Summaries here and here and here.

When the G. Walker propaganda machine blathers on, keep this in mind. Look, Iraq was a secular nation wuth an extensive educational and university sytem. Even more so among the then-favored Sunnis, there is no particular lack of the knowledge or expertise being accorded Iran.

Since late August, British commandos in the deserts of far southeastern Iraq have been testing one of the most serious charges leveled by the United States against Iran: that Iran is secretly supplying weapons, parts, funding and training for attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

A few hundred British troops living out of nothing more than their cut-down Land Rovers and light armored vehicles have taken to the desert in the start of what British officers said would be months of patrols aimed at finding the illicit weapons trafficking from Iran, or any sign of it.

There’s just one thing.

“I suspect there’s nothing out there,” the commander, Lt. Col. David Labouchere, said last month, speaking at an overnight camp near the border. “And I intend to prove it.”

Other senior British military leaders spoke as explicitly in interviews over the previous two months. Britain, whose forces have had responsibility for security in southeastern Iraq since the war began, has found nothing to support the Americans’ contention that Iran is providing weapons and training in Iraq, several senior military officials said.

“I have not myself seen any evidence — and I don’t think any evidence exists — of government-supported or instigated” armed support on Iran’s part in Iraq, British Defense Secretary Des Browne said in an interview in Baghdad in late August.

[snip]

…Allegations that Iran or its agents are providing military support for Iraqi Shiite Muslim militias and other armed groups is one of the most contentious issues raising tensions between Washington and Tehran. Most gravely, U.S. generals and diplomats accuse Iran of providing infrared triggers for special explosives that are capable of piercing heavy armor.

[snip]

…Maj. Dominic Roberts of the Queen’s Dragoons said: “We have found no credible evidence to suggest there is weapons smuggling across the border.” Article

Chaos abides. And how’s that training going?

Bomb attacks in Baghdad have hit an all-time high, the U.S. military said on Wednesday, as one of the capital’s frontline police units was pulled off the streets on suspicion of involvement with sectarian death squads.

[snip]

The same sectarian divisions driving hundreds of killings a week in the capital are also present among the 300,000 Iraqi soldiers and especially the police, U.S. officials say.

“There is clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death squad elements to move freely,” Caldwell said of the decision to stand down the 8th Brigade — some 700 to 800 men — after U.S. officers reviewed all 27 brigades last month.

“The determination was made that removing them from Baghdad will be in fact enhancing the overall security,” he said.

[snip]

All police brigades will be retrained over the coming year.

One U.S. military official described some national police last week as “absolute … remnants of humanity” while another, conceding the U.S. role in recruiting them, said he found it “frightening” meeting some of the men drafted in from mainly Shi’ite communities to help protect January 2005 elections. Article

More:

The 8th Brigade of the 2nd Division of the Iraqi National Police will be moved to a US military base for “anti-militia, anti-sectarian, national unity training.”

“They’re going to be doing criminal background checks,” Major General William Caldwell said of the demobilized policemen.

“There was clear evidence that there was some complicity in allowing death squad elements to move freely, when in fact they were supposed to be impeding their movement,” he told reporters.

The brigade, which had around 800 members, was operating in northwest Baghdad, an area that had previously been cleared by the US military but was still seeing persistent death squad activity. Article

Sovereignty ain’t what it used to be.

It is in Baghdad that the situation is worst and there is a sense of desperation in the Iraqi government’s announcement of yet another plan to tackle the sectarian violence tearing the city apart.

This is the third security initiative the government has come up with for the capital since it took office just four months ago.

[snip]

However, many details of the plan remain unclear.

The government has not spelled out what powers these local committees will have, or what areas they will cover.

In fact, most neighbourhoods of Baghdad set up their own local security bodies some time ago to protect themselves - because they do not trust the authorities to look after them. Article

Polling Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. One word: Oy.

Strictly FYI:

In Iraq, “staying the course isn’t good enough because a course has to have an end,” Powell said.

[snip]

In the U.S. today, a challenge the war poses is a question of whether an essential “bond of trust that must exist within a nation…has been shaken,” he said. The extent of the damage to trust will be measured in the November elections, he said. Article

The Rev. Annie Taylor, Boothby’s aunt, said Boothby underwent surgery at a U.S. military installation in Germany before being flown to the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. She said he has remained unconscious since the explosion, which left a piece of shrapnel in the back of his neck near the brain steam [sic].

[snip]

“We’d like all of the Christians to pray for his safe return,” she said. Article

All others, not so much. Isn’t that special. Well, best wishes for a recovery anyway, Sgt. Boothby.

Yes and yes again.

Call me old school, but I am still more concerned with the Republicans molesting Lady Liberty while pretending to be guarding the nation’s security, an assignment which they have totally botched. The news about the Foley coverup, while important as yet another example of extreme hypocrisy on the part of the Republican virtues police, should not be allowed to obscure the latest evidence of administration deceit as to its egregious ineptness in protecting the nation. Article

There are individual propositions ye old scribe would take issue with as far as being proven beyond the shdaow of doubt, but there remain still so many, many clear and unassailable other points that to dispute the conclusions would be mere quibbling.

