Sic Semper Tyrannis

Kabul Mobs Are Dangerous

  Twice in the 19th Century the British Indian Army was forced out of Kabul by murderous mobs.

The first time was n the 1840s, the second in 1879.  Earlier that year the British had negotiated the "Treaty of Gandamak" with the Afghan government.  The principal negotiator had been Major Sir Louis Cavagnari.  As a result of the treaty the British were allowed to maintain a "residence" in Kabul.  This was an embassy in all but name.  Cavagnari was made "resident."  The British/Afghan relationship did not prosper.  The Afghans bitterly resented the presence of this infidel establishment in their midst.  The "residence" had a guard made up of a company sized force of the "Guides,"  perhaps the most distinguished of all Indian Army regiments.  Made up of both infantry and cavalry the "Guides" were a mixed force in terms of ethnicity and religion.  This was unusual and the Afghans hated the Sikh and Hindu members of the residency guard.

One day, the whole precarious structure of security cam crashing down when a Kabul mob formed over some slight or grievance and after a days fighting over ran the residency having killed Cavagnari and the Guides, every man.

The picture is of a monument to the courage of the Guides at the Kabul Residency.

Pat Lang

http://members.tripod.com/~Glosters/guides.htm

Bush Backsliding on Democracy? Richard Sale

Richard Sale writes a column for an international wire service, and has, for many years, been a reporter on the "intelligence beat."

He sent me the following piece for your consideration.

Pat Lang

Download in_a_recent_attack_on_the_bush_administration_danielle_pletka_and_a_co.doc

Adventures in Shialand

"There is, however, a problem with the celebration and with the U.S. troop withdrawals it may presage: The political process, though a success in its own terms, has manifestly failed to stabilize Iraq or even to produce any meaningful movement in that direction. The Sunni insurgency is as active and strong as it was two years ago; though U.S. casualties have dropped in the first five months of this year, compared with the same period last year, attacks have not. The overall level of killing is far higher today than it was in late 2003 because of the gathering momentum of sectarian bloodshed among Sunnis and Shiites. Reconstruction, too, has gone backward since sovereignty was handed to an interim government in June 2004: Oil production and electricity generation are down.

A similar analysis applies to the other main leg of Mr. Bush's Iraq strategy, the training of the Iraqi army. Iraqi armed forces and police number 254,000 and are supposed to reach their target strength of 273,000 by the end of the year. Still, many Iraqis feel less secure than they did two years ago. If the ultimate measure of success is Iraq's pacification, the U.S. mission is producing results but no visible progress."  Washpost Editorial Today

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1- The Sunni insurgency is largely religious in its inspiration.  for the overwhelming majority of Muslims such issues as piety, nationalism, patriotism, etc. are inseparable.  The very thought of separating the various aspects of human existence into separate spheres isolated from religion is impious.  Only the truly marginalized and acculturated like the Baathi demons of our dreams do not think that way.

2- The contest between us and the Sunni insurgents and between the Sunni Arabs and the Shia Arabs is RELIGIOUS.  RELIGIOUS!  Do you hear me?  In this sense it is not religion as philosophy that we are talking about.  It is religion as sect. IDENTITY!!!

3- We went to a lot of trouble to inflict our political PROCESS on Iraq.  Now it is evident that that process does not produce a solution for the country and that the SUBSTANCE of the government that we midwifed is such that they align themselves with our Iranian opponents.  (They are laughing in Tehran).

OK.  I will say it.  (Sound of Trumpets) We need to start thinking of how we are going to stabilize a "Greater Middle East" after this is over.  We broke it but self interest will keep us from walking away from it altogether (like VN)

Congratulations to all the Shia cherishing naifs of the Utopian/Jacobin/neocon coven.  You got what you wanted.

Pat Lang

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/27/AR2006052700849.html

A Failure of Leadership

"In Haditha, families of those killed keep an ear cocked to a foreign station, Radio Monte Carlo, waiting for any news of a trial of the Marines.

"They are waiting for the sentence -- although they are convinced that the sentence will be like one for someone who killed a dog in the United States," said Waleed Mohammed, a lawyer preparing a file for Iraqi courts and the United Nations, if the U.S. trial disappoints. "Because Iraqis have become like dogs in the eyes of Americans.''"  Knickmeyer for the Washpost

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I have written that we should wait for the outcome of ongoing investigations before judging what happened in Haditha in the Euphrates River Valley.  I continue to think that.

