The Emperor’s New Hump

I can appreciate the broader factors weighing on the paper’s top editors, particularly that close to the election. But personally, I think that Nelson’s assertions did rise above the level of garden-variety speculation, mainly because of who he is. Here was a veteran government scientist, whose decades-long career revolves around interpreting imagery like features of Mars, who decided to say very publicly that, without reservation, he was convinced there was something under a president’s jacket when the White House said there was nothing. He essentially put his hard-won reputation utterly on the line (not to mention his job) in doing so and certainly with little prospect that he might gain something as a result—except, as he put it, his preserved integrity.

ANONYMOUS LIB GUESTING FOR GLENN FINDS SOME EXAMPLES OF KRISTOL’S STUPID, FATUOUS  WRITING

Bill Kristol: Pundit Superstar

By Anonymous Liberal

On March 17, 2003, on the eve of our invasion of Iraq, Bill Kristol wrote the following:

We
are tempted to comment, in these last days before the war, on the U.N.,
and the French, and the Democrats. But the war itself will clarify who
was right and who was wrong about weapons of mass destruction. It will
reveal the aspirations of the people of Iraq, and expose the truth
about Saddam’s regime. It will produce whatever effects it will produce
on neighboring countries and on the broader war on terror. We would
note now that even the threat of war against Saddam seems to be
encouraging stirrings toward political reform in Iran and Saudi Arabia,
and a measure of cooperation in the war against al Qaeda from other
governments in the region. It turns out it really is better to be
respected and feared than to be thought to share, with exquisite
sensitivity, other people’s pain. History and reality are about to
weigh in, and we are inclined simply to let them render their verdicts.

Well,
it’s been almost four years since Kristol penned those smug, taunting
words, and I think it’s fair to say that history and reality have
indeed weighed in. There were no weapons of mass destruction. Our
invasion has destabilized the entire region (and not in a positive way)
and has actually exacerbated the overall terrorist threat our country
faces. We are no longer feared or respected, at least nowhere near the
degree we were before the invasion. Over 3000 American soldiers have
lost their lives (with many thousands more badly injured). Tens of
thousands of Iraqis (perhaps hundreds of thousands) have been killed
and millions more displaced. We’ve squandered billions of dollars, as
well as our national credibility and mystique. And our armed forces are
currently bogged down and stretched to the limit as they undertake the
thankless task of policing an escalating civil war.

Now, you
would think that being so incredibly wrong about such an important
subject might hurt your career prospects, and that would probably be
true in any other field. But in the world of Washington punditry, being
consistently and catastrophically wrong about everything is apparently
not an obstacle to advancement. As David Corn reports, TIME Magazine has invited Kristol to become one the magazine’s new “star” columnists.

I
can see why TIME wanted Kristol so badly. His track record over the
last few years is rather remarkable. Here’s a sampling of some of
Kristol’s most impressive contributions to our political discourse over
the last few years:

August 26, 2002:

Reading
the Scowcroft/New York Times “arguments” against war, one is struck by
how laughably weak they are. European international-law wishfulness and
full-blown Pat Buchanan isolationism are the two intellectually honest
alternatives to the Bush Doctrine. Scowcroft and the Times wish to
embrace neither, so they pretend instead to be terribly “concerned”
with the administration’s alleged failure to “make the case.”

April 4, 2003:

“There’s
been a certain amount of pop sociology in America … that the Shia
can’t get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to
establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There’s almost no
evidence of that at all. Iraq’s always been very secular.”

April 28, 2003:

The
United States committed itself to defeating terror around the world. We
committed ourselves to reshaping the Middle East, so the region would
no longer be a hotbed of terrorism, extremism, anti-Americanism, and
weapons of mass destruction. The first two battles of this new era are
now over. The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively
and honorably. But these are only two battles. We are only at the end
of the beginning in the war on terror and terrorist states.

March 22, 2004:

[T]here
are hopeful signs that Iraqis of differing religious, ethnic, and
political persuasions can work together. This is a far cry from the
predictions made before the war by many, both here and in Europe, that
a liberated Iraq would fracture into feuding clans and unleash a
bloodbath. The perpetually sour American media focus on the tensions
between Shiites and Kurds that delayed the signing by three whole days.
But the difficult negotiations leading up to the signing, and the
continuing debates over the terms of a final constitution, have in fact
demonstrated something remarkable in Iraq: a willingness on the part of
the diverse ethnic and religious groups to disagree–peacefully–and
then to compromise. This willingness is the product of what appears to be a broad Iraqi consensus favoring the idea of pluralism.

