Antiwar.com Blog

Who’d think the US Department of Health and Human Services would make for such interesting fodder? While its not near so glamorous as the resignation of, say, John Ashcroft or Tom Ridge, the closing comments of the outgoing Tommy Thompson raise some compelling questions of their own. Here’s what I found interesting:

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson resigned Friday, warning of a potential global outbreak of the flu and health-related terror attacks. “For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do,” he said.

That’s not surprising in and of itself, since there’s a dire prediction of impending doom coming out of DC approximately once every 30 seconds. But when we combine that with the interesting fact that

The former Wisconsin governor has warned about food safety issues since before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and pushed for more money for safeguards. Spending on food security has increased from $800,000 to $150 million during Thompson’s tenure, and there are eight times as many food inspections now as in 2001, according to HHS figures.

So we start with a problem that doesn’t exist, namely, terror attacks against the food supply. They literally pour money into the program, an almost 200-fold increase in funds and an eightfold increase in manpower to prevent future attacks, even though past attacks have never happened. And now what?

Now we’re warned, by seemingly the only man who even considered this a problem in the first place, the same man who fought tooth and nail to get this incredible increase in funding that now he “cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do”.

Is it just me or did Tommy just get away with admitting he wasted hundreds of millions of dollars without even a hint of an apology?

“Gliding” toward elections in Iraq:

In the second major assault on Baghdad’s police force in two days, two car bombs -including at least one detonated by a suicide attacker -exploded next to an Iraqi police station just outside Baghdad’s Green Zone on Saturday, killing seven people and wounding 59, mostly police. Insurgents killed 16 officers in an attack the day before.

The U.S. military announced that four American military personnel died in separate attacks Friday and Saturday.

Two car bombs exploded at 9:30 a.m. (0630GMT) Saturday near a checkpoint leading to Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses the offices of Iraq’s interim government and several foreign missions, including the U.S. Embassy. Only one blast was heard at the time, suggesting the bombs may have been timed to detonate simultaneously.
[…]
A U.S. soldier in a truck north of Baghdad was killed when a roadside bomb destroyed his vehicle on Saturday. Another U.S. soldier died and five were injured in a roadside bomb attack in eastern Baghdad.

On Friday, a suicide bomber killed two Americans along the Iraqi-Jordanian border, the military said.
[…]
Police in the northern city of Samarra also came under attack Saturday. Mortars were fired at a station after midnight, wounding two officers. Gunmen injured two policemen in another attack at about 10 a.m., according to police Maj. Sadoon Ahmed Matroud.

New details emerged about heavy fighting in the last day in Mosul, the northern Iraqi city that has seen a surge in violence recently including several attacks in which insurgents captured and looted several police stations. The U.S. military said in a statement the fighting began when insurgents attacked four police stations but were repelled.

About 70 insurgents also tried to ambush a U.S. patrol with roadside bombs, rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire. After regrouping, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an assault on “pockets of resistance” in Mosul, killing more than two dozen insurgents.

It’s a good thing the US broke the back of the resistance in Fallujah! Imagine how bad it would be if they hadn’t! So, how is the Satan-hunt going in Fallujah?

William Lind: My favorite (quote) last week was the American general who claimed Falluja had “broken the back” of the insurgency. Insurgencies, like octopi, are invertebrate.

Al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi, architect of the political process leading to elections in Iraq:

It would be impossible to hold elections in Iraq in January if the security situation remains as precarious as it is, a UN adviser has said.

“Elections are no magic potion, but part of a political process. They must be prepared well and take place at the right time to produce the good effects that you expect from them.”

Asked if it was possible to hold elections as conditions exist now, al-Ibrahimi said: “If the circumstances stay as they are, I personally don’t think so.”

I’m wary of people who pick the worst among their opponents to “prove” the superiority of their own position. I won’t say Viktor Yushchenko is an anti-Semite just because this nut believes in a kosher conspiracy (literally). I won’t say National Review is full of Nazis just because this Nazi echoes their sentiments perfectly. And I won’t say all neoconservatives/pro-war “libertarians” should be drummed out of the league of halfway decent humans just because one of them should.

