Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University. 

Sunday, November 30, 2003

Two U.S. Soldiers Killed

We Grieve, But We Cannot Quit.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Guerrillas ambushed a military convoy in western Iraq near the border with Syria, killing two American soldiers, the military said Sunday.

The attackers opened fire on the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment task force with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades near the border town of Husaybah, 180 miles northwest of Baghdad, the statement said.
A.P.
  

10:05 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




The Winners In Kristof's Name That War Contest

And the Winners are:
Honorable mention in this contest goes to "Operation Unscramble Eggs," by Russell Schindler of New York; "Desert Storm und Drang," by Robert Proctor of Connecticut; "The 'Raq," by Jeff Schramm of Missouri; "A'bombin'nation," by Kent Moore of North Carolina; "Tigris by the Tail," by Paul Reeves of New Mexico; "War of Mass Deception," by Scott Dacko of New York; and "Iraq: A Hard Place," by Chris Walters of Texas.

The five winners, each of whom gets a 250-dinar note left over from my last Iraq trip, are: Brad Corsello of New York for "Dubya Dubya III"; Richard Sanders for "Rolling Blunder"; John Fell of California for "Desert Slog," Will Hutchinson of Vermont for "Mess in Potamia"; and Willard Oriol of New York for "Blood, Baath and Beyond."

More seriously, during this holiday weekend, I hope we'll think often and appreciatively of those Americans who are in Iraq right now. Humor cannot erase their fear and loneliness in the face of Washington's policy failures, or the heartbreak here in so many homes where bereaved parents, spouses and orphans are struggling in this season to remember why they should be giving thanks.
In The New York Times...
 

1:28 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




This Is News? To Whom? Dubya, Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz & Company

And This Is A Surprise? Hello? Did the administration really believe all of these "coincidences?" Right. This is exactly the kind of war Saddam had to fight; Christ, he even told us his strategy--which is as old as "The Art of War."
WASHINGTON, Nov. 28 — Bush administration officials are increasingly concerned that anti-American forces in Iraq are using simple but effective means to monitor activities and coordinate attacks against the American military, civilian administrators and visiting dignitaries.

As evidence, Pentagon and military officials cite a recent raid by troops of the 101st Airborne Division during which they broke up an apparent plot to assassinate an American colonel. The would-be assailants, they said, had observed and charted the Army officer's daily routine — including his jogging route and schedule of public appearances — to plan their attack.

Evidence gathered by investigators also sheds new light on the rocket attack that struck the Rashid Hotel during the overnight visit to Baghdad by Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, in late October. Military intelligence officers have reported that the hotel staff was infiltrated over the summer by at least one former member of Saddam Hussein's secret service.

Mr. Hussein's government operated a Stalinist-style domestic security apparatus to control Iraqis, so there is no shortage of agents skilled in traditional surveillance techniques.

In the case of the Rashid, which had become home to Americans and other foreigners working for the Coalition Provisional Authority, "the hotel was penetrated," according to a Pentagon official.

Military intelligence officers discovered that, at least as early as summer, the Rashid's catering service had on its staff a former member of Mr. Hussein's intelligence agency, officials in Washington and Iraq said.
In The New York Times...
  

1:26 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




What A Hell Of A Mess This Is

Very Bad News, that does not bode well for the near future; which, of course, is why we are, in effect, starting the war all over again. This time with the light, moblie infantry troops needed to wage an urban street fight. I hate to say, I told you so, but I did.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- There is no evidence that al-Qaida terrorists have taken part in the long string of attacks on U.S. or Iraqi targets, but some U.S.-trained Iraqi police appear to have coordinated some of those assaults, the top U.S. military official in Iraq said Saturday.

U.S. military officials are concerned that some attacks on Americans have been coordinated by a few of the numerous Iraqi civilians hired by the U.S. military, who may glean intelligence on troop movements and travels of high-ranking officers, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told reporters at the Baghdad Convention Center.

"Clearly those are concerns we have. We try to do the vetting (of Iraqi employees) as close as we can,'' he said. "There have been instances when police were coordinating attacks against the coalition and against the people.''

He said the insurgency was becoming particularly bloody for Iraqi civilians. Guerrillas launched more than 150 attacks on Iraqi civilian and police targets, killing scores during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ended last week.

Sanchez also said the United States is boosting the number of infantrymen in Iraq and moving from a force based on tanks and heavy armored vehicles to one specializing in urban raids.

A new phase in the Iraq war, known as Iraqi Freedom II, would begin as current forces are rotated out of Iraq and replaced by new units, including several thousand U.S. Marines, Sanchez said.

"We are going to change the composition of our forces,'' Sanchez said. "We'll have more infantry. We're moving to a more mobile force, one that has the right blend of light and heavy.''
In The New York Times...
  

1:22 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Moving On Up...

MoveOn.org Is Moving On Up, Fast, and it's making waves, not ripples. There is something new under the sun of political campaigns, and this is it. An analysis by the UPI explains what is happening, and what is happening is remarkable
WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- When former Vice President Al Gore wanted to blast George W. Bush on Iraq he chose a forum of the MoveOn.org organization to do it.

And when Democratic presidential hopefuls obsessed on savaging each other in the run up to the hotly contested Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary early next year, it was MoveOn.org that paid out $175,000 to hammer the president over the 2 million jobs lost during his presidency with an ad blitz in Washington and in 15 other cities in sing presidential states over the past week.

Suddenly MoveOn.org is everywhere. And as Gore's choice of its venue to delivering his blistering Nov. 9 attack on Bush shows -- in a development that may come to signal his eventual availability as a "stop Howard Dean" candidate for the Democratic right -- the upstart Web-based Internet organization has suddenly become the market place for aspiring Democratic national leaders to hawk their wares and reach out to the party grass roots.

It is quite a leap for a group that was founded half a decade ago. But MoveOn.org, started in 1998 by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs Joan Blades and Wes Boyd, has come a long way fast by flouting conventional wisdom and making visionary leaps that so far have paid off amazingly often.

The group seeks to revive liberal fortunes by marrying middle-class, baby-boom yuppie frustration, and even horror, at the repeated political triumphs of President George W. Bush and the conservative Republicans with the wonders of Internet technology and it has swept the high-tech, suburban middle-class Web-surfers like a tidal wave.

Even before the extraordinary success of Vermont former governor Howard Dean's Internet drive for activists and funds had put MoveOn.org and its Internet reach firmly on the political map, the organization already claimed a network of 1.4 million activists around the United States with another 700,000 wired in from around the world.

By last June, it had raised $6.5 million for candidates it supported and its leaders remain confident they can double that amount in the current election cycle.

Now compared with the quarter-of-a-billion-dollar war chest that Bush is methodically raising for his re-election campaign that appears to be still pocket change. But MoveOn.org's soaring national visibility and exponential growth has Republican strategists concerned. This is especially the case as the group has linked up with the almost limitless deep pockets of billionaire financier George Soros.