Nevertheless, this story in the Post should remind us all that individuals in the armed forces must be held accountable for their actions under military law.  If that is not done, then the institution becomes liable and culpable for what its members did OR FAILED TO DO.

It is probable that whatever happened in Haditha occurred because a junior leader failed in his responsibility.  It is also probable that more senior leaders failed in their responsibility to take appropriate action after the fact.  Three officers of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment have been relieved of command pending further action.  It may well be that responsibility after the fact runs much higher up the chain of command than that.  All should be held to account for their actions or inaction whether these failures were before or after the fact.

To fail to do so would be to betray the US Marine Corps and the armed forces of the United States in general.

Pat Lang

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR2006052602069.html

A Gesture of Contempt

Iran rules out talks with U.S. over Iraq Reuters, The Associated Press FRIDAY, MAY 26, 2006 BAGHDAD The Iranian foreign minister rejected a U.S. offer of direct talks on Iraq during the first visit from a top Iranian official since the new Iraqi government was formed last week. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki accused the Bush administration of raising "other issues." He did not elaborate, but Washington and Tehran have been sparring over Iran's nuclear program and Tehran reportedly wants talks with Washington on that issue as well. At a news conference in Baghdad on Friday with his Iraqi counterpart, Hoshiyar Zebari, Mottaki said: "We had decided to have direct talks on the issue of Iraq with the Americans." He added: "Unfortunately, the American side tried to use this decision as propaganda and they raised some other issues. They tried to create a negative atmosphere and that's why the decision which was taken for the time being is suspended." Reuters --------------------------------------------------------------------- A gesture of contempt brought on by their complete victory in Iraq? Why should they talk to us?  The Iranian in the picture with Zebari, the Kurdish Sunni Muslim Foreign Minister of Iraq, is not Mottaki, but you get the idea.  Zebari has been a great favorite of the Bush Administration.  It appears that he thinks that it will be necessary to "get on" with the neighbors when we are a memory in Iraq. Pat Lang http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/26/news/iraq.php

"In Cold Blood?"

"We do not employ force just for the sake of employing force. We use lethal force only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful," Gen. Michael W. Hagee wrote in a statement issued by his office. 

His statement and the announcement of his trip to Iraq came just hours after the Marine command in Iraq disclosed a criminal investigation into allegations that an unspecified number of Marines killed an Iraqi civilian west of Baghdad on April 26. Iraqis made the charge during a meeting with Marine officers on May 1."  Robert Burns  AP

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I don't envy the marines the task of sorting this out.  the word "proportional" as it applies above worries me. Certainly, anyone who injures an apparently unarmed civilian is subject to military law (UCMJ) for the action, and should be.  Unfortunately, the situation is often not like that.  Most of the time in combat, the infantry do not see the people whom they are fighting until they see their bodies or are so close to them that split second decisions must be made.  Often these decisions are tragic.  If you are fighting in a built up area, are taken under fire or ambushed and counter-attack into the buildings, you are not going to walk up to each door or window and call out "Any civilians in there," before you do something.  If you do that, you are going to die there, or your friends are going to die there.  No.  You are going to grenade the rooms and go in shooting.  This is not a police situation.  The enemy intends to kill you.

Similarly, a patch of trees set back from a road on which you are moving in "Indian Country" is normally "searched" by fire before you approach it.  Not to do so is to risk destruction.  To move into the "beaten zone" of an ambush is a lethal mistake.  Most people do not get to make that mistake twice.

Not going to win you "hearts and minds?" You bet it won't, but if it were your son or brother involved which would you prefer?

The key to survival once the shooting starts is to build up a greater volume of applied fire on targets so as to suppress the other side's fire.  This enables you to move against him.  This means that you shoot.  You shoot a hell of a lot!!  "Proportional?"  This sounds suicidal to me.

I will be interested to learn what the actual circumstances of this action were.  Until we know that, we should not judge.  Murtha should know that, but, then, maybe he already knows the details...

Pat Lang

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060525/ap_on_go_ot/marines_iraq_investigations

Welcome to the Actualization

"Irving Kristol initiated neoconservatism at least partly in revulsion at the disorder of John Lindsay's New York. Now his son William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and the single leading proponent (going back to the mid-1990s) of invading Iraq, has helped convert neoconservatism into a source of a disorder infinitely more violent than anything that once disquieted his dad. To do so, he and his fellow war proponents ignored all credible information on the actual Iraq and promised an Eden more improbable than anything that '60s liberals ever imagined. "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America," he told National Public Radio listeners in the war's opening weeks, "that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's been almost no evidence of that at all," he continued. "Iraq's always been very secular."

