Everyone seems to be all up in arms today about something Senator Joe Biden (D-MBNA) said recently when describing Senator Obama. Frequent commenter WKMaier brought this matter to my attention as a comment on another post.

This appears to be the actual quote:

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy," he said. "I mean, that's a storybook, man."

I had just seen the quote for the first time minutes before when I’d read Michael Crowley’s rather foolishly short commentary at The Plank blog at The New Republic Online.

What Senator Biden apparently said was pretty simple in my mind. He was trying to be graciously complimentary. I focused on the word “clean” and felt he meant “clean cut”. With the aid of the always-useful second thought I think he also meant clean as in the sense of “free of baggage,” most especially so after CNN committed journalism and put Fox Noise Channel’s attempted madrassa slur to bed. It’s important to remember that Senator Biden was speaking extemporaneously, and everyone fluffs now and again..

There have been other mainstream African-Americans with highly visible profiles in national politics. Not necessarily as national candidates, mind you, but as interviewees and pundits/opinion makers. Because they are African-Americans, any discussion of their positive and negative qualities is fraught with peril because race is still a tremendously divisive issue in this country. One can’t always discuss these qualities casually because Americans tend to be careless and imprecise in our language. We are apparently in the official 2008 Presidential campaign season, 16 months ahead of time, because our broken media is unwilling or too frightened to take up the real issues confronting our nation’s survival as a democracy.

Just as any criticism of Israel brings immediate accusations of anti-Semitism, so does any criticism of African-Americans bring an instant challenge of racial prejudice. I’m not inferring some Americans are not prejudiced against blacks, because there are many. I take the point, however, that most of them are on the other side of the fence.

Language, words, has meaning, and can be an arrow, striking deep in the heart of its target, or it can be a boomerang, circling back to strike the speaker. In 21st Century America, only Democrats are held to a standard of accuracy in thought and language, so it appears the media, and the blogospere has ruled Senator Biden out of bounds.

Garance Franke-Ruta has a good take on the real meaning of Senator Biden’s comment here, while addressing the whole politically correct demands of a society divided against itself. And Josh Marshall has five articles on the topic here, and a clarification from Senator Biden’s office and a partial transcript of an interview with Diane Sawyer explaining exactly what he meant here. I deeply respect Steve Gilliard and he took offense at this, also.

Now, as I said, I understood what he meant the second I saw his words, and I’m sure many if not most Americans understood it as I did. I’m certainly not trying to defend Senator Biden, but I do understand he misspoke. It happens sometimes, when people speak in public.

But as long as our media is owned and controlled by the anti-Democratic party it, as well as the yapping dogs of the right blogosphere. will exploit every misstep, each mangled sentence construction, every garbled word, to pummel us.

It just seems unfortunate to me that those of us who are oxygen breathers have to spend so much productive time enabling their efforts to destroy our society.

Senator Joe Biden (D-MBNA) has once again decided he is Presidential material and is going to start yet another “exploratory committee” with a view to running for the White House.

NEW YORK - Democratic Sen. Joe Biden, who has made no secret of his plans to run for president in 2008, says he'll make it official next Wednesday. The 64-year-old Delaware lawmaker said he will file paperwork with the Federal Election Commission and launch a campaign Web site, http://www.joebiden.com

It’s true Mr Biden looks Presidential; he’s spent a small fortune on having his teeth capped, works assiduously on his tan, and is an honor graduate of the Hair Club For Men. And, truth be told, since the Democratic Party got a vote of confidence from the electorate last November, he’s actually spoken up in support of Democracy.

It seems he’s also had a spine transplant and some form of testicular treatment or surgery. He’s been seen thoughtfully tucking a straight razor into his pocket before going on the Sunday morning talking head shows. One of his better comments was when a bobble head host confronted him with a quote from Dick “dick” Cheney parroting the standard Bu$hCo Bu$hit that anyone daring to question their plans to destroy all Arab countries is a terrorist loving traitor. Senator Biden replied that he pays no attention to anything Mr Cheney says because he’s been wrong about everything. “Why would I pay attention to him? He has no credibility.”

Generally regarded as a longshot in the presidential contest, Biden is one of his party's leading spokesmen on foreign affairs and plans to stress that expertise on the campaign trail. Biden voted in 2002 to authorize military intervention in Iraq, but has since become a vociferous critic of the conflict.

Biden has also criticized President Bush's plan to deploy an additional 21,500 troops to try and stabilize Iraq's capital city, Baghdad. On Wednesday, the Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution he co-authored with Sens. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., stating that sending more troops into Iraq is "not in the national interest."

If you want to lead, Senator, you have to be a leader. It’s time to cut off funds for Mr Bu$h’s little ego-war. Americans want the troops to come home. Now.

A tip of the too-small Kevlar helmet to Buzzflash.com for the lead.

Specter: Bush not sole 'decision-maker'

WASHINGTON - A Senate Republican on Tuesday directly challenged President Bush's declaration that "I am the decision-maker" on issues of war.

"I would suggest respectfully to the president that he is not the sole decider," Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., said during a hearing on Congress' war powers amid an increasingly harsh debate over
Iraq war policy. "The decider is a shared and joint responsibility," Specter said.

The question of whether to use its power over the government's purse strings to force an end to the war in Iraq, and under what conditions, is among the issues faced by the newly empowered Democratic majority in Congress, and even some of the president's political allies as well.

We’ve noted in the past that Senator Specter is a dangerous man, because he has several times initiated or changed legislation to better enable Mr Bu$h’s rape of the Constitution.

He also snuck a last minute amendment into the Patriot Act that enabled Bu$hCo to appoint US Attorneys without Senate review. This little gem was carefully hidden until the Bu$h malAdministration began firing US Attorneys that have been too successful in prosecuting Republican donors for white collar crimes.

Obsequiousness in the service of despotism is not the American way, Senator.

Recent reports that Senator Specter is crafting a new law determining that Mr Bu$h is the sole authority for Federal decisions has not yet been confirmed.

Reuters has a fascinating story this morning:

LONDON (Reuters) - Human trials of an experimental treatment for obesity derived from cannabis, which is commonly associated with stimulating hunger, are scheduled to begin in the second half of this year, Britain's GW Pharmaceuticals Plc announced Tuesday.

Several other companies, such as Sanofi-Aventis, which is investigating Acomplia, are working on new drugs that will switch off the brain circuits that make people hungry when they smoke cannabis.

GW Pharma, however, says it has derived a treatment from cannabis that could help suppress hunger. "The cannabis plant has 70 different cannabinoids in it and each has a different affect on the body," GW Managing Director Justin Gover told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"Some can stimulate your appetite, and some in the same plant can suppress your appetite. It is amazing both scientifically and commercially," he said.

Much of the 1960s was just a blur for me, and frankly I’m probably better off not remembering. I’m sure I caused a lot of headache or heartache for various “adults” who thought they had some kind of responsibility for how I was turning out.

But I do have some very fond memories of 200 AM trips to 7-11s loading up on potato chips and Fritos. And oh yeah! Twinkies! Oh my goodness, how could we forget Twinkies with that incredibly soft, sweet cream center which sort of clings to your teeth and coats your tongue and, you know what I mean, man?

….
And, umm….. red Twizzlers
….

Where was I?

Oh, right. Anyway, what’s the point of getting your head on if you don’t get the munchies? The Frito crunch was like a minor earthquake, cascading along your jawbone and transferring the sound waves by induction through the middle ear right to the uhh

….

….

And another thing, what’s the point of getting lit and losing track of what you were saying half way through the sentence if you aren’t nibbling on something? When conversations seem to last two days you need food at hand to sustain your energies. Or something like that.

GW submitted Sativex for assessment by several European regulators in September, and hopes to secure approval for the UK, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands in the second half of this year at the earliest, the company said on Tuesday.

GW's marijuana plants are grown indoors in a secret location in Southern England.

Secret location. Sigh.

Ranger Against War makes a simple point:

Reports indicate three U.S. helicopters have been shot down in Iraq this past week. The method used has not been clearly elaborated, but it's possible that air-ground Strella-type shoulder-fired missiles are being introduced into this scenario.

If so, then they will be coming from Russia, via Iran. The Russians defend their sale of "defensive rockets" to Iran as legitimate. Legitimate or not, it would be ironic payback for U.S. support of the Mujahadeen in the Russo-Afghan war, where the U.S. introduced Stinger (air-to-ground) missiles to help shoot down Soviet helicopters.

