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On this, the anniversary of the start of the first Gulf War, Pierre Tristam notes Peter Arnett’s Prophesies. It took Arnett less than two weeks to figure Bush’s War was off the rails and the Iraqis weren’t going to play by the expected rules.

Except…the Iraqis did exactly what should have been expected with a senior officer corps trained in Soviet doctrine. Apparently all of the “Cold Warriors” forgot about the basic strategy of the Russian/Soviet military since it proved so successful against Napoleon and the Wehrmacht: when the homeland is invaded by a superior force, draw them into the country to extend supply lines and then fight a war of attrition. When the Iraqi army refused to give battle in large unit engagements, it should have been obvious that this was going to be an extended guerrilla war. Napoleon didn’t win when he seized Moscow, and the Germans didn’t win when they lay siege to Stalingrad. They were stretched too thin and couldn’t control the land they had taken.

Of course Arnett had to be fired. You can’t have people running around speaking truth when the “Leader” doesn’t want to hear it.

Perhaps it’s just to annoy people, but the BBC has a tendency to interview Frank J. Gaffney Jr. of the Center for Security Policy, a neocon think tank, about Iraq.

The man is an ignorant fool who has not made a minimal effort to understand the major players in Iraq. He made constant references to Moqtada al Sadr and Iran, at one point calling him “a puppet of Iran.”

Al Sadr is an Iraqi nationalist, and may be the only major player who wants all foreigners, not just the Americans out of Iraq. He has his own forms of madness, but working with the Iranians isn’t one of them.

Gaffney probably approved of the Shrubbery’s outreach to Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq [SCIRI] and associated with the Badr Organization militia. The SCIRI backed Iran in the Iran-Iraq War. They spent much of the Saddam years living in Iran. They have unquestioned ties to Iran and the Revolutionary Guard. They want a theocratic government, just like Iran.

Gaffney et al. may have a problem finding the Madhi army, because, as Swopa notes, Nobody here but us death squads. They are hanging loose waiting for their official Iraqi government uniforms, just like the ones the Badr Organization already has.

I like Monty Python as much as the next guy, but the BBC shouldn’t do these improv versions during the news.

What, you thought they shut this program down because Congress told them to? How naïve can some people be? Admiral John Poindexter of Iran-Contra was in charge of the program. For those who have forgotten, Iran-Contra was a scheme to fund a program that Congress told the executive to shut down, and refused to fund.

Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democrat writes about military credit searches and wiretaps, and people wonder what’s going on?

Charles at the Fulcrum thinks that the Shrubbery may be stealing because $5.6 billion for the deployment of 21,500 troops is totally out of line. Consider the fact that most of this increase is achieved by extending deployments and deploying people early, not with troops from outside the system. Most of these costs should already be accounted for in the current appropriations.
They are still gathering information and plugging it into their TIA project. Since Congress refused to fund it and told them to stop it, I think for some time the Pentagon has been moving money out of other accounts to pay for it.

Congress funded body and vehicle armor, but it never showed up. Congress funded the utility bills of military bases, but the bases haven’t paid them. We have depots filled with vehicles that need to be fixed, but there is no money to do it.

I don’t have the slightest doubt that a real audit of any of the current departments of this administration would reveal multiple sets of books, or no recognizable accounting system in place. None of their budget numbers have any significance or meaning.

A number of people have said they are running the government like a business – Enron. We should be so lucky. Enron was creative, but there were books that you could use to figure out what they were doing. I don’t think these people actually know where their money is, or where it is going.

Six years of Republican Congresses have been involved in one of the biggest frauds in history, and it doesn’t make much difference if it was caused by criminal intent or incompetence.

The next President needs Eliot Spitzer for Attorney General. He knows how to prosecute these cases and could get some of our money back.

If the Iraqi “Justice” ministry is going to insist on being medieval in their sentences they might avoid a lot of world condemnation if they would just go out to the ‘Net and look at the the Wikipedia article on Hanging which includes a link to the Official Table of Drops prepared by the UK Home Office.

