Theft and Swine Flu in Iraq

Tuesday! Almost hump day, bringing us closer to the weekend. :D

Today, for the second day in a row, a US service member was killed in Iraq. Staying with Iraq, Mary Beth Sheridan (Washington Post) reports:

A former State Department program manager in Iraq has been charged with accepting tens of thousands of dollars in kickbacks in exchange for steering contracts to Iraqi construction firms, according to court documents.
It appeared to be the first time a State Department employee had been charged in federal court in connection with fraud in the multibillion-dollar U.S. reconstruction effort in Iraq, according to officials familiar with that work.

So there's some theft in Iraq story and now let's turn to the kids. Reuters reports, " Iraq will temporarily shut down thousands of schools in two provinces and some in Baghdad after discovering 36 new cases of the H1N1 flu virus, Iraqi officials said on Tuesday." Swine Flu. And f**k the pork industry, it's Swine Flu. That's what we know it is and it's what the country called it under Ford when they all had to get immunizations at schools and other places. Adults had to show up and get their shots when Gerald Ford was president. (My grandfather tells this story a lot.)

Hey, it's Afghanistan Awareness month. Did you know that? I didn't until I opened the e-mail from IVAW:

Afghanistan Awareness Month
U.S. Marine reflects on his return to Afghanistan as a civilian

As a U.S. Marine Corps Infantryman, Corporal Rick Reyes deployed to Afghanistan in 2001 to destroy Al-Qaeda's bases of operations there. On a recent trip organized by the Institute for Public Accuracy, he went back as a civilian and met with locals and NGOs to understand better what is presently happening in the country.
"Our current foreign policy is the problem, and our troops will be targeted regardless of the task they are intending to achieve, even if that task consists of peace or rebuilding...we need to look at this war differently and not from a viewpoint clouded by fear of 'terrorists.' America is suffering from an acute case of PTSD and it's time we cure ourselves and begin to have some solidarity with the people of Afghanistan." Click here to read his full statement.
Hear the views of Afghan women during National RAWA Tour

This tour is being called, "Afghan Women Resist Occupation and Fundamentalism," and features a representative from the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) as well as Malalai Joya, outspoken exiled Afghan Parliament Member. RAWA has been around since the 1970s and has largely functioned as an underground social and political organization resisting domestic fundamentalism and foreign occupation by, among other things, providing education to girls.
Come hear the perspective of Afghan women who the U.S. claims to want to help, but whose voices are mostly left out of the discussion of what's best for Afghanistan. The tour will be stopping in California, Rhode Island, New York, Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, and Washington state. It ends on November 12. Find a tour stop near you here: Afghan Women's National Tour calendar. IVAW members who are Afghan vets will appear alongside the Afghan speakers at tour stops in California and New York City.
IVAW Office Moves from Philadelphia to New York CityUnder the leadership of new Executive Director, Jose Vasquez, IVAW has relocated to New York City. Here is our new contact info:
IVAW National Office
630 9th Avenue, Suite 807
New York, NY 10036
Tel: 646.723.0989
Fax: 646.723.0996
email: ivaw@ivaw.org
More than ever before, IVAW is relying on the financial support of individuals like you to keep our doors open. Make a donation today. Thank you,
Iraq Veterans Against the War

So there you go. Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Tuesday, October 20, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces another death, still no election law passed in Iraq, Nouri remains in DC, Cindy Sheehan prepares to interview Noam Chomsky, Ryan Crocker tries to talk SOFA (will the press listen) and more.

Today the US military announced: "CONTINGENCY OPERATING BASE SPEICHER, TIKRIT, Iraq - A Multi-National Division - North Soldier was killed and two were wounded when an improvised explosive device detonated near their vehicle in Ninawa province, Iraq, Oct. 19. The name of the deceased is being withhled pending notifcation of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The names of service members are announced through the U.S. Department of Defense official website [. . .]. The announcements are made on the Web site no earlier than 24 hours after notification of the service member's primary kin." The announcement brings to 4351 the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war.
Before we go into other violence in Iraq, let's go to the heart of the violence: The continued war. And some people try to pretend it's over -- when it's not. And some try to pretend that SOFA means the end of the war -- when it doesn't. Golly, with even Ryan Crocker, former US Ambassador to Iraq, making it clear, you think the press will try to get it right now?

Gordon Robison (Gulf News) reports on Crocker's speech last week at Harvard's Kennedy School:

Like any international agreement the Sofa can be modified if, at some point in the future, both governments agree there is a need to do so. It is rarely said in Washington, but widely assumed, that this means the actual implementation of the withdrawal agreement is essentially situational: that is, it will go ahead only if conditions on the ground warrant it.
Despite the fact that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki has emerged as a stronger, and far more savvy, political player than almost anyone expected; and despite the fact that the existing Sofa was only grudgingly approved by the Iraqi parliament, there remains a near universal assumption in Washington that if, come 2011, Washington decides we need to stay longer, then so be it. Last May, the army chief of staff, General George Casey, acknowledged as much, telling a group of journalists and think tank specialists that his planning scenarios envision the presence of US combat troops in Iraq for another decade.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there has been little discussion here in the United States about what 'withdrawal' really means. As Crocker emphasised last week at Harvard, the US policy has always been that it wants no permanent bases in Iraq. Crocker, however, failed to note that government officials and the general public often have starkly different definitions of "permanent base."
[. . .]
Beyond that there is the question of what 'withdrawal' actually means. The military tends to make a distinction between training or advisory troops and combat forces. The American approach to Iraq raises the very real possibility of combat forces heading home while tens of thousands of trainers, advisers and their accompanying support troops remain in place. A military professional might call such a situation 'withdrawal', but a lot of ordinary Americans and Iraqis are likely to think otherwise.
[. . .]
It is time, as Ambassador Crocker says, for a more public, more focused, discussion about what 'getting out' of Iraq really means. Americans and Iraqis alike may well be unhappy with what they hear.
The Iraq War has not ended. The SOFA does not mean -- and never did -- that the Iraq War ends. The UN mandate expired yearly. When the US operated under the UN mandate, the expiration of the mandate never meant the war ended. It only mean the US had to leave . . . if no other agreement was reached. Instead of doing the yearly renewal, the SOFA was an agreement allowing for three more years of occupation. That's all it has to mean (and that's provided neither side decides to kill it -- and killing it can be to replace it). James Circello (Party for Socialism and Liberation) addressed the realites of the illegal war this week:

The fact that dozens of bases will remain in Iraq long after the United States puts the Iraq war "behind it" clearly demonstrates that the U.S. ruling class has no intention of truly relinquishing Iraq. These bases—six of which are so-called "supersize bases" -- will continue to be filled with the boots and rifles of U.S. occupational forces. The same NY Times article notes that at least 50,000 troops will be left in Iraq through at least 2011. Soldiers, airmen and marines will continue to kill innocent Iraqis, while simultaneously building the military might of a puppet Iraqi army. The purpose of that reduction in Iraq, according to the senior commander in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, is to free up U.S. soldiers to go to Afghanistan.[. . .]
This so-called withdrawal is a continuation of using different tactics to achieve the same goal: imperialist domination and exploitation. The U.S. ruling class is invested in maintaining the occupation and due to multiple factors -- most notably the heroic resistance by the Iraqi people against its occupiers -- has now chosen to change its policies and the appearance of the occupation in Iraq. For the millions of families in Iraq and Afghanistan that have seen loved ones die while living under occupation, the nature of the experience doesn't change by simply lowering troop levels from 125,000 to 50,000. Foreign soldiers armed and under the direction of foreign governments in Iraq mean that Iraq is still occupied.

Now to some of today's violence in the continued Iraq War.

Bombings?

Jenan Hussein (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing injured three people, a Baghdad sticky bombing injured three people, a second Baghdad roadside bombing left two people wounded, a third one injured four people, a Falluja car bombing claimed the lives of 4 people with an ten more injured, a Mosul roadside bombing injured 2 Iraqi soldiers, a Mosul sticky bombing which injured two people and, dropping back to Monday, a Mosul mortar attack which left four Iraqi military recruits injured.

Shootings?

Jenan Hussein (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 1 person shot dead in Mosul and an armed clash in Mosul in which an Iraqi soldier was injured and 1 suspect was shot dead.

Corpses?

Jenan Hussein (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 3 corpses discovered in Mosul.

Last month, Lisa Holland (Sky News via Information Clearing House) reported on the damage being done to Iraqis and future generations due to toxic and deadly weapons foreign forces (which would include the US) have used (and continue to) in Iraq:

An Iraqi doctor has told Sky News the number of babies born with deformities in the heavily-bombed area of Fallujah is still on the increase. Fifteen months ago a Sky News investigation revealed growing numbers of children being born with defects in Fallujah. Concerns were that the rise in deformities may have been linked to the use of chemical weapons by US forces. We recently returned to find out the current situation and what has happened to some of the children we featured. In May last year we told the story of a three-year-old girl called Fatima Ahmed who was born with two heads. When we filmed her she seemed like a listless bundle - she lay there barely able to breathe and unable to move. Even now and having seen the pictures many times since I still feel shocked and saddened when I look at her. But the prognosis for Fatima never looked good and, as feared, she never made it to her fourth birthday. Her mother Shukriya told us about the night her daughter died. Wiping away her tears, Shukriya said she had put her daughter to bed as normal one night but woke with the dreadful sense that something was wrong. She told us she felt it was her daughter's moment to die, but of course that does not make the pain any easier.

It's a topic Dave Lindorff has covered many times before -- for example, see 2003's "America's Dirty Bombs" ran at CounterPunch. Today Lindorff revisits the topic at CounterPunch:

While the Pentagon has continued to claim, against all scientific evidence, there is no hazard posed by depleted uranium, US troops in Iraq have reportedly been instructed to avoid any sites where these weapons have been used -- destroyed Iraqi tanks, exploded bunkers, etc. Suspiciously, international health officials have been prevented from doing medical studies of DU sites. A series of articles several years ago by the Christian Science Monitor (http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0515/p01s02-woiq.html) described how reporters from that newspaper had visited such sites with Geiger-counters and had found them to be extremely "hot" with radioactivity. The big danger with DU is not as a metal, but after it has exploded and burned, when the particles of uranium oxide, which are just as radioactive as the pure isotopes, can be inhaled or injested. Even the smallest particle of uranium is both deadly poisonous as a chemical, and can cause cancer.
There are reports of a dramatic increase in the incidence of deformed babies being born in the city of Fallujah, where DU weapons were in wide use during the November 2004 assault on that city by US Marines.

