Needlenose

I read him because he reads the rantings of the wingnuts – so I won’t have to! Check out his spoof of Supreme Court Justice Long Dong Silver’s supporting opinion of the porn freedom ruling.

Gilliard on Asia Times
Gilliard on Guardian
Spin from ATimes article:
“We would like to rectify some information now circulating in the Western media, that’s why we took the initiative of meeting you.” Our discussion lasts for more than three hours.

Back to the fall of Baghdad
“We knew that if the United States decided to attack Iraq, we would have no chance faced with their technological and military power. The war was lost in advance, so we prepared the post-war. In other words: the resistance. Contrary to what has been largely said, we did not desert after American troops entered the center of Baghdad on April 5, 2003. We fought a few days for the honor of Iraq – not Saddam Hussein – then we received orders to disperse.” Baghdad fell on April 9: Saddam and his army where nowhere to be seen.

“As we have foreseen, strategic zones fell quickly under control of the Americans and their allies. For our part, it was time to execute our plan. Opposition movements to the occupation were already organized. Our strategy was not improvised after the regime fell.” This plan B, which seems to have totally eluded the Americans, was carefully organized, according to these officers, for months if not years before March 20, 2003, the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The objective was “to liberate Iraq and expel the coalition. To recover our sovereignty and install a secular democracy, but not the one imposed by the Americans.

. . . Every Iraqi region has its own combatants and each faction is free to choose its targets and its modus operandi. But as time goes by, their actions are increasingly coordinated. Saddam’s generals insist there is no rivalry among these different organizations, except on one point: which one will eliminate the largest number of Americans.

“The attacks are meticulously prepared. They must not last longer than 20 minutes and we operate preferably at night or very early in the morning to limit the risks of hitting Iraqi civilians.” They anticipate our next question: “No, we don’t have weapons of mass destruction. On the other hand, we have more than 50 million conventional weapons.” By the initiative of Saddam, a real arsenal was concealed all over Iraq way before the beginning of the war. No heavy artillery, no tanks, no helicopters, but Katyushas, mortars (which the Iraqis call haoun), anti-tank mines, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other Russian-made rocket launchers, missiles, AK 47s and substantial reserves of all sorts of ammunition. And the list is far from being extensive.

But the most efficient weapon remains the Kamikazes. A special unit, composed of 90% Iraqis and 10% foreign fighters, with more than 5,000 solidly-trained men and women, they need no more than a verbal order to drive a vehicle loaded with explosives.Late last week, the Asia Times ran an ominous-sounding article purporting to describe the merging of Saddam Hussein’s secular generals with the Islamic fundamentalists fighting the U.S. occupation of Iraq:

On the eve of the so-called transfer of sovereignty to the new Iraqi caretaker government on June 30, former Saddam Hussein generals turned members of the elite of the Iraqi resistance movement have abandoned their clandestine positions for a while to explain their version of events and talk about their plans. According to these Ba’ath officials, “the big battle” in Iraq is yet to take place.

. . . Why have these former officers waited so long to come out of their closets? “Because today we are sure we’re going to win.”

. . . “Before any discussions, we don’t want any doubts on your part about our identities,” they say, while extracting some papers from inside a dusty plastic bag: identity cards, military IDs and several photos showing them in uniform beside Saddam Hussein. They are two generals and a colonel of the disbanded Iraqi army, now on the run for many months, chased by the coalition’s intelligence services.

“We would like to rectify some information now circulating in the Western media, that’s why we took the initiative of meeting you.” Our discussion lasts for more than three hours.

. . . Essentially composed by Ba’athists (Sunni and Shi’ite), the resistance currently regroups “all movements of national struggle against the occupation, without confessional, ethnic or political distinction. . . . As to the young Shi’ite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, he is, like ourselves, in favor of the unity of the Iraqi people, multiconfessional and Arab. We support him from a tactical and logistical perspective.”

The description from the generals’ perspective dovetails with a report on a meeting with Sunni religious extremists in Fallujah by Time magazine:

The safe house lies on the outskirts of Fallujah in a neighborhood where no Americans have ventured. Inside, a group of Arab sheiks has gathered to discuss the jihad they and their followers are waging against the U.S. . . . At the back of the room are a few men from Saudi Arabia, who stand silently as one of the sheiks, the group’s leader, addresses me in Arabic and stilted English. . . . What he and his men offer is endless, righteous resistance. “Maybe this war will take a long time,” he says. “Maybe this is a world war.”

