Needlenose

I don’t know what to make of this, so I have no comments to add, but this may be a subject to watch:

7 more cases of mystery illness

Military trying to identify malady that killed lake area soldier

By Marsha Paxson

Lake Sun

LAKE OF THE OZARKS — Seven more soldiers in Iraq have contracted the same puzzling illness that has killed two soldiers, including one from the lake area.

The latest cases bring the number of affected troops to 19. All have been evacuated to the same Landstuhl, Germany, hospital where Spec. Josh Neusche, 20, of Montreal was treated before he died July 12.

It is believed Neusche contracted the illness, first thought to be pneumonia, while conducting cleanup operations with the 203rd Engineer Battalion in Baghdad.

“The Army Surgeon General confirmed that three or four of the soldier’s in Josh’s unit are among those who got sick,” Sen. Ike Skelton told the Lake Sun Tuesday. “I know Josh was stationed in Baghdad when he got sick but I still do not know what unit the second soldier (who died of the mysterious illness) was in, what his job was or where he was working when he became ill.”

. . . When Neusche’s parents arrived in Germany on July 9, the illness had already begun ravaging his muscles, liver and kidneys. Neusche died in an ambulance on the way to another hospital for dialysis.

Cindi and Mark Neusche said that as they watched their son’s health get worse, they noticed other soldiers were beginning to fill nearby hospital rooms.

Acute respiratory distress syndrome, which mimics some of the symptoms exhibited by the ailing soldiers usually targets the lungs and is not known to break down other organs.

It’s probably become apparent to Needlenose readers that Swopa is the rational, high-brow blogger, and you can only expect low-brow dreck from me. So in that tradition, I’ll offer some humor, currently making it’s rounds through the email circuit:

Explaining the invasion of Iraq to your kids

EXPLAINING FOREIGN POLICY IN THE SIMPLEST TERMS:
Q: Daddy, why did we have to attack Iraq?
A: Because they had weapons of mass destruction honey.

Q: But the inspectors didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction.
A: That’s because the Iraqis were hiding them.

Q: And that’s why we invaded Iraq?
A: Yep. Invasions always work better than inspections.

Q: But after we invaded them, we STILL didn’t find any weapons of
mass destruction, did we?
A: That’s because the weapons are so well hidden. Don’t worry, we’ll
find something, probably right before the 2004 election.

Q: Why did Iraq want all those weapons of mass destruction?
A: To use them in a war, silly.

Q: I’m confused. If they had all those weapons that they planned to
use in a war, then why didn’t they use any of those weapons when we
went to war with them?
A: Well, obviously they didn ‘t want anyone to know they had those
weapons so they chose to die by the thousands rather than defend
themselves.

Q: That doesn’t make sense Daddy. Why would they choose to die if
they had all those big weapons to fight us back with?
A: It’s a different culture. It’s not supposed to make sense.

Q: I don’t know about you, but I don’t think they had any of those
weapons our government said they did.
A: Well, you know, it doesn’t matter whether or not they had those
weapons. We had another good reason to invade them anyway.

Q: And what was that?
A: Even if Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, Saddam
Hussein was cruel dictator, which is another good reason to invade
another country.

Q: Why? What does a cruel dictator do that makes it OK to invade his
country?
A: Well!, f or one thing, he tortured his own people.

Having just uncorked a long, doomsaying post last weekend on the subject, I’m at least somewhat encouraged to report that North Korea appears to be slightly backing down from its confrontational stance in dealing with the United States.

One of the minor skirmishes that has kept this issue stalemated has been North Korea’s insistence on discussing it directly with the U.S. (wanting the ego boost of being seen as an equal at the negotiating table), while the Bush administration has wanted to bring in as many other countries as possible, including South Korea, China, and Japan. Apparently, the North Koreans are now saying that it’s willing to go the multi-party route, with Russia thrown in for good measure. (I don’t recall Russia’s name being brought into this before — I’m curious whether the North Koreans see their inclusion as a compromise or advantage of some sort.)

Unfortunately, just agreeing on a tentative way to talk about the issue is a long way from actually resolving it. Given how this development is being played as a success for the Bushites’ bluffing strategy, it’s entirely possible that they will sink any further progress by standing even firmer on their policy of not making any concessions, thinking it’s only a matter of time before the North Koreans cave in entirely. This response would be entirely in keeping with the policy paralysis that I described in the previous post, based on Bush’s moralistic inability to deal with North Korea in a rational way.

