Summaries here and here and here.

The spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said that the number of missing persons in Iraq rose to one million people, according to Iraqi official reports released recently.

“The number of persons missing since the Iraq-Iran war rose from 375,000 to 1,000,000,” Hesham Hassan told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Article

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Competing aseertions of cause, competing co-options of the aftermath of chaos for political aims.

The US military said American soldiers and Iraqi forces had arrested 11 suspected extremists in Karbala since Wednesday.

It was not known whether the detained people were involved in the Karbala firefights.

The Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala, meanwhile, saw a few hundred Shiites attend Friday prayers amid tight security. The shrine usually sees thousands of devotees on Friday.

Leading the prayers, imam Abdel Mahdi Karbalae, a representative of senior Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, called Tuesday’s clashes the result of an “organised” plan.

“We have intelligence information which indicates there was an organised plot to cause clashes and create chaos,” he told the congregation, holding up a letter from “intelligence sources.”

He did not say who allegedly masterminded the fighting. Article

More:

Maliki and his senior aides including ministers of defense and interior rushed to Karbala but they could almost do nothing despite the heavy presence of Iraqi police, security and army.

Residents say many police officers in the city refused to fight or simply left the scene of clashes. Now Maliki has ordered the expulsion of what he has described as “defeatist elements in the police force who did not shoulder their duties in confronting the gunmen.”

But if Maliki carries through his threat of dismissing the police officers and other security personnel who did not move a finger while innocent Iraqis were being gunned to death, he will have to sack the entire Iraqi police force and security personnel.

Iraq’s new police and security forces are built on sectarian and factional lines and members owe their allegiance to their sects and factions rather than the national government – if there is such a government in Iraq.

Residents and pilgrims give a version of events which runs contrary to that of the government. They speak of popular discontent and anger which many pilgrims vented during the ceremony.

Not only bullets were used in the clashes. Many pilgrims resorted to stones and sticks to attack government-appointed guards of the shrine as well as officials. Article

Another related piece weaving other scenarios here.

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So how’s that training going?

An independent panel established by the US Congress will recommend a complete overhaul of Iraq’s national police to purge it of corrupt officers and Shiite militants suspected of complicity in sectarian killings, the New York Times reported Thursday.

The commission concludes that the rampant sectarianism that has existed since the formation of the 26,000-strong force requires that its current units “be scrapped” and reshaped into a smaller, more elite organization, a senior US official familiar with the findings was quoted as saying.

The recommendation is that “we should start over,” the official said, according to the Times, which spoke with US administration and military officials about the panel’s findings. Article

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Op-ed du jour:

…it is both cruel and foolish for the United States to ignore the plight of more than two million others who have fled and are struggling to survive in Syria and Jordan. The United States pledge this week of $30 million to help educate Iraqi refugees in the region is dwarfed by the need.

Dealing with the refugee crisis is vital to the national security of the United States. Continuing indifference to suffering that we had a strong hand in causing will turn our Muslim supporters against us. More important, it repudiates the fundamental values of our country and costs Iraqis their lives.

[snip]

The administration has promised to resettle 7,000 Iraqi refugees by September. By the beginning of August, it had brought in just 190. Jordan has taken in some 700,000 Iraqi refugees – equivalent to more than 10 percent of its own population. Syria has taken in more than 1.2 million, and significant numbers are in Lebanon, Egypt, Turkey, Iran and the Persian Gulf states. Unlike the United States, none of these countries are well prepared to integrate refugees. Sectarian fighting has paralyzed the Lebanese government, Jordan is water poor, and Syria struggles with a poor economy and high unemployment. At a recent conference in the region, these countries pleaded for international help to deal with the crisis.

So while tiny Jordan struggles to cope with 700,000 refugees, the United States will not meet a goal of only 7,000. The United States is sending a clear message to the refugees and the countries sheltering them: you are on your own.

Without serious American or other international support, a downward spiral is beginning for the refugees and the Middle East. In Jordan, the cost of living has doubled for all residents, leading to sharp resentment against both the Iraqis and the government. In turn, the Jordanian government has denied most Iraqi refugees the right to work and restricted their access to health care.

Syria, one of the last countries to keep its borders open to the Iraqis, has suggested it cannot continue to do so much longer without some kind of international support. Social services there are collapsing, and poverty has driven many refugees toward desperation.

This strain could all have a terribly destabilizing effect on the Middle East.… Article

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Even in clemency (if releasing the innocent and the unchraged can be called clemency), acting the part of the monarch.

Fifty Iraqi prisoners will be released on a daily basis from U.S. army detention in the country during the holy Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, the office of Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashimi announced on Friday. Article

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Politicizing everything. If one-tenth the effort were put into anything productive…

The sheets of paper seemed to be everywhere the lawmakers went in the Green Zone, distributed to Iraqi officials, U.S. officials and uniformed military of no particular rank. So when Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) asked a soldier last weekend just what he was holding, the congressman was taken aback to find out.

In the soldier’s hand was a thumbnail biography, distributed before each of the congressmen’s meetings in Baghdad, which let meeting participants such as that soldier know where each of the lawmakers stands on the war. “Moran on Iraq policy,” read one section, going on to cite some the congressman’s most incendiary statements, such as, “This has been the worst foreign policy fiasco in American history.”

[snip]

Brief, choreographed and carefully controlled, the codels (short for congressional delegations) often have showed only what the Pentagon and the Bush administration have wanted the lawmakers to see. At one point, as Moran, Tauscher and Rep. Jon Porter (R-Nev.) were heading to lunch in the fortified Green Zone, an American urgently tried to get their attention, apparently to voice concerns about the war effort, the participants said. Security whisked the man away before he could make his point.

Tauscher called it “the Green Zone fog.”

[snip]

It was the bio sheets that seemed to annoy the members of Congress the most. Just who assembled them is not clear. E-mails to U.S. Central Command’s public affairs office in Baghdad this week went unanswered.

“I had never seen that in the past. That’s new,” said Porter, who was on his fourth trip to Iraq. “Now I want to see what they’re saying about me,” he added, when he learned of the contents of his travel companions’ rap sheets.

For one, the quotations appeared to be selected to divide the visitors into those who are with the war effort and those who are against. For another, they were not exactly accurate. Article

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Noted FYI:

Recently, an avid ThinkProgress reader – a U.S. soldier serving his second tour in Iraq – wrote to us and said that he can no longer access ThinkProgress.org. The error message he received:

The ban began sometime shortly after Aug. 22, when Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste was our guest blogger on ThinkProgress. He posted an op-ed that was strongly critical of the President’s policies and advocated a “responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq.”… Article

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Once opened a crack, the door must now be flung open wide (emphasis added).

An American-owned company operating from Kuwait paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to American contracting officers in efforts to win more than $11 million in contracts, the government says in court documents.

The Army last month suspended the company, Lee Dynamics International, from doing business with the government, and the case now appears to be at the center of a contracting fraud scandal that prompted Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to dispatch the Pentagon inspector general to Iraq to investigate.

Court documents filed in the case say the Army took action because the company was suspected of paying hundreds of thousands in bribes to Army officers to secure contracts to build, operate and maintain warehouses in Iraq that stored weapons, uniforms, vehicles and other matériel for Iraqi forces in 2004 and 2005.

[snip]

Details of the case have come to light because the company contested the Army’s decision, on July 9, to suspend it from obtaining contracts. That forced the government to disclose details in court papers, including a seven-page statement by an Army investigator.

Howell Roger Riggs, a lawyer or the company, denied the accusations and said the company was appealing to have the suspension lifted. Mr. Riggs acknowledged that the company was under a Justice Department investigation but said that no charges had been filed against the company or its officials.

[snip]

The court papers make clear that investigators have concluded that Lee Dynamics paid large bribes to numerous United States officials in Iraq and Kuwait.… Article

Afghanistan summary here.

