"It travels above insurgent positions and sends real-time video images to Marines on the ground. The unmanned device can relay facial expressions on enemy soldiers, and can transmit in such detail that it shows steam rising from their coffee."
Here's one being launched in Iraq.
The way the stall on the intelligence reform bill is being reported is really quite striking. Essentially it's all being put on two Republicans, Rep. Hunter, and Rep. Sensenbrenner, and by far Hunter is getting off with the lighter treatment of the two here, since he's being portrayed as wrong-headed (perhaps even as a tool of the Pentagon in its defense of turf), but since his motivation is generally explained as rooted in the fact that his son has served in Iraq, and therefore he wants to protect the troops (what, no one else does?) he's just a tool. Sensenbrenner's argument is never explained, nor is his motivation.One of the comments to this piece quotes from Judge Richard Posner's review of the 9/11 Commission report from the New York Times
... And now, of course, the 9/11 Commissioners have gotten back in the game. These guys play for keeps when it comes to political rhetoric, and they just aren't going to let some congressman get in the way of a bill based on their recommendations. As before, the commissioners seem interested primarily in structuring their rhetoric in such a way as to preclude debate: if you are interested in debate you are interested in unconscionable delay in a self-evidently good bill: standing in the way not just of progress but of defending the American people.
Much more troublesome are the inclusion in the report of recommendations (rather than just investigative findings) and the commissioners' misplaced, though successful, quest for unanimity. Combining an investigation of the attacks with proposals for preventing future attacks is the same mistake as combining intelligence with policy. The way a problem is described is bound to influence the choice of how to solve it. The commission's contention that our intelligence structure is unsound predisposed it to blame the structure for the failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks, whether it did or not...
At least the commission was consistent. It believes in centralizing intelligence, and people who prefer centralized, pyramidal governance structures to diversity and competition deprecate dissent. But insistence on unanimity, like central planning, deprives decision makers of a full range of alternatives...
The tale of how we were surprised by the 9/11 attacks is a product of hindsight; it could not be otherwise. And with the aid of hindsight it is easy to identify missed opportunities (though fewer than had been suspected) to have prevented the attacks, and tempting to leap from that observation to the conclusion that the failure to prevent them was the result not of bad luck, the enemy's skill and ingenuity or the difficulty of defending against suicide attacks or protecting an almost infinite array of potential targets, but of systemic failures in the nation's intelligence and security apparatus that can be corrected by changing the apparatus.
That is the leap the commission makes, and it is not sustained by the report's narrative. The narrative points to something different, banal and deeply disturbing: that it is almost impossible to take effective action to prevent something that hasn't occurred previously. Once the 9/11 attacks did occur, measures were taken that have reduced the likelihood of a recurrence. But before the attacks, it was psychologically and politically impossible to take those measures...
The multiple-stage Taepo Dong-2- potentially capable of reaching parts of the United States with a nuclear-weapon-sized payload-may be ready for flight-testing.
The Taep’o-dong 2’s major use is as a weapon of international blackmail. Easily equipped with a nuclear weapon, it is the first direct threat to the United States from North Korea. It will likely be used as a threat of nuclear escalation in response to any American intervention during a second Korean war. Just as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Lt. Gen. Xiong Guang Kai stated that Americans “care more about Los Angeles than they do Tai Pei,” North Korea will likely rely on American unwillingness to lose cities rather than withdraw from Korea. In addition, it will likely be used to blackmail wealthier countries for energy and food, similar to how the North Korean nuclear program has been used. It is also a major income generator as an item for export.
In most of the world today, a country’s defense outlays are regarded as a weight that must be shouldered by the value-adding sectors of the national economy (hence the phrase “military burden”). North Korea’s leadership, however, evidently entertains the concept of a “self-sustaining” defense sector — implying that Pyongyang views its military activities as generating resources rather than absorbing them. In the enunciated view of Pyongyang’s leadership, the dprk’s military sector is the key to financing the recovery of the national economy.