Soros, who is loudly and repeatedly expressing his determination to help drive Bush out of office, announced in mid-November, along with Progressive Insurance founder Peter Lewis, that they would match contributions to MoveOn.org's Bush-basing ads on job losses in the targeted cities.

That campaign could prove to be the prototype for many more. MoveOn.org organizers are looking at a $10 million ad campaign on those lines over the next year's run up to the presidential vote. It could go as high as $15 million, thanks to the Soros-Lewis matching funds.
UPI...
  

1:17 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




We Grieve Mightily, But We Cannot Quit

The Ultimate Sacrifice is so willingly made by courageous young men and women so that the rest of us can live free.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 29 — At least 75 U.S. soldiers have died so far in Iraq in November, making it the deadliest month for American troops since the U.S.-led invasion began on March 20, U.S. military statistics show.

A TOTAL OF 436 U.S. soldiers have died since the start of the war, according to the Pentagon and the latest casualty figures released by the U.S. military in Baghdad. They include 299 soldiers killed in combat, while the others died from other causes such as accidents.

Seventy-five soldiers from other allied nations - including 52 from Britain and 17 from Italy - also have died, bringing the total number of coalition deaths since the war started to more than 500.

U.S.-led occupation authorities in Baghdad say they do not have a number for Iraqi deaths. A survey by The Associated Press counted at least 3,240 civilians killed during the invasion, which lasted more than a month. The total number is believed to be much higher.

A tally of all reports of fatalities released by the U.S. military command and compiled by AP showed that at least 75 American soldiers died since the start of November, surpassing deaths recorded in any previous month since the invasion.

Until now, the deadliest month was April, when 73 troops died at the height of the war. The single deadliest day was March 23, when 30 U.S. soldiers died.

President Bush declared major combat over May 1.

Since the start of military operations, 2,094 U.S. service members have been injured as a result of hostile action, according to the Defense Department’s figures as of Wednesday. The number of soldiers injured in non-hostile incidents was 350.
MSNBC...
 

1:14 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Saturday, November 29, 2003

The Future Ms. President Visits Iraq

Hillary Clinton Also Goes to Iraq, but she does it in the full light of day and even takes a look around. Of course, she is not the target that Dubya is: She isn't hated world-wide.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Senator Hillary Clinton called Friday for a wider international role in running Iraq, but doubted the U.S. administration would cede much control in the country it invaded and occupied.

"I'm a big believer that we ought to internationalize this, but it will take a big change in our administration's thinking," Clinton, a Democrat from New York, said during a nearly 10-hour visit to Baghdad where she met with U.S. troops, military chiefs and civilian officials including U.S. administrator Paul Bremer.

"I don't see that it's forthcoming," said the wife of former President Bill Clinton.

Clinton, who has ruled out a 2004 presidential bid, arrived in Baghdad with Democrat Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island a day after President Bush's surprise Thanksgiving visit to U.S. troops and Iraqi officials in the capital.

Bush's trip was widely seen as a move to boost the flagging morale of a U.S. military facing mounting casualties at the hands of a deepening guerrilla insurgency nearly eight months after the overthrow of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

The Bush and Clinton visits also come as senior Iraqi officials on the U.S.-backed Governing Council struggle to define terms of an agreement for the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis.

Clinton said the United Nations -- which pulled all but a handful of foreign staff from Iraq after the August bombing of its Baghdad headquarters -- could still play a role in administering Iraq, easing the burden on the United States.

"We're in a very difficult political situation, trying to expedite a process for self-governance that will be very challenging," she said.

"It's no longer sufficient for our military to win battles, but they have to win the hearts and minds. It's a very big challenge," Clinton said.
Reuters...
  

10:58 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Dubya Is On A Roll

A Pretty Good News Cycle For Dubya, All in All. The question is how many can he put together in a row, or at least better than five out of every ten; that's called "playing .600 ball," which is what Dubya needs to do if he's going to have a successful "World Series" next fall.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 27 — The American plan to transfer power to Iraq regained some momentum on Thursday, after a meeting between two leading Iraqi political figures.

Jalal Talabani, the president of the Iraqi Governing Council, traveled to Najaf to confer with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the senior Iraqi cleric who had raised objections to the American plan for indirect elections for a new provisional government. Afterward, both sides appeared to be moving toward a possible compromise.

Ayatollah Sistani exercises strong influence over Iraq's majority Shiites, and on Wednesday his spokesmen said he was insisting that the election planned for next June must be a direct, popular ballot and not the indirect caucus election called for in the American plan.

That threw the future of the plan for speeding up self-rule into doubt. The American authorities have maintained that popular elections are impossible in the absence of a census, which cannot be completed by next summer. But at a news conference on Thursday night, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric and member of the Governing Council who is close to Ayatollah Sistani, said there was room for negotiation.

"There are different proposals for getting the opinion of the Iraqi people," he said. "The best way would be to have a census and election law, and elections. But in these circumstances, there are other ways you can reach the views of the Iraqi people."

"The most important thing," he added, "is to end the occupation."
In The New York Times...
  

12:19 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Dubya Wins A Round

Hell of a Good Idea From a Man Who Isn't Known For Having Many; even the harshest critics need to spot Dubya on his "Thanksgiving Surprise," not to shows spitefulness and ignorance. If you don't credit your opponent when he makes a good move, you run at least two risks: 1) Demonstrating your stupidity; 2) If you do it often, you might lose the objectivity to recognize a good idea from a bad idea.
With his Thanksgiving Day excursion to Baghdad, President Bush moved to regain control of an issue that Democrats have increasingly viewed as a political liability, reinforcing his commitment to the war while displaying solidarity with troops his rivals had accused him of neglecting, Democratic officials said yesterday.

The surprise visit stunned and confused his rivals, who struggled — in the midst of Thanksgiving dinner — to balance praise for the president's gesture with renewed criticism of his Iraq policy, which they said would be among his greatest vulnerabilities in next year's election.

"It's nice that he made it over there today, but this visit won't change the fact that those brave men and women should never have been fighting in Iraq in the first place," said Jay Carson, a spokesman for Howard Dean, one of the biggest critics of the war among the nine Democrats vying for the party's presidential nomination.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts issued a statement saying that the trip was "the right thing to do for our country." But, he added: "When Thanksgiving is over, I hope the president will take the time to correct his failed policy in Iraq that has placed our soldiers in a shooting gallery."

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, described the visit as a "daring move and great politics," but added: "I think these kids need more. I'm sure they were buoyed by his coming, but they need more."

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, described the visit as a "daring move and great politics," but added: "I think these kids need more. I'm sure they were buoyed by his coming, but they need more."

The trip came at a time of rising criticism of the president for not attending the funerals of the returning war dead. It also came in the same week that Mr. Bush met with families of 26 soldiers killed in Iraq, and thus appeared to be a concerted effort by the White House to deal with a political problem.

And now, in a single day, Mr. Bush may have managed to supplant what has become the single most problematic image of him in this war: The picture of him swaggering across an aircraft carrier in front of banner reading "Mission Accomplished."

