Month: July 2004

The top news story out of Iraq today reports a massive suicide car bomb in Baqouba. Early reports neglected to mention that the target of the bombing was an Iraqi police station, in front of which lines of Iraqis applying for jobs as policemen had formed, but that information is now out. It is well known that guerillas have targeted the Iraqi police force for being collaborators with the occupation, but a report from Newsday reveals another reason for Iraqis to hate the NEW! Iraqi Police:

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The Intelligence Service has its own secret prison. Criminals wear uniforms and collect police salaries. Senior security officials hand out jobs to family members. Investigators charged with being watchdogs over the police say they have little or no power. They report to the interior minister rather than to justice itself. The police arrest the innocent, beat them, and imprison them without charge; and in at least one case, police shot dead an innocent bystander.

This is not Saddam Hussein’s corrupt police state. This is the new Iraq run by interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, the man the international community is hoping will shepherd Iraqi democracy into being early next year. There are so many corrupt, violent and useless police officers in the new Iraqi police force that, according to a senior American adviser to the Iraqi police, the U.S. government is about to pay off 30,000 police officers at a cost of $60 million to the American taxpayer.

Did you get that last bit? The US government is paying 60 MILLION dollars stolen from American taxpayers for 30,000 Iraqi “police” to go away.

The staggering cost and violent results of the repeated asinine blunders committed by the clueless neocons and Bushie nation-builders in Iraq is no surprise for those who’ve watched this farce unfold. Could anyone read this and not feel a frisson of dread as well as anger at the hypocrisy and stupidity of the War Party?

United States occupation authorities are recruiting and training agents with the Iraqi intelligence service to help identify resistance to US forces after months of increasingly sophisticated attacks and bombings.

The employment of agents of Saddam Hussein’s brutal security services underscores a growing recognition that US forces cannot alone prevent attacks like the bombing of the United Nations headquarters last week.

Authorities had stepped up recruitment over the past two weeks, a senior US official said.

“The only way you can combat terrorism is through intelligence,” the senior official said. “It’s the only way you’re going to stop these people from doing what they’re doing.”

Officials are reluctant to disclose how many former agents have been recruited since the effort began. But Iraqi officials say they number anywhere from dozens to a few hundred, and US officials acknowledge that the recruitment is extensive.

OK, so now we have installed the thug Allawi in place of Saddam and recreated Saddam’s Mukhbarat. Allawi is shooting people in cold blood and sending goon squads out to round up entire neighborhoods. His secret police are torturing and beating prisoners and the New! IP are shaking down Iraqis at checkpoints and working with kidnappers. What was the justification for invading Iraq again? Anybody? Is anyone still mystified as to why the guerillas would attack the Iraqi “police” so relentlessly?

Everyone hates at least one of them, and this is why: Michael Moore vs. Bill O’Reilly. (Be sure to read the conditions Moore stipulated for the interview at the beginning of the article – i.e., that it oughta be an honest record of what took place.) My favorite excerpt:

MOORE: So you would sacrifice your child to secure Fallujah? I want to hear you say that.

O’REILLY: I would sacrifice myself—

MOORE: Your child—It’s Bush sending the children there.

O’REILLY: I would sacrifice myself.

MOORE: You and I don’t go to war, because we’re too old—

O’REILLY: Because if we back down, there will be more deaths and you know it.

MOORE: Say ‘I Bill O’Reilly would sacrifice my child to secure Fallujah’

O’REILLY: I’m not going to say what you say, you’re a, that’s ridiculous

MOORE: You don’t believe that. Why should Bush sacrifice the children of people across America for this? …

MOORE: Right, I would not sacrifice my child to secure Fallujah and you would?

O’REILLY: I would sacrifice myself.

MOORE: You wouldn’t send another child, another parents child to Fallujah, would you? You would sacrifice your life to secure Fallujah?

O’REILLY: I would.

MOORE: Can we sign him up? Can we sign him up right now?

O’REILLY: That’s right.

MOORE: Where’s the recruiter?

O’REILLY: You’d love to get rid of me.

The tough guy goes out with a whimper. The look on O’Reilly’s face during the parts above is priceless. Watch the video (link at top of article).