It does not require a great deal of imagination to spell out the operational details of this approach. While forswearing any appreciable export revenues from legitimate commerce with advanced market economies, North Korean policy today seems to be banking on the possibility of financing state survival by exporting strategic insecurity to the rest of the world. In part, such dividends are derived from exports of merchandise (e.g., missile sales, international transfer of wmd technology). But these revenues also depend heavily on what might be described as an export of services: in this case, military extortion services (or, perhaps better yet, “revenue-sensitive threat reduction services”) based upon Pyongyang’s nuclear development and ballistic missile programs.
After weeks of reports from North Korea of defecting generals, antigovernment posters and the disappearance of portraits of the country's ruler, the leader of Japan's governing party warned Sunday of the prospects of "regime change" in North Korea.
What does make it unusual however - and the Chosun Ilbo points this out - is that on Nov. 20, the Choson Sinbo - the mouthpiece of the pro-Pyongyang General Association of Korean Residents in Japan- ran a dispatch from Pyongyang claiming that the portraits were in fact taken down in international venues, complete with quotes from an official from the People's Palace of Culture explaining how the removals were carried out on orders from Kim Jong-il himself and a touching tale of the younger Kim's undying fidelity to his late dad.
he pointed out that the removal of the portrait from the People's Palace of Culture was an incontrovertible fact-there are pictures to prove it. Fair enough. But that still leaves us with a large pile of other stories - mostly of dubious credibility - all getting leaked at once. You also have the North Koreans issuing contradictory explanations in less than a week, which might be simply Orwellian "We at war with Eurasia and have always been at war with Eurasia," or it could mean ... that they are genuinely confused by all that's being reported about their little gangster kingdom.
Chinese officials hedged a bit yesterday when questioned about a rumor that the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, had died."Kim" reports that the rumors of his death are exaggerated.
Speculation swept Seoul's stock market yesterday afternoon that Mr. Kim had been shot and killed.
At its daily press briefing yesterday in Beijing, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Zhang Qiyue, said she had not been informed about such a report and did not know if the rumor was true.
Ms. Zhang said no abnormal signs had been seen in the North, citing a remark by Wu Dawei, the vice foreign minister in charge of Asian affairs.
The one pictured is 100 feet long.
So what’s wrong with it? The layers of useless bureaucracy? The seeming inability to do anything constructive without U.S. assistance? The latent (and not-so-latent) anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism?
These are all symptoms, but they’re not the problem. No, the problem with the United Nations is that second word: nations.
Supporters of the U.N. worship the ideal of “international consensus” and “international law”, speaking of these concepts in hushed and reverent tones. The core belief is a simple one: the actions of any single nation are by definition less proper and less moral than actions that arise from a consensus among nations.
This seems reasonable on its face to most enlightened types who’ve come to think democracy is a good idea over the centuries. One man, one vote; one country, one vote, right? The ideals of democracy are the heart and soul of free societies the world over; by applying them to the international stage, we create a framework for ensuring that tyranny between nations does not occur, just as democracy defends against tyranny between men. Therefore: international consensus is by definition a good and moral thing, to be sought after wherever possible.
Right?
Wrong.
There’s a crucial piece missing in this formulation, and in the reality of the United Nations: that the nations in question must all be free, democratic societies. Otherwise, all moral bets are off.
U.N.-philes use the idea of international consensus as a synonym for morality; for justice. But in our present world, it just isn’t so. Ask any “peace” protester opposing our coming action against Saddam whether having a Security Council member state vote in favor of a course of action makes it a moral thing: betcha they say “yes”.
Well, what if the member state is Syria? What then? Do you truly sleep better at night knowing that particularly tyranny blesses your actions?
The U.N. is a grand shell game. It looks like democracy; it acts like democracy. It has all the trappings of democracy; votes and debate and all those wonderful, wonderful procedures. But at its very heart, the votes come from member governments, and many of those aren’t democracies at all. And there, the system breaks down.
