This was the second time in the last few months that the DoD has been caught issuing a photograph to the media that was digitally altered. In September, they issued two photos of slain soldiers that were obviously identical beyond the face, name, and rank.

The army insists that it did nothing wrong, as its policy only prohibits issuing edited photos that misrepresent the facts of an event. The AP insists that submitting altered photos for any reason damages the credibility of photos distributed by the military.

What I didn’t realize at the time is that the Israeli military has been working on this very thing. Indeed, they went one better: envisioning the mighty AIBOs flanked by a whole army of robotic animals, including robotic cats with razor sharp claws to use for climbing walls, and slithering robot snakes capable of sneaking into buildings through pipes.

A couple of features stand out.  First, the price was relatively constant for almost all of 2008.  Second, the price has fluctuated wildly since November 5th and is now 30% below its 2008 average.  Here is how you calculate the implied June 2010 troop level from the contract price:

expected 2010 troop level = contract price x 2000

As of the end of June [pdf], there were 183,100 troops participating in Operation Iraqi Freedom.  So a price for a “no change in troop levels” is 91.55 compared to a current price of 29.9. This price says that the Intrade “market” expects about 60,000 US troops in Iraq by the end of June 2010. (Note: As a thinly traded contract, it is difficult to infer true market expectations from the price.)  If you predict less “change” from this administration, you might think this is an extremely low number.  If you have little hope for real change, then perhaps you should purchase the contract today.  Contracts on other foreign policy-related issues are also available:

Gitmo closed by December 31st, 2009 (low number –> low predicted likelihood)

Gates as Sec. of Defense (high number –> high expected likelihood)

Please let the incoming presidential administration know that you demand real change in our interventionist foreign policy. Ask President Elect Barack Obama to make a stand for peace by dumping Bush appointee Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. You can easily let the transition team know your thoughts on this matter by calling 202-540-3000 or pasting the letter below into this form.

Dear President Elect Obama:

You sailed to victory on the promise of change and hope. For those of us who love peace, a change in foreign policy must come with a change in the key personnel who supported and argued for the continued occupation of Iraq. President Elect Obama, we want change in the Pentagon. We ask you to not to give former CIA Director Robert Gates another term as Secretary of Defense.

Respectfully,

[Antiwar.com Reader]

Thanks to Shauna, Chad, Eric and Justin, Dan, John, Brendan, Brandon, Angela, August, Chris, Mark, Adam, Brent, everyone at KAOS Radio, Antiwar.com, my incredible guests and listeners for everything.

All interviews are available for free download at ScottHortonShow.com. All foreign policy related interviews since December, 2006 at Antiwar.com/Radio.

(Cross-posted at Stress.)

We have followed the campaign behind Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West since it first emerged in 2005. IPS has published two articles on its producers and distribution here and here. This new rebuttal by JewsOnFirst is one of the most comprehensive attempts to dismantle the arguments presented in the film.

JewsOnFirst, an organization, “dedicated to the protection of the separation of church and state under the First Amendment,” has published Rebutting Obsession: Historical Facts Topple Film’s Premise that Violent Muslim Fundamentalists are Nazis’ Heirs, Expose its Fear-mongering, a devastating critique of Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West. Obsession, a 2005 film that, in the name of exposing violent fundamentalism, casts suspicion on all Muslims, experienced increased exposure this fall, when the mysterious Clarion Fund initiated the unsolicited distribution of millions of DVD inserts inside swing state newspapers.

In support of the rebuttal, JewsOnFirst also offers a web-based slide presentation summarizing the key arguments, as well as profiles of the supposed experts interviewed in the film. (The slide presentation will soon be available for download as a PowerPoint presentation next week.)

Key arguments made in JewsOnFirst’s Rebutting Obsession are:

• Obsession and the “expert” viewpoints presented in it represent the ideology of the far right wing within the Republican Party, which seeks to intervene in the Presidential election with a distraction from the current economic turmoil.

• Obsession ignores the geopolitical environment in which radical Islam was cultured, and makes a baseless argument that such fundamentalism is the ideological descendent of Nazism.

• Obsession seeks, at a time of economic pain and cultural division to permit the viewer to project all real or imaginary fears and anxieties onto Muslims, as an alien and externalized enemy. This propaganda mirrors the situation faced by Japanese Americans during World War II and non-Anglo-Saxon immigrants in the 20th century. Such divisiveness actually weakens America by threatening our principles of cultural coexistence and religious freedom.

• The “experts” presented in Obsession have limited experience in the Middle East, few speak Arabic or Farsi and most have limited or no academic background in Islam or the Koran. They represent a fringe group of Middle East “specialists” who align themselves with the Likud party in Israel and Christian evangelical and pro-settler lobbies in the United States.