The US has lost quite a few helicopters over the four years of our illegal occupation of Iraq. News reports have specified that several of them were hit by “rockets.” While it has been suggested by CENTCOM that some of the strikes were RPGs that’s realistic only if the helicopters were in a stationary hover.

The Cheney lunatic group has insisted that the lack of evidence of the existence of WMDs does not mean there are none, only that they haven’t been found yet. If we turn that around we can reliably state that the lack of proof that Russia is supplying the resisters with Strelas does not mean they aren’t.

Tragically, we may find out for certain once the attention of the Army is concentrated on destroying Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army in Baghdad.

Agency Says Higher Casualty Total Was Posted in Error

For the last few months, anyone who consulted the Veterans Affairs Department’s Web site to learn how many American troops had been wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan would have found this number: 50,508.

But on Jan. 10, without explanation, the figure plummeted to 21,649.

Which number is correct? The answer depends on a larger question, the definition of wounded. If the term includes combat or “hostile” injuries inflicted by the enemy, the definition the Pentagon uses, the smaller number would be right.

But if it also applies to injuries from accidents like vehicle crashes and to mental and physical illnesses that developed in the war zone, the meaning that veterans’ groups favor, 50,508 would be accurate.

How odd that there are two different figures; apparently “injured” has to be kept separate from “wounded” for some arcane bureaucratic or political reason. Perhaps Bu$hCo feels that "injured" are not entitled to the same disgraceful level of non-care that "wounded" are insulted with?

The 50,508 figure caught the attention of the Pentagon when Prof. Linda Bilmes of Harvard mentioned it in an opinion article on Jan. 5 in The Los Angeles Times. A few days later, said Professor Bilmes, who teaches public finance, she had a call from Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, challenging the number.

Professor Bilmes explained that she had used the government tally, the one on the “America’s Wars” page of the veterans’ department Web site. She faxed him a copy.

A few days later, the number on the Web site was changed.

A spokeswoman for Dr. Winkenwerder confirmed that he had called the veterans’ department to have the figure corrected and that the worker had misunderstood the Defense Department figures.

For her purposes, Professor Bilmes said, the higher figure was the relevant one because she was writing about the future demands that wounded veterans would place on the veterans’ health care system. Many of the veterans would be treated in the system regardless of whether they had been injured in combat or in vehicle crashes.

It may be a moot question, since the Bu$h malAdministration seems determined to starve the VA of funds to care for the nation’s veterans, even as it avidly seeks to create even more vets. It should also be noted that the “America’s Wars page Professor Bilmes used as a reference has been scribbed. There is no longer any mention of casualties related to Mr Bu$h’s ego-war in Iraq.

Laura Rozen has noticed one of the obvious problems:

Has anyone else noticed that we don't seem to quite know the identity of the 250 plus gunmen killed at Najaf yesterday? "Iraqi security officials offered conflicting accounts of the identity and motives of the heavily armed fighters outside Najaf, variously describing them as foreign fighters, Sunni Muslim nationalists, loyalists of executed former dictator Saddam Hussein or followers of a messianic Shiite death cult. Some witnesses reported that the attackers wore colorful Afghan tribal robes." That's a pretty broad range of possible affiliations for people to be in a several hour major battle with to not know roughly who they are.

There have been lots of theories about who these rather remarkable “250 gunmen” were, but apparently none of the descriptions and answers supplied by the Iraqi National Government seem to be very convincing. We’re had lots of opinions and statements about them.

One amazing description quoted “security sources,” saying “…the insurgents involved in the fighting had included both Shia and Sunni Muslims, as well Afghans, Saudis and Sudanese fighters.”

So it appears that this group comprised just about every bugbear in the Middle East, except for Iranians. Remarkable indeed. It appears that my original take on it, born of scarred and hardened cynicism, that they were pilgrims was wrong. While I regret the error, it seems safe to say cynicism is never misplaced when viewing any Bu$hCo action, or Iraqi mudrumble.

All the stories seem to agree that there were about 250 of them, and that they were taking refuge in an orchard, possibly a date palm orchard. There has been no mention whatsoever of their being armed, other than for a report of a US helicopter “crashing,” with the two crewmen reported as dead, and one mention of approximately 30 Iraqi National (army or police) casualties. It’s been almost 24 hours – surly enough time for Iraqi and US authorities to actually enter the grove and police up any wounded prisoners, and perhaps more important, to collect the weaponry these people supposedly had, and display it for cameras.

In an update Laura quotes the NY Times that “the 500 [!!!] gunmen involved in the huge clash near Najaf yesterday were members of the messianic Shiite cult, "Soldiers from Heaven." They had apparently planned to "storm the city during a religious festival and kill the nation’s top Shiite clerics." The group's leader is named Ali bin Ali bin Abi Talab, and Iraqi officials describe the cult as "Shiite in its 'exterior,' but not in its 'core.'”

Whatever that means.

While Iraqi officials stressed today the group’s mixed membership and fringe beliefs, on Sunday two senior Shiite clerics said the gunmen were part of a Shiite splinter group that Saddam Hussein helped build in the 1990’s to compete with followers of the venerated Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

They said the group, calling itself the Mahdawiya, was loyal to Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri, an Iraqi cleric who had a falling out with Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr — father-in-law of the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr — in Hawza, a revered Shiite seminary in Najaf.

With so many competing stories, it’s hard to winnow through them all to find the truth. Perhaps when CENTCOM produces their first official narrative we’ll be able to eliminate one of the stories.

In case there is someone who doesn’t know who Cliff Schecter is, he’s the Democratic pundit and strategist who fights back. For years now Republican anti-Democratic (new term let’s use it) gasbags brought in on “news” shows to spread the day’s talking points have beaten up ill-prepared and hapless Democrats. Cliff has changed all that. He tears right into the fakers, disputing their daily lies with facts and pointing out the illogical and hypocritical statements they make.

Cliff has taken on a sacred trust: pointing out the fraud that is John McCain.

Go here. Read. Absorb. Enjoy. There will be a lot more.

Under Secretary Rumsfeld’s administration, the Defense department saw quite a bit of stop-loss personnel actions. Many have characterized stop-loss as “disguised draft.”

The Associated Press is reporting this morning that Secretary Gates intends to strictly limit this sort of action, which should be a morale booster for the troops.

WASHINGTON - In an action branded a backdoor draft by some critics, the military over the past several years has held tens of thousands of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines on the job and in war zones beyond their retirement dates or enlistment length.

It is a widely disliked practice that the Pentagon, under new Defense Secretary Robert Gates, is trying to figure out how to cut back on.

[Secretary] Gates has ordered that the practice — known as "stop loss" — must "be minimized." At the same time, he is looking for ways to decrease the hardship for troops and their families, recruit more people for a larger military and reassess how the active duty and reserves are use

And not a moment too soon. Many GIs have enlisted for reasons of their own and decided not to re-enlist. It’s entirely possible that the revolving door of repeated Iraq deployments could well have influenced their decisions. To enlist, serve your country, deploy one or more times to a war zone that is being managed on the cheap, and as a result of your experiences decide not to re-enlist is understandable. But, to be stop-lossed and retained in country past your DEROS, or involuntarily redeployed is tantamount to a slap in the face.

[Secretary] Gates has asked the chief of each service branch for a plan by the end of February on how they would rely less on stop loss.

The authority has been used off and on for years and was revived by all services to some extent after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

As an example, the Army revived it in early 2002 to keep people with some skills or specialties deemed critical to the fight against terrorism and later used it to retain whole units, according to an Army chronology of the policy.

Pentagon officials provided no figures on how many people the policy has affected. Yet just in the Army, it is in the tens of thousands.

The Army Times newspaper reported in September [2006] that 10,000 soldiers were being held in the service at the time. That compared with 25,000 at one point in 2003, according to the account. [emph added]

The Navy stopped a few hundred sailors from leaving in the year after the terrorist attacks and used the policy again after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Marine Corps used it from January through August of 2003 and at the high point had some 3,400 active duty troops and 440 reservists held in service under the authority, said 1st Lt. Blanca E. Binstock, a spokeswoman.

The Air Force did not have statistics immediately available.

The Army has been meeting its announced recruitment goals through Enron accounting for over a year now. Between adjusted goals and a dangerous broadening of standards, some say the Army has been seriously weakened as a fighting force.

The Defense Department says the main reason for the policy is to keep units whole for deployments, regardless of whether service time is up for some individuals in the unit.

