Summary here.

Chaos abides.

A system of iron weirs in the Tigris River 20 miles southeast of Baghdad was designed to prevent lily pads, known here as “Nile flower,” from traveling down-river and clogging canals vital to farmers for irrigating Iraq’s south.

But now, the weirs also catch corpses that float down from the capital, murder victims in the sectarian violence that blights Iraq.

[snip]

Local police in the nearby town of Swaira say that since January 2005 they have collected 339 bodies of men, women and children from the filters. It’s considered one of the highest numbers of corpses found in a single location in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in 2003.

“Every day, we find bodies in the river,” an official at the Swaira police force’s crime department told ABC News. “Most of them are of Iraqis living in the bloody areas to the south of Baghdad.”

[snip]

Identifying the bodies is no easy task. Many have spent more than 10 days in the water. Some are mutilated or have been eaten by fish. Identifying features such as scars and tattoos, as well as distinctive clothing, are sometimes the only means of verifying their identity. So far, only 91 bodies have been identified by their families.

[snip]

The Tigris River is not the only place where bodies are found. Others include a sewage treatment plant in the southern Baghdad suburb of al Rustomia, and the Al Maleh canal that irrigates farming country to the west of Baghdad. It’s a predominantly Sunni area where many Shiite pilgrims have been killed over the past two years in towns like Latifia, Yousofia and Mahmodia. Article

Are al-Maliki’s days numbered?

One month out from the midterm elections, are any further deaths (of Iraqis, of U.S. troops) a crass political commodity in the electoral calculus of an administration that cannot accept the reality on the ground and the consequences of their misguided and flawed policies?

With violence reaching new heights every week — this past week alone claimed the lives of 22 American soldiers — the Bush administration is starting to worry that reports of more American deaths so close to the mid-term elections could hurt the Republican Party.…

And the death toll on Iraqis has not been any kinder. The number of corpses that show up around the country’s morgues every day now averages around 50-60. The bodies typically have their hands and feet tied and show signs of torture and mutilation. Also on the increase is the number of attacks on American and Iraqi government forces.

And as if to add insult to injury, only a day after President George W. Bush declared the Iraqi city of Tall Afar as one of the safest in Iraq, insurgents detonated a truck bomb in that city killing eight people. Article

Follow-up to a story mentioned yesterday:

Iraqi authorities have arrested a produce supplier and four cooks after hundreds of police fell sick at their training barracks in an apparent bout of food poisoning, a spokesman said. Article

Summaries here and here and here and some immediate reaction here, which belies a benighted bullheadedness which promotes rather than works to defuse tensions.

Questions remain as to just what did occur. At this point, the obtuse and sketchy statements out of the DPRK and the lack of provision of any corroborating data do bolster speculation that what exploded was not what was announced that exploded.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency announced the test took place Monday morning local time and seismic activity consistent with a nuclear explosion was detected by geologists in both South Korea and Australia. It occurred in the northeast of the country near the town of Kilju, an area that had been under U.S. surveillance as a possible test site because of the excavation of several deep tunnels there.

North Korea warned China that it was about to test and the Chinese passed the information on to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing. President Bush was informed Sunday night shortly before the test took place.

[snip]

North Korea is an economic basket case underwritten by Chinese food and energy aid. This is ironic as the country’s governing ideology is still ‘juche,’ roughly translated as ’self-reliance,’ developed by Kim’s father Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s founding president known as the Great Leader. North Korea’s economy outperformed that of South Korea, measured by per capita GDP, until the mid-1970s. Today, however, South Korean economists estimate that their country’s GDP is around 40 times that of its northern neighbor.

If China were ever to pull the plug on its flow of aid to North Korea it would precipitate a crisis. North Korea is counting that China will never do that and it is not in China’s interests to do so. China’s policy toward the Korean peninsula has two goals: the peninsula should be nuclear free, and stable.

[snip]

The Chinese are increasingly frustrated that Kim is forcing such unpleasant choices upon them and it is beginning to show. Kim ignored China’s warnings against the missile tests of July 4 and the North Koreans refused to receive the diplomat dispatched by Beijing after the launch. China responded by supporting U.N. Security Council sanctions against the sale of any missile technology to North Korea. This was a first for China even though they modified a much tougher resolution initially proposed by Japan. Article

Requiring the most delicate and intense of diplomatic tools, the woebegone G. Walker administration is now quite bereft of skilled staff, those with expertise and standing having been subsumed or driven out by ideologues and neocon black-and-white warhawks. Sadly too, one gets the impression that anyone tapped as a special envoy would either chafe at the constrictions that would undoubtedly accompany the position or outright refuse in light of the rhetoric, record, grandstanding and showboating evidenced by Rummy, Cheney, Bolton, Rice, et al.

