November 2003 Archives

Study Says Medieval New World Map Is Real

The latest scientific analysis of a disputed map of the medieval New World supports the theory that it was made 50 years before Christopher Columbus set sail.

The study examined the ink used to draw the Vinland Map, which belongs to Yale University. The map is valued at $20 million — if it is real and not a clever, modern-day forgery.

A study last summer said the ink on the parchment map was made in the 20th century.

But chemist Jacqueline Olin, a retired researcher with the Smithsonian Institution (news - web sites) in Washington, said Tuesday her analysis shows the ink was made in medieval times.

"There is no evidence this is a forged titanium dioxide ink," said Olin, whose paper appears in the December issue of the journal Analytical Chemistry.

The authenticity of the map has been debated since the 1960s, when philanthropist Paul Mellon gave it to Yale. The university has not taken a position on its authenticity.

The map depicts the world, including the north Atlantic coast of North America. It includes text in medieval Latin and a legend that describes how "Leif Eiriksson," a Norseman, found the new land called Vinland around the year 1000.

Scholars have dated the map to around 1440. Some scholars have speculated that Columbus could have used the map to find the New World in 1492.

Last summer, Olin and other researchers announced that carbon-14 dating of the parchment showed it was made around 1434 — exactly the right time for the map to be genuine.

However, researchers from University College in London examined the ink on the map and announced last summer that it cannot be more than 500 years old.

Tests in the 1970s by Walter McCrone — who also had disputed the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin — found the ink contained anatase, a form of titanium dioxide that is common in inks made after 1920. Anatase is found in nature, but the crystals of anatase were too regular-shaped to have been natural, McCrone said.

Olin's study looked at various minerals found in the ink, including aluminum, copper and zinc. All these minerals, she said, would have been byproducts of the medieval ink manufacturing process.

Also, she said anatase also could have ended up in the ink because of the manufacturing process, and its crystal size and shape could have changed over time.

Research is continuing into the Latin writing on the map.

A foul mood.

A nation whose economy and military are the most powerful in the world affects the rest of the world by its very existence. The very existence of U.S. power makes the rest of the world feel powerless, even under the best of circumstances. If the United States had the most benign intentions toward the rest of the world -- which it certainly doesn't since 9-11 -- it would be bitterly resented. Every action taken by the United States helps some and hurts others. Like an elephant in a flowerbed -- good intentions or not -- the elephant can't get out without trampling flowers.

The United States is not feeling all that kindly toward the world since 9-11. It is in a foul mood. Should Albania or Sri Lanka be in a bad mood -- well, the world can live with it. But when the United States gets in a foul mood, the world is like a flower bed with an angry elephant in it. The flowers can resent getting trampled. They can be bitter and angry, but they can't do much about it.

One of the issues for the United States is what to do about the genuine anger and resentment much of the world feels about American actions. The issue, from a cold-blooded geopolitical standpoint, is whether that matters much. Are the views of thousands of flowers more or less important than the elephant's? In the end, the elephant determines the outcome.

With the American economy booming and fundamental American military power undiminished -- if tarnished -- the rest of the world must find ways to accommodate the United States. America has economic benefits it wants and military consequences it must avoid. The resentment and anger are real and cannot be denied, but the question in 2004 for those who feel it is: To what extent can those sentiments be turned into effective power to block and control the United States?

The unexpected strength of the American economy suddenly creates an interesting equation. Objective U.S. power is increasing dramatically, while subjective sentiment against it is growing as well. The issue on the table -- which will win? We tend to bet on power over sentiment. Unless sentiment can be turned into power, American power remains the single most important fact in the world -- for better or worse.

FundRace has a lot of fun information on the Presidential race. Little factoids that seem to come up in political discussions like the "Grass Roots Index", candidate rankings by donor's percentage of income given, contributions per donor. Lot's of fun stuff.

Plus a great map you really should see. Make sure to play with all the features and note the scale differences when you switch candidates.

Via Eszter @ CT. Thanks!

Your "Google Number" (GN) seems to be a passing fad. So latching on the caboose I offer these amusing GN factoids.

GN 8,840 Donald Luskin, conspiring to keep you poor and stupid.
GN 16,900 John Constantine, fictional character and blog author.
GN 22,500 Kevin Drum, higher being.
GN 38,600 Dean Esmay, higher being.
GN 108,000 Atrios, a gym teacher.
GN 133,000 Paul Krugman, evil leader of the communist revolutionary army.
GN 180,000 Ann Coulter. Her and her little dog, too.
GN 217,000 Al Franken. All lies, of course.
GN 258,000 Andrew Sullivan - A quarter million flies can't be wrong.
GN 1,310,000 Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of imperialism.
GN 1,510,000 Colin Powell - State Rules!!!! Woo Hoo!
GN 2,860,000 George Bush - The big man himself

The canaries in the coal mine are starting to drop. Over come by the "vapours" coming from the open bottle of sewage known as the Republican National Committee. Time for the larger mamals to start looking for an exit strategy.

The Patriotism Refuge

Mistakes can be rectified, although the consequences of this one are hard to exaggerate. But an abuse of constitutional power is a different matter, and it is this we must all begin considering. It is possible -- actually, more than possible -- that a clique of defense intellectuals either snookered the president into going to war or did so with his full cooperation. If this was done, then it represents a grave and reprehensible breach of faith with the American people. We cannot now pull out of Iraq. But we can and we must determine how we got there.

And about the only way to find out what really happened is through the political process. This is especially the case because the Senate has gone from being the world's greatest deliberative body to the world's greatest rubber stamp. Naturally and predictably, the White House would like to avoid any accounting whatever and is likely to respond to criticism with demagogic appeals to patriotism. I hope it doesn't work. I love my country and I love the truth and I always thought the best thing about being an American is that you don't have to choose.

No one, it seems, can resist a good conspiracy theory.

The Mystery of Marina Oswald

We don't have problems with the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald was a shooter, but we do have problems with the idea that he was the lone gunman. There are four crucial points that, for us at least, make it extremely unlikely that Oswald was operating alone:

1. Oswald had a beautiful, unobstructed shot from the Texas Schoolbook Depository building in Dallas as the presidential motorcade approached. He passed on a perfect shot, choosing instead to allow the motorcade to turn left and proceed below his window, and then took a much more difficult shot with his view partially obscured by a tree. Why would he have done that if he were acting alone?

2. The idea that he took three shots with his bolt-action Italian rifle in the elapsed time (a few seconds) -- taking out Kennedy with the head shot -- is just outside the box of credibility. No matter how we strain, we can't get there.

3. The trajectory of the bullet that was supposed to have hit the president and Texas Gov. John Connolly similarly strains credibility.

4. The idea that Jack Ruby, a strip club owner and connected guy, went to the Dallas police station on an impulse and was so overwhelmed by uncontrollable rage at the death of his president that he shot Lee Harvey Oswald strains our credulity beyond its limits. Ruby was a lot of things, but sentimental was not one of them. Ruby looked out for Ruby. Whatever brought him to the station and to kill Oswald was not uncontrolled emotion.

There are lots of other things, but for us, these four issues -- taken together -- make it very difficult to buy the Warren report. We can probably explain away any one of these aspects, but the four things taken together with other anomalous facts create a critical mass of doubt.

David Neiwert has a fantastic - and rather long - post up about Politics and the Personal. It's impossible to summarize, but it's well worth the read. Especially if you're on the Right complaining about Liberal Anger^tm

How is any kind of normative political discourse possible in this environment? How is it possible to be civil to people who constantly are placing you under assault? How can there be dialogue when the normative rules of give and take and fair play have not only been flushed down the drain, but chopped into bits and swept out with the tide? Do the advocates of civility place any onus on the nonstop verbal abuse, and absolutely ruthless, win-at-all-costs politics emanating from the conservative quadrant? And do they really expect liberals to refuse to defend themselves, when even doing so gets them accused of further incivility?

I'll believe conservatives are serious about civil, adult dialogue when they step back and give liberals some breathing room. When "civil" conservatives seriously confront the violent and vicious rhetoric coming from their own quarters; when they do away with suggesting that their political opponents are somehow disloyal Americans; and when they finally acknowledge that people's concerns about the legitimacy of the process by which Bush obtained office are not only well grounded but driven more by patriotic feeling than partisan rancor -- then, perhaps, they can expect to start seeing some civility in return.

But until then, they should not expect liberals to take the evisceration of their lives, both political and personal, lying down. The Culture Wars that they have been recklessly pursuing are slowly growing into a genuine and significant rift in American society. And it cannot be healed until both sides are willing.

It grieves me to see old friendships and relationships actually damaged by this war. But it was not a fight I or other liberals chose. It was thrust upon us. And until that aggression comes to a stop, I will not stop fighting back. Civilly, of course, but with all the blunt force and passion I can muster.

Because, yes, it is political -- but it's also become personal.

Over at Reason's Hit n' Run, they have a post up lending some credence to belief I have that Same Sex Unions should be argued as civil unions not on the basis of marriage. They quote from yesterday's NY Times

Kathryn Czapinski, 59, a nurse and a Roman Catholic, said she was "totally outraged" by the [Massachusetts] court's decision, because of her religious convictions and the prospect of government spending on benefits for people whom she regarded as violating the sanctity of marriage.

But civil unions? "I have no objection," she said. "If they want to recognize civil unions for gays, giving them insurance benefits, things like that, I'm not against that."

Nor were Bill McConaghy, 66, a funeral director, and Walter Shields, 42, a carpenter and electrician for Septa, the area's public transportation system.

They both said they found the idea of gays marrying repugnant. They said they supported the idea floating through Congress of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Yet they held the same view as Ms. Czapinski. They said they were not uncomfortable with gay unions.

"I'm not against anybody living that way," said Mr. McConaghy, a Roman Catholic. "It's just the way I was brought up. Gay marriage is taking it way too far."

Mr. Shields, 42, said: "As a Christian, I don't believe in it. I don't read the Bible that way. A man is supposed to be with a woman." But as for two men or two women living together in a gay union, he said, "It doesn't bother me."

Via Mithras, I find the incredibly useful site MyRss. They set up RSS feeds for your favorite blogs by scraping the HTML. To cut down on bandwidth, they only do this once a day. Which is fine for most of the blogs that don't have RSS. If you want to sponsor a feed, it'll be updated once an hour. Since the folks over at Pandagon are having trouble getting that feed up and running, I've sponsored the MyRSS feed for that site. I didn't spring for the hand crafting, but I did spring for the hourly updates of that site.

Enjoy.

Bitch slap Ann Coulter Ted Rall day

Okay, so Ann Coulter is invited to power lunches after Jew baiting the liberals and Rush Limbaugh gets off for Drug Running and Money Laundering. Touché for the right. Nothing new here.

But for once, one of the RWAP blogs actually bitch slapped Ann Coulter for the bile she spews on this earth. Even my close personal friend Dean Esmay throws a few bones our way regarding Coulter - though the personal attack on how she looks really isn't the point, Dean. It's her politics and hate speech that are ugly.

So I figure I can do the same. Not to Ann, but the focus of pain on the RWAP - Ted Rall. I don't see a moral equivalence between Ann Coulter and Ted Rall. But I do understand why people on the right and center of American politics would be furious with what he says.

And just remember. A large contingent of our Administration subscribes to the tinfoil hat theories this joker peddles.

The Istanbul bombings were likely Iraq's doing.

Al Qaeda on its own — if it still exists in any meaningful form — would not have had the capability to carry out the attacks in Istanbul. Moreover, one indication of a "false flag" operation is that the investigation is too easy. Authorities are immediately led down one track, away from the real culprits. Thus, the passport of one suicide bomber in the first set of attacks, on the synagogues, was found amid the wreckage. He was easily identified and the link to al Qaeda quickly established. Perhaps, Turkish authorities are aware of this trap. The prime minister has cautioned that they are "not 100-percent sure" al Qaeda was responsible.

One major reason for ousting Saddam was the strong suspicion that Iraq was involved in the 9/11 strikes, as well as the anthrax letters that followed. There was, however, enormous bureaucratic resistance to that notion. The concept is not difficult to comprehend, nor is evidence lacking, but as columnist Andrew Sullivan recently suggested, government bureaucrats simply do not want to acknowledge a serious error.

The White House should straighten this out. It is a bad idea to allow U.S. agencies to operate on the basis of a fundamental misunderstanding. Intelligence failures should be corrected.

Moreover, the preoccupation with militants and groups, rather than major terrorist states, inhibits the achievement of critical U.S. goals, like blocking Iran's nuclear program. Senior Israeli officials have warned that Iran is on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough that will pose an existential threat to their country. But what is being done? If one believes that every Tom, Dick, and Harry of a militant poses a major threat, then the truly serious threats appear less so. There are no sensible priorities and too many dangers to deal with.

Finally, explaining Iraq's role in the terrorism against America may also prove necessary in fighting this war. Americans are now evenly divided on whether we should have toppled Saddam. Continued U.S. casualties will only increase those doubts. Yet no doubt would exist, if the public understood that Iraqi intelligence was intimately involved in the 9/11 attacks and that the military grade anthrax sent to Senators Leahy and Daschle almost certainly came from an Iraqi lab.

Unfortunately, there is a Catch-22. President Bush probably does not understand how easy it would be to demonstrate this, because the intelligence failures that left us vulnerable on 9/11 remain uncorrected.

Because even a child could see what's going on. . .

Alarms Sounded On Cost of GOP Bills
Lawmakers Increase Spending to Win Votes

"The U.S. budget is out of control," the Wall Street investment firm Goldman Sachs & Co. warned Friday in its weekly newsletter to clients.

In the final days of the congressional session, GOP leaders added billions of dollars to energy and Medicare bills to help persuade key factions to support the legislation. Overall, the energy bill would cost $33 billion and the Medicare bill $400 billion.

Less noticed were congressional moves to expand veterans' benefits by $22 billion and increase spending on forest-thinning projects from $420 million a year to $760 million to ensure passage of forest legislation promoted by the White House. Lawmakers are also trying to extend 14 expiring tax cuts through 2004, at a cost to the Treasury of more than $7 billion.

All those actions come in the face of a federal budget deficit already projected to rise from a record $374 billion in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 to close to or above $500 billion in the current fiscal year.

"The only thing I can tell you is evidently the word 'tomorrow' no longer exists in the vocabulary of otherwise responsible members of Congress," said Warren Rudman, a former New Hampshire Republican senator and long-standing budget hawk. "They are acting as if there is no tomorrow."

I want one.

Mini-turbine brings 'green power for all'

Unlike old-style domestic wind generators, which needed a lot of land, sat on top of poles and drove pumps and a few bulbs for farmers and backwoodsmen, the machine does not need batteries to store the electricity. Instead, it tops up the existing mains supply.

Unlike bigger systems, it cannot sell excess power back into the grid. But the company believes it has cracked the holy grail of renewable energy - getting government subsidies and making the machines silent.

In theory, there are handouts both for installation and for "Rocs" - renewable obligation charges - which currently pay green electricity providers about 6p per kilowatt-hour generated.

The system, says the Scottish inventor David Gordon, who has pumped £1m into the idea, can generate up to 750 watts - enough to power lights but not high-energy items such as kettles or heaters.

"Nobody has been able to take raw wind power and put it straight into the domestic electrical system at 240 volts," he said. "We will be able to bring green energy to the masses."

Mr Wilson, who has declared his interest in the company on the House of Commons register and has no financial share in it, was enthusiastic. "I have looked at it upside down and sideways for a catch and I don't think there is one. The amazing thing is its affordability.

