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LOL, what exactly am I hiding from, you're towering intellectual abilities
Notice here that's it's you who has failed to respond to me calling you out for not having a clue about =the subject of earmarks
Hiding from the Pegbot- how precious- her scary thought processes are supremely intimidating
Yeah, bit it;s OK for arrogant libs to mock southerners and gays etc, but this joke was outside of their boundaries
We're now finding out that the Clintons are appealing to the racist dems by framing Obama as the "black" candidate. Their hope it that it will scare off the racist white dems and the Clintons are happy to pander to them and collect their votes
YOu're the biggest punk posting here
As I said in my previous post, I don't know what your talking about- I don't remember that joke- and furthermore, please show where extel said it was funny
TIA
I have no idea what you're talking about- I was responding to YOUR post
YOU are a joke and your reasoning abilities are severely limited
It's YOU that says it's ALL bush's fault. He's about to announce a sever limit on pork- which should help reduce the deficit which you pretend to care about- and you can't get over your bot like blame Bush Blame Bush
DO you think his plan to end earmarks is a good thing, yes or no????
TIA
You really are completely divorced from reality aren't you?
In THIS case, no, it's not his fault.
IF you had read and comprehended any of my previous posts on pork, you'd know that the pork isn't even voted on. They are additions that are sent by committee after a bill has been passed and become part of the law even though they weren't voted on or debated.
The fault lies entirely with the congresspeople who put the pork into the bills after the fact. Do you really think that Bush wanted to reward Murtha so he lavished him with pork????
The only part of your post that is a joke or retarded is you, dear pegbot
Stick to your tried and true memes- you come off like an idiot when you try and think on your own
Being overbearingly obnoxious comes naturally for red sawx fans
And a prime show of liberal tolerance
The reps live in dumbfikistan, the libs live in you'renotnearlyassmartasyouthinkyouareistan
You just don't get it, do you??? ( well ,since your program doesn't include reason, I guess it would be impossible for you to do it )
Bush is not the problem- it's the congresspeople who pass the pork bills ( Murtha is a champ at it )
Here, in his SOU speech he is going to take unprecedented steps to end the practice and you can only come back with your bot like "It's all Bush's fault"
What a tool
12-Step Earmark Withdrawal
January 28, 2008; Page A14
As every reformed addict knows, the road to recovery is long and hard. So it is for Republicans who became addicted to spending "earmarks" while running Congress, lost their majority in large part because of it, and are now struggling with mixed results to dry out.
Their latest halting effort in what appears to be at least a 12-step recovery plan will come tonight, when President Bush uses his State of the Union address to lay down his toughest anti-earmarking pledge to date. We're told he will tell Congress that he will veto any fiscal 2009 spending bill that doesn't cut earmarks in half from 2008 levels. He will also report that he is issuing a Presidential order informing executive departments that from now on they should refuse to fund earmarks that aren't explicitly mentioned in statutory language.
This is progress, though frankly less than we had hoped because Mr. Bush's executive order will not apply to the fiscal 2008 spending bills that passed late last year. Congress endorsed 11,735 special-interest earmarks worth $16.9 billion in fiscal 2008, yet thousands of these weren't even written into the actual budget bills. Instead, they were "air-dropped" at the last minute into nonbinding conference reports that serve as advice to federal departments about where to allocate funds. This ruse means that earmarks are able to avoid scrutiny from spending hawks on the House and Senate floor.
We argued in December that Mr. Bush had the legal authority to refuse to fund those this year as well. But in the end we hear he acceded to the argument from Capitol Hill that because he hadn't made a specific earmark veto pledge last year, he would be sandbagging Congress after the fact and courting its wrath.
The President had, however, said the following last year: "even worse, over 90% of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate -- they are dropped into committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk. You didn't vote them into law. I didn't sign them into law. Yet they're treated as if they have the force of law. The time has come to end this practice." Members in both parties whooped and hollered in approval, even as they could barely contain their self-knowing grins.
Senate Republicans in particular lobbied hard to stop Presidential action against their 2008 earmarks, in the strange belief that they will help incumbent Members in close races this fall, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. This shows that Senate Republicans haven't even taken the first essential step of admitting their addiction.
They also don't understand that pork is overrated as incumbent protection, as ex-Congresswoman Anne Northup of Kentucky found out last year. She received five times as much pork as the average House Member, but still lost her Louisville district. Conrad Burns delivered $2 billion in earmarks for Montana -- about $5,000 for every voter -- but he lost too. Five pork-barreling Republicans on the Appropriations Committee in the House and Senate were defeated in 2006. The pork could well boomerang again this year if certain GOP incumbents under investigation for earmark favoritism for political allies are indicted before Election Day.
House Republicans at least made some progress at their annual retreat late last week, offering a one-year moratorium on earmarks if Democrats go along. That probably won't happen, however. So the GOP leadership could help itself with voters by endorsing Arizona Representative and earmark scourge Jeff Flake's request to join the Appropriations Committee, where he could serve as a taxpayer watchdog. Imagine how he could torment such all-world earmarkers as Pennsylvania Democrat Jack Murtha?
Mr. Bush's strategy of drawing a harder line on the fiscal 2009 budget might at least force an anti-earmark showdown this autumn. And an executive order will set a precedent for the next President, who would pay a political price to repeal it. But Republicans are still missing a major opportunity this year to restore their fiscal credibility by swearing off earmarking altogether. You can't claim to have kicked the habit if you keep hitting the vodka bottle in your desk drawer.
You just don't understand how expensive reprogramming is
Those memes are imbedded deep in her CPU
The Final Mission, Part I
Iraqi Police Covered Face Fallujah.jpg
FALLUJAH – At the end of 2006 there were 3,000 Marines in Fallujah. Despite what you might expect during a surge of troops to Iraq, that number has been reduced by 90 percent. All Iraqi Army soldiers have likewise redeployed from the city. A skeleton crew of a mere 250 Marines is all that remains as the United States wraps up its final mission in what was once Iraq's most violent city.
“The Iraqi Police could almost take over now,” Second Lieutenant Gary Laughlin told me. “Most logistics problems are slowly being resolved. My platoon will probably be the last one out here in the Jolan neighborhood.”
“The Iraqi Police in Jolan are very good,” Second Lieutenant Mike Barefoot added. “Elsewhere in Fallujah they're not as far along yet. Theoretically we could leave the area now and they would be okay, except they would run out of money.”
Lieutenant Eric Laughlin in Gear.jpg
Lieutenant Gary Laughlin
There's more to the final mission than keeping the Iraqi Police solvent, however. The effort is focused on the Police Transition Teams. Their job is to train the Iraqi Police and bring them up to international standards so the locals can hold the city together after the last Americans leave.
A senior Marine officer whose name I didn't catch grilled some of his men during a talk in the Camp Fallujah chow hall after dinner.
“Do you trust the Iraqi Police?” he said to a Marine who works on one of the teams.
“No, sir,” the Marine said without hesitation. That was the only acceptable answer. This was a test, not an inquiry.
“Why not?” the officer said.
“Because they're not honest,” the Marine said.
“What do the Iraqi Police watch?” the officer said. “What are they looking at on a daily basis?”
“Us,” said several Marines in unison.
“They will emulate you, gents,” the officer said. “They. Will. Emulate you. Why? Because we came over here twice and kicked their ass. I do not trust the Iraqi Police today. Our job is to get them up to speed. They don't need to be up to the standard of Americans. But they do need to be better than they are right now.”
IP with Beret Fallujah.jpg
The Marine Corps runs the American mission in Fallujah, but some of the Police Transition Team members are Military Police officers culled from the Texas National Guard. “We're like the red-headed stepchild of units,” one MP told me. “We're from different units from all over Texas, as well as from the Marine Corps.”
One Texas MP used to be a Marine. “I decided I would rather defend my state than my country,” he said jokingly. “But here I am, back in Iraq.”
After I adjusted my embed to focus specifically on Police Transition Teams, I was nearly surrounded by young men from Texas. Many seemed to instinctively understand Fallujah's infamous provincial “nationalism.”
“Fallujah pride is like Texas pride,” I heard from several MPs who, unlike Iraqis from Baghdad, didn't think that was a bad thing.
JSS Exterior Fallujah 1.jpg
A large rented house has been turned into a Joint Security Station where Marines and Iraqi Police live side by side
Training Iraqis to replace Marines is a lot less dangerous than fighting a war, but it's harder. Every single American who has an opinion one way or the other told me it's harder. Iraqis are not lumps of clay or blank slates that can be hand-molded or written on. They are human beings with their own complex history and culture. Most recently they were the brutally micromanaged subjects and enforcers of the regime of Saddam Hussein. If the Americans fail to field an effective local police force, Fallujah may go the way of Somalia and Gaza all over again – and next time there may be no one to save them.
Maybe it will work, and maybe it won't. The Iraqis lag more than a hundred years behind their teachers. “They're where the American police were in the late 18th and 19th centuries,” said Lieutenant Brandon Pearson, a resident military expert in American Criminal Justice. You can see the broad outlines of what he means in old American movies that take place on the Western frontier in places with names like Dodge City. Corrupt lawmen sometimes sided with bad guys while decent, yet weak, lawmen cowered while gunslinging thugs terrorized entire communities.
Officially, on paper, the Americans don't trust the Iraqis. The real world, though, is more complex and…human.
“I trust them little by little,” one MP said as he summed up the majority's actual view. “I trust some of them, the ones we're directly involved with and have a real relationship with. Otherwise, no, not really. I don't. They act like a bunch of third graders, and there's no telling what they do behind closed doors. But when we're out there with them they're doing their job, what they're supposed to do.”
The Americans in Fallujah trust the Iraqi Police a lot more than the Iraqi Police trust the civilians. Many Iraqi Police officers still cover their faces when they go outside the station. They don't want to be recognized, and therefore possibly targeted, by any remnants of the insurgency. Some Iraqi Police won't let me take or publish their photographs.
IP Camo Face Covering Fallujah.jpg
The Iraqi Police are more trustworthy and competent than they used to be. Even the most jaded and pessimistic Marines admit that much, at least. But I do not trust them with my life. It's not because I worry they might hurt me. In Fallujah that's pretty unlikely. But I wouldn't want them as bodyguards in a bad situation.
Sergeant Clarence Foster told me about one of those bad situations as we drank our morning coffee.
“Some bad guys kidnapped the daughter of a prominent city leader last night,” he said.
I sat upright. Whenever I started to think Fallujah might be a kinda sorta “safe” place to visit without armed protection, along came another reality check.
“They took her in the middle of the night,” he said.
“Are you going after them?” I said. “If so, I want to go with you.”
“We're staying out of it,” he said. “The Iraqi Police are handling it. Last night they chased them into a cemetery. They let the girl go, but they're still holed up out there.”
“This is still going on?” I said. “Right now?”
“Yeah,” he said.
For the briefest instant I considered going to the cemetery with the Iraqis, but it was a terrible idea.
“I guess I'm not going then,” I said. “I don't trust them.”
“Well,” he said and laughed. “They aren't as bad as they used to be. And besides, the kind of stuff that goes on here is like what happens in American cities now. It's not like the old Fallujah.”
School Girls Fallujah.jpg
School girls walk home by themselves in Fallujah today. Not long ago, no children were out on the streets and schools were not even open.
Fallujah may not be like the old Fallujah. But it's still Fallujah, and it always will be.
*
I sat down with Captain Stewart Glenn and his executive officer Lieutenant Chuck Miller at India Company's train station FOB.
“The Marines were the catalyst for providing security,” Captain Glenn said. “But without guys like Colonel Faisal, Captain Jamal, and some of the leaders of the Iraqi Police, this never would have happened. The Marines had the idea of hiring a neighborhood watch, professionalizing the Iraqi Police, providing barriers so they have actual precincts which they can police. Instead of having a centralized station that goes out, they have small precincts now, which is also pretty common in the States. The idea came from the Marines, but the Iraqi Police took it, ran with it, and made it work.”
