HUMVEES LETHAL: 1 in 5 GI deaths have been in wretched Humvees, often not armed at all, or armed with ad-hoc plates which weigh the machine down so it can't escape quickly from an attack.

The Humvee was intended for 'behind-the-lines' transport..but in Iraq no place is 'behind the lines'--a contingency that the Pentagon never foresaw. ABC

And two years after the war started, even though the need for armored Humvees was soon clear, the Pentagon still hadn't ordered enough armored Humvees (though the producing corporation was producing under capacity!)--until that courageous GI raised the question in Rumsfeld's press-conference. We'd hate to guess what future that GI has.
---------
What's omitted from this report is that the Humvees have caused far more maimings and injuries than deaths! GIs wear flack-vests which protect their torsos somewhat from bomb-fragments, so they're not killed. But nothing protects their arms, legs, eyes, faces, brains! So the proportion of GIs maimed or wounded, vs. killed, is much higher in this war than in other wars.

We're going to have Iraq cripples around for the next forty years. Get used to it.

 
INCREDIBLE Pentagon repeat of the same mistakes they made in Vietnam!
A colonel who served in Vietnam lists our blunders there, and details how we're doing the same stupid things in Iraq! COLORADOAN
----------
HISTORY IS ALREADY JUDGING BUSHIES: The official Pentagon historian of the Iraq war, I. Wilson, has been lecturing around America, telling of the 'stunted learning' (read 'stupidity') the Pentagon has displayed in Iraq. REUTERS

 
WE’RE NOT WINNING! Even the right-wing RockyMtnNews (printing an AP story)has finally admitted that in every respect, the guerillas are pulling ahead. [The story is available only in the print edition; strangely there’s no reference to it on NEWS.GOOGLE.COM!]

In terms of the number of attacks on our forces, or Gis killed or wounded, the last half of ’04 was the worst since the invasion—far worse than the same months last year. And things were far worse this November than this July!

Not that we’re being defeated in the classic military sense: the guerillas can’t drive us out. One analyst said it’s a standoff; neither side will prevail in the next year. But such a stalemate is really a victory for the guerillas. It has been said that guerillas win just by not losing.

The reason is simple; they think they are fighting for their religion and their homeland; we have nothing to gain by staying in, nothing really to lose by bugging out.

But we’d lose plenty by staying in. Thousands more of Gis would be killed or maimed or wounded; billions of dollars more would be spent, deepening the gigantic Bush-deficit even further.

And all for nothing; when we finally pulled out, in a few years, Iraq would be no better off than it is now.
After all, we struggled for TEN YEARS in Vietnam, then had to bug out, leaving our enemies in control.
On the other hand, we lost nothing from that bug-out--because we had no real stake in that war! Similarly, we have little to gain from staying in Iraq.

Even with Bush already winning re-election--with over 50% of Americans finally realizing that the whole affair was a mistake, and blaming Bush for mishandling the war—assuming minimal sanity on the part of some Bushies, they can perhaps persuade the little dimwit in the WhiteHouse to ‘declare victory’ and bug out—e.g., after the farce-election in January.

 
DIVINE GUIDANCE: How does it go? Some pious person prays hard for God’s guidance; then whatever of his thoughts follow, he counts them as coming from God !
(When people pray for physical, observable favors, they expect that God will often ‘say NO!’ But when they ask for guidance, these people assume God always says Yes.)

Catholics learn early that their personal guidance counts for nothing if it contradicts even the ‘ordinary teaching authority of the Church’, (i.e., some Papal encyclical). But for Protestants, it’s ‘every man his own Pope’. So there’s no block to the arrogant assumption mentioned above, that any thought I have right after fervent prayer for guidance--this thought comes, with divine authority, from God.

As the whole system degenerates, the prayer needn’t be very fervent. The Protestant assumes that ALL his opinions are, if not divine, then at least as valid as any other opinion. The way is open for complete nuttiness.
If an idea makes you feel good, then you have every right to take it as true.

This is also true of Sunni Muslims. Shiites are like Catholics, the ordinary person trusting the religious opinions of Ayatollahs (usually educated people, like bishops and Popes) . But any Sunni imam can interpret the Koran validly, so the nuttiest ideas can get loose. (e.g., binLaden’s hope to establish a new, true-believer Caliphate in Arabia, and his willingness to slaughter people for that goal.)
----------------------
Bill Moyers gave a speech, presumably well-researched, about the nutty ideas believed by millions of Americans about the Last Days coming up quickly..no need to conserve the environment, no need to worry about the Iraq war..it’s all in the Book of Revelations. [This speech is presented right below here.]

(You can imagine the delight over such nutty beliefs on the part of the corporate moguls who are ruining the environment, and the pols who are blamed for starting this needless war..it’s all in the Bible, so that’s OK. The Zionists must be chuckling also; the fundamentalists used to hate Jews..but now they approve of the triumph of Zionism as meaning that Jesus will return sooner! )

People deplored the Roman Church in 1600 not wanting the Bible to be available in the vernacular, only in Latin to be read by educated people. But perhaps the bishops foresaw the nutty ways ordinary, semi-literate Christians would interpret the vernacular Bible.

If Martin Luther and John Calvin could come back today and hear how their supposed followers are now interpreting the Bible, they’d burn all their heretical books and rush back into the monastery.

 
Here's the terrifying Bill Moyers speech about the nutty 'religious' ideas loose among millions of Americans:
----------------------
Moyers Receives Harvard Med School's Global Environment Citizen Award
--------------
by Bill Moyers
This week the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School presented its fourth annual Global Environment Citizen Award to Bill Moyers. Here is the text of his response to Ms. Streep's presentation of the award:

I accept this award on behalf of all the people behind the camera whom you never see. And for all those scientists, advocates, activists, and just plain citizens whose stories we have covered in reporting on how environmental change affects our daily lives. We journalists are simply beachcombers on the shores of other people's knowledge, other people's experience, and other people's wisdom. We tell their stories.

The journalist who truly deserves this award is my friend, Bill McKibben. He enjoys the most conspicuous place in my own pantheon of journalistic heroes for his pioneer work in writing about the environment. His bestseller The End of Nature carried on where Rachel Carson's Silent Spring left off.

Writing in Mother Jones recently, Bill described how the problems we journalists routinely cover - conventional, manageable programs like budget shortfalls and pollution - may be about to convert to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations. The most unmanageable of all, he writes, could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the melt of the arctic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.

That's one challenge we journalists face - how to tell such a story without coming across as Cassandras, without turning off the people we most want to understand what's happening, who must act on what they read and hear.

As difficult as it is, however, for journalists to fashion a readable narrative for complex issues without depressing our readers and viewers, there is an even harder challenge - to pierce the ideology that governs official policy today. One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the oval office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

Remember James Watt, President Reagan's first Secretary of the Interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, 'after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back.'

Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the twelve volumes of the left-behind series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious right warrior, Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans.

Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): once Israel has occupied the rest of its 'biblical lands,' legions of the anti-Christ will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts, and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious, and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelation where four angels 'which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man.' A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I Googled it, the rapture index stood at 144-just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter heaven, and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire.

So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist, Glenn Scherer - 'the road to environmental apocalypse. Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse.

As Grist makes clear, we're NOT talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total - more since the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Senator Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the senate floor: 'the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that i will send a famine in the land.' He seemed to be relishing the thought.

And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 TIME/CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the Book of Revelation are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations or in the motel turn some of the 250 Christian TV stations and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, 'to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?'

Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, America's Providential History. You'll find there these words: 'the secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie - that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece.' however, '[t]he Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth - while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people.'

No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, 'Onward Christian Soldiers.' He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on November 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics.

I can see in the look on your faces just how hard it is for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I once asked: 'What do you think of the market?' 'I'm optimistic,' he answered. 'Then why do you look so worried?' And he answered: 'Because I am not sure my optimism is justified.'

I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that - it's just that I read the news and connect the dots:

I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration that wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act that requires the government to judge beforehand if actions might damage natural resources.

That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections; and ease pollution standards for cars, sports utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment.

That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about environmental problems secret from the public.

That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting coal-fired power plans and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies.

That wants to open the arctic wildlife refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America.

I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend nine million dollars - $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council - to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study.
I read all this in the news.

I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the international policy network, which is supported by ExxonMobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is 'a myth, sea levels are not rising, scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are 'an embarrassment.

