Christmas in Cambodia

I notice that neither Tex nor the New York Times nor the Washington Post nor the LA Times, nor in fact any of the media who are so eager to call the Swift Boad Veterans “lying” seem to ever be able to utter the word “Cambodia.” Kerry said that his “Christmas in Cambodia” was “seared” on his memory. Tex and the others are sure afraid of this topic. Why? And why is someone who blogs for an anti-interventionist web site pro-Kerry anyway? You know, John “don’t bring the boys home” Kerry.

Saturday blog tour

This is a mini blog tour because I had a crazy day!

How about that Iraqi soccer team?

How bad IS the missile defense system the Bushies are insisting on deploying pre-election? Noah Schachtman at Defense Tech posts that the former Pentagon testing chief Phillip Coyle says it is about this bad. More.

Mark Elf posts that Israel Shamir has been outed as a Swedish neo-Nazi.

Everyone’s talking about those lying Swift Boat Vets. The best treatment of the SBVT (Notice how that acronym spells subvert?) controversy is by Arthur Silber, of course.

Salam Pax is back and is posting on a new blog. He called the new blog shut up you fat whiner!, probably so people wouldn’t doubt it was really him. He was in Najaf today. Meanwhile, the mathematically challenged Raed Jarrar is still AWOL.

Mike Mayakis, RIP (III)

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a very nice obituary of Mike Mayakis, longtime libertarian and antiwar activist, and my best friend. Following is the article:

Mike Mayakis – Libertarian activist and agile debater

by Charlie Goodyear, Chronicle Staff Writer
August 19, 2004

Mike Mayakis, a prominent Libertarian whose surprising political positions made him a formidable debater, has died. He was 53.

Mr. Mayakis died at his home in San Francisco on Sunday after a long struggle with leukemia.

A native of Los Angeles, he moved to San Francisco in 1971 and worked for more than a decade at the Haight Ashbury Switchboard as a counselor and trainer for the service that provided information, assistance and counseling to the city’s growing counterculture.

Mr. Mayakis was elected to the switchboard’s Board of Trustees in 1973 and became its president in 1980.

During the 1970s, he worked as an aide to liberal Republican state Sen. Milton Marks of San Francisco and eventually became active in Libertarian politics, founding a chapter of Students for a Libertarian Society at San Francisco State University.

In 1982, Mr. Mayakis was the Libertarian Party’s candidate for state Senate. He was elected chair of the San Francisco Libertarian Party and held that position three times during the 1980s.

He became well known for defying assumptions in political debates. He argued frequently for the rights of smokers when he himself was an asthmatic.

In 1988, he worked for the Libertarian Republican Organizing Committee at the Republic Convention in New Orleans. But he was never a Republican, and in 1995 helped found the popular Web site Antiwar.com.

His failing health took its toll on his political activism. But Mr. Mayakis turned his frustrating experiences with the medical system into a guide called "Express Hospital Emergency Room Admission & Survival Kit" to help other patients.

He is survived by his wife, Betty Honeycutt; siblings Matthew Mayakis, Martha Mayakis and Sara Tisher, all of Los Angeles; and stepfather Lloyd Daic, also of Los Angeles.

A memorial service is being planned. For details, phone (650) 838-0381.

Notes on Chapters 7 and 8 of the 9/11 Report

Chapter 7 meticulously chronicles the arrival and actions of the nineteen hijackers. Little interesting information is found in the chapter. However, one is surprised by the remarkable ease at which many of the men moved around and in and out of the United States. Also, beyond stopping each at the border, it seems little could have been done once the men were inside the U.S. Their lives consisted of time at the mosque, the gym and flight training, setting off few alarms at the FBI or CIA.

The government has attempted to adjust its law enforcement capabilities to these simple methods of assimilating and moving about the country [read: PATRIOT Act]. However, this chapter’s narrative suggests that new methods of hiding and concealing identities will adapt to anything the government implements. This scenario suggests more should be done on the policy front; i.e. altering those policies that anger individuals enough to lead them to commit suicide in response.

Chapter 8 is best summed up by its conclusion:

    “We see little evidence that the progress of the plot was disturbed by any government action. The U.S. government was unable to capitalize on mistakes made by al Qaeda.Time ran out.” (page 294)

Entitled “The System Was Blinking Red,” the chapter details a plethora of missed opportunities. Simply, various government bureaucracies failed to connect the dots. This problem stemmed from a few issues. One was a problem of information sharing. The report describes a meeting between CIA and FBI who were separately investigating the attack on the USS Cole. Each attendee held information, that if put together, would have suggested al Qaeda was planning something in the US. However, due to technical issues between bureaucracies, the information was never shared:

    “It is now clear that everyone involved was confused about the rules governing the sharing and use of information gathered in intelligence channels.”(page 288)

Upon investigation, each member of this meeting told the commission that if they had seen the others’ info, action would have been taken.

