and will be for many days to come, it's this one:(emphasis intended)

During the two months Jeremy Feldbusch spent recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, his parents lived at his bedside. Charlene Feldbusch remembers one day seeing a young female soldier crawling past her in the corridor with no legs and her 3-year-old son trailing behind.

Perhaps Michael Douchebag Ledeen and William Fucking Kristol had her in mind when they said:

I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say, but all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war. . . . What we hate is not casualties but losing. And if the war goes well and if the American public has the conviction that we're being well-led and that our people are fighting well and that we're winning, I don't think casualties are going to be the issue.
Michael Ledeen
AEI Breakfast
March 27, 2003

I think the American people are going to have great tolerance for the war taking longer, and they are going to have great tolerance for more casualties.
William Kristol
AEI Breakfast
March 27, 2003

I have read several articles on the internet recently that seem to pointing to a shortage of manpower in the military despite the "stop-loss" orders being promulgated from the five-sided monument to Murphy's law on the Potomac. If there's a shortage, I'll bet money that if the Miserable Failure wins (no! no!) and they institute a draft, something that one of my faithful commenters, Bryan, has said will come true: A two-tier pay scale for draftees v. volunteers, it seems like such republican thing to do, don't you think? Cheap labor conservatives indeed.

She's headed to San Diego, the ol' Midway Maru. I'll be there next June when they open her up as a museum. I hope they kept some of those BK doors intact (great paintings)!

More than half again as heavy as the Hornet, the Midway was the namesake for the last class of carriers developed during World War II. Japan surrendered before the Midway went on active duty, but the ship served three tours during the Vietnam War and led the air bombardment of Iraq during the first Gulf War.

The Midway was based in Alameda from 1958 through the Vietnam War.

It was later home ported in Japan, and one of its main tasks was showing American force in the Far East.

As the navel-gazing over the mad-cow issue grows (as does the number of places that pesky cow has been parted out to), here's the latest quote from the bseinfo.org website, which is linked from guess where: The National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association expects trade to be the Administration’s top priority. Beef and variety meat exports represent approximately 10 percent of U.S. beef production and were valued at $3.5 billion to the U.S. industry in 2002.

Nope, those good folks who have worked hand-in-hand with congresscritters to prevent testing/screening from happening, who are just representing the good-old 'murkan values typified by the cowboy-boot wearin' yahoos...never mind that they are actually Gucci-clad feedlot owners...they are more concerned with Trade numbers than Public Health; and they are not even ashamed to admit it.

It's OK if you or a loved one dies a horrible, wasting death, as long as those damned Japanese keep importing our meat! So says the 1600 Crew and their good friends, the Cattleman's Lobbyists and pet congresscritters.

How did I leave "To the Barricades" off my blogroll when I moved my site? [whack...sound of hand hitting forehead]. Anyhow, that oversight has now been corrected, and I point you to this wonderful list of how to be a republican. Very funny and sadly, true.

Are you shocked and amazed that there is not a good system in place to track cattle herds from birth to death? Even though the significance of knowing where they are as they pass from womb-to-table has been vital since the first discovery of BSE and its' human variant CJD. Well golly, setting up databases and havin' them dang com-pew-tors with gub'mint reg-ladors would be positively un-amurkan.

Cattle in other states may have eaten the same contaminated feed that infected a Washington state Holstein with mad cow disease, but investigators who want to track the infection to its source are being confounded by the lack of an organized system that would lead them to the herd where the cow was born, officials said yesterday.

The lack of a reliable tracking system, and a complex trail of clues, rumors and false leads, mean it could be days or months -- or never -- before all the links are fully explored, officials said. For a nation already jittery about the Holstein, the expanding investigation could spread worry.

"The epidemiological investigation becomes a tangled web of different possibilities," said W. Ron DeHaven, deputy administrator and chief veterinary officer at the Agriculture Department. "Some of those do lead back to Canada. Some take us into the state of Washington and other states, as well."
...
The birth herd is where the Holstein was probably infected -- and from which infectious links could radiate in multiple directions. Investigators want to track down who supplied the birth herd with infected feed four or five years ago to deduce whether contaminated feed was also sent to other farms.

This sure looks like a smaller-government compassionate-conservative move to me. Hmmmmm, is there an issue here?

Sullivan in what I am sure is an unintentional faux pas has awarded himself one of his own awards...the coveted McSullivan Award for Inadequate Attention to Detail. In the quest to be holier-than-Us, Our Lady has made an award to Simon Jenkins for his overstatement of the defense of Baghdad by the Iraqis. While it is true that our forces had little to no opposition in the first days of Saddam's defeat let's look to the one of HRH's co-religionists, Tucker Carlson, who unlike Andy has actually been to B-Dad.