Most of the 9/11 perps were Saudis, providing legitimacy to reacting against Saudi Arabia. But we didn't because... they have too much oil. Instead, we attacked Iraq... who only has a whole lot of oil.
Remaining steadfast in the task of cramming democracy down on people who increasingly resist it at the cost of a thousand of our finest countrymen is difficult enough without asserting that it is all about containing an erstwhile ally. That sounds like war by State Department.
The verdict itself and the trial’s proceedings can only deepen suspicions of a high-level cover-up, for fear of exposing the fact that Bunel was not acting alone but on behalf of a section of France’s state apparatus.
Thanks to Russ Vaughn for his poetic work and to Mrs. Greyhawk at Mudville Gazette for her fine collage. And thanks again to our soldiers, Marines, airmen and sailors! God bless you all!
In a report to the (South Korean)National Assembly's Intelligence Committee on Thursday, the NIS (South Korean National Intelligence Servcie) said, "We understand that Chang Sung-taek was purged for sectarian behavior such as creating his own clique within the military ... We know that seven or eight generals who were part of Chang's faction were removed from command".
North Korea conducted lethal chemical experiments on humans until 2002 as part of a programme to develop weapons of mass destruction, a human rights group said yesterday, quoting former scientists from the communist state.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre said the scientists gave first-person testimony describing gassing of political prisoners in the North from the 1970s until 2002.
Kosovo's 90-percent Albanian majority sees the 1998-99 guerrilla war as one of liberation from Serb forces.
Anger at the U.N.-sponsored trial has coincided with rising bitterness against Kosovo's U.N. administration, which remains in control five years after a war which Albanians believed would lead swiftly to independence.
"If this continues we will find other ways to prevent the dignity and blood of the martyrs from being trampled on," Sherif Krasniqi, a member of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) veterans group which organised the protest, told the crowd
Impoverished North Korea might resort to selling weapons-grade plutonium to terrorists for much-needed cash, and that would be "disastrous for the world," the top U.S. military commander in South Korea said Friday.(Hat tip: North Korea Zone)
Gen. Leon J. LaPorte said the communist state may have harvested plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear rods, which experts say could yield enough material for several atomic bombs.
Reports that portraits of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had been removed were a US plot to overthrow the government and a “groundless fabrication”, Xinhua news agency quoted a North Korean official on Friday as saying.
Some diplomats in the North Korean capital and experts in the South said this week that portraits of Kim had been removed from some public places, starting as far back as August, in what may be a bid to soften the personality cult surrounding him.
“It didn’t happen before, and will never happen,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry official, Ri Gyong-son, was quoted as saying.
“The words are an intrigue that the United States and its attaching countries want to overthrow the DPRK,” he added, referring to the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Why did US military censors allow NBC to run the tape? It should have been seized as "evidence" in any legal proceeding or investigation that will follow the shooting incident, or simply as posing a danger to lives and future operations.And they ask to be told if they are wrong...I commented on their site that I think they are wrong, but space limitations prevented a fuller response, which is what follows:
Some military PR flack should lose his job over this...
"PFC X has served in Fallujah for the past 72 hours and has been under fire almost that entire time. He suffered a slight wound but asked to be returned to combat.
Yesterday, in a similar situation, one of his friends discovered the hard way that the enemy has booby trapped corpses and others have discovered that the enemy sometimes feigns jnjury to create an ambush. Both of these are in violation of the laws of armed conflict.
This type of action by the enemy plants a doubt, in any reasonable person's mind, that the enemy can be trusted in such situations. As a result, the proper and prudent behavior of any soldier concerned with self defense, which is an absolute right under the laws of armed conflict, would be to place the burden of showing absolute surrender or capitulation on the enemy.
In other words, if there is doubt as to the status of a wounded or allegedly surrendering enemy, the wise course is to shoot first and sort the facts out later.