July 26, 2004:

What
the Bush administration did say–and what so many reporters seem to
have trouble understanding–is that Iraq and al Qaeda had a
relationship that, by its very existence, posed a potential threat to
the United States.

October 29, 2004 (column titled “Politicizing the bin Laden Tape”):

Is
there any development in the war on terror, however grave, that the
Kerry campaign won’t try to exploit for partisan advantage?

November 1, 2004: (column titled “Bin Laden v. Bush”)

Osama bin Laden’s videotape is an attempt to intimidate Americans into voting against President Bush.

March 7, 2005:

Just
four weeks after the Iraqi election of January 30, 2005, it seems
increasingly likely that that date will turn out to have been a genuine
turning point. The fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, ended
an era. September 11, 2001, ended an interregnum. In the new era in
which we now live, 1/30/05 could be a key moment–perhaps the key
moment so far–in vindicating the Bush Doctrine as the right response
to 9/11. And now there is the prospect of further and accelerating
progress.

April 4, 2005 (re: Terri Schiavo)

After
all, we are a “maturing society,” as the Supreme Court has told us.
Perhaps it is time, in mature reaction to this latest installment of
what Hugh Hewitt has called a “robed charade,” to rise up against our
robed masters, and choose to govern ourselves. Call it Terri’s
revolution.

November 7, 2005:

Last week the Bush Administration’s second-term bear market bottomed out.

November 30, 2005 (column titled “Pelosi’s Disastrous Miscalculation”):

All
this made me think the 2006 elections could result in a Speaker Pelosi.
I now think that unlikely. Pelosi’s endorsement today of the withdrawal
of U.S. troops from Iraq makes the House Democrats the party of defeat,
the party of surrender. Bush’s strong speech today means the GOP is
likely to be–if Republican Congressmen just keep their nerve–the
party of victory. Now it is possible that the situation in Iraq will
worsen over the next year. If that happens, Bush and the GOP are in
deep trouble. They would have been if Pelosi had said nothing. But it
is much more likely that the situation in Iraq will stay more or less
the same, or improve. In either case, Republicans will benefit from
being the party of victory.

December 26, 2005 (column titled “Happy Days!”):

If
American and Iraqi troops continue to provide basic security, and if
Iraq’s different sects and political groups now begin to engage in
serious, peaceful bargaining, then we may just have witnessed the
beginning of Iraq’s future.

April 4, 2006:

What
was striking, following the mosque bombing, was the evidence of Iraq’s
underlying stability in the face of attempts to undermine it. The
country’s vital institutions seem to have grown strong enough to
withstand even the provocation of the bombing of the golden mosque.

I
could go on and on, but you get the idea. If you want to succeed as a
conservative pundit in Washington, the key appears to be amassing a
mile-long track record of wildly inaccurate predictions and
disastrously bad advice. Congratulations, Bill Kristol. You truly are a
“star”.

posted by A.L.

January » 02 CROOKS AND LIARS

Sacrifice 

 Keith Olbermann stepped up and slapped Bush’s plan to use the word “sacrifice”
as an excuse to send more troops to Iraq. Bush needs a new
catch phrase to try and deceive the nation with,
but Republican talking points won’t work on the people
anymore. They are fed up with Bush and this war and sending more
troops to die is not an answer. John McCain and Lieberman will now wear the McCain Doctrine around their necks—as Bill Kristol drools with glee as he’ll finally get his wish.

 Download (5846) | Play (6819)     Download (2487) | Play (3525)

Olbermann: If in your presence an individual tried to
sacrifice an American serviceman or woman, would you intervene? Would
you at least protest? What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them?
What if he had already sacrificed 3,003 of them — and was then to
announce his intention to sacrifice hundreds, maybe thousands, more?

(Read the rest of this story…)

depressing New York Times article

Greenwald explains…

Crooks and Liars 

For months before my fiancé, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King, kissed my swollen stomach and said goodbye, he had been preparing for the beginning of the life we had created and for the end of his own. He boarded a plane in December 2005 with two missions, really – to lead his young soldiers in combat and to prepare our boy for a life without him.

 Dear son, Charles wrote on the last page of the journal, “I hope this book is somewhat helpful to you. Please forgive me for the poor handwriting and grammar. I tried to finish this book before I was deployed to Iraq. It has to be something special to you. I’ve been writing it in the states, Kuwait and Iraq.