That image, which already has shown up in an advertisement by Mr. Kerry attacking the president, now seems likely to be overtaken by the picture of Mr. Bush, his eyes glistening with tears, addressing cheering troops on Thanksgiving Day. It was a moment fraught with imagery that was certainly a central subject of discussion at Thanksgiving tables.

Even aides to Democratic presidential candidates expressed grudging admiration for the political skills of this White House.

"Those guys can do some pretty smart stuff sometimes," a senior adviser to one of the Democrats said.

Matt Bennett, the communications director for Gen. Wesley K. Clark, said: "We're not going to throw stones at the guy for trying to do a nice thing for the troops. When the president goes and spends time with the troops, that's a good thing."
Yep, better to let it play to the applause it deserves--politically--otherwise you're taking shots at Thanksgiving (a uniquely American ideal) and G.I.'s who got the thrill of a lifetime amidst a situation where that lifetime might only be until tomorrow. Well done, Dubya--but I'll betcha the ranch it wasn't your idea.

In The New York Times...
  

12:15 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




The Good News

Some Good News From Mr. Krugman, if for no other reason than to taunt the neocons who froth at every word he writes. I also offer Paul Krugman because he's a fine wordsmith who makes sense to me, but then I am definitely not an economist.
[Yet] I keep coming back to the big good news of the past 25 years: in a world with more or less free trade, development is possible. We are not, it turns out, condemned to live forever on a planet where only a small minority of the global population has a decent standard of living.

Will this good news continue? Growing tensions over world trade worry me. The steady trickle of U.S. protectionist moves, against everything from steel to Chinese bras, hasn't yet become a torrent. But there's a definite sense that the grown-ups have left the building.

What's particularly striking is the contempt this administration has for the rules. I was on the staff of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Reagan administration (those were nonpolitical jobs back then); one thing I remember was that if the experts said a proposed trade restriction violated international trade law, that was that. By contrast, just about every protectionist step taken by the Bush administration has been clearly in violation. And if the major economic powers stop honoring the rules that preserve open global markets, the chances of future development in poor nations will be much reduced.

But none of this cancels the fact that over the past 25 years more people have seen greater material progress than ever before in history. That's something to celebrate.
In The New York Times...
 

12:11 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Commentary: Strengthening Sino-US relations

Here's another interesting piece from the People's Daily. It is a pretty damn good analysis of our world today. Yes, it is the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party and the Central Government, and censorship is not just rigid, it is the expected, ordained, routine rule. But the writing and research is often first-rate, and the range of issues covered widens constantly.
It is risky to forecast trends in the Sino-US relationship, one of the world's most influential yet volatile state-to-state ties, due to its complexity.

Veteran diplomats from both sides have sent a message that relations between the world's most powerful country and the most populous country are at an all-time high.

These words struck a chord among experts and scholars in world affairs at an international symposium on Sino-US-European relations co-hosted by the China Institute for International Strategic Studies (CIISS) and the Hotung Institute For International Relations in Beijing from November 18-20.

Dr Henry A. Kissinger, former US national security advisor and secretary of state, once said the power of politics is to transfer divergence into consensus.

The fight against terrorism mirrors that convergence of interests between China and the United States and can serve as a catalyst for a strengthened rapport.
In the People's Daily...
 

12:05 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Friday, November 28, 2003

Roll Over Vladimir, Tell Mao Zedong the News

Transsexuals in China: The Times They Are A-Changing, and it's in the People's Daily! This is a place where homosexuality is still a secret even to many homosexuals. The New China amazes me at least once every day--and almost always for the better.
Mainland tabloids have recently entered a phase of sudden fascination with transsexuals (TS). Rarely has a month gone by without a detailed account of some out-of-towner with a French-sounding nickname pleading with big-city doctors for a sex-change operation.

Chen Huanran is one of these doctors. The plastic surgery department at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, where he works, is one of the few of its kind in Asia that specializes in the surgery.

"As many as 3,000 people come to us every year," Dr Chen told China Daily. "However, we are very rigorous in screening and approve only a very small number for the actual surgery."

The patients have to go through a lengthy process of psychological counselling and physical checkups before a decision is made.

Dr Chen disapproves of the many sex-change cases in Thailand as "induced by external influences". In China, doctors would not recommend it unless absolutely convinced that the patient's urge is fuelled by innate needs, says Dr Chen.

He calculates that, using a rate of one out of 50,000, China would have 24,000 who suffer from a TS drive. So far, about 500 people on the mainland have undergone surgery.
You will enjoy reading the rest of this story. I am not excerpting more because I want to encourage you to visit the People's Daily and read the news from their perspective. Go ahead, it won't bite you.

The People's Daily...
  

11:46 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




From the People's Daily

Beijing's Response to Chen Shui-bian's idiocy, in the People's Daily, as expected, was measured and NOT provocative. The leaders of the New China are not given the credit they deserve as novice statesmen now playing on the world's biggest stage, and doing it exceedingly well. From the middle east to North Korea to Africa, they are serving the world community with a maturity that would be a credit to the former super powers of Europe.
Taiwan lawmakers Thursday passed a watered-down version of referendum law put forward by the opposition Kuomintang Party and People First Party by 113 votes to 94. The bill excludes future referendums on issues such as changing the island's name, anthem, flag and "constitution."

"Although the imminent danger of Taiwan independence has been get rid of, the so-called defensive referendum clause may give rise to more potential troubles in bilateral relations,'' said Liu Guoshen, director of the Taiwan Research Institute at Xiamen University in East China's Fujian Province.

"After all, the referendum law has managed to create a legal basis for Taiwan independence, which the mainland has strongly opposed.''
Read it in the People's Daily...
  

11:35 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Chen Idiocy

The Mouse-Mouth That Almost Roared has now overtaken George W. Bush for the top spot as the world's most stupid head of state. Mr. Chen Shui-bian is taunting China over the biggest canard left over from the Cold War--that Taiwan is not a part of the People's Republic of China. Not only is he taunting the elephant that can sit on him without feeling more than what the Princess did of that pea under her mattress, but he is trying to put the United States into the terribly awkward position of having to publicly "disown" its former adopted orphan or face a military confrontation it cannot win without destroying civilization as we know it. China cannot and will not let Taiwan assert a sham "independence." But it is perfectly willing to let the current status quo go on almost indefinitely. Mr. Chen is playing with the biggest fire there is for the purpose of his re-election campaign. What a stupid, stupid man.
TAIPEI, Taiwan, Friday, Nov. 28 — Taiwan's legislature took a half-step back on Thursday night from an immediate confrontation with China, passing a bill that would allow national referendums on constitutional and sovereignty issues only under very narrow circumstances.

Chinese officials had tried to dissuade Taiwanese politicians from endorsing any bill to provide for referendums, but had devoted most of their criticisms to a rival measure, supported by President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan, that would have made it easy for him to call referendums. Most provisions of that bill were defeated in the legislature on Thursday night.

