Dan Lyons

DEPLETED URANIUM NAMED AS MAIN CAUSE OF 'GULF SYNDROME':11 in every 600 U.S. Gulf Veterans (of GulfWar I) are already dead, 15 years later.One in two is on permanent medical disability.That is, 56% of Gulf vets are dead or disabled...rate from previous wars was 5% or 10%.Bushies knew this and hid it. INFOCLEARINGHOUSE
(Original source here was letter to Preventive Psych.Newsletter(?) by the head of Vets for Constitutional Law.(?)
The main scientist cited for this data is one "Laureen Moret". Her 'vita' can be read at MORET

It's amusing that Americans are so admiring of professional Pentagon killers, believing fondly that while they don't care about the lives of foreigners, they MUST SURELY care intensely about the lives of our own people--especially our own troops!

Needless to say, the Pentagon went right on using tons of the DU stuff in the present war, exposing Iraqis and GIs.
(The main advantage of DU casings on shells is supposed to be that it penetrates armor. But in this war we didn't face any armor, any tanks.! Pentagon used this awful stuff just because they had it--just as they used extra-harmful version of cluster bombs.)
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ODD! A couple of dozen small media sources mention this connection--but on GOOGLE.COM & NEWS.GOOGLE.COM I could find no mainline sources that mention it. They don't deny the connection; they just don't mention it. They don't even tell how many vets of GulfWar I so far are dead or disabled!

Well, CNN just said that 209,000 Gulf vets had applied for disabled benefits, and that 161,000 are actually getting disability payments (That's more than 1 in 6.)

But that CNN story was in connection with ANOTHER THEORY: that the syndrome is from Saddam's stockpiles of various gases, which U.S. shells & bombs released on our troops. (Some vets are suing various corporations for providing Saddam with chemicals to make these gases.)

One way to decide between these 2 theories is to see what bad effects DU had in Kosovo war, where there were no gas stock-piles. A WorldHealthOrg. study in '01 said there was no proof of medical harm from DU in Kosovo--but they called for more INDEPENDENT investigations, i.e., studies NOT FUNDED BY THE MILITARY.
WHO

Sooner or later this story must be dealt with in mainstream papers.

IRAQI-GI INJURIES DIFFER FROM PREVIOUS WARS: Far more amputations and brain injuries.
Two reasons:
a) swift, clever medicine saves more lives than before. But is that always good? Wouldn't some maimed, blinded GIs be better off dead?

b) The main problem was under-armed Humvees, vulnerable to roadside bombs. The Kevlar vests protected the torso, but not legs, arms, head (face, eyes, brain).

While the yahoos are telling us to 'support the troops', the Pentagon didn't give a damn. One father of a GI said, "Bush cares for the troops the way Tyson cares for chickens!"
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And of course there's a lot of shell-shock (now called 'post-traumatic-stress-disorder') in GIs who served when any civilian might be murderous, when they saw atrocities BY GIS--OR REMEMBER THEIR OWN ATROCITIES!
USATODAY

TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-FIVE IRAQIS, mostly potential recruits for our native militia, were put out of commission today; (125 killed, 148 wounded) by one suicide bomber, south of Baghdad.

1 GI killed and other Iraqi-casualties elsewhere.
REUTERS

Guerillas seem to know always when our militia (or recruits) are crowded up..that's when to strike. You'd think our forces would be smart enough not to allow such crowding!

This slaughter occurred in a mainly-Shiite city, and the Sunni Islamist Zarquawi took 'credit' for it. So far, Sistani has been able to prevent an open civil war by forbidding Shiites to strike back at Sunnis in general.

But even if this amazing restraint continues, the elected Shiites, presumably, won't be eager to provide the necessarily generous GUARANTEES for (not-represented) Sunnis in the new constitution that would lure Sunni leaders to turn in the guerillas.

So Zarquawi may be able to sabotage any 'ALL-IRAQ' regime that might result for the recent 'election'.

'FEDERAL TECH SPENDING' means Pentagon spending. USATODAY(28Feb) has this incredible story ascribing huge increase in fed-tech spending to 'military, and security'. Then the first paragraph says 'military and homeland security projects are taking much of the money'. Then later "56% of that money, or 36 billion is earmarked for the military and Department of Homeland Security."

However, when you look at the actual tables, you see that 'the military' (the Pentagon) gets $30 billion, while Homeland Security gets only $6 billion, just a little more than the negligible dept of Health and Human Services.

This is like a 'horse/rabbit stew', made with one horse and one rabbit.

At least the 'spin' writers had the sense to try to conceal the disparity between pumped-up Pentagon money and the skimpy amount spent to defend our Homeland against terrorists.(Pentagon bombs, missiles, and marines are pretty useless to counter individual terrorists!)

The table gave it all away: and the headline even here said "Military,security get tech dollars."

All this illustrates the strange fact that the Bushies don't seem to care much about Homeland Security--and the stranger fact that so many Americans trust them on the issue of 'security'!

BUSHIES LET PAKIS SPREAD NUKE-KNOWLEDGE: Long after our 'intelligence' svcs knew that Pakistan's Khan was running a nuke-info black-market, (providing info to Iran, No.Korea, and Libya),
Bushies did nothing to stop it. LATIMES, cited by TRUTHOUT.

That shows the cynicism in their pretence that they attacked Iraq to prevent Saddam from passing on nuke technique to terrorists!

SHAME BACK IN FASHION? Dr.Joyce Brothers, in PARADE 27fEB, asks whether Shame might be sometimes beneficial.This is an occasion to remind everyone of the ONLY book to my knowledge that respects humiliation as sometimes warranted.

This is STRUTTING AND FRETTING: STANDARDS FOR SELF-ESTEEM, by JannBenson & DanLyons

When you type "strutting and fretting: standards" into GOOGLE.COM, you get 120 references (to second-hand bookstores); when you type that into ASK JEEVES, you get 148 references.

On first publication, the book simply died.We told ourselves this was partly because we noted that every society does have standards under which humiliation (as well as pride) are sometimes warranted.(e.g.,pride at clever cheating is warranted by given aesthetic standards in U.S. society, but perhapsit should be shaming, on philosophical reflection.)

In 1990, the only references to 'Self-esteem' were self-help books on how to RAISE your self-esteem, NOT a book on how to judge when self-esteem is WARRANTED!

Most English-writing philosophers since Kant are obsessed with guilt/innocence.Just as a philosophical critique of guilt-standards is called ETHICS, so the (much-neglected) critique of given standards for judging conduct as splendid or pathetic could be called the AESTHETICS OF CONDUCT.

People should care most about guilt--but in fact, practically everyone cares more about pride or humiliation. People kill themselves or others when afflicted too severely by humiliation.

One of Plato's main projects was his attempt to harness powerful feelings of pride/humiliation to socially useful guilt/innocence standards.

Our book, said a noted economist, was the best philosophy book he'd ever read.One nurse said it was the ONLY philosophy book she could understand.

We wrote it for typical undergrads,on a low reading-comprehension level--we even tell the reader how HAMLET comes out! This offended more literate readers; but the book actually contains original ideas on this neglected subject.

"Pride is the mother of achievement, and the sense of Honor--but also of crime and folly.We had better study Pride!"

Comments on this book or this topic are welcome here.

‘A.I.JOE’ IN FOR GI JOE: Robots guided by artificial intelligence will be the new infantrymen and pilots. What are the implications?

--I’ve mentioned below that U.S.robots won’t mind at all firing on Americans. So a few generals can take over the U.S. easily and turn our Congress and WhiteHouse into pawns of the Pentagon, like the Roman Senate under the Emperors.

--A NYTIMES columnist raises another issue: should we really trust computers with our national survival? (Colorado has learned a lesson when GovernorOwens’ new computer system totally bolloxed up our welfare system..but who cares? it was only the contemptible poor who suffered. Our glamorous Colorado space-company Lockheed screwed up several big Space assignments because of marked staff incompetence in programming. But their funding did not suffer, and eventually they hit Mars--for what that's worth.)

--‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’. Fewer and fewer college-age Americans are qualified—or motivated--for technical studies. At CSU (a top technical school in Colorado) I overheard two students saying that in their computer class, 80% of the students dropped out before the midterm exam! Whether or not the situation is that extreme, the number of technical grads has dropped steadily over the years.
(Now that cars involve computers, we face a shortage of qualified car-mechanics!)

U.S. high-school students placed twenty-fourth out of 29 countries in applied math.[USATODAY24FEB05]
Only 28 in 100 U.S. h.s.freshmen make it to be college sophomores.Chr.Sci.Monitor
We're 16th among 20 industrial countries for youths who finish 12th grade in time. Bill Gates says, "When I visit other countries, I'm terrified for our workforce in the future!" USATODAY28FEB
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The universities have pressured the feds to stop harrassing foreign grad applicants, because the applications from overseas have dropped radically. If we didn’t have foreign grad students, most of our grad programs in technology would have to close for lack of qualified U.S. students.

