sfarber

Ukraine and Bulgaria, two members of our multi-national force in Iraq (it is, at least, that) have announced their intentions to withdraw their forces, a combined total of 1,250 troops, from Iraq in the next few months. This comes amidst a number of other countries (Italy, South Korea, Poland and others) already discussing or outright planning on partial or total withdrawals of their own, all while the 800 pound super-power gorilla debates whether the 98-pound weakling local Iraqi guerrillas have inflicted enough military and political damage to increase the Americanwithdrawal plans (around 1/3 of current forces, or a remaining force...

In a scripted speech given at the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, on the subject of Iraq, the President confirmed that the United States will be withdrawing troops from Iraq to bring the number to 99,000 or less (100,000 being the magic “too many”) not less than 30 days before next November’s all-important Congressional mid-term elections. Of course the President promised there would be no artificial timetables for withdrawal; that’s why the timetable he laid out will be organic: naturally tied to the American political election cycle. As usual, the expected babble-crap that oozed from the President’s lips (“We...

So it would seem in Iraq, as evidence mounts that organized Iraqi military, mostly Shia units of the kind we are attaching the future of Iraqi security to, have been carrying out kidnappings and executions of Sunnis from Sunni neighborhoods. This, of course, is the perceived pay-back for years of abuse of Shia at the hands of the Sunni dominated Baathist government (or perhaps, for other grudges of shorter or longer standing.) These revelations emerge at the same time that the nascent Iraqi government attempts to try former Iraqi despot Saddam Hussein for various crimes against the Iraqi people. Indeed,...

Bet you’re thinking as I was that we were talking about Bob “Prince of Darkness and Karl Rove’s best friend in the whole world who isn’t named Bush” Novak. Ha! We’re talking about Time‘s Viveca “No Relation” Novak. It seems she was talking to Karl Rove’s lawyer in the middle of 2004… Why? How the hell do I know? Presumably, that’s one of the things that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will be asking. We can’t really tell where this investigation is heading, but for those of us still naiively clinging to notions of American justice, this at least means that...

This week’s visit to Pravda gives us this account of a major toxic spill (estimated to be an astounding 100,000 tons) of RBS (really bad s***), including heavy concentrations of benzene, that has emptied into a river that forms the water supply for the large-ish Chinese city of Harbin (4-5 million, despite the Pravda account of 10 million)… The spill is on its way to the Russian border, where it will, in turn, effect the water supplies in various Siberian locales, all complicated by the extreme cold freezing the river… the Russians may, it looks like, deal with this one...

Not much else to say about the evidently inadvertent release by an Iraqi guard of Abass Hussein Alwan al-Amry, a suspected Iraqi bomb-maker, indeed, among the first if not the first such “insurgent” bomb-maker linked to a roadside bomb by forensic evidence. Mistakes will be made… recall the accounts that 70-90% of those we held at Abu Ghraib were completely innocent of anything. Amidst this aggressive capture net, there follows a rapid-release effort… and, once in a while, if nothing more than a file-notation to the effect of “hold indefinitely-dangerous dude” is taken for the bad-ass prisoners… well, mistakes will...

So much going on, I don’t even know where to start… Bruce the Veep, who has been hot, hot, hot of late, sends us this gem: a report that the President was informed by the CIA of no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein… get this… ten days after the 9-11 attacks. In its usual counter-constitutional way, the Bush Administration has refused to share this report (a famous “PDB”, or Presidential Daily Briefing) with the Senate Intelligence Committee… as Drudge would say… “developing”… Meanwhile, the White House has dismissed reports that in 2004, British PM Tony Blair talked the...

One might suppose that would be Dick Cheney’s answer to a group of over 100 Iraqi officials lawmakers who, at a pan-Arab conference in Cairo, demanded a timetable for the departure of all foreign troops from Iraq. Gutless bastards. Damned cowards. Let’s just let Mean Jean Schmidt deal with them, shall we? Things do seem to be unravelling on that script. Honestly, if this “pullout timetable” talk persists for more than a few more days, it may make it really embarassing when the withdrawal plan that’s on Rummy’s desk gets implemented (lest the GOP lose one or both Houses of...

Former aide to former Secretary of State Larry Wilkerson has continued his irritating-to-the-Administration disclosures, by pointing out that “guidance” for our Defense Department’s various methods of torture masquerading as “interrogation” originated in the office of the Vice-President (hat to tip to a recently peripatetic Bruce the Veep.) While the likes of ignoramuses such as Lynndie England and Charles Graner are the poster-children for American torture, it is painfully obvious to all but the most dishonest knee-jerk supporters of the Bush Administration that the policies associated with… relaxing what had at one time been strict American standards for humane treatment of...

Yes, that’s a pun… and a pretty good one, actually, to describe the new military-industrial-journomedia complex that has arisen since we permitted defense contractors to own broadcast networks, and Whoreporate America realized that reporting on the government was so much more effort than having access to high government officials and simply printing their prepared press releases as fact without further review. Which takes us to this story in Time by one Viveca (no relation) Novak, about WaPo Assistant Managing Editor and reputed investigative journalist Bob Woodward’s interaction with “his source” (which we can all guess was probably actually more than...