Pakistan summary here and here and here.

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Tracking the South Korean situation:

South Korea paid two million dollars to Taliban extremists in Afghanistan to secure the release of 19 hostages, a Japanese newspaper reported Friday.

Citing unidentified sources in Afghanistan, the respected Asahi Shimbun said Afghan mediators persuaded South Korea’s ambassador in Kabul that there was no other way to end the six-week kidnap ordeal.

“Two million dollars were paid to release all 19 people,” an Afghan mediator was quoted as telling the influential Japanese daily.

The Asahi Shimbun said both a South Korean official and a Taliban spokesman contacted by the newspaper denied any payment. Article

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Cornered?

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf has made his last move in the endgame he is playing with the country’s politicians — threatening to hand over the keys to another general before he quits.

The threat — conveyed to opposition politicians in London — is conditional. If politicians accept him as the head of a new government of national consensus for the next five years, he will work with them.

If not, he will quit and let them deal with another general.

[snip]

Over the weekend Musharraf sent a team to London for “a final meeting” with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who has been negotiating a power-sharing deal with the general for some time.

The package his team brought from Islamabad includes an offer to convene an all-party conference for achieving “grand national reconciliation.”

For the sake of this grand reconciliation, Musharraf offered to quit the army before the presidential elections, due by October this year. But in the trade-off he wants all political parties to agree to elect him president for the next five years after parliamentary elections, due later this year.

Musharraf also wants to retain the powers he enjoys as a military ruler, which makes the prime minister subservient to him. In the British parliamentary system that Pakistan follows, the prime minister enjoys all executive powers while the president is only a figure head.

[snip]

Sources in Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party told United Press International that Musharraf’s team warned the politicians that if they fail to reach an agreement with him, he will quit and hand over power to another general.

The chief of Pakistan’s much-dreaded Inter Service Intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ashfaq Kiani, led Musharraf’s team in these talks, perhaps because he was considered the right person for telling politicians that if the talks failed, Pakistan will have yet another period of martial law.

But Musharraf’s threats are not having much of an impact these days.

[snip]

If both Bhutto and Sharif reject his proposal, Musharraf can then turn to the army, saying that since politicians are not interested in reaching a national consensus, he has no other option but to let the military deal with the situation.

It is, however, not clear if the military would back such a deal. Another hurdle that Musharraf may have to cross before bringing the troops is convincing the United States. Article

Summary here and here.

With liberty and justice for all. Those words do have meaning.

About one-quarter of the civil appellate lawyers in the U.S. Justice Department have refused to get involved in appeals by Guantanamo detainees.

Sources told U.S. News & World Report the lawyers are not convinced by the government’s legal arguments.

A court ruling in February that upheld the Military Commissions Act put all appeals from Guantanamo in the District of Columbia circuit, making the 56 lawyers in the appellate division responsible for fighting them. Article

More:

These conscientious objectors–their exact number is not known–have decided not to take part in the government’s litigation against the detainees because of disagreements with the legal approach, these sources say. They would not elaborate on the specific reasons for the objections, but critics have long objected to the government’s failure to formally charge detainees and have pushed for closing Guantánamo because of allegations of torture and inhumane conditions. Defense lawyers also contend that the government has stymied their cases by withholding documents and curbing client access.

The quiet rebellion has emerged in recent months among the approximately 56 attorneys in the appellate section of the Justice Department’s civil division following a court ruling in February that placed the defense of the approximately 130 remaining Guantánamo cases under the responsibility of the appellate lawyers. More than 300 men captured shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 are still being held at Guantánamo over alleged ties to terrorists, although all but a handful have never been formally charged with crimes.

Though the objectors have created some tension among the appellate staff, it’s unclear that their opposition has hampered the government’s efforts–especially because the court ruling will be reviewed by the Supreme Court this term. But the staff attorneys’ objections highlight how dissension has grown even within the department’s own ranks.

Justice Department spokesperson Charles Miller declined comment.

The Justice Department has no formal policy allowing attorneys to opt out of certain cases, unlike some law firms that make clear they won’t penalize associates who, for instance, choose not to defend tobacco companies. But, informally, attorneys have rejected certain types of cases. Article

While self-limited by way of the specifics it adheres to and those it defines as outside its scope, nonetheless an important report worth a careful perusal:

US military, if not political, readiness for a war using minimum ground forces indicates that the current seeming inaction surrounding Iran is misleading. The United States retains the ability – despite difficulties in Iraq – to undertake major military operations against Iran. Whether the political will exists to follow such a course of action is known only to a few senior figures in the Bush administration.

General Wesley Clark claims that he became aware of the Bush Administration’s instructions concerning the overthrow of the Iranian regime in September 2001. He states that he was told this in the Pentagon by a serving General holding the order in his hand.

“He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”

[snip]

The study concludes that the US has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus and economic infrastructure within days, if not hours, of President George Bush giving the order.

This report is focussed on the prospect of the possible attempted destruction of the Iranian regime and state by the United States and its allies. It neither examines the realities of Iran’s nuclear programme, the negotiations between Iran and the international community nor does it examine in detail the human, political, economic and environmental consequences of such an attack. Nevertheless a number of conclusions can be reached.

1. If the attack is “successful” and the US reasserts its global military dominance and reduces Iran to the status of an oil-rich failed state, then the risks to humanity in general and to the states of the Middle East are grave indeed.

The two world wars of 1914-18 and 1939-1945, the creation of nuclear weapons, and the advent of global warming have created successive lessons that humanity and states cannot prosper or survive long unless they hold their security in common-sharing sovereignty and power to ensure both survival and prosperity.

A “successful” US attack, without UN authorisation, would return the world to the state that existed in the period before the war of 1914-18, but with nuclear weapons.

The self-styled realists argue that this is an inevitable and manageable world, the naivety of imagining a nuclear armed world without nuclear war is utopian in the extreme.

States and regimes in the region may consider that in the short-run they would benefit from the implosion of Iran and the eclipse of Shi’a power. However, the threat from within from disaffected elements outraged at further unabashed Western militarism is likely to threaten crowns and republics alike. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths have had no electoral cost to American and British leaders, the same number of Iranian deaths may have equally little impact in the West, but it is unimaginable that it would not cause far greater spurs to anger than already exist in the region.

The impact of on Turkey of an autonomous Iranian and Iraqi territory of Kurdistan is hard to overestimate.

2. If the attack is pursued with the skill of the Iraq campaign then we face major and unpredictable escalation arising from the fallacy of attempting to make “the last move” on the political game board. Should Iranians rally to their battered state regardless of their, then what has been seen in Iraq will merely become an overture to a larger regional war, and one where a blip in oil prices becomes a prolonged global recession. Regional instability that might follow “victory” will be magnified. The Shakespearean quote, “cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war” expresses the simple rule that wars, like fires are far easier to start than to contain or put out.

3. The potential for a major regional war over Iran should give greater impetus to all sides to avoid conflict and act on previously agreed objectives for security in the region as a whole. In this respect the UNSC (687, 1540) objective of establishing a WMD Free Zone in the Middle East should be given far greater political investment by all parties. .pdf file

Related:

Former CIA analyst and Deputy Director for Transportation Security, Antiterrorism Assistance Training, and Special Operations in the State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism, Larry Johnson, does not agree with the report’s findings.

“The report seems to accept without question that US air force and navy bombers could effectively destroy Iran and they seem to ignore the fact that US use of air power in Iraq has failed to destroy all major military, political, economic and transport capabilities,” said Johnson late Monday after the embargo on the study had been lifted.

“But at least in their conclusions they still acknowledge that Iran, if attacked, would be able to retaliate. Yet they are vague in terms of detailing the extent of the damage that the Iran is capable of inflicting on the US and fairly assessing what those risks are.”

