Some conservatives latched on to heartening news in the past few days that the violence we saw last week in Iraq following the Golden Dome bombing has subsided. The daytime curfew, no doubt, did quelch some violence, but now that the curfew has been lifted, the violence continues once again.
Furthermore, we are now discovering that the prior spate of violence was three times more deadly than originally reported, with civilian casualties as high as 1300.
Glenn Greenwald’s thesis here is pretty straightforward.
First, Glenn notes that conservative Bill Kristol pointed the finger at the U.S. military, as an explanation of the Iraqi debacle. Kristol got the blame game started, and now that it’s in full swing, Glenn plays it himself.
Glenn then turns to blogger Jeff Goldstein, who "shared this blame-shifting gem with us yesterday":
One of the important points made in this excerpt (the entire piece is available to subscribers only) is that a goodly portion of our success or failure in Iraq has ultimately to do with how we react in terms of either lending our support or leveling our criticisms against the campaign.
And this is (and has been) a crucial component of the war—one that many on the anti-war side are loathe to admit: that their constant naysaying, though it is well within their right to voice, has objectively hurt the war effort, particularly when the criticism incorporates carefully-crafted falsehoods many of the war’s critics know for a fact to be objectively untrue.
From my perspective, there comes a time when, having registered disagreement with the war, the war’s critics (and here I’m not talking about critics of individual strategical or tactical initiatives, but rather those who have been against the effort from the start) simply wait and—if things fail—rush to brag of their prescience and perspicuity. But in the meantime, actively working to undermine the effort by presenting our enemies with a rabidly partisan divided front (one of their chief aims, remember)—whether it be through suggestions that we are in Iraq “illegally”, or that the President “lied” to take us to war, or seemingly hoping, on a daily basis, that the whole thing devolve into a civil war—matters. And not just rhetorically.
Greenwald mockingly responds:
One can bet the mortgage that we’ll be seeing a lot more of this over the next few months – between now and, say, oh, November or so. Those who insisted on this war, who started it, who prosecuted it, who controlled every single facet of its operation – they have no blame at all for the failure of this war. Nope. They were right all along about everything. It all would have worked had war critics just kept their mouths shut. The ones who are to blame are the ones who never believed in this war, who control no aspect of the government, who were unable to influence even a single aspect of the war, who were shunned, mocked and ridiculed, and who have been out of power since the war began. They are the ones to blame. They caused this war to fail.
Glenn is absolutely right. How can the failure of the Iraqi effort be blamed on those who are NOT in power, and who control NO branch of government? Read it all.
That’s the headline screaming from CBS, who now have Bush at 34%.
(And Cheney’s at 18%. That’s simply mind-blowing. Why so high?)
UPDATE: A conservative "pollster-type" writes to the Corner and takes aim at the poll’s methodology. He peaks in silliness when he writes this:
Now, I’ll tell you right now, what "Americans" or "adults nationwide" think, doesn’t matter one iota in politics, or the polling world. Ultimately, anyone who thinks CBS is guilty of bias can find more evidence in this poll, which is exceedingly dirty.
That’s right. The poll is biased because it asks what "Americans" and "adults nationwide" think. And when it comes to politics, who cares what "Americans" think?
Bush argues that DPW should manage six twenty-one American ports because they are an ally in the war on terrorism, and it would send a terrible sign if we blocked the deal.
Okay, fair enough. But what sign will it send to Israel (also an ally), considering that DPW supports the boycott of Israel?
UPDATE: They’re also trying to stifle the dissent coming from CNN’s Lou Dobbs.
Sigh.
The Vice President shoots someone in the face, and Anna Nicole Smith is now in front of the Supreme Court.
What’s next? A worn-out couch just sitting on the front lawn of the White House?
This menace is getting closer and closer every week it seems:
BERLIN – The deadly strain of bird flu has been found in a cat in northern Germany, the first time the virus has been identified in the country in an animal other than a bird, a national lab said Tuesday.
The cat was found on the northern island of Ruegen, where most of the more than 100 wild birds infected by the H5N1 strain have been found, the Friedrich Loeffler institute said.
In WWII, the Germans used the Enigma coding machine to send messages back and forth. The Enigma code, which you can read about here, was so good that even after the Allies obtained an Enigma machine, it still was difficult — if not impossible — to crack certain messages.
The M4 Project is a shared computing project. Shared computing is an interesting research tool where volunteers (like you and me) essentially donate our PC resources, allowing our computers to run programs in the background to accomplish some goal. In effect, it’s like one massive computer engaging in one massive task.
The M4 Project is designed to crack some still-uncracked German messages created with Enigma.
Last week, they succeeded in cracking one.
The cyphertext:
nczwvusxpnyminhzxmqxsfwxwlkjahshnmcoccakuqpmkcsmhkseinjusblkiosxckubhmllx
csjusrrdvkohulxwccbgvliyxeoahxrhkkfvdrewezlxobafgyujqukgrtvukameurbveksuh
hvoyhabcjwmaklfklmyfvnrizrvvrtkofdanjmolbgffleoprgtflvrhowopbekvwmuqfmpwp
armfhagkxiibg
The decrypted (and formatted text):
Von Looks:
Funktelegramm 1132/19 Inhalt:
Bei Angriff unter Wasser gedrueckt, Wasserbomben. Letzter Gegnerstandort
08:30 Uhr, Marqu AJ 9863, 220 Grad, 8 Seemeilen, stosse nach. 14 Millibar
faellt, NNO 4, Sicht 10.