No, that won’t happen..in the time-honored U.S. reaction, the technical departments, you can bet, are simply lowering their standards to keep the classrooms full (and the lab assistants coming). But that might mean that half-qualified youths will be programming—and especially, will be operating—these battlefield robots. (One hears that already, in the present Iraq war, U.S.deaths and injuries from ‘friendly fire’ are scandalously frequent. )

For war, we don’t dare ‘outsource’ the technical work to foreigners, who might very well be secretly hostile to America! On the other hand, by outsourcing most of the non-military techie work, we can perhaps create a surplus of supposedly-qualified U.S. techies, and siphon off the elite techies to program and operate our military robots.
(Already, the military techies are gettting far more pay.)

Of course, secretly-hostile foreign techies in not-obviously-military work can sabotage our economy and society quite effectively.
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CHANGES IN ADMIRATION OVER ‘MANLINESS’: Hyper-macho warriors will no longer warrant much admiration. Already, glamorous fighter pilots--worshipped in my youth--are as obsolete as cavalry knights. (Before each war—even as long ago as Korea!—U.S. bombs hell out of all enemy airfields, so there aren’t any enemy planes to ‘scramble’ against.)

Decades ago, TomWolfe’s great masterpiece THE RIGHT STUFF told the story of glamorous hyper-male test-pilots like ChuckYeager being replaced by rather pedestrian astronauts, ‘spam-in-a-can’, who just sit there while the robots run the mission. Indeed, women can be perfectly adequate astronauts.

In our Afghan war, the most visible role of airpower was this: airmen breakfasted in Kansas, then hopped into their B-52s, dropped 500-lb bombs on Afghanistan, then home again for supper and playing with their kids. Perhaps necessary, but not hyper-manly!
And Pentagon spokesmen bragged of a coming intercontinental bomber that could be completely robotized--so 'we could fight wars without ever leaving the U.S.!'

(By the way, binLaden became even more supernaturally famous among Muslims because he survived that awful bombing by simply lying in a ditch! He's so twentieth-century!)

(Helicopter crews in Iraq do display courage, facing shoulder-fired missiles. Likewise transport pilots flying in and out of Baghdad airport. But these manly men can be replaced in future wars by robots.)

Now even sweaty heroes like Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis will be obsolete models; anything they can do, a disposable infantry robot can do better. They'll be as redundant as were the women with delicate fingers in the textile industries.

Already, mean old Irish women could staff a nuclear submarine able to wipe out many cities in a day. Now women who are nasty enough --or 'WoodyAllen' nerds--could be guiding the infantry robots (from a safe distance) in their murderous and ‘death-defying’ exploits.
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One plus: After the Pentagon takes over here openly, ‘heroes’ like KarlRove, expert in manipulating the herd of U.S. yahoos to vote for Bushies…these experts will also be obsolete. People who can manipulate computers/robots will be the heroes, NOT people who can manipulate yahoo voters.

The military techies must be cossetted; the yahoos can be controlled by robots. (And they can be culled out; we don't need anywhere near that many yahoos--not even for cannon-fodder! Who will care then what the crazy church-goers think? In fact, most of them will be among the 'cullables'.)
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U.S. will NOT be the unmatchable DarthVader Empire.
Of course Japan is far ahead already in designing & producing robots. And China & India will have far more youths competent to program and operate military robots. (backed up by their deterring nukes).

LAWMAKERS WANT BIGGER ARMY: They can't figure why Rummy is so reluctant to budget now for more troops (when troop shortage is making us rely on NatlGuard & ArmyReserve so heavily that those forces are near breaking-point (not enough enlistments!) FinTimes

Maybe they don't realize that Rummy is counting on replacing a large proportion of troops with INFANTRY ROBOTS, perhaps sooner than the ten years talked about.

Once Congress authorizes the production of all these robots, the Pentagon can take over America openly any time it chooses (rendering Congress as powerless as was the Roman Senate under the emperors!) Once again, U.S. soldiers would never fire on Americans; U.S. robots won't hesitate.

FALSE DICHOTOMY (a logical fallacy featuring 'either-or' statements which ignores possiblity of 'both'.)

U.S. spokesmen say that as we get better at protecting GIs, insurgents go more and more for killing Iraqi civilians.But then we read that this week, they killed six GIs in 48 hours. (How many wounded?)NYTIMES, cited by CapeCodTimes

And a lot of the 'civilians' killed turn out to be the feckless members of our native militia. Also, 'killing civilians' sounds random & crazy. But these civilians are often collaborators with 'infidel invader'.
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An oil pipeline exploded near Kirkuk earlier was still burning fiercely on Saturday. ABC

DANGER FROM RUSSIA? Missiles to Syria, nuke-fuel to Iran, no real pressure on naughty North Korea..and more and more centralization of domestic power (including the oil industry and the media) in the Kremlin.

(Of course Putin could point out that the right-wing Bushies pretty well control the mass media in America, that our elections are a farce.)

But that's not the main point, which is, what can Bush do about all this?

The only 2 pressure points Bush could use are that Putin wants entry into the WorldTradeOrganization, and he wants to host a meeting of the Group of 8. (Some talk of expelling Russ from 'Group of 8', but when he controls the second largest oil production in the world...c'mon!

And perhaps Putin, like Bush, finally wants to control further nuke-proliferation (but perhaps not in Iran or North Korea!)
BostonGlobe
How important are these concerns to Putin? He can now finance handsomely his government AND HIS MILITARY with $50-a-barrel oil.We can't bomb Russia; they could destroy America in 2d-strike retaliation.They're trying to line up an alliance with China--another country with 2d-strike nukes.

Bush is finding out that our alleged 'unique super-power' status [i.e., our bombing capacity] doesn't involve all that much actual power to control world affairs!

THE PENTAGON DEFICITS: J.A. Farrell (DenverPost) warns us aptly about our gigantic federal deficit: adding up over the years, to a Debt equivalent to $350,000 for each U.S. worker. But he doesn't mention the big reason for this deficit: the preposterous $1200 millions we shovel EACH DAY to the Pentagon.

That Pentagon budget (over $400 billion a year) is roughly equivalent to our federal deficit. In other words, our government is living pretty well within its means, except for the profligate Pentagon.

People might think that such offerings to our military gods are necessary, because of the terrorism problem. But the Pentagon bombs, missiles,and marines are pretty useless for protecting our Homeland from individual terrorists. In fact, our new CIA head admits that the Iraq War (a Pentagon extravaganza costing almost $300,000 millions so far) has actually served to recruit and train MORE terrorists worldwide.

Besides being the main factor in our federal deficit, the Pentagon is a main culprit in our Trade Deficit. They insist on maintaining huge bases overseas; that means they must pay other countries for base expenses. And of course the Pentagon uses an astronomic amount of oil each year, which must be imported.(The cheapened dollar means that this imported oil costs us ever more: more than $50 a barrel now.)

So the Pentagon is a main culprit in generating our huge imports, which our puny exports can't match.

In fact, we should refer not to our federal or trade deficits, but to our Pentagon deficits.
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About the danger from our deficits: the Korean Bank reassured everyone that it is not soon going to be selling our bonds; but it has already begun buying fewer U.S. bonds.

Now, we must go on selling the bonds, at whatever low price they will bring. We must go on borrowing money, because the Pentagon is spending far more than we can earn. (And tax-raises are taboo.) So the bubble is ready to burst; U.S.interest rates will skyrocket.

FinTimes columnist notes a big change in the financial 'balance of power'--just a hint of disenchantment from an Asian bank strikes a blow at our stock market now, more striking than the effect of any gnomic utterance by Alan Greenspan!
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When it comes to our financial problems, the Pentagon is the elephant in the living-room that everyone tries earnestly to ignore.

HOW MANY ARE LEFT?
Iraqis (on our side) claim they've caught a 'top aide' to evil Zarquawi. INDEPENDENT

We learned in Vietnam NOT to take 'body-count' of fallen enemies as any index of our success.

In a guerilla war like this (especially where guerillas are smartly decentralized) what counts is how many guerillas are LEFT to attack us. And that will be shown when our GI casualties and those of our native militia start to lessen.

So far, no indication of this!

OIL PRICES: too high? Saudis used to say that $40 a barrel was 'too high' (and they could goose up production all by themselves to bring the prices down.)Now they've announced that $40 to $50 is NOT too high!

Representatives of the oil-consuming countries say it IS high enough to threaten world growth.(If people must pay so much for e.g., gasoline, and for products whose production needs oil, then we'll have 'stagflation' (high prices along with high unemployment!)