"It will be a few hundred quid, you do your bit for the environment, and you get a cheque back once a year. What more can you want? It's been though all the standard checks and everyone who's seen it is of the same opinion."

Mr Gordon admits that his invention is not as technically efficient as turbines sited on high poles to collect the optimum wind, but says that it is the annual supplementing of household electricity which makes it suitable for buildings. The machine starts working at a wind speed of 3mph and is said to be most efficient in a 20mph breeze - common for much of the year across large parts of Britain.

Truly, the Democratic party is a party of ideas. Just ask the Pentagon. Too bad no one listened before having two wars that we cannot win the peace afterward.

Pentagon Considers Creating Postwar Peacekeeping Forces

The Pentagon has begun to look seriously at creating military forces that would be dedicated to peacekeeping and reconstruction after future conflicts, defense officials said.

The idea is to forge deployable brigades or whole divisions out of units of engineers, military police, civil affairs officers and other specialists critical to postwar operations.

The move marks a reversal for the Bush administration, which came into office strongly resistant to peacekeeping missions and intent on trying to get Europeans and other allies to shoulder more of that burden.

It also comes in the face of traditional U.S. Army opposition to the idea of establishing forces focused on peacekeeping. Army officials have argued that combat troops can be used for peacekeeping when necessary and that additional units with recovery-related skills can be cobbled onto combat divisions to meet postwar demands.

But in Iraq, U.S. forces have struggled to deal with insurgents and other postwar cAzaellenges, and help from other foreign countries has fallen far short of initial U.S. expectations. Facing widespread criticism for poor postwar planning, and concerned that peacekeeping may become more of a norm for the U.S. military, senior Pentagon officials are being driven to consider alternative ways of organizing troops for postwar operations.

Little Lies, Part I

Truly a bizarre world we live in.

Georgia's new leaders win backing from Washington

Georgia's new leaders won U.S. support and said they would seek urgent international financial aid on Monday after President Eduard Shevardnadze was ousted in a bloodless revolution.

Washington backed the new interim president, outgoing parliament speaker Nino Burdzhanadze, to promote fresh elections in the impoverished former Soviet republic after Shevardnadze bowed to mass protests over alleged vote-rigging and resigned.

"The United States and the international community stand ready to support the new government in holding free and fair parliamentary elections in the future," said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, adding U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell had called Burdzhanadze to offer support.

Powell also spoke to Shevardnadze and Boucher praised the former Soviet foreign minister -- a hero in the West when he helped oversee the end of the Cold War -- for resigning after 11 years in power "in the best interests of (Georgia's) people".

Burdzhanadze urged Georgians to work to restore order quickly in the Caucasus mountain state, anxiously watched in the West because a pipeline is being built through its territory to carry Caspian oil to the Mediterranean Sea.

"From tomorrow order and stability should be restored in the country and I appeal to all law enforcement agencies to return to a normal rhythm of work. And I appeal to our citizens to help them," Burdzhanadze said in a television address on Sunday.

Well, the bear let loose on Salam today. Salam Pax is, of course, a creature created almost entirely from the wispy regions of the blogosphere. So it's only appropriate, I suppose, that the keeper of the ecosystem should let him have it.

But I got to wonder about all of this rage. Let's pretend for a moment that everything really is going gang bustlingly great in Iraq. Even then you're going to get a lot of anger and resentment due to simply being occupiers. And this is to be expected. Anyone who wanders into a soup kitchen can figure out how someone can say "Fuck You" while simultaneously taking the soup and sleeping on the cot. The psychology isn't really a mystery.

But the mystery to me is why someone reacts with "well yeah, fuck you too, buddy". When that someone is a citizen of the coalition, that is. You know, the people with the actual occupying force. The reaction to an occupied someone venting has to be measured precisely because you want to defuse the situation, not inflame it by raising the stakes in some kind of macho head butting game.

Kind of like being the adults in a situation. After all, 50% of Iraq's population under the age of 20. They actually are a bunch of teen agers. Oh, and did I mention we're the citizens of the occupying force and consequently held to a different standard - by definition?

And might I just add, as a mere slithering lefty reptile of the ecosystem, I find the incident of group mutilation of our dead soldiers highly disturbing. Both from the sheer inhumanity of an actual lynch mob and the fact that it's actually happening - at all - under our occupation.

If we can't see a message beyond "Fuck You" in Salam's writings then could it be perhaps because we aren't reading hard enough?

Al Qaeda: The Whole Vs. the Parts

The recent attacks in Turkey, and the surge in attacks in Iraq, appear to be part of a more centralized plan -- a Ramadan offensive. The core al Qaeda leadership chose this month to launch a broader series of attacks and called on local groups to choose the specific targets and carry out the plans. In Turkey, it was the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, a key al Qaeda affiliate, that apparently planned the attacks and recruited local operatives and associates to help facilitate the attacks. These included the Islamic Great Eastern Raiders' Front (IBDA/C), the Union of Islamic Communities (UIC) and the Turkish Islamic Movement, according to German intelligence sources.

The decision to spread into Turkey was obviously not one that slipped unnoticed past the core al Qaeda leadership -- they had the same opportunity as in the proposed Singapore attacks to pre-empt the strikes. But for information on the specific targets, and how it would affect things inside Turkey, the al Qaeda core relied on the local operatives, who would have a greater and more nuanced understanding of the situation and sentiments on the ground. In essence, al Qaeda embodies the idea of thinking globally and acting locally.

Thus, the idea that capturing bin Laden is not as important as the entire campaign against terrorism is correct, but it is also misleading. Bin Laden himself is a player, albeit an important one, but simply targeting operational cells would be just as ineffective in ending terrorism as targeting only the top leadership. Al Qaeda's regional branches, like the Jemaah Islamiyah or the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, can operate independently of the al Qaeda core, but will have primarily a regional rather than global reach.

With information and ideas passing both up and down the command structure, and the central leadership able to switch which local groups it works with depending upon the local circumstances and strategic needs, the network remains fluid, resilient and capable of reaching very sophisticated understanding of local conditions that feed into and are guided by the central strategic mission.

Republican Governors Voice Concerns on Iraq

Republicans at a governors' association meeting here raised concerns on Saturday about the Bush administration's ability to communicate its policies on Iraq, particularly as Americans continue to die.

Gov. Donald L. Carcieri of Rhode Island faulted the White House for not delivering a better message on its successes in Iraq and said that as the casualties rose, skepticism over President Bush's policies would rise.

People who believe that they can control the situation by controlling the image are doomed to fail at both.

Juan Cole says it more eloquently than I did in comments on my post regarding Tommy Frank's peculiar delusion about how the U.S. will descend into totalitarianism after a major terrorist attack.

The Republic and the Constitution are what America is about. Without them, we lose our historic mission and identity. They are not in danger from terrorism. They survived the Civil War, which proportionally was massive compared to the small events of our era. Hell, we lose 30,000 citizens a year to automobile accidents, and we're going to scrap the Constitution over a little dirty bomb? The Constitution can function in emergencies, and we should be educating Americans to think creatively about that.

Franks' scenario would make more sense if there were any evidence that military governments are better at stopping terrorism than civilian ones. Judging by CENTCOM's performance in Iraq, the Israeli army's performance in Palestine, and numerous other examples, this allegation would be difficult to substantiate. It is the agility and litheness of elected, democratic government that will permit a timely and effective response to non-hierarchical threats like al-Qaeda.

I was talking to a former high government official recently, who told me that for the first time in his life he was alarmed about the survival of American democracy. I think we all should be.

Russians fume as Mormons 'buy souls'

The Russian Orthodox Church has expressed its outrage at what it claims is a Mormon scheme to buy up the names of dead Russians in order to baptise 'dead souls' in their faith.

In one archive, in the town of Nizhni Novgorod, east of Moscow, the Church of the Latter Day Saints has paid ten US cents for each page of thousands of names of dead people dating mainly from the late eighteenth century to be put on a microfilm.

The idea, the last-ditch attempt of a cash-strapped archive to fund urgent preservation work, has caused fury among the predominantly Orthodox nation. The Mormon Church is angry at what it sees as an obstruction to its religious practices.

Father Igor Pchelintsov, spokesman for the local Orthodox Church, said: 'The teaching of the Mormons about the conversion of the dead contradicts reason and naturally causes concern among the faithful and creates a tense situation.'

You've got to read this to believe it.

Iraqi CPA fires 28,000 teachers.

American's top man in Baghdad, L. Paul Bremer, last week fired 28,000 Iraqi teachers as political punishment for their former membership in the Saddam Hussein-dominated Baath Party, fueling anti-U.S. resistance on the ground, administration officials have told United Press International.

A Central Command spokesman, speaking to UPI from Baghdad, acknowledged that the firings had taken place but said the figure of 28,000 "is too high."

He was unable, however, after two days, to supply UPI with a lower, revised total.

The Central Command spokesman attributed the firings to "tough, new anti-Baath Party measures" recently passed by the U.S.-created Iraqi Governing Council, dominated by Ahmed CAzaelabi, a favorite of administration hawks in the White House and Pentagon.

"It's a piece of real stupidity on the part of the neocons to try and equate the Baath Party with the Nazis," said former CIA official Larry Johnson. "You have to make a choice: Either you are going to deal with Iraqis who are capable of rebuilding and running the country or you're going to turn Iraq over to those who can't."

Facing a spreading insurgency, this was "not the time to turn out into the street more recruits for the anti-U.S. insurgency," Johnson said.

"It's an incredible error," said former senior CIA official and Middle East expert Graham Fuller. "In Germany, after World War II, the de-nazification program was applied with almost surgical precision in order not to antagonize German public opinion. In the case of Iraq, ideologues don't seem to grasp the seriousness of their acts."

Administration officials told UPI that from the beginning of Bremer's arrival in Iraq, the Bush administration has consistently misplayed the issue of Iraq's former ruling Sunni group, most of whom were members of the Baath, but who are also the most able and knowledgeable administrators in the country. In addition, many able government employees joined the Baath Party not out of any special political sympathies, but simply to attain or retain their jobs.

"The anti-Baath edicts, all of which are ideological nonsense, have been an outright disaster," a State Department official said. "Whatever happened to politics as the art of the possible?"

"All we have done is to have alienated one of the most politically important portions of the Iraqi population," another administration official said.

According to several serving and former U.S. intelligence officials, the latest firings are only one of a series of what one State Department official called "disastrous misjudgments." He cites, as one of the first, how senior Pentagon officials, relying on CAzaelabi's advice, led the Bush administration to believe it would inherit the Iraqi government bureaucracy virtually intact at the end of the war.

This same group ignored warnings from the internal CIA and State Department studies about looting and general lawlessness in the event of a U.S. victory, these sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Rapport Between Bush, Bremer Grows

Although Bremer is widely accessible to the media on Iraq issues, he actively discourages personal publicity and refused to comment for this article. But friends and colleagues talk about the striking similarities between the president and his key envoy.

Both graduated from Yale, then Harvard Business School. Both are self-described gym-junkies, dedicated to carving out time for rigorous daily workouts. And friends and colleagues use the same words to describe both men: fiercely patriotic, tenacious, youthful and stubborn, though eventually willing to shift course when faced with tough realities.

Both also had religious epiphanies as adults: Bush as a born-again Christian, Bremer as a convert to Catholicism. "Both believe they are doing God's work," said a senior U.S. foreign policy official.

And both see the war on terrorism as a personal mission.

And Bremer is discreet, which fits in well with an administration widely regarded by reporters as tight-lipped. Bremer was Kissinger's executive assistant at the State Department and managing director of Kissinger and Associates for 11 years -- yet he has not discussed Bush even with Kissinger. "Jerry would not say this to me, but I have heard from other people that the president and he have a good relationship," Kissinger said.

I know Bush. He's your best chance for peace

If Bush fails in Iraq and loses the 2004 election, you are all going to roast in hell. Luckily, that won't happen.

Nano-transistor self-assembles using biology

"DNA is very good at building things in molecular biology, but unfortunately, it does not conduct electricity. We had to get a metal conductor on the DNA," explains physicist Erez Braun, who led the research.

"This is spectacular work," says Cees Dekker, a nanoscience expert at Delft University in the Netherlands. "It demonstrates that it's possible to use biology to build an inorganic device that works."

"But while it is a first step towards molecular computing based on this type of DNA configuration, we are still many years way from large scale self-assembly electronic devices, such as computers," Dekker cautions.

Biometric cards will not stop identity fraud

A plan to introduce biometric ID cards in the UK will fail to achieve one of its main aims, New Scientist has learned. The proposed system will do nothing to prevent fraudsters acquiring multiple identity cards.

Unveiling the proposals last week, the home secretary, David Blunkett, said they are necessary to prevent identity fraud. Every resident would have to carry an ID card containing biometric information, such as an iris scan. Cards could then be checked against a central database to confirm the holder's identity.

But Simon Davies, an expert in information systems at the London School of Economics and director of Privacy International, says the system would not stop people getting extra cards under different names. If he is correct, it could have far-reaching implications.

US begins hypersonic weapons program

The US military has begun development of an ultra-high speed weapons system that would enable targets virtually anywhere on Earth to be hit within two hours of launch from the continental US.

Ten companies have been given grants by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Pentagon for six-month "system definition" studies. If the Pentagon likes the results, a three-year design and development phase will begin.

The ultimate aim, slated for around 2025, is a reusable Hypersonic Cruise Vehicle (HCV) that can take off from a conventional runway in the US and strike targets up to 16,700 kilometres (10,350 miles) away.

"There is a strategic military need to be able to strike potentially dangerous military targets that are far away and may only be accessible for a short period of time," explains Daniel Goure, an analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.

Current cruise missiles travel relatively slowly, meaning a target may move before it arrives. One solution is to use military bases in foreign countries, but this brings political and logistical difficulties. A hypersonic weapons systems solves both problems.

Luckily

However, experts describe the technical cAzaellenges posed by the program as "tough" and "cAzaellenging". Tearing through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds requires materials that can withstand the phenomenal temperatures produced by air resistance. Traveling above the atmosphere, in space, avoids this, but would require the creation of a new type of rocket-plane hybrid vehicle.

EPSRC achieves a world first in high performance computing

For the first time supercomputers in the UK and the US have been linked to carry out an interactive scientific experiment. It involves three of the most powerful computing resources in the world working in parallel with each other.

This is the first demonstration of the use of the "Grid" to simultaneously link the high performance computers with remote visualisation centres in the UK and the US. This allowed scientists to interact with the computer models as they evolved in real time.

Georgians stage coup to oust Shevardnadze

President Eduard Shevardnadze of Georgia was forced to flee his parliament yesterday after thousands of protesters overran the building and his state security forces abandoned him.

In dramatic scenes reminiscent of the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade three years ago, the former Soviet foreign minister and one-time darling of the West barely escaped with his life after being whisked away by his bodyguards.

Thousands of protesters stormed the Georgian parliament

Later, claiming he was the victim of a coup, he declared a state of emergency. Last night, his spokesman, Bondo Mdzinarashvili, said the army would take control if the newly elected parliament failed to approve his emergency order within 48 hours.

In such an event, "the army and the police would co-ordinate all state agencies to ensure the safety of the population, prevent a coup and would have the right to detain criminals", said Mr Mdzinarashvili.

As Mr Shevardnadze took refuge in his residence, ringed by armed supporters, he defiantly insisted that he would not let go of power. "I will not leave, we are all together," he said. "I will not resign. I will resign when the presidential term expires, according to the constitution."

