The Dream Is Dead - the dumbest [expletive] speech on the planet

The Dream Is Dead

By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: December 12, 2007

WASHINGTON

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Maureen Dowd

The man crowned by Tommy Franks as “the dumbest [expletive] guy on the planet” just made the dumbest [expletive] speech on the planet.
Doug Feith, the former Rummy gofer who drove the neocon plan to get us into Iraq, and then dawdled without a plan as Iraq crashed into chaos, was the headliner at a reunion meeting of the wooly-headed hawks Monday night at the American Enterprise Institute.
The room was packed as the former No. 3 at the Pentagon, previewing his upcoming book, “War and Decision,” conceded that the case could be made that “mistakes were made.” His former boss, Paul Wolfowitz, and the former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle sat supportively in the front row.
But he wasn’t self-flagellating. He was simply trying to put an egghead gloss on his Humpty Dumpty mishegoss.
“At the end of the day, here we are, and as of now there’s a reasonable chance that the country is going to remain united,” he said. Not quite the original boast of democracy cascading through the Middle East.
Feith also inanely noted that his personal view was that his de-Baathification policy — which created a huge, angry pool of unemployed men that fueled the insurgency — “was not basically a big error. It’s been criticized very severely. I think there actually was a lot of good thought that went into the de-Baathification policy.” It just spiralled out of hand, he said. Mistakes were made.
He thinks everything would have been fine if America had not lingered so long in Iraq. If only Paul Bremer and the generals had just turned Iraq over to the slippery con man Feith wanted to put in charge, Ahmad Chalabi.
Asked about getting tough with Iran and Syria, Feith offered this incandescent insight: “As we all know, the president said he’s The Decider. That actually is quite a profound point. The president is The Decider and the main thing he decides about is risk.”
He noted that in battles through American history, “the military fights better over time.” This from a guy who sent our military into Iraq without the right armor, the right force numbers or the right counterinsurgency training.
“A strategic alliance of the ousted Baathists and foreign jihadists was something that our intelligence community did not anticipate,” he said, continuing to spread the blame.
But the intelligence community didn’t miss it. The neocons tried to scrub out that sort of analysis, knowing it would make the war harder to sell.
Classified reports prepared for President Bush in January 2003 by the National Intelligence Council warned that rogue elements of Saddam’s government could hook up with existing terrorist groups to wage guerrilla warfare.
In “Fiasco,” Tom Ricks wrote that Feith’s Pentagon office was dubbed the “black hole” of policy by generals watching him drop the ball.
“People working for Feith complained that he would spend hours tweaking their memos, carefully mulling minor points of grammar,” Ricks wrote. “A Joint Staff officer recalled angrily that at one point troops sat on a runway for hours, waiting to leave the United States on a mission, while he quibbled about commas in the deployment order.”
Jay Garner, America’s first viceroy in Iraq, deemed him “incredibly dangerous” and said his “electrons aren’t connected.”
Feith’s disdain for diplomacy and his credo that weakness invites aggression were shaped, Ricks reported, by personal history: “Like Wolfowitz, Feith came from a family devastated by the Holocaust. His father lost both parents, three brothers, and four sisters to the Nazis.”
Feith told Jeffrey Goldberg in The New Yorker that “My family got wiped out by Hitler, and ... all this stuff about working things out — well, talking to Hitler to resolve the problem didn’t make any sense to me. The kind of people who put bumper stickers on their car that declare that ‘War is not the answer,’ are they making a serious comment? What’s the answer to Pearl Harbor? What’s the answer to the Holocaust?”
What’s the answer to bin Laden? According to Feith, it was an attack on an unrelated dictator. He oversaw the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, whose mission was to amp up links between Saddam and Al Qaeda.
It defies reason, but there are still some who think the chuckleheads who orchestrated the Iraq misadventure have wisdom to impart.
The Pentagon neocons dumped Condi Rice out of the loop. Yet, according to Newsweek’s Mike Isikoff, Condi has now offered Wolfie a job. It wasn’t enough that he trashed Iraq and the World Bank. (He’s still larking around town with Shaha, the sweetheart he gave the sweetheart deal to.)
Condi wants Wolfie to advise her on nuclear proliferation and W.M.D. as part of a State Department panel that has access to highly classified intelligence.
Once you’ve helped distort W.M.D. intelligence to trick the country into war, shouldn’t you be banned for life from ever having another top-level government post concerning W.M.D.?

