Past Peak: June 2006 Archives

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June 30, 2006

Bumper Sticker

Activism

Seen in traffic:

Without dissent, it isn't America

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Friday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

Today's Gumpagraph. Kent is 'Gumpa' to his grandson Sebastian.

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

A powerful storm in Washington, D.C. knocked over a 100-year-old Elm tree on the White House lawn. President Bush was not hurt because he was playing in a different tree at the time. — Conan O'Brien

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June 29, 2006

Thursday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

The White House is mad at the New York Times because they broke the story that the White House is secretly tracking our banking transactions. They're looking out for when people suddenly withdraw large amounts of cash — you know, either terrorists or people who need to fill up their SUV. In fact, President Bush is so angry at the New York Times he said today he's not even going to pretend to read it anymore. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 08:41 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 28, 2006

Posts Will Be Sparse For A Few Days

Environment

Saw "An Inconvenient Truth" again tonight, this time with my daughters. It's a masterpiece of explication. See it if you can. It's most important message: global warming is happening now.

I'll be leaving in the morning to drive to Pennsylvania with my younger daughter Molly to visit my ailing father. Internet access will be intermittent, so I don't know how much posting I'll be doing over the next few days. We'll be staying in Reading, one of the Pennsylvania cities hit by the flooding. I expect that to be sobering and eerie, after seeing Gore explain how global warming models predict exactly the kind of unusually heavy rains and flooding that we're seeing. Welcome to the future.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:36 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Wednesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

Posted by Jonathan at 10:31 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

The flooding was so bad in Washington that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called the president and said, "You're on your own pal." — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 10:30 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 27, 2006

The Real WMD

Activism Environment

Parade Magazine, which reaches 75 million people, began its Sunday cover story "How Climate Change Affects You Right Now" with this bold sentence:

As we learned last year in New Orleans, weather can be a weapon of mass destruction.

Momentum is building.

Global warming: the real WMD. Pass it on.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:59 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

AIT

Activism

Reaching the young. Yes!

Posted by Jonathan at 11:55 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Bumper Sticker

Humor & Fun

Bumper sticker I saw tonight:

BILLIONAIRES FOR BUSH
Tax cuts for the rich create jobs. Honest.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:53 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Tuesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

Posted by Jonathan at 02:31 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Heavy rains caused so much flooding in Washington, D.C. today that they had to close down the National Archives where they keep the Constitution. They had to close it down. Luckily, the Bush administration isn't using the Constitution anymore. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 02:29 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 26, 2006

DC Tastes Its Future

Environment

If you've seen Al Gore's movie, you know that global warming is expected to produce torrential rains and flooding in some locales, drought in others. Today, the pols in Washington got a preview, as the capital got more than a foot of rain, with more rain forecast for the remainder of the week.

It's clear that somebody at ABC saw the movie. Excerpt:

The massive downpours this morning shorting out government buildings with flooded basements, seizing up legislative communications, snarling traffic access to white columned buildings, fit exactly the pattern predicted decades ago as a consequence of global warming.
It's a simple fourth grade science lesson: the warmer the air, the more moisture it can hold.

Winds suck up more water vapor from oceans and farmlands — leaving more agricultural drought behind — and when they finally do dump that moisture out as rain, the downpours are much heavier.

Not just in the United States. Worldwide, such downpours have been increasing markedly over recent decades — exactly as predicted by scientists.

In the 1980's, leading American climatologists stood in front of Congress, trying to get across the reality of this planetary threat.

One of the world's most resepected climatologists, NASA's James Hansen, even used a dice metaphor to make it clear.

If you paint one side of the die red, you'll roll red about one in six times. Paint four red, and you'll roll red on average four in six times.

Manmade greenhouse gas emissions, Hansen explained, were loading the dice so that we'd have such extreme weather far more frequently. And, exactly as predicted, we and the world have — well above what the frequency of any natural weather cycles can explain. [...]

And the president amid this morning's wind and rain?

In the White House, only hours after that old elm had fallen, Bush was addressed by a reporter, thus: "I know that you are not planning to see Al Gore's new movie, but do you agree with the premise that global warming is a real and significant threat to the planet?"

"I have said consistently," answered Bush, "that global warming is a serious problem. There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused. We ought to get beyond that debate and start implementing the technologies necessary ... to be good stewards of the environment, become less dependent on foreign sources of oil..."

