97 Senators vote to censure criticism of the military

in two amendments, one sponsored by Democrat Barbara Boxer, the other by Republican John Cornyn.

Russ Feingold was the only Senator voting against both amendments.

46 Republicans thought it was perfectly acceptable to attack veterans like Max Cleland and John Kerry, but outrageous to attack the credibility of General Petraeus.

22 Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman felt it was reprehensible to ever criticize members of the military.

Joe Biden and Maria Cantwell didn't vote on either measure.


(For comparison, only 5 Senators were willing to go on the record censuring the President for violating the law by spying on Americans without a warrant.)

What did I do with all those Canadian quarters anyway?

The price of a U.S. dollar in Canadian dollars.

Holy frack! Now the Canadians are going to start making fun of our money.

The Canadian dollar rose as high as $1.0008, before retreating to 99.87 U.S. cents at 4:16 p.m. in New York. It has soared 62 percent from a record low of 61.76 U.S. cents in 2002. The U.S. dollar fell as low as 99.93 Canadian cents today. The Canadian currency last closed above $1 on Nov. 25, 1976, when Pierre Trudeau was Canada's prime minister.

When George Bush became president the U.S. dollar was worth about $1.50 Canadian.

Northwest passage open. Northeast passage nearly open

Satellite mosaic of the polar ice cap during September 2007. Image courtesy ESA

The most direct route of the Northwest Passage (highlighted in the top mosaic by an orange line) across northern Canada is shown fully navigable, while the Northeast Passage (blue line) along the Siberian coast remains only partially blocked. To date, the Northwest Passage has been predicted to remain closed even during reduced ice cover by multi-year ice pack – sea ice that survives one or more summers. However, according to Pedersen, this year’s extreme event has shown the passage may well open sooner than expected.

The call of the moderate Republican

“I endorsed it,” Mr. Warner said of the Webb proposal. “I intend now to cast a vote against it.”

Webb's amendment would have required the military to grant soldiers as much time at home as they spent overseas. The vote to end debate garnered 56 votes in the Senate. A majority, but short of the 60 needed to overcome Mitch McConnell's filibuster.

40 Republicans and Independent Joe Lieberman voted against cloture.

Republicans Norm Coleman, Susan Collins, Chuck Hagel, Gordon Smith, Olympia Snowe, and John Sununu broke with their party.

Let's hope John Warner finds his lost self-respect in retirement.

How about just giving Iraq an effective legal system?

Another reason to oppose arbitrary, indefinite detention of suspects without trial:

The effort to reshape attitudes among the growing detainee population is aimed at addressing a problem that has vexed U.S. troops in Iraq for the past four years: Military detention facilities have served as breeding grounds for extremist views, transforming some prisoners into hard-core insurgents, according to military analysts.

We want the guilty in jail, and the innocent out. Consider that while we debate the restoration of habeas corpus to our legal system.

Russ Feingold calls for an end to the military mission in Iraq

Senator Feingold plans to use the Defense authorization bill to end the Iraq war:

“Last night, we heard the President tell the nation that he intends to keep a large number of U.S. troops bogged down in Iraq indefinitely, while Al Qaeda continues to strengthen and regenerate in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Feingold said. “While many Democrats and Republicans have acknowledged the President’s strategy is the wrong approach, Congress has so far failed to take strong action to end it. Congress must use its power to end this misguided policy – a policy which has stretched our military to the breaking point, hobbled our ability to go after those who attacked us on 9/11, and endangered our national security.”

Time for Congress to end this

John Edwards:

"Has there been serious progress to a political solution?"

"The answer to that is no," he said in answering his own question.

Edwards said, as he's done in the past, that Congress should pass the next Iraq spending bill only with a timetable for withdrawal attached. And if Bush should veto that legislation, Congress should keep re-submitting the same bill. "It is time for the Congress to end this," he said. "It's time for the Congress to stand its ground."

Chris Dodd:

"Rather than picking up votes, by removing the deadline to get our troops out of Iraq you have lost this Democrat's vote.

"Despite the fact that this has been the bloodiest summer of the war and report after report says that there has been little to no political progress, the White House continues to argue that their strategy is working.

"It is clear that half measures are not going to stop this President or end this war.

"I cannot and will not support any measure that does not have a firm and enforceable deadline to complete the redeployment of combat troops from Iraq. Only then will Congress be able to send a clear message to the President that we are changing course in Iraq, and a message to the Iraqis that they need to get their political house in order.

Barack Obama:

"There is an eerie echo to the President's words today. Five years ago, he made a misleading case to the American people that the trail to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden somehow led through Iraq, and too many in Washington followed without asking the hard questions that should have been raised. Now we are dealing with the consequences of that failure of candor and judgment, and the President is using the politics of fear to continue a wrong-headed policy. It's time to turn the page on the failed Bush-Cheney strategy and conventional Washington thinking, remove our combat troops from Iraq, mount a long overdue surge of diplomacy, and focus our attention on a resurgent al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Irrational behavior and the Iraq war

For those of you wondering why Congress and the President can't end the disaster that is the Iraq war; I think the best explanation is right here:

The problem surfaces when the bidders get up close to a dollar. After 99 cents the last vestige of profitability disappears, but the bidding continues between the two highest players. They now realize that they stand to lose no matter what, but that they can still buffer their losses by winning the dollar. They just have to outlast the other player. Following this strategy, the two hapless students usually run the bid up several dollars, turning the apparent shot at easy money into a ghastly battle of spiraling disaster.

Theoretically, there is no stable outcome once the dynamic gets going. The only clear limit is the exhaustion of one of the player's total funds. In the classroom, the auction generally ends with the grudging decision of one player to "irrationally" accept the larger loss and get out of the terrible spiral. Economists call the dollar auction pattern an irrational escalation of commitment. We might also call it the war in Iraq.

This is why war supporters always complain about their critics "looking backwards". It doesn't matter that the Iraq war has become more expensive than it was ever worth. All that matters is that we might end up in a situation that's slightly better than the one we are in today.
h/t Andrew Sullivan

Mitt Romney attacks his home state

There's an old saying that goes, "you dance with the one who brung ya". Mitt Romney doesn't subscribe to that creed. He routinely ridicules the people who elected him Governor, and talks about his 4 years in office as though he had staged a one-man battle against the forces of darkness.

"Coming from Massachusetts, I saw first hand the liberal future, and it doesn't work. That's why I ran against Ted Kennedy. Liberal social programs weren't solving poverty; they were in fact creating a culture of poverty. I didn't win, but at least Teddy had to take out a mortgage on his home to beat me.

"Massachusetts became center stage for the liberal social agenda - sort of San Francisco east, Nancy Pelosi style.

"Ten months into my term, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said our Constitution requires gay marriage. John Adams, who wrote it, would be surprised.

Massachusetts, for the record, has one of the lowest rates of poverty in the nation (and has for decades).

It also has the lowest divorce rate, not that that has anything to do with gay marriage.

And how did Romney attempt to stop the liberal hordes from destroying his state? Did he marshal bills through the State House? Did he rally like-minded citizens against the extremists? Did he use his phenomenal leadership skills to turn the tide in his favor?

No.

"I vetoed bills, and filed new bills. I enforced a law that banned out-of-state same sex couples from coming to Massachusetts to get married. I went to the court again and again, I testified before Congress for the federal marriage amendment, and I championed our successful drive that collected 170,000 signatures for a citizen ballot initiative to protect marriage.

Sadly for Romney, most of his vetos were overriden, he failed in his appeals to the courts and he was ultimately replaced by a pro gay-marriage, liberal Democrat.

Sea Ice extent as of August 22, 2007. Image courtesy of NASA.