Protesters abused for heckling Raymond Tanter Terrorist Financier

Doctor 'not guilty' for protecting anti-war protester
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
By: Dylan Wilkerson

Jury finds providing health care is not a crime

On Dec. 3, an Arbor Michigan jury found Dr. Catherine Wilkerson not guilty on both criminal counts she was facing. Dr. Wilkerson was charged with two counts of attempted obstruction/interference/assault of a police officer and a paramedic for assisting a victim of police brutality at a demonstration. It is a victory for protesters and their right to necessary medical assistance in the face of police violence.

The phony charges stemmed from an incident on Nov. 30, 2006 at the Michigan League in Ann Arbor where several

protesters where arrested for heckling Raymond Tanter. Tanter is a former national security advisor for Ronald Reagan and current Georgetown University faculty member who was speaking at the University of Michigan campus at an event organized by the American Movement for Israel, a right-wing Zionist organization.

Tanter was there to discuss "regime change" in Iran. He not only advocates taking military action, but also using tactical nuclear weapons and depleted uranium against Iran.

Several protesters were dragged from the event and arrested for heckling Tanter. One protester, Blane Coleman, was taken down forcefully by University of Michigan Department of Public Safety officers Mark West and Janet Conners. They pinned Mr. Coleman face down and held him to the floor, while handcuffing him behind his back. Coleman complained that he could not breathe and then he collapsed unconscious.

Dr. Wilkerson identified herself as a physician and asked permission to examine Coleman. She was allowed to examine him as the group waited for Huron Valley Ambulance medics to arrive. Dr. Wilkerson was concerned that Coleman was at risk for a condition called positional asphyxia. Positional asphyxia occurs when people are handcuffed with their hands behind their back as weight is pressed on them, causing them to be unable to draw a full breath. Positional asphyxia has caused several recorded deaths.

Upon HVA arrival, Dr. Wilkerson relinquished Coleman’s care to HVA medics, but was forced to intervene a second time when one of the medics, Dean Lloyd, began using a series of ammonia inhalants on Coleman. Lloyd cupped his hands over Coleman's mouth and asked "You don't like that do you?" as Coleman retched and spit from the noxious fumes.

At Dr. Wilkerson’s trial, both officer Conners and Lloyd testified that they believed that Coleman was faking his medical emergency.

Dr. Wilkerson denounced the behavior of the medics when the incident occurred: "Ammonia inhalants have no medical efficacy," she said. An Ann Arbor Police officer on the scene, Kevin Warner, removed Dr. Wilkerson forcefully, using a painful restraint technique on her arm and throwing her face-first into a wall. She was held for some time and then released.

Dr. Wilkerson was never arrested at the scene. She was not charged with a crime until nearly two months later, one week after she filed a citizen complaint against Warner with the Ann Arbor Police.

The trial was an obvious attempt to silence public criticism of police and paramedic behavior at the protest. Another woman, Dr. Kathryn Babayan, a University of Michigan history professor, testified that she was also charged with similar crimes after she filed a complaint against police due to the incident.

The prosecutor in the case, Margaret Connors—who is making a bid to become a judge—attempted to prejudice the jury against Dr. Wilkerson throughout the proceedings by referencing her political views as evidence of her guilt. During her cross-examination of Dr. Wilkerson, Connors asked questions like, "Is it true that you list Ho Chi Min as one of your 'heroes' on your myspace page?" and "Did you say that you needed 'international solidarity' during your interview on KUCI radio?"