"It's based on unit cohesion," former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld once said when a soldier questioned him about the policy during Rumsfeld's visit to the staging area in Kuwait that is used for troops going into Iraq.

"The principle is that — in the event there is something that requires a unit to be involved in, and people are in a personal situation where their time was ending — they put a stop-loss on it so cohesion is maintained," Rumsfeld said.

Another method of filling ranks has been a prodigious use of the Individual Ready Reserve. A Daily Kos diarist wrote about this yesterday:

The Individual Ready Reserve (IRR) is where they put people awaiting their 8 year obligation to finish. For officers, you remain in the IRR indefinately unless you proactively resign your commission, regardless of any obligation you may have due to school, West Point etc. Once people leave the military and go into the IRR, they conduct no training or any sort of military operational work and are kind of a "just in case" force sitting around. The talk always had been, "They won't call the IRR back unless it is World War III". … George Bush and his cronies changed all that when in the summer of 2004, they recalled about 5,400 IRR soldiers to not backfill active army but to actually deploy to the war zone for a period of 1 year and to train for 1/2 a year for a total recall time of 545 days. This was ridiculous. Many recalled had been out of the Army for over 10 years and a lot were over 40 years old. Many had financial obligations and family obligations which had been built but the Army did not care. They had 30 days to report. An article in the USA Today about how the IRR Recall put Lives in Disarray explains how poorly this recall was carried out. This blog reports on a 43 year old mother who had been out for over 20 years being recalled.

The poor logic of trying to run a war on the cheap is destroying our services, especially the Army. While it is true that the “needs of the service” will always prevail, it appears that Secretary Gates intends to restore some degree of sanity and humanity to the Defense Department’s personnel policies. One can only hope so, before we truly have an “Army of One.”

Greg Mitchell commits a new crime.

Dick Cheney: The New 'Baghdad Bob'?

Is the former Iraqi propaganda minister inhabiting the soul of our vice president? It sure seemed this way during Cheney's highly delusional interview with Wolf Blitzer this week.

January 27, 2007) -- Is it just me, or is Vice President Cheney, in his latest statements, starting once again to sound like another balding, rose-colored-glasses wearing war spokesman, Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as “Baghdad Bob”?

For that matter, has anyone seen "Bob" lately? Perhaps, as a trained propagandist, he is in the bunker with Dick, writing his material.

By now you have read excerpts from Cheney's interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN this week, filled with delusional statements -- reminiscent of his "last throes" claims -- about things going so well in Iraq and refusing to admit any mistakes (beyond counting on the American public to strongly support the war forever). Asked, for example, if there is still a deadly mess to clean up in Iraq, Cheney replied, "No there is not. There is not. There's problems — ongoing problems — but we have in fact accomplished our objectives."

Is it time to start calling him "Beltway Bob"? Or "D.C. Dick"? Or perhaps "Bunker Bob"?

Baghdad Bob, of course, was Saddam Hussein's minister of information, later immortalized on t-shirts, Web sites, and even a DVD for his optimistic, if fanciful, statements about Iraq's triumph over the American infidels, right up to the point his boss left the building. Baghdad Bob somehow survived and later worked as an Arab TV commentator, sans trademark beret (although he now seems to have inhabited our vice president's body).

I hope Mr Mitchell understands that in the new, 21st century America, with its now-streamlined Constitution, contempt of warmongering vampire is a crime.

Just in case anyone thought all the action is in Karbala and Baghdad, Reuters is reporting that, at approximately 2:15 PM (Eastern US time) today there is heavy combat in Najaf as well:

NAJAF, Iraq (Reuters) - U.S. and Iraqi forces killed 250 gunmen in a fierce battle involving U.S. tanks and helicopters on the outskirts of the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf on Sunday, a senior Iraqi police officer said.

The day-long battle was continuing after nightfall, Colonel Ali Nomas told Reuters, as tens of thousands of pilgrims converged on the nearby city of Kerbala for the climax of the Ashura commemorations.

Please.

This is Ashura, a Shiite holiday and faithful travel for days to the holy city of Najaf. I’m sure they’ve estimated 250 dead, but what are the odds they’re all armed?

Oh yes, we lost yet another helicopter, apparently. That would be three in one week.

A U.S. helicopter was shot down in the fighting,
Iraq security sources said. The U.S. military declined comment. A Reuters reporter saw a helicopter come down trailing smoke.

Shi'ite political sources said the gunmen appeared to be both Sunni Arabs and Shi'ites loyal to a cleric called Ahmed Hassani.

And what are the odds that Sunni and Shiite fighters would partner up just to shoot at Americans? I know we’re universally despised in the country, but I don’t think they’re over their own little internecine spat yet.

Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims have converged on Iraq's other main Shi'ite holy city, Kerbala, for Ashura, marking the 7th century Battle of Kerbala, which helped consolidate the schism between Shi'ite and Sunni Islam. It ends on Monday.

If there are hundreds of thousands of pilgrims at Karbala, is it possible there are thousands or hundreds of thousands at Najaf also?

So maybe this,

A Reuters reporter about 1.5 km (1 mile) from the fighting said he heard intense gunfire and saw U.S. helicopters rocket groves sheltering militants. He saw smoke trailing from one helicopter before it came down in the midst of the fighting.

He was unable to see what had happened to the helicopter, but officers in Iraq's 8th Army Division and policemen said it had crashed and that the two crew members were dead. The U.S. military said it did not comment on operations still taking place.

Wasn’t really about militants and gunmen sheltering in groves but rather pilgrims, who of course mostly wouldn’t be able to stay under roofs.

The AP has yet another followup on the false flag raid at Karbala which resulted in the abduction and later execution of four US troops:

(AP) In perhaps the boldest and most sophisticated attack in four years of warfare, gunmen speaking English, wearing U.S. military uniforms and carrying American weapons abducted four U.S. soldiers last week at the provincial headquarters in the Shiite holy city of Karbala and then shot them to death.

The U.S. military confirmed a report earlier Friday by The Associated Press that three of the soldiers were dead and one was mortally wounded with a gunshot to the head when they were found in a neighboring province, about 25 miles from the compound where they were captured. A fifth soldier was killed in the initial attack on the compound.

The new account contradicted a U.S. military statement on Jan. 20, the day of the raid on an Iraqi governor's office, that five soldiers were killed "repelling" the attack.

The security breakdown and the dramatic kidnapping and murder of four soldiers leaked out just as President Bush faces stiffening congressional opposition over his plan to flood Baghdad and surrounding regions with 21,500 more American troops. Two of Congress's most vocal war critics, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Murtha, were in the Iraqi capital as the news broke.

CENTCOM’s relentless and poorly advised lust to manage the news and only permit “good news” to escape the meat grinder of Iraq is going to cause them some severe heartache with this story. There are elements of the story that are just a bit too far out of the ordinary to be chalked up to “insurgents.” Since Page One of the PIO’s office at CENTCOM appears to carry the primary instruction to always lie and obfuscate, no matter what matter is at hand, they can expect some rough handling on this as the story percolates up through the media consciousness.

The brazen assault, 50 miles south of Baghdad, was conducted by nine to 12 gunmen posing as an American security team, the military confirmed. The attackers traveled in black GMC Suburban vehicles (the type used by U.S. government convoys), had American weapons, wore new U.S. military combat fatigues, and spoke English, according to two senior U.S. military officials as well as Iraqi officials.

None of the American or Iraqi officials would allow use of their names because of the sensitive nature of the information.

The confirmation came after nearly a week of inquiries. The U.S. military in Baghdad initially did not respond to repeated requests for comment on reports that began emerging from Iraqi government and military officials on the abduction and a major breakdown in security at the Karbala site.

Within hours of the AP report that four of the five dead soldiers had been abducted and found dead or dying about 25 miles east of Karbala, the military issued a long account of what took place.

"The precision of the attack, the equipment used and the possible use of explosives to destroy the military vehicles in the compound suggests that the attack was well rehearsed prior to execution," said Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl, spokesman for Multi-National Division-Baghdad.

"The attackers went straight to where Americans were located in the provincial government facility, bypassing the Iraqi police in the compound," he said. "We are looking at all the evidence to determine who or what was responsible for the breakdown in security at the compound and the perpetration of the assault."

It might not be too difficult to convince an Iraqi that you have excellent English if his knowledge of the language is poor. But the Iraqi Army knows what US BDUs look like, as well as US weapons. And earlier reports also mentioned US ID cards, which just might be waved around at check points, too.