Consumers have less money to pay for other consumables--so less of such consumables will be produced, meaning fewer jobs,etc.FinTimes

Perhaps Saudis just don't care, so long as they get their windfall profits now.
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One thing is sure--the prospect of such high oil prices IN ANY CASE makes it all the dumber for Bushies to bomb IRAN (as they're said to be ready to do in June).
Iran can, in retaliation, further disrupt world oil supplies!
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REJOICE! There's reason to think Bushies have given up hope of threatening Iraq out of its nuke plans, or of simply bombing the hell out of them. They're now willing to REWARD Iran for complying. INDEPENDENT

However, Iranian authorities have said they won't let threats OR REWARDS swerve them from their nuke plans. And why would they? (a) they're now oil-rich beyond their dreams of avarice--what rewards would impress them?, and (b) they'd be fools to pass up this chance to develop a second-strike deterrent vs. future Bushie threats.

(Bushies may be pretending to be reasonable now, figuring plausibly that promised rewards won't change Iran policy, and 'thinking' that then their bombing plans will seem more palatable as LAST RESORT. But such plans are just as dumb as last resort..Iran getting a few a-bombs is far less evil than what Iran can do to U.S. & the world (even WITHOUT NUKES!) in retaliation.)

WEAK DOLLAR, at first sight, doesn't hurt average American who does not plan to travel overseas anyway. And if it makes things we import more expensive, we can just start 'buying American'! right?

But the dollar might REALLY plunge and along with it the price of U.S. bonds! If the bonds plunge, then Asian banks will lose a lot as the trillions of dollars worth of bonds they hold are worth less.

But for EACH nation: the first ones to start selling will lose the Least! (Korean Bank denied it was selling U.S. bonds--it's just buying fewer! FinTimes That's the beginning of the bust of the bubble.

Bonds sinking in value means they're paying higher interest. U.S. must go on selling bonds AT ANY PRICE, since we can't fund our huge deficits in any other way.

U.S. must import huge amounts of oil (the Pentagon alone uses fantastic amounts of oil!) The Pentagon spends trillions overseas (to pay for its bases overseas,etc.)'

'Cheaper dollar' means that Pentagon budgets will have to rise above their present Himalayan heights, and so our deficits will sink to unheard of depths. Because of course TAXES MUST NOT RISE!

SCIENTISTS HINT LIFE ON MARS: [Colum.Tribune]
Remember, though, there are billions of dollars at stake for 'space scientists' if they can persuade us that Mars is more interesting than it is.

Remember when they announced that we were in imminent danger of being hit by an asteroid (so we should immediately invest in H-bomb-rockets to blow the thing off-course and away from us)? Then, on closer inspection, there was no real danger.
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Now that Big Money has corrupted Science so thoroughly, one must hesitate to believe experts until ALL the experts have weighed in. Of the 'experts' who testified that the 3 pain-killers should still be allowed, TEN of them had financial ties with the Pharm. companies that made the drugs. SeattleTimes

Not only can some experts be bought; many can be rented! -------
A smooth columnist in FinTimes admits there are urgent needs on earth that can't be financed, when we spend all those billions on space travel.

But he intimates that those earthly needs pale in importance with our specially human need for KNOWLEGE (which need is ministered to by space travel).

This is an oft-made point; but it assumes that the only important knowledge is knowledge of the moon and Mars.

We urgently need more knowledge of our own oceans, of viruses, etc.

There's a legend that someone reproached Socrates for not wanting to travel. "Wouldn't you like to see all the monsters you hear about in various other places?"

Socrates replied, "I am fascinated by the monsters I can study right here in Athens!"

WHY NOT HERE? The smooth right-wing columnist, David Brooks (NYTIMES) intimates that Bush's maneuvering Iraq into having an ELECTION is a great
democratic inspiration to other countries.

It is clear that VOTING is now a ceremony that most peoples, all over the world, want to join in.And KarlRove's gang has showed the rich and powerful that this ceremony doesn't threaten at all their dominance.

Ordinary people can usually be manipulated easily by mass media, to think of DANGERS, and THREATS to their WAY OF LIFE, so they vote for pols who look out for the interests of the rich and powerful, NOT the interests of that sappy majority voting.

So Why not Everywhere? This voting ceremony, like RiverBaptism, harms nobody and makes people feel good--for a while.

WORLD VIRUS DANGER FROM 'MIRACLE OF TRANSPORT':New viruses, like AIDS, come from Africans who eat monkeys.That would be their problem, as Avian Flu would be Asia's problem--IF it weren't for modern megatech's advances in transportation.

AIDS spreads across Africa along the new highways, (spread by promiscuous truck-drivers).Avian flu will spread with lightning-speed around the world, by airline-passengers.

Perhaps all that will work is 'negative quarantines': regions forbidding any outsider to enter--or demanding temporary quarantines of any outsiders--as England demanded quarantines for entering dogs, to keep out rabies.

However, considering that TOURISM is the top world industry, such quarantines would be vigorously opposed.

PUTIN/BUSH TENSE: The Summit civility was on the surface. The question is what pressure can each put on the other? Bush needs Putin's help in keeping nuclear material away from terrorists;Putin needs Bush's OK to get into the WorldTradeOrganization.

On Iran, Putin is just defying Bush; he'll go ahead on providing nuke-fuel for Iran's allegedly peaceful nuke program.

On 'democracy within Russia',Putin also ignores Bush's wishes. The main problem for Bushies (disguised by chatter about 'democracy') is Putin's clawback of the Russ oil-industry, away from private investors, for the State. DenverPost

FOURTEEN GI CASUALTIES IN 24 HOURS (with one more killing announced on Saturday)--just as U.S. generals were telling the press that we've 'turned the corner' in the fight against insurgents:partly, they say, by our increased experience in countering them, and partly by the 50,000 in our native militia.NYTIMES

Others have claimed that only 3000 of our militia are reliable--vs. 40,000 active guerillas, and 140,000 supporters.
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IRAQ 'SPECIAL FORCES' NOT ALL THAT SPECIAL:
U.S. brags about our native militia, which is supposed to take over the anti-guerilla fight. Several problems:
--many soldiers volunteer only from economic desperation.

--U.S. doesn't trust them with effective weapons (partly because of the large desertion rate).

--They can't even protect themselves, let alone the people.
They are seen by many Iraqis (especially in Sunni areas) as traitors, collaborating with enemy invaders. Their families are threatened. The troops are largely Shiite or Kurds; this raises tensions between the ethnic groups.

--The guerillas have superb intelligence about their every move (e.g., when a crowd will be gathered, vulnerable to a bombing). This is probably because many guerillas have infiltrated their ranks. REUTERS

--Uniforms of our militia are available everywhere. So a suicide bomber finds it easy to walk into a militia station and blow everyone up.
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STALEMATE IN FORMING NEW GOVT. Kurds are still demanding oil-soaked Kirkuk--else their 75 votes won't support a candidate.Both the Shiite Alliance and Allawi's slate are refusing that demand.This means that no combination seen today can control the votes needed to install new regime.

CHALABI'S 'secular'backers (inside the 'Sistani' slate)--probably U.S.puppets whose main desire is to be installed in plush (though useless) government positions in the'GreenZone'--these people are 'demanding' that Chalabi abandon that alliance and set up a separate block (30 votes).That would make a winning coalition even more unlikely.

People have not noticed that sensible Shiites could forget dreams of ruling all Iraq: they can't control Sunni/Arab region, and Kurds will secede one way or another.

So the 'Sistani/alJa'afri' camp could just let the voting negotiations--and the chance of a new govt. of 'allIraq'--collapse; they could set up an independent Shiite regime analagous to the independent Kurd regime;(its capital would likely NOT be in Baghdad!)

Iraq would be split into '3 nations', with guerilla chiefs allowed to take control in Sunni/Arab region, with U.S. troops pulling back into Kurdistan, with Shiite region--lots of oil--allied with Iran.

IRAN & NUKE KNOW-HOW: Pakistan was distributing nuclear Know-how (e.g. to Iran) way back in the '80s. ABC/NEWS

Later, of course, the Bushies terrified U.S. yahoos by fears that N.Korea and IRAQ might sell their nuke techniques to terrorists & to other nations. (N.Korea GOT its know-how from Pakistan!)

Today, Pakistan is still called one of our top allies--even though they haven't nabbed binLaden, even with a $25 million reward!(Truth is, U.S. distrusts Musharraf; but if he should disappear, then full anti-U.S. Islamists would take over, and they'd have complete nukes!)

U.S. & Israel are slobbering with eagerness to bomb Iran's nuke-development plants--even though such a strike would provoke Iran to disrupt the world's oil supply!)

Wealthy Iran should just buy a few completed nukes (from Russia, China, N.Korea, or Pakistan).Then they'd have the second-strike capacity they want, telling U.S.: "You can destroy our cities in a day--but, with your oh-so-vulnerable cities,we can make you regret it..."