People seem like it's threatening. One of the guys I was traveling with is a former Marine recon guy, Special Forces guy, who spent five months in Somalia in the early '90s. And he said he believed after living here for six months that it's more dangerous than Mogadishu, is what he said.
...

I can tell you that coming over here, we're staying far outside the Green Zone in a house. I'm staying with Kelly McCann and some of the guys he works with.

Merry Christmas to you, you Miserable Failure. I am sure that there are some families who are gonna be rockin' the vote for you ... not.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Guerrillas killed two U.S. soldiers in a mortar attack north of Baghdad, the U.S. military said on Friday, as rockets shook the Iraqi capital in the biggest insurgent attacks since the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Insurgents also wounded two Polish soldiers in an ambush in southern Iraq, the latest in a string of attacks on the forces of countries which have answered Washington’s call for troops to help it secure the country it invaded to topple Saddam.

The U.S. casualties brought to 208 the number of U.S. combat deaths since Washington -- now under pressure over troop casualties as the 2004 presidential election approaches --announced the end of major combat in Iraq on May 1.

So the case of "mad cow" has been confirmed...sort of. I have not seen the report from the lab in the UK, which has the authoritative tests make it into the media yet; but they'll report sometime soon, I'm sure. Not being a carnivore any more, I am not concerned with the outcome of the tests for my sake, but there are lots (millions) of folks, including my family who are of the carnivorous bent and are affected. Now from the Farm and Market Bureau of the 1600 Crew we see this:

As the American beef industry struggles with its first case of mad cow disease, the Department of Agriculture is debating whether to do far more screening of meat and change the way meat from suspect animals is used, department officials say.

The officials declined to say exactly what they would recommend, but acknowledged that European and Japanese regulators screened millions of animals using tests that take only three hours, fast enough to stop diseased carcasses from being cut up for food.

I still don't understand how that cow contracted BSE, I thought that the feeding of "animal parts" was banned. Did it somehow "slip by" our extra-rigorous and highly paid USDA meat inspection folks...whom I am sure that the 1600 Crew wants to cut by at least 90% to satisfy that friend o'Islam, Grover Norquist.

Here's to hoping everyone is having a great Holiday Season, and being safe, warm and with loved ones!

Cheers!

There are those noises again. It's time to go topside to get the images of most of the 1600 Crew out of my mind, so I can enjoy the Holiday Rooty-Toots. I am glad for my small family, gratefully go my job as a "whining boomer", and would have traded none of it, for anything.

Being at sea on a peaceful Christmas evening walking the flight decks, touching the planes that our lives were intertwined with. Some were like our guardian angels and would bring us home no matter what, some folded like a cheap suit and cost the lives of the men flying them in a split second. Very rarely was there an in-between, a grey area of life an death.

****************************************
Maybe that noise is the persistent knocking of my buddies going on liberty here in Tokyo...we're staying in the New Sanno Hotel, minutes from nowwhere and everywhere, depending on your point of view. I answer the door, in my Kong-acquired red-silk robe, a bottle of GlenLivet from my dad (well, he capitalized said bottle for this voyage) and tell me mates that, I am going exactly nowhere, since I have a better view of Mt Fuji than does the dried up old emporer himself. And I have every intention of watching the sun set, drink to celebrate it's passage and then hit the streets looking for sustenance at the Yaki-Niku stands or noodle stands.

Besides, when the scotch is gone, there will be Sake to follow...as to ladies of the evening, they were on their own..

Darkness inevitably falls, hunger prevails and we head out to get food. Much to my initial chagrin, my buds made me leave the robe, since we transited an area where someone migh have mistaken me for merchandise, if they were into Hulk Hogan Crossed with Chris Farley....ewww.

They were both great christmas eves...which later became christmas day. Certainly days that meant a lot to me. When this season comes to pass every year, I want some one else to have those experiences, or to make their own traditions to carry with then, to be brought out in later years, to help add meaining to a job that sometimes seems to have to have no meaing at all.

Be Happy, BE Safe and may this be the last holiday away from the World and your loved ones for you; your troops; and buddies. Happy Holidays, come home soon.

Her Royal Highness nominates Rosie O'Donnel for a Sontag Award, for essentially speaking the truth to power.

"The country was really taken over. It was a coup. This man was not elected, he sits in the White House and he's declaring war. That's a coup d'état. America should be in the streets picketing. And our boys and our girls, our teenagers and 20- year-olds, are off there killing people. And war begets war."

A Polite Request Addressed To Andrew Sullivan

2003 is coming to a close, so how about you gather up all the nominations for your cute little "awards," name the winners in each category, and then NEVER USE THE WORD "AWARD" AGAIN. NOT. FUCKING. EVER.

Seriously, I am having a very hard time deciding which gimmick is more annoying, your awards or Kaus's imaginary editor - and damn you both for the fact that I spent 30 seconds of my life actually thinking about this.