• Finally, Obsession, despite its half-hearted disclaimer that radical Muslims are a small minority, seeks to promote the concept of a violent clash of civilizations instead of cultural coexistence and religious pluralism.

The full project can be viewed at http://www.jewsonfirst.org/obsession/.

Hudson, of course, was the first refuge of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby after his 2005 indictment for perjury, but he apparently left after his conviction (and despite Bush’s commutation), and I’ve completely lost track of him now. (Does anyone know what he’s doing?)

Feith will join other leading Likudist lights at Hudson, including Meyrav Wurmser (wife of former Cheney aide David Wurmser), who heads the Institute’s Middle East Studies department; Hillel Fradkin; Laurent Murawiec; Anne Bayefsky; Norman Podhoretz (not in residence); and Nina Shea, among others. It’s interesting to note that the two Wurmsers, as well as Feith and another Hudson Senior Fellow, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., made up half of the eight members of the task force sponsored by the Jerusalem-based Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies (IASPS) that produced the 1996 “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” paper for incoming Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that many analysts believe helped plant the seed for the Iraq invasion eight years later. (That alone suggests how dangerous it might be to put Feith in charge of developing any kinds of “strategies,” as Hudson seems to have done.) The other task force members included IASPS’s highly eccentric (check its website) president, Robert Loewenberg, James Colbert, then-Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) researcher Jonathan Torop; and the nominal chairman, Richard Perle, from whom not much has been heard lately — another sign that, with the exception of Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and the Kagan boys, neo-cons have been lying rather low during the election campaign.

Feith’s former boss, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, has also not been heard from recently, which in many ways is very strange, given that his last public post was president of the World Bank and his official at AEI (where he has been a Visiting Scholar since his ignominious resignation 18 months ago) stresses his interest in development and trade. You would think that, given the current financial crisis and its potentially disastrous ripple effects on emerging economies and poor countries (for which he has expressed particular sympathy in the past), he would not have been shy about offering his advice about how to protect them. But, apart from his advocacy of business and defense ties with Taiwan (he’s chairman of the U.S.-Taiwan Business Council), he seems to have largely disappeared from the public sphere. In the realm of economic development and aid, Hudson has acquired a far more credible figure in the person of former USAID Administrator Andrew Natsios, who joined the Institute at the same time as Feith.

The group also condemned Harrison Ford and Cate Blanchett as “capitalist puppets” for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which they said was anti-Soviet propaganda. They seem to have an even bigger problem with Ms. Kurylenko however, slamming her for assisting “a man who worked for decades under the orders of Thatcher and Reagan to destroy the USSR.”

A fictitious man, to be sure, but party leader Sergei Malinkovich claims that “Everyone knows that the CIA and MI6 finance James Bond films as a special operation of psychological warfare against us. This Ukrainian girl sleeps with Bond and that means that Ukraine is sleeping with the West.” He accused Ms. Kurylenko of betraying her homeland and wanting “Crimean girls to be raped by cruel and stupid American marines,” an apparent reference to the Ukraine-Russia dispute over Russia’s Crimean Black Sea Fleet HQ in Sevastopol.

The new production company/website Truthtopower.tv has just released its powerful first film, The Warning, featuring exclusive interviews with five recently-published authors Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (Crimes Against Nature), Naomi Wolf (The End of America), Chris Hedges (American Fascists), Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine) and Joe Conason (It Can Happen Here). Director/Writer/Producer J.P. Sottile wisely steers clear of cinematic fireworks, keeping a tight focus on the writers’ frightening observations about the subversion and erosion of American Democracy in recent years. Privatized warfare, illegal torture and wiretapping, corporate and religious influence, the ballooning power of the Executive and more are exposed as the film warns just how slippery a slope the U.S. is sliding down. The Warning is an excellent example of the kind of patriotic dissent the country needs right now.
Find out more and get your own copy here.

Check the preview below:

Shoes.

Yes, shoes. Israel has reportedly banned shoes and other clothing from being imported into the Gaza Strip, claiming that “they could be used in producing military uniforms.”

Now, humanity has been making shoes for itself for at least 10,000 years, and there’s no denying that some of those shoes have been put the military use in that time. Still, its something one can at the very least consider a “dual use technology.”

Of course, with some Gazans finding electric car technology as a solution to harshly curbed fuel imports, the production of shoes seems well within their technological capabilities. But expensive and scarce materials will make satisfying the demands of the strip’s million and a half residents for footwear extremely difficult if not impossible.