Northman's Fury

Given the early nature of the information on the attack, I can't make any real comments beyond the following:

1. Even a small group of relatively incompetent individuals can cause major disruptions, and

2. At some point, these groups are going to find someone who has the ability to turn vehicles into something that will actually do more than turn into a moderately impressive bonfire; something closer to the car bombs in Iraq or the truck bomb that destroyed the federal building in Oklahoma City.

It's good news that they found it in time. Bad news that it was there in the first place.

Update: I was thinking about writing something else about this, but Cernig at Newshoggers wrote a much more detailed and knowledgeable post than I'm capable of, so I'll just point you to him.

An interesting nugget regarding the story behind the killing of Spanish and Columbian peacekeepers in Lebanon last Sunday.

Previously, the UN has come under attack from Israeli forces, pro-Israeli guerrillas in southern Lebanon and, occasionally, from Palestinian and Hizbollah fighters. But the Hizbollah has been at great pains to try to protect the new UN force because they fear that just such an attack as occurred yesterday will prompt the US to claim falsely that it was their organisation - which is supported by Iran - that was responsible. In fact, intelligence officers from the French, Spanish and Italian embassies met secretly with Hizbollah officials in Sidon more than three weeks ago to seek assurances that Hizbollah would do their best, as the local armed militia, to protect the international force. The Hizbollah men agreed that they would do their best, but warned that al-Qa'ida-type groups in the Sunni areas of northern Lebanon may well try to breach their security. We shall now find out if America believes this - and it is the truth - or whether Western governments decide to blame Iran by claiming Hizbollah was behind the bombing of the UN troops.

The UN force has been there at the sufferance of Hezbollah since the beginning, but given the fact that this new beef-up force was sold as a form of protection for Hezbollah's enemies, to learn that the UN force itself is looking to Hezbollah to protect it . . . I just can't find the words.

It does put the whole Lebanese situation in a new light, though.

You had to know that he was looking forward to taking over the title of "Bush's Poodle" once Blair stepped down. But Blair has went and found himself a way to stay in the public eye for a little while longer. Of course, appointing a peace envoy who is best known for helping launch one of the stupidest wars in recent history doesn't seem like the best of ideas, but then Blair is in charge of the Israeli/Palestinian road map. When some of the major players wants the road map to succeed, having somebody with little credibility on the issue in charge of it makes more sense.

As for Harper, I'm sure he looks at this situation as one of those, "If at first you don't succeed . . .

It turns out even Republicans are beginning to realize the Iraq War wasn't such a great idea.

That really isn't too much of surprise. Screw things up for long enough, and even the faithful are going to eventually notice. The one polling point that did surprise me is this:

Fifty-four percent of Americans do not believe U.S. action in Iraq is morally justified.

So a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the US, based on a pack of lies, and used as a laboratory for every S&M fantasy the apparently ex-Constitutional Vice-President's Office ever had, is now looked upon as immoral by a slim majority of Americans.

Four years late, but it appears Americans are capable of learning. Too bad their elected officials seem incapable of the same.

Should you really make that a True or False question?

Fareed Zakaria does his best to argue that "we" aren't losing, but its a pretty loose argument.

Consider the news from just the past few months. In Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation in the world, the government announced that on June 9 it had captured both the chief and the military leader of Jemaah Islamiah, the country's deadliest jihadist group and the one that carried out the Bali bombings of 2002. In January, Filipino troops killed Abu Sulaiman, leader of the Qaeda-style terrorist outfit Abu Sayyaf. The Philippine Army—with American help—has battered the group, whose membership has declined from as many as 2,000 guerrillas six years ago to a few hundred today. In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which were Al Qaeda's original bases and targets of attack, terrorist cells have been rounded up, and those still at large have been unable to launch any major new attacks in a couple of years. There, as elsewhere, the efforts of finance ministries—most especially the U.S. Department of the Treasury—have made life far more difficult for terrorists. Global organizations cannot thrive without being able to move money around. The more that terrorists' funds are tracked and targeted, the more they have to make do with small-scale and hastily improvised operations.