While that goes on, the US-installed thug of the occupation Nouri al-Maliki visits the US. Yesterday in DC, he met with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and US Vice President Joe Biden. Kenneth R. Bazinet (New York Daily News) reports Nouri met with US President Barack Obama today and quotes al-Maliki stating, "Today Iraq has moved beyond a dictatorship and beyond the destruction, and we are trying to rebuild all our sectors of agriculture, oil sectors, tourism and so forth." Bazinet also notes, "Maliki acknowledged he understands the importance of holding the elections on time." Joseph Weber (Washington Times) reports Nouri stated, "Our relationship will no longer be confined to security cooperation."

This afternoon the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson participated in an online chat at the paper and we'll note this exchange:

Guerilla war vs. conventional army: Hi, I've wondered when republicans talk about win in Iraq, Afghanistan (or VietNam) what does that mean? What is win in a guerilla war, when anyone with a political, religious, poverty driven dispute can cause havoc? IMO there's no way to defend or win, what do you think?

Eugene Robinson: I don't know what it means to "win" this kind of conflict, and that's a big problem. We should figure that out, because this is the nature of war these days.
There is no 'win' in Iraq (or Afgahnistan, but this is the "Iraq snapshot") and there is no 'progress.' Perfect illustration of the latter, the Iraqi Parliament had the deadline of last Thursday to pass their election law and . . . they missed it. Yesterday the Iraqi Parliament decided to put off voting on the election law. Anthony Shadid and Nada Bakri (Washington Post) explain, "Lawmakers resumed negotiations into the evening, as U.N. officials and representatives of the American Embassy lingered on the sidelines. As each hour passed, confidence receded that any quick compromise would cut through a Gordian knot of issues as arcane as the number of seats in a new parliament and the way an election would be organized in Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq contested by Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens." Liz Sly (Los Angeles Times) adds: "In recent years, thousands of Kurds have moved into the area from Kurdistan, supposedly to reverse the Arabization policies of Saddam Hussein, who expelled Kurds and settled Arabs there." Oliver August (Times of London) observes, "The Iraqi parliament has failed repeatedly to pass a new election law because of arguments over whether ballot papers should give the names of candidates, or of parties only. MPs are now talking about delaying the election, planned for January 16."
What's going on in Kirkuk besides the above? US forces are doing patrols. Gabriel Gatehouse (BBC News -- link is video) reports on it:

It's early morning in the city of Kirkuk. The Americans are back. Sure the Iraqi security forces here are in charge now but they like to have American soldiers along with them -- especially on operations like this one. Together they're conducting what's called a clearing up operation, sweeping through an area of the city searching houses for weapons explosives and insurgents. The Americans are suspicious of this house here because it's got a group of younger men in it and also a car with license plates from out of town. Now they've got a list of around sixty names of people they suspect of belonging to al Qaeda or other insurgent groups. Three hours of searching produces three arrests.

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, "Iraq's parliament failed again Tuesday to vote on legislation that would allow Iraqis to cast ballots directly for candidates in parliamentary elections scheduled for January, rather than choosing political party lists that don't name the candidates." Liz Sly reports of today, "There was certainly no sense of urgency in the halls of parliament, where several lawmakers from the Shiite Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council bloc said they believed the election commission needed only two months to prepare for the election, not three." Meanwhile, the Telegraph of London quotes the top US commander Gen Ray Odierno on the developments: "It's clear that al-Qaeda and other groups do not want the elections to occur. What I think they will try to do is discourage peopel from voting by undermining the authority of the government of Iraq with attacks, so that people lose faith in the democratic process. If the parliament doesn't pass the election law and they delay the elections, that violates their own constitution, which says they have to have elections in January."

In other election news, Sami Moubayed (Asia Times) reports that the Sunni Iraqi Accordance Front "is promising its constituency a major breakthrough in the parliamentary elections"; however, many "Iraqis believe that the Accordance Front's days in the sun are over, due to the absence of so many influential players from the Sunni coalition."

As noted earlier, Megan McCloskey (Stars and Stripes) reported on the findings of a [PDF format warning] military investigation into health policy in the wake of a violent incident last May, "The report, released late Friday, was prompted by a shooting at a Baghdad combat stress clinic last May that left four soldiers and a sailor dead." The incident took place May 11th at 2:00 pm (Iraq time) on Camp Liberty base, five US service members were shot dead. John Russell is the accused. Nishant Dahiya (NPR -- text only) adds, "The findings of the report (pg. 302 onwards) are critical of the operational tools and training aimed at preventing such tragedies as occurred at Camp Liberty. The findings show that policies were unclear; those that existed are improperly implemented; and soldiers were unsure of how to deal with fellow soldiers who have behavioral health problems. The findings highlight lapses in dealing with the situation, on or before the day of the incident, right from the soldier's unit, to the Combat Stress Clinic, to the Military Police." From some of the conclusions (page 303):After abruptly leaving his session with (b)(3)(b)(6) and asking the MPs to take him in, (b)(3)(b)(60 tossed a knife to the ground. The 54th EN BN has no template for setting a unit watch, and neither did any of the unit leaders we interviewed in the course of this investigation. There is no standard for escorts, how many, how senior, and what type of escort should be assigned to a troubled Soldier, a suicidal Soldier or a homicidal Soldier. Additionally, at the unit level, there is no real conception of when to Command refer Soldiers for assistance. (b)(3)(b)(6) unit encouraged him to self-refer for 3 appointments within 3 days. Access to care is not an issue. On the fourth day, the Behavioral Health clinic asked the 54th, to make it a "Command referral." Granted our Commands want to reduce the stigma associated with ill health, but there is a lack of emphasis upon Command involvement and responsibility for behavioral problems. There is no message, SITREP, or verbal notification required for Soldiers with suicidal ideations. The Commander, 54th EN BN, was never notified that his subordinates had removed (b)(3)(b)(6) bolt from his weapon. Correspondingly, when his bolt was removed, (b)(3)(b)(6) was not put on buddy or unit watch. Unit Commanding Officers at the 03-05 level need more than awareness training, they require precise instruction in effective suicide and behavioral problem remediation measures to effectively support our Behavioral Health professionals.

Rod Nordland (New York Times) notes the investigation found "a lack of any guidelines for how to handle his case allowed it to get out of control".

Cindy Sheehan notes that her show this Sunday features Noam Chomsky and she's requesting that you e-mail the questions you would like to ask Chomsky:

This upcoming Sunday (October 25, 2PM Pacific on the website or 3PM Central at 1360am Rational Radio, Dallas, Tx), Professor Noam Chomsky will be on the Soapbox.
This is your chance to ask the author of Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez' favorite book,
Hegemony or Survival (I like it too!)
the question you've always wanted to ask the good Professor.
Please submit your questions (with your name and city) to:Cindy@CindySheehansSoapbox.com
I will do my best to ask Professor Chomsky as many of your questions as I can!
The Bills for the Soapbox are coming due soon! (Studio, engineer, asst. producer)
Please make a donation to support this fantastic progressive radio show that is totally listener supported!


And we'll close with this from Sherwood Ross' "AN APPEAL: TIME TO OPPOSE MILITARY RECRUITING" (Grant Lawrence):From every appearance, President Obama intends to step up the war in Afghanistan. Even though the American people voted for peace last November and would prefer to devote themselves to the ways of peace -- working a full-time job if they can find one, educating their children, providing essential services in their communities, etc., Obama plans to remain in Afghanistan, squandering billions more on a war that the latest poll shows 57% of the American people oppose. Obama also has given no signal that he will withdraw the remaining U.S. troops from Iraq and is providing the Pakistanis with the money, means, and encouragement to expand President Bush's criminal wars' into yet a third nation.We need to ask ourselves: who is better off for all these wars? Are Americans better off today than nine years ago? What of our 30,000 wounded? What of our 5,000 dead? (Contractors are human beings, too, so I count them.) What of the 1-million slaughtered Iraqis? What of the millions of Iraqi civilians wounded and/or driven from their homes? What of the ruined Iraq infrastructure and economy? What of millions of motorists and homeowners world-wide who have seen oil prices escalate? What of the homeless and malnourished Iraqi children? The only ones who appear to be better off from the Bush-Obama wars are the arms manufacturers and various public officials vegetating on the government payrolls in Washington. From steel mills to banks and from airlines to automobiles, the rest of American industry is suffering. Long ago, Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), the author of "War and Peace," wrote these harsh words about Russia: "The truth is that the state is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens." It takes little imagination to divine what the good Count would have said about America today and its serial wars of aggression centered upon the Middle East oil fields and the proposed pipeline access routes to and from them. Face it: USA today is corrupting its people, turning its children into killers, and sending them out to fight and die in wrong wars half way around the world. "Only one thing remains," Count Tolstoy wrote: "to fight the government with weapons of thought, word and way of life, not making any concessions to it, not joining its ranks, not increasing its powers oneself. That's the one thing needful and it will probably be successful. And this is what God wants and this is what Christ taught." What was true of Russia under the tsars---of a state that corrupted its children---unfortunately happens to be true of America in 2009. America's No. 1 cash crop today is armaments and our military-industrial complex is making big bucks peddling 68% of total arms' sold! Fifty-two cents out of every tax dollar is being chewed up by the Pentagon, busy night-and-day turning out ever more horrific killing machines to destroy people. The Pentagon has covered the globe with 1,000 military bases for "defense" and is busy devising ingenious ways to attack the earth from space, develop germ warfare and threaten and control any and every other country with its 11 mobile nuclear navies.

iraqthe los angeles timesliz slythe washington postanthony shadidnada bakrioliver augustthe times of londonthe telegraph of london
mcclatchy newspaperssahar issa
cindy sheehan
stars and stripesmegan mccloskeynprnishant dahiya
rod nordland
james circello
bbc newsgabriel gatehouse
sherwood ross

Isaiah, Dave Zirin, Third, Iraq

Monday. Monday. Uh no. :D I need a laugh. Do you need a laugh? Let's go to Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "White House On Attack" from last night.