Blocked Road Fallujah.jpg
Precinct barriers force all vehicles through checkpoints that prevent weapons smuggling and car bombs
Walls Around Fallujah.jpg
Barriers around Fallujah's city limits prevent weapons smuggling and car bombs from outside the city
Fallujah's current policing model did come from the Marines, and it's based loosely on the American idea of community policing. Mayor Tom Potter — of my hometown Portland, Oregon — is credited by many for coming up with this mehtod when he was our chief of police. When police officers live and work in their own neighborhoods, have relationships with key neighbors, and patrol small beats on foot as well as anonymously in police cars, trust and community cooperation with law enforcement increases. Crime drops precipitously. Mayor Rudy Giuliani more famously implemented some of the same ideas in New York City.
Captain Glenn and his men are with the 3rd Battalion 5th Regiment which rotated into Fallujah at the end of the summer in 2007. They inherited the current strategy from the Marines who came before them, and who finished off the insurgency just as they were getting ready to leave.
“Some units will come in and scrap the old unit's plan,” he said. “We actually built on it. We kept it because it works. We're not getting shot at. We're not getting blown up.”
“That's good,” I said. “I don't want to get blown up either.”
“Yeah,” Captain Glenn said. “It's pretty awesome. But complacency, you've got to fight it. There's nothing like getting shot at to make you more alert.”
Complacency Kills Flour Mill.jpg
“Have you been shot at at all?”
“We had one pot shot over at ECP 3,” he said. ECP is short for Entry Control Point. “The Marine that was sitting in the post heard a round snap over his head, saw a muzzle flash, then went and investigated. He found a .762 casing. And there was another report at another outpost where there was a similar incident. A pot shot at the post. Couldn't see where it was coming from.”
“They found a hole in a sand bag to indicate that somebody did take a shot,” Lieutenant Miller said.
“But they never saw anybody or anything,” Captain Glenn said. “Those are the only two incidents of any kind of activity against coalition forces in our sector. It could be a wide variety of things. It could be somebody shooting a dog and the round…that does happen.”
“That's something we have to be very aware of with the Iraqi Police sometimes,” Lieutenant Miller said. “You've been to Baghdad, I'm sure there's a dog problem everywhere. Some people will just spray them with the AK-47 and Inshallah where the round goes.”
IP truck with mounted machine gun Fallujah.jpg
There is a dog problem in Baghdad, and it's sad. Both Iraqis and Americans have been known to shoot dogs. They don't do it because they're sadistic killers, but because the dogs are wild. And the dogs are trouble. Lieutenant Miller is right, though, about the Iraqi Police. Their near-complete lack of muzzle discipline and careless aiming gets a lot of people hurt and even killed.
“We follow the safety rule of knowing our target and what lies beyond it,” Captain Glenn said. “They know their target, and that's about it. Like when people shoot up in the air. It's not a real popular thing to do in America. Gravity works. A bullet that goes up must come down.”
By all accounts the Iraqi Police in Fallujah are in much better shape than they were, even though they still have serious problems. Whether they're ready for prime time or not, they're being shoved into the role. Some Marines think they're ready. Others do not. Captain Glenn and Lieutenant Miller are more optimistic than some.
“The Iraqi Police are really taking the lead at this point,” Captain Glenn said. “They have the capability and the initiative right now.”
“I think if we pulled back pretty substantially in a couple different places in the city,” Lieutenant Miller said, “you wouldn't even know we were gone.”
“As a matter of fact,” Captain Glenn said, “the Iraqi Police used to want the Marines to lead. Now they say we've got it, we'll call you if we need to.”
“So what, exactly, is your purpose here then?” I said.
“Transition,” he said. “Getting the Iraqi Police to totally take the lead. They still have deficiencies when it comes to their logistics, when it comes to their administration, their communications. So we help facilitate that. We're helping build the city government…well, not build it, but facilitate it. Because we do appear to be the power brokers, if you will, we push the government to do what it needs to do.”
“Are you the power brokers in the city?” I said.
The Marines were the closest thing Fallujah had to a government for a while, but the mayor's office, the city council, and the neighborhood leaders known as muktars are back in business again. No American is “mayor” of Fallujah anymore.
“I wouldn't say we're the power brokers,” Captain Glenn said. “But the Iraqis perceive that we are. I think the average Iraqi sees that we're America and that we control everything here.”
Blue Bus Fallujah.jpg
“The average American probably sees it that way, as well,” I said.
“Sure,” he said. “Well, they're not dumb. They see that our country's GDP is trillions of dollars. They know we have what they perceive to be the best medical care in the world. Most Americans don't believe that, but the Iraqis do. So there's a perception there.”
“It's definitely a team effort,” Lieutenant Miller said. “We work hand in hand with them. It really feels like the Iraqi Police have the lead. They're telling us we don't have to go on as many patrols.”
“There are a lot of different agencies out there,” Captain Glenn said, “that help the Iraqi Police and help them to become a stronger force, different agencies within the Marines Corps like the Police Transition Teams. Their sole focus is the Iraqi Police. That's what they do. They train the Iraqi Police. How to conduct a proper investigation, CSI type stuff. How to be a detective. Stuff that I'm not very well trained in. I can provide them with guidance and oversight, but these guys are the ones who are the experts in that. They get the training on how to do it. They're MPs, they're military policemen, so they understand the investigative process, they understand how to be a detective, they understand how to do CSI.”
“We can train the Iraqis on how to handle their weapons properly,” he continued, “how to load and shoot their weapon straight. How to move out in the city. How to enter a house. Some of the Rule of Law things. For example, when you go into someone's house it is not okay to go to the refrigerator and take a drink. You know what I mean? It's a small thing, but they're supposed to be the good guys and this is how good guys act. That's how we affect the police. They see us doing it right, and they really want to be like us. I'm not saying that to be egotistical. You'll see them on patrol and they'll start looking like Marines on a patrol. They're not just walking on the street to walk on the street. They see the Marines, and the Marines are attentive, they're looking down alleyways and making sure everything is clear, then pushing past it. That's what we call a danger area.”
Marine Bullet Holes Fallujah.jpg
“They've also come a long way with the dispatching,” Lieutenant Miller said. “Within each precinct we have an operations center with an Iraqi Police side and a Marine side. They coordinate with each other when they go out so that when the Iraqi Police go out we know where they're going and what they're doing. And it's just as important that we tell them what we're doing because you don't want an incident where somebody accidentally gets hurt.”
“Just like a patrol route,” Captain Glenn said. “You know, the Marines put up a patrol route and say this is where we're going to go. It's small stuff, and I know it isn't real sexy. But this is how you make a country.”
*
One of the people who help the Marines train the Iraqis is, oddly enough, another Iraqi.
His semi-official name is Staff Sergeant Crash. He is not a Marine, so he is not really a staff sergeant. And his name, obviously, is not really Crash. He's an Iraqi interpreter who goes by a pseudonym. And he is authorized to go by the rank of staff sergeant because he saved the life of a real American staff sergeant in battle.
Crash Fallujah.jpg
Crash
“I've been fighting with the Marines in Fallujah for three years,” he told me.
“Fighting?” I said. “You mean they let you carry a weapon?”
“Yeah,” he said and laughed as if my question was silly. But it was not a silly question. I had not yet met an Iraqi interpreter who is allowed to carry and fire a weapon in combat. None of the interpreters I met with Army were allowed to do that. The Marines, though, kept trying to put a gun in my hand, so it's perhaps not surprising that they're willing to let their most trusted Iraqi comrades shoot, too.
“Crash here just earned himself a Green Card,” one of his Marine buddies told me. “He's moving to San Diego, and you know what he's gonna do there? He's going to boot camp. He's going to become a Marine.”
“Congratulations,” I said to Crash. “You've been fighting with Americans for three years, and now you're one of us.”
He grinned. “I won't be able to wear the rank of staff sergeant anymore, though.”
“It's going to be tough for him,” his buddy said, “when he goes to boot camp. Some drill sergeant who has never seen combat is going to call Crash here a stupid piece of shit after he fought with us for three years.”
Crash did not seem to mind, not really. He knows all about boot camp, and expects to rise in the ranks fairly quickly once he gets out.
For every unreliable Iraqi Police officer, there is someone like Crash around to balance him out. Or someone like Superkid.
“Superkid is just great,” Lieutenant Eric Laughlin said. “He's the best. He's been with us since 2006. He always wants to go on patrol with me. Some Iraqi Police officers are lazy and are only with us now because it's safe to be with us now. Those who have been with us since 2004 are very brave, serious, and they really care about their city.”
Some Marines told me that Subzero is their favorite Iraqi. And he hasn't been with the Marines since 2004 because he is only 18 years old.
Subzero was friendly to me…until I tried to take his picture.
“No, no, no, no, no!” he said and covered his face and turned away from me. After I put down my camera he made a slashing motion across his throat.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “I won't take your picture.” But he doesn't understand English and may not have understood.
I did have one blurry photograph that showed the back of Subzero's head as he shadowboxed with Specialist Tomas Morales. He said it was okay if I published that one.
Morales and Subzero Fake Fist Fight.jpg
He avoided me after that, and I did not take it personally. My camera made him nervous. Iraqi Police and Iraqi interpreters go by names like Crash, Superkid, and Subzero because Al Qaeda hunts them and their families. Appearing in newspapers and, especially, on the Internet is risky and brings no reward. Some don't worry about it, but many do.
I tried to take a photo of another Iraqi Police officer and he, like Subzero, yelled no and made a slashing motion across his throat with his finger. Then he pointed at a poster on the wall that showed the handsome face of another Iraqi Police officer. He made that slashing motion again after pointing at this picture. “Muj,” he said, which is short for mujahideen. “Muj finished him. No photo.”
If I understood him correctly, he meant that Al Qaeda killed this man because they recognized his face from the photograph that appeared around town.
Poster of Killed IP Fallujah.jpg
The Iraqi – who wished to remain anonymous – explained further in his limited English. “My father, brother, sister…” he said, then made that slashing motion again.
“His family was killed by Al Qaeda,” a Marine added helpfully. “They were killed because he's a police officer.”
The Iraqi Police officer nodded.
“He went out all by himself and killed the people who did it,” the Marine said.
The officer nodded again.
Sometimes it's hard to know who and what to believe in Iraq. The Marines seem to believe him, so maybe it's true. But Iraqis exaggerate, and they do it a lot. Most exaggerate the crimes of their enemies, and many exaggerate their own heroism.
“If we hear that a woman was raped, maybe she was,” Captain Glenn said. “And maybe somebody just leered at her. We have to filter what they say through that understanding and investigate a bit further to find out what, in fact, actually happened. You are an American. I know how to listen to you and what you mean when you say something. If you tell me your wife was raped, we'll go out right away and find the people who did it.”
Four Iraqi Police officers carried one of their injured comrades into the station. A bloody broken bone jutted out the top of his bare left foot. He winced severely and was obviously in a great deal of pain.
“Man, that's gotta hurt,” I heard a Marine say. “I first thought it was another negligent discharge. The Iraqi Police shoot each other all the time.”
Almost every time I heard a random gun shot in Fallujah, some Marine or other told me not to worry about it. “It's just the Iraqi Police,” was the typical answer. Either somebody fired off a round on accident, or somebody fired a shot in the air. It happened almost every day. It struck me that embedding with the Iraqi Police might be the most dangerous thing I could do in Fallujah. I was more likely to be shot by a police offier on accident than by an insurgent on purpose.
*
“Do you think what you're doing now is still counterinsurgency?” I said to Lieutenant Andrew Macak. “Or have you moved on to something else?”
“I think today is a perfect example of what counterinsurgency actually is,” he said. “There is not a whole lot of kinetic activity day-to-day, even though that's what people join the Marines Corps to do, for the sense of adventure and everything. That's what we spend most of our time training for. A lot of that is gone now. But in order to be thorough and complete our mission, it's very important for us to do what we're doing right now.”