The journal will have to speak for Charles now. He was killed Oct. 14 when an improvised explosive device detonated near his armored vehicle in Baghdad. Charles, 48, had been assigned to the Army’s First Battalion, 67th Armored Regiment, Fourth Infantry Division, based in Fort Hood, Tex. He was a month from completing his tour of duty. (Read the rest of this story…)

December 31st, was supposed to be Marla Ruzicka’s 30th birthday.
Marla has founded the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) and convinced Congress to create an Iraqi War Victims Fund. Lawmakers
realized that financial compensation for families of civilians
accidentally injured or killed by the U.S. military is important for
helping them cope financially. A compassionate response might convince
the families that Americans feel sorry about their loss; therefore they
might not hate Americans, i.e. Marla was advancing US interests. Newsweek‘s Baghdad bureau chief wrote
that “Marla was alienated from much of the human rights community
because she chose to work with the military instead of always against
it.” As Peter Bergen wrote in the Washington Post:

Ruzicka
initially came off like a blond surfer girl (she was much given to
exclaiming “Dude!” and “You rock!”), but underneath the effervescent
exterior was a tough-minded humanitarian advocate who had little
tolerance for leftist anti-war demonstrators. Ruzicka understood that
wars happen despite the demonstrations, and she wanted to do something
concrete to alleviate the subsequent damage to human life.

Rolling Stone Magazine described her as a “youthful representative of a certain kind of not-yet-lost American idealism.” It’s a good, balanced and heart-wrenching biographic article.
 

Change the World in 2007

Writing in WorldChanging.Com, philosopher Edward Wolf says the key to being in tune with social change in 2007 will not be what we think, but how we think. “Politics resembles a battle of brands more than an exchange of ideas,” Wolf observes.
“The blogosphere has blown the doors of civic conversation wide open
but hardly elevated the dialogue, as almost any comment string
confirms. But that may be changing as social networking and open-source
tools reshape the ‘spaces’ in which people interact. Can new leaders
emerge in such spaces?” He thinks so and advises watching for leaders
who “embody humility, not those who merely espouse it.”

Writing in the same WorldChanging series, Jason Kottke calls for a True Cost rating on food and products, like the nutritional information on a cereal box or the Energy Star rating on a refrigerator. True Cost,
as he points out, would allow consumers to make legitimately informed
decisions about how they spend their money. When True Cost is factored
in, conflict diamonds become a more morally charged choice, as does
clothing made in sweatshops. Organic blueberries flown in from Chile
may be healthier for your toddler, but how much carbon dioxide was
released into the atmosphere to get them to your kitchen? What’s the
energy cost of living in the suburbs, compared to living downtown? Do
the people who made the clock hanging on the wall get paid a fair wage
and receive health care? Just how bad for the environment (and for me!)
is the laptop on which I’m typing or the cell phone on which I’m
talking?

THE LAST MARINE:
When he lost the 11 others in his squad, he lost a 2nd family —and his zeal for the war

Associated Press reporter Antonio Castaneda was with Marines in Lima
Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, 4th Division, when they led an
offensive into the city of Haditha in late May. And he returned to the
area after an August blast killed 14 Marines — and shortly before
the unit began demobilizing to return to the United
States

By Antonio Castaneda
Associated Press Writer

HADITHA
DAM, Iraq — Cpl. David Kreuter had a new baby boy he’d seen only
in photos. Lance Cpl. Michael Cifuentes was counting the days to his
wedding. Lance Cpl. Nicholas Bloem had just celebrated his 20th
birthday.

Travis
Williams remembers them all — all 11 men in his Marine squad
— all now dead. Two months ago they shared a cramped room stacked
with bunk beds at this base in Northwest Iraq, where the Euphrates
River rushes by. Now the room has been stripped of several beds, brutal
testament that Lance Cpl. Williams’ closest friends are gone.

For
the 12 young Marines who landed in Iraq early this year, the war was a
series of hectic, constant raids into more than a dozen lawless towns
in Iraq’s most hostile province, Anbar. The pace and the danger bound
them together into what they called a second family, even as some began
to question whether their raids were making any progress.

Now,
all of the Marines assigned to the 1st Squad, 3rd Platoon, Lima
Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Regiment, based in Columbus, Ohio, are
gone — all except Williams. They died in a roadside bomb set by
insurgents on Aug. 3 that killed a total of 14 Marines. Most of the
squad were in their early 20s; the youngest was 19.

“They
were like a family. They were the tightest squad I’ve ever seen,” said
Capt. Christopher Toland of Austin, Texas, the squad’s platoon
commander. Even though many did not know each other before they got to
Iraq, “They truly loved each other.”