I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached to it: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California.

...and so on.

 
NOT-ONE-DAMN-DIME-DAY: Someone has suggested that we observe his inHOGuration, 20Jan, by boycotting every place we usually spend at: restaurants, stores, churches. That's a good idea.

In fact, a world boycott of U.S. brands would be about the only way to impress Bush's corporate masters. If anyone can put a bridle on this mad mule, they can.
---------
Such a world-boycott may happen without anyone organizing it. U.S. world-wide brands are beginning to de-emphasize their identity as American,now that America is more and more seen around the world as a 'nightmare'.
[ FinTimes ; full story can be read only by subscribers.]

 
MALES SUPPLANTED: The most radical revolution in history is ‘women’s liberation’: half of humankind is asked to give up their ancient, automatic, unquestioned supremacy over the other half.
Some loosely-arranged thoughts:
--how did it happen? Technology first made male muscles redundant. I remember a surprising scene: A big man and a little woman were chatting, beside a pair of vehicles: one huge and formidable, the other small and insignificant. After they talked, they jumped into their vehicles: the girl into the big monster, the man into the little car.

But the technology that undermined male muscularity was invented, not by rebellious females, but by other males. ‘Muscularity’ males ought to hate scientists, not women.

There are two sides to masculinity: one, the obvious physical side, emphasizing muscles and aggression; side two, the love of gadgets. Adam Smith bragged that he was the first to notice the male love of gadgets for their own sake, not just for their usefulness. He noted that men who could afford it bought expensive , elaborate watches, when a cheap watch would tell the time just about as well.

For a while, the old-fashioned physical, courageous masculinity could blend with the masculine mastery of gadgets. A great portrayal of these two, often rival, sides of masculinity was Tom Wolfe’s great essay THE RIGHT STUFF. First he portrays the classic super-male, Chuck Yeager, the hyper-example of the courageous,reckless, but mechanically competent test pilots of the years before the sixties.

But then along came the scientists who invented missiles and rockets (which could explore space so much cheaper and more efficiently than any male human could.) The test pilots sneered at the astronauts as ‘spam in a can’; their only function was to sit in the capsule..only at their insistence were windows put in so they could look out. But John Glenn was the omen of the future, not Chuck Yeager. (In fact, when the movie THE RIGHT STUFF was reissued, it didn’t draw big crowds.)

In WWII, fighter pilots illustrated the old-fashioned male supremacy; they were completely in charge of their machines, flying competently, courageously, and reckless-aggressively. But by the 21st century, fighter pilots were completely redundant; the U.S. prudently first bombed the enemy airports off the map, so there were no enemy fighter-planes to counter.

The symbols of the new times were the pilots living in Kansas who mounted into their B-52s after breakfast, flew off to drop huge bombs on Afghanistan, then returned home to play with their children in Kansas after supper. Worthy, perhaps, and perhaps necessary--but certainly not heroic!

In the Kosovo campaign, no U.S. ground troops were used. It was noted that our pilots flew so high (concerned with their own skins) that they often bombed the civilians they were supposed to protect. There was no embarrassment.

The only old-fashioned manly courage today is displayed by the helicopter pilots in Iraq, who are now and then shot down. (Of course the marines in Fallujah--though they are really only a sideshow for the missiles that destroyed the city—are showing great old-fashioned courage in the not-yet-ended face-to-face combat with the death-loving guerillas.)

We’ll see how many young Americans enlist in the marines,now that the ugly reality of face-to-face fighting is made clear..or rather, they might enlist thinking it’s all a war-movie. But how many will re-enlist?

The trend is away from old-fashioned male courage and toward mechanical cleverness in weapons. After all, a group of mean old Irish women could easily staff a nuclear submarine that could wipe out many cities.
-----------------------
The Islamists sometimes despise us for good reasons, for our commercial greed and our pornography. But they also resent and fear our conceding equal rights to women, to some extent. What’s the most frightening to the recalcitrant men is that most governments are now siding with the women, realizing that they fit flexibly into modern commerce better than typical men do.

In America we have the idea that women can't do math analysis as well as men, or computer programming. But they can in other countries....

There is a strong backlash here against uppity women. If you ask why a huge majority of men back the GOP, one reason of course is that GOP are the party of war—and American men love to be cheerleaders and spectators of war, though few actually want to ‘get in the game’ personally.

Besides that, though, many men are virulently anti-abortion…now nobody has claimed that men are generally more moral than women. They sense that ‘free choice’ among women about when to get pregnant puts women in a stronger bargaining position than before. And even though divorced women suffer economically much more than divorced men—still, the number of women who initiate the divorce shows how important the new liberation is to both men and women. In Japan the women, unable to change the terms of the marriage contract, are simply not getting married.

(It’s interesting to note the small remaining vestiges here of the assumption of automatic male superiority. For instance, restaurant servers, male and female, automatically address mixed couples as ‘you guys’. It’s assumed the woman will be flattered by calling her a ‘guy’. And women don't seem to mind; but to show the importance of this fluke, imagine a server asking the couple “Would you dolls like dessert?” Rage would ensue.)

This is the most radical revolution in history. I fear it will also be the most painful. But in the long run, it seems irreversible.

 
TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY: [ltr to NYT]:
U.S. is worried that the new Iraqi parliament will be disproportionately Shiite. (Since Shiites are 60% of the population, what counts as ‘disproportionate’?) The Sunnis won’t stand for tyranny of the majority, though for centuries they have indulged in the tyranny of the Minority.

How many have noticed this? In our country the Bushies, who won only 51% of the votes, have set out to completely trample the interests and opinions of 49% who voted against them. They are out to abolish the Senate filibuster, one of the traditional ways to prevent the tyranny of the majority. But of course they defend the electoral college (where Wyoming and other underpopulated Red States gets a disproportionate number of electors, compared to California).

I guess the difference is that the slightly-outvoted Democrats--unlike the ferocious, death-loving Sunnis--are, sensibly, not resorting to violence, which is apparently the only language the Bushies understand. [Trouble is, the GOP understand violence all too well; they are the party of the Pentagon and the gun-nuts. If Dems tried any kind of a violent uprising, (a) it would fail, and (b) it would give the Bushies an excuse to trample all dissidents.]

So we must put up with being under the absolute rule of a mad, ignorant king who will tolerate little dissent. (As I said earlier, now is the time for talented young U.S. liberals to think of emigrating; but first they must learn foreign languages, and a frugal life-style--and pick up scarce skills that will make another country welcome them.)

 
“DON’T JUST STAND THERE; DO SOMETHING!” A technophile GUARDIAN columnist uses the Tsunami to warn us against luddite pressures against technical progress. The headline says that an asteroid WILL hit us eventually, if we don’t learn now how to deflect it (with H-bombs,presumably).
We shouldn't just DO NOTHING!

Of course countries around the Indian Ocean should have had up-to-date sensors to detect the tsunami—though word could not have been circulated in time to the poor of many nations who are living on beaches so they can fish. World poverty caused the disaster more than any lack of technical up-to-dateness. And the huge increase in populations (caused by technical emphasis on death-control without birth-control) meant that many MORE people than ever before were vulnerable to the tsunami .

About the asteroid; recent scientific reports say the feared asteroid will definitely NOT hit us a decade from now. What a disappointment for the military scientists who wanted billions to be spent on developing H-bombs!

My luddite position is very simple: Megatech introduces dramatic changes, which are of necessity mostly-blind changes. For stable organisms, there are far more ways a blind change can do harm than ways it can do good. So dramatic, blind technical innovations may do some good, but they are likely to do even more harm.

Our slogan should be, “When you don’t really know what you’re doing: DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING; STAND THERE!”

(For more on my luddism, read my DEMOCRACY, RIGHTS, AND FREEDOMS (ch.1 & 2)--available at CSU library or by interlibrary loan/ also my comments on this book at my other website at CSU .)
--------------------
Luckily, low-brow Americans and their low-brow GOP government are cutting research funds. The dangerous technophiles are the middle-brow science lobbies.

 
‘OFFENSIVE’ EMPHASIS: For weeks now, guerillas have been bombing and assassinating our native militia in various places—showing the Sunni people that this force cannot protect them at polling places in the Jan.election.