But the aforementioned one is not exactly on the fringe of pro-war thought. In fact, he’s a program director at the Institute for Humane Studies, a major mainstream libertarian organization. His standard approach to foreign-policy matters goes as follows:

(1) make assertions so outrageously stupid and/or vicious that they far surpass the worst caricatures of right-wingers;

(2) whine that those who either recoil in horror or laugh their asses off aren’t addressing his arguments.

His latest libertarian argument?

If boiling people alive best served the interests of the American people, then it would neither be moral or immoral.

We’re not talking about choosing between rum raisin and rocky road at the Baskin-Robbins. Boiling people alive (if only under exceptional circumstances) is either moral, or it isn’t – and anyone half as clever as this lad thinks he is would make those exceptional circumstances clear, then argue for the morality of throwing people in the cauldron.

But even if he were clever enough to do so, he still wouldn’t be a libertarian. Some issues are beyond debate for libertarians, and even if you don’t count preemptive war among those issues, you damn well better include the impermissibility of boiling people alive. Vegans don’t debate skinning baby seals. Libertarians don’t debate boiling people alive. Period. And if we do, then perhaps we should also reconsider Sweden’s take on taxes, Uganda’s thinking on homosexuality, and Bill Bennett’s favored drug policy.

Feel free to express your disgust to Max Borders’ employers.

UPDATE (12/4)

UPDATE (12/5)

UPDATE (12/6)

Check out our Über-Editor Matt Barganier tonight on the “Peter Principle” guest hosted by Scott Horton, from 7-9PM CT.
You can Listen Live on the internet.

(see 10 for introduction)
7 next

For Thursday’s Capital Times , John Nichols reworked his latest Nation On-Line Beat entry, which topped Common Dreams’ list Wednesday. The subject was the thwarting of a church’s attempt to celebrate inclusiveness. I’m attempting to celebrate how religiously exclusive John (and by proxy, far too many “progressives”) is when it comes to Palestine, that’s 102 Cap Times columns down, eight to go and he’ll have made it through the year without having used the word “Israel.”

In a letter to the editor in response to a Cap Times editorial in October, 1995, I wondered how the same people who had celebrated the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa were gushing over “the peace process,” i.e., the “formalization and intensification of apartheid in Israel/Palestine…The plan being implemented is to isolate Palestinian population centers. Each enclave is being surrounded by settlements, Israeli army fortresses and crucially, ‘bypass’ roads costing a billion dollars…”

“Born in 1991,” the checkpoints “were greatly reinforced” after the Oslo Accords were signed, Yitzhak Laor writes in the wake of the violin incident.

Amira Hass reports and applauds, the Palestinian Authority is finally taking a practical step against apartheid road construction.

In “Palestinians await someone who offers them freedom,” Nadia Hijab mentions “Marwan Barghouti, whose capture and imprisonment by
Israel during the current uprising evokes comparisons with South Africa’s Nelson Mandela.”

Martin Fletcher, NBC News’ Tel Aviv bureau chief who was previously based in Johannesburg, had this to say in an interview last year:

“The thing is that, to a large extent, Israel today is worse than South Africa. Because if you compare the situation of the blacks under apartheid to the situation of the Palestinians under the Israeli military occupation, the Palestinians’ situation is much worse.

“The idea of apartheid was that the blacks would live separately from the whites, but as long as they were living apart, they could do what they wanted. They were free to travel, to go to the cinema, to go to work, or wherever else they wanted. Here the Palestinians are not free to move because the military dictatorship of this government doesn’t allow it…

“I loved South Africa, but one day I realized that I couldn’t remain there any longer…

“I wonder when the Israelis will look at the Palestinians’ situation and understand that it’s intolerable that a million people should live for so long stuck in their houses without being able to go anywhere.”

“Untolerable” for whom? Yes, 102 columns down, eight to go.

Or, How Many Daughters Does Michael Ledeen Have?

The following is apparently supposed to be yet another example of the wonderful Iraq news the doggone librull media get up early in the morning to suppress. According to our source, the young lady who authored this e-mail from the Green Zone "is in charge of getting water to the entire country of Iraq."

Emphasis mine.