He wasn't entirely wrong. Iraqi professionals were disproportionately secular. Now they are packing up their secularism and taking it to other lands. The war, and the failure to establish order that led to the barbarism that's driving Iraqis away, can't be laid solely on the neocons' doorstep, of course. These second-generation neos needed a trio of arrogant, onetime CEOs -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld -- to actualize their vision. But actualize it they did, and the ideologues whose forebears once argued that the drugged-out Bronx was a monument to liberal folly have now made blood-drenched and depopulating Baghdad the monument to their own neocon obsessions."  Mayerson

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Yes.  It is the non-secular majority of Iraqis, as opposed to the very Westernised and secular minority who are now in command of the "national unity government." 

Pat Lang

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/23/AR2006052301527.html

The VA Data Theft

Our friend Jon Stanley has sent me this letter concerning the risks for veterans in the recent theft of personal data from the Department of Veterans' Affairs.  He would like to make it clear that he is not in search of clients and offers this as a service to us all.

On behalf of us all, I thank him.

Pat Lang

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"To Whom It May Concern:

You all know the saying, "on the internet they don't know you are a dog", or words to that effect. So feel free to take what I am about to share with a grain of salt.

I'm a lawyer and a frequent poster on this blog. Jonst is my handle. My field of expertise is in information security/technology law. One area of law, and/or law breaking you might say, that I am focusing on, is identity theft/misuse. Presently,I’m part of team working on an 18 month long project dealing with ID theft/misuse. The project is funded by the National Institute of Justice which some of you might know is the research and development branch of the US Department of Justice. I have spoken on the topic of ID theft at the annual American Bar Association meeting in 2005 and numerous RSA Security conferences. Last month I was one of three presenters on a national teleconf hosted by the

ABA

on ID Theft. I don't say all this stuff for self promotion. I say it because I am about to offer people some advice on what I think is an important subject. And if you guys are like me, when someone is offering me advice on something I want to know about, I want to know a bit about their background. This is particularly so when the advice proffered may, at first glance, go against the conventional wisdom.  So there is the 'bit'.

As many of you know already, a large data base of Veteran's information is missing from the home of a Veterans Admin employee. Ostensibly, the info was taken during a 'routine' burglary. The data taken ".....contained the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of every living veteran from 1975 to the present, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Monday". I believe it is the greatest theft of SSN in our history.  [update: it may be that some pre 1975 Vets were effected. The jury is still out on that}

Veterans, and other relevant parties, are being assured that if all is not exactly well, it is close to well: "Nicholson and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said there was no indication that the information has been misused" and that this was just a 'routine burglary'. To me their reaction is like hearing the officer say, "move along folks, there's nothing to see here.'

I'm going to share some of my thoughts on ID theft with you. Take it for what it is worth. Here goes:

1. First, there is a bustling black/gray market for social security numbers.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00E13FF385C0C748CDDAF0894DD404482  and http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/cybercrime/index_page5.html  for example. Let's do a conservative guess on the value of a valid SSN. Say ten dollars a number. Now, 10 x, again, let's be conservative, let's say, there were only 20 million numbers on the medium in question, the hard drive or the external hard drive or both. So, 10 x 20 million. You get the potential prize here that has been stolen? You think this increases or decreases the odds that the wrong info is going to get (or has already gotten) into the wrong hands? So what does it mean when we are assured that there is no indication that the info has been misused? Again, I'll leave that to the reader. Me? I'm concerned. Not panicked. Indeed, not even overly concerned. But I am concerned. Damn concerned.

2. Again, with regard to the no misuse issue. On average it takes over one year for misuse of a person ID's to show up. See, among many other sources, statement by J Howard Beales, then, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection made before the Senate. Commission on the Judiciary,

20 March, 2002

.  And it gets worst. Antidotal evidence is suggesting that it's possible that organized ID theft rings are 'warehousing', or 'parking' stolen ID data for use years down the road. The evidence is not strong enough yet for it to be proffered with a sense of certainty. But it is out there, discussed among people on both sides of the law who make their living at this. The argument is; people might be on a heightened sense of alert in the immediate aftermath of a theft of their data (say 2 years) but as time moves on the heightened state of alert is diminished. Hence the supposed parking of data. Aged data if you will. 