But today U.S. headlines (from our tame media) were about our new ‘offensive’ against the ‘triangle of death’ South of Baghdad. We had a similar offensive in the same area a while ago—which apparently accomplished very little.

Similarly, we just responded to a blatant attack on GIs in Mosul with airborne missiles, which—necessarily indiscriminate—tend to recruit newly enraged survivors into the guerilla force. U.S. admits it doesn't control all of Mosul; many more GIS will be sent in (weakening our forces elsewhere). The attack was the most blatant for some time, involving suicide bombers and 'suicide' foot-soldiers..killing one GI and wounding 15 others, but killing a lot more insurgents, of course. REUTERS

One would guess that these counter-attacks by U.S. are NOT really intended to accomplish anything—they are simple revenge attacks based on the frustrated rage of U.S. generals. You can bet the guerilla leaders rejoice at every such counter-productive attack.

Also, these headlines are to reassure our ‘cheerleader’ hawks at home that we are striking back at someone..never mind to what purpose. This is not so important now that the Bushies have been put back in power for 4 more years.
---------
Even the fairly-objective FinancialTimes used as headline: "U.S. kills 25 insurgents.." One might not notice at first that this attack put 16 GIs out of commission.
-----------------
SAUDIS KILL TEN INSURGENTS (or at least 10 people) in retaliation for the recent brazen bombing of their government buildings. REUTERS
But what counts is how many insurgents are left, willing to die opposing the Saudi regime.
-----------------
We learned in Vietnam how useless were these Pentagon claims of 'body count', of enemies killed--useless as any index of our success.

 
GOOD NEWS! Millions of people suffer from malaria because the parasite has become immune to hitech medicines. But ARTEMESIA is very effective vs. malaria, and comes from a plant easily and cheaply grown, say in Ethiopia. INDEPENDENT
The Charity orgn. Called SEND A COW taught them how to grow the stuff.
----------------------------------
GUARDIAN reporters were told long ago that Iraqis working at the Mosul base were smuggling out weapons to sell. But the U.S. officers said, no, these workers were carefully screened. Recently a suicide bomber got through the fence with enough explosives on him to cause a fireball 400 feet high.
--------------------
A laser beam tracked a commercial U.S. flight for some time (requiring sophisticated equipment). Previously, a pilot’s eye was damaged by a laser beam coming into his cockpit. Terrorists have been talking about using laser beams…but U.S. technowhizzes might be doing this also, as a prank. GUARDIAN, 29Dec
Actually 34 U.S. pilots have reported permanent eye-damage from such laser-attacks, occurring in MANY DIFFERENT PLACES. INDEPENDENT

This possibility illustrates the total uselessness of Pentagon missiles or marines in countering terrorist threats from individuals.
----------------------
CIA EXODUS continues: the head of their Analysis section just quit. INDEPENDENT,29DEC

Bush put in an ‘enforcer’ as CIA head, who’ll see that no information sees the light of day which might undermine Bush’s mad schemes.

We have mixed feelings: the people in there before were incompetent and willing to tailor findings to suit the WhiteHouse. But now the new people will be super-flexible (indeed, supine)! Rejoice, enemies of America—the giant will be more myopic than ever, lunging self-confidently through the fog.
----------------------
U.S. STINGY? We give more dollars for foreign aid than other countries—but we give very little, compared to the size of our gross national product. Which way should count? Bush had a little tantrum at accusations of our stinginess.
But Jesus seemed to show great good sense when he said the widow gets more credit for her tiny contribution, because she had so little.

(Also, a lot of our foreign aid is used for political,not humanitarian, reasons: most goes to Israel and Egypt. Also, much of our aid is for buying weapons from U.S. corporations.)

 
INADEQUATE ARMY? When Rummie was accused of not providing adequate supplies to our Iraqi GIs, he said,"You go to war with the army you have, not the one you would want!" And a letter-writer in USATODAY 30Dec blames Clinton for shrinking the military too far.

What is forgotten is that this was a war 'of choice, not necessity'--as even war-friendly columnists have noted. If Rummie & his buddies saw they didn't have adequate resources, then they shouldn't have chosen to start an unprovoked and needless war!
===========
TWO CAR BOMBS EXPLODED IN SAUDI CAPITAL, sending up world oil-prices. REUTERS
=============
BUSINESSMEN KIDNAPPED: in Baghdad. REUTERS People forget that there are FOUR separate forces in Iraq: U.S. troops, our native militia, the guerillas, and the GANGSTERS, who kidnap people for ransom.

However, the gangsters' activities have results desired by the guerillas: a) demonstrating that U.S. and its puppet regime cannot enforce 'law'nOrder' even in Baghdad, and (b) discouraging foreign businessmen from visiting or investing in Iraq.
==========
Ukraine will pull out most of its troops from Iraq in April, the rest in December. Ukraine has the 4th-largest contingent in Iraq from the 'Coalition of the Unwilling' (populations of most of the 'coalition' members oppose their nations' involvement in Iraq!) GUARDIAN

 
'FALLUJAH' DIDN'T WORK ! We attacked Sammara earlier, then we destroyed Fallujah--almost every building. That was supposed to deter or disable the guerillas from interfering with the Jan.election.

Well, so far, the attacks have escalated, not diminished--up to 3000 a month.
Over the Christmas holiday, dozens of our native militia have been bombed, shot, or had their throats slit, over much of Northern Iraq. REUTERS

Guerillas killed 50 people in two days this week News.com.au

With only 5 weeks left before the election, there is no sign that the polling places can be protected--presumably by our hapless militia (to avoid any feeling that U.S.is in control) ! A main Sunni party has withdrawn its candidates from the slates, saying the election can't be fair and free.

It looks like there will be an overwhelming proportion of Shiites elected.
Perhaps they & the elected Kurds will be calm and rational enough to give guaranteed-rights to the Sunnis in the Constitution, which might lure the Sunnis away from supporting the guerillas. We'll see.
========
Iraqis are bound to ask, "What good are U.S.troops doing? They can't protect the pipelines, the short road to the airport, the native militia--not even the big guns in their puppet government! They can't protect election-workers. (700 in Mosul just quit, plus 300 el.workers in Baiji, for fear of their lives.) Yanks can't provide electricity reliably, or gasoline for our generators, or clean water to drink.
(The big gas refinery in Baghdad was set ablaze on 30Dec.) HeraldSun

"What the Yanks are good at is bombing and shelling our cities."
------------------------
[Note: the electoral HQ in Baghdad has denied the report that all 700 of their workers in Mosul have quit. USATODAY We'll see how many show up for work between now and 30 Jan.]

 
WOMEN'S MILITIA VS. IRAN MULLAHS: There is an para-military organization (allowed by Saddam) on the border between Iraq & Iran. 30% of its members, and 70% of its officers, are women! They are enraged, for instance, by photos of Iranian women buried to their necks and stoned to death for sex-sins. (Muslims never had a Jesus, as Jews did, to ask the eager-to-stone men, "Which of you is without sin?")

In bargaining with Iran, U.S. & Britain have, predictably, sold them out, listed them as terrorist groups. They are confined to their camp and disarmed, protected only by GIs from Iranian operatives wandering freely now in Iraq. INDEPENDENT

 
ALTERNATIVE TO OUTSOURCING? A GUARDIAN article sketches the interesting possibility that highly skilled Westerners (e.g., Americans) working from home computers can compete with Indians working for a much cheaper wage. (Somehow this involves saving on office space, and calculating 'effective hours' instead of just hours..??) It's claimed that 100,000 people are working from home computers in America.

 
BinLADEN VS. SISTANI ! Shiite Grand Ayaltollah Sistani has told Iraqis they have a religious duty to vote in January--a duty more important than the duty to pray and fast! He has opposed U.S. presence in Iraq, but has never backed violent resistance.

Now comes an audiotape from the prophet-hero Osama, demanding that Iraqis BOYCOTT the election as a religious duty, and contribute their money and their bodies to fighting U.S. and its 'apostate' puppet Allawi.

There's no doubt which prophet will be heeded by the Sunnis (at least the Sunni Arabs; but what about the Sunni Kurds?) But it will be interesting to see how many Shiites follow binLaden instead of Sistani.
-----------
Polls before Osama's statement showed 80% of Shiites intending to vote, and 30% of Sunnis hoped-for (plus the Sunnis in exile, e.g., in Jordan). Polling stations wouldn't even be attempted in Answar Province (the Sunni Triangle).
Special arrangements would be made for Fallujah residents now living in tents outside the city.