The President — as far as the extensive and repeated researches of this and many other professional journalists, as well as all scientists credible on this subject, can find — is wrong on one crucial and no doubt explosive issue. When he said — as he also did a few weeks ago — that "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" ... well, there really is no such debate.

At least none above what is proverbially called "the flat earth society level."

Not one scientist of any credibility on this subject has presented any evidence for some years now that counters the massive and repeated evidence — gathered over decades and come at in dozens of ways by all kinds of professional scientists around the world — that the burning of fossil fuels is raising the world's average temperature.

Or that counters the findings that the burning of these fuels is doing so in a way that is very dangerous for mankind, that will almost certainly bring increasingly devastating effects in the coming decades.

One small group of special interest businesses leaders — those of some fossil fuel companies — have been well documented by journalist Ross Gelbspan and others to have been fighting a PR campaign for 15 years to keep the American public confused about the wide and deep scientific consensus on this.

They've aimed, as Gelbspan explains, to keep us thinking that (to borrow the president's words this morning) "There's a debate over whether it's manmade or naturally caused" — though no open and thorough journalism this reporter knows of can find any such thing. [...]

Meteorologists predict more heavy rain this week along the mid-Atlantic seaboard.

Climatologists predict much the same for the coming decades. [Emphasis added]

If you haven't seen Gore's extraordinary movie yet, you should. Your survival may ultimately depend on it. Before long, the irresponsibility of Bush and the rest of the puerile know-nothings will be seen for what it is. Hopefully, before it's too late.

New Orleans was only the beginning.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:36 PM | Comments (3) | Link to this

Monday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

Posted by Jonathan at 11:24 AM | Comments (4) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

President Bush got back tonight from his very brief trip to Europe. Boy, remember the old days when it used to take longer than two days to visit all of our allies? — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 25, 2006

James Hansen On Global Warming

Environment

James Hansen, probably America's top climate scientist, has an excellent article on global warming in the The New York Review of Books.

June 24, 2006

Bill Clinton On Peak Oil

Peak Oil

From Straight Talk, via Oil Drum, a warning from Bill Clinton on Peak Oil:

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton has urged newspaper editors to focus more attention on the depletion of the world's oil reserves. In a June 17 speech to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies convention in Little Rock, Arkansas, Clinton said a "significant number of petroleum geologists" have warned that the world could be nearing the peak in oil production.
Clinton suggested that at current consumption rates (now more than 30 billion barrels per year, according to the International Energy Agency), the world could be out of "recoverable oil" in 35 to 50 years, elevating the risk of "resource-based wars of all kinds."

During a question-and-answer period, the Georgia Straight asked Clinton if he believed that Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, and United Arab Emirates had exaggerated claims about their proven oil reserves. The four Persian Gulf states are among the six nations with the greatest listed proven reserves. (Canada and Iraq are the other two.)

"I don’t know if they're overstating their reserves," Clinton replied. He added that he expects oil prices will reach US$100 per barrel "in five years or less." [...]

At the AAN convention, Clinton delivered a detailed scientific explanation of some of the problems with the Ghawar oil reservoir [in Saudi Arabia, the world's largest]. Clinton echoed [Matthew] Simmons's claim that massive amounts of water have been injected into Ghawar to maintain oil pressure. "It implies less oil than we previously thought," Clinton said.

Clinton also recommended that everyone at the convention read The Empty Tank: Oil, Gas, Hot Air, and the Coming Global Financial Catastrophe, by Jeremy Leggett, a petroleum geologist and international campaigner for Greenpeace...Clinton also emphasized the importance of developing the alternative-energy industry and weaning his country off its dependence on imported oil. He claimed that promoting renewable power would also stimulate the American economy.

"Unlike us, the U.K. has found a source of new jobs in this decade," he said, referring to the Blair government's efforts in this area. "The implications are dire if we don't do something." [Emhpasis added]

Somebody tell Dubya.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:36 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Saturday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

This is a little frightening. The White House says North Korea has missiles with the capability of being launched in North Korea and landing on the west coast of the United States...I was thinking about this and I was like, "Oh hell, that's Leno's problem." — David Letterman

Posted by Jonathan at 12:03 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 23, 2006

Uniforms, And Shoes

9/11, "War On Terror"

This "home-grown terrorist" story is a laugh. What's not funny, though, is the way people have been acting like these guys are for real. Knight-Ridder:

Federal officials framed the case as one against "homegrown terrorists" who were infiltrated by an informant before they could take action, but said the seven could have posed a significant danger.
[Group leader Narseal] Batiste called them "soldiers" in an "Islamic army" that would wage a "full ground war" against the United States, according to the indictment. The suspects called the Liberty City warehouse in which they met "the embassy," officials said.

