Putting aside the questions about the report's methodology, the argument they are making is stupid even using the report's own terms or reference.
They frame the issue in Bush's favor by looking at the NUMBER of terrorist attacks vs. the number of casulaties they create as the benchmark for success.
So, using their dumb methodology (quantity over quality), a small-scale attack that broke some guy's arm is EQUIVALENT to the 9/11 attacks in importance.
No serious or honest person would agree with that, obviously.
Another analogy would be, for example, saying that because the ONLY terrorist attack recorded in a given year was some Al Qaeda operative detonating a nuclear device in Chicago and killing hundreds of thousands of people, vs the previous year in which 1000 small-scale attacks occurs, it's is an indication Al Qaeda is on the run and that we are "winning" the war on terror.
I don't know about you, but that single nuclear attack would be a hell of a lot more of an indication that we are FAILING in the war on terror, than 1000 mini-attacks that only kill a few dozen people.
So, I guess if they want to frame the debate in a way that makes them look like a complete idiots, they can be my guest.
Also, according to the report they keep citing, there were 1898 total CASUALTIES from terrorist attacks in the entirety2003. That includes Deaths AND injuries.
"The Army will prevent soldiers in units set to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan from leaving the service at the end of their terms, a top general said Wednesday.
The announcement, an expansion of an Army program called "stop-loss," means that thousands of soldiers who had expected to retire or otherwise leave the military will have to stay on for the duration of their deployment to those combat zones.
The expansion affects units that are 90 days away or less from deploying, said Lt. Gen. Frank L. "Buster" Hagenbeck, the Army's deputy chief of staff for personnel. Commanders have the ability to make exceptions for soldiers with special circumstances; otherwise, soldiers won't be able to leave the service or transfer from their unit until they return to their home base after the deployment.
The move will allow the Army to keep units together as they deploy, Hagenbeck said. Units with new recruits or recently transferred soldiers would not perform as well because the troops would not have had time to work together.
"The rationale is to have cohesive, trained units going to war together," Hagenbeck said.
Previously, the Army had prevented soldiers from leaving certain units scheduled for deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq. But Wednesday's move is the first time since Sept. 11, 2001, that the stop-loss program has been ordered so widely.
The announcement comes as the Army is struggling to find fresh units to continue the occupation of Iraq. Almost every Army combat unit has faced or will face deployment there or in Afghanistan, and increased violence has forced the deployment of an additional 20,000 troops to the region, straining units even further.
Some criticize the stop-loss program as contrary to the concept of an all-volunteer military force. Soldiers planning to retire and get on with their lives now face months away from their families and homes.
In an opinion piece in Wednesday's New York Times, Andrew Exum, a former Army captain who served under Hagenbeck in the 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan, called the treatment of soldiers under stop-loss programs "shameful."
"Many, if not most, of the soldiers in this latest Iraq-bound wave are already veterans of several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan," he wrote. "They have honorably completed their active duty obligations. But like draftees, they have been conscripted to meet the additional needs in Iraq."
Better watch your back, Captain Exum. PeePers, and Swift Boat liars don't take too kindly to traitors like you pointing out the facts about our President.
"WASHINGTON, D.C., The United States Navy, today, sent a Cease and Desist letter to the political group "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" asking them to stop using the U.S. Navy logo on their website, and misrepresenting themselves as being officially affiliated or endorsed by the Navy.*
"We have a long tradition of remaining absolutely neutral in political matters," said Navy Spokesman Captain James Meyerson. "More importantly, it's a violation of federal law for the Navy to endorse any political campaign or cause," according to Meyerson.
Critics of the political group note that it is particularly ironic that it misused the Navy logo on its website, while at the same time sending the Kerry campaign its own "cease and desist" letter asking him to stop using a group photo from Kerry's Vietnam stint that shows a number of the group's members.
"They're a bunch of political hacks who only care about smearing John Kerry and propping up George W. Bush," said a source close to the Bush campaign who is insufferably pleased with how gullible and stupid the Swift Boat group has turned out to be, and only spoke on condition that his name not be used. "Boy, are they fools. We are slashing veterans benefits left and right in the next budget once the President gets re-elected. And these suckers are doing our dirty work for free!"