North Africa has seen an uptick in activity, particularly Algeria. But the main group there, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat (known by its French abbreviation, GSPC), is part of a long and ongoing local war between the Algerian government and Islamic opposition forces and cannot be seen solely through the prism of Al Qaeda or anti-American jihad. This is also true of the main area where there has been a large and troubling rise in the strength of Al Qaeda—the Afghanistan-Pakistan borderlands. It is here that Al Qaeda Central, if there is such an entity, is housed. But the reason the group has been able to sustain itself and grow despite the best efforts of NATO troops is that through the years of the anti-Soviet campaign, Al Qaeda dug deep roots in the area. And its allies the Taliban are a once popular local movement that has long been supported by a section of the Pashtuns, an influential ethnic group in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Iraq, where terrorist attacks are a daily event, another important complication weakens the enemy. From a broad coalition promising to unite all Muslims, Al Qaeda has morphed into a purist Sunni group that spends most of its time killing Shiites. In its original fatwas and other statements, Al Qaeda makes no mention of Shiites, condemning only the "Crusaders" and "Jews." But Iraq changed things. Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, bore a fierce hatred for Shiites, derived from his Wahhabi-style puritanism. In a February 2004 letter to Osama bin Laden, he claimed that "the danger from the Shia ... is greater ... than the Americans ... [T]he only solution is for us to strike the religious, military and other cadres among the Shia with blow after blow until they bend to the Sunnis." If there ever had been a debate between him and bin Laden, Zarqawi won. As a result, an organization that had hoped to rally the entire Muslim world to jihad against the West has been dragged instead into a dirty internal war within Islam.

All this is true, but it is also incomplete. Never mind that he never mentions Somalia, or Thailand, or even the ongoing struggle within Turkey between the secular military and an increasingly popular Islamic movement using the democratic process to make gains, he also ignores or downplays parts of the narrative in the areas he does mention.

While he de-emphasizes the uptick of violence in Algeria because of its long-standing nature, he doesn't mention that the Indonesian and Philippine violence is of even longer pedigree when he claims their success. The fact that al Qaeda, the main threat to the West from radical Islam, has also managed to survive and grow in Afghanistan/Pakistan is also downplayed.

In Iraq, even a greatly weakened al Qaeda presence is still greater than its presence before the invasion, and for some reason Fareed completely fails to mention the growth in radical Shiite militias and organizations. For that matter, nothing is mentioned of the greatly expanded influence of the Iranian theocracy next door. One assumes that when you're talking about radical Islam, the mullahs of Teheran would bear mentioning?

Saudi Arabia's ability to stamp out domestic terror cells is lauded while later in the article he points out that it is Saudi-funded wahhabist literature that inspired one of the London bombers. So, does the continued survival of the Saudi monarchy and their continued distribution and funding of the most militant form of Islam count as a victory?

In Egypt, the crackdowns have also been effective at keeping the current dictatorship in power, but the Muslim Brotherhood made impressive gains in the last so-called elections despite the crackdown. Or maybe, like Fatah, the Muslim Brotherhood is now considered moderate so it doesn't ruin Fareed's narrative.

The split between Sunnis and Shiites—which plays a role in Lebanon as well—is only one of the divisions within the world of Islam. Within that universe are Shiites and Sunnis, Persians and Arabs, Southeast Asians and Middle Easterners and, importantly, moderates and radicals. The clash between Hamas and Fatah in the Palestinian territories is the most vivid sign of the latter divide. Just as the diversity within the communist world ultimately made it less threatening, so the many varieties of Islam weaken its ability to coalesce into a single, monolithic foe. It would be even less dangerous if Western leaders recognized this and worked to emphasize such distinctions. Rather than speaking of a single worldwide movement—which absurdly lumps together Chechen separatists in Russia, Pakistani-backed militants in India, Shiite warlords in Lebanon and Sunni jihadists in Egypt—we should be emphasizing that all these groups are distinct, with differing agendas, enemies and friends. That robs them of their claim to represent Islam. It describes them as they often are—small local gangs of misfits, hoping to attract attention through nihilism and barbarism.(emphasis mine)

It's good that the author can see this, but even he points out that the leadership isn't making this distinction. Hell, read the title of his article! He lumps them together himself even while he advises that this is a bad idea. That lumping together of various foes strengthens them by forcing them to work together against their common foe. Zawahiri has repeatedly tried to make common cause with Hamas, the latest example coming to light today. The Shiite Hezbollah received support across sectarian lines while fighting Israel last year and emerged more popular and politically powerful.

So do I think we're losing the war on radical Islam? It's a very poor question when most people can't even come to a good definition of what "radical" means beyond "against US/Israeli interests".

All I do know, is that the current leadership is doing a damn poor job of it so far.