Iraqi officials said the approaching convoy of black GMC Suburbans was waved through an Iraqi checkpoint at the edge of the city. The Iraqi soldiers believed it to be American because of the type of vehicles, the distinctive camouflage American uniforms and the fact that they spoke English. One Iraqi official said the leader of the assault team was blond, [em added] but no other official confirmed that.

A top Iraqi security official for Karbala province told the AP that the Iraqi guards at the checkpoint radioed ahead to the governor's compound to alert their compatriots that the convoy was on its way.

Iraqi officials said the attackers' convoy divided upon arrival, with some vehicles parking at the back of the main building where the meeting was taking place, and others parking in front.

The attackers threw a grenade and opened fire with automatic rifles as they grabbed two soldiers inside the compound. Then the guerrilla assault team jumped on top of an armored U.S. Humvee and captured two more soldiers, the U.S. military officials said.

Described this way the “hail of gun fire and grenades” seems slightly more sensible. As I noted in my last post about this attack,

“Since it is unthinkable that this was a false flag operation, the only question in my mind at the moment is how did Iranians obtain uniforms that haven’t yet been distributed to all the troops? How did they get US ID cards? And how did they obtain armored Chevy Suburban SUVs which are supposedly only sold to the USG?”

And where did they find a blond Iranian?

“Do you have any allergies?”

Michael Yon goes on a night patrol with the 2nd of the 7th Cavalry. (A fine unit, but not hardly as great as 1st/7th)

Do I have any allergies? Anywhere else, that might seem non sequitur.

“You must be a medic,” I said.

“Yep.”

“No known allergies. Thanks for asking.” My medical kit is packed with various bandages, tourniquet, and a blood coagulant toxic to people with shellfish allergies. One type of coagulant is poured into a wound to sort of burn the bleeding shut. Combat medics usually are quick to give classes if they sense a question. Mike Wooley didn’t wait for questions before giving last minute medical instructions, along the lines of, “And if you get shot tonight . . . do this. . . . ” Within three to four minutes of meeting me, Wooley had already inventoried my allergies, asked what kind of medical kit I carried, and issued emergency medical instructions. All while squaring away my night-vision gear. The man’s natural talent for multi-tasking no doubt serves him well for triage.

…

A minute later, a face was yelling at me from the dark. Outside the thick humvee window, imploring me to open the door, was the medic, Mike Wooley, bearing a handful of bandages. “Take this,” he said. The humvees were ready to roll but Mike Wooley was still giving classes over the rumble of the engine. “Here’s an Israeli bandage, and here, take these,” Wooley said, handing over two tampons for gunshot wounds. In case I got shot. Twice.

A tip of the too-small Kevlar helmet to IraqSlogger for this.

A friend of ours, Ranger Against War, brings us news of yet another US Army recruiting program:

[T]he Army is now soliciting for bounty hunters to ensnare recruits makes the entire war venture look like a very bad "B" Western gone awry, after the World's Sheriff kicked the bad guy out of town.

In this program, Soldiers or retirees who convince someone to join the Army can mop up to the tune of $2,000 a head in the Referral Bonus Pilot Program. My January/February Purple Heart Magazine explains, "The bonus is not paid to Soldiers referring members of their immediate families, to include spouses, children, parents, step-parents and siblings." So don't try any funny business thinking you'll shed yourself of some troublesome relation. Just set up shop somewhere--a coffee shop or McDonald's will do--and try to reel 'em in.

But it's not a slam dunk--you don't get the whole enchilada just for having them sign the dotted line. You, as the one who scored the hit, get $1,000 when the individual finishes Basic Training; the other $1,000 comes when they finish AIT. So should there be a problem along the way, your efforts on behalf of Uncle George will not be remunerated. You function, in effect, as a contract recruiter.

One must see the desperation that is evident for the Army to start pimping out its recruiting functions. This program is designed to turn all Soldiers and retirees into Johns looking for help.

My first thought was that the recruiting standards are so elastic now that this is a shoo-in. I’ll bet they’re taking 41 year old alcoholics with hernias. Hell’s Bells, back in the Viet Nam era they took just about anybody with a pulse because the draft had a monthly quota to fill. I remember very distinctly that my Basic Training company of 238 bodies had one guy who was legally blind (sightless in one eye, very poor sight in the other), and two with Pilonidal cysts, and they presented documentation from civilian doctors verifying their conditions. By the end of the second week, those boys were in the administrative section, pending separation, but it still took six or seven more weeks to process them out. Things are much worse now, and bodies that breathe now and then are probably maxing their PT and rifle range scores via the Mark II pencil.

Do US Army recruiters get credit for the body snatch just as long as the corpus somehow gets through Basic Training? And if so, why don’t I get credit until after the dude finishes up AIT? That doesn’t sound fair. I thought the Army was all in favor of privatization!

How about if I go to a Young Republican kegger and get some of those sissy boys so boozed up they sign on the dotted line for me? Are we going to allow press gang rules? Who’s to tell whether they’re unconscious from too much liquor or a good klopp on the head?

Now, I realize there might be a small problem when my roly-poly Young republicans wake up. (They all seem to be roly-poly, BTW) But I remember my Drill Sergeants very calmly explaining that we don’t get dress uniforms right away, and we have to get fitted for fatigues and “work boots” first. (The dreaded “c” word wasn’t mentioned for the first week or so.)

I foresee a brand new area for expansion in the Bu$h economy.

Attackers wear U.S. uniforms in raid on GIs

3rd-deadliest day for Americans includes disturbing new tactic

(01-22) 04:00 PST Baghdad -- The armored sport utility vehicles whisked into a government compound in the city of Karbala with speed and urgency, the way most Americans and foreign dignitaries travel along Iraq's treacherous roads these days.

Iraqi guards at checkpoints waved them through Saturday afternoon because the men wore what appeared to be legitimate U.S. military uniforms and badges, and drove GMC SUVs commonly used by foreigners, the provincial governor said.

Once inside, however, the men unleashed one of the deadliest and most brazen ambushes of U.S. forces in a secure, official area. Five U.S. service members were killed in a hail of grenades and gunfire in a breach of security that Iraqi officials called unprecedented.

The attack, which lasted roughly 20 minutes, came on a day when the United States lost at least 20 other troops, including a dozen in a helicopter crash.

I hadn’t wanted to write about this story when it first broke because it just felt wrong. I agree that managing news and commentary by hunch is no way to handle information with professionalism. But the story was wrong on so many levels that it just screamed out “incomplete!”

The attackers mimicked Americans: wearing US uniforms, driving black GMC SUVs that are used by Americans. The story notes that that a sign in the rear window of one of the SUVs warns vehicles, in English and Arabic, to stay back, just as American SUVs do. They had identification cards that closely resembled American IDs. They spoke English, according to several sources.

After arriving at the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in Karbala, in southern Iraq, the attackers detonated sound bombs, Iraqi officials said.

"They wanted to create a panic situation," said an aide to Karbala Gov. Akeel al-Khazaali, who described the events with the governor's permission but on condition of anonymity because he fears reprisals.

The men then stormed into a room where Americans and Iraqis were making plans to ensure the safety of thousands of people expected to visit the Shiite holy city for an upcoming holiday.

"They didn't target anyone but the American soldiers," the aide said.

After the attack, the assailants returned to their vehicles and drove away. It was unclear how many people participated, and the men's identities and motive remained unclear, but the attack was particularly striking because of the resources and sophistication involved, Iraqi officials said.

“Sound bombs” probably means stun grenades, something that only US Spec Ops personnel have used heretofore. Using them is a bit tricky and requires special training, which is apparently why they’re not issued to US regular units.

The use of American uniforms should also be questioned. Were the attackers wearing the new BDU? According to the US Government, it’s not planned to complete issue of these to all troops before December 2007, and somehow they’ve already gotten into unauthorized hands?

And how do attackers barge into a room filled with American and Iraqi personnel, kill the Americans “in a hail of gunfire and grenades” and not injure any of the indigenous?

Today we learn from the AP that CENTCOM lied about the attack.

BAGHDAD Contrary to U.S. military statements, four U.S. soldiers did not die repelling a sneak attack at the governor's office in the Shiite holy city of Karbala last week. New information obtained by The Associated Press shows they were abducted and found dead or dying as far as 25 miles away.