The international community appealed for calm last night and called on both sides in the stand-off to try to find a peaceful solution.

Jerome points to an article in the New Yorker magazine that I must read.

The High Level Pursues the Truth

“During the [vetting of the plans], Gordon W. Rudd, a professor from the Marine Corps’s Command and Staff College, who had been assigned to Garner’s team as a historian, noticed that a man sitting four rows in front of him kept interjecting comments during other people’s presentations. ‘At first, he annoyed me,’ Rudd said. ‘Then I realized he was better informed than we were. He had worked the topics, while the guy onstage was a rookie.’

“It was Tom Warrick, the coördinator of the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project, and his frustrations had just begun. Two weeks after the [vetting], after a meeting at the Pentagon, Rumsfeld asked Garner, ‘Do you have a guy named Warrick on your team?’ Rumsfeld ordered Garner to remove Warrick from the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, adding, ‘This came from such a high level I can’t say no.’ Warrick, who had done as much thinking about postwar Iraq as any other American official, never went to Baghdad.”

From George Packer’s article, “War after the War,” in this week’s New Yorker.

In The Right Man, former White House speech writer David Frum reports that Bush told him, "there is only one reason I am in the Oval Office…I found faith. I found God. I am here because of the power of prayer." According to Christianity Today, Bush told a Baptist congregation in Houston, TX, that he "believed that he had been chosen by God to be a good steward of the nation."

A Swan Song for the Gray Fox of the Caucasus?

In such a volatile region, a small firefight between security forces and the opposition could spark serious clashes that would pave the way to civil war.

However unpopular, Shevardnadze seems to be the only thing keeping Georgia together. Neither pro-U.S. Saakashvili nor pro-Russian Abashidze could do it. If Washington and Moscow realize this, they both will back Shevardnadze until the next elections in 2005. If not, the consequences likely will be dire. Civil war would destroy what little is left of Georgia and create excellent opportunities for international Islamic militants to cause havoc in southern Russia by sending fighters and arms from Georgia to Russia's Muslim-dominated republics of the North Caucasus. That would turn Chechen war into Caucasian war.

Civil war in Georgia would greatly endanger the construction of the BTC pipeline and Baku-Tbilisi-Erserum gas line. Sending U.S. troops to protect the projects would be difficult because the lines are built through Ajara and Javaketia, Russia-allied regions. Still, sinking Georgia in chaos threatens Moscow next door much more than Washington faraway. So Russia suspects that creating chaos in Georgia to infect Russia's multi-ethnic south could be Washington's plan. We are not sure the Russians are correct. But geopolitically, if the Bush administration wants to weaken other global players, there would be no better way to make Russia bleed than by helping inflame the Caucasus through linking the Chechen and Georgia wars. But U.S. ally, oil-rich Azerbaijan, would catch fire too in that scenario.

We believe that Washington and Moscow likely will do their homework and decide for the time being to stick by Shevardnadze, while each pressing him to make a succession choice in their favor. The genie might be already out of the bottle, however, and violence could easily tear fragile Georgia apart.

100,000 U.S. troops in Iraq to 2006

Or not, depending who you talk to

THE NEWSPAPER REPORTED that a “senior Army officer” warned that maintaining a force of such size beyond early 2006 would cause the Army to “really start to feel the pain” from stress on overtaxed active-duty, reserve and National Guard troops.

But the Times said another senior military official cautioned that while the senior Army officer’s comments reflected prudent planning, it “has nothing to do with what the security situation on the ground might be in 18 months.”

The newspaper said the Pentagon plans to reduce the U.S. military presence in Iraq to 105,000 by May from the current 130,000, and that while some defense officials have raised the possibility of shrinking the force even more next year, the senior officer said planners were assuming the number of U.S. forces in Iraq would probably stay the same when the military begins its third one-year troop rotation in March 2005.

So I guess Operation Iron Hammer had the desired effect.

Deadly Car Bombs Target Iraqi Police Stations

In Iraq, two deadly car bombs exploded Saturday at police stations in and near the town of Baqubah, 65 kilometers northeast of Baghdad. Meanwhile, civilian transport plane may have been hit and damaged by a ground-to-air missile.

The U.S. military says the first car bomb exploded in front of a Baqubah police station, killing and injuring dozens of policemen and civilians.

Minutes later, in the town of Khan Bani Saad 20 kilometers south of Baqubah, a suicide bomber sped his car toward a police station, detonating as Iraqi police opened fire on the vehicle. The U.S. military says several policemen and civilians were killed and wounded in that attack.

Since Wednesday, there have been at least five car bombings in Iraq, targeting Iraqis who work with the U.S.-led coalition.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military says a plane belonging to the international express courier company, DHL, was forced to make an emergency landing, with one wing on fire. It is unclear whether the plane had been hit by a ground-to-air-missile or had suffered a mechanical fault.

Everything starts looking like a thumb.

Juan Cole points to this disturbing NewsDay article, U.S. Has Too Few Informants in Iraq

Juan is also curious as to what extent Feith based reasoning directly led to our soldiers dying.

I think an investigation should be launched into the degree to which Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and his Office of Special Plans actually interfered with Pentagon preparations for the Iraq occupation in ways that detracted from US intelligence operations. Certainly there are persistent reports that the civilians in the Pentagon stopped experienced Arabists from going to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority on the civilian side. The Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith had some sort of shady plans to turn Iraq into a dictatorship run by their crony Ahmad CAzaelabi, and they actively excluded from the whole operation anyone with the background to recognize and object to what they were doing.

As a result, they bear a big responsibility for getting so many of our guys killed in Iraq, since they in essence blinded the US operation there for the sake of their crackpot political schemes.

Via the unavoidable one's comments to this post, I type "Cruise Missile Left" into Google.

THE CRUISE MISSILE LEFT, pt.1

I particularly like the imagery of Christopher Hitchens presenting in full Cruise Missile imperial lust. Well, not really. But you get the idea.

I like this characterization a lot better than the phrase "Liberal Hawks".

A prominent set of commentators claiming to speak from the left have aligned themselves with the national leadership in support of an aggressive military interventionism and projection of power abroad. This is by no means a genuine left—that is, one that opposes the powerful in the interest of the non-elite majority. I call them a “cruise missile left” (CML) because of their alignment with power and their eager support of external violence, which is a very important component of their intellectual labors. One of their cohort, Christopher Hitchens, even explicitly lauds cruise missiles themselves—“precision-guided weaponry”—which he finds “good in itself,” but especially admirable when decimating the forces of evil that are the official targets (“Its a Good Time for War...,” Boston Globe, September 8, 2002).

CMLs often designate themselves the “pragmatic,” “rational,” and “decent” left and they spend considerable energy attacking their erstwhile comrades for failing to keep in touch with the U.S. public, for “reflexive anti-Americanism” (Todd Gitlin), for “genuflecting only briefly—if at all—to the [9/11] dead” (Marc Cooper), for “refusing to acknowledge that the country faced real dangers” and has a right to defend itself (Michael Walzer), and for not crediting U.S. policy with successes when it attacks and removes bad men from power (Michael Berube et al.), among other leftists’ failings.

This is, of course, why the current Administration is busily trying to build nuclear bunker busters. One of those babies and the bunker is toast. Well, maybe not. Maybe all you do is irradiate the surrounding civilians.

Oh well, can't make an omelet without frying up a few radioactive eggs.

One thing that has always puzzled me about the line "private charities can do the job of government hand outs" is the fact that they simply aren't. I suppose that one can make an argument that the private sector charities aren't picking up the slack because that untapped money is going to pay taxes instead of flowing to churches n' such.

But I've never seen any statistic to back this up. Much less known human behavioral and economic patterns.

In any event, wander over to the OMB Watch Blog and check out the graphs in this disturbing document. Fun for all the family.

Watcha think, Steven?

Slacktivist has the roundup on the reaction to the new Republican attack ads.

I saw the snippets on Crossfire and I must say I'm not impressed. If they're trying to create a straw man, it's a pretty poor job. Maybe I'm just not clever enough to see the brilliant strategy of the Great Oz here, but the somber tone is far more likely to put people to sleep than anything else.

Maybe they're trying to hypnotize us with a clever Zombie Mind Trick^tm.

And the bold flashing words just remind me of cheap psychological thrillers from the 60's.

I'll simply add to all this that this ad seems to highlight one of George W. Bush's most unattractive and unflattering traits -- his thin-skinned, hyper-sensitivity to criticism. "Some are attacking the president for attacking the terrorists," the ad says, revealing that the president perceives any criticism of his person or policies as the equivalent of armed violence.

The president's petulant prickliness is one reason he is carefully shielded from uncontrolled and unscripted public appearances. Yet we still get glimpses of it, such as when he appeared personally stricken by the idea that the California recall election, just days before that vote, might be a bigger story than his own campaign, even though that election was still more than a year off. His sneering sarcasm on that occasion was just a foretaste of what we'll see someday when he finally snaps. He's due for a big-time public tantrum/meltdown, like Andy Griffith at the end of A Face in the Crowd.

Even if that doesn't happen, it's still probably unwise for his party to run ads with the theme of: "Don't you dare criticize me." Encouraging the pathologies of the incumbent is not the best strategy for re-election.

Iraq: Operation Iron Hammer May Turn Many Iraqis Against U.S. Troops

Many ordinary Iraqis are not optimistic about the outcome of the operation. They say the new tactics will unlikely give more stability to the country but will probably turn more Iraqis against the U.S. occupation.

Muhammad, a shopkeeper in his thirties, says the U.S. troops are using force too late. He says the "shock and awe" strategy at the beginning of the war should have continued longer: "If they had used Iron [Hammer] from the beginning, building and construction would already be under way [in the country]."

He says the Americans "should have surrounded and arrested all the Ba'ath Party members when the coalition entered Iraq," and "should have used several Iron Hammers" to stop the looting that followed the fall of Baghdad.

But now, Muhammad says, it may be too late for such heavy-handed tactics to be effective.

Abdel Aziz al-Kamme, a man in his seventies, says he always opposed the former regime. But he says he cannot support tactics like Operation Iron Hammer. Although he says the operation gives hope that terrorist networks in Iraq may soon be disbanded, it should not come at the cost of the lives of innocent people.

''(U.S. President George W.) Bush believes he can make the Iraqi people yield to the Iron Hammer, but with so many bombs and missiles he has failed to make the people surrender in Iraq and Afghanistan,'' Rafsanjani said in a Friday prayers sermon in Tehran broadcast live on state radio.

''(Bush) wants to act as the bearer of the banner of freedom and democracy in Iraq, but it is evident that he will get nowhere,'' Rafsanjani said in his sermon on the annual Qods (Jerusalem) day marking Iran's backing for Palestinians.

Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armoured Division in Iraq, said on Thursday the new U.S. tactics were working, noting a 70 percent drop in attacks since Operation Iron Hammer began.

But guerrillas fired rockets from donkey carts on Friday at Iraq's Oil Ministry compound and two Baghdad hotels used by foreign contractors and journalists in the latest strikes on targets linked to the U.S.-led occupation.

More clue cards for the clueless on the Right.

Al Qaeda Bombings: Why Turkey?

The HSBC bombing clearly will hurt Istanbul more than London. Economic instability in Turkey could cost it dearly. As of January 2003, European banks held $43 billion of Turkey's hard-currency-denominated foreign debt -- which might have increased since -- out of a total foreign debt of approximately $53 billion. The EU is also the loudest voice in the IMF, and Turkey owes it another $36 billion. Ankara also has more than $90 billion in domestic, lira-dominated debt.

Furthermore, these attacks likely send the signal to other countries that remaining neutral and refusing aid to Washington will not prevent them from being targeted.

Since al Qaeda acts in very calculated ways, it clearly would be aware of these potential outcomes and impressions. The attacks happened on the watch of the moderate, Islamist-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. Domestically, these attacks will resonate within civil and military politics.

In essence, Recep Tayyep Erdoghan's government had argued that a more neutral Turkey, with respect to Iraq, would prevent al Qaeda from acting against Turkish interests. This stance now appears to be losing water. Post-attacks, the military can counterargue that -- with or without Turkish involvement in Iraq -- Turkey is a target. It can say that Ankara not only failed to gain to influence in Iraq -- which a deployment would have brought -- but also failed to secure the country against al Qaeda attacks.

Should Ankara's civilian-military fissure reopen, it could give the military the upper hand. This would move Turkey closer to the United States regarding troop deployment to Iraq. Also, stronger military influence will frustrate AKP efforts to join the EU.

But in the nearer term, these issues will reignite tensions between the generals and the Islamist-leaning government. As the custodian of Turkey's secular political system, the military always has thwarted Islamists from gaining power in the country. Hence, there was intense speculation about the AKP's ability to rule following its landslide victory in the November 2002 elections.

Via Orcinus, I find the very disturbing NewsMax article. Read Dave for far more brilliant and insightful commentary than I can manage. Let me just quote some of the article and note that my jaw is on the floor.

Gen. Franks Doubts Constitution Will Survive WMD Attack

Discussing the hypothetical dangers posed to the U.S. in the wake of Sept. 11, Franks said that “the worst thing that could happen” is if terrorists acquire and then use a biological, chemical or nuclear weapon that inflicts heavy casualties.

If that happens, Franks said, “... the Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.”

Franks then offered “in a practical sense” what he thinks would happen in the aftermath of such an attack.

“It means the potential of a weapon of mass destruction and a terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event somewhere in the Western world – it may be in the United States of America – that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. Which in fact, then begins to unravel the fabric of our Constitution. Two steps, very, very important.”

Franks didn’t speculate about how soon such an event might take place.

Already, critics of the U.S. Patriot Act, rushed through Congress in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, have argued that the law aims to curtail civil liberties and sets a dangerous precedent.

But Franks’ scenario goes much further. He is the first high-ranking official to openly speculate that the Constitution could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government.

Man, the RWAP is a twitter with disbelief.

Andrew Sullivan

What exactly is the strategy behind going after Turkey and Saudi Arabia? We know the motivation - they despise Turkey's secular form of government and they loathe Saudi Arabia's connections to the West. But doesn't this strike you as spectacularly dumb from a strategic point of view?

Well, then, color me confused - how do these attacks do anything but strengthen this axis?

Am I the only one who sees this asa sign of weakness on the enemy? Their only option is to have a few jackasses strap a rocket to a jackass and then attack soft targets? This is spun as a sign that we are losing? I don't get it.

To lose in a military sense, the US has to encounter a larger and more threatening enemy.
This can only occur if:

...
...
--The US military fails to properly prepare for steadily more sophisticated attacks, longer-range weapons, and an enemy that is flexible, adaptive, and learning more and more about how to best target and strike at objectives with a high political
impact.

--The US and its allies are not prepared to see the current level of attacks be sustained well into 2004, at least in terms of political and media impact and see at least some casualties and strikes continue through the US election and full transfer of sovereignty back to Iraq.

...
...
The US can, however, also lose for internal and political reasons, and these may prove to be as much, or more of a threat. The ways the US could lose are:

--A popular perception in the US that the war after the war is pointless, casualties and costs are too high, and nation building cannot succeed. So far, the Administration is preparing for such a defeat by underplaying the risks, issuing provocative and jingoistic speeches, and minimizing real-world costs and risks. The weakness of the Governing Council, a failure to convince the Iraqi’s that the US is committed to a true and early end to occupation, and a failure to communicate the scale and future impact of the US aid effort, currently increase the risks.