Counterinsurgency does involves kinetic warfare, of course. That's what the Marines spent most of their time doing in Fallujah and the surrounding area. But the tail end of a successful counterinsurgency mission has to involve what is essentially peacekeeping and nation-building in order to first stabilize and then rebuild the devastated society.
“As far as enemy activity goes now,” Lieutenant Macak said, “it's mostly handled by the Iraqi Security Forces. All we really do is cordone-and-knock raids. Actually, I shouldn't even call them raids. Raids is more of a kinetic term. We'll just cordone off an area and go in to see what's going on. If there is an insurgent living in there, he probably won't be sitting with his AK-47 ready. He'll probably just play stupid like he doesn't know what's going on, that he doesn't know what we're talking about. They capitalize on the Marines lesser knowledge of who's in the area, which is why we take Iraqi Police with us when we go out on patrol. The Iraqi Police officers know who is being deceptive.”
“Do you still do some of the cordone and knock raids?” I said. I was itching to see some kind of drama. Of course I'm relieved that I wasn't in very much danger and that the war in that part of Iraq is effectively over, but it felt perversely unsatisfying at times, like I had arrived just a few months too late.
“We have a couple of target packages that we haven't had a chance to get to yet,” he said.
I went on a another foot patrol from the Khaderi police station. Normally the Americans let the Iraqi Police lead the way to make it appear that they are in charge, even though they are not. But this patrol was at night.
“We go on joint patrols with the Iraqis during the day,” Second Lieutenant A.J. DeSantis said. “We go out alone after dark, though, because the Iraqis get lost.”
Night Shot Nondescript Fallujah.jpg
The Iraqis get lost at night. In their own city. Even though the Americans don't.
I've been driven around by taxi drivers in Beirut who have the same problem. Beirut is small; it only takes an hour to walk from one end to the other. I can't explain how a native Lebanese who works as a driver can get lost in such a small city and rely on me for directions. All I can say is that it happens once in a while, and I know several other Americans who say the same thing happens sometimes to them. Additionally, hardly anyone in the Middle East knows how to give directions. It's just one of those things, and it probably isn't fixable.
So we walked the streets at night by ourselves and left the Iraqis behind so they wouldn't get lost. Don't get the wrong idea, though. Supposedly the Iraqi Police at the Khaderi are good, and better than most in Fallujah. The station is clean and well-organized. Every American I spoke to said the Iraqis there were otherwise competent. “Are they Marines?” Lieutenant A.J. DeSantis asked me rhetorically. “No. But they don't need to be. They just need to keep their neighborhood safe.” And besides, if a sense of direction and navigation is a cultural weakness for even otherwise competent police officers, the insurgents likely have the same problem for the same reasons.
The lieutenant walked alongside me. I snapped a few pictures in the dark.
Three Marines Night Fallujah.jpg
Somewhere off in the distance a dog barked.
“There's some weird dogs in this country,” he said. “Not many Iraqis have dogs, you know. They think they're unclean. Most of these dogs are wild. But there was this one dog that I'll never forget. We heard it barking and growling at us from behind somebody's wall. It was a pet or a guard dog or something, and it sounded enormous, vicious, and threatening. So we went to check it out. It was a guard dog, alright. But it was a Pomeranian. A goddamn Pomeranian guard dog. Strangest thing I've ever seen.”
I laughed and wasn't sure what to make of that.
“So, what's the purpose of this patrol, exactly?” I said. Not a lot happens on patrols in Fallujah anymore. I found them boring after a while. But the Marines and the Iraqi Police still patrol every part of the city on foot every day.
“To show a presence,” Lieutenant DeSantis said. “And to gather some intel. To see if some insurgents are around trying to plant IEDs. There's one guy we've been looking for who drives a [redacted] vehicle, and we'll detain him on sight if we can find him.”
We stopped and talked to several groups of Iraqis who were out at night minding their stores. The lieutenant asked if they had seen anything suspicious and if they had any complaints. The first group we spoke to was a family who ran a corner grocery. None said they had seen anything suspicious. All complained about the ongoing shortage of electricity. Two men also said they had seen nothing suspicious. They were primarily concerned with schools.
“We're refurbishing the schools with our own money,” said one of the Iraqis.
The Marines listened respectfully and said they were trying to get more money from Baghdad.
“It costs 100 dollars for the vehicle sticker,” said another young Iraqi.
That is a scandal. Only residents of Fallujah are allowed to drive in the city, and only if they have a sticker issued by the Iraqi Police on their windshield. Charging 100 dollars for that sticker in a city where the average salary is only 300 dollars per month, and where unemployment is greater than 50 percent, is hardly a strategy for earning the support and respect of the locals.
“I will take care of it,” Lieutenant DeSantis said. “Most of the Iraqi Police are new. There's a lot of room for improvement, but they are improving.”
Marine and Two Civilians Night Fallujah.jpg
“And the fuel,” said the first Iraqi. “It is too expensive. We need fuel to heat our houses. It gets cold here in winter. You will see.”
I felt like I was out with cops who moonlight as politicians, not the fiercest of all American warriors. I can see why there are only 250 Marines in the city. Fallujah really isn't a war zone anymore. It seems like the Marines really should be able to leave once the local government and the Iraqi Police get their act together. Many say that would rather go to Afghanistan where they can still “get some.”
A minority of Marines, however, think this is naive wishful thinking.
“None of the bad guys dares to take a shot at us because they know it's a death sentence if they do,” one of them said. “But they'll go after the Iraqi Police once we pull out.”
“As soon as we leave, it's going to pop off again,” said another.
There is no way they can know that is true. It is just a gut feeling based on what they've seen and what they've heard, and it's the minority viewpoint. But a gloomy Army soldier I met last summer in Baghdad said something so simple, depressing, and obviously correct that I doubt I will ever forget it.
“Iraq will always be Iraq,” he said as he shook his head and stared at his feet.
To be continued.
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The Terror Scare?
By J.R. Dunn
Influential voices are peddling a dangerous fallacy: that the threat of terror is overblown, another example of scare tactics, like the supposedly nonexistent Communist threat in the 1940s and 1950s. Surprisingly level-headed people are hearing this siren call, at once so attractive and so dangerous.
John Tierney is possibly the most intelligent - and certainly the most balanced - featured writer that the New York Times currently possesses. He's very much his own man, by no means the kind of walking echo chamber that populates most of the paper's opinion pages. So it was a disappointment to come across his recent piece dealing with the War on Terror, "The Endless Fear of Terrorism".
Tierney's column is in large part devoted to the work of John Mueller of Ohio State University, author of Overblown. How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats and Why We Believe Them. Mueller's thesis is the commonplace liberal argument that there is no real terrorist threat and that the belief that there is amounts to an example of public hysteria. Mueller argues that the number of terrorist victims has remained roughly constant before and after 9/11, and that therefore "there has been little or no increase in the amount of international terrorism". (Tierney also throws in something called "availability cascades", a buzzword of the moment that means the same thing as "herd thinking". This is one of those deals in which new terminology is supposed to mean new knowledge. As we shall see, it does no such thing.)
Among many obvious fallacies here one is paramount: the number of victims is only one metric for judging terrorist activity, and possibly the least telling. The number of victims is the factor most open to reduction. A country can control that number the way it can few other numbers involving terrorism. It can't control the number of terrorists, it can't control the number of attacks, it can't control the number of attempts. But it can keep the terrorists, attacks, and attempts from being successful, which is precisely what U.S. antiterrorist policy has concentrated on since 9/11, and to all indications, quite successfully.
Did Mueller consider any of these other factors? There's no sign of it.
But as we move on, we begin to see what Mueller is really up to. His major point, on which he spends more time than any other, is that the current War on Terror is equivalent to the Red Scare of the early 50s. As we well know, liberal mythology concerning the Red hunt era is that there were no Reds to be scared of in the first place. The entire business, we've been assured for many years, was worked up by reactionary interests for purposes that have never been made quite clear but would surely make perfect sense if we ever got around to explicating them. So that's what Mueller, and Tierney after him, is arguing: that the War on Terror is essentially bogus, another example of American paranoia of a piece with the Reds-in-the-closet uproar of sixty years ago.
In some circles this argument would sound extremely convincing. The imaginary-communist-threat contention is a perennial, one that we're unlikely to ever see the last of, even though holding it requires almost complete ignorance of the historical facts -- an ignorance that both Prof. Mueller and John Tierney seem to share.
The history of left wing terror in America
American communism was in no way an isolated historical phenomenon, but one phase of left-wing terrorist activity in the U.S. (and elsewhere, needless to say) stretching across the better part of a century. Left-wing terror in the American context can be divided into three distinct phases: that of the Anarchists (1880 - 1920), the American communists (1930 - 1956), and the New Left (1962 -1976).
Though nearly forgotten today, the anarchists, under the name anarcho-syndicalists, were the chief international terrorist threat for two full generations. In fact, the anarchists could be said to have invented the concept of political terrorism, by means of the theoretical work of Mikhail Bakunin and Errico Malatesta, which was put to the practical test by hundreds of followers worldwide. Anarchists considered violence to be "Propaganda of the Deed", a method of getting their point across with the greatest possible impact. And they were very able propagandists. International leaders who fell victim to anarchist assassins include Sadi Carnot, the president of France, in 1894, Spanish prime minister Antonio Canovas del Castillo in 1897, the Austro-Hungarian empress Elizabeth (willful, eccentric, and one of the beauties of her era) in 1898, King Umberto I of Italy in 1900, and of course, President William McKinley in 1901. (Anarchists of the period claimed that McKinley's assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was not actually a comrade, having been expelled from several of their organizations. But this is a pretty weak argument.)
We can only hit the highlights as far as bombings go, with each of the more well-known atrocities standing in for several hundred others. The Chicago Haymarket bombing of 1886, which killed seven policeman, the bombing of the French Chamber of Deputies in 1893, the Greenwich Observatory bombing of 1894 (a fictionalized version of this attack served as the centerpiece of Joseph Conrad's masterwork of the consequences of revolutionary violence, The Secret Agent), and the Wall Street bombing of 1920, which killed 40 people.
The anarchists were even then being shipped back where they had come from in lots of several thousand (the result of yet another bombing, that of Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer's home the year previously). Since most of them were Italian or Slavic, that meant that they were eventually dealt with by Mussolini or Stalin. The communists then took over the terrorist mantle.
Communist use of terror was more discreet than that of the anarchists, the communist parties being centrally controlled by the Communist International (or Comintern), which viewed such matters more strategically than their predecessors. Communist terrorism in the U.S. was in large part confined to their attempts to take over labor unions, if not through trickery and manipulation, than by brute force. A vast unwritten history awaits concerning the long battle waged by people such as David Dubinsky, the Reuther brothers, and for that matter, Ronald Reagan, to purge the unions of communist influence. That battle saw no limits, the communists stooping to beatings, bombings, and even maimings with acid and fire to get their way. The party was also known to hire Mob goons to handle the violence. (Granted that the standard weedy, narrow-chested communist intellectual might not have excelled in that style of activity.)
When we throw in post-Cold War revelations by figures such as Oleg Gordievsky and Vasili Mitrokhin concerning arms dumps on U.S. territory and plans to smuggle in nuclear weapons, we can see that American communists were a bit more of a handful than Mueller and Tierney are willing to grant. (If anything has been done about those arms dumps, which were evidently fully active during the Cold War period, I am not aware of it.) The country was in no way unjustified in taking steps to deal with these people.
But less than a decade after the party was crushed, a third wave appeared in the guise of the New Left. Most of the people involved in the movement which had its start at 1962's Port Huron Conference were earnest lefties seeking reform. But violent offshoots such as the Black Panthers and the Weathermen weren't long in coming. New Left groups were responsible for over 300 bombings in the late 60s, and would doubtless have carried out many more if the vanguard group, the Weather Underground, hadn't blown themselves up with their own bomb in Greenwich Village in 1970. Beyond that we have such colorful mutations as the Symbionese Liberation Army, which carried on the struggle well into the 70s.