3. Here are some sites you can go to that will offer some suggestions as to what course of action you might consider taking if you find out, or suspect, your data has been compromised.

http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft/ 

http://www.privacyrights.org/about_us.htm 

http://www.idtheftcenter.org/index.htm 

There are others as well.

4. Be on the look out for solicitations where they party soliciting seems to know a bit about you .  As in ‘ let me say up front we want to thank you for you x tours in x country. And for your service in the x corps or field artillery.’ You know, stuff like that and then they go on to say ‘ the vet admin is cutting back and this supplemental policy could solve all your woes.  Or this ‘credit card will be the lowest interest in the western world’.  Seriously, these scams can be really slick.

Again, and in conclusion, panic and undue worry are uncalled for. This is a risk management issue. The threat level has gone up somewhat. More than the media is letting on. At least in the first reports. And less than those who might counsel 'their coming over the walls folks". But I would, at a minimum, start paying a lot of attention, prolonged attention, to my financial statements and records.

I hope that this has been helpful. That was my intention. I will be glad to answer, where I have answers, any follow up questions you might have.

Jon Stanley

Attorney at Law

"--wilfullness, self-righteousness, wishful thinking"

I agree that Hayden's testimony is momentous and shows how presumption and emotional predisposition to believe and thing to be true and then scuttle around to heap up facts to support what is mainly a desire results in disastrous intelligence collection.

There are certain steps required to produce good intelligence no matter what the enterprise or what the issue is at hand. The chief difference between failure and success is not how much you know but how much you know about the right things. And figuring out the right things to know about  --which is to say the things that will help you directly reach a particular objective --is one of the trickiest, least understood, most underrated jobs in the world. What's required to do this job is not expertise in one or another specific subject or issue but rather to recognize what factors will most influence that specific subject or issue. Anyone who knows how to determine what need to be known to reach one objective can also determine what needs to be known to reach any other objective.

In other words, the question in intelligence that matters is, what do our policymakers need to know to achieve their stated objective?

The incredible misjudgments of the Bush administration shows clearly that there is some kind of moral error --willfulness, self-righteousness, wishful thinking -- that lies at the basis of even our  intellectual mistakes.

Richard Sale

Out by 2010

"A senior British official said Maliki's unity government will speed the handover of security control from U.S.-led forces to Iraqis, letting London bring some troops home by mid-year.

Three years after the invasion to topple Saddam, the United States has some 133,000 troops in Iraq while the British troop strength is around 7,000, mainly patrolling Iraq's south.

At least 2,450 U.S. soldiers and 111 British troops have been killed in Iraq since 2003, and both countries are keen to start drawing down their military presence.

"The aim is to take Iraq to a position where the multinational force is able to withdraw during its (the government's) period in office," said a British official, accompanying Blair on his fifth visit to Iraq since the war."  Reuters

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US and British policy in Iraq has rested on two assumptions:

- The insurgencies have little or no popular support.

- The successful completion of a fair and open democratic political process will bring an end to both the unsupported (sic) insurgencies and sectarian violence between Sunni and Shia Arabs in the country.

A minor theme that has emerged recently is found in the pronouncements of LTG Chiarelli , USA who has been saying from Baghdad that the violence is motivated largely by unemployment.  This is the same officer who during a previous tour of duty in Iraq insisted that there were really no important differences between the Sunni and Shia communities, and that they all saw themselves as "Iraqis together."

The claim that the insurgents do not have significant public support is nonsensical.  They could not exist without significant support in various forms.

The belief that political process will halt the violence appears to be based on the notion that the ethno-religious communities do not have real and differing interests, and that what has happened in Iraq is somehow a matter of mis-communication which can be straightened out by lawyering things into shape.

I don't think any of that is true, but now we are going to know for sure and I, for one, would be glad to be proven wrong in my pessimism.

Pat Lang

http://www.metronews.ca/reuters_international.asp?id=149833

Hayden "Comes Clean"

LEVIN: An independent review for the CIA, conducted by a panel led by Richard Kerr, former deputy director of the CIA, said the following -- and this relates to the intelligence prior to the Iraq war -- "Requests for reporting and analysis of Iraq's links to Al Qaida were steady and heavy in the period leading up to the war, creating significant pressure on the intelligence community to find evidence that supported a connection."

Do you agree with Mr. Kerr?

HAYDEN: Sir, I -- as director of NSA, we did have a series of inquiries about this potential connection between Al Qaida and the Iraqi government. Yes, sir.

LEVIN: Now, prior to the war, the undersecretary of defense for policy, Mr. Feith, established an intelligence analysis cell within his policy office at the Defense Department.