GIS would NOT be on duty to guard polling places, for fear of being accused of foreign influence. So guarding the polls will be left completely to our hapless native militia.

Foreign observers will be thin on the ground. FinTimes

Who will decide if election is valid? UN even accepted our present, obviously-puppet regime as 'legitimate'! This new parliament (overwhelmingly Shiite) will write the permanent constitution. Only if extravagant, guaranteed favors for the minority Sunni Arabs are written into the constitution--only then would there be any chance of insurgent attacks lessening...and even then, such a benefit would be only possible, not perhaps probable..especially after binLaden's call for continued attacks.

Is it likely that the Shiites & Kurds, running the show after January,will provide these guarantees? Can they forget the crimes committed against them during the 90s by Saddam's Sunni regime? For that matter, will Shiites guarantee de facto independence for the Kurds (which they will demand)?
-------------
What will happen to SADR'S lower-class Shiite movement? It's not on the ballot.

 
MISERABLE STATE OF HOMELAND DEFENSE: The former inspector-general of HomelandDefenseDept. (just fired for having a big mouth) tells in detail in NYTIMES the intolerable defects in this program.

Bushies are spending billions of dollars on ineffectual gadgets for defending against nuke-missiles; but an enemy would never need missiles, when thousands of huge ship-containers enter our ports EACH DAY uninspected--each of which could contain a nuclear bomb.

The Bushies have spent only about $500 million on port protection OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF YEARS. That's less than half of the money shoveled to the Pentagon EACH DAY (the Pentagon's missiles and marines are useless for countering individual terrorists.) And much of this paltry $500 million has been spent for 'pork' projects, not for real port defense! NYTIMES
--------------------------------
Interestingly, this whistle-blower never mentions the danger from a possible germ-attack. Even before the inevitable first germ-attack, we face an urgent shortage of nurses. And there aren't enough nurse-professors. We should be setting a wartime-emergency program to train and recruit these vital professionals. The Bushies are doing nothing in this line.

It's funny and sad that about 53% of Americans--though they now perceive Bush's folly in invading Iraq--still trust Bush on the issue of SECURITY !

 
“THE BEST DEFENSE IS AN OFFENSE” says usually sensible A.Cordesman, in NYTIMES.
This hypnotic slogan has in the past led many Americans to agree that, when attacked by one set of Muslims (mainly Saudis on 9/11), we must attack SOME group of Muslims (Iraqis). Goofy!

Cordesman’s position is not that crazy, but it is misguided. He’s worried that after the Mosul Messhall disaster, U.S. commanders seem to be making ‘force protection’ their main priority—that is, pulling Gis back into well-defended bases (NOT like the one in Mosul!)

He points out sensibly that such a policy might just stretch the war out and would probably end up costing MORE U.S. casualties. He wants us to ‘stay on the attack’—but whom are we to attack, and how? When we destroyed Fallujah, we obviously motivated new suicide bombers. Our intelligence (our ability to recognize guerillas ‘off-duty’) is basically zilch.

Our usual way to attack is to shell and bomb areas we suspect of ‘harboring’ guerillas. We dropped a one-thousand-pound bomb on the city of Mosul just a week before they struck at our messhall; that huge bomb neither deterred nor disabled the guerillas. Indeed, it may have recruited the suicide-bomber in the messhall!

Cordesman says there are now up to 3000 guerilla-attacks each month, and that this will continue past the election, into 2006…in fact, for ‘months and years’ to come.

C. says we can’t possibly succeed if we don’t train a native militia to take over the anti-guerilla war so we can eventually pull out. That means we have to trust our native recruits. But another story in the same issue of the TIMES points out that, after the Mosul attack, Gis are naturally inclined NOT to trust native workers. And they offend the recruits constantly, e.g., by offering them pork to eat!

The whole position is impossible. Our people don’t even speak the language. (Note was taken of a few Arabic and Kurdic words written on a wall, in the hope that the Gis would learn them.)

Half-educated American soldiers have always been racist and xenophobic. Now that Koreans are outcompeting us commercially, and score the highest on international tests (while our youth score badly)--it is all the more ironic to remember a joke I heard often from Gis in Korea: “What do you get when you mate a gook (a Korean) with an ape? A retarded ape!” At the time, many street-beggars in Inchon spoke 2 or 3 languages, while the Gis, of course, spoke only English. (And these GIs were mainly draftees, usually better-educated than the 'ER's, enlistees. All the GIS now in Iraq are enlistees.)

But for one reason or another, the South Koreans wanted Gis to stay there, so the rear-area soldiers’ reaction to them was only contempt, not fear.

But now the GIs have good reason to think that many or most Iraqis resent them and want them to leave. It’s not likely that these Americans are going to trust volunteer recruits, who might well be guerilla infiltrators..the suicide bomber in Mosul allegedly wore a uniform like our recruits--which uniforms are available anywhere.

C. admits that with ANY strategy now, we may ‘lose’ the war. But he says if we pull back into fortresses, defeat is not just possible but certain.

Many experts say we have already lost the war, that our troop-presence in Iraq is doing more harm than good.. The sensible policy is not to pull back into fortresses (which could be hit by shells with poison gas!) NOR to lunge blindly out ‘attacking SOMEONE’—we should bug out of Iraq altogether, immediately.

 
WE DON’T NEED OVERSEAS BASES! We’re NOT going to get oil from Iraq; very likely, the Shiite rulers coming up will line up with Iran (our most hating enemy--except Osama!), and their combined oil—perhaps more than in SaudiArabia!—will not be easily available to America.

So why is Pentagon so determined to stay on in Iraq for an extended, bloody stalemate, rather than bugging out now? There are stories of P’s determination to build a web of advance bases in MiddleEast (e.g., in Uzbekistan, Qatar,etc.)
------------
But how badly do we need an extra base in Iraq?
We can strike quickly at any (real or imagined) enemy from our homeland, using aircraft carriers, huge air-transports,etc. (We bombed Afghanistan with B-52s stationed in mid-America!) /So why do we need such advanced bases, at such an awful cost?

One hypothesis: the overseas bases enrich the host-country (at the expense of U.S.: they increase both our trade-deficit—the money spent there counts as imports, when our imports far outweigh our exports—and of course these bases increase our govt. deficit. And the U.S. communities who might otherwise host these bases lose out--as the screams of outraged Congressmen testify.)

Perhaps these bases constitute bribes to the host-governments, and perhaps these governments kick-back some percentage to Bushie-friendly corporations or individuals.
-----------
Aside from this possibility, one can see no reason why we’re so determined to spend U.S. and Iraq blood and billions of U.S. dollars on prolonging this stalemate!

(If Bushies are afraid their backers will be furious at a bug-out, then now's the time to bug-out. Those yahoos can easily be distracted in the next 4 years, before the next Presidential election!

Of course if at stake is the ego of the little dimwit in the WhiteHouse, that's a bigger problem. )

 
GUERILLA WARS UNWINNABLE: in ATLANTIC MONTHLY (cited by TRUTHOUT), the recent history of wars between formidable first-world countries and fanatic guerillas is recounted. France spent years trying vainly to pacify its colonies in Algria and Vietnam. Russia got thrown out of Afghanistan. and so on..only the Brit campaign in Malaysia was successful--and that took 9-12 years.

(None of these campaigns had to deal with wholesale suicide bombers; these are more effective,because a) they don't have to plan a getaway, and (b) the bomber can't be captured and tortured to tell about his handlers. In Iraq, it's said there seems to be an 'endless supply' of suicide bombers available.)

The expert Cordesman says we will have tens of thousands of U.S. casualties by the ten years they're now talking about. The point is this: we'd have NOTHING TO LOSE by bugging out now, because we had NOTHING TO GAIN by lunging into these foolish campaigns.
------------------
As guerillas released TV pictures of the successful attack on the Mosul messhall, as a top Shiite is nearly assassinated, and the top Sunni party withdraws from the election-process-- the U.S.Army Chief of Staff visited small groups of GIS in Iraq and Afghanistan who have just reenlisted. He said the Iraq war was going 'pretty well." WashPost
----------
24 of our native militia were killed just on Tuesday,27Dec.PITTSBURGH
6 had been killed on Monday.
What with the slaughter of our native militia, and the possibility that many of them are guerilla infiltrators, any dream we had of having Iraqis replace GIs has faded. see also REUTERS

 
OUTSOURCING PAYS: (only now journalists use a different word: 'farming out' InfoTech functions, mainly to India). FinTimes says the companies facilitating this process are showing huge profit margins. Only 5% of US IT functions are now 'farmed out', but this figure is expected to rise to 27%.