The brazen assault 50 miles south of Baghdad was launched Jan. 20 by a group of nine to 12 militants. They traveled in black GMC Suburban vehicles - the type used by U.S. government convoys, had American weapons, wore new U.S. military combat fatigues and spoke English.

In a written statement, the U.S. command reported at the time that five soldiers were killed while "repelling the attack." Two senior U.S. military officials as well as Iraqi officials now say three of them were found dead and one mortally wounded in locations as far as 25 miles east of the governor's office.

The U.S. officials said they could not be sure if the soldiers were killed as the attackers drove them to the place where they abandoned the Suburbans or afterward. Iraqi officials said the men were killed just before the vehicles were abandoned.

It is obvious that CENTCOM lied about the story so as to deflect commentary and criticism until after Mr Bu$h’s pathetic SOTU speech in which (among other things) he announced that Iran, and not Saddam Hussein, is the living incarnate embodiment of all that is evil in the Universe.

I can understand why CENTCOM lied; their entire history has been one of enabling and supporting Bu$hCo’s illegal and immoral war of aggression and the occupation that followed it. The upper levels of the US military has been thoroughly politicized by these people, and as competent guides and advisors for defense of the country they are most likely now useless. They’re probably incapable of thinking in purely military terms any longer; everything they do must be examined in the light of how it will affect the domestic political spectrum.

Since it is unthinkable that this was a false flag operation, the only question in my mind at the moment is how did Iranians obtain uniforms that haven’t yet been distributed to all the troops? How did they get US ID cards? And how did they obtain armored Chevy Suburban SUVs which are supposedly only sold to the USG?

UPDATE - Five hours after posting, the shoe fell and I woke up. Since the truth (or some of the truth) about this story comes from the AP, we can expect a week of hysterical denials and "investigation" of the story from the yapping dogs of the anti-democratic blogosphere. Michelle (and Jesse) Malkin and Flopping Ace will grip this story in their chihuahua teeth and shake it like a puffball as they shriek about the Captain Jamil Hussein story.

I have to get down to CostCo and pick up another case of popcorn.

Joe Galloway discusses the illogic in Mr Bu$h’s desperation plans:

President George W. Bush this week asked Congress and the American people to give him one more chance to get the strategy and tactics right as his war in Iraq moves into its fifth year with ever-rising costs in blood and national treasure.

His choice to command this final phase, Army Gen. David Petraeus, told senators at his confirmation hearing the day before Bush's speech that the president's mini-escalation, adding 21,500 American troops to the 130,000 already there, would take until late May - a painfully slow ratcheting up that allows the multitude of enemies in Iraq ample time to adjust their own strategy and tactics.

Petraeus said that, consequently, we wouldn't know until late this summer whether the president's gamble was paying off. He promised that if it weren't working, he'd say so.

If it isn't working, and that seems to be a pretty good bet at this point, given how many weak reeds the plan rests upon, we're likely to know well before the general tells us.

This is going to end badly. Even the book the man supervised said it can’t work, and yet he’s quite willing to go ahead anyway, because the prize is a fourth star for his shoulder. I know many people have said the man is a good soldier; he does have some admirable achievements on his record. Speaking as a grunt, none of that means a thing, because his overweening ambition has driven him to agree to an impossible task for the sake of personal aggrandizement. That is careerism, not leadership.

Petraeus, who's already spent 32 months in Iraq as a two-star division commander and the three-star U.S. officer in charge of training the Iraqi security forces, most recently has commanded at Fort Leavenworth and supervised the writing of a new Army counter-insurgency manual.

That manual provides a formula by which to calculate the number of regular soldiers required to maintain control in an insurgency situation: 20 troops per 1,000 people. So by Petraeus' own formula, Baghdad requires approximately 140,000 friendly troops. Even if you count the Iraqi security forces that are supposed to be assigned to the job - nearly 90,000 - we'll still fall considerably short of what's needed.

The new U.S. commander in Iraq plans to parcel out the newly arriving American soldiers in small groups attached to Iraqi forces in widely scattered Baghdad neighborhoods.

How those soldiers will be supplied and supported and protected is the primary question. It's one thing for Americans to fort up in the Green Zone or at the huge U.S. base at Baghdad Airport by night and venture out by day to patrol a mean city's streets.

It's quite another for them to spend their days in those streets and their nights in vulnerable Iraqi army and police stations scattered throughout the city. Their lives will depend on Iraqi troops whose training and equipment leave much to be desired, and whose loyalty in the sectarian civil war is suspect.

Keeping them supplied and providing quick reaction forces able to respond to their 9-1-1 calls for help in the middle of the night will only put even more Americans on the most dangerous streets and roads in the world.

Parceling out small groups of GIs – in platoon size or smaller – and partnering them up with larger groups of Iraqi troops does not sound like a very good idea. Iraqi troops are at best of questionable quality, and in moments of stress communication will be primary. It’s one thing to teach a squad leader a handful of phrases for everyday transactions, but will it be possible to transmit complicated messages or instructions when under fire? Something tells me that QR Forces will have their hands full on rescue and relief missions.

January 27th is Chocolate Cake Day. Give someone you love the beauty of endorphin-releasing chocolate. It's nature's sedative.

Third-tier winger and alleged lawyer Hugh Hewitt has had enough of defeatist talk. In this day of maximum danger to the Republic, it behooves every patriotic Fascist to support Mr Bu$h’s plans to inject more troops into the meat grinder, and to build up our ground forces in anticipation of combat in Iran. If we don’t squelch this treasonous talk of Senators thinking for themselves, the next thing you know we’ll be finding Islamomeximunifascists under our beds, sharp knives waiting until we fall asleep. Mr Hewitt has taken his cue from Senator Joe Lieberman (R-Tel Aviv) who questioned LTG Petraeus a few days ago about making our ground forces more robust, and supporting them unquestioningly.

In a move that is unusual for an active-duty officer, Petraeus also spoke against pending Senate resolutions disapproving of the new Bush administration strategy. Asked by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) whether those resolutions would give encouragement to the enemy by exposing divisions among the American people, he replied: "That's correct."

[Quote is from WaPo, hence no link. Go find it yourselves.]

Now, it’s one thing for Whining Joe to make grandstand speeches about a subject. It’s what he does best. In fact, it’s just about his only skill. But for a serving military officer to endorse such political oratory is downright creepy.

Speaking of creepy, here’s Mr Hewitt’s Pledge:

If the United States Senate passes a resolution, non-binding or otherwise, that criticizes the commitment of additional troops to Iraq that General Petraeus has asked for and that the president has pledged, and if the Senate does so after the testimony of General Petraeus on January 23 that such a resolution will be an encouragement to the enemy, I will not contribute to any Republican senator who voted for the resolution. Further, if any Republican senator who votes for such a resolution is a candidate for re-election in 2008, I will not contribute to the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless the Chairman of that Committee, Senator Ensign, commits in writing that none of the funds of the NRSC will go to support the re-election of any senator supporting the non-binding resolution.

I think swearing allegiance to a serving General is a bit out there as far as a participatory democracy is concerned. It sort of reminds me of this:

I swear by God this sacred oath that I shall render unconditional obedience to Adolf Hitler, the Führer of the German Reich and people, supreme commander of the armed forces, and that I shall at all times be ready, as a brave soldier, to give my life for this oath.

Any Republican Senators that still have a conscience and care about our grievously wounded democracy can always contact me the next time they're running for re-election. Piss on Mr Hewitt and his goosestepping lemmings.

A tip of the too-small Kevlar helmet to The Agonist.

We missed this at the time, and it deserves a mention:

More than 10,000 Marines, family members and friends of the Corps were on hand for the dedication of the National Museum of the Marine Corps near Quantico, Va., Nov. 10, the Corps’ 231st Birthday. Due to limited parking and heightened security with the anticipated arrival of the President, more than 100 buses made round trips to the museum over four hours from points north and south, dropping off those who desired to be part of the historic and momentous occasion.

Early arrivals who were waiting for the ceremony to begin passed the time looking for the engraved bricks they had purchased to line the walkway of Semper Fidelis Memorial Park and listening to the Marine Corps Band Quantico and country artist Josh Gracin, a former lance corporal and “American Idol” finalist. Others spent the time catching up with old friends as well as inspecting the Corps’ latest operational equipment displayed by Marine Corps Systems Command.

Good deal, gentlemen. Glad to see it happen.

Back in September 2006 we wrote about the Queen’s Royal Hussars turning in their Challenger tanks and Warrior armored cars for armed Land Rovers. Their plan was to abandon their base, which was a mortar magnet, and move out into the salt marshes along the Iraq/Iran border. The story came from the Guardian and is no longer available online.