So I'll content myself with a few links

John Cole at Balloon Juice and Cernig and Shamanic at the Newshoggers regarding the latest Darth Cheney chronicles.

Matt Yglesias on how the US military is ignoring its own counterinsurgency manual.

Ian Welsh on the mess in Israel/Palestine.

And Sean Gonsalves asks "Is Religion the Root of all Evil?" Something I've been wanting to write about for awhile now, but haven't found the time.

Bin Laden may have helped family flee US

You know, when I watched Fahrenheit 9/11, I thought it was a very heavy-handed propaganda film. So heavy-handed that I left the theatre less convinced of my opposition to the Iraq War than when I went in. The most interesting part of the experience was how quickly the audience was willing to buy the film's message. In that regard, I felt it had at least been instructional, though I'd never consider using it as a source. This story managed to bring the film back to mind, though.

OSAMA bin Laden may have chartered a plane that carried his family members and Saudi nationals out of the US after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the FBI says.

The papers, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, were made public by Judicial Watch, a Washington-based group that investigates government corruption.

One FBI document referred to a Ryan Air 727 airplane that departed Los Angeles International Airport on September 19, 2001, and was said to have carried Saudi nationals out of the US.

"The plane was chartered either by the Saudi Arabian royal family or Osama bin Laden,'' according to the document, which was among 224 pages posted online.

I say almost defies belief since this is the same government that issued a visa to Muhammed Atta six months after he crashed a plane into the World Trade Centre, so anything is possible. I don't actually believe that they wouldn't have noticed Osama chartering a plane at that time. We'll use a form of Occam's Razor on this and say it was probably the Saudi royals or a different member of the bin Laden clan. Still causes some cognitive dissonance, though.

The LA Times has a story out this morning on about how the US attorney scandal is affecting prosecutions.

Defense lawyers in a growing number of cases are raising questions about the motives of government lawyers who have brought charges against their clients. In court papers, they are citing the furor over the U.S. attorney dismissals as evidence that their cases may have been infected by politics.

. . .

The controversy has drained morale from U.S. attorney offices around the country. And now, legal experts and former Justice Department officials say, it is casting a shadow over the integrity of the department and its corps of career prosecutors in court.

There has long been a presumption that, because they represented the Justice Department, prosecutors had no political agenda and their word could be trusted. But some legal experts say the controversy threatens to undermine their credibility.

"It provides defendants an opportunity to make an argument that would not have been made two years ago," said Daniel J. French, a former U.S. attorney in Albany, N.Y. "It has a tremendously corrosive effect."

Defense lawyers in political corruption cases often argue to juries that the prosecution was motivated by politics, especially when the prosecutor happens to be of a different political party than the defendant.

B. Todd Jones, a former U.S. attorney in Minneapolis, said such arguments are now "given credence in the public eye because they are seeing that maybe there were political decisions made. Any defense lawyer worth their salt is going to say this is a political prosecution that shouldn't have been brought."

As usual, the MSM is a little slow on the uptake. John Cole pointed out this issue back in March.

Seymour Hersh has an article in the New Yorker regarding General Taguba, the man who wrote the original investigative report on the Abu Ghraib prison and the abuse that occurred there in late September, 2003. Taguba's career stalled upon writing the report and was later forced to retire. Telling the truth is not a good way to get ahead with the Bush Administration.

“They always shoot the messenger,” Taguba told me. “To be accused of being overzealous and disloyal—that cuts deep into me. I was being ostracized for doing what I was asked to do.”

Taguba went on, “There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff”—the explicit images—“was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.” He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

The whole article is well worth the read.

From Chet Richards of D-N-I.net and his new book’s introduction, (which looks like it will be a good read as well.)

I will use the word “terrorism,” faute de mieux. As far as I know, there are no true terrorist groups operating in the world today. These would be organizations in the business of killing civilians, presumably for fun or profit. All so-called terrorist groups have other aims, ranging from crime to national, ethnic, or religious liberation. They all kill people from time to time, but they use the violence to serve their primary purposes. Lumping them all together as “terrorists” is a form of mental laziness, and failure to think clearly about their various purposes will not serve us well. All uniformed military forces, for example, kill civilians, and most wars kill more civilians than military, either accidentally or through famine and disease. Sometimes, though, it is deliberate. The Nazi atrocities to control partisans and guerrillas, and our own bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, were attempts to exert influence by killing civilians. Yet we generally do not refer to members of state military organizations as “terrorists.”

