Eating the New Year

On New Years day, dinner has see-sawed back and forth between the vegetarian and the beef heavy. I love good beef but don't eat it very often, I'm a carnivore but treat good beef as a rarety to cherish, and I will not eat bad beef. I'd rather eat it less often and pay the premium for the good stuff. When I was growing up, New Year's Day dinner was always prime rib of beef with yorkshire puddings (really a popover using fat from the the roast, rather than oil as in this recipe. They are utterly delicious and a great way to sop up the juices on the plate.)

If you want really good American beef (as opposed to the pricey Kobe stuff, which I've never had) you need to find a restaurant or butcher who knows how to hang a steak properly. The process is too touchy for the home cook. An aged tenderloin and one from the cooler at the grocery are two different things. The former will fall apart with your fork, even while rare. The latter will need your knife and a lot of trimming. The former also costs me more than twenty dollars a pound, so I eat it about once a year, and I'm going to have it for dinner tomorrow with Bernaise Sauce scroll down) which turns a simple steak into an occasion.

My favorite place for eating this is a hole in the wall French place owned and run by some Vietnamese people in nearby Arlington. From the outside, you wouldn't know it's a restaurant, once you get inside you are treated like visiting royalty. It isn't cheap, but I'm willing to pay a premium for good food, well prepared and well presented, and the bernaise sauce in this place is so perfectly prepared that it deserves the hung tenderloin filet mignon they always serve. I haven't been able to afford to go there for a lot of years, but it is a neighborhood favorite (and only the neighborhood knows about it, and I'm certainly not going to tell you how to find it) and I will dine the New Year in. The first course will be CLASSIC ESCARGOTS A LA BOURGUIGNONNE, which I haven't had in a dozen years, prepared in the classic fashion, in the shells, with toast points. If they have fresh oysters on the half shell, I'll have those, too. I once made an entire birthday dinner out of oysters on the half-shell at a very good raw bar in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I've learned to vary my palette since that particular tummy-ache.

2005 has to be better than 2004. We've already fallen farther than I ever thought we could. And I'm going to dine us in with a new copy of Maximum PC as a companion. PC tyros, you actually can learn to be your own technologist, and it isn't that hard.

Ah, a copy of Maximum PC with bernaise spots on it. That's the way to begin the new year.

Simple Joys

This was a traditional New Year's Day dinner for my table for many years. In China, noodles are for good luck. This simple and elegant dish comes by way of one of my favorite cookbooks, La Cucina de Lidia.

Pappardelle in Salsa di Porcini Freschi
(Pappardelle with Fresh Porcini Mushrooms)
Serves 4 as a first course

1/4 c. olive oil
1 lb. fresh porcini mushroons, trimmed and sliced (morels are an expensive and delightful substitution)
4 cloves garlic, barely crushed
Salt and pepper to taste
3 tbsp. chopped fresh parsely (Italian flat-leaf if you can find it)
3/4 c. chicken stock
1 lb. fresh pappardelle (any broad noodle works well)
1/2 c. grated parmesan cheese

While bringing 6 quarts pasta water to a boil, begin the sauce.

In a large skillet, heat 2 tblsp of the oil. Add half the mushrooms and garlic, season to taste and saute until mushrooms are lightly browned on both sides. Do not stir the porcini, they will break, turn them gently with a spurtle or wooden spoon. Transfer to a plate and do the same with the remaining mushrooms and garlic. Clear excess oil from skillet and return all the mushrooms to the pan with the parsley, adjust the seasonings and add the stock and simmer one minute, meanwhile adding the pappardelle to the boiling water. Fresh pasta will cook in about a minute and a half, so adjust the start times for the sauce and pasta based on whether you are using fresh or dried pasta. When the pappardelle are done, drain quickly, add to the sauce over low heat and toss gently adding 4 tbsp. of the cheese. Serve immediately with the remaining cheese at the table.
Use vegetable stock instead of chicken, and your ovo-lacto vegetarian friends will be pleased to join you at the table.

If you've never made your own fresh pasta, this is a recipe that will reward that labor, as it showcases simple ingredients. I made fresh pasta for the first time a dozen years ago when I was caught by a snowstorm with no pasta in the house. I had nothing but a rolling pin for equipment, and that works just fine, thanks very much. I have a pasta roller now, but those first hand-cut fettucine were a revelation. Make it at home and dry it to store, you'll never tolerate the store bought dried stuff again. Fresh pasta turns a simple dish like Linguine Aglio e Oglio into a feast.

Bloggy New Year's Eve

Got plans for the evening? I'll be here blogging the New Year in. I can't think of a better way to spend my time, nor better people to spend it with. Whatever your plans tonight, remember that the amateurs are out tonight, so be careful.

People cannot exist without hope, so add your hopes for the New Year in the comments below. Mine are for a year in which peace is given a plot of ground to sprout in, in which we dodge the pandemic bullet, and in which the criminal maladministration of George W. Bush is brought to justice.

And I'm in the mood for some recipes. If you have a New Year's food tradition, I'd love to know about it.

I just checked the stats: at some point during the day tomorrow, we'll be starting the New Year with 300K hits since the sitemeter was installed back in February, and a total of 450K page views.

Shamed into It

U.S. Pledges $350 Million to Help Tsunami Victims
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: December 31, 2004

Filed at 2:01 p.m. ET

CRAWFORD, Texas (AP) -- The United States is pledging $350 million to help tsunami victims, a tenfold increase over its first wave of aid, President Bush announced Friday.

``Initial findings of American assessment teams on the ground indicate that the need for financial and other assistance will steadily increase in the days and weeks ahead,'' Bush said Friday in a statement released in Crawford, Texas, where he is staying at his ranch.

``Our contributions will continue to be revised as the full effects of this terrible tragedy become clearer,'' he said. ``Our thoughts and prayers are with all those affected by this epic disaster.''

Bush also is sending Secretary of State Colin Powell to Indian Ocean coastal areas ravaged by earthquake and tsunami to assess what more the United States needs to do. The president's brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, will travel with him.

The newly announced aid came after some critics claimed that the initial U.S. contribution of $35 million was meager considering the vast wealth of the nation.

France has promised $57 million, Britain has pledged $95 million, Sweden is sending $75.5 million and Spain is offering $68 million, although that pledge is partly in loans.

Bush said disaster response officials are on the ground and the United States has established a support center in Thailand that is in operation. More than 20 patrol and cargo aircraft have been made available to assess the disaster and deliver relief supplies, he said.

The LAT has an interesting chart which compares per-capita giving for the industrial nations, both by governments and individuals. Colin Powell can parse this however he wants, but the track record is there and it isn't all that hot.

In the LAT article, Center for Global Development's David Roodman makes the most salient point:

David Roodman, one of the architects of the Center for Global Development study, argued that no wealthy country was giving enough to the poor.

"Stingy, of course, is a relative term," Roodman said. "I wouldn't say the entire world is stingy. But helping the rest of the world is clearly a low priority in making our policies, and that's true in every country to a greater or lesser extent."

While that is true, look at the chart. We are at the bottom of a list of cheapskates.

Looking Forward, Looking Back

E.J. Dionne has some excellent advice for Democrats:

Lessons for Democrats

MIDDLETOWN, R.I. -- Except for the glorious victories of the Red Sox and the Patriots, 2004 was a disappointing year. But bad years offer useful lessons. Here are a few:
....
• Cultural hypocrisy should be exposed. I cannot understand why liberals who regularly criticize the excesses of the economic market let conservatives get away with being the advocates of "traditional values."

When television networks and Hollywood exploit sex to make money, why aren't liberals asking why the free market so revered by the right wing promotes values the very same right wing claims to despise? The coarsening of the culture that traditionalist conservatives denounce is abetted by the very media concentration that economic conservatives defend. Why are liberals so tongue-tied in exposing this contradiction?

• Class matters. Bush and the Republicans condemn "class warfare" -- and then play the class card with a vengeance. Bush has pushed through policies that, by any impartial reckoning, have transferred massive amounts of money to the wealthiest people in our country. Yet it is conservatives, Bush supporters, who trash the "elites," especially when it comes to culture. Class warfare is evil -- unless a conservative is playing the class card.

Somebody has to call this bluff. Why is it taboo to talk about a Wall Street "elite" that has benefited from Bush's tax cuts and would win big-time from Social Security privatization? Why is it just terrible to point out that pharmaceutical industry and HMO "elites" were paid off handsomely in the Medicare drug bill? Why is it so dreadfully radical to denounce corporate "elites" when conservatives can denounce "the Hollywood elite" with impunity? Why does the right wing get away, year after year, with this double standard on elitism and class warfare?

• Stand for something. Bush won this year because of those attacks on Kerry. But he also won because swing voters who didn't like him very much were nonetheless quite certain that he knew what he wanted to do and would try to get it done.

One line of attack against Bush is to say that his certainties are mistaken and that he never, ever questions them. That's true. It's also inadequate. Those who oppose the direction in which Bush is leading us need to propose an alternative.

They need to demonstrate that we could be much safer -- and fight a more effective war on terrorism -- if so much of the world did not mistrust us. They must create a realistic narrative about a more just and prosperous society. Policies on jobs, health insurance, child care, education and taxes should be more than a list. They ought to form a coherent picture of how things could be better, for everyone.

The long-term need for alternatives should not stop the loyal opposition from being tough. But the short-term need to be tough should not stop the opposition's search for alternatives. For Bush's adversaries, 2005 will be a difficult year. It also could be exhilarating.

It will only be exhilirating, E.J., if the Democrats grow some stones. I heard some commentary during the week from those who know Nevada politics, and the word is that Harry Reid is as mean a gutter fighter as they come. We'll see.

Toy Soldiers

Bang, bang you're dead
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 31/12/2004)

British soldiers training for Iraq are saying "bang bang" instead of firing their grenade launchers because the Ministry of Defence did not buy enough, defence sources said yesterday.

The MoD did not have the money to order sufficient Under-Barrel Grenade Launchers for the SA80 rifle, so all those available have had to be sent to Iraq.

British soldiers take position behind an armoured vehicle
British soldiers stationed in Basra

They also failed to buy any training rounds so soldiers cannot be trained on the weapon until they reach Iraq.

They are having similar problems with the Minimi Light Machinegun because there are no blank attachments, which allow blank rounds to be fired safely, or cleaning kits. Those for other weapons are not suitable.

"The Under-Barrel Grenade Launcher is a success and the boys love it," one source said. "But all that's been bought is the high-explosive ammunition. There has been no buy for any training ammunition." Troops from 12 Mechanised Brigade, who are scheduled to go to Iraq in April, will spend the next three months carrying out training for the deployment.

But they will be unable to use either the Minimi machinegun or the grenade launcher because the attempts to cut costs mean that they will not be able to train properly on either equipment until they get to Iraq.

The lack of grenade launchers means that most members of the brigade will not even have fired one until they deploy on operations in Iraq.

During recently held training for Iraq, held in pouring rain at the Castlemartin ranges in South Wales, members of the Staffordshire Regiment, one of the brigade's two armoured infantry regiments, had to shout "bang bang" to simulate the firing of the grenade launchers.

Although they did have the Minimi, they could not fire it because there were no blank attachments and no way of cleaning it even if they fired live rounds. "It's ridiculous," the source said. "Everybody understands the need to save money but what was the point of buying the Minimi if they don't get the cleaning kits?

"What makes it worse is they know that most of the problems they had with the new SA80 were down to the fact it wasn't being cleaned properly."

We aren't the only ones screwing up by the numbers.

Sleeping with the Enemy

Violence Against Iraq Troops Takes Toll
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: December 30, 2004

Filed at 10:56 p.m. ET

Pentagon statistics show that for all of 2004, at least 838 U.S. troops died in Iraq. Of that total, more than 700 were killed in action, by far the highest number of American battlefield deaths since at least 1980, the first year the Pentagon compiled all-service casualty statistics.

It almost certainly is the highest KIA total for any year since the Vietnam War.

U.S. deaths averaged 62 per month through the first half of the year. But since June 28, when U.S. officials restored Iraqi sovereignty and dissolved the U.S. civilian occupation authority, that average has jumped to about 78.

Deaths among U.S. National Guard and Reserve troops are rising, reaching a single-month peak of 27 in November. At least 17 were killed in December. Nearly 200 Guard and Reserve troops have died since the war began, and more than one-third of those deaths happened in the past four months.

Bush administration and U.S. military officials had predicted that the insurgents would intensify their efforts to create chaos before the Jan. 30 elections for an Iraqi National Assembly. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said during a visit last week to U.S. troops in Iraq that he saw no reason to think the violence would abate even after the elections.

``All along the way it's bumpy,'' Rumsfeld told a group of Marines over lunch at their base outside of Fallujah, the city west of Baghdad where nearly 100 Marines have been killed over the past two months. ``It's tough, and there are setbacks. It's not a smooth, easy, steady path to success.''

Since the Marines regained control of Fallujah after fierce battles in November -- by far the bloodiest month of the war for the Corps -- the focus of insurgent violence has shifted to the northern city of Mosul.

A Dec. 21 attack on a military mess hall in Mosul killed 22, including 13 U.S. soldiers and a sailor -- the deadliest single attack on a U.S. installation in the war. At least six other U.S. troops died in other attacks in Mosul during December.

Even as U.S. losses mount, the brunt of insurgent violence is hitting the Iraqi security forces being trained by U.S. troops, as well as Iraqi political figures and Iraqis seen as supporting the Americans.

On Tuesday, for example, insurgents lured Iraqi police to a house in Baghdad with an anonymous tip about an insurgent hideout. Then they set off explosives, killing at least 29 people, including seven Iraqi policemen, and wounding 18.

Across the restive area north and west of Baghdad, known as the Sunni Triangle, car bombs, ambushes and assassinations killed at least 54 people on Tuesday, including 31 policemen and a deputy provincial governor.

Terrorist threat to Iraq voters
By Jim Muir in Baghdad
(Filed: 31/12/2004)

Three Iraqi insurgent groups gave warning yesterday that anyone taking part in the "dirty farce" of next month's elections would be exposing themselves to attack.

Their statement, posted on the internet, told Muslims that democracy was tantamount to apostasy and said: "God willing, the hands of the holy warriors will reach those who take part in the elections, the polling stations and those running them".

The statement from the Sunni-dominated insurgents contrasted with edicts from Shia leaders, who say voting is every Muslim's duty.

One of the groups signing the statement was Ansar al-Sunna, which has been behind many attacks in the Mosul area, now the centre of insurgent activity after US forces captured Fallujah.

15 killed in Iraq violence

BAGHDAD, Dec 30: Fifteen Iraqis were killed in attacks across the country on Thursday as plans were unveiled to deploy 100,000 Iraqi soldiers to stave off a bloodbath on election day exactly a month from now.

The deadly violence came one day after battles between US troops and guerillas in the northern city of Mosul left at least 26 dead, including a US soldier, and 30 people were killed when a booby-trapped house in Baghdad exploded.

The grim business of hostage-taking again surfaced, with two Lebanese businessmen kidnapped in an upmarket neighbourhood of Baghdad late on Wednesday. And the Iraqi government announced that a senior aide to the country's most wanted man, Abu Musab al Zarqawi - whose militants are behind many deadly attacks and killings of hostages - was captured recently in Baghdad.

A similar arrest was made in Mosul. On Wednesday guerillas detonated car bombs against a US patrol and attacked a combat outpost in Mosul, triggering air strikes and clashes that left at least 25 guerillas dead, the US military said.

A US soldier died of wounds suffered in one of the car bombings, the military announced. Across the country, at least 15 Iraqis have been killed in various attacks by guerillas since Wednesday night, security officials said.

This is some DoD PR person's wet dream. I seem to recall reading in the last couple of weeks that we have something like 3,500 Iraqi Army troops trained (and underequipped) as of now and somehow we're going to magic up 100K in the next month?

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

CATASTROPHE IN SOUTHERN ASIA
Sumatra's West Coast Devastated
# Deaths in Remote Areas Push Toll to 125,000; Powell to Tour Region

By Richard C. Paddock, Times Staff Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia — The first survivors from an isolated area of the Sumatran coast were airlifted Thursday to the provincial capital, where they described a horrendous scene in which floodwaters covered a vast swath of land and probably killed more than half of one city's 100,000 people.

Survivors from the city of Meulaboh arrived with stories of being at sea for days and surviving by hanging naked to the minaret of a mosque. It was another grim detail of one of the worst natural disasters in modern history. The death toll Thursday stood at 125,000 from Sunday's earthquake and tsunami that struck nations lining the Indian Ocean. At least 80,000 of the dead were from Indonesia.

There was still no clear picture of conditions in some remote villages or on islands off India and Indonesia, raising the specter that the disaster's toll could yet eclipse the 138,000 killed by a cyclone that struck Bangladesh in 1991.

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that more than 30 countries and organizations had pledged $500 million in aid, half of that from the World Bank.

"I would like to assure the people of the region that the entire United Nations family stands ready to assist, and we stand behind them," Annan said. "We will work with them in every way we can to rebuild their lives, livelihoods and communities devastated by this catastrophe."

President Bush, still smarting from charges that the United States was doing too little to assist in relief operations, announced that he was sending Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to the region, along with the president's brother, Jeb, the governor of Florida.

The United States has pledged $35 million. Britain, France and Sweden have pledged considerably more.

"To coordinate this massive relief effort, firsthand assessments are needed by individuals on the ground," President Bush said in a written statement delivered at his ranch outside Crawford, Texas. The delegation, he said, would "meet with regional leaders and international organizations to assess what additional aid can be provided by the United States."

Bush said he was sending his brother because of his experience in recent months dealing with hurricane damage in Florida. White House Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy said that sending Gov. Bush underscored the importance of the mission.

"He's also the president's brother," Duffy noted. "I think it signifies the high level of importance that the president puts on this delegation."

This year the governor won accolades for his attention to recovery efforts after four hurricanes pummeled Florida in a six-week period. Details of the upcoming trip were not immediately available.

In India, Thailand and Sri Lanka, thousands of people fled inland Thursday after unfounded rumors that another tsunami was approaching.

David Nabarro, head of the World Health Organization's crisis team, said that as many as 5 million people in the region lacked essentials needed to survive.

An estimated 6,000 foreigners, many of them Europeans, were still missing. Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said that as many as 1,000 of his countrymen may have died, almost all of them on holiday at the beaches of southern Asia. More than 1,000 others from Scandinavian countries also were listed as missing.

The U.S. death toll was officially raised from 12 to 14, with seven dead in Thailand and seven more in Sri Lanka. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said an estimated 600 Americans who were listed as missing in the disaster zone had been found. But he said several thousand others had not been located. He said that in Sri Lanka, Americans had been showing up at U.S. consular offices wearing bathing suits, with no money or other clothing.