Under the guise of fighting terrorism – a terrorism the government itself creates, perpetuates, expands, nurtures and helps grow – the Constitution as we know it is being dismantled, not by terrorist evildoers intent on destroying us, but by our own government intent on destroying our way of life. For a government need not eviscerate a nation’s laws, protections, guarantees, rights, freedoms and liberties to guarantee security. It need not introduce a police state that destroys the way of life for 300 million individuals. This government is pursuing the dismantling of the Constitution and our laws not for fighting terror but to fight the American people. It is doing this in a methodical, some would say obsessive, desire to erode rights and freedoms, grant unlimited powers to the executive and silence dissent because in doing so it is removing the barriers that have for decades impeded authoritarians and corporatists from implementing their vision of the world. As such, the last remaining vestiges of American freedoms and rights are all that stand between fascists and their despotic nirvana. With the relative ease by which they have eviscerated so many laws and rights since 9/11, it is these few liberties left that will be targeted next, becoming easy pickings on the road to full fledged American tyranny.

Already, the government has been granted the right to enter our homes without a warrant and without our knowledge. It can ask for and get library records when it chooses. It has the right to pick us off the street and take us into custody without probable cause. It can wiretap any phone it wants, as well as listen in to any voice message in the country, monitoring our private conversations. Today we are regularly surveilled upon, our histories deciphered, our lives dissected. Our Internet activities are frequently monitored, our emails read and scrutinized. Technology has allowed the government the capacity to overlook our movements using the ever-expanding public cameras, as well as each and every activity we do using our credit or debit cards. It can track our financial records as well as our purchases, all the while gathering files with our complete, bio-metric information. It can do all this in secrecy, without transparency, without accountability, without needing the color of law as a guiding instrument nor the legality of honest governance for inspiration. Activists and dissidents are spied upon and harassed, their activities monitored. Enemies of the state have their names placed on various lists, prohibiting them from enjoying the daily rights afforded to millions.

[snip]

Today, the president claims himself the unitary executive, the Dictator in Chief, possessing absolute power, doing what he wants, when he wants and without a care in the world that he will ever be held to account. This is dictatorship. This is the end of America as we knew her and the birth of an America we wish never to know.

[snip]

For the last five years the Bush cabal has successfully conditioned the population to its “New Normal,” the new America. It has manipulated both society and laws to accept gross violations of human rights, a suppression of liberties, and an authoritarian paradigm of disturbing wickedness. It is preparing us to incorporate into American law and culture the mechanisms used in totalitarian states. Using the incomprehensible ignorance and apathy of the American people against us, it has clandestinely destroyed the foundation of our principles and virtues. Using its vast power, its legions of authoritarians, its army of stenographers and it great arsenal of tools at its disposal, it has inexplicably made the American people tolerant and even acceptant of torture, rape, humiliation, illegal imprisonment, disappearances and criminal malfeasance, something thought unthinkable just years ago. The New Normal has become a reality, the new America now routinely tortures and inflicts horrible pain and suffering on human beings, all to the indifference and acceptance of the American people. Article

One nation, under One.

…Think the bill goes after only terrorists or people who support them? Think again. The president is expected to sign it imminently. If you just read news reports, you won’t have any idea how far this bill goes. Read it. Yes, it’s too late to do anything, aside from letting your representatives know what they have done. They and the media have failed you. Read it.

But don’t stop there. President Bush certainly hasn’t. The bill’s suspension of access to habeas corpus explicitly applies only to “aliens,” which it defines as non-citizens — in other words, legal permanent residents of the United States — but the Bush administration has taken the position that it can detain anyone — anyone, U.S. citizens included — by, in its sole discretion, labeling that person an enemy combatant.…

[snip]

In fact, the bill is explicitly designed to deal with “them,” but its effect is to cast a far wider net. You may be like many Americans who have a general unease about compromising the Bill of Rights, but think some give is necessary in the case of purported monsters like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. If that’s your understanding of what this bill does, you have been ill-served by the media. This is a bill that compromises the rights of all of us — the KSMs of the world, but also those who the President Bush decides are a threat to this country — or even to his agenda to privatize Social Security. And, you might not know it from such eminent media outlets as the The New York Times and The Washington Post, but not even Bush supporters are safe — those who might meet with this administration’s approval, but still fall victim to this bill if they pose a threat to a future administration that might have a lower respect than President Bush for the democratic principles that distinguish this nation.

How is this possible? Here’s what the bill says: “No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider an application for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.”

In other words, under this bill, the president or his designee can simply decide that someone poses a threat, call them an unlawful enemy combatant, and lock them away. Yes, they are entitled to a determination by the Combatant Status Review Tribunal of whether they in fact meet the definition of unlawful enemy combatant. But the law doesn’t impose a time limit. The government could simply postpone that hearing indefinitely, and the detainee would have the status of “awaiting such determination,” and not be given access to federal court. Article

Give us our country back. Demand that by way of your vote this November.