I don’t agree with everything he says here. Killing civilians to exert influence is terrorism when committed by non-state forces and therefore its not inaccurate to declare some folks terrorists.

State militaries killing civilians for the same reason generally fall under the term war crimes, though some have used the term “state terrorism”. As Robert McNamara said in The Fog of War, regarding the strategic bombing of Japanese cities:

LeMay said, "If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals." And I think he's right. He, and I'd say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?

But saying that your opponents are terrorists is a form of laziness, one normally used as an excuse not to address the reasons underlying the terrorist’s actions. After all, “we don’t negotiate with terrorists” is a refrain almost every government uses.

All that usually means is that they’ll rationalize some sort of reclassification for the “terrorists” once they’re willing to talk, whether it be the African National Congress, Sinn Fein/IRA, or the “tribal insurgents” the US is now arming to fight Al Qaeda in Iraq. After all, the Sunni Arabs the US is arming and funding were terrorists themselves right up to the point the US decided they needed their help.

Richards is correct in that there really isn’t a better term to use, though, and that’s quite unfortunate, because people generally shout “terrorism!” to avoid rational debate over how to deal with groups they oppose.

Peter Worthington is upset that the US didn’t come out too high in the recent “peace index” ratings that were released. His argument: They didn’t take Freedom into account. Apparently countries that do relatively well on the personal freedoms scale shouldn’t be punished if they also turn out to be warlike and violent.

Now I could make some snarky comments about how Iraqis prefer the tyranny of Saddam to the freedoms the US has given them, but that doesn’t really address the point.

I could also point out that the GPI does include Respect for Human Rights as one of its indicators, which defines the freedoms we enjoy, the freedoms Peter doesn’t think the GPI takes into account. Perhaps he should have read the report and it’s methodology before attacking it based on the US’s ranking.

But there’s an easier way to refute Mr. Worthington’s argument. All you have to do is ask, has the “War on Terror” given Americans greater or less personal freedoms?

When people are afraid, they are more willing to give up their freedoms for the sense of security, and nothing scares people so much as the fear that somebody is going to come and try and kill them.

Sure WWII was necessary, but did it really mean freedom in the US? Massive drafting of civilians into the armed services. Ration cards for common goods. Detention camps for citizens of Japanese descent. When the war ended, the government gave people most of their freedoms back, but they could just as easily used the scare of Communism to continue denying them.

Wars, even the just ones, degrade freedom, and that’s why unlike Mr. Worthington, I would suggest you take the GPI seriously.

First there was the dismissal of charges at Guantanamo, and now another court has ruled that the US military cannot indefinitely confine “enemy combatants”. It appears that the rule of law may finally be making a comeback in the US.

While this does give some cause for optimism, it is also true that once a government has been given power, it is unlikely to relinquish it, at least not entirely. However far the courts and Congress are able to roll back the abuses of the Bush Administration, the end result will still be a more powerful Executive Branch.

From the CBC: Your View: CIA Prisons

Reader Comment by Ray S
Amazing how some people are leaning towards protecting 'terrorists rights'. This is such an oxymoron that it defies description.

How blind to facts can people be? Protect the rights of terrorists? I don’t give a flying fuck about the terrorists. It's my rights I'm looking to protect.

Do you really want to live in a country where somebody can claim you’re a threat, and based solely on that claim, you can be dragged off the street and thrown into legal oblivion for the rest of your natural life?

Want to know why you were arrested? Sorry, you’re a terrorist now, we don’t have to tell you.

Want to challenge the evidence against you? Sorry, you’re a terrorist now, we don’t have to show you or anyone else what evidence we have.

Want a trial? Sorry, you’re a terrorist now, you don’t deserve a trial.

Say you’ve been abused? Tortured? Forced into confession? Too bad, you’re a terrorist, we don’t care about you.

So the Government says these folks are a threat. Well here’s a concept to consider: Government’s lie. All Government’s, all the time. Ever hear of checks and balances? That’s why we have them, so that when the Government lies to us, we have some chance at finding out the truth.

You ever wonder about the fact that if these guys are really as bad as they say they are, why they keep releasing them from places like Guantanamo? Ever wonder, if they’re so sure these guys are terrorists, they don’t want to put them on trial and convict them?

Which threat do you fear the most? Getting killed in a terrorist attack, or being carted off, disappeared, and tortured because someone or something suggested you might be a threat to them?