"Everything else was lost, and we're taking care of them," he said. "We're getting them places to stay, money to buy clothes, new passports, putting them in touch with their relatives."

As Charles told us last night (by way of CNN and NPR), the State Department isn't doing such a hot job of getting Americans up and running, demanding cash for replacement passport photos.

Unlike Charles, I'm not feeling the need for dueling pistols at 50 meters. I would prefer to take the offending undersecretary and humiliate them in front of a couple of thousand people. This kind of idiocy needs some accountability.

You don't have to be a frickin' genius to get this kind of stuff right.

We Are the World

When my words fail, as they so often do, the world is filled with wonderful writers who can stand in. As usual, the NYT's Bob Herbert keeps his pen filled:

Our Planet, and Our Duty
By BOB HERBERT

Published: December 31, 2004

On Tuesday The Times ran a big front-page picture taken in a makeshift morgue in southern India. It certainly captured the horror. It looked for all the world like a sandy playground covered with dead children.

Imagination pales beside the overwhelming reality of the tragedy. There were, for example, the grief-stricken throngs, clawing through mud and rubble, peering into the faces of the severely injured, wandering through piles of decaying corpses, in search of loved ones.

The Boston Globe quoted a young man whose college sweetheart was among the more than 800 people killed when a train carrying beachgoers in Sri Lanka was slammed by a 30-foot wall of water that lifted it from the tracks and hurled it into a marsh. "Is this the fate that we had planned for?" cried the young man. "My darling, you were the only hope for me."

Perhaps a third of those killed were children. Many were swept away before the eyes of horrified, helpless parents. "My children! My children!" screamed a woman in Sri Lanka. "Why didn't the water take me?"

The killer waves that moved with ferocious speed across an unprecedented expanse of global landscape flung their victims about with a randomness that was all but impossible to comprehend. People in beachfront dwellings ended up in trees, or entangled in electrical power lines, or embedded in the mud of hillsides. People died in buses, cars and trucks that were swept along by the waves like leaves in a strong wind. Sunbathers were swept out to sea.

In that environment, Einstein must stand aside for Shakespeare, whose Gloucester said: "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport."

Any tragedy is awful for the relatives of those who perished. But this is a catastrophe of a different magnitude. "This," as one observer noted, "is like confronting the apocalypse."

"What makes it especially frightening is that whole communities have been annihilated," said Dr. John Clizbe, a psychologist in Alexandria, Va., who, until his retirement a couple of years ago, had served as vice president for disaster services at the American Red Cross. He said, "We've known for years now that the emotional devastation that survivors feel and experience is often greater than the physical devastation."

The recovery process is easier, he said, when there is a supportive community to bolster those in need. But in some of the most devastated regions of southern Asia, the regions most in need of support, those communities have vanished.

It's a peculiarity of modern technology that people anywhere in the world can sit back and watch in real time, like voyeurs, the life-and-death struggles of their fellow humans. The planet is growing smaller and its residents more interdependent by the day. We're fully aware that our planetary neighbors in southern Asia are desperately drawing upon the deepest reservoirs of fortitude and resilience that our troubled species has at its disposal.

What this means is that we're the supportive community. All of us. This catastrophe would at least have a silver lining if it moved the people of the United States and other nations toward a wiser, more genuinely cooperative international posture.

William Faulkner, in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, said: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."

That's what Faulkner believed. We'll see.

Tragedy on this scale requires an entire world for healing. We are that world.

Help for You

Reader John Hart brings us to his Bug Blog, which is keeping its eyes peeled for Avian flu and the like. It's nice not to be alone, but the Bugblogger brings us some discomfitting advice:

the N95 respirator doesn't do the job. Here is the respirator that can defeat H5N1, and I'm searching for ordering and pricing info. More news here when I find it. John, can you tell us where to find the five customizable colors of the NanoMask?

Bug Blog has been enstalled over on the right on the permanent blogroll.

You Can Help

Here are the relief agencies. I'll keep repeating this over the weekend. Give what you can.

If you can't give them anything, give blood to your local Red Cross, the need remains great in your own community. You CAN help. Help where you can.

Google has a list, too.

Lady Wisdom

Charles and I had an interchange earlier about N95 respirators, and we both think that this is going to be a useful tool if a bad influenza breaks out. This puppy is neither pretty nor disguisable, but if the Avian flu breaks out, none of those things will be important. Here is a link to what the thing does and what it doesn't do. It's probably the best last line of defense for those of us who aren't in the healthcare industry. If you are a nurse or doctor, you'll probably want a PAPR mask.

I haven't yet located a good source for N95 masks, but I'm now home for three days after a couple of weeks from hell at work, and can search and blog at will. I'm just home this weekend and intend to be the quintessential blogger in my jammies and bathrobe. It is good to return to the roots.

Check back here for more information as I learn it. We are a community of wisdom. And that is why your thoughts are necessary, wisdom isn't a solo project. It builds in community.

I'm taking my sneezles (wracking attacks of sneezes) to bed. The clean, flannel sheets beckon and I'd be a fool to miss their call.

Sleep knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.

Grief Actual

Rising Death Toll Tops 117,000

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, December 30, 2004; 5:48 PM

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Dec. 30--The formal count of those who perished in Sunday's earthquake and tsunami topped 117,000 Thursday as Indonesian officials issued a new death toll of nearly 80,000 for that country alone.

News services reported that pilots in Sumatra had discovered about 28,000 more dead while dropping food to remote villages still unreachable by rescue workers.

Sri Lanka also upped its total by about 5,000 Thursday. In Thailand, the toll increased by about 600.

Rescue flights from throughout the world delivered supplies for millions of survivors around South Asia, but disorganization blocked the lifesaving food, water and medicine from reaching many of those stricken and in need.

Cartons of food and water were stacked in an airplane hangar in the devastated Aceh region of northwestern Indonesia on Wednesday after military transports delivered tons of supplies to the provincial capital of Banda Aceh, which was mostly destroyed in the Sunday earthquake and tsunami that hit minutes later.

Some officials said there was dismal coordination among the Indonesian military, civilians and foreign governments. "We haven't gotten any help at all, nothing," said Yasin, 42, a displaced father who was camped out five miles from the airport. "I don't have anything left."

Rescuers in Indonesia have found scenes of calamity and destruction in remote western Sumatra. On Wednesday, the Indonesian military finally reached the Sumatra town of Meulaboh, closest to the epicenter of the massive earthquake. Images of tragedy in Aceh province were horrific: A weeping father with a limp child in his arms waded through water past shattered buildings; houses were flattened in the mud; battered survivors lay exhausted and hungry in tents; a bulldozer dug a mass grave the size of a swimming pool in which to pile corpses covered only by plastic sheets.

Tom at Information Clearing House has put up a story from a source with which I'm completely unfamiliar, so take with salt, but the bare facts comport well with what I'm reading in other sources: the people of Indonesia's Aceh province may have lost 25% percent of their population. That is unimaginable (I keep using that word, I know. This entire catastrophe beggars the imagination of this poet.) As Charles noted in comments on an earlier thread, this level of social dislocation and grief is literally off the scale of human experience. Here is what Tom has: just because the numbers are staggering doesn't mean they are wrong.

Indonesia Needs Help, Death Toll Expected To Exceed 400,000

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 30 (Bernama) -- The death toll in Acheh, the region worst hit by last Sunday's tsunami, may exceed 400,000 as many affected areas could still not be reached for search and rescue operations, Indonesia's Ambassador to Malaysia Drs H. Rusdihardjo said Thursday.

He said the estimate was based on air surveillance by Indonesian authorities who found no signs of life in places like Meulaboh, Pulau Simeulue and Tapak Tuan while several islands off the west coast of Sumatera had "disappeared".

He said the latest death toll of more than 40,000 in Acheh and northern Sumatera did not take into account the figures from the other areas, especially in the west of the region.

"Aerial surveillance found the town of Meulaboh completely destroyed with only one buiding standing. The building, which belonged to the military, happens to be on a hill," he told reporters after receiving RM1 million in aid for Indonesia's Tsunami Disaster Relief Fund here Thursday.

Rusdihardjo said there were about 150,000 residents in Meulaboh, which was located 150km from the epicentre of the earthquake while Pulau Simeuleu had a population of 76,000.

The contributions were from several corporate giants.

Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), represented by Chairman Tan Sri Ahmad Sarji Abdul Hamid, gave RM200,000; Guthrie, represented by Chief Executive Officer Datuk Abdul Wahab Maskan, gave RM200,000; Golden Hope Plantations Berhad, represented by Group Director for Corporate, Legal and Public Affairs Norlin Abdul Samad, gave RM200,000; Maybank, represented by Head of Public Affairs Wan Norhiyati Ibrahim, gave RM200,000 and Sime Darby Group's Motor Division, represented by Director Yip Jon Khiam, also gave RM200,000.

Ahmad Sarji also handed over a PNB contribution to Utusan's Tsunami Disaster Relief Fund, which was received by Utusan Melayu (Malaysia) Executive Chairman Tan Sri Hashim Makarudin to help Malaysian tsunami victims.

Ambassador Rusdihardjo said a combination of earthquake and tsunami had left 80 to 100 per cent of infrastructure in Acheh province, such as hospitals, health centres, transport and communication networks and homes, destroyed.

"Looking at the scale of destruction, it's difficult to say when the search and rescue operations can be mounted in all affected areas," he said.

He said rescue efforts were hampered by transportation difficulties and lack of fuel.

The scale of human tragedy here isn't really describable and it will take not just years but generations to recover from it.

The part of me that thinks like a sociologist and anthropologist would like to be around in a hundred years to hear how the story of this time is told in the future by the children of the perished and of the survivors. Experiences like this have to be processed in community, and I wonder how the community will remember the story a couple of generations hence.

The State Department Reaches out to Americans in Need ...

This lovely little item was actually permitted to be shown at CNN.com. Quite amazing, really, when you think about it, that CNN printed this! Emphasis will be mine.

American diver underwater during catastrophe

Wednesday, December 29, 2004 Posted: 7:12 AM EST (1212 GMT)

(CNN) -- An American woman who was scuba diving with her husband in Thailand as one of Sunday's tsunamis roared overhead said she was oblivious to the disaster until after they surfaced, her mother told CNN on Tuesday.

Faye Wachs, 34, was diving with her husband, Eugene Kim, Sunday morning off Ko Phi Phi Island in Thailand when they noticed the water visibility worsened and felt as though they were being sucked downward, Helen Wachs said.

Their dive master signaled to them to surface, "but we still didn't know what happened," Faye wrote in an e-mail to her mother Tuesday.

The enormity of what was happening while they were scuba diving was not immediately apparent after they surfaced, Helen Wachs said her daughter told her.

"She said she saw a lot of trash in the water. The dive master said it was really rude for people to throw trash. Then they saw large bits of debris and thought there might have been a boat crash," Helen Wachs said.

She said her daughter didn't know what had happened until the dive master got a text message from his wife telling him about the catastrophe.

Soon they saw bodies floating past them, Wachs' mother said in an interview from Oakland, California, where she lives.

Once they returned to shore, the couple did what they could to help, Helen Wachs said.

"I can't describe carrying a moaning person who just saw his girlfriend killed down a hill in the middle of the night," the e-mail said. "I saw more bodies than I care to report. The hotel where we were staying is mostly gone. We lost everything, but our lives."

Faye Wachs said she was impressed by the efforts of the Thai government and the International Committee for the Red Cross, but "she was appalled at the treatment they got" from the U.S. government, her mother said.

At the airport in Bangkok, other governments had set up booths to greet nationals who had been affected and to help repatriate them, she said.

That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother.It took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.

Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued.

But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.

The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken and buy food, Helen Wachs said.

"She was really very surprised" that the government did so little to ease their ordeal, she said.

Helen Wachs said her daughter told her they would need "some serious counseling" upon their return to Los Angeles.

Once aboard the plane, Wachs told her mother, the biggest thing they noticed was the absence of the stench of raw sewage that had permeated the air.

"She said the clean smell was amazing."

Wachs, who described herself as "shell-shocked but happy to be coming home," is scheduled to arrive Wednesday morning in Los Angeles, her mother said.

She returns acutely aware that many thousands of others don't have that option.

"The tourists are able to get out, but those there are left with utter destruction," Helen Wachs said.

Sweeeet. Our State Department at work, tirelessly and selflessly defending Americans at need.

You know, when I read something like this, I get so angry I get literally bloody-minded. I regret soooo much that death-duels are illegal these days. Sad. Because taunting one of those Consulate creatures, who were fucking off in the bloody VIP lounge instead of minding the store, into calling me out would afford me a deep spiritual joy. I wonder how good they are with single-action .45 autopistols? Which would, indeed, be my weapon of choice. Ahh, such sweet dreams.

Trusting the Military

When the civilians get out of line, we have a constitutional problem. Think about the implications of this editorial.

Legal Breach: The Government's Attorneys and Abu Ghraib
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL

Published: December 30, 2004

When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved the initial list of interrogation methods for Guantánamo Bay in late 2002 - methods that clearly violated the Geneva Conventions and anti-torture statutes - there were no protests from the legal counsels for the secretary of defense, the attorney general, the president, the Central Intelligence Agency or any of the civilian secretaries of the armed services. That's not surprising, because some of those very officials were instrumental in devising the Strangelovian logic that lay behind Mr. Rumsfeld's order. Their legal briefs dutifully argued that the president could suspend the Geneva Conventions when he chose, that he could even sanction torture and that torture could be redefined so narrowly that it could seem legal.

It took an internal protest by uniformed lawyers from the Navy to force the Pentagon to review the Guantánamo rules and restrict them a bit. But the military lawyers' concerns were largely shoved aside by a team of civilian lawyers, led by Mary Walker, the Air Force general counsel. The group reaffirmed the notion that Mr. Bush could choose when to apply the Geneva Conventions.

That principle was originally aimed at the supposed members of Al Qaeda held at Guantánamo Bay, but it was quickly exported to Iraq and led, inexorably, to the horrors at Abu Ghraib and other recently disclosed crimes by American soldiers against Iraqi and Afghan prisoners.

If it had not been for a group of uniformed lawyers, the nation might never have learned of the torture and detention memos. In May 2003, soon after Ms. Walker's group produced its rationalization for prisoner abuse, a half-dozen military lawyers went to Scott Horton, who was chairman of the human rights committee of the City Bar Association in New York.

That led to a bar report on the administration's policies, a report that was published around the same time the Abu Ghraib atrocities came into public view. Those lawyers had to do their duty anonymously to avoid having their careers savaged. Meanwhile, the Justice Department official who signed the memo on torturing prisoners, Jay Bybee, was elevated by Mr. Bush to the federal bench.

This month, several former high-ranking military lawyers came out publicly against the nomination of the White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales, to be attorney general. They noted that it was Mr. Gonzales who had supervised the legal assault on the Geneva Conventions.

Jeh Johnson, a New York lawyer who was general counsel for the secretary of the Air Force under President Clinton, calls this shift "a revolution."

"One view of the law and government," Mr. Johnson said, "is that good things can actually come out of the legal system and that there is broad benefit in the rule of law. The other is a more cynical approach that says that lawyers are simply an instrument of policy - get me a legal opinion that permits me to do X. Sometimes a lawyer has to say, 'You just can't do this.' "

Normally, the civilian policy makers would have asked the military lawyers to draft the rules for a military prison in wartime. The lawyers for the service secretaries are supposed to focus on issues like contracts, environmental impact statements and base closings. They're not supposed to meddle in rules of engagement or military justice.

But the civilian policy makers knew that the military lawyers would never sanction tossing the Geneva Conventions aside in the war against terrorists. Military lawyers, Mr. Johnson said, "tend to see things through the prism of how it will affect their people if one gets captured or prosecuted."

Some Senate Democrats have said they plan to question Mr. Gonzales about this mess during his Senate confirmation hearings. But given the feckless state of Congressional oversight on this issue, there's not a lot of hope in that news.

Meanwhile, the relationship between the civilian and the military lawyers has gotten so bad that Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican, pushed through legislation that elevated the military services' top lawyers to a three-star general's rank. That at least put them on a more equal footing with the civilian lawyers.

Sidney Blumenthal is an elegant writer whose elegance sometimes tends to the baroque. Today, he's playing the slasher.

A state of chaos

George Bush has purged the last of his father's senior advisers, handing over control to his neocon allies

Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday December 30, 2004
The Guardian

The transition to President Bush's second term, filled with backstage betrayals, plots and pathologies, would make for an excellent chapter of I, Claudius. To begin with, Bush has unceremoniously and without public acknowledgement dumped Brent Scowcroft, his father's closest associate and friend, as chairman of the foreign intelligence advisory board. The elder Bush's national security adviser was the last remnant of traditional Republican realism permitted to exist within the administration.

At the same time the vice president, Dick Cheney, has imposed his authority over secretary of state designate Condoleezza Rice, in order to blackball Arnold Kanter, former under secretary of state to James Baker and partner in the Scowcroft Group, as a candidate for deputy secretary of state.

"Words like 'incoherent' come to mind," one top state department official told me about Rice's effort to organise her office. She is unable to assert herself against Cheney, her wobbliness a sign that the state department will mostly be sidelined as a power centre for the next four years.

Rice may have wanted to appoint as a deputy her old friend Robert Blackwill, whom she had put in charge of Iraq at the NSC. But Blackwill, a mercurial personality, allegedly assaulted a female US foreign service officer in Kuwait, and was forced to resign in November. Secretary of state Colin Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, presented the evidence against Blackwill to Rice. "Condi only dismissed him after Powell and Armitage threatened to go public," a state department source said.

Meanwhile, key senior state department professionals, such as Marc Grossman, assistant secretary of state for European affairs, have abruptly resigned. According to colleagues who have chosen to remain (at least for now), they foresee the damage that will be done as Rice is charged with whipping the state department into line with the White House and Pentagon neocons. Rice has pleaded with Armitage to stay on, but "he colourfully said he would not", a state department official told me. Rice's radio silence when her former mentor, Scowcroft, was defenestrated was taken by the state department professionals as a sign of things to come.

Bush has long resented his father's alter ego. Scowcroft privately rebuked him for his Iraq follies more than a year ago - an incident that has not previously been reported. Bush "did not receive it well", said a friend of Scowcroft.

In A World Transformed, the elder Bush's 1998 memoir, co-authored with Scowcroft, they explained why Baghdad was not seized in the first Gulf war: "Had we gone the invasion route, the US could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." In the run-up to the Iraq war, Scowcroft again warned of the danger. Bush's conservative biographers Peter and Rachel Schweizer, quoted the president as responding: "Scowcroft has become a pain in the ass in his old age." And they wrote: "Although he never went public with them, the president's own father shared many of Scowcroft's concerns."