Batiste allegedly said he wanted to attend al Qaeda training, along with five of his "soldiers," during the second week of April.

He was known to his alleged followers as Brother Naz and Prince Manna, according to the indictment.

"Left unchecked, these homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like al Qaeda...," Gonzales said, comparing them to terrorists in Madrid, London and Toronto. "What we had was a situation where individuals in America made plans to hurt Americans."

Woo woo. Scary stuff. But:

They were not able to obtain explosives and no weapons were found, according to authorities.
"It was more aspirational than operational," said Pistole, the FBI's deputy director.

The group, however, asked the supposed al Qaeda representative to provide machine guns, boots, uniforms and vehicles, the indictment said.

Uniforms? Oops. There's more:

Batiste gave the supposed al Qaeda representative a shopping list of materials he needed — boots, uniforms, machine guns, radios and vehicles.
Six days later, Batiste outlined his mission to wage war against the U.S. government from within using an army of his "soldiers" to help destroy the Sears Tower. He also gave the informant a list of shoe sizes for his soldiers.

On Dec. 29, the informant delivered the military boots to Batiste, who expanded his shopping list to include radios, binoculars, bulletproof vests, firearms, vehicles and $50,000 in cash. [Emphasis added]

Because when you're getting ready to destroy the Sears Tower, what could be more important than getting yourself some of them al Qaeda uniforms, and some shoes.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:54 PM | Comments (2) | Link to this

Bill Of Particulars

Iraq

Are Iraqis better off because of the US invasion? William Blum has compiled a list of the many ways they're worse off. It's a long list.

Posted by Jonathan at 10:01 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Friday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

Posted by Jonathan at 11:26 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

It was so hot today that President Bush met with European leaders just for the chilly reception. — David Letterman

Posted by Jonathan at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 22, 2006

Crackpots

9/11, "War On Terror" Politics

Reading Ron Susskind's The One Percent Doctrine, I came across the following anecdote that pretty much sums up the crackpot flailing of the Bush White House in its "war on terror":

The result [of 9/11]: potent, wartime autority was granted to those guiding the ship of state...In the wide, diffuse "war on terror," so much of it occurring the shadows — with no transparency and perfunctory oversight — the administration could say anything it wanted to say. That was a blazing insight of this period [2002]. The administration could create whatever reality was convenient. [...]
What, for instance, did all of this mean upon the capture of [Abu] Zubaydah? A freeing of rhetoric for the "wartime" President to say what he felt desperately needed to be said.

Which Bush did, first, in a speech...on April 9, 2002. "The other day we hauled in a guy named Abu Zubaydah. He's one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States. He's not plotting and planning anymore. He's where he belongs," the President said to raucous cheers from a room full of Republican Party contributors. [...]

This message — and the characterizing of Zubaydah as the "chief of operations" for all of al Qaeda, a putative "number three" to bin Laden and Zawahiri — would be a drum the President, the Vice President,...Condoleezza Rice, and others would beat relentlessly that April and the months to follow.

Meanwhile, Dan Coleman and other knowledgeable members of the tribe of al Qaeda hunters at CIA were reading Zubaydah's top secret diary and shaking their heads.

"This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality," Coleman told a top official at FBI after a few days reviewing the Zubaydah haul. "That's why they let him fly all over the world doing meet and greet. That's why people used his name on all sorts of calls and e-mails. He was like a travel agent, the guy who booked your flights. You can see from what he writes how burdened he is with all these logistics — getting families of operatives, wives and kids, in and out of countries. He knew very little about real operations, or strategy. He was expendable, you know, the greeter...Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar's Palace, shaking hands."

This opinion was echoed at the top of the CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President. While Bush was out in public claiming Zubaydah's grandiose malevolence, his private disappointment fell, as it often would, on [CIA Director] Tenet...

"I said he was important," Bush said to Tenet at one of their daily briefings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?"

"No sir, Mr. President."