If an enemy soldier intends to surrender or is wounded and wishes to be treated humanely, he had better make damn sure his intentions are unmistakeably clear.If it means stripping naked to show you are unarmed, so be it.
Based on my personal review of the video in question, there is no doubt in my mind that PFC X acted well within the law of war and there will be no further investigation.
We will not make any changes to our policy of allowing reporters to be embedded with our troops. One of the fundamental beliefs of the American people is having a free press. The press has shown the bravery and honor of our Marines and soldiers and if it also occasionally catches a glimpse of how hard war is, then so much the better.
Captain T, our JAG officer will now discuss in depth the violations of the law of war which have created the atmosphere under which PFC X was acting."
Not understanding the intentional lethality of battle is a very common misperception among people of the comfortable classes such as Mrs. Joel - for example, the graduate students I had dinner with one night just after the air campaign began against the Afghan Taliban. They apparently thought that our bombing was a form of posturing, a symbolic display, intended to yield psychological, not lethal, effects on the enemy.
One guest said that the bombing "wouldn't intimidate" the Taliban.
"We're not trying to intimidate them," I said.
"Then why are we bombing them?" came the question.
"To kill them," I answered. There was a long silence at the table. The concept seemed not to have occurred to them.
For those accusing Sites of various anti-American crimes I offer the same admonition I'd give to those who accuse the young Marine of atrocities: "You weren't there.""...only one side was fighting for freedom of the press..." Yep.
The gist of which was drawn from an misunderstood, sometimes misquoted, and often ignored post I offered up a more in-depth defense, noting the fact that in Fallujah only one side was fighting for freedom of the press - among other noble causes - and that those who would call for the end of embedded reporters were dishonoring the sacrifices of a lot of GIs.
Now I'll dispense with subtleties and add this: I've seen a number of people claim that Sites "wasn't fit to accompany those Marines" yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah but the one inescapable fact is this: He was accompanying those Marines, he did go through that door, and I'm not sure the loudest whiners in this entire episode would have the guts to do so.
Hardliners have tightened their political grip on North Korea while Kim Jong-il, the Stalinist state’s dictator, has retreated into virtual seclusion after the death of his favourite consort from cancer. . . . Chinese and western sources say the regime has prepared for a state of siege as it confronts a re-elected US administration determined to break its will and disarm it of nuclear weapons. . . . “The loss of this woman was a blow,” said a foreign diplomat. “But John Kerry’s loss in the US election was a harder one. These are now very worried men." [Kim’s] prestige suffered a blow after he gambled and lost on a Kerry victory. The North Koreans played a waiting game through three rounds of nuclear talks in the belief that Kim could cut a better deal with a Democratic administration.
Prof. Cha, a Korea and security expert, drew attention in 2002 when he introduced the concept of "hawk engagement" calling on the U.S. administration to intervene and resolve the North Korean nuclear issue. He has supported Bush's policy of not compensating North Korea, which has breached its promises in the international community. Along the context of the Bush administration's Asia policy, he asserted that the U.S. should maintain friendly relations with China and Japan in Asia, resolve Pyongyang's nuclear issue through the six-party talks, and utilize multilateral forums like APEC and ASEAN as a debate arena on security matters.
Prof. Cha has maintained a friendship with Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, then academic affairs dean of Stanford University, when he was a researcher at the university's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Associating with foreign policy and security officials of the Bush administration like Green and outgoing Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Cha has provided advice to the administration from the outside.
As reports filter out of North Korea that portraits of the country's leader, Kim Jong Il, have been removed from their honored spots, official news outlets are dropping the honorific "Dear Leader" from reports on Mr. Kim, according to Radiopress, a Japanese news agency that monitors North Korea's radio.
Regional analysts are debating whether Mr. Kim is losing his grip on power, or, more likely, quietly orchestrating the downsizing of his own personality cult.