(Iran has missiles that can reach Israel or U.S. bases in MiddleEast --they don't really need nukes to do a lot of harm.)

ANOTHER PIPELINE EXPLOSION near Kirkuk:
[ ABC ] Even though Sunni/Arab region has little oil, their saboteurs' ability gives them a bargaining card--unless the Kurds & Shiites GUARANTEE them a 'fair' share of Iraq oil-money, the Ks & SHs won't be able to export much oil.

DEATH FROM HIGHWAY CULTURE:
Just DIESEL fumes, just in COOK COUNTY,Ill alone, cause 540 premature deaths every year, plus 707 non-lethal heart-attacks, plus11,540 extra athsma attacks. SunTimes
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Britons lose 6 months off their lives, ON AVERAGE, from air-pollution (mainly from cars). That’s nine times as many as are killed in car-accidents. And Britain has a great train system,cutting down the need to drive. Average Belgians lose over a year of their lives—some less, some FAR MORE.
INDEPENDENT

A similar study in U.S. would likely be a horrible revelation. We have NO real intercity public transit system. We have a much larger percentage of huge trucks/SUVs (polluting extra) than any other country.
We collectively drive unbelievable trillions of miles every years.

One study showed that people who sit in heavy traffic (even riding in buses) are much more likely to have a heart-attack right afterwards. TRAFFIC

It’s black humor that ‘respect life’ license-plates are found on big SUVs! Churchgoing Christians are eager to forbid women to flush out fertilized eggs, but don't display much concern about millions of full human beings being killed (or even worse, suffering for years from emphysema) from vehicles.

—These 'Culture of Life' churchgoers don't care much even about AMERICANS, (let alone Iraqi infants). They don't even seem to mind that SACRED U.S. FOETUSES show GENETIC damage from surrounding pollution!
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While death-rate from practically every other disease form is dropping, death-rate from lung diseases keeps rising!
AmerLungAssn
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GLOBAL WARMING WILL WORSEN POLLUTION:
Today pollution hangs over our big cities in Northern U.S. UNTIL a cold front from Canada comes down, and winds cleanse the air over the cities.

But global warming is predicted to lower those cleansing cold fronts by 20%. ABC

So auto-accidents will kill thousands of us each year (more importantly, maim or wound several MILLION each year). Then the CO2 from the auto and electric plants (aggravating global warming) will increase air-pollution above our cities, killing more of us, giving athsma to our children and emphysema to our elders.

(I had awful athsma as a child; my father suffered for years from emphysema; my sister was run over by a car..This is why I'm so enraged at the highway culture.)
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AIR POLLUTION & ALTITUDE: People are rushing to Colorado because of its 'wonderful' climate. But its climate is very much like that of MexicoCity. This point about M.C. should be heeded: its two worst air problems are from ozone and from small particles--both increase from heavy highway travel. M.C's ALTITUDE and ABUNDANT sunshine make these problems worse. PulseOfThePlanet

It stands to reason (abstractly) that when one is a mile high, as in Colorado, there is less oxygen per cubic meter of 'air', so a given amount of pollutants in that cubic meter should be more dangerous than at sea-level--breathing in the necessary amount of oxygen, presumably, would mean, in thin air, breathing in more pollutants.
One study showed no bad health effects from particles at high altitude, except in men over 80.HealthEffectsInstitute
I want to check on this.
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We wonder at primitive people sacrificing their children to the god Baal, to help the crops. But we're just as goofy.

MORE INVESTMENT MEANS MORE JOBS? JamesGalbraith is a very respected economist. His main complaint about the Iraq war, as economist, is the UNCERTAINTY it introduced, which discouraged investors from investing. Instead, they consumed like mad. He says(as though this is self-evident) that
more investment is what 'makes jobs'.[Econ.AlliedForArmsReduction]

But is this true? Are we really short of investment money?
If there were investment OPPORTUNITIES here, you'd think money would FLOOD in from overseas. But even now our factory-utilization rate is about 78%; we can sell less than 80% of what we could produce, already, without more investment. Perhaps there are no great investment opportunities here; more devotion to investing wouldn't help.

[In fact, U.S. corporations are 'awash in cash'! They just don't see enough investment OPPORTUNITIES! ]
REUTERS

Also: business investment often means investing in computers, robots, and software--to REPLACE U.S. workers.After all, much-revered PRODUCTIVITY INCREASES mean more value produced for each hour of human input;that is, less worker input needed for each unit of value produced!

Decent people who care about the average American should forget all indexes of economic 'progress'--except the median income and the number of long-term jobless U.S. workers who have used up their unemployment pay and now have no safety net! (FinTimes says that U.S. personal income has recently DROPPED!)

CHAVEZ: A NEW CASTRO?--BUT WITH OIL !Venezuela produces lots of oil, most sold to U.S. But a coup against leftist Pres.Chavez was tried a couple of years ago--Chavez says with U.S. backing. The coup failed, and Chavez now has solid popular backing.

He says he's a 'Fidelista', a disciple of Castro! He says Bush will be trying to assassinate him.He's using his oil wealth to buy lots of weapons, to defend himself.

When Bushies tried to isolate him,he got backing from Brazil, Chile, & Peru--and even a friendlyexchange with leader of our top ally there, Colombia. It was Bushies who ended up isolated.TheEconomist
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Chavez just announced that his regime would be 'socialist', since capitalism is harmful. But it would be a new, '21st-century' kind of socialism. CNN

But the very word will inflame the Bushies and their supporters. What they can do about it is another matter.
They haven't been able to eliminate Castro (he's survived 7 U.S. Presidents), and Castro had no such economic weapons as Chavez does. Also, Brazil & other big Latin nations have been alienated by the Bushies, so they're not going to help rein him in.

As long as he keeps supplying us with oil...but he's also investigating China as a customer....

SHOCKED BUT NOT SURPRISED! 'W's uncle 'Bucky' (brother to Daddy Bush) just cleared a half-million bucks from his connection with a company that has been awarded lush no-bid contracts in Iraq. INDEPENDENT

J'AFARI SAYS SISTANI ENDORSED HIM ! GUARDIAN
Allawites had been hoping to lure some of the Shiite coalition away from backing J. for the PrimeMinister post, to go instead for some U.S. puppet (they say 'secularist') like Allawi instead.

This project has no hope otherwise. Even if the Allawites got every single Kurdish vote, they'd be far short of the 2 in every 3 votes they need.

Till now, Sistani has been silent about WHO should rule, just endorsing the slate of candidates called the 'Shiite coalition' (but containing some non-Shiites).

Now, after S's specific endorsement, it looks very doubtful that some of this coalition would double-cross Ja'afari. After all, there's another election coming in a few months. Traitors to the coalition leaders (who unanimously endorsed J.) could be isolated and defeated in the next election.
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Kurds insist: they demand a) Kirkuk (b) autonomy equal to secession (c) no Islamic law in their region--else they won't add their 75 votes to the ShiiteCoalition's 142 votes (to elect J'afari as PM). INDEPENDENT

Kurds may be overestimating their bargaining power.
Shiites could secede instead--by letting the PM election go into stalemate and then setting up their own ministate.
They really have nothing to gain by pretending to rule 'All-Iraq'!

BLAIRITES PLAY THE TERROR CARD: MPs are objecting to draconian laws depriving terrorist suspects of civil rights.So The Blairites are talking about possible terrorist attacks during the big Brit election later this year. FinTimes]

They may have read the psych.research saying that people move to the right politically, if they have heard about frightening possibilities beforehand.(Cheney used this trick effectively before our election.)

We'll see if the Brit voters are the patsies that U.S.voters turned out to be, trusting Bushies for our 'security'--when they have shamelessly underfunded Homeland Defense!(about 2 days of Pentagon money for each year of H.D.!)

NEGOTIATIONS over new 'all-Iraq' govt.posts are still going on. Kurds are still saying that they will vote with whichever slate gives them what they want--e.g., control of Kirkuk area (which sits on ONE-SIXTH of world oil reserves!) REUTERS

Shiites should face the fact that any 'all-Iraq' govt. will be a farce.

I believe there still exists a fictitious entity called "Yugoslavia" (Serbia, Kosovo & Montenegro).
The 'all-Iraq' regime will be equally fictitious. Guerillas will continue to make the Sunni region ungovernable (indeed U.S. may soon tacitly consent to Saddamite guerilla leaders controlling Sunni region!) And the Kurds will secede, officially or covertly.

Shiites have reason to form an 'autonomous' enclave like that of the Kurds--i.e., to secede from any 'all-Iraq' scheme. Then they can ignore Kurd election-demands, letting the (now-worthless) 'prime minister election' go into stalemate.
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Who would still support 'all-Iraq' fiction? U.S. puppets like Allawi & Chalabi, and other pols who want to live in luxury, financed by U.S.