British troops quit Iraq base, adopt WWII tactics

BAGHDAD, Aug 24 (Reuters) - British troops abandoned their base in Iraq's southern Maysan province on Thursday, which has been under almost nightly attack, and prepared to head deep into the marshlands along the Iranian border to hunt gun smugglers.

Soldiers of the Queen's Royal Hussars are to adopt tactics first pioneered by the famed Long Range Desert Group, a roving special forces unit that fought Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's German Afrika Korps in North Africa during World War Two.

Well, that sounds exciting. Stripped down Jeeps armed with machine guns rocketing around the sand dunes, machine-gunning German Iranian smuggler convoys and blowing up airplanes. Although you might not rocket around salt marshes.

"We are repositioning our forces to focus on border areas and deal with reports of smuggling of weapons and improvised explosive devices from across the border," British military spokesman Major Charlie Burbridge told Reuters.

"We are going to do what the Long Range Desert Group did in North Africa. We will live in the desert. We will be mobile and able to strike when we want. We will have surprise on our side," he said.

There have been some indications that there isn’t much US and Brits do in Iraq that surprises al-Quaeda/Shiite militias/insurgents/dead-enders/Iranian gun smugglers, but let’s give it a try because we haven’t done anything right so far in Iraq.

The Brits put in two months of effort investigating the Likudnik theory fantasy of Iranian gun smuggling. WaPo reported in October:

ON THE IRAQ-IRAN BORDER -- Since late August, British commandos in the deserts of far southeastern Iraq have been testing one of the most serious charges leveled by the United States against Iran: that Iran is secretly supplying weapons, parts, funding and training for attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq.

A few hundred British troops living out of nothing more than their cut-down Land Rovers and light armored vehicles have taken to the desert in the start of what British officers said would be months of patrols aimed at finding the illicit weapons trafficking from Iran, or any sign of it.

There's just one thing.

"I suspect there's nothing out there," the commander, Lt. Col. David Labouchere, said last month, speaking at an overnight camp near the border. "And I intend to prove it."

Other senior British military leaders spoke as explicitly in interviews over the previous two months. Britain, whose forces have had responsibility for security in southeastern Iraq since the war began, has found nothing to support the Americans' contention that Iran is providing weapons and training in Iraq, several senior military officials said.

"I have not myself seen any evidence -- and I don't think any evidence exists -- of government-supported or instigated" armed support on Iran's part in Iraq, British Defense Secretary Des Browne said in an interview in Baghdad in late August.

Oooops.

Someone needs to contact Mr Cheney’s intelligence forgery office and tell them there’s a problem. It seems the Iranians are not cooperating with his scheme to invent a new casus belli.

"It's a question of intelligence versus evidence," Labouchere's commander, Brig. James Everard of Britain's 20th Armored Brigade, said last month at his base in the southern region's capital, Basra. "One hears word of mouth, but one has to see it with one's own eyes. These are serious consequences, aren't they?"

They are. Allegations that Iran or its agents are providing military support for Iraqi Shiite Muslim militias and other armed groups is one of the most contentious issues raising tensions between Washington and Tehran. Most gravely, U.S. generals and diplomats accuse Iran of providing infrared triggers for special explosives that are capable of piercing heavy armor.

Evidence of Iranian armed intervention in Iraq is "irrefutable," one U.S. commander in Iraq, Brig. Gen. Michael Barbero, told Pentagon reporters in August. The lead U.S. military spokesman in Iraq renews the allegation almost weekly in Baghdad.

Iraq's remote Maysan province is "a funnel for Iranian munitions," said Wayne White, who led the State Department's Iraq intelligence team during the war and now is an adjunct scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. White said that in the first year of the occupation a well-placed friend had seen "considerable physical evidence of it, and just about everyone in al-Amarah knew about it." Al-Amarah is the commonly used name of Maysan province.

Here in Maysan, Jasim Alawa Salum, an Iraqi father of 10 whose home is in a warren of thatched farmhouses near the border, agreed. "All troubles come from Iran," he said, bending his head to show a wound from the 1980s Iran-Iraq war.

But Maj. Dominic Roberts of the Queen's Dragoons said: "We have found no credible evidence to suggest there is weapons smuggling across the border."

Brigadier Everard’s comment about “intelligence versus evidence” is noteworthy. Intelligent people don’t believe Likudnik “evidence.”

A tip of the too-small Kevlar helmet to Sean-Paul Kelley from The Agonist.

Military shows off new ray gun

MOODY AIR FORCE BASE, Ga. - The military calls its new weapon an "active denial system," but that's an understatement. It's a ray gun that shoots a beam that makes people feel as if they are about to catch fire.

Apart from causing that terrifying sensation, the technology is supposed to be harmless _ a non-lethal way to get enemies to drop their weapons.

Military officials say it could save the lives of innocent civilians and service members in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

The weapon is not expected to go into production until at least 2010, but all branches of the military have expressed interest in it, officials said.

During the first media demonstration of the weapon Wednesday, airmen fired beams from a large dish antenna mounted atop a Humvee at people pretending to be rioters and acting out other scenarios that U.S. troops might encounter in war zones.

The device's two-man crew located their targets through powerful lenses and fired beams from more than 500 yards away. That is nearly 17 times the range of existing non-lethal weapons, such as rubber bullets.

Anyone hit by the beam immediately jumped out of its path because of the sudden blast of heat throughout the body. While the 130-degree heat was not painful, it was intense enough to make the participants think their clothes were about to ignite.

A weapon like this would need a whomping power supply. Something like that is unrealistic for ground combat. The article references rubber bullets. The US Army doesn't use rubber bullets overseas because crowd control in foreign countries is not part of their mission.

A cynical man would immediately realize that this weapon stemmed not from a land combat proposal, but rather from a perceived need for domestic crowd control.

Five Blackwater employees died when the helicopters they were riding in were shot down, apparently by machine gun fire. The bodies were later recovered, some with bullet wounds to the head, which suggests execution. Little else is known at this moment.

One of the best resources for mercenary activity is Dr R J Hillhouse, who has posted information about this event, including what she posits is an educated guess about this particular mission. Apparently CENTCOM is being somewhat reticent about discussing this event.

There also links to some video clips about Blackwater and its private air force.

I know some of our readers have hard feelings about mercenaries engaging in combat in Iraq. Quite a few of these mercenaries are former operators from the US Spec Ops community who left the uniformed services for the mega-bucks of contracting. I know their buddies who are still in the green bag miss their positive contributions to the US armed forces before they were distracted by the glamour life.

Via the amazing IraqSlogger, we see a video report of combat on Haifa Street, where US troops have apparently begun fighting the Mahdi Army, with Iraqi support.

Just posted, very enlightening B-roll of Operation Tomahawk Strike 11, one in a series of raids targeting illegal militia activity. Scenes include U.S. and Iraqi Soldiers engaging insurgents from a high-rise in the Haifa Street area of Baghdad.

This battle on Haifa Street is less than a mile from the Green Zone, and I think we’re going to see a lot of this over the next few months.

The videos are available here.

One of the goals of the new Democratic Congress was to raise the Federal minimum wage, and take the first step in paying people a decent, living wage. The bill passed the House. It was stopped in the Senate by greedy bitch Republicans.

Senate Republicans Block Minimum Wage Increase

Despite a united front from Senate Democrats for passing the same stand-alone minimum wage increase approved by the House of Representatives two weeks ago, the Republican minority voted against cloture on the bill today, throwing down a roadblock until Democrats agree to more business tax cuts.

Before that, the measure by Judd Gregg (R-NH) to give the line-item veto to George W. Bush was defeated by a vote of 49-48, well short of the 60 votes required to end debate and send the bill for a vote.

The clean minimum wage bill went to a floor vote after the line-item veto was killed and, despite the fact that the minimum wage has not been raised in 10 years and an increase is supported by the vast majority of Americans, almost all Republicans voted against the increase and it fell six votes short of the three-fifths required to reach cloture.

The vote was 54-43, with every Democrat voting to raise the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour and only five Republicans -- Coleman, Collins, Snowe, Specter and Warner -- crossing the aisle to vote with the Democrats.

These 18 Republicans voted against working Americans. These 18 greedy pigs have had a 31% pay increase during the years they have refused to raise the minimum wage.