If your life's goal is standing at the North Pole, you'd better book your tickets now.

If the increased rate of melting continues, the summertime Arctic could be totally free of ice by 2030.

Mark Serreze, an Arctic specialist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University in Denver, said: "It's amazing. It's simply fallen off a cliff and we're still losing ice."

The Arctic has now lost about a third of its ice since satellite measurements began thirty years ago, and the rate of loss has accelerated sharply since 2002.

Dr Serreze said: "If you asked me a couple of years ago when the Arctic could lose all of its ice then I would have said 2100, or 2070 maybe. But now I think that 2030 is a reasonable estimate. It seems that the Arctic is going to be a very different place within our lifetimes, and certainly within our childrens' lifetimes."

On the up side, you can now sail the Northwest Passage. The National Snow and Ice Data Center has the details:

Another notable aspect of August 2007 was the opening of the Northwest Passage. During August 2007, the passage was the most navigable that people have seen since monitoring began. The Northeast Passage, along the Russian coast, is still blocked by fairly heavy ice conditions north of the Taymyr Peninsula.

Might the Northeast Passage open in the next few weeks? We will be monitoring the situation.

Alan Keyes (2004): on the brilliance of the Iraq war

We attacked Iraq because it was easy. North Korea and Iran might have fought back.

From the 2004 Illinois Senate debate:

MODERATOR: Let's talk about some of the decisions that might have to be made. There may not be any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but there are such weapons in Iran, there are such weapons in North Korea. Ambassador Keyes, how strongly would you consider preemptive action against those nations?

KEYES: Well, all such decisions--and that's what I thought was one of the brilliant things about the Iraq decision--is that you go after those things that are most susceptible to the right kinds of action. Iraq was susceptible to direct military action, and so the President acted. If you're talking about North Korea, you have to look at the entire context in which we deal with the North Korean threat. And that includes relationships with the Chinese and the possibility that you're talking about something that could escalate into a larger war. We also have mechanisms preexisting for bringing international pressure to bear on both the North Koreans and the Iranians, when it comes to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly nuclear weapons.

This basically falls into the "suck on this" school of foreign policy advocated by Tom Friedman.

bin Laden "virtually impotent" since 2002

Once again the Bush brigade is mocking the man they're incapable of finding.

The Taliban fled for the hills. Bin Laden, it seemed, would be cornered. Indeed, on Dec. 15, CIA operatives listening on a captured jihadist radio could hear bin Laden himself say "Forgive me" to his followers, pinned down in their mountain caves near Tora Bora.

As it happened, however, the hunt for bin Laden was unraveling on the very same day. As recalled by Gary Berntsen, the CIA officer in charge of the covert team working with the Northern Alliance, code-named Jawbreaker, the military refused his pleas for 800 Army Rangers to cut off bin Laden's escape. Maj. Gen. Dell Dailey, the Special Ops commander sent out by Central Command, told Berntsen he was doing an "excellent job," but that putting in ground troops might offend America's Afghan allies.

They've been making the claim that bin Laden is irrelevant ever since.

"Everybody wants to know where Osama bin Laden is. The next question is, who cares?" says one Defense Department official, reflecting an attitude widespread in Pentagon corridors.

Since that quote was made (in 2002), the impotent man has been involved in terrorist attacks against Tunisia, Bali, Mombasa, Casablanca, Istanbul, Egypt, London and Madrid and members of his organization have been intercepted planning attacks in Denmark, Scotland and Germany.

Maybe president Bush should be more concerned about his own inadequacy.

Duncan Hunter on the perks of Guantanamo

REP. HUNTER: Those guys get taxpayer-paid-for prayer rugs. They have prayer five times a day. They’ve all gained weight. The last time I looked at the menu, they had honey-glazed chicken and rice pilaf on Friday. That’s how we treat the terrorists.

They’ve got health care that’s better than most HMOs, and they’ve got something else that no Democrat politician in America has. They live in a place called Guantanamo where not one person has ever been murdered. And there’s not one politician, one Democrat politician in America, that can say that about one of the prisons in his home district.

We got to keep Guantanamo open.

And all you need to do to get all that is get yourself declared an enemy combatant. No wonder terrorist recruitment is up.

Democratic majority suicide watch

In an absurdly titled article in the New York Times we learn that the Democrats are preparing to cave, yet again, before the fight even begins.

Democrats Newly Willing to Compromise on Iraq

With a mixed picture emerging about progress in Iraq, Senate Democratic leaders are showing a new openness to compromise as they try to attract Republican support for forcing at least modest troop withdrawals in the coming months.

This is the same group of Senate Democrats who voted 36-11 to rubber stamp George Bush's $120 billion emergency supplemental request last May.

16 of them later voted to legalize the secret NSA domestic spying program. The one that was judged an unconstitutional violation of the 4th amendment last August.

One wonders what more they could do in the name of compromise.

Democrats had been counting on more Republicans to make a clean break from the president after the summer recess, but the White House has managed, at least temporarily, to hold on to much of its support.

After explicitly telling the president that he merely needs to veto legislation to get his way, and showing the minority leader that he can pass his own bill by filibustering theirs; the Democrats thought the Republicans would now cooperate? This is the sort of political acumen that has led to a 20 point drop in their approval rating since January.

Some Democrats have concluded that their decision earlier this summer to thwart votes on alternatives left them open to criticism that they were being intransigent. Democrats had wanted to keep pressure on Republicans over the summer by denying them votes on Iraq. Now, with the recess over, Democratic leaders are more willing to allow alternatives to a hard withdrawal date to reach the floor to keep pressure on President Bush.

Mr. Levin and other Democrats said this week that they were reaching out to Republicans who had expressed reservations about Mr. Bush’s policy to generate momentum for a proposal by Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, to begin to remove at least a limited number of troops from Iraq by the end of the year.

Harry Reid has demonstrated that he simply doesn't know how to lead the Senate. Instead of pushing a Democratic Iraq strategy, he begins negotiations by starting with Republican John Warner's. (Warner's plan is to ask nicely if the president would please send a few troops home for Christmas.)

Democrats won in 2006 because a majority of Americans had tired of an ineffectual rubber stamp Republican Congress and their support for the war plan of the most incompetent president in American history. Democrats were elected to change course, not whine. They cannot wait for Republican conversions. They have the power of the purse and the power to block the president's agenda, but they need to actually use it. If they smack their supporters again they can kiss the Senate goodbye in 2008.

Keep your eye on the ball, Harry. Three strikes and you're out.

Politically correct speech: Republican version

Be careful with your use of adverbs:

SEN. MCCAIN: Governor, the surge is working. The surge is working, sir. It is working.

MR. ROMNEY: That’s just what I said.

SEN. MCCAIN: No, not apparently -- it’s working.

Sam Brownback: partition Iraq

Sam Brownback reiterates his strategy to split Iraq into 3 parts along ethnic lines:

SEN. BROWNBACK: We ought to now push for establishment of a Sunni state in the west, still one country, still one country, but separate states. That’s a political solution -- that you can take advantage of what the military has done on the ground. That’s what we need to do to move forward now.

MR. GOLER: Senator, let me ask you, quickly, if you do that kind of loose federation, how do you keep the Kurds in the north from fighting with Turkey, how do you keep the Shi’a from allying with Iran, and how do you keep the Sunnis from rebelling over having no oil resources?

SEN. BROWNBACK: How do you do it now? I mean, I think you’re going to need a long-term U.S. presence in, I think, particularly in the Kurdish region in the north and the Sunni region in the west, that you’re going to have a long-term -- invited by those governments, and you’re going to need it to assure the Turks that the Kurds aren’t going to pull out and to assure the Kurds that the Turks aren’t going to come in. I think that’s what you have to do in looking at the reality.