Now for Dave Zirin. I really don't go out of my way to rag on my friend Dave Zirin. I've always thought it great that he breezes through and reads me. But sometimes Dave just steps in. Here he is from ZNet: "Let's be absolutely clear: there is nothing in the 1st amendment which covers the right to own an NFL team. Owners have the right to protect their brand and Rush needs to deal with the fact that in 21st century America, he is a liability and not an asset." Now I don't diagree with that. But I'll add there's nothing in the 1st amendment that says Van Jones has right to be in any administration nor is there anything in the Constitution that says terrorist William Ayers (terrorist and small pricked Willie Ayers) has any right not to be called a terrorist. You blow things up -- including a judge's home -- you get dubbed a terrorist. And noting your crimes? Not a witch hunt.

But Dave and Rush's problems are a little deeper than the above. Dave lied about him. This is from "Whatever happened to the facts?:"

Last week, Rush Limbaugh's dreams of being a part-owner of an NFL football team went up in smoke. We didn't lose any sleep over it.
But we did find it interesting to watch as the usual hairy-backed loons (hello, David Zirin!) worked themselves into a tizzy. You know, the same low-lifes who were screaming "Not fair!" when the right-wing media focused on Van Jones. That was wrong, they insisted then. But using the same techniques on Limbaugh? Okay with them.
Well not the same techniques. Van Jones' own words and actions were used to ease him out of the administration. A job, it should be remembered, that the tax payers fork over the salary for. But with Rush Limbaugh? Turns out the hairy-backed crowd invented a few quotations. In other words, they flat out lied.
Confronted with his using a false quote, Zirin insists it's not his fault: "For all the dittoheads out there, here is how we came up with the quote: it was in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Detroit Free Press, the Washington Post, and in the book 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America by Jack Huberman. It has been out in the ether for years. "First, Hairy Back Boi, when you're using a false quote probably not a good idea to write "here is how we came up with" it. English, like personal grooming, has yet to be mastered by Hairy Back Boi.
If the quote has really "been out in the ether for years," one wonders, why are all of Zirin's links to October 2009 pieces?
We're having trouble finding the quote in the Detroit Free Press article (Zirin links to USA Today republication) but maybe that's explained at the top of the article with this: "Editor's note: A quote that has been widely attributed to Rush Limbaugh has been removed from the original version of this column after Limbaugh denied saying it. USA TODAY could not verify the accuracy of the quote."
When insisting you're in the right, probably not a good idea to use as a source a publication that has pulled the quote and stated they "could not verify the accuracy of the quote."
At The Washington Post link, Mike Freeman does not reveal where the quote came from. He either attempts to mislead or doesn't know how to link because he does provide a link but it goes to an AP report that does not contain the quote. What of St. Louis Post-Dispatch?
A quote in Bryan Burwell's column Oct. 7 attributed to Rush Limbaugh about the merits of slavery in the United States cannot be verified, and its use did not meet the Post-Dispatch's standards for sourcing. Limbaugh said he did not make the statement. Burwell's column did not identify the source of the quote, which was Jack Huberman's 2006 book "101 People Who Are Really Screwing America." The book provided no details about the origin of the quote. When contacted by the Post-Dispatch, Huberman said that he had a source for the quote but declined to reveal it on advice of counsel. The book's publisher, Nation Books, did not return calls to the Post-Dispatch.
So that link is no good either. And any high school student learns citation and grasps that citing secondary sources all using the same primary source is frowned upon.
So what we're left with is Dave Zirin providing four 'sources' for the lie he repeated -- which he has not retracted nor apologized for and is still claiming to possibly be accurate -- and it is most likely one source being cited by three people. We know it's one source cited by two. And two of his three cited newspapers have retracted the quote -- stated they cannot stand by it.
But silly Dave Zirin continues to do so.
Whatever happened to facts?

A good question. And the link to Dave Zirin's article where he 'backs up' his claims? Huffington Post which has gone back to their 2006 article on that book and removed the quote and stated they can't verify it either.

The latest edition. Nightmare. Dallas and the following worked on it:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Trina of Trina's Kitchen,
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.

And what did we come up with?

• Truest statement of the week
  -- this one and the next were from Justin Raimondo, "Code Yellow: The selling-out of the antiwar movement" (Antiwar.com) and Dallas suggested it. We had all missed it which is why I'm not just saying "Justin Raimondo" but including the title and the link.
  
  
  
• Truest statment of the week II
• -- I believe Raimondo is the first person to ever have two truests in one week.

• A note to our readers
• -- Jim breaks down the edition. And it was a crazy one. I couldn't believe it.
  

• Editorial: Responsible Withdrawal

-- This is something we all worked on and it had a major edit. Which is good and it made it better.

• TV: Piss Queens
• -- Ava and C.I. and aren't they amazing? They did this as a bonus because the entire edition is falling apart. It's not just a bonus, it's the best thing about the entire edition. I love this. My mother loves it, my father loves it, read and you'll love it. They take on the faux peace queens and yet again break down the realities of counter-insurgency.
• 
  
• TV: The Homophobic Show
• -- This is nothing to sneeze at either. I didn't watch The Beautiful Life. I was surprised it ended up cancelled so quickly (after two episodes) because I'd seen it advertised everywhere. I assumed it would be one of those CW shows I never watched the lasted forever. Reading their review, I'm real glad audiences rejected.
• 
  
• Whatever happened to the facts?
• -- The edition was a nightmare. Jim's note explains Jess came up with this from various articles we wrote. Those articles weren't working. Most of what we wrote didn't work. Jess noted a theme in some of the articles: We were catching people in errors. So he pulled that out of various articles and made it into one and Ava and C.I. smoothed it over with some writing.
• 
  
• Roundtable
• -- The gang did this as a last minute thing after they sent us off to sleep. This was not planned and they rushed to do it quickly. I think they did a fine job.
  
• 
  
• Iraq
• -- Highlights. They weren't in the mood for any more. I don't blame them.
  
• 
  
• Simon Assaf's 'Violence continues in Iraq'
  
• -- Repost of Simon Assaf's Socialist Worker (Great Britain) article.
• 
  
• Over 1,164 US troops may have been exposed to Sodi...
• -- DPC statement on exposure.
• 
  
• Highlights
• -- Rebecca, Betty, Wally, Cedric, Stan, Ann, Marcia, Ruth, Kat, Elaine and I wrote this.
  
• 
  

In the snapshot today, C.I. notes Nouri's visit to the US and to that, I'll add this from Alsumaria, "The delegation accompanying Al Maliki includes ministers of Foreign affairs, Finances, Oil, Electricity and head of the national commission for investment as well as a number of lawmakers and investors. Iraqi Prime Minister will meet with US President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and White House officials to discuss the latest political and security development in the country as well as upcoming elections and enhancing the bilateral strategic agreement. " Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Monday, October 19, 2009. Chaos and violence, the US military announces another death, bridge bombings continued over the weekend, Nouri visits the US, there is still no election law for the 'intended' elections to be held in Iraq in January, and more.

Today the US military announced: "CONTINGENY OPERATION BASE SPEICHER, TIKRIT, Iraq -- a Multi-National Division - North Soldier was killed and two were injured in a vehicle accident approximately five miles west of Mosul, Iraq, Oct. 18. The name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The names of service members are announced through the U.S. Department of Defense official website [. . .]. The announcements are made on the Web site no earlier than 24 hours after notification of the service member's primary next of kin. The incident is under investigation." The announcement brings to 4350 the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war.

As always, violence continued in Iraq today.

Bombings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad diner bombing claimed 1 life and left ten people injured, a Baghdad bus bombing claimed 1 life and left eight people injured, a Baghdad roadside bombing wounded three people, a Diyala Province roadside bombing claimed the life of 1 person, a Faulluja suicide bombing claimed the life of the bomber and the lives of 2 police officers (four more injured) while there were two assassination attempts by bombings: In Kirkuk, Qais Amer Naji, Head of Criminal Investigation Bureau, survived a sticky bombing and, in Salahuddin Province, Abdulrahman Khalid (District Commissioner) was targeted with an assassination attempt via bombing but survived. Reuters notes a Mosul mortar attack which resulted in four people being injured, a Mosul car bombing claimed the life of "a former army officer, who heads a small political party" and a Garma car bombing which left four police officers injured.

Shootings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports the Head of the Bureau of Tribal Affairs Thenoon Younis was assassinated in Mosul today and two by-standers were injured. Reuters notes 1 person shot dead in Mosul.

Still with the violence, Friday Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reported "a pontoon bridge in Ameriyah" was blown up leaving the "area which is now completely isolated." As noted in Friday's snapshot, "Those who remember the 2006 bridge bombings and the violence that followed, should take into account that this could be step-one of a multi-violence attack that follows." The bridge bombings are back. Uthman al-Mokhtar (Washington Post) reported Saturday, "Insurgents detonated a truck loaded with five tons of explosives Saturday on a bridge here that links western Iraq to Jordan and Syria, pulverizing part of the overpass and paralyzing traffic for hours. Another, smaller bridge was also destroyed in Fallujah, where a roadside bomb struck an Iraqi military patrol on the highway, killing four soldiers and wounding 14 others, said Sulaiman al-Dulaimi, a spokesman for the Fallujah General Hospital." Iran's Press TV notes, "'A truck was driven over the bridge on a highway in Ramadi at around 4:00 am (0100 GMT) and subsequently exploded,' police Major Imad Abboud told AFP, adding that the highway is used heavily by the departing US military to transport equipment out of the country. It is also being used by local civilians."