The government also struggled with the new and unseen threat of domestic terrorism:

    The September 11 attacks fell into the void between the foreign and domestic threats. The foreign intelligence agencies were watching overseas, alert to foreign threats to U.S. interests there.The domestic agencies were waiting for evidence of a domestic threat from sleeper cells within the United States. (page 290)

Despite the above setbacks, DCI Tenet still claimed that the “system was blinking red.” Here’s a quick overview of some of the warnings the administration received in 2001:

“In the spring of 2001, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks increased dramatically to its highest level since the millennium alert.” (page 272)

“On May 17, based on the previous day’s report, the first item on the CSG’s agenda was ‘UBL: Operation Planned in U.S'”(page 273)

“One al Qaeda intelligence report warned that something ‘very, very, very, very’ big was about to happen, and most of Bin Ladin’s network was reportedly anticipating the attack.” (page 274)

“On June 30, the SEIB contained an article titled ‘Bin Ladin Threats Are Real.’ Yet Hadley told Tenet in July that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz questioned the reporting.”(page 276)

“To give a sense of his anxiety at the time, one senior official in the Counterterrorist Center told us that he and a colleague were considering resigning in order to go public with their concerns.” (page 276)

Unfortunately, no one in the government was “looking for foreign threats to domestic targets” and “time ran out.” (page 280)

Current mayhem in Iraq, 8/19 Edition

OK, too much is happening, so I’m doing an Iraqi mayhem post.

Moqtada al Sadr’s militants have torched the headquarters of Iraq’s South Oil Company on Thursday and set the company’s warehouses and offices on fire.

Rebels mortared the American “embassy” in Baghdad, wounding two Americans and damaging the roof. Negroponte was elsewhere.

Grand Ayatollah Ali al Sistani is still in London. Since nothing important was happening in Iraq, he had eye surgery on Monday. Interestingly, all four of Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah’s have business outside of Iraq.

Sources in Najaf state that all four clerics of the Maraji are out of Iraq.

Ayat Najafi has left for Iran.
Ayat Hakim has left for Germany.
Ayat Sistani is in London.
Ayat Fayadh has left Najef, his whereabouts and destination are uclear. Fayadh was born in Pakistan.

Thanks grrpy and Angry Arab.

UPDATE: The US military is using AC-130 gunships on the Old City of Najaf.

UPDATE: US warplanes bomb Fallujah. Again.

Iraqi soccer team speaks truth to Bush

Iraqi Olympic soccer player, Ahmed Manajid, angered by George Bush using the team in a (fatuous – read the article to see how stupid it is) campaign commercial said:

“How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?” Manajid told me. “He has committed so many crimes.”

The Bush campaign was contacted about the Iraqi soccer player’s statements, but has yet to respond.

To a man, members of the Iraqi Olympic delegation say they are glad that former Olympic committee head Uday Hussein, who was responsible for the serial torture of Iraqi athletes and was killed four months after the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq in March 2003, is no longer in power.

But they also find it offensive that Bush is using their team for his own gain when they do not support his administration’s actions in Iraq. “My problems are not with the American people,” says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. “They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?”

At a speech in Beaverton, Ore., last Friday, Bush attached himself to the Iraqi soccer team after its opening-game upset of Portugal. “The image of the Iraqi soccer team playing in this Olympics, it’s fantastic, isn’t it?” Bush said. “It wouldn’t have been free if the United States had not acted.”

Sadir, Wednesday’s goal-scorer, used to be the star player for the professional soccer team in Najaf. In the city in which 20,000 fans used to fill the stadium and chant Sadir’s name, U.S. and Iraqi forces have battled loyalists to rebel cleric Moktada al-Sadr for the past two weeks. Najaf lies in ruins.

“I want the violence and the war to go away from the city,” says Sadir, 21. “We don’t wish for the presence of Americans in our country. We want them to go away.”

Manajid, 22, who nearly scored his own goal with a driven header on Wednesday, hails from the city of Fallujah. He says coalition forces killed Manajid’s cousin, Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was fighting as an insurgent, and several of his friends. In fact, Manajid says, if he were not playing soccer he would “for sure” be fighting as part of the resistance.

“I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?” Manajid says. “Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq.”

The truth hurts, doesn’t it, Shrubbie? Funny how people can hate you just because you kill their cousins and friends.