There is also the situation of US soldiers in Iraq and the supply routes that would have to be protected to ensure that US forces had what they needed. Plesch explains that “”firepower is an effective means of securing supply routes during conventional war and in conventional war a higher loss rate is expected.”

“However as we say do not assume that the Iraqi Shiia will rally to Tehran – the quietist Shiia tradition favoured by Sistani may regard itself as justified if imploding Iranian power can be argued to reduce US problems in Iraq, not increase them.” Article

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No surprise.

The Bush administration is signaling that it plans to turn again to a legal tool, the “state secrets” privilege, to try to stop a suit against a Belgian banking cooperative that secretly supplied millions of private financial records to the United States government, court documents show.

The suit against the consortium, known as Swift, threatens to disrupt the operations of a vital national security program and to disclose “highly classified information” if it continues, the Justice Department has said in court filings.

[snip]

Administration officials have defended the program as an important tool in the war on terror. European banking regulators and privacy advocates were quick to denounce the program as improper and possibly illegal.

The pressure resulted in an agreement this year by Swift and United States officials to tighten restrictions for using the data.

Two American banking customers also sued Swift on invasion-of-privacy grounds. Legal and financial analysts had expected that the suit would have been thrown out because American banking privacy laws are considered much laxer than those in much of Europe.

But the chief judge in Federal District Court in Chicago, James F. Holderman, ruled in June that he would allow the suit to proceed, partly on grounds of claims of a Fourth Amendment violation and his finding that Swift’s arguments on that point were “unpersuasive.”

[snip]

The administration has turned to the privilege much more frequently than past administrations. According to a report due out this weekend by an advocacy group, OpenTheGovernment.org, the administration has used it 39 times in the last six years, compared with 59 times in the 24 years before that.

[snip]

Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive at George Washington University, said: “What seems clear is that until a year or two ago, the judges rarely even questioned it when the government raised the ‘state secrets’ claim. It was a neutron bomb – no plaintiffs left standing.

“But we’re now seeing that judges are starting to actually look behind the government’s secrecy claims and see what’s really there.” Article

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Maybe the Deprtment of Justice can hold a telethon

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These reports do keep popping back to the surface.

Recent reports by the FBI and the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command show that gang-related activity in the U.S. military is increasing. The FBI report concludes the increase poses a threat to law enforcement officials and national security.

Some experts point to looser recruiting standards, implemented in recent years as the Army struggles to meet recruiting goals, and the increase in waivers given to recruits with criminal records as a factor behind gang presence in the ranks.

Each year since 2003, an increasing number of applicants with records of everything from traffic violations to felony convictions have been allowed to enlist in the Army under “moral waivers.” In fiscal 2006, 7.9 percent of all recruits received moral waivers, compared with 4.6 percent in 2003, according to Recruiting Command.

So far this year, more than 9,000 recruits have received moral waivers to join the service. That’s 11 percent of all new enlistees in fiscal 2007, which ends Sept. 30.

Army officials could not say whether any gang members or former gang members were allowed into the ranks under waivers. But at least one expert said it stands to reason that if you open the door to more people with criminal backgrounds, some of them will have gang affiliations.

[snip]

The CID official attributed the increase in gang-related reports and investigations to a recently adopted uniform method in identifying such activity.

“We do not see it as a rampant problem, but we’re not denying it,” said a senior official with Army Criminal Investigation Command, who asked not to be identified. “It’s a low threat, but it’s a serious problem. We’ve never denied that it exists.” Article

Three pieces of interest noted FYI.

#1:

Prosecutor General Saeed Mirza on Thursday ordered police to launch an investigation into a video game about the storming of Premier Fouad Saniora’s government compound and the killing of all the ministers.

The state-run National News Agency, which distributed the terse report, did not disclose further details.

[snip]

The game ends with the phrase: “Game over, congratulations” when the player succeeds in “liquidating” all those in the government compound, the report noted. The game ends with the phrase: “Game over, congratulations” when the player succeeds in “liquidating” all those in the government compound, the report noted. Article

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#2:

The number of executions worldwide increased slightly in 2006 while the number of countries that employ capital punishment decreased, according to a report released Thursday by the Rome-based anti-death penalty group Hands Off Cain. According to statistics compiled from news reports and NGOs, there were 5628 executions in 27 countries in 2006, up from 5494 executions in 24 countries in 2005. At the same time, three countries abolished the death penalty last year, reducing the number of countries that use capital punishment to 51. In total, 146 countries have either abolished or placed a moratorium on the death penalty. Source

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#3:

British military scientists sent hundreds of Indian soldiers into gas chambers and exposed them to mustard gas, documents uncovered by the Guardian have revealed.

The Guardian understands that the British military did not check up on the Indian soldiers after the experiments to see if they developed any illnesses. It is now recognised that mustard gas can cause cancer and other diseases.

Many suffered severe burns on their skin, including their genitals, leaving them in pain for days and even weeks. Some had to be treated in hospital. Article

THE SHAPE OF THINGS THAT WERE

The changing dimensions of the medieval.

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TAKING A STAB AT IT

Shakespeare accidentally rewritten.

Summaries here and here and here.

Iraqi Foreign Minster Hoshyar Zibari said on Thursday an expanded conference for Iraq’s neighboring countries is to convene in Baghdad in early September, unveiling that Iraq is seeking a long-term security agreement with the U.S. next year once the U.N. mandate given to the Multi-National Forces’ presence in the country was over.

[snip]

Zibari told reporters “the United Nations will review the presence of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq at the end of this year and we will act to issue a new resolution from the Security Council on new joint security arrangements.”

“The move needs much efforts but it is a step towards enhancing the sovereignty of Iraq,” said the minister noting that “it is still too early to discuss establishing U.S. bases in Iraq according to this agreement but there will be U.S. troops’ presence for a long time with smaller size and different missions.”

Zibari considered such a move as “an internal issue and has nothing to do with the neighboring countries.” Article

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So how’s that training going? (emphasis added)

The Prime Minister visited Karbala yesterday, decided to extend the curfew, ordered the arrest of 1,500 security personnel for failing to do their job properly, and referred senior officers to interrogation.

Al-Maliki also sacked Major-General Saleh Al-Maliki, commander of Karbala operations, for failing to do his job. Article

Highly related:

As Congress prepares to receive reports on Iraq from General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker and readies for a debate on George W. Bush’s latest funding request of $50 billion for the Iraq war, the performance of the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has become a central and contentious issue. But according to the working draft of a secret document prepared by the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, the Maliki government has failed in one significant area: corruption. Maliki’s government is “not capable of even rudimentary enforcement of anticorruption laws,” the report says, and, perhaps worse, the report notes that Maliki’s office has impeded investigations of fraud and crime within the government. Article

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No matter how full of hot air, a trial balloon of lead won’t float. Sheer scare tactics.

Gasoline prices could rise to about $9 per gallon if the United States withdraws troops from Iraq prematurely, Rep. Jon Porter said he was told on a trip to Iraq that ended this week.

The Nevada Republican, who returned Tuesday from his fourth trip to Iraq, met with U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker, Iraqi Deputy President Tariq al-Hashimi and Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh.

“To a person, they said there would be genocide, gas prices in the U.S. would rise to eight or nine dollars a gallon, al-Qaida would continue its expansion, and Iran would take over that portion of the world if we leave,” Porter said Wednesday in a phone interview from Las Vegas. Article

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Noted FYI:

The black-clad, gun-toting fighters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr disappeared from the streets of Baghdad’s Sadr City on Thursday, apparently obeying their leader’s order to lie low.

An AFP photographer who walked the streets of the teeming neighbourhood said there was no sign of the Mahdi Army militiamen who usually dominate the Sadr City landscape. Article

Related:

The Mahdi Army is likely to counter any attack by US forces or any political powers targeting it, despite a six-month freeze on their activities imposed by their leader, Moqtada al-Sadr, a Sadrist source said Thursday.