Meanwhile Thomas Grove, Shamal Aqrawi and Janet Lawrence (Reuters) report that today eight members of the PKK would cross the border into Turkey (from Iraq) and turn themselves over "to Turkish military forces [. . .] in a gesture of support for Turkey's Kurdish initiative". AP says it is 34 turning themselves over but only 8 of the 34 "are rebels". Hurriyet Daily News reports this took place at 4:00 pm: "The group comprised 26 people, including nine women and four children, from the Mahmur camp in northern Iraq and eight PKK members from the Kandil Mountains. The group is coming 'not to surrender but to open the way for peace,' DTP co-leader Ahmet Türk said earlier Monday at a press conference in Silopi, on the Turkish side of the border. NTV television reported that they would be taken in by Turkish authorities for questioning once they're in the country." BBC News adds, "As Kurdish Turks gathered in Istanbul, thousands of supporters waving PKK flags were waiting in Silopi to greet the 34 Kurds as they crossed the border. Some had come from a refugee camp in Makhmour, south of Mosul in Iraq." Deutsche Welle quotes Turkish government spokesperson Ibrahim Kalin Allen stating, "It is a very good sign, it is one first fruit of the democratic initiative."

Last Tuesday's snapshot included the news that England was attempting to forcibly deport Iraqis back to Iraq. Over the weekend, BBC reported that approximately 30 refugees are "being refused re-entry to Iraqi" allowing the UK to 'only' unload ten of them Thursday. Even so, the inhumane UK Border Agency announces it will be sending even more back. Coalition illegal war of choice partner Italy's Aire Italy provided the flight to Baghdad. Rod Nordland and John F. Burns (New York Times) numbered the forced deported at 50 with Iraq only accepting 9 of them. Amnesty International's London office issued "Asylum removals to Iraq put lives in danger, says Amnesty:"Reacting to news reports that a plane carrying refused Iraqi asylum-seekers from the UK arrived in Baghdad yesterday (15 October), Amnesty International stressed that removals to southern and central Iraq are not safe and should not take place.An Amnesty International spokesperson said: 'Given the reports of killings, bombings and other human rights abuses that continue to come out of Baghdad, it is hard to comprehend that the UK government considers it a safe place to return people. 'As far as we are concerned, removing someone to Baghdad, or elsewhere in central or southern Iraq, is likely to put their life in danger. Amnesty is opposed to all forcible returns to southern and central Iraq. 'Until the situation improves and it is safe to return to Iraq, these people should be offered some form of protection in the UK.' Reports have stated that the plane carrying the refused Iraqi asylum-seekers was turned around upon arrival and returned to the UK with the people still on board.

Owen Bowcott and Alan Travis (Guardian) report the Iternational Federation of Iraqi Refugees state it was one "Iraqi army officer" who allowed the others on board the plane not to depart and that he told them, "Those of you who want to come back, you get off, the rest stay where you are." Richard Ford and Mary Bowers (Times of London) observe, "The [UK] Home Office refused to give any explanation for the debacle at Baghdad, referring all inquiries to the Iraqi Government. A Home Office spokesman said: 'We are not giving a running commentary on this'." Those who returned? Last night, Owen Bowcott reported that they they are reporting "they were beaten by British security guards and that no Arabic translator accompanied them. Refugee Kawa Ali Azada tells Bowcott:

It was like a kidnapping. We had no food for 12 hours. We were kept out of sight at the airport then put on an Italian charter flight. We we arrived in Baghdad, there was an Iraqi officer with sunglasses and eagle decorations on his shoulders. [The British immigration official] started to talk to him but his English was not good so I went to help translate. The British officials didn't have an Arabic translator. [The airport commander] said he had received a message from his boss there was an Italian flight but was never told it was transporting deported Iraqis -- otherwise he would not have let it land. He said to the immigration official he had two hours to refuel the plane and leave or he would take further action. He would not take responsibility for the Iraqis because of the danger of kidnapping and bombs. The immigration officer asked what 'further action' meant and he said would burn the plane with all the people on board if it didn't leave."

Traveling this week is Nouri al-Maliki. But first he had to grandstand. Alsumaria reports that US-installed thug of the occupation Nouri al-Maliki spent Saturday bloviating and puffing his chest about how the 'evil-doers' would be brought to 'justice' as he appeared at Baghdad's Al Rashid Hotel to grand stand on the two month anniversary of Black Wednesday or Bloody Wednesday or Gory Wednesday. That was August 19th and yesterday was August 17th but apparently a photo-op was needed for Nouri. Try to remember a two-month 'anniversary' 9-11 photo-op by Bully Boy Bush. There wasn't one. But Nouri's damn determined to milk Black Wednesday for all it's worth. As he grand stands on a pile of corpses, remember the US installed him in 2006 and US forces have been trapped in Iraq attempting to prop up the exile's illegitimate regime. That was Saturday. Now Nouri's on the move.

At the US State Dept today, spokesperson Ian Kelly noted, "First of all, you've seen that the Secretary [of State Hillary Clinton] has a meeting with Prime Minister Maliki. That's in about 40 minutes. There'll be a camera spray before the meeting and then I expect the Secretary will make some brief remarks as well. There will be, of course, a discussion of bilateral issues, but I think one of the more important items on the agenda for the meeting will be tomorrow's US-Iraq business and investment conference. This conference we see as a stepping stone to greater private sector involvement and investment in the Iraqi economy. And, of course, we have had very intensive government-to-government relations, but we think that the next step is greater involvement of the private sector. So this conference is intended to encourage business-to-business connections and partner our respective business communities."

At the US State Dept, Hillary and al-Maliki greeted reporters (click here for text and video)


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: Today, the prime minister and I discussed a range of issues, and we agreed to establish a diplomatic joint coordinating committee under the Strategic Framework Agreement. In that committee, we will discuss all Chapter 7 issues that need to be resolved. Tomorrow's U.S-Iraq Business and Investment Conference will be a very important priority for both of us. By bringing together business and government leaders from both countries, we hope to pave the way for greater international investment in Iraq and closer economic ties between us. As Iraq emerges from conflict, the stability that is occurring will drive greater prosperity, which will help create a lasting peace and bring jobs that will lift families' income and give Iraqis a greater opportunity to chart their own futures. I want to thank Prime Minister Maliki and the other Iraqi leaders who are here today for their leadership on this important conference and the issue, and I want to express our pleasure at seeing the recent amendments to Iraq's national investment law. We also discussed the upcoming national elections which are critical to Iraq's future. Obviously, we are supporting the efforts to ensure that the elections are credible and legitimate, and that a new government is formed in a timely way to continue the peaceful stability and economic growth that is so important. And finally, Mr. Prime Minister, I really salute the Iraqi people. They have withstood the challenges of sectarianism, violence, and terrorism. They have made tremendous sacrifices and have achieved the right for a secure and peaceful future of progress and prosperity. The United States remains committed to Iraq and the people of Iraq.
Installed Thug Nouri al-Maliki: In the name of God, peace be upon you. In this occasion, I take the opportunity to express my happiness and pleasure to be here inaugurating the investment conference between Iraq and America. We have met Mrs. Clinton, the Secretary of State, and it was the second meeting with Mrs. Clinton. The first one was in July this year. We had talks, and our talks, in fact, concentrated on the importance of activating the strategic agreement -- framework agreement between Iraq and America. This conference, which will be held tomorrow, and the strategic agreement between Iraq and America means that the relationship between Iraq are no more on the militant level. In fact, it moved to the economic level and other horizons. Iraq, in fact, attempts to inaugurate an extensive and comprehensive investment process, especially after the stability achieved in the country. In addition, and besides the task of reconstruction, in fact, Iraq seeks and attempts to find revenues to find new ways for increasing and promoting its revenues to cover the cost of reconstruction. In fact, we have waited to carry out or to make amendments on the investment laws in Iraq. And this conference is -- will be held after achieving these amendments. The governors and the representative of provincial councils will stay in the United States of America to coordinate and to strengthen the ties and relationships between the Iraqi governors and the American governors. The meeting with Mrs. Clinton, in fact, was fruitful and very important. We have talked and tackled different issues related to Iraq and to different -- to many issues, especially the problem of the Chapter 7. And we, in fact, discussed to get Iraq out of this chapter eventually. In fact, we have the same points of view and we have the same ambitions. And our ambitions for future are sure and as addressed. In fact, this means that we have succeeded in confronting and defeating terrorism, but we have another task, which is creating new opportunities, to create welfare and economic development. The next meeting, I hope it will be in Baghdad. Thank you very much.

Also meeting Nouri was US Vice President Joe Biden. Xinhua quotes the vice president's office stating, "The Vice president also encouraged the Iraqi Council of Representatives to act expeditiously on an election law that will set the terms for transparent political participation in the upcoming Iraqi national elections." This is the election law which was supposed to be passed no later than last Thursday. Needless to say, it was not passed. It wasnt passed over the weekened either. Today? Xinhua explains the Parliament decided not to consider the law today but may pick it up tomorrow. Which appears to be Scarlett O'Hara Rules of Order: "Oh fiddle-dee-dee, I'll think about it tomorrow." Who knew Turner Classic Movies (TCM) was so popular in Baghdad?

The Center for American Progress' Lawrence J. Korb (Reagan-ite) is in Iraq, and blogging about it for CAP, and he notes, "A real but often overlooked danger of the upcoming Iraqi election in January 2010 is whether Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will go quietly if his party loses and he does not stay in power. History tells us that only when there is a peaceful transfer of power can a country be considered a democracy."

The latest Inside Iraq (Al Jazeera) began airing Friday and Jasim Azawi spoke with former CIA asset and Iraq's former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi on a number of topics and we'll excerpt a section on the elections.

Jasim Azawi: The former Iraqi interim prime miniters Ayad Allawi has been living in a political wilderness for more than four years but now he's banking on returning to power in the upcoming parliamentary election next January. Yet so far he has failed to build a powerful political bloc to challenge either the coalition headed by his chief nemesis, the current Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki or the Iraqi National Alliance headed by Amar al-Hakim. Ayad Allawi has few friends in neighboring Iran due to his constant accusations of Iranian interference in Iraq. His critics -- and even some of his supporters -- say his style of rule is authoritarian and it is bound to harm him and his cause. And now I'm joined from Baghdad by Dr. Ayad Allawi, Iraq's former interim prime minister. Dr. Allawi, welcome to Inside Iraq, let us start with the latest

Ayad Allawi: Thank you.