These attempts appeared petty and irrelevant to court room observers. They did not have the intended affect on the jury.

Despite a parade of police and paramedic witnesses called by the prosecution, Connors was unable to demonstrate any evidence that Dr. Wilkerson ever did anything during the incident other than verbally criticize police and paramedics for their treatment of Coleman.

When asked pointedly during cross-examination, officer West testified that "verbally interfering with an arrest and criticizing police is not a crime." Another prosecution witness, Jeff Green, a University of Michigan student and building manager of the Michigan League who witnessed the event, testified that Coleman's treatment by DPS officers seemed "overly harsh."

Several HVA medics testified that ammonia inhalants are no longer carried on HVA ambulances or used by HVA medics as a result of the incident.

The defense presented several eye witnesses who testified on Dr. Wilkerson’s behalf. Despite Connors attempts to discredit them as political fanatics, their testimony lent further credence to Dr. Wilkerson's account of the incident.

The defense also called Dr. Bledsoe to the stand, one of the nation's leading experts on emergency medicine and paramedic training. Dr. Bledsoe testified that ammonia inhalants are potentially dangerous and have no real medical application.

Additionally, Dr. William Wilkerson, the defendant's husband and a court recognized emergency medicine and paramedic expert, testified that ammonia inhalants are just plain bad medicine. He said that HVA did not follow their on-scene patient-doctor protocols with Dr. Wilkerson.

There also was considerable political support for Dr. Wilkerson’s case. More than 4,000 people signed an ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism) national petition demanding that all charges be dropped.

The trial was more than a victory for Dr. Wilkerson; it was a victory for free-speech and the rights of protesters. If Dr. Wilkerson had been convicted, it would have established a precedent criminalizing protesters who complain or criticize police behavior during unlawful arrests.

Reprinted with credit to the Party for Socialism and Liberation

The Wrong Choice for a National Hero’s Museum

The Wrong Choice for a National Hero’s Museum
[November 05, 2007]

Monte Melkonian would have turned 50 On November 25th. The Government of Armenia has decided to mark the National Hero’s jubilee with a formal celebration. The commission established for the occasion and headed by the minister of defense has planned a number of activities, among which is the establishment of the Monte Melkonian Museum.

The commission intends to lay a wreath on Monte’s grave in the morning of November 25th and then to visit School # 11 in the Southwestern district of Yerevan to officially rename it after Monte Melkonian, to unveil a bust of Monte in the Alley of Glory leading to the Military Museum in Victory Park, and to hold a commemorative evening at the National Opera House. The establishment of the Monte Melkonian Museum is among these very appropriate measures, but no one knows who decided to establish the museum at School # 11.

It is one thing to have a corner illustrating the life and achievements of the person the school is named after (which, by the way, does not require a special decision by a state institution and can be done by the school administration itself) and another thing to pass a decision to create a museum dedicated to a national hero and to set it in an inaccessible outlying district. One can only congratulate the students, the administration and the staff of School # 11, along with the people who live in the neighborhood.

Alec Yenigomshian, Chairman, Monte Melkonian NGO

US Supported Terrorist Group Guilty of War Crimes

MKO Accused
Of Anti-Iraq Crimes

BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 11--Iraq’s High Court accused terrorist group Mujahideen Khalq Organization of committing crimes against the Iraqi nation.
Head of the High Court for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, Jafar Al-Mousavi, told reporters on Sunday that the court’s prosecutors have collected concrete proof for putting MKO agents on trial, IRNA reported.
“Written, audio and video evidence pertaining to MKO has been found based on which MKO members are accused of murdering and displacing thousands of Iraqi citizens in the north and south of Iraq,“ he said.
Al-Mousavi said the team of prosecutors is seeking to file two complaints against MKO in this regard. He did not disclose the time of the trial and the names of suspects.
There are close to 4,000 MKO agents held by US forces in Camp Ashraf, Diyala province.