The total number of killings carried out by the New left remains unknown. As far as I've been able to discover, nobody has ever made the effort to come up with a tally. Liberal mythology contends that only one individual died at the hands of the New Left -- a physics student killed by the University of Wisconsin bomb in 1970. But in truth several other bombing deaths occurred, the most well-known witnessed by the legendary physicist Freeman Dyson at San Jose University. (And covered in detail in his memoirs, Disturbing the Universe.) And what about all those killed by the Black Panthers, the Nyack cops shot by the SLA, and so on? Nailing the actual figure down would make for an excellent historical paper by some gutsy grad student.
This record tells us two things about Mueller's thesis: first, that his historical lens is far too narrow. It's as if somebody looked at the Pacific Ocean from January to May 1941 and decided that there couldn't be a war going on because there were no naval battles visible, and that therefore the Japanese threat was "overblown". You can demonstrate anything by trimming your data to the proper temporal dimensions. (Global warming alarmists utilize a similar technique.) Focusing exclusively on the American communist party gives Mueller the conclusion he was looking for at the cost of historical veracity.
The second point involves the conclusion that Mueller would have been led to had he looked at the bigger picture. Taking in events as a whole reveals to us that these violent movements mutate over time without ever abandoning their original impetus. As the anarchists were suppressed, their primary mission -- the destruction of the capitalist system -- was taken over on an official level by the world's communist parties. When the communists' turn came, the New Left rose to pick up the torch.
There is no reason to believe that the same process won't occur with the Jihadis. Responses to long-duration historical developments -- for the left, the consolidation of capitalism in the 19th century, for Islamofascism, the not dissimilar confrontation between Islam and modernism -- tend to be similar across cultures and epochs. (This is the basis of systems of historical morphology such as those of Spengler and Toynbee.) Jihadism will very likely follow the same pattern as the left, with new groups appearing to pick up the ball dropped by the previous one to keep it racing toward the goal. The next outfit that hits us may have no actual connection with Al-Queda or any of its affiliates. It may be totally new, it may be a variant, it may be an utterly harmless organization -- the Libyan All-Islamic Model Railway Association -- that gets bitten by the Jihad bug. But it will be fighting the same war, using the same techniques.
So eager was Mueller to stain the War on Terror with anti-communism (as the typical American academic views it) that in the process he stumbled through the entire vast wreckage of modern leftism without ever recognizing it for what it is. (And, sadly enough, dragging John Tierney, by the evidence of his work a superior thinker, along with him.) Considered in total, the lesson to be drawn from the West's encounter with the left is not that the Jihadis deserve less attention, but considerably more -- and a much broader form of attention than we might have previously thought necessary.
Our campaign against Al-Queda and its offshoots has been extraordinarily successful. There have been no further attacks despite repeated attempts (another element that Mueller ignores) But the next successful strike may well come from a completely different direction, from groups now considered harmless, or irrelevant, or that perhaps don't even yet exist. The lesson of the left gives us a means of checkmating such attempts. A difficult means, certainly -- one that will require a lot of work to develop. But the record of radicalism suggests that we must try.
J.R. Dunn is consulting editor of American Thinker.
I guess you missed the 60 min. show that showed SH's motivation for wanting the world to think he still had WMD was the he wanted to keep Iran afraid to attack?
Of course that won't change your programmed responses
Yep, but if you look at the total casualties, they are all greatly reduced- it's 3 times a greatly reduced number
First you complain that they aren't defending their own country and then you say it's terrible that t hey are
Typical lib pretzel logic
This sio what happens to people who appease the islamofascists:
"Islamists planned attacks across Europe: report
Sat Jan 26, 2008 10:06am EST
MADRID (Reuters) - Islamist extremists were planning attacks across Europe, especially against public transport, before their arrests in Barcelona last weekend, a Spanish paper reported on Saturday, citing a would-be attacker's testimony.
The Al Qaeda-inspired cell planned to attack the Barcelona metro and other targets in Spain, Germany, France, Portugal and the United Kingdom, said the bomber turned police informant.
In testimony that led to the arrest of 14 South Asians last Saturday, the informant told police the group had a preference for attacks on public transport, especially metro systems, El Pais newspaper reported.
"If we attack the metro, the emergency services can't get there," the informant said he was told by a fellow suicide bomber, El Pais reported.
Two pairs with explosive-filled bags were to enter separate Barcelona subway stations and other members of the group were to detonate their bombs by remote control, said the witness.
On Friday, Spain's government said the Barcelona cell was preparing to carry out the metro attack either last weekend or in the following 15 days.
Two other pairs of suicide bombers had been assigned targets elsewhere in Spain, another was to attack Germany, three were given objectives in France and two more were to strike Portugal.
The informant said the Barcelona cell had six suicide bombers and other members responsible for preparing explosives and planning attacks in other European states. Four of those arrested have since been released due to lack of evidence.
Al Qaeda was to take responsibility for the Barcelona attacks through Baitullah Mehsud, a Taliban commander the Pakistani government says was behind the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, El Pais said.
"Only the leadership of the organization knows what requests the emir (Baitullah) will make after the first attack, but if they are not carried out, there will be a second attack, a third in Spain. And next Germany, France, Portugal, United Kingdom," the head of the cell told the police informer, El Pais reported.
The Barcelona bombings could have taken place less than two months before Spain's March 9 general election.
Islamic militants attacked Madrid commuter trains days before Spain's last general election in March 2004, killing 191 people and wounding 1,800. They said the attacks were made in revenge for Spain sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.
(Reporting by Andrew Hay; Editing by Michael Winfrey)
I guess you must have blocked out the great decrease in casualties and the political progress made.
Even Murtha has admitted the progress made
LOL. OF course your hero saint murtha gets mentioned because he led the house in pork
Are you arguing that it's ok for him because the reps do it also
Do you not realize the role pork pays in increasing the defecit you're so worried about?
Dogged determination like that deserves mention
Are you still proud that he brought jobs to his district like you said before?
Do you not realize that if we had cut and run as he proposed there would have been no surge and the net result is no chance for political progress and 10's of 1,000's more dead?
It Wasn't Derangement After All (Update: Trailer Trash?)
Earlier this morning, I noted that some Democrats have discovered that the Clintonian Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy meme may actually have been drizzly pap. In the Los Angeles Times today, Jonathan Chait reluctantly comes to that conclusion. He writes that the conservatives who have long railed against the lies and dirty tactics of the Clintons have been somewhat vindicated by the primary campaign tactics of Bill and Hillary:
Going into the campaign, most of us liked Hillary Clinton just fine, but the fact that tens of millions of Americans are seized with irrational loathing for her suggested that she might not be a good Democratic nominee. But now that loathing seems a lot less irrational. We're not frothing Clinton haters like ... well, name pretty much any conservative. We just really wish they'd go away.
The big turning point seems to be this week, when the Clintons slammed Obama for acknowledging that Ronald Reagan changed the country. Everyone knows Reagan changed the country. Bill and Hillary have said he changed the country. But they falsely claimed that Obama praised Reagan's ideas, saying he was a better president than Clinton -- something he didn't say and surely does not believe.
This might have been the most egregious case, but it wasn't the first. Before the New Hampshire primaries, Clinton supporters e-mailed pro-choice voters claiming that Obama was suspect on abortion rights because he had voted "present" instead of "no" on some votes. (In fact, the president of the Illinois chapter of Planned Parenthood said she had coordinated strategy with Obama and wanted him to vote "present.") Recently, there have been waves of robocalls in South Carolina repeatedly attacking "Barack Hussein Obama."
I crossed the Clinton Rubicon a couple of weeks ago when, in the course of introducing Hillary, Clinton supporter and Black Entertainment Television founder Robert L. Johnson invoked Obama's youthful drug use. This was disgusting on its own terms, but worse still if you know anything about Johnson. I do -- I once wrote a long profile of him. He has a sleazy habit of appropriating the logic of civil rights for his own financial gain. He also has a habit of aiding conservative crusades to eliminate the estate tax and privatize Social Security by falsely claiming they redistribute wealth from African Americans to whites. The episode reminded me of the Clintons' habit of surrounding themselves with the most egregious characters: Dick Morris, Marc Rich and so on.
The Clinton campaign is trying to make it seem as if the complaint is about negativity, and it is pointing out that Obama has criticized Hillary as well. That's what politicians are supposed to do when they compete for votes. But criticism isn't the same thing as lying and sleaze-mongering.
Lying. Sleaze-mongering. False claims. Well, no one can say that conservatives didn't warn everyone -- repeatedly -- about these Clinton characteristics. Chait still wants to shrug it off by claiming that the Republicans are somehow worse, and does so by calling Paula Jones "trailer trash", and then justifying it in the next paragraph.
Somehow, that doesn't amount to a stirring repudiation of sleaze-mongering and character assassination, Jonathan.
This does show that the Clintons have started becoming a liability among the elites. That could drive better coverage of their deceptions and smears from the media and expose them in a way that never happened during their years in power. It might force the Democrats to come to terms with the gutter politics they've cheered from this crowd and finally put an end to the Clinton machine.
UPDATE: The more I think about Chait's repeated assertions of Jones as "trailer trash", the more revealing it gets. How exactly does Jones qualify? She turned down Bill's awkward pass, but didn't take any action against him until someone claimed she'd acquiesced. She took the same exact action Democrats hailed when they rolled out sexual-harassment legislation in The Year of the Woman -- 1992, just after Anita Hill's accusations that sprang out of 10 years of silence and her following the alleged perpetrator to a new job elsewhere.
Remember when Democrats accused Republicans of not "getting it" during Clarence Thomas' testimony? We "got it" just fine. Women who accuse Republicans of sexual impropriety are heroes of the Left, while women who do the same to Democrats -- in a lot more timely manner and with actual evidence of wrongdoing -- are "trailer trash", unworthy of respect. In fact, for elites like Chait, these women are nothing more than commodities for his partisan rancor.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on January 26, 2008 10:33 AM |
Rules? The Clintons Don't Need No Stinkin' Rules!
The Democratic National Committee stripped Michigan and Florida of its delegates for violating scheduling rules for their primaries. It took 365 delegates off the table and forced candidates to stop campaigning in the two vital states. Now one of them -- just coincidentally, the one who somehow forgot to have her name removed from the Michigan ballot -- wants the delegates restored:
In a bit of political theater, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Florida Democratic Party clamored to restore convention delegates that had been stripped by the national party.
At stake: 185 delegates in a state where Clinton leads almost 2-to-1.
The presidential candidate said Friday — just four days before Florida's primary — that she wants the convention delegates from Florida and Michigan reinstated. The national party eliminated all the delegates from those states — more than 350 in all — because they broke party rules against holding their primaries before Feb. 5. All the major Democratic candidates also made pledges not to campaign in those states before their primaries.
Clinton could claim most of the Michigan delegates because she won that state's primary after the other major candidates pulled their names from the ballot.
Isn't that special? Hillary and the rest of the candidates have been barred from campaigning in Florida as a result of the sanction imposed by the DNC. This, however, allows Hillary to campaign for Florida's support without breaking the ban on campaigning. She's signaling to Floridians that she's their candidate.
Observers could see this coming when Hillary won Michigan. Barack Obama and John Edwards didn't have a problem in removing their names from the ballot before the primary, and yet Hillary somehow couldn't quite manage to succeed in negotiating a bureaucracy that gave no trouble to her two competitors. The result? Hillary beat None of the Above by a mere 15 points, but enough to gain over half of Michigan's delegates if they get them restored. Now she leads in Florida polling by a 2-1 margin, and all of a sudden she's worried about disenfranchising Florida -- a concern that didn't get much air time when the DNC made its decision.
Would Hillary defy the DNC if she hadn't won Michigan's primary after somehow neglecting to have her name removed from the ballot? Would she champion Floridians if Barack Obama was beating her in the polls? Of course not. She'll wrap all sorts of high-flying rhetoric about fairness and empowerment of the voter around it, but Hillary would have become the Defender of the DNC Faith had anyone else won Michigan.