Sweet merciful God, is it over yet? Tonight was pure fluff from start to finish. Ted Kennedy tried to beat a few more flecks of pixie dust from Camelot’s rugs. Howard Dean played the good party hack. Barack Obama said little of any interest, but he benefitted from what the Prez used to call the “soft prejudice of low expectations” – his speech was alright, to be sure, but you could almost hear the talking heads thinking, “Gosh, he’s so articulate!” Ron Reagan spoke about stem-cell research – or rather, heavily government-subsidized stem-cell research. Finally, our potential first African-American first lady, Teresa Heinz Kerry, spouted more liberal cliches than the backside of a Berkeley Volvo.

Say, fellas, ain’t there a war on? You’d hardly know it from the speeches tonight. Of course, you’d think the evening was nothing but Quakers and Bush-haters if you watched it on Fox News (as I did). They’re still whining about the peacenikery/vituperation that my eyes and ears somehow missed in real time. Too bad they’re lying.

American, do you realize,
That the taxes that you pay
Feed the forces that traumatize
My every living day?

The bulldozers and the tanks,
The gases and the guns,
The bombs that fall outside my door,
All due to American funds.

Read the whole thing here: Subzero Blue

Here’s a good illustration for Charley Reese’s column, featured on AntiWar.com today:

United States aircraft dropped leaflets on the rebellious Iraqi city of Fallujah on Tuesday, warning residents they will lose $102-million (about R637-million) in rebuilding funds if they do not halt attacks and allow US troops to enter freely.

Charley says:

One mistake that seems to be a permanent feature of our foreign policy is mirror-imaging. So many American politicians, most of them poorly educated and ignorant of other people and their cultures, tend to think other people are just like us. A great many are not.

Lyndon Johnson failed in Vietnam because he thought he could treat the Vietnamese the same way he treated members of the U.S. House and Senate. Johnson always used a stick and a carrot. Vote with me, and you’ll get pork-barrel rewards; vote against me, and I’ll find a way to punish you. That worked with American politicians, most of whom are nothing more than officeholders with “for sale or rent” signs on their foreheads.

Johnson told the North Vietnamese, make peace, and I’ll give you billions of dollars in American aid; don’t make peace, and I’ll bomb you. Unfortunately for Johnson, the North Vietnamese, whatever their other faults, were not for sale, nor were they willing to succumb to threats. They wanted to unify their country, and they were willing to fight as long as necessary to achieve that. As it turned out, we were not willing to fight as long as necessary to prevent it. So, despite billions of dollars, despite 57,000 dead, despite a quarter of a million wounded, Vietnam is today a unified communist country.

President George W. Bush has offered a $25 million reward for Osama bin Laden. He thought, apparently, that like most Americans, the Afghans and Pakistanis were for sale. Despite Afghanistan being one of the poorest countries in the world, the American millions have not produced a single traitor willing to rat out bin Laden.

Let’s face it – we have become a secular and materialistic society. The two kinds of people we have real trouble believing actually exist are people of true religious faith and people to whom honor means more than money.

This shouldn’t be such a hard thing to understand.

"Counterterrorism Evolves" highlights the many faults with the US law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies prior to 9/11. One includes the structure of institutions such as the FBI:

"[P]erformance in the Bureau was generally measured against statistics such as numbers of arrests, indictments, prosecutions, and convictions. Counterterrorism and counterintelligence work, often involving lengthy intelligence investigations that might never have positive or quantifiable results, was not career-enhancing." (page 74)

Still, the FBI had plenty of power to thwart foreign terrorists:

"In 1986, Congress authorized the FBI to investigate terrorist attacks against Americans that occur outside the United States. Three years later, it added authority for the FBI to make arrests abroad without consent from the host country." (page 75)

Unfortunately, there was a definite lack of focus only a year before 9/11:

"Although the FBI’s counterterrorism budget tripled during the mid-1990s, FBI counterterrorism spending remained fairly constant between fiscal years 1998 and 2001. In 2000, there were still twice as many agents devoted to drug enforcement as to counterterrorism." (page 77)

Overall, one gets a sense that the commission still believed that the FBI and others still didn’t have enough power. Continue reading “Notes on Chapter 3 of the 9/11 Report”