‘Freezing the Mahdi Army’s activities entails no attacks against the US-led coalition forces in Iraq,’ al-Sadr office director Kazmiya Hazem al-Araji said in press statements on Thursday.

However, al-Araji added: ‘this doesn’t entail self-defence, which is a legitimate right to the Mahdi Army.’ Article

Also another related story here.

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Flag of fear: antithetical to every principle, every concept, every ideal for which it stands. The latest example of “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

Another Iraqi man who lived in the house also was questioned, though he wasn’t detained. What did he know about Sunni insurgents living in the area, asked Staff Sgt. Kenneth Braxton, who’s from Philadelphia. Nothing, the man said. Braxton said he knew the man was lying because of the way he moved his eyes. The sergeant tore an American flag Velcro patch from his sleeve and told the Iraqi to hold it to his chest. Then another soldier used a digital camera to take a picture of the man.

“So we’ve got a picture of you holding an American flag now,” Braxton said. He told the man that if he didn’t cooperate, the photo would be posted around the neighborhood. Article

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Fred Kaplan, on fire:

President George W. Bush’s behavior gets more baffling every day. Most leaders in his predicament would be recalibrating their rhetoric, seeking to alter expectations, so that the inevitable drawdown of U.S. troops from Iraq won’t appear to be a defeat.

Instead, Bush is doing the opposite. Twice this past week, he has appeared before his most bedrock base (the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars), promised to give his commanders whatever they need for victory, and lambasted Congress for so much as contemplating withdrawal, a step, he warned, that would imperil civilization and free peoples everywhere.

He is willfully ignoring two facts. First, almost nobody in a position of power or much influence is advocating a complete withdrawal from Iraq. Second, a partial withdrawal is certain to take place in the next nine months, and this has nothing to do with Congress.

This has been noted time and time again, but apparently it bears repeating: The U.S. Army and Marines are simply running out of combat troops.

[snip]

The long and short of it is that by next spring some of the 20 U.S. combat brigades currently in Iraq–perhaps as many as a quarter to a half of them–will be pulling out, and nobody will replace them. This is a mathematical fact, quite apart from anything to do with the upcoming election or the war’s diminishing popularity.

Whether or not you regard this fact as lamentable, President Bush only makes things worse by howling that any pullback would erode American power and embolden the terrorists. Even if his warning is true, for a president to state it so urgently, over and over and over and over, deepens the damage when the storm hits. And given that the storm is certain to hit, it’s irresponsible–it’s baffling–that he’s howling so loudly.

Most presidents would be doing two things right now: adjusting the rhetoric (so that expectations meet reality) and changing the policy (so that the reality isn’t disastrous for U.S. interests).

One problem with Bush, judging from his Aug. 28 speech at an American Legion convention, is that he doesn’t seem to grasp the reality.… Article

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Keeping up with the courts-martial:

A US Marine was ordered to execute a room full of Iraqi women and children during an alleged massacre in Haditha that left 24 people dead, a military court heard Thursday.

[snip]

At one house Wuterich gave an order to shoot on sight as Marines waited for a response after knocking on the door, said Mendoza.

“He said ‘Just wait till they open the door, then shoot,’” Mendoza said.

Mendoza then said he shot and killed an adult male who appeared in a doorway.

During a subsequent search of the house, Mendoza said he received an order from another Marine, Lance Corporal Stephen Tatum, to shoot seven women and children he had found in a rear bedroom.

“When I opened the door there was just women and kids, two adults were lying down on the bed and there were three children on the bed … two more were behind the bed,” Mendoza said.

“I looked at them for a few seconds. Just enough to know they were not presenting a threat … they looked scared.”

After leaving the room Mendoza told Tatum what he had found.

“I told him there were women and kids inside there. He said ‘Well, shoot them,’” Mendoza told prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Sean Sullivan. Article

Summary here and here.

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Tracing the South Korean hostage situation:

Taliban insurgents freed seven remaining South Korean hostages in Afghanistan on Thursday after a six-week kidnap ordeal, following a deal that Afghan officials said included a ransom payment by Seoul.

The four women and three men were handed over in two batches to officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Ghazni province in southeast Afghanistan, from where the Taliban seized 23 Christian volunteers on July 19.

[snip]

Some Afghan officials say South Korea agreed to pay a ransom during negotiations with the Taliban, which one foreign diplomat said started out as a demand for $20 million.

[snip]

South Korea’s presidential Blue House said that under the deal it struck with the Taliban it must withdraw its small contingent of non-combat troops in the country within the year and stop its nationals from doing missionary work in Afghanistan.

However, South Korea had already decided before the crisis to pull its 200 engineers and medical staff out of Afghanistan by the end of 2007. Since the hostages were taken, it has banned its nationals from travelling there.

A spokesman for South Korea’s president, Chon Ho-seon, was evasive in responding to questions at a news briefing in Seoul on Wednesday on whether a ransom was part of the deal, saying only South Korea had done what was needed. Article

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Just shy of 71 months on:

A suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives near an entrance to the Afghan capital’s airport early on Friday, killing at least one Afghan and wounding several other people, police and witnesses said.

The blast occurred at the NATO controlled side of the combined civil and military airport, they said. An Afghan airport official said civilian flights to and from the airport continued as normal. Article

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“Diminishing humanitarian space” = chaos.

Less than a month after three deminers were shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Kandahar Province, southern Afghanistan, the Mine Detection Dog Centre (MDC) has announced it will not resume demining activities in the volatile Kandahar and Helmand provinces unless security is guaranteed.

[snip]

According to Hakimi, 80 percent of MDC’s demining activities have been suspended in Kandahar and Helmand provinces as a result of security concerns.

MDC says it now has a limited presence in the provincial city of Kandahar, where it raises public awareness of landmine issues.

Mine clearance agencies operating in Afghanistan say there are no particular security measures in place to protect their staff from hazards.

[snip]

Since the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Army in 1979 hundreds of thousands of mines have been planted throughout the country. The UN demining programme says people in over 2,020 communities across Afghanistan still face the threat of landmines and UXOs.

Haji Agha Lalai, an elder in Panjwai District, said people in his village were finding it increasingly risky to travel within their locality. “Some people are even not cultivating their land because of landmine risks,” Lalai told IRIN.

In the last 18 years over 150,000 Afghans have been killed or disabled by anti-personnel landmines, according to demining organisations. Mine action agencies say every month landmines kill or injure over 50 Afghans. Article

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What’s up in Waziristan:

The Pakistani military and tribal leaders were Friday trying to secure the release of some 150 paramilitary troops captured by pro-Taliban insurgents in the border area by Afghanistan, an official said.

The Frontier Corps unit was travelling between the regional capital of Wana and Shakai in 16 vehicles when ‘hundreds’ of heavily armed militants blocked and surrounded the convoy, a senior security officer said on condition of anonymity.

The group was being held in mountains in the Ladha area, he added.

However, the central army command in Islamabad’s twin city of Rawalpindi denied reports of the captures, saying contact was lost with the group while it was sheltering in a valley from a storm and that the convoy would shortly return to base.

A spokesman for a local rebel leader Baitullah Mehsud told the BBC that the soldiers were surrounded, disarmed and taken prisoner because the government was not honouring a peace deal. Article

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Tracking the incredible shrinking Musharraf.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf is about to choose one of three options available to him to relinquish his office of the chief of the army and appoint a new commander in his place to lead the world’s fifth largest standing army.

[snip]

Whatever Musharraf’s decision, his legal advisers have made it clear during several rounds of in-house discussions that he can’t hold the office of profit after November 15 if he wants to remain president following this cut-off date.

He has been told that Article 43, which in one sense has been held in abeyance by Article 41 (7)(b), inserted in the Constitution by the 17th Amendment, would become operative on November 15.

It says: “The president shall not hold any office of profit in the service of Pakistan or occupy any other position carrying the right to remuneration for the rendering of service.”