The rejection of Kanter is a compound rejection of Scowcroft and of James Baker - the tough, results-oriented operator who as White House chief of staff saved the Reagan presidency from its ideologues, managed the elder Bush's campaign in 1988, and was summoned in 2000 to rescue Junior in Florida. In his 1995 memoir, Baker observed that the administration's "overriding strategic concern in the [first] Gulf war was to avoid what we often referred to as the Lebanonisation of Iraq, which we believed would create a geopolitical nightmare."

In private, Baker is scathing about the current occupant of the White House. Now the one indispensable creator of the Bush family political fortunes is repudiated.

Republican elders who warned of endless war are purged. Those who advised Bush that Saddam was building nuclear weapons, that with a light military force the operation would be a "cakewalk", and that capturing Baghdad was "mission accomplished", are rewarded.

The outgoing secretary of state, fighting his last battle, is leaking stories to the Washington Post about how his advice went unheeded. Secretary of defence Donald Rumsfeld, whose heart beats with the compassion of a crocodile, clings to his job by staging Florence Nightingale-like tableaux of hand-holding of the wounded while declaiming into the desert wind about "victory". Since the election, 203 US soldiers have been killed and 1,674 wounded.

I'm not fond of playing psychojargon games, but there does seem to be something dark and unsavory going on between Bush I and Bush II, something pathological, and we are all caught up in it.

Stingy?

Canada blogger James Bow notes that Canada, with a population less than a tenth of the US, has already pledged $40 million dollars to the Indian Ocean catastrophe.

All of the industrialized West will be upping their totals in the weeks to come, but Bush sure lost the ability to get out in front on this one. He could have recouped some of the goodwill we've lost with the world community with his policies, but since this has nothing to do with his next election, he can't get it on his radar screen.

IPS's James Lobe tots up some of the price American business is paying for Bushian unilateralism:

Poll: War Bad for Business
by Jim Lobe

The Bush administration's foreign policy may be costing U.S. corporations business overseas, according to a new survey of 8,000 international consumers released this week by the Seattle-based Global Market Insite (GMI) Inc.

The latest poll found that more than two-thirds of European and Canadian consumers have had a negative change in their view of the United States as a result of U.S. foreign policy over the last three years. Nearly half believed that the war in Iraq was motivated by a desire to control oil supplies, while only 15 percent believed it was related to terrorism.

No Revolution Yet

On Nov. 2, GOP Got More Bang For Its Billion, Analysis Shows

By Thomas B. Edsall and James V. Grimaldi
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, December 30, 2004; Page A01

In the most expensive presidential contest in the nation's history, John F. Kerry and his Democratic supporters nearly matched President Bush and the Republicans, who outspent them by just $60 million, $1.14 billion to $1.08 billion.

But despite their fundraising success, Democrats simply did not spend their money as effectively as Bush. That is the conclusion of an extensive examination of campaign fundraising and spending data provided by the Federal Election Commission, the Internal Revenue Service and interviews with officials of the two campaigns and the independent groups allied with them.

In a $2.2 billion election, two relatively small expenditures by Bush and his allies stand out for their impact: the $546,000 ad buy by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush campaign's $3.25 million contract with the firm TargetPoint Consulting. The first portrayed Kerry in unrelentingly negative terms, permanently damaging him, while the second produced dramatic innovations in direct mail and voter technology, enabling Bush to identify and target potential voters with pinpoint precision.

Those tactical successes were part of the overall advantage the Bush campaign maintained over Kerry in terms of planning, decision making and strategy. The Kerry campaign, in addition to being outspent at key times, was outorganized and outthought, as Democratic professionals grudgingly admit.

"They were smart. They came into our neighborhoods. They came into Democratic areas with very specific targeted messages to take Democratic voters away from us," Democratic National Committee Chairman Terence R. McAuliffe said. "They were much more sophisticated in their message delivery."

The ultimate test of the two campaigns is in the success of their efforts to increase turnout from 2000. Kerry and his allies increased the Democrat's vote by about 6.8 million votes; Bush increased his by nearly 10.5 million. In the key battleground of Ohio, Bush countered Kerry's gains in the metropolitan precincts by boosting his margin in exurban and rural counties from 57 to 60 percent, eking out a 118,457-vote victory.

A supposed strategic advantage for the Democrats -- massive support from well-endowed independent groups -- turned out to have an inherent flaw: The groups' legally required independence left them with a message out of harmony with the Kerry campaign.

A large part of Bush's advantage derived from being an incumbent who did not face a challenger from his party. He also benefited from the experience and continuity of a campaign hierarchy, based on a corporate model, that had essentially stayed intact since Bush's 1998 reelection race for Texas governor.
Take Office, Plan Campaign

When Bush moved into the Oval Office in 2001, planning for his presidential reelection campaign began almost immediately. Under the direction of Karl Rove, Bush's top White House adviser who served as a kind of chairman of the board, White House political director Kenneth B. Mehlman, the chief executive officer, pollster Matthew Dowd, chief operating officer, and Mark McKinnon, the principal media consultant, the Bush political team developed a strategy for 2004, began investing in innovative techniques to target voters and prepared an early and cost-effective advertising plan. During this period, the Republican National Committee, where much of the planning was based, outspent its Democratic counterpart by $122 million.

In 2001, Dowd said that "we made some of the basic strategic assumptions about what we thought the election would look like."

One fundamental calculation was that 93 percent of the voting-age public was already committed or predisposed toward the Democratic or Republican candidate, leaving 7 percent undecided.

Another calculation was that throughout the Bush presidency, "most voters looked at Bush in very black-and-white terms. They either loved and respected him, or they didn't like him," Dowd said. Those voters were unlikely to change their views before Election Day 2004.

That prompted Republicans to jettison their practice of investing 75 to 90 percent of campaign money on undecided voters. Instead, half the money went into motivating and mobilizing people already inclined to vote for Bush, but who were either unregistered or who often failed to vote -- "soft" Republicans.

"We systematically allocated all the main resources of the campaign to the twin goals of motivation and persuasion. The media, the voter targeting, the mail -- all were based off that strategic decision," Dowd said.

This is an important article, so read the whole thing. One of the points that Edsall and Grimaldi make is that the top-down, highly disciplined and hierarchical campaign the Bushies ran didn't start in 2003, it started the day they moved into 1600 Penn. The disorganized populism of the Kerry campaign didn't really have a chance against such a well-identified "brand," even with near-equity in fund raising.

The relatively tiny Swift Boat ad buy was never properly countered by Kerry (spending constraints moving into the general election) or the 527s, and was probably the wound from which the campaign never really recovered.

I haven't read Joe Trippi's book yet, and I'm certain that the rise of the netroots and the coming of Internet community will have some significance down the road, but I don't think any of the campaign pros, including Trippi, have yet learned how to use this new phenomenon as anything other than a cash cow. As this campaign demonstrated, that's not nearly enough when faced with a disciplined and well-established foe.

What Elections?

Falloujans Get an Unsettling Look at Their City
# Refugees eager to return change their minds after seeing the ruin. Will balloting be feasible?

By Edmund Sanders, Times Staff Writer

BAGHDAD — Yasser Abbas Atiya swore he'd sooner sleep on the streets of his beloved hometown of Fallouja than spend another night in the squalid Baghdad shelter where his family had been squatting.

Thirty minutes after he returned home this week, however, Atiya had seen enough. He left in disgust and had no plans to go back.

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"I couldn't stand it," the grocer said. "I was born in that town. I know every inch of it. But when I got there, I didn't recognize it."

Lakes of sewage in the streets. The smell of corpses inside charred buildings. No water or electricity. Long waits and thorough searches by U.S. troops at checkpoints. Warnings to watch out for land mines and booby traps. Occasional gunfire between troops and insurgents.

"I thought, 'This is not my town,' " Atiya said Tuesday after going back to the abandoned Baghdad clinic his family shares with nearly 100 other displaced Falloujans. "How can I take my family to live there?"

The initial clamor by an estimated 200,000 refugees to return to the homes they had fled last month is being replaced by a bitter resignation that the city remains largely uninhabitable and unsafe. Hopes of quickly restoring normality to the restive Sunni Muslim city are fading, raising questions about whether Fallouja will be ready to participate in the Jan. 30 national election.
....
U.S. Marines say they are working to make the city livable again but are grappling with decades of neglect and decay, as well as the results of last month's bombardment.

More than 700 workers have been hired for the rebuilding effort. Aid centers distribute bottled water, food and blankets. On Wednesday, a hospital reopened.

Military leaders are mindful that drawing Falloujans back into Iraqi society and into the election would send a powerful signal that the country was headed in a positive direction.

"We are attacking reconstruction efforts with the same grit, sweat and determination used to eliminate the malicious threat posed by the terrorists and insurgents," said Lt. Col. Dan Wilson, deputy operations officer of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Fallouja. "We want to help the residents, so they will be able to live in peace and enjoy the privilege of voting in the upcoming elections."

But the effort to win the hearts and minds of the local population has fallen flat as soon as returning homeowners see the burned buildings, piles of rubble and heavy troop presence. The residents say voting is the last thing on their minds.

"What election?" Atiya, 35, asked. "I'm a refugee. How can a refugee take part in an election? Let me get back home and then I'll talk about elections."

After enduring three hours of military checkpoints and searches, Atiya and two brothers anxiously reentered the city Monday, uncertain what to expect.

U.S. troops handed them leaflets warning against a myriad of dangers and advising them that the U.S. military could not guarantee their safety. Don't drink the water, the leaflets warned, or eat food left behind.

Every resident is required to carry a small card outlining special new rules for the city. There's a 6 p.m. curfew. No weapons are allowed. Graffiti and public gatherings are illegal. Cars and visitors are banned.

Males between the ages of 15 and 55 must carry special identification cards. U.S. military officials have announced plans to use fingerprinting and retina scans to prevent insurgents from returning.

As Atiya and his brothers traveled through the city and saw the destruction, they braced for the worst. When he caught a glimpse of his roof, Atiya's first emotion was relief. The house was still there.

As they drew closer, however, Atiya and his brothers began to curse. A gaping hole in the two-story house appeared to have been caused by a tank, whose tracks were visible in the mud, he said. Most of the furniture was smashed. "Half my house was demolished," Atiya said.

In the kitchen, cabinets had been ripped from the walls, he said. Others were emptied of their contents, which lay in heaps on the floor.

"Every dish was broken, every cup, every plate, as if someone had just stood there breaking one dish after another," said Atiya's brother Raaid Abbas, 37. "Why?"

The brothers don't know who ransacked the house, but they blame American troops, who they say left muddy boot prints.

Tank treadmarks and muddy bootprints don't equate to "decades of neglect and decay" and the lakes of sewage in the street weren't there before.

"Our forces never intentionally damage structures or homes," said Wilson, the deputy operations officer. "After all, we, in partnership with the [interim Iraqi government], will be at the forefront of assisting in the restoration and cleanup of Fallouja."

And here is the problem with the "interim Iraqi government." It's partnership with the people who destroyed Fallouja has given it a smidge of a credibility problem.

What to Do

Are We Stingy? Yes

President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.

We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we've now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States' recovery effort. Let's hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises.

Bush's spokescritter handed out a back-handed criticism of Bill Clinton (who got out in front of this issue in an interview in Britain) by saying that actions speak louder than words. Bush has so far been more talk than action on the international development front, Powell's posturing to the contrary.

If you want to help here and here are the channels, if you are in the USA.

Coming Through the Wry

I'm fighting the scratchy throat, ruined lungs, coughing it up syndrome right now. The doc says it's an upper respiratory nasty combined with sinusitus. He sent me home with some decongestants, a cough thinner and the advice to drink a whole lot of water.

I'm so tired, and tired of coughing, that I want to send off serious rants in the direction of, oh, say....instapundit...but I'm too tired and feeling too poorly.

I'm going to call tonight in early. This is it for me, unless I wake up with another case of the wracking coughs at midnight. I tried brandy with honey last night and when THAT doesn't work, I know I'm in deep yoghurt.

I'm taking the cough medicine every four hours, as specified, and yet I ain't well yet. Give me a day or two to start feeling like an ordinary human.

your obedient correspondent,
Melanie

The Healthcare Agenda, W Version

This is a press release rather than a news story. I get press releases all the time, but this is the first time I've printed one, because I think the stories it highlights are right on. I know zip about Kurt Salmon Associates, but I know a lot about the news and healthcare. This stuff is true:

Kurt Salmon Associates Highlights 2004's Eight Significant Issues in the Health Care Industry

NEW YORK, Dec. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- From the re-election of George W. Bush to the closure of key emergency rooms, significant moments in 2004 health care provider history will significantly shape the future of the U.S. health care industry, says Kurt Salmon Associates (KSA) Health Care Consulting Group.

* National health information superhighway provides uneven ride. The
Federal government's drive toward a comprehensive electronic health
record paves the way for a much-needed health information superhighway.
But the failure to fund the Office of the Health Information Technology
Coordinator is a huge pothole along that path. Despite clarification of
kickback rules for hospitals' provision of information technology to
physicians, significant roadblocks remain.

I think that sums things up rather neatly. Healthcare professionals, your comments are invited.

What Civilization Means

This is unbelievable. The link comes via Tom at Information Clearing House:

Swedish paper reports tsunami warning halted out of concern for tourist industry

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

Think they are still going to get along without lawsuits?

CNN is reporting (as DavidByron noted in a comments thread below) that the likely total of the dead from the earthquake and tsunami--the immediate event--will likely hit 100,000. I'm watching a WHO doctor on the Newshour, who is predicting at least another 50,000 dead from disease, contaminated water and the like.

To the extent that any of these countries have functional economies (certainly India, Sri Lanka and Thailand do, and the Maldives were almost completely dependent on tourism) this is going to be an economic disaster as well as a human tragedy.

I urge you to pay attention to this story for several reasons: for the human tragedy and our called-for response as empathic humans, and for what it presages in human, economic and social costs if the avian flu breaks out of the bird population. Indonesia's Aceh province was already one of the poorest places on earth. Some of the estimates I've read say that fully a quarter of the population is dead. Some areas in India and Sri Lanka have lost half of their children. That is unimaginable. And it is already malaria season in this part of the world.

It is far too easy to dismiss this because it is happening in a poor, brown part of the world (I've commented earlier on the US press's focus on tourists, rather than the indigenous population, as if it isn't real if it doesn't affect white people) but pay attention: a flu pandemic which is only as lethal as the "Spanish" flu of 1918 (2-5% mortality) would devestate the economies of the so-called industrialized west. Watch what happens to the social fabric and economic underpinnings of the Indian Ocean states in the going out months of this catastrophe to get a lesson we will need to learn, and I hope we do it sooner rather than later. If the H5N1 bug isn't the break-out nasty this flu season, we are still overdue for a flu pandemic. If this isn't the year, the year isn't far off.

House of Bush, House of Saud

Two Explosions Disrupt Saudi Capital
Police Kill 7 Militants in Shootout in Riyadh

By ABDULLAH Al-SHIHRI
Associated Press Writer
Wednesday, December 29, 2004; 4:36 PM

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- Militants launched coordinated car bombings and battled security forces in the Saudi capital Wednesday night in attacks that killed eight people, caused oil prices to jump and signaled that Islamic extremists are keeping up their fight despite the kingdom's crackdown on al Qaeda.

A car bomb detonated near the Interior Ministry in central Riyadh -- killing a bystander, according to Saudi TV -- followed soon after by an explosion when suicide attackers tried to bomb a troop recruitment center.

At around the same time, militants and police clashed in northern Riyadh in fighting that Al-Arabiyah television said left seven militants dead.

The attacks came two weeks after al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden called on his followers to focus attacks on his homeland. While damage to the Interior Ministry was minor, it was a bold assault on the government body at the center of the kingdom's war on al Qaeda and other Islamic extremists.

The violence sparked a jump in oil prices in afternoon trading in New York, helping push the price of a barrel of light crude up nearly two dollars to $43.64.

I wonder how the members of the House of Saud are feeling about their historical connections to the Bush family today?

Busy Blogger

Light posting today because of extreme busy-ness at work. I'll give you a few more things when I get home tonight. Tomorrow morning is also likely to be light, but it is a half-day, so things will pick up in the afternoon.

Got any plans for New Years Eve?

Unimaginable

At 10 AM EST, CNN is reporting 80,000 dead in all of the countries affected by the tsunami and earthquake on Sunday. washingtonpost.com is carrying a Reuters report from earlier this morning in which the head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for Indonesia, Michael Elmquist, says that the death toll in Aceh province alone may reach 50-80,000. The scale of this tragedy beggars the imagination.

The World Health Organization warned on Tuesday that tens of thousands of people could face death from cholera, typhoid and other diseases.

"The initial terror associated with the tsunamis and the earthquake itself may be dwarfed by the longer-term suffering of the affected communities," said David Nabarro, a physician in charge of crisis operations for WHO. "There is certainly a chance that we could have as many dying from communicable diseases as from the tsunami."

The Pottery Barn Rule

William Pfaff: An army's morale on the downswing

William Pfaff International Herald Tribune

The new President Bush, in 2001, was another draft-dodger, in fact if not form, but he walked and talked in a way the military liked. However, his secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was not such a likable fellow, and he set out to reform the Pentagon and re-establish civilian authority.
.
He has in considerable measure imposed himself on the uniformed military, but in a way they now hate. Following his ideas about a small, light and "agile" force, he has made one bad tactical and organizational choice after another, with particularly devastating consequences for the army, its reserve forces, the national guard, and the marines. Their manpower resources are being exploited and wasted in a manner that could leave the services damaged and their officers alienated for a generation.
.
This has been the result of the Bush government's total misjudgment of the Iraq situation; its refusal to enlarge the regular army; its reliance on mobilized reserve forces on extended service in what amounts to the draft of specialist veterans from civilian life; and, since the Iraq occupation turned very unpleasant, "stop-loss" refusal to let people go at the end of their contracts.
.
Recruiting for the reserves and the guard is now badly off, as are regular army re-enlistments and quality recruits. A 20-year-old man, a regular in the army, on his way back for a second tour in Iraq, says, "What everybody is starting to know now is that this is what's going on for the foreseeable future."
.
This probably is true, since nobody in the Bush administration seems capable of changing course, and it is increasingly evident that American policy for the so-called greater Middle East will fail.
.
If the failure is a traumatic one, the result is likely to resemble the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Vietnam destroyed the American citizen army: product of a 200-year tradition that rejected standing armies and held temporary and egalitarian military service to be a duty and experience of citizenship. In Vietnam, the conscript army eventually staged a mute mutiny against the folly of its government.
.
However, you must not abuse even a professional army. It too can rebel, and as in the citizen army, disaffection starts at the bottom, where the most pain is felt.
.
Iraq is now destroying the professional army the United States recruited to take the place of its citizen army. The new army was intended to serve as the unquestioning instrument of the policies of the elected administration. This administration's refusal to supply the manpower and means necessary for its vast military and political ambitions is now having its effect on that army. Its politically inspired fear of conscription, the merciless combat rotation policy and systematic use of involuntary extensions of duty its policies impose, are devastating to troops.
.
The incoherence of its policy in the Middle East, and lack of clearly defined objectives, is deeply disquieting to the military leadership. America's military leaders once again find themselves victims of the policies of appointed ideologues and elected amateurs. As in Vietnam, they have no alternative to propose, except Dresden.

We tried Dresden in Fallujah. The result was predictable:

At Least 29 People Killed by Explosion in West Baghdad

Associated Press
Wednesday, December 29, 2004; 2:38 AM

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A powerful explosion in a house in west Baghdad killed at least 29 people and wounded 18, police said Wednesday. They described the blast as an ambush staged by insurgents.

Police were en route to a raid in Baghdad's Ghazaliya neighborhood late Tuesday after an anonymous call tipped them about a suspected militant hideout in the neighborhood, an official in Ghazaliya police station said.

As they were about to enter the house, an explosion erupted from inside, he added.

At least 29 people were killed, including 7 policemen, and 18 others were injured. Six houses collapsed in the blast and several people are believed to be still trapped underneath the rubble.

The police official said the attack was "evidently an ambush" and that "massive amounts of explosives" were used.

As Naomi Klein noted in Monday's Guardian:

Let's start with the idea that the US is helping to provide security. On the contrary, the presence of US troops is provoking violence on a daily basis. The truth is that as long as the troops remain, the country's entire security apparatus - occupation forces as well as Iraqi soldiers and police - will be exclusively dedicated to fending off resistance attacks, leaving a security vacuum when it comes to protecting regular Iraqis. If the troops pulled out, Iraqis would still face insecurity, but they would be able to devote their local security resources to regaining control over their cities and neighbourhoods.

As for preventing "anarchy", the US plan to bring elections to Iraq seems designed to spark a civil war - the civil war needed to justify an ongoing presence for US troops no matter who wins the elections. It was always clear that the Shia majority, which has been calling for immediate elections for more than a year, was never going to accept any delay in the election timetable. And it was equally clear that by destroying Falluja in the name of preparing the city for elections, much of the Sunni leadership would be forced to call for an election boycott.

When [NYTmes Op-Ed columnist Nicholas] Kristof asserts that US forces should stay in Iraq to save hundreds of thousands of children from starvation, it's hard to imagine what he has in mind. Hunger in Iraq is not merely the humanitarian fallout of a war - it is the direct result of the US decision to impose brutal "shock therapy" policies on a country that was already sickened and weakened by 12 years of sanctions. Paul Bremer's first act on the job was to lay off close to 500,000 Iraqis, and his primary accomplishment - for which he has just been awarded the presidential medal of freedom - was to oversee a "reconstruction" process that systematically stole jobs from needy Iraqis and handed them to foreign firms, sending the unemployment rate soaring to 67%.

And the worst of the shocks are yet to come. On November 21, the group of industrialised countries known as the Paris Club finally unveiled its plan for Iraq's unpayable debt. Rather than forgiving it outright, the Paris Club laid out a three-year plan to write off 80%, contingent on Iraq's governments adhering to a strict International Monetary Fund austerity programme. According to early drafts, that programme includes "restructuring of state-owned enterprises" (read: privatisation), a plan that Iraq's ministry of industry predicts will require laying off an additional 145,000 workers. In the name of "free-market reforms", the IMF also wants to eliminate the programme that provides each Iraqi family with a basket of food - the only barrier to starvation for millions of citizens. There is additional pressure to eliminate the food rations coming from the World Trade Organisation, which, at Washington's urging, is considering accepting Iraq as a member - provided it adopts certain "reforms".

So let's be absolutely clear: the US, having broken Iraq, is not in the process of fixing it. It is merely continuing to break the country and its people by other means, using not only F-16s and Bradleys, but now the less flashy weaponry of WTO and IMF conditions, followed by elections designed to transfer as little power to Iraqis as possible. This is what Argentinian writer Rodolfo Walsh, writing before his assassination in 1977 by the military junta, described as "planned misery". And the longer the US stays in Iraq, the more misery it will plan.

Clearing Bush

Aid Grows Amid Remarks About President's Absence

By John F. Harris and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 29, 2004; Page A01

Some foreign policy specialists said Bush's actions and words both communicated a lack of urgency about an event that will loom as large in the collective memories of several countries as the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks do in the United States. "When that many human beings die -- at the hands of terrorists or nature -- you've got to show that this matters to you, that you care," said Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations.

There was an international outpouring of support after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even some administration officials familiar with relief efforts said they were surprised that Bush had not appeared personally to comment on the tsunami tragedy. "It's kind of freaky," a senior career official said.

The president of Bread for the World, a leading advocacy group lobbying for more U.S. assistance to suffering people abroad, did not criticize the Bush administration, but did urge the United States to play a central role in the relief effort. "This is a disaster of biblical proportions and one that calls for a global response, with the United States playing a key role," David Beckmann said.

Some of those lost in the carnage were Americans. The State Department, which is in the early stages of estimating both relief needs and the U.S. death toll, has received more than 4,000 inquiries about relatives not yet accounted for, although many may be calls searching for the same people, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials denied that the overnight aid increase was a response to the U.N. complaint Monday that some countries were "stingy" with aid. Usually only about 10 percent of the final aid tally is given in the initial response to a natural disaster, with the bulk of aid provided after an assessment of long-term needs, according to the State Department.

"We know the needs will be greater. This was a disaster of almost unimaginable dimension, and it's going to require massive support for some time," State Department spokesman J. Adam Ereli said.

Gelb said what appears to be a grudging increase in effort sends the wrong message, at a time when dollar totals matter less than a clear statement about U.S. intentions. Noting that the disaster occurred at a time when large numbers of people in many nations -- especially Muslim ones such as Indonesia -- object to U.S. policies in Iraq, he said Bush was missing an opportunity to demonstrate American benevolence.

"People do watch and see what we do," he said. "Here's an opportunity to remind people of the good we do, and he [Bush] can do it without changing his policy on Iraq or terrorism."

"My initial reaction is that it does not seem to be very aggressive," said Morton Abramowitz, a former ambassador to Thailand who has been active in humanitarian relief efforts, of the administration's response to the tsunami.

Besides USAID assistance, the Pentagon dispatched the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln from Hong Kong to the region, and three Navy P-3 Orion surveillance planes and six Air Force C-130 cargo planes with humanitarian goods are being sent to Thailand.

A regional support center will be established at a military base in Utapao, Thailand, as a staging area for relief flights and for emergency and medical personnel providing assistance throughout the region, the Pentagon announced yesterday. The U.S. Pacific Command will deploy personnel mainly from the III Marine Expeditionary Force to set up the command, control and communication structure.

Retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark, who as the military's top European commander helped supervise NATO's efforts to respond to a 1999 earthquake in Turkey, said the United States has unique military capabilities in reconnaissance and logistics management that can be useful in the current crisis. He urged Bush to take a higher profile. "Natural disasters happen," Clark said. "One of the things people look for is a strong response that illustrates America's humanitarian values."

Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who is frequently outspoken in favor of U.S. humanitarian ventures, said he believes the initial U.S. response has been appropriate, even without a public role for Bush. "I think the world knows we're a very generous people," he said.

Still, the United Nations' Egeland complained on Monday that each of the richest nations gives less than 1 percent of its gross national product for foreign assistance, and many give 0.1 percent. "It is beyond me why we are so stingy, really," he told reporters.

Among the world's two dozen wealthiest countries, the United States often is among the lowest in donors per capita for official development assistance worldwide, even though the totals are larger. According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development of 30 wealthy nations, the United States gives the least -- at 0.14 percent of its gross national product, compared with Norway, which gives the most at 0.92 percent.

Can we please get over the idea that Bush is "clearing brush?" This isn't a working farm, and working farmers have help to do that kind of dirty work.

And can we please get over the "CNN response?" This is a crisis of biblical proportions, not because some American tourists were lost. Tens of thousands of Indonesians, Sri Lankans, Indians, Maldivians, Somalians and others lost their lives in a few seconds. Isn't that enough to demand some compassion out of us? Do we have to put some Caucasian faces on this tragedy before we can begin to respond to it? I was so offended by CNN's coverage that I had to turn it off.

Spook Shortage

Director of Analysis Branch at the C.I.A. Is Being Removed
By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: December 29, 2004

WASHINGTON, Dec. 28 - The head of the Central Intelligence Agency's analytical branch is being forced to step down, former intelligence officials say, opening a major new chapter in a shakeup under Porter J. Goss, the agency's chief.

The official, Jami Miscik, the agency's deputy director for intelligence, told her subordinates on Tuesday afternoon of her plan to step down on Feb. 4. A former intelligence official said that Ms. Miscik was told before Christmas that Mr. Goss wanted to make a change and that "the decision to depart was not hers."

Ms. Miscik has headed analysis at the agency since 2002, a period in which prewar assessments of Iraq and its illicit weapons, which drew heavily on C.I.A. analysis, proved to be mistaken. Even before taking charge of the C.I.A., Mr. Goss, who was a congressman, and his closest associates had been openly critical of the directorate of intelligence, saying it suffered from poor leadership and was devoting too much effort to monitoring day-to-day developments rather than broad trends.

Ms. Miscik's departure is the latest in a series of high-level ousters that have prompted unease within the C.I.A. since Mr. Goss took over as director of central intelligence in September. Of the officials who worked as top deputies to Mr. Goss's predecessor, George J. Tenet, at least a half-dozen have been fired or have retired abruptly, including the agency's No. 2 and No. 3 officials. Much of the top tier of the agency's clandestine service is also gone.

The departure of Ms. Miscik will be the first major change within the directorate of intelligence, which is responsible for making important judgments about events around the world and whose products include the President's Daily Brief, the highly classified document prepared for the president each morning.

The C.I.A. declined to comment on the move, and Ms. Miscik did not reply to written questions provided to her on Monday evening.

But in her message to subordinates, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, Ms. Miscik described her departure as part of a "natural evolution," saying every intelligence chief "has a desire to have his own team in place to implement his vision and to offer him counsel."

Current and former intelligence officials said the move seemed to signal that Mr. Goss's overhaul, which has focused on human spying operations, would be widened to include the analytical unit.

The former intelligence officials who agreed to discuss Ms. Miscik's plans did so on condition of anonymity. They defended her performance, saying that in 2003 she was quick to acknowledge the shortcomings of the agency's work on Iraq and adopted new safeguards intended to prevent future breakdowns.

The changes at the C.I.A. come as the agency is bracing for a wider reorganization endorsed by Congress and the White House that will strip it of its leading status among the country's intelligence agencies. Under legislation signed into law this month, the chief of the C.I.A. will no longer oversee all 15 of the country's intelligence organizations, which include operations in the Pentagon, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency.

Instead, that power will be transferred to the new post of director of national intelligence, for which the White House has yet to choose a nominee. Administration officials say aides to President Bush are trying to narrow their search, with a decision expected in early January. It is not clear whether Mr. Goss, whose early personnel moves have been sharply criticized inside and outside the C.I.A., will be a candidate for the new job.

Under the new law, the post of director of central intelligence will no longer exist. Among the questions not yet resolved, according to Congressional officials, is whether Senate confirmation would be required for the C.I.A. director.

Ms. Miscik, an economist who rose through the ranks of the intelligence directorate over a 21-year career at the agency, suggested to associates as early as November that she did not expect to stay at the agency under Mr. Goss. But a former intelligence official who worked closely with her said she would have been happy to stay, despite the intensity of the criticism voiced by Mr. Goss and his top aides.

That's right, throw out the old wood, even if the new shoots haven't yet been found. Meanwhile, the various intel agencies poach from each other as they try to fill their shortfall of analysts:

Counterterrorism agencies are shopping for talent at job fairs, dangling generous scholarships and luring staff from each other in a race to overcome a shortage of analysts that may only get worse in the new intelligence overhaul.

"You don't have a limitless pool to draw from," Black said.

The Agency and the other spy departments will have a hard time competing with the Beltway Bandits, who can pay those with security clearances double what the GSA schedule allows. Third rate pay buys third rate talent.

The Power of Soul

The local news says that Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital is swamped with gifts, phone card minutes and all the rest. As always, ordinary Americans came through when the VA and the DoD didn't have a clue.

As we stand on the brink of a new year, send your goodies, minutes, phone cards and ordinary toiletries, cookies and magezine subscriptions to
anysoldier.com, the site will guide you to the real needs of our men and women who didn't ask to be where they are right now.

Alternatively, serve the cold and hungry in your own community through America's Second Harvest. Need doesn't begin and end on December 25. The weather is getting colder, and ASH can help you find the clothing banks where you can donate warm clothes for cold children and adults, as well as food. During the W administration, these needs are only going to get worse. If you gave Toys for Tots for Christmas, think about Gloves for Tots in January. Those post-Christmas sales are a great place to stock up for the needs of the homeless: 50% off doesn't mean much when you don't have a place to live or a warm meal, but it just increased your buying power. Even I can afford a couple of pairs of half-price gloves for the poor.

The poor we shall always have with us: the Gospel warned us.

Other sites have the places you can donate for the disaster in the Indian Ocean, the list I like starts with Medecins sans Frontieres/Doctors Without Borders, who have stripped their website down to nothing to accept the additional traffic. They already have some teams on the ground, and have 60 tons of supplies ready to go when they can get flights into the area. The need is so huge that these are tears in the ocean, but MSF has a track record, they get the job done. Diarrhea and cholera are going to be hitting the children before Friday. Water purification is something they specialize in. Give them a check, let the experts do what they do best.

Can't do any of the above? When was the last time you gave blood? Your community can't possibly repay you for that, but as you slap the band-aid over your arm and accept a cookie from the volunteer, you'll wonder why you waited so long. Blood supplies are always very low at this time of the year. This beats the crap out of going to the movies in order to feel good.

Give what you can, not because you have to, but because you can. Exercise your free will to make the world a little better than it was this morning. It is your choice.

You can save a life, and you don't have to be a hero to do it. It only takes a couple of minutes.

Links are the currency of the Interdependent web. Spend them freely.

DNA

This was on the PRO-med update page earlier today. You have to read the foreign papers in order to keep up with this story, it is still off the US media's radar screen. It's out of the US Centers for Disease Control, but only the Canadians have picked it up.

CDC to conduct avian flu pandemic experiments

Canadian Press

TORONTO — The alarm now sounds with increasing frequency and urgency: the world could be on the brink of an influenza pandemic sparked by the highly virulent avian flu strain ravaging poultry stocks in Southeast Asia, experts fear.

The Geneva-based agency would like to be able to put some kind of odds on how likely H5N1 is to become a pandemic strain and how deadly -- or not -- H5N1 reassortment viruses might be in humans.

This is a good news/bad news kind of story. The good news is that if the scientists can force the recombination in the laboratory ahead of the wild strain's mutation, we've got a chance of putting up some kind of defense and growing a vaccine, and at least a chance at understanding what kind of risk this virus represents. The bad news, of course, is that the experiments themselves run the risk of letting this bug loose on the world.

The fact that an influenza specialist of the order of magnitude of Robert Webster is using the kind of vocabulary he is using above tells me that my own alarm at the appearance of this strain of influenza is completely justified.

There is a big wild card in all of this: the disaster in Southern and Southeast Asia. The breeding ground of H5N1 is the far east and the earliest cases came out of Thailand and Viet Nam, territory where we now have large populations of refugees, little in the way of public health infrastructure and next to nothing in communications infrastructure. This is a very frightening scenario, as various kinds of digestive and respiratory ailments will begin surfacing as soon as this weekend in stressed populations with very little in the way of fresh water. Aid workers themselves are likely to be among the first line of a variety of infections. In addition to the predictable sequellae of disease in the face of a natural disaster of this scale (typhus, cholera, TB) we've got these three emergent strains of influenza about which little is known lurking in animal populations

Bookmark PRO-med and check on it regularly. Charles, if you are around, could you comment on the efficacy of an N95 respirator against this virus? I haven't had time to do the research on the bug's dimensions or the granularity of the filter on this respirator. Anyone with familiarity with the issue, chime in. Some of our Canadian readers may have had experience with this respirator during the SARS scare last year.

If this scenario (wide-spread displaced persons, public health and governement services in collapse) reminds you at all of the way the stage was set for the 1918 influenza pandemic...

There weren't jet airplanes in 1918.

Stingy

I knew somebody would come up with the numbers. This is via PSoTD:

America, the Niggardly

It was with great fanfare that the United States and 188 other countries signed the United Nations Millennium Declaration, a manifesto to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger and disease among the one billion people in the world who subsist on barely anything. The project set a deadline of 2015 to achieve its goals. Chief among them was the goal for developed countries, like America, Britain and France, to work toward giving 0.7 percent of their national incomes for development aid for poor countries.

The government spends $450 billion annually on the military, and $15 billion on development help for poor countries, a 30-to-1 ratio that, as Mr. Sachs puts it, shows how the nation has become “all war and no peace in our foreign policy.” Next month, he will present his report on how America and the world can actually cut global poverty in half by 2015. He says that if the Millennium Project has any chance of success, America must lead the donors.

(Emphasis mine.) Yes, we write the biggest check, in absolute terms. But as a percentage of budget, GDP or per capita, the Dutch have us beat.

The Mind Boggles

Asia Struggles As Death Toll Hits 44,000

By ANDI DJATMIKO
Associated Press Writer

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia (AP) -- Mourners in Sri Lanka used their bare hands to dig graves Tuesday while hungry islanders in Indonesia turned to looting in the aftermath of Asia's devastating tsunamis. Thousands more bodies were found in Indonesia, dramatically increasing the death toll across 11 nations to around 44,000.

Emergency workers found that 10,000 people had been killed in a single town, Meulaboh, in Aceh province at the northern tip of Sumatra island, the hardest hit region in Indonesia, said Purnomo Sidik, national disaster director at the Social Affairs Ministry.

Another 9,000 were confirmed dead so far in the provincial capital, Banda Aceh, and surrounding towns, he said. Along Aceh's hard-hit western coastline, villages were swamped up to the roofs, still unexplored by soldiers combing the area for survivors and dead. Refugees fleeing the area described surviving for days on little more than coconuts before reaching Banda Aceh.

"The sea was full of bodies," said Sukardi Kasdi, who reached the capital from his town of Surang.

With aid not arriving quick enough, desperate residents in Meulaboh and other towns in Aceh - a region that was unique in that it was struck both by Sunday's massive quake and the killer waves that followed - began to loot.