All
that is left now are photos and snippets of video, saved on dusty
laptops, that run for a few dozen seconds. As they pack up to return
home by early October, the Marines from Lima Company — including
the squad’s replacements — sometimes huddle around Williams’
laptop in a room at the dam, straining to watch the few remaining
moments of their young friends’ lives. Some photos and videos carry the
squad’s adopted motto, “Family is Forever.”

In
one video, Lance Cpl. Christopher Dyer, who graduated with honors last
year from a Cincinnati area high school, strums his guitar and does a
mock-heartfelt rendition of “Puff the Magic Dragon” as his friends
laugh around him.

In a
photo, Kreuter rides a bicycle through a neighborhood, swerving under
the weight of body armor and weapons, as Marines and Iraqis watch and
chuckle.

Each video
ends abruptly, leaving behind a blank screen. Some are switched off as
soon as they start — some images just hurt too much to see right
now.

Insurgent hunt

The
August operation began like most of the squad’s missions — with a
rush into another lawless Iraqi city to hunt insurgents and do
house-to-house searches, sometimes for 12 hours in temperatures near
120 degrees.

On Aug.
1, six Marine snipers had been ambushed and killed in Haditha, one of a
string of river cities that line the Euphrates, filled with waving palm
trees. Two days later, Marines in armored vehicles, including the 1st
Squad, rumbled into the area to look for the culprits.

Like
other cities in this region, Haditha has no Iraqi troops, and its
police force was destroyed earlier in the year by a wave of insurgent
attacks. Marines patrol roads on the perimeter and occasionally raid
homes in the city, which slopes along a quiet river valley.

Commanders
say insurgents have challenged local tribes for control and claim
Iraq’s most wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once had a home
here.

Since their
arrival in February, the Marines had spent nearly all their time on
such sweeps or preparing for them, sometimes hurrying back to their
base to grab fresh clothes and then heading off again to cities that
hadn’t seen American or Iraqi troops in months.

Surprised by combat

The
intense pace of the operations, and the enormous area their regimental
combat team had to cover — an expanse the size of West Virginia
— caught some off guard.

The combat was certainly not what the 21-year-old Williams had expected.

“I
didn’t ever think we’d get engaged,” said the soft-spoken, stocky
Marine from Helena, Mont. “I just had the basic view of the American
public — it can’t be that bad out there.”

In
some sweeps, residents warmly greeted the Marines. But in others, such
as operations in Haditha and Obeidi near the Syrian border, the squad
members met gunfire and explosions. In the Obeidi operation in early
May, another squad from Lima Company suffered six deaths. Williams
himself perhaps saved lives, once spotting a gunman hidden in a mosque
courtyard, said Toland, the platoon commander.

The
night before the Aug. 3 operation, an uneasy Toland couldn’t sleep.
Instead he spent his last night with his squad members talking and
joking, trying to suppress worries the mission was too predictable for
an enemy that knew how to watch and learn.

“I had concerns that the operation was hastily planned and executed, with significant risks and little return,” Toland said.

The
road had been checked by engineers and other units, Marine commanders
say. But insurgents had been clever — hiding the massive bomb
under the road’s asphalt.

Massive blast

Several Humvees first drove over the bomb, but the triggerman in the distance apparently waited for a vehicle with more troops.

Then,
as the clanking sound of their armored vehicles neared, a massive blast
erupted, caused by explosives weighing hundreds of pounds.

It threw a 26-ton Amphibious Assault Vehicle into the air, leaving it burning upside-down.

The
blast was so large that Toland and his radioman, Williams —
traveling two vehicles ahead and not injured — thought their
vehicle had been hit by a bomb.

They scrambled out to inspect the damage, but instead found the blazing carnage several yards down the road.

A total of 14 Marines and one Iraqi interpreter were killed.

There
was no time for grieving — not at first. There was only sudden
devastation, then intense anger as the Marines pulled the remains of
their friends from the vehicle.

Then
there was frustration, as they fanned out to find the triggerman.
Instead, they found only Iraqis either too sympathetic toward the
insurgency, or too afraid, to talk.

Although
the bomb had been planted in clear view of their homes, residents
claimed they had seen nothing of the men who had spent hours digging a
large hole several feet deep and concealing the bomb.

It was a familiar — and frustrating — problem.

“They
are totally complacent with what’s going on here,” said Maj. Steve
Lawson of Columbus, Ohio, who commands Lima Company. “The average
citizen in Haditha either wants a handout, or wants us to die or go
away.”

Intelligence scarce

In
a war where intelligence is the most valued asset, the Marines say few
local people will divulge “actionable” information that could be used
to locate insurgents.