The Act also suspends the constitutional protection of habeas corpus, which means that those branded as unlawful enemy combatants can be incarcerated indefinitely without even being charged. And, if the person so branded happens to be an “alien” (say, a Canada citizen) he can no longer use the Geneva Conventions in his defense because “no alien enemy unlawful combatant subject to trial by military commission… may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights at his trial by military commission.”

As for who interprets the meaning and application of Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, concerning whether or not a prisoner has been tortured, “the President has the authority for the United States to determine the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and to promulgate higher standards and administrative regulations for violation of treaty regulations which are not grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.”

While a list of “grave breaches” is provided in the legislation, the bill enjoins that no foreign or international law shall be used by any U.S. court of law to interpret these breaches. This means that it is up to the President to decide whether or not someone is guilty of torture or other cruel and inhumane violations of the Geneva Conventions. This in turn means that George W. Bush now has the authority to decide whether he himself is guilty of having tortured anyone. And, of course, the provisions of this Act regarding torture have been conveniently made retroactive and take effect as of November 26, 1997. Article

Short version: Flawed premises lead to flawed policy lead to flawed execution.

Both of these correctives — the renewed recognition of Afghanistan as the flashpoint in the effort to eradicate Al Qaeda and a realistic backing away from hubristic neoconservative illusions about democratic peace growing out of the barrel of a gun — should be welcomed, despite their obvious purpose of shifting the political spotlight away from the administration’s gross ineptitude in Iraq. Rectifying the legacy of ineptitude, however, even in Afghanistan, let alone at the level of grand strategy, requires a more fundamental overhaul of policy and policy-making than this administration is capable of undertaking.

The vaunted assumption by NATO of the prime counterinsurgency role in Afghanistan has not yet yielded sufficient troop and equipment contributions to overcome the expanding Taliban insurgency. Castigations of the allies for dragging their feet when the indispensable superpower, still bogged down in Iraq, is engaged in a transparent effort to slough off the lion’s share of its own counterinsurgency efforts to NATO are unlikely to produce the substantial force augmentation required. The gap between promise and performance in Afghanistan is starkly revealed also by the continuing reduction of funds for reconstruction and development, without which local victories in firefights with the Taliban are only temporary, if not meaningless.

[snip]

The record of this administration does not inspire confidence that it can avoid a simplistic implementation of the moderation vs. extremism formula in which those who go along with its demands and preferences are, by definition, moderates, and those who oppose it are either extremists or appeasers of the extremists. Article

Bravo.

Enough.

The people of this nation have been lied to, deceived, spied upon and bullied far too long by the Bush administration.

It’s become a national disgrace. Worse yet, there is no shame. No contrition. No apology.

[snip]

And now we’re learning that the acts that started it all – those planes crashing into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania farm field – might have been averted if someone would have just listened.

[snip]

But then listening has never much interested this administration. Even to the truth.

Enough. Article

The ongoing unrest, simmering disaffection and violence in Nigeria is nothing new; the signs for oil and gas production remain not propitious.

Militants said they killed 17 soldiers in two separate gun battles in Nigeria’s oil heartland on Wednesday and threatened imminent attacks on strategic oil facilities.

The killings extend to four days a surge in violence between troops and rebels in the world’s eighth largest oil exporter and follow the kidnapping of seven foreign workers from a U.S. company compound on Tuesday.

“In (one) firefight, which lasted about one and a half hours, our units captured two gunboats, killing all occupants, nine soldiers,” the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) said in an email to the media.

[snip]

Seven foreign oil workers are still missing after being abducted by suspected militants from a residential compound attached to ExxonMobil’s operational base on Tuesday.

A day earlier, about 70 gunmen attacked a convoy of boats supplying oilfields operated by Shell. The militants killed up to 10 soldiers and abducted 25 Shell contractors who were all free by Wednesday. Article

DOES HE BUY RINGS BY THE GROSS?

201 times is the charm.

WHAT HAVE WE BECOME

Yuppers

The appearance of legal torture as part of the American landscape is a profound change, and certainly signals the approach of the totalitarian state, though it may not herald its actual arrival. And considering that a right-wing regime is involved, discussing the specter of fascism is not only appropriate but necessary.

Even if it does not signal the actual arrival of fascism, it’s the clearest warning sign of its approach yet. Torture is a quintessentially fascist act; codifying it means that the massive brick in the wall that it represents has been plunked into place. And it’s the kind of brick that can be the cornerstone of a massive national pathology of apocalyptic proportions. Article

PUTTING A PRICE ON ‘VICTORY’

Premature exultation.

APPOSITE LAMPOON

Stumped where to file this.

Psst — it’s fabrication. At least for now.

LIGHTER FARE

Just for fun.

Here’s how ye old scribe came out:

You are Superman

Superman 80% Green Lantern 80% Supergirl 67% Iron Man 65% Spider-Man 60% Robin 57% Wonder Woman 57% Batman 50% Hulk 50% The Flash 45% Catwoman 35%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz