Blame Misses the Mark

The Sineman's latest sign:



The Sineman's latest post: http://sineman.blogspot.com/2006/10/blaming-iraqis.html

It is not wrong to ask Iraqi security forces to establish and maintain law and order in their country. Admitting shortcomings in that effort is not blaming them, it's...admitting shortcomings.

The fact of the matter is that the conflict in Iraq is the central front in two, yes two, struggles at the moment. The sineman hints at this but doesn't elaborate:

...should we simply leave, there will likely be a power struggle that will likely not be smooth. As a starter, the United States should flatly and unequivocally state that we will not maintain a physical presence in Iraq or in the Middle East for that matter. We are the cause celebre. We create the purpose for the terrorism there. Why can’t we absorb that reality? We need a strategy that draws upon