My impression is that InfoTech people have voted Republican not because of objections to gay marriage or abortion, but because they objected to Welfare programs, to being taxed to support a bunch of losers. Well, they'll now be the losers.

What might happen: all these unemployed computer gurus might retaliate by devising ever-new worms and viruses to attack their former employers.

 
SHIITE LEADER ATTACKED; SUNNI PARTY WITHDRAWS. A bomb went off near the home of the leader of the top Shiite party, the expected new ruler of Iraq. He survived, but not 4 of his bodyguards.

The largest Sunni party withdrew from the elections, saying security is so weak that a credible election could not take place.

Several other elite Iraqis were assassinated or threatened. MSNBC

 
PRIVATIZING SOCIAL SECURITY: The best argument for this is the complete untrustworthiness of GOP government. Under Reagan, they cut the progressive income tax for the wealthy, then raised the regressive tax for social security. This resulted in a huge surplus for SS--which they spent promptly on the Pentagon.

So now they want to farm out SS to the corporations. Well, the corporations are equally crooked; they are cheating millions of workers out of their pensions. RMtnNews And of course the corporations get away with this because they are in bed with GOP government.

However, the baby boomers won't be cheated too much on SS--because they vote! Somehow, the military-industrial-GOP complex will manage to shift the burden onto the young and poor, who up to now haven't voted. (And the fiascos in '00 and '04 might make them give up on voting again.)

 
“POLITICAL AUTHORITY FROM GOD, NOT FROM THE PEOPLE!” says Ansar alSunna, the new insurgent group that so cleverly got a suicide-bomber into the U.S. mess-hall in Mosul. “Democracy idolizes human beings.” Boston.Com

This view was held explicitly by Pope Pius IX [click on 'CafeteriaCatholics'], and I believe also is held now by Justice Scalia.

All fundamentalists agree on wanting a theocracy; they just disagree on which ‘theo’ should be in charge. Or rather, they disagree on which group of CLERICS, speaking for some 'theo', will rule.

 
SUNNIS REFUSE BRIBE: Americans think it should be a simple matter to 'buy off' the secular Sunnis (ex-Saddamites) who may be the brains of the guerilla movement.

Willing now to let the Baathists into the new 'elected' government, they asked only that the Sunnis sign a renunciation of their old Baathist links.

But many Sunni leaders have refused to do that! NYTIMES

That seems to show that money and individual power are not the most important considerations for these people. Shocking!
-------------
Anyway, the Iraq Election Commission has refused any such scheme. REUTERS
That means that the Sunnis, after 30 Jan, will have vivid evidence that they will have basically no power or influence in the new Iraq. That will confirm them in their resolve to fight to the death.
-----------
MILLIONS OF (MAINLY UPPER-CLASS) IRAQIS HAVE MANAGED TO FLEE THE COUNTRY. Now they will be invited to vote in January. (The UN opposed this move, fearing wholesale fraud--but the Electoral Commission --of our puppet regime-- insisted.) However, since most refugees are Shiite or Kurd, this won't help the Sunnis much. LondonOBSERVER But it might put more 'pro-Westerner Shiites' into the new parliament.

 
NEW MORNING-AFTER PILL: One dose of Mifestiprone works (up to 5 days after sex) to prevent (or interrrupt) conception, as well as the mainly-used drug. REUTERS

We can expect the Bushies to repay their fanatic constituents (who hate even early abortion more than killing 50,000 real women and children in war) by forcing in Supreme Court Justices to revoke Roe vs. Wade, and then banning abortions in their 'red states'. (Already, abortion providers are thin on the ground in the yahoo states.)

However, as ordinary women find out about the 'morning-after' pill--and 'do-gooders' should first emphasize making sure they DO find out!-- regular abortions won't be so necessary. But we can expect the right-wingers to try to ban this pill also, hell-bent on protecting fertilized eggs. So we need several alternative chemicals, and plans for getting 'forbidden' pills into the U.S.

Also, we need videos instructing ordinary women on how to use ordinary birth-control pills on the 'morning after' unprotected sex. The right-wingers are not likely to succeed in banning ordinary birth-control pills.

As ordinary workers get REALLY POOR in Bushie Amerika, it's more important than ever that they learn to spend less--on cars, on gambling, and on CHILDREN.

(Actually the rich GOP leaders, while pretending to back their frothing 'values' constituents, will want widespread accessibility to this pill--forget about preventing poverty; PREVENT THE POOR! )

 
MOSUL DISASTER: An explosion hit a mess-tent at the big GI base near Mosul a week ago. At first they wouldn't say how many casualties resulted--then a later REUTERS account said that 22 were dead and over 50 wounded! (Later, 72 wounded.) [GIs, U.S. civilian workers, and Iraqis were there.]

Apparently the 1000-pound bomb we dropped earlier on the city didn't deter or disable the guerillas. More heavy bombing may be needed, to teach them a lesson.

Earlier rockets aimed at GI bases--30 this year at this base!--have missed. We'd better hope their aim is not improving (as we should expect it would.)

[Wait up! The fanatic group that claimed credit for this attack said it was a 'martyrdom' move. And the U.S. grabbed at that idea--because that would mean that it wasn't their failure to keep rocketeers outside the range at fault. ]
GUARDIAN

However, it's bad news that our forces couldn't keep out a suicide-bomber wearing THAT MUCH EXPLOSIVE AND SHRAPNEL around his waist!
It's said the fireball from the explosion was FOUR HUNDRED FEET HIGH!
Perhaps the guerillas are using some of that 400 tons of SUPER-HIGH-EXPLOSIVE that we let them steal.

Apparently the only thing that would work in this line is to keep all Iraqis (including those now working in the kitchen) far away from GIs.
But then we can't 'train' a native militia to replace our GIs.
=================
Allawi (a former Saddamite henchman, now our puppet) is talking with Saddamite leaders--he might be able to lure them by bribes into quitting the insurgency. (Though Sunni hatred of Americans, and rage at losing 1400 years of domination, might be stronger than greed, even for these guys.)

But the group that took credit for the mess-tent bombing was a wild Islamist group..if even they are able to carry off such an effective attack....

A more solid mess-hall is being built (by Haliburton!) but is far behind schedule. One problem is reluctance of locals to help out; they desperately need the pay, but they fear retaliation against them and their families.

If this was a suicide-bombing, a 'bunker-type mess-hall' won't help, unless (again) all Iraqis are kept away from all GI gathering-places.

The real worry is the possibility that guerilla rockets might be loaded with poison gas (against which gas-masks are useless: one drop on the skin can kill).
It's not clear if a suicide-bomber could carry gear that would spread gas or anthrax germs throughout, say, a mess-hall.
---
Now it seems the suicide-bomber might have been wearing an Iraqi military uniform (one of 'our' militia). Guerillas have stolen many,many uniforms.
U.S. general: "Our vetting procedure is sound--but in this case.." NYTIMES
Vetting--when Americans don't speak the language!

GIs are not safe in unarmored humvees on the road. Now it turns out they're not safe on their bases either.

All this shows the ready willingness of the Bush-team to take awful risks with the lives of GIs. (After the farcical Jan. election, they just might 'declare victory' and bug out. Let's hope they have that much sense.)
----------
Another oil-pipeline in Northern Iraq was bombed. WashPost

 
OUTCOME UP TO THE IRAQIS, says Rumsfeld finally. SeattlePostIntelligencer Yes, since the Americans have completely failed to quell the insurgency. So, it seems to follow, the U.S. should bug out and leave the outcome to the Iraqis. Maybe that's what he's saying, in code. Let's hope so.
-------------
The international observers of the Jan. election will mostly stay in neighboring countries. They don't have a lot of confidence in U.S. as guaranteeing their safety in Iraq! SBS

 
CHRISTIANS FLEE: There was a Christian community in Iraq (Mesopotamia) before Mohammed was born. They were tolerated by the Muslims (sensibly they didn't try to convert Muslims!)--and protected by Saddam. But now the Muslims have turned against them as 'collaborators' with Americans. Few showed up for Christmas Mass this year; many have emigrated outside the country. As a community, they will likely disappear.
INDEPENDENT
Oh, well, typical Bush supporters won't mind--since these Christians were Catholic or Orthodox: born only once.