Saudi Princes Funding Terrorits Groups MKO and Al-Qaeda

Saudi Princes Funding MKO

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 1--A senior Iraqi official has disclosed that Saudi Arabian princes are providing financial support to an anti-Iran terrorist group in Iraq.
In an interview with Al-Alam TV channel on Tuesday, Iraq’s National Security Counselor Fazel Al-Shavili said the Iraqi government has found documents showing that Saudi princes are paying $30 million monthly to the armed terrorist group Mujahideen Khalq Organization (MKO), whose agents are largely based in Iraq’s Camp Ashraf.
The MKO agents were allied to executed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in suppressing the Iraqi people and carrying out terrorist attacks against Iranian civilians and officials for almost three decades.
Following the ouster of Saddam, the terrorist MKO has made efforts to attract the attention of war-mongering American officials who are currently protecting the terrorist group as a tool against Iran.
The Iraqi official noted that apart from making regular financial donations to MKO, Saudi princes are also funding Al-Qaeda terrorists in Iraq as well.
Shavili pointed out that half of the foreign insurgents and bombers entering Iraq through the western borders are Saudi citizens.
The Iraqi western borders are controlled by US occupation forces.

Wolfowitz's Indonesia record the trail of SLIME

Wolfowitz's Indonesia record eyed By ROBIN McDOWELL, Associated Press Writer
Fri May 4, 3:24 AM ET

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The controversy surrounding World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz spotlights a lack of ethics that was apparent two decades ago when he was U.S. ambassador to Indonesia, say critics who recall how he failed to speak out against corruption and rights abuses.

Today, as head of the bank, Wolfowitz has been arguing that corruption is crippling the world's poorest nations. But that was "the very thing he closed his eyes to" when he served as ambassador from 1986 to 1989 during the regime of the dictator Suharto, said pro-democracy activist Binny Buchori.

"He's a hypocrite," she said. "He should quit."

Wolfowitz is fighting for his job after disclosing that he helped arrange a promotion and raises for his girlfriend Shaha Riza soon after taking over the bank's helm in 2005. Wolfowitz says he is the victim of a smear campaign and has refused to resign.

But Jeffrey Winters, a professor of political economy at Northwestern University, said that Wolfowitz's past career already showed he was ill fit to run the World Bank.

"From the very beginning, I felt this was the wrong person for the job," said Winters.

He pointed to the radical deregulation of Indonesia's banking sector in 1988, promoted by Wolfowitz's economic team and international lenders. It "opened the floodgates for local crony conglomerates to set up private banks and take in deposits from a trusting public."

With no rule of law, there was no oversight and no supervision, he said.

"The foxes were running wild in the financial chicken coop and no one, including Wolfowitz, pressured the Indonesians to design safeguards to protect the public's deposits," he said. One result was the 1997-98 financial crisis "that plunged tens of millions into abject poverty."

Suharto, who ruled for 32 years, was toppled in 1998 by pro-democracy demonstrations.

The former dictator's family has been accused of embezzling an estimated $35 billion in state funds during his regime, according to corruption watchdog Transparency International. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed under the dictator's brutal reign.

Supporters say Wolfowitz pushed quietly for economic and political reforms. One example: a call for greater openness at his farewell speech at Jakarta's American Cultural Club in 1988.

"I wouldn't say it was brave, after all he was moving on," said James Castle, a former head of the American Chamber of Commerce, adding that the comments would also have need Washington's approval. "But he was the first ambassador to challenge the Suharto government, and that speech became quite famous."

Others say he helped fight the Suharto regime in subtle ways.

"It seemed like he was hugging a dictator, but he was actually supporting us," said Bambang Harymurti, editor of the hard-hitting magazine, Tempo, noting that "persons non grata with the government" were often invited to embassy receptions.