. . . Indeed, the nature of the insurgency in Iraq is fundamentally changing. Time reported last fall that the insurgency was being led by members of the former Baathist regime, who were using guerrilla tactics in an effort to drive out foreign occupiers and reclaim power. But a Time investigation of the insurgency today—based on meetings with insurgents, tribal leaders, religious clerics and U.S. intelligence officials—reveals that the militants are turning the resistance into an international jihadist movement. Foreign fighters, once estranged from homegrown guerrilla groups, are now integrated as cells or complete units with Iraqis. Many of Saddam’s former secret police and Republican Guard officers, who two years ago were drinking and whoring, no longer dare even smoke cigarettes. They are fighting for Allah, they say, and true jihadis reject such earthly indulgences.

. . . The insurgency’s shift toward a religious outlook is in part driven by financial necessity: the capture of Saddam and his henchmen drained the insurgency of its former sources of funding. That forced Iraqi groups to turn to foreign financiers in places like the gulf, and they have demanded that the insurgents adopt a more radical religious identity.

The same point is made, with far more irreverence, by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad in the British Guardian newspaper:

Falluja is now like a deja vu from the good old times of Saddam; there are so many former Iraqi military in khaki uniforms, big moustaches and bellies that I am scared that someone will come up and ask me for my military ID card. But, as everything in the new Iraq, the picture is totally blurred, and no one in Falluja can figure out what the new arrangement actually means.

. . . I head towards one of the mosques where people are going to get aid and charity donations. A guy in his 40s approaches me with the famous welcoming smile of the Fallujans — a look of, “What the fuck are you doing here?” I tell him that I’m a journalist and would like to meet the Sheikh.

. . . I am ushered inside where, surrounded by three muj fighters, the new mayor of Falluja gives me his geopolitical analysis of the American plot to control the world by occupying Falluja. . . .

He opens his drawer and pulls out two sheets of paper: the demands and the strategies of the resistance. One details an American-Shia plot to kill the Sunni clerics, technocrats and former army officers. . . . The other is a letter sent by the joint committee for the Iraqi resistance to Lakhdar Ibrahimi, the UN envoy working to form a new government. Its demands can be summarised as a request to hand Iraq to a bunch of wacko Sunni army generals.

. . . One of the local muj cell leaders, Abu Tahrir (“father of liberation”), is complaining how part of the muj corps has deserted and joined the Americans. He is in his late 30s, overweight and a bit grim; a typical former mukhabarat officer who mixes bits of the Koran with chunks of nationalist and Ba’athist ranting.

(Note: If Ghaith Abdul-Ahad’s phraseology reminds you of =http://dear_raed.blogspot.comSalam Pax[/url], there’s a good reason — he’s the friend named “G.” whom Salam mentions frequently.)

Whatever alliance exists between the secular Saddam loyalists and the religious muhajedeen is probably as awkward as these anecdotes depict. Personally, I can imagine both sides looking ahead to chopping their allies’ heads off as soon as the Americans are chased out of Iraq. But it is disturbing that they seem confident enough in their capabilities (and personal safety) to mount what seems like an small PR blitz to say they’re on their way to power.

When I first heard news of the ‘legal’ (but not ‘physical’) transfer of Saddam to Iraq, my first reaction was, of course, to make fun of it. I mean, It’s hard to fight the urge when you read statements like:

Saddam will remain in a U.S.-controlled jail guarded by Americans until the Iraqis are ready to take physical custody of him. That is expected to take a long time.

But then came news that the puppet provisional government of Iyad Allawi was actually going to put Saddam on trial:

In a one line statement, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi’s office said the Iraqis had assumed legal — but not physical — control, “today, 30th June, at 10:15 in the morning.” The 12 defendants are expected to appear in court on Thursday for a formal reading of the charges.

Bush Jr’s popularity rating is hovering around 42%, close to where his father was around this time. He needs something to avert following his father into the history books–something dramatic. A public trial of Saddam Hussein, complete with PowerPoint slides of dead Kurds, prison and torture records, and evidence of mass killings, splashed across international news media over the next three months will do everything to help W. make the case that the war in Iraq was not only justified, but the only morally correct course of action.

None of the original reasons given for the invasion have come to pass, but there is still the undisputed fact that Saddam was not a very nice person. Proving exactly how bad will make for a highly dramatic kangaroo court show trial display of truth and reconciliation (setting aside the incovenient fact that the nephew of Ahmed Chalabi–with access to the INC forgery labs–is in charge of the trials).