The Kerry campaign refused to comment, citing more important issues like the continuing problematic occupation in Iraq, spiraling health care costs, insufficient job creation, and a ballooning federal budget deficit, that are occupying the candidate and the campaign's time."
That should generate oodles and oodles of fun over there.
"More alarmingly, my Hotmail account had been broken into, and I couldn't access my e-mail. Random people in my in-box whom I hadnÂ?t spoken to in months suddenly started getting calls from reporters. My father called to tell me someone had tried the same thing with his account, but that his security software had intercepted them and tracked them back to a rogue computer address in Washington, D.C. When I finally got back into my account, assuming the hacker was a Republican, I changed my password to Â?Bushsucksdick.Â?
Indeed.
UPDATE: Incidentally, Alex, if you are reading this, e-mail me for an interview if you feel up to it. I don't think your "friend" who spread the rumor should be let off the hook. I also believe that her ties with Tom DeLay and the GOP should be explored. Why was the rumor started? Who's idea was it? Did DeLay or the Bush campaign know about it ahead of time? Did Karl Rove?
ALSO: The New York Post, predictably, focuses on the hard questioning Alex received from Kerry's campaign spokesperson about the affair, rather than the FALSE allegation their own complicity in pushing it (along with that of their BOSS, Rupert Murdoch).
But, you know it's true because there is no way in hell we'd reveal, publicly, that we broke Iran's codes unless they already knew that.
UPDATE: OK. Apparently, U.S. officials didn;t want the "code breaking" info made public, but acceded to it once it started surfacing in various news stories.
Also, according to the story Atrios excerpts, Chalabi apparently told the Iranians that their codes had been broken after he learned of the information from a "drunken" american official.
Wouldn't it just be, well, ironic if it was Bush himself falling off the wagon to drink some champagne with Chalabi over Saddam's capture who revelaed the information?
All original material published on this site is copyrighted by the author.
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Monday, May 31, 2004:
TERROR COGNITO:Remember that report issued by the State Department a while back claiming that 2003 saw the fewest number of terrorist incidents resulting in deaths or serious bodily injury since 1969? Supposedly, this was a sign that George W. Bush's strategy against terrorism is working.
"As to the accusation that Chalabi has endangered American national security by slipping secrets to Tehran, I can only say that three days ago, I broke my usual rule and had a "deep background" meeting with a very "senior administration official." This person, given every opportunity to signal even slightly that I ought to treat the charges seriously, pointedly declined to do so. I thought I should put this on record."
Hmmm...a "very 'senior administration official'" huh? Hopefully it wasn't the same guy who slipped Chalabi that highly sensitive intelligence on our troop positions and movements, which he later passed on to the Iranians. Too bad we have no idea who Hitch is talking about, because he won't name him.
But, I'm not so sure I'd trust the inferences of, say, Donald Rumsfeld or Dick Cheney on this matter. And neither would anybody else, which explains why Hitch didn't tell us who he talked to.
"Laur[ie] Myroie, author of "Bush vs. the Beltway," and critical of the CIA handling of Iraq, blamed Allawi for what she said was faulty intelligence that endangered the U.S. troops at the end of the Gulf War. The United States plans to turn over power to Iraqis by July 1. We are all hoping to see reasonable, honest people in power; we do not want to see another potential Saddam."
Hmmmm....
On the one hand, I think Laurie Mylroie is a certifiable nutcase.
On the other hand, the comment I posted above says that Allawi is basically a fraud, who worked with saddam Hussein until Hussein turned against him. (Also note in the above link that Mylroie herself posted that comment, and seems to endorse it -- the second "comment" link I posted was to the original article).
Most importantly, the physician who wrote the comment allegedly went to medical school with Allawi, and claims that he's Ahmed Chalabi's COUSIN!
Things get weirder and weirder every day in the Republic of FUBAR.
"At a well-appointed conservative think tank in downtown Washington and across the Potomac River at the Pentagon, FBI agents have begun paying quiet calls on prominent neoconservatives, who are being interviewed in an investigation of potential espionage, according to intelligence sources. Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified information about the plans of the U.S. government and military?