"It is every person for themselves here," district official Tengku Zulkarnain told el-Shinta radio station from the area.

In Sri Lanka, the toll also mounted significantly. Around 1,000 people were dead or missing from a train that was flung off its tracks when the gigantic waves hit. Rescuers pulled 204 bodies from the train's eight carriages - reduced to twisted metal - and cremated or buried them Tuesday next to the railroad track that runs along the coast.

"Is this the fate that we had planned for? My darling, you were the only hope for me," cried one man for his dead girlfriend - his university sweetheart - as Buddhist monks held prayer nearby.

More than 18,700 people died in Sri Lanka, more than 4,400 in India and more than 1,500 in Thailand, with numbers expected to rise. Scores were also killed in Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, the Maldives. The giant waves raced nearly 3,000 miles to east Africa, causing deaths in Somalia, Tanzania and Seychelles.

And the toll was expected to continue to mount. A police official said 8,000 people were missing and possibly dead in India's remote Andaman and Nicobar Islands, located just north of Sumatra. So far, only 90 people were confirmed dead in the archipelago of 30 inhabited islands. The Indonesian vice president estimated that up to 25,000 could be dead on Aceh's western coastlines, bringing the country's potential toll up to 50,000.

If the speculation in the last paragraph is correct, the toll directly attributable to the tidal wave and earthquake may top 100,000. How many more may succumb to water-borne illness, starvation and the other sequellae of massive natural disaster is impossible to know.

U.S. Relief Package to More Than Double

By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Agency for International Development prepared Tuesday to add $20 million to an initial $15 million contribution for Asian earthquake relief as Secretary of State Colin Powell bristled at a United Nations official's suggestion that the United States has been "stingy."

A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press the increased aid figure was bound to be pushed even higher as assessments of the damage from the biggest earthquake in 40 years are received.

The Pentagon is preparing a supplemental relief operation and pre-stocked supplies of shelter, food and water bags are on their way to Indonesia from Dubai, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Powell, irritated by the U.N. official's criticism, toured morning television talk shows to say the Bush administration will follow up its contributions with large additional sums.

"The United States has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world," Powell said when asked about the comments Monday by Jan Egeland, the U.N. humanitarian aid chief.

Initially, the U.S. government pledged $15 million and dispatched disaster specialists to help the Asian nations devastated by a massive earthquake and tsunamis that claimed tens of thousands of lives.

I don't think there is much point in playing the numbers game (although as Duncan points out, the total committed today is less than the cost of W's coro--er, inauguration next month) as the scale of this disaster is beyond anything experienced in modern times. All of that money tied up in the sands of Mesopotamia now seems kind of pointless, doesn't it?

Beauty and Truth

4 Ways to Find Out What’s Really Happening in Iraq
by Doug Ireland

Coverage of Iraq made this an annus horribilis for America’s major media. If you want to know why public opinion in Western Europe has been so overwhelmingly against the U.S. war in and occupation of Iraq, there’s one obvious answer: the difference in television news between theirs and ours. You can easily determine this for yourself: Spend a week watching the news broadcasts and TV magazines of the BBC, France2 and Deutsche Welle, all available on many U.S. cable systems. The footage of dead Iraqi babies and children — victims of U.S. attacks on "terrorists" — that you will regularly see on European public television is rarely aired on U.S. networks. The regular interviews in Iraqi hospitals with doctors recounting the slaughter of the innocents that show up on European news broadcasts aren’t often seen on the all-news cable networks here, let alone on the Big Three broadcast nets’ newscasts. Iraqis, of course, know this daily reality all too well — which explains their overwhelming hostility to the U.S. occupation.

An on-the-ground study of Iraqi casualties between April and September by Nancy Youssef of Knight Ridder newspapers demonstrated that "Operations by U.S. and multinational forces and Iraqi police are killing twice as many Iraqis — most of them civilians — as attacks by insurgents." But you’re not told this by U.S. TV’s "embedded" reporters, who’ve traded their reportorial independence for access to the boom-boom footage that drives what Time magazine has labeled the "militainment" proffered by American television. In fact, embedded reporters are enrolled in what the Pentagon calls "information operations" — a counterpart to military operations designed to exact the rosiest possible picture of the U.S. occupation from accredited reporters. Those who don’t toe the Pentagon line, and who report negatively on the occupation of Iraq and the indiscriminate effects of U.S. forces’ combat there, are simply blacklisted.

The demagogic nationalism of Fox News, the ratings king, has dragged the other networks down to its level as they seek to win back lost viewers. In a must-read article on "Iraq, the Press and the Election" in the December 16 issue of The New York Review of Books (available online at www.nybooks.com), the Columbia Journalism Review’s Michael Massing dissects U.S. media coverage of Iraq with devastating effect. CNN, for example, he portrays as "careening wildly between an adherence to traditional news values on the one hand and a surrender to the titillating, overheated, nationalistic fare of contemporary cable on the other. In the end, CNN . . . offered the superficiality of Fox without any of its conviction."

The degree to which coverage of Iraq reflects the structural corruption of U.S. major media is even more damningly portrayed in Weapons of Mass Deception, the superb new film by Danny Schechter. Schechter, a TV veteran of three decades, is an Emmy-winning former investigative producer for ABC and CNN (he calls himself a "network refugee"), and the founder of the independent TV production company Globalvision and also of MediaChannel.org, the Web site where his sharp-eyed, acid-tongued media criticism punches gaping holes in official newsdom’s coverage of Iraq. In this film — which is much more meticulously documented and more accurate than Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, and therefore infinitely more devastating — Schechter shows with precision how U.S. mass media have been recruited as part and parcel of the Pentagon’s war-propaganda machine.

There is no end in sight in Iraq. Senator Joe Biden, the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, reported recently from Iraq that he hasn’t talked to a single U.S. military commander who doesn’t believe the U.S. occupation will last "three, or five, or seven years more" at least. So, to penetrate the fog of propaganda relayed by our major media, you’ll need to be well-armed. Here, then, are a few suggestions of how to get your head around the reality of what’s truly happening in Iraq from online sources, in addition to the previously mentioned MediaChannel.org:

Undernews (http://prorev.com/indexa.htm), the daily press review by veteran Washington journalist Sam Smith, is in the I.F. Stone tradition: He culls open sources in the English language from which to construct an alternative version of reality. It’s the perfect solution for the average news consumer too busy to wade through all of the English-language press — including the fine coverage of Iraq from British and Australian newspapers — from which Undernews provides brief extracts and links to complete articles.

Truthout (www.truthout.org/) is edited by William Rivers Pitt, the author of the best-selling War on Iraq — What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You To Know. Truthout’s daily e-bulletins bring you a selection of the latest news and analysis that counters official Washington’s worldview — augmented by Rivers’ scintillating commentaries and contributions from Truthout’s own foreign correspondents.

Informed Comment (www.juancole.com/) is the Web site of University of Michigan history professor and Middle East specialist Juan Cole, whose analysis has become a must-read for anyone seriously interested in Iraq.

Allow me to add some of the sources on my blogroll. I start my day every day with Paul Woodward's The War in Context (on vacation until 12/30) and the other "Brilliant Aggregators" listed over on the right because they include the world press. The American media are so parochial as to be myopic, the rest of the world is less interested in American media cheerleading. The Agonist is a community-mediated summary of world news.

Soon to be added to the blogroll: Tom's Information Clearinghouse ("There is a war going on for the minds of America, those waging this war are determined to control the American people by taking possession of our minds and by controlling our sources of information....
Truth is indefinable. Information is unlimited. ") and The Randolph Bourne Institute's www.antiwar.com ("With every war, America has made a "great leap" into statism, and as Bourne emphasizes: " . . . it is during war that one best understands the nature of that institution [the State]." At its core, that "nature" includes the ever-increasing threat to individual liberty and the centralization of political power. ")

I present each of these sites with the understanding that you are well-informed, thoughtful and able to find your way through the announced or unannounced political viewpoints of each of them to the kernel of truth which fuels your own activism.

I urge you to read widely. I print the material which speaks to my own head, heart and gut. You are as likely to find material from liberal sites and The American Conservative Review at this URL. As John Keatstold us:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

Read these and the other aggregators. I have placed them over there for a reason.

Support the Troops

CIA makes no disclosures on abuse
By Charlie Savage The Boston Globe
Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Agency refusal cites precedent from '70s

WASHINGTON The CIA is refusing to disclose any information about abuse of detainees in Afghanistan and at the U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, invoking a legal precedent that involved a secret project by the billionaire Howard Hughes to recover a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine in the 1970s.

The CIA allegedly oversaw interrogations of top-level detainees, and some investigators think the agency's tactics are at the heart of the question of whether the Bush administration has authorized torture.

But nearly all the disclosures concerning abuses have come from other agencies, including the Pentagon and the FBI.

The CIA traditionally has invoked special protections aimed at shielding its intelligence-gathering operations, but the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing to obtain the records, and some independent observers think the agency's insistence on secrecy is inappropriate in this instance.

Megan Lewis, a lawyer for the civil rights group, said she would file an objection in early January to the CIA's efforts to avoid scrutiny.

The CIA asserts that it is protected according to the submarine case, in which a judge allowed the agency to neither confirm nor deny that it possessed records of a deep-sea mining project thought to be a front to recover a sunken Soviet submarine. The CIA has refused to acknowledge whether it has documents and photographs related to abuse of detainees.

Among the records sought in the ongoing Freedom of Information Act case pursued by the American Civil Liberties Union are a Justice Department legal opinion about interrogation techniques and pictures of John Walker Lindh, an American with Taliban forces who was detained in Afghanistan.

In the same suit, the FBI chose to turn over troves of e-mails regarding accusations of prisoner abuse that were made public last week.

But the CIA "asserts that it is not able to confirm or deny whether it has any records relating to its purported involvement in these specific activities related to the treatment, death, or rendition of detainees in U.S. custody because to do so would tend to reveal classified information and intelligence sources and methods that are protected from disclosure," the agency said in a court filing on Oct. 15.

The lawsuit has met stiff resistance from some other government agencies, most notably the Pentagon. Legal wrangling continues over Pentagon assertions that certain documents are exempt from disclosure on the grounds of national security. Still, all agencies involved other than the CIA have said whether sought-after documents exist.

In seeking to keep its role in the detainee-abuse scandal from public view, the CIA has invoked the so-called "Glomar response," named for the Glomar Explorer, a deep-sea mining ship built by a Hughes-owned company for the CIA. The operation was exposed in 1975, leading to a Freedom of Information Act suit that established the precedent.

Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, who has extensive experience in Freedom of Information Act cases, said the use of the Glomar response was relatively rare and was particularly questionable in the context of records of detainee abuse. A more typical use, he suggested, would be a request for information about a secret technology or installation.

In litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, "the Glomar response has its place," Aftergood said.

"But it doesn't follow that every time it's invoked, it is legitimate," he said.

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, which is representing the CIA in the lawsuit filed in June, declined to comment.

(This article contains copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of democracy, economic, environmental, human rights, political, scientific, and social justice issues, among others. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in this article is distributed without profit for research and educational purposes.)

If The Agency was so successful at all of those "interrogations," how come we're still being blindsided in Iraq, and by the way, in Afghanistan?

AFGHANISTAN: IDPs willing to settle in south

27 Dec 2004 15:36:09 GMT
Source: Integrated Regional Information Networks

ZHARE DASHT, 27 December (IRIN) - Tens of thousands of internally displaced persons [IDPs] in the southern border camp of Zhare Dasht are seeking assistance to help them settle in an area they have lived in temporarily over the last two years.

With drought conditions continuing in the areas these IDPs came from, the destitute families prefer to stay in Zhare Dasht rather than return to their places of origin. Although the desert area is cold during the winter and isolated from southern Kandahar city, people say they can manage to earn a living or receive some aid assistance in the troubled IDP camp.

"We cannot live forever as IDPs, nor can we return to our lost lands, pasture and cattle. We want to settle here," Abdul Quam, the chief of the IDPs, told IRIN in Zhare Dasht, 45 km west of Kandahar.

The IDP camp hosts nearly 45,000 people who took refuge in the desert in early 2002 after harassment by local commanders and incidents of systematic ethnic discrimination in the country's northern provinces.

According to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 45 percent of the IDPs are Kochee nomads from the south. The Kochees, whose livelihood depends on livestock breeding, were displaced after losing their cattle and pastures following years of prolonged drought.

Nearly three years after the fall of the Taliban, conditions in Afghanistan still do not allow for the return of all IDPs.

According to the Afghan Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation (MORR), after another year of drought and crop failures, more than a third of the Afghan population remains dependent on food aid. Among them are at least 167,000 IDPs, most of them living in camps in the south and west of the country. Persistent drought, a lack of infrastructure and slow reconstruction has considerably slowed the pace of return in 2004.

Only 17,000 IDPs have made the journey home since the beginning of the year. Unable or unwilling to return to their homes, the remaining IDPs, most of them drought-affected nomadic Kochees, are now in need of long-term solutions that go beyond humanitarian assistance.

The Coalition forces in Afghanistan call this struggle forgotten, and so it is treated by the American media. The international aid organizations have pulled out of Afghanistan because the security situation is still too dire. Sound familiar?

Representation

Sunni Party Pulls Out of Iraq Vote As Doubts Grow

By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, December 28, 2004; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Dec. 27 -- The largest political party representing Iraq's Sunni Muslim minority announced Monday that it would drop out of the Jan. 30 election, dealing a fresh blow to the vote's credibility on the same day the top Shiite Muslim candidate survived a car bombing.

The withdrawal of the Iraqi Islamic Party, combined with the assassination attempt on cleric Abdul Aziz Hakim, heightened concerns that the parliamentary election may produce a lopsided result, further alienating Sunni areas where the armed insurgency is growing.
Iraq Casualties

The need for adequate Sunni participation has become a central issue a month before the election, seen by the United States and Iraq's interim leadership as pivotal to creating a stable government. On Monday, Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader, added his voice to those of Sunni clerics urging Iraqis to boycott the ballot, saying "anyone who takes part in this election consciously and willingly is an infidel."

Bin Laden issued the warning in an audiotape aired on the al-Jazeera satellite television network. In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell encouraged "all Sunnis and all Sunni leaders to join in this effort, to say no to terrorism, no to murder and yes to democracy."

But voter registration in Sunni areas has lagged far behind registration in other parts of Iraq, according to Iraq's top election official, Hussain Hindawi. Voters have not been able to register at all in Anbar province, home to the restive cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. Candidates have proved scarce as well: The 41 openings on Anbar's proposed provincial council have drawn only 50 candidates.

In another troubling sign, Western diplomats noted that preliminary indicators of voter participation nationwide are markedly lower than expected, judging by the sluggish early rate at which Iraqis have offered corrections to voter rolls.

Officials blame the problems on poor security and a late start in public information campaigns intended to explain the election to a population ruled by dictatorship for three decades. Leaders of the Iraqi Islamic Party also cited security as a reason for withdrawing the Sunni party's slate of 275 candidates.

"We asked to postpone the election long ago because we believe the security situation in the country is not suitable to hold elections," Mohsen Abdul Hamid, head of the party, told reporters in Baghdad.

"The Iraqis don't understand the elections yet," he said. "We need enough time, at least six months, to prepare ourselves. . . . The security issue is very complicated."

It doesn't take a rocket science degree to figure out that getting shot at is going to keep the vote total down.

The Retail Result

Retail in Review: More Bah Than Sis-Boom
By TRACIE ROZHON

As customers crammed stores the day after Christmas, waving their gift cards and seeking the latest markdowns, analysts were there, too - watching. They offered their latest judgment of the Christmas shopping season yesterday: good, but not great.

The analysts, however, were talking mainly about the traditional bricks-and-mortar retail companies. Amazon.com said yesterday that it had set a one-day record during the holiday season of 2.8 million orders (although it did not say which day), adding strength to the strategies of many retailers to beef up or start online stores.

Shares of Amazon rose $3.32, or 8.5 percent yesterday, to $42.25, as the online retailer said its two top-selling categories were books (not surprising) and electronics like DVD players and digital cameras (more surprising).

The other big news yesterday was from Wal-Mart Stores, which reaffirmed predictions that its sales would fall in the middle of its revised holiday numbers, that is, 1 percent to 3 percent. Wal-Mart originally predicted a bigger increase, but the $256 billion chain stumbled over the post-Thanksgiving shopping period, and analysts said they were worried. Yesterday, some breathed a sigh of relief.

"For all the hand-wringing over Wal-Mart's soft results, the world's largest retailer may be right on plan after all," Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, retail consultants, wrote in a report. Wal-Mart, Mr. Johnson speculated, "may be shifting strategies - at least for its domestic business, which is approaching saturation - from maximizing sales to maximizing profits."

Shares of Wal-Mart rose 24 cents yesterday, to $52.79. Target, its hottest competitor, gained 81 cents, to $51.31, after forecasting that sales in December may increase as much as 5 percent.

Yet over all, most analysts took a less-than-cheery approach to this holiday season, and some wondered about the future.

Last night, Brian J. Tunick, an analyst at J. P. Morgan Chase, issued a report expressing concern that a handful of retailers - from Chico's to Tiffany to T. J. Maxx - might soon lower their projections for the fourth quarter.

Despite an acceleration in sales last week and the current strength in luxury goods, Merrill Lynch still projected that holiday retail comparisons for stores open more than a year - the yardstick retailers prefer - would increase only 2 percent, down from a 3.3 percent gain in November and December of 2003. Elizabeth O. Pierce, an analyst at Sanders Morris Harris, called her report on holiday shopping, "A Less Than Stellar Finish."

Todd D. Slater, an analyst with Lazard, stuck to his earlier prediction: a 3.2 percent gain this holiday season over last.

Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst at NPD Group, retail consultants, also stuck to his group's prediction of 3.4 percent.

And, the National Retail Federation, whose president called the season "decent" last week, maintained its prediction for 4.5 percent growth.

I was in a mid-low-end retail department store on the morning after. The lines were manageable. The express lines at my local grocery are longer at 6 in the evening. I was able to find everything I was looking for in my size, which means that stocking levels were still decent.

The boutique merchants I talked to had a better than average season, and I'm sure Nordstrom did, too. My own gift shopping was down more than a third from the last year I was able to buy gifts and I doubt that I'm alone, judging from the comments you've left here about your own employment situations.

A 3.2 percent over last year, in aggregate, is barely above the rate of inflation.

Don't go looking for this shopping season to find a "tell" on the economy.

I retain my dour outlook and look forward to correction (and a whole lot more in my pay envelope) when I'm proven wrong.

Science Monday

As I got ready to leave work this evening the AP was reporting that the number of dead in Indonesia alone was over 20,000. The totals we are likely to see in coming days beggar my imagination.