Also, as longtime experts in posturing and misleading tactics, the North Koreans might have a surprise waiting when these multi-country negotiations begin. They intentionally sabotaged the last set of discussions by announcing that they had nuclear weapons (which is not yet known to be true) and pointedly daring the U.S. to do anything about it. What if they hold a nuclear test — removing the last shred of doubt about their capabilities — just as the six nations are gathering to talk?

Reader Kevin Whelan emailed me the link to an article in the American Journalism Review on Judith Miller, and it’s a sad sight indeed. I thought poor Judith was making progress, but judging from this article there’s a lot of backsliding going on:

In an interview with AJR, she insistently defended every aspect of her reporting, saying again and again how proud she is of her exclusive stories. . . . “I think we beat everybody in the field,” she says, referring to her competition, “and what we’re getting now is a lot of sour grapes.”

What can I say? I tried to tell you all that the overzealous pursuit of scoops was Miller’s core problem a month ago. I guess she hasn’t broken that addiction yet.

The article goes on to discuss a story last fall about Iraq purchasing aluminum tubes as part of what Miller and a co-writer called “a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb” — a claim that has been thoroughly debunked:

… Judith Miller says that in her opinion that question remains unresolved. What she does dispute is the accusation that she was the passive recipient of an administration leak. “It took a good long time to get that story,” she says. “We were the first ones to have it. When it’s to the New York Times, it’s a leak; when other papers get it, it’s dogged reporting.“

Take the sarcasm away from that last sentence, Judith, because it’s true. Aside from your own admission that your “dogged reporting” largely consisted of begging for table scraps from Ahmed Chalabi, there’s the fact that less influential papers have to work harder for legitimate scoops, because they don’t get the agenda-promoting leaks that the Times and the Washington Post do. The AJR article describes how the process works:

On September 8, the Miller/Gordon story about the aluminum tubes appeared on page one of the New York Times. The information was attributed to unnamed administration sources. That same morning, Vice President Dick Cheney was interviewed by Tim Russert on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Cheney mentioned, vaguely at first, Saddam’s efforts “to acquire the equipment he needs to be able to enrich uranium to make the bombs.” Russert, familiar with the Times story, prompted his guest: “Aluminum tubes.”

Cheney replied: “Specifically aluminum tubes. There’s a story in the New York Times this morning–this is–I don’t–and I want to attribute the Times. I don’t want to talk about, obviously, specific intelligence sources, but it’s now public that, in fact, he has been seeking to acquire…the kind of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge.”

When Bob Simon [of CBS News] heard about this interview, he told me, he smelled a rat. “You leak a story to the New York Times,” he says, “and the New York Times prints it, and then you go on the Sunday shows quoting the New York Times and corroborating your own information. You’ve got to hand it to them. That takes, as we say here in New York, chutzpah.”

(By the way, wasn’t it nice of Tim Russert to be so helpful to Cheney, showing none of the skepticism he famously applies when browbeating Democrats?)

Meanwhile, here’s the quid Miller got for her quo of playing a key role in the administration’s nuclear scare campaign:

In the weeks leading up to the war, Miller pulled off a journalistic coup that took her competitors by surprise. She talked her way into getting a secret clearance from the Pentagon and then being embedded with the 75th Exploitation Task Force in Iraq, whose teams were specially trained and equipped to look for germ, chemical and nuclear-related materials. In March, when Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times began seeing Miller’s stories about the activities of this special unit, he realized that “she was in a great position to get the initial confirmation in the field” when Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were found, as everyone assumed they would be.

See? There’s the payoff. Cozy up to the folks in power by telling the stories they want told, and they give you the “scoops” you so desperately crave. If any WMD had actually been found, Miller probably would be up for another Pulitzer right now.

As I was saying in late April, that’s how you create the equivalent of Pravda in a democratic, capitalist society. All you have have to do is accept the deal, and stop worrying about what the truth is.

A campaign against the guerrilla warfare in Iraq? No, silly, we mean against the opponent that really matters to Dubya and his team — his declining poll numbers.

They made clear that one would start soon last week, kicked it off with a speech by Dick Cheney, and now it’s in full swing.

For example, if you find that knocking off Saddam Hussein’s sons gives you a small bounce, be sure to flood the media with one report after another that you’re hot on the trail of the big guy himself.

Then launch a flanking assault by reminding the public of the evil terrorists ready to strike again at any moment. That’ll remind ‘em to cling to their government for protection, and not to say disloyal things about their fearless president. (Stories like this will be an easy sell to your favorite, most easily duped reporters.)