……Work has been going really well, though extremely busy and increasingly stressful. I have learned a lot about program management, and how to be an advocate. It is a fascinating position, where I feel like I “own” the water sector, like it is my own child that I have to protect, rear, and help grow to her full potential. Learning about how to manage a program, from the project execution side, to the budgetary and funding side, has been an experience that I never would’ve imagined. Interacting with engineers who are just so passionate about this water project or that has been eye-opening – they had such a different perspective on the world than pure “policy” people. Each day I try my best to noodle all the issues, from technical, to coordination, to optics, to security, to logistics, to funding – and protect the money the sector has left – so that we can get people drinkable water, sewer systems, irrigation canals, and dams. I am learning a lot about management too – and trying to be a good manager by giving folks the tools they need to succeed. I’m not any good, I’ve found. It’s funny what issues arise that you have to deal with as a manager… I do sometimes feel like a parent over here.

What a great time to learn about management – while in charge of getting water to the entire country of Iraq. And as for the parenting bit, I’ve heard a lot about children having children, but this takes the cake.

A little more about management… over the past week, I’ve had to have meetings with folks in my sector about roles and responsibilities. It was a very odd position to be in, because it really isn’t my style to tell someone what they are supposed to do, what I do, and that what I do is tell them what to do. It’s different from, as Fumie would call it, “smack down” sessions we might have with agencies, only because it is an institution v. institution issue. Here, it is a position v. position issue (i.e. my position is different from yours…). I had to have a talk with my deputy actually this week, where I had to softly lay down the law… I had talking points I had drafted earlier, because I was so nervous. He took it well – he is a military guy after all – and since then, things have gone smoothly ….Another management skill I’m learning. There are a ton of things I need to learn, I’ve quickly discovered.

No matter what you think about this war, I think we can all sympathize with the "military guy" who had to endure that talking-to.

On a totally unrelated matter – The other day, I was offered the position of Dep. Director of Programs (aka “Knothole”), where I would help oversee all of the sectors that we are doing reconstruction in – water, electricity, oil, buildings/health/education, security and justice, and roads/communications. I am definitely flattered that I have been offered the job, but I am also really liking running the water sector, and am trying to figure out maybe how I can do both. I did a whole decision matrix the other night, and weighted it (one of the items in the “con” side of the “doing both” option – provided by a good friend of mine – was “sh#$tty home life”. Heh). I think I am going to try to do both, but where I have defined a narrower scope of what I call “deputy director”. I ran it by the big cheese last night, and he seemed to like the idea. It’s so funny how everyone has a title for everything over here.

[…]

Things here in the Green Zone are a little more monotonous than when I first started here, simply because we are restricted to where we are allowed to go in here. Essentially, we are only allowed to be in the Palace compound, or at my work building, or the PX (the little concessionary store with stuff)… no real restaurants or anything. We are supposed to wear our flak jackets and helmet everywhere we go, which is a big fat pain because the jacket is super bulky and heavy, and a sad fashion statement when paired up with khakis and blue sneakers. Oh well. The place has been hit by mortars or rockets almost every day, but the injuries and such have been limited. Folks outside aren’t spot on with the targeting, which is real good for all of us! It’s odd though, I don’t really even flinch when I hear something pass over me. The other day, I was on the balcony in the Palace, and all of a sudden I heard a whizzing sound, which means that it is a rocket, pass over – apparently it hit the fountain on the north side of the Palace, which is about maybe 2 city blocks away. I was more interested in the rocket than scared… I suppose it is a function of just having to survive over here – if you got anxious every time something was shot in, you’d never be about to concentrate. […]

Remember: this is the good news.

Ooh – another food incident! Last Sunday I went out with some friends to the Al Rasheed hotel, this hotel in the Green Zone. It is guarded by these Marines (I’ve found that many Marines are very very serious about their job…). Anyway, we were driving and came upon this checkpoint. The driver, Allen, didn’t notice the stop sign, and was going about 10 mph over the speed limit. Bad idea. The Marine guarding the checkpoint ran up, and started yelling at us to stop, and drew his gun. Allen slammed on the brakes, and I rolled my window down. The Marine was visibly very very angry at us, and said in no uncertain terms that we had not followed instructions. In fact, he said that in about 5 seconds he was able to fire – not good news for me, as the one sitting in the passenger seat, and the target of his potential firing… yikes. It gives new meaning to traffic violation… no tickets, just deadly force. Yikes.

Funny anecdote.

(Thanks to Matthew Yglesias.)