Needlenose

Lavoisier guesses Chalabi in JulyContinuing his game of “I know something you don’t,” today Joshua Marshall has posted the second installment of his investigation of who forged the Iraq-Niger uranium documents that the Bushites used as support for their nuclear scare campaign.

In fact, he points out that the documents appear to have surfaced as part of that campaign. Marshall also notes that the editor of the magazine to which the documents were leaked seems to have been in cahoots (directly or indirectly) with the forger(s) in a scheme to funnel the documents to the U.S. with a minimum of inspection.

It’s an intriguing real-life spy story, and I hope people are interested in following it.

Note: If you’re a reader of Alex Parker‘s weblog — and I highly recommend it — I think he’s misinterpreting some key facts on this subject.

INR’s Ford tells the truth to the LAT
=http://slate.msn.com/id/2090497Slate on NK’s Chalabi[/url]
Juan Cole links:
Dreyfuss blames Mossad for Niger documents
Kwiatkowski 1
Kwiatkowski 2
Kwiatkowski archive?
Fox people really do “get the memo”
Wilson interview part 2
Dana Priest chat
=http://slate.msn.com/id/2090498Slate on economy[/url]
The contest for the Democratic presidential nomination has reached an odd state, where no one seems to be making much progress. A month ago, I wrote this:

I think the race to challenge Dubya is on its way to being a three-person contest between Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, and John Edwards.

The candidates from the Congressional sausage mill (Kerry, Gephardt, and Lieberman) are rapidly losing relevance — Kerry’s plan to run on his military record has been upstaged by Gen. Clark, Gephardt’s populist angle has been usurped by Dean, and Lieberman was a poor candidate to begin with . . .

But although I still think my general analysis was right, my three supposed contenders have done little to seize the spotlight in the weeks since that post. Dean is still the front-runner if only by default, but hasn’t followed through on the promise of a relentlessly aggressive campaign after bursting to the forefront over the summer.

Similarly, Wesley Clark entered the race with a big splash, but has lost so much of that momentum already that even strong supporters are saying that his campaign is in total disarray and needs to essentially start over before it grinds itself to a halt.

And a couple of days ago, both the Los Angeles Times and Washington Post took swings at John Edwards, my own sentimental favorite (or so Green Boy would have you believe!) — pointing out that for all of his apparent effort and skill as a campaigner, he simply isn’t winning very many converts.

Each of the three seems to have a central flaw that is holding them back. Dean’s success has in a sense outrun his tactical skills, and have come so far so quickly, he doesn’t seem to know where to go from here. Clark’s rookie status as a politician is showing up in his ability to manage his own campaign staff. And while Edwards has a good sense of what themes and messages to deliver, he doesn’t project the authority to convince listeners that he’ll get the job done (whether the “job” is ordering military action as President or beating Bush as a candidate).

The race will change significantly if one of these candidates is smart enough to recognize their flaw, then figure out a plan to address it. If not, one of them will stumble to a win, but perhaps not be prepared for the onslaught of Dubya’s advertising dollars and spin machine once the nomination is won.

More U.S. “progress” in Iraq, as locals are introduced to the concept of Christmas.

The Associated Press sums up the latest bad news:

Iraq was hit by a string of explosions Thursday that set a freight train on fire, killed a U.S. soldier in a military convoy and ripped through Baghdad’s Old Quarter. Another blast injured two U.S. soldiers on a military police patrol.

The attacks came as international organizations continued their exodus from Iraq and the U.N. secretary-general warned of “a new phase” in postwar violence.

. . . Meanwhile, leaflets purportedly from Saddam’s “Arab Baath Socialist Party – Regional Command” appeared in the capital calling for a three-day general strike starting Saturday . . .

. . . The freight train was carrying military supplies near Fallujah west of Baghdad, when an improvised bomb set four shipping containers ablaze. No casualties were reported, but the attack sparked a looting frenzy by Iraqis who carried off computers, tents, bottled water and other supplies.

. . . U.S. forces are suffering an average of 33 attacks a day – up from about 12 daily attacks in July. A total of 117 American soldiers have been killed in combat since May 1 – when Bush declared an end to major fighting – or slightly more than the 114 soldiers who died in invasion that began March 20.

The escalating violence has unnerved many of Baghdad’s 5 million people. Many parents are not sending their children to school for fear of further bombings.

“Today most of my friends did not come to school,” said 18-year-old Duha Khalid at the Al-Khalisa girl’s high school, located near a police station. “We heard rumors about big bombs that will go off at the start of next week.”

There also was an apparent assassination attempt Wednesday night against an aide to Iraq’s most influential Shiite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani.