Between excited anticipation and fear, they’ll forget all about those dying U.S. soldiers and that stalled economy . . . for a while, anyway . . .

I’ll be posting later today (more about our good friend Judith Miller, and hopefully some more items of interest) . . . but in the meantime, be sure to drop by The Likely Story, which has had several outstanding posts just in the last few days — all typically thoughtful, and not merely regurgitating the same fodder that others have blogged to death.

Various posts dig deeper into the Bush administration’s pre-September 11th failures, the crackdown on troops who criticized Dubya and Rumsfeld, the trap the administration’s pro-war neoconservatives have created for themselves, and more. If they weren’t all so involving, I’d have posted something here by now! So blame them — either before or after you pay a visit.

It’s common knowledge (among us sensible progressives, anyway) that George W. Bush is whacked-out — but exactly how? This is the implied topic of a post over at Calpundit, which in turn is spun off from an Associated Press article I mentioned yesterday and a column in Time magazine by Joe Klein, who says that the president “misleads not only the nation but himself.”

Some of the commenters over at Calpundit hit on important aspects of why Dubya seems so determined to ignore facts that are contrary to what he says:

(phil:). . . the messianic theory seems more plausible: he never amounted to much in life, but there’s no other explanation for how he could have become president at this critical moment (9/11) in American history besides having been personally chosen by Jesus himself. And since his power is the product of divine intervention, he can do no wrong.

(Barry:). . . if I were able to get away with failure, lies and BS as much as Bush has, I’d probably be the same. His whole life is one in which failure was somebody else’s problem.

As no stranger to psychoanalyzing Dubya myself, I think another big factor is fear — rather than admit he’s incapable of judging complex issues, he grabs a simplistic answer and tries to bluff his way through.

But let’s get one thing straight. When George Bush is asked (as the Time article mentions) about whether he accepts responsibility for the falsehoods in the State of the Union, and he answers by saying he takes responsibility for removing Saddam, he knows he’s evading the question — that he’s being dishonest. That he’s lying. Joe Klein is the one who’s deluding himself on that count.

backlash?
more tips
idleness
First, the latest bad news — 2 more U.S. soldiers probably killed this morning in Iraq, on top of 5 killed over the weekend:

A U.S. officer at the scene told Reuters that two of his men had been badly wounded in the attack but declined to say whether they had died. Iraqi police said the two were dead.

A military spokesman had no official comment.

Soldiers surrounded the Humvee after the attack with rifles at the ready. One soldier was slumped motionless in the back seat of the vehicle and another lay in the road. Neither received any medical attention and they were later driven away in the back of a truck, one covered in blood.

. . . Local witnesses said the grenade was dropped on the vehicle from a bridge at a major intersection.

The incident highlighted how easy it is for guerrillas to attack U.S. troops. The grenade was dropped on a heavily armed convoy and the assailant quickly melted away in an area that was not densely populated.

But according to official spokesmen, if you don’t mind the corpses, the U.S is actually having great success against the guerrillas, even if they have to use some questionable tactics:

Col. David Hogg, commander of the 2nd Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, said tougher methods are being used to gather the intelligence. On Wednesday night, he said, his troops picked up the wife and daughter of an Iraqi lieutenant general. They left a note: “If you want your family released, turn yourself in.” Such tactics are justified, he said, because, “It’s an intelligence operation with detainees, and these people have info.” They would have been released in due course, he added later.

The tactic worked. On Friday, Hogg said, the lieutenant general appeared at the front gate of the U.S. base and surrendered.

[Update: Atrios points out that the above is probably a violation of the Geneva Conventions.]

. . . Senior U.S. commanders here are so confident about their recent successes that they have begun debating whether victory is in sight. “I think we’re at the hump” now, a senior Central Command official said. “I think we could be over the hump fairly quickly” — possibly within a couple of months, he added.

Hogg, whose troops are still engaged in combat every day, agreed. “I think we’re fixing to turn the corner,” he said Thursday. “I think the operations over the next couple of weeks will get us there.”

Meanwhile, the Shiite areas of Iraq continue to edge closer to open conflict, with rock-throwing protests in Karbala and increasingly militant rhetoric from a leading Shiite cleric. If the guerrilla attacks in the Sunni areas really are decreasing (albeit more deadly), then you can expect Shiite opposition to actually increase, since the goal of those instigating the resistance is to keep the U.S. from solidifying its occupation and being able to pursue genuine reconstruction projects that will begin to earn support from the Iraqi population.

unhappy Baathists
threats to Mosul informer or alternate version
unhappy in Karbala
unhappy in Najaf

I said a few days ago that the next step in the controversy over bogus Iraq intelligence would be to put the heat on national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Today, both the Washington Post and U.S. News magazine follow in exactly that path.