The insurgents, beheaders, terrorist, and their broader Sunni supporters have to wage a PR guerilla war. Unable to defeat America militarily; they must drive us out in other ways. They have to make it too expensive for us, too dear in blood and treasure. But now they have a problem. George W. Bush is an irrational, "non reality-based," war-mongering, Crusader who ignores public opinion and thinks he has a direct line to God. That's a problem for them.
This is not to ignore, nor understate the problems of the government/occupation. Allawi and the Americans have to uphold their authority everywhere in Iraq. By definition, no city can be surrendered to the rebels, at least not permanently. Thus Fallujah. Thus Mosul. In every one of these cases, we must kill, capture, or dishearten as many insurgents as possible, fully aware that most survivors will slip away and fight again.
The war crimes trial of three former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army begins at the UN Yugoslav tribunal today, marking the first time ethnic Albanians face charges stemming from the Kosovo war.
Fatmir Limaj, Haradin Bala and Isak Musliu will be tried for their alleged roles in the murder, torture and imprisonment of Serb civilians and Albanian dissenters during the 1998-1999 conflict.
The arrest of the trio in February set off protests in Kosovo's capital Pristina, where many Albanians view them as heroes in a war for independence. All have pleaded not guilty.
President Roh Moo-hyun on Tuesday stressed North Korea will give up its nuclear weapons program if it is provided with enough compensation.
He rebuffed the claim that the North has deliberately delayed the nuclear talks to buy time for nuclear development.
``We do not agree with the assertion of some hard-liners that the North is showing no intention of resuming the nuclear negotiations, seeking only to protract the dialogue,’’ Roh said during an interview with Portuguese-language newspaper Estado de Sao Paulo.
He urged North Korea to come to the six-party dialogue table. ``Trust among the relevant parties is the most important thing in negotiations. Utilizing dialogue itself as tool for negotiations will not help build trust, a fact which North Korea should bear in mind,’’ he said.
Portraits of Kim Jong-il have been removed from some public meeting halls in North Korea, a Pyongyang-based diplomat said on Tuesday, but others said the leader’s picture remained prominently displayed.
The law of war seeks to limit or restrain the social costs of war in three ways: by protecting "both combatants and noncombatants from unnecessary suffering;" by "safeguard[ing] certain fundamental human rights of persons who fall into the hands of the enemy, particularly prisoners of war, the wounded and sick, and civilians;" and by "facilitat[ing] the restoration of peace." In pursuit of these aims, international law imposes certain standards on all combatants in armed conflicts. These include requirements to wear uniforms or distinctive insignia and to bear arms openly; prohibitions against abuse of flags of truce or equivalent symbols, and against the misuse of symbols such as the red cross or red crescent; and roles concerning the status of cultural and humanitarian sites during wartime.(quote is from page 2 of the article, found here. References to notes have been omitted).
During the course of Operation Iraqi Freedom, fighters loyal to Saddam Hussein violated all of these. The most common such violation--and the one attended by the most tragic results--attacking U.S. forces while under civilian disguise. Protecting civilians from the evil effects of battle has long been a fundamental goal of the law of armed conflict. To that end, international law has long sought to "maintain the distinction between combatants and noncombatants with as much clarity as possible."
Now, as far as what the law requires and what it prohibits, let me suggest to you that you can remember one principle. In a nutshell, the law prohibits perfidy. It allows legitimate trickery and strategies. At this point, I could almost sit down and say, “And that is all you need to know.” There is, in fact, no other codification in treaty law and there are no other principles of customary international law that have a bearing on the issue. What we will discuss here over the next two days will have little to do with the law, but has everything to do with the ethics and policy consequences of what we do and why we do it. Now let me give you some examples of acts of perfidy. They are few, but do in fact constitute violations of international law. You find them either in treaty or customar international law.
First, it is illegal for a soldier to pretend to be a civilian while committing hostilities. This may be the most important of all the prohibitions because it gets at what lies at the very heart of what we call international humanitarian law – the distinction between combatants and non-combatants. .. So that is act of perfidy number one. It is, as I said, the first and probably the most important prohibition because, whatever we do by way of deception at whatever level –tactical, strategic, or any other – we must always respect that bright line separating civilians from combatants.
