Guest Post!

From the one-and only MARY:

BREAKING!

Fox Was Right – Home Grown Al Qaeda Starts California Fire!

A boy admitted to starting one of more than a dozen wildfires that ravaged Southern California last week, state detectives said Tuesday night.

The child admitted to playing with matches Oct. 21 and accidentally starting the Buckweed Fire, Los Angeles County sheriffs said. Officials have released the boy to his parents.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21553786/

His name was Omar. Probably. Article doesn’t say, but we know it was that, or Mohammed maybe, or Abdul – or maybe Abdul Mohammed Omar (AMO). The NSA has a series of intercepted Omar communiciations that have led to his capture. Well, that and the fact that he turned himself in. Apparently the NSA tapes have not yet been translated into “American” by the monitors. An anonymous source confirms that the NSA has been struggling with complex language issues presented by this “American” dialect ever since the recent discovery of a previously mysterious “warrant clause” and the baffling “probable cause” reference in an ancient intercept called the “Constitution.” Luckily, these references appear to have become abandoned over the last half decade, but the NSA has vowed to remain ever vigilant against their resurrection. That is, as vigilant as it can be, what with not being able to find competent translators for “American.”

Also under investigation for aiding terrorism is The Holy Match, an inflammatory organization known to disseminate very small weapons of match destruction.

While AMO has been temporarily released to his parents, the President is reviewing offers to disappear AMO from the CIA, several Special Ops forces, the Republican WannabeNinjas Caucus, a consortium of Blackwater alumni in hiding from police in various countries, and a group of Dept of Justice lawyers who have gotten tired of only writing the solicitations and want to get some water on their hands.

Meanwhile, the FBI has been breaking into homes of known associates of AMO, including many who would listen to seditious rhetoric during a ritual known as “recess.” Under a process known as “Hide N Go Sneak N Peek,” the FBI is also using National Paternity Letters to take custody of the children who “look funny.” Facebook is cooperating by reviewing all its files for “funny looking” kids, and with their active cooperation, numerous funny looking faces have been successfully disappeared.   Monitoring systems have been set up nationwide to try to clamp down on radical playgrounds throughout the country where other so-called “children” have been reportedly taking oaths of loyalty involving blood offerings from fingers pierced by metal.

Senator Mitch McConnell held a press conference late last night to decry the rise in recess terrorists and has called on Senate Democrats to pass a resolution denouncing recess. Sen. McConnell also pointed to the rampant growth in playground facilities during the Clinton administration and the failure of that administration to take out known radical playgrounds. He noted that, if only Clinton had set up perimeters around McDonalds’ playgrounds throughout the nation, much of the childthreat could have been contained.

Senate Leader Harry Reid immediately issued a statement indicating his support for the resolution denouncing recess and Recesso-fascists. Reid also called on McConnell to please take over the job of leading the Senate, with the current Leader noting that he is far too incompetent to tie his own shoes or place himself in a state of active cognition.  Reid reminisced about how nice it had been to just go along with everything the Republicans did, rather than having to think up what the Republicans might want to do and then do it for them.  Paraphrasing a personal idol, Reid said of his position as Senate Leader, “It’s hard work.”  He then wandered away, mumbling something about needing more resolutions to keep teachings our childrens.

Snapshots from the GWOT

UPDATED BELOW (X 4)

In Pakistan, a suicide bomber kills three cops and four civilians within a quarter-mile of the president.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban return to Kandahar for the first time since 2001.

In both countries, foreigners with harsher agendas than the locals’ are showing up for jihad; some, like the bomber who just missed Musharraf, are fair-skinned.

Japan’s new prime minister, on the losing end of a vote in the upper house of parliament, must now recall the Japanese navy from the Indian Ocean, where it’s been refueling US and other coalition forces operating in Afghanistan since 2001.

In hopes of thwarting suicide bombers, Pakistani army officers have new orders to appear in public only in civilian clothes, driving only cars with civilian plates.

Pakistan’s supreme court rules this week on whether Musharraf’s parliamentary re-election was valid.  If he doesn’t like the answer, many expect he’ll declare a state of emergency or martial law.

There’s a metaphor in here somewhere

UPDATED BELOW (X 4)

Two big stories from Iraq this morning, one of which could be a metaphor for the other. The one with metaphorical potential concerns Mosul Dam — due to corruption and incompetence, threatening to collapse at any minute and wash away not only Mosul but a large chunk of Baghdad and the 200+ miles in between. I entertain hopes that that image might also fit the Blackwater-immunity story before long. Lord knows, I’d so much prefer that result . . .

The Washington Post’s Amit R. Paley gets off to this rousing start:

AT THE MOSUL DAM, Iraq — The largest dam in Iraq is in serious danger of an imminent collapse that could unleash a trillion-gallon wave of water, possibly killing thousands of people and flooding two of the largest cities in the country, according to new assessments by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other U.S. officials.