The Pacific Ring already has tsunami warning system which, while not perfect, has saved thousands of lives. Something similar needs to be installed in every major ocean/plate tectonic system. Indonesia's trench situation with regard to plate tectonics was well known.

Tsunamis' Toll Might Have Been Lessened
Experts Cite Lack of Warning System

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A20

The real tragedy, many experts acknowledged yesterday, is that thousands of lives in countries such as Sri Lanka, India and Thailand could have been saved if an early warning system similar to one that exists for the Pacific Ocean had been in place. U.S. officials said that they wanted to warn the countries but that there was no mechanism to do so.

The tsunamis' impact in the hardest-hit countries occurred about two hours after the underwater earthquake: If authorities had had the opportunity to move people even a few hundred yards inland, many people would have been saved, Bernard said.

"The idea is to get yourself high enough or far enough inland that the water is not strong enough to take you back to sea. About waist-deep water is where you lose control," he said.

One reason experts had not pushed hard for a warning system is that the risk along the shores of the Indian Ocean had long been underestimated. Most of the devastating tsunamis in the last century or more have occurred elsewhere.

"We have believed as a community that the Indian Ocean is fairly immune to tsunamis of the kind that took place," said Costas Synolakis, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Southern California. "The last tsunami that affected the Indian Ocean was in 1883. . . . The hazard was underestimated by a factor of 10."

Synolakis said he had opened discussions two weeks ago with officials in Hawaii at the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center about expanding the warning system to the Indian Ocean.

The geological cause of the earthquake is plain: Indonesia has long been plagued by earthquakes and the volcanoes that usually attend such massive fissures in the earth. Giant plates bearing India and Australia have been moving north for millenniums, colliding with the Eurasian landmass near Indonesia. As a result of the immense pressure that was built up, the southern plate is dug like a bulldozer blade under the northern plate.

"Most of the time, the plates are stuck together and nothing happens," said Lori Dengler, professor of geology at Humboldt State University in California. "But every several hundred years, we have a rupture that causes one side to move."

When that happened about 8 p.m. Eastern time Saturday, pressure that had accumulated for years or decades was released in an instant. As the earth convulsed, the ocean floor probably fell rapidly in some places and rose elsewhere along a fissure hundreds of miles in length, several experts said. Areas that collapsed saw tons of water plunge in, causing what is known as a depression wave. Elsewhere, the ocean floor reared up, causing water to be displaced -- an elevation wave. It is likely that both effects fed the tsunamis, experts said.

"Think of a kid's plastic swimming pool and sliding your hand underneath -- pushing up on the plastic," said John Ebel, a professor of geophysics at Boston College. "It would cause a wave to spread throughout the pool. That's what happens on the ocean floor after an earthquake."

Unlike wind-whipped waves on the ocean, which rarely cause much disturbance below the surface, a tsunami's energy is contained underwater. A ship in the deep ocean is unlikely to be affected by a tsunami.

But the effects become shockingly clear as a tsunami approaches shore and the waves rear up, said Kenneth Hudnut, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, Calif. Depending on where the earthquake occurred, people often encounter the depression and elevation waves in the same sequence in which they were created.

"In many cases, people report the sea withdrew first and then the seafloor was exposed, and then the elevation wave comes in and hits the land," Synolakis said.

The energy released by a tsunami is enormous, and geologists said that measuring instruments would likely continue to pick up signals for about 24 hours all over the world. Although earthquake aftershocks are common, new tsunamis are likely to be much smaller and localized, and might well not be noticed without sensitive measuring instruments.

Even without a sophisticated early warning system, experts said, just knowing about the nature of tsunamis could have saved lives. A rapidly receding shoreline is a warning that the elevation wave is about to strike -- people may have as long as 10 minutes to flee the ocean's edge, Synolakis said. Even fleeing when the sound of the approaching wave can be heard might save lives, Bernard said.

Fishing boats or sailboats in the ocean are likely to find greater safety by heading farther out to sea, Bernard added. A tsunami has less effect in deeper water.

"You can't stop these once they get going," he said. "The only thing that could have been done is evacuate the coastline."

Ten minutes warning would have saved thousands of lives. Just saying the word "thousands" sends a terrible dead weight into my shoulders.

The Best Offense

The Best Defense Is a Good Offense
By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN

Published: December 27, 2004

War is not about eliminating risks; it is about managing them. America should do everything it can to manage its risks in Iraq, and the military is constantly learning and adapting. So, however, are America's enemies - and they understand they can only win politically, not militarily. This in part explains the attacks earlier this month on Shiites in Karbala and Najaf, which killed 68 Iraqis and wounded about 175. It also helps explains last week's attack in Mosul; the insurgents knew the bombing would receive extensive news coverage in the United States, and they no doubt are aware of the results of recent polls that show rising opposition to the war among Americans. Why not try to divide Americans and Iraqis the way they are trying to divide Sunnis and Shiites?

The brutal reality is that the United States is fighting a "war after the war" that has already killed and wounded far more Americans and Iraqis than the war that drove Saddam Hussein from power. It is an intense war, with some 1,600 to 3,000 incidents and attack attempts a month. Troops are dispersed and sometimes vulnerable. All of this means more attacks are likely before Iraqi elections next month and constant fighting well into 2006. For months and years to come, insurgents and terrorists will continue to try to exploit every fault line in Iraqi society, in American politics, and in regional and international affairs as well.

There is no certainty that the United States will win in Iraq. The war after the war is a far more difficult one than the war against Saddam Hussein. If America overreacts to attacks and lets the enemy drive its agenda, losing the war in Iraq will become not just possible but almost certain.

Here I think Cordesman in simply wrong: insurgencies are classicly defensive wars, and the defense is always a stronger position than the offense, as Von Clausawitz noticed. This is the reason that the history of insurgencies against colonial or imperial invaders in the last 200 years has favored the home team. Cordesman has failed to learn the lessons of history.

Wage Depression

Paycheck has yet to make recovery
Salary increases no longer keeping up with inflation

By Barbara Rose, Tribune staff reporter. Freelance writer Ann Therese Palmer contributed to this story
Published December 26, 2004

More than three years into the economic recovery, U.S. workers' hourly wages continue to decline when adjusted for inflation with little hope of a dramatic turnaround anytime soon.

The long, lean times for salary increases have led some experts to wonder if a fundamental shift is under way even as productivity levels remain high and corporate profits continue to soar.

Beyond the temporary factors contributing to a sluggish recovery from the recession of 2001, some believe that globalization, the movement of jobs offshore and the declining influence of trade unions could be putting pay envelopes on a permanent diet. Some companies have concluded that the past practice of hiking wages faster than inflation is no longer needed to keep employees from leaving. It may never, in fact, be needed again.

Naturally, not many human-resource managers are trumpeting their commitment to holding the line. But in a recent issue of Workforce Management, a leading trade journal for human resources executives, the latest advice is plenty blunt:

"Annual pay increases designed for optimal hiring and retention are no longer needed," the magazine declares. "If your salary increase budget for 2005 is much higher than 3 percent, you're probably overspending," the article advised.

Even though real wages are falling for many workers, consumers continue digging deep into their pockets to keep the economy growing. Consumer spending, which accounts for about two-thirds of all economic activity, has remained relatively high during the recovery while savings levels have declined.

Meanwhile, average growth in wages and salaries fell below 3 percent for the 12 months through September for U.S. sector employees, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Pay grew at 2.4 percent--the lowest increase on record, partly because soaring health benefit expenses raised overall compensation costs for employers, some economists say.

Hourly wages for production and service workers--representing four-fifths of the nation's workforce--declined or remained flat year over year, when accounting for inflation, every month since May, according to the bureau's reports.

"Real wages are falling for a lot of workers," said economist Jared Bernstein of the Washington-based Economic Policy Institute, a liberal think tank. "It's surprising and disheartening, three years into the recovery with strong productivity growth, we're still looking at declining wages."

Employees like Cheryl Ruthrauff are feeling the pinch.

An administrative assistant who earns in the mid-$50,000 area, the 48-year-old mother of two has put her Lake Bluff townhome on the market and plans to move into an apartment to cut expenses.

Her budget is strained by the cost of putting her youngest daughter through Northern Arizona University on a single parent's salary.

Even without college costs, "it still probably would be tight," she said. "To me, you're not really receiving a raise because of inflation and the higher [health care] insurance."

Her raises at a midsize manufacturing company averaged between 2 and 3 percent in recent years compared with 7 to 8 percent during the 1990s.

"It's a drastic difference," she said. "You just live paycheck to paycheck. There's always something."

Thomas Foss, 51, chief technical officer at Mt. Prospect National Bank, is typical of the highly skilled workers who were forced to take jobs at steep discounts to their previous salaries during the recession to stay employed.

"You take a job for less with the hope that it works out later when you prove yourself in the position and demonstrate your contribution," said the former Lucent project manager. "It's driven by the market. People are doing that readily just to get in."
.....

At the same time, companies are paying more for employee health care, which boosts the costs of total compensation even while salaries lag.

"Compensation has been rising at a pretty rapid clip," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for Waltham, Mass.-based research firm Global Insight Inc. "That's a trade-off a lot of companies have made."

Benefit costs at U.S. employers grew at a brisk 6.8 percent for the 12 months ended in September--the same period when pay grew by 2.4 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Economists predict wages will rise when hiring picks up.

Despite the fact that the economy is adding jobs, 1.2 million fewer people are employed than in March 2001, when the recession started. Meanwhile, the number of available workers has increased due to population growth.

That sink of the 1.2 million excess workers is going to make a jobs recovery of any kind a long and painful process. During the period Mar. 2001 to the present, and additional 7 million people have been added to the workforce, many of them underemployed in part-time or temporary positions. This will assure that a downward pressure on wages will continue.

Electoral Legitimacy

Suicide bomber kills 15, wounds dozens in attack on top Iraqi Shiite political leader
posted by: Dan Viens (Web Producer)
Created: 12/27/2004 6:34 AM MST - Updated: 12/27/2004 6:34 AM MST

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - A suicide bomber detonated his car Monday at the gate of the home of the leader of Iraq's biggest political party, killing 15 people and injuring dozens, police said. The cleric was unharmed.

In another blow to Washington's plans for the upcoming elections, the largest Sunni Muslim political party that had planned to take part in the Jan. 30 ballot announced Monday it was pulling out of the race because of the rapidly deteriorating security situation and the lack of public awareness about the vote.

raq Rejects U.S. Talk of Adjusting Vote Result
Sun Dec 26, 2004 01:07 PM ET

By Luke Baker

The New York Times said Shi'ite leaders had been approached about the idea. Shi'ites would be reluctant to see the minority shut out of power if that means more violence, like the twin suicide car bombs that rocked their holy cities a week ago.

The chance that this "election" is going to have any legitimacy or significance for the "insurgency" is now down to zero.

Justice and Mercy

Why Some Politicians Need Their Prisons to Stay Full
By BRENT STAPLES

Published: December 27, 2004

Seldom has a public policy done so much damage so quickly. But changes in the draconian sentencing laws have come very slowly. That is partly because the public thinks keeping a large chunk of the population behind bars is responsible for the reduced crime rates of recent years. Studies cast doubt on that theory, since they show drops in crime almost everywhere - even in states that did not embrace mandatory minimum sentences or mass imprisonment. In addition, these damaging policies have done nothing to curb the drug trade.

Changing prison policy, however, is no longer a simple matter. The business of building and running the jailhouse has become a mammoth industry with powerful constituencies that favor the status quo. Prison-based money and political power have distorted the legislative landscape in ways that will be difficult to undo.

These problems are on vivid display in New York, which started mass imprisonment when Gov. Nelson Rockefeller persuaded the Legislature to pass the toughest drug laws in the nation at the start of an ill-starred "war on drugs" 30 years ago. The Rockefeller laws introduced the country to mandatory sentencing policies that barred judges from deciding who goes to jail and for how long. Instead, the laws required lengthy sentences - 15 years to life - for nonviolent, first-time offenders, many of whom would have received brief sentences, drug treatment or community service under previous laws.

Nearly all of the prisoners ended up in upstate New York, where failing farms and hollowed-out cities offered a lot of room for building. Politicians in these sparsely populated districts caught on quickly and began to lobby to have the new prisons located in their communities. As a result, nearly 30 percent of the people who were counted as moving into upstate New York during the 1990's were prison inmates.

The influx of inmates has brought desperately needed jobs to the region and resulted in districts whose economies revolve around prison payrolls and whose politics are dominated by the union that represents corrections officers. The inmates also helped to save political careers in areas where legislative districts were in danger of having to be merged because of shrinking populations. Inmates, as it turned out, were magically transformed into "residents," thanks to a quirk in the census rules that counts them as living at their prisons. Although people sentenced under the drug laws frequently serve long sentences, many prisoners remain behind bars only briefly before returning to homes that are often hundreds of miles away.

Felons are barred from voting in 48 of 50 states - including New York. Yet in New York, as in the rest of the country, disenfranchised prisoners are included in the population counts that become the basis for drawing legislative districts.

An eye-opening analysis by Prison Policy Initiative's Peter Wagner found seven upstate New York Senate districts that meet minimal population requirements only because prison inmates are included in the count. New York is not alone. The group's researchers have found 21 counties nationally where at least 21 percent of the "residents' were inmates.

The New York Republican Party uses its majority in the State Senate to maintain political power through fat years and lean. The Senate Republicans, in turn, rely on their large upstate delegation to keep that majority. Whether those legislators have consciously made the connection or not, it's hard to escape the fact that bulging prisons are good for their districts. The advantages extend beyond jobs and political gerrymandering. By counting unemployed inmates as residents, the prison counties lower their per capita incomes - and increase the portion they get of federal funds for the poor. This results in a transfer of federal cash from places that can't afford to lose it to places that don't deserve it.

Lately, polls have shown growing support for drug law reform. In November, prominent New York Republicans ran into trouble when they faced candidates who made Rockefeller reform an issue. In response, the State Senate endorsed a plan that cut sentences for drug possession crimes, which was the easy part. But it stonewalled on the crucial change, which would have returned to judges the discretion to sentence at least some offenders to drug treatment instead of prison.

While other political forces support the mandatory sentences - most notably the powerful local prosecutors - prison rights advocates have recently begun to argue that prison district politicians are more concerned about keeping the prisons full than about crime. The idea of counting inmates as voters in the counties that imprison them is particularly repulsive given that inmates are nearly always stripped of the right to vote. The practice recalls the early United States under slavery, when slaves were barred from voting but counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of apportioning representation in Congress.

I might add that treating the prison industry as a for-profit business creates a powerful lobby in favor of the Rockefeller laws. These laws also make a joke of the Judeo-Christian idea that justice and mercy should be tempered together, but that idea was long ago abandoned by the Christian right.

Make 'em Sing

Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 27, 2004; Page A01

The airplane is a Gulfstream V turbojet, the sort favored by CEOs and celebrities. But since 2001 it has been seen at military airports from Pakistan to Indonesia to Jordan, sometimes being boarded by hooded and handcuffed passengers.

The plane's owner of record, Premier Executive Transport Services Inc., lists directors and officers who appear to exist only on paper. And each one of those directors and officers has a recently issued Social Security number and an address consisting only of a post office box, according to an extensive search of state, federal and commercial records.

Bryan P. Dyess, Steven E. Kent, Timothy R. Sperling and Audrey M. Tailor are names without residential, work, telephone or corporate histories -- just the kind of "sterile identities," said current and former intelligence officials, that the CIA uses to conceal involvement in clandestine operations. In this case, the agency is flying captured terrorist suspects from one country to another for detention and interrogation.

The CIA calls this activity "rendition." Premier Executive's Gulfstream helps make it possible. According to civilian aircraft landing permits, the jet has permission to use U.S. military airfields worldwide.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, secret renditions have become a principal weapon in the CIA's arsenal against suspected al Qaeda terrorists, according to congressional testimony by CIA officials. But as the practice has grown, the agency has had significantly more difficulty keeping it secret.

According to airport officials, public documents and hobbyist plane spotters, the Gulfstream V, with tail number N379P, has been used to whisk detainees into or out of Jakarta, Indonesia; Pakistan; Egypt; and Sweden, usually at night, and has landed at well-known U.S. government refueling stops.

As the outlines of the rendition system have been revealed, criticism of the practice has grown. Human rights groups are working on legal challenges to renditions, said Morton Sklar, executive director of the World Organization for Human Rights USA, because one of their purposes is to transfer captives to countries that use harsh interrogation methods outlawed in the United States. That, he said, is prohibited by the U.N. Convention on Torture.

The CIA has the authority to carry out renditions under a presidential directive dating to the Clinton administration, which the Bush administration has reviewed and renewed. The CIA declined to comment for this article.

"Our policymakers would never confront the issue," said Michael Scheuer, a former CIA counterterrorism officer who has been involved with renditions and supports the practice. "We would say, 'Where do you want us to take these people?' The mind-set of the bureaucracy was, 'Let someone else do the dirty work.' "

The story of the Gulfstream V offers a rare glimpse into the CIA's secret operations, a world that current and former CIA officers said should not have been so easy to document.

Not only have the plane's movements been tracked around the world, but the on-paper officers of Premier Executive Transport Services are also connected to a larger roster of false identities.

Each of the officers of Premier Executive is linked in public records to one of five post office box numbers in Arlington, Oakton, Chevy Chase and the District. A total of 325 names are registered to the five post office boxes.

An extensive database search of a sample of 44 of those names turned up none of the information that usually emerges in such a search: no previous addresses, no past or current telephone numbers, no business or corporate records. In addition, although most names were attached to dates of birth in the 1940s, '50s or '60s, all were given Social Security numbers between 1998 and 2003.

"Extraordinary rendition" is a way to use proxy countries for torture. We've been doing it for decades, in spite of the fact that every intelligence service on earth knows that torture doesn't work. The psy-ops folks have known this since at least WWII. Yet we continue to play at it, as if we have something to learn from the convserso experience of the Spanish Inquisition. Our imaginations haven't progressed much from the 13th Century.

US disclosures signal wider detainee abuse

By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | December 26, 2004

WASHINGTON -- A trove of government disclosures forced by a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has signaled that the abuse of detainees in Iraq and at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was much broader than the Bush administration has portrayed it since the Abu Ghraib prison scandal became public this spring.

A heavily redacted internal e-mail from an FBI agent in June, for example, reported hearing of ''numerous serious physical abuse incidents of Iraqi civilian detainees . . . strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations" and refers to ''coverup efforts."

Another FBI agent wrote in an e-mail in August of witnessing an interrogation in Guantanamo:

''The A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees," the report said. ''The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

Thousands of pages of documents, including two sets of FBI reports made public in the past week, have been released since October in response to a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other rights groups.