Of course, U.S. can't protect the officials of the new all-Iraq regime. So they'll have to huddle in their mansions in the Green Zone (just like the officials of Allawi's present regime).

Then they must worry about their cousins being assassinated. Is the luxury worth it?

U.S. GIVES EUROPE 'TILL JUNE' to get Iranian compliance on destroying its nuke-power capacity.
REUTERS

Bloody likely, when Russia is sending hundreds of engineers to Iran to finish the plant!

After June, U.S. will go to UN to demand sanctions.
This is uncomfortable coincidence; Scott Ritter claims that Bush has signed plans to BOMB Iran in June!

THREE 'COALITION' SOLDIERS KILLED, 6 WOUNDED on Friday. [ Bloomberg ]

U.S. military just can't speak plain, honest English. The 'coalition' soldiers were obviously American GIs!
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TALIBAN still there! 22 (our native militia & theirs) were killed in one day. Taliban stronghold is also big opium producer. REUTERS

U.S. winks at their warlord-allies selling opium; but Taliban also can finance its activities that way.

ABSTINENCE: EFFECTIVE? (ltrToNYTIMES)
"Abstinence", says a Bush official, " is the only 100% effective way to prevent STDs and pregnancies." (letter 23Feb)

Abstinence is not the only effective means--in fact, abstinence may not be very effective at all.

Successful abstinence is indeed 100% effective. But youths can't just decide to succeed at abstinence; they can decide only to TRY to abstain.And ATTEMPTED abstinence (very difficult)might well be less effective in preventing pregnancy and disease than, say, condoms.

NYTIMES FINALLY WAKES UP:
For weeks I've been predicting that Iraq will split into 3 nations. Finally, the NYTIMES has recognized this inevitable development.

Neither U.S. nor our puppet governments have been able to defeat the Sunni insurgents. So eventually they will have to be recognized as the legitimate rulers of Sunni/Arab land.

That leaves two entities (the Shiite South and the Kurdish North)that share neither a common religion nor race, nor even contiguous boundaries!

The U.S. pretence of a national election for 'All/Iraq' is absurd; the Shiites have the majority of votes (149)for the new assembly, but they can't install a government without the backing of 2/3ds (185) votes.The only alliance that could produce that super-majority is with the Kurds.

But the Kurds obviously intend to secede from Arab Iraq anyway. An informal poll showed that nearly all of them want complete independence.

Earlier it seemed they would help install a government, then fight for their autonomy (and Kirkuk's oil) But now they're saying they won't even help install the government unless all their demands are fulfilled now.

What choices do the Shiites have? Give up the idea of a strongly Islamic state? (another Kurd demand).Even if they got the 2/3 vote and installed a 'prime minister' of All/Iraq, his writ would not run beyond the Southern, Shiite area.

The Southern Shiite area has plenty of oil, and it has Basra, Iraq's only port for exporting it (Kurdish oil in the North must go out through Turkish ports.)

Right next door is Shiite Iran, a congenial neighbor and future ally.

There's no reason for Sistani's slate to yield to Kurdish demands. They can let the race for government posts end in a stalemate; then they could set up a DeFacto Independent state,as the Kurds have done.

Till now, the mainstream press has been silent about this possibility.But finally in NYTIMES yesterday, an article by James Glanz says that people in the South are very much interested in this possibility.
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NOW: what to do about the savage Sunni guerillas? Yesterday one of their number put out of commission nearly 300 recruits for our much vaunted native militia.

There are strong indications that the Americans want desperately to bug out. They've been talking secretly to some Sunni leaders. Our general just said, "If the insurgency is defeated, it won't be by us!"
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Here's a scenario: Americans back out into Kuwait, where they'll be much safer. But it won't look like a complete bug-out.They can stop Turkey from a conventional invasion of Kurdland--and they can stop Saddamites from mounting a conventional invasion of either neighbor.

Both the Kurds and the Shiites would have to fend off Sunni/guerilla attacks by themselves.The Shiites had several militias, which they obediently disbanded on the American demand--(the Kurds didn't!) You can bet the weapons are hidden somewhere, and the militias can be restored.Iranian professional soldiers could train the Shiite militias (as they say ISRAEL is training the Kurd militia!) so they could repel Sunni guerillas.

At some point, the Saddamite branch of the guerillas will likely double-cross the Islamist branch.There'll be a nasty fight over who controls the Sunni/Arab region.

Then there'll have to be a deal between the 3 regions, to guarantee some share of oil money to the Sunni Sadamites.Else the oil-poor Sunnis will continue to sabotage the oil pipelines so the other two (oil-rich) regions can't export much oil.

The U.S. humiliation will come when they have to recognize as legitimate the Saddamite rule over the Sunni region. Also, they'll have to accept the alliance between Iraq Shiites and IRAN (the nation who has defied U.S. most blatantly!) Before their stupid invasion, Iraq was the worst enemy Iran had!

ZANY PEP-TALK: Sending troops to Iraq, this Colorado Colonel said, [RMNEWS24FEb]:
"Your mission is as important to our own children as to the children of Iraq.If we do not defeat the terrorists in Iraq, they will seek to use that region as a base of operations for attacks against us and others who share our values."

He's got it 180 degrees wrong; the new head of our CIA (a Bush flunkie) admitted to Congressthat the Iraq war is HELPING TERRORISTS recruit and train new members!

I'm reminded of a similar pep-talk I heard when we were all worried about being sent to Korea.This goofy priest said, "Just remember, guys; they can kill you, but they can't hurt you!"The guy next to me muttered "...any more."

BOMBSHELL: U.S. to back down vs. guerillas. "It's not going to be us that defeats the guerillas!" said our general.This year, U.S. operations will be cut in half; we will be labelled as 'peacekeepers',not occupiers.

GIs will be pulled back into bases (based on the pretence that Iraq militia can 'do the job'.) REUTERS Remember the similar pretence of 'Vietnamization'?

Accompanied by TIME MAGAZINE'S word that U.S. is holding secret talks with guerilla leaders, this announcement suggests strongly that we are going to cede real control of the Sunni areas (presumably including Baghdad!) to the guerillas! GIs will likely be pulled back into friendly bases in Kurdistan.
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This would give Shiites all the more reason to forget about any dreams of controlling all of Iraq. (Kurds will secede, openly or covertly.) Shiites would be smart to settle for an 'autonomous region' like that of the Kurds. They'd have lots of oil, and friendly Iran next door, and the chance to set up a (Shiite) Islamic regime in their area.

Shiites now have little reason to compromise with Kurd demands in order to get Kurd votes for--now worthless--post of 'Prime Minister of All Iraq'.They'd do well to let the whole election-farce collapse.
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Will the guerillas settle for Sunni-area autonomy? That area, I understand, has little oil. They may keep up attacks on Shiite, Kurd pipelines until they are guaranteed a 'fair' share of the oil money.
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GLOATING OVER IRAQ FAILURE? I do want the Bushie Iraq project to fail clearly and vividly--(which it will do when they have to recognize as legitimate Baathist (Saddamite) rule over the Sunni/Arab region).

I want this failure NOT for vindictive revenge--instead, to prevent similar capers in the future.

People don't realize how mad the plans of the Sharonista neo-cons were.A guy named Woolsey (once head of CIA) said we were now entering WW IV, the war against 'Islamofascism' (i.e, the war against all the enemies of Israel.)He foresaw that we'd have to intimidate or conquer Iran, Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, not just Iraq.

He also warned us a couple of summers ago that we should attack North Korea immediately!
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In Sept.'02 the Bushies issued a document as our actual policy intimating that we'd feel free to launch a pre-emptive first strike at any nation that dared even to TRY to catch up with us in weaponry! (Since then Russia's Putin has announced that they had devised a new, unheard of way to deliver H-bombs; we didn't attack them, because in retaliation they could wipe out the US.--and the exchange would nearly wipe out the whole human race.)
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Such civilian nuts, cheerleaders for war, can be controlled only by the generals,who learn from experience the embarrassing limits of our 'superpower' reach--only they keep forgetting and must be reminded, periodically--by a dramatic failure.

(Our main military talents are bombing and missiling..these activities are pretty useless for protecting our homeland from individual terrorists.)

We can hope that a vivid defeat in Iraq will tame these fiery spirits for a few years--although in ten years or so, when they have thousands of 'infantry robots'available, and don't have to worry about enlistments, or complaints from families of dead/maimed/wounded GIs--then we can expect that the imperial urge will surge up again..and this next time it might work!

I'd expect that the imperialists would first take over U.S. militarily, as Nazis first took over Germany before they started their imperial capers, and the Stalinists first got their own country under iron control before they set out to establish their empire. It should be easy to take over America, using infantry robots.

But for a few years at least, some sanity should return to America.