 
"..BUT NO ARMOR, HUH?" A wag at USATODAY started his story (24Dec) on Rummie's lightning-visit to survivors of Mosul disaster this way:" Secy. Rumsfeld brought gifts of praise and encouragement.."
--------------
'STUNTED LEARNING & FAILURE TO ADAPT' on part of civilians & generals have crippled Iraq effort, says OFFICIAL HISTORIAN of Iraq campaign, Maj.I.Wilson. Incredibly,there was no official plan for how to occupy and stabilize Iraq after our invasion. There was failure to realize this was a 'people's war'. So we MAY LOSE THIS WAR. Wash.Post, cited by Reuters

When a guy this close to the top says we MAY lose, you can bet we're already toast.

 
The COMMENT section (where others have a say on my ideas, and I respond) may not get updated automatically. After clicking on COMMENT--if the number of separate comments is less than the number cited [e.g., COMMENTS (12)]--you may have to write (e.g.,) abc in the big box below, then click on PUBLISH. Then all the comments on that post will show up.

Also, the blog itself may not update automatically. If a new post doesn't show up each day, click on REFRESH at the very top,here.

 
'GLOBAL ECONOMIC CATASTROPHE' predicted by French official, in the strongest-yet comment by a European official.

Poor bastards. Asian countries cheapen their currency in synch with U.S. dollar. So only European exports are undermined.

Market analysts say that 'coordinated management' (which saved world economy last time, in '98) will not happen this time. FinTimes

Uncoordinated devaluation of currencies is a 'beggar-thy-neighbor' tactic calculated to bring on World Depression, the catastrophe this guy is likely worried about.

 
‘WE CAN STILL WIN!” Rummie tells survivors of Mosul mess-tent attack, pinning a purple heart on one wonded GI. (No ‘signing machine’ here!) He denied that his surfacing in Mosul was at all related to the recent disaster there.

Why was he so confident? “The great sweep of History is toward Freedom, and you’re on the right side of that!” (Of course History sometimes zigs and zags..a crushing defeat in Iraq for our version of Freedom [the Free Market] might fit within this irregular pattern. After all, Putin just RENATIONALIZED the Russ oil industry!)

Among those few returning to Fallujah, there was little gratitude for the U.S. ‘clearing out the guerillas’..possibly because , in this process, they destroyed ALMOST EVERY BUILDING in Fallujah.

Colin Powell reportedly told the Bushies that we need more troops in Iraq. REUTERS
One previous observer said, “If they’re going to fight, we have too few troops there. If they’re just going to be sitting ducks, we have too many there already!” (Rummy cited this last possibility recently, as reason NOT to send more troops.)

Another observer said, "The more security troops are needed to guard our bases, the less good they can do in the rest of Iraq." But also, the less harm; and many experts say they're unwittingly doing more harm than good there. But then,of course, why not pull them out?

 
THAT'S NOT NEWS! The French hostages just released say the guerillas told them that THEY WANTED BUSH RE-ELECTED. "That way, the U.S. troops will stay here, and we'll develop further." BostonGlobe

Of course that's what they want--the Bush team is the greatest RECRUITER OF NEW TERRORISTS ever!

Scheuer, the CIA man who wrote the HUBRIS book, thought Osama might attack us just before the election, realizing that many Americans are so dumb that they'd cuddle closer to Bush after such an attack.

As things turned out, Osama didn't attack then--but he did thunder a new threat just before the election--as did a bizarre American terrorist. And they got what they wanted--this team of clowns--useful for terrorists--put back in power until '08.

 
SORE LOSERS: (lettr to RMTNNEWS):
A small majority of Americans finally see that the Iraq war is--was from the beginning--a lethal mistake. Now two of the pet hawk columnists in RMTNNEWS [24Dec] are basically admitting that the battle has most likely been lost.

T.Friedman admits that the blame should fall partly on the Bush-team. However, he rushes on to blame the Arabs and Europeans because they won’t step into the charnel-house we have created.

Clifford May is even more reluctant to blame the Bushies. He says that the charge that we invaded to control the oil is ‘not much heard’ any more. No, because the war has been bungled so badly that the pipelines are indefensible. We’re NOT EVEN going to get oil out of this fiasco!

May’s main blame is for the American people, for giving up. May quotes Osama as deriding Americans for not being willing to ‘stay the course’ in a long war. Of course fanatics like Osama will ‘stay the course’ for decades, to please Allah. We should think of that in the future, before we start a war with fanatics.

The crucial point is that typical Americans have NOTHING TO LOSE by bugging out—because we had NOTHING TO GAIN by lunging into--or by staying on in--this goofy war! As in Vietnam, our people have no real stake in turning back the guerillas.

The shameful thing would NOT be our sensibly bugging out of this mess. The crime is our government’s once again lunging blindly into a needless, pointless, WINLESS war.
=============
Our puppet regime just signed a large oil contract with a Turk/Brit/Iraq consortium. FinTimes These signers risk a later Iraq regime repudiating this agreement NOT made by a legit Iraq regime!

Note also that the agreement is NOT with any U.S. firm! As said above, we're not even going to get OIL from this slaughter!

 
FALLUJAH STILL NOT PACIFIED: U.S. & its puppet regime are anxious to 'rebuild' shattered Fallujah, so the people will vote in January!

They welcomed back a few refugees--only about 200 came. However, explosions were still heard; U.S. missiles still exploded. It was admitted that 'some' marines were killed by insurgents--and of course, lots of insurgents were killed by marines! GUARDIAN

One would bet that IF Fallujans vote, it won't be for the slate headed by our puppet Allawi, who OKd the destruction of the town.
-----------
A perhaps-exaggerated piece by an Iraqi gloats that the 'Fallujah campaign' shows decisively that the most heavily-armed force in the history of the world can be foiled by cunning, brave 3d-world natives. InformationClearinghouse

 
THE MESS IN IRAQ:
---“[Mosul] ATTACK IS EVIDENCE THAT THEIR INTEL IS BETTER (than ours).” DUH!
[ USATODAY23DEC.]
We invade a country whose language hardly any of our military people speak. Of course we have to rely on translators. Trouble is: 1) our friendly translators get shot. (2) Many translators may be covertly allied with guerillas..how would we know? (They may be fingering for assassination the Iraqis who are helping us.) REUTERS

During the Viet war, an accomplished linguist watched an exchange between a U.S. officer and an officer of our allied force. The Yank would say something; his translator would tell the Viet something else. The Viet would respond, and his translator would tell the Yank something else.

In other words, for practical purposes, we have NO intelligence about the guerillas—but they have all kinds of ways to find out what we’re up to. For instance, we insist on hiring Iraqis for odd jobs, to free our troops presumably for fighting. We have no idea how many of these workers are guerilla spies. We watch ‘which ones are going back and forth past the same place’. We note which ones are writing things down. Aside from those brilliant precautions, we’re completely helpless and blind.

The group that claimed credit for the bombing said the bomber broke through a fence; "we knew the exact time the guard changed."
-----------------
An ex-intelligence officer says that armored humvees and mess-halls are ‘band-aid’ remedies. The problem is the widespread hostility we face among the people. “The idea that they’re our allies—that’s a lot of bunk. There has to be a larger support group which doesn’t turn them in, which turns a blind eye, which cooperates with them.”
DUH!

Rumsfeld says we can’t quit, turning over the country to ‘people who cut off people’s heads’. Iraqis might respond that the country is now under the control of Americans who blow infants to bits with shells and missiles. Our slaughter is wholesale, while guerilla slaughter is retail.

Rumsfeld also said he ‘shares deeply’ in the grief of families who have lost relatives. That’s probably why he had his ‘condolence’ letters signed by machine. He may share their grief—but not deeply.

A large U.S. contractor just pulled out of Iraq, abandoning a $325 million contract—because the place just isn’t safe. Some top Brit legislators visited Iraq to inspect; they couldn’t go to Baghdad, the capitol—it just wasn’t safe. We can’t defend the crucial 4-mile road from Baghdad to the airport. A suicide bomber blew himself up right in the ‘Green Zone’, the super-protected headquarters for our top honchos.