--A failure in the efforts to create a new Iraqi government and deal with economic problems that means the US loses the battle in Iraq for credibility and “hearts and minds.”

--A loss of international support and credibility by withdrawal of coalition allied elements, inability to carry out armed nation building in high threat areas, and last departure of the UN, NGO, and other international aid elements.

'Phase shift' in terror's war on West

Al Qaeda may have a new twist in its strategy: bomb attacks designed to blow up alliances as well as buildings.

Thursday's sobering truck explosions in Istanbul were but the latest in a series of strikes aimed at US allies in the war on terror.

This doesn't mean Washington is certain Al Qaeda is behind all the latest violence. It's possible that Iraqi insurgents sneaked across the border and carried out Thursday's Istanbul attacks.

Nor might cleaving allies away from the US be Al Qaeda's only goal. Osama bin Laden has long excoriated the leaders of Muslim nations that he deems to have wandered from the true faith.

But the recent bombs bear traces of known Al Qaeda tradecraft. There is a pattern emerging, say some experts, that indicates the terror group is determined to wage a sort of world war.

"This feels like a strategic shift to me, or a phase shift," says Jerrold Post, a former CIA official who heads the political psychology program at George Washington University.

... the followers of Ur-Fascism must also be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

Over at Poliblog. Dean's dough still on the rise. Clark turning a bit brown.

The Unnoticed Alignment: Iran and the United States in Iraq

That means that the Iranians are using their nuclear option to extract maximum political concessions from the United States. It is in Tehran's interest to maximize the credibility of the country's nuclear program without crossing a line that would force an Israeli response and a pre-emptive move by the United States. The Iranians are doing that extremely skillfully. The United States, for its part, is managing the situation effectively as well. The nuclear issue is not the pivot.

The alignment represents a solution to both U.S. and Iranian needs. However, in the long run, the Iranians are the major winners. When it is all over, they get to dominate the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula. That upsets the regional balance of power completely and is sending Saudi leaders into a panic. The worst-case scenario for Saudi Arabia is, of course, an Iranian-dominated region. It is also not a great outcome for the United States, since it has no interest in any one power dominating the region either.

But the future is the future, and now is now. "Now" means the existence of a guerrilla war that the United States cannot fight on its own. This alignment solves that dilemma. We should remember that the United States has a history of improbable alliances that caused problems later. Consider the alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II that laid the groundwork for the Cold War: It solved one problem, then created another. The United States historically has worked that way.

Thus, Washington is not going to worry about the long run until later. But in the short run, the U.S.-Iranian alignment is the most important news since the Sept. 11 attacks. It represents a triumph of geopolitics over principle on both sides, which is what makes it work: Since both sides are betraying fundamental principles, neither side is about to call the other on it. They are partners in this from beginning to end.

What is fascinating is that this is unfolding without any secrecy whatsoever, yet is not being noticed by anyone. Since neither country is particularly proud of the deal, neither country is advertising it. And since it is not being advertised, the media are taking no notice. Quite impressive.

Perle bitch slaps the world once again. Guess we were really prescient not to sign the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. Sure glad we got all those side treaties established in time limiting our liability.

Is anyone is truly surprised by this revelation of Perle's? It seemed pretty obvious from the beginning. The opening shot from the White House counsel was "Badges? We don't need no stinking badges".

International lawyers and anti-war campaigners reacted with astonishment yesterday after the influential Pentagon hawk Richard Perle conceded that the invasion of Iraq had been illegal.
In a startling break with the official White House and Downing Street lines, Mr Perle told an audience in London: "I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing."

President George Bush has consistently argued that the war was legal either because of existing UN security council resolutions on Iraq - also the British government's publicly stated view - or as an act of self-defence permitted by international law.

But Mr Perle, a key member of the defence policy board, which advises the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said that "international law ... would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone", and this would have been morally unacceptable.

French intransigence, he added, meant there had been "no practical mechanism consistent with the rules of the UN for dealing with Saddam Hussein".

Key Shiites soften tone toward US

At the gold-domed Kufa Mosque in this holy city south of Baghdad, the young firebrand imam, Moqtada al-Sadr, known for condemning the Americans as Iraq's enemies, has softened and redirected his words.

"We were the only enemy of Saddam Hussein, and now the Baathists who still support him are our only enemy," he tells rows of fellow Shiites baking in the hot sun at Friday prayers. "We must resist them and the terrorists."

The US soldiers who recently arrested members of Mr. Sadr's paramilitary army are still "occupiers," he says. But Iraqi supporters of the young sheikh - who rose to the world stage in July, calling for an Iranian-style theocracy - have taken note of his softer tone. The cleric who once called the Americans "infidels" says he is now ready to work with them, spelling hope for the US-led coalition as it looks to transition to Iraqi rule. Last Friday, Sadr praised the American about-face that now favors a faster turnover of authority to the Iraqi people.

"The Iraqi people only want what is good for the Americans, because they are not the enemy," he recently told the London-based Arabic newspaper, Al Zaman. He even said he hoped to be "attending [the Americans'] meetings soon" to further the common goal of a stable Iraq.

The evolution in Sadr's tone is emblematic of a wider rejection of violence and extremism among Iraq's faithful - and the importance of their role to a successful political transition. As the US shifts to the creation of a provisional government by next summer, more Iraqi leaders are saying such a government will have to be made up of representatives from a broader spectrum of Iraqi religious, political, and tribal groups than those now on the US-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Sadr seems to be among the formerly left-out figures, saying, count me in.

Either Eugene Volokh unwittingly printed Astroturf, or Eugene Volokh willingly gave his email to the Astroturf cause.

Just thought it was funny and I wanted a remembrance.

Would have been killer if Insty and Sullivan were caught in the web as well. That would have been priceless.

Via Atrios and Pandagon.

Chun asks a couple of questions of his readers. As a member of his vast army of readers, I am compelled to offer my humble answers, such that they are.

How is it possible that people are surprised at the fact that the stated reasons for the invasion of Iraq bear no resemblance to the actual ones?

Second, there still is a significant amount of people who actually have faith in the POTUS (my parents, for example). They are still struggling with this faith, and are having a hard time believing the POTUS outright lied - even with the obvious evidence of such. Loss of faith is an ugly process.

Third, there were the Liberal Hawks (for lack of a better group name) for whom this really was the reason for the war - i.e. their hijacked reasons. Either like Friedman, who saw that he couldn't prevent it and decided to make it a humanitarian/democratic revival cause (I'm being kind to the man. I think he's a fink) or like the followers of Kenneth Pollack (and similar ilk), who thought Saddam was a Really Bad Man^tm and thus justified the war as the lesser of two evils (Josh MarsAzael) that had to be done eventually anyways. But for this latter group, it's merely embarrassing that there isn't even a fig leaf of justification. For many, the faux surprise that the real reasons aren't the actual ones is similar to the faux reaction of indignation one would have when their wife caught them in the raw act with a lover (How dare you walk in on me unannounced!).

Did anyone really believe that Iraq was connected to Al-Qaeda or 9/11?

But if you add 'by "anyone," I mean of course anyone who actually tried to inform themselves on the topic by doing nothing more than reading the national press', then I'd have to retract almost everyone I mentioned above, as they pretty much are devoid of information sources outside the US mainstream media. Even the internet aware in that set, as they are primarily on a diet of Fox, Rush and the NRO.

should public school teachers be tried for failing to tell their students the truth about the Iraq war? If they didn't know, they obviously weren't keeping up with the news, which is probably cause for dismissal if not criminal action.

Pity.

Is there no end to the incompentence?

Seeds of Rebellion?

Could the Iraqi resistance soon be spreading from the cities to the countryside? That's what some U.S. officials fear if the nation's 600,000 farmers face another disastrous growing season. This year's summer season was wrecked largely by the war as well as by the looting of $1 billion worth of fertilizer, seeds and agricultural equipment from 100 warehouses. Now the farmers are worrying about what could be another calamity. They are afraid they may not be able to plant the seeds for the next growing season before the rains begin, any day now.

What's missing: fertilizer.

The problems began when the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) failed to prepare adequately for the timely import and distribution of Azaelf a million tons of fertilizer, according to a former U.S. Department of Agriculture adviser to the CPA. Now, ramshackle vehicles that are supposed to be rushing the fertilizer from Jordan and the southern port city of Basra are stalling on Iraq's rutted, cratered roads. What's at stake is more than just another failed growing season's crops, which include maize, wheat and barley. Agriculture is Iraq's second largest economic sector and largest employer. If farmers have no work, that might fuel recruitment into the ranks of Iraqis battling occupying troops. "The Army regards this as a security issue," says the Agriculture Department official, who just returned from Iraq and is worried that the country's farmers might take to the streets. "It does not want the violence to spill over into the countryside." Haj Abdul Wahab al-Bunnia, 82, patriarch of a family-run agribusiness empire in Iraq that farms 25,000 acres and employs 6,000 people, has the same concerns. "We need to get people off the city streets and back onto the farms," he says.

"With incentives, we can do this. But if there is no farm work and farmers have nothing to do, they will take money to blow up something."

A surprisingly interesting article by Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard.

Against Giddiness

They should be very scared.

Resurgent Taliban Threatens Afghan Stability, U.S. Says

Nearly two years after the Taliban's ouster from Kabul, a resurgence in its activities and cross-border operations have posed a new threat to eastern and southern Afghanistan and a new diplomatic cAzaellenge in American dealings with Pakistan, Bush administration officials said this week.

The officials said that they were hopeful that American military operations would push the Taliban back, and that an increase in economic assistance would pull people away from the Taliban. But they said those efforts would take time.

Uggabugga has a chart of electricity production in Iraq starting this summer. It peaked around mid October and has been falling since.

Geesh.

There's lots of other excellent posts up there as well. I particularly liked the visual representation of the U.S. military deaths in the conquest of Iraq. Personally, I'd much rather see a graph of the first and second derivative, but people get confused by such stuff.

I am perplexed at the framing of same sex civil unions as "marriage". I'm getting pretty sick of it.

If you truly care about this issue, you will STOP using the word "marriage" and replace it with "civil unions".

Marriage is a religious artifact.

Civil unions are an artifact of the secular government.

So stop saying "marriage". When people hear the word Marriage, a host of issues get confused with the real issue.

I'm not married to my wife, we have a civil union. There was no religious component to it at all. It was the *state* granting us these rights. Not god (or whatever).

Unless and until the debate gets framed this way, the lunatics on the right will continue to obscure the real issue.

And this will only happen if you let them get away with it.

Geesh. Are we all just tools?

China says use of force may be 'unavoidable' if Taiwan pursues independence

Again, Taiwan's domestic politics have made Beijing angry. Again, mainland China's communist leadership menaces the island with terms like war and force. And again, people on both sides of the straits wonder whether it's just talk -- or something more ominous.

In a warning more blunt than usual, a top Chinese official said the use of force might be "unavoidable" if Taiwan's leaders pursue independence. Wang Zaixi's remarks, published Wednesday, could be aimed at intimidating Taiwanese voters as they prepare for a presidential election in March.

But the rhetoric could also be directed at persuading the United States -- Taiwan's chief, though unofficial, ally -- to head off the island's increasingly maverick leader.

Just don't.

via Metafilter

U.S. Officers in Iraq Find Few Signs of Infiltration by Foreign Fighters

The commanding general of the United States Army division that patrols much of Iraq's eastern borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia said Tuesday that his men had encountered only a handful of foreign fighters trying to sneak into the country to attack American and allied forces.

"I want to underscore that most of the attacks on our forces are by former regime loyalists and other Iraqis, not foreign forces," said the officer, Maj. Gen. Charles H. Swannack Jr., commander of the 82nd Airborne Division.

His view was echoed by Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the 101st Airborne Division, which controls northern Iraq and parts of its borders with Syria, Turkey and Iran.

During a briefing on Monday for a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, he said that since May, his men had captured perhaps 20 foreign fighters trying to slip into the country from those three countries.

During a period in which border patrols have been intensified and new technology is being used, that number suggests only modest foreign incursions into Iraq, in contrast to estimates by the Bush administration.

In Washington late last month, officials estimated the number of foreign fighters in Iraq at 1,000 to 3,000, and the White House has been suggesting that foreign fighters are continuing to enter the country and are behind many of the attacks, linking the war in Iraq to the global campaign against terror.

In a news conference on Oct. 28, President Bush said: "We are mindful of the fact that some might want to come into Iraq to attack and to create conditions of fear and chaos. The foreign terrorists are trying to create conditions of fear and retreat because they fear a free and peaceful state in the midst of a part of the world where terror has found recruits."

Democracy By Example

Needless to say, the spin on the visit — see the same ABC news story — is that Bush is in London to “address” and “confront” those who doubt his policy in Iraq. He’ll just be doing this without, you know, addressing or confronting anyone.

Matt agrees.

It's going to be pretty hilarious when (and if) Dean wins the democratic primary and leans into the television and rips off his radical lefty mask. He's going to unzip his suit and turn into a rightish centrist , mildly authoritarian liberal.

Hey, I'm an anti war lefty supporter of Dean. And I actually do support the use of the "Iron Fist" of our military. Hell, I agreed with humanitarian missions - taken under the auspices of international organizations like NATO or the UN. It's not like the whole nineties didn't happen guys. Get real.

Seems like only yesterday George W was running on a platform of anti "humanitarian missions" and the democrats were the party of foreign interventionists?

Ha!

Iraq: Too Uncertain To Call

This is the actual report the Independent story was referring to.

There is a tendency to see the situation in Iraq either in terms of inevitable victory or inevitable defeat, or to polarize an assessment on the basis of political attitudes towards the war. In practice, Iraq seems to be a remarkably fluid and dynamic situation field with uncertainties that dominate both the present and the future.

A visit to Iraq makes it clear that no one is really a current expert on this country. Too much is changing. Even if most prewar statistics had been valid, they would not be valid now. The security situation is evolving by the day. The local and provincial leadership elites are in a state of flux, and the Governing Council is deeply divided and has not yet taken hold in terms of winning popular support. The economic situation may be improving in broad terms, but the day-to-day of ordinary Iraqis varies sharply by area and by individual, and much of the aid program is just beginning to take hold. More broadly, political, economic, social and military forces have been unleashed by the fall of Saddam Hussein that are only beginning to play out and which will take years to have their full effect. No Iraqi can credibly predict the end result, much less an outsider. In fact, trying to understand the uncertainties at work is probably far more important than trying to make assessments and predictions which cannot be based on past knowledge, current facts, or stable trends.

How to Deal With North Korea

Pyongyang's belligerent behavior should not obscure other dramatic conciliatory steps North Korea has taken in recent years--steps suggesting that, even now, a solution lies within reach. The trick is to craft a plan that does not reward the North for its misdeeds. In such a plan, all major outside powers should guarantee the security of the entire Korean Peninsula first. This will remove Pyongyang's excuse for nuclear proliferation--and break the deadlock on the world's last Cold War frontier.

Attacks will continue until day the Americans leave, says report

Update: Here's the original report from CSIS

Proving once again that hope really is the plan.

A little Sullivan style commenting:

No, not about privacy, about materials science.

MIT team mines for new materials with a computer

Throughout history, scientists have created new materials with novel characteristics by experimentation, essentially melting together existing materials, then painstakingly characterizing the structure of the resulting product. "The behavior of any material flows from its structure," Morgan noted.