* Lamar Alexander (R-TN)
* Wayne Allard (R-CO)
* Saxby Chambliss (R-GA)
* Thad Cochran (R-MS)
* John Cornyn (R-TX)
* Larry Craig (R-ID)
* Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)
* Pete Domenici (R-NM)
* Michael Enzi (R-WY)
* Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
* Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
* James Inhofe (R-OK)
* Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
* Pat Roberts (R-KS)
* Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
* Gordon Smith (R-OR)
* Ted Stevens (R-AK)
* John Sununu (R-NH)

They’re all up for re-election in 2008, and they deserve to be turned out, and forced to get real jobs, and have to work for a living.

There were two important speeches last night. One was given by George Bu$h, who proposed some fairly ridiculous things. In addressing the horrendous deficits his irresponsible tax and spend policies have created, he suggested that we can fix this without raising taxes. By use of Enron accounting, he has pretended that the deficit has been cut in half. What they did, of course, was to peg the end deficit as much higher than it would really be. Then each year, as the postulated deficit was announced, they could point to a 10 year projection and triumphantly proclaim, “See? We’re ahead of the curve.” Suggesting “spending discipline” will solve the problem, Mr Bu$h noted he will submit a new budget within the next few weeks and expects to level the deficit within five years. Betting men all over the world agree that the "spending discipline" will entail cruel budget cuts in programs that keep people alive, or allow them to live lives with some sort of dignity.

I wonder whether we’ve seen the end of “emergency appropriations” for Mr Bu$h’s ego-war? Will he agree to honest accounting? Noooo……. I didn’t think so.

Mr Bu$h urged the ending of earmarks, which of course, the Republicans have abused without mercy. Now that the Democratic Party controls spending we might actually see an end of this, although I’m dubious. Bad habits die hard.

Oh yes, Mr Bu$h insists the Social Security and Medicare “problems” must be fixed. Despite about a dozen carefully crafted extravaganzas before vetted friendly audiences, he got his hat handed to him on that. Americans are pretty certain Social Security works just fine, despite his party’s desperate desire to turn the cashbox loose for the Wall Street wolves. We can expect another full court press on this in the upcoming year, because there’s still some cash in the Treasury, so the job isn’t complete yet.

In addressing the health care crisis in America, he suggested that the 48 million Americans who don’t have insurance should start health care savings accounts, and take advantage of a tax break the Republicans are supposedly going to suggest. Apparently it hasn’t penetrated through the wall to the Millionaires’ Club that the reason 48 million people have no heath insurance is because their employers refuse to provide it. Faced with the choice of paying horrendous rates for health insurance rather than paying for food and shelter, people choose three meals a day and a roof. Without even seeing this proposal I can confidently predict it will be loaded with special tax breaks for “small business,” which of course doesn’t mean small businesses at all.

Naturally, his ego-war and its consequences got a lot of air time during the speech. I especially liked this bit:

With the distance of time, we find ourselves debating the causes of conflict and the course we have followed. Such debates are essential when a great democracy faces great questions. Yet one question has surely been settled — that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.

“With the distance of time” has a nice ring to it. It sort of implies that somewhere in the deep, dark, murky mists of time somehow the original cause was forgotten, rather than that he and his criminal associates lied like titty bar barkers to get us into this thing that is destroying our nation.

I also liked this bit:

From the start, America and our allies have protected our people by staying on the offense. The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing, and free-flowing communications are long over. For the terrorists, life since 9/11 has never been the same.

Those days are over, unless you’re moving around Afghanistan, Waziristan, Pakistan, Somalia, or have Pakistan’s ISI as your travel agent, and the Banks of Dubai as your financial advisors. And it’s true life hasn’t been the same since 9/11, because now Bu$hCo arranges about 85% of their recruiting for them.

On the other hand, Jim Webb (D-VA) gave a speech last night, too. If you’d like to see what a smart man, a patriotic man, a man who answered his country’s call in a time of need, a man who actually breathes oxygen and lives on the Planet Earth looks like, his speech is here.

Bill Roggio has a column up at his blog The Fourth Rail which compares visits with Iraqi Army and police units in November 2005 and November 2006. It should be noted that Roggio is one of the very few Westerners actually out in the boondocks, and about the only one reporting on the military edge of Mr Maliki’s government. For this one reason his work is a must-read. His reports are a vital viewport into the arm of that government that must one day bear the brunt of efforts to minimize and or disburse the sectarian violence currently tearing Iraq apart.

Mr Roggio discusses perceived strengths and weakness of the army and serves up a wish list of heavy weapons and equipment they lack. FWIW, I have serious doubts whether the Bu$h malAdministration has any plans to provide artillery, armor, helicopters, and the like to the Iraqi army. It seems that what they want, at best, is a convenient supply of riflemen for national security, and that group should be seriously out-gunned by any American forces. Since Bu$hCo and CENTCOM have never discussed any plans for these augmentations, it’s a safe bet.

One of our faithful readers, WK, pointed out a story today that is fascinating. We all know – well, those of us who breathe oxygen, and walk erect, that is – that our armed forces are woefully undermanned for the task(s) assigned them by the Likud Party: conquest of the Middle East, and destruction of society and infrastructure of all Arab nations. The wholesale use of IEDs are causing troops to be killed and maimed in horrendous fashion, and those blessed to survive their deployment tours with whole bodies are now being fed back into the meat grinder for second and third tours. Incidents of PTSD are at frighteningly high levels, and one can only expect both casualties and PTSD to rise even further when the ground combat phase of the impending attack against Iran manifests itself.

Our volunteer forces - all branches – have performed magnificently in answer to Mr Bu$h’s call for Imperium. Even though I hate this evil war and occupation, I get a lump in my throat every time I think of the grunts and their dedication to the flag. Patriotism doesn’t have to be a bad thing. While we maintain that we are a peaceful nation, there is a martial spirit that is either inspiring or troubling depending on your outlook. But it’s enough to just say that Americans do answer their country’s call to bear arms at moments of crisis.

And we’re woefully short handed. The Navy and Air Force have released troops from over-stocked MOSs for ground combat training as convoy guards and point security at facilities. The Army has decided that they will add two more divisions – about 40,000 troops – to their ranks over the next five years, and the Marine Corps plans to expand by about 22,000 over the same period.

Marine Corps will ask thousands to come back

The Marine Corps plans to ask up to 100,000 former Marines released from the ranks since September 2001 whether they would like to come back.

Speaking at the Pentagon on Friday, Lt. Gen. Emerson Gardner, the Corps’ deputy commandant for programs and resources, said many of those Marines had either hinted that they’d like to have re-enlisted at the time they got out or were told outright that no slots were available in which they could re-enlist.

“In the past, we’ve had a number of people who have desired to re-enlist in a particular job specialty, and, unfortunately, there is not enough room in the Marine Corps to keep them on, so we have released them from active duty,” Gardner said.

“But anecdotally, we’re all familiar with people that have gotten out of the Marine Corps, and you talk to them a year or two later and they say, ‘You know, if I had to do it over again, I sure would like to have stayed,’ ” Gardner said.

“We’re going to offer them that opportunity. Our commandant will make a call to arms and see what number of those 100,000 would be willing to come back on active duty,” Gardner said.

I’m from an older generation. I placed second in the Greater South East Asia Wargames of 1965-1975, and after my release from the hospital I extended my active duty service beyond the usual three years for the expressed purpose of career development in a particular field that is rather arcane. As it turned out, it didn’t turn out, and I left a couple of years later. But I stayed in touch with a number of people I met, EM and Officers, who left active duty when the chance came. And none of them ever expressed any interest in getting back into the green bag afterwards. That Army was mainly composed of draftees and it’s not surprising they politely laughed at the Re-enlistment NCO before their separation.

Today’s Army is wholly voluntary and I wonder how many of the soldiers (and marines) who left after 9/11/2001 would like another bite of the apple.

This question really has to be considered within the context of Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, because it looks like that will be our military horizon for the next 10 or 15 years. Citizens opting to get back in understand where they will be going and what they will be doing. I can’t conceive of anyone doing it for the adrenaline rush, so the motivations would seem to be patriotism, no economic hope in civilian life, a determination to make a career of service. I suppose a burning hatred for Muslims might be considered a factor, and I just don’t want to debate the rightness or wrongness of any one of these motivations.

Why did they leave? Why did the Corps allow them to leave? And if the Corps (or Army) heaved a quiet sigh of relief when they left, would they now be welcome again?