Although the Fightin' Keyboarders led by Grand Admirals of The Chickenhawks, Tom Delay and Dick Cheney would unmercifully question both his mettle and patriotism in an nanosecond, retired Marine Major General Anthony Zinni has been spending a good bit of his time speaking out about the Quagmire he sees as Iraq. And it seems to be a term he uses with some familiarity.

Anthony C. Zinni's opposition to U.S. policy on Iraq began on the monsoon-ridden afternoon of Nov. 3, 1970. He was lying on a Vietnamese mountainside west of Da Nang, three rounds from an AK-47 assault rifle in his side and back. He could feel his lifeblood seeping into the ground as he slipped in and out of consciousness.
...
It is one of the more unusual political journeys to come out of the American experience with Iraq. Zinni still talks like an old-school Marine -- a big-shouldered, weight-lifting, working-class Philadelphian whose father emigrated from Italy's Abruzzi region, and who is fond of quoting the wisdom of his fictitious "Uncle Guido, the plumber." Yet he finds himself in the unaccustomed role of rallying the antiwar camp, attacking the policies of the president and commander in chief whom he had endorsed in the 2000 election.
...
...He was there in Nashville in August 2002 to receive the group's Dwight D. Eisenhower Distinguished Service Award, recognition for his 35 years in the Marine Corps.

Vice President Cheney was also there, delivering a speech on foreign policy. Sitting on the stage behind the vice president, Zinni grew increasingly puzzled. He had endorsed Bush and Cheney two years earlier, just after he retired from his last military post, as chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in Iraq.
...
He was alarmed that day to hear Cheney make the argument for attacking Iraq on grounds that Zinni found questionable at best:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said. "There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

Cheney's certitude bewildered Zinni. As chief of the Central Command, Zinni had been immersed in U.S. intelligence about Iraq. He was all too familiar with the intelligence analysts' doubts about Iraq's programs to acquire weapons of mass destruction, or WMD. "In my time at Centcom, I watched the intelligence, and never -- not once -- did it say, 'He has WMD.' "

Though retired for nearly two years, Zinni says, he remained current on the intelligence through his consulting with the CIA and the military. "I did consulting work for the agency, right up to the beginning of the war. I never saw anything. I'd say to analysts, 'Where's the threat?' " Their response, he recalls, was, "Silence."

Zinni's concern deepened as Cheney pressed on that day at the Opryland Hotel. "Time is not on our side," the vice president said. "The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action."

Zinni's conclusion as he slowly walked off the stage that day was that the Bush administration was determined to go to war. A moment later, he had another, equally chilling thought: "These guys don't understand what they are getting into."

This retired Marine commander is hardly a late-life convert to pacifism. "I'm not saying there aren't parts of the world that don't need their ass kicked," he says, sitting in a hotel lobby in Pentagon City, wearing an open-necked blue shirt. Even at the age of 60, he remains an avid weight-lifter and is still a solid, square-faced slab of a man. "Afghanistan was the right thing to do," he adds, referring to the U.S. invasion there in 2001 to oust the Taliban regime and its allies in the al Qaeda terrorist organization.

But he didn't see any need to invade Iraq. He didn't think Hussein was much of a worry anymore. "He was contained," he says. "It was a pain in the ass, but he was contained. He had a deteriorated military. He wasn't a threat to the region."
...
So early in 1999 he ordered that plans be devised for the possibility of the U.S. military having to occupy Iraq. Under the code name "Desert Crossing," the resulting document called for a nationwide civilian occupation authority, with offices in each of Iraq's 18 provinces. That plan contrasts sharply, he notes, with the reality of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S. occupation power, which for months this year had almost no presence outside Baghdad -- an absence that some Army generals say has increased their burden in Iraq.

Listening to the administration officials testify that day, Zinni began to suspect that his careful plans had been disregarded. Concerned, he later called a general at Central Command's headquarters in Tampa and asked, "Are you guys looking at Desert Crossing?" The answer, he recalls, was, "What's that?"

The more he listened to Wolfowitz and other administration officials talk about Iraq, the more Zinni became convinced that interventionist "neoconservative" ideologues were plunging the nation into a war in a part of the world they didn't understand. "The more I saw, the more I thought that this was the product of the neocons who didn't understand the region and were going to create havoc there. These were dilettantes from Washington think tanks who never had an idea that worked on the ground."