Call me crazy, but if I get dragged off the street and thrown into a cell, I want to know why. I want to know what the charges against me are. I want the Government to be forced to produce some evidence of their claims. I want a trial and the chance to defend myself.

Now if all that means that there is a somewhat greater chance that I find myself getting blown up because I wandered too close to an abortion clinic the next time some nut decides to bomb it because it offends his religion and the “sanctity of life”, well, that’s a risk I’ll just have to learn to live with.

Israel has told Syria it is willing to trade land for peace and is waiting to hear whether President Bashar al-Assad would cut ties with Iran and hostile guerrilla groups in return, Israeli officials said on Friday.

Hard to say if this will go anywhere, but if its a serious offer, then it counts as good news.

While the fanatics of the "We don't talk to EVIL!" crowd will probably be going nuts over this little initiative, the strategic situation is such that this could be a huge benefit to both Israel and the US. Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld wrote a good article outlining the benefits back in January.

To summarize: Giving back the Golan actually enhances Israeli defences against a motorized attack force from Syria. Cutting Syria away from the Iran-Hezbollah axis leaves both more isolated. Most of Iran's military hardware and personnel sent to Hezbollah have been using Syria as a transport hub. Cut it off, and the support dwindles to a trickle. Same for Iranian support to Palestinian organizations. Iran can no longer project its strength to the Mediterranean and to Israel's borders.

Israel, despite its great military supremacy at the moment, cannot afford to make to many mistakes, and its leadership appears smart enough to realize this. After failing to achieve its objectives in their war in Lebanon, the Winograd Commission took the Israeli leadership to task over it. The Israelis know there is something worse than losing a war; trying to ignore the fact you lost and therefore refusing to learn the lessons of that loss. ("We never lost any battles in Vietnam! Tet was an American victory! We would have won if it wasn't for the defeatocrats betraying us!")

If Israel is to have any chance of lasting as a state over the long-term, it has to live in peace with its neighbours. Making peace with Syria puts that much closer to reality. Of course, the elephant in the room with all this is the Bush Administration, which scuttled the last attempt at peace between the two.

Alon Liel, a former top Israeli diplomat who has taken part in discreet contacts with Syrians for some years, said he thought the basis of a deal between Israel and Syria was taking shape but that the key to any accord lay in Washington.

"I think the deal is pretty much closed. But you can't move forward on the 'small' deal with Israel without the 'big' deal with the U.S.," said Liel, who new heads the Israel-Syria Peace Society, dedicated to promoting a settlement.

Assad, Liel said, would not give up his alliance with Iran without an assurance of aid and other benefits from the United States and other Western powers -- similar to those that Egypt secured by making peace with Israel in 1979.

Israeli officials have said that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's meeting with the Syrian foreign minister a month ago showed a softening in Washington's attitude to Syria that indicated Bush would not oppose Israeli peace moves.

Let's hope they're right, and remember that while Bush may not oppose Israeli peace moves, Cheney may have other ideas, and has shown the willingness to undercut diplomatic efforts.

A bit more regarding Putin’s move on missile defence from the NY Times:

Experts say that Mr. Putin’s proposal faces a number of daunting, and possibly insurmountable, hurdles. Russia leases but does not own the radar station in Azerbaijan, and it is an early warning system, not the X-band radar that is used to guide antimissile interceptors, and which the Bush administration wants to build in the Czech Republic.

Trust between the nations is also an issue. The plan would require the kind of intense cooperation in which only the closest allies could engage. With the two sides already embroiled in disputes over the future of Kosovo, the state of democratic institutions in Russia and how to deal with Iran’s nuclear program, some experts raised questions about whether Mr. Putin was serious — and, if he was, whether the White House would ever accept the offer.

For the first, my understanding of the offer was to use the site to build the kind of radar the US needed, not to use the existing radar, but regardless the larger point is whether or not the offer was serious.

The only way to find out would be for the US to accept it and then see if the details would wind up scuttling it. I still stand by my original impression of the offer. It was a brilliant diplomatic move, putting the emphasis on US moves while sounding magnanimous and conciliatory.

I did get a chuckle out of the last paragraph in the NY Times story, though.

A spokesman for Mr. Putin, Dmitri Peskov, told reporters after the meeting that the Russian president had decided to make the offer because “dialogue is better than mutual silence.” He added, “This offer shows once again that President Putin is ready to find consensus and he’s ready to find solutions, not by confronting, not by threatening anyone — well, he’s never done that, actually — but by working together.”