The second prohibition in international law is against wearing the uniform emblems or insignias of the enemy again during combat operations. Now there are notable exceptions to this rule. A downed aircrew in distress may don the uniform of the enemy. But it may do so only for the purpose of escape and evasion. Under the current state of international law, were this downed aircrew to go into an attack mode or even go so far as to gather intelligence, it would be engaging in a prohibited act.
Probably the most easily recognizable proscription against types of deception is the raising of the white flag. I have a cartoon that I use in my classes. It shows a cavalryman with a flag behind his back and the flag has the words “fake” written on it, suggesting that it could be being used as a ruse. Well, if it is used as a ruse, then it is a violation of international law, because the white flag of truce is recognized as the means of surrender, so whoever holds it is no longer seen as a combatant.
Feigning wounds so as to gain an advantage in an attack is also a violation of international law. However, feigning injuries or even death to stop an attack is not. You see the difference. There is a clear thread running through all of these examples. For deception to be considered perfidy, perpetrators must intend to use the advantage gained in order to attack, to kill, or to wound. If they use these tactics in order to survive then it is not illegal in any since of the word. Indeed, not only is it not illegal, it is probably prudent.
Feigning protected status by using signs emblems or uniforms of the United Nations, of neutral countries, or of countries that are not a party to the conflict, is also a violation of international law. Again there are exceptions. I did not know until I started to look at some of the literature that there is an exception in naval warfare. A ship may in fact fly the colors of the enemy up until the time that it commences an attack. Then it must strike its true colors. Now that is not an exception that the Air Force can make use of, simply because it is very difficult to step outside one’s airplane, and change its markings!
Feigning protected status by using internationally recognized signs like the Red Cross, or the Red Crescent is also a violation of international law. You can get into the weeds here. There is a sign in treaty law, by the way, recognizing hospital zones. It is a rather obtuse red band set across a white shield. There are also some recognized symbols: you’ve got “PW” for prisoner of war. You’ve also got a “PG” which is also another version of the same thing. It is a violation of international law to use these signs for the purpose of gaining an advantage in an attack.
Similarly if one were to broadcast an “S.O.S,” which is an internationally recognized distress symbol, or a “Mayday” for the purpose of gaining a tactical advantage in an attack, that would be a violation of international law. And, folks, that is really the entire list.
Another Marine in the man's unit was killed the previous day by the booby-trapped body of an insurgent, a fact that international legal experts said could provide the Marine with a defense if charges are filed against him. A key issue was whether the injured man was a prisoner at the time, they said.
Top United Nations human rights official Louise Arbour has called for an investigation of alleged abuses in Falluja including disproportionate use of force and the targeting of civilians.
Those responsible for any violations - US-led forces, Iraqi government troops or fighters - should be brought to justice, the former UN war crimes prosecutor said in a statement on Tuesday.
"There have been a number of reports during the current confrontation alleging violations of the rules of war designed to protect civilians and combatants," Arbour said.
She gave no specific examples. But on Monday, Amnesty International accused both sides of breaking rules designed to protect civilians and wounded combatants during conflict.
On March 23, Iraqi soldiers and Fedayeen fighters killed 10 U.S. soldiers and injured 40 in an ambush after feigning surrender by waving a white flag and then opening fire on the U.S. soldiers preparing to accept their surrender.
Numerous reports have detailed how Iraqi soldiers have violated the “principles of distinction” by disguising themselves as Iraqi civilians and concealing their weapons and military status, attempting to draw U.S. soldiers into an ambush.