Translated to English:
From Looks:
Radio signal 1132/19 contents:
Forced to submerge during attack, depth charges. Last enemy location
08:30h, Marqu AJ 9863, 220 degrees, 8 nautical miles, (I am) following
(the enemy). (Barometer) falls (by) 14 Millibar, NNO 4, visibility 10.
Fred Barnes writes:
This isn’t true. Security would remain in the hands of the U.S. Coast Guard and Customs Service. And the personnel operating the ports would be the same. Only the company owning the terminals would change.
I’ve come to accept this as true, which is why I’m not terribly up in arms about the Dubai Ports World deal.
But Matt Yglesius gives one pause to think:
This a widespread notion, but is it true? If you’ve ever been to a port it doesn’t seem to be crawling with Coast Guard personnel, they’re out in the harbor somewhere. There are some Customs folks about and sometimes a special port police departments, but as with any other sizeable business in America the ports I’ve seen appear to employ a lot of security guards to do security. Consider a bank. The FBI, I believe, is responsible for catching bank robbers. The Secret Service handles counterfeiting. If I point a gun at a bank teller, grab some cash, then run out onto the street, the local police will chase me. Law enforcement professionals, in other words, are in charge of enforcing the laws against robbing banks. But there’s an important sense in which (duh) banks are responsible for bank security. They have cameras and guards and locks and procedures and all the rest.
Transparent Grid has further thoughts.
This is freaky-deaky:
An editor of a noted scientific journal says he has discovered a genetic defect that seems to set back the clock on human evolution by more than a million years.
The researcher, Uner Tan of Cukurova University Medical School in Adana, Turkey, has posted an online video clip of an affected woman walking on all fours, her face blurred.
The idea that evolution can run backward isn’t new; some scientists say there have been confirmed cases of it in animals. But it’s also a controversial subject, and considered hard to prove in any given case.
Tan, at any rate, argued that this could be a case of it, so the mutation—known to run in one Turkish family—might offer scientists an unprecedented glimpse into human origins.
“This syndrome interestingly exhibits prehuman features” and represents “possible backward evolution,” he wrote in a paper describing the condition. As such, it “can be considered a live model for human evolution.”
The paper appears in the March issue of the International Journal of Neuroscience, where Tan sits on the editorial board. He also named the condition after himself: Unertan syndrome.
The mutation could shed light on the “transition from quadrupedality to bipedality”—from four-legged to two-legged walking, he wrote. Possibly more important, he added, it may illuminate the evolution of the mind.
“The children exhibiting this syndrome originated from a family having 19 children,” he wrote in another recent paper, in the journal Neuroquantology. Five of these, aged 14 to 32 years, “walked on two palms and two feet, with extended legs… They could stand up, but only for a short time, with flexed knees and heads.”
“The patients had a rather primitive language… they spoke to each other using their own language, using only a few hundred words” which the parents could partly understand, Tan wrote.
“They were mentally retarded; they could not count from one to ten. They were not aware of time and space. For instance, they did not know where they live (which country, which village, which city). They were unaware of year, season, day, and time. Otherwise, they had quite strong legs and arms.”
“The sitting posture was rather similar to an ape,” Tan added. “They could not hold their heads upright; the heads were flexed forward with their skulls. They could not raise their heads to look forward. This head posture with flexed skull was rather similar to the head posture of our closest relatives, like chimpanzees.”
Interestingly enough, many living organism carry the genetic code of their by-gone ancestors. It is relatively simple, for example, to genetically modify chickens to that they grow teeth like their dinosaur ancestors.
No word yet on how the "intelligent design" people hope to explain this phenomenon.
The government’s program to reclassify (or de-un-classify) documents, as discussed here and elsewhere, is leading to absurd results.
For example, if you go to the National Archives, you can no longer find a copy of the 1958 Department of Defense "Emergency Plans Book," an early cold war description of response planning for a nuclear attack on the United States.
But you can purchase it on Amazon.com, as part of this book.
What’s going on here and why is this silliness happening? Slate offers an answer:
With very few exceptions, we are not talking here about secrets that have anything to do with "national security" as anyone might reasonably define the term. In many cases, we are talking about documents that were publicly released—and have since been widely disseminated—after careful review by high-ranking military officers and security personnel. It is also worth noting that much of this reclassification is being conducted by junior officers, or in many cases private contractors who know nothing about the historical context of these documents and nothing about whether the contents are sensitive or innocuous. One military historian told me that some of these junior contractors have been instructed simply to reclassify anything bearing the words "atomic" or "restricted data," regardless of what else the documents might or might not contain.
First Don Knotts, then Darren McGavin, now Dennis Weaver.
Word has it that Donny Most, Danny Bonaduce, and Dick Clark are rewriting their wills.