"Sometimes it would be a small gathering, and Paul would have someone like me sitting next to a military general," Harymurti said with a chuckle. "In this way he sort of empowered the pro-democracy activists."

But critics said Woflowitz's actions were too little, too late.

"Wolfowitz never criticized human rights issues, let along corruption," said Asmara Nababan, executive director of the pro-democracy research institute, Demos. By staying silent, he "was saying 'don't worry about your domestic problems, America is here to back you.'"

___

Associated Press reporters Zakki Hakim and Irwan Firdaus contributed to this report from Jakarta.

Chris Carney alarming and unfounded prewar claims about Iraq

Elected as a war critic, he was part of prewar errors
Chris Carney, who worked at the Pentagon, still believes there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
By Greg Miller, Times Staff Writer
November 22, 2006


WASHINGTON — Of all the Democrats who rode a wave of public anger over Iraq to election victories this month, Chris Carney had the most unlikely credentials as a war critic.

Before winning the race for Pennsylvania's 10th Congressional District, Carney was part of a controversial intelligence unit at the Pentagon that was responsible for some of the most alarming — and, it turned out, unfounded — prewar claims about Iraq.

Assigned to search for links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the unit reached a series of conclusions, including that a Sept. 11 hijacker had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague, Czech Republic, that have since been widely discredited. The Pentagon unit was created and run by one of the Iraq war's principal architects, then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith.

Carney took part in briefings at the White House and the Pentagon that disparaged the CIA for underestimating the relationship between Baghdad and the terrorist network. Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials frequently touted the findings to bolster the case for war.

Despite his background, Carney campaigned as an antiwar Democrat and said he got a "very warm reception" when he arrived at Capitol Hill this week to take part in orientation activities for incoming members. Carney is a lifelong Democrat, according to his press secretary.

"They are intrigued," Carney said of his fellow freshmen. "But I'm not sure all of them know about this."

Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Atherton) said she was disturbed by the work that came out of Feith's office, but doubted that members would hold that against Carney.

"I think that in retrospect that what happened there is deeply troubling and we're paying a price for it," Eshoo said. "But I don't want to cast judgment on him."

Carney, 47, is not apologetic about his work at the Pentagon.

"I certainly stand by the fact that I believe there was some sort of relationship," he said in an interview. "On a scale from zero to 10, with zero being no relationship and 10 perfect operational coordination," Carney said, the Iraq-Al Qaeda link was "somewhere in the 2.5 range."

That appears to be a more qualified assessment than the so-called Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group presented to policymakers during a series of briefings in 2002. In one briefing slide, the group asserted that there were "more than a decade of numerous contacts" between Iraq and Al Qaeda and that there were "multiple areas of cooperation," possibly including the Sept. 11 attacks.

Carney, a reserve officer in the Navy and political science professor at Penn State University, wasn't expected to win his conservative-leaning district in eastern Pennsylvania. But his chances improved when the Republican incumbent, Don Sherwood, admitted he'd had a five-year extramarital affair and was forced to deny accusations that he had choked his mistress.

Carney said he initially was a supporter of the invasion of Iraq but has been dismayed by the handling of the postwar insurgency. His stance hardened, he said, when one of his college students returned from Iraq and complained of how ill-equipped U.S. fighting units were.

"They had to scrounge Iraqi scrap yards for junk metal to weld onto their trucks," Carney said.



Carney ended up working for Feith after being called up for duty as an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Carney was detailed to Feith's office in 2002 after the noted neoconservative asked the DIA to provide two analysts for a special project.

Carney and another DIA analyst, Christina Shelton, spent months poring over thousands of raw intelligence reports. They quickly concluded that the CIA, which had been skeptical of any serious relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, was getting it wrong.

"I found it kind of curious the way they were so equivocal in the analysis," Carney said of the CIA reports. "It was frustrating to me and others with all the caveating that was going on."