Back in Langley, Tenet pressed subordinates over what could be done to get Zubaydah to talk. His injuries were serious, but...[the CIA] found [him] some of the finest medical professionals in America. CIA agents alighted at their medical offices and soon they were on flights to Pakistan.

"He received the finest medical attention on the planet," said one CIA official. "We got him in very good health, so we could start to torture him." [...]

"Around the room a lot of people [at CIA] just rolled their eyes when we heard comments from the White House. I mean, Bush and Cheney knew what we knew about Zubaydah. The guy had psychological issues. He was, in a way, expendable. It was like calling someone who runs a company's in-house travel department the COO," said one top CIA official. {...]

According to CIA sources, [Zubaydah] was water-boarded, a technique...creating the sensation of drowning. He was beaten, though not in a way to worsen his injuries. He was repeatedly threatened, and made certain of his impending death. His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with deafening, continuous noise and harsh lights. [...]

Under this duress, Zubaydah told them that shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda. That information traveled the globe in an instant. Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, Customs, and various related agencies joined local police to surround malls. Zubaydah said banks &mdash yes, banks — were a priority. FBI agents led officers in a race to surround and secure banks. And also supermarkets — al Qaeda was planning to blow up crowded supermarkets, several at one time...And the water system — a target, too. Nuclear plants, naturally. And apartment buildings.

Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target. Of course, if you multiplied by ten, there still wouldn't be enough public servants in America to surround and secure the supermarkets. Or the banks. But they tried. [Emphasis added]

The stuff of some particularly vicious satire. They pick up a mentally ill nobody, pump him up in public statements as al Qaeda's number three, then, to save face for Bush, they act as if it were actually true. They give him medical treatment to get him well enough to torture, and under torture he starts spewing out every conceivable plot under the sun. Then, the final insanity: thousands of agents and law enforcement officers are sent scrambling to Zubaydah's imaginary targets, when they presumably could have been doing something useful.

These jokers have our collective futures in their hands. It's embarrassing.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:57 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Thursday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

President Bush is creating a Marine sanctuary in the Pacific Ocean off the northwest islands of Hawaii. You know what that means? No oil there. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 21, 2006

Neurons Regenerate After All

Science/Technology

This is a surprise. For as long as I can remember, I've read that adult humans don't grow new brain cells. Whatever we've got, going into adulthood, we're stuck with. Apparently, not so. It depends on your environment. Barbara Ehrenreich, in the current issue of The Progressive:

[A] recent article in the new pop-science magazine, Seed, makes me think that our office environments [cubicles and windowless offices] may be more damaging than I suspected. The article is about neurogenesis, the generation of new neurons within adult brains. According to longstanding neuroscientific belief, this is impossible: Neurons cannot regenerate, and we are stuck with the number we were born with, minus those lost to alcohol or Alzheimer's. Princeton psychologist Elizabeth Gould has shown otherwise: Neurons can regenerate. The reason this hadn't been observed before is that the animals studied lived out their short lives in plain laboratory metal cages.
Gould studies little rat-sized monkeys called marmosets. Put them in metal cages, kill them, and slice their brains for microscopy, and you find very little neurogenesis. But if you let them live in an "enriched enclosure" — the marmoset equivalent of Versailles, featuring "branches, hidden food, and a rotation of toys" — neurogenesis kicks in, along with an increase in the number and strength of synaptic connections.

Another scientist, Fernando Nottebohm, working at my alma mater, Rockefeller University, has found a similar effect in birds. Keep finches and canaries in metal cages and you get listless, tuneless, birds with equally dull brain tissue. Only when studied in the wild do the birds sing and, not coincidentally, generate a profusion of new brain cells. [Emphasis added]

Neurons being regenerated. That's a pretty fundamental thing to have been missed for all these years.

Here's something to consider. Much of our understanding of biology and medicine comes from experiments involving animals held in the bleakest conditions of unhappy captivity. You have to wonder the extent to which that's skewed our understanding across the board. It's like trying to arrive at a balanced understanding of human organisms by studying only the inmates of Auschwitz. It's a measure of the erosion of our basic common sense that any of this comes as a surprise.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:21 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

To See Ourselves As Others See Us

Iran Iraq Palestine/Middle East

Who's the biggest threat to world peace? We are, according to a poll spanning 15 nations. Guardian, via CommonDreams:

George Bush's six years in office have so damaged the image of the US that people worldwide see Washington as a bigger threat to world peace than Tehran, according to a global poll.
The Washington-based Pew Research Centre, in a poll of 17,000 people in 15 countries between March and May, found more people concerned about the US presence in Iraq than about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons ambitions. [...]