SEVERAL GIs killed, plus dozens of 'our' police put out of commission in various places in Iraq-- [REUTERS,cited by WiredNetwork]--it looks as if the guerilla movement has NOT been weakened by the triumphant 'success' of the elections!
--
Another cloud on the horizon: it seemed earlier that the Kurds would first help set up a new government, THEN make their controversial demands.

But one prominent Kurd honcho now says that they will
demand compliance now, and will vote (for new government) with whichever slate promises now to concede their demands (for extensive autonomy--amounting to deFacto secession, for secular government, for their control of Kirkuk).

This new demand would likely wreck chances for setting up a new government; Kurds plus Allawites would come nowhere near to getting the 2/3ds vote needed--and the Shiite alliance is not likely to cave in now on these Kurdish demands.

WHAT CHEAP OIL? After a Saudi honcho predicted that oil would stay between $40 and $50 a barrel throughout 2005, crude oil actually spurted up to nearly $52 a barrel on Thursday. India TIMES/ONLINE

Some American 'realists' admitted that our Iraq invasion was to secure our oil supplies..but in fact we're getting less oil now from Iraq--and we're likely to go on getting less--than we got when Saddam was in power!

And the more expensive oil gets, the more recalcitrant will oil-soaked Russia get--they can now afford to defy us.
Also, the less likely it is that we can afford to bomb Iran, severely cutting world oil-supplies even further.

[These 2 concerns overlapped when Russia announced--just as Bush is arriving for 'summit'!-- that they're ready to sign on to send hundreds of Russ engineers to Iran to finish their nuclear-power plant by 2006. REUTERS ]

SUV owners who voted for Bush again may soon have reason to regret his whole regime--when they're paying more than $5 per gallon for gas.

PREDICTIONS: A cheerful-propaganda piece in USATODAY starts out listing some pessimistic 'anti-hawk' Iraq predictions that proved false: but the writer doesn't list the falsified hawk predictions : that Saddam had WMDs, that the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms,that the guerilla movement could be put down quickly, that European nations would pitch in to help rebuild the areas we destroyed.

As for the hoopla about the 'successful election', one should remember the similar hoopla over the 'successful elections' in Vietnam in 1967: elections followed by seven more years of pointless bloodshed and then by an ignominious U.S. bugout.

The main point of the article is that, even if the Shiite coalition has the majority of members of the new Parliament,there's no danger of Iraq becoming a 'new Iran', an open theocracy. Of course not; but that's not the danger to worry about.

The danger is that the Shiite region will demand the same pseudo-federal autonomy that the Kurds are demanding. Then the Shiite Islamic state can develop (with elected officials ruling--but with the mullahs in a powerful background position).

And this state will be strongly allied with their Shiite neighbor Iran,which happens to be the most openly anti-American nation around. (Before we invaded, Iraq was Iran's worst enemy!)

Together, Iran plus Iraq/Shia will control about as much oil as does SaudiArabia; and Iran will likely have nukes as a 2d-strike deterrent, to keep the Bushies from attacking them.

Meanwhile the U.S. will likely cede control of the Sunni/Arab region (including Baghdad) to the Saddamites who are now the brains of the unbeatable guerilla movement. U.S. will retreat to a base in friendly Kurdistan, which will deter the angry Turks from invading.

IF this situation had been predicted as the invasion's outcome,even the goofy Bushies might have had second thoughts before they 'spent' twenty thousands of U.S.casualties and $300,000 millions--SO FAR--on this loony invasion.

KURDS & SHIITES:[letter to NYTIMES]

Re the possible political stalemate following the election: NYTIMES
The Shiites may well think this way: "The new government's writ will likely run only over the Shiite region. The Sunni Arabs will be controlled by the guerillas, and the Kurds will secede: officially or covertly.

"Given that situation, why should we make any concessions to the Kurds or the secularists? The people in our region will accept Dr.Ja'afari as our leader. We have plenty of oil, and we have friendly Iran next door to help us defend ourselves.

"Let the election lead to a stalemate. We will organize a separate state, just as the Kurds have done."

With that possibility, the Shiites have a lot more bargaining power than observers figure.
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Two small parties lined up with Shiite coalition, giving them 149 votes of 275. Allawi would have to get a lot of votes away from Shiite coalition. (Chalabi is a big force among 'secular' members of Shiite coalition--and he and Allawi hate each other!) LATimes

MOST PAKISTANIS LIKE OSAMA! U.S. intelligence agents say that if Musharraf were assassinated (he's at high risk) a new government 'less friendly to U.S.' would come into power. M's government is trying to root out asQaeda from border with afghanistan, but is careful not to offend unduly the tribal chiefs there, who are used to considerable autonomy. TheDailyStar (Lebanon)

CHRISTIANS CAN'T TRUST ANYONE!

Clint Eastwood was the PosterBoy of right-wing enemies of 'Hollyweird'. But in his latest movie, his hero kills his paralyzed ward, out of mercy.

The right-wing frenzy was predictable. INDEPENDENT
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Eastwood's movie won big at Oscar nite. REUTERS
Will that make the 'culture of life' people even more angry?
Would they have raised hell over a movie about a girl boxing and getting paralyzed, if only mercy-killing hadn't been involved?

BUSH IS NUTTY AS EVER: Just when he's supposed to reassure Europe that he's now sensible, Bush spouts off again to our troops, to defend his invasion:

"We must confront threats before they materialize!"
("Well, you notice there are no dragons! We did it!")

"We found in Iraq a threat to the whole world."
wow!

"We must bring the fight to the enemy!"
He brought it to the WRONG enemy--Iraq, not Saudi Arabia. GUARDIAN

"U.S. PULLOUT NEED NOT MEAN U.S. DEFEAT" say Fin.Times (23Feb) columnists. [Only the 1st bit is available to non-subscribers]

Bush & others say that "our bugout would embolden guerillas and harm those Iraqis trying to rebuild Iraq."
(The question is how effectively our troops are countering guerillas today? Indeed, crude U.S. tactics seem to be recruiting NEW terrorists!)

Also, Bushies say, "we did well to stay in former Yugoslavia"; (but recent stories have said that Kosovo is ready to explode again! Also, we have help from other countries in Yugoslavia, but almost no help in Iraq.)

Also," look at our success in Japan & Germany, where we're still there FIFTY YEARS LATER!"
Big difference: no GIs are getting shot or bombed in these two tame countries. GIs ARE getting killed/ maimed/ wounded in Iraq! Do we want this to go on for years and years? There is no indication that Iraq guerillas can be quickly defeated.
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At least the bugout option is now thinkable in D.C.;
it's openly defended by insiders. Once that happens, it's a short step to see that such a bugout is obviously necessary!

ALLAWI STILL TRYING to be new PrimeMinister!

Even though the Shiite 'Alliance' makes up over 50% (140 in 275) of members of new Parliament--even though their leaders unanimously chose Ja'afari--Allawi still thinks he has a chance to win!
ABC

What could he be planning? First, 2/3ds of members (184) must vote for a 3-man committee. Then that committee must unanimously choose a PM--else PM will be chosen by a simple majority of the members (which,you'd think, would surely choose Ja'afari!)

Allawi is the U.S. candidate. He spent $300,000 in WASHINGTON D.C., NOT IN IRAQ to lobby for the PM job in the present 'interim' regime. One would guess he plans to use millions available from Bushies to buy the office again.

Perhaps Allawi can get a lot of Kurd votes, since they fear Shiite fanaticism from Ja'afari's gang. (Ja'afari already rashly announced that Shiites will renege on their previous promise to accept a Kurdish veto on the new constitution.) But Kurds have only 75 members;
Allawi's own slate has only 40. Even if he took every Kurdish vote, he'd only have 115--not 184!

There are 20 other members not allied with Shia, Kurds, or Allawi. All those votes would bring him only to 135.

So Allawi must be planning to bribe a lot of the 'Sistani coalition' (not all are Shia) members to vote for a committee that would select him.
Then, at a later stage, these bribed Shiites would vote for him in the general assembly.
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If he is new PM, the Sunnis will resent the new regime even more than otherwise. They know that Allawi OKd the U.S. decision to flatten (pointlessly) the Sunni city of Fallujah.

On the other hand, Allawi was formerly part of Saddam's Baathist gang! He might be better able than Ja'afari to negotiate with Baathist guerilla-leaders for a 'separate peace', double-crossing their Islamist colleagues.
He's already 'rehabilitated' some Saddamites, and plans more in that line.

On the THIRD hand, you'd think SISTANI would speak out against this betrayal of HIS alliance's choice. Then, would Allawi's bribes outweigh Sistani's fatwah? Remember, there's another election in a few months. The Sistani camp could isolate the traitors who voted for Allawi, seeing that they didn't get re-elected.

So the next few months must seem somehow crucial to Allawi and his U.S. backers.