Jasim Azawi: and that is the Iraqi Parliament has just postponed a vote on a new election bill until Monday and this constant delay and postponement definitely is helping somebody because what is at stake is an open list vis a vis a closed list. To explain to our international viewers, an open list is where a group, they list every single candidate running for office, for parliament. While a closed list -- just like happened in 2005 -- you really don't know who you are voting for. So I'm asking you who is scheming behind this postponement?

Ayad Allawi: In fact this is another failure by the Iraqi Parliament to produce a strategic law that would -- hopefully would be cementing democracy. But unfortunately that's not the case. Likewise, the Parliament has failed in producing a law for the parties -- to say where the funding for these parties are coming from, what they are, who they are, are they national, are they sectarian, are they secular. So there are no laws -- no laws of election. Indeed, the Iraqi people are disenchanted with the so-called closed list because usually it's either voting for the sect or voting for the -- for the leader of the list.

Jasim Azawi: Who will benefit from this? I understand you are for the open list.

Ayad Allawi: Yes, absolutely.

Jasim Azawi: Many other politicians are for the open list including the prime minister and he said we will not accept any postponement of the elections under any circumstances. So tell me, if everyone says 'we are with the open list,' who is delaying it?

Ayad Allawi: Well frankly we -- we are -- we have been lobbying for an open list. But it is the government, it is the sectarian forces that have been lobbying in the government --

Jasim Azawi: Are you alluding to the Iraqi National Alliance headed by Amar Hakim?

Ayad Allawi: I am alluding to most of the sectarian groups in the Parliament because they were in control of Parliament -- last Parliament -- in the first elections and they decided that they should go on the closed list not the open list. And this remains the case until now. Although there are very strong calls and lobbying from other forces in Iraq, that we need to have an open list rather than a closed list.

Jasim Azawi: Since you mention sectarian parties and sectarian blocs, perhaps some of them are affiliated with Iran? One thing I know for sure, over the past several years, you've been attacking Iran for its interferences in Iraq and there is almost like a veto by Iran against you. Is that true? Are you and Iran on the out?

Ayad Allawi: No [. . .], I've always -- I've been calling for a stable region where the trade links and economic links are the predominant feature. Where there is a kind of security and kind of dialogue between our regional forces. I think this remains a must in the region and there is no way really to go into stability in this region without talking to each other. That's why I personally was behind the first Sharm el-Sheikh [International Conference held in Egypy which included ministers and secretaries from twenty countries as well as then UN Secretary-General Kofia Annan, November 22nd to 24th, 2004] where original forces met under the umbrella of the UN and the presence of the Gulf Cooperation Council and the Arab League. Unfortunately this conference was not followed through by successive governments who came after me.

Jasim Azawi: We will talk about that and your relationship with the current prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. But, please, put to the rest -- to put to rest a rumor that it has been circulating as a matter of fact it was mentioned in one of the PanArab newspapers that says Ayad Allawi had a secret trip to Iran to get the green light from Iran's Revolutionary Force to run as the sole candidate for the Iraqi National Alliance. Is that true? Did you visit Iran secretly?

Ayad Allawi: Wll it is not true, Jasim, because it is very difficult for me to travel secretly. I can't be hiding in a suitcase. I am a known figure. It's difficult to travel. I don't travel alone usually. With a -- with a secretaries, I travel with body guards. So really this is not the case. I haven't been to Iran. I don't have an invitation to go to Iran. And my schedule, in the future, I don't have visit to Iran. So this is all fabrication --

Jasim Azawi: I'm glad we put this to rest, this fabrication at least. The newspaper perhaps will retract this information. Iraqi politicians are at a frenzy to create coalition alliances.


Meanwhile the US Boob to Iraq, Chris Hill is in the news. Mohammed Jamjoom (CNN) reports he told them Friday that the delay in the election law (still not passed -- supposed to have been passed no later than Thursday) was no big deal: "Would we like them [to] kind of get this over with early rather than late? We would, but sometimes in this country there's a tendency to do things at the last minute. So we'll see." If you were supposed to be explaining the need for political movement to the puppet government and you had FAILED you would no doubt make similar statements. The Boob is also reported on by Roy Gutman (McClatchy Newspapers) who reveals that Chris Hill went to Basra and told the business leaders "to project positive energy instead of complaining about all the things that are wrong with Iraq." Deception lessons from the Boob. As for withdrawal, Chris Hill is quoted stating, "as long as your people want us here, we will be here."

We'll note the opening of a new piece by Debra Sweet (World Can't Wait):

Tuesday I was on Anti-war Radio with Scott Horton and Angela Keaton. As an announcement for the show read, "Debra Sweet, Director of World Can't Wait, discusses the post-Obama antiwar movement collapse, the strange confluence of The Feminist Majority and the Bush administration in selling the War in Afghanistan, the laughable notion that the Pentagon can be used to secure human rights, Afghan warlords allied with the Karzai government whose human rights records are no better than the Taliban's and how activists can make their voices heard on antiwar issues."

Listen here.

In an early evening edition of the San Francisco Chronicle Thursday, coverage of the Obama fundraiser there included: "Mike Dean of San Francisco , with the left-wing group World Can't Wait, paid tribute to Obama's Nobel Peace Prize with a huge poster showing the president wearing a medallion inscribed 'Orwell War Is Peace 2009'."

Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan has a must read column entitled "Hopeless?" and we'll note this from it:

Not only have we collectively marched millions of miles and signed millions of petitions and made millions of phone calls to our elected officials, but many people also put all of their hope eggs in the basket of another war-monger and where has that gotten us? Nowhere except deeper into quagmires and please don't tell me that Obama wants peace when he is a pawn of the Machine that I have been trying so hard to stop.
Since my son was killed, I have thrown everything I have at the machine. Every penny I have, every ounce of energy, every relationship and even my health have been sacrificed to end the wars and five years later there is very little to show for such a profound investment and the even sadder part is that I am not the only one in the struggle. Multiply these sacrifices by thousands of us and there's a whole lot of heartache for zippity-do-dah.
As evidenced by poor showings at anti-war marches and rallies all over the country since the Democrats came back into power in 2006, I am growing more convinced that very few people care at all about the wars and the killing and those of that do are growing weary and teary.
Americans care about issues when those issues directly affect Americans. I believe that one thing that will get people out into the streets is a forced military conscription, or draft. But even with the threats of sending tens of thousands of more troops to the war zone, the economy is swelling the ranks of the military and for the first time in six years, recruitment is meeting its quotas. So forced conscription is unnecessary. Obama's "job's plan" turned out to be enlistment in the military. Who knew?

Read the entire thing if you're able. I think we'll probably try to do something on it at Third on Sunday, Cindy's covering a lot of ground and she's offered the thought piece for the year. Lastly, community member Dallas, after he read Ava and my TV piece on the faux peace activists mentioned Justin Raimondo, "Code Yellow: The selling-out of the antiwar movement" (Antiwar.com) which we'd all missed last week (except for Dallas) so please make a point to check that out and here's a sample:

A political whore isn't "born again," as it were, on account of a single visit to Afghanistan and a talking to by the "minister of women" -- this lady has been operating the political equivalent of a house of ill repute at least since 2004.


iraqthe new york timesrod nordlandjohn f. burns
the guardian
alan travis
the times of londonrichard ford
thomas groveshamal aqrawijanet lawrencereutershurriyet daily news
the washington postuthman al-mokhtar
mcclatchy newspaperssahar issa
cnnmohammed jamjoomroy gutman
cindy sheehan
debra sweet

the common illsthe third estate sunday reviewlike maria said pazkats kornersex and politics and screeds and attitudetrinas kitchenthe daily jotcedrics big mixmikey likes itthomas friedman is a great manruths reportsickofitradlzoh boy it never endsthe world today just nutsiraqiraq

Patrick Martin, American Dad

Friday!!!! Finally the weekend. I'm dead tired though. I've got an American Dad DVD in the player and am watching it. "The holiday rapist" is being discussed right now. Stan says "It's the Christmas rapist!" But he's being forced to say "holiday" instead. This is a funny episode. He goes back in time to kill Jane Fonda (whom he blames for everything); however, he learns that Donald Sutherland is the problem. He messes with the time line and it all goes downhill with Russians invading the US. Lisa Kudrow voices the ghost that takes him around. (This actually happens because he gets Martin Scorse to stop doing drugs before he does Taxi Driver.)

This disc also has the ice skating episode where Stan and Roger try to be a team and also where Roger and Steve run off to New York. The latter has a Midnight Cowboy parody in it. :D

This is Patrick Martin's "Obama in New Orleans: The callous face of the US ruling elite:"

In a brief, four-hour stopover in New Orleans en route to a fund-raising dinner with millionaire Democrats in California, President Barack Obama made perfunctory promises to the people of the devastated city, barley disguising his indifference to their plight.
The visit, coming one day after the stock market soared above 10,000 and the Wall Street Journal estimated that compensation at major banks and financial firms would hit a record $140 billion this year, underscored the chasm that separates rich and poor in Obama’s America.
Obama has waited nine months from his inauguration to visit the city which in 2005 became a worldwide symbol of the failure of the Bush administration and the callousness of the US ruling elite, as more than 1,000 Americans died and hundreds of thousands of poor and working class people lost everything in Hurricane Katrina.
The New Orleans visit was intended as a photo-op, with heartwarming footage of cheering school children and grateful citizens, but the reality of growing popular disillusionment and anger intruded when a college student challenged Obama during his appearance at a town hall meeting at the University of New Orleans.

That's got a lot of good points in it. You can also see Cedric's "Celebrity Whine" and Wally's "THIS JUST IN! LA BITCHY!" from last night. That's it, I'm going off to the weekend! Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"

Friday, October 16, 2009. Chaos and violence continue, US House Rep Harry Mitchell asks a VA rep "How are we supposed to believe the assurances you're offering today?," an attack on a Sunni mosque results in multiple deaths, bridge attacks are also back, Moqtada al-Sadr performs a miracle by turning 250,000 people into 1.5 million, and more.

