As the ex-Rep. Foley scandal continues to spew sordid and culpable details, and as the Republican House leadership tapdances wildly, it occurs that the entire debacle serves as an object lesson of a pervasive problem more and more obviously endemic to those in entrenched power (and a corollary: the extended control of multiple branches of the government by one party), namely that the laws, in Leona Helmsley fashion, apply only to the “little people.”

The enablers’ and abettors’ claims of being victims (they’re not), the furious finger-pointing and deflection, the demonization of the affected and of the sources of information, all amply bear this out, none moreso than ex-Rep. Foley himself, who is finding out he is subject to a law he himself championed and nurtured through Congress.

Abuse of power is always an ugly thing, but that’s what is occurring. True, politics is hardball, but hardball is also a game for grown-ups, an appelation that cannot be applied to those who dodge, weave and otherwise out and out refuse to accept responsibility for their action, or responsibility for what transpired as result of deliberate inaction.

Personal observation: It is no great secret that Speaker Hastert was installed as a figurehead for Tom DeLay. Though DeLay has resigned and is under indictment and is on the outside of the power structure right now, ye old scribe would be willing to bet good folding money that though not in power he is not out of contact. He was still majority leader (someone whose position dictates never being out of the loop on party members) during the years previous when warnings and concerns involving now ex-Rep. Foley were being made to “senior” ears in the House.

Commended once again to your attention is the audio file linked over in the right-hand column.

Summaries here and here and here.

Broken record: A “decisive six months” — following the previous such described period. And the one before that. And the one before that…

Missed this one in the Iraqi press from last week:

The Ministry of Interior has fired more than 7,000 of its employees for involvement in ‘corruptin.’ [sic

It is the largest purge in the ministry following accusations that Iraq’s newly formed security forces are more corruptive than counterparts under former leader Saddam Hussein.

[snip]

…the purge included high-ranking officers some of them carrying the rank of lieutenant-general.

Despite the seriousness of the allegation on the basis of which the sackings were made, it is apparent that none of them would face prosecution. Article

The degradation of chaos takes its toll on the next generations.

Mohammed U, a 60-year-old science professor who asked for his full name not to be disclosed, spoke to the Guardian after returning from the funeral of a colleague, a law professor and head of the law faculty, who died in an explosion.

“Education here is a complete shambles. Professors are leaving, and the situation - the closed roads and bridges - means that both students and teachers find it difficult to get in for classes. In some departments in my institute attendance is down to a third. In others we have instances of no students turning up at all.

[snip]

The situation is reflected in many of Iraq’s schools. “Education in my area is collapsing,” said a teacher from a high school in Amariya, who quit four months ago. “Children can’t get to school because of road blocks. The parents of others have simply withdrawn them from the school because of the fear of kidnapping.

“If children have to travel by car, we are much less likely to see them. When I left, we had 50% attendance. We see parents when they come in to ask for the children to have a ‘vacation’, and they admit they are too scared to let them come.

“Between September 8 and 28 two members of the staff were murdered. The staff was supposed to be 42. Now there are only 20.” Article

Saturday October 7 marks five years to the day since the war in Afghanistan began.

If significant attacks do continue through the winter, that shows a level of organization and capability above and beyond any of the past five years. On its face, that is gravely troubling.

Senior officials have warned British troops they face the prospect of fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan throughout the winter.

Traditionally military campaigning ceases during the fierce Afghan winters allowing forces to re-group before resuming fighting in the spring. Article

The spiral can be generally tracked.

US Marine Corps General James Jones, NATO’s supreme commander of operations, has admitted that the fierce resistance put up by the Taliban and the burgeoning insurgency has taken the alliance by surprise. NATO forces have realized that an all-out war is at hand, rather than the peacekeeping mission that was imagined earlier. New rules of engagement have been accordingly drawn up for NATO contingents deployed in the southern provinces of Afghanistan - and soon to be extended to the whole country, where US soldiers are reportedly to be put under NATO control.

British commanders in southern Afghanistan have been given clearance to use the army’s controversial Hydra rockets, which can target large concentrations of people with tungsten darts. The commanders are also permitted to resort to air strikes on suspected Taliban formations, conduct preemptive strikes and set up ambushes. Yet a British commander has been reported as telling the media, “The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis.”

[snip]

Distinguished British soldier-politician Sir Cyril Townsend wrote in Al-Hayat newspaper this week, “A realistic military appreciation of the situation would be that to gain the upper hand against the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and to start winning over the southeast of the country, will require deployment of at least 10,000 extra, highly trained professional and well-equipped troops with matching air support.”