And the more he dwelled on this, the more he began to believe that U.S. soldiers would wind up paying for the mistakes of Washington policymakers. And that took him back to that bloody day in the sodden Que Son mountains in Vietnam.
...
"Obviously there are differences" between Vietnam and Iraq, he says. "Every situation is unique." But in his bones, he feels the same chill. "It feels the same. I hear the same things -- about [administration charges about] not telling the good news, about cooking up a rationale for getting into the war." He sees both conflicts as beginning with deception by the U.S. government, drawing a parallel between how the Johnson administration handled the beginning of the Vietnam War and how the Bush administration touted the threat presented by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. "I think the American people were conned into this," he says. Referring to the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the Johnson administration claimed that U.S. Navy ships had been subjected to an unprovoked attack by North Vietnam, he says, "The Gulf of Tonkin and the case for WMD and terrorism is synonymous in my mind."

Likewise, he says, the goal of transforming the Middle East by imposing democracy by force reminds him of the "domino theory" in the 1960s that the United States had to win in Vietnam to prevent the rest of Southeast Asia from falling into communist hands.

And that brings him back to Wolfowitz and his neoconservative allies as the root of the problem. "I don't know where the neocons came from -- that wasn't the platform they ran on," he says. "Somehow, the neocons captured the president. They captured the vice president."

Zinni says that he hasn't received a single negative response from military people about the stance he has taken. "I was surprised by the number of uniformed guys, all ranks, who said, 'You're speaking for us. Keep on keeping on.' "

Even home in Williamsburg, he has been surprised at the reaction. "I mean, I live in a very conservative Republican community, and people were saying, 'You're right.' "

But Zinni vows that he has learned a lesson. Reminded that he endorsed Bush in 2000, he says, "I'm not going to do anything political again -- ever. I made that mistake one time."

You could not write this stuff as fiction if you tried:

Rush Limbaugh says he's the victim of a rush to judgment.

A kid, 14 years old burns down a boathouse that has the ex-presidents boat motor in it, and gets a total of 57 months in the federal prison system.

It was supposed to be simple, breaking into a small boatyard near here and stealing a marine radio to monitor police frequencies.

But when the two intruders, Patrick V., 14, and his accomplice, Christopher Conley, 19, spotted what they thought were video surveillance cameras, they panicked and set fire to the building, burning it down along with several boats and engines. Unknown to them, one of the boat engines belonged to former President George Bush, whose summer house is seven miles away.

Within days of the July 2002 fire, Secret Service and other federal agents were at Patrick's house here. His mother, Denise Collier, said they told her that the young men had "blown up the president's boat" in what might have been "a terrorist act." One federal firearms agent told her, Ms. Collier recalled, that the incident had raised "national security concerns."
...
Under a federal law dating to the 1970's, juveniles are to be tried in state juvenile court except in special circumstances, said Robert Schwartz, director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, a nonprofit law firm that represents juveniles. The attorney general of the United States or the local United States attorney must certify to the court in writing that the case meets these requirements, Mr. Schwartz said.
...
There are so few juveniles in the custody of the bureau that it does not even have its own juvenile prison, Mr. Dunne said. Instead, it has contracts with states, like Pennsylvania, where Patrick is being kept at the Cresson Secure Treatment Center in the central part of the state.

Cresson is for the most serious juvenile offenders in Pennsylvania who have proved disruptive in other facilities. Patrick is now housed in a wing where the other inmates are all mentally ill or mentally retarded, his mother said.
...
"They already had all the evidence they needed," Mr. Mongue said. "This was not a thin case. I am unaware of any investigation after Mike Cantara gave Patrick to the feds."

"So the real question is why the feds were so hellbent on obtaining jurisdiction," he said. "It's difficult not to draw the conclusion that the reason was the Bush connection."

Using what are sure to be tactics that engender love and flowers, the 1600 Crew have been instructing soldiers in Iraq to behave as much like fascist footsoldiers as possible. They have been out looking for more of those pesky Iraqi "Wolverines" (think "Red Dawn") again.

Using sledgehammers, crowbars, explosives and armored vehicles, U.S. forces smashed down the gates of homes and the doors of workshops and junkyards Wednesday to attack the Iraqi resistance that has persisted despite the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Loud blasts mixed with the sound of women and children screaming inside the houses. An explosion at the gate of one compound shattered windows, cutting a 1-year-old baby with glass. U.S. medics treated the injury while other soldiers handcuffed four men, who were later released.

The raid, launched before dawn and lasting until midmorning, targeted the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad. U.S. officials say some 1,500 fighters operate in Samarra, making it one of the persistent hotspots in the so-called Sunni Triangle.

''Samarra has been a little bit of a thorn in our side,'' said Col. Nate Sassaman. ''It hasn't come along as quickly as other cities in the rebuilding of Iraq. This operation is designed to bring them up to speed.''

Jeebus, it's like the ultimate Fractured Fairy Tale...every freakin' day.

Apologies to the late Frank Zappa.

It seems that there is at least one American CPA administrator in Iraq who might be getting a clue.

When American diplomat Keith Mines wanted the bombed-out Baath Party headquarters here torn down, he began with contracting rules issued by the U.S. occupation authority. He posted an official notice soliciting bids. A week later, he accepted several sealed proposals, planning to choose the lowest bid.

Then Hamid Rashid Mahenna, an influential tribal sheik, heard about the contract. Mahenna wears suede jackets and a red-and-white headscarf, smokes Dunhill cigarettes, and owns a construction company. His tribesmen had been helping U.S. forces in Ramadi -- and he figured it was payback time. After the deadline, he drove up in his white Mercedes and handed Mines four sealed envelopes. Inside, Mines said, were bids far higher than those from other Iraqi contractors.

...
"I don't have a lot of other options," Mines said. "The sheiks are a valuable bridge into the community."

A key uncertainty in the gamble Mines has taken is whether or not the sheiks will deliver. Thus far, the sheiks have not lessened the resistance, prompting questions about whether tribal leaders are doing enough to bring their followers in line. But sheiks in Ramadi insist their power only goes so far. "We try, but we cannot control every one of our members," said Bazia Gaoud, the stout leader of the Bunimir tribe.
...
When Mahenna, who leads the Bu-Alwan tribe, heard that Mines was looking for a contractor to tear down the Baath Party headquarters and build a park dedicated to peace, the sheik swung into action. He had his construction company -- one of several businesses he owns -- draw up four sealed bids for Mines, ranging from $75,000 to $120,000

As he handed over envelopes, Mines recalled him saying, "I hope you'll be fair to me."
...
"Thirty-five thousand is nothing," Mahenna told Mines, in an openly complaining tone. "What am I going to tell my people?"

"You're going to tell them we have a park," Mines responded.

"It's not enough," Mahenna protested.

"The big contracts are coming," Mines said. "We're just getting started."

With that, Mahenna pulled out three envelopes from his leather folder. Inside were bids for other contracts. "These I want for me," he said, thrusting the envelopes at Mines.

Then Mahenna got in his Mercedes and drove away.

"Dealing with the sheiks isn't easy," Mines said as he watched the car pull out of the parking lot. "But we don't have another choice."

The problem is, as the story says, if there not a reasonable feeling among many Iraqi's in the next six months that we have made some kind of progress in the "fixing" department, all the efforts of the CPA will be in the dumper. Big Time.

Iraq is a country where respect comes from a Gun, a Buck or both. Up until now, we've had both, but the 1600 Crew is notorious for getting bored with a problem and then removing option two (the bucks) while leaving the bearers of option one to clean up...think Afghanistan. At this point, I doubt that the "insurgents" will ever let them pump out economic quantities of Oil...which leads to the boredom factor going up and the quagmire aspect increasing. Gosh, who said Vietnam?

Gee, GOoper congresscritters are now complaining in a round-about way about being pressured on the Medicare "bill".

Lawmakers from both parties have complained about the tactics used on the night when the House leadership pushed the Medicare bill through by a vote of 220 to 215. The margin would have been even closer if some lawmakers had not changed no votes to yes when it became clear the bill would pass.

It's hard to believe they'd bitch about eating where they shit.

Seems to me that for all their whining about "bad Unions", the politicians who make statements accusing unions of Societal Malfeasance should read and remember this story...but I guess that's hard to do when soliciting for campaign dollars with a mattress strapped to your back. This looks like a bi-partisan crime to me.

Every one of their deaths was a potential crime. Workers decapitated on assembly lines, shredded in machinery, burned beyond recognition, electrocuted, buried alive — all of them killed, investigators concluded, because their employers willfully violated workplace safety laws.

These deaths represent the very worst in the American workplace, acts of intentional wrongdoing or plain indifference that kill about 100 workers each year. They were not accidents. They happened because a boss removed a safety device to speed up production, or because a company ignored explicit safety warnings, or because a worker was denied proper protective gear.
...
Over a span of two decades, from 1982 to 2002, OSHA investigated 1,242 of these horror stories — instances in which the agency itself concluded that workers had died because of their employer's "willful" safety violations. Yet in 93 percent of those cases, OSHA declined to seek prosecution, an eight-month examination of workplace deaths by The New York Times has found.

What is more, having avoided prosecution once, at least 70 employers willfully violated safety laws again, resulting in scores of additional deaths. Even these repeat violators were rarely prosecuted.

Sullivan thanks the two-headed dog that can't hunt, Bush-Blair for their part in the surrender of Ghaddafi by invading Iraq. He says that former Blair cabinet minister Claire Short is just bitter over the Mutts accomplishments. Well, it takes one to know one I guess. After all what would an aging gay man whose community, church and political party have all left him know about being bitter?

Never mentioned it, but I saw it on opening day. Still mulling it over, if you've seen it by now what's your verdict? Not to be a spoiler, but what's the deal with all the "endings" and why no "Scouring of the Shire"? A couple of the scenes made me want to kick Peter Jackson's private parts (Frodo/Sam/Gollum at Cirith Ungol) and some were very good (Pelennor Fields).

I guess I need to see it again...once is not enough. Eowyn Rocked! And what was up with Gimli giving the Crown to Aragorn, or was I missing something?

If you haven't seen it, give up a few bucks to New Line Cinema and enjoy it...I am looking forward to extended DVD to fill in a few of the gaps (again).

Gee, this is a Casablanca Moment...

A lengthy investigation of the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan, by American and European intelligence agencies and international nuclear inspectors has forced Pakistani officials to question his aides and openly confront evidence that the country was the source of crucial technology to enrich uranium for Iran, North Korea and other nations.

Until the past few weeks, Pakistani officials had denied evidence that the A. Q. Khan Research Laboratories, named for the man considered a national hero, had ever been a source of weapons technology to countries aspiring to gain nuclear weapons. Now they are backing away from those denials, while insisting that there has been no transfer of nuclear technology since President Pervez Musharraf took power four years ago.
...
Pakistani officials said the sales to Iran might have occurred in the 1980's during the rule of the last American-backed military ruler, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. They acknowledge questioning three scientists: Mohammed Farooq, Yasin Chohan and a man believed to be named Sayeed Ahmad, all close aides to Dr. Khan.

And the 1600 Crew is just St. Ronnie's & Tricky Dicky's bunch revisited. Damn, I feel so much better now, and safer too!

He might have been talking about other Democratic contenders, but it certainly makes you think of the lack of service or "lacksadaisical" service of certain republican politicians (no names shrub).

"You know, the American flag doesn't belong to the Republican Party," he said. After asking the veterans in the audience to stand, he continued, still clutching the fabric. "That's our flag. We saluted that flag. We served under it. We fought for it. We watched brave men and women buried under it. And no Tom DeLay or John Ashcroft or George W. Bush is going to take this flag away from us."

Clark's pointed words and theatrical flair drew a sustained ovation from the audience that night, and the moment captured the essence of Clark's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. With Democrats worried and resentful that President Bush will run for reelection on a heavy dose of patriotism, Clark offers himself as the antiwar warrior: the one candidate who not only opposed the Iraq war but also has the résumé and experience to checkmate a commander in chief.
...
Arguing that national security will be at the forefront of the general election, Clark told reporters recently, "If we nominate a person who hasn't had the experience . . . if he hasn't been there, hasn't done it, hasn't proved himself, he's going to have a tough time -- and that's the issue."

Well, it's always been said, "Bad Press is better than No Press", so if the Media Whores are saying something at least they are saying something. Now, about that AWOL stuff....

Looks like the Homeland Security Department is taking a break from busting the chops of Australian Journalists to raise the threat level...

Federal officials said yesterday that because fresh intelligence suggests al Qaeda is planning multiple catastrophic terrorist attacks in the United States, they were raising the national threat alert status to "high risk," or code orange, a step administration officials previously had said they were reluctant to take except in the most unusual circumstances.

Seems that at some point yesterday my ISP/Web hosting company experienced an equipment failure on the server that hosts me amd my stuff. They were in constant cimmunication with all of us as clients, and worked their tails off to get the server back up and running.

So a little later today, I'l be posting again (I hope). I missed Friday night because of network issues and routine maintenance did not get me home til well after midnight...sleep was looking real good after an 18-hour day.

So, back later today, sorry for the inconvenience...
Update: Apparently three posts did not get restored either, because the Host's Tape Server crashed/could not restore. So if you came here from SullyWatch! looking for the post on Tammy Bruce, tis gone...sorry. I had not backed up my stuff locally lately, looks like I need to start that again. mmmmm....computers.

Was Ghaddafi so looking to not have Wheelis Air Base set up again, or what? Talk among yourselves....

Update update...I think I fixed all my typos, it's hell growing old and not having your reading glasses sometimes. Golly gee.

If there were any one crime that we could legitimately take the Evil-Doer Saddam to trial for it would be the attack on the USS Stark (FFG-31) in 1987. Who could object to that? Funny that none of the 'fighting keyboarders' seem to remember that little incident, isn't it?

Seems that the 1600 Crew and close relatives are not the only ones who are worried what former All-Around Bad Guy Saddam might spill.

Sheikh Mahmoud Nidda, who heads Saddam Hussein's al-Nasseri tribe, has reasons to be upset. United States forces make his life difficult because he is a relative of the deposed leader. And now, Saddam himself is no longer a source of pride and prestige. He has become reason for embarrassment.

"We are a tribe of brave men," the sheikh, 60, asserts in his large reception hall in Ouja, the village near Tikrit where Saddam was born. "Saddam should have fought. He should have killed a couple of American soldiers and then he should have let them kill him, just like his sons Uday and Qusay did."