None of this should surprise anyone, although Memeorandum highlights some of the outrage on the Left over this cynical Clintonian calculation. Republicans have known all along how the Clintons play their game. We're encouraged that progressives have finally started to notice it after 16 years.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on January 26, 2008 7:42 AM |
Saddam, WMD, and Preemption-Revisionism of the Revisionism? [Victor Davis Hanson]
We are supposed to hear on 60 Minutes from an FBI interrogator that Saddam hid knowledge that he had lost his WMD program, in hopes of retaining deterrence against Iran, and on assurance he had the personnel and infrastructure to reformulate it rather quickly once our vigilance grew lax — and in a general context that he thought he would never be removed by U.S. ground forces.
The entire question is going to be revisited — especially when we remember that Qaddafi gave up his program in December 2003 a week after Saddam was photographed in his spider hole; the Iranians (if one were to believe the NIE) supposedly began cessation of their nuclear weapons program at about the same time, and A. Q. Khan quite mysteriously a little later in January 2004 was detained in Pakistan and his proliferation program stopped. All of this is more than a coincidence, and suggests that the world might be a much more dangerous place had we not acted in 2003.
And by the same token, we are getting a third look at preemption, a doctrine that went from a legitimate consideration, to a supposed Strangelovian abomination — back again to a legitimate consideration? Nicolas Sarkozy raised the issue in relationship to Iran. Both Mike Huckabee and Barack Obama have talked of preemptive raids into Pakistan. But now we hear that the Nato team of war-planners — Europeans no less! — have announced that they retain the right to preempt with nuclear weapons against terrorist-sponsoring regimes with WMD-a warning that matched or trumped both our own much maligned 2002 National Security Strategy document and George Bush's famous March 6, 2003 preemption address.
As Iraq continues to quiet down, expect stranger things yet to follow.
01/25 12:23 PM
Really????
So every previous admin ran a balanced budget and had no need to sell treasuries to fund day to day activities??
IT's a very basic economic fact that I guess you're just blissfully unaware of
It's the other countries buying our debt that has allowed us to continue our standard of living.
It's been going on for decades- not surprising to discover another hole in your knowledge
LOL, the democrat controlled congress has an 11% approval rating
Did Bush change mortgage lending laws to make them less regulated ( hint, the answer is no ) ? The problem was the very low cost of credit that caused the excesses?
I think all the rep candidates ( except Paul ) have supported the surge and the current course of progress in Iraq
Other than that, your analysis is typically way off base
Just bot on, when you try to actually analyze things, it's painful
Egypt Got The Message
It didn't take long for Egypt to get the message. After Israeli ministers openly talked about transferring responsibility for Gaza's energy and humanitarian needs to Cairo for not closing the blown-up Rafah border, Egypt responded today by forcing the border closed. They put up barbed wire and shot water cannons at Gazans who attempted to defy the closure:
Egypt began closing its breached border with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip on Friday, using barbed wire and water cannons to keep Palestinians from crossing into Egypt in defiance of an Israeli blockade.
Israeli air strikes overnight killed four Palestinian militants in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, where Hamas blasted open the border wall on Wednesday, letting tens of thousands rush across to stock up on goods in short supply.
Pressed by the United States and Israel to take control of the situation, Egyptian forces in riot gear lined the border and began placing barbed wire and chain-link fences to prevent more Gazans from entering Egyptian soil.
Tensions flared as some in the crowd threw stones at the Egyptian police, who responded with batons and water cannons. As tensions rose, Hamas began to deploy its own forces on the Gaza side of the border.
The move appeared to take Hamas by surprise. They complained that Egypt needed to create a mechanism for Gazans to lawfully cross the border at Rafah. That complaint came after Hamas blew up the border, of course, making their protestations about lawfulness somewhat empty. The terrorist group arrayed some of its fighters across the gap, but wisely have not chosen to engage, at least not yet.
Egypt did not want to get saddled with Gaza again. Many have suggested that as a solution to the political standoff over the small parcel, overcrowded with more than a million Palestinians. Egypt lost Gaza in the 1967 conflict and has no particular desire to reacquire it, with its radicalism and high-maintenance population. Israel's threat to close all the other borders permanently and let Hosni Mubarak deal with the problem undoubtedly clarified that choice.
Of course, Egypt may find the Rafah crossing harder to close than Hamas did opening it with bombs. If Hamas makes trouble, Mubarak may find himself in a military alliance with Israel in dealing with the terrorists in Gaza. That could create even bigger headaches than he has now.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on January 25, 2008 6:15 A
The credit crisis has NOTHING to do with government borrowing.
It's about bad decisions that were leveraged by financial institutions
Please explain in detail how you think that gov't borrowing has caused the current situation
TIA
As usual, the problem is beying your scope
"Bankers, Wall Street hucksters, financial network commentators, and floating analysts seem to have flunked basic arithmetic in grand fashion. Maybe they only expose the next link in a long chain of deception, their apparent expertise. One hears estimates of $200 billion on total mortgage bond losses from the Secy of Inflation Ben Bernanke. One witnesses the series of bond writedowns by Wall Street banks. One can read of Wall Street economists like Jan Hatzius of Goldman Sachs, who cites $400 billion in potential bond losses, a favorite figure cited by other bankers. One is subjected to press anchors and their simplistic echoes of bond losses. One is endlessly lectured by highbrow analysts of the extent of bond damage. The trouble is, they all cannot do simple arithmetic and observe the billboards on mortgage bond indexes, fully available.
Put aside for a minute the fact that the mortgage debacle in the United States is described as a subprime loan problem. The entire gaggle of banker goons and press parrots have their reasons for insisting on focusing entirely on subprimes. It makes the problem more marginal, more understandable, more excusable. Dumb lenders gave home loans to bad borrowers. OK! Follow this path of incredibly easy math. The total of all US$-based mortgage bonds is $10.4 trillion. A conservative estimate of the prime mortgages within this giant mass is $7 trillion. We all know it is more, so bear with my lowball for argument sake. The prime mortgage bond index measures an aggregate of prime rated bonds scattered across the beleaguered fifty states, varying over loan size from large to medium to small. The �AAA� mortgage bond index has lost a whopping 30%, a fact that continuously eludes the big bankers and their legion of obsequious monitoring mavens. Simple math, within the grasp of a 9-year old kid, results in prime mortgage losses amount to at least $2.1 trillion. The kid might have trouble with all the zeroes though, and even be confused by what a trillion is. A trillion is a million millions.
The size of the subprime mortgages in the United States is estimated at $1.4 trillion. The �BBB� mortgage bond index has lost 80% of its value. It too measures an aggregate of such mortgage bonds across the US, of various size loans. So subprime mortgage bonds have lost over $1.1 trillion. If subprime bonds have lost a trillion$, why cannot supposed experts estimate that the total asset backed bond losses to be at least a cool trillion$? Add the two numbers from subprime and prime together to reach a $3.2 trillion in their bond losses. This total does not account for the middle tier �Alt-A� mortgages, no small sum either. That is probably close to another $1 trillion in bond losses. Alt-A mortgages do not receive much attention. They are essentially more subprime slime with a more obscure name. Their decline rate for associated bonds is almost as horrible as the subprimes. Even if they are omitted in the argument, the point remains just as dire. This summer the avalanche of innovative prime adjustable mortgages will be the wreckage to report. The bonds have fallen in value, but the writeoffs have yet to make the news. All in time.
DAMAGE SUMMARY ON A NAPKIN
Let�s summarize in plain bold letters so as to avoid any confusion. These comments require plan language. Clear numbers are needed in clear statements.
PRIME MORTGAGE BOND LOSSES AT LEAST $2 TRILLION
SUBPRIME MORTGAGE BOND LOSSES TOTAL OVER $1 TRILLION
THE TOTAL MORTGAGE BOND LOSSES ARE OVER $3 TRILLION
THE OFFICIAL ESTIMATES ARE WRONG BY A FACTOR OF 10 !!!
GOLD WILL SKYROCKET WHEN THESE NUMBERS ARE FINALLY REPORTED
So why are all the so-called experts spouting about $200 billion in total bond losses? Why are Wall Street economists talking about $400 billion in extensive losses? A simple conclusion is that they prefer to lie and deceive, as they defend their industry. Most savvy observers are hard pressed to identify the last time Wall Street and their gaggle of advertisement vehicles actually told the truth. When people ask me why such a huge volume of lies is routinely told, my answer is always the same. Check the advertisers of CNBC, Wall Street Journal, Barrons, even Investors Business Daily. They are almost all the same: big banks, brokerage houses, mutual funds, mortgage lenders, and related firms, mostly of them headquartered in New York City. By the way, not a single felony conviction has stuck against a New York City defendant in court. All the convictions are of non-club members roaming other regions. The consequence of being beholden to such a chorus of advertisers is lost objectivity, blatant bias, active deception, and comprehensive obstruction to present the facts in a truthful light. Their message has become simple. �Do not panic, wait it out, because we are desperately trying to sell from our cratering portfolios.�
The USGovt stimulus package at $150 billion is being floated, replete with minor tax cuts, and a puny amount of money doled to each households. This is peanuts. Ben Bernanke is a bit late in living up to his name of �Helicopter Ben� actually. The name �B-52 Ben� is in no way deserved, not yet. Questions are asked if the USGovt fiscal plan is enough. Of course not! The stimulus is ten times smaller than required, because the estimated size of the problem is ten times smaller than reality. Unless and until the authorities in charge of this implosion of financially engineered tinkertoys get serious, when a rescue package and resolution platform are designed and put into action valued in the trillion$, they are urinating on raging bonfires. The USFed has put a very small amount of money into the banking system since August, under $20 billion net.
BIAS AMONG BANKERS
Without any doubt, the Wall Street conmen and the clueless rookies running the US Federal Reserve choose not to properly assess the problem. They are totally unwilling to tell the public that the risk price modeling system is being unraveled totally, that the mortgage debacle has wrecked the banking system totally, that the USEconomy is going to be dragged down in a tragedy. The USFed and even the US Dept of Treasury are delighted to see a recession, since it makes demand grow for USTreasurys. Therein lies a blatant bias. These clowns talk a lot about transparency, when such spotlights have exposed the banking system as insolvent. These charlatans talk a lot about the virtues of home ownership, when they have become agents to destroy life savings. A grotesque transfer of wealth has taken place using mortgage bonds as the theft vehicle, from the homeowners to the mortgage originators and mortgage bond sales force, FROM FEES. Big investment institutions are bag holders, like pension funds, insurance firms, hedge funds. As USTBill yields decline, borrowing costs for the increasingly bankrupt US book of business decline. Borrowing costs might become a huge portion of the ongoing federal budget and its deficit.
The banking leaders much prefer a recession to a big bout of price inflation. They have a destructive policy at work, to prevent what they call �Secondary Inflation Effects� from taking root. In other words, they can tolerate systemic price inflation in energy costs, material costs, service costs, insurance costs, but heaven forbid any increase in wages. They steer the system towards a Middle Class squeeze. Wages have fallen by USGovt nitwit analyses by 4% to 5% since 2003 on an inflation adjusted basis. So if realistic inflation adjustment is used, employing the 7% to 10% CPI rise seen in the last few years, the Middle Class has suffered a 20% to 25% wage crush in real terms!
Those analysts who have been forecasting severe problems do not receive proper credit. Instead, they are criticized, disrespected, and called lucky. They are even called part of the problem, as they contribute to the erosion of confidence. My position is steadfast, consistent, and stern. The US financial system embodies institutional dishonesty, fully intertwined throughout the entire system. With each passing month, another huge story of fraud is revealed. We need a new cable television network just to track US financial fraud.
Today we were treated to yet another deceptive home sales report. The December existing home sales were down 2.2% in sequential sales. Yet, the home inventory supply improved to only 9.6 months, down from 10.2 months in November. Just how did inventory improve when sales continued to decline? EASY, people are removing homes for sale, taking their listing off multi-listing services, in response to a lousy market. They hope for a better day, one which will not come. The homes were not sold, so supply was reduced by decisions.