So the Feith team assembled a competing report called "Assessing the Relationship Between Iraq and Al Qaeda." The document cited "fundamental problems" with the CIA's analysis and offered conclusions without caveats. It said Baghdad was providing training to "non-Iraqi terrorists" and had "provided safe haven" for terrorist leader Abu Musab Zarqawi. Under the heading "Known Iraq-Al Qaeda Contacts," the document listed the alleged 2001 meeting of Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta with an Iraqi agent in Prague as if there were no doubt the meeting had occurred.

When the group's findings were leaked to a conservative publication, Cheney described the report as the "best source" for understanding ties between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

Like much of the prewar intelligence on Iraq, the allegations of ties between Baghdad and Al Qaeda have crumbled under postwar scrutiny. A recent investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that Atta never met with an Iraqi agent in Prague, that Baghdad did not give safe haven to Zarqawi, and that Hussein was so wary of Al Qaeda he had issued an edict barring anyone in his government from having any dealings with the terrorist network.

Carney defends his work by saying that many of the postwar conclusions are based on information that wasn't available to analysts in 2002.

Polls show a significant minority of Americans still believe Iraq was somehow involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, but Carney disputes that his work contributed to that misperception or pushed the U.S. into war.

"I was one voice among hundreds talking about this," Carney said. "Ultimately, the decision to go to war rests with the president, and I am certain that the president had lots of information other than what I had."

Carney said that much of his focus in Congress would be on domestic issues, including healthcare and job security. Still, he said that he believed U.S. intelligence agencies suffered from a lack of creative thinking, and that he had ideas about how to fix some of the community's problems.

"There are a number of things I'm looking at as committee assignments, and the intelligence committee is certainly one of them," he said. If selected, he added, "I think I would apply the same kind of rigor to those issues that we did in the Pentagon."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
greg.miller@latimes.com

Roozbeh Pournader of Tehran Enemy of Iran - Dangerous Revolutionary

Roozbeh Pournader of Tehran, Iran is a prominent Anti-Islamic revolutionary. He has been deeply involved in turning Wikipedia into a propaganda tool to attack the Islamic republic of Iran. Roozbeh Pournader has posted a huge amount of slander against IRI leaders including Imam Khomeini and Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

On his web page Roozbeh Pournader of Tehran describes himself as:
I work as the CTO of Sharif FarsiWeb, Inc., a company doing software localization, internationalization, standardization, and free software and Open Source customization, consulting, and development. We have our own GNU/Linux distribution, its users including Royal Dutch Shell branch in Iran.

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjan

Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani is a hard man to pin a label on. He is regularly castigated in the American press as a hard-liner. However he played a crucial role in freeing Western hostages held in Lebanon. He is called a Conservative and President Khatami is called a moderate but Rafsanjani's Brother-in-law is Khatami's new Vice President. (see Notes on Vice President Seyed Hossein Mar'ashi), Clearly Rafsanjani is a pragmatist who will do what is best for Iran even if it means coming to terms with the US. Unfortunately the US has rebuffed every peace initiative and treated him shamefully.

State versus the Anti-State, Post Modern War - A look at President Bush's response to 911