Brownback's plan, shared by Democratic candidate Joe Biden, addresses the ethnic component of Iraq's civil war, but ignores the fact that there are more than 3 factions in Iraq and they don't all break along simple ethnic lines. The violence in Shiite dominated Basra is evidence that even when an area has become ethnically purified, the battle for power rages on.

Fox host accuses Ron Paul of taking orders from al Qaeda

MR. WALLACE: Congressman Paul, your position on the war is pretty simple: Get out. What about, though, trying to minimize the bloodbath that would certainly occur if we pull out in a hurry? What about protecting the thousands of Iraqis who have staked their lives in backing the U.S.? And would you leave troops in the region to take out any al Qaeda camps that are developed after we leave?

REP. PAUL: The people who say there will be a bloodbath are the ones who said it would be a cakewalk, it would be slam dunk, and that it would be paid for by oil. Why believe them? They’ve been wrong on everything they’ve said. Why not ask the people -- (interrupted by cheers) -- why not ask the people who advise not to go into the region and into the war? The war has not gone well one bit.

Yes, I would leave, I would leave completely. Why leave the troops in the region? The fact that we had troops in Saudi Arabia was one of the three reasons given for the attack on 9/11. So why leave them in the region? They don’t want our troops on the Arabian Peninsula. We have no need for our national security to have troops on the Arabian Peninsula, and going into Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening Iran is the worst thing we can do for our national security.

I am less safe, the American people are less safe for this. It’s the policy that is wrong. Tactical movements and shifting troops around and taking in 30 more and reducing by five, totally irrelevant. We need a new foreign policy that said we ought to mind our own business, bring our troops home, defend this country, defend -- (bell sounds) -- our borders --

MR. WALLACE: So, Congressman Paul, you’re basically saying that we should take our marching orders from al Qaeda? If they want us off the Arabian Peninsula, we should leave? (Laughter.)

REP. PAUL: No! (Cheers, applause.) I’m saying -- (laughter) -- I’m saying we should take our marching orders from our Constitution. We should not go to war -- (cheers, applause) -- we should not go to war without a declaration. We should not go to war when it’s an aggressive war. This is an aggressive invasion. We’ve committed the invasion of this war, and it’s illegal under international law. That’s where I take my marching orders, not from any enemy. (Cheers, boos.)

Rudy Giuliani on gun control

You have a 2nd amendment right to own a gun. Unless the state says that you don't:

MR. GIULIANI: I think states have a right to decide that. I mean, states have an right to decide their gun laws. The 2nd Amendment grants you the right to bear arms.

We have a federal system. A lot of these issues work in America, where we have people of different views and different conscience, because we are a federal system. We allow states to make different decisions.

Of course a Constitutional right that can be rescinded by the state is no right at all.

Mitt Romney on "sanctuary cities"

Governors aren't responsible for the actions of their mayors. But as president, I would be:

MR. WALLACE: Governor Romney, in recent weeks, you have gone after Mayor Giuliani for running what you say was a sanctuary city for illegals. But as governor of Massachusetts, you did nothing to stop Cambridge, Somerville or Orleans, all of which proclaim themselves to be sanctuaries.

MR. ROMNEY: [W]ith regards to sanctuary cities, the governors aren’t responsible for mayors who are not following the law. And actually in my case, I -- as soon as I learned about it, a program in the department of -- of ICE, that we could have our state police authorized to enforce the law, I did just that, so that in sanctuary cities in our state and non-sanctuary cities, the law would be enforced.

But this is a place where Mayor Giuliani and I just simply disagree.

I think we should reduce federal funding to cities that call themselves sanctuary cities. I think saying, as he did, if you happen to be an undocumented alien, we want you in New York, we’ll protect you in New York -- I think that contributed to 3 million illegals in this country becoming 12 million illegals coming into this country.

Sanctuary cities are those which ban city employees from asking a person about their residency status or contacting the INS when discovering an illegal alien. The argument being that illegal immigrants won't report crimes or seek medical care if they feared being deported.

Enforcement of immigration laws is typically the purview of the federal government, not the states. In 2006 Congress passed a provision which authorized state and local officials to identify and detain illegal immigrants. Rudy Giuliani left office at the end of 2001.

Fighting in Basra doesn't count

Apparently, it's not a civil war if the parties involved aren't religiously or ethnically distinct.

Among the most worrisome trends cited by the NIE was escalating warfare between rival Shiite militias in southern Iraq that has consumed the port city of Basra and resulted last month in the assassination of two southern provincial governors. According to a spokesman for the Baghdad headquarters of the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I), those attacks are not included in the military's statistics. "Given a lack of capability to accurately track Shiite-on-Shiite and Sunni-on-Sunni violence, except in certain instances," the spokesman said, "we do not track this data to any significant degree."

Attacks by U.S.-allied Sunni tribesmen -- recruited to battle Iraqis allied with al-Qaeda -- are also excluded from the U.S. military's calculation of violence levels.

This definition, of course, requires that we recategorize a fairly famous war of our own.

George Bush won't accept a Labor victory in Australia?

A reporter from Sky News in Australia asks a simple question:

Speers: You've had a very close relationship with John Howard. You famously called him the ‘Man of Steel'. If he doesn't win the election and Kevin Rudd does become Prime Minister, given you have differences over such a big issue as Iraq will the alliance still be the same?

The correct answer is: "Australia is a close ally and we will work closely with the democratically elected government, no matter who the winner is."

Bush: I refuse to accept your hypothesis.

Speers: Well if, if he wins.

Bush: Well that's if. I mean you're asking me to answer a hypothetical. I'm...

Speers: But will the alliance change?

Bush: All I can tell you is is that I remember John Howard has been behind in polls before and he's won it, so I... certainly I'm not going to prejudge the, ah, the decision of the Australian people, and I will end up dealing with whomever and work hard to make sure that the Australian and U.S. relationship is good, but I don't buy into your hypothesis.

Speers: But essentially the relationship won't suffer if Kevin Rudd becomes Prime Minister?

Bush: Look, I'll be glad to deal with the situation. See, that's a loaded question.

Kevin Rudd is the leader of the opposition Australian Labor Party currently favored to defeat John Howard in the next election. Howard is so far behind in the polls that he may lose his own seat in parliament as well as his position as leader of Australia.

Americans may remember John Howard as the man who said that al Qaida is praying for an Obama victory.

Dick Cheney is suspected of arranging the secret plea bargain that freed Guantanamo detainee David Hicks (complete with temporary gag order) to aid in Howard's reelection effort.

Couldn't you just keep quiet for another 9-10 years?

Apparently the militias in Iraq weren't a real problem until the Democrats got elected.

While debate over a war's merits -- and whether to withdraw -- is a sign of a healthy democracy, Iraq unfortunately highlights many of the difficulties a democracy faces in a long-term counterinsurgency or nation-building campaign. Such debate can be detrimental to the battle for perceptions. Having linked its future to an antiwar stance, the Democratic Congress has in effect told Iraqis that they are best off joining militias, because the dissolution of Iraq is only going to accelerate.

This is the same Democratic Congress that rubber stamped George Bush's last request for just under $100 billion dollars.

You might've thought that the threat of sectarian death squads was a bigger motivator for potential recruits.