LEVIN: While the intelligence community was consistently dubious about links between Iraq and Al Qaida, Mr. Feith produced an alternative analysis, asserting that there was a strong connection.

Were you comfortable with Mr. Feith's office's approach to intelligence analysis?

HAYDEN: No, sir, I wasn't. I wasn't aware of a lot of the activity going on, you know, when it was contemporaneous with running up to the war. No, sir, I wasn't comfortable.

LEVIN: In our meeting in our office, you indicated -- well, what were you uncomfortable about? Let me...

HAYDEN: Well, there were a couple of things. And thank you for the opportunity to elaborate, because these aren't simple issues.

As I tried to say in my statement, there are a lot of things that animate and inform a policy-maker's judgment, and intelligence is one of them, and, you know, world view, and there are a whole bunch of other things that are very legitimate.

The role of intelligence, I try to say it here by metaphor because it's the best way I can describe it, is you've got to draw the left- and the right-hand boundaries. The tether to your analysis can't be so long, so stretched that it gets out of those left- and right-hand boundaries.

Now, with regard to this particular case, it is possible, Senator, if you want to drill down on an issue and just get laser beam focused, and exhaust every possible -- every possible ounce of evidence, you can build up a pretty strong body of data, right? But you have to know what you're doing, all right?

I got three great kids, but if you tell me go out and find all the bad things they've done, Hayden, I can build you a pretty good dossier, and you'd think they were pretty bad people, because that was I was looking for and that's what I'd build up.

That would be very wrong. That would be inaccurate. That would be misleading.

It's one thing to drill down, and it's legitimate to drill down. And that was a real big and real important question. But at the end of the day, when you draw your analysis, you have to recognize that you've really laser beam focused on one particular data set. And you have to put that factor into the equation before you start drawing macro judgments.

LEVIN: You in my office discussed, I think, a very interesting approach, which is the difference between starting with a conclusion and trying to prove it and instead starting with digging into all the facts and seeing where they take you.

Would you just describe for us that difference and why you feel, I think, that that related to the difference between what intelligence should be and what some people were doing, including that Feith office.

HAYDEN: Yes, sir. And I actually think I prefaced that with both of these are legitimate forms of reasoning, that you've got deductive -- and the product of, you know, 18 years of Catholic education, I know a lot about deductive reasoning here.

HAYDEN: There's an approach to the world in which you begin with, first, principles and then you work your way down the specifics.

And then there's an inductive approach to the world in which you start out there with all the data and work yourself up to general principles. They are both legitimate. But the only one I'm allowed to do is induction.

LEVIN: Allowed to do as an intelligence...

HAYDEN: As an intelligence officer is induction.

And so, now, what happens when induction meets deduction, Senator? Well, that's my left- and right-hand boundaries metaphor.

LEVIN: Now, I believe that you actually placed a disclaimer on NSA reporting relative to any links between Al Qaida and Saddam Hussein. And it was apparently following the repeated inquiries from the Feith office. Would you just tell us what that disclaimer was?

HAYDEN: Yes, sir.

SIGINT neither confirms nor denies -- and let me stop at that point in the sentence so we can stay safely on the side of unclassified.

SIGINT neither confirms nor denies, and then we finished the sentence based upon the question that was asked. And then we provided the data, sir."  Hayden Transcript

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The "mainstream media" are doing a great job of ignoring this exchange in the Hayden CIA hearing, but what Hayden did here is repudiate altogether the Administration assertion (supported by various bogus commissions and the SSCI under Roberts) that intelligence analysts were not "pressured" by abusive repetitions of "requests" for information into backing away from what they knew to be true about Iraq before the war.

Look at what Hayden said:

- There was pressure from Feith's Office pushing the analysts towards judgments that were desired by Feith and company.

- That he was aware at the time of the pressure that it existed.

- That the "World View" of parties un-named in the Administration "informed" their judgment as much as the opinions of the intelligence community.  This is important because the administration is now claiming that it is innocent of "original sin" in this matter and that the colossal errors in understanding Iraq were altogether the fault of the intelligence community.

- That the Feith/neocon crowd went outside the "boundaries" of what the intelligence community thought might be the situation in Iraq and were incompetent in the attempt.

- That the Feith/neocon crowd ignored evidence contrary to their views.