RESILIENT GOLD, SHINY TOO
Gold is resilient. Its price has a fail-safe mechanism against declines. When gold falls in price, the factors weighing it down are the same as what forces central banks to cut interest rates. At the Vancouver Gold Show on Monday, on stage my words were to watch gold bounce back when the USFed made an interim rate cut in the next couple days. My guess was given a 30% chance of occurrence. It happened the next day! An argument was claimed that in several months, the decline in the gold price toward 850 would be part of a uptrend not even recognized for the one-day big selloff. My words at the breakout session were to expect the gold price to rebound with strength as soon as the USFed took responsive action, since London bankers were making telephone calls now. And London guys share the big power with other guys in Old Europe. The Swiss uber-bankers are angry. They are taking back control. See Basel 2 bank rules and their changes.
When the Europeans soon join in the coerced rate cuts, the gold price will rise in Europe. In a competing currency war, gold wins across the board since they all devalue their currencies versus gold!!! The gold price is back over 900 again, set to retest the 915 high. Notice the mild �Bull Hammer� signal evident this week, an incomplete week. The intra-week lows have been erased. The reversal was bullish. The Arabs and Asians would have come to rescue gold if not for the USFed. Be totally assured that Goldman Sachs was buying gold contracts on Monday, knowing full well that the USFed would make an interim cut. Such are the benefits of the Fascist Business Model. The rally is back, but my suspicion is the 915 gold price will hold and a retest under 900 must be completed. The key here is the Euro Central Bank. They can force a recession across the Eurozone, or else join in the global price inflation engineering. Debts cannot be permitted to grow out of control. A bank crush cannot be permitted to spill over to the mainstream economies.
JUSTICE SERVED AND TO BE SERVED
The financial sector to date has avoided felony charges, but not lawsuits. Regulators have permitted untold fraud, sitting on their hands. Those committing fraud have friends in the regulatory agencies, even the federal prosecutor posts. The lawsuits might possibly bring some semblance of justice to the big picture. Of course, the compromised USGovt officials, the hapless USFed chairman, the omnipotent Goldman Sachs henchmen, the sleazy hidden JPMorgan spooks, they might deliver a message or phone call to some judges to interfere with the lawsuit process. WE MIGHT JUST FIND OUT HOW ANGRY INDIVIDUAL STATES ARE AT THE FEDERAL YESMEN AND CANCEROUS CONMAN NEW YORK BANKERS. The nation is a collection of states, after all. The federal government has usurped powers. The Manhattan Made Men have sucked so much blood out of the living American corpse, that the states might be in the process of fighting back. Watch the Cleveland city lawsuit set against a dozen big banks for a clue. The state of Ohio has been hard hit by home foreclosures. The city mayor accuses the big banks of predatory practices and worse. He likens them to organized crime. Wow! Finally an accurate description. He might be in line for a car accident, or a heart attack, or much missing funds in the city coffer, some smear.
For the longest time white collar crime has been minimized and tolerated. Rob a store of $500 with a gun and receive 10 years in prison. Rob a pension fund of $500 million with a pen and not even be indicted, let alone even be deemed in need of social isolation. Why are Wall Street bankers not being indicted for fraud? Of course, it makes sense. Because the banking system would collapse without their beneficence and key role steering the economy. We all need their guiding hands. And also, because they run the government prosecutor agencies, a minor fact. In the last month, when watching the debacle unfold, a mindboggling thought came. The criminals on Wall Street are designing the solution. Why is that? Only in America can perpetrators of fraud design solutions to the grotesque problems they caused. Not only that, they will probably administer the programs as part of the solutions, thus profit more. More fraud will appear in the programs as well, just like with the Hurricane Katrina relief program. Neither has the fraud been prosecuted in the Hurricane programs nor the Wall Street bond fraud. Watch the lawsuits, especially the class action suits. Class actions are different, and involve federal courts, unlike the individual cases. When an account holder challenges the brokerage house, the case goes to compulsory arbitration with a former brokerage firm official presiding, and very few wins for more minions. Watch the class action lawsuits!!!
REALITY SINKING IN
As the situation becomes more clear on the broad and deep extent of the wreckage, more and more people will realize that my summertime forecast of a $2 to $4 trillion bailout makes sense. They will trot out their insane platform of a New Resolution Trust, built atop an acidic cesspool of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Some wonder why fresh new platforms are not built, why fresh new banks are not erected as the old fraud-ridden Wall Street banks are let go to liquidation in bankruptcies. The answer is simple: liquidation of old corrupt financial entities would require a complete accounting of their mountain of credit derivatives, of their gold derivatives, of their currency derivatives. The 1998 LongTerm Capital Mgmt was not permitted to endure liquidations, since the powerful men in suits did not want for gold to rise by $500 more per ounce, exposing the Bank of Italy in its hidden leases to Wall Street hedge funds. So the monetization papering over of the problems will continue on a greater scale.
News items are growing uglier by the day. The second biggest bank in France, Soci�t� G�n�rale announced a $7.1 billion loss from a rogue bond trader involved in fraud. Was blame put on one man instead of putting their entire bank management under scrutiny? They join in the Hall of Shame the firms Sumitomo, Barings, and Kidder Peabody in lax trading oversight. Ford Motors announced a 54 thousand job cut, at a time when USGovt officials claim the economy is still expanding. Not to worry! The Qatar government has decided to put $15 billion of cash into twelve ailing US and European banks. Why do they do that? Simply because many US & Euro banks are insolvent, a nice word for bankrupt.
The bond insurers are the big story these days. Ambac was downgraded by the debt rating agencies last Friday. MBIA, ACA Capital and a small gaggle of bond insurers are sitting on a mountain of dead credit default swaps. One day we might awaken to learn that those who thought they had a profit from credit default swaps are actually holding nothing, since the counter-party is dead as a doornail. If only we could arrange counter-party risk holders to reside on the planet Mars, outside our system. A credit default swap is an insurance contract against $10 million in debt securities, such as mortgage bonds or corporate bonds. As distress is felt, the bond loses value while the swap rises in value. The 50% annual rise in the credit derivative volume of outstanding contracts owes mainly to the burgeoning growth in credit default swaps. As mortgage loans flooded the banking system, and their bonds flooded the credit market system, some measure of insurance was taken out. Too bad pay days on those insurance claims will be absent. Watch the municipal bonds insured by Ambac and MBIA. They might be forced into sales by institutions soon, or else just permit the munis to run naked without insurance at all. Some cities and towns might order huge budget cuts.
The USDollar money supply is growing at alarming rates, sure to go much higher. The gold price rises with this growing supply, now clocking a 15% annual rate. The biggest story among central bankers right now is how the Euro Central Bank is being coerced to cut rates. We are watching the quintessential �Competing Currency Wars� with a series of competitive currency devaluations to ensue. The Canadians relieved their loonie rise by cutting rates. The Bank of Canada will cut more. The British relieved their sterling rise by cutting rates. The Bank of England will cut more. My January Gold & Energy Hat Trick Letter contains a very important forecast on the British banks, sterling currency, and economy. The EuroCB is mired in internal confrontations. The Germans remain hawks against price inflation, with vivid memories of Weimar times. The French advocate rate cuts, led by Sarkozy. In time, the EuroCB will cave in from the currency war. The US Federal Reserve cut the official interest rate by 75 basis points, a forecasted call made on stage by me on Monday at the Vancouver Gold Show. Now pressure is extreeeeme on the EuroCB to cut also, or else suffer from a euro currency vaulting over 150. Bond yield spreads favor the euro too much. The tougher the Europeans act against price inflation, the more serious damage their economies will suffer from a high currency rendering harm to exporters. Unlike the USEconomy, the Eurozone economy has a hefty trade surplus on the order of $10 billion per month. The USFed remains well behind the curve. With a 2-year TBill yield at 2.2% (it was under 2.0%), and the Fed Funds at 3.5% now, the USFed is still behind the curve. Their rate cuts will not affect the USEconomy for some time, maybe six to nine months. The stock market likes the news, but corporate profits are sure to decline badly.
THE UPSHOT OF THE COMPETITIVE CURRENCY DEVALUATIONS IS THAT GOLD WILL RISE IN EACH ECONOMY WHOSE BANKERS EXECUTE INTEREST RATE CUTS. THAT MEANS ALL OF THEM, WITH THE EUROPEANS BEING THE LAST.
"
In addition, the vast majority of the problems have nothing to do with subprime mortgages
It's a general credit crisis
And the first time in history since the depression that home prices FELL
Please provide links showing that housing [prices have never fallen till now
TIA
Tool
And I'm sure that you hold CLinton responsible for the dot com meltdown also, right??
There was a housing bubble just as before there was a stock market bubble
People got greedy and are now paying the price. Please explain how they should be bailed out now.
Clinton and his God Nemesis [Victor Davis Hanson]
Everyone remembers the Greek concept of Nemesis ("the giver of what's due"), and the chain of events that invites her to intervene: a fatal character flaw that leads to hubris that in turn incurs divine retribution, culminating in personal ruin.
Bill Clinton this campaign season seems a character right out of Sophocles, an Oedipus that just can't stop himself. He knows the end, but simply cannot desist, no more than he could lecture Monica about the inappropriateness of a subordinate young female employee satisfying the lusts of her male senior superior boss.
His natural talents were more than offset by extraordinary character flaws, as we remember — a tendency to exaggerate, if not often fabricate entirely. His temper was legendary, especially when called on his bending of the truth or becoming self-absorbed to the point of embarrassment. He never controlled his own appetites, whether that meant sexual, culinary, or thirst for the spotlight. All that explains his implosion with Monica, the pardons, and the tawdry exit from office.
But if the flaws were still there, he at least attempted a Nixonian (an apt analogy given his similar end) rehabilitation by globe-trotting, and playing the humanitarian-now the bipartisan senior statesman, now the Democratic Wise Man kindly offering his consultation to less experienced novices. As in all his prior escapes from personal ruin, the comeback kid found that he could always talk, threaten, cajole, or unleash his surrogates to do enough triangulation, revisionism, or charm to land on his feet. That sums up not only his brushes with personal scandal but the incredible rehabilitation post 2001.
And now? Hillary's campaign is just heating up, and Bill has, almost by divine will, thrown away not only his emeritus reinvention, but appreciation of his accomplishments of the 1980s and 1990s, themselves unknown to a new generation of American who will remember only his performance the last two months (and it isn't over yet).
Nemesis left her perch at Rhamnous, and must have flown over here to sit on his shoulder, waiting, waiting for just the right moment to unleash his legendary flaws to ensure an apt ruin.
When it became a question of Bill getting back in the White House for another eight years — more adulation, more attention, more opportunities for indulgence — then all came back to the fore, in ways we have not quite witnessed before.
He has fabricated almost everything from his own history about unyielding opposition to the war to why he magnanimously did not run in 1988. In temper tantrum after temper tantrum, he has told off interviewers, blown up at reporters, and hectored audiences. In the most embarrassing moments on stage, he has held on to the microphone with an iron-clad grip, and one cannot listen to him without hearing the same mantra of how he suffered at the hands of all our enemies and all for us.
The result is more than embarrassing to watch. Our first black President has unleashed a vicious campaign against our first serious black Presidential candidate — and all for the crime of standing in the way of his return for more. In a manner beyond the powers of the most right-wing polemicist, Bill has exposed liberal pieties and condescensions, or the idea that a supposedly black inspirational upstart has no business freelancing without sanction from senior liberals who have paid their dues and alone have the political savvy and experience to help black folks.
Nemesis has reminded us as well of the creed of Clintonian feminism.