Pentagon propagandists said things would get better after we captured Saddam/ after we wrote a Constitution for them/ after we installed a puppet interim government /[now] after the Jan. election. But even Rummie now says peace won’t come after January.
--------------
The big gas refinery in Baghdad was just set ablaze. HeraldSun

 
THE CHEERLEADERS (letter to NYTIMES)
“I would never have gone [into Iraq],”said oil worker Dallas Speer,”but that’s beside the point now..there’s pretty much no choice. We have to proceed.” [NYT22D]

Well, that’s not quite accurate. Mr. Speer doesn’t want US to proceed; he presumably has no intention of volunteering as an oil worker in Iraq. He wants THEM to proceed: the poor GIs who have suffered so much and who have so much more to suffer.

Mr. Speer may be a very common type of American: the cheerleader for war. War is a spectator sport for these people; they feel qualified to voice opinions, and to root for our team—without ever planning to ‘get in the game’ and ‘risk their own knees’, as it were.

Many experts say that our troops, for one reason or another, are enraging Iraqis more each month, are doing more harm than good by staying there. Mr.Speer says there is no choice—not if the homebody cheerleaders and Mr.Bush want to avoid the shame of failure, if we just bug out. But there is always the choice to pull out: we just got out of Lebanon, Somalia, Vietnam. These abrupt exits hurt no U.S. interest, only our national vanity.

If we wait a couple of years and then bug out, with the number of U.S. and Iraq casualties skyrocketing, the chaos in Iraq will be no better than if we get out now.

The crime is not ‘bugging out’ so regularly; our government’s crime is to lunge blindly into so many foolish conflicts. Getting out now would be, belatedly, good sense.

 
TEN MORE YEARS before Brits can pull out of Iraq, warn some senior MPs who just went there (they couldn't go to Baghdad--too dangerous).

Hilariously, Blair (who lied Brits into the fiasco) announced that 'British are not quitters." INDEPENDENT Over the cliff together!

The TVpictures of Blair showed a fixed, grisly smile on his face, making one wonder if he's not losing it.


He'll be as infamous as those ninny-generals in WWI who wouldn't back out of the pointless Somme bloodbath.

 
TERRORISTS IN TRAINING: Thailand is a mainly-Buddhist country,with a few Muslim provinces. Next-door Malaysia is Muslim. 400 Thais have been killed by terrorists.Now Thai govt.says it has photographic proof that terrorists are training in Malaysia. Bloomberg

This emphasizes the silliness of people who say about the Iraq fiasco: "I'd rather fight them there than here!" The 'them' we're fighting in Iraq is completely distinct from the thousands and thousands of 'them' who threaten us and our allies elsewhere in the world. Even victory in Iraq (which won't happen!) would in no way make our Homeland any safer.

What might mitigate the threats a little is taking certain obvious precautions: e.g., inspecting the thousands of huge incoming ship-containers entering our ports EVERY DAY; guarding our chemical plants and nuclear waste-ponds from attack; recruiting and training first nurse-professors, then nurses, to alleviate the urgent shortage we have now, even before the inevitable first germ-war attack....financing adequate forces of police & firemen, etc.

However, these precautions are quite expensive, and the Bushies 'can't afford' them..not when they're routinely shovelling $1200 millions EACH DAY to the Pentagon, whose missiles and Marines are useless against individual terrorists. Also we're wasting $6000 millions each month on our Iraq campaign. Besides, Bushies are giving luscious tax-breaks to their wealthy buddies.

 
ANYONE ELSE? BinLaden and his gang think that Allah will reward them if they die while killing innocent civilians.

Sharon’s gang think that Jahweh gave them the Holy Land 3000 years ago; they’re willing to kill and kill to defend every square feet of their bequest.

Bush and his gang think that the Jews grabbing the Holy Land from the Arabs will hurry Jesus’ return.

And Bush told the Amish that he’s sure God speaks through him. (He also told Pat Robertson--presumably reassured by God--that the upcoming Iraq invasion would cost NO U.S. casualties.)

Suppose we take seriously these claims to Divine Guidance--claims made by people who pray fervently,I'm sure.

Then one wonders: Could we talk to Someone Else Up There Who's more sensible?

 
UNBIASSED? HELL,NO! A critic (commenting on my post about Osama) has noticed that in these posts I'm not objective and unbiassed. That is true.

Defenders of Bush's crimes and blunders have plenty of outlets on FOX news and on talk-shows. What's needed is blunt statements about these crimes and blunders. I provide these. I have no idea how many people read my rants..I don't want to get the depressing news. But I need to express my astonished rage, for my own self-respect.

Most literate people throughout the world would recognize that I'm not overstating these accusations against the Bush-team. His fans show their stupidity by refusing to heed the opinions of the rest of the world--including the worldly-wise Vatican!

I will continue to snicker at Bush-team follies during the day--I weep for their victims at night.

 
AMERICANS WAKE UP, SORT OF... Most Americans now say the war in Iraq was not 'worth the costs'. Most Americans now disapprove of Bush's handling (and,of course, Rumsfeld's) of the war. 'W's general approval rating has sunk below 50%. Finally! and a little late--after the 51% of voting clowns restored those clowns to power for 4 more years.

However, most say we must 'stay in Iraq' until the country is stable..(that is, until Hell freezes over!) REUTERS

What counts is that 'W' doesn't back down! Why should he, when he's safe in power for 4 more years? Maybe if our GIs are still being killed in '08, GOP advisors may tell him THEN to bug out.
--------
Also, sadly, 53% of Americans still trust Bush on 'security'. FinTimes Will they ever learn?

 
CREATE JOBS? OR DESTROY THEM? (ltr to COLORADOAN)
The pep-up-piece on 20Dec (PARTNERSHIP RESOLVES TO LEAD WAY TO NEW JOBS) noted well the rather desperate need in our region for more jobs. But it was quite vague about exactlyhow this public/private partnership [‘Leadership 2010’]was going to ‘create’ 9000 new jobs. (After all, Bush's tax-cut for the wealthy was also supposed to generate jobs!)

Keep your eyes on the ball. Don’t ask how much new taxes will be generated, how many thousands of billions of dollars will be added..ask how the JOBS are going to be created—and how the partnership people will guarantee that the extra money will create those jobs.

Much investment goes to make firms more ‘productive’, to enable them to need fewer U.S. workers to generate a given amount of revenue for the firms. Also, firms can outsource an amazing number of jobs to India or China. Any job where the problem and the solution can be expressed in words or numbers—any job where a person can input his contribution from a computer—any such job can in theory be handled by someone overseas—working for incredibly low pay.

Often the outsourcing backfires in the long run, when the foreigner doesn’t really understand the problem posed here…but firms tend to think only in the short-term.

Our taxes should go to firms only in proportion as they hire Americans; if their manpower requirements drop, then they must refund the tax-money they accepted.

 
IRAQI BATTLE-HARDENED JIHAD VETERANS worry Saudi authorities.
They may number in the low hundreds--but rulers fear a repeat of the fiasco when the Soviets were thrown out of Afghanistan. People like Osama binLaden got combat experience and skills in Afghanistan, and then moved elsewhere.FinTimes

NEITHER the Russ in Chechnya NOR the U.S. in Iraq are making the world safer by their goofy campaigns.

 
CALLOUS RUMSFELD:
Bush just said that Rummy has a 'rough' exterior, but he has a big and caring heart. So.Austral.Advertiser

It turns out that Rummie's 'condolence' letters to families of dead GIs were signed by machine! GUARDIAN

Bush can't distinguish a heart from a spleen.

 
ATTACK US THROUGH OIL! Osama binLaden just advised world Muslims, intelligently. REUTERS

He was once a high-level Saudi businessman; he knows how a further cutback in oil supplies would disrupt First-World economies.

And the Iraq guerillas have shown how easy it is to disrupt the oil pipelines, etc. (In 24 hours on this weekend, FIVE attacks were made on Iraq pipelines, in the north AND IN THE SOUTH! At least once the people taking credit cited binLaden's 'fatwa'.) AgenceFrancePresse, cited in YAHOO NEWS

 
NEITHER THE MEDIUM NOR THE MESSAGE AT FAULT--IT'S THE AUDIENCE! (Ltr to DenverPost):
One D.Windes says it wasn’t the way the Democrat message was put; the message itself ‘no longer appeals to the majority’.Well, he’s right that it appealed only to 49% of the voters. What of the remaining 51%?