- That the Feith/neocon group committed the ultimate "sin" for an intelligence analyst, i.e., they used "deductive" rather than "inductive" reasoning in reaching their conclusions about Iraq.  "Deductive" thinking is poison injected into the bloodstream of the government's decision process.  it inevitable leads to the USAF's favorite metaphor, the "Self Licking Ice Cream Cone."

- That when "pressed" by the Feith/neocon crowd about NSA's conclusions concerning the AQ/Iraqi connection, he caused NSA to respond that "SIGINT neither confirms nor denies.."  This was an appropriate response for NSA which is a COLLECTION arm of the intelligence community and which does not perform analysis in the sense that the term is properly used.  At the time, he could have stepped out from behind that curtain to have his agency make a statement which would have (however improperly) supported the Feith/neocon position on this, but he did not.

Bottom Line:  This guy ain't no dummy and can see where all this is ultimately going.  People are enraptured now by the 1st and 4th Amendment issues raised by the NSA programs, but this is at least as important.

Pat Lang

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/18/AR2006051800823.html

Joe Galloway and the "Talking Dog"

Joe Galloway is the "Ernie Pyle" of my generation and one of the greatest friends the American soldier ever had.  He is the reporter who went to LZ X-Ray in 1965 with the First Battalion, Seventh Cavalry Regiment.  Yes.  He is the reporter in the film "We Were Soldiers."                                                 

Larry Dirita is Rumsfeld's press guy. 

Here we have an exchange of e-mail between Joe Galloway and Dirita with McCaffery urging Galloway on.

Pat Lang

Download following_is_a_recent_email_exchange_between_larry_dirita.doc

"Chinese" Gordon and the 12th Imam.

"There is an ancient tradition in the Mahommedan world, telling of a mysterious being, the last in succession of the twelve holy Imams, who, untouched by death and withdrawn into the recesses of a mountain, was destined, at the appointed hour, to come forth again among men. His title was the Mahdi, the guide; some believed that he would be the forerunner of the Messiah; others that he would be Christ himself. Already various Mahdis had made their appearance; several had been highly successful, and two, in mediæval times, had founded dynasties in Egypt. But who could tell whether all these were not impostors? Might not the twelfth Imam be still waiting, in mystical concealment, ready to emerge, at any moment, at the bidding of God? There were signs by which the true Mahdi might be recognised—unmistakable signs, if one could but read them aright. He must be of the family of the prophet; he must possess miraculous powers of no common kind; and his person must be overflowing with a peculiar sanctity. The pious dwellers beside those distant waters, where holy men by dint of a constant repetition of one of the ninety-nine names of God, secured the protection of guardian angels, and where groups of devotees, shaking their heads with a violence which would unseat the reason of less athletic worshippers, attained to an extraordinary beatitude, heard with awe of the young preacher whose saintliness was almost more than mortal and whose miracles brought amazement to the mind. Was he not also of the family of the prophet? He himself had said so; and who would disbelieve the holy man? When he appeared in person, every doubt was swept away. There was a strange splendour in his presence, an overpowering passion in the torrent of his speech. Great was the wickedness of the people, and great was their punishment! Surely their miseries were a visible sign of the wrath of the Lord. They had sinned, and the cruel tax-gatherers had come among them, and the corrupt governors, and all the oppressions of the Egyptians. Yet these things, too, should have an end. The Lord would raise up his chosen deliverer: the hearts of the people would be purified, and their enemies would be laid low. The accursed Egyptian would be driven from the land. Let the faithful take heart and make ready. How soon might not the long-predestined hour strike, when the twelfth Imam, the guide, the Mahdi, would reveal himself to the World? In that hour, the righteous would triumph and the guilty be laid low for ever. Such was the teaching of Mahommed Ahmed. A band of enthusiastic disciples gathered round him, eagerly waiting for the revelation which would crown their hopes. At last, the moment came. One evening, at Abba Island, taking aside the foremost of his followers, the Master whispered the portentous news. He was the Mahdi."  Lytton Strachey ---------------------------------- "When the news of the Hicks disaster reached Cairo, the Pashas calmly announced that they would collect another army of ten thousand men, and again attack the Mahdi; but the English Government understood at last the gravity of the case. They saw that a crisis was upon them, and that they could no longer escape the implications of their position in Egypt. What were they to do? Were they to allow the Egyptians to become more and more deeply involved in a ruinous, perhaps ultimately a fatal, war with the Mahdi? And, if not, what steps were they to take? A small minority of the party then in power in England—the Liberal Party—were anxious to withdraw from Egypt altogether and at once. On the other hand, another and a more influential minority, with representatives in the Cabinet, were in favour of a more active intervention in Egyptian affairs—of the deliberate use of the power of England to give to Egypt internal stability and external security; they were ready, if necessary, to take the field against the Mahdi with English troops. But the great bulk of the party, and the Cabinet, with Mr. Gladstone at their head, preferred a middle course. Realising the impracticability of an immediate withdrawal, they were nevertheless determined to remain in Egypt not a moment longer than was necessary, and, in the meantime, to interfere as little as possible in Egyptian affairs. "  Lytton Strachey ========================== "Eminent Victorians," written in the first years of the 20th Century is a minor masterpiece of the English language.  In this book, Strachey, a thorny character himself, outlines sketches of four people he considers to have been representative of the Victorian era.  One of them is "Chinese" Gordon. If General Gordon had been an officer of our Army, he would have been considered "out of the mainstream," and might have ended up in the Green Berets, or worse yet, as a specialist in the Arab World. This brilliantly written sketch of Gordon is interesting, not so much for its description of him as a personality, but for its crystal clear tale of Western politicians trying to deal with  a phenomenon of Islamic history that they only dimly comprehend.    I commend it to you. Pat Lang