Honestly, if this is the thinking of a man who bills himself as "a co-author of the military's counterinsurgency field manual" I'm not surprised that our efforts in Iraq are going so badly. We aren't failing in because people are debating it. We're failing because the people running it think it can be won with the best propaganda strategy.


h/t Matt Yglesias

Shah Wali Kot: snapshots of a battle zone

Canadian forces speaking with elders in Shah Wali Kot image uploaded by lafrancevi

8/28/2007

The battle in southern Kandahar province's Shah Wali Kot district started after the joint force was ambushed by a large group of insurgents who tried to overrun their position several times, before being strafed by airstrikes.

"Coalition aircraft destroyed the reinforced enemy emplacements and sniper positions as well as two trucks used to reinforce and re-supply the insurgent force,"

8/18/2007

Taliban militants kidnapped four Afghan engineers in the southern Kandahar province, the police said Saturday. The engineers, who were building a bridge, were abducted in Shah Wali Kot district in northern Kandahar on Friday afternoon, provincial police chief Sayed Aqa Saqib told Xinhua.

6/5/2007

On Monday, Taliban fighters attacked Afghan and U.S.-led coalition troops with rockets and gunfire in the Shah Wali Kot district of Kandahar province, sparking a four-hour battle, a coalition statement said. Fighter aircraft bombed three enemy positions, it said.

4/24/2006

While they have some beefs with the tactics of Canadian troops, Afghan villagers in Gumbad denied Monday that they had any involvement in the weekend bombing that killed four soldiers in the area.

The Shah Wali Kot district, of which Gumbad is a part, is routinely a hotbed of rumour and innuendo, a state that went into overdrive following the Saturday morning attack.

Published U.S. reports suggested Canadian troops brought the attack upon themselves by conducting inappropriate searches of homes and mosques, sometimes using dogs - considered unclean animals by Muslims.

6/28/2005

The Shah Wali Kot district is considered to be one of the last Taliban strongholds in Kandahar province, but Ges said that may soon end as the patience of the district’s residents grows thin with anti-coalition forces.

“For the most part, the people out here are tired of the Taliban,” said Ges.

“Because there is no government representation out here, the Taliban come out of the hills and take their food, beat on them, harass them, and then leave.”

Establishing security in the district is the first priority, said Ges, but another is to strengthen the positions of the district leadership. Once this is done, reconstruction efforts can begin in the embattled region.

10/24/2003

Since then, Taliban militants have indeed displayed a new assertiveness; they have even set up their own roadblocks. It was Talibs manning one such roadblock in the Shah Wali Kot district near Kandahar who stopped International Committee of the Red Cross irrigation engineer Ricardo Munguia, a citizen of El Salvador, and his Afghan co-workers. Acting on Mullah Dadullah's orders after Munguia's captors had used a satellite phone to request instructions as to his fate, the militants shot the engineer. (The murder was tragically ironic since the Talib leading the operation had once had his life saved by ICRC.)

Just spot me another $50 billion

This plan can't lose!

Like a compulsive gambler begging for a loan,George Bush is asking for a supplemental to his supplemental:

The revised supplemental would total about $200 billion, indicating that the cost of the war in Iraq now exceeds $3 billion a week. The bill also covers the far smaller costs of the war in Afghanistan. The Pentagon said recently that the cost of the Iraq war has surpassed $330 billion, while the war in Afghanistan has cost $78 billion.

The article quotes an unnamed White House official saying that the additional spending is "relatively noncontroversial".... it just keeps the war running.

Last year at this time, the headline was that the cost of the war in Iraq had reached $2 billion a week.

Here's what we've spent over the years:

$2.5 billion in 2002
$51 billion in 2003
$77.3 billion in 2004
$87.3 billion in 2005
$101.8 billion in 2006

We are not fighting for a "free Kurdistan"

In his latest defense of the war in Iraq, Christopher Hitchens makes the astonishing argument that we are fighting in part to enable the Kurdish minority to "defend and consolidate its regional government in the north".

An American family that lost a son or a daughter in the defense of free Kurdistan or in the struggle against AQM could console itself that the death was in a worthwhile cause.

This may come as a surprise to most Americans who thought we went to Iraq to eliminate Saddam's WMD stockpile.

[W]e can point to Kurdistan as the most outstanding success of the past four years, with its economically flourishing provinces run along broadly secular lines, and with the old Kurd-on-Kurd civil war now in real abeyance for almost a decade (which shows that people can and do come to their senses). The Kurds are also active in the center of the country; their ministers of foreign affairs and water are universally regarded as the most capable and intelligent, and they have also been secure enough to lend units of their own peshmerga forces to the coalition's efforts in Baghdad, Fallujah, and elsewhere.

The Kurds were certainly the group in Iraq happiest to see the American forces arrive. However, when Hitchens talks of the Kurds "consolidating" their hold on the north, that includes some very brutal fighting. The peshmerga have been accused of driving ethnic Arabs and Turkmen from their homes in Kirkuk and have battled in Mosul and Irbil as each attempts to lay claim to a wide swath of the oil rich northern portion of the country. The peshmerga are one of the many factions in Iraq. They aren't loyal to the central government and they aren't selflessly working for the common good.

Hitchens is apparently focusing on the freedom and independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, but his choice of the phrase "free Kurdistan" is hardly accidental. Free Kurdistan, sometimes referred to as Greater Kurdistan, usually refers to the idea of a unified Kurdish state. Maps of Free Kurdistan vary, but (like the one above) typically encompass large portions of Iran, Iraq, Syria and America's close NATO ally, Turkey.

It's the reason 40,000 turkish troops recently threatened to invade northern Iraq.

Fighting in defense of a free Kurdistan would set the entire Middle East on fire.

Iraq is not a sovereign country

Nouri al Maliki, prime minister of Iraq, has begun striking back against the rising calls for his resignation, furious that foreigners are making demands of his government.

"Iraq is a sovereign country, and we will not allow anyone to talk about it as if it belongs to this country or that," Mr. Maliki said.

Unfortunately for both the people of Iraq and America, Iraq is not a sovereign country. A sovereign country is at the very least capable of ensuring its own internal security. It's almost universally agreed that the Iraqi government would cease to exist the day U.S. forces left the country.

Sovereignty is not like a gold star to be handed out as a prize to a good student. Paul Bremer's ridiculous stunt, transferring "sovereignty" to Iyad Allawi in a secret ceremony just before he hightailed it out of the country, only reinforced the point that even then Iraq was descending into chaos:

Allawi repeated earlier suggestions that soon he will declare martial law, impose curfews and suspend some civil liberties to battle the insurgents, a disparate mix of Islamic extremists and Iraqi nationalists. He said he would announce the new legal measures today.

U.S. administrator Paul Bremer gave a short speech and answered only two questions from the media before rushing off in a swarm of bodyguards.

Immediately afterward, Bremer was helicoptered to the Baghdad airport, boarded a military airplane and returned to the United States, ending his 13- month reign as the supreme ruler of Iraq.

Like all things done by this administration, bestowing sovereignty onto an unformed and ill-prepared government was nothing more than a P.R. stunt. An attempt to declare victory without actually doing the work needed to accomplish it.

Hillary Clinton declares the surge a failure

From her statement on the recent Iraq NIE:

As I have said many times before, there is not a military solution in Iraq. Progress will only come from political reconciliation and compromise from the Iraqis themselves. In January, President Bush argued that the escalation of U.S. troops into Iraq would create the political space for reconciliation among the Iraqis. At the time that the President announced the escalation, I opposed this new strategy because I did not believe the Iraqi government was committed to making the tough political decisions necessary for Iraq to resolve its sectarian divisions. Indeed, the declassified key judgments from the most recent National Intelligence Estimate regarding "Prospects for Iraq's Stability" clearly demonstrate that progress toward political reconciliation in Iraq has not been achieved since the beginning of the President's decision to add additional troops into Iraq. The NIE's key judgments provide additional evidence that the President's escalation strategy has failed. We need to stop refereeing this civil war, and start getting out now.