Informed circles said it would be fine with the presidential camp if Bhutto’ s MPs, as per the deal, abstained during voting for Musharraf’s re-election.

“Our main concern is that they should not resign in any case as some other opposition parties would do,” one of them said.

These quarters frankly concede that Musharraf has very limited options in this difficult time and he is trying to get the best out of them. It is now inevitable that he can’t remain in uniform, they said.

They admitted that Musharraf’s aides have negotiated with Bhutto from a position of weakness.

“Had there been no March 9 blunder of filing the presidential reference against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohamed Chaudhry, Bhutto would have even agreed to re-elect Musharraf in uniform,” they added. Article

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Noted FYI:

A Christian priest and his American wife were shot dead at their home in the Pakistani capital Islamabad in what police said yesterday was a revenge attack for an alleged rape.

[snip]

The detained couple were also Christians and had confessed to the crime, he added.

The wife, a nurse at an Islamabad hospital, accused the priest in her confession of having raped her some months before, when he invited her to prayers at his residence.

The priest filmed the assault and was trying to blackmail her, she claimed. Article

Summary here and here.

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Shorter version: They came, they met, they left.

Organisers of Somalia’s national reconciliation conference hailed the meeting as a success even as analysts expressed doubts over the outcome, saying major parties in the current crisis had been left out of the peace-making process.

“The conference will come to a close today [30 August]. It has been a success,” said Abdulkadir Walayo, media adviser to the National Governance and Reconciliation Commission (NGRC), which organised the conference.

[snip]

According to analysts, however, the conference did not achieve much and failed in its main task of reconciliation. “Reconciliation is the most urgent priority for Somalia but the TFG defined it in deliberately narrow terms, related to clans only. The conference achieved very little since none of the key issues essential to restoring security, as well as a broader peace, was discussed,” said Salim Lone, a newspaper columnist and political commentator based in Nairobi, Kenya.

Timothy Othieno, Horn of Africa analyst at the Institute for Global Dialogue in Johannesburg, described the conference as “a total failure” because of the way the participants were chosen and the arbitrary tactics of the TFG. “The TFG determined who was going to attend and who wasn’t. You cannot place conditions on participants if you are trying to reconcile a nation.”

The Hawiye clan, the dominant group in Mogadishu, and the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) were left out of the process, he said. “This indeed signalled the end of the ‘conference’ even before it began,” Othieno said. The TFG forgot that it was an interim government created to “to facilitate a process that would legitimise whoever is chosen by the people - via credible elections”, he added.

A civil society source in Mogadishu, who said they had not been invited to the conference, complained that it was “a missed opportunity”. The gathering should have been all-inclusive, and held at a neutral venue, he said.

“Unfortunately neither the armed nor the unarmed opposition was invited,” he said. Mogadishu was not a neutral venue for the meeting, he added.

Added Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed of the UIC: “From beginning to end [the conference] was not about the interests of the Somali people but to legitimise the occupation.” Ethiopia sent its troops to Mogadishu in late 2006 to help the TFG defeat UIC forces and its soldiers, who are widely seen as occupiers, are still in the city.

Sheikh Ahmed said those who participated in the conference represented no one but themselves. “If anything, the conference has worsened the plight of the population in Mogadishu”, pointing out that thousands of people continue to leave the city due to the insecurity. Article

This was mentioned here when it was first proposed an generated negative reaction several months ago. Push has now come to shove. A mass exodus (or mass firings) could effectively shut the place down.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists and engineers sued NASA and the California Institute of Technology on Thursday, challenging extensive new background checks that the space exploration center and other federal agencies began requiring in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The lawsuit says NASA is violating the Constitution by calling on employees – everyone from janitors to visiting professors – to permit investigators to delve into medical, financial and past employment records, and to question friends and acquaintances about everything from their finances to sex lives. Those who refuse could lose their jobs, the suit says.

“They don’t tell you what they’re looking for, they don’t tell you when they’re looking for it, they won’t tell us what they’re doing with the data,” said plaintiff Susan Foster, a technical writer and editor at JPL for nearly 40 years.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by 28 plaintiffs. Many have worked on such projects as the Mars rovers, the Galileo probe to Jupiter and the Cassini mission to Saturn, but none are involved in classified work, according to the suit. It seeks class-action status to represent similar JPL employees.

JPL employees have until Sept. 28 to fill out forms authorizing the background checks. Those who don’t will be barred from JPL and be “voluntarily terminated” as of Oct. 27. A request for a preliminary injunction blocking the requirements is to be heard in court Sept. 24. Article

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The trough is overflowing. Following the money (emphasis added):

In a few weeks, Gen. David Petraeus and the Bush administration will report to Congress on the progress of the U.S. military’s troop surge in Iraq.

But some of the war’s winners are already clear: military contractors who supply everything from bodyguards to bombs, clean socks to ready-to-eat meals. “For the companies involved, this has been a real gravy train,” says William Hartung, who tracks defense spending for the New America Foundation.

The White House has proposed military spending of $647 billion in 2008. Adjusted for inflation, that would be the highest level since World War II — topping even expenditures during Vietnam and the Reagan years, calculates Hartung. The current request for Iraq-related spending for 2008 is $116 billion, which would raise total Iraq war spending to $567 billion.

Who’s getting all that money? Sometimes it can be difficult to tell. “There isn’t good visibility on where the money goes,” says Steven Kosiak of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. But you can get a snapshot of who’s been getting a good chunk of the Iraq-related spending in two ways.

The first step is to scour a vast database of more than $400 billion in annual government contracts, more than 70% of which are from the Department of Defense.… Article

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The Cinderella south: The first paragraph in the snippet is the money quote.

“Since there has been no coherent United States policy toward Latin America, there’s a window of opportunity for the Iranians to come fill the vacuum,” said Riordan Roett of the Latin American Studies Program at Johns Hopkins University.

[snip]

Analysts say some Latin American countries are seeking new alliances in part because the U.S. government has largely ignored the region in recent years as it focuses on its declared war against terrorism.

China has extended its economic influence across much of Latin America, and Iran uses its alliances to help prevent its isolation by Washington on the global stage. Article

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Noted FYI:

The United States should not deport foreign detainees back to their home countries if there is reason to believe they will face torture,, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers argued Thursday.…

[The] case marks the first time a US court may address whether the government can lawfully rely on assurances from foreign governments to deport detainees to countries with a record of engaging in torture. Source

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Want some syrup with that waffle, Congressman Conyers?

Have to admit that ye old scribe did a double take when reading about a communist government passing an anti-monopoly law.

The law appears to mark a shift in strategy away from policies that have long favoured foreign enterprises to attract the outside investment that has fuelled China’s economic expansion.

“Preferential treatment for foreigners and aggressively bringing in foreign investment will decrease gradually and finally domestic and foreign companies will receive almost equal treatment,” Shen Minggao, an economist with Citigroup in Beijing, said of the law’s effect, while adding that he doesn’t expect a sharp impact on foreign investment.

But he also said an anti-monopoly law was necessary now as China seeks to reduce the size of the state-owned industries that once monopolised the entire national economy.

“We can’t simply take it as being against foreign investors. It’s being done now mainly because the authorities have been thinking over how to deal with monopolies by state-owned companies,” he said. Article

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As potable water becomes more and more of a scarce commodity, the dangers will increase, too.

About 140 million people, mainly in developing countries, are being poisoned by arsenic in their drinking water, researchers believe.

Speaking at the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) annual meeting in London, scientists said this will lead to higher rates of cancer in the future.

South and East Asia account for more than half of the known cases globally.

Eating large amounts of rice grown in affected areas could also be a health risk, scientists said.

“It’s a global problem, present in 70 countries, probably more,” said Peter Ravenscroft, a research associate in geography with Cambridge University.