Clearly, a huge crisis is shaping up for NATO. Its credibility is at stake. Sir Cyril does not foresee that the alliance will come up with the required military resources “to beat the Taliban on its own ground”. No wonder Lieutenant-General David Richards, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan and former assistant chief of the general staff of the British army, ominously warned in a recent television interview, “We need to realize we could actually fail here.”

[snip]

̾germane to the crisis in a fundamental sense is the hard reality that no matter the oft-repeated factor of a reasonably secure cross-border sanctuary in Pakistan, the Taliban have indeed staged a comeback in essence as an indigenous guerilla force capable of waging a long-term struggle. That is to say, the central issue is that the US has simply failed to come up with a winning political and military strategy in Afghanistan.

[snip]

The inability to earn respect and command authority plus the heavy visible dependence on day-to-day US support have rendered the Kabul setup ineffective. Alongside this, the Afghan malaise of nepotism, tribal affiliations and corruption has also led to bad governance. It is in this combination of circumstances that the Taliban have succeeded in staging a comeback.

[snip]

Second, the Taliban are becoming synonymous with Afghan resistance. [This is a key observation and prehpas the most dangerous of all. — voxd] The mindless violations of the Afghan code of honor by the coalition forces during their search-and-destroy missions and the excessive use of force during military operations leading to loss of innocent lives have provoked widespread revulsion among Afghan people.

[snip]

Third, it is a matter of time, if the threshold of the Taliban resurgence goes unchecked, before the non-Pashtun groups in the eastern, northern and western regions also begin to organize themselves. There are disturbing signs pointing in this direction already. If that were to happen, NATO forces might well find themselves in the unenviable situation of getting caught in the crossfire between various warring ethnic groups.

Fourth, at a certain point it becomes unavoidable that regional powers will get drawn into the strife. [Less agreement here. Pakistan aside, there may well be internal intranational conflicts that erupt, but a co-ordinated regional response and entrance into inter national conflict seems much, much less likely on the scale of possible escalations. — voxd] The fact remains that all Afghan ethnic groups enjoy a contiguous presence across the borders in neighboring countries. There is considerable misgiving among regional powers already over Washington’s hidden long-term agenda to bring Afghanistan, which has been historically a neutral country, under the NATO flag. Article

Something to always factor in is how much of Ahmadinejad’s wind and bluster as regards foreign and military matters (and Iran’s moves into the regional power vacuum created by the disintegration of Iraq as a regional counterbalance) is a beard to distract from the the lackluster implementation of domestic matters which where the basis of the populist support for his election.

“It’s still too early to make a good assessment of the government’s economic performance, but some of the contradictions resulting from lack of a clear economic theory are already becoming evident. Single digit interest and inflation rates that Ahmadinejad promised to achieve quickly is one example. They can’t be both achieved at the same time. Lower interest rates meant to bring growth to the national economy can in countries like Iran and the U.S. lead to higher inflation. In our case, the economic growth rate wasn’t accelerated by lowering interest rates and when prices started to go up, the panicky government had to back down and resort to controlling and manipulating prices,” Saeed Leylaz, economic analyst in Tehran, told IPS.

“Moreover, the government sector is growing fast and the private sector is losing ground. The government has been granting huge contracts by the order of the president and without holding tenders to military bodies. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has over the past few months been granted eight billion dollars worth of government contracts alone,” he said.

“On the other hand, the government’s slogans and its domestic and foreign policies have scared away investment. The stock market has lost 50 percent of its total value compared to its peak time,” Leylaz added. Article

Unilateralism and ultimatums constitute a divisive hand and deny valuable options.

…The European Union’s talks with Tehran over getting it to suspend uranium before negotiations that would be joined by the U.S. have failed. Now, the U.S. is saying to the Europeans, it’s time to leave the talking behind and move on to sanctions. That’s something the Europeans are deeply reluctant to do, because they know that sanctions would be unlikely to change Iran’s nuclear attitude; Iran if it does feel squeezed will respond by tightening world oil supplies; and the fact that sanctions won’t work will make military confrontation more likely. All along, the Europeans have joined with the U.S. in pressing for Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, but they’ve had a different agenda when it comes to resolving the standoff – just as the other parties to the six-party process over North Korea have insisted that the only way to resolve the conflict is in direct talks between Washington and Pyongyang in which the regime is offered security guarantees; so will the Europeans reiterate their longstanding demand that Washington hold direct talks with Tehran. Article

The tenebrous path to becoming vassals of despotism.

Bush, his Administration and the Republican Majority in Congress are hoping that our fear will convince us to give up the very freedoms and rights on which this country was founded. They have reason for optimism on this score. Several times before American’s have supported abridgement of citizen rights in the interest of security. Most recently, Japanese and Italian Americans were removed to concentration camps after Pearl Harbor and everyday citizens were blackballed because they chose to associate with those whom a Congressional Committee accused of being “Un-American”.

