July 7, 2008About that yellowcakeThe right-wing blogosphere is abuzz about Iraq's sale of yellocake uranium to Canada. This, they say, is the long-sought proof that Iraq did so have WMD, thus justifying the costly, deadly and disastrous invasion of Iraq. Nevermind that, well, the U.S. knew Saddam had this uranium. It was under lock and seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the Tuwaitha nuclear complex. In fact, the uranium was well monitored until the invasion, when the facility was left unguarded and vulnerable to looters: "In April 2003, just days after the statue of Hussein in Baghdad was pulled down, a U.S. Marine engineering company took a close look at Tuwaitha, which is 30 miles south of Baghdad. There they found guards had abandoned their posts and looters were roaming the giant facility. At one storage building, which later was found to hold radioactive samples used in research, the radiation levels were too high to enter safely, although the entrance door stood wide open." I guess we should be glad there was some of the uranium left to sell, but no one should believe this is any indication that we were right about WMD after all. Hostage rescue in Colombia took grave risksThere was much cheering over the weekend about a covert Colombian mission to rescue hostages from FARC guerillas. Colombians, with some help from American intelligence, set free more than a dozen people who had been held for years. Freeing prisoners from such a terrible group is something to celebrate, but there's a dark underside to how things went down in the jungle. The Colombian forces disguised themselves as humanitarian workers and journalists. Usually governments don't use such deception; they don't dress up as, say, the Red Cross because all sides usually agree that humanitarian groups benefit all sides and that the media needs access to share the story and shine light on what's really going on. Now, after Colombia, there will be gnawing doubt in the back of people's minds when they see such people trying to help a bad situation. NGOs and reporters will be at greater risk, will be less able to do their jobs and could be killed. I'm glad the hostages are free, but I'm not sure about the price. (In googling stories about the rescue, I stumbled across this commentary on this topic.) July 1, 2008A flimsy caseWant to know just how flimsy some of the evidence the government has used to justify holding foreign citizens at Guantanamo as "enemy combatants" is? Read this decision by a panel of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A couple of the key passages follow after the jump. June 12, 2008Guantanamo prisoners have rights after allThe Supreme Court ruled today that foreign prisoners held by the Bush administration without charges for six years have some rights under the Constitution after all. Guantanamo prisoners may challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. (Read the decision.) Discuss. April 14, 2008Death in IraqHow many Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the American invasion? Depends who you ask. This Congressional Research Service report rounds up the estimates. They are wildly divergent: 30,000 to 790,000. Meanwhile, you can check out U.S. casualties in this CRS report. March 27, 2008How bad has the administration mismanaged its wars?
(Photo: Miam-Dade Police Department - oh, yeah, did I mention the guy was charged with assault and a woman sought a order of protection against him?) March 26, 2008What's happening in IraqFrom Talking Points Memo, here's a good rundown of the escalating chaos in Iraq. March 24, 2008War and peace in FallujahLast week, the Los Angeles Times published a glowing piece about the turnaround in Fallujah, site of a grisly massacre of American private security workers early in the war. The comeback of Fallouja, the site of two major battles between Marines and insurgents in 2004, surprises even the most optimistic U.S. planners. The Washington Post, though, had a different take on the security gains and the brutal police chief, Col. Faisal Ismail al-Zobaie, behind them: December 19, 2007"Shared beliefs"From today's Washington Post, good news from Iraq: At the very least, analysts optimistically concluded, the findings indicate that Iraqis hold some "shared beliefs" that may eventually allow them to surmount the divisions that have led to a civil war. What are those "shared beliefs"? According to focus groups conducted by the military, Iraqis of all kinds believe "the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of 'occupying forces' as the key to national reconciliation," the Post says. We're uniting the Iraqis after all, it seems. December 4, 2007Speaking of Iran's nuke's....... this video of President Bush trying to explain when he new about the NIE is priceless. As Talking Points Memo, which posted the video, said: Pay particular attention to when he says he was told there was new information back in August but supposedly didn't ask what the 'new information' was. And then: "He didn't tell me what the information was." Right ...) April 3, 2007This week: War's impact on the National GuardTo be deployed to Iraq with an unclear mission, a shortage of authorized equipment and little warning before mobilization, must only compound the worries of more than 300 Virginia Army National Guard soldiers — and the fears of their family members But that is no fault of the National Guard members. The commission’s report highlighted a consequence of the Bush administration's disturbing committment to the Iraq war, impact on the military be damned: The National Guard has shifted from a strategic force to an operational force, but without benefit of changes in laws, regulations, policies, personnel management or funding needed to make it truly operational. December 11, 2006Sin of omissionI was listening to Rush Limbaugh on the way to a doctor's appointment this afternoon. He was talking about how incoming House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes flunked a pop quiz by Congressional Quarterly on the Mideast. He read verbatim from an article by Jeff Stein. He read these paragraphs: Now the five-term Texas Democrat, 62, is facing similar unpleasant surprises about the enemy, this time as the incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. That’s because, like a number of his colleagues and top counterterrorism officials that I’ve interviewed over the past several months, Reyes can’t answer some fundamental questions about the powerful forces arrayed against us in the Middle East. It begs the question, of course: How can the Intelligence Committee do effective oversight of U.S. spy agencies when its leaders don’t know basics about the battlefield? To his credit, Reyes, a kindly, thoughtful man who also sits on the Armed Service Committee, does see the undertows drawing the region into chaos. November 25, 2006What we've accomplished in IraqSo far, this appears to be our main concrete accomplishment: “I think Iran senses an opportunity to deliver a knock-out punch to the United States,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a regional specialist at the Brookings Institution. “They may see a chance that the US is driven out of the region altogether. Iran could become the great power of the Persian Gulf.” Despite this, there are some who want, desperately to attempt to blame this on the Democrats, who, let the record show, have not wielded any genuine power since the invasion and subsequent botched occupation of Iraq. But somehow, the mere fact that the Democrats won control of Congress, though they have yet to exercise such control, is enough to leave our soldiers impotent in the face of exploding civil war. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work. But the attempt to shift blame is pathetic and desperate - especially when our efforts should be focused on an attempt, however futile, to restrain this disaster. November 5, 2006400,000 troops might not have been enoughThose who planned the invasion of Iraq and the aftermath had access to these results. They apparently ignored them. WASHINGTON (AP) -- A series of secret U.S. war games in 1999 showed that an invasion and post-war administration of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, nearly three times the number there now. And even then, the games showed, the country still had a chance of dissolving into chaos. Read more. If you want a Congress that will continue to support this kind of incompetence, go ahead and vote for Republicans on Tuesday. November 3, 2006David Brooks' columnThe David Brooks column we ran today was excellent. He writes about a 36-year-old essay written by an Iraqi that someone really should have read before we invaded. On the Web, the column is only available behind The New York Times' tollbooth, but I'll post a couple relevant paragraphs after the jump. Pick up today's Roanoke Times if you want to read the whole thing. November 1, 2006Only the good die youngWhen I saw the news that former South African President P.W. Botha died at age 90 yesterday, I recalled a famous editorial written by Richard Aregood, then of the Philadelphia Daily News: "They say only the good die young. Generalissimo Francisco Franco was 82. Seems about right" That, by the way, was the entire editorial. October 31, 2006The problemBush in Charleston, S.C. said: "And now you're involved in this global war on terror, in the central front, which is Iraq. I know some in America don't believe Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, and that's fine, they can have that opinion. But Osama bin Laden knows it's the central front in the war on terror. He has called Iraq the third world war. He has said of Iraq that he will lead to victory or glory or humiliation. We have made our decision. Iraq will lead to victory and glory for the United States, for the Iraqis, and for the moderates around the world." That would be fine if al-Qaida were all were were fighting in Iraq, or even mostly what we're fighting in Iraq. But it's not. And anyone who thinks it is must not be paying attention. We're battling a powerful sectarian divide that grows stronger with every reprisal killing. Until we solve that - and God knows how we do - Iraq is unwinnable. And Bush should have known that going in, and he should have known the stakes if we lost. For that monumental blunder, his place in history is most likely set. October 23, 2006DarfurThis chilling account by 60 Minutes of what is happening now in Darfur is a must-read: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/20/60minutes/main2111909.shtml One part in particular caught my eye. Do you ever wonder why we, meaning the United States or the United Nations, aren't doing more to stop this ongoing crime against humanity? Here's one reason: The Sudanese government has been slowly dribbling out useful intelligence about al-Qaida, gained from the time in the late 1990s when Sudan hosted Osama bin Laden. As John Prendergast, with the International Crisis Group, told CBS reporter Scott Pelley, "It's been a very good deal for the government of Sudan to give little tidbits of information about suspects around the world in order to blunt United States outrage over what’s happening in Darfur." Prendergrast called the arrangement, in which the United States turns a blind eye to ongoing genocide in return for assistance on counterterrorism, "a really heinous arrangement and one that history will judge very harshly." |
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