[snip]

“In the long term, one in every 10 people with high concentrations of arsenic in their water will die from it,” observed Allan Smith from the University of California at Berkeley.

“This is the highest known increase in mortality from any environmental exposure.” Article

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For the ‘Snowball’s chance in hell’ file, pperhaps the oddest recommendation of the year.

ABOUT STOUT

What’s the second largest market for Guinness? Not what you might have guessed.

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WE’RE NUMBER — HUH?

Credit where it is due for a complex prank.

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KILO CAPERS

Flash from the radio past: metric system is “Marxist” and “anti-Christ.”

Summaries here and here and here and here.

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Retrenchment.

Radical Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his dreaded Shiite militia on Wednesday to stop attacks on US-led forces as part of a six-month suspension of the militant group’s activities.

The order came after fierce firefights left at least in 52 people dead in the Shiite shrine city of Karbala on Tuesday in violence witnesses said involved policemen and suspected fighters from Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.

[snip]

“I direct the Mahdi Army to suspend all its activities for six months until it is restructured in a way that helps honour the principles for which it is formed,” Sadr said in a statement issued by his office in the city of Najaf.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Shaibani, a Sadr aide who led a bloody rebellion against US forces in Najaf in 2004, said the suspension included a ban on any attacks on US-led forces. Article

A little more here.

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Swinging slowly, slowly in the wind (emphasis added).

Looking tired and pale but speaking firmly, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki told McClatchy Newspapers Tuesday that he has no intention of resigning despite rising U.S. criticism of his government.

In a 50-minute interview in his office in Baghdad’s Green Zone, Maliki strongly defended his tenure and said that he doesn’t expect to be forced out. He said his efforts at national reconciliation, not the surge of additional U.S. troops or actions by Iraqi security forces, are responsible for improved security.

He blamed the United States and its early policies in Iraq for the sectarianism that plagues the country, and said he opposed the current U.S. policy of working with former Sunni Muslim insurgent groups who’ve turned against al Qaida in Iraq because that, too, promotes sectarianism.

[snip]

…He was especially dismissive of any suggestion that groups opposed to him would topple him in a military coup.

“This is a sick mentality, a hangover, from the Baathist era (of Saddam Hussein),” he said. “The era of coups has departed. This country will see no more such overthrows.”

But he said he’d welcome being dismissed from office if Iraq’s parliament decided to do so.

“Indeed, I would cheer it on because for the first time we would have affected change through political means and not by weapons and tanks,” he said.

[snip]

Despite Maliki’s confidence, the scene at his office made it clear that his survival isn’t being debated only in Washington. Maliki’s security guards were closely watching a talk show on a wide screen Panasonic television in the lobby. The topic was whether Maliki is the only choice for Iraq, and political pundits were debating whether the prime minister should step down.

When Maliki entered, the guards turned down the volume, but kept the program on.

[snip]

…he said the Americans were trying to take credit for things that his government had accomplished.

“The positive development in the security situation is owed to national reconciliation much more than to our security forces or coalition troops. Some would want to hide this fact, but it is a fact not to be hidden,” he said. Article

Semi-related — report card time.

Congressional auditors have determined that the Iraqi government has failed to meet the vast majority of political and military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President Bush’s Iraq war strategy, The Associated Press has learned.

The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, will report that at least 13 of the 18 benchmarks to measure the surge of U.S. troops to Iraq are unfulfilled ahead of a Sept. 15 deadline for Bush to give a detailed accounting of the situation eight months after he announced the policy, according to three officials familiar with the matter.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the report has not been made public, also said the administration is preparing a case to play down its findings, arguing that Congress ordered the GAO to use unfair, “all or nothing” standards when compiling the document.

The GAO is to give a classified briefing about its findings to lawmakers on Thursday. It is not yet clear when its unclassified report will be released but it is due Sept. 1 amid a series of assessments called for in January legislation that authorized Bush’s plan to send 30,000 more troops to Iraq, where there is now a total of more than 160,000 troops. Article

Also related — it goes without saying that the pressure is on to pass this by the date of G. Waler’s ‘progress report.’ But panglossian pronouncements don’t trump the political realities.

Iraq’s draft oil law should pass by a comfortable majority when parliament meets to discuss it after the end of its summer break in September, Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi said.

“The oil law was completed in cabinet… the draft that was approved in cabinet is the one that will be presented to parliament,” he said.

[snip]

Abdul-Mahdi said that some appendices to the law could be included to ensure the broadest possible political consensus, even though the law was expected to pass comfortably as it is.

“There are some parliamentary blocs that call for the addition of some appendices to this law. Fine, the committee is studying this and the appendices could be included in this law despite the fact that if the voting took place in parliament now… the law would be expected to pass with a comfortable majority,” Abdul-Mahdi said. Article

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In other oil news:

Anglo-Dutch oil company Royal Dutch Shell is reportedly in talks with Dow Chemical to develop an Iraqi petrochemical plant for $2.1 billion, in a likely attempt to gain a strong foothold prior to the hoped-for opening up of the country’s broken oil industry. But analysts believe the project itself has little hope of being profitable.

The plant is to be based in the southern city of Basra, and would therefore rely on the city’s 120,000 barrels-a-day refinery for its feedstock. The problem, according to Global Insight energy analyst Samuel Ciszuk, is that Iraq is experiencing a refining shortage that would have a severe supply impact for any major petrochemical project.

“Unless the facility operates small-scale, it is hard to see it run on Iraqi refined products,” said Ciszuk. “Of course, in the Gulf you don’t need to look that far for feedstock, but it is still more expensive than sourcing it locally.”

[snip]

Although any real long-term profitability for the petrochemical project will depend on the reconstruction of Iraq’s security and industrial infrastructure, the real advantage for Shell and Dow lies in getting a favorable position ahead of the passing of the country’s notorious oil law. The law will be the foremost issue to address when the Iraqi parliament reconvenes in September, and companies are hoping that the plan to unlock over two-thirds of the country’s reserves of 112 billion barrels will finally get approval. Article

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An interlude with an Iraqi blogger.

My feelings are different for the American people and the American government. I think it was a big mistake for the government to invade Iraq, and they should do something to end the mess they started and correct the many mistakes they have made during these years. They can do it. It’s obvious who is causing the problems, and they are letting them walk around, giving them power. This mess has to stop now. But the American people are very nice, I think. I really like them; they are doing what they can to help Iraqis, well, not all of them, but many of them.

[snip]

Do your neighbors and work mates know that you are writing this blog?

No, of course not. No one should know, because if you want to live in Iraq you have to trust no one. You shouldn’t trust even yourself.

Besides not revealing your name, what other security measures do you take to protect yourself and your blog?

Every thing that might help someone know me is a threat. Every detail that people around me might know me from is a threat. I never mention the word “blog” in front of anyone. I’m in danger if someone discovered my identity. If that happened I’d die before I knew that my identity was known. I’d die before I could do anything. Article

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Can you say private army, boys and girls?

We new that you could.

Security company Blackwater U.S.A. is buying Super Tucano light combat aircraft from the Brazilian manufacturer Embraer. These five ton, single engine, single seat aircraft are built for pilot training, but also perform quite well for counter-insurgency work. Brazil. The Super Tucano is basically a prop driven trainer that is equipped for combat missions. The aircraft can carry up to 1.5 tons of weapons, including 12.7mm machine-guns, bombs and missiles.…The Super Tucano costs $9 million each, and come in one or two seat versions.… Article

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Microwaving hearts and minds?

U.S. military commanders have been telling Washington many civilian casualties can be avoided by using a new non-lethal weapon developed over the last decade.

Military leaders have repeatedly and urgently requested the device. It uses energy beams instead of bullets and lets soldiers break up crowds without firing a shot.

It is a ray gun that neither kills nor maims but the Pentagon has refused to deploy it because of the possibility the weapon might be seen as a torture device.