Hillary Clinton calls for the ouster of Maliki

From her statement calling for political change in Iraq:

During my last visit to Iraq in January, I expressed my reservations about the ability of the Iraqi government, led by Prime Minister Maliki, to make the tough political decisions necessary for Iraq to resolve its sectarian divisions. Since my visit, Iraqi leaders have not met their own political benchmarks to share power, modify the de-Ba'athification laws, pass an oil law, schedule provincial elections, and amend their constitution. During his trip to Iraq last week, Senator Carl Levin, the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee on which I serve, confirmed that the Iraqi Government’s failures have reinforced the widely held view that the Maliki government is nonfunctional and cannot produce a political settlement, because it is too beholden to religious and sectarian leaders.

I share Senator Levin’s hope that the Iraqi parliament will replace Prime Minister Maliki with a less divisive and more unifying figure when it returns in a few weeks.

Such as who?

The sad fact is that there is currently no unifying figure in Iraq. In fact, Maliki was the original "unity" candidate. Picked after the Shiite's preferred candidate al-Jaafari was pushed aside with a shove from the American ambassador. Maliki was supposed to be acceptable to the Shiite majority, and the Sunni and Kurdish minorities, alike.

The problem is not Mr. Maliki’s narrow-mindedness or incompetence. He is the logical product of the system the United States created, one that deliberately empowered the long-persecuted Shiite majority and deliberately marginalized the long-dominant Sunni Arab minority. It was all but sure to produce someone very like Mr. Maliki, a sectarian Shiite far more interested in settling scores than in reconciling all Iraqis to share power in a unified and peaceful democracy.

Maliki was our choice. As was Allawi. As was Chalabi. Americans have had a pathetic record at selecting Iraq's leaders. If Senator Clinton knows of a good candidate, now is the time to speak up.

Bill Richardson: leave Iraq, target al Qaeda

From Bill Richardson's "Grand Strategy on Terrorism":

Al Qaeda is not the only terrorist group. But it is unique -- it has declared war on America, it has attacked us on our soil -- and it continues to plan another spectacular domestic attack like 9-11 or worse.

Iraq diverted critical intelligence and military resources from the fight against Al Qaeda. We let up the pressure and Al Qaeda recovered -- and struck back. Since 2002, Al Qaeda and its affiliates have carried out attacks in Algiers, Casablanca, Madrid, London, Istanbul, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Jeddah, Karachi, Sharm al Shaykh, Taba, Mombassa, Kuwait, Mumbai, New Delhi, Dacca, Bali and elsewhere.

The target of our military strategy needs to be the Al Qaeda leadership. As long as these men are active, they symbolize the success of resistance to America, and attract new recruits. It is not good enough to have them "hiding in caves." The death or capture of Osama bin Ladin and his associates in Pakistan and Afghanistan will not end the Al Qaeda movement, but it will deal it a serious setback. So how do we do it?

We urgently must redirect our military effort away from Iraq (where Al Qaeda's leadership is not located) and toward the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (where they ARE located).

[Economic reconstruction] efforts also must extend into Pakistan. The border regions are poverty-stricken breeding grounds for Jihadism. We need to read the riot act to Dick Cheney's pal, President Musharraf. We have provided him with $10 billion, in mostly military aid. Future aid must be linked to a real crackdown on terrorists -- including Arabs, Afghans and Kashmiris.

We cannot defeat Al Qaeda until we get out of Iraq. An orderly, phased and complete troop withdrawal could be completed rapidly -- and it is imperative that it be complete. The key to an exit strategy is to exit. We don't need a South Korea-like solution as the President suggests, an open-ended military base in Iraq that will alienate succeeding generations of Iraqis and other Muslims.

Of Moose and Men

The UK magazine TimesOnline picks up where Der Spiegel left off on the absurd story of Norwegian moose causing climate change:

“To put it into perspective, the return flight from Oslo to Santiago in Chile leaves a carbon footprint of 880 kilos,” said the biologist Reidar Andersen, a biologist. "Shoot a moose and you have saved the equivalent of two long-haul flights.”

To put it in better perspective, at roughly the 2 metric tons, a Norwegian moose puts out about one fifth of the carbon equivalent of the typical Norwegian. You could exterminate the whole species and you'd never know the difference.

Not to be hard on the Norwegians. After all, people in the United States have twice the carbon footprint that they do (or roughly the equivalent of 10 Norwegian moose each). But these are the numbers:

120,000 Moose x 2 metric tons/year = 240,000 tons per year
4.6 Million Norwegians x 9.9 metric tons/year = 45 million tons per year
300 Million Americans x 19.8 metric tons/year = 5.94 billion tons per year

I thought Hillary wouldn't answer hypothetical questions

Continuing her unfortunate habit of embracing the Republican talking points, Hillary Clinton declares that another terrorist attack on the U.S. will benefit the same incompetents who let the first one happen.

"It's a horrible prospect to ask yourself, 'What if? What if?' But if certain things happen between now and the election, particularly with respect to terrorism, that will automatically give the Republicans an advantage again, no matter how badly they have mishandled it, no matter how much more dangerous they have made the world," Clinton told supporters in Concord.

"So I think I'm the best of the Democrats to deal with that," she added.

I'm not sure why she considers herself the best Democrat to deal with that. (If she explained herself, the NY Post didn't bother to tell us). We all know that the first reaction of the Republicans will be to blame Bill Clinton for destroying the U.S. military.

We know that, because that's what they're doing right now.

Here's Mitt Romney, casually ignoring the fact that almost 7 years have passed since Bill was in charge and that George Bush Junior has been given carte blanche to rebuild the military as he sees fit:

After President George H. W. Bush left office, in 1993, the Clinton administration began to dismantle the military, taking advantage of what has been called a "peace dividend" from the end of the Cold War. It took a dividend, but we did not get the peace. It seems that our leaders had come to believe that war and security threats were gone forever; as Charles Krauthammer observed, we took a holiday from history.

Here's Fred Thompson, echoing the same quote by Krauthammer:

Our country was not prepared for our current situation. We took a holiday from history in the 90’s. We cut our military, our procurement and our research and development. Now our military is stretched too thin. We are wearing out our equipment. Our intelligence capabilities are inadequate.

And here's Rudy Giuliani, explicitly blaming Bill Clinton for the attacks on 9/11:

"Islamic terrorists killed more than 500 Americans before Sept. 11. Many people think the first attack was on Sept. 11, 2001. It was not. It was in 1993," said the former mayor.

"The United States government, then President Clinton, did not respond," Giuliani said. "(Osama) bin Laden declared war on us. We didn't hear it."

h/t TPMCafe

Rudy Giuliani defines "fiscal conservatism"

I had a surplus once but I spended it.

Mayor Giuliani “turned a $2.3 billion deficit into a multibillion dollar surplus.” ... and then turned that into a $4.8 billion deficit.

The Giuliani campaign defended the advertisement, noting that it merely states that Mr. Giuliani created a multibillion-dollar surplus, not that he passed one on to his successor.

Rudy cut taxes, increased spending, and raided the city's pension fund. The plan worked great while the economy was booming. Then the stock market collapsed. Then 9/11 changed everything.

The Norwegians solve global warming

Illustrating the human habit of being overcareful about trivial things and undercareful about important ones, millions of Norwegians are apparently worried that the country's moose population is responsible for global warming.

The poor old Scandinavian moose is now being blamed for climate change, with researchers in Norway claiming that a grown moose can produce 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year -- equivalent to the CO2 output resulting from a 13,000 kilometer car journey.