Fascinating, if you think of it just as a chess-game, and forget the suffering of Iraqis and of GIs that is involved.
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Shiite leaders (including Ja'afari) fear that Allawi has let covert Baathists (Saddamites) infiltrate his security service. They are determined to continue
'de-Baathification' --over U.S. objections.

Polls show that Ja'afari is one of the most popular pols all over Iraq--Allawi is very unpopular! FinTimes

It's really mysterious how Allawi thinks he has a real chance to get installed as new PM! Could it be that this is all stagecraft, to provide a second candidate to make the election seem more genuine?

EUROPEANS DISLIKE BUSH, AND U.S. ROLE IN WORLD says FareedZakaria. He points out that Bush's talking to European leaders won't do much good, when their resistance to our message stems partly from their having to appease their own people, who are 'blisteringly critical' of us, according to recent polls.

--He also points out that 'economic sanctions' vs. Syria will be as ineffective as our previous attempts to punish various countries by economic sanctions. NEWSWEEK

The truth is, our economic clout worldwide has practically disappeared. We need the goodwill of other countries to sell more of our goods/services overseas. Right now we can't sell anywhere near enough to pay for the gigantic amount we import.
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James Glassman addresses our unpopularity worldwide by calling for a revival of our propaganda efforts (euphemism: 'public diplomacy'.) But then he notes an underlying problem with staffing U.S. propaganda agency: too few Americans even try to understand foreign cultures--not even foreign languages!

BUSHIES CUT $ FOR PROTECTION VS. TERRORISTS coming in through Mexico.

Non-Mexican illegals caught trying to enter thru Mexico rose from 29,000 in year 2000 to 66,000 in ’04.

A Border official says that terrorists living in SouthAmerica are assimilating the culture, learning the language, so they can blend in with Mexicans entering U.S.

In one region, 109 border agents patrol 14,000 square miles of rugged terrain. They have picked up illegals from China, Southeast Asia, and the MiddleEast. People-smugglers use high-tech counter-intelligence equipment to evade capture.

Guards would like barriers extended, but the NationalGuard personnel who install them are no longer available—sent to Iraq !

Bush’s new budget provides for hi-tech border-guard equipment, but not for ‘boots on the ground’. Congress authorized adding 2000 guards a year for the next 5 years.
But Bush’s budget would pay for ONLY TWO HUNDRED MORE for 2006.
USATODAY

Why do Bushies always go for hi-tech equipment instead of human guards? (With high unemployment, you’d think they’d want to use humans!) Partly because of fascination with gadgets..but also perhaps because equipment money actually goes to corporations friendly to GOP fund-raisers.

This is another example of the obvious fact that Bushies don't care much about protecting our Homeland from terrorist-attacks.

CHIRAC BACKS SCHROEDER VS. BUSH: Both leaders called for a revamp of NATO (now just a puppet of U.S.), ignoring U.S. protests. YAHOO

To U.ofChicago magazine:
About your article (Feb'05) on 'environmental economics' that says, radically--against classic economics--that human rationality has its limits: One thinks of a classic biology holding that dogs eat only lettuce, faced with an upstart version of biology, saying that dogs also eat meat.

EU HONCHO DEFLATES BUSH: Bush said that the Iraq election 'vindicates' the invasion. Solana referred to those billions spent, all those people killed or wounded, and said it's too early to talk of 'vindication'.

Bush went on about working WITH Europe; Solana said he'd wait and see what actually happened. A Brit honcho said that European feelings were probably in agreement with Solana. [Canada:NatlPost ]

DON'T LET BUSH PRETEND HE'S WORKING FOR HOMELAND SECURITY! says Paul Krugman
NYTimes

My response:
from DanLyons (a devoted fan) / to Paul Krugman:I was glad to see you call attention to the scandalous malfeasance of Bushies in regard to Homeland Defense.

The most obvious failure is the gross funding. $2.5 billion total for a year of grants to states and cities, the front-line of Homeland Protection.That's about 2 days of $ shovelled to the Pentagon--you should make it clear that Pentagon ships, missiles, planes and marines are useless to ward off individual terrorists.

I've been wondering why Americans are so dumb as to trust Bushies on 'national security'. I figure Americans define security NOT as ability to protect Homeland, but as'ability to strike back at SOMEONE.'We sensible people should insist on talking about Homeland PROTECTION.

An analogy: a dumb leopard stirred up some hornets. He counted on his splendid teeth and claws to fight them, but he only stirred up still more hornets.At least he improved the gene-pool of leopards.

The 'teeth & claws' we are so inordinately proud of are our bombers and missiles.
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Also, a psychological study showed that people who heard fearful mention (e.g., about terrorist threat) moved afterward to the right, politically.

You notice that toward end of the campaign, Cheney emphasized the DANGER!

Let's face it: Americans are no longer ready for democracy.

CHALABI OUT! Under pressure, the odious Chalabi backed out of the running for the Shiite candidate for PrimeMinister, leaving al Ja'afari as the sole candidate, with no secret ballot needed. LaPrensa

One problem: Ja'afari has backed the Shiite decision to renege on their previous agreement to let the Kurds veto any constitution they disapproved of.

So now we'll see if the Kurds vote for Ja'afari for PM. He needs 2/3 of the votes to get in, and the Shiite slate got only around 50% (ScottRitter in U.S. said that U.S. cheated on the vote; Shiites should have got 56% of the vote, and more than that in elected MPs. But it still wouldn't add up to 2/3ds.)

wow!
U.S. TALKS WITH INSURGENTS: First word was from the insurgent negotiators; but since then, Pentagon has confirmed to TIME magazine that Americans are unofficially negotiating (in GreenZone) with men who claim they represent the Baathist, non-Islamist wing of the insurgency. TIME

In other words, U.S. has given up hopes of defeating the guerillas; [see below about the sophisticated attacks on Baghdad’s infrastructure.]

They’re discussing timetable for U.S. withdrawal (!) (first from cities, then from all Iraq).

Many difficulties:
--no assurance that these men actually represent top leadership of Baathist insurgents;

--rage of Islamist guerillas over ‘double-cross’ by Baathists; they say they’ll kill the negotiators.

--fury of Shiites & Kurds now organizing parliament, over rehab of Baathists (Saddamites) who trampled them in early 90s.

--the incompetence of our ‘native militia’ (composed of Shiites & Kurds); if U.S. withdraws (e.g., from Sunni cities, presumably), that’s equivalent to handing over the cities to the guerillas. Eventually, the whole Sunni region would be handed over to the guerillas! INDEPENDENT

This is what I’ve been suggesting for some time.
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But this handover will render absurd the 'Iraq' parliament of Shiites and Kurds. They share no common religion or race or even contiguous territories (separated as they'll be by guerilla-controlled Sunni area!)

So there's no reason for semi-theocratic Shiites to compromise with secular Kurds, e.g., on 'separation of religion & State'). Shiites will know that this new entity will control only the Shiite area anyway..the Kurds will secede, deFacto or officially.

Result will be semi-chaotic '3-nation' solution. But that may be the ONLY solution, given the stalemate between the U.S. & the guerillas.
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DOWNSIDE: ScottRitter (former inspector looking vainlyfor Saddam's WMDs) now says a) that U.S. tinkered with Iraq vote, cutting Shiite majority from 56% to 48%..[but Shiites didn't complain!]

and (b) that Bush has approved plans to BOMB IRAN THIS JUNE! Ritter says that expose' artist Seymour Hersh will blow these whistles soon in a big journal (NEW YORKER?) InfoClearingHouse

Could it be that Bushies are pulling out of part or all of Iraq, to hunker down for war with Iran? !

Iran's retaliation will be just as devastating against GIs hunkered down in camps as it would be if they were still trying to control Sunni cities! (perhaps involving poison gas or anthrax germs).

And Iran's retaliation will include cutting down the world's supply of oil, perhaps throwing the whole first world into recession! (Oil has already risen to FIFTY-ONE DOLLARS A BARREL, causing Dow to drop 174 points on Tuesday.) Get ready, SUV drivers, for gas at over $5 per gallon!

Russia, China or India [already siding with Iran] could sell fully-developed nukes to wealthy Iran, thus rendering pointless U.S./Israel's attempt to block Iran's development of nukes.
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Once again, why is it that only TIME and LondonINDEPENDENT have reported on these secret talks? This is a news-bombshell!

U.S. THREAT TO EUROPE: "If you're ready to sell military technology to China, we'll quit selling our top mil. tech to you!", say Congressmen.

English honcho says they're willing to guarantee that U.S. techn. will NOT be sold to China--but lots of megatech goodies remain to be sold.FinTimes,22Feb

How fearful will Europe find these threats? So far, they seem determined to end the arms embargo to China..let the Bushies roar.

As things are, the only ones hurt by our 'tough stance' will be U.S arms salesmen! Our competitors will take over the lush Chinese arms market. And if we carry out our threats, then our salesmen can't sell to Europe either!