With state-of-the-art computational techniques, or ab initio methods, engineers can now do "virtual" screenings of potential materials. A computer predicts what structure and properties a given mixture might have, based on fundamental equations of quantum mechanics. Ceder's Lab for Computational Materials Science specializes in ab initio calculations.

Even these virtual screenings, however, can be time-consuming and costly because "there are still so many possible structures for any given material that it's impractical for the computer to explore them all," Morgan said.

The new MIT technique "establishes patterns among the many thousands of different possible structures" for a given mixture of materials, he said. "These patterns can then be used to greatly reduce the number of structures the computer has to explore."

To date, the MIT team has tested the technique on a relatively small homegrown database. Recently, however, they received funding from the National Science Foundation to produce a public online database "that will allow the whole computational materials community to contribute calculated data," Morgan said.

Thomas Spencer of Thinking It Through is hanging up the blog....

The usual reasons. Arson threats, trolls roughing up his comments...

I kid! I kid!

nd, speaking of research, I have just recently received a research grant from my university and I need to start spending my time working on that project. I applied for the grant last year but, due to budget woes, they canceled all research grants at my university. Well folks, I got a grant a couple of weeks ago and I need to work on that project. I plan to present a paper at a conference next April and it’s high time I got to working on that. I also need to start working on my next book. The research project is part of that. An essay anthology I’ve edited is hopefully coming out next year but I need to start working on an actual book. It’s about time to do so. Blogging has been a fun thing to do during the year that I didn’t get my research grant, but it’s time to start working on my project. I love doing research and scholarly writing (it’s why I became a historian after all) and it’s now time to return to it. I simply can’t keep working gratis on this blog while neglecting my research.

Furthermore, I am a great deal more busy now than when I started this blog in August of 2002. I have just been elected to serve on the Missouri Humanities Council and I’m more active in my church (I’m now a Deacon and I sing in the choir). I was doing neither of those things when I started blogging. I’ve also been exercising for at least 4-5 hours per week (I’ve lost more than 30 pounds since May) and that’s taking a fair amount of my time. During the fall and spring soccer seasons, I coach two teams and referee a game or two every weekend.

Therefore, after a lot of thought, I’ve come to the painful conclusion that something has got to give folks – and this blog, I’m afraid, is what’s got to go.

We'll miss you.

Go watch the video of Clark on Fox. You know, in case you've been living in a hole and haven't seen the link on a zillion other sites.

That was a clear demonstration of the difference between Clinton Hatred and Democratic Anger.

Laugh while you can monkey boys.

Now we got two "angry" democrats in the lead.

We get by with a little help from our friends

This is Israeli code for "if they take one more step, we're going to nuke Iran." Dagan's was not an accidental statement: The United States has been reminding Iran for weeks to take its nuclear weapons off the table, not only because they were gumming up more serious negotiations, but also because Iran would never be permitted to complete the project. More precisely, the Israelis would threaten to use nuclear weapons, and the United States -- to keep it all from going nuclear -- would destroy the facilities with conventional weapons.

The fact is that the United States doesn't want to do this, the Israelis don't want to nuke Iran, and Iran certainly doesn't want to be nuked. There is, in fact, complete alignment on the main point -- Iran will not be allowed nuclear weapons. There is also agreement that Iran will get to dominate Iraq, and this is much more important to it than nuclear weapons, and much preferable to getting nuked.

The interesting thing today was this: Despite the fact that the nuclear issue is still on the table, Khatami moved ahead on Iraq -- and moved dramatically. The nuclear issue is more a question of face and internal Iranian politics than a serious geopolitical question. Iran will not get many chances in history to have the major global hegemon spread-eagled over a barrel and asking for help to get up. Letting that delicious moment pass because of some nuclear weapons that Iran won't use anyway is fairly unlikely.

This also means that the Iraqi guerrillas and al Qaeda will both raise hell over the next few months, attempting everything possible to destabilize the deal beyond the control of Iran and the United States together. In the long run, this pact will create huge problems for the United States. But in the short run, it creates massive problems for the guerrillas and their allies. They really will be between a rock and a hard place.

Sebastian left a rather thoughtful comment on the post I had chronicling Zbigniew Brzezinski's piece on Power and Insecurity. Rather than respond in comments, I'm pulling it out to a post for my convenience.

Another pointer from Mithras to a fabulous blog I had no idea existed, War & Piece. Laura writes about the fundamental problem with this Administration - it's inability to recognize reality when it smacks them across the face. The almost preternatural ability to create complicated and detailed scenarios that bear almost zero resemblance to reality.

What's one to say except, this memo, these leaked "proofs" of exactly what the neocons insisted was true all along is highly suspicious in every way. The neocons do seem to have this habit of just manufacturing their own reality and their own "facts" when the real facts don't back up the worldview and convictions they have endorsed. Indeed, the Feith memo seems to offer the kind of "vindication" the neocons hoped they would get from Iraq weapons of mass destruction hunter David Kay, but which David Kay -- sadly, for them -- did not yet prove able to provide them.

It truly seems like the Administration is unravelling over the mess of post war Iraq, and that we are witnessing some of that unravelling and desperation with this leaked memo. The B team has become unhinged.

Mithras posted a bit about the cover of Time during the week he was born - he's born under the sign of the punch card. So I wander over to see what was on the cover during the week of my birth, and I find I'm born under the sign of the Quagmire. Figures.

Update: Forgot to post this bit of trivia about General Paul Harkins

The first American general to command the military advisory mission to South Vietnam (1963), he was a supporter of the Diem regime and a forceful optimist over the ability of the American military to win in Vietnam. His positive reports to Washington encouraged President Kennedy and his advisers to believe that success was imminent.

Hope is obviously the plan

Gen. John Abizaid is heading back to Doha where he will re-establish his command, previously moved to Tampa, to oversee the counteroffensive and the Afghan sideshow. We suspect other offensive operations in the region will be mounted as well, including the African operations we discussed at the beginning of summer. In short, the U.S. is trying to retake the initiative.

That is the key to the situation. Iraq has become a conceptual nightmare, focusing on such silliness as Iraqi democracy and whether the U.S. Defense Department or State Department will run the Baghdad waterworks. It's the al Qaeda, stupid. They hit Saudi Arabia and now Turkey and two weeks remain in Ramadan. Iraq is merely a campaign in a longer war.

We find it interesting that Donald Rumsfeld is touring Asia at this time. The trip had been planned for a while, but the current crisis in Iraq would normally give him every excuse to stay home to oversee it. But while Gen. Abizaid headed for the Gulf, Rumsfeld headed for Asia. There is important symbolism in this. Control over combat operations is devolving to the man responsible for it -- Commander in Chief, Central Command (we prefer the old name), not civilian planners in the Pentagon.

The U.S. position has improved simply because it is paralyzed no longer. An offensive has started and Rumsfeld is focusing on shaking hands and holding tough press conferences. That means that the military command has been given authority and responsibility to execute Iron Hammer. It most emphatically does not mean it will succeed. But the United States has gone from a snowball's chance in hell to actually having one. The curve is definitely trending positive.

Steven over at PoliBlog has his handicapping of the Democratic primary up, the Toast-o-meter. Myself, I think it's going to be a brokered convention with a huge come to Jesus finale...

Via Atrios, I find the latest Insta-tom-foolery. I follow the links and eventually come to this story on Fox: Weekly Standard: Intel Report Links Saddam, Usama. Then I see the words "Douglas Feith" and "memo" in the same sentence. Laughingly, I also see the intelligence backing up the memo described as "detailed, conclusive, and corroborated by multiple sources". Well, if you ignore the prefix "Much of the evidence is" it sounded pretty good. Especially if you don't bother to say which evidence has these qualities and which don't.

Color me extremely skeptical. It is David Feith after all. And a "Hail Mary" pass down the field isn't exactly a sign of strength.

Update: Matt pretty much has the same feeling...

Update 2: The DOD has a few things to say about this Feith in the connection. . .

To lead, U.S. must give up paranoid policies

Zbigniew Brzezinski

Power and insecurity

Paradoxically, American power worldwide is at its historic zenith while its global political standing is at its nadir. Why?
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Since the tragedy of Sept. 11, which understandably shook and outraged every American, the United States has increasingly embraced, at the highest official level, what can be fairly called a paranoiac view of the world. This is summarized in a phrase repeatedly used at the highest level: "He who is not with us is against us."
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Let's not forget this was a phrase popularized by Lenin when he attacked the social democrats on the grounds that they were anti-Bolshevik and, therefore, "he who is not with us is against us" and can be disposed of accordingly.
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There are two troubling conditions that accompany this mindset.
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First, making the "war on terrorism" the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today reflects a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's primary superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.
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The second troubling condition, which contributes to the crisis of credibility and to the isolation in which the United States finds itself today, is the absence of a clear, sharply defined perception about what is actually happening abroad.

Or call it the DuToit maneuver. Say you don't like the way something is going. You just wade in and drop a grenade or two and pick off those remaining with your gun.

Or call it the strategy of preemption. Don't like the way a country is developing as a threat to you? Just wade in and whack the hornets nest. Pick off the remaining 50,000 (or so) flies with an ill suited military mix.

Or call it the disturbing behavior of fantasizing about an armed revolt against Liberals - complete with a list of Senators that died, and the names of the Supreme Court judges that joined them in death. I kid! I kid! Of course.

Or ponder at the cahones it must take make the argument that there is a moral equivalence between "Clinton hating" and "opposing Bush's policies". Insanity vs. opposition politics. Any criticism of the plan is hurting the war effort. Withdrawal of the troops is the fault of the Liberal's propaganda. It's all Clinton's fault!

Or simply marvel at the whining when an obscure lefty cartoonist calls them "Chicken".

Or wonder if we'll see the day when Saddam sends us a note from Baghdad saying "thanks for rebuilding my infrastructure while I was on vacation in the Caymans".

The Usefulness of Civil Disobedience-Part II-The Bonhoffer Option

Yep, I've often fantasized about killing my political opponents - NOT.

Oh, and the rage on the Left is just like the rage on the Right.

Imagine the response from the warbloggers (Dean Esmay, that's you!) if a Liberal blogger had written the mirror image of this post.

Rumsfeld Says Iraq Coalition Not in Trouble

"What's taking place is not a surprise," Rumsfeld said hours before he was to meet Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

"It is that the terrorists -- the remnants of the regime -- are going to school on us. And they watch what takes place and they make adjustments, just as we go to school on them, watch what takes place and make adjustments," he said.

Networks Hire David Kay To Find Missing Viewers

Citing frustration and panic (with a heavy dose of confusion and pain), the heads of the broadcast tv networks have enlisted former UN weapons inspector and current Iraq WMD hunter David Kay to find where all their viewers have gone. "Specifically, males 18-30", said NBC entertainment chief Jeff Zucker. "We can't understand for the life of us why young men aren't sticking around to watch lame reality shows, overheated melodramas and stale sitcoms. That's why we hired Mr. Kay."

It's clear that VHS tape to tape duplication devices have, in the past, been used to copy and distributed TV programs. But their quality was limited and the technology available to US media consumers today provides a grave and gathering threat to the god given right to unlimited profits by media conglomerates - according to an RIAA spokesman. Clearly, we don't want this threat to intellectual property hanging over our head. The threat could materialize at any moment. The time to act is now.

We don't want the smoking gun to appear in the form of lower profits.

China Launches Satellite, Plans 10 More by End-2004

Seems like they have the whole reliable launch space vehicle thing down. Wonder if it's as reliable as they believe.

In any event, these guys are cooking.

I feel like I'm playing a game of Civilisation III sometimes, though. Well, in the game, not playing it. That's Karl Rove's job. I'm just a disgruntled citizen that can be molified by a jester or the random fool with the click of a mouse button.

Now about that Virtual Law. . .

Again, courtesy of the VOA.

Bush: No Iraq, Afghan Withdrawal Before Mission Completed

And by this we mean no premature withdrawal.

And by that we mean no premature evacuation.

President Bush says U.S. forces will stay in Iraq and Afghanistan until they have found Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

President Bush says it is "inconceivable" that U.S. troops would pull out of Afghanistan or Iraq "until the job is done."

Smack in the front of Google News front page is the headline Rumsfeld: US Will 'Outlast' Enemy In Iraq. Even better is that this headline comes from none other than the Voice Of America^tm.

So, it's now a seige. I guess the "Shock n' Awe" (reloaded) is likely not having the desired effect on the estimated 5,000 guerillas.

Not surprising since we have no idea who or where the guerillas are.

And then to hear this priceless quote from Rumsfeld.

Man, things must be pretty grim.

Update: US Struggles to Determine Who Is the Enemy in Iraq

Someone out there has a very sick sense of humor.

My friend Steven posts the notion that perhaps running a 500 Billion dollar yearly deficit (actually more, because we're "borrowing" from SS) isn't such a bad thing. As we have heard before, as a percentage of GDP, the deficit doesn't really look all that bad from a historical perspective. After all, when we were fighting a global war - WWII - the deficit was 30% of our GDP.

So relative to when we were fighting for our lives in a world wide war, the fiscal year 2004 deficit percentage of 2.7% doesn't look all that bad. Kind of puny, really. So what's all the fuss?

GOP Filibuster Causes Dangerous High Winds Throughout Northeast

Hurricane force winds whipped up the northeast today and yesterday, generated by enormous blasts of hot air during the latest Senate filibuster.

GOP senators seemed unconcerned about the dire consequences of their actions as they complained that the Democrats had blocked only 4, or 2%, of President Bush's judicial nominees, as opposed to the "colossal job" done by the Republicans in blocking 63, or a whopping 20 percent of Clinton's nominees during his tenor.

Time to Panic?

Last year I would never have thought to vote for a Democrat for President. Last week I wouldn't have thought of it. But today I have been pushed to the brink.

I just got back from a work trip to San Francisco and I read an article which worried me. Like an idiot, I left the paper on the plane and I can't find the article on-line, but it is very similar to this one . The gist of the article I read, which is not so strongly echoed in the LA Times article, is that Bush is looking a way to transfer power very quickly to an Iraqi government. This strikes me as a disastrous possibility, especially if it is used as a pretext for a substantial withdrawal from Iraq.

If - and I stress the word "if" - Saddam's plan all along was to melt into the surrounding population, harass us with guerrilla tactics, wait until we leave and then regain power... Well, the only way this could have worked is if the people prosecuting this war are COMPLETE IDIOTS. My mom, after hearing this, said "I told you that was what he was planning on doing" (My mom believes the theory that Saddam Husein is pretty much a James Bond Super Villain. Plans within plans n' all that jazz). I repeated the last part of my thesis to her - i.e. that the only way this could have worked is if the occupation was being run by COMPLETE IDIOTS - and she finally got my point.

Yep, Saddam is the master global criminal because he has the audacity to incorporate into his plans the assumption that the President of the United States and his advisers are completely incompetent.

My, my, my.

We're now going to end up with a situation far worse than we would have had if we simply did nothing.

Ironic.

Operation Iron Hammer: Shock and Awe II

In essence, the new operation is a tactical application of the strategic reasoning for going into Iraq in the first place. In part, the invasion of Iraq was a way to signal the rest of the Arab world -- or any country in fact -- that any thought of hosting or supporting al Qaeda or other anti-U.S. militants would be met with a swift and overwhelming response from the United States. On the tactical level, this is now being implemented in the form of Operation Iron Hammer.

The strategy was previewed in early November when U.S. F-16s dropped 500-pound satellite-guided bombs on targets near Tikrit and Al Fallujah in response to the downing of two U.S. helicopters.