Governors of both parties said Sunday that Bush Administration policies were stripping the National Guard of equipment and personnel needed to respond to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, forest fires and other emergencies.” Following a recent Pentagon budget proposal to cut 20,000 Guard members, “all 50 governors signed a letter to the president opposing any cuts in the size of the National Guard.”
The Christian Science Monitor has an article about the spread of "Stand Your Ground" laws throughout the United States. To date, Florida is the only one to enact such a law, but 21 other states are thinking about it.
Through statute or common law, most states allow people to use deadly force when intruders enter your home. "Stand Your Ground" laws take it one step further — they allow people to defend themselves with deadly force even in public places when they perceive a life-threatening situation for themselves or others, and they would not be held accountable in criminal or civil court even if bystanders are injured.
Welcome to the Wild West.
Back in the early 1990’s, I worked on People of The State of New York v. Goetz. I was a law clerk — one of a small handful of people working for the defense. For those of you too young to remember, Bernhard Goetz was riding the #2 downtown train in Manhattan on December 22, 1984, when four young black men approached him and asked for five dollars. Sensing them as a menacing and threatening presence (and no doubt recalling an earlier time that he was mugged), Bernie pulled out a .38 Smith & Wesson and shot them. One of them, Daryl Cabey, is paralyzed.
The case sparked a nationwide controversy about vigilantism and self-defense. To this day, people disagree on whether the shooting was justified. At the end of the day, Goetz was found guilty for illegal possession of a firearm, but was acquitted on all charges related to the shooting. In a subsequent civil trial by Cabey (I was not involved with that), a jury found Goetz guilty of recklessness and awarded Cabey $43 million. Goetz subsequently filed bankruptcy.
The "Stand Your Ground" law would make Goetz’s actions entirely legal.
And that’s the problem.
One of the sticky wickets of the criminal trial was the Goetz confession (given, ironically, to police in my hometown of Concord, NH, where Goetz fled). Goetz told police that he fired all five shots. Then after surveying the scene, Goetz saw Cabey moving on the bench and later confessed to approaching Cabey and saying, "You don’t look too bad, here’s another", and then attempting to shoot Cabey again in the stomach (with an empty gun).
This confession was used by prosecutors to show that Goetz was not merely reacting in self-defense. He was, they argued, acting with intent to harm (after all, he had already shot all four guys, so he was out of danger). We (the defense) argued that Goetz was in a state of heightened fear, and was working on "auto-pilot", and wasn’t cognizant of his motivations.
This is the danger of the "Stand Your Ground" law. It takes law and order out of the hands of the legal authorities and gives it to each individual, some of whom may be unreasonable in their paranoia, some of whom may be pumped up with adrenaline, some of whom may become irrational when faced with a potentially deadly situation. It was fortunate that the other two people on Goetz’s subway car that night were not it, but will that always be the case?
"Stand Your Ground" is a law laced with machismo, but it is simply a recipe for disaster. It’s only matter of time before innocent bystanders are caught in the crossfire between fearful gun-toting would-be victims and their assailants. Who will protect them?
In a story related to the one below (in which the U.S. government pays Halliburton’s overcharges), we learn how our government is abdicating responsibility for making mines safe.
USA Today reports how the fines assessed on Sago Mine (the West Virginia mine which collapsed last month, killing 12) were minimal. Not the number of violations — there were plenty of those. But for each violation, it was assumed that the safety of only one miner was jeopardized, thereby minimizing the fine:
• On Aug. 16, 2005, an inspector found a main escape path "obstructed by concrete blocks." On Nov. 8, 2005, an escapeway was "not being maintained in a safe condition to assure passage of anyone." Sago got six citations for blocking escapeways miners use to flee a fire or explosion. Each citation said one miner was endangered. The mine paid $60 fines for two violations. The amounts of the four other fines are being decided.
• On Aug. 16, 2005, an inspector found "chemical smoke" being blown toward areas where two mining teams were working. A team typically has eight to 10 miners. The citation said one miner was endangered. A fine is being determined.
• Sago was cited for 22 violations from July 2004 to December 2005 for "accumulation of combustible materials" — coal dust and coal chunks that can spread fires and explosions. All 22 violations said one miner was endangered. MSHA fined the mine a total of $1,768 for 17 violations and is deciding fines for the five others.
"If you have coal dust in the air, that becomes part of the explosion," says Robert Ferriter, director of mine safety training at the Colorado School of Mines. "That would certainly affect more than one person. That would affect everybody in the area."
It kind of makes you wonder what these people are thinking.
Halliburton had a contract with the U.S. Army to deliver fuel and repair oil in Iraq. (It actually was one of many no-bid contracts that Hallilburton has with the government with respect to Iraq).
The contact was for $2.4 billion, but Halliburton overcharged Uncles Same by $236 million. Obviously, since our government is run by responsible fiscal conservatives, the Bush Administration refused to pay for the overcharge of $236 million, right? Right?
Citing Army officials, the [New York] Times said the military had decided to pay Halliburton engineering and construction unit Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) all but $10 million of the costs which Pentagon auditors had identified as potentially inflated or unsupported by documentation.
Unbelieveable. So far, the folks at Porkbusters are silent.