Chinese and American officials had feared that legislation permitting a referendum on Taiwanese independence from the mainland would lead to a showdown in the Taiwan Straits that neither China nor the United States wants now.

China is trying to pay more attention to economic growth, especially in its interior provinces, while the United States has been preoccupied with Iraq and with seeking China's cooperation in trying to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons program.

The Bush administration has reaffirmed repeatedly the principle that there is one China encompassing Taiwan and the mainland, but Chinese officials have called for the United States to do more. China regards Taiwan as a renegade province and has threatened to use military force to prevent it from becoming a fully independent nation.

Mr. Chen and his Democratic Progressive Party have tried to move Taiwan gingerly toward somewhat greater independence status and had sought a referendum bill for that purpose. But most of the provisions in the final bill came from amendments by the opposition, which opposes full independence and has more seats in the politically fractured legislature than Mr. Chen's party.

Even a narrowly written referendum bill could still irk Beijing's leaders, by establishing a precedent for holding any referendums at all on what Beijing regards as Chinese soil.

The final bill bars referendums on changing the flag of Taiwan or Taiwan's official name, the Republic of China. The legislation also makes it extremely hard to hold a referendum to amend the constitution and bars referendums to draft a new or completely rewritten constitution.

Following approval of the bill, lawmakers from Mr. Chen's party were so upset that they tried to schedule additional votes to undo it. They contended the law involved an unconstitutional transfer of power from the executive branch to the legislature, by allowing the legislature to call referendums but making it hard for the president to do so. ...

Justin Chou, a spokesman for the Nationalist Party, said that the party was "very happy with the result" of Thursday's voting. The party was not acting because of the threats from China but because of what it saw as the best course for Taiwan, he added.

There was no immediate reaction to the bill from Beijing, where officials sometimes mull events in Taiwan for a day or two before issuing a response.
In The New York Times...
  

11:18 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  






We Grieve, But We Cannot Quit.
MOSUL, Iraq (AP) -- Four mortar shells hit a U.S. military compound Friday in the northern city of Mosul, killing a soldier from the 101st Airborne Division, the military said.

An Iraqi worker in the compound was slightly wounded in the attack at around 11 a.m. local time, Master Sgt. Kelly Tyler said.

Attacks by Iraqi insurgents on U.S. troops in Mosul have increased in recent weeks. Two American soldiers were shot and killed on Sunday.

The 101st Airborne is based in Fort Campbell, Ky.
A.P.
  

10:48 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Duh...

Well, It's About Time, I wonder who figured this one out? And all along I've been maligning the brain power in the White House. Silly me.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 — Dozens of the American intelligence experts and linguists sent to Iraq to search for illicit weapons have been reassigned to an expanding effort to learn more about the insurgents attacking United States troops, senior government officials said Wednesday.

The shift in the last two weeks appears to reflect a decision that the hunt for insurgents is becoming a more urgent task than the quest for chemical and biological weapons, which has so far proved unsuccessful despite the involvement of hundreds of people in the search.

In recent weeks as many as 40 attacks a day have been conducted against American troops in Iraq, and American commanders have acknowledged that they know relatively little about the attackers.

The question of whether to assign some of the intelligence experts to counterinsurgency has been debated for weeks within the Bush administration. Government officials say the work for now is being carried out informally, with no decision yet on whether to make the reassignment official or permanent.

But they said the switch meant that some of the linguists, intelligence analysts and other experts on the 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group were now reporting only to Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, a top official of the Defense Intelligence Agency who heads the survey group.

Previously they reported further up the chain of command to David Kay, the civilian American official who oversees the weapons hunt as a special adviser to George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

A Defense Department official said the group had been reinforced in recent weeks with "additional assets" focused on counterinsurgency.
In The New York Times...
  

1:20 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




There Goes Plan C

Oops! Plan D, anyone? This would be a Marx Brothers movie if human beings weren't being blown up everyday, for real.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 26 — The American plan to turn over power in Iraq more quickly was thrown into disarray on Wednesday when the country's most powerful cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, made public his opposition to a proposal for indirect elections.

"All of us are groping around right now," an administration official said in Washington, acknowledging that the plan worked out earlier this month by the Iraqi Governing Council and L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator of Iraq, would have to be revised.

Spokesmen for Ayatollah Sistani, who exercises strong influence over Iraq's majority Shiites, said he insisted that the election, planned for June, be a direct ballot and not the caucus-style vote called for in the American plan. He also insists that the new Iraqi government have a more overtly Islamic character.

"The people should have a basic role in issues concerning the destiny of their country," Abdul Aziz al- Hakim, a Shiite cleric and politician, said in an interview. Mr. Hakim said he discussed the American proposal with Ayatollah Sistani on Tuesday.

Shiites account for about 60 percent of Iraq's 25 million people and so could benefit from a direct vote.

Under the current plan, which has been fraying almost since it was approved by both sides on Nov. 15, council members and local governments are to choose a transitional assembly — several hundred Iraqis from every region and social sector. That assembly is to choose an interim government in June, and that indirectly elected interim government is supposed to draft a constitution. ...

In Washington, administration officials said a plan establishing Iraqi self-rule by June 30 would have to at least partly accommodate the ayatollah's insistence on a popular vote.

Such a ballot in the next several months is widely seen as impractical, however. Instead, administration officials said, a system of provincial and local elections, town meetings and caucuses of civic leaders throughout Iraq might be acceptable to Ayatollah Sistani.

"The nub of this is, how do we get to enough elections in enough places to satisfy the ayatollah's insistence on elections," one official said. "We should be able to do it." ...

Ayatollah Sistani's objections were a further blow to a plan that had already begun to unravel. Earlier this week, leaders of the Governing Council said they would like to back away from their agreement to dissolve the council as soon as elections are held in June, and instead to preserve it as a second legislative body, a kind of senate. ...

Communications between official Iraqis and official Americans have been difficult from the start of the occupation in May. On Wednesday, for example, Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, the first American administrator, acknowledged in an interview with the BBC that his office had made a "bad job" of communicating with Iraqis.
Uh...can't anybody here play this game? Is this a Big League club or a Single A rookie league squad?
American officials have insisted that a direct election cannot be held now because there are no voter rolls. A census must be taken first, and that cannot be completed until late next year at the earliest.

But a senior Shiite leader on Wednesday pushed a United Nations proposal to use its food-rations registry as a voter list so elections could be held next spring.

Both American and Iraqi officials have said they believe the real motivation for insisting on direct elections is that the clerics hope the nation's Shiite majority will empower religious leaders to form an Islamic government, an idea the United States opposes.

Mr. Hakim himself said one of Ayatollah Sistani's objections was that "there is no emphasis on the role of Islam and the identity of the Muslim people."

"There should have been a stipulation which prevents legislating anything that contradicts Islam in the new Iraq," Mr. Hakim added, summarizing the ayatollah's views. ...