How successful it will be as part of the broader campaign remains to be seen, however. Without a solid intelligence network in place, U.S. forces will have few high-level targets to strike in and around Baghdad. Further, the chances for collateral damage is, in some respects, proportional to the size of weapon used. A few miscalculations, misguided bombs or strikes relying on faulty intelligence could undermine Washington's attempts to demoralize potential insurgents and their supporters, strengthening resolve against U.S. forces.

And this is why it is so important for Washington to accelerate the transition of some authority -- or at least responsibility -- for Iraqi security to Iraqis themselves. Using Iraqi intelligence assets will allow for more nuanced and better-vetted information, and may avoid many of the cultural and language mix-ups that slow operations. Deploying indigenous Iraqi forces -- something that has already been done in coordination with U.S. forces and independently on a small scale -- may open the way for more effective counterinsurgency operations in sensitive areas that are difficult for U.S. or other foreign coalition forces to enter.

Another Bold Roll Of the Dice

If those assumptions are true, then Iron Hammer could achieve the goals. We would think that intelligence is there, and we think that a 25 percent attrition would be highly disruptive. We are not convinced yet that the Bush administration is prepared to accept the political consequences of massive civilian casualties. It is good logic to say that given the guerrillas' animosity to the United States, there isn't much to lose anyway. But politically, it will certainly raise the barrier to IGC cooperation with Washington. Moreover, massive civilian casualties will strain what little allied cooperation there is in Iraq, and pictures of those casualties could have repercussions in the United States.

Many things are forgiven when there is success. That is what President George W. Bush is betting on. He is placing a massive bet on the table: that the guerrillas can be knocked down, if not out, by this assault, and that success will pave the way to political settlement. It is an interesting bet. On the other hand, Bush is not risking as much as he can win. The situation he was in Wednesday was unacceptable and would probably cost him re-election. In that light, launching Iron Hammer -- even if the odds were against its success -- still made sense. Doing nothing was not an option.

So now we know what came out of the war council: There is a political initiative and a military offensive. We do not know how far the offensive will go. One possibility is that it is simply a show piece to frame U.S administrator Paul Bremer's talks with the IGC, and that the United States is not prepared to inflict civilian casualties -- a small bluff instead of a big bet. That would be in keeping with the administration's previous behavior. However, Bush has been making a wrenching re-examination of his strategy, and it might well have changed. Iron Hammer might last more than a few days. That is the most important thing to watch over the next 48 hours. It will be the key indicator of whether there has been a policy switch -- or just a policy twitch.

I know that I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I sAzaell link to this in the name of Freedom. The last time I linked to Dean Esmay, he threatened to send some burly military types over to rough up my comments. So it is not without great personal danger that I post this.

So Tom Tomorrow's latest cartoon really struck a nerve with Dean. I've argued elsewhere that the term Chickhawk is probably a term that people shouldn't be using in their arguments. But with the reaction from the RWAP to Tom Tommow's little jibe at them, I'm beginning to have second thoughts. These guys are wimps with skin so thin it's translucent.

See, I don't think I've ever heard any of the Chickenbloggers (yes, I'm now using that term for the first time) whine and moan about - say - Ann Coulter strongly suggest that the Right needs to start physically intimidating Liberals so that they know they can be hurt. Ann can playfully suggest that the New York Times should have been blown up by Timothy McVeigh and at worst it barely registers with these guys. See, it's perfectly okay to say whatever you want about Liberals. After all, they are the enemy. They deserve to die and get beat up and exposed for the lying communist scum that they are.

I guess the "Mission Accomplished" line is now officially devoid of all meaning.

I wonder how long Dean Esmay will be able to ignore the obvious?

Back to Qatar

Deteriorating Security in Iraq Draws CENTCOM to Region

The general running the war in Iraq, Gen. John Abizaid, will move his headquarters back to the region beginning next week, because of the rise in attacks on U.S., allied and Iraqi targets, military officials told ABCNEWS.

By moving his headquarters back to Doha, Qatar, Abizaid will be able to move in and out of the war zone, making it easier for him to keep track of the situation, the sources said. He will also be in the same time zone, allowing him and his staff to act more quickly on intelligence, the sources added.

Since taking command of U.S. Central Command, which covers the Middle East, in July, Abizaid has run the Iraq war from CENTCOM's permanent base in Tampa, Fla.

Abizaid has made frequent trips to the region — a grueling 7,000-mile commute across the Atlantic Ocean. The arrangement will allow U.S. officials more planning and operation capabilities.

Although Abizaid's predecessor, Gen. Tommy Franks, left Qatar on May 1, the day after Bush declared that major combat in Iraq was over, Doha never officially closed as a headquarters. It is considered a "split headquarters," along with Tampa.

The move to Qatar will involve about 400 people on the CENCTOM staff, and they are expected to be there at least two months.

Laying Down the Virtual Law

You're a dwarf in a virtual world, and that troll over there has just defamed you in front of everyone. So can you sue, or is it all just fun and games?

That's what a collection of the brightest thinkers and best designers of games like EverQuest, and metaverses like There and Second Life, will be talking about in New York starting Thursday. They're gathering for the first State of Play: Law, Games and Virtual Worlds conference.

A host of questions are on everyone's minds: Are virtual worlds the new Wild West or a legitimate province of the courts? Is game play equivalent to speech as defined in the First Amendment? Is there such a thing as fraud in a metaverse?

"As the game universe becomes intricate, as transactions start to cross the boundary between the game world and the real world, it becomes more complicated as to what you're going to call defamation," says Jack Balkin, a professor at Yale Law School and an organizer of the conference. "The more closely your life is tied to the game, the more what happens can be construed as injury to yourself ... privacy, fraud, breach (of contract). Maybe you really did break a promise. Maybe you did defame me. Maybe you did defraud me, and maybe that does matter."

Scientists Gain on Artificial Organism

Scientists announced significant progress Thursday toward creating an artificial organism that one day may have uses ranging from pollution control to clean energy production.

Scientists using commercially available DNA took only two weeks to build from scratch an artificial virus with the identical genetic code of a simple virus already known to infect and kill bacterial cells.

Applying Relativism to Relativism- The Conservative's Error

How can you decry moral relativism yet offer impassioned defenses of creationism that amount to factual relativism? To me, this is among the stupidest combination of viewpoints I've ever heard. To suggest that morals are absolute but that science is relative is exactly backwards. Science is quantifiable, it's subject to objective tests, it's essentially a name for information that is gathered through the senses. Moral standards, on the other hand, are defined by nothing except what a majority of people believe. There is no way to measure "morality" against our senses, or to test it except against the views of others.

Now, I realize that philosophically you can make a case for everything being relative, or you can make a general stand against all relativism. Neither of those is practical for real-world application. So accepting that you have to split your relativism, saying science is quantifiable and morals aren't makes sense, but the opposite doesn't. So yes, I think that people who believe in creationism are flat out wrong, and I think morality is frequently colored in shades of gray. If that makes me a snob so be it, I'd rather be a snob than embrace a philosophy that is patently nonsensical. On that I'm absolute.

Fears mount over ferrying troops into Baghdad
Commercial planes are sitting ducks for militants with portable missiles

With the Pentagon's announcement last week that it is sending 85,000 fresh troops and up to 43,000 National Guard and reservists to replace troops in Iraq next year, concerns are growing on Capitol Hill and among military security experts that commercial airliners ferrying soldiers there will be easy prey for terrorists or insurgents armed with shoulder-fired missiles.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told The Chronicle on Monday that she was concerned the Bush administration was not doing enough to protect troops from being shot out of the sky by the same kind of missiles that destroyed an Army helicopter and killed 16 troops last week.

The Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday that it would award preliminary contracts next month for a pilot program to study how to adapt existing anti-missile technologies for use on commercial airliners. Among the firms vying for the contracts, which are part of a $100 million two-year research project, are two from California: Northrop Grumman Corp. and Raytheon Co.

But Boxer says the department is not moving fast enough. "I feel the administration is slow-walking the decision to protect our planes," she said.

Explosive-laden ambulances seized

Thank "Bob" these were found before they were used.

THREE ambulances packed with explosives, one with as much as 1000 kilograms, were discovered by US and Iraqi forces here in the past few days, a senior US military spokesman said today.

"Terrorists have taken on a new ambitious tactic in recent days. Iraqi and coalition security forces have foiled numerous attacks involving ambulances," said Lieutenant Colonel George Krivo.

"Two Iraqi ambulances were stopped at a checkpoint in Baghdad. While the first ambulance was being searched, the second one sped off," he said.

Krivo said "once the ambulance was searched, it was found to contain over 225 kilograms of explosives".

He said Iraqi police found in Baghdad's southern Al-Dura neighbourhood an ambulance filled with 1000 kilograms of explosives.

"In a third incident, an ambulance was driving suspiciously near a police station. They fired on the vehicle and the terrorists fled the scene," he said.

"Inside the vehicle were sticks of explosives and three shoe boxes with detonators," he said.

The offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad were hit by a suicide bomber driving an ambulance on October 27, while four police stations were also gutted by suicide bombers at around the same time.

<heh> Hillarious.

Listen to this rather amusing wav file to learn all about the many and varied usages of the F-Word.

We say use this unique and flexible word more often in your daily speech. It will identify the quality of your character immediately. Say it loudly and proudly!

And by "jumping the shark", I mean it in the strictest sense of the phrase: "From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same". The tipping point has been reached.

U.S. Troops More Hostile With Reporters

- With casualties mounting in Iraq, jumpy U.S. soldiers are becoming more aggressive in their treatment of journalists covering the conflict.

Media people have been detained, news equipment has been confiscated and some journalists have suffered verbal and physical abuse while trying to report on events.

Although the number of incidents involving soldiers and journalists is difficult to gauge, anecdotal evidence suggests it has risen sharply the past two months.

Go give Dave a read. Call it alarmist, call it insane rantings. But I think he's right. We're a completely polarized country. Bush n' company are driving this wedge deep.

The most recent, and troubling, harbinger of this trend was reported yesterday in the Boston Globe, which detailed the Republican plans to demonize Democrats as essentially treasonous and disloyal in the 2004 election:

The strategy will involve the dismissal of Democrats as the party of "protests, pessimism and political hate speech," Ed Gillespie, Republican National Committee chairman, wrote in a recent memo to party officials -- a move designed to shift attention toward Bush's broader foreign policy objectives rather than the accounts of bloodshed. Republicans hope to convince voters that Democrats are too indecisive and faint-hearted -- and perhaps unpatriotic -- to protect US interests, arguing that inaction during the Clinton years led to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Of course, this meme has been floating in conservative circles since well before the Iraq War broke out -- it is, after all, the explicit thesis of Ann Coulter's fraudulent screed, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism (for more on that, see this post). Coulter's book is itself clearly extremist in orientation, since much of its subtext is devoted to rehabilitating the deservedly broken reputation of Joe McCarthy. And like so much proto-fascist thinking, its worldview is decidedly dualistic, posing everything in black and white, good and evil, us and them. This is, as I have pointed out, a politics specifically designed to attract followers who are, in Erik Erikson's famous formulation, part of a "totalist" mindset -- which is to say, avid participants in a totalitarian society.

Operation Iron Hammer. Okay, getting tough with a guerrilla insurgency is a good idea. But the consistent understanding from right and left - not to mention this Administration itself - is that we don't have very good intelligence at all. If we even take just the party line from the Administration, it isn't even poor intelligence - it's close to nothing.

So, we're going to lash out at guerrillas that we don't know who they are, where they are coming from and what they are going to do next.

This is not a strategy. This is an act of desperation.

"We'll show them who's boss"

Unfortunately, I think we're going to do precisely that. And I don't think it's going to be us who's going to come out on the positive end of the demonstration.

A defining crisis

The problem is not in Iraq. The problem is in Washington, where there is an intellectual and spiritual crisis. Intellectually, President George W. Bush's team appears unable to conceptualize a war plan to deal with the guerrillas. Spiritually, the team appears to be exhausted, lacking the will to accept the guerrilla war and maintain its momentum in other theaters in spite of it. It is not just Iraq: The United States is on the defensive in Afghanistan and has failed to mount expected attacks in Africa. The broader war on al Qaeda appears to have shifted to the defensive.

Such crises happen. One way through them is to recognize that your team has hit its wall -- and fire the lot. That works only if you have a team to replace it with, and if the new team can show rapid progress with new ideas. There does not appear to be a B team in the wings. Another solution is to decide that the particular campaign was an error and withdraw. Bush already has said that that isn't an option, and the results of a withdrawal after having invaded would be far worse than never having invaded at all.

The leaked CIA report indicates that the White House is going with the worst-case scenario. In war, accepting the worst-case scenario is frequently the first step to wisdom. The second step is accepting that radical action must be taken and taking that action, even in the face of danger. That is the hard part. And that is the crisis of the war. Having accepted that things have not turned out as expected and that the current situation requires radical change, taking risky, radical steps is the next logical process.

U.S. administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer is being asked to go back to Iraq to convince the interim governing council to take over. That is not a strong move. Begging someone to take responsibility for the country you just conquered -- and having them say no -- does not, sAzaell we say, project the requisite "manly" image. Now, Bremer might have other instructions he is taking back to Iraq with him. However, if his comments to the press were indicative, he does not seem to be heading back with the spirit of Churchill seared into his soul by the president.

And that -- not the guerrilla movement in Iraq -- is the defining crisis of this war.

Iraq: Examining the Guerrilla Objective

The attack in An Nasiriyah hints at an uptick in activity outside the Sunni Triangle and raises a critical question for the U.S. military: Can the guerrillas extend their campaign to encompass the entire country, stretching coalition forces thin and dispersing their counterguerrilla operations? The truck bombings in An Nasiriyah do not provide an answer to this question, but they do suggest that the guerrillas want to spread the conflict across the California-sized country. With this objective in mind, guerrillas and their allies likely will try to launch further attacks to the south, north and west -- and perhaps strike previously untargeted infrastructure, such as southern oil fields and pipelines.

Expanding the conflict to include the entire country -- especially the predominately Shiite regions in the south -- could give the guerrillas an incredible operational advantage. Such an expansion would require U.S. forces to increase their counterinsurgency efforts, including raiding villages and growing the troop presence in hot zones. This potentially could strain delicate relations between the Coalition Provisional Authority and southern Shia.

Preventing or destroying any potential U.S.-Shia alliance is a key goal of the guerrillas, because the Shia comprise the country's majority and are the foundation upon which Washington will try to build a post-Saddam Hussein government.

The Iraq Dilemma: Frying Pan or Fire?

It would seem to us that there are two strategies on the table:

1. Assume that scenario two is at work, wait until December and then deal with the IGC from a position of relative strength.

2. Assume that scenario one is at work and lock in a deal with the Shiites before the situation gets any worse and the Shiite -- and Iranian -- price gets any higher.

Each scenario carries substantial risks and no intelligence guidance available is sufficiently authoritative. The temptation to wait and hope for the best is strong, but a miscalculation could lead to an impossible situation in which the Shiites have the Americans by the throat while the guerrillas are hitting other parts of the body. Paying the Shiite price now, if unnecessary, creates a long-term problem -- the Shiites will be charging a high price for their services.

The administration has toyed with this Shiite-Iranian alignment for months now without coming to a definitive decision, constantly hoping that things would get better. Now, the choice is only between things remaining the same or getting worse. Given the intelligence problems, we suspect that Bush needs to work from the worst-case scenario. That means he will bypass the IGC and work directly with Shiite leaders to lock in a deal quickly.