Yesterday the House Committee on Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity met to address the Post-9/11 GI Bill. Chair Stephanie Herseth Sandlin called the hearing to order and noted that US House Reps Vic Snyder and Harry Mitchell were joining the committee (she asked for the Subcommittee's consent, which was given) and then explained, "Today we seek to administer our oversight jurisdiction on the VA's implementation efforts of the Post-9/11 GI Bill. I expect that this hearing will provide the VA the opportunity to update us on recent actions taken to address delays in distribution of education benefits and its plan moving forward to ensure the same mistakes do not occur in the future."

In his opening remarks, the VA's Keith M. Wilson stated that the VA was unable to find an outside contractor due to a low number of bids so the computer issues were handled in-house by VA's IT. He declared, "Post-911 GI Bill claims currently require manual processing using four separate IT systems that do not interface to each other. When an application or enrollment certification is received, the documents are captured into The Image Management System (TIMS). The documents are routed electronically to a claims examiner for processing. The claims examiner reviews the documents in TIMS and determines the student's eligibility, entitlement and benefit rate using the Front End Tool [FET]. The FET is used to calculate and store student information to support the Post-9/11 GI Bill claims adjudication process. However, the FET has limited capability for processing the multiple scenarios encountered in determining eligibility and entitlement under the new program." If that was an attempt at an explanation for the delay or even just a whine, the Pity Party's already seated and he needs to join others at the VA table -- the VA designed the system and if it doesn't work (so far it hasn't worked well) that falls back on the VA.

Chair Stephanie Herseth Sandlin The issue of outreach prior to the fall semester starting starting, we have repeatedly heard from veterans believing that their housing allowance would be issued to them at the beginning of the month or that this would be paid "upfront." What is creating this disconnect?

Keith M. Wilson: We've heard that as well. First let me clarify in terms of how it is paid. The monthly housing benefit is paid in the same manner as VA education benefits are paid under the same existing program -programs in that it is paid in arrays at the end of the month following the month of attendance. There -- and quite honestly this is speculation -- the tuition payment is paid to the school at the beginning of the year, the housing allowance -- I'm sorry the book and stipend allowance is paid to the student at the beginning of the semester. I think it would be logical for some individuals to make a connection between the manner in which those payments were made and the manner in which they would presume that the housing allowance would be paid.

Chair Stephanie Herseth Sandlin Before recognizing other members and we'll have another round of questions for everybody, yesterday at our full committee meeting when Secretary [Eric] Shinseki was testifying, we heard from several members that were proposing legislative fixes to make your job easier in the future because as you described it in your written testimony, your oral testimony today, I know you're laying the groundwork for your long-term IT solution but you're dealing with legacy systems and we had the recession effecting states and their decisions, and so some factors and some variables which, in a perfect world, we would have liked to have anticipated all of them and had you prepare for every possible scenario. But we do know that, uh, many members are interested in streamlining the administration of all the education benefits. I don't know if you're prepared to say which legislative fixes you'd endorse today or if you're starting to give those thoughts but any suggestions?

Keith M. Wilson: We are giving that a lot of thought. Clearly there are issues that have been discussed that conceptually are very appealing. Paying housing allowances in advance has been talked about as a possibility. Delinking the tuition payment with the schools with the need to get the housing payment out as quickly as possible to students, etc. The -- and I would -- I would agree that those are appealing from a conceptual perspective. The challenge I believe will be making sure that any legislative fixes are immediately implementable, taking into account the-the issues that you rightly brought up considering the legacy systems that we have in place, the limitations in our short term initiative that we are currently essentially locked into process claims. One thing we absolutely don't want to do is make the situation worse.

No, Wilson did not take accountability. Setting aside Wednesday's testimony to Congress when Shinseki revealed that the VA always knew the system wasn't ready -- which Wilson apparently thought he could ignore, if there are problems with schools or veterans for this new program, who does that fall back on? It's a new program. VA has a million and one excuses for their 'computer' problems. What's the excuse for any misunderstandings? The VA has a budget they are supposed to be spending to get the word out.

And what about when the VA gave out the wrong information? That was pursued at one point in the hearing.

US House Rep Harry Teague: You know we've had a problem with some contradictory information coming out. You know when the checks didn't go out the first of the month, well then we issued the letter that they would be cut on Friday the second. And then there was also some letters sent out that if, like in places like New Mexico, it's 320 miles to the only hospital and the only facility in the state that they would be going to some of the larger universities around and handing the checks out. That didn't happen. At the same time, they got a website up where they could go to but we didn't get that information to people. So I was just wondering if we're streamlining our communications within our office there so that we don't continually jerk the veterans around and have some of them misinformed.

Keith Wilson: I understand your concerns, Congressman. And we-we have, I believe, we have a better process in place to make sure that we are communicating more effectively on that. The issues that we are dealing with was trying to get -- make sure we had something out the gate and-and informed our student population prior to 10-1 [October 1st] -- around the 10-1 time frame. The 10-1 was important because most folks were at that point where they were due their first housing allowance payments. .We thought it was important to get something up as soon as possible. We were dealing -- and continued to deal -- at the time of that press release, with some technical issues concerning how we get to the other locations beyond our 57 regional offices. We very early on wanted a desire to spread this out as much as possible. We felt that the most effective way of doing this was leveraging technology. Taking into account that we've got technology students at thousands of locations across the country. We felt the most effective way of uh getting those folk that weren't within distance of a regional office was to allow technology and so that was the driver for our decision on the follow up --

US House Rep Harry Teague: Yes and I agree with that and I think that the webpage is working good. It's just that during that week prior to that, when I was at New Mexico State University, they were expecting someone to be there with the checks and then, on Friday when there's not, that's when we find out about the webpage.

Keith Wilson: I understand.

US House Rep Harry Teague: Another thing I don't know, I guess it's a misunderstanding on their part and I guess I was wondering where the information came from that so many of the veterans thought that they were going to be paid in advance both for tuition and housing?

Keith Wilson: I-I-I uh -- The advance payment issue has been troubling. We have had, in our outreach material, going back to the winter period -- early spring, winter period, information providing the student experience. In other words, what would the student experience. We have worked very hard to make individuals understand when they will be paid. The example that we used was for the individual who would be having their first day of class toward the end of August, come September 1st, they were only eligible for a partial housing allowance for those couple of days of attendance in September followed by the first full housing allowance paid October 1st. For whatever reason, and again, I would be speculating that didn't seem to be fully understood. Largely it did because most of our current participants are transferees from the Montgomery GI Bill and this past benefit is paid in the same manner but we didn't get that word out to everybody and there were pockets of communication and we need to continue to work hard on that issue.

US House Rep Harry Teague: You know, and you brought up another thing there with the transferring from the Montgomery GI Bill to the Post-9/11 GI Bill and sometimes before they understand the full benefits of both programs, people have committed the Post-9/11 GI Bill and then found out that it really didn't have as many benefits for them individually as the Montgomery GI Bill but they can't switch back. Is there anything that we can do there where they can reconsider if -- through oversight on their part or misinformation -- they want to go back to the Montgomery Bill?

Keith Wilson: The structure of the Post-9/11 GI Bill calls for an irrevocable decision so currently that's a statutory requirement -- is an individual has to revoke, there's no mechanism in the statute allow -- that would allow a person to unrevoke the irrevocable election. Our-our mechanism by which we have been educating people on that is making sure that they can understand the an -- the questions that need to be answered. The answers to the questions themselves are going to be unique to each individual person. You're absolutely right for raising this concern. Individuals do have to be well armed, they have to know what questions to ask and our efforts have been designed towards ensuring they can answer those questions.

A friend who is an Iraq War veteran and a veterans' advocate was at yesterday's hearing and wanted it pointed out how the VA is taking no accountability for all of this. He points out what a huge, huge amount of information is required for all of this -- for deciding to go with the Montgomery GI Bill or the Post-9/11 GI Bill just for starters. At this site, we repeatedly referred to the VFW which offered advocates by phone who would explain what was going on and that's because the VFW is going to know what's going on, is going to have explored every facet. And people who called the VFW got information they could use -- the VFW provided that service at no charge -- in determining which plan would be best for them and details of each. But why does the VFW have to do that? It's great that they did. Praise to them for it. They did a wonderful job. But this is the VA's program. This is a government program run by a government department. It shouldn't require a veterans service organization -- which is what the VFW is -- to help veterans sort through the maze.

That was the VA's responsibility, not the VFW's. (And to be clear, the friend I'm speaking is a member of the VFW but his advocacy is not with/for the VFW. It would be fine if it were and if it it were, I would identify him as such.) The VA did not live up to its obligations. A new program is run by the VA. Guess whose job it is to explain that program? The VA's. No one else has that obligation. Many veterans service organizations took it upon themselves to assist their members and that's wonderful. But that's the bonus, that's the added detail. The VA is not supposed to count on or rely on veterans service organizations to do their job.

The VA did not do their job and this is why there is confusion now. The VA has put the blame off on colleges, it's pushed the blame off on individuals. It is a VA program. The VA is responsible for administering it and administering it properly. Now anyone can put a program in place and have it fall apart. That's, in fact, what the VA did. But their role also includes "administering it properly" and that is what they did not do and what they have not taken accountability for. Once Congress made the program law, it was in the VA's court and they were responsible. Having made it a law, the Congress repeatedly asked the VA what they could do to help? Did they need more employees? Did they need more money? What did they need? And the VA led the Congress to believe -- as they led the veterans and as they led the American people to believe -- that there was no problem. But Wednesday, truth emerged when Eric Shinseki informed Congress that the VA always knew there would be a problem, that he had hired an outside consultant who had backed up internal opinions that it wasn't manageable. And until Wednesday, the VA never informed Congress of this problem.

Last night, Rebecca noted a press release from US House Rep Glen Nye's office about additional questions Nye has submitted to Shinseki since the hearing:

If internal estimates showed that there would be delays in processing tuition payments, why did the Department of Veterans Affairs not seek additional resources or support prior to the start of the academic year?