But they may be wrong in suggesting that Rice will be forced to resign. As this AP article aptly notes, being incompetent or dishonest while saying what Dubya wants to hear isn’t a firing offense in the Bush administration:

In the rising controversy over how the Bush administration built its case for war in Iraq, one curious fact stands out. Some who gave President Bush unwelcome information that turned out to be accurate are gone. Those who did the opposite are still around.

Former economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey, retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni and former Army chief of staff Gen. Eric Shinseki voiced concerns about the expense, aftermath and forces that would be needed — concerns now proving to be true. These men are no longer in the picture.

By contrast, nobody so far has come under apparent pressure to resign in the events that led up to the president’s mention in his State of the Union address in January of a British intelligence report that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa.

And in a cynical way, they’re probably right if their judgment is that actually firing any of these people would just cause the questioning to move up a step in the executive ladder (from Rice to Dick Cheney, and then Bush himself).

Besides, when it comes to people with access to inside intelligence information, sometimes they’re more dangerous when they’ve left government and don’t have to worry anymore about appearing loyal or protecting their jobs.

mouse image
NK reserves currently in IraqWell, Green Boy chided me the other day for not keeping up with developments in North Korea, so I got brave enough to look at what’s been going on. Just as feared, the answer is nothing . . . although that could change significantly for the worse very soon.

In a sense, there’s really no difference at all between the news reports of the past week, with North Korea making threatening claims about its nuclear intentions and the U.S government trying to look as unconcerned as possible, and the situation I described nearly seven months ago.

Except that, as I noted in February and March, this do-nothing “strategy” more or less begs North Korea to call our bluff by actually developing nuclear weapons, or at least the plutonium to make them — and by all indications, they’re now several months further down that road.

This situation has now officially scared the bejeezus out of longtime experts like former Defense Secretary William Perry:

“I think we are losing control” of the situation, said Perry, who believes North Korea soon will have enough nuclear warheads to begin exploding them in tests and exporting them to terrorists and other U.S. adversaries. “The nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities,” he said in an interview.

Perry added that he reached his conclusions after extensive conversations with senior Bush administration officials, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun and senior officials in China.

. . . As President Bill Clinton’s defense secretary, he oversaw preparation for airstrikes on North Korean nuclear facilities in 1994, an attack that was never carried out. He has remained deeply involved in Korean policy issues and is widely respected in national security circles, especially among senior military officers.

. . . Only last winter Perry publicly argued that the North Korea problem was controllable. Now, he said, he has grown to doubt that. “It was manageable six months ago if we did the right things,” he said. “But we haven’t done the right things.”

He added: “I have held off public criticism to this point because I had hoped that the administration was going to act on this problem, and that public criticism might be counterproductive. But time is running out, and each month the problem gets more dangerous.”

The reasons for this inaction? They’re no surprise to those of us who have written about our president’s tendency to base war-and-peace decisions on his personal neuroses and insecurity because he’s intellectually overwhelmed by the complexities of policymaking, and the out-of-control battles between subordinates that result:

The administration policy toward North Korea, however, has been characterized by fierce disputes among senior policymakers, which officials privately acknowledge have hampered the administration’s response. “There is an ongoing search for consensus within the administration itself,” said Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. “The lack of a consensus to a significant extent has prevented U.S. policy from unfolding.”

In a two-hour interview in his office at Stanford University, Perry said that after conversations with several senior administration officials from different areas of the government, he is persuaded that the Korea policy is in disarray. Showing some emotion, the usually reserved Perry said at one point, “I’m damned if I can figure out what the policy is.”

. . . From his discussions, Perry has concluded the president simply won’t enter into genuine talks with Pyongyang’s Stalinist government. “My theory is the reason we don’t have a policy on this, and we aren’t negotiating, is the president himself,” Perry said. “I think he has come to the conclusion that Kim Jong Il is evil and loathsome and it is immoral to negotiate with him.”

So that’s the long and short of it, I guess. Dubya thinks the North Korean dictator is icky, so he’d rather risk New York City or Washington, D.C., going up in a mushroom cloud than be seen as compromising with him.

The mental bankruptcy of this approach will become obvious if and when North Korea tests an actual nuclear weapon — which could happen by September 9, according to their latest threat/possible bluff. If it’s not a bluff, brace yourselves, because then we could have a real nightmare on our hands.