Odds are like most decadent dictators, Saddam fell grievously out of touch with his people, surrounded by opulence and a coterie of yes-men. Most of the worst atrocities committed in his name were probably promulgated by his cronies who kept him in the dark to allow for future claims of plausible deniability. The question of the leader being culpable for crimes committed by his underlings will be swept aside (after all, is GW being held personally responsible for Abu Ghraib?) Any claims of a few bad apples committing these crimes will most likely be met with disbelief. The image painted will be a Saddam Hussein as satan incarnate, instead of a doddering gasbag with a penchant for firing pistols into the air or an onanistic love of portrait paintings.

The ostensible goal will be to produce closure for the Iraqi people. The real reason will be to allow Bush and the neocons to crow that they were justified in their noble cause. The fact that the trial is being pushed forward when the ink on the transfer-of-powers document is barely dry means that this is going to be a very high-priority operation. A good show trial should take 3-6 months which, if I do the math right, puts us into … hey!

There are a few possible flies in the ointment:

• If Saddam pulls a =http://www.un.org/icty/milosevicMilosevic[/url], insisting on representing himself and standing up to make public pronouncements against his accusers. In that case, a Saddam with nothing to lose can become a source of deep embarassment to the Bush family and a rallying point for his followers who have hardened into the current insurgency. The Saddam trial will not be a UN/European operation and will not take 2-5 years. Political expedience Justice demands a speedy resolution.
• The Abu Ghraib trials and documentation trail heat up, or the complete set of prison photos get leaked right in the middle of the show trial, offering an even more unflattering contrast between Saddam’s prisons and the ones run by the American troops.
• No October Surprise: The Saudis refuse to make a deal on the capture of one of their own royalty and Osama is still not found by election time. Michael Moore squandered a perfectly good opportunity in F411 to pre-emptively ‘inoculate’ the country against Osama’s discovery.

Of course, none of this may come to pass. There is organizational inertia, the small matter of Iraq devolving into civil war, the Afghan elections, and the possibility of something going wrong during the Olympics. The Saddam trial is a high-wire act that can backfire, but W. has to do something to bring his poll numbers back up, and unlike his father, he will not go quietly into the night.

It should make for a fascinating Summer.

one more caption contest 514w x 628h
http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=1777

[url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-0406290219jun29,1,4144608.story?coll=chi-news-hed
In a rebuke to one of Bremer’s most dramatic and controversial moves, Allawi sought to undo the effects of Bremer’s disbanding of the Iraqi army and reached out to disaffected former soldiers who have helped fuel the insurgency.

“The army is Iraq’s army, not Saddam’s army,” Allawi said. “They are our sons and brothers, and those who did not return to the [new Iraqi] army will be included in rehabilitation programs for warriors to join the civilian institutions or be retired with their dignity and honor.”

The new government’s vow to confront armed militants drew a cautious reaction from a spokesman for radical cleric Moqtada Sadr, whose militia clashed with U.S. troops for seven weeks during a bloody uprising this spring.

“The new government should be very decisive against terrorism,” said the spokesman, Sheik Hassan Al-Uthari. “But they have to distinguish between those who protect the country and those who are destroying it.”
Allawi’s strategy for 15 years
Bush poll, Kerry favorability
Tim Dunlop on insufferable liberal hawks
Baathists welcomeSpencer Ackerman of the New Republic‘s Iraq’d weblog, who’s concisely explained the problems with declaring martial law over there, is now reporting that temp Prime Minister Allawi may already have declared it but won’t admit it publicly yet.

The question is, who will enforce it? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised

The five or six funniest takes you’ll read on Iraqi “sovereignty” are all in the same place.

I’m going to repeat in full a comment that the redoubtable =http://oldman1787.blogspot.comOldman[/url] left on my post yesterday about the apparent kidnapping of a Lebanese-American Marine and the killing of four others on the same day in western Iraq:

The rumor is that Hassoun was making a break for Lebanon – e.g. deserting when he was picked up. More interestingly, the absolute silence of the Pentagon on the slain soldiers and their odd situ of death suggests they too were on the lam. Think about it. Hassoun is really sick of serving in the army. He speaks Arabic. He’s got regional connections. But is he just going to walk out of there alone?