The hope in Washington is now that Chinese President Hu Jintao will decide he’s finally had enough of his out-of-control former junior partner. With Sunday’s test Kim has now twice rebuffed Hu’s pleas for restraint. The last time was July, when Kim ignored the Chinese leader’s request not to test missiles. This time Kim insulted Hu the day after an important Sino-Japanese summit with Tokyo’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe—a nationalist who will no doubt be probing China’s strategic determination—and on the eve of a big communist party plenary session at which Hu’s reputation will be on the line.

For Washington, almost everything is riding on this hope.…

[snip]

…only days after China orchestrated a framework agreement in September 2005 that promised the North it would be rewarded if it abandoned its nuclear program, including with a civilian nuclear reactor, the Bush administration imposed sanctions on the Macao-based Banco Delta Asia that effectively froze the accounts of Kim and other North Korean elites. The action is believed to have so riled Kim that he refused to return to the talks.

Now the hardliners have won the day. There are unlikely to be any carrots offered for quite a while to Kim after he posed what President Bush on Monday called “a threat to international peace and security” that “defied the will of the international community.” Still, Washington is gambling on quite a number of still-untested premises. It is gambling that Hu Jintao will be angry enough to sponsor a strategic shift in his country’s view of North Korea; until today Beijing has been reluctant to do anything that might lead to regime collapse. And it is gambling that the regime itself is moribund. Article

Written just before yesterday’s announcement of a weapons test, the points stand with a new prescience.

…From the perspective of Pyongyang, when confronted by the reality of significantly decreased economic aid and the recent freezing of financial accounts by two of its remaining semi-allies in China and Vietnam (upon the request of the United States), elevating this nuclear blackmail strategy to the next logical level likely constitutes the regime’s only available option.

Pyongyang’s perception of a world united against its security and economic interests compounds this desperate rationale, driving the nation to engage in a downward spiral of wartime propaganda, military brinksmanship, and saber rattling. Exacerbating the precarious situation has been the well-documented failure of the Six Party Talks to achieve its agreed-upon objective, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Preoccupied with the Iraqi debacle, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and Iranian nuclear ambitions, the Bush administration, since last November’s most recent Six Party Talks breakdown, has largely ignored the issue of North Korean nuclear weapons, passively acknowledging that while these weapons may exist, the security dynamic of the region would remain unchanged until the technology was demonstratively proven.

[snip]

…For all their toughness, militancy, and self-discipline, North Korea is an extremely impoverished and desperate nation. Desperate and militarily strong is, of course, a very dangerous combination. As such, the United States has a responsibility at this point in time to step in while we can, cast aside an ineffectual strategy, and offer North Korea the opportunity of direct talks. Failure to do so, as we may see in the coming days, will lead to further hostility and a nuclear change in the regional balance of power. Article

More:

On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.” In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations.”

Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country’s access to the international banking system, branding it a “criminal state” guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.

The Bush administration says that this sequence of events was a coincidence. Whatever the truth, I found on a recent trip to Pyongyang that North Korean leaders view the financial sanctions as the cutting edge of a calculated effort by dominant elements in the administration to undercut the Sept. 19 accord, squeeze the Kim Jong Il regime and eventually force its collapse. My conversations made clear that North Korea’s missile tests in July and its threat last week to conduct a nuclear test explosion at an unspecified date “in the future” were directly provoked by the U.S. sanctions. In North Korean eyes, pressure must be met with pressure to maintain national honor and, hopefully, to jump-start new bilateral negotiations with Washington that could ease the financial squeeze. When I warned against a nuclear test, saying that it would only strengthen opponents of negotiations in Washington, several top officials replied that “soft” tactics had not worked and they had nothing to lose.

[snip]

North Korea is divided between hawks who favor nuclear weapons and pragmatists who are pushing for economic reforms and a denuclearization deal with the United States. Just as the engagement policy pursued by the Clinton administration strengthened the pragmatists, so the Bush shift to a regime-change policy has given the initiative to the hawks. Article

And a clearly put day-after analysis:

The immediate effect will be that there will be a lot of tough talking - mostly from the Americans and Japanese.

In the long-term there isn’t realistically much that the rest of the world can do about this. The international community has very few options.

A military attack from America is out of the question because it would result in a significant war. South Korea wouldn’t stand for that and I do not think the American public would either.

I think we will see sanctions. There may be some sort of shipping blockade but that won’t have much of an impact as North Korea does not have significant trade.

I do think that the only way forward is engagement. We may not like cosying up to a profoundly obnoxious regime but there are no alternatives.

[snip]

China is not likely to do anything that will precipitate the fall of the North Korean Government as if they do, they will have large numbers of refugees bringing them all sorts of problems. The Chinese will talk tough for a while but will want to avoid a sudden collapse.

That’s why sanctions won’t work. You can’t have sanctions without the co-operation of China. They do not want all the chaos and unpredictability that a collapse will bring. Article

U.N. recap.

US-proposed Security Council sanctions over North Korea’s atom-bomb test would include international inspection of inbound and outbound cargo to curb proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, a Western diplomat said Monday.

[snip]

Last week, Japan, which chairs the council for October, and the United States had pushed for inclusion of a threat to slap an arms embargo and other trade and financial measures under Chapter Seven of the UN charter, if North Korea went ahead with its test.