The day has gone when we're so far ahead of the world in military tech. that we could withhold it to punish countries. Now we're desperate to sell ANYTHING overseas, to mitigate our gigantic TRADE DEFICIT.

U.S. BONDS LESS ATTRACTIVE: Individual investors have lost interest in U.S. bonds for a while, leaving only Central Banks to keep buying them (for their own purposes, NOT necessarily as expressing faith in U.S. economy).

Now several big banks (Korean Bank most recently) have said they're 'diversifying', i.e., moving some of their money from dollars to other currencies, mainly euros.

A run on our bonds may start. In such a sell-off, as the value of the bonds sinks, all bond-holders will lose--but he ones who sell first will lose less.

The U.S. dollar sinks ever lower. FinTimes

Of course in such a situation, U.S. would have to offer higher interest rates to keep their bonds selling..which Bushies must do to finance gigantic federal and trade deficits. That actually happens automatically, as auction-price of our bonds falls.(Fed.Deficit equals Pentagon budget. Pentagon spends many billions abroad; these expenditures count as imports, which our puny exports can't match..thus expanding our trade deficit.)
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Dollar-panic stops when Koreans & Japanese say they're not going to sell a lot of U.S. bonds suddenly. FinTimes
However, if they just slow down their BUYING of our bonds, that will signal their disenchantment.

DUMB AUSTRALIA: In Iraq, Dutch troops were protecting the Japanese (who are forbidden by their constitution to send fighting troops anywhere); the Dutch, like so many of our 'coalition of the unwilling' are pulling out..so the Japanese would have to pull out.

The Aussies once had 2000 troops in Iraq. Now they're down to 900. The right-wing Premier promised before the election that he would send NO MORE TROOPS to Iraq. But now he reneges on that promise, is sending 500 more to protect Japanese workers. The opposition protests, but apparently can't oust him.

What's mysterious is what Aussies think they gain by this. They've long counted on U.S. to protect them,say, from China--so they sent troops to Korea, and then again for our fiasco in Vietnam.

But today the biggest danger they face is from Moslem terrorists, with one million Muslims right next door in Indonesia, with terrorists attacking in Indonesia and the Phillipines and Thailand. (Many Aussies died in that nightclub in Bali.)

It seems pretty dumb for Aussies to further enrage Indonesian Muslims by again showing support for hated Bush.
We'll have to wait to see if they get away with such provocations.

ARMY RECRUITING DOWN: (also recruiting for army reserve & natl. guard) WashPost

Surprise, surprise! Young men may enjoy WATCHING war (only if we're winning). But now they're not anxious to 'get in the game'--not into THIS nasty Iraq game!

In 10 years we'll have robots as infantrymen. But for now we need cannon-fodder. So: either we get out of Iraq and avoid new wars (horrors!) or we renew the Draft.

This latter option might risk seats of House incumbents in 2 short years.

SOPHISTICATED ANTI-PETROL ATTACKS: While the attacks on Iraq petrol industry continue (264 last year, 30 already this year)-- they are increasingly aimed, NOT now at export facilities (!) , but at disrupting Baghdad infrastructure..these very intelligent attacks are masterminded, presumably, by the very Saddamite officials who earlier SUPERVISED this infrastructure! NYTIMES

One big reason for this emphasis: chaos in Baghdad gets bigger play in world media, presumably, than trouble in Karbala.
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SPLITTING UP THE INSURGENTS? Presumably the movement is composed of (a) guerillas led by smart, ruthless, secular ‘Baathist’ Saddamite officers, PLUS (b) Islamist fanatics (mainly Iraqi, but also including foreigners..these symbolized, if not led, by Zarquawi).

Presumably the suicide bombers are from the Islamist wing, while the intelligent attacks on the oil-pipelines are masterminded by the Saddamite wing.

Now—Americans are talking secretly with the ruthless but non-fanatic Saddamites--hoping, presumably, that they could be bought off, by guarantees in the new Constitution of getting their share of Iraq’s oil-money—plus amnesty, of course. And once bought off, they would presumably betray their Islamist allies, giving their names to the Americans so they can be eliminated.

PROBLEMS:
--Baathist pride: Sunnis have ruled Mesopotamia,deFacto, for hundreds of years. Could they submit to [even generous] rule by despised Shiites and Kurds? If not, they might pretend to be agreeable, just to infiltrate the new regime..all the time planning to die (while killing) rather than submit. In other words, they may be nationalist fanatics.

What kind of GUARANTEES could the new regime give them? No mere PROMISE of a share in oil-money would be enough--only a U.S. exit, plus an autonomous Sunni region, ruled by Saddamites, including enough oil-fields.

--Shiite rage: Maybe the Shiites—under orders from Sistani and Sadr--won’t strike back at the Sunnis over the outrageous attacks on Shiites. (Remember also their rage--and Kurd rage-- at the Saddamites who slaughtered them in the '90s!) But Shiite rage might be expressed in refusal to grant these [necessarily generous] concessions in the new Constititution. That refusal would scuttle the deal.

--Also, the Kurds are not about to give up oilfields of Kirkuk. And yet the guerillas could continue to sabotage the pipelines so the Kurds can’t export enough oil to make a lot of money.

--Both Kurds and Shiites might fear a later takeover of the whole country by the Saddamites—after U.S. exit, if they’re not squashed now. (However, Kurds are pretty competent militarily; and the Shiites could count on Iranian protection.)

Maybe promises of guarantees could be combined with threats of absolute destruction (Sunnis are outnumbered 4 to 1). But again, if Saddamites are willing to die rather than submit, these threats wouldn’t work.

We’ll see.

GI RAP IN IRAQ: GIs have found a way to express openly (and apparently with impunity) their complex emotions (resentment of the war & their officers, loyalty to their fellows, and resentment of 'ungrateful' Iraqis), by using the 'rap' format.
NYTIMES20Feb, cited by TRUTHOUT

DEAR ABBY,
My husband has a long record of money problems. He runs up huge credit card bills and at the end of the month, if I try to pay them off, he shouts at me, saying I am stealing his money. He says pay the minimum and let our kids worry about the rest, but already we can hardly keep up with the interest.

Also he has been so arrogant and abusive toward our neighbors that most of them no longer speak to us. The few that do are an odd bunch, to whom he has been giving a lot of expensive gifts, running up our bills even more.

Also, he has gotten religious in a big way, although I don't quite understand it. One week he hangs out with Catholics and the next with people who say the Pope is the Anti-Christ.

And now he has been going to the gym an awful lot and is into wearing uniforms and cowboy outfits, and I hate to think what that means.

Finally, the last straw. He's demanding that before anyone can be in the same room with him, they must sign a loyalty oath. It's just so horribly creepy!

Can you help?

Signed, Lost in DC
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Dear Lost: Stop whining, Laura. You can divorce the jerk any time you want. The rest of us are stuck with him for four more years!

MISERABLE AFGHANS: A UN report laid out the horrific living conditions of the average Afghan, 3 years after the U.S. took over control of that country. In only 5 countries in the world are conditions worse for the ordinary person.

But the warlords, allied with U.S., selling opium, are prospering !

U.S. occupation, it's said, has produced "fear, intimidation,terror, lawlessness."
GUARDIAN

ATTACK ON IRAN? Bush in Europe pointedly did NOT take military attack 'off the table' as a response to Iran's alleged help to terrorists and nuclear efforts.

But he said the diplomatic alternative was still in early stages. REUTERS

He's supposed to be wooing Europeans; but imagine their reaction when he threatens to disrupt the whole world's energy supply by attacking Iran!

RUSSIA IGNORES BUSHIES! A devastating article in MoscowTimes points out that oil-soaked Russia is now too rich to need U.S. any more.

Putin is seeking an alliance with China, which lusts for Russ oil.

He is also backing Syria and Iran in MiddleEast, against Israel & U.S. Another proxy war coming up?

The editorial thinks this situation will harm Russia (which might face China some day as enemy)--but the blame clearly falls on Bushie stupidity ('ineptness').

So the 'summit' between Putin & Bush will be completely useless.
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U.S.LAWMAKERS TELL BUSH TO TALK TOUGH to Putin when they meet. One guy said, "Putin is on the verge of isolating himself!" CNN

Wow. Bush, of course, has gone far over the verge in isolating himself from the civilized world!
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BUSH TALKS TOUGH AT PUTIN: Knowing that their summit is useless, Bush is firing criticism at Putin in Europe, shots to be heeded by the yahoos at home, not for any Europeans. (Putin doesn’t bother to respond.)

Russia’s oil output (second only to SaudiArabia's!) has sagged a little, what with Putin’s statist moves against corporations—but what does he care? Oil is $50 a barrel; even with statist interference, Putin can pull in billions for his govt. And the longer the oil stays in the ground, the more it will be worth (for the middle-run time—until consumers get smart and switch to non-petrol energy).