Now that he's been caught, he's incommunicado. For all the braying that the National Embarrassment has been doing about not influencing the outcome of any judicial action against Saddam, they sure are holding on to him tightly. Why not just turn his sorry ass over to the Hague and be done with him, let the Iraqi's deal directly with the international courts...you know cut out the middle man?

Saddam Hussein is now prisoner No. 1 in what has developed into a global detention system run by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency, according to government officials.

It is a secretive universe, they said, made up of large and small facilities scattered throughout the world that have sprouted up to handle the hundreds of suspected terrorists of Al Qaeda, Taliban warlords and former officials of the Iraqi government arrested by the United States and its allies since the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the war in Iraq.

Interesting issue, one that has been vaguely mirrored here in some legislation in California and other places, either denying benefits or forcing immigrants to meet certain expectations for 'getting' by in our immigrant-based society. The ever-tolerant French have gone one step further in marginalizing their immigrant population by mandating that observant Islamic girls/women can not wear their traditional headscarves in public schools. As a sop to someone, I'm not sure who, they have also forbade the wearing of Jewish skullcaps and Christian symbols (crucifixes) as well. But...small Stars-of-David and Crosses are OK.

Warning that growing ethnic and religious divisions threaten to erode France's tradition of equality, President Jacques Chirac called Wednesday for a law that would ban Muslim head scarves and all other overt religious symbols from public schools.
...
"The Islamic veil, whatever name it is given, the kippa [the Jewish skullcap] or the cross, if of manifestly excessive dimensions, don't have a place within the walls of public schools," Chirac said. Small, discreet signs, such as tiny crosses or Stars of David, should be allowed, he said.

The Chairman of the 9-11 Commission has come out and said that the disaster that was 9-11 could have and should have been prevented but the 1600 Crew was asleep at the switch. I'm pretty surprised, don't know about you. Thomas Kean, former republican Governor of New Jersey, ostensibly chosen for malleability and the ability to take orders from within the 1600 Crew is standing up to them and telling the truth. Not a popular pasttime within the administration, but he's doing it. Figure that'll get him the undying enmity of La Famiglia Bush...

For the first time, the chairman of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks is saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented...
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"There are people that, if I was doing the job, would certainly not be in the position they were in at that time because they failed. They simply failed," Kean said.

Ahhh, so what's the story with GITMO then, WhistleAss?

Even while expressing his views, Bush said Saddam's punishment "will be decided not by the president of the United States but by the citizens of Iraq in one form or another."

He said he doesn't see a need for an American role in Saddam's trial, a process that Iraqis are "plenty capable of conducting."

The president distanced himself from possible interrogation methods used to elicit information from Saddam, other than to say that "this country doesn't torture."

And to all the wingnuts who have made a career of parsing the word "is" and bashing Clinton, the Miserable Failure will surely pass into the history books as the Biggest Liar Ever in the White House. Let's now move on to the word "if". Here are some examples from today: (emphasis added)

Bush also defended the intelligence that he used in citing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq as a main reason for going to war. Asked about the emphasis now on alleged weapons "programs" instead on possession of weapons themselves, Bush remained firm about his prewar assessment of the threat Saddam posed and insisted the world and America are safer because of the war that toppled him.

"What's the difference?" he said. "If he were to acquire weapons, he would be the danger. That's what I'm trying to explain to you. A gathering threat, after 9-11, is a threat that needed to be dealt with."

In reality, WhistleAss is probably hoping against hope for another Karla Faye Tucker moment to demonstrate his compassion and true christo-fascist brotherhood. All he'll need is a white hood to make it a Photo Moment for Laura's scrapbook o'death.

So here I am blogging away, sending my random idiocy to blogtopia via Moveable Type, which has a cool feature that pings some of the blogs that track blogs, like blo.gs; and weblogs.com. Weblogs.com however sends me this message:

Ping 'http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2' failed: Ping error: Thanks for the ping, however we can only accept one ping every half-hour. It's cool that you're updating so often, however, if I may be so bold as to offer some advice -- take a break, you'll enjoy li

An interesting note from CBS's website quoting a former CIA director, James Woolsey on the 'treatment' of Saddam.

He has greeted his initial interrogation with a mix of sarcasm and defiance, the officials said. Former CIA director James Woolsey was not optimistic that the deposed leader would become more forthcoming.

"I think we'll be lucky to get anything useful out of him," Woolsey told the CBS News Early Show, noting that Saddam could not be tortured or even subjected to some of the interrogation tricks used on al Qaeda suspects. "But even liars sometimes can point you in a useful direction by what they lie about and the way they lie, so we may learn some useful thing."