But in the face of opposition from China and Russia, the explicit mention of sanctions was removed from a non-binding statement adopted by the council Friday. Article

What’s up.

Summary here and here.

One voice in a nation of anguish.

It is five years since American forces first entered my country offering the peace and stability that we had been denied for the past 30 years.

Thousands have died since that day, the countryside is overrun by Taleban rebels and thieves, and the prospect of a peaceful Afghanistan remains but a dream.

Even the road from Kabul to Kandahar, which cost $500 million (£270 million) in Western aid money to build, is becoming too dangerous. Earlier in the year I would drive Western journalists working for The Times. Now that would be a death sentence.

When I drove along the road two weeks ago armed Taleban rebels had set up a checkpoint less than two miles from Qalat. The roadblock was in clear view of a police post, yet the officers did nothing.

[snip]

…The youth of my village are being deprived of an education. Even under the Taleban there were two schools. In the years immediately after their fall, there were three serving 2,000 children from the five surrounding villages.

Today not even one is open. A campaign of intimidation, which included the beating and murder of teachers and the burning of schools, has closed them all. The Taleban say that the schools represent a government that they do not recognise and, as such, are a legitimate target.

My village is the site of our family graveyard. Eight of my brothers and sisters are buried there. Two were martyrs; they died after a Soviet rocket hit our house in 1983. The graveyard is also the home to five of my children, all born prematurely. They died because there is only one hospital in the province.

We used to go to the graves every Friday to pray; now it is impossible. For us – my wife who has lost five children and my mother – that is the hardest part of all. Article

What stand out and raise questions for ye old scribe are the locations highlighted here in bold in this eport.

As of Sunday, Oct. 8, 2006, at least 279 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The Defense Department last updated its figures on Thursday, Oct. 5, 2006.

Of those, the military reports 177 were killed by hostile action.

Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 56 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, two are the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as: Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen.

There was also one military civilian death and four CIA officer deaths. Article

Come election day, remember who pushed, prodded and passed this odious bill.

Bush, with his reverse Midas touch, has led this nation into a muck-pile of intractable problems. But even had Bush been the most talented chief executive in history, Congress should not have handed him the powers it did under the Military Commissions Act.

The right to habeas corpus, which is the ability to get before a judge to challenge the legitimacy of your imprisonment, is nonnegotiable. Congress may suspend habeas corpus only in cases of invasion or rebellion, according to the express terms of the Constitution.

[snip]

The law is a true abomination. It is our fault. We let this happen. We allowed them to draw the false dichotomy between security and freedom. We accepted Bush’s Torture Nation and his untouchable island prison.

Judge Learned Hand said “Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; if it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.” Americans no longer understand what liberty means. They think it has something to do with tax-free shopping and their right never to be offended by others’ opinions. Article

Yes, it is an administration with sparse interest and even less skill in applying power, whose self-oriented focus is primarily in accumulating and monopolizing power.

Rice has been here six times in the course of a year and a half, and what has come of it? Has anyone asked her about this? Does she ask herself?

It is hard to understand how the secretary of state allows herself to be so humiliated. It is even harder to understand how the superpower she represents allows itself to act in such a hollow and useless way. The mystery of America remains unsolved: How is it that the United States is doing nothing to advance a solution to the most dangerous and lengthiest conflict in our world? How is it that the world’s only superpower, which has the power to quickly facilitate a solution, does not lift a finger to promote it?

[snip]

The recent years have not been good for America. From “the leader of the free world,” it has become detested by the world. Not only do South Africa, Asia and Africa feel strong animosity toward it, most of the public opinion in Europe has also turned away from it. Is anyone in the administration asking why the world loves so much to hate America? And what implications will this growing global feeling have on the strength of the U.S. in the years ahead? Can the dollar, the Tomahawk and the F-16 provide an answer for everything?

In the Middle East, the U.S. has an opportunity to fundamentally change its image, from a warmonger to a peacemaker. And how does the U.S. respond to the challenge? It sends Rice to tell the excited Ehud Olmert how she falls asleep easily on her unnecessary and ridiculous flights to and from the Middle East. Article

Less than one week after the woebegone G. Walker administration first took office, on Jan. 25, 2001 (.pdf file) to be precise, National Security director Condoleezza Rice received a memo following up onpre-inauguration briefings and stressing the importance of addressing Al-Qaeda. We all know what both her and the administration’s reaction was.

A human (and turtle) interest tale of dedication from Lebanon.

On North Korea: What Josh says, to a “T.”

The woebegone G. Walker administration has burned their bridges on North Korea, and now finds itself unassailably beholden to China (who has resisted adamantly the U.S. calls for sanctions on Iran).

More later. It’s late, and Morpheus calls.

But it is not too early to surmise that the announced test also cements N. Korea’s regime as a regional pariah state, as they have now played the biggest bargaining chip they had. Other than South Africa, no nation has successfully reversed a confirmable nuclear weapons program.