Our first female President is here only because of her husband, and he here only because his long-suffering wife is the only ticket left back to the White House, which is an apparent addiction that he can't kick. Even if Hillary wins there will be an asterisk, since the campaign has taught us that we have no idea of whether we are voting for Hillary, Bill, or both. This second Clintonian tutorial about feminism overshadows even his earlier exploitative sexual conquests, and suggests he (and she) view gender relations as mercenary and contractual, where each plays on stereotypes, and uses the other's gender advantages for personal aggrandizement (tough guy Bill rides to the rescue to smear meanie male rivals, loving wife loyally forgives sins and stands by her man as a paragon of marriage partnership and loyalty, albeit shedding a tear now and then for her suffering).
And Nemesis has only begun her work.
Please explain in detail how those stats are Bush's fault.
TIA
More, Please, Sir
January 23, 2008: The U.S. Army has been able to achieve an extraordinary feat, by sustaining it's strength in a long war (longer than World War II) using only volunteers. The main reason for this success was the willingness of troops already in uniform to stay there. Reenlistments have been higher than before the war on terror began in 2001. The invasion of Iraq resulted in even higher reenlistment rates.
The army sets goals each year, for the percentage of troops who will re-enlist when their current enlistment (usually for four years) is up. This past year, about 14 percent of troops in each combat brigade were expected to re-enlist. Nearly all brigades exceeded this figure, with the most spectacular being the 4th brigade of the 25th Infantry division, which had 37 percent of its troops reenlist.
The consistently higher re-enlistment rates were the result of several things. First, there was patriotism and a feeling that the wartime service was making a difference. Most of the troops re-enlisting had been to Iraq or Afghanistan one or more times. They had seen for themselves what was going on, and believed in it. Then there was the money. Reenlistment bonuses averaging $10,000 (depending on rank and job) for the 64,000 troops that re-enlisted last year. These bonuses, plus combat pay increases the average soldiers pay by 10-20 percent. It helps.
Then there is the fact that the troops are professionals and they like their work. It's challenging, even though only fifteen percent have combat jobs. But the benefits are great (including retirement on half pay after twenty years) and you get respect from those you know and work with. The media snipes a bit, inventing dark fantasies explaining this unexplainable re-enlistment rate. But that's easy to ignore, and the troops just keep signing up for more.
Israel: We Wash Our Hands Of Gaza
The explosion of the wall in Rafah intended to demonstrate defiance of Israel by Hamas, but it may have given the Israelis a bigger opening than it provided Gazans. An official declared that the unaddressed breach would now allow Egypt to handle Gaza's needs -- and that Israel could completely shut off energy and medical supplies to the people who keep launching rockets at their cities (via Shrink Wrapped, who saw this coming):
Washington, Cairo, and Jerusalem are expressing "concern" regarding the flow of hundreds of thousands of Gazans into Egypt, testing border agreements that have existed since Israel completely withdrew from the heavily populated strip in 2005. Some Israeli officials, nevertheless, saw an "opportunity" in yesterday's event, suggesting that responsibility for Gaza's humanitarian situation should be shifted to Egypt.
Egyptian officials said that yesterday's event occurred after an explosion on the border crossing from the Sinai desert into the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip. After the explosion, which blew the border barriers open, a teeming flow of Palestinian Arab men and women — up to 350,000 people, according to some counts — crossed the border into Egypt, in search of heating oil, food, cigarettes, and other goods Gaza lacks. ...
The official — who was intimately involved in forging the agreements between Israel and its neighbors when Prime Minister Sharon decided on "disengagement" from Gaza — said the "paradigm change" after yesterday's event at Rafah may lead to a reexamination of some realities those agreements have created, such as Israel's responsibility for the flow of humanitarian goods into Gaza.
The Gazans will have to rely on other Arabs for their sustenance, and that may prove a poor strategy in the long term. Arab nations such as Egypt have long used the Palestinians for their own political purposes, but have done nothing to alleviate their conditions. They see the Palestinians as useful props but nothing more, and would rather have little to do with them.
Egypt has little desire to become their long-term supplier for energy, food, and humanitarian needs. They want that pressure to stay on Israel as a means to gain concessions in other negotiations, and to tie Israel down economically and militarily. But if Egypt isn't willing to secure the Rafah crossing properly, then they have removed what leverage they have with Gaza. Israel certainly won't continue to allow border crossings when the Gazans can bring all sorts of weapons and explosives through Rafah from Egypt, and if Egypt wants to encourage them to buy goods through Rafah, then Israel doesn't need to do it at all.
Israel should follow through on this threat. Cease all humanitarian provisions and make it clear to Hamas and the Gazans that they need to rely on other Arabs for their sustenance. We'll see how long it takes for Egypt to close Rafah again under those circumstances. Most likely, it will be a matter of days.
Hillary Clinton: "Fair" warning
Posted by: mcq
Jacob Sullum takes a look at the words and phrases Hillary Clinton has been using on the campaign trail and warns us to take heed:
During this week's Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton said putting together the right kind of stimulus package is "a part of economic justice." The remark reflected a major campaign theme for the New York senator, who has declared she would pursue "a new vision of economic fairness" as president.
That slogan should set off alarm bells for anyone who recognizes that economic outcomes result from myriad individual choices. To impose her vision of economic fairness, Clinton would have to override those choices, compromising freedom in the name of equality.
His point goes to the heart of my warning, over the years, about those on the left who are fully invested in the philosophy of radical egalitarianism. That would include Hillary Clinton.
Clinton's aim is economic equality, not legal equality, and you really can't have both. As the economist and political philosopher F.A. Hayek observed, equal treatment of people with unequal abilities leads to unequal outcomes. In this sense social justice is, if not a "mirage," as Hayek argued, at least in conflict with procedural justice.
Sullum says we should listen carefully to what she is saying:
So it's not surprising that many of the policies Clinton believes promote economic fairness strike others as decidedly unfair. In 2006, for example, she endorsed a successful Commerce Department petition by Syracuse candle makers to impose a tariff of more than 100 percent on candles imported from China.
"Our manufacturers deserve a level playing field," Clinton explained, "and we owe it to them to make sure that others do not unfairly circumvent our fair trade practices." In Clinton's view, then, fairness demands that all Americans pay more for candles to subsidize manufacturers in her state.
More generally, Clinton advocates "smart" trade rather than free trade, insisting on "strong protections for workers and the environment" that reduce the competitive advantages of foreign producers. She wants "jobs that cannot be shipped overseas," which can be achieved only by interfering with companies' profit-maximizing (and consumer-benefiting) decisions. For her, globalization is not what happens naturally when people are free to exchange goods and services on mutually agreeable terms; it's a process that needs to be "managed properly."
Of course that management is top down and government driven. Economic fairness is focused on what? Job holders. Not employers. Not consumers. Hillary Clinton would find economic fairness in a robust buggy whip manufacturing sector whose jobs are "safe".
Clinton loves to talk about "fiscal responsibility". Yet, she certainly doesn't project the plans of someone who is serious about it:
When it comes to fiscal policy, Clinton seems to see herself as a kindergarten teacher "fairly" doling out cupcakes, giving no thought to who baked them in the first place. In a recent New York Times interview she worried that "inequality is growing" and waxed nostalgic for the "confiscatory" tax rates of the post-World War II decades.
Clinton would use higher taxes to pay for universal preschool, universal college, universal health care, and universal high-speed Internet access, among other taxpayer-funded goodies. These she calls "the investments we make in each other," and they are just like investments, except that there is no reliable test of whether they make sense, since the people paying for them have no choice in the matter and are not the ones who stand to benefit.
One of the true Orwellian phrases begun by her husband's administration is this concept that increased taxation is really just investment, and by calling it that, it somehow lessens the immorality of the confiscatory nature of taxation. Plan on hearing much more of that as well as lectures to shame you into feeling guilty about not wanting to have your hard earned money go toward what she considers to be worthwhile "investments".
Another caution:
There's a similar problem with Clinton's proposal to "create millions of new jobs by investing in clean energy" through a $50 billion Strategic Energy Fund. When a politician talks about the jobs government spending will create, it's usually a signal that the spending cannot be defended on its own merits. A Strategic Thumb Twiddling Fund could create millions of new jobs too.
Sullum concludes:
In the Times interview Clinton suggested that as president she would be prepared to ram through her economic program on straight party-line votes. "If you really believe you have to manage the economy," she said, "you have to stake a lot of your presidency on it."
The history of central planners and their failures suggests a different lesson: If you really believe you have to manage the economy, you shouldn't be president.
"Fair" warning.
What's she gonna do when Bush is out of office??
It's pathetic that she continues to attack him as if he's running for office again in 2008
Hillary and Bill Use Alinksy Tactics To Bring Down Obama
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
Obama was up; now he's down. Even though Obama seems to be harnessing the South Carolina black vote that will give him that state's delegates, he has been feeling the brunt of the Clintons' mastery of the tactic of polarization, taught decades ago to Hillary by Saul Alinsky.
Obama is being forced into the position of being the black candidate. Successfully polarizing Obama, who has attempted to run as the anti-polarity uniter, a man in the middle, has not been a lazy-day walk in the park for the Clintons, and surely would not have been attempted if Obama hadn't trounced them in Iowa.
Alinsky's 13th rule for radicals
Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.
Saul Alinsky taught his eager disciples that the establishment despised conflict. He blamed this perverse malady upon the dual forces of organized religion ( those turn-the-other-cheek folks) and the Madison Avenue advertising culture, which he said "emphasizes getting along with people and avoiding friction." Alinsky deemed avoidance of conflict as not only disgusting, but contrary to the betterment of a "free and open society."
The polarization of American politics that has occurred since the Clintons first forayed onto the national scene has been notable. Stirring the pot of constant agitation has been the Clintons' signature political accomplishment.
Alinsky knew that in order to force a transfer of power through the use of constantly agitated serial conflicts, there had to be a personal enemy to rally the troops round. Hillary's ill-conceived "vast right wing conspiracy" wasn't nearly personal enough, which is why it significantly failed to keep America on the Clintons' side.
In the broad scope of socialist revolution, identifying one's target for polarization can be a bit tricky, and may involve singling out the CEO of a multi-layered corporation or finding out which person in government holds the seat where the buck truly does stop, or in the impeachment of Bill Clinton, finding out just who was out to get our imperfect but lovable president.
To Alinsky, in the march to nonviolent revolutionary power transfer, identifying one's genuine enemy was entirely secondary to merely pinning the enemy tail on one donkey or another, just as long as it served to rally the Have Nots. Targets needed to be specific, but they didn't need to really be your enemy. A target simply had to be seen as a vile enemy in the minds of one's followers.
Ken Starr understands the Clintons' operational application of this principle, even if he has never read up on Alinksy. In a political campaign, however, less strategic guesswork is required. The enemy is the one running against you, who might actually win, and thereby grab the power prize for himself.
The Clintons employed their now infamous brand of tag-team Alinsky polarization in Bill's 1990 bid for re-election as Arkansas' governor. The race was pivotal to the Clintons' presidential aspirations. Without a sufficient state-government launching pad, his campaign for the 1992 nomination would not succeed.
It's pretty hard to keep a secret in Arkansas and Bill Clinton's opponent was making advertising mincemeat out of the boy governor's planned presidential bid. Many Arkansans wanted a governor; they didn't want to provide office space for a presidential candidate.
When Bill's opponent Tom McRae held a press conference in the state capitol daring Bill to come clean about his presidential designs and agree to an open debate, guess who showed up to crash the conference and attack McRae? Of course, it was Hillary.
And naturally, rather than deny the substance of Bill's presidential aspirations, she instead loudly brought the press' attention to an instance where her husband had been present and accounted for in Arkansas, but McRae had not. "I mean, I think we oughta get the record straight...," Hillary blasted. And McRae stood before her stiff and speechless.
Barbara Olson summarized the tactic:
"The line of attack from this arch feminist (Hillary) was to make a blatant appeal to voters' sexism. If Tom McRae couldn't stand up to the governor's wife, he had to be a very weak man indeed." (Hell to Pay; p. 203)
And again, in 1992, when Bill's campaign seemed in danger of derailment by the accusations of one Gennifer Flowers, it was Hillary who tag-teamed the press into submission, by first acknowledging that her husband had caused pain in the marriage, and then by shaming questioners with female pleas for privacy.