In the same paper it’s said that a huge majority of Bush-voters believed absurd claims that their own leaders had denied: that Saddam had significant WMD supplies; that clear evidence showed that Saddam was tied up with alQaeda (and that the 9/11 commission said so!) and so on.

No presentation of the facts, no sensible‘democratic message’ would affect these willfully ignorant people.

 
1 IN 3 IRAQIS FEAR TO VOTE: Candidates on TV allowed only their FEET to show!

Brit & U.S. leaders tell us that Fallujah was the main nest of guerillas. But in fact, 240 GIs have been killed in the capitol BAGHDAD! INDEPENDENT Pentagon is probably considering bombing Baghdad into rubble.

 
WIN SOME, LOSE SOME? While U.S. was pounding Fallujah into rubble (300,000 population), we lost control of MOSUL (1.2 million).Only 400 of our native militia there are now considered reliable.
------------------
Indeed, there's still trouble in Fallujah! U.S. never successfully surrounded the city, couldn't keep guerillas from leaving or entering. They still can't let back in those civilians living in tents outside the city. INDEPENDENT


U.S. general says the first part was easy, killing insurgents who wanted to die as martyrs. [Easy? Those martyrs took dozens of Marines with them!] Now, from tunnels all over the rubble of the city, smarter guerillas show up again in places we thought we'd cleared.

 
"LONG-RANGE N.KOREAN ROCKET may be tested soon, able to deliver nuke-warheads to parts of U.S.', say the Bushies, REUTERS to distract us from the miserable latest failure of their 'anti-missile missiles'.

North Korea is NOT going to launch a puny FIRST-strike at U.S. ! That would be suicide. That's not our hawks' worry; they worry that N.K. will improve their already-considerable SECOND-STRIKE capacity. Already, they could wipe out tens of thousands of GIs in So.KOrea & Guadacanal, to retaliate if we bombed them. (One can imagine their missile-bases buried under mountains, to survive our first-strike.)

But they may reasonably worry that the Bushies don't care that much for our GIs, to be deterred. So they may set up a second-strike capacity at Western U.S. cities. On the other hand, these are hives of 'blue' anti-Bush voters. He might not mind their being wiped out either!

 
BOMBS VS. SHIITES! Dozens of people were killed/wounded by one bomb in Holy City of Najaf, near the top shrine, and one in Karbabla, near a top shrine. ABC/NEWS

Whodunit? Most likely Sunni guerillas. They may have despaired of getting Shiites to join their jihad, so now they want to provoke Shiite retaliations, to get a good civil war going, to discourage Sunnis from voting in Jan.elections.

Up to now, Shiites have resisted such provocations. After all, they're going to come into power (under U.S. !) in January! We'll see if these outrages work to start a civil war.
-------------
Apparently six employees of electoral commission have been killed this week.
Guerillas SET UP A ROADBLOCK in Baghdad! FinTimes

They're sending signals that U.S. can't or won't protect even its own vital allies! The head of the Electoral Commission complained that his 6000 workers are NOT being protected! BostonGlobe

 
IRAQ HANDED OVER TO IRAN: Two years ago, intelligence agents would have said that the worst outcome imaginable for our invasion would be a new alliance between Iraq and Iran (our oldest enemy; the only country that dared to kidnap our embassy staff and hold them hostage for months! the country that coined the label for U.S.: the Great Satan.)
So says the pundit DAVID IGNATIUS (in WashPost, cited in DenverPost...no link possible.)

That fear may well be the reason Daddy Bush didn't attack Saddam in Baghdad--he didn't want to remove Iran's biggest foe. Unhappily, 'W' didn't inherit his daddy's brains.

Now that's exactly what our much-vaunted 'election' in January will accomplish. Whether some Sunnis vote or almost none do, the new Parliament will have to be dominated by Shiites, probably by those on Sistani's list. And the biggest Shiite party is one dominated by pro-Iranians. (Shiites constitute 60% of Iraq's population!)

The election will also confirm Sunni Arabs in their belief that, after ruling Iraq for centuries, they will now be powerless--they don't have much oil on their land. They'll be all the more determined to fight to the death.

Sunni leaders all over the Arab world are worried. The king of Jordan just warned of a 'Shiite Crescent' (Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon). This new alliance, I believe, would control more oil than does SaudiArabia. One Sunni leader in our puppet regime described Iran as "Iraq's greatest enemy SINCE BEFORE ISLAM !"

Hawks in Israel & U.S. want to bomb hell out of Iran. But Iranian mullah-rulers might WANT sinful Teheran destroyed ! They may prefer to rule over rubble (as the Taliban did--another foe of Iran's that we eliminated in an accomodating way.) After the bombing, hundreds of Iranian operatives now lying low in Iraq would join up with the Sunni guerillas to make our stay in Iraq 'a living hell', as one pundit put it.

Our only hope is from the stories that many Iranian mullahs have now been corrupted by power and oil-money; they wouldn't want to rule over rubble!
But once we bomb, they will join their more fanatic brethren in a real jihad vs. Israel/America.
-----------
After the invasion, it was said we needn't worry about suicide bombers (as in Palestine). "Nobody will die for Saddam!" However, over 200 suicide bombers have chosen death in Iraq. It turns out that hatred for America, plus fanatic Islam, seems to provide 'a limitless supply' (as one observer said) of suicide bombers.

Imagine the increase in suicide bombers in Iraq after we bomb Iran!

 
DON'T QUIT, RUMMIE! The right-wingers are now out to get 'arrogant' Rumsfeld.INDEPENDENT HIs smart-ass answer to the GI who asked about the lack of armor is one example.

No one knows which way the little dimwit in the Whitehouse will go. After all, he's approved of Rummie's policies all along.

Personally,I want Rummie to stay on: he's almost as offensive and ugly as his policies, and that's better than having a genial, good-looking, 'humble' man as head of the Pentagon, with the same bloodthirsty bungling going on. More people would be fooled.

 
CHINA GROWLS: at Taiwan, with a new law coming up aiming to punish Taiwanese leaders who advocate secession. FinTimes

The pro-independence group in Taiwan might once have counted on U.S. to protect them from China. But now, China owns nearly one million millions of dollars of our bonds. They could sink us (and the rest of the first-world economies) just by not buying any more--or even worse, by dumping a lot of bonds. (They'd lose money, of course, because the value of their remaining bonds would plummet; but the first big holder of our bonds who dumps will lose less than nations slower to dump them.)

Taiwan had better face its future as part of 'one China' !

 
SO THEY FINALLY PASSED AN INTELLIGENCE-REFORM BiIl!
Of course, this is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

We have basic problems with our un-Intelligence system. First, we have NO cadre of young elite Americans, knowledgeable about alien cultures and languages, and willing to work for the government as spies. (One brilliant young linguist-anthropologist says he would not dream of working for the Bush team!)

--That's the next problem: the Bush-team won't (probably can't) accept honest advice from intelligence experts--even if we had such experts--warning them off their various goofy war-schemes. The new head of CIA has informed his people that they are NOT to criticize Bush's mad schemes.(Bush just gave the Medal of Freedom to G.Tenet, the toady who let Bush tell him what the intelligence should say!)

Bush's team is a myopic giant lunging around self-confidently in the fog.

One doesn't know how many catastrophes they'll have to undergo before they realize they should pull back from meddling with other nations, for the next few years--and devote Pentagon billions and our attention to countering the urgent threats of terrorist attacks on our own oh-so-vulnerable Homeland.

Our enemies will rejoice at hearing rumors that the Rummie-dummies in the Pentagon are jockeying for even more power over 'intelligence' in our newly 'reformed' system!

 
WOE TO YOU RICH ! said Jesus. A friend just sent me an election-analysis that showed that the most loyal Bush-supporters are married people with children, owning their own homes in a (prosperous) suburb.

No surprise there! Comfort has made these people into moral perverts, who didn't hesitate to vote for that war-criminal.

Temporary comfort has also made them lose ordinary prudence, voting for pols who care only for multi-millionaires, not for puny suburbanites. Wait until they have spent their house-equity and get foreclosed; wait till their jobs are outsourced; wait till their children can't afford college; wait till their own SocialSecurity benefits and Medicare benefits have been decimated. They won't need to wait for an angry God to punish them in the next life.