Posts from — February 2007

Glenn Greenwald comments on the hearings by the always serious Henry Waxman in A New Beltway Term — “Oversight”. Representative Henry Waxman and the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform are looking at the activities of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Digby goes to a portion of the hearings that really interested me, Viceroy Autoteller, i.e. Mr. Bremer’s passing out BILLIONS OF US DOLLARS IN CASH. Bremer said he was faced with a country without banks and a need to pay people working in the various government agencies, so he needed cash.

Okay, this is beyond stupid. In occupations, check your history, the occupation forces issue “script”, limited use money, to pay people. This is how it’s done, and for very good financial reasons.

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Lurch of Main and Central notes in Stoking the Furnace of War that between the unguarded munitions dumps of the early part of the invasion and the Iraqi security forces selling their weapons and equipment on the Black Market, it is really silly to claim the Iranians are supplying the militias. The country is awash in weapons, or have they forgotten about the CPA order that every house could have an AK-47 and pistol for security, because the US wasn’t providing any?

With the 4 military helicopters downed¹ in the past couple of weeks, more than 50 helicopters have been downed in Iraq since May 2003. About half were downed by enemy fire. People have started talking about SA-7s, shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles coming in via Iran. Aircrews should be so lucky, as military helicopters have defenses against those, but there is no defense for flying low and fast into a hail of automatic weapons fire from the ground.

One of the things that is supposedly going to “improve” the situation in Iraq is the appointment of General David Petraeus, because he was the lead author on the Army manual on counter-insurgency. Well, that might prove of some value in Anbar province where there is an insurgency, but what about the civil war in central Iraq, and the ethnic cleansing in the north? Where is the manual on those forms of unpleasantness?

Actually, if we just get out of Anbar, the problem will be over. Let the Iraqi government deal with that, as it is going to involve deals with the various tribes, and the tribes aren’t likely to make deals with groups that are the target of multiple blood feuds, like the US military.

I’m still waiting for the clear statement of what the US military is supposed to be doing in Iraq. What are the goals and how are they going to be achieved – you know, the strategy?

1. From First Draft

Over at Crooks and Liars they have a clip of an appearance by William Kristol in which “Pistol” Kristol says: “Look, if I were a Sunni extremist and was worried, which I would be, about a doubling of U.S. forces in Baghdad, what would I do? I would try to convey an impression of chaos.”

Kristol has no idea what anyone outside of his “support group” thinks about anything, because none of these people seems capable of understanding the motives of others. They can’t put themselves in the position of others, so they make nonsensical comments. These are the people who think torture works, because they know it would work on them. These guys would apparently sell their families into slavery on the threat of a paper cut, and can’t understand that some people are made of sterner stuff.

It doesn’t occur to Kristol that the upsurge in violence is a result of the Shi’ia militias disappearing from the streets. It is a tactical response by the Sunnis to take revenge while they can. Baghdad is fast being “cleansed” of Sunnis by the Shi’ia militias, so this is an opening for the Sunnis. The main Sunni area of operations is Anbar province. I guess Kristol missed the memo about the Sunnis of Baghdad welcoming the American surge as they view it as a way to halt the Shi’ia attacks.

Kristol has been consistently wrong about everything, but he keeps getting air time to give his opinion. You would think that the media would occasionally scheduled someone who was right, just for the shock value.

Glenn Greenwald has an article, How the super-smart, insider experts opine, about one Benjamin Wittes, “Guest Scholar” at the Brookings Institution, who has his opinions published by the The New Republic.

According to Ben, everyone else is too stupid to understand the entire issue about the Shrubbery’s electronic surveillance program and the FISA court. The reason is that Ben has studied the issue and he doesn’t understand it. According to Ben, if an “expert” like him doesn’t understand it, no one does, because Ben has actually visited the FISA court.

Glenn, as a lawyer, points out that the law, US Code: Title 50, Chapter 36 – Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, is actually quite simple and straight forward, essentially, electronic surveillance requires a warrant. That’s it – officials need to obtain a warrant.

Unlike Ben, I’m not a “Guest Scholar” at a think tank. Unlike Glenn, I’m not a lawyer. No, I’m just some guy with a web site™, who happens to have been assigned to the National Security Agency, who happens to have a degree in Information Technology, who happens to have spent a decade in law enforcement. What could I know about electronic surveillance by the National Security Agency or obtaining warrants?