State versus the Anti-State, Post Modern War
A look at President Bush's response to 911
In regards to Churchill's "melancholy paradox" Wohlstetter wrote,
"If peace were founded firmly on mutual terror and mutual terror on symmetrical nuclear powers, this would be, as Churchill has said, "a melancholy paradox;" nonetheless a most comforting one." That simple thought caused me to dash off the following thoughts:
In the late 1950s America charted a defense strategy that Churchill termed "a melancholy paradox". Peace was founded firmly on mutual terror and mutual terror on symmetrical nuclear powers. This we now know as MAD, mutually assured destruction. America and the Soviet Union lived in fear of a "First Strike" and both lived in grim realization of the other's ability to launch a massive "Second Strike". This spawned 30 years of Cold War maneuvering. MAD worked because we knew where the Soviets were and they knew where we were. I remeber the Rand Surveys where they would rank American cities as to their likelihood as targets in nuclear war. As a child I grew up in Scranton which was about 50 on the list as I remember it. We could target them and even if we missed their leadership we could cripple their system.
As long as the mutual terror was state terror the state was always vulnerable. On September 11, 2001 a new terrible enemy arose and launched a "First Strike" terror attack. The enemy which we call al-Qaeda is not a state, it is a loose knit group based in Wahhabi Islam. The strategy that protected us through the Cold War was now applied to a non-state "First Strike" Scenario.
A massive "First Strike" called for an immediate "Second Strike". George Bush looked immediately to his key advisors for a military solution. Obviously someone had to pay and the United States must respond. But respond to who, attack what. al-Qaeda was not a state, it lacked clearly identifiable targets. What states sponsored the terror attack? Obviously Saudi Arabia was deeply involved. The money and the majority of the participants were Saudi. Close behind was Pakistan whose ISI worked closely with al-Qaeda.
How then did the Bush advisors react? Paul Wolfowitz proposed attacking Iraq. This completely ignored a host of obvious facts such as that Iraq was not involved in the terror attack on the United States. However attacking Iraq was not without merit. Iraq was the great blemish on the Bush family honor. For the elder President Bush Iraq was a major strategy blunder. While we can debate most of the first Bush presidency Bush failed miserably in Iraq. Our military did everything asked of them but Bush snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory. This was a burr under the saddle as they say in Texas of the Younger President Bush. Iraq was far easier to attack then isolated Afghanistan and most importantly at least to Wolfowitz Iraq was an enemy of Israel. I do not suggest that Wolfowitz has dual loyalties but Wolfowitz sees the world through Likud tinted glasses. Bush disregarded Iraq for the time being and went with Afghanistan as a target. Saudi Arabia and Pakistan were key allies in our old cold war strategy so the Bush crew took them off the list. Afghanistan was a good possibility because as a country it had few friends.
Attacking Afghanistan is an interesting choice. Imagine that a man came home to find a man raping his wife. That man then goes out and picks out a weaker friend of the rapist to thrash as revenge for the rape.
Afghanistan is surrounded by Pakistan, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. Iran was viewed as an enemy by the Bush team so there was no loss to the US no matter how Iran reacted to an Invasion. (N.B. Perhaps Bush's greatest weakness is that he sometimes rashly categorizes opponents as enemies when he does not need to do so.) Turkmenistan was pursuing a non-aligned course. Uzbekistan was a secret ally with the United States against al-Qaeda so we could count on their support. During the Clinton Presidency US Green Berets were put into Uzbekistan and even conducted covert missions in Afghanistan. Tajikistan had a close affinity with the Northern Alliance so they were on-board for an invasion if the NA was a part of it. Pakistan was the skunk in the woodpile so to speak.
Most of Afghanistan was in the hands of Taliban. The Taliban was a creation of Pakistan's CIA, the ISI, with the help and financing of Saudi Arabian Intelligence. Part of the price of Saudi Arabian support was al-Qaeda. Pakistan was between the rock and the hard place. As a state Pakistan was targetable so being a prudent man General Musharraf deemed it better to give up Afghanistan then to face American wrath.
The United States then rolled through Afghanistan in a brilliant fashion. The combination of massive air power, the Northern Alliance, Special Forces, and CIA commando teams were ideally suited to attacking and destroying Taliban. It was Air-Mobil warfare in a way Robert McNamara never imagined . There was however a small problem in that Taliban was not the one who attacked us, al-Qaeda did. The Afghan invasion was costly to al-Qaeda but not destructive. They delivered a "First Strike" and our response was annoying, irritating, but not destruction in the way necessary to make a MAD like strategy successful.