Perched on a Humvee or a flatbed truck, the Active Denial System gives people hit by the invisible beam the sense that their skin is on fire. They move out of the way quickly and without injury.

[snip]

…in August 2003, Richard Natonski, a U.S. Marine Corps brigadier general who had just returned from Iraq, filed an “urgent” request with officials in Washington for the energy-beam device.

The device would minimize what Natonski described as the “CNN Effect”: the instantaneous relay of images that depict U.S. troops as aggressors.

A year later, Natonski, by then promoted to major general, again asked for the system, saying a compact and mobile version was “urgently needed,” particularly in urban settings.

[snip]

In October 2004, the commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force “enthusiastically” endorsed Natonski’s request. Lt.-Gen. James Amos said it was “critical” for marines in Iraq to have the system.

Senior officers in Iraq have continued to make the case. One December 2006 request noted as U.S. forces are drawn down, the non-lethal weapon “will provide excellent means for economy of force.”

The main reason the tool has been missing in action is public perception. With memories of the 2004 Abu Ghraib prison scandal still fresh, the Pentagon is reluctant to give troops a space-age device that could be misconstrued as a torture machine.

[snip]

The Active Denial System is a directed-energy device, although it is not a laser or a microwave. It uses a large, dish-shaped antenna and a long, V-shaped arm to send an invisible beam of waves to a target as far away as 500 metres.

With the unit mounted on the back of a vehicle, U.S. troops can operate a safe distance from rocks, fire bombs and small-arms fire.

The beam penetrates the skin slightly, just enough to cause intense pain. The beam goes through clothing, as well as windows, but can be blocked by thicker materials, such as metal or concrete.

The system was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory in New Mexico. During more than 12 years of testing, only two injuries requiring medical attention have been reported; both were second-degree burns, the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate website said.

Prototype units have been assembled by the military, the most promising being a larger model that sits on the back of a flatbed truck. This single unit, known as System 2, could be sent to Iraq as early as next year, said Hymes of the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate. Article

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There is little doubt which way the woebegone G. Walker administration will lean.

The Pentagon appears to be sewing breechcloths to cover their butts.

In a sign that top commanders are divided over what course to pursue in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it won’t make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month’s strategy assessment, but instead will allow top commanders to make individual presentations.

“Consensus is not the goal of the process,” Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. “If there are differences, the president will hear them.”

Military analysts called the move unusual for an institution that ordinarily does not air its differences in public, especially while its troops are deployed in combat.

“The professional military guys are going to the non-professional military guys and saying ‘Resolve this,’” said Jeffrey White, a military analyst for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “That’s what it sounds like.”

White said it suggests that the military commanders want to be able to distance themselves from Iraq strategy by making it clear that whatever course is followed is the president’s decision, not what commanders agreed on. Article

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In a word, SNABU.

Despite a stepped-up commitment from the United States to take in Iraqis who are in danger because they worked for the American government and military, very few are signing up to go, resettlement officials say.

The reason, Iraqis say, is that they are not allowed to apply in Iraq, requiring them to make a costly and uncertain journey to countries like Syria or Jordan, where they may be turned away by border officials already overwhelmed by fleeing Iraqis.

[snip]

For many Iraqis, the travel is no longer possible.

Ali Saleh, a 37-year-old interpreter who worked for the military for four years, said he was barely able to leave his neighborhood in western Baghdad, never mind travel with his wife and 2-year-old son to Jordan, where border authorities turned away one of his friends. He traveled to Syria last year to apply, but gave up, fearing the Syrian police officials knew about his American ties when they questioned him roughly at the border.

In his four years of work, eight colleagues have been killed. He quit this spring, when a woman working as an interpreter from a different camp was kidnapped and killed in his neighborhood. Yet, he said, “The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is not for us. Nobody can go there.”

[snip]

Half a dozen American diplomats said in interviews that the United States needed to do far more to aid Iraqis associated with the United States.

Oliver Moss, who was a political officer in Baghdad from 2005 to 2006, said that more than 120 Iraqis who joined American-backed local councils at the provincial, city, district, and neighborhood levels had been killed.

[snip]

Rachel Schneller, a 34-year-old American diplomat, said that of about 10 Iraqi employees of the American Embassy compound in Basra two years ago, two have been killed, five have fled the country and three live in hiding in Basra, begging Ms. Schneller for help getting American visas.

“Working with Americans for the last couple of years has more or less become a death sentence in that part of Iraq,” said Ms. Schneller, who now works in Washington. “I must get desperate e-mails every other day from one of them.” Article

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Keeping up with the courts-martial:

The only U.S. Army officer to face court-martial over the scandal at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison will be reprimanded for disobeying an order not to discuss an investigation into the abuse of inmates at the jail.

Army Lt. Col. Steven Jordan faced a maximum punishment of five years in prison and dismissal from the Army, but a court-martial panel of 10 officers decided on the milder penalty, the Army said in a statement released on Wednesday.

The court-martial on Tuesday acquitted Jordan of being responsible for cruel treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib. Images of the prisoner abuse published in 2004 provoked outrage around the world.

The military court at Fort Meade, Maryland, also acquitted Jordan of failing to train soldiers to treat inmates properly. But it found that he had communicated with other soldiers about the investigation, despite being told not to do so.

It was not immediately clear what form the reprimand might take. The Army statement said Jordan would have the chance to submit a request for clemency before any reprimand was issued. Article

Afghanistan summary here.

Pakistan summary here.

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Tracking the South Korean hostage situation.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) facilitated the release of twelve South Korean hostages in Afghanistan today.

The ten women and two men had been held by an armed opposition group in Ghazni Province for more than six weeks.

ICRC personnel handed them over to a South Korean delegation in the town of Ghazni. Article

More:

The Taliban is expected to release seven remaining South Korean hostages in Afghanistan Thursday under a pledge it made a couple of days ago in face-to-face negotiations with South Korean officials to end the six-week hostage crisis. Article

Related:

South Korean Christian groups promised yesterday to end operations in Afghanistan after the Seoul government pledged to halt missionary activities there in return for the freeing of 19 hostages.

[snip]

Seoul…undertook to withdraw its 200 troops from Afghanistan by year-end — which it was already planning to do — and to stop missionary activities by its Christian groups in the Islamic nation.

The government has already imposed a ban on all unauthorised travel to the war-torn country. Article

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For someone who “cannot be separated from” from his “second skin” the decision to shed it is telling.

As if anyone is truly under the illusion that doffing the cloth will remove the position it represents.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has revealed she has almost sealed a power-sharing deal with President Pervez Musharraf which would see him quit as Pakistan’s army chief.

General Musharraf, whose term in office is coming to an end and is experiencing a decline in popularity, has turned to Bhutto for help to shore up his position and his aides are meeting the two-time premier, who is currently in exile in London.

On the issue of whether Musharraf had agreed to stand down as head of the army, Bhutto said: “I can say that he wants to make the people of Pakistan happy on the uniform issue.

“It’s not an obstacle any more. It’s my assessment it will be before the presidential (election).”

Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a close ally of Musharraf, told a news conference in Islamabad the matter was settled and the president would make an announcement soon. Article

More:

[Musharraf] has also agreed to drop corruption charges against Benazir Bhutto and dozens of MPs.

[snip]

General Musharraf has already announced his intention to seek election for a second five-year term. But Pakistani law bars him from holding both offices beyond November unless changes are made to the constitution. Today the Supreme Court began hearing a constitutional petition challenging General Musharraf’s candidacy. Article

The fluid situation calls to mind an opinion piece from a bit earlier this month.

…We can only imagine what would happen if an incumbent two-term president in the United States declared that the existing Electoral College would re-elect him for a third term. That would immediately trigger impeachment proceedings against him. The fact that he is not the army chief who seized power in a coup will not be regarded as attenuating circumstances.