Even in a country gripped by daily bloodshed, the possibility of a catastrophic failure of the Mosul Dam has alarmed American officials, who have concluded that it could lead to as many as 500,000 civilian deaths by drowning Mosul under 65 feet of water and parts of Baghdad under 15 feet, said Abdulkhalik Thanoon Ayoub, the dam manager. “The Mosul dam is judged to have an unacceptable annual failure probability,” in the dry wording of an Army Corps of Engineers draft report.

At the same time, a U.S. reconstruction project to help shore up the dam in northern Iraq has been marred by incompetence and mismanagement, according to Iraqi officials and a report by a U.S. oversight agency to be released Tuesday. The reconstruction project, worth at least $27 million, was not intended to be a permanent solution to the dam’s deficiencies. …

The Los Angeles Times’s Peter Spiegel, filing from Washington, introduces “the most dangerous dam in the world” in more classically-Washington — that is, fuzzier, more bureaucracy-centric – terms:

Now about that silly little email . . .

If you saw Saturday’s AYFKM? post, you know that pride-of-place went to the House Judiciary Committee for confusing “To:” with “Blind copy to:” and thereby accidentally blowing its whistle on those trying to blow whistles on skulduggery in Alberto Gonzales’s DoJ.

Now, reports TPMMuckraker’s Paul Kiel, the committee has sent around another email released an lengthy statement, explaining in excruciating detail just how a “nonpartisan, clerical employee” went so wrong. When I say “lengthy,” I mean it includes eleven chronological stages of explanation. The last is an instant classic in understatement:

The Committee is familiar with legal protections involving whistleblowers and stands ready to assist any whistleblower who feels that they are in any jeopardy as a result of this mistake or for any other reason. We have not yet been contacted by any such whistleblower in this regard. [emph. mine]

Um, how many decades do you expect to elapse before they are so contacted again? I give it at least two.

lotus

State gave Blackwater Nisour Square immunity

According to the AP:

The State Department promised Blackwater USA bodyguards immunity from prosecution in its investigation of last month’s deadly shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

As a result, it will likely be months before the United States can — if ever — bring criminal charges in the case that has infuriated the Iraqi government.

“Once you give immunity, you can’t take it away,” said a senior law enforcement official familiar with the investigation. …

Three senior law enforcement officials said all the Blackwater bodyguards involved — both in the vehicle convoy and in at least two helicopters above — were given the legal protections as investigators from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security sought to find out what happened. …

And that, I suppose, must be how John Negroponte convinced Condi Rice that head of BDS Richard Griffin had to go: they’d have to try to pre-empt this news.

The impunity of BushCo is now complete, and we can have no confidence whatsoever that this corporate-mobbed-up Congress will do a thing about it.

Beyond sickening.

lotus

Blair was Bush’s poodle? Try Chihuahua

If you’ve been known to call Tony Blair “Bush’s Poodle,” maybe you should think smaller. Yesterday, the U.K’s Mail on Sunday published excerpts of Blair Unbound, a new biography by Anthony Seldon, Peter Snowdon, and Daniel Collings that sizes Tony Blair’s stature at approximately “Chihuahua.” (Parts 1 and 2 here and here, story here.)

Colin Powell seems to have greeted Seldon-Snowdon-&-Collings with glee at this new opportunity to dish and distance himself from it all. His account makes clear that Blair always quailed before Bush, time after time stifling his own better impulses and insights to support a war he knew was all wrong. The portrait of Blair that Powell does so much to shape would be pathetic did it not damn him for all time as second only to Bush himself for heedlessness.

If Blair Unbound fully explains the prime minister’s remora-like attachment to Bush, it must be in an unexcerpted passage. In the Mail, we read only that

[chief of staff Jonathan] Powell was the strongest advocate for “hugging America close”.

He judged Britain would best be able to sway American policy by working closely with the White House and trying to influence it from the inside. Blair agreed.

Among other passages, I found these especially remarkable:

Sound-and-fury signifying a clusterf*ck

This morning’s stories of Turkey and Iraq propose a theme, and I’m afraid that theme is disaster. From north of Kurdistan right down to Basra, you don’t have to be Iraqi to hate what’s happening there, or to own — stars on your epaulets or otherwise — that you want out.

The Times of London’s lede story starts it right off with Iraqi Kurdistan’s regional president Massoud Barzani warning Turkey that any move across the border starts a war:

“If they invade or if there is any incursion, it means war,” Mr Barzani said at his offices on the outskirts of Arbil. “If they attack our people, our interests, our territories then there will be no limit because everything is subject to that incursion.” …

He also hinted that Turkey had another reason for its tough stance on the PKK, which is not a new problem. “I am about to be convinced that the PKK is only an excuse,” he said. “The continuous, direct threats of Turkey against the Kurdistan region and its behaviour has created a doubt, leading us close to the conviction that exactly this is the aim. The Kurdistan region is the target, otherwise why should we be involved in the fight between Turkey and the PKK?”

By the way, what ToL calls Barzani’s “offices,” The Independent refers to (in a nice touch) as his “mountain fortress” ten miles north of Irbil.