The Iraqi neocon favorite, tipped to lead his liberated country post-invasion, has been identified by the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency as an Iranian double agent, passing secrets to that citadel of the "axis of evil" for decades. All the while the neocons cosseted, promoted and arranged for more than $30 million in Pentagon payments to the George Washington manqué of Iraq. In return, he fed them a steady diet of disinformation, and in the run-up to the war he sent various exiles to nine nations' intelligence agencies to spread falsehoods about weapons of mass destruction. If the administration had wanted other material to provide a rationale for invasion, no doubt that would have been fabricated. Either Chalabi perpetrated the greatest con since the Trojan horse or he was the agent of influence for the most successful intelligence operation conducted by Iran, or both.
The CIA and other U.S. agencies had long ago decided that Chalabi was a charlatan, so their dismissive and correct analysis of his lies prompted their suppression by the Bush White House. In place of the normal channels of intelligence vetting, a jury-rigged system was hastily constructed, running from the office of the vice president to the newly created Office of Special Plans inside the Pentagon, staffed by fervent neocons. CIA Director George Tenet, possessed with the survival instinct of the inveterate staffer, ceased protecting the sanctity of his agency and cast in his lot with Cheney et al. Secretary of State Colin Powell, resistant internally but eventually overcome, decided to become the most ardent champion, unveiling a series of neatly manufactured lies before the United Nations. Last week Powell declared, "It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that I'm disappointed, and I regret it." But who had "deliberately" misled him? He did not say. Now the FBI is investigating espionage, fraud and by implication treason."
"[T]he former president says Kerry's smart not to comment on every development.
Clinton says Kerry should be focused on letting "the American people get to know him...what he's for, what he wants to do, and then clarify, on his terms, the differences between himself and the president."
Hear that? So...chill out!
ADDENDUM: And speaking of Bill Clinton, at least one conservative commentator appreciates Bill Clinton's foresight about where the world economy was heading, and applied the lessons to the rearing and education of his own children.
I'm not saying he shouldn't. I'm suggesting that he shouldn't have said he was.
The best strategy was to leave everybody guessing, and make the coverage of his "acceptance speech" a true NEWS event that people will be motivated to watch, just to see what happens.
UPDATE: This is another piece of a puzzle that indicates to me that Zarqawi is in fact an American agent.
He's being pumped up as part of a disinformation campaign by the CIA in order to gather intelligence against terrorist operations. He's got to be given credibility in the eyes of terrorists, so he's credited with all sorts of evil deeds.
That would explain his "letter" to Bin Laden offering an alliance, and complaining about how successful the U.S. was in Iraq.
It would explain why his terrorist camp wasn't bombed before the Iraq war.
It would explain why his name was grafted onto the Nick Berg video, and why other people unaffiliated with Al Qaeda were arrested for the crime. (How did they even know who these people were?)
It explains why, despite his being terrorist bogeyman number one right now, he's not listed on the most wanted list. And it cannot be because he's dead. They still list Mohammed Atef, even though he was supposedly killed in Afghanistan.
"The questioning of hundreds of Iraqi prisoners last fall in the newly established interrogation center at Abu Ghraib prison yielded very little valuable intelligence, according to civilian and military officials.
[...]
[C]ivilian and military intelligence officials, as well as top commanders with access to intelligence reports, now say they learned little about the insurgency from questioning inmates at the prison. Most of the prisoners held in the special cellblock that became the setting for the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib apparently were not linked to the insurgency, they said.
All of the prisoners sent to Abu Ghraib had already been questioned by the troops who captured them for urgent information about roadside bombs, imminent attacks and the like."
"Richard Perle, until recently a powerful adviser to U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, described U.S. policy in post-war Iraq as a failure.
"I would be the first to acknowledge we allowed the liberation (of Iraq) to subside into an occupation. And I think that was a grave error, and in some ways a continuing error," said Perle, former chair of the influential Defence Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon."
Josh Marshall is going to have lots of fun with that quote.
But, according to this article, French Preisdent, Jacques Chirac is also 6'0" tall. And, assumming that politcians would never underestimate their height, that little tidbit made this photograph very interesting to me:
Hmmm.....which one is taller in this photo?
And since it looks like Bush is the one in the foreground, there's no need to adjust for perspective.
Things like this make one wonder whether the President and his aides have a PATHOLOGICAL need to lie under any circumstance to make the Preisdent look better.