To make matters even worse in November2001 the United States allowed thousands of Taliban, ISI operatives and al-Qaeda men to leave Kunduz Afghanistan by plane. We do not know who got on those planes. It is very possible even probable that top terrorist leaders including Osama Bin-Laden merely got on a plane and slipped away to freedom. What we do know is that Mullah Omar, Osama Bin-laden, al-Zawahiri and many others slipped through our fingers. Our Second Strike was unable to find much less touch our enemies.
What did we really accomplish against al-Qaeda and their supporters. Today Osama Bin-Laden is a free man living a life not terribly different than how he lived before 9/11. The same goes for Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri. al-Qaeda has paid a price but it is a price they are willing to pay. Their supporters primarily Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have escaped very lightly. In Saudi Arabia Crown Prince Abdullah who was very close to al-Qaeda was preempted by the return of Fahd to day to day oversight of the monarchy. Losing the Regency was a small price to pay for his active role in the attack upon America. In Pakistan Musharraf became a defacto vassal state of the US to avoid the retribution that was so richly deserved. al-Qaeda is larger and in many ways more deadly than ever. The states that supported al-Qaeda flourish.
Has the US response been so terrible as to discourage any future terrorist attack on the US? No, our second strike capability is so flawed as to future action against the US is virtually assure future action against the US.
In the Post Cold War Era we have replaced MAD with MAR (modestly accomplished retaliation). When it came time to sow salt in their fields all we could do is sow their fields with the blood of our children. When it came time to fight we allowed the fight to be subverted to the foreign policy goals of a third power. After Afghanistan we allowed a Likudnik cabal to trick us into war with Iraq.
How do we fight non-state terrorism?
First of all true believers who are willing to die for a cause are almost impossible to stop. Still we must adopt a strategy that makes a significant portion of the less than true believers think of the cost.
First of all a terrorist is one who plans, prepares, or implements an act of terror but we must also consider those who aid and shelter them to be terrorists as well. If a mosque or a club is used by the terrorists then it should be destroyed. If a company helps terrorists it should be dealt with severely. If a country supports terrorists then it should pay a severe price.
False dichotomies of good terrorist and bad terrorist are extremely destructive. All terrorism must be seen in the same light. The Bush policy of sheltering the Mujaheddin-e-Khalq sends the wrong message to nations considering aid or comfort to Terrorists. No terrorist should be tolerated.
Our strategy must be morally comprehensible. If torture is wrong then it is always wrong. The Bush policy of stripping "enemies" of their human rights or protection under the Geneva Convention is morally wrong. What President Bush allowed at Abu Ghraib prison was barbaric, immoral, and evil. Even our friends in the Moslem world look at this abomination and ask how can we claim "One Nation Under God" and then do the evil we do. It validates everything that the extremists suggest when the call us "The Great Satan". The essence of fighting terrorism is massive response in a matter befitting One Nation Under God.

JCPenney: "Today's the Day" Commercial - a happy song

There is a lot to be said for a happy song. You know what I mean, one of those songs that just makes you smile. Recently I heard the JCPenney: "Today's the Day" Commercial. The next time I heard it I listened more closely. The third time I told my children that they had to be quiet for the ad. They thought I was really strange. So I looked it up and found out it is "How can It Be" by Forever Thursday.
I hate iTunes and refuse to use their stupid site. but being a pragmatic man I had my wife Jodi download it for me. I insist on paying for all my music so I buy CDs and put them on my computer. When CDs are not an option I pester Jodi... oh well.



"how can it be" lyrics

i say, and so say i
my morning thought
it knew itself just fine
until across the room
it caught its first glimpse of my afternoon
how can it be
that these things live in me?

i say, and so say i
my mornings day seems nothing like its night
my night so self assured
was all at sea when faced with dawns strange world
how can it be
that these things live in me?
http://www.myspace.com/foreverthursdaymusic
Thank you,
Barry O'Connell