If Americans allow the Bush Administration to restrict our rights and liberties in the interest of security it will be because we as a society are singularly ignorant about our own history and history generally. Too many Americans have retained allegiance to the symbols of the “Spirit of 76″ but have forgotten the meaning. Those who fought to create our republic understood that the right to challenge one’s detention, the Writ of Habeas Corpus, the Great Writ, is the cornerstone of liberty. The revolutionary generation understood that this right must be universal. Without the Great Writ tyrants can rule unimpeded, with it tyranny is circumscribed, forced to reveal its methods and thus is undermined. Article

Had enough? Like most any 5½-year-old’s, the grabby, self-oriented hand of the woebegone G. Walker administration is in need of a slap.

President Bush’s frequent use of signing statements to assert that he has the power to disobey newly enacted laws is “an integral part” of his “comprehensive strategy to strengthen and expand executive power” at the expense of the legislative branch, according to a report by the non partisan Congressional Research Service.

In a 27-page report written for lawmakers, the research service said the Bush administration is using signing statements as a means to slowly condition Congress into accepting the White House’s broad conception of presidential power, which includes a presidential right to ignore laws he believes are unconstitutional.

The “broad and persistent nature of the claims of executive authority forwarded by President Bush appear designed to inure Congress, as well as others, to the belief that the president in fact possesses expansive and exclusive powers upon which the other branches may not intrude,” the report said.

Under most interpretations of the Constitution, the report said, some of the legal assertions in Bush’s signing statements are dubious. For example, it said, the administration has suggested repeatedly that the president has exclusive authority over foreign affairs and has an absolute right to withhold information from Congress. Such assertions are “generally unsupported by established legal principles,” the report said.

[snip]

Signing statements date to the 19th century but were rare until the 1980s. The Bush-Cheney administration has taken the practice to unprecedented levels.

Bush has used signing statements to challenge more than 800 laws that place limits or requirements on the executive branch, saying they intrude on his constitutional powers. By contrast, all previous presidents challenged a combined total of about 600 laws. Article

Sounds like a valuable text to discredit the ongoing epistemic distortion of American history.

…it is no great stretch to suppose that Christian historical revisionists might - in the words of author Chris Rodda - “Lie For Jesus” and, in her new book “Liars for Jesus: The Religious Right’s Alternate Version of American History” (the first of two in the series) Rodda undertakes what an entire generation of professional historians, ensonsced and tenured in America’s finest universities, has largely failed to do : acknowledge, confront, and refute the emergent school of Christian historical revisionism that amounts to the construction of an entire fictitious parallel history of the United States - with numerous interwoven and self-referential accounts claiming that the intention of the founders of the United States was to create an expressly Christian nation. One might suppose such a enterprise to have sprung from pages by Jorge Louis Borges or Philip K. Dick, but it is quite real and deadly, for that mythology has become firmly lodged in the minds of millions of Americans and so propells the political advance of Christian nationalism.

…in four hundred painstaking pages of analysis extensively footnoted and tied to numerous original and sometimes never before cited source documentation, Rodda methodically traces and debunks the references of alleged works of history by leading Christian nationalist authors and, in the end demonstrating them to be rooted in vanishingly little truth and extensive artifice, calls into question the entire revisionist ouevre. Article

Now this is an interesting development – Israel and Saudi Arabia admitting to agreeing to share intelligence data.

Another view of how the woebegone G. Walker administration’s bristling foreign policy obfuscates and impedes.

The Syrians “have the impression, not necessarily correctly, that they could gain something through force,” commented Uri Sagie, a former chief of Military Intelligence. Assad could believe, Sagie said, that “you don’t need to start an all-out war. By heating up the border or perhaps grabbing [some land], you might get world attention and renew the [diplomatic] dialogue.” Assad wants not only to get back the Golan Heights, Sagie said, but also to “get everyone off his back” – that is, to remove Syria from Washington’s blacklist and reduce his isolation.

Assad’s double message of peace and war, former ambassador Itamar Rabinovich said, is similar to how Egyptian President Anwar Sadat talked more than 30 years ago, when he sought to regain the Sinai. Rabinovich, now president of Tel Aviv University, headed Israel’s negotiating effort with Syria under late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

[snip]

Old Syria hands in Israel are less convinced that Assad’s overtures should be ignored. Rabinovich recommends “discreetly clarifying” with Assad “whether there is anything to talk about.” Such secret contacts, he notes, would have to be coordinated with Washington.

Sagie, who was in charge of talks with Syria under former prime minister Ehud Barak, said that Syrian-Israeli peace remains “a supreme strategic interest” for both sides. For that matter, he suggested, the Bush administration’s hard line “is not necessarily in U.S. interests.”