But don't worry the country has a solution:

Norway has some 120,000 moose but an estimated 35,000 are expected to be killed in this year's moose hunting season, which starts on September 25, Norwegian newspaper VG reported.

Norway has about 4.5 million people and roughly 2 million cars. So unless the Norse drive less than 1,000 kilometers a year on average (620 miles American), they need to find a different scapegoat.

Warner calls for pullout by winter (of 2039)

John Warner is getting a lot of credit in the press for his "sharp and clear message" suggesting that it would be nice if the president pulled a few troops from Iraq by Christmas.

In a misleadingly titled article ("Warner Calls for Pullouts by Winter") the Washington Post quotes exactly what the senior Republican moderate considers a significant change in course.

"I can think of no clearer form of that than if the president were to announce on the 15th that, in consultation with our senior military commanders, he's decided to initiate the first step in a withdrawal of armed forces," Warner said. "I say to the president respectfully, 'Pick whatever number you wish.' . . . Say, 5,000 could begin to redeploy and be home to their families and loved ones no later than Christmas of this year. That's the first step."

5000 troops brought home by Christmas. At that rate, we'll be out of Iraq in 32 years.

But only if the president really thinks we should do that, of course.

Hurricane Dean crosses the Yucatan

From NASA's Earth Observatory

Just the right number of troops in Iraq

It's strange how, these days, everyone realizes that the Iraq war is stretching the military to the breaking point.

After all it wasn't very long ago that senior administration officials were telling us that we had millions of troops to draw upon.

Condoleeza Rice, September 2005:

SECRETARY RICE: There were, I think as of today, more than 70,000 forces in the Louisiana area. So we have an active and reserve and guard force of 2.5 million people; 139,000 people are in Iraq. So this is just not an argument that holds water. What is the question is how we better coordinate and decide when federal resources of this magnitude are going to be brought to bear.

Donald Rumsfeld, January 2006:

"And there isn't any reason in the world why we shouldn't be able to maintain, with an active and reserve total force ... of over 2 million people, why we shouldn't be able to maintain 138,000" troops in Iraq, he said.

We didn't send 150,000 Americans to Iraq because that's all we had. We sent 150,000 Americans to Iraq because that was the perfect number. This was the operative argument right up until the elections last November.

Rumsfeld again, January 2005:

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well, there’s of course a debate going on in our country as to whether or not the number of troops is the right number...

The one place there is not a varying opinion on that is among the general officers who are responsible for providing the U.S. military effort in Iraq. ... everyone of them believes that the goal is not to increase the number of troops because then we’d look more and more like an occupying force. We have more and more people that could be attacked. It takes more and more force protection people, more and more logistics support people. And their unanimous recommendation to the president and to me has been that what we want to do is to have right about this – we went from about 140,000 up to 153,000 during this election period, after the election bring down that number and work with the coalition over the period ahead to adjust the force levels downward towards whatever the security situation may or may not require.

From the Heritage Foundation, July 2006:

In Vietnam, the United States employed a flawed strategy referred to as “graduated pressure.” The idea behind this was that increasing levels of military force, applied incrementally, could ultimately push the North Vietnamese to some abstract breaking point, achieving victory for the U.S. and South Viet­nam. The strategy focused on mini­mizing costs rather than winning the war, relied on faulty assumptions about the enemy’s psychology, and, most of all, offered no real solutions about how to defeat the Communists other than essentially throwing more troops at the problem.

Free Speechless Zones

Protecting the president from all criticism has been an obsession with this White House.

From the Presidential Advance Manual (stamped "Sensitive - Do Not Copy"):

The first step to keeping demonstrators out of events, the manual tells the president's event staff, is to encourage the Secret Service to "ask the local police department to designate a protest area...preferably not in view of the event site or the motorcade route."

Protest areas and "free speech zones" have no place in American society. Their only purpose is to protect the powerful and muzzle dissent.

Also in the document, we learn the true purpose of rally squads.

These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstators. The rally squad's task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA! USA! USA!).

As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site.

For large rallies... at least one squad should be 'roaming' throughout the perimeter of the event to look for potential problems.

via Americablog

George Bush's plan to run out the clock on Iraq (part 2)

Just in case anyone is still wondering what the purpose of the surge is:

One administration official made it clear that the goal of the planned announcement was to counter public pressure for a more rapid reduction and to try to win support for a plan that could keep American involvement in Iraq on “a sustainable footing” at least through the end of the Bush presidency.

It's not about a defeating al Qaeda or getting the Iraqis to form a democratic government. It's about saving George Bush's pride. The president only cares that he won't be the one who has to make the hard decision to call an end to this fiasco.

Many Republicans have urged Mr. Bush to unveil a new strategy, and even to propose a gradual reduction of American troops to the levels before this year’s troop increase — about 130,000 — or even lower to head off Democratic-led efforts to force the withdrawal of all combat forces by early next year.

That's about the number of troops we had in Iraq in June of 2005.
Of course, this is just business as usual for this White House:

"We should gum this to death," Sampson wrote to a White House aide on Dec. 19. "[A]sk the senators to give Tim a chance . . . then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith,' of course."

Mitt Romney gets 373 votes in Illinois straw poll

Or 40.4% as he prefers to describe it.

Non-candidate Fred Thompson came in second with 184 votes and blog favorite Ron Paul came in third with 174 votes.

Notable by his poor showing was Mike Huckabee, whose second place finish at Ames gave him some positive press. He only received 28 votes at the Illinois fair.

You wouldn't expect much excitement at such a poorly attended event. But apparently, Ron Paul is getting under the skin of Romney's campaign committee:

Paul's libertarian stylings and campaign of strict interpretation of the Constitution has earned him an unorthodox band of sign-carrying supporters. They frequently interrupted TV reports of the event and at one point, Romney's Illinois chairman, state Sen. Dan Rutherford (R-Chenoa), ripped a sign out of one Paul supporter's hands and threw it on the ground.

What's a "seismic bump"?

A term most of us have probably never heard before, has been popping up a lot today after several rescue workers were killed trying to find survivors in the Crandall Canyon Mine.

In simple terms a seismic bump occurs when the stresses caused by mining aren't properly compensated. It's one of the reasons we need well enforced safety regulations in this hazardous line of work.

Bumps occur when too much stress builds on mine support structures. Often the mine's roof and floor are strong, so what gives under the pressure is the coal, usually on the support pillars. It can cause the floor and roof to buckle, too.

It's a benign name for something that explodes like a hand grenade. Mine "bumps'' shoot high-speed coal and rock at anyone in the way as support pillars buckle.

This is not related to earthquakes or natural seismicity, despite the efforts of some (like Utah Senator Orrin Hatch) to claim otherwise:

"You use the best technology you can, you do best you possibly can. You hope natural disasters don't occur, like did occur. I don't think anybody could say it's anything but a natural disaster," Hatch said.

Actually, people who know earthquakes are saying it wasn't a natural disaster.

It'd be nice if the Senator was as concerned about the safety of mine workers as he is about the welfare of mine owners.

h/t Schreinervideo

Tony Snow earns $168,000 a year

As of 2007, according to the White House staff list at the Washington Post.

I only mention this because some of you might have gotten the impression that Press Secretary might be a volunteer position, given his recent comment to Hugh Hewitt:

SNOW: No, I’m not going to be…I’ve already made it clear I’m not going to be able to go the distance, but that’s primarily for financial reasons. I’ve told people when my money runs out, then I’ve got to go.

