Don’t miss the NY Times Magazine cover story by Nir Rosen, aka World’s Bravest Person, on the gigantic Iraq refugee crisis. As the article reports, about four million Iraqis have fled their homes. That’s 15% of Iraq’s population; the equivalent in the US would be 45 million people.
It’s really something to live in a country so powerful we can rip another nation to shreds like this and barely notice. Hey, what time is the Golden State-Jazz game on?
Of course, at the top of the US government it’s not ignorance. It’s total indifference:
“What I find most disturbing,” [Kenneth] Bacon [president of Refugees International] went on to say, “is that there seems to be no recognition of the problem by the president or top White House officials.” But John Bolton, who was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the Bush administration, and later ambassador to the United Nations, offers one explanation for this lack of recognition: it is not a crisis, and it was not triggered by American action. The refugees, he said, have “absolutely nothing to do with our overthrow of Saddam.
“Our obligation,” he told me this month at his office in the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, “was to give them new institutions and provide security. We have fulfilled that obligation. I don’t think we have an obligation to compensate for the hardships of war”…
When I read John Bolton’s comments to Paula Dobriansky — the undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs — and her colleague Ellen Sauerbrey, assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, they mainly agreed with him.
Or as George Bush put it in January, “I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude.”
They also asked the clerk if they could buy some of those cool Canadian spy quarters
In case you missed it, here’s how the Fort Dix conspiracy suspects got caught:
The FBI learned of the alleged plot when the men went to a Circuit City store and asked a clerk to transfer a jihad training video of themselves onto a DVD.
Good to know the FBI was able to catch guys who had surveilled themselves.
That thingy should be instantly recognizable as a replica red poppy flower. In Canada, as in much of the Commonwealth, paper poppies are worn on their version of Veteran’s Day, a practice begun after WWI, when countless men died in the poppy-strewn fields of Europe.
There are almost 30 million of these coins in circulation in Canada. How anyone could think this was some sort of secret device is beyond me. Usually people don’t hide things by making them bright red and sticking them right in the middle of stuff.
But the US Army contractors leapt to the logical conclusion that this was all some sort of numismatic surveillance.
So it seems the House Intelligence Committee may have a little more self-respect than the Senate Intelligence Committee under Jay Rockefeller. Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists points out this section of the House version of the 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act:
The Committee was dismayed at a recent incident wherein the Intelligence Community failed to inform the Congress of a significant covert action activity. This failure to notify Congress constitutes a violation of the National Security Act of 1947. Despite agency explanations that the failure was inadvertent, the Committee is deeply troubled over the fact that such an oversight could occur, whether intentionally or inadvertently.
The Committee firmly believes that scrupulous transparency between the Intelligence Community and this Committee is an absolute necessity on matters related to covert action. The Committee intends this audit and reporting requirement to act as a further check against the risk of insufficient notification, whether deliberate or inadvertent.
Obviously this likely involves Iran. And given its tremendous importance, we can count on the U.S. media never looking into it.
I’m told there’s an outside shot that House Democrats on the Armed Services Committee will put a restoration of habeas corpus into the Defense Department Authorization Bill being marked up tomorrow and Thursday. Apparently Chairman Skelton has the votes but there are concerns about whether to have this fight now.
Now’s the time to let them know that this is something that we elected them to get done. There’s a bit of fear that this vote could put freshmen members at risk, though I don’t really know why as the data on this isn’t compelling and the attack ads just didn’t work in 2006.
The most important members to contact are Ike Skelton, antiwar freshmen, and members of the Armed Services Committee. Pelosi and Hoyer would be good too. Each link below goes to that member’s email form, and their phone numbers are to the right. I’ve only included Democratic members of the committee since the decision on whether to make a vote will be made within the party - the full list of Armed Service members is here.
Call and ask them to restore habeas corpus and put it in the Defense Department Authorization bill. This is an especially important message to deliver to freshmen members who have the moral credibility of having been in elected in 2006 in the teeth of Republican fear-mongering.
Thank you, but our terrorist is in another castle.