True, Sagie stressed, Syria “has done its utmost… regarding Iraq, Lebanon and Iran” to cause its own isolation. But “dividing the world into good guys and bad, black and white,” has undermined American influence in the Middle East, he said. “There are other shades, as you know. I’m not sure that Bush does.” Article

USE WHAT? WHERE?

The old saying ‘can’t tell one’s ass from one’s elbow’ may be in need of an update.

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HOLY HOLE

Ooh, those pesky mole people are not gonna be happy.

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BUST ‘N’ RUN

If nothing else, the wanted poster will perk up those dreary Post Office lines.

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SOFT SHELL CGI

Via Sideshow, Crab-Fu.

THAT WAS THEN…

Gearing up for 2003: While the fact that the realization has infiltrated the recalcitrant heads of the military is not to be sniffed at, it is a tad late to be setting out logistics.

The United States Army and Marines are finishing work on a new counterinsurgency doctrine that draws on the hard-learned lessons from Iraq and makes the welfare and protection of civilians a bedrock element of military strategy.

The doctrine warns against some of the practices used early in the war, when the military operated without an effective counterinsurgency playbook. It cautions against overly aggressive raids and mistreatment of detainees. Instead it emphasizes the importance of safeguarding civilians and restoring essential services, and the rapid development of local security forces.

[snip]

The doctrine is outlined in a new field manual on counterinsurgency that is to be published next month. But recent drafts of the unclassified documents have been made available to The New York Times, and military officials said that the major elements of final version would not change.

The spirit of the document is captured in nine paradoxes that reflect the nimbleness required to win the support of the people and isolate insurgents from their potential base of support — a task so complex that military officers refer to it as the graduate level of war.

Instead of massing firepower to destroy Republican Guard troops and other enemy forces, as was required in the opening weeks of the invasion of Iraq, the draft manual emphasizes the importance of minimizing civilian casualties. “The more force used, the less effective it is,” it notes.

Stressing the need to build up local institutions and encourage economic development, the manual cautions against putting too much weight on purely military solutions. “Tactical success guarantees nothing,” it says.

Noting the need to interact with the people to gather intelligence and understand the civilians’ needs, the doctrine cautions against hunkering down at large bases. “The more you protect your force, the less secure you are,” it asserts.

[snip]

A common assumption was that if the military trained for major combat operations, it would be able to easily handle less violent operations like peacekeeping and counterinsurgency. But that assumption proved to be wrong in Iraq; in effect, the military without an up-to-date doctrine. Different units improvised different approaches. The failure by civilian policy makers to prepare for the reconstruction of Iraq compounded the problem.

[snip]

One military officer who served in Iraq said American units there generally carried out the tenets of the emerging doctrine when they had sufficient forces. But protecting civilians is a troop-intensive task. He noted that there were areas in which there were not enough American and Iraqi troops to protect Iraqis adequately against intimidation, a central element of the counterinsurgency strategy.

“The units that have sufficient forces are applying the doctrine with good effect,” said the officer, who is not authorized to speak on military policy. “Those units without sufficient forces can only conduct raids to disrupt the enemy while protecting themselves. They can’t do enough to protect the population effectively and partner with Iraqi forces.” Article

WHAT HAVE WE BECOME

No comment, particularly, but it is important to note.

The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge’s ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

The president has said the program is needed in the war on terrorism; opponents argue it oversteps constitutional boundaries on free speech, privacy and executive powers.

The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest. Article

GOV NOTION #9

On a recent Meet The Press, did the (soon to be ex-) Senator from Ohio give away the game? (emphasis added)

MR. RUSSERT: Here’s two poll questions that I think caught the attention of a lot of Americans. Let me start with Senator DeWine.

“Most Iraqis Favor Immediate U.S. Pullout.” “Most Iraqis.” “A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.”

And then this poll. “Iraqis back attacks on U.S. troops. About six in 10 Iraqis say they approve of attacks on U.S.-led forces … [according to] the poll done for University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes.”

Senator DeWine, if they want us out, and they’re in favor of attacking us, why are we still there?

SEN. DeWINE: Tim, I was shocked by that as well. But you know, on reflection, this is their country. There’s a lot of things going wrong. You blame someone who is there. Still does not change that we’re not in Iraq primarily for the Iraqis. We’re in Iraq for us. We’re-have to do what we have to do, and it goes back to what the three generals-three military leaders said. It would be a total disaster for us to leave. It is in our self-interest, the interest to protect American families, that we are in Iraq. That’s why we’re there. Source

LIGHTER FARE

Help, I’m on the ballot and can’t get off!