I’m sure people thought I was just being sarcastic when I said there was a manual on how to do this sort of thing, but torturer and executioner have been civil service positions since the very beginnings of the system in China. Wherever you have civil servants, you have rules and regulations.

I already covered this back in November. Pierre Tristam’s post, You Mean It’s Not Apartheid?, went over it in mid-December.

Now James Wolcott comments on it in the second part of Serial Comma Killer, Qu’est-ce que C’est?, Pat Lang mentions it in his post, War Against the Boogey Men, Juan Cole covers it in Attempts at Marginalizing Carter Intensify, and OhDave at Candide’s Notebooks looks at the “controversy” in Jimmy Carter’s Holy Land.

Essentially you have people screaming because Jimmy Carter isn’t rabidly pro-Israel. If you notice that Israel is not following the rules you are an anti-Semite and want Israel wiped from the face of the planet. Get a grip. Jimmy Carter has been at this longer than any of the current leaders in Israel and Palestine. He knows what deals were proposed, and what the conditions are on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza. He also reads all of the newspapers in Israel and knows that significant number of Israelis oppose some of the policies of their current government.

I’m a good deal more interested in the national interests of the US than Israel. Blindly supporting Israel is not in the US interest.

I’m rather surprised that the serial comma has become an issue, but apparently a lot of people are rebelling against one of the few rules that actually exist in English.

I seem to remember Steve Bates of Yellow Doggerel Democrat commenting on them earlier, and then I saw the Wolcott post, Serial Comma Killer, Qu’est-ce que C’est?, which seemed to indicate that there is a move afoot to change the rules, or ignore them.

I stand with the standard use of the serial comma, including the one before the conjunction. That’s the rule Miss Delores Smith stated, and that makes it good enough for me.

Grumpy Forester covers the Washington Post article, U.S. unit says Iraqis ‘not ready to stand up’, that reports on the view of the military in Iraq about the escalation.

An American View From The Arab Street deals with the frustration of doing something dangerous that the people who are supposed to be benefiting don’t seem to want done.

Part of the deal with the oath of enlistment is that those set over you are not going to order you to do something dangerous without a good reason. Risking life and limb should be for serious purposes, not for someone’s promotion. When people no longer believe that their mission is important they make mistakes.

A point that many people miss is that this administration has done such a good job de-humanizing the “enemy,” that American forces view all Arabs as the enemy. You can’t trust people you believe to be the enemy and both the Iraqi and American forces are caught in this web of lies.

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a couple of days, but Ellroon at Rants from the Rookery beat me to it: Another attempted shut down of a blog by legal threats.

Lisa at All Hat and No Cattle is being threatened with a libel suit by Joe Scarborough for her web page on the death of one of Joe’s office staff in Fort Walton Beach under mysterious circumstances.

The page has been up for years, so why bring it up now? The point of the page is the remarkable lack of coverage by the local media of this event, even though it occurred during the same time as the Gary Condit / Chandra Levy media scrum. The case was poorly investigated and poorly reported, and Lisa details the problems and wonders why?

You have wonder if Joe’s attorney has ever heard of the Sullivan “Actual Malice” Rule which is the reason the Swift Boaters can get away with their crap. If you are a politician, you make yourself a target and have to prove actual malice as well as falsehood to win a libel case. If you know you can’t prevail in court, the only reason for talking about a lawsuit is to intimidate someone. Joe was once a practicing attorney, he should know these things.

The BBC, CNN, and MSNBC are all flashing about an explosion in the US embassy in Athens, Greece at around 11PM CST. No word on any injuries.

Update: Here’s the Reuters stub and the BBC stub. Not much information yet.

Will Bunch at Attyhood compares the Shrubbery’s reading with LBJ’s State of Union of 01/10/1967: “E-Day”: It was 40 years ago today.