The documents suggest that severe mistreatment was far more widespread than previously known and that there may have been higher-level authorization by Bush administration officials for a policy of aggressive interrogation tactics. The White House last week again denied that anyone authorized torture and pledged to investigate the new allegations.

Because the e-mails and memos recounting scenes of abuse were written by government officials -- largely FBI agents appalled by interrogation practices they found unprofessional and counterproductive -- the disclosures lend greater credibility to prior claims of abuse by former detainees, according to an advocate for the detainees.

''This is really disturbing and frightening," Khalid al-Odah, father of a Guantanamo detainee, said in a phone interview from Kuwait City. He says his son went to Pakistan to teach the Koran just before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and was later sold into detention under false pretenses by villagers seeking a bounty for Al Qaeda members.

''Before the FBI reports, we did not take these stories from the [human rights] organizations and released detainees as full fact," Odah said. ''We thought maybe there was some exaggerating, or they are not sure about what is happening exactly. Now we don't have any doubt."

The disclosures also fill in details of what occurred at critical moments in the story of how the administration's detention and interrogation policies adopted after the Sept. 11 attacks led to a downward spiral in how detainees were treated.

Faced with a need to gain greater human intelligence about Al Qaeda plans but stymied by provisions in the Geneva Conventions that prohibit coercive interrogations of prisoners of war, the administration announced in February 2002 that the conventions would not cover treatment of Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees captured in Afghanistan.

At Guantanamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller established a positive-rewards system for detainees who cooperated. But by fall 2002, questions arose about what pressures could be brought against those who did not. In April 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed off on techniques including loud music, temperature changes, stress positions, and isolation.

The FBI memos have done two things to broaden public understanding of what occurred at this stage to detainees captured in Afghanistan and held at the naval base. First, they demonstrate that service members also used growling dogs to frighten detainees at Guantanamo, something the military had denied. Second, they have rendered vivid that, in practice, the options amounted to physical and sensory assault.

''These documents that describe particular interrogations witnessed by FBI agents are useful because in the past, when we have talked about 'stress and duress' and hooding or loud music, it's been sterile," said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU staff attorney. ''People don't understand how these things work in practice -- what it means to bombard someone with loud music for a long time."

A vivid FBI e-mail, which recounted the detainee who pulled his hair out, also describes sessions in which detainees were chained in a fetal position with no food or water for 24 hours or more, causing them to urinate and defecate on themselves.

During one prolonged period, the room temperature was set so low that a barefoot detainee shook with cold. Another time the unventilated room was made ''unbearably hot" while ''extremely loud rap music" blasted a detainee for more than a day, the agent said.

Another FBI agent reported in July 2004: ''I saw another detainee sitting on the floor of the interview room with an Israeli flag draped around him, loud music being played, and a strobe light flashing."

And two FBI reports from Guantanamo also present possible new evidence of higher responsibility for authorizing abuses. A e-mail from last December protests about Defense Department interrogators impersonating FBI officers at Guantanamo.

''If this detainee is . . . released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [by] the 'FBI' interrogators," the FBI agent wrote in December 2003.

If you beat them harder, you will get better information. Fsck human rights.

The Prophets

Shopping for War
By BOB HERBERT

Published: December 27, 2004

So, as detailed in an article in The Times on Dec. 19, Mr. Rumsfeld's minions are concocting yet another grandiose and potentially disastrous scheme. Pentagon officials are putting together a plan that would give the military a more prominent role in intelligence gathering operations that traditionally have been handled by the Central Intelligence Agency. They envision the military doing more spying with humans, as opposed, for example, to surveillance with satellites.

Further encroachment by the military into intelligence matters better handled by civilians is bad enough. Now hold your breath. According to the article, "Among the ideas cited by Defense Department officials is the idea of 'fighting for intelligence,' or commencing combat operations chiefly to obtain intelligence."

That is utter madness. The geniuses in Washington have already launched one bogus war, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and provoked levels of suffering that are impossible to quantify. We don't need to be contemplating new forms of warfare waged for the sole purpose of gathering intelligence.

Part of this plan to further aggrandize Mr. Rumsfeld is being drafted under the direction of Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense who has already demonstrated that he should not be allowed anywhere near the most serious matters of national security. General Boykin, who once had the job of directing the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is an evangelical Christian who believes God put President Bush in the White House. He has described the fight against Islamic militants as a struggle against Satan and declared that it can be won only "if we come at them in the name of Jesus."

General Boykin asserted his views in speeches that he delivered in his military uniform at religious functions around the country. In one speech, referring to a Muslim fighter in Somalia, the general said: "Well, you know what I knew - that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

General Boykin was forced to apologize after media accounts led to widespread criticism. But the Bush administration is still holding him tightly in its embrace. How difficult is it to come to the conclusion that this is not a fellow who should be making decisions on matters involving armed conflict with Muslims?

It's also time to rein in Mr. Rumsfeld. As The Times noted in a recent editorial, "The last time Mr. Rumsfeld tried to force himself into the intelligence collection and analysis business, he created a boutique C.I.A. in the bowels of the Pentagon under the command of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy. The office essentially fabricated a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden - a link used to justify the Iraq invasion, and one that Mr. Rumsfeld was not getting from the C.I.A."

As Mr. Rumsfeld sees it, if the professionals won't give you what you want, find someone who will. What the Bush administration wanted from its intelligence sources was a reason to go to war. Mr. Rumsfeld's shop was more than happy to oblige.

The war in Iraq was the result of powerful government figures imposing their dangerous fantasies on the world. The fantasies notably included the weapons of mass destruction, the links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the throngs of Iraqis hurling kisses and garlands at the invading Americans, and the spread of American-style democracy throughout the Middle East. All voices of caution were ignored and the fantasies were allowed to prevail.

The world is not a video game, although it must seem like it at times to the hubristic, hermetically sealed powerbrokers in Washington who manipulate the forces that affect the lives of so many millions of people in every region of the planet. That kind of power calls for humility, not arrogance, and should be wielded wisely, not thoughtlessly and impulsively.

This latest overreach by Mr. Rumsfeld is a sign that the administration, like a hardheaded adolescent, has learned little or nothing from the tragic consequences of its wrongheaded policies. The second term is coming, so buckle up. It promises to be a very dangerous four years.

And, like Boykin, it promises to be four more years of treating our troops like shoot-em-up props in the evangelical video game of war.

8.9

I have nothing to say in the face of this disaster.

May the dead be given safely home..

May my own teers speed thee to thy rest

Mela ke

Babelfish

I can't come up with a favorite present from this holiday season--that wouldn't be fair. But I can tell you which set of operating instructions caused the most hilarity. Background you need to know: I traded in a diet cola habit (a very serious habit) a number of years ago when I learned what Aspartame can do to brain chemistry. I'm an H20 head now, and I particularly love the fizzy variety and go through dozens of ounces of seltzer a day. I got a seltzer bottle (or siphon bottle, for you Brits) as a very welcome gift. The instructions to the thing kept us in stitches for hours yesterday. Yes, I read instructions, particularly when the contents are under pressure (funny, none of my colleagues come with operating instructions....)

For those of you who don't know what a seltzer bottle is or have never seen one: most are made of heavy Czech glass and armored with a steel chain sleave so that the bottle won't explode in shards in case the glass has gotten cracked or nicked before it is put under pressure. It has a cap or head on top with a screw fitting that allows for the bottled water to be infused with CO2 gas, which is what makes seltzer fizzy.

Fill the heavy bottle to the fill mark, chill and you are ready to force the compressed C02 into the water from a small gas cartridge with a screw fitting on the head of the bottle. I quote:

"Gas Admitting

Put a pressure cartidge with carbon dioxide (C02) into the wing nut. C02 cartridge or bodies or their caps are in golden or messing* yellow colour finish. Wrap the bottle in a towel. Screw the wing nut with pressure gas cylinder on the head. The origination of gas admitting into the bottle will be manifested by water bubbling. Having filled the bottle unscrew the wing nut with empty pressure gas cylindaer. Leaking out of rest of gas contents is no failure. Shake the bottle well for 8--12 second to accelerate the saturation of water by gas. Caution! Gas admitting is not allowed with more than one gas cartridge!"

*"messing" is one of the German words for yellow-gold. The original Czech instructions have some German words.

From the Important Notices on the next page:

"...By screwing the gas cylinder on the bottle keep the safe face-distance...When the wing nut tightening is difficult, put the vaseline on the thread....Do not use the bottle after falling downsplitting or cracking more longer...Avoid the sunshine places or other places where the temperature is high...Store things under pressure away from children."

Read this aloud for the full effect. Of course there are some "terms of art" for those of us on both the right and the left in this brief, and all of us got them when we read out the instructions prior to giving due consideration to spritzing the dogs and each other a good Marx Brother's dosing down.

"Leaking out of the rest of the gas contents is no failure..." will be the inside joke in our family for the next year. It is infinitely stretchable.

Later this week, I'll have a reflection for you about living in a family where I'm the family political odd sheep, and what it means to love each other across ideological lines. I learned a lot this weekend and have much to think about. My bro and s-i-l have values and aspirations and yearnings not much different from mine. We often disagree about how to get there, but we rarely argue anymore. We spent the weekend meditating on disagreement and respect. I also have some thoughts about the role of humor in building the liminal moment, the moment when walls come down and the public commons happens. Having silly dogs around helps. I'm thinking we may start Friday Dog Blogging.

This week is going to be another crush at work, but I'm going to try to get back on schedule in the morning: back at the computer between 4-5 AM, 3-4 stories up before I leave for work, another couple at work over lunch, and a reflection or two in the evening. Yes, I have to start that early.

Here is what I'll be following this week: the retail picture of this shopping season, the year ahead in investments, the continuing failure of the neo-cons. A number of my sources will be on holiday hiatus and I'm on some really scary deadlines at work, so I'll have to make do with the best I can do for you. You can contribute, too, I don't have time to move every worthy contibution to the front page, but Bumpers in the know read comments. Post your stories there. If you need some basic work in HTML, the codes you need for posting, and some of you do, go here and read the instructions. Every time you mess up the side bar, I have to fix it, or other people can't read it. This is easy to learn.

Cross posted at The American Street.

Failure to Plan is Planning to Fail

Army Historian Cites Lack of Postwar Plan
Major Calls Effort in Iraq 'Mediocre'

By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 25, 2004; Page A01

The U.S. military invaded Iraq without a formal plan for occupying and stabilizing the country and this high-level failure continues to undercut what has been a "mediocre" Army effort there, an Army historian and strategist has concluded.

"There was no Phase IV plan" for occupying Iraq after the combat phase, writes Maj. Isaiah Wilson III, who served as an official historian of the campaign and later as a war planner in Iraq. While a variety of government offices had considered the possible situations that would follow a U.S. victory, Wilson writes, no one produced an actual document laying out a strategy to consolidate the victory after major combat operations ended.
....
As a result of the failure to produce a plan, Wilson asserts, the U.S. military lost the dominant position in Iraq in the summer of 2003 and has been scrambling to recover ever since. "In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative . . . gained over an off-balanced enemy," he writes. "The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since."

It was only in November 2003, seven months after the fall of Baghdad, that U.S. occupation authorities produced a formal "Phase IV" plan for stability operations, Wilson reports. Phase I covers preparation for combat, followed by initial operations, Phase II, and combat, Phase III. Post-combat operations are called Phase IV.

Many in the Army have blamed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon civilians for the unexpectedly difficult occupation of Iraq, but Wilson reserves his toughest criticism for Army commanders who, he concludes, failed to grasp the strategic situation in Iraq and so not did not plan properly for victory. He concludes that those who planned the war suffered from "stunted learning and a reluctance to adapt."

Army commanders still misunderstand the strategic problem they face and therefore are still pursuing a flawed approach, writes Wilson, who is scheduled to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point next year. "Plainly stated, the 'western coalition' failed, and continues to fail, to see Operation Iraqi Freedom in its fullness," he asserts.

"Reluctance in even defining the situation . . . is perhaps the most telling indicator of a collective cognitive dissidence on part of the U.S. Army to recognize a war of rebellion, a people's war, even when they were fighting it," he comments.

Because of this failure, Wilson concludes, the U.S. military remains "perhaps in peril of losing the 'war,' even after supposedly winning it."

Overall, he grades the U.S. military performance in Iraq as "mediocre."

Wilson's essay amounts to an indictment of the education and performance of senior U.S. officials involved in the war. "U.S. war planners, practitioners and the civilian leadership conceived of the war far too narrowly" and tended to think of operations after the invasion "as someone else's mission," he says. In fact, Wilson says, those later operations were critical because they were needed to win the war rather than just decapitate Saddam Hussein's government.

Air Force Capt. Chris Karns, a spokesman for the U.S. Central Command, which as the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East oversaw planning for the war in Iraq, said, "A formal Phase IV plan did exist." He said he could not explain how Wilson came to a different conclusion.

Look, everybody who knew much of anything at all about the planning for this misbegotten operation, from Eric Shinseki on down, knew that there was no Phase IV plan. Hell, I knew it. The State Department had crafted an elaborate one in a working group assembled by Colin Powell and Rumsfeld and the neo-cons ditched it, so convinced that they'd be welcomed by dancing in the streets. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the history of the wars of colonial invasion of the last 150 years knows that IEDs area lot more common than rose petals. This failure to plan is criminal.

No, I'm not yet home, in fact staying til tomorrow afternoon. Our regular blogging schedule will resume before dinner tomorrow evening, just about the time all of you return from your travels. This story screamed at me from the headlines of the WaPo and I had to say something about it.

Twas the Night Before Christmas

The bro's set-up just isn't conducive to newsblogging, and I need a break from it, anyway.

So let me just wish you all a very Merry Christmas, from my family and the Blondies, to yours. I'll be back with you on more familiar territory sometime tomorrow.

A Little Traveling Music, Maestro

I'm off to run some errands before heading to the train. Posting will be light until late tonight and will remain light until I return home tomorrow night.

Do you have the day off? What are you doing today?

Family Values

Families Pay the Price
By BOB HERBERT

Published: December 24, 2004

Once again American troops sent on a fool's errand are coming home in coffins, or without their right arms or left legs, or paralyzed, or so messed up mentally they'll never be the same. Troops are being shoved two or three times into the furnace of Iraq by astonishingly incompetent leaders who have been unable or unwilling to provide them with the proper training, adequate equipment or even a clearly defined mission.

It is a mind-boggling tragedy. And the suffering goes far beyond the men and women targeted by the insurgents. Each death in Iraq blows a hole in a family and sets off concentric circles of grief that touch everyone else who knew and cared for the fallen soldier. If the human stakes were understood well enough by the political leaders of this country, it might make them a little more reluctant to launch foolish, unnecessary and ultimately unwinnable wars.

Lisa Hoffman and Annette Rainville of the Scripps Howard News Service have reported, in an extremely moving article, that nearly 900 American children have lost a parent to the war in Iraq. More than 40 fathers died without seeing their babies.

The article begins with a description of a deeply sad 4-year-old named Jack Shanaberger, whose father was killed in an ambush in March. Jack told his mother he didn't want to be a father when he grew up. "I don't want to be a daddy," he said, "because daddies die."

Six female soldiers who died in the war left a total of 10 children. This is a new form of wartime heartbreak for the U.S.

We have completely lost our way with this fiasco in Iraq. The president seems almost perversely out of touch. "The idea of democracy taking hold in what was a place of tyranny and hatred and destruction is such a hopeful moment in the history of the world," he said this week.

The truth, of course, is that we can't even secure the road to the Baghdad airport, or protect our own troops lining up for lunch inside a military compound. The coming elections are a slapstick version of democracy. International observers won't even go to Iraq to monitor the elections because it's too dangerous. They'll be watching, as if through binoculars, from Jordan.

Nobody has a plan. We don't have enough troops to secure the country, and the Iraqi forces have shown neither the strength nor the will to do it themselves. Election officials are being murdered in the streets. The insurgency is growing in both strength and sophistication. At least three more marines and one soldier were killed yesterday, ensuring the grimmest of holidays for their families and loved ones.

One of the things that President Bush might consider while on his current vacation is whether there are any limits to the price our troops should be prepared to pay for his misadventure in Iraq, or whether the suffering and dying will simply go on indefinitely.

I concur with Bob (as I usually do) but let's get over the "strength and will" nonsense of the "Iraqi forces." There are no "Iraqi forces." No matter how desperate their personal situations, few are willing to be seen as collaborators with the occupiers. It's that simple.

No Place Like Home

Invited Home, 900 Evacuees Revisit Falluja
By ERIK ECKHOLM and ERIC SCHMITT

Published: December 24, 2004

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 23 - The first displaced residents were briefly allowed back into war-ravaged Falluja on Thursday, even as American marines and warplanes battled insurgents in another corner of the city, leaving three marines dead.

Thursday was the official start of the resettlement of Falluja, the former insurgent stronghold that was conquered block by bloody block last month, leaving a virtual ghost town, with many homes damaged, sewage running in the streets and electrical and water facilities demolished.

But it was a gingerly first step, at best, toward repopulating a city that once held some 250,000 people. About 900 of them, almost all men and all from the single northwestern neighborhood of Andalus, re-entered for a few hours to see the condition of their homes and decide if they want to move their families back, according to marine officers there.

Returning families will face serious privation. With water purifying plants and distribution systems largely destroyed, officials have built 24 temporary water tanks. They will give out water cans; returnees will have to fetch supplies by hand.

Residents will also receive food aid, and kerosene to fuel generators for lighting. Every returning family will be given the equivalent of $100, the interim government has said. Families whose houses were destroyed will receive $10,000 worth of Iraqi currency.

Via Juan Cole, here is what they are returning to:

The returnees were entering an apocalyptic backdrop of flattened city blocks and bullet-scarred homes, where wild dogs and cats have feasted on corpses and the sour smell of the dead filled the streets for weeks.

Funny, that's not a story being told in the US press.

There's no water, sewer or electricity in Fallujah. What are the refugees being returned to?

Tough Talk

Powell Advised Bush to Add Iraq Troops
Secretary Joined Blair And President in Talks

By Thomas E. Ricks and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, December 24, 2004; Page A01

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell told President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair last month that there were too few troops in Iraq, according to people familiar with official records of the meeting.

Powell made his assertion during one in a series of intense discussions on Iraq between Bush and Blair this fall. Those sessions, which have largely been kept secret, indicate that there was a tough debate behind closed doors as the Bush administration reexamined its handling of Iraq in the wake of Bush's reelection victory. Less than three weeks after the White House meeting, the Pentagon announced that it would boost the U.S. military presence in Iraq by 12,000 troops, to 150,000.