UPDATE: If the photographic evidence isn't sufficient for some people, we could easily settle this one way or the other by referring to George W. Bush's listed height in his military personnel records.
I haven't been able to find it so far, so if anyone can come up with it, I'd appreciate it.
UPDATE: Apparently, when people claim that George W. Bush "grew in office," they are being literal.
"DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources reveal that US counter-terrorist authorities are focusing on tracking down two key suspects: a 32-year old Pakistani woman called Aafaya Siddiqui, doctor of neurology who attended a university in the Boston area, and Adnan G. Al Shukrijmah, an al Qaeda activist known to have spent time in Florida.
Our sources add that American and foreign counter-terror and intelligence agencies are also hunting for Midaat Mursi, known as Abu Khabab, prominent member of al Qaeda’s operational partner, the Egyptian Jihad Islami, who is considered the organization’s top expert on radiological bombs. Mursi heads a number of terrorist rings who have been instructed to infiltrate the United States through Canada for a dirty bomb attack. They may have made the crossing already.
[...]
Several sleeper cells are also known to have infiltrated the United States in ship’s containers in 2003 and early this year. Some of these containers were spotted at important US ports with signs of occupation by men with weapons and explosives who were never caught. They may have been decoys to distract attention from landings of large parties of armed terrorists on American shores, whom intelligence sources believe headed undetected for safe houses inland to await orders to strike."
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PATRIOT GAMES: Kevin Drumm notices an article in the Sydney Morning Herald where Author Tom Clancy admits that prior to the Iraq war, he and Richard Perle "almost came to blows" in an encounter over the adviseability of the war.
Then check out the Bush campaign website urging people to send letters with that exact phrase to their local newspapers.
Contact the newspapers that were duped into running Bush campaign spam, and let them know they've been punk'd. Do so especially if any of them are your local papers.
(Thanks to reader S.G. for the tip).
UPDATE: After notifying the Waukesha (WI) Freeman that they published one of these letters, I received this response:
"Thank you for your e-mail.
The Freeman's policy on publishing letters has been and will always be to publish all opinions of our readers. Using a "pre-fab" line in a letter doesn't change the writer's opinion --and usually not the reader's, either.
Using one political "spam phrase" is no different than using any other common or well-known phrase, such as calling people who are pro-life "anti-choice," or calling pro-choicers "pro-abortionists" or "pro-death." These are also politically motivated phrases used to inflame, villify or validate their own point of view. The Freeman will not censor reader's letters for these type of phrases, as we stand firmly behind our readers1 First Amendment rights.
The Freeman has a long-standing policy of printing all legitimate letters to the editor. That's why we ask for a name, address and phone number--to verify the authenticity of the letter writer. Using an Internet-generated phrase within a letter of opinion will not change our policy.
Thank you, again, for your concern and interest.
terrie peret, edit. assistant Waukesha Freeman"
Here is what I wrote in response:
"That's fine. I would like you to print a notice, however, that the opinions expressed in such letters were pre-drafted and are part of a mass produced letter-writing campaign, and are not the original words or thoughts of the writer, even if they agree with what is expressed in the letter.
Original thoughts and words by individual readers carry more weight with others than pre-fabbed, unoriginal letters repeating the same thing over and over again in newspapers across the country.
The people who submit such letters should not get the benefit of people's expectations that the letters were original or that they were submitted by the author.
It is incumbant upon the editors of news publications to inform their readers about this important information, especially if they choose to publish the letters. Otherwise, you are defrauding your readers."
Let's see if they respond.
Send me any other responses you get from any of the publications that got conned. Make sure that any newspapers in swing states, especially, are notified.
UPDATE: The editor told me that they would print a letter from a reader outlining my concerns about the Bush campaign Astroturf.
If anyone is interested, they can do so. USE your own words and thoughts, however. (For obvuious reasons). Make sure you lay out the case for why the letter is fake (using the appropriate links and evidence), and why it's bad for our Democracy.
Send your letter to Terrie Peret, the paper's assistant editor:
tperet@conleynet.com
Tell them you are doing so at my (and their) invitation. I'd prefer thay you be a resident of Wisconsin, if possible.
Be polite, thoughtful and succinct. Make sure the letter is appropriate for publication.
ADDENDUM: Here's the link to the astrotruf letter they published so you can reference it in your e-mail.