Nye has additional points and other strong statements but that question above is the main one and it needs to be answered.

US House Rep Harry Mitchell grasps that. Let's jump into his exchange from yesterday. He began by noting that the VA had not yet given out Fiscal Year 2009 bonuses and he strongly suggested that before any "plush bonuses" were handed out, the VA think long and hard about the veterans struggling to receive the benefits that they have earned.

US House Rep Harry Mitchell: Mr. Wilson, this is not your first appearance before this subcommittee. You have appeared before it several times since the GI Bill was signed into law to keep the committee members apprised of the VA's efforts to implement the GI Bill. And you offered assurances that the VA would be ready by August 1st. You even brought in a detailed timeline to show us how the VA would be ready by August 1st. In February, [John] Adler of this Committee asked if the VA needed more tools to accomplish the goal of program implementation and you responded by stating, "This legislation itself came with funding. This funding at this point has adequately provided us with what we need for implementing payments on August 1, 2009." If this legislation provided you with what you needed then why did you go to the VA -- or then where did you and the VA go wrong in meeting the implementation goal? So I'd like to ask two questions. How are we supposed to believe the assurances you're offering today? And, two, knowing how interested Congress is in implementing the GI Bill, once you knew you were running into problems, why didn't you let us know? Why did we have to first hear about it from veterans and read about it in the Army Times?

Keith Wilson: You rightly call us out in terms of not providing timely service to all veterans. We acknowledge that and uh are working as hard as humanly possible uh to make sure that we are meeting those goals. Uh the timeline that we provided to the subcommittee uh I believe was largely met uh in terms of our ability to generate payments on the date that we were required to deliver the first checks -- first payments did go out August 3rd. Uh there were a couple of significant challenges uh that we had not anticipated. One was uh the volume of work created by the increase in applications for eligibility determinations that did not translate into student population dropping off other programs. But we had significantly more work in our existing programs than we would have expected to have to maintain going into the fall enrollment. One of the other primary challenges that we have responded to is uh when we began our ability to use the tools that were developed uh to implement the program in the short term. Uh May 1st is when we began using those tools and it was very clear to us from the get-go that even accounting for our understanding that they weren't perfect, we underestimated the complexity and the labor-intensive nature of what needed to be done. We responded by hiring 230 additional people to account for that.

US House Rep Harry Mitchell: And I read all of that in your testimony. My point is, once you knew you were running into problems, why didn't you come back to us? We heard it first by veterans and through the Army Times that you were having problems.

Keith Wilson: [Heavy, audible sigh] It has been our desire from the get-go to make sure that the subcommittee has been informed all along. If we did not meet those expectations, then we need to be held accountable for that. We provided information that we had at each of the hearings and we have had a long standing mechanism by which we have provided updates to staff on a regular basis. Uh we did notify the Subcommittee at the time of the hiring of the 230 additional people.

Mitchell was obviously not impressed with the response. They had to break to take votes. But everyone should grasp how offensive Wilson's answer is: "If we did not meet those expectations, then we need to be held accountable for that." If? Veterans were in danger of losing their homes, some of those veterans were parents, some were single-parents. They were not getting their checks will into October (and some still haven't gotten their checks). Did Congress hear that and say, "Sure, fine, you do whatever you want." No. Congress would not have taken that attitude and Congress was not informed. There is no "if." Congress was not informed of the problems and Democrat or Republican, every member of the Veterans Affairs Committee -- in Committee meetings and Subcommittee meetings throughout 2008 -- has asked the VA (a) do they need any other resources and (b) please come to us immediately if you have any problems.

There is no "if." The VA did not meet expectations. I'll go further. They lied -- and that includes Wilson -- to the Congress. Repeatedly. Shinseki testified on Wednesday that when he stepped into his role as VA Secretary at the start of this year, he knew. He was told that the VA could not meet the expectations. He then went and hired an outside consultant to determine whether or not that was true. The consultant determined the same thing. Shinseki: "And in order to do that, we essentially began as I arrived in January, uh, putting together the plan -- reviewing the plan that was there and trying to validate it. I'll be frank, when I arrived, uh, there were a number of people telling me this was simply not executable. It wasn't going to happen. Three August was going to be here before we could have everything in place. Uh, to the credit of the folks in uh VA, I, uh, I consulted an outside consultant, brought in an independent view, same kind of assessment. 'Unless you do some big things here, this is not possible.' To the credit of the folks, the good folks in VBA, they took it on and they went at it hard. We hired 530 people to do this and had to train them. We had a manual system that was computer assisted. Not very helpful but that's what they inherited. And we realized in about May that the 530 were probably a little short so we went and hired 230 more people. So in excess of 700 people were trained to use the tools that were coming together even as certificates were being executed. Uhm, we were short on the assumption of how many people it would take." When did the VA share the problem with the Congress? Never.

That's what US Rep Mitchell was getting at in his testimony -- how the Congress had to learn about the problems from veterans and the Army Times. That's ridiculous. As he pointed out, they had multiple hearings, they made requests and the VA never indicated any problems in testimony or in one-on-one discussions.

The VA's failure is an issue. It's an issue that many veterans are still living with as they wait for education benefit checks to arrive. But the issue Congress needs to resolve is why they were misled. If that's not resolved, what is the point?



US House Rep Harry Mitchell: Mr. Wilson, I believe that no veteran, and I'm talking as a former school teacher who values education very, very much, I don't believe any veteran should fall behind even a semester because of the VA's inability to meet the goals that we've set out for them. And I'd like to know what the VA's doing to ensure that future payments will not be delayed? As well as, what assurances can you offer that these measures will work?

Keith Wilson: Everything that we're putting into place right now is designed to ensure that we go into the spring semester fully loaded with what we need to have on board. We will take every step that we need to to make sure that veterans have access to payment. If that means that we have to keep an advance payment mechanism some -- some sort in process, we will do that. But our goal is to make sure that those mechanisms are not needed, that we have this issue resolved prior to the spring semester and we move forward. The Secretary has been very clear that any delay in payment is unacceptable. Everybody in VA agrees wholeheartedly with that. On a personal level, I can say first hand, I know exactly what these students are going through.

Liar. He went to college. On a GI Bill. That doesn't mean he knows what the veteran students are going through today. A program was in place for him and it administered the checks in a timely manner. For him to try to use his 'personal experience' should have resulted in someone on the Subcommittee coming back with, "Well if you know what it's like, why did you and others mislead the Veterans Affairs Committee instead of coming to us and asking for help as we repeatedly requested you to do?"

Stephanie Herseth asked if he needed additional staff at the call center for educational benefits. She also underscored that "we need to be made aware of the problems immediately if there's any complications that arise" and "if you start anticipating problems or start experiencing problems" then let the Committee know. US House Rep John Adler also touched on this repeatedly such as asking Wilson "are there any other tools you need from Congress" and reminding him that "we would like to hear from you as needs arise, before the crisis arise" and "tell us what you need from us."

But here's the thing, these statements? Made throughout 2008. And we know how that didn't work out. There needs to be accountability. There was none. And it was really cheap and dishonest for this man who has worked at the VA since 1989 to pretend he understood what it was like for the veterans who worried (and some still do) that they will be homeless because their education checks have not arrived. Translation: The hearing accomplished nothing. The friend I spoke of earlier stated he felt the Subcommittee made Wilson squirm but he didn't feel that anything else was accomplished: "There was no effort to track down where the accountability was or where the breakdown came in. Even the most basic question was not asked: 'Were you ordered not to tell the Congress that there were problems coming up, problems that the department knew were coming?'"


Yesterday's snapshot noted the House Veterans Affairs Committee's Subcommittee On Health hearing and Kat offered her impressions of it last night. The exchange between Subcommittee Chair Michael Michaud and Gary Baker should have included ". . ." after Baker's first lengthy excerpt and before Micahud's next question. My apologies for the error which was most likely my fault when dictating -- I probably wasn't clear. I apologize and claim that error as my own.

Today violence continued in Iraq. Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports on a Tal Afar suicide bombing, "Checkpoint security opened fire upon four gunmen in a sedan who refused to stop for searching near al Taqwa Mosque in the town of Tel Afar west of Mosul, Friday. At last the car stopped and three of the four men ran away, while the fourth ran into the mosque just as Friday prayers ended, and shot and killed the imam and a judge who was sitting with him." Issa reveals the man attempted to leave the mosque but was prevented and then set off his bomb. BBC News adds, "The explosion was triggered as people gathered for the main congregational prayers of the week." Timothy Williams and Sa'ad al-Izzi (New York Times) quote Akram Haseeb stating, "I was sitting in the back rows in the mosque when one of the worshipers in the front stood up and loudly interrupted the iman while he was preaching." Al Jazeera quotes eye witness Sahir Jalal on the bomber standing up in the mosque, "Then he took out a small rifle from under his jacket and start to shoot." Jamal al-Badrani, Jack Kimball and Michael Christie (Reuters) quote Qassim Ahmed who was wounded in the attack, "I came to the mosque late and when I went to enter, I heard shooting. Seconds later, a big explosion happened." Sun Yunlong (Xinhua) adds, "Abdul A'al, the mayor of the town told Xinhua that the attacker shot dead Abdul-Sattar Abdul-Hussein, the imam of the mosque and another person believed to be a judge in the town before blowing himself and causing the destruction." Nada Bakri (Washington Post) offers this context, "Tal Afar, 260 miles north of Baghdad and near the Syrian border, has long been the target of suicide attackers and car bombers, but Friday's attack marked one of the few times that a Sunni mosque there was attacked. Security officials said they believe the mosque was targeted because its preacher, Abdel Satar Hassan, who was among the dead, was a staunch critic of al-Qaeda." Timothy Williams and Sa-ad al-Izzi state 15 are dead from the assault and one-hundred more injured. Turning to other violence . . .

Bombings?