The survey, carried out annually, shows a continued decline in support for the US since 1999. [...]

But even in the UK, Washington's closest ally, favourable ratings have slumped from 83% in 1999 to 56% this year. The pattern is similar in France, down from 62% to 39%, Germany 78% to 37%, and Spain 50% to 23%.

In Muslim countries with which the US has traditionally enjoyed a good relationship, such as Turkey - a member of Nato - and Indonesia, there have also been slumps. In Indonesia favourable ratings for the US have dropped from 75% to 30%, and in Turkey from 52% to 12%.

"It's all [because of] Iraq," Carroll Doherty, associate director of the Pew Centre, said. [...]

Favourable ratings of the US in India dropped over the year from 71% to 56%. [...]

Throughout the period the poll was conducted the crisis over Iran's nuclear programme, intensified by hardline comments from its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was repeatedly in the news. Iraq, too, has been in the news on an almost daily basis, with the formation of a new Iraqi government being accompanied by fears of a civil war.

Only in the US and Germany is Iran seen as a greater danger than the US in Iraq. Public opinion in 12 of the other countries - Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Indonesia, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey, Pakistan, Nigeria, India and China - cite the US presence in Iraq as being the greater danger. Opinion in Japan was evenly divided.

As well as Iraq and Iran, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is also high on the list of issues that present a danger to world peace. Public opinion in about a third of the countries polled put it at the top of their list of threats. [...]

By contrast, concern about Iran has almost doubled in the US over the past two years. Some 46% of Americans view Mr Ahmadinejad's government as "a great danger" to stability in the Middle East and world peace, up from 26% in 2003. The concern in the US is shared in Germany, where 51% see Iran as a great danger to world peace, against 18% three years ago. [...]

Those are remarkable numbers: US approval cut more or less in half under Bush. Meanwhile, the media blitz here in the US has done its work: nearly half of Americans now view Iran as "a great danger". They didn't arrive at that conclusion on their own. It's disheartening to realize what sheep we are. Small wonder that media ownership and control is such a priority for elites here and elsewhere.

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Wednesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

Posted by Jonathan at 12:01 PM | Comments (1) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Republicans in the House of Representatives forced everyone to spend an entire day discussing a non-binding resolution praising the troops and labeling Iraq part of the War on Terror. Later they will debate a resolution declaring kittens "adorable". — Jon Stewart

Posted by Jonathan at 11:57 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 20, 2006

Iraq: Millions Of Barrels Dumped

Disasters Environment Global Guerrillas Iraq

So, how's that Iraqi reconstruction coming along? Check this out. NYT:

An environmental disaster is brewing in the heartland of Iraq's northern Sunni-led insurgency, where Iraqi officials say that in a desperate move to dispose of millions of barrels of an oil refinery byproduct called "black oil," the government pumped it into open mountain valleys and leaky reservoirs next to the Tigris River and set it on fire.
The resulting huge black bogs are threatening the river and the precious groundwater in the region, which is dotted with villages and crisscrossed by itinerant sheep herders, but also contains Iraq's great northern refinery complex at Baiji.

The fires are no longer burning, but the suffocating plumes of smoke they created carried as far as 40 miles downwind to Tikrit, the provincial capital that formed Saddam Hussein's base of power.

An Iraqi environmental engineer who has visited the dumping area described it as a kind of black swampland of oil-saturated terrain and large standing pools of oil stretching across several mountain valleys. The clouds of smoke, said the engineer, Ayad Younis, "were so heavy that they obstructed breathing and visibility in the area and represent a serious environmental danger." [...]

...He added that at least some of the black oil was already seeping into the river.

Exactly how far those pollutants will travel is unknown, but the Tigris passes through dozens of population centers from Baghdad to Basra. In the past, oil slicks created when insurgents struck oil pipelines in the Baiji area have traveled the entire length of the river.

As much as 40 percent of the petroleum processed at Iraq's damaged and outdated refineries pours forth as black oil, the heavy, viscous substance that used to be extensively exported to more efficient foreign operations for further refining. But the insurgency has stalled government-controlled exports by taking control of roadways and repeatedly hitting pipelines in the area, Iraqi and American officials have said.