What they were/are doing is illegal. Nothing obtained by their actions is admissible, nor is anything derived from it. There is no excuse for what they have been up to, and if they had tried it in my jurisdiction they would have been arrested and prosecuted.

As for the garbage about “we don’t know what they doing,” just about everyone who works with networks on a regular basis has a damn good idea of exactly what they were doing, and it wouldn’t take much poking around to prove it. There are logging activities going on all over the various networks that can be used to back-trace, and tampering with the logs will also produce evidence.

Be advised that currently iTunes & Vista don’t like each other. There are some work-arounds, but when you can’t download music and have it play on your iPod, it sounds broken to me.

This is no doubt part of the “protect copyright at all costs and screw the users” that is built into Vista as part of the “security.” Word is that Vista spends a lot of resources verifying that the “thieving” users aren’t doing any possible type or form of “piracy,” like downloading free software.

Oh, if you use someone else’s security software, like Norton, it probably won’t work either. This reminds me of the old days when the mantra about new MicroSoft OSs was “if Lotus will run, it isn’t done,” a reference to the fact that Lotus Notes was very popular and MicroSoft wanted people to use Outlook. I’m sure it was just coincidental that Lotus software never seemed to work after an OS upgrade.

Natasha at Pacific Views has a round-up, Iran: Some Presidential Candidate Perspectives, that features the generally less than informed views of people running for President of the United States.

There’s no point in going over the information I covered last April in my post on Operation Iranian Liberation.

I will re-emphasize the reality that while Iran pumps crude oil, it lacks refineries and must purchase gasoline and other petroleum products from other nations. This problem is the result of having its resources developed by other countries that had no concern for Iran.

This problem is behind the Iranian insistence on having the ability to produce its own nuclear fuel, rather than depending on buying the fuel from other nations. Iran has uranium and doesn’t want to repeat the mistake that was made in petroleum production.

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Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

I have been extremely busy lately but have arrived at a short break, so I thought I would release my frustration about the current lies that are being “catapulted” by the Shrubbery. [Molly called him Shrub, but she went to high school with him for a time, so she was entitled to the familiarity.]

When they talk about a surge of 21,500 troops they forgot to include the support units, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates could more than double the actual number of people involved, and the cost of the operation.

The White House says [my paraphrase] that the extra troops won’t need food, water, ammunition, fuel, medical services, pay, housing, or any of the other “frills” that are lavished on troops in the field.

I read somewhere that a wingnut thought “beverage, powdered, coffee” was a designer drink. I’ve heard the olive drab packets called a lot of things, but I don’t remember “designer” being used by anyone making it in a canteen cup. We also made coffee by putting ground coffee from “the world” in a sock and steeping in boiling water – caffeine and “clean” socks, an unbeatable combination.

There may be basis for their attitude because four years later the Pentagon is still unable to supply the troops. There are continuing shortages for the troops already deployed, so the members of the “surge” can’t expect to receive much of anything.

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Cold Cats

Stop with the flash and build a fire!

[Editor: Faced with lows below freezing and a house that isn’t designed for heating, the crew calls a truce to share body warmth.]

Friday Ark

I stopped in to see my Mother tonight and out of the blue she asked me what has happened to John McCain. She wondered if he had been in an accident or something, because she thought he had lost his mind from some of the things he has been saying recently.

Now, I don’t think my Mother would ever really consider voting for McCain, she’s has been a Democrat since FDR took over from Hoover, but she respected him for his service. Now, she thinks his family needs to get him some help before things get worse.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the Shrubbery’s people have made him the same offer they made Cruella de Harris to get her to let Mel Martinez run for the Senate in 2004, if you back our plan, we will help you in the next election. John, they were lying to you like they lied to her. The loyalty is all one way with these people. Harris and Libby have found out that they will cast you aside without a thought on a whim. You have sold your soul for nothing.

February 1, 2003

Commander:
Rick Douglas Husband, Colonel, USAF

Pilot:
William C. McCool, Commander, USN

Payload Commander:
Michael P. Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

Mission Specialist:
Kalpana Chawla, PhD
David M. Brown, MD, Captain, USN
Laurel Blair Salton Clark, MD, Captain, USN

Payload Specialist:
Ilan Ramon, Colonel, Israel Air Force