I'm not sure what he spends his money on, but for comparison, that puts him in the top 5% of U.S. earners. It's over 3 times the median salary and it's 65% higher than the the average for those with Professional and Doctoral degrees ( doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, etc. )

His assistant, Dana Perino, makes over $141,000.

Hillary Clinton: First choice of conservative Republicans

It's pretty incredible given the years of Hillary hatred on the right but she's now their favorite liberal. Conservatives are arguing, "If you must vote for a Democrat for God's sake vote for Hillary".

First came Rupert Murdoch, magnate of the FOX news empire.

Murdoch to host fundraiser for Hillary Clinton

One media lobbyist said: “Murdoch will be for the Republicans but he is also smart enough to know that the Republicans might not win. At some level, whether nationally or in New York, Hillary is the future and what savvy businessman would not want to put a line of interest in someone who will be the future?”

And now we have neoconservative icon Bill Kristol singing her praises.

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, sounded more effusive. "Obama," he said, "is becoming the antiwar candidate, and Hillary Clinton is becoming the responsible Democrat who could become commander in chief in a post-9/11 world."

But why would conservatives, to whom Hillary has come to personify everything that's wrong with the left, pick her as their best hope?

First, given the hard times the Republicans have fallen on, they realize that she's may be their best bet. With the possible exception of Joe Biden, she's the most conservative candidate on the Democratic side.

Here's Bruce Bartlett.

Having come to this realization, it became necessary to judge the Democratic field to determine which candidate would be the least bad from my point of view. I concluded that Hillary Clinton was less objectionable that the others. She appeared to be a clone of her husband on economic policy--which is good as far as I am concerned--and a realist on foreign policy. Given the choices facing us, I concluded that conservatives ought to consider supporting Hillary in order to ensure that a more liberal candidate such as Barack Obama or John Edwards didn't become our next president.

Republicans hated Bill because he kept stealing their ideas, not because he was a radical leftist. Now they're worried that the choice is between a triangulator and an liberal ideologue.

They also think she's more of an opportunist than an idealist - she might be happy just to get the brass ring. Ross Douthat:

As a conservative, I see this as an advertisement for a Clinton presidency, not a mark against her candidacy. I like my liberal Presidents to offer "no big ideas, no crusading causes" - particularly after eight years of George W. Bush, Big Thinker.

... And yet, and yet. She has a real record now, and it's no more left-wing than her rivals, and a good deal more restrained. Whether you're a libertarian like Andrew or a social conservative like me, you're not going to be wild about any Democratic president. But better a liberal "Nixon in a Pant Suit," I often think - and whatever her pathologies they can't hold a candle to Tricky Dick's - than the liberal, realigning Reagan that Obama has an outside chance of turning out to be.

Moderate Republicans see in her a bit of themselves. Here's Andrew Sullivan, who dislikes Hillary, but can still identify with her on a fundamental level:

I've written before that Clinton's relentless sensibleness on many issues - including the war, where her own journey has been in the same direction as mine - makes her hard to oppose.

And finally, for the far right, there's the war. Hillary is the only Democrat running who hasn't completely repudiated the case for the Iraq war.

(Rich Lowry)

In those moments in the Democratic debates that have offered a choice between saying what the pacifist left wants to hear or saying what someone who might someday be president should say, she has done the latter. Her default mode is seriousness, and all her preparation shows. When she was asked in the most recent debate about the possibility of nearly three decades of a Bush or Clinton in the While House, I found myself commenting to a friend, “Watch — she’ll hit this out of the park.” Which she did with a joke about regretting that Bush won in 2000.

(Fred Barnes)

There was a key moment, however, and once again it pitted Clinton, the New York senator, against Barack Obama, her counterpart from Illinois. The question was whether they'd promise to meet in the first year of their presidency with the leaders of such enemy nations as Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, and Syria.

"I would," Obama said, foolishly showing his inexperience, and perhaps his naivete as well, in foreign affairs. After all, he said, President Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" and still talked to Soviet leaders. "I think it's a disgrace we haven't talked" to leaders of the five anti-American countries, Obama said.

(Charles Krauthammer)

From the Nation's David Corn to super-blogger Mickey Kaus, a near-audible gasp. For Hillary Clinton, next in line at the debate, an unmissable opportunity. She pounced: "I will not promise to meet with the leaders of these countries during my first year." And she proceeded to give the reasons any graduate student could tick off: You don't want to be used for their propaganda. You need to know their intentions. Such meetings can make the situation worse.

Just to make sure no one missed how the grizzled veteran showed up the clueless rookie, the next day Clinton told the Quad-City Times of Davenport, Iowa, that Obama's comment "was irresponsible and frankly naive.

None of these men will vote for Clinton. With the exception of Andrew Sullivan, they look at the Democratic field and think, "she's a person I could vote for, but I'd rather have a real Republican".

Deep down they believe Hillary is the smart move for Republicans. She motivates their base helping Republicans generally, but if she wins, she's still the most conservative Democrat. It keeps the debate shifted to the right.

And they dream of a rematch in 2012.

The magnitude 7.9 Peruvian earthquake

A magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck Peru 90 miles south of Lima causing significant shaking and a small tsunami. So far (6:10 GMT) it's been followed by 10 aftershocks larger than magnitude 5.0. The quake struck at the junction of two oceanic plates near the location of two previous magnitude 8 events (1908 and 1974). The USGS map below shows the area of greatest intensity.



"There was a pretty big, intense, long-wave earthquake," a woman named Erica in Lima told APTN television. "You could see all the buildings here in San Isidro and the glass shaking."

Huge drop in casualties or deja vu all over again?

August 2007:

U.S. officials say the number of civilian casualties in the Iraqi capital is down 50 percent. But U.S. officials declined to provide specific numbers, and statistics gathered by McClatchy Newspapers don't support the claim.

Let's hope it's true. But there is reason to suspect the official count if it's not backed up by specifics.


September 2006:

It turns out the official toll of violent deaths in August was just revised upwards to 1535 from 550, tripling the total. Now, we’re depressingly used to hearing about deaths here, so much so that the numbers can be numbing. But this means that a much-publicized drop-off in violence in August - heralded by both the Iraqi government and the US military as a sign that a new security effort in Baghdad was working - apparently didn’t exist. […] Violent deaths now appear roughly in line with the earlier trend: 1855 in July and 1595 in June.

And why was the count so low?

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. officials, seeking a way to measure the results of a program aimed at decreasing violence in Baghdad, aren't counting scores of dead killed in car bombings and mortar attacks as victims of the country's sectarian violence.

In a distinction previously undisclosed, U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Barry Johnson said Friday that the United States is including in its tabulations of sectarian violence only deaths of individuals killed in drive-by shootings or by torture and execution.

That has allowed U.S. officials to boast that the number of deaths from sectarian violence in Baghdad declined by more than 52 percent in August over July.

500 Iraqis may be dead because of a blood feud

Virtually everyone is pointing fingers after the recent suicide bombings that has killed at least 250 people in northern Iraq. Americans blame al Qaida (in Iraq). Shiite leaders blame the Sunni insurgency, and Kurds put the blame on the battle for northern oil fields. But according to McClatchy it may be the latest shot in a religious vendetta.

U.S. officials blamed al Qaida in Iraq, a Sunni Muslim extremist group that has targeted American troops, Iraqi government forces and Shiite Muslim civilians. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, a Shiite, blamed Sunni extremists. Kurdish officials said the blast was part of the jockeying between Kurds and Arabs for control of northern Iraq, though Nineveh province lies outside the Kurdish autonomous region.

Many, however, said the blast appeared to be the latest spasm in a blood feud that erupted earlier this year when members of Iraq's non-Muslim Yazidi ethnic minority stoned to death a teenage girl they accused of dating a Sunni Arab man and converting to Islam.