So the backed-up black oil — known to the rest of the world as the lower grades of fuel oil — was sent along a short pipeline from Baiji and dumped in a mountainous area called Makhul.

A series of complaints handed up the Iraqi government chain were conveyed to oil industry officials, and as of last weekend the fires had at least temporarily stopped, but black oil was still being poured into the open valleys, according to Mr. Younis, who works in the province's Department of Environment and Health Safety. [...]

But with few options for disposing of Baiji's current production of black oil and so much at stake for the Iraqi economy, it is unclear whether the government will even be able to hold the line on the burning at Makhul. A United States official in Baghdad, speaking anonymously according to official procedure, said earlier this month that Baiji was still turning out about 90,000 barrels a day of refined products, which would yield about 36,000 barrels a day of black oil.

Iraq's refineries will grind to a halt if the black oil does not go somewhere. "Unless we find a way of dealing with the fuel oil, our factories will not work," said Shamkhi H. Faraj, director of economics and marketing at the Iraqi Oil Ministry.

The dumping and burning has embarrassed ministry officials and exposed major gaps in the American-designed reconstruction program, even as President Bush appeals to the international community for much more rebuilding money in the wake of his visit to Baghdad. [Emphasis added]

This is how a modern insurgency can bring a country to its knees: isolated, relatively low-risk actions by small teams that hit the country's economic infrastructure at key points where the effects cascade and are magnified manyfold. Blow up an oil pipeline here, sabotage a refinery there, and in the end, you've got the government dumping millions of barrels of heavy oil into valleys and reservoirs. The downward spiral feeds on itself.

Posted by Jonathan at 11:17 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Tuesday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

Posted by Jonathan at 10:15 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Good news from President Bush. At a press conference yesterday, he was upbeat, he was cheerful, he was optimistic. Yeah, that's right. He's drinking again. ... They say he's having a pretty good week and you got to give him credit because, earlier in the week, President Bush quietly sneaked into Iraq. Here's an idea: Why don't we quietly sneak out of Iraq? — David Letterman

Posted by Jonathan at 10:09 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 19, 2006

US Rejected Iranian Proposal In 2003

Iran Politics

The Washington Post reported yesterday that in 2003 Iran sought to open a dialogue with the US, but the administration rejected the proposal out of hand. Excerpt:

Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces three years ago, an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States, and the fax suggested everything was on the table — including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups.
But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran, former administration officials said.

Last month, the Bush administration abruptly shifted policy and agreed to join talks previously led by European countries over Iran's nuclear program. But several former administration officials say the United States missed an opportunity in 2003 at a time when American strength seemed at its height — and Iran did not have a functioning nuclear program or a gusher of oil revenue from soaring energy demand.

"At the time, the Iranians were not spinning centrifuges, they were not enriching uranium," said Flynt Leverett, who was a senior director on the National Security Council staff then and saw the Iranian proposal. He described it as "a serious effort, a respectable effort to lay out a comprehensive agenda for U.S.-Iranian rapprochement." [...]

Parsi said the U.S. victory in Iraq frightened the Iranians because U.S. forces had routed in three weeks an army that Iran had failed to defeat during a bloody eight-year war.

The document lists a series of Iranian aims for the talks, such as ending sanctions, full access to peaceful nuclear technology and a recognition of its "legitimate security interests." Iran agreed to put a series of U.S. aims on the agenda, including full cooperation on nuclear safeguards, "decisive action" against terrorists, coordination in Iraq, ending "material support" for Palestinian militias and accepting the Saudi initiative for a two-state solution in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The document also laid out an agenda for negotiations, with possible steps to be achieved at a first meeting and the development of negotiating road maps on disarmament, terrorism and economic cooperation. [...]

Leverett said Guldimann included a cover letter that it was an authoritative initiative that had the support of then-President Mohammad Khatami and supreme religious leader Ali Khamenei. [...]

Paul R. Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, said that it is true "there is less daylight between the United States and Europe, thanks in part to Rice's energetic diplomacy." But he said that only partially offsets the fact that the U.S. position is "inherently weaker now" because of Iraq. He described the Iranian approach as part of a series of efforts by Iran to engage with the Bush administration. "I think there have been a lot of lost opportunities," he said, citing as one example a failure to build on the useful cooperation Iran provided in Afghanistan. [...]

