on the bermuda triangle that is iraq

Today, Tim Grieve writes in Salon.com's War Room:

First the WMD, then the $9 billion

Before Congress gives George W. Bush an additional $80 billion for Iraq, and before his friends in the media engage in any more hand-wringing about the U.N. oil-for-food program, somebody on the right might want to start asking about the nearly $9 billion that the Coalition Provisional Authority can't quite seem to find.

The U.S. inspector general assigned to audit the reconstruction effort says that "severe inefficiencies and poor management" by the CPA make it impossible to know what has become of $8.8 billion worth of Iraqi money that the CPA once controlled. Among the problems the inspector general found: The CPA may well have been paying "ghost employees" to provide security in Iraq. As CNN reports, auditors found 8,206 guards on the payroll at one Iraqi ministry but could validate the existence of only 602 of them. Perhaps this helps explains why Condoleezza Rice insists that there are 120,000 trained Iraqi security personnel when others, like Delaware Sen. Joe Biden, put the number at around 4,000.

Former CPA chief and Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Paul Bremer says the inspector general's findings are overblown and based on a lack of understanding about the problems on the ground in Iraq. In a response to the audit findings, Bremer said that it was more important to buy peace by getting money to Iraqi employees than it was to keep track of where the money was going and that it was better to live with a flawed payroll system than to "stop paying armed young men" who might have been providing security.

-- Tim Grieve

on iraq, and parallels to the vietnam war

(thanks to patachon for posting this bit of history on Daily Kos)

U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote :
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror

by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.

According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.

The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here.

rest of article here

on the use of appropriate language

kak·is·toc·ra·cy (kk-stkr-s)
n. pl. kak·is·toc·ra·cies

Government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.

source: dictionary.com
used recently by eric alterman, www.thenation.com

the power of nightmares

from the Nation. Katrina van den Heuvel writes:

"Last week, the BBC re-broadcast a provocative documentary series which challenges the idea that Al Qaeda is the center of a uniquely powerful, unified and well-organized international terrorist conspiracy.

"The attacks on September 11th," according to the film's director Adam Curtis--one of Britain's leading documentary filmmakers--"were not the expression of a confident and growing movement. They were acts of desperation by a small group frustrated by their failure which they blamed on the power of America. It is also important," Curtis adds, "to realize that many within the Islamist movement were against this strategy." (This view accords with those held by terrorism experts--like Peter Bergen--who argue that Al Qaeda is largely a spent force that has changed from a tight-knit organization capable of carrying out 9/11 to more of an ideological threat with loose networks in many nations.)

"The film also challenges other accepted articles of faith in the so-called war on terror, and documents that much of what we have been told about a centralized, international terrorist threat "is a fantasy that has been exaggerated and distorted by politicans. It is a dark illusion that has spread unquestioned through governments around the world, the security services and the international media."

"The series does not claim that terrorism poses no threat, nor does it challenge the idea that radical Islamism has led to gruesome violence throughout the world. "The bombs in Madrid and Bali showed clearly the seriousness of the threat--but they are not evidence of a new and overwhelming threat unlike any we have experienced before. And above all they do not--in the words of the British government--'threaten the life of the nation.' "

"First broadcast in Great Britain last November, The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear has yet to air on this side of the Atlantic. Why is it that no television outlet in the United States has yet to broadcast this critically-acclaimed film?. . . [cut]

"America has become trapped by that fear--riven by nightmare visions of 'sleeper cells' in its midst for which there is little or no evidence. The series attempts to explain why this strange state of affairs has come about and it argues that politicians have found in fear a way of restoring their power. In a populist consumerist age where their authority and legitimacy has declined dramatically politicians have simply discovered in the War on Terror a way of making themselves indispensable to their populations again by promising to protect us from something that only they can see."

"Curtis has promised to send me a copy of the documentary. But millions of Americans deserve to see a film that offers a rigorously documented and credible counter to the conventional narrative of a "war on terror."

"If you agree, write HBO and ask why it isn't showing this BBC documentary. You can also call on PBS stations to be true to their missions by asking them to air The Power of Nightmares.

on a similar note...here's someone getting told what-for on Fox

check out this short clip that's going around and around. Fox newscaster was NOT prepared. :)
click here

on why ann coulter sucks, or, someone actually cares about facts...

found this gem by quickiemart on dailykos's blog

"It's rare that the media ever nail Ann Coulter for her obfuscations and misrepresentations but it happened in prime time, in Canada last night. . .Last night, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's excellent investigative news program, "the Fifth Estate," broadcast a one-hour special on the hijacking of the American media by conservative bullies whose knowledge of foreign policy seems to run the gamut from A to B and who tend toward scream-o-ramas in which dissenters are accused of being unpatriotic.

"Of course, it included Coulter who gloated to correspondent Bob McKeown about how her side is "winning and they're loosing." But in the next segment during a rant about how Canada is disloyal for not sending troops to Iraq, Coulter was finally exposed. It just isn't clear from the exchange if she is genuinely confused or purposefully misrepresenting the truth. . .

"Transcript below. (I recorded this from my television last night.)

"Coulter: "Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?"

McKeown interrupts: "Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam."

Coulter: "I don't think that's right."

McKeown: "Canada did not send troops to Vietnam."

Coulter (looking desperate): "Indochina?"

McKeown: "Uh no. Canada ...second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No."

Coulter: "I think you're wrong."

McKeown: "No, took a pass on Vietnam."

Coulter: "I think you're wrong."

McKeown: "No, Australia was there, not Canada."

Coulter: "I think Canada sent troops."

McKeown: "No."

Coulter: "Well. I'll get back to you on that."

McKeown tags out in script:

"Coulter never got back to us -- but for the record, like Iraq, Canada sent no troops to Vietnam."

on iraq

apparently, we've given up searching for weapons of mass destruction. Salon.com points out that the NY Times story was buried on p. A10, in a short, 240-word blurb.

truly disturbing information about what happened in Fallujah: UK Guardian site

but hey! i really would like some MORE information about how Social Security is in SUCH A CRISIS that only President Bush can save us! Sounds a bit like the hype over the WMDs, come to think of it. Pump the fear, push the pre-emptive policies... (see Krugman on why there is no such crisis)