"Some Iraqis perceive the process as being too rushed to fit the American presidential elections," said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, a member of the Governing Council who is close to Ayatollah Sistani. "We don't mind helping our partners. We understand their requirements. And we will consider helping them."

The view that the United States elections play a major role in shaping Iraq's political future is widely held among council members.
Geeze, you mean these folks also see through Dubya's motives? That would imply that they're at least as sophisticated regarding democracy as most Republicans.
Ahmad Chalabi, another council member, said: "The whole thing was set up so President Bush could come to the airport in October for a ceremony to congratulate the new Iraqi government. When you work backwards from that, you understand the dates the Americans were insisting on." American officials deny that electoral concerns played a role in their planning.
Yeah. Right. Everybody got that?

In The New York Times...
  

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Classical Guerrilla Warfare: A Roundup

This Is The War Saddam Planned to Fight, and Rummy & Wolfie fell for it hook, line and improvised explosive devise. Gracious, it's certainly not new in the annals of warfare--in fact it is just about the oldest and most popular way to wage war on a superior force that is away from home: Let 'em in, let 'em get settled, then start picking fights at a time and place of your choice. Something akin to "death by a thousand cuts." Of course, it doesn't always succeed. But then it often does. The primary determinant for success or failure is directly related to how determined the superior force is in sticking around. If it never quits, and it's superior numbers and supplies continue to be superior, it will not lose. It is that simple; it is also that complex. The public and political will must be as determined as are the forces in the field.
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Insurgents fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the Italian mission in Baghdad, damaging the building but causing no injuries, the U.S. military said Thursday. In a political setback for the U.S.-led occupation, key Shiite Muslim leaders criticized the U.S. plan to transfer power to Iraqis.

A U.S. military convoy came under attack Thursday on the main highway west of Baghdad near the town of Abu Ghraib, witnesses said. An Associated Press Television News cameraman filmed two flatbed military trucks that were abandoned and left with their cabs blazing fiercely, as dozens of townspeople converged to loot tires and other vehicle parts. The military had no immediate information.

And in the northern city of Mosul, unidentified gunmen on Thursday shot dead an Iraqi police sergeant, Brig. Gen. Muwaffaq Mohammed said.

The overnight attack on the Italian mission underscored the precarious security situation in the Iraqi capital, despite a reduction in attacks on U.S.-led coalition forces in recent days. Two weeks ago, a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb outside the Italian barracks in Nasiriyah, killing 19 Italians and 14 others in an apparent attempt to weaken the resolve of Washington's coalition partners.

In Mosul, U.S. troops on Wednesday killed a girl and injured three people in a pickup truck that was approaching American soldiers who had been shot at, the U.S. military said. No weapons were found in the truck. Assailants had fired at two shuttle buses traveling from a U.S. military compound, but no American troops were hurt.
In The New York Times...
  

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Friedman Pens a Letter

Thomas L. Friedman Nails It, and he does it with a literary devise that could be disastrous in less skillful hands. This is simply MUST reading. I will only excerpt enough to set the hook. Please. Please, read it all.
Memo to: President Bush

From: Saddam Hussein

Dear Bush: Well, it's been a while since we last communicated. It's not easy getting tapes out from this basement in Tikrit, but I thought it was time we had a little chat. Heard your speech on Arab democracy on the BBC Arabic Service. I'll give you this, Bush, you and Blair do understand the stakes. It's your willpower I doubt.

You see, Bush, this really is "The Mother of All Battles." You may not have meant to, but you have triggered a huge civilizational war — the war within Islam. Who wins in Iraq will have a big impact on this war — which is now spreading to Indonesia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

By now you've realized that I was prepared for this war. I got rid of all my W.M.D., hid explosives and set up an underground network to fight you once you were in country. But God bless the Turkish Parliament. By not allowing you to use Turkey to invade from the north, my boys in the Sunni Triangle were spared. By the time you got here from the south, we just receded into the shadows. You occupied our Sunni towns, but never defeated them. Had you been able to sweep down from the north, my boys would have had to engage you, and you would have killed them wholesale by the hundreds. Now you have to kill them retail — one by one.
Thomas L. Friedman, in The New York Times...

 

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Give Life A Chance

Read A Very Different Maureen Dowd Column; on this day of giving thanks, I give thanks for the heart of Ms. Dowd and her talent for expressing it.
WASHINGTON — Maybe it's so touching because Alonzo Mourning seemed so tough.

"A cartoon image of toughness," as our sports editor, Tom Jolly, puts it, "a rugged 6-foot-10, larger-than-life guy with a great work ethic, an aggressive player who had been the Knicks' archenemy when he played for Miami."

The enduring image of "Zo" to many fans was the night of April 30, 1998, when the Miami star slugged it out with the Knicks' Larry Johnson in the last second of a playoff game, with Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy hanging on to Mr. Mourning's leg in a vain attempt to stop him.

But now that virile image has been supplanted with a vulnerable one: the 33-year-old walking away from his $23 million comeback deal with the Nets because his doctor says that his chronic kidney disease has grown so bad he can no longer play without risking cardiac arrest.

Upon learning that Mr. Mourning would need a kidney transplant, dozens of people from across the country, including some Knicks fans, called the Kidney and Urology Foundation to offer their kidneys.
Please read the rest of this column; it is not a sports story, I assure you.

Maureen Dowd, in The New York Times...
  

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We Are Still At War

There Is No Good News Story Here; for all the new schools and clinics built and polls taken about a better life courtesy of the U.S. military, this story about the gleeful murder of two American soldiers is too telling for me. This is still a war, it is not yet country building, or peacekeeping until democracy buds and blooms. To argue that it is only a few hundred Iraqis fighting this guerrilla war in any one concentration, while true, is not meaningful. The proportion of a people actually doing the fighting in an insurgency is always a small percentage of the populace. The numbers that are meaningful are how many people sympathize with the fighters, or at least do not in any way attempt to deter them--such as providing information to coalition forces, or denying insurgents food or shelter, anything that would lead to their inability to fight effectively.
MOSUL, Iraq, Nov. 26 — Since the Americans came to town seven months ago, the firefighters in this northern Iraqi city have gotten new trucks and new uniforms, American training and salaries 10 times larger than they used to be.

But when word came Sunday afternoon that two American soldiers had been shot in the head and killed a block away, the men of Ras al Jada fire station ran to the site and looked on with glee as a crowd of locals dragged the Americans from their car and tore off their watches and jackets and boots.

"I was happy, everyone was happy," Waadallah Muhammad, one of the firefighters, said as he stood in front of the firehouse. "The Americans, yes, they do good things, but only to enhance their reputation. They are occupiers. We want them to leave."

It was not supposed to be this way in Mosul, an ethnically diverse city of two million people and the economic and cultural center of northern Iraq.

As places like Ramadi and Falluja and Tikrit burned and their residents rebelled against the American occupation this summer, Mosul stayed calm, the one city with a Sunni Arab majority where most people still seemed to regard the Americans as their friends. A vigorous and far-reaching effort by the 101st Airborne Division to rebuild the city's roads, schools and public buildings seemed to cement an unusually warm bond.