I’ve been saying for years that those Ataris and Nintendos are the cause of violence, but you fools weren’t listening. Now the video game threat has reached our shores :
F-B-I agents say one of the six men accused of planning a shooting spree at Fort Dix conducted surveillance at several military installations.
According to a complaint, nearby Lakehurst Naval Air Station, Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and a Coast Guard building on Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia were cased in August 2006.
The F-B-I says it also tailed the suspect to Fort Monmouth.
Prosecutors say the suspect told an informant he settled on Dix because co-defendant Serdar Tatar delivered pizza to the post for Super Mario’s Pizza Restaurant in New Hanover Township.
From what sources are telling me, the Fort Dix terrorists were dangerously close to getting their hands on advanced flame-throwing technology.
Thank goodness we’ve got a President willing to use cheat codes to keep us safe.
I think that withdrawal from Iraq — it obviously gives al Qaeda a huge victory. Huge victory. On the other hand, if we stay in Iraq, it gives them the opportunity to kill more Americans, which they really like.
One of the things, though, that I think the antiwar crowd has not considered is that, if we’re putting the Americans right within their arms’ reach, they don’t have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans. They don’t have to knock down the trade center. They can do it around the corner, and convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.
A few days ago I wondered whether Christopher Hitchens had accurately described Karl Rove as “not a believer.” The answer seems to be yes. Christopher Schipper sends along this transcript of Wayne Slater on Fresh Air last September, talking about The Architect, his book about Rove:
SLATER: You know, I remember seeing Ralph Reed in Texas when Rove tried to bring him on board back in about 1998…Ralph Reed is an Evangelical Christian who was successful in bringing Evangelical Christians around for political ends. Karl Rove is just the opposite. He is, in fact, an agnostic. He has told–he told a friend in high school that he grew up in a largely a-religious household. He told a friend at the University of Texas, where some years ago he was teaching, that he would like to be a believer but he’s an agnostic and he couldn’t be otherwise. So Rove’s approach has always been not that religion and the values of religion ought to have a place in our public policy, which is the message that he sent. Rove’s approach is that Christians are a marvelously effective voter delivery system that can be rallied, motivated, energized, and delivered for the political candidate of your choice.
GROSS: Are you confident that Karl Rove would still consider himself an agnostic?
SLATER: I know that he felt that way two years ago. I don’t know of any reason to think that he has changed that view. He certainly hasn’t told me that he has. It’s certainly possible. I think the evidence and the history is that he remains something of an agnostic, though he sees the Christians, and not just Christians but also orthodox Jews, to some extent, as a valuable voter source. With Rove, it’s about winning. With Karl Rove, it’s how can you put together a team and a constituency or a cluster of constituencies that delivers you 50 percent plus one of the vote? And that’s what it’s all about.
Atrios is right, when you’re using something like this to convince people there’s a “thriving Republican punk music scene”, then you’re an idiot :
And, as a Republican, I’m proud to have John Cummings in our Party. You may know John as Johnny Ramone, of one of the best bands of all time, the Ramones. The Ramones are largely regarded as being the first punk rock band and they happen to be Republicans. In fact, Johnny Ramone was quoted in 2004 as saying, “I send money to the [Republican National Committee] and to Bush/Cheney. I will argue politics with people all day long. I am one of the few Republicans out here.”
Odd that conservatives would boast of having a dead Ramone in their ranks when one of the band’s most political songs, Bonzo Goes To Bitburg, was to protest St. Ronnie putting a wreath on a Nazi grave :
Remind me, how many times did the Republican candidates compare themselves to Reagan in last week’s debate?
The true cost of the escalation in Iraq is about to become even more apparent:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The United States said on Monday its military was expecting to suffer heavier casualties as it pushed into “tougher neighborhoods” in a bid to crush insurgency in Iraq.
The White House warning came on a day when 25 people were killed near Ramadi in two suicide bombings police blamed on al Qaeda. They were the latest in a string of big car bombings across Iraq in recent weeks that have killed hundreds despite a U.S.-backed security crackdown in Baghdad and outlying areas. [Reuters]
That liar Tony Snow is now saying that the White House anticipated this wave of carnage from the beginning. “We’ve known that, been saying it all along. We’re getting into some of the grittiest security operations,” Snow said.