Ha!

Vladimir Putin said their two countries could use a radar system in Azerbaijan to develop a shield covering all of Europe, during talks at the G8 summit.

Mr Putin said the base could detect incoming missiles from so-called rogue states aimed at Europe or the US.

Russia has been critical of US plans to extend the shield into central Europe.

Mr Putin has repeatedly scoffed at US claims the defence shield is targeting rogue states, and has said Moscow may in response aim its missiles at Europe.

I love it when people who actually understand what the word diplomacy means start playing with the Bushies.

The US keeps harping about “rogue states”, read Iran, being the threat the missile defence shield is being built for. Putin has basically said, “Oh yeah? Well then do I have a deal for you! Why don’t you base your shield down close to where Iran is? I got an old base down there nobody’s using. If you’re really concerned about the non-existent Iranian ICBM’s, then it makes good sense to have the missile shield components close to where the non-existent ICBM’s would be launched from rather than sitting in northern Europe near the Russian border where they would leave most of Europe undefended from the those Iranian ICBM’s, if, you know, they had any.”

Of course, if the US is truly concerned about Iran, then this proposal is very reasonable. If, on the other hand, the US has a somewhat different target in mind regarding its missile shield, then the pretzel-twisting rhetoric we should be hearing out of Washington over the next little while should be highly amusing to watch.

Meanwhile, Russia is making good use of the “carrot and stick” approach with the EU. The stick came out earlier with the threat to retarget Europe with nukes should the US put interceptors in Poland and Czechoslovakia. The carrot is a prime site in a much more effective location if the purpose is really to deter Iran plus the promise to not retarget their missiles.

Of course the Europeans have to hope that Bush takes the carrot so they don't get hit with the stick. An effective way to caution folks about their alliances.

Either way, Putin has forced Bush to make an explicit choice and by doing so; show the real purpose behind the missile shield’s construction. Very well played.

I’d probably be more concerned about things like this if it wasn’t for the fact that all of these home-grown Islamic plots in the US didn’t wind up following this plot-line.

From the morons who were dreaming about blowing up the Sears Tower, to the “Fort Dix Six” who were going to overwhelm an entire military base single-handedly, to this latest wild scheme to blow up an airport by lighting of matches forty miles away, every plot has been announced with great fanfare and shrill warnings and after a day or two, we learn that the plots are in basic planning stages, nobody actually has any weapons or explosives, and the informer is the one coming up with all the ideas and leading the guys along until they get arrested.

This is becoming a “Cry Wolf” scenario all too often, and more and more people are no longer taking them seriously. Worse, those that are taking the threat at face value are getting closer and closer to becoming the kind of terrorists that don’t get national and international news coverage.

but only so long as they agree with continuing the war. Once they start speaking out against it, screw them.

An Iraq war veteran could lose his honorable discharge status after being photographed wearing fatigues at an anti-war protest.

. . .

a military panel has been scheduled to meet with Cpl. Kokesh on Monday to decide whether his discharge status should be changed from "honorable" to "other than honorable."

. . .

Cpl. Kokesh argues that he was not representing the military at the protest in Washington, and he made that clear by removing his name tag and other military insignia from his uniform.

Mr. Lebowitz said Cpl. Kokesh technically is a civilian unless recalled to active duty and had the right to be disrespectful in his response to the officer. He called the proceedings against Cpl. Kokesh highly unusual and said the military usually seeks to change a veteran's discharge status only if a crime has been committed.

If his discharge status is changed, Cpl. Kokesh said he could lose some health benefits and be forced to repay about $10,800 he received to obtain his undergraduate degree on the GI Bill.

The corporal said he holds no ill will toward the Marines.

"I love the Marine Corps," he said. "I always have loved the Marine Corps, and that is why I'm particularly offended to see it being used for political ends."

Not his popularity or "political capital", those are long gone already and were inevitable once people realized how badly he's screwed them. Now I'm more worried about what we laughingly refer to as his "mental state".

An article in yesterday's Dallas Morning News contained this snippet:

But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated "I am the president!" He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of "our country's destiny."

Only a couple of weeks earlier, I came across this story:

[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc. This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

Throw in Bush's little stunt a while back of jumping into the conductor's pit to conduct his own exit music and it's beginning to look like the presuure of letting Cheney run the country is finally getting to him.