Sahar Issa (McClatchy Newspapers) reports "a pontoon bridge in Ameriyah" was blown up leaving the "area which is now completely isolated." Those who remember the 2006 bridge bombings and the violence that followed, should take into account that this could be step-one of a multi-violence attack that follows. Reuters notes a Mosul suicide car bombing which claimed the life of the car driver and 1 Iraqi soldier. Dropping back to yesterday, Reuters notes a Mosul roadside bombing claimed the life of 1 police officer and left four more injured

Shootings?

Still dropping back to yesterday, Reuters notes Mosul police attacked an ambulance "killing one civilian inside and wounding two others including a paramedic".

On NPR's The Diane Rehm Show today, second hour, Iraq was noted by Diane and the panel of James Kitfield (National Journal), Hisham Melhem (Al-Arabiya TV and An-Nahar) and Nancy A. Youssef (McClatchy).

Diane Rehm: Alright, let's turn to Iraq and the reputed death toll. James Ki , Iraq's Human Rights Ministry said more than 85,000 Iraqis were killed from 2004 to 2008. We really have no idea about the total loss of humanity there.

James Kitfield: No, we don't. And we know it was a very violent war. And it was not only a violent war that we were fighting trying to attack Sunni insurgent groups that were trying to destabilize that government but it devolved almost into an entire civil war, 2006, 2007, where Shi'ite death squads were killing Sunnis and Sunnis were responding with suicide bombings against Shi'ite mosques. You know it really was an awful bloodshed --

Diane Rehm: Judges, lawyers, everybody was being targeted.

James Kitfield: I remember being on the street with a unit there and you would go and there would be piles of bodies every morning lying on the side of the road. It was disgusting.

Diane Rehm: And now you've got a total of how many American troops, Nancy?

Nancy A. Youssef: In Iraq now? It's 120,000 [she stops at one-hundred-and twenty-thou] --

Diane Rehm: Killed.

Nancy A. Youssef: Oh, killed. We're at 4200 for the total.

Diane Rehm: No, a little bit more.

[C.I. note:4349.]

Diane Rehm: 4300, something like that.

Nancy A. Youssef: 4300. For the total span of the war. What I thought was interesting with the 85,000, in my mind, it's the minimum because as James was describing at the height of the war, and I was there for it, the group was basing it on documents. People with death certificates and reports to the morgue and sort of official tracks. At the height of the war people were not going through that. If someone was killed, they buried their dead and then moved out.

Diane Rehm: So we don't know.

Nancy A. Youssef: We will never know. We will never know. And so it's this first effort to try to quantify that number which has been uhm, uhm, almost impossible to get. To me what's important is anecdotally, you talk to any Iraqi and they have had a friend a family member killed and that's the real effect of the Iraq War, they've all felt it.

Diane Rehm: What about these parliamentary elections coming up? Is there a chance they could be postponed?

James Kitfield: The chance just got better this week. They missed a Thursday deadline yesterday to uh vote on --

Hisham Melhem: Now it's Monday.

James Kitfield: Now it's Monday and we'll see if they keep pushing it off.

Diane Rehm: The deadline is Monday.

James Kitfield: Yeah they pushed the deadline back but there's major concern amongst the Americans there that if these elections don't happen in January, we can't pull out on the schedule we plan on next year which is very ambitious, we're going down from 120,000 troops in January to just 50,000 troops by the end of August. That is a very ambitious schedule. And oh by the way the troops that Obama's going to need if he does surge 40,000 to Afghanistan are going to be coming out of Iraq or being replaced by units scheduled to go to Iraq. So that needs to go smoothly.

As a note requested by an NPR friend, last Friday, when Susan Paige guest hosted, Iraq was dealt with in the second hour. They had some e-mails complaining that it wasn't featured. I said I'd note it here and also pointed out we quoted from it in last week's snapshot. (Most likely, people had turned off before the final two minutes of the program when Iraq was raised.) I am noting: Today the panel appeared to get lost in fantasies of go-get-Osama. They were a blood thirsty group and one (James Kitfield) got a little peevish when Diane corrected him of those US drones attacks in Pakistan, they do kill civilians. He dismissed the concern and the whole panel seemed to run on the fumes of the dead and a desire for more dead. The panel was living in a fantasy world of Where Is Osama and We Must Get Osama. (They are all so convinced that he is the biggest issue and that he's in Pakistan that you wanted someone to give the three guests a map and let them put their Xs on the exact spot Osama was at.)


On the election issue, let's first note a primary. Jenan Hussein and Mohammad al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) report on the primary that took place today for Moqtada al-Sadr supporters. They explain it's an effort to restore luster to the al-Sadr brand and that "there were few safeguards against double voting, and the party claimed far more votes [1.5 million] than the number it had registered [250,000] a few days earlier." They also note that women voted in large numbers "at some polling stations where entire families" went to vote. al-Sadr is thought to be attempting to improve his standing ahead of the 'intended' January elections. Oliver August (Times of London) notes the draft election law is still in a state of limbo and that, "The deadlock on election law concerns whether ballot papers should list only the competing parties or also include candidates' names. Some prominent MPs fear that having their names on display will harm their chances of re-election."

David DeGraw has a new piece entitled "If You're Not Outraged, You're Not Paying Attention" on how the game is distraction and both of the two major political parties are playing it. Meanwhile Page Gardner, Women's Voices, Women Vote, informs:

I wanted to take a moment to share with you some exciting information. The Center for American Progress (CAP), in partnership with Maria Shriver, has broken new ground with the publication of "The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything." The report takes a hard look at how women's changing roles are affecting our major societal institutions, from government and businesses to our faith communities, and examines how our society is responding to one of the greatest social transformations of our time. I wrote an essay for the report, "Single in a Married-Centered World," exploring the unique challenges facing unmarried women in these times. You can read my essay here and the entire report here at CAP's website. In conjunction with the report, I also sat down for an interview with Heather Boushey, a CAP senior economist and co-editor of the report, to discuss how unmarried women are faring in the economy and the workplace. You can see the video of the interview here at WVWV's website. The kind of monumental change the Shriver Report says government and business need to make to adapt to the realities of the modern American family requires an informed, engaged citizenry willing to stand up and demand it. At WVWV, we are finding ways to both engage and inform women on issues that matter most in their lives. Theirs is an important voice to be heard in the national conversation about modernizing public policies and business practices to better meet their circumstances. I encourage you to read this important report. I am honored to be in such esteemed company as an essay contributor. Please read my essay and view the short video conversation about how unmarried women are affecting and being affected by this social transformation.

Meanwhile, Tom Hayden composes his most useful piece in two years, "Will We Stay 50 Years In Afghanistan?" (link goes to CBS News' reposting) which is a contribution for the section on the war on the native people counter-insurgency:The counterinsurgency doctrine is promoted as being "population-centric" as opposed to "enemy-centric," leading some to think it means a combination of Peace Corps-style development and community-based policing. Indeed, counterinsurgency differs sharply from "kinetic" war, which is based on conventional use of combat troops and bombardment. This is why Kilcullen disapproved of the ground invasion of Iraq and is critical of the current use of Predator strikes from the air, which alienate the very civilian populations whose hearts and minds must be won. The central flaw in Kilcullen's model is his belief in the "accidental guerrilla" syndrome. Drawing partly on a public-health analogy, he defines Al Qaeda as a dangerous virus that grows into a contagion when its Muslim hosts face foreign intervention. The real enemy, he thinks, is the global network of hard-core Al Qaeda revolutionaries who want to bring down the West, overthrow Arab regimes and restore a centuries-old Islamic caliphate. Like Obama, Kilcullen hopes to "disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda" without provoking the contagion of resistance from the broader Muslim world. The "accidental guerrillas" who fight us, he writes, do so not because they hate the West and seek our overthrow but because we have invaded their space to deal with a small extremist element that has manipulated and exploited local grievances to gain power in their societies. They fight us not because they seek our destruction but because they believe we seek theirs. But of course, these accidental guerrillas are no accident at all. They inevitably and predictably emerge as a nationalist force against foreign invaders. Their resistance to imperialism stretches back far before Al Qaeda. In fact, Al Qaeda was born with US resources, as a byproduct of resistance to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and earlier oppression of hundreds of Islamic radicals in Egyptian prisons. Kilcullen would like to believe that the "accidental guerrilla" syndrome can be avoided by a surgical counterinsurgency combined with Western liberal reform, as opposed to a ham-fisted, knock-down-the-doors combat approach. But he admits that imposing law and order American-style in Afghanistan is a "temporary" form of neocolonialism that will produce violent popular resistance. The strategic dilemma is created when this neocolonialism fosters a corrupt regime of warlords, drug lords and landlords, as it has in Kabul. The first priority of Kilcullen's counterinsurgency doctrine is "a political strategy that builds government effectiveness and legitimacy while marginalizing insurgents, winning over their sympathizers, and coopting local allies." Obama's recent surge in Afghanistan, whose purpose was to protect Afghanistan's presidential election process, had the opposite result: sending Americans to fight for an unpopular Kabul machine that committed fraud on a massive scale.

TV notes. NOW on PBS begins airing tonight on most PBS stations and examines the expected nursing shortage that looms in the near future. On Bill Moyers Journal, Bill Moyers sits down with Maurice Sendak. Bonnie Erbe will sit down with Melinda Henneberger, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Tara Setmayer and Genevieve Wood to discuss the week's events on PBS' To The Contrary. Check local listings, on many stations, it begins airing tonight. And turning to broadcast TV, Sunday CBS' 60 Minutes offers:

H1N1 Scott Pelley reports on the H1N1 flu - which is increasingly targeting young, healthy people - and how the government plans to fight the flu pandemic.
The Kanzius Machine John Kanzius fought his leukemia head on, inventing a machine that may someday offer effective treatment for cancers without the debilitating side effects of radiation and chemotherapy. Lesley Stahl reports. Watch Video
Drew Barrymore The remarkable former child star, actress and now director is profiled by CNN's Anderson Cooper.
60 Minutes, this Sunday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

iraqreutersjamal al-badranijack kimballmichael christie
mcclatchy newspaperssahar issa
jenan hussein
mohammed al dulaimy
the washington postnada bakrixinhuatimothy williamsthe new york times
nprthe diane rehm show
the times of londonoliver august
tom hayden