Meanwhile, the Turkish army tells ToL that it killed 20 Kurdish guerrillas (the New York Times says 15) yesterday in an 8,000-troop ground and air assault in Tunceli, an eastern province of Turkey 370 miles from the Iraqi border. In other words, Turkey is now mowing down its own citizens.

Too many moving parts

So I’m skimming over the Iraq stories this morning, just marveling at the many directions they take. I mean, I know war is chaos and all, but surely there’s never been a conflict with as many moving parts in as tight an arena as we see in Iraq. Even leaving aside the Turkey-PKK piece for the moment, just look at all this:

Twelve days ago, the Washington Post talked up the “devastating and perhaps irreversible blows to al-Qaeda in Iraq” said to be “leading some generals to advocate a declaration of victory over the group.” Today WaPo hits this theme again:

The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David H. Petraeus, said Saturday that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq has been disrupted and no longer operates in large numbers in any neighborhood of the capital.

“In general, we think that there are no al-Qaeda strongholds at this point,” Petraeus said. He added: “They remain very lethal, very dangerous, capable at any point in time, if you will, of coming back off the canvas and landing a big punch, and we have to be aware of that.”

(For the lessening violence, Petraeus partly thanks the U.S. attacks on car-bomb manufacturers outside Baghdad that keep them from deploying the explosives in town. One of the last remaining al-Qaeda in Iraq strongholds in Baghdad, he says, is the predominantly-Sunni southeastern section of Dora. Recent raids there have reduced that threat, though “[t]hey’re still there, don’t get me wrong, and they’re still in Adhamiyah, there’s still some in Mansour.”)

So okay, now AQI runs along to Pakistan, per John Robb’s prediction, and nobody in Iraq will miss ‘em (though some in Washington may). But that doesn’t mean as much good news for indigenous Sunnis as they might hope. Both New York’s and Los Angeles’ Times today repeat Gen. Mixon’s complaint yesterday about Nouri al-Maliki’s “foot-dragging” in hiring desperately-needed Sunni police officers because of sectarian bias, then take it from there.

Americans in PKK camps? Why?

Whoa, here’s an interesting development. Having added an update to the “AYFKM?” post (re Gen. Benjamin Mixon’s strangely-oblivious claim that he has “no idea” why the Turks might be upset with the PKK), I wandered over to DailyKos and encountered a rather cryptic (you really need to follow the links to get it) diary by someone called “kidneystones.” Turns out kidneystones diaries quite a lot about Turkey and the Kurds, and s/he’s found at least one report that certainly deserves further pursuit.

KS’s main focus has been on retired Air Force Gen. Joseph W. Ralston, the former NATO commander Bush appointed last year as his special envoy to resolve the PKK problem, whose resignation was quietly announced earlier this month. That’s an interesting angle too, but I’ll get back to it in a minute. The chewiest chunk KS has found is an October 9 story in the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, reporting in part:

In the Qandil mountains [of northern Iraq], signs of a conflict gathering momentum are easily found.

US army helicopters are reportedly used to shuttle officers to regular meetings with Kurdish fighters.

There is a landing pad complete with spotlights near [PKK commander Murat] Karayilan’s headquarters, while four-wheel-drive vehicles belonging to a US private security contractor, are easily seen. [emph. mine]

That raises more questions than it answers, does it not? Whose officers heli-shuttle in to visit the PKK — American? Iraqi? both? other? Which US private security contractor drives in to see them — Blackwater? DynCorp? Triple Canopy? somebody else? And why? What are they bringing?

AYFKM?

I considered calling this blog “AYFKM?” (a friend’s shorthand for “This is a joke, right?”). Thinking she might want it for her own blog someday, I chose “folo” for mine, but since her phrase is the only reasonable response to today’s news, I hope she won’t mind my bumming it for this post. Mostly I’ll be talking Iraq, but one Capitol Hill story so completely exemplifies the spirit of my friend’s question that I’m not only going off-topic for it but leding with it.

AYFKM? #1: From Paul Kiel at TPMMuckraker last night came word that yesterday the House Judiciary Committee sent a group email to more than 150 people who’d responded to the committee’s special tip-line on wrongdoing at the Department of Justice. The message described the measures being taken to keep their identities in the “strictest confidence.” Only problem was, whoever sent the damn thing mixed up “To:” and “Blind Copy:” — thereby revealing to all concerned the email addresses of all concerned.

Some of the email addresses appear to be transparently fake, but there’s also, much more troubling, a vice_president@whitehouse.gov carbon copied on the email, which is the public email address for Vice President Dick Cheney. In other words, an email containing the email addresses of all the whistleblowers who had written in to the committee tipline was sent to [the] public email address of Vice President Cheney. …

Compounding the mistake, the committee later sent out a second email attempting to recall the original email; it, too, included all recipients in the “to:” field, according to a recipient of the emails.

“standingup” has more at DailyKos. If you’ve ever caught them in action on C-SPAN, you know that HJC includes a number of true doughheads. Now we know it has staffers to match. Infrickincredible.