An embedded reporter traveling with Marines on the road to Nasiriya reported taking fire from Iraqi soldiers dressed as civilians on a bridge outside the city of Nasiriya. By disguising themselves as civilians, Iraqi soldiers blurred the distinction between soldier and civilian in an effort to limit the force of the American military response. As part of this effort, the Iraqi soldiers stockpiled weapons and other heavy military equipment in several houses and moved freely among the houses disguised as civilians.
Iraqi officials have sanctioned the use of terrorist tactics to kill coalition forces. In several instances, Iraqi soldiers have disguised themselves as Iraqi civilians and then detonated concealed explosives. In one case, a pregnant woman pretending to be in distress lured three American soldiers guarding a checkpoint to her, and then the driver of the vehicle detonated an explosive device killing all three soldiers, the pregnant woman, and the driver.
On April 3, a non-commissioned Iraqi Army officer posing as a taxi driver detonated an explosive device in his car at a checkpoint, seriously wounding four American soldiers.
Minju Joson, a state-run newspaper, accused the United States of preparing for war on the Korean Peninsula instead of pursuing a peaceful solution to the dispute over the North’s nuclear weapons program.
“No matter what the others say, our People’s Army and people will further strengthen our nuclear deterrent force for self-defence,” the newspaper was quoted as saying in a commentary carried by the North’s official news agency, KCNA.
North Korea has 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods which could yield enough plutonium for several bombs, when reprocessed with chemicals. North Korean diplomats have recently claimed the country had “weaponised” the material.
Senator Joe Lieberman concurred in Coleman's analysis, saying that Saddam corrupted UNSCAM in order to fund his military ambitions...But the committee's ranking Democrat, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, said "for the most part the U.N. sanctions achieved their intended objective of preventing Saddam from rearming and developing weapons of mass destruction."Levin must have missed the news about the 600,000 tons of ordnance and other explosives scattered around Iraq.
"How was the world so blind to this massive amount of influence-peddling?" asked Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, head of the investigations subcommittee.Sometimes, Senator, you only see what you choose to see.
The trucks laden with food, water and medical supplies will travel instead to villages around Falluja where tens of thousands of people have set up camp after fleeing the massive week-old offensive spearheaded by US marines, said Firdaus al-Ubadi.Looks to me like all the non-insurgents in Fallujah just have to raise their hands and the U.S. troops will double time some supplies to them. So, who would be unwilling to raise their hands? The guys with the AK-47s and RPGs?
Relief agencies are trying to get food, water and medicine to hundreds of families they say are trapped inside Falluja.
The military said it was announcing over loudspeakers in the city that civilians needing medical or other help should seek out US forces.
"There is no need to bring [Red Crescent] supplies in because we have supplies of our own for the people," said US marine Colonel Mike Shupp.
"Now that the bridge (into Falluja) is open I will bring out casualties and all aid work can be done here (at Falluja's hospital)," he added.
He said he had not heard of any Iraqi civilians being trapped inside the city and did not think that was the case.
But aid workers say there are still hundreds of families left in the city, which has been pummelled by sustained aerial bombardment and artillery fire in recent days.
"We know of at least 157 families inside Falluja who need our help," said Firdus al-Ubadi of the Iraqi Red Crescent. Seems to me the Marines and the Iraqi forces had plan for this and do not presently need the "help" of the "aid workers."
Probably not the way it'll be reported in the papers, though.
It is a war the United States cannot win, and which the government of Iyad Allawi cannot survive.The article is full of more positive "analysis" of this sort.
Unfortunately for O'Donnell, however, there is no evidence that the most productive elements of our society favored Kerry over Bush. The president captured 51 percent of the vote. Does O'Donnell think Bush did that well among unemployed voters? Among the increasing number of voters who pay no federal income taxes? Among government workers? Among those earning below average incomes? Unless he is prepared to make these highly implausible claims, O'Donnell has no basis for implying that Bush's victory represents the triumph of the less productive elements of society, or that the voters who re-elected Bush, as a group, were voting against their economic interests.