http://www.bartleby.com/189/401b.html

Here We Go Again

"The wounded were rushed to the civilian Balad Hospital. Police said that as the Kurdish soldiers drove to the hospital, they fired weapons to clear the way, and one Iraqi Shiite civilian was killed.

Shiite soldiers from another Iraqi unit based in Balad rushed to the scene, and the Kurds decided to take their wounded elsewhere, Iraqi police said. Iraqi troops tried to stop them and shots were fired, killing one Shiite soldier, Iraqi police said.

The U.S. account said an Iraqi soldier from the 3rd Battalion, 1st Brigade was killed in a "confrontation" as the other Iraqi troops were trying to remove their wounded from the hospital.   Associated Press

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This is the problem with "national" armies made up of the forces of the ethnic nations which make up the population of a multi-national state.  Unless the army involved is formed under the "boot" of an authoritarian figure who will allow no ethnic foolishness, these forces nearly always break down into their essential identities under serious stress. 

The Kurds in this story were originally Kurdish Pesh Merga.  The Shia were whatever they were. 

In 1984 the US tried to re-make the Lebanese Army to transform it into the "backbone" of a new, united Lebanon.  A variety of formulae were attempted for the purpose of "bringing Lebanon together again."  Mixed units were tried.  Ethno-religiously "pure" units were tried.  Everything looked good so long as none of these units were stressed by forcing them into combat.  The US Command in Beirut reported that all was well.  The usual "can-do" attitude prevailed in reporting from the American trainers in Lebanon.   Then one fine day it was necessary to begin to commit some of these troops to action against adversaries of the government.  It was then discovered that the soldiers involved would not fight their co-religionists.  Quite soon it was clear that this was generally true throughout the country.  US policy goals in Lebanon were "scaled back" soon after that.

Having tried to "referee" between an ethnic Cambodian scout battalion and another battalion of Vietnamese Rangers while they shot it out for an hour, I was not surprised at what happened in Lebanon and I am not surprised now.

The "insult" which started that fight had to do with "national" diet. 

Pat Lang

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060513/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq

Boycott the Gang of Three

AT & T

Verizon

Bell South

Never Again!!!!

Pat Lang

Traffic Analysis

So, the question is --- what would NSA do with all those telephone records?  One possibility is that they would know what phone belonged to whom if they intercepted one end of a phone conversation that terminated overseas. 

That's a possibility, but the biggest benefit would lie in "traffic analysis."

               Cryptology =

                            Cryptography

                            Cryptanalysis

                            Traffic Analysis

Look up these terms.  Wikipedia is the answer.

Pat Lang

Turf II

"..a senior U.S. intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of events says Goss was dismissed as CIA director after the White House became convinced that strong disagreements with his immediate boss, John Negroponte, were beyond resolution. Those disputes involved changes that Goss feared would limit the agency's scope and influence, undercutting its role in analyzing intelligence."  Chicago Tribune

"..the senior official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the boiling point was reached earlier this month when it became clear to the White House that Goss and Negroponte were at loggerheads over Negroponte's insistence that the CIA must dramatically change its focus and mission.

"The Negroponte appointment not only finished Goss but it hurt the agency," said a senior CIA analyst who recently retired after a distinguished 30-year career. "The agency will never be the same."