And now it becomes a question of whether the Shiites are feeling lucky.

Hold the Vitriol

Why can't we all just get along under the religious theocracy of the right?

From Stratfor.

Therefore, the core of White House discussions must focus on possibilities for reconfiguring the IGC to U.S. specifications and, failing that, on other political arrangements for dealing with the guerrillas. And this brings us back to what we have discussed for so long -- Iraq's Shiite community, whose interests in suppressing the Sunni guerrillas match that of the United States. As we know, this carries a stiff price: satisfying Iran's needs. However, at this point, the president is pointing out to his team that the preferred option -- peace on terms dictated by the United States -- is not a viable option. Any choice will be suboptimal.

The president has one possible out. Whatever he assumes to be the case, the reality will become clear by the end of November or beginning of December. We expect Ramadan to end with a bang, so to speak. After that, if guerrilla operations decline, the White House can rapidly reconsider its position. If the attacks remain steady, the White House will move with its main plan.

However, Bush is telling his team, including Bremer, that hoping for the best is no longer a strategic option. Given the lack of clarity and effective short-term military options, now is the time for the team to provide practical alternatives. If Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, for example, is vehemently opposed to a deal with the Shiites, now is the time to offer an alternative. Bush plans to be re-elected, so hanging on and hoping for the best is probably not an option in which he is interested.

Everything going according to plan, naturally.

Iraq attack death toll rises to 24

A suicide bomber devastated the Italian military police headquarters in southern Iraq today, killing at least 24 people – most of them Italians.

The bomber drove a tanker truck into the compound in Nasiriyah, about 180 miles south-east of Baghdad, exploding the vehicle in a ball of flames

Witnesses said the driver got past the gate guards after a car ran a roadblock, distracting the sentries.

It was the deadliest attack suffered by non-American coalition forces since the occupation began in April, and the first in the relatively quiet Shiite Muslim city.

US Expresses Concern About Iraqi Governing Council's Performance

Many members of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council are becoming openly skeptical that they can meet the December 15 U.N.-imposed deadline for establishing a timetable for a new constitution and elections. Council members say they now support the formation of a provisional government, while a constitution is written and elections held. The U.S.-appointed 25-member Iraqi Governing Council took office in early July, promising to work quickly toward drafting a new constitution that would pave the way for democratic elections to be held next year.

Four-months later, U.S. officials say they have serious concerns about the performance of the council, which has not even decided how to choose delegates to a panel that would draft the constitution.

Council members have countered that they cannot work quickly because all their decisions must first go through the U.S.-led administration in Iraq.

The holder of the Governing Council's rotating presidency this month, Kurdish-leader Jalal Talabani, recently complained that council members are also being pressured to make quick decisions about issues which require delicate negotiations.

My heartfelt thanks to all those who have served and who currently serve in this country's armed services and para military organizations. You do the most dangerous jobs to keep your country free. I know that a lot of military types might like to see people like me move to another country, but I'd just like to say that I do appreciate what you've done and continue to do for your country. Despite being consistently screwed over by the very government you lay your life on the line to protect.

Thanks. We owe you big time.

Just a trip to the bizarro world. That world of which I catch a glimpse of every once and a while. That world where Tom Friedman makes sense.

Never, ever underestimate a people's pride, no matter how broken they might be. It is very easy for Iraqis to hate Saddam and resent America for overstaying. Tap into people's dignity and they will do anything for you. Ignore it, and they won't lift a finger. Which is why a Pakistani friend tells me that what the U.S. needs most in Iraq is a strategy of "dehumiliation and re-dignification."

The only way we'll foster a decent government in Iraq is if every day we turn a little more power over to Iraqis and create the economic conditions where Iraqis can be successful. The more we empower Iraqis, the less humiliated they will feel, the more time we will have to help them and the less they will need our help.

Tom, Tom, Tom. Remember back in July when you told us

Unlike Bush, Friedman had never argued that Saddam posed a grave threat to America. He wrote this week that the "real reason" for the war was "that after 9-11, America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world ... because a terrorism bubble had built up over there -- a bubble that posed a real threat to the open societies of the West and needed to be punctured."

Why Iraq? "We hit Saddam for one simple reason: because we could, and because he deserved it, and because he was right in the middle of that world," Friedman wrote.

According to Friedman, "The only way to puncture that bubble was for American soldiers, men and women, to go into the heart of the Arab-Muslim world ... and make clear that we are ready to kill, and to die, to prevent our open society from being undermined by this terrorism bubble."

But I'm not sure the rest of the Islamic world is going to be so nuanced in its parsing of historical events. It's hard to see how attacking a weak foe on trumped up and baseless charges just so you can get a base in the heart of their civilization and show people who's the boss is going to be looked upon as anything but humiliating. Mean, too.

Geesh.

Oh, and I'm sure a bunch of pre secreted weapon caches really helps things along. Unlike in Vietnam, the enemy has weapons already distributed and hidden around the Theatre O' Operations^tm. Convenient, that. Predictable? I would have certainly hoped so...

Sure glad David Kay is spending a Billion dollars tracking paper and the odd spoon covered with botulism in some guy's refrigerator. Wish he would have spent his time and money uncovering and securing conventional weapon caches.

Oh well, hind sight is always 20/20. Perhaps we'll start sizing things properly before we bite next time.

A little fable for this rainy afternoon.

A guy walks into a bar with his pet monkey. He orders a drink and while he's drinking it the monkey is running wild.

The monkey jumps up on the pool table and grabs the cue ball, sticks it in his mouth and swallows it whole.

The bartender is livid and says to the guy, "Did you see what your monkey just did?"

"No. What did that stupid monkey do this time?", says the patron.

"Well, he just swallowed the cue ball off the pool table, whole", says the bartender.

"Yeah, well I hope it kills the little sucker because he's been driving me nuts", says the patron.

The guy finishes his drink and leaves.

Three Explosions Rock Saudi Capital

Yi.

I guess Saudi Arabia is going to respond by a healthy investment into democracy, right?

9/11 Panel Issues Subpoena to Pentagon

Okay, one down. Oval Office to go. Maybe - just maybe - we'll find out what the hell went on 2 years ago.

But they said the issue of a subpoena, which would technically be served on the Central Intelligence Agency, which prepares the intelligence reports, would be revisited within days if the White House failed to meet the panel's demands for access to copies of the highly classified reports, known as the President's Daily Brief or P.D.B., that Mr. Bush and his top aides received in the days and weeks before Sept. 11.

"There is a clear message today to the White House and the C.I.A. and the rest of the agencies that we're dealing with," said Timothy J. Roemer, a Democratic member of the commission and a former member of the House of Representatives from Indiana.

"The commission is very serious about getting access to the P.D.B.'s and extremely interested in maintaining our credibility and independence," he said in an interview. Mr. Roemer, who was a member of the joint Congressional committee that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks last year, said that a White House offer made this month for partial access to the Oval Office documents was "completely unacceptable."

The White House refused to provide copies of the daily intelligence reports to the joint Congressional committee last year, citing executive privilege and the need to prevent leaks of highly classified material.

The White House acknowledged last year, in response to news reports, that one of the daily Oval Office intelligence reports in August 2001, the month before the terror attacks, referred to the possibility that Al Qaeda would hijack passenger planes.

Last month, the chairman of the federal commission, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey, said that the White House would be unable to assert executive privilege with his panel in denying document requests and that he was willing to subpoena the intelligence reports if they were not made available.

The subpoena to the Pentagon today was the second that the commission has issued and reflected the panel's growing antagonism with the Bush administration, which had initially opposed the creation of an independent commission to investigate law-enforcement and intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks. The first subpoena was issued last month to the Federal Aviation Administration.

U.S. Retaliates After Black Hawk Crash

Certainly has been a lot of howling regarding how we're going to have to get tough with the guerrillas. It now appears we're about 5 micro meters from the Israeli plan for dealing with indigenous people who are blowing things up.

It's a sign of a massive failure. It's a sign of desperation. It's a sign that things are on the point of exploding and they have to resort to really nasty actions in order to keep control.

Precisely the kind of situation which would allow you to draw down troops, right? I mean, with things going so swimmingly, we can likely have 3 guys hanging around the gas station in Baghdad and they'd probably be as busy as the Maytag Repairman, right?

The U.S. military swept through Iraqi neighborhoods early Saturday, firing at houses suspected to be harboring hostile forces in the wake of an apparent attack on a Black Hawk helicopter that killed six U.S. soldiers.

Backed by Bradley fighting vehicles, American troops bombarded buildings with machine guns and heavy weapons fire.

"This is to remind the town that we have teeth and claws and we will use them," said Lt. Col. Steven Russell, commander of the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment.

He's been completely pussified.

Okay, that was a cheap shot, but I really couldn't resist at least one post about this complete asshole.

Obviously, the first thing you do when you have nothing to hide is freeze the investigation.

Angry about a leaked Democratic memo, the Republican leadership of the Senate yesterday took the unusual step of canceling all business of the committee investigating prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called on the author of the memo -- which laid out a possible Democratic strategy to extend the investigation to include the White House and executive branch -- to "identify himself or herself . . . disavow this partisan attack in its entirety" and deliver "a personal apology" to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

Only if those steps are taken, Frist said, "will it be possible for the committee to resume its work in an effective and bipartisan manner -- a manner deserving of the confidence of other members of the Senate and the executive branch."

Roberts followed Frist on the floor and said that unless the Democratic members "properly" address the issue, "I am afraid that it will be impossible to return to 'business as usual' in the committee."

A committee meeting scheduled for yesterday was canceled, and none has been scheduled for next week, according to a senior committee staff member.

6 U.S. soldiers killed in Black Hawk copter crash; 2 killed near Mosul

The cycle is focused on Friday, Saturday with a big finish on Sunday morning. Irritants during the week to keep the issue alive.

Unemployment rate ticked down, double the number of expected jobs added to the economy. All in all, good news.

Quite frankly, I would much rather have a strong economy than an election issue. It's far better for all of us.

But on the other hand, all of this good news is really only good news in relation to the long two years of really crappy news. And the news is only a small sliver of what is needed for it to really be good news.

I'm constantly amazed at the incredibly low expectations that George W Bush is held to. He signs his name and he is hailed as the best, most wonderful name signer in the entire Universe. Expectations are so low right now that I think GW will be a winner if he manages to only lose 2 million jobs since he's been in office ("look how bad it could have been). Geesh.

Oh well. At least some people got some jobs and less of us are looking for them.

I hope - really hope - this is the beginning of a marvelous recovery for our economy.

I guess this will take care of any lingering questions about democracy and accountability.

White House Puts Limits on Queries From Democrats

The Bush White House, irritated by pesky questions from congressional Democrats about how the administration is using taxpayer money, has developed an efficient solution: It will not entertain any more questions from opposition lawmakers.

The decision -- one that Democrats and scholars said is highly unusual -- was announced in an e-mail sent Wednesday to the staff of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees. House committee Democrats had just asked for information about how much the White House spent making and installing the "Mission Accomplished" banner for President Bush's May 1 speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The director of the White House Office of Administration, Timothy A. Campen, sent an e-mail titled "congressional questions" to majority and minority staff on the House and Senate Appropriations panels. Expressing "the need to add a bit of structure to the Q&A process," he wrote: "Given the increase in the number and types of requests we are beginning to receive from the House and Senate, and in deference to the various committee chairmen and our desire to better coordinate these requests, I am asking that all requests for information and materials be coordinated through the committee chairmen and be put in writing from the committee."

He said this would limit "duplicate requests" and help answer questions "in a timely fashion."

It would also do another thing: prevent Democrats from getting questions answered without the blessing of the GOP committee chairmen.

I'd like to give this site a makeover. I have not the talent for such things. Therefore, I need to hire someone to do the job. So if you know anyone who'd like to take on the task, I'm willing to foot the bill. If you're interested, or know someone who might be, please contact me via email (please do not reply in comments).

Oh, and I use Moveable Type as my publishing software. Knowing MT is a big plus (but it's easy to learn).

Voted "most likely to be the scapegoat" 2 years running.

Anyways, a fascinating piece on his nibs, Douglas Feith.

Loss of Feith in Douglas

But, more to the point, virtually everything that has gone wrong in Iraq - especially those matters that Congress is either investigating or is poised to probe - is linked directly to his office. "All roads lead to Feith," noted one knowledgeable administration official this week.

His now-defunct Office of Special Plans (OSP) is alleged to have collected - often with the help of the neo-conservatives' favorite Iraqi exile, Ahmed CAzaelabi - and "cooked" the most alarmist pre-war intelligence against Saddam Hussein and then "stovepiped" it to the White House via Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, unvetted by the intelligence agencies.

It was also his office that was in charge of post-war planning, and rejected the product of months of work by dozens of Iraqi exiles and Mideast experts in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency who anticipated many of the problems that have wrong-footed the occupation.

<giggle>

Reading the memo which has caused such a tiff - Zell Miller has claimed it was treasonous (!) - I am rolling over the floor laughing.

First, if this is treasonous, then outing Plame has got to be something on the order of Ames selling strategic secrets to our enemies. Really, guys. I know you think it's a cute strategy to make mountains out of mole hills, but the strategy doesn't work. The mountains you're comparing the mole hill only get astronomically bigger and makes your side look worse.

Second, wasn't there this "war" issue that Karl Rove was pushing a while back? Using the war for political gain? Who would land on a carrier with dramatic flair to the background of "Mission Accomplished!".

Shocked! Simply shocking to see the democrats believe they can get political advantages out of the failures of the president.

Third, it the memo isn't really about using the issue in the presidential election. As the summary states

Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet, we have an important role to play in the revealing the misleading -- if not flagrantly dishonest methods and motives -- of the senior administration officials who made the case for a unilateral, preemptive war. The approach outline above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives and methods.

What a joke. I thought there was something really dastardly in the memo.

Now that I find out it's just about exposing what a fraud the Iraq war was, I just have to laugh at how hard the RWAP has been flogging this horse.

Go for it Zell.

Oh, BTW, I just heard Tucker "Lap Dog" Carlson yip about how a DEMOCRATIC Senator just called this memo TREASON. I don't think there's a democrat on the earth who thinks Zell Miller is a Democratic Senator.

Really, Tucker. You're scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

Zell Miller! A DEMOCRATIC Senator.

Just an entry to save the actual text of the Democratic memo that's got all the RWAP in a tiff.

Startup Says Quantum Crypto Is Real

Startup MagiQ Technologies Inc. yesterday announced it's shipping what appears to be the first security system based on quantum cryptography (see MagiQ Ships Quantum Crypto ).

Quantum cryptography goes a step further than electronic cryptography through its employment of a stream of photons, the quantum properties of which determine the key. The fun part is that if an intruder observes or intercepts the transmission, those properties get changed -- an unavoidable principle of quantum mechanics -- meaning the sender and receiver can tell if anyone is eavesdropping. Perhaps more important, the key can't be copied or faked (see Optical Science Gets Spookier and Quantum Cipher Sent by Fiber ).

It's a potential breakthrough, though working with photons has never been easy, and, as the optical networking bubble has shown, it can be an expensive way to build technology.

My, my, my.

I found this highly amusing.