Say he has some buddies, American buddies who maybe are sick enough of service in Iraq – over a year, another extension, and no end in sight – to kiss life in the States goodbye.

What does Hassoun do? He talks them into making a break with him, maybe even suggests he’ll help them set up a new life in Lebanon. So they all quietly go together. Only someone goes wrong. They’re made, the insurgency probably doesn’t even realize their deserters. It just thinks they’re a bunch of stupido kafir with a Lebanese translator tour guide that got foolish or lost while going from point A or B. So it nails them.

The US army realizes post facto that they were AWOL when they got nailed, but it tries to keep the lid on things. Why? Because it doesn’t want it widely known that morale is so bad that there are soldiers so desperate to get out that they’re willing to desert and say goodbye to life in America forever.

That’s the backstory that’s firming up.

The reason I’m reposting the entire thing is that the New York Times tonight confirms the first line of Oldman’s comment:

The American marine who is being threatened by his kidnappers with beheading had deserted the military because he was emotionally traumatized, and was abducted by his captors while trying to make his way home to his native Lebanon, a Marine officer said Tuesday. . . .

I wonder if (and in what detail) we’ll hear about the rest …

Here’s what the New York Times reported from Istanbul this morning:

President George W. Bush said Monday that coalition forces in Iraq would support a possible decision by the new Iraqi leadership to declare martial law to deal with escalating violence and terror attacks.

“Iraqis know what we know, that the best way to defend yourself is to go on the offensive,” he said, speaking at a news conference with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

. . . “Prime Minister Allawi, as head of a sovereign government, may decide he has to take tough measures to deal with a brutal cold-blooded killer,” Bush said, in a reference to Zarqawi. “Our job is to help.”

Now, here’s the New York Times from Istanbul again this evening:

Speaking at the end of a five-day trip to Europe and Turkey, Mr. Bush acknowledged that Western nations have helped nourish extremism by supporting repressive Middle Eastern leaders for the sake of regional stability.

“But it did not serve the people of the Middle East to betray their hope of freedom,” he said, “and it has not made Western nations more secure to ignore the cycle of dictatorship and extremism.”

. . . “Any nation that compromises with violent extremists only emboldens them and invites future violence,” Mr. Bush said. “Suppressing dissent only increases radicalism.”

Kind of like one of those dolls where you pull the string, and random phrases come out of its mouth, isn’t it?

Paul Bremer (Sep. 23, 2003):

JIM LEHRER: Are things really more secure now?

L. PAUL BREMER: Oh, yes.

JIM LEHRER: Are there fewer and fewer incidents on a daily basis than there have been?

L. PAUL BREMER: Oh, yes. You know, the country is basically peaceful.

One follow-up note on my post directly below on Iraq, Niger, uranium, and so on. Matthew Yglesias wrote at Tapped yesterday afternoon:

Somewhat lost in this blogospheric drama is the FT’s actual lede, however, which asserts that there is independent, non-forged evidence to support the Niger contention and that this is why British intelligence continues to stand by the story. If that’s right, then the mystery remains why US intelligence is so unconvinced by their colleagues in the UK. Intelligence cooperation between different countries is always a tricky business, but no two states have a longer history of collaboration on this front than the US and UK, so it’s odd to see such persistent disagreement on a fairly basic factual question.

The interesting thing about official (if anonymous) sources playing up the British “other evidence” after all this time is that it’s been perhaps the most taboo subject of an infamously secretive administration.

To pick up on a theme I posted about a few months ago, the Niger uranium scandal isn’t unique because the Orwell Bush administration lied — it’s unique because they admitted it. What made them “melt down” (as commenter CMike put it) and confess?

If you look at the White House press briefing where the confession occurred, the question that stopped spokesliar Ari Fleischer in his tracks was this:

Q: So you believe the British report that he was trying to obtain uranium from an African nation is true?

The stonewalling answer to give here would have been “yes” — but apparently Fleischer knew that was a line he couldn’t cross. And this wasn’t just a momentary slip-up in the press briefing; Fleischer eventually escaped the subject by saying he’d check with his superiors and respond later. The result of that consultation (which, again, could have been a stonewalling “We stand by our statements”) was the admission that the uranium claim shouldn’t have been in the State of the Union speech Dubya gave in 2003.