That appears to be changing very fast. The money the American occupiers once doled out freely has dried up, and other reconstruction aid has yet to arrive. Attacks on Americans, which have killed more than 25 in the Mosul area this month, have highlighted what local Iraqis say is a rapidly deteriorating relationship. ...

A network of former members of Mr. Hussein's Baath Party, stretching from the universities to government offices, openly flout the Americans' edicts and, some Iraqis say, quietly support the resistance.

"I would say that the number of people who are opposed to the Americans here numbers in the thousands, the tens of thousands," said Hunien Kadu, a professor of economics at Mosul University and a city council member. "There are deans and assistant deans who were high-ranking members of the Baath Party. There are Baathists all through the government. The Americans can't continue to let these people operate."

Many Iraqis complained that the recent American crackdown had pushed potential supporters away. Mr. Barhawi, for instance, cited a local cleric detained on suspicion of encouraging attacks against the Americans in his weekly sermons. He said American troops had handcuffed, hooded and slapped the cleric. Word of that, he said, was helping to alienate many Iraqis here who were still more or less receptive to the American enterprise.

The cleric, Abdul Satar al-Jawiri, was released after a search of his home turned up nothing, Mr. Barhawi said. A spokesman for the 101st Airborne said Wednesday that he could not confirm the incident.

"I am not defending the cleric, but he was humiliated in public," Mr. Barhawi said. "Do you realize what he is going to say in his sermons now?"
To expect young American soldiers who know they are targets to have more civil attitudes is delusional. Soldiers are trained to kill and intimidate lest they be killed. It is war; a cleric gets slapped and the war goes on with more fuel in the belly of the war-beast. It is an equation as old as stone axes and flint arrowheads.

In The New York Times...
  

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Garner: Mistakes Were Made

Garner Fesses Up; the general takes to the radio for a cathartic confession. Let's hope he feels better now. They say it is good for the soul.
The U.S.-led coalition's handling of postwar Iraq came under sharp criticism from Garner, who said he should have deployed more troops in Baghdad and communicated better with Iraqis from the start.

The retired general also said his successors made a mistake in disbanding the Iraqi army.

Garner, who was replaced by L. Paul Bremer after less than a month on the job, made the comments in London during an interview broadcast on British Broadcasting Corp. radio.

"I think there was a lot of thought . . . on how to do postwar Iraq," Garner said. "I just don't think that it unfolded the way everybody expected it to unfold."

He said he could have done better at communicating with the Iraqi people and that the coalition should have moved more quickly to establish a government in Iraq and put more troops in Baghdad, including more infantry.

"If we did it over again, we probably would have put more dismounted infantrymen in Baghdad and maybe more troops there," Garner said, when asked what the biggest mistakes of the occupation had been.

"We should have tried to raise a government a little faster than we did," he said. "I think we are finally placing more trust in Iraqis, which we should have done to begin with."

He criticized Bremer's decision to disband the Iraqi army as "a mistake."

"You're talking about around a million or more people . . . that are suffering because the head of the household's out of work," providing potential recruits for the anti-U.S. insurgency, he said.
In the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
  

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Wednesday, November 26, 2003

Another Great One Gone But Never To Be Forgotten

Warren Spahn Dies at 82. As pretty as a picture, he was a pitcher's pitcher. Lordy, Lordy, was he fun to watch and tough to beat. R.I.P. Mr. Spahn.
Warren Spahn, who in a career spanning 21 seasons won 363 games, the major league record for a left-handed pitcher, died yesterday at his home in Broken Arrow, Okla. He was 82.

Confounding batters with a fluid, high-kicking motion and an assortment of pitches that nicked the corners of the plate or darted just outside the strike zone, Spahn was a craftsman on the mound.

Pitching 20 seasons for the Braves — 8 in Boston and 12 in Milwaukee — and a final season with the Mets and the San Francisco Giants, Spahn had a record of 363-245, fifth on the career victory list. He won the Cy Young award as baseball's best pitcher in 1957, was an All-Star 14 times and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1973, his first year of eligibility.

"For the years I was watching him, Koufax was tops," Johnny Podres, a Dodgers pitcher and later a pitching coach, told Donald Honig in "October Heroes." "But for the long haul, for year-after-year performance, Warren Spahn was the best I ever saw. He was just a master of his trade. I couldn't take my eyes off him. Watching him was an education."
In The New York Times...
  

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A President Who Reads Books, How Refreshing

What A Real President Reads; of course, the cowboy who calls himself President is proud that he doesn't read, so it isn't a fair comparison. But then Dubya comes up 7 days late and 7 bucks short in any comparison with William Jefferson Clinton.
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. Nov. 21 — Ah, nothing like curling up in front of the fireplace with 21 of President Clinton's favorite books.

To coincide with the opening of a Clinton Library-related exhibit of books and gifts he received while president, Clinton has released a list of his 21 favorite books from his wife's "Living History" to Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" to Thomas a Kempis' "The Imitation of Christ."

Clinton's presidential library is to open next November on the south bank of the Arkansas River in downtown Little Rock. A nearby office building, the Cox Creative Center, has hosted a number of preview exhibits, and on Monday opens "America Presents: A Collection of Books and Gifts of the Clinton Presidency." The exhibit runs through Jan. 3.

Copies of Clinton's 21 favorite books will be on display at the Cox building.

Besides Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's autobiography, Ellison's soaring novel of a black man's journey through white America and Kempis' 15th-century treatise on Christian living, other books of note include Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and Thomas Wolfe's "You Can't Go Home Again."

The entire list of Clinton's favorite books, listed alphabetically by author:

"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," Maya Angelou.

"Meditations," Marcus Aurelius.

"The Denial of Death," Ernest Becker.

"Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-1963," Taylor Branch.

"Living History," Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Lincoln," David Herbert Donald.

"The Four Quartets," T.S. Eliot.

"Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison.

"The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-First Century," David Fromkin.

"One Hundred Years of Solitude," Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

"The Cure at Troy: A Version of Sophocles' Philoctetes," Seamus Heaney.

"King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa," Adam Hochschild.

"The Imitation of Christ," Thomas a Kempis.

"Homage to Catalonia," George Orwell.

"The Evolution of Civilizations: An Introduction to Historical Analysis," Carroll Quigley.

"Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics," Reinhold Niebuhr.

"The Confessions of Nat Turner," William Styron.

"Politics as a Vocation," Max Weber.

"You Can't Go Home Again," Thomas Wolfe.

"Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny," Robert Wright.

"The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats," William Butler Yeats.
What? No "Blood Will Tell"? Or surely "The Boys Who Would Be Cubs"? I'm heartbroken. But I am excited to learn that our last elected president reads Thomas Wolfe and Bill Styron.