For 2008, the Clintons have simply exchanged positions. They are, however, using the same tactical maneuvers that have kept them out of jail and in public office for 30 years.
Alinsky's 5th rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon
Last December, Bill Clinton appeared on the Charlie Rose Show in a long interview that finally got around to the Presidential election. Bill Clinton had very complimentary things to say about all of his wife's opponents, save one.
On Barack Obama, he delivered one ridiculing statement after another, while playing the genteel, elder statesman. Here's a sampling:
"I think a president ought to have done something for other people and for his country when you pick a president.
"I get tickled watching him."
"highly intelligent symbol of transformation"
"And we're prepared to roll the dice."
"It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule." (Rules for Radicals; p. 128)
Personalizing Obama
While Bill handled the ridicule angle from his lofty position as a former president, Hillary dispatched lesser surrogates to begin thinly veiled personal attacks against her chief rival. The pattern was set in the Muslim accusation and the drug-use reminder gambits.
A campaign professional or volunteer made a charge against Obama, either before cameras or in an email. Then, Hillary made a show of firing the person.
Both of these attacks was personal, aimed not at Obama's stand on any issue, but on his character.
A perfect example of Alinsky personalize-your-target tactics.
End Game: Racial Polarization
It is obvious now that the Clintons have seized upon race as Obama's potentially lethal vulnerability. They had probably hoped they would not have to use Obama's race against him to create a white backlash of electoral victories, but that point is now moot.
By attacking Obama's authenticity as a new icon for African-Americans, the Clintons understand full well, I believe, that the black community will rally to Obama, thereby demonstrating to the broader electorate that it's been about race after all.
The first racial blow, of course, was Hillary's. She failed to adequately acknowledge MLK's stature by stating that it took LBJ to get the Civil Rights Act into law. This was confirmation that they would use any and every means necessary to achieve a second co-presidency. Everyone who knows anything about Democratic Party politics of the last 40 years, knows that any slight whatsoever of MLK is tantamount to blasphemy.
Once Hillary secured her victory in New Hampshire by playing the sympathy card with female Democrat voters, she dispensed tag-team champ, Bill, to Nevada. Behind the scenes, Hillary supporters filed suit to have the special casino caucus sites declared illegal. When a reporter asked Bill Clinton if that might have the effect of disenfranchising culinary workers, the majority of whom are minorities, Bill verbally clobbered the guy, displaying his infamous temper. The reporter backed off.
In Monday's SC debate, Hillary invoked Obama's work for a Chicago slumlord, referring to Anthony Rezko, who will stand trial in February in Chicago on several corruption charges. Rezko is indeed a slumlord, and his is another tawdry tale emitting from that veritable cesspool of political corruption, Chicago. Obama's law firm did represent Rezko, Obama did know him and has received a great deal of campaign finance from him, which he claims to have returned.
Her particular use of the word, "slumlord," was a way of accusing Obama of betraying his own people.
Having instigated this quite uncivil conflict, Hillary has gone on to campaign in states with bigger-bang delegate counts, and left tag-team champ Bill behind in South Carolina to schmooze the black citizens, whom they have both done all they could to alienate.
Party elders seem so concerned over the possible fractures to their special-interest coalitions, that some are begging the Clintons - even in public - to clean up their act and cut it out with the low-body blows against Obama.
Here's my advice to the Democrats:
If one doesn't like the sight of blood, but wants to play politics with the Clintons, it might be best to invest in blindfolds.
Of all the amoral things the Clintons have done over the past 30 years, tag-teaming Obama on his race is the most dastardly, in my opinion.
Not only to Obama, but to America.
this is the guy who continues to borrow from China,
I guess this meme has made the pegbot rotation
I guess you're referring to the Chinese buying treasuries to keep the government operating. Of course you realize that if the people who buy treasuries- the whole world, not just the Chinese- are allowing us to continue to operate ?
W/o that inflow of money, we'd shut down tomorrow
You flatter yourself
I wouldn't waste the time trying to remove one of your posts- they're too amusing
" well reasoned"
Now that's funny
So, how do you feel about Hamas imperialism??
Let me guess, it's all OK because the Jews took their land
DEBKAfile Exclusive: Hamas’ seizure of Northern Sinai from Egypt sends Washington, Jerusalem and Cairo into tense consultations
January 23, 2008, 8:49 PM (GMT+02:00)
Gazans mob streets of Egyptian side of Rafah
Gazans mob streets of Egyptian side of Rafah
Senior military sources told DEBKAfile that the strategic feat achieved by Hamas Tuesday night, in capturing a section of Sinai from Egyptian forces, is irreversible. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert held tense talks on the crisis Wednesday night, Jan. 23.
By demolishing the 10-km concrete barrier dividing the Gaza Strip from Egyptian Sinai, Hamas, backed by 200,000 Palestinians who surged across Wednesday, has acquired a new stronghold outside Israel’s military reach. US and Israeli intelligence sources report that Hamas laid the ground for its coup and timed it deliberately for the opening Wednesday of the Palestinian National Congress in Damascus. This event was organized by Tehran and Damascus to counter the US-promoted Annapolis conference and discredit Mahmoud Abbas’ diplomatic track with Israel under the US aegis.
Tehran and Damascus brought to the congress some 900 Palestinian delegates of 17 radical Palestinian opposition groups and 300 “special guests” from across the Arab world. It was opened by hard-line Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal with a speech which glorified his Gazan brothers’ feat in breaking down the Gaza-Egyptian border as the greatest Palestinian achievement for years.
He declared that an “end to the occupation” in all parts of Palestine must take precedence over Palestinian statehood – a direct challenge to the Bush administration’s two-state thesis.
Rice and David Welch, assistant secretary of state for the Middle East, made a point of warning Mubarak that he must act expeditiously to restore border security because the entire Washington Palestinian strategy hinging on Abbas and the Annapolis declarations hangs in the balance.
But the Egyptian president replied that his main worry is not the Palestinian issue but concern that his own opposition, led by the Muslim Brotherhood, may adopt Hamas tactics and stir up trouble in his cities. Mubarak said he would leave the situation in northern Sinai as it is for the time being. In other words, his troops would not force the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who swarmed out of Gaza to return home.
Such an effort would be a tall order, anyway. According to information reaching Cairo, Hamas has instructed large numbers of Palestinians who fled Gaza to stay where they are. Their assignment is to create a bridge between Gaza and the 40,000 Palestinians living in North Sinai. This population ballooned fivefold on Jan. 23 in the space of a few hours.
Furthermore, the Palestinian department of Egypt’s security services is on high alert after learning that the 130,000 Palestinians living in communities in Cairo, Alexandria and the Suez Canal cities are preparing to help their Gazan brothers steal into Egypt.
So conjecture by one person means the new law is worthless??
The point is that the parties being able to agree on a law is huge political progress
The fact that oil revenue is being shared- even w/o a law is huge progress
But, you playing your typical uninformed clown role find one quote that speculates that their might be problems with the bill and you are blasting off your little clown horn
Yeah, it's not as if our legislature ever passed a law that had some unintended consequences
Get back to us when there are widespread negative consequences form the bill that was passed
Clown
Has Bush Lost His Spine On Earmarks?
The Washington Examiner wonders whether George Bush fears Congress more than his constituents in a battle over pork proliferation. As I noted yesterday, the White House appears to have backed away from issuing an executive order defunding the non-legislative earmarks in the omnibus spending bill, which account for 90% of the nine thousand pork items. Porkbusters wonder why the President won't follow a course of action that follows the law and forces Congress to adhere to its own rules:
Conservatives and good-government groups have been urging Bush since before Christmas to issue an executive order directing federal agencies to ignore earmarks contained in committee reports that are not attached to legislation voted into law. Bush has previously picked fights with Congress on executive privilege issues. Yet he seems uncharacteristically reluctant to do so now, despite being on legal grounds declared solid by none other than the Congressional Research Service and the U.S. Supreme Court.
So what is Bush waiting for?
Signing such an executive order would eliminate most earmarks and force Congress to clean up its act. By funneling billions of dollars to favored — and often secret — earmark recipients, members of Congress bypass their own legislative process, as well as the competitive bidding typically required in the executive branch.
Bush has received warnings from Congressional leadership in both parties that cancellation of the earmarks would lead to angry relations from members in 2008. This amounts to a type of extortion. How much should non-angry relations cost the American taxpayer? Is it really worth the $16.7 billion contained in these earmarks for everyone to have a Rodney King moment and get along -- for about a day?
Or are there other considerations? Last night, the Politico reported that the Democrats in the House have stalled on voting for contempt citations against Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten over the firings of presidentially-appointed federal prosecutors. Their leadership says they've put it off to keep a bipartisan effort on an economic stimulus alive, but privately admit they don't have the votes to approve the citations. Perhaps the White House figures that the $16.7 billion has convinced enough Representatives to vote down the citations.
Is that unfair? Well, when our elected officials demand that they keep their money in exchange for doing the nation's business, they have identified themselves as commodities to be bought and sold, if not the explicit basis of the sales. If Bush wants to end that kind of politics using the clear authority he has to do so, he will have no better opportunity.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on January 23, 2008 7:26 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)
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Not Everyone Porks Up
The Las Vegas Review-Journal notes that the excuse used by members of Congress for pork-barrel spending doesn't add up, like almost every Congressional budget. Politicians claim that their constituents demand the projects that they bring back from Washington, but as the LVRJ notes, it isn't the constituents asking for the money. The federal dollars usually wind up supporting -- other politicians:
Lawmakers who continue to indulge in earmarks -- self-described fiscal conservatives among them -- argue that if they don't bring some money home for their constituents, other states are lined up at the trough to steal the leftovers.
But the representatives and senators who've stopped bringing home the bacon aren't hearing complaints from voters. In fact, many enjoy the support of citizens tired of seeing tax dollars squandered on projects that have little merit. These taxpayers are content to let other states bear the guilt of such extravagance, if such sacrifices bring the country closer to fiscal responsibility and accountability.
No, most of the squealing these lawmakers hear comes from ... state and local governments, the biggest beneficiaries of federal pork.
Members of Congress, who spend most of their time in Washington, don't come up with ideas for earmarks on their own. They're bombarded with pork requests from state legislatures, law enforcement agencies, public colleges and universities and municipal governments.
This exposes one of the dirty secrets of the earmark process. If one looks through the earmarks carefully, a large percentage of them go to other politicians. It feeds the system that produces the candidates and ensures that incumbents maintain their power base in their home districts and states. Failure to feed the machine could result in an end to the career in Congress.
The Review-Journal mentions several Congressmen and Senators who have rejected pork for their districts and states, including Jeff Flake and Tom Coburn. Neither of them earmark funds at all, and neither does my Congressman, John Kline (R-MN). He converted to the porkbuster cause after the 2006 election taught him and the rest of the GOP a painful lesson.
Not that conversion has been easy. The LVRJ notes that our district has its share of unhappy local politicians who counted on getting easy money from Washington. The Scott County board wanted some cash for a road in their area, but Kline refused to acquiesce. Jon Ulrich, one of the commissioners, says that he wanted Kline to work within the system while trying to change it -- or, in other words, hypocritically earmark funds while railing against earmarks.
Kline's not a hypocrite, unlike others who have no problem complaining about extra-Constitutional federal action while larding up their home districts. We need more Republicans like Kline, and a GOP leadership that recognizes the risks they take. That's why many of us continue to call for Jeff Flake to get the open seat on the House Appropriations Committee -- so that the Republican leadership can demonstrate that they want to end the hypocrisy as well.
Posted by Ed Morrissey on January 23, 2008 7:09 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)
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Please provide a quote from the article where it says he IS an ME advisor
Good luck
You can't argue his anti Israeli bias, so you counter the tons of evidence of his bias in the article by saying he's no an ME advisor as if you know his bias never surfaces in his advisory role
Do you deny his bias or do you agree with it or think it doesn't matter?