The cleric, Abdel Mehdi al Karbali, suffered head wounds in the explosion of a hand grenade thrown at him and his bodyguards.

I should mention that an excellent ongoing source of daily summaries is Today in Iraq, which contains a comprehensive list of the latest links to news and commentary. It’s aggressively partisan, but if you’re reading here, you can probably deal with that.

Luskin-Upton article
Wilson interview
Alterman on Abrams as leaker
I tell Kevin the escape hatch on 10/4
Calpundit on how leak happened
My Novak explanation
Waas on Plame investigation looking at RNC
link to Gulf War incubator BSYou remember “Mohammed,” don’t you?

Sure you do. The lawyer from Iraq who’s taken credit for saving POW Jessica Lynch by telling American soldiers that she was alive in a hospital in Nasiriyah? Of course, if you’ve been reading Needlenose since June, you know that the hospital staff unanimously dismiss his story. Not only that, you might recall that Susan Schmidt’s epic rehash of the Jessica Lynch saga inadvertently contradicts Mohammed’s account by providing an alternate explanation of how the U.S. developed its rescue plans.

Well, for whatever it’s worth, Mohammed stands by his story, and the other day he paid a visit to Lynch’s home town as part of a trip through West Virginia promoting his forthcoming book. As the Washington Post, Lynch herself was too “busy” to meet with the man who purportedly saved her life. Perhaps understandable, given the demands of rehabilitation and so on.

But I guess everyone from her immediate family was too “busy” as well. In fact, as far as I can tell in a search of numerous local news accounts, no one in any way formally representing Lynch met with Mohammed to express any type of thanks.

Seems to be kind of a message there, doesn’t it? Clearly they don’t think there’s anything to thank him for, and it’s probably only official pressure that keeps them from denouncing Mohammed publicly as a fraud.

It’s meaningless compared to the nonstop news of deaths and maimings, but this brazen dishonesty by the Bushites who spread the Mohammed myth, brought him to the U.S., and set him up with a cushy job at a Republican lobbying firm genuinely pisses me off. As I’ve written before, the irony of this is brutal — all in the name of making Jessica a larger-than-life hero, our government is actually humiliating her family (which includes several service members), rubbing its cynical amorality in their faces by forcing them to silently tolerate the self-promotion of this huckster.

Who is “pedro”? I don’t know, aside from the apparent fact that he’s not from the United States. In any event, that’s the name at the bottom of this comment on a post from Billmon’s Whiskey Bar, about our ongoing screwups in Iraq:

A friend once commented with me that Americans have engineers’ minds. That’s both their great gift and their great curse. It seemed, and still seems, a fairly good insight. This sort of mind allows you to be direct, practical, objective, good at building things — anything from toasters to jet fighters to superpowers. It is the sort of mind that deals with cost-benefit ratios, “metrics,” prices, body counts (“How many dead soldiers is Iraq worth?”). Engineering is, in a way, digital — either this beam will support the roof or it won’t. This would explain, for example, why you can find in American libraries an amazing profusion of self-help books dealing with anything you may care for, from sex to cancer. Or why Americans (as far as I can tell) don’t enjoy any kind of sport that can end in a draw, like soccer, or why American movies are never open-ended. Indeterminacy is unbearable. B.F. Skinner and his behaviorist theory could only have come from the US (or perhaps Germany, which also produces excellent engineers). The underlying idea is that anything can be fixed provided that you have a good manual.

This engineering mind is obviously what drives the present good-evil friend-enemy winner-loser kind of reasoning that seems to prevail everywhere in American culture, from the White House to open forums like this. People, however — and therefore countries — are basically analog devices. There is an infinity of intermediate points between on and off, one and zero. It is hard to deal with this, because it requires an acceptance of uncertainty (which sounds like defeat to a pragmatic mind) and a permanent state of attention to nuances and details you might have missed. You must come to terms with your own irremediable ignorance.

I apologize to you all for this rather pompous and perhaps silly introduction. Why am I saying all this? Because many posts in this thread and others, albeit unwillingly and with the best of intentions, seem to revolve around the same absurd concept of country-building which has come up lately and is even discussed seriously in some newspapers. Apparently it is something akin to bodybuilding, where you steadily measure your progress and make the required corrections to attain the ultimate goal — perfection. This is omnipotent and ultimately senseless Lego talk: we could bring in the Turks, apply pressure on Iran, mount this or that strategy to equalize things. It can be done, of course, given the tremendous American power, but it will never come out as predicted in the drawing board. As Einstein once said, “You cannot solve a problem using the same reasoning that created it.”