ABC News
  

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Bush Meets With Families of Fallen Soldiers

Apparently Dubya Reads Maureen Dowd After All. This is not really the occasion to make punditry-hay with a memorial service for fallen heroes, but not to note that Bush has suddenly chosen to publicly honor our war dead and their families after the hammering he's taken--and given--over the issue from his critics, led by Ms. Dowd, would be negligent journalism.
FORT CARSON, Colo., Nov. 24 — President Bush offered personal condolences on Monday to the families of 26 soldiers killed in Iraq, meeting privately with 98 parents, spouses, children and other relatives of the dead at a time when his handling of war casualties has become a political issue.

"I want to thank the families of the fallen soldiers who are here with us today," Mr. Bush said in an address to troops before the private meeting. "Our prayers are with you."

How to deal with the casualties of war is a quandary for any president, and particularly so for Mr. Bush, whose handling of Iraq has become a central issue in the presidential campaign. A further challenge, White House aides have said, is how to express sympathy for those killed without showing favoritism for one family over another or drawing attention to the mounting number of deaths.

Among the people he met after the speech here were family members of some of the 16 soldiers killed when a missile brought down a Chinook helicopter near Falluja on Nov. 2.

On the day of that attack, Mr. Bush, who was at his ranch in Texas, made no comment on the casualties, and the White House limited its response to a general statement of regret for all loss of life in the conflict.

The president's decision not to make a direct statement was seen by some of his critics as an effort to avoid political fallout from the mounting death toll in Iraq, and as part of a pattern in which the administration has also restricted photographers' access to scenes of coffins arriving in the United States.
In The New York Times...
  

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Tuesday, November 25, 2003

The New York Times’ "Starter Blog"

The New York Times is Blogging on the Q.T. The Venerable Grey Lady is putting her toes into the Blogosphere, testing the waters with one of her best, Nicholas Kristof. Go figure. Glenn Reynolds will choke on his rah rah cheer-babble taking his lame licks at this turn of the tables.
During the “Back to the Future” panel at the Online News Association conference this past weekend, NYTimes.com editor in chief Len Apcar said, “We have a starter blog. We’ve had it for a few months. I’ll let you figure out where it is. And we’ll have more.” For those wondering where it is as the New York Times figures out its blogging strategy, it's this page, where Nicholas D. Kristof, Op-Ed columnist for The Times, addresses reader e-mail and gives the story behind the column.
CyberJournalist.net
  

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So What's Up With Hezbollah?

Only In Love, War and Geopolitics, so go figure this. Honor among terrorists; or pragmatic expediency with a dollop of fear? Whatever it is, it is very interesting, to say the obvious. Me? I don't have a clue. Do you? Or maybe that guy over there waiting for a bus? Ask him.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 — Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite group, has established a significant presence in Iraq, but is not taking part in attacks on American forces inside the country, according to current and former United States officials and Arabs familiar with the organization.

Iran is believed to be restraining Hezbollah from attacking American troops, and that is prompting a debate within the Bush administration about Iran's objectives, administration officials said.

Hezbollah's presence has become a source of concern as it is recognized by counterterrorist experts to have some of the most dangerous operatives in the world.

Both American and Israeli intelligence have found evidence that Hezbollah operatives have established themselves in Iraq, according to current and former United States officials. Separately, Arabs in Lebanon and elsewhere who are familiar with the organization say Hezbollah has sent what they describe as a security team of up to 90 members to Iraq.

The organization has steered clear of attacks on Americans, the American officials and Arabs familiar with Hezbollah agree. United States intelligence officials said Hezbollah operatives were believed to have arrived in Iraq soon after the end of major combat operations last spring, and had refrained from attacks on Americans ever since. The Central Intelligence Agency has not seen a major influx of Hezbollah operatives since that time, officials added.

"Hezbollah has moved to establish a presence inside Iraq, but it isn't clear from the intelligence reports what their intent is," one administration official said.

Based in Lebanon, Hezbollah is a Shiite Islamic group that is under Tehran's control. Syria, which dominates Lebanon and controls Hezbollah's supply lines from Iran, also plays a powerful role with the group. ...

In recent months, American troops have faced a deadly guerrilla campaign waged largely by the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party government in the Sunni-dominated region of central Iraq. Some foreign Arab fighters are believed to have infiltrated Iraq, but their role in attacks against American troops now appears to be less significant than United States military and intelligence officials originally believed.

But Iran's role in Iraq's Shiite community has been a wild card for the Bush administration. Shiite-dominated Iran has a strong interest in influencing the political and religious direction of the country, particularly because some of the Shiite world's holiest sites are in the Iraqi cities of Karbala and Najaf. Iran's powerful clerical leaders are deeply concerned about which clerics emerge as the dominant figures in those cities, American officials say.

"We are very aware of the rivalry between Iranian Shia and Iraqi Shia for dominance in that community," one administration official said. "It's possible that Hezbollah is there to help the Iraqis politically, to work in the Shia community," and have no plans for terrorist attacks against Americans, the official added. ...

Another critical concern of the Iranians is the American policy toward the People's Mujahedeen, an anti-Iranian terrorist group that operated for years on the Iraqi side of the border under the protection of Mr. Hussein's government.

Since the American occupation of the country, the Bush administration has been deeply divided over how to handle this group. Pentagon officials and conservatives inside and outside the administration have been open to the idea of using it against the Iranians, but State Department officials have argued that the group should be disarmed and rendered ineffective to improve relations with Iran. ...

"I think it is a little bit of the carrot and the stick," said one administration official. "They want a dialogue, and they also want to get their hands on" members of the Mujahedeen.

"I think sending Hezbollah to Iraq is about Iran's desire for us to take them seriously, both in terms of their interests in Iraq and their broader concerns in the Middle East," observed one former American official familiar with the intelligence reports on Hezbollah's presence in Iraq. "They want a dialogue with us, and they are signaling they can help us or hurt us."
In The New York Times...
  

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Monday, November 24, 2003

The Second Front In World War III, A Report

The Other War: a truly fine writer and reporter, The New York Times' David Rhode writes with verve, telling detail, color and insight about the "other war" American troops are fighting and dying in, Afghanistan, as the Taliban is slowly but surely staging a comeback attempt. I will quote just enough to hook you with David's prose and then hope you click onto the rest of a great piece of writing and war reporting.
LOZANO RIDGE, Afghanistan, Nov. 23 — As Sgt. First Class Vernon Story's column of Humvees climbed a desolate ridge a mile from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border here on Sunday morning, the sergeant got the feeling that someone was watching. The five unexploded land mines he and his men had found along this same ridge in a firefight with Taliban rebels here less than two months ago lingered in his mind.

"Hey, don't be driving down the tracks," Sergeant Story warned his driver.

Just after he spoke, the front of his Humvee abruptly lurched into the air as a mine or remote-controlled bomb detonated under the right front tire. It severed the lower left leg of a young soldier in the front passenger seat and tossed the 6,000-pound vehicle violently on its side. Sergeant Story, seven soldiers and four journalists traveling with them in the back of vehicle were thrown to the ground.