The brutal death of Doaa Khalil Aswad, 17, in April was captured on video by cell phone. Stomach-turning images of her writhing as she was beaten and pelted with stones by hundreds of young Yazidi men spread across the Internet.

Two weeks later, 23 Yazidi men were taken from a bus and executed.

Southern Justice: Tennessee frees a convicted killer

67 days for murder?

The woman convicted of manslaughter in the shotgun slaying of her minister husband was freed Tuesday after serving 67 days in custody.

I thought only ACLU loving, Northeastern states were this soft on confessed killers.

She even remembered holding the shotgun later that morning. But she insisted she had no recollection of what happened thereafter, until she saw her dying husband lying on the floor in a pool of blood.

Her testimony contrasted sharply with the prosecution's portrayal of Mary as a calculated killer who shot her husband after he confronted her with a check-kiting scheme she had become involved in. Matthew, according to the prosecution, was a loving husband, caring father and beloved minister.

Because there was no dispute that Mary shot Matthew, the jury was faced with deciding first whether it believed Mary and, if so, whether the physical, verbal and sexual abuse excused her husband's murder.

Basra: how not to make an exit from Iraq

For a picture of what a poorly planned American pullout might look like, look no farther than Basra:

Attacks on British forces in Basra are soaring. Deaths and injuries are higher than any time since the invasion.

The [British base at the Basra airport] has become a shooting gallery for Iraqi insurgents. British forces are housed in tents, many near the airport tower which is visible from well beyond the heavily defended airport perimeter. Insurgents using 107mm or 120mm rockets, fired from old drainpipes or other makeshift launchpads, simply aim at the tower and hope to cause mayhem in the camp.

Basra is the major city in oil rich southern Iraq. Controlled by the majority Shiites, the battles in Basra are dominated by factional power struggles, not the ethnic slaughter currently seen in Baghdad. The small Sunni community along with intellectuals and teachers is being driven out by the militias.

Earlier this year, Tony Blair decided to call it quits and begin pulling out completely. But that hasn't spared British troops who largely remain confined to the airport.

Basra, mind you, is Dick Cheney's idea of a success story:

"The British have done what is really the plan for the country as a whole, which is to be able to transfer security responsibilities to the Iraqis, as conditions permit," Cheney said. "What I see is an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well."

This also lends the lie to the idea that a "soft partition" along ethnic lines would prevent the collapse of Iraq into civil war. Ethnic rivalries are only the most obvious conflicts to those of us on the outside. The Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are themselves divided into hostile factions who target each other as often as they target anyone else.

Couldn't we just get rid of the electoral college?

California Republicans, led by Arnold Schwarzenegger's lawyer are the latest in a string of partisans who would like to guarantee that their team wins the presidency regardless of the whims of the little people:

Instead of laboring in vain to turn California Red, a clever lawyer for the state Republican Party thought of a gimmicky shortcut. Thomas Hiltachk, who specializes in ballot referenda that try to fool people in the titles and fine print, is sponsoring a ballot initiative for the June 3, 2008, California primary (which now falls four months after the state's presidential primary). The Presidential Election Reform Act would award the state's electoral votes based on who wins each congressional district. Had this idea been in effect in 2004, Bush would have won 22 electoral votes from California, about the same number awarded the winners of states like Illinois or Pennsylvania. In practical terms, adopting the initiative would mean that the Democratic candidate would likely have to win both Ohio and Florida in 2008 (instead of one or the other) to be elected.

The strategy is a simple one. Take 40% of the electoral votes in states dominated by the opposition party, add 100% of the electoral votes in states dominated by your own party and suddenly you've got a system where an extremely unpopular candidate could win the presidency while losing by 10 or 20 million votes nationwide.

Partisans who cheer the effort when it works to their advantage are typically outraged when the other guy pulls the same stunt:

North Carolina appears headed to becoming the third state in the nation to abandon the winner-take-all method for awarding its electoral votes as the House tentatively agreed Thursday to shelf the method.

Republicans called the change a cheap way to give Democrats, who have been shut out in North Carolina since 1980, some electoral votes.

"This is clearly a partisan bill. There's no question about that," said Rep. Leo Daughtry, R-Johnston. "You've got to change the law to make it an advantage."

Not that Republicans wouldn't trade a few votes in North Carolina for a couple of dozen in California.

And of course, partisans like the idea of a national popular vote even less than the current system. Governor Schwarzenegger, who hasn't taken a position on his lawyer's scheme (and denies being involved personally) vetoed a bill that would have given California's sizeable electoral to the overall winner.

So long, Johnny, we hardly knew ye

What's that?...........It's Tommy Thompson?.......... Seriously?

We may lose in Afghanistan because George Bush got bored

For an example of the number one reason critics opposed the Iraq war from the start.

At critical moments in the fight for Afghanistan, the Bush administration diverted scarce intelligence and reconstruction resources to Iraq, including elite C.I.A. teams and Special Forces units involved in the search for terrorists. As sophisticated Predator drone spy planes rolled off assembly lines in the United States, they were shipped to Iraq, undercutting the search for Taliban and terrorist leaders, according to senior military and intelligence officials.

Unfortunately, Afghanistan remains the forgotten front, even as the Taliban rebuilds and the Afghan population tire of being caught between American guns and their targets.

In all the posturing about expanding or ending the Iraq war, few in the Congress and none in the Executive branch make any mention of the risk that we could lose on both fronts.

How do they know it wasn't caused by an earthquake?

Much to the chagrin of Robert Murray, CEO of the company that owns the Utah mine where 6 workers are trapped; scientists have confirmed that the collapse was not caused by an earthquake. The magnitude 3.9 event was the collapse itself.

Murray insisted there was no way the collapse was not caused by an earthquake - "It was a natural disaster and I'll prove it to you" - even though a federal geologist said Tuesday evening the collapse was absolutely not caused by an earthquake

Murray spent as much time attacking union workers, environmentalists and global warming theory as he did addressing the concerns of the miner's families so he's hardly a sympathetic figure.

Still, how do seismologists really know that there was no earthquake?

By looking at the data from seismometers, scientists can determine how the energy emerged from the source. In simple terms, if all the energy is expanding outward you've got an explosion, all the energy moving inwards identifies an implosion or collapse. Earthquakes slip along faults and some of the energy moves outwards, some inwards in a characteristic pattern called a double-couple.

Scientists at the Berkeley Seismology Lab looked at the data from 16 nearby instruments and the identified the source as a collapse. In the figure above earthquakes fall in the blue region, explosions in the red, and collapses in the green. The Utah event, indicated by the red star, falls well outside the earthquake zone.

Climatologists make a near term prediction

....Plan for warmer weather soon.

Because of the complexity of the Earth system, most forecasts of climate change are long-range predictions. External forcing becomes dominant over the long term (decades to centuries), but in the near term natural signals such as El Nino play a larger role. Now a new method which includes the initial state of the ocean and atmosphere and accounts for this natural variability provides improved near term forecasts:

From news@nature:

When called on to forecast the coming decade, [the Decadal Climate Prediction System] produced a 10-year temperature curve distinctly different from those predicted by conventional models. The curve is based on 20 different model runs starting on 20 different days in 2005, each with its own set of initial conditions.

If the model is correct, in the next few years natural variability — mainly in factors affecting the heat content of the ocean — will offset some of the climate warming resulting from humanity's greenhouse emissions. But global warming will be taking only a brief breather: [at least] half the years from 2009 to 2014 will be warmer than 1998, which is currently the warmest year on record.

Those with subscriptions to Science can read the original paper here.