Some Iraqis apparently fear reprisal attacks from militants. Many just want to stay out of the crossfire.

Others
hate the Americans enough to protect the insurgents: Marines say
lookouts in cities would often launch flares as their vehicles
approached.

In this
region ruled by Sunni tribal loyalties, few voted for the new Central
Iraqi government, and many suspect the U.S. military is punishing them
and empowering their longtime rivals, the Shiites of the south and the
Kurds of the north.

“From
a squad leader’s perspective, the intelligence never helped me
accomplish my mission,” said Sgt. Don Owens, a squad leader in Lima
Company from Cincinnati, who fought alongside the 1st Squad throughout
their tour.

“Their intelligence is better than ours,” Owens said.

Sobs in the night

The
first night after the attack, Williams couldn’t sleep. He stayed near
his radio, listening to the heavy sobbing of fellow Marines that
punctured the night around him.

He thought of his best friend, Lance Cpl. Aaron Reed, a 21-year-old with a goofy demeanor and a perpetual smile, now dead.

A
world without his second family had begun. The young men Williams had
planned to meet up with again, back in the States, had vanished in a
matter of minutes.

He was alone.

Yet
from a military standpoint, it was important to press on to show the
enemy that even their best hits couldn’t stop the world’s most powerful
military.

The Marines were ordered away from the blast site, to hunt insurgents, just one hour after the explosion.

They
stayed out for another week, searching through dozens of homes in the
nearby city of Parwana and struggling to piece together intelligence
about who had planted the bomb.

“I pushed them back out the door to finish the mission,” said Lawson. “They did it, but they were crying as they pushed on.”

As
word spread back in the United States that 14 men had been killed, the
Marines on the ongoing mission couldn’t even, at first, contact their
families to let them know they had survived.

Progress questioned

Marine
commanders say the large-scale raids in western Anbar province have
kept the insurgency off-balance, killing hundreds of militants and
leaving a dwindling number of insurgent bases in the area.

They
say the sweeps are critical to beat back the insurgent presence in
larger cities such as Ramadi and Baghdad, where suicide bombings have
been rampant. But, among some Marines and even officers, there are doubts whether progress has been made.

The
insurgents lurk nearby — capable of launching mortars and suicide
car bombs and quietly re-entering cities soon after the Marines return
to their outskirt bases.

“We’ve
been here almost seven months and we don’t control” the cities, said
Gunnery Sgt. Ralph Perrine, an operations chief in the battalion from
Brunswick, Ohio. “It’s no secret.”

Even
commanders acknowledge that with the limited number of U.S. and Iraqi
troops in the region, the mission is focused on “disrupting and
interdicting” the insurgency — that is, keeping them on the run
— and not controlling the cities.

‘Maintenance work’

“It’s maintenance work,” said Col. Stephen W. Davis, commander of all Marine operations in western Anbar.

“Because
this out here is where the fight is, while the success is happening
downtown while the constitution is being written and while the
referendum is getting worked out. . . . If I could bring every
insurgent in the world out here and fight them all day long, we’ve done
our job.”

For Williams, the calculation is much more visceral and personal.

“Personally,
I don’t think the sweeps help too much,” he said quietly on a recent
day, sitting in a room at the dam, crowded with Marines resting from a
late mission the night before.

“You find some stuff and most of the bad guys get away
. . . . For as much energy as we put in them, I don’t think the output is worth it,” he said.

Thoughts of home

Williams, a Marine for three years, has decided not to re-enlist.

Instead, in these last days in Iraq, he thinks of home and fishing in the clear streams of Montana.

He hopes to open a fishing and hunting gear shop once he returns and complete his bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology.

He looks forward to seeing his mother, his only surviving parent, and traveling to her native Thailand this fall.

He said his “best memory” will be the day he leaves Iraq. His only good memories, he said, are of his friends:

Of Dyer, 19, an avid rap music fan who would bop his head to Tupac Shakur.

He played the viola in his high school orchestra and had planned to enroll in a finance honors program at Ohio State University.

Of
Reed, his best friend. He was president of his high school class from
Chillicothe, Ohio, and left behind a brother serving in Afghanistan.

Of
Cifuentes, 25, from Oxford, Ohio. He was enrolled in graduate school in
mathematics education and had been working as a substitute teacher when
he was deployed.

“I think the most frustrating thing is there’s no sense of accomplishment,” Williams said.

“You’re biding your time and waiting. But then you lose your friends, and it’s not even for their own country’s freedom.”

Copyright 2005 THE DECATUR DAILY. All rights reserved.
AP contributed to this report.

–>

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.