Parsi said that based on his conversations with the Iranian officials, he believes the failure of the United States to even respond to the offer had an impact on the government. Parsi, who is writing a book on Iran-Israeli relations, said he believes the Iranians were ready to dramatically soften their stance on Israel, essentially taking the position of other Islamic countries such as Malaysia. Instead, Iranian officials decided that the United States cared not about Iranian policies but about Iranian power.

The incident "strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance," Parsi said. [Emphasis added]

The gang that couldn't think straight. Have they ever been right about anything?

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Monday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

Posted by Jonathan at 01:37 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

The Supreme Court has ruled that with a warrant, police no longer have to knock before kicking your door in. Unless, of course, you're the Vice President of the United States and we're talking about shooting a man in the face. Then you can come back tomorrow. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 01:27 PM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 18, 2006

Something Doesn't Add Up

Iraq

Amid all the hoopla surrounding the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, no one but Patrick Cockburn (one of the most courageous Western journalists covering Iraq) has thought to ask how it was that al-Zarqawi, supposed terrorist arch-villain and mastermind, was living virtually unguarded with five companions that included two women and an eight-year-old girl. It doesn't add up. Cockburn:

In the days before he was tracked down and killed by US laser-guided bombs Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was living with almost no guards and only five companions, two of whom were women and one an eight year old girl. [...]
The ease with which Iraqi police and US special forces were able to reach the house after the bombing without encountering hostile fire showed that Zarqawi was never the powerful guerrilla chieftain and leader of the Iraqi resistance that Washington has claimed for over three years.

Amid the broken slabs of concrete and twisted metal was a woman's leopard skin nightgown, a magazine with a picture of Franklin Roosevelt and a leaflet apparently identifying a radio station in Latafiyah which might be a potential target for attack. It is not clear how long the little group had been in the house. [...]

The only resistance encountered by black-clad American commandos was from local Sunni villagers in the village of Ghalabiya, near Hibhib, who thought the strangers were members of a Shia death squad. Villagers who were standing guard fired into the air on seeing the commandos who in turn threw a grenade that killed five of the guards. American regular army troops later came to Ghalabiya to apologise and promise compensation to the families of the dead men.

The manner in which Zarqawi died confirms the belief that his military and political importance was always deliberately exaggerated by the US. He was a wholly obscure figure until he was denounced by US Secretary of State Colin Powell before the UN Security Council on 5 February 2003. Mr Powell identified Zarqawi as the link between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein though no evidence for this was ever produced.

Iraqi police documents were later discovered showing that Saddam Hussein's security forces, so far from collaborating with Zarqawi, were trying to arrest him. In Afganistan Zarqawi had led a small group hostile to al Qa'ida. Arriving in Iraq in 2002 hee had taken refuge in the mountain hide out of an extreme Islamic group near Halabja in Kurdistan in an area which the Iraqi government did not control.

Over the last three years Zarqawi has had a symbiotic relationship with US forces in Iraq. After the capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2003 Zarqawi was once again heavily publicised by US military and civilian spokesmen as the preeminent leader of the resistance. His name was mentioned at every press conference in Baghdad. Dubious documents were leaked to the US press. The aim of all this from Washington's point of view was to show that by invading Iraq President Bish was indeed fighting international terrorism.

US denunciations and Zarqawi's own videos of himself beheading western hostages together spread his fame throughout the Muslim world enabling him to recruit men and raise money easily. But, for all his vaunted importance, the US spokesmen admitted that Zarqawi's suicide bombers concentrated almost entirely on soft targets and were responsible for very few of the 20,000 American casualties in Iraq. [...]

It is not clear how far American or Iraqi government statements about how they located him should be believed. It appears unlikely that he was having meeting with his lieutenants, as was first suggested, given that only two other men died with him. [...]

The myth of Zarqawi, which may originally have been manufactured by Jordanian and Kurdish intelligence in 2003, was attractive to Washington because it showed that anti-occupation resistance was foreign inspired and linked to al Qa'ida. In reality the insurgency was almost entirely homegrown, reliant on near total support from the five million strong Sunni community. Its military effectiveness was far more dependant on former officers of the Iraqi army and security forces than on al-Qa'ida. They may also have helped boost Zarqawi's fame because it was convenient for them to blame their worst atrocities on him. [...]