I stand by the suggestion I made in a previous post: bring in the UN, get out of Iraq, call it a day. This is not terraforming in SimCity, this is for real and involves actual people whose lives are precious. The damage is done and cannot be undone. What would happen in Iraq? Who would take over? It doesn’t really matter, as long as you cease to interfere and, if possible, try to help. This is what being human is about and is also, as far as I can tell, the best strategical option as well. People around the world, even your enemies, are never too far from liking the US. There are too many likeable things about your country. It is precisely the scheming engineering mind that brought about this situation and the potential for hatred it entails — first we support and arm Osama to fight the Russians in Afghanistan, then we support Saddam to fight Iran, then we place troops in Saudi Arabia, which enrages Osama, and so on indefinitely. Errors of judgement are not really consequential to the US, because you are too powerful to really care, but they create deep scars all over the world. Furthermore, since there is no longer a Soviet Union to play world chess with, you can perfectly well afford to sit back and act the benevolent big brother.

I think Americans must take a step back from all this and consider what they are about as a nation. Either all countries in the world are your enemies — actual or potential — and there is nothing you can do except remain in this permanent state of belligerence and paranoia, or people around the world are just trying to live their lives and can even be friendly if you try not to push them too hard. Of course, I am not advocating carelessness — as the Arabs say, trust Allah but tie your camels. A recent public opinion poll in Iraq showed that the majority want a democracy based on Islamic law, not a Western-style democracy (which only ranked third). Are Americans, deep down, actually ready and willing to accept their political system and their way or life are not necessarily the best for others? When will Americans finally learn to embrace diversity and enjoy life without trying so desperately to control it?

Any thoughts?

bogus evidence in March
curious leakLast night at Talking Points Memo, Joshua Marshall claimed to have “picked up a few clues” about the forged Iraq-Niger uranium documents that played a significant role in the Orwell Bush administration’s lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs.

First, Marshall points out that rumors of nefarious dealings between Iraq and Niger appear to have been reported by VP Dick Cheney to the CIA (rather than the other way around), with the forged documents turning up some time later. Then he cites Seymour Hersh’s recent New Yorker article identifying the source of the documents as an “Italian businessman and security consultant . . . believed to have once been connected to Italian intelligence.” Marshall then asks:

Who’s this “Italian businessman and security consultant”? Who’s he do his security consulting for? Any associations to any folks with names we know? Any connections to noteworthy figures in the United States?

Obviously, he thinks he knows the answer to the first question, which has led him to explore the rest. And we know from Marshall’s lead-in that the “noteworthy figures” in the last question are almost certain to include Dick Cheney.

But as far as the missing link between the Italian businessman and Cheney — the “folks with names we know” who apparently have a direct line in terms of feeding intelligence to the White House and no inhibitions about manufacturing evidence . . . well, doesn’t that sound like a description of Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress? I suppose they’re not the only conceivable possibility, but don’t be surprised if that’s where this ends up.

Lakoff on “framing”In my post this morning, I mentioned Dubya making “the usual noises” he trots out whenever something unusually awful happens in Iraq:

“The more progress we make on the ground . . . the more desperate these killers become.”

As he is wont to do, Billmon has compiled a damaging list of quotations to show how much mileage has been put on this rickety vehicle. But let’s look at some more quotes that make the Bushites’ spin sadly ironic. For example, Charles Hanley of the Associated Press writes:

The tactics suggested a level of organization that U.S. officials had doubted the resistance possessed. In past weeks, bombers have carried out heavy suicide bombings but in single strikes. Not only were Monday’s attacks coordinated, they also involved disguise . . .

A police car, somehow commandeered for a suicide mission and driven by a man in police uniform, blew up after entering the courtyard of the al-Baya’a police station in southern Baghdad . . . .

Just five minutes later, a second blast struck the local headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, a small, three-story building on a quiet street in central Baghdad. This bomber, too, used a subterfuge – an Iraqi ambulance that apparently was able to approach the ICRC offices without suspicion.

And then consider all of the elements of planning in this snippet from the Washington Times about yesterday’s attack on the Al Rashid hotel:

U.S. military police who investigated the morning attack said four men in either a white car or a pickup had driven into a park near the hotel towing a blue trailer of a type often used to haul electrical generators. Such generators are commonly used by the hotel because of frequent blackouts.
But when two security guards approached, the men dropped a side panel on the trailer and drove away. Moments later, the rockets fired into the hotel, apparently launched by a timing device. The guards were injured.
A military police officer who arrived on the scene soon afterward said 11 more rockets remained unfired in the launcher. A bomb squad later determined that the trailer had been booby-trapped with 220 pounds of explosives strapped to the wheel wells.