The truth is that war is cruel. And difficult. And complex. It's never as smooth as it is in a film or a video game. In real life, heroes get killed, too — sometimes by friendly fire. Mistakes are made, despite rigorous planning. The enemy shoots back. And sometimes the enemy gets lucky. Tragedy is war's inseparable companion.
We cannot foresee all the details of the combat ahead. The fight for Fallujah may prove easier than we feared, or tougher than we hoped. Time will tell. Meanwhile, don't let your view be swayed by the crisis of the hour. Have faith in our troops and their leaders.
In return, I can promise you one thing: If we don't fail our troops, they won't fail us. (written on 11/9/04)
I call it the paranoid style simply because no other word adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind. In using the expression “paranoid style” I am not speaking in a clinical sense, but borrowing a clinical term for other purposes. I have neither the competence nor the desire to classify any figures of the past or present as certifiable lunatics., In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.
Of course this term is pejorative, and it is meant to be; the paranoid style has a greater affinity for bad causes than good. But nothing really prevents a sound program or demand from being advocated in the paranoid style. Style has more to do with the way in which ideas are believed than with the truth or falsity of their content. I am interested here in getting at our political psychology through our political rhetoric. The paranoid style is an old and recurrent phenomenon in our public life which has been frequently linked with movements of suspicious discontent.
The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millenialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse...
As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.
The enemy is clearly delineated: he is a perfect model of malice, a kind of amoral superman—sinister, ubiquitous, powerful, cruel, sensual, luxury-loving. Unlike the rest of us, the enemy is not caught in the toils of the vast mechanism of history, himself a victim of his past, his desires, his limitations. He wills, indeed he manufactures, the mechanism of history, or tries to deflect the normal course of history in an evil way. He makes crises, starts runs on banks, causes depressions, manufactures disasters, and then enjoys and profits from the misery he has produced. The paranoid’s interpretation of history is distinctly personal: decisive events are not taken as part of the stream of history, but as the consequences of someone’s will. Very often the enemy is held to possess some especially effective source of power: he controls the press; he has unlimited funds; he has a new secret for influencing the mind (brainwashing); he has a special technique for seduction ...
The paranoid style is not confined to our own country and time; it is an international phenomenon. Studying the millennial sects of Europe from the eleventh to the sixteenth century, Norman Cohn believed he found a persistent psychic complex that corresponds broadly with what I have been considering—a style made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: “the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary; the refusal to accept the ineluctable limitations and imperfections of human existence, such as transience, dissention, conflict, fallibility whether intellectual or moral; the obsession with inerrable prophecies…systematized misinterpretations, always gross and often grotesque.”
This glimpse across a long span of time emboldens me to make the conjecture—it is no more than that—that a mentality disposed to see the world in this way may be a persistent psychic phenomenon, more or less constantly affecting a modest minority of the population. But certain religious traditions, certain social structures and national inheritances, certain historical catastrophes or frustrations may be conducive to the release of such psychic energies, and to situations in which they can more readily be built into mass movements or political parties. In American experience ethnic and religious conflict have plainly been a major focus for militant and suspicious minds of this sort, but class conflicts also can mobilize such energies. Perhaps the central situation conducive to the diffusion of the paranoid tendency is a confrontation of opposed interests which are (or are felt to be) totally irreconcilable, and thus by nature not susceptible to the normal political processes of bargain and compromise. The situation becomes worse when the representatives of a particular social interest—perhaps because of the very unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demands—are shut out of the political process. Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed. They see only the consequences of power—and this through distorting lenses—and have no chance to observe its actual machinery. A distinguished historian has said that one of the most valuable things about history is that it teaches us how things do not happen. It is precisely this kind of awareness that the paranoid fails to develop. He has a special resistance of his own, of course, to developing such awareness, but circumstances often deprive him of exposure to events that might enlighten him—and in any case he resists enlightenment.
We are all sufferers from history, but the paranoid is a double sufferer, since he is afflicted not only by the real world, with the rest of us, but by his fantasies as well.