All I’m curious about is whether LTG Garner is right when he says he knows people are trying to bust down the doors.

Today’s terror headline:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22, 2007 — Mimicking the hijackers who executed the Sept. 11 attacks, insurgents reportedly tied to al Qaeda in Iraq considered using student visas to slip terrorists into the United States to orchestrate a new attack on American soil.

Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently testified that documents captured by coalition forces during a raid of a safe house believed to house Iraqi members of al Qaeda six months ago "revealed [AQI] was planning terrorist operations in the U.S."

At the time, Maples offered little additional insight into the possible terror plot. ABC News, however, has learned new details of what remains a classified incident that has been dealt with at the highest levels of government.

Sources tell ABC News that the plot may have involved moving between 10 and 20 suspects believed to be affiliated with al Qaeda in Iraq into the United States with student visas — the same method used by the 19 al Qaeda terrorists who struck American targets on Sept. 11.

Is this another one of those deals where, after a sufficient amount of time has passed, a patently non-story quickly ginned up on a bad news day suddenly becomes the turning point because we discovered they were going to hide under your beds until you were asleep and then slit your throats!!!!! ?

Back in August 2006, we had some Eqyptian college students go AWOL en route to a college seminar in Montana. There was a nation-wide dragnet. Fox News had extra-large letters in their chiron crawl, and Drudge rated the story five flashing beacons. News reports (relying on USG information, of course) stated “3 Missing Egyptian Students In Custody
Officials Say There's No Indication 8 Others Pose A Threat”, and “None of the students is considered a terrorism risk.”

The [Iraqi insurgent] plan was uncovered in its early stages, and sources say there is no indication that the suspects made it into the United States. Officials also emphasize that there is no evidence of an imminent attack.

So, naturally, a curious (or cynical) man might wonder why these Egyptian students, who were no danger at the time, might now be part of a serious threat to the very safety of the republic. And why are we suddenly being spoon-fed some story about putative plans to feed putative “insurgents” with alleged links to al Quaeda into the US for some vague plan to do something or other?

Ah.

Hang on a moment.

Poll: Bush Approval Rating At New Low On Eve Of State Of Union, President's Approval Rating Falls To 28%, A New Low

CBS) President Bush will deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday night to a nation that's strongly opposed to his plan for increasing troops in Iraq and deeply unhappy with his performance as president, according to a CBS News poll.

Mr. Bush’s overall approval rating has fallen to just 28 percent, a new low, while more than twice as many (64 percent) disapprove of the way he's handling his job.

Two-thirds of Americans remain opposed to the president's plan for sending more than 20,000 additional U.S. troops to Iraq — roughly the same number as after Mr. Bush announced the plan. And 72 percent believe he should seek congressional approval for the troop increase.

n. pl. ser·en·dip·i·ties

1. The faculty of making fortunate discoveries by accident.
2. The fact or occurrence of such discoveries.
3. An instance of making such a discovery.

[From the characters in the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, who made such discoveries, from Persian Sarandīp, Sri Lanka, from Arabic sarandīb.]

Somehow I just knew there was a fairy tale involved in here, somewhere.

In a fresh Weekly Standard article those two great warmongers and Likudnik operatives, ex-trotskyite William Kristol and Napoleonic War expert Fred Kagan have taken the proverbial hickory stick to Democrats and Republicans who disagree with the neo-con notion that until Iraq and Iran are reduced to a vast area of goat herders, all of mankind is in jeopardy. Their chief argument: LTG Petraeus must be allowed to decide how many troops to use. That is the substance of the lede head.

All We Are Saying . . . Is Give Petraeus a Chance

Following this there is a blatantly dishonest misstatement of the Democratic Party’s position of escalation (you expected otherwise?) and most specifically an outright attack on Senator Clinton’s public statements about the proposed escalations in Mr Bu$h’s ego-war.

Beyond that, Clinton's statement completely ignores the significance of a congressionally mandated cap on troop strength. American forces are fighting in Iraq every day. They do not have enough strength to control the violence they are facing. The efforts of Clinton and others would prevent the new commander in Iraq, David Petraeus, from working effectively to bring the violence under control. There is every reason, therefore, to imagine that violence would continue to increase. This would be the effect of Sen. Clinton's legislation

Let me make one point here. For three years Bu$hCo tried sporadically to contain the violence of a resistance against a cruel and ignorant occupation which slowly morphed into a brutal civil war, while refusing to supply sufficient troops, or to dedicate the resources necessary to quell the resistance and civil war. (Those resources, by the way, would include honest bookkeeping and adequate spending. Instead, Mr Bu$h insisted that his family’s taxes must be significantly lower, and by all means, let’s share the largesse with all the other American millionaires and corporations.) What we got was deliberate off-the-books accountancy a la Enron and WorldCom, and deficit spending that our grandchildren will be paying off.

During this time period the Generals in charge, Chief of Staff Pace, Abizaid, and Casey insisted time and again that they didn’t need more troops to accomplish the mission. Now, suddenly Messers Kristol and Kagan have decided more troops are needed, and Abizaid and Casey are gone.

All generals are subject to the demands of military service, including obedience to the chain of command. Whatever the man (or woman) above you says is what you agree with. As a hypothetical thought experiment, consider this: If George Bu$h woke up in the middle of the night, a line of dried white powder covering his upper lip, and, stumbling out of bed tripped and fell over four empty Jim Beam bottles, and then rose with the realization that the way to victory in Iraq demanded a battalion of left handed red headed Bulgarian acrobats, LTG Petraeus would enthusiastically agree. LTG Petraeus is most likely an excellent officer, a fine tactician, and a warm human being, but he will do as he is told.

Enthusiastically.

Glen Greenwald has handled Messers Kristol and Kagan in a far more diplomatic manner than these sleazy warmongers really deserve:

[O]nly blind obedience to the decrees of Gen. Patraeus is acceptable because he is the commander on the ground and thus Knows Best. And, of course, unquestioningly cheering on the "surge" plan is the only thing which responsible, serious and patriotic people would do:

Republicans should not hesitate to point out how irresponsible their Democratic colleagues (and some Republicans) are being. Senator Clinton's troop cap is dangerously foolish. The nonbinding resolution of disapproval Senator Biden has proposed is irresponsible. The fact is that President Bush has, as he was widely and correctly urged to do, changed strategy. He's put a new commander, General Petraeus, in charge. Petraeus thinks the new plan can work, with the support of additional troops. He'll be confirmed by the Senate and sent out to the theater this week. Members of Congress should ask themselves, "What can we do to help Petraeus succeed?" Or would Senator Clinton and the Democrats just as soon lose?

We have here the standard tactics of the warmonger -- namely, anyone who opposes Bill Kristol and Fred Kagan's latest video game fantasies are, by definition, unserious, irresponsible and want America to lose. But what is uniquely and appallingly dishonest about their new rhetoric tactic -- that we must all defer to the General -- is that Kristol and Kagan have spent the last two years, at least, insisting that Generals Casey and Abaziad, the commanders on the ground, had no idea what they were talking about because they resisted the neonconservative demands for escalation.

This little sidetrip into BizarroWorld highlights the dangers of allowing operatives loyal to another nation to fashion your foreign policy. You become a tool.

It is true that US geopolitical interests are best served with a military presence in the Middle East string enough to control the mineral and petroleum resources of the Middle East, reserving them for our own use, and denying them to economic rivals, such as Russia, China, and India. Coincidently, that’s also very good for Big Oil, where Mesers Bu$h and Cheney’s primary loyalties lie. Sadly, the neocons are too dishonest to publicly admit, “Yes. Israel’s future security demands a very weak and fragmented Iraq and Iran.” Thus, we get sold we get sold a series of lies based upon the moving goalposts of WMDs, and WMD facilities, then WMD programs, and finally dreams of WMD programs.

Now we are being set up with another series of lies, this time about Iran’s alleged nuclear power program.

Recall that, according to the neocon-friendly New York Sun, Bill Kristol was urging the White House back in September to obtain from Congress an Authorization to Use Military Force against Iran when the Republicans still controlled Congress, and he even argued that doing so was the only way to swing the election in favor of the Republicans. The people who want a surge are the same people who want a war against Iran, and the latter is what is driving the former. It is all part of the same worldview and agenda and it is one the President has embraced. Here is Kagan last August in an AEI article where he first laid out his "surge" plan in detail:

The United States has ground and air forces stationed on both the western and eastern borders of Iran at a time of crisis over Ir