The discussions between the two leaders have gone on in recent months in a series of videoconferences that have been considered so sensitive that the transcripts of the meetings are destroyed after other senior officials read them. The disclosure of the sessions indicates that, privately, there has been more concern at the top levels of the Bush administration about the conduct of the U.S. mission there than officials have shown publicly. It also shows Powell taking an unusual role for a secretary of state, advising the president on a military issue.

Powell made his remarks on Nov. 12, just 10 days after the end of a presidential campaign in which Bush's handling of the war in Iraq and his decision to limit troop levels there had been a major issue. Powell announced his intention to resign his post three days later but submitted his letter of resignation on the day of the Blair meeting.

Accounts differ about the details of Powell's remarks. One U.S. official said that Powell flatly stated: "We don't have enough troops. We don't control the terrain."

But a senior State Department official familiar with the exchange said that Powell was less pointed, raising the issue in the context of continuing conversations that focused on the turmoil in the Sunni Triangle, the Iraqi elections scheduled for next month, and the shape and size of the U.S.-led military presence in the country. This official said Powell spoke about the size not only of the U.S. presence but also of the British and Iraqi forces.

"They were talking about the security situation," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of ongoing diplomacy. "They asked Powell his opinion."

The secretary of state, who is a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, responded by invoking his background as an infantry officer. He said the key task in warfare is to dominate the ground and control the situation. Overall, Powell concluded, according to this official, the number of troops -- U.S., coalition and Iraqi -- was insufficient to ensure such control.

The conversation, which took place on the fifth day of a major U.S. offensive to retake Fallujah, then turned to the issue of Iraqi security forces and the troubles that have been encountered in developing local forces that have confidence and leadership. "They looked especially at the training and how they could expand the Iraqi forces -- and that the situation would be difficult until they could do that," the State Department official said. "The emphasis was on getting Iraqi forces."

Both officials who discussed the meeting noted that the president a few weeks later decided to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq in an effort to improve security before the Iraqi elections, scheduled for the end of January. It is not clear how much Powell's comments influenced that decision. Nor is it clear whether the boost in troop strength by 12,000 has fully addressed Powell's concerns.

In a White House news conference and in other public appearances that day, top officials gave no hint that they had discussed whether troop levels in Iraq were adequate.

In their public comments on Nov. 12, neither Bush nor Blair alluded to the troop levels in Iraq. At a joint news conference, Bush warned that, as the Iraqi elections draw near, "the desperation of the killers will grow, and the violence could escalate."

Blair said: "We have to complete our mission in Iraq, make sure that Iraq is a stable and democratic country." Most of the news conference focused not on Iraq but on efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The session is also revealing of Powell's peculiar role in the administration, as a longtime Washington insider who has achieved outsider status on the issue of Iraq. His qualms about going to war there have long been known, but his concerns about the conduct of the occupation are only beginning to emerge.

I doubt that the Good Soldier will write about it in his next book.

Another guard unit decries training, equipment

By SCOTT GOLD, Los Angeles Times

HOUSTON -- Members of a second National Guard unit that prepared for duty in Iraq at the Army's Fort Bliss compound have come forward with allegations that they were not adequately trained. The soldiers said in interviews, e-mails and official documents that they were sent to war earlier this year with chronic illness, broken guns and trucks with blown transmissions.

The unit's M-60 machine guns reportedly were in such bad condition when the soldiers deployed in February that one sergeant -- in a section of a post-training summary sent to his commanders that was titled "gun maintenance" -- wrote: "Perhaps we should throw stones?"

The allegations come a month after another National Guard unit alleged that its training at Fort Bliss was so poor that soldiers feared incurring needlessly high casualties when they arrive in Iraq early next year.

Although the military has defended its troop preparedness, the willingness of units to go public with allegations suggests growing concern among National Guard and reserve members.

In the summary document obtained by the Los Angeles Times, the sergeant reported that some soldiers had arrived in Iraq without ever having fired some of the weapons they would use in war. Military commanders at the Fort Bliss complex, which straddles the Texas-New Mexico line, had misread mobilization orders, costing the soldiers a month of training, the sergeant wrote.

"We have been called away from our homes and families for hostile operations. We are owed a chance to be trained properly and given the tools to obtain that objective," the sergeant wrote.

Another 12,000 badly trained troops don't really mean much, except to the people who will be missing them. 150,000 pairs of boots on the ground are what is needed and we don't have them.

Bush/Cheney04: bringing democracy at the end of a gun since 2002.

Where Ignorant Armies Clash By Night

An Intelligence Gap Hinders U.S. in Iraq

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 24, 2004; Page A14

While insurgents in Iraq have placed informants inside the Iraqi government, the U.S. and Iraqi militaries, coalition contractors, and international news organizations, the United States is having serious intelligence problems in Iraq, according to sources inside and outside the U.S. government.

The CIA and the U.S. military were slow to start creating intelligence networks in Iraq and have had trouble developing informants because of death threats to Iraqis and their families should they get involved, the sources said.
spacer

"The insurgents have good sources in the Iraqi interim government and sometimes in local U.S. and coalition [military] commands," according to Anthony H. Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and a former Pentagon official, who this week published a study titled "Strengthening Iraqi Military and Security Forces."

"As in most insurgencies," writes Cordesman, " 'sympathizers' within the Iraqi government and Iraqi forces, as well as the Iraqis working for the coalition, media and NGOs [nongovernmental organizations], often provide excellent human intelligence without violently taking part in the insurgency."

Two recent events illustrate the problem. Last week, U.S. military and Iraqi forces raided the Baghdad offices of Iraqna, a mobile telephone service company, and seized the computers of two Egyptian security managers suspected of aiding the insurgents. On Wednesday, the Pentagon disclosed that the blast that killed 22 people at a U.S. military base outside Mosul on Tuesday was most likely set off by an insurgent who had penetrated the base.

In preparing his study, Cordesman, who specializes in the Middle East, visited Iraq and the Persian Gulf area repeatedly in the past two years and talked to U.S. intelligence experts, military officers and embassy officials, some in the past two weeks.

He and others note that the situation in Iraq is similar to what occurred almost 40 years ago in Vietnam, in that, as Cordesman puts it, local residents "are often pushed into providing data [to insurgents] because of family ties, a fear of being on the losing side, direct and indirect threats, etc." As in Vietnam, he says, there is in Iraq "the sense that as various insurgent factions organize, they steadily improve their intelligence and penetration of [coalition] organizations."

The same pressures hamper the U.S. effort to gain intelligence. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said to reporters on Wednesday: "The enemy's got a brain. . . . As things happen on the ground, they see what we do to respond to it. They then change their tactics. And intimidation is the kind of thing that can prevent people from providing intelligence" to coalition forces.

This is precisely where Rummy is falling down on the job. The "enemy" has a brain and isn't the "ignorant mud people" that his War Department thinks it is fighting. Oh, and by the way, most people hate being occupied. Being bombed into democracy is rarely a useful tactic.

The motives of the "insurgents" are varied. Fourth Generation Warfare isn't won at the end of a gun, it's a political struggle and RummyBush don't have the first clue about how to finish what they started.

Uh-huh

America, the Indifferent

In fact, the amount involved is a pittance within the federal budget when compared with our $412 billion deficit, which has been fueled by war and tax cuts. The administration can conjure up $87 billion for the fighting in Iraq, but can it really not come up with more than $15.6 billion - our overall spending on development assistance in 2002 - to help stop an 8-year-old AIDS orphan in Cameroon from drinking sewer water or to buy a mosquito net for an infant in Sierra Leone?

There is a very real belief abroad that the United States, which gave 2 percent of its national income to rebuild Europe after World War II, now engages with the rest of the world only when it perceives that its own immediate interests are at stake. If that is unfair, it's certainly true that American attention is mainly drawn to international hot spots. After the Sept. 11 bombings, Washington ratcheted up aid to Pakistan to help fight the war on terror. Just last week, it began talks aimed at contributing more aid to the Palestinians to encourage them to stop launching suicide bombers at Israel.

Here's a novel idea: how about giving aid before the explosion, not just after?

At the Monterey summit meeting on poverty in 2002, President Bush announced the Millennium Challenge Account, which was supposed to increase the United States' assistance to poor countries that are committed to policies promoting development. Mr. Bush said his government would donate $1.7 billion the first year, $3.3 billion the second and $5 billion the third. That $5 billion amount would have been just 0.04 percent of America's national income, but the administration still failed to match its promise with action.

Back in Washington and away from the spotlight of the summit meeting, the administration didn't even ask Congress for the full $1.7 billion the first year; it asked for $1.3 billion, which Congress cut to $1 billion. The next year, the administration asked for $2.5 billion and got $1.5 billion.

Worst of all, the account has yet to disperse a single dollar, while every year in Africa, one in 16 pregnant women still die in childbirth, 2.2 million die of AIDS, and 2 million children die from malaria.

Jeffrey Sachs, the economist appointed by Kofi Annan to direct the Millennium Project, puts the gap between what America is capable of doing and what it actually does into stark relief.

The government spends $450 billion annually on the military, and $15 billion on development help for poor countries, a 30-to-1 ratio that, as Mr. Sachs puts it, shows how the nation has become "all war and no peace in our foreign policy." Next month, he will present his report on how America and the world can actually cut global poverty in half by 2015. He says that if the Millennium Project has any chance of success, America must lead the donors.

Washington has to step up to the plate soon. At the risk of mixing metaphors, it is nowhere even near the table now, and the world knows it.

As my Black friends say, Uhh-huh.

Waxing Elephants

The American Street founder, Kevin Hayden, is waxing lyrical these days. I missed this post when it was first put up, but caught a reminder earlier today. I will have a submission or two to this poetry contest. Kev tells me that the prizes are:

First prize will be a Jesus General Republican Jesus mug and either a book
or CD.

Third prize will be lesser memorabilia from Jenny.

Kev, it's not "bric-a-brac," it's swag. Being a poet who gets published in the "little" journals and usually getting copies in return, this is a step up for me. Here are the submission instructions.

There are entries on the comments thread to that post and some of them are quite creative, the competition will be significant. You have until 12/30. Those of you who can whip out a haiku on a whim will have a leg up. Or you can email Kevin. All the dope is on the link.

Cat-Mas

Our friend RevKenn sent this by email for the Christmas Catlovers of this site:

What's Your Cat Doing for Christmas?

It was a good day.

Smiles being in somewhat short supply in the news these days, I'll pass along the ones I find.

Shedyule

We've a half day at the office today and I'm taking off at noon to trek to Union Station to make sure I've got a ticket for tomorrow and to do some Chistmas shopping, so light posting until I get everything off to FedEx this afternoon.

In all of your shopping this holiday season, which ever it is that you celebrate, has there been a gift that you felt particularly good about giving, one that was uniquely appropriate for the recipient? Have you gotten one like that?

Tony's Turnaround

Blair's peace talks take back seat

PM tones down efforts after warning not to interfere by US and Israelis shun plan

FRASER NELSON AND BEN LYNFIELD
IN JERUSALEM

TONY Blair was yesterday forced to tone down his plans for an international Middle East peace summit in London, after Israel and the United States warned him not to "interfere".

The Prime Minister yesterday declared that a "meeting" - rather than a conference - will be held in London which would be restricted to helping the new Palestinian government, due to be elected next month.

But Israeli officials have said they will not take part, and privately made clear Mr Blair had invited himself to Jerusalem. They earlier suggested the talks might be motivated by the coming UK general election.

Ending his whistle-stop tour of the Middle East, Mr Blair visited both Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister and Mahmoud Abbas, the moderate Palestinian leader expected to succeed the late Yasser Arafat.

For weeks, UK officials have been trying to raise support for a peace conference in London aimed at kick-starting the stalled "road map" to peace agreed in the run-up to the Iraq war last year.

The event, expected to take place weeks before a UK general election on 5 May, has been agreed by Russia, Canada, South Africa, Egypt, Norway, Jordan and Tunisia. But, crucially, Israel has refused to participate.

Standing next to Mr Sharon, Mr Blair stressed he had no intention of suggesting that the first phase of the road map - where Palestinians renounce terrorism - should be skipped. This is what Israelis suspect.

Instead, Mr Blair said, his conference would ensure "there are plans and proposals in place to allow the Palestinian side to become a real partner for peace with Israel".

Mr Sharon, in turn, said a London conference would be "important" but said there is little point in talks while suicide bombs continue. "As long as terror exists it is very hard to expect there to be any change," he said.

Poor Tony, having to take a slap in the puss from Arik. I'm beginning to think the guy enjoys being belittled by moral midgets.

We Win

Kiss, kiss, hug, hug, Michael.

Michael Kinsley:
Let's Face It, Blogs Are Better
# Better than I thought, and maybe even better than what I do for a living.

If you're going to peddle opinions for a living, self-assurance is essential. If you don't have it, you need to bluff. People don't want to read a lot of "Oh dear, this is so terribly complicated, I just can't make up my poor little mind…. " Many's the pundit who has retired on full disability after developing a tragic tendency to see both sides of the issue.

Rarely, though, does mathematical certainty inflate even the most self-assured commentator on public affairs (i.e. George Will). It's happened to me only once, on the subject (unfortunately) of Social Security privatization. Not, perhaps, the most glamorous topic on which to waste the gift of certitude. But, to borrow philosophically from our Defense secretary, you make do with the epiphany you have, not with the epiphany you might wish or want to have.
....
Nor does it help when the president himself passes up every opportunity to accept your airtight logic, as George W. Bush did in pushing partial privatization yet again at his White House economic conference last week. The gentle explanation that the president may be unfamiliar with you and your logic is oddly uncomforting.

That conference was the last straw. To vent my frustration, I sent an e-mail to some economists and privatizing buffs saying, look, either show me my mistake or drop this issue. Refute me or salute me. Disprove it or move it. Or words to that effect. As an afterthought, I sent copies to a couple of blogs (kaus files.com and Andrew Sullivan.com). What happened next was unnerving.

A few days later, most of the big shots haven't replied. But overnight, I had dozens of responses from the blogosphere. They're still pouring in. And that's just direct e-mail to me. Within hours, there were discussions going on in a dozen blogs, all hyperlinking to one another like rabbits.

Just so I don't sound too naive: I am familiar with the blog phenomenon, and I worked at a website for eight years. Some of my best friends are bloggers. Still, it's different when you purposely drop an idea into this bubbling caldron and watch the reaction. What floored me was not just the volume and speed of the feedback, but its seriousness and sophistication. Sure, there were some simpletons and some name-calling nasties echoing rote-learned propaganda. But we get those in letters to The Times editorial page. What we don't get, nearly as much, is smart and sincere intellectual engagement — mostly from people who are not intellectuals by profession — with obscure and tedious, but important, issues.

Why the difference? Lots of space, for one. I'll be hard-put, next week, even to summarize my own argument, let alone discuss those of others, in the space available to a columnist. Letters get even less space, if they are published at all. Certainty that what you write will get posted is surely another factor. It's nice to know you're not wasting your time. Ease is important, too. You can send your views electronically to a blog in less time than it takes to find a stamp, let alone type a letter.

Most interesting, though, is how the Web enables people scattered around the globe, who share an interest in a topic as naturally uninteresting as the economic theory behind Social Security privatization, to find one another and enjoy a gabfest. Webheads like to call this phenomenon "community." I used to think that was a little grand and a little misleading. Populist electronic conversation mechanisms like blogs and Web bulletin boards are more about the opportunity to talk than about the opportunity to listen. But that may be true of physical communities as well.

At least we're talking past each other in a glamorous new medium.

Um, Michael? It's not even a "conversation" if no one is listening, so maybe it is a "community" when a whole bunch of someones are not just listening but thinking and offering thoughtful responses and being held accountable by the rest of those listening and thinking. Hmmm?

Cut and Run

I don't know anything about Martin Sieff and anything that comes out of the Moonie-owned UPI is always going to be hedged with questionmarks.

NPD cases like Bush frequently dig in their heels long past the point of good sense and then abruptly abandon the position for which they fought so hard. We'll see. And with Wolfowitz in the wings to replace Rummy, I don't know that we'd get much in the way of improvement.

Commentary: Rummy on the skids

By Martin Sieff
UPI Senior News Analyst

The unease over Rumsfeld among the GOP majority in Congress is now palpable and it is already the No. 1 subject of discussion on Capitol Hill. Tellingly, even Republican congressmen and their staffers draw repeated parallels with McNamara during the Vietnam War almost 40 years ago.

In addition, Rummy's most worshipful supporters have abandoned him. Last week, Thomas Donnelly of the American Enterprise Institute released a critique of Rumsfeld that read as if it has been penned by Noam Chomsky or Pat Buchanan. Other neo-conservatives are energetically circulating "Rummy must go" articles on their e-mail lists as fast as they can hit the "send" button.

Some neo-cons like Richard Perle, the godfather of the movement, still defend Rumsfeld publicly. But many others criticize the secretary of defense for not standing blindly behind their hero, Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi who has made a comeback in Iraqi politics by winning a place among the top 10 on the united Shiite list for next month's Iraqi elections.

The ultimate reason why Rumsfeld is going to go, however, is not his falling poll numbers or the disenchantment on the part of his neo-con cheerleaders. It is because Rumsfeld, like McNamara, not only pulled the United States and the American army headlong into an unnecessary and avoidable morass, but he has given no indication that he has any clue how to either win the war or get out of it.

All he has been able to offer is more of the same. Pentagon planning anticipates the necessity of maintaining the current U.S. troop levels in Iraq -- at the very least -- until the end of 2006 and probably well beyond that.

The comparison with McNamara is a remarkably apt one. Rumsfeld like McNamara was arrogant and sure of his brilliance and intellectual superiority over everyone else in the Pentagon. Like McNamara he enjoyed the worshipful, even adulatory support of a Texas president who was a wizard at domestic politics but was woefully ignorant of land war and international affairs when he entered office.

Like McNamara, Rumsfeld loved high-tech gadgetry and flashy, Special Forces officers but regarded meat-and-potato units like the infantry, heavy armor and artillery with contempt. And like McNamara he reveled in treating veteran senior Army officers contemptuously.

Rumsfeld is no longer seen as the heroic, decisive, charismatic leader that Congress and public alike took him at his own estimation to be for so long. Instead, he is showing his own thin skin by his retreat from any public forum where he might have to field awkward questions. It may be a tactically prudent move, but it blows another huge hole in his macho, he-man image.

The president will never fire his "Rummy." But some outcomes can only be delayed, not averted. Count on a thoughtful, dignified letter of resignation explaining the secretary's crying need to spend more quality time with his grandchildren to be delivered to Crawford, Texas, in a month or two. It has become only a matter of time.

Note that the entire article is based in the speculation of the writer: there is not even one anonymous source. Take it for what it is worth: interesting, and noted.