"If we ever want to kneecap al-Qaeda, just get them to adopt our procurement system. It will bring them to their knees within a week," a former Pentagon official said.
War
Pentagon v. al-Qaeda
Get Your War On, Live!
Wolly Mammoth will be showing the Rude Mechanical's Get Your War On [flash], based on the inspired comic of the same name.
Cuba Killed Kennedy
Interviewed for the film, Alexander Haig, then a U.S. military adviser and later secretary of state, quoted Johnson as saying "we simply must not allow the American people to believe that Fidel Castro could have killed our president."
"And the reason was that there would be a right-wing uprising in America, which would keep the Democratic party out of power for two generations," Haig said.
[Y!]
My Head Just Exploded
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (أبومصعب الزرقاوي) was captured last year, and then released. The Iraqi "security forces" responsible for this are fucking fired. You know who should be most pissed about this? Jordan. I'd like to see everyone involved got a visit from the Dairat al Mukhabarat.
[CNN]
Hidey-Hole Fabrication
"I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.
...
"Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam's capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well," Abou Rabeh said.
Can We Stop Torturing People, Please?
An Iraqi whose corpse was photographed with grinning U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib died under CIA interrogation while in a position condemned by human rights groups as torture -- suspended by his wrists, with his hands cuffed behind his back, according to reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
Not A Front, More Like A Regular Poker Game
"Today we do not want to form a front against anybody, particularly not against the United States," Imad Moustapha said.
I can't imagine why anyone would have thought that...
Perspective
Andrew Sullivan makes the following claim in the 10/24 Sunday Times on London--- which is backed up, at the very least, by the GOP political strategy:
Born-again white Americans outnumber blacks and hispanics combined.
WoT?
Amy Sullivan reports this stunner while filling in for Kevin Drum:
"A Stan Greenberg poll that was released last week asked Americans what bothered them most about the situation in Iraq. The idea that it diverts resources from a larger war on terror ranked 12th out of 12 concerns; the thought that it has alienated our allies was third."
Just Guessing.
Much ink has been spilled over the Small Group of Men who hijacked a history-honed Conservative (yes, capital C) philosophy of peace-by-overwhelming-strength and reluctant engagement (see: Foreign Policy Successes, Cold War) in favor of overly-optimistic open-ended intervention (see: LBJ, Nightmares of).
And much blood has been spilled over this SGM's lack of planning for post-war Iraq--- a result of an assumption that the Iraqis would, more or less, like being occupied by our benevolent angels of democracy. It's been safe to assume, up to this point, that the President and his SGM had insulated themselves from contrary views, hence a strategy based a view of the world with as much depth as a one-page briefing summary, which we know is all this President reads. (Remember folks, he's not dumb, he's just intellectually lazy).
But today, Douglas Jehl and David Sanger report in the NY Times that the National Intelligence Council (the same people who brought you the "things will stay the same or get worse" study first reported on last month) gave the President an analysis in January '03 that stated, as Jehl and Sanger's summarize:
"... that an American-led invasion of Iraq would increase support for political Islam and would result in a deeply divided Iraqi society prone to violent internal conflict...