So, why were the Bushites so terrified of anyone taking a close look at “the British report”? Were they willing to humiliate themselves politically out of a sincere desire to protect an intelligence operation that was tracking the nuclear ambitions of not just Iraq but Libya, North Korea, and China? (Okay, c’mon, stop laughing out there!) Or would discovering the source of the British information be even more damaging — in terms of revealing the intentional let’s-go-to-war scam — than the “sixteen words” admission was?

Remember, the frenzy surrounding this Niger uranium issue led to the illegal leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA employment in a desperate (and, to be honest, nonsensical) attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, who had brought the subject to public attention. What hidden truth could be so scandalous that Bushites would not only risk jail but — even more unthinkably — admit having made a mistake? We may find out soon.

Time on new insurgencyTapped on Niger
Fleischer flip-flop on Niger — worried about “other evidence”Scandal lovers have reason to rejoice today — the great granddaddy of Orwell Bush administration controversies, the forged documentation of supposed uranium sales between Iraq and Niger (which were a key part of the nuclear scare campaign used to drag us into war), is back in the news. The Financial Times in the U.K. says they know who the forger is, and soon so will the rest of us:

The fake documents were handed to an Italian journalist working for the Italian magazine Panorama by a businessman in October 2002. According to a senior official with detailed knowledge of the case, this businessman had been dismissed from the Italian armed forces for dishonourable conduct 25 years earlier.

. . . The businessman, referred to by a pseudonym in the Panorama article, had previously tried to sell the documents to several intelligence services, according to a western intelligence officer.

It was later established that he had a record of extortion and deception and had been convicted by a Rome court in 1985 and later arrested at least twice. The suspected forger’s real name is known to the FT, but cannot be used because of legal constraints. He did not return telephone calls yesterday, and is understood to be planning to reveal selected aspects of his story to a US television channel.

Weirdly, though, the FT chooses to preface this bit of news with what they consider a more important revelation:

. . . European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq.

These intelligence officials now say the forged documents appear to have been part of a “scam”, and the actual intelligence showing discussion of uranium supply has been ignored.

Yeah, right. There was just so much slam-dunk proof of the Niger-Iraq connection floating around that the really solid evidence somehow got lost in the shuffle — and these intelligence officials just happened to remind the FT’s reporters of it just as the forgery scandal was about to hit the U.S. airwaves?

There’s even a separate Financial Times article explaining just what this alternate “evidence” really is:

. . . European intelligence officials have for the first time confirmed that information provided by human intelligence sources during an operation mounted in Europe and Africa produced sufficient evidence for them to believe that Niger was the centre of a clandestine international trade in uranium.

. . . According to a senior counter-proliferation official, meetings between Niger officials and would-be buyers from the five countries were held in several European countries, including Italy. Intelligence officers were convinced that the uranium would be smuggled from abandoned mines in Niger, thereby circumventing official export controls. “The sources were trustworthy. There were several sources, and they were reliable sources,” an official involved in the European intelligence gathering operation said.

Notice what’s missing here? There is no proof that any uranium actually went anywhere, and no documents of any kind indicating that it ever would. Just gossip “human intelligence sources” saying that something might have been planned, as vouched for by officials who won’t put their name to it. (But hey, they swear that the sources had really honest faces, you know?)

After all we’ve been through with bogus “intelligence,” anyone who buys this unsourced, undocumented vaporware at face value is a fool. Even as a hypothetical scheme, the imagined smuggling plot doesn’t make sense. In an interview with Joshua Marshall (and again in his new book, Joseph Wilson explains that he examined that specific possibility:

The problem with that . . . is that you still had to figure out a way to actually get the tonnage out of the mines and get it into barrels, and get it shipped several thousand miles across the Sahel, and down to the port, get it placed on ships, and get it sent, without anybody else knowing.

In short, the scheme laid out in the Financial Times is a smoke-bomb thrown out to confuse readers who don’t know any better. Which is exactly why Joshua Marshall — who’s been tracking this subject for several months — and apparent collaborator Laura Rozen react with some discernible fury, since they seem to feel like they’re about to come out with the real story, which the aforementioned smoke is intended to obscure.

What is in that “real” story that the powers behind the Financial Times articles don’t want known? Well, here’s how Marshall framed the issue of the forger back in October:

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, the Bushites would be happier to see the forger depicted as a “lone assassin” of the truth rather than have people start looking for unpleasant connections back to Washington, D.C. I’ve been noting for more than a week now that they seem to be bracing themselves for some damaging news … maybe this is what they’re afraid of. The choices are getting too numerous to keep track of.