Can I designate my tax dollars to go directly to the E-3 with the spouse and two kids waiting at home for their return? No stops by the RNC or CheneyBurton first...

More evidence that perhaps the 1600 Crew think this whole going to war thing is just a big ol' joke...the operation to bring in the bad, bad former trading partner and ally Saddam was named...Operation Red Dawn, and the locations that they scouted out were called Wolverine I and Wolverine II. Jeebus.

The problem with calling Saddam's capture Operation Red Dawn is that it subverts the righteousness of our action with Orwellian Newspeak. (By sheerest coincidence, Red Dawn was released in 1984.) The U.S. military isn't mounting an insurgency against a foreign invader. It is the foreign invader. The real insurgents in Iraq—its Wolverines—are the Baathists and Islamist extremists who continue to wage guerrilla war against the American occupation and its Iraqi collaborators.

For years we have all wondered, "What the hell happened to Andy?". Well, sort of. Now he's inadvertently given us the answer, in his advice to Howie "the Whore" Kurtz:

Poor Howie. I'm not sure he realizes what a permanent deadline of 'now' does to your mental equilibrium.

In a classic piece, Paul Krugman deconstructs some of the ties of CheneyBurton and others to the 1600 Crew. Nice job.

Meanwhile, NBC News has obtained Pentagon inspection reports of unsanitary conditions at mess halls run by Halliburton in Iraq: "Blood all over the floors of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meat and vegetables." An October report complains that Halliburton had promised to fix the problem but didn't.

Why does NBC News Hate America?

The Great National Embarrassment has to be doing a little of the Gange or a couple of "wake up in the AM" lines or something. Here's from the All-Saddam All-the-Time press conference today. (emphasis added)

Q Thank you, Mr. President. The dollar has fallen quite sharply, Wall Street is increasingly worried about the deficit. Sorry. Wall Street is increasingly worried about the deficit. Will you have a specific plan for reducing the deficit, or will economic growth alone take care of the problem?

THE PRESIDENT: I appreciate that question. Josh Bolten laid out a plan that will shrink the deficit in half in a five-year period, and that's based upon reasonable growth assumptions. And it's a plan that depends upon Congress to continue to hold the line on spending. We have a deficit because of, one, a recession; two, a war. I want to remind you all that in order to fight and win the war, it requires an expenditure of money that is commiserate with keeping a promise to our troops to make sure that they're well paid, well trained, well equipped.

Which Congress is holding the lines on spending again? Or which administration? And supplies for the troops...let's see, the Deficit Dollars go into CheneyBurton and if anyone is lucky some supplies come out the other end. Okay, commiserate might be the right word for that. Jeebus, what an idiot.

"well paid" - never mind about that whole hazardous duty pay reduction thing
"well trained" - arguably they are, but not in Iraqi customs or language
"well equipped" - except for small things like body armor

Yeah, he's on top of screwing the troops...for the benefit of his biggest contributors. Daily.

If it wasn't so long, Juan Cole's "email of the day" to Sullivan would almost make a great "shorter" piece. But hey, I have to try:

"You're a demagogue."

That wasn't so hard.

That's the way that the case is going to be framed. Not the People of Iraq v. Hussein, but rather the aging, convict, self-appointed grand Neocon Poobah v. Saddam Hussein. Chalabi who has no real ties to Iraq other than being a Neocon and possessing a thirst for money and a lust for power, which he sold to Perlowitz & Company, is now setting the ground rules for he trial of Saddam. Note in the story that they are setting aside $75 million for the "trial". Are they looking for a blue dress too? And what's with his nephew being involved...oh yeah, it's the Nepostism Administration...no wait that's here. I'm so confused.

An Iraqi-run tribunal could begin proceedings against former president Saddam Hussein on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity as early as next spring, Iraqi political leaders and officials responsible for the court said Monday.

One of the architects of the tribunal, Salem Chalabi, said political leaders and legal specialists had already begun discussing the best prosecutorial strategy to employ against Hussein. Chalabi said there was growing agreement that Hussein should be charged with perhaps only a dozen specific atrocities in an effort to keep a trial from bogging down. The charges would include the use of chemical weapons against ethnic Kurds in 1988, the execution of prominent Shiite Muslim clerics and the killing of hundreds of Sunni Muslim tribesmen after a coup attempt, he said.
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U.S. officials said they were confident the tribunal would be able to conduct a fair trial of the former president. Although the law authorizing the tribunal was passed only last week by Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council, it was vetted by the occupation authority, the Pentagon and the White House, according to officials involved in the process.

"We think it will work," said a senior U.S. official familiar with the tribunal.

At a White House news conference on Monday, President Bush pledged that the United States would "work with the Iraqis to develop a way to try him that withstands international scrutiny."
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"We're not going to hold a kangaroo court," he (Chalabi) said.