[snip]

No one had doubted that the general would ever want to directly face the electorate. But there were many who thought he would be willing to stand for re-election sans uniform. Others thought he would be willing to stand for re-election through a new parliament. He has disappointed both groups.

The nation has to ready itself to witness something akin to a freak astronomical phenomenon, like a red eclipse of the moon: a general in uniform who has ruled the nation for a goodly eight years being re-elected for a five-year term by a parliament whose own term has been allowed to expire. In keeping with the spirit of the time, the parliamentarians might as well re-elect each other, sparing both the time and expense of a general election. This would also avoid raising people’s expectations about the return of real democracy.

[snip]

In any democracy, the chief executive has to face a direct election. In a parliamentary system, the prime minister has to first win his seat before he can contest that post within parliament. In a presidential system, the president has to face a direct vote from the electorate. In Musharraf’s Pakistan, the only real electorate that he faces is the Corps Commanderate, whose members serve at his pleasure. Article

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Noted FYI:

Pakistan would not sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), as its atomic capability is essential to maintain a strategic balance of power in the region, said Foreign Office Spokeswoman Tasnim Aslam.

“Nuclear deterrence capability is an integral part of Pakistan’s security and, therefore, it can’t be compromised upon,” Aslam told reporters at a weekly briefing. Article

Summary here.

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Sputtering to a close.

The chairman of the Somali reconciliation conference said that the groups that are opposing the conference violated and handicapped the facilitation finance of the conference, and he loudly announced that the doors of the conference hall will be closed from Thursday while some other delegates requested to conference to be prolonged. Article

Marketing war and chaos as if they were razor blades.

…”My friend had spoken to someone in one of the leading neo-conservative institutions. He summarized what he was told this way:

They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this–they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.” Source

Related report here

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Hmm.

Israeli officials warned the George W. Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilizing to the region and urged the United States to instead target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.

Wilkerson, then a member of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and later chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, recalled in an interview with IPS that the Israelis reacted immediately to indications that the Bush administration was thinking of war against Iraq. After the Israeli government picked up the first signs of that intention, Wilkerson says, “The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy – Iran is the enemy.”

[snip]

The warning against an invasion of Iraq was “pervasive” in Israeli communications with the administration, Wilkerson recalls. It was conveyed to the administration by a wide range of Israeli sources, including political figures, intelligence, and private citizens.

Wilkerson notes that the main point of their communications was not that the United States should immediately attack Iran, but that “it should not be distracted by Iraq and Saddam Hussein” from a focus on the threat from Iran.

[snip]

Israel was more concerned with the relative military threat posed by Iran and Iraq, whereas neoconservatives in the Bush administration were focused on regime change in Iraq as a low-cost way of leveraging more ambitious changes in the region. From the neoconservative perspective, the very military weakness of Hussein’s Iraq made it the logical target for the use of U.S. military power. Article

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Shorter version: piss off.

The US will continue to refuse requests for its personnel to appear at inquests into the “friendly fire” deaths of British troops, a report says.

The MoD has sent written guidance to coroners across England and Wales over the holding of military inquests.

According to the Times, its letter says the US “confirms categorically” it will not provide witnesses for inquests.

It comes six days after three British soldiers were killed by US “friendly fire” in southern Afghanistan.

The Times reports that the letter to coroners states: “The US have confirmed categorically that they will not provide witnesses to attend UK inquests.

“While coroners may continue to ask for US witnesses to attend… they should be aware that there will in all cases be a refusal.” Article

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Don’t pull a muscle grasping at those brittle straws, Mr. Gonzales.

Keeping up with the kidnappings in Nigeria’s oil region:

Authorities in Nigeria say kidnappers have released a Pakistani construction worker who was taken hostage one month ago in the oil-rich delta region.

The kidnappers seized the man in late July from Bodo city in southern Nigeria’s Rivers state. The victim has been working for an Italian firm building a road in the area. Article

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Sheer perversion of power in a resurrection of brutality.

…Doctors and Kremlin critics say over the past year at least 10 journalists, political activists or critics of local authorities have been wrongfully hospitalized in mental hospitals. And though forcible psychiatric treatment for political reasons is still rare, the Independent Psychiatric Association, a Moscow watchdog, says Russia’s mental hospitals are routinely used by unscrupulous relatives and criminals to remove inconvenient family members for financial gain. “We see cases of psychiatrists taking bribes and faking diagnoses all the time,” says Gennady Gudkov, a member of the Duma’s Security Committee.

In some cases, hospitalization is seen as a way to resolve real-estate disputes or family quarrels. In two current criminal cases, doctors in Nizhniy Novgorod and Ulyanovsk are on trial, accused of committing old people to psychiatric institutions and selling their apartments for personal profit. (One defendant has pleaded guilty; the other says patients consented to the sale of their properties.) But increasingly, it is critics of authority who find themselves sent off to state hospitals. Yuri Savenko, head of the Independent Psychiatric Association, says he hears of new political cases almost every day. The most high-profile thus far involves Larisa Arap, a 48-year-old journalist in Apatity, near Murmansk, who had given an interview to a local newspaper in June that was highly critical of the region’s state psychiatric hospitals. Arap was also an activist with the local branch of United Civil Front, a Kremlin opposition movement. In early July, she went to the hospital for a routine check-up required by law to renew her driving license. But, as she recalls, someone in the hospital called the police, and by evening, she had been committed to a psychiatric hospital, stripped of her clothes, tied to a bed and sedated. “Doctors told me that I would experience all the practices I had complained about in the papers,” Arap told NEWSWEEK while still in the hospital. “They also told me that I was locked up for life.” The hospital’s head doctor, Yevgeny Zenin, told NEWSWEEK, “We do not care what independent commissions of psychiatrists, or the United Nations, or even aliens tell us. Once we decide to keep a patient here, we will. The courts will always listen to us and no one else.” Yet Arap was lucky—the United Civil Front brought the case to the international media, and complained to Russia’s human-rights ombudsman. He sent a delegation to Apatity to review her case, and they found Arap to be mentally fit. She was released last week. But other cases are still ongoing. Andrey Novikov, a journalist with a newspaper in Rybinsk, in central Russia, was jailed earlier this year on charges of “extremism” after publicly criticizing Vladimir Putin’s policies in Chechnya. In February, Novikov was sent for involuntary psychiatric treatment for what his doctors say in court papers would be “as long as it takes to have his mental health fully restored.” Article

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Shameful, period.

European diplomats in four-wheel drive cars have caused millions of dollars worth of damage to a fossilised whale lying for millions of years in the Egyptian desert, a security source said on Sunday.

“Whale Valley officials have informed the authorities that people from two diplomatic corps vehicles destroyed the fossil,” the source told AFP after the destruction was discovered around 150 kilometres (95 miles) south of Cairo. Article

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Test tubes and testaments: The pilgrimage of the parochials and the professionals.

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Noted FYI:

The United States has 90 guns for every 100 citizens, making it the most heavily armed society in the world, a report released on Tuesday said.

U.S. citizens own 270 million of the world’s 875 million known firearms, according to the Small Arms Survey 2007 by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

[snip]

On a per-capita basis, Yemen had the second most heavily armed citizenry behind the United States, with 61 guns per 100 people, followed by Finland with 56, Switzerland with 46, Iraq with 39 and Serbia with 38.

France, Canada, Sweden, Austria and Germany were next, each with about 30 guns per 100 people, while many poorer countries often associated with violence ranked much lower. Nigeria, for instance, had just one gun per 100 people.

[snip]

The report, which relied on government data, surveys and media reports to estimate the size of world arsenals, estimated there were 650 million civilian firearms worldwide, and 225 million held by law enforcement and military forces.

Five years ago, the Small Arms Survey had estimated there were a total of just 640 million firearms globally. Article

H₂O NO-NO

Holy screw-up, Batman.

Posts between this one and the next Housekeeping post are delayed from Tuesday due to personal dilemmas.