Juan Cole asks, Did the Bush Administration Burn a Key al-Qaeda Double Agent? It appears that they did: ““Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff of Reuters reveal the explosive information that the Bush administration blew the cover Monday of double agent Muhammad Naeem Noor Khan.” Cole also speculates on Ayatollah Sistani’s “heart trouble”:
One problem with an all-out attack on the Mahdi Army was that it might endanger the life of, or meet opposition from, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. He was therefore spirited out of Najaf on the pretext that he had heart problems. But Al-Zaman reports today that Sistani stopped off in Beirut on his way to London, where he met with moderate Shiite leader Nabih Berri of the AMAL party, who serves as Speaker of the Lebanese Parliament. Sistani then went on to London, but is not in hospital and won’t be for at least a week. This story just does not square with him being so ill that he had to be airlifted to London for emergency heart treatment. It would not have been easy for al-Zurufi and the Americans to convince Sistani to leave, but they could have simply shared with him their plans to have an all-out war in Najaf, and told him they could not protect him. That would have left him no choice but to leave. If you think about it, he could not possibly have been gotten out of Najaf to Beirut and London without US military assistance, though he flew a private plane from Baghdad airport.
I think this analysis is likely true, as I insinuated here yesterday.
Riverbend checks in for the first time in over a month:
Is there sympathy with all these abductees? There is. We hate seeing them looking frightened on television. We hate thinking of the fact that they have families and friends who worry about them in distant countries and wonder how in the world they managed to end up in the hell that is now Iraq… but for every foreigner abducted, there are probably 10 Iraqis being abducted and while we have to be here because it is home, truck drivers, security personnel for foreign companies and contractors do not. Sympathy has its limits in the Iraqi summer heat. Dozens of Iraqis are dying on a daily basis in places like Falloojeh and Najaf and everyone is mysteriously silent- one Brit, American or Pakistani dies and the world is in an uproar- it is getting tiresome.
As for The New Iraqi Police State, where US installed Dictator Allawi has just shut down Al Jazeera’s offices in Iraq, Riverbend says, “Word on the street has it that email, internet access, and telephone calls are being monitored closely. We actually heard a couple of reports of people being detained due to the contents of their email. It’s a daunting thought and speaks volumes about our current ‘liberated’ status- and please don’t bother sending me a copy of the “Patriot Act”… this last year it has felt like everyone is under suspicion for something.”
Stuart Hughes is blogging from Athens where he’s covering the Olympics for the BBC.
About 900 hacks, me included, are being put up at the Selete complex, a javelin throw away from the main Olympic Stadium.
The check in procedure resembles that of a prison – x-ray scanners, searches, and all sharp implements confiscated. The security guards let me keep my shoelaces but I couldn’t be trusted with my Swiss Army Knife. It was taken away for safe keeping by one of the ubiquitous jolly volunteers, all of whom are dressed in shorts and brightly coloured polo shirts. The fear of sharp instruments continued when I got to the restaurant – all knifes and forks are made from wood or plastic.
The rooms are comfortable, if spartan. One single bed. One wardrobe. One desk. One chair. One TV. Little else. I was surprised to find that they weren’t screwed to the floor, although this may have just been an oversight by the architects.
If Guantanamo Bay was taken over by Walt Disney it’d be a lot like Selete. All that’s missing are the orange jumpsuits.
General J.C. Christian reviews Michelle Malkin’s new book. For an interesting debate on just how bad Malkin’s research for this book was, see Eric Muller’s blog, starting here and continuing up. Muller and Greg Robinson convince me, though I know little about the history of the Japanese internment and I thought Malkin was a lightweight warmongering neocon twit already. I must be right, because the Libertarian Jackass agrees.
Libertarian Jackass asks, “WHAT HAPPENED TO Anthony Gancarski? Abducted by aliens? Under contract with the Feds? Midlife crisis?” See Garcanski’s latest incoherent (and dishonestly unlinked) word salad to see why these are good questions.
Via Arthur Silber, I found Claire Wolfe’s review of James Bovard’s new book, The Bush Betrayal, which I had missed. Arthur is doing some commentary on the book as well (see here) and has found that James Bovard has a blog.
Tim Swanson is posting pictures from the Mises University. Start here and follow the links. What a suck-up!
So that’s what happened. Ridge Raises Terror Level After Watching Cujo.