The Cuban Missile Crisis: Parallels in History

All of that is intended to be thoughtful and deep. The point of this essay is simpler however. Americans tend to think of each moment as extraordinarily unique and the present leaders as particularly incompetent. Those who opposed President Bill Clinton thought he was particularly venal, and those who oppose Bush think him uniquely incompetent. It is useful to look back on moments like the Cuban missile crisis, which we tend to see through the prism of time as a particular moment of U.S. courage and decisiveness. Like the current circumstance, it was a moment born of failure, ineptitude and dishonesty, and it ultimately gave rise to the things it was intended to prevent. The president that presided over the crisis is revered today. There are few who were alive in September 1962 who would have thought that Kennedy would be remembered for his strategic acumen. And there are many historians who still wonder what the shouting was about.

Bush's critics should take note of this. And Bush should remember that the kind of victory he gains -- if he gains one at all -- is as important as the victory itself.

It starts off incoherent and ends incoherent. But does so with trademark beauty.

Let's just say I thought the original plot of the first movie was thin at best. I know the whole world fell in love with it, but I think they were just dazzled rather than intrigued.

In any event, the trend has been monotonically downward with each progressing minute past the end of the first film.

The first fighting scene is rather boring. When people start flipping gravity and fighting on the roof, someone obviously thought that we'd be surprised. They were wrong. And what was up with the sound? All the violence was muted - must be some art thing, with deep meaning. Or it might be sound system of the theatre (doubtful). In any event, out of character.

Oh, and a word about the APUs: Shielding. I mean, what a stupid design. Let's take the most vulnerable, weakest link and stick it out in front with zero protection. I mean, really. Okay, another art thing. It makes a certain statement and kind of looks cool. But Japanese anime has already done the anthropomorphic exoskeleton battle armor to death, and they managed to make it look very cool. Go figure.

Anyways, take it all with a grain of salt. I'm sure it will make everyone involved lots and lots of money.

Perle is amazing.

Iraq Made 11th-Hour Appeal to Avert War, Intermediaries Say

The overtures, following a decade of evasions and deceptions and a number of other attempts to broker last-minute meetings with American officials, were ultimately rebuffed. But the messages from Baghdad raised enough interest that in early March, Richard N. Perle, an influential adviser to top Pentagon officials, met in London with the Lebanese-American businessman, Imad Hage. According to both men, Mr. Hage laid out the Iraqis' position to Mr. Perle, and he pressed the Iraqi request for a direct meeting with Mr. Perle or another representative of the United States.

"I was dubious that this would work," Mr. Perle said, "but I agreed to talk to people in Washington."

Mr. Perle said he sought authorization from officials of the Central Intelligence Agency to meet with the Iraqis.

Mr. Perle said the C.I.A. officials said they did not want to pursue this channel and indicated they had already engaged in separate contacts with Baghdad. Mr. Perle said the response was simple: "The message was, `Tell them that we will see them in Baghdad.' "

US crackdown on bioterror backfiring

THIS week, a respected biologist was led into a Texas courtroom. He faces no fewer than 68 charges and could end up in jail for the rest of his life. Has the FBI finally caught the anthrax attacker? No. Thomas Butler merely reported that 30 vials of plague bacteria had gone missing from his laboratory at Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
Many of Butler's colleagues believe the justice authorities are making an example of him as part of a wider effort to ensure that scientists take more care with material terrorists might exploit. Whatever the outcome of the case (see right), that effort is having repercussions that go far beyond the fate of one scientist.

New Scientist has contacted more than 20 prominent figures in the US working in bioterror-related fields. Some refused to talk, and most who did did not want to be named. Their comments paint a disturbing picture. Some scientists, for instance, are refusing to work on projects involving agents that could be exploited as bioweapons, even though the US government is providing massive funding to boost such research.

Others are considering abandoning existing work. Irreplaceable collections of microbes essential for managing and tracing outbreaks, bioterrorist or natural, are being destroyed simply because labs cannot comply with the new rules. The climate of fear created by the Butler case is even threatening the US's ability to detect bioterrorist activity.

New Scientist has been told that labs in one state are no longer reporting routine incidents of animals poisoned with ricin, a deadly toxin found in castor beans, for fear of federal investigation.

And if any terrorist ever does make off with dangerous bacteria, it will be a brave scientist who tells the FBI. As one put it: "I don't want to end up in a cell with Tom Butler." In a letter sent to the US attorney-general John Ashcroft in September, Stanley Falkow, a respected researcher at Stanford University in California, goes further: "Trying to meet the unwarranted burden of what the government considers 'biosafety' is simply not coincident with the practice of sound, creative scientific research."

The thing that is striking about the "Cut n' Run" argument is that the NeoCons are starting to get quite nervous about it. They seriously believe that the Administration is going to pull out, declare victory and bring the troops home in time for elections.

The other thing striking about this is the blame for this strategy is being placed squarely on the anti-war side.

All I got to say is that we didn't start this war. Pretty much everything we did to prevent it was laughed out of the room.

It's not like there's any anti-war person in power now, is there?

So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. I don't know how they'll do it, but Bush and the entire RWAP will lay the blame squarely at the feet of the anti-war crowd.

After all, we're the one's who are calling the shots, right? Bush is our puppet. Hopeless to withstand our propaganda - which isn't even saying "get out".

Oh well. At least it'll be fun to see what kind of tortured logic they'll use to blame us for this fiasco.

Death by Optimism

It's not our fault for letting these guys get away with this crap. It's their fault for being overly optimistic.

With apologies to the shorter form developed by B³ and D² (now at CT).

Via Nathan Newman, I find this rather interesting chart of the blogs that posted their Political Compass result.

Check it out. It's rather entertaining.

My cluster includes Unlearned Hand, Amanda Butler, Michael Drake, and Brock Sides.

Amazing what a little metrics added to the system will turn up.

The latest round of attack memes of the form "I used to be a democrat, but I switched" are pretty much standard Psyops. Equivalent to dropping "large" size condoms labeled "small" on the enemy's front lines. None of the arguments make sense, but what it does is give you the impression you're on the losing side. Ships leaving a sinking rat. You know the score.

Well, there's something to be said for being swayed by this. People like to be on the "winning side of history" as my close personal friend Dean Esmay said.

But anyone who wavers that easily will waver again. One or two more horrific weeks in Iraq, or one or two more expose's on the Plame affair, or "Bob" only knows what's in store for the future, and they'll come running back to the party.

So don't be mean to them. Be mean to the pompous idiots who strut around and look down their noses at you for remaining with "them".

It's just beginning to get ugly. It's going to get a heck of a lot worse. You just have to find that quiet little voice inside you that reminds you of what you're fighting for in the first place. It isn't easy. And we may well lose in the end. But there is a guaranteed way to lose, and that's to never try.

Hey, do you want to live forever? Not under this regime.

So start getting strategic. They may have a tub of lard 6 feet thick in place of their stomach, but they have adamantium steel protecting it. Full frontal attacks are only going to get you hurt. You have to aim the attack where they aren't protected. Tease their inner adolescent that actually still gives a damn about all the things they've sold out in their quest to be on the winning side.

Remind this inner adolescent of the shame they should feel for giving up all that they hold dear in exchange for some false security and a measly one time tax cut. Grind away at it.

Or use one of the many other strategies for attacking a big lumbering politically blind idiotic juggernaut.

Democrat's strength is the incredible variety of people united in the liberal tradition of political thought. Like everything, it's a disadvantage to us - obviously. But it's also a source of great strength.

The single biggest liability they have is their heavily centralized, lock step mentality. Distributed denial of services (politically speaking, of course) is their Achilles' heel. Once overloaded, the periphery goes on autopilot and flails in the wind. Easily picked off.

Get cracking. If you find a particular political attack isn't working, just shift tactics. There's no need to hold on to your particular pet peeve and keep pounding when you're not having an effect. There's plenty of crap out there in this target rich environment. Shifting lines of political attack is quite effective against these jokers.

And it's a heck of a lot of fun.

Schwarzenegger Picks Finance Director

Donna Arduin, a budget official known for cutting billions in social services in Florida under Gov. Jeb Bush, has been named California's new finance director.

Gov.-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger also announced Monday that former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan has agreed to become the state's new education secretary. The appointments are the first of more than 150 the new governor is expected to make in coming weeks.

Why you should always read the small print...

So the news is really not all that different from recent months; A significant Keynesian upsurge based upon consumer spending due to one-time middle-class tax credits, but which fails to motivate businesses to increase employment versus fall back on an upswing in productivity.

A lot of Administration apologists assert that critics want nothing more than to see the economic "recovery" fail; to be honest, seeing that in this household we've been unemployed all but six months out of the past twenty-one, I personally would like nothing more than to see a true upturn in the economy. Unfortunately, I see this recent upswing as a house of cards built on a foundation of sand, to mix metaphors, and suspect that as the stimulus which was infused late this summer winds down, we'll see a return of the "double" (or is it now "triple"?) dip in employment, whether or not GDP continues to surge.

Plumbing the anti-Bush sentiment

I'm with Al Franken. I don't "hate" Bush - it's just that I bitterly oppose the president on several issues ... and I think the president is a liar.

Roosevelt governed with a strong mandate coming from an emotionally loyal majority of Americans who believed his reforms had revitalized the country and, often, even saved their lives. Therefore, his continuing in office always seemed a safe assumption. The angry critics remained, but they were never able to toss FDR out.

Bush, however, has only a slight hold on an American voter majority - if even that. The angry Democrats who, increasingly, bash this president could be the hard core of a Democratic force that overturns Bush in the next election.

Follow this link to get some perspective on the 87 Billion dollars we're spending on Iraq.

Oh yea, it's really $166 Billion. $87 Billion is just the last bill.

The Ultimate Sign of an Intellectual Loser

Call it the Esmay rule of political change: when you're vicious, mean, arrogant, and condescending toward those who stay in the democratic fold, rather than hurt and bewildered and seeking to understand, you're on the winning side of history

Dem Problems

Join me, Luke. Together, we can rule the galaxy.

Iraq War III

Through no fault of our own, it appears that we have entangled ourselves in a tar baby. I suggest that the solution to this problem is better propaganda and more of it.

I think even Stratfor is having difficulty spinning the last couple of weeks.

This brings us to the real problem. It is awfully difficult to tell what is happening in the Sunni triangle. Combat operations certainly have intensified. Given the timing of Ramadan, it appears, on the surface at least, that Iraqi guerrilla commanders have decided to increase operational tempo of their own accord -- not because they are under pressure to attack U.S. soldiers.

Or so it appears. That does not constitute definitive military analysis. We are taking the advent of Ramadan and the increase in operational tempo, tying them together and making an assumption. Another assumption is possible: The U.S. counterinsurgency operations are hitting home, and the guerrillas are being forced, against their wishes, to squander scarce resources to counter those operations.

These are issues that will become clearer only in hindsight. Tet was over for 10 years before we all understood its lessons. The same with the Bulge. At the time, the fog of war was too thick for anyone to come to conclusions. Possibly, neither the U.S. command nor the guerrillas know what is really happening out there. Nevertheless, it is clear that the casualty count alone cannot indicate how the war is going. Only the details of how and why the casualties were incurred can tell that story. Here's where the lack of combat-savvy reporters on the ground really begins to hurt public perception of the war -- on both sides.

<geek>
Well, I talked to some of my friends who are cognitive scientists, and my theories are, of course, hardly anything new. So, no paper. I'll have to use my fall back Design For Failure. It's about my belief that systems - whether computer or not - are rarely designed for failure and that this is a bad thing. They are designed for success. I know that one would logically assume systems should be designed for success, but one only has to look at the state of most systems to find they spend most of their time failing. So I want to explore a couple of implications of designing systems for failure, show some examples of current systems designed along such guidelines, as well as show some of the advantages of moving this kind of failure thinking from the back rooms of our minds and bringing it to the fore of the design process.

Any ways, back to the subject of Process Psychosis and what I wanted to write about.

I think this is his 20th post on the topic, but now he's starting to lose it.

Our primary enemy here at home is irresponsible, sloppy, slanted, and unbalanced reporting. This is the home front. Those of us who care about the war effort need to be aware of it, vigilant about it, and to take it seriously. Soldiers have been killed because of shoddy and irresponsible press coverage. Entire wars have been lost before because of such things.

In World War II, we said "Loose lips sink ships." In this war, we increasingly need something to replace it, like "Thoughtless reporters kill soldiers." I wish I could think of something more pithy. Anyone got any suggestions?

Sorry Dean, but you need to take a break.

This free floating, periodically occurring meme that is known as the Flypaper Theory^tm is getting to be pretty tedious. Every time it pops up, there doesn't seem to be a heck of a lot of evidence supporting it. It's really just a re-occurring fantasy that they have - that somehow they can beat the hornet's nest so hard that all the really nasty types will self sort and come out where we can pick 'em off.

Instead, what our pentagon planners seem to have done is simply piss off a large sector of the native Iraqi population. Sure, maybe there's a certain number of young pups who want to die who join in the fight from the surrounding territory. But it's doubtful that these people would have made it to the United States on a student visa anyway. Flies that would never have crossed the ocean.

Apparently, after taking the same test that's been making the rounds, Daniel's score came out as Libertarian - Right. His exact score is

4.38 on the "Economic Left/Right" axis
-2.77 on the "Libertarian/Authoritarian" axis

So, it turns out that I'm actually more of a libertarian than Daniel Drezner is (my score of -4.72 vs his -2.77 on that axis). But the difference isn't that great. What is a far larger difference between the two of us is the economic left right axis. No big surprise. I'm far more mainstream than Dan, and I believe that the group benefits individuals tremendously, ergo the group should actually get some credit and say in things (which is why I'm in the lower left quadrant). I suspect Dan doesn't feel the same way, rather he (I'm speculating) would feel that the individual doesn't owe much to the group - rather it's the other way around. The function of the group is to stay out of the way of the individuals and to benefit those who can make best use of it.

No big surprise to me, but I took the test and here's where I stand:

Economic Left/Right: -2.12
Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.72

Journal of Life Sciences

I picked this up in the airport news shop as the issue looked interesting. Since the flight was only one hour, I had time to only flip through some other news magazines. So I got around to reading it, and it really is a fantastic issue. I have no idea if they can keep this up, but I'm guessing three or four issues would still be a great run.

One particular gem in this issue is the review of the book Decisions, Uncertainty and the Brain entitled This Is Your Brain On Money.

Nothing is so rare as intelligence. But while economics is the study of scarce resources, thinking itself has never been examined by economists. The reason they neglected brain function goes back to the roots of modern economic thought. Since the 1920s, economists have considered their field to be a system of mathematical equations: a physics of social and economic life. To derive mathematical theorems about the behavior of systems like the worldwide coffee market, it is necessary to make the behavior of individuals inside that market mathematically simple. Economic theory does this by assuming that people know what they like; that they are consistent; that they don’t care what other people are buying; and that, given their incomes, they choose the goods they like most. Economists call this “utility maximization” or “rational choice.”

The utility-maximization model has proved useful for simple problems, like predicting what happens to the demand for gas if it is taxed. If people don’t care what others are buying, their individual utilities, or how much they want for what they will pay, can be added up into a demand curve showing how sensitive the market is to price increases. If demand is consistent over time, then consumer response to price change can be computed statistically and used to forecast the response to a specific anticipated tax change. These forecasts are usually accurate.

But as the physicist Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D., once said, “Think how hard physics would be if particles could think.” Economics is about particles that can think—as well as emote, plan, and talk. Because human behavior is more complex than rational-choice theory would allow, economic theory often fails to explain very much at all. Now a new approach, called neuroeconomics, seeks to make economics a better guide to real human behavior by introducing the dismal science to what is known about the brain. It also hopes to import economic principles into the neurosciences, thereby rescuing neuroscience from some of its own troubles.