When an opponent has the intelligence capability to stage apparent assassination attempts, can spend weeks or months planning assaults down to such details as the types of vehicles in which to hide their weapons (and the precise angle at which to park a trailer on short notice so that its rockets strike a particular building), and is able to coordinate multiple assaults, that’s not desperation — that’s operating with impunity.

But I’ll grant that someone comes across as desperate here. Unfortunately, it’s our side, rather than theirs.

It may have been just a question yesterday, but there’s no doubt now:

Car bombers struck the international Red Cross headquarters and three police stations across Baghdad on Monday, killing about 40 people and wounding more than 200 in a spree of destruction that terrorized the Iraqi capital on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The string of bombings, all within less than an hour, was the bloodiest attack yet in the city of 5 million by insurgents targeting the American-led occupation and those perceived as working with it. It also appeared like a dramatic escalation in tactics – in past weeks, bombers have carried out heavy suicide bombings, but in single strikes.

. . . One American soldier was killed in one of the police station attacks and six U.S. troops were wounded, the military said. Iraqi police Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ibrahim, the deputy interior minister, put the Iraqi death toll at 34, including 26 civilians and eight police but not the suicide bombers.

The bombings came hours after clashes in the Baghdad area killed three U.S. soldiers overnight, and a day after insurgents hit a hotel full of U.S. occupation officials with a barrage of rockets, killing a U.S. colonel and wounding 18 other people. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was in the hotel, but was unhurt.

In response, our president promptly made the usual noises:

“The more progress we make on the ground, the more free the Iraqis become, the more electricity that’s available, the more jobs are available, the more kids that are going to school, the more desperate these killers become,” Bush told reporters at the White House.

Bush spoke after meeting with civilian U.S. Iraqi administrator L. Paul Bremer, who along with the U.S. military commander for Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, previously had scheduled meetings with the president, Secretary of State Donald H. Rumsfeld and others here before the latest outburst of violence. The goal of the meetings was to focus on what lies ahead for occupation forces.

Bush, sitting next to Bremer in the Oval Office, said those who are continuing to engage in violence “can’t stand the thought of a free society. They hate freedom. They love terror. They love to try to create fear and chaos.”

Bremer sure picked a convenient time to come to Washington, didn’t he? I wonder if he had a hunch things would get uncomfortable around Baghdad at the start of Ramadan . . .

Earth is under attack from a massive solar storm, scientists say. They predict major disruption to satellites, power systems, mobile phones, hairdryers, cappuccino-makers and, as ever, the British rail network. The storm comes from an eruption of super-hot gas from one of the largest groups of sunspots seen for years.

Speaking to reporters at a hastily-convened White House press conference before heading to the safety of a deep underground bunker at his Camp David retreat, US President “Boy” George W. Bush said that the Pentagon had conclusive proof that the solar storm had been triggered by failed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein™, with the help of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and possibly the Democrat contenders in the 2004 US presidential election.

“We know it’s the work of these evil-doers”, he said. “We have the proof. Don [Rumsfeld, Secretary of Offence] told me about it. We know that Saddam has been in contact with Dr Evil. We know that he had weapons of mass destruction. We know that he can deploy these storms in only 45 minutes. We know that he wants to destroy freedom-loving people everywhere.”

Read complete article on DeadBrain

I’ve read various reports since this summer that the monthlong Muslim holiday of Ramadan would ignite a surge of guerrilla violence in Iraq, but didn’t know how much to credit them. This Knight Ridder story suggests that they knew what they were talking about — or at least that some people are trying to encourage a broader, more aggressive resistance:

Just before 9 p.m. Sunday, three large explosions, which sounded they had been caused by mortar rounds or more rockets again rocked the Iraqi capital, sending a shudder through buildings several miles away.

A military spokesman confirmed that two of the explosions had taken place inside the so-called Green Zone, which houses the hotel and Saddam’s former Republican Palace, now the coalition headquarters. But the spokesman said he had no additional information, including whether there were any casualties.

A series of five more explosions took place just after 10 p.m., but a military spokeswoman said she could provide no information on those incidents.

The attacks, which took place on the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, appeared to confirm predictions by some Iraqis and western observers that a violent new chapter in Iraq’s guerilla war had been inaugurated by insurgents.

I wonder how forthcoming the military will be about these “incidents,’ given the apparent lack of journalists near the scenes. Then again, if this is a legitimate guerrilla offensive, there will be more incidents soon enough.