The killing of Zarqawi is a boost for the newly formed government of Nouri al-Maliki, but Iraqis noticed that when announcing it he stood at the podium between Gen George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, and Zilmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador. "It showed the limits of Maliki's independence from the Americans," noted one Iraqi commentator. "It would have been better if they had let him make the announcement standing alone." [Emphasis added]

Why do we buy that al-Zarqawi was everything they say he was? After they've lied about everything else?

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Sunday Gumpagraph

Gumpagraphs

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Today's Bush Joke

Humor & Fun

Today in Iraq, the new prime minister instituted a ban on guns. Hey, good luck with that. — Jay Leno

Posted by Jonathan at 11:24 AM | Comments (0) | Link to this

June 17, 2006

Desert Dunkirk?

Iraq

Nicholas von Hoffman, writing in The Nation, speculates that the US military in Iraq may be facing a nightmare scenario: an overstretched and exhausted force that is forced, finally, to abandon its bases and equipment and make a desperate evacuation under fire, a la Dunkirk. Excerpts:

We could be moving toward an American Dunkirk [in Iraq]. In 1940 the defeated British Army in Belgium was driven back by the Germans to the French seacoast city of Dunkirk, where it had to abandon its equipment and escape across the English Channel on a fleet of civilian vessels, fishing smacks, yachts, small boats, anything and everything that could float and carry the defeated and wounded army to safety.
Obviously, our forces in Iraq will not be defeated in open battle by an opposing army as happened in 1940, but there is more than one way to stumble into a military disaster. Fragmented reports out of Iraq suggest we may be on our way to finding one of them. Defeat can come from overused troops. It does not help that one by one, the remaining members of the Coalition of the Willing give every appearance of sneaking out of town. [...]

Filtering out from Iraq are indicators of a military organization in danger of creeping disintegration. For three years our troops have been in a foreign land fighting God knows who for God knows why for God knows how long and God knows how many times. This now well-quoted paragraph from the June 12 edition of Newsweek hints at the price paid in order and morale: "The wife of a staff sergeant in the 3/1 battalion — members of which are currently accused of murdering Iraqi citizens in Haditha — says that there was "a total breakdown" in discipline and morale after Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani took over as battalion commander when the unit returned from Fallujah at the start of 2005.... 'There were problems in Kilo Company with drugs, alcohol, hazing, you name it,' she tells Newsweek..."I think it's more than possible that these guys were totally tweaked out on speed or something when they shot those civilians in Haditha." [...]

The Internet is alive with pessimistic stories and opinions about what may be happening, one of which informs its readers, "Military commanders in the field in Iraq admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war 'is lost' and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month. Even worse, they report the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is 'just the tip of the iceberg' with overstressed, out-of-control American soldiers pushed beyond the breaking point both physically and mentally."

The New York Times's John Burns, a good-to-go-to-war man from before the first American smart bomb fell on Baghdad, was on the air the other night warning that, in effect, the invading army had lost both the initiative and control. Readers of Juan Cole's authoritative Informed Comment blog get a daily summing-up of deaths, murders and atrocities not available to TV viewers and ordinary newspaper readers. The simple numbers tell the story of a large and growing bloodbath. [...]

The Defense Department is not telling what it knows but no wartime government ever, ever tells the truth. Even Abraham Lincoln did not let on how badly things were going, even when they were very bad indeed.

In the south of Iraq, in the Basra region, the British who occupy that sector have all but given up aggressive patrol. They are holed up in their encampments on the defensive. Some reports have it that it is now too dangerous for them to fly helicopters by day. At the point when they must choose between being overrun or withdrawing, the small contingent of British troops facing unknown numbers of militia hidden in and among a hostile population should be able to evacuate the port of Basra even under fire.

The situation for American troops may be even more precarious. While our forces are still able to carry out aggressive patrolling, it nets little except to increase popular hostility, which, of course, makes it yet easier for the various insurgents and guerrilla groups to operate against us. It appears that in many places our people may have simply hunkered down to stay out of trouble. The vast construction projects of a few years ago are all but closed down, too, as the American forces appear to be doing less and less of anything but holding on and holding out.

The shortage of troops, which three years ago was a restraining factor, has become a potential disaster, with the ever-rising level of hostilit