Scrambling to his feet, his face cut, the sergeant cursed, suspected an ambush and ordered his men to fire at the surrounding hillsides.

No one shot back.

So went a typical engagement in the grinding conflict for the 10,000 American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, overshadowed by the larger conflict in Iraq.

Casualties are not as high here, but fatal clashes with a shadowy enemy continue.
In The New York Times...
  

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Safire: Missing Links Found

Safire Thinks He's Found Al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein Missing Links, and it's not improbable that he has. Or rather he leads us to sources he believes have found the links; he's a wonderful and honest wordsmith and he does not claim to have done the investigative journalism he points us toward. Of course, he's also honest enough to display that he has a horse in this race: He wants Dubya & Company to be proven right. Well, being a brilliant wordsmith does not mean that the ideas expressed in that eloquent, pristine syntax can't be a modest load of wrong minded wishful thinking.
WASHINGTON — Two blockbuster magazine articles last week revealed evidence that Saddam's spy agency and top Qaeda operatives certainly were in frequent contact for a decade, and that there is renewed reason to suspect an Iraqi spymaster in Prague may have helped finance the 9/11 attacks.

On weeklystandard.com, you can find chunks of a 16-page letter by Under Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith, responding to a Senate Intelligence Committee request for evidence of Saddam-bin Laden collaboration. Fifty specific instances from C.I.A., N.S.A., F.B.I. and Pentagon files are described, many from 'sensitive reporting' never made public.

The Defense Department acknowledged the Oct. 27 letter included a classified annex of 'raw reports or products' of U.S. intelligence agencies on 'the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,' cautioning that it 'drew no conclusions.' But with so much connective tissue exposed — some the result of 'custodial interviews' of prisoners — the burden of proof has shifted to those still grimly in denial. ...

Deniers derogate as "cherry picking" Feith's intelligence summary available to senators: "The Czech counterintelligence service reported that the Sept. 11 hijacker [Mohamed] Atta met with the former Iraqi intelligence chief in Prague, al Ani, on several occasions. During one of those meetings, al Ani ordered the IIS [Iraq Intelligence Service] finance officer to issue Atta funds from IIS financial holdings in the Prague office."

If true, that would implicate Saddam's regime in the murder of 3,000 Americans. Though the C.I.A. can confirm two Atta trips to Prague, in 1994 and 2000, it cannot confirm the two other visits the Czechs reported, including one on April 9, 2001, with Saddam's top European agent, al-Ani, then vice consul in Prague. C.I.A. chief George Tenet testified that the meeting reported by the Czech service was "possible," but the F.B.I. floated hints that car rental records showed Atta to be traveling between Virginia and Florida that week.

Enter the writer Edward Jay Epstein in the liberal online journal Slate: "All these reports attributed to the FBI were, as it turns out, erroneous. There were no car rental records in Virginia, Florida, or anywhere else in April 2001 for Mohamed Atta, since he had not yet obtained his Florida license." You cannot rent a car without a driver's license.

Epstein went to Prague this month to interview Czech officials who want to cooperate with the U.S. to get to the bottom of the Atta-Iraqi story but have been stiffed by the F.B.I., whose bureaucracy is sensitive to charges of failed surveillance. Read his detailed Slate report and subsequent commentary on edwardjayepstein.com.

Since July, al-Ani has been in U.S. Department of Justice custody and I wonder how effectively he is being interrogated. Have we learned the whereabouts of his Prague and Baghdad aides and secretaries, and taken their testimony? Have we asked M.I.5 to let us speak to Jabir Salim, his Prague station-chief predecessor, who defected to Britain and may know which employees and which banks could transfer $100,000 to an account accessible to Atta? ...

F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller is duty-bound to examine the full transcript of the interrogation to see how seriously this is being pursued; same with Senate Intelligence. I'd also assign new agents to follow up leads in Prague.

Intrepid journalists will ultimately bring the full story of the Saddam-bin Laden connection to light. In the meantime, the F.B.I. should stop treating 9/11 as a cold case.
In The New York Times...
  

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Good News Is Usually Bad News To Someone Else

"South of the Border, Down China Way," the new words to an old song? It is a sad song, really. Success coming at the expense of others--must it always be that way? Of course, there is an answer to the problem, radical though it will sound to almost all--Mexico should become part of the United States. Ouch! The curses from all sides hurt the ears even in cyber space. But, it will happen someday; it is inevitable in the march of time and progress. I'm serious.

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- It's a trade war being fought in the streets: Mexico's army of 1.6 million street vendors is resisting police attempts to confiscate imports from China, and the government has responded with everything from buy-Mexican ads to a special anti-import police squad.

Long known for the work of its artisans, Mexico now imports such handicrafts as painted figurines of Mexican saints and leather sandals from China. This year, China also displaced Mexico as the second-biggest exporter to the U.S. market, leaving Mexicans feeling cheated and worried the country is being left behind.

"It's not just fear, it's panic," said Mexico City historian Lorenzo Meyer. "We were supposed to be the ones moving ahead. We had free-market reforms, and now we're losing out to a communist-run country. In 500 years, this country has never been able to get ahead economically."

Newspapers regularly run stories on the threat. "The Chinese want Mexico's oil," "Chinese products proliferate in handicraft markets," and "Border factories fight Chinese threat" are just a few recent examples.

The damage is everywhere. China is producing statuettes of Mexico's patron saint, the Virgin of Guadalupe. And plastic Chinese flip-flops are the preferred footwear in many parts of rural Mexico, replacing Mexican leather sandals that had been worn here for centuries.

In the north-central state of Guanajuato, dozens of shoemaking businesses have closed recently, including Botas Fox, the family business of President Vicente Fox. Shoemakers complain they are being driven out of business by cheap Chinese imports.

"We just can't compete with the labor costs," said Sandra Santamaria, project director for Mexico's Apparel Industry Chamber. "Labor in China costs 48 cents per hour, and in Mexico it's $1.20." ...

Some Mexicans blame themselves. "We've never been able to defend ourselves against the Americans, or the Chinese," said one anti-import sign posted outside a Mexican clothing store. "But, then again, we haven't seen any Chinese. All we see are disloyal Mexicans who don't want to pay for Mexican goods." ...

The Chinese have argued Mexico should improve its own products, rather than complaining about other countries.

"China was inundated with foreign products, but we did not blame those countries. Instead, we learned how to produce like them," said Xingmin Yin, the deputy director of Fudan University's China Center for Economic Studies in Shanghai.
Syracuse.com
  

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Roll Over Vladimir, Tell Mao Zedong the News: Baseball In China

Glory Be! Baseball In China! My life is now almost complete: Baseball in China! Truly amazing. I went over to Tsinghua University a few weeks ago to watch an intramural game and while the baseball was bad, the spirit was wonderful. Frankly, baseball was the only thing I missed about the States in the year-and-a-half we've been in China. I have always managed to live my life since childhood with feet firmly planted in what many think are two disparate worlds: The Intellectual and The Jock. I was lucky enough to get to pl