That may explain this reaction noted in the CNN report, Sparring senators threaten Iraq fund cut, filibuster:

One of those Republicans, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, showed his strong opposition to Bush’s plan Thursday during Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

“Madam Secretary, when you set in motion the kind of policy that the president is talking about here, it’s very, very dangerous,” said Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War combat veteran. “As a matter of fact, I have to say, Madam Secretary, that I think this speech given last night by this president represents the most dangerous foreign policy blunder in this country since Vietnam — if it’s carried out.”

About that filibuster, Harry Reid says that based upon the dozen Republican Senators who have spoken in opposition to the plan, he’s not concerned.

The BBC is reporting US forces storm Iranian consulate in Irbil in Kurdish territory and detained six Iranian diplomats. They also took documents and computers from the offices.

The NPR report on the hourly update this morning said the Kurds are angry and there is tension between US and Kurdish forces.

Great, they decide to really antagonize the one group in Iraq that doesn’t totally hate the US.

I would note that the seizure of the US embassy in Teheran was by student radicals, not the armed forces of Iran, and it occurred in Iran, not a separate country. “Jerry” Boykin may be on his way out [praise be to Robert Gates], but this smells like one of his stupid ideas.

The BBC talked to various people about their reaction to the speech on the world service this morning and their interview with an Iraqi exile, a woman forced to leave Iraq after death threats was illuminating for her clear understanding of the Shrubbery. She said he only listens to himself and people who agree with him, he never consults with the Iraqis before making these decisions.

They also conducted some interviews with people in a sports bar in Seaside, California, outside of Camp Pendleton. After several quotes from Marines in the bar, who were all saying “it’s our job” and “Semper Fi,” the reporter asked a waitress what the Marines said when the media wasn’t there. She said that they wondered why they couldn’t come home after Saddam was hanged and let the Iraqis take care of their own business.

Today the Shrubbery is off for a photo op at an Army post to hide from his critics by surrounding himself with the people who are paying the real price for his arrogance. It may be time for the Democrats to take away the keys to Air Force One, and make the guy spend some time in the office doing some work.

The Shrubbery read a speech, and CNN felt compelled to write about it. Their essay is titled: Bush will add more than 20,000 troops to Iraq [not exactly catchy].

Bush recognized that the progress of the war is “unacceptable to the American people — and it is unacceptable to me,” adding, “Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.”

…snip

Emerging from their meeting with Bush about 3:15 p.m. ET, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said they felt they were not able to give input to the Bush plan.

Their meeting “was notification, not consultation,” said Pelosi.

…snip

The Republican congressional leadership is standing behind President Bush’s new plan, and faulted Democrats for not offering their own plan for victory.

…snip

A number of Republican senators — including Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas — have publicly questioned whether Bush’s plan to increase troop strength will help stabilize Iraq.

“A troop surge in Baghdad would put more American troops at risk to address a problem that is not a military problem,” Coleman said Wednesday on the Senate floor.

“It would put more American soldiers in the crosshairs of sectarian violence and create more targets. I just don’t believe this makes sense,” Coleman said.

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I caught most of the Terry Gross [Fresh Air, January 9, 2007] interview, Frank Luntz Explains ‘Words that Work’, and it was an amazing display of delusion and propaganda.

Luntz wires focus groups and reads a thesaurus to them to find the best word to describe the next Republican outrage or to maximize the value of attacks on critics. Words aren’t selected for their accuracy of meaning, but for their emotional impact. Luntz is selecting a vocabulary based on its appeal to the “lizard brain.”

Northstar of People’s Republic of Seabrook has a Horsey cartoon in the post, It’s all about the propaganda, that illustrates this point.

The new “Enemy of the State” feature on Fox News’ Hannity’s America is an example of what happens when Republicans don’t hire Luntz, their repressive authoritarian face is shown. Even Stalin dressed it up by calling them “enemies of the people.” Not to rain on their parade, but the “founding fathers” were “enemies of the state.”

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