Negroponte, a career diplomat who is the first person to hold the newly created job of Director of National Intelligence, designed to serve as the intelligence community's "czar," insisted that the CIA spin off many of its functions to his own office or other agencies and become primarily a "collector" of intelligence, mainly from human sources." Chicago Tribune

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I know that some believe that this butt kicking contest in Washington is about corruption, whores at poker parties and "Dukey" Cunningham, but....  It isn't.  This piece in the Chicago Tribune makes that clear.  When reading it, remember that the principal source is a very unhappy CIA person who clearly is yet incapable of comprehending (much less accepting) structural change on the scale that Negroponte is attempting. 

Pat Lang

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0605110179may11,1,6770857.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Turf

While the stature and role of the CIA were greatly diminished under Goss during the congressionally ordered reorganization of the intelligence agencies, his counterpart at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, continued his aggressive efforts to develop a clandestine intelligence operation within his department. The Pentagon's human intelligence unit and its other clandestine military units are expanding in number and authority. Rumsfeld recently won the ability to sidestep U.S. ambassadors in certain circumstances when the Pentagon wants to send in clandestine teams to collect intelligence or undertake operations.

"Rumsfeld keeps pressing for autonomy for defense human intelligence and for SOF [Special Forces] operations," said retired Army Col. W. Patrick Lang, former head of Middle East affairs at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "CIA has lost the ability to control the [human intelligence] process in the community."

Now, "the real battle lies between" Negroponte and Rumsfeld, said retired Army Lt. Gen. Donald Kerrick, a former deputy national security adviser and once a senior official at the Defense Intelligence Agency. "Rumsfeld rules the roost now."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050501738.html

Sharing the Pain

By Tony Capaccio
     May 5 (Bloomberg) -- Iran may be planning to share the pain
of any U.S. attack with the world's oil markets.
     A strike against Iran's nuclear program would probably be
met with an effort to choke off oil shipments through the Strait
of Hormuz, military planners and Middle East analysts say. The
goal would be to trigger a market disruption that would force
President George W. Bush to back off.
     The Iranians hope the mere threat of such action may lead
oil-consuming nations to pressure the U.S. to resolve the dispute
short of a military confrontation. About 17 million barrels of
oil, representing one-fifth of the world's consumption, is
shipped through the strait every day.
 

Mussawi Gets Life

I am generally opposed on principal to the death penalty.  It is my only liberal position.  My reasons are religious.

Nevertheless, in this case I would have voted for the death penalty.  Why?:

-He will proselytize in prison, if he lives.

-He will become the focus of Jihadi operations seeking to release him

Pat Lang

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-05-03T210323Z_01_WBT005280_RTRUKOC_0_UK-SECURITY-MOUSSAOUI.xml

Something Bush and Jefferson Agree On

"Over the past five years, Bush has stated that he can defy any statute that conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. In many instances, Bush cited his role as head of the executive branch or as commander in chief to justify the exemption.

The statutes that Bush has asserted the right to override include numerous rules and regulations for the military, job protections for whistle-blowers who tell Congress about possible government wrongdoing, affirmative action requirements, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Bush made the claims in ''signing statements," official documents in which a president lays out his interpretation of a bill for the executive branch, creating guidelines to follow when it implements the law. The statements are filed without fanfare in the federal record, often following ceremonies in which the president made no mention of the objections he was about to raise in the bill, even as he signed it into law."  Boston Globe

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Before "Marbury vs. Madison" it was not at all clear who had the ultimate "say" on what the Constitution meant in any given situation.  In that decision, John Marshall (Chief Justice) effectively asserted the right of the federal courts to interpret the meaning of the Constitution.  Before that decision in which the "cause" was an appointment by departing President John Adams of a sheriff in the District of Columbia, the whole thing was "up for grabs."

Adams made a lot of appointments just before midnight on his last day in office and the new Jefferson Administration contested this one.  Marbury (the prospective sheriff) sued Madison, the Secretary of State over this and Marshall "found" for Marbury.

Jefferson had previously been of the opinion that the three branches of the federal government were co-equal in judging the meaning of the Constitution.  In other words, he had believed that he had just as much right to say what the Constitution meant in any given case as anyone in the federal courts or the Congress.

In this case, he must have been having a bad day, because for some reason he did not ignore Marshall and fire Marbury which he surely believed he could do legally if he wished.

"Everything old is new again."   Have at it lawyers.

Pat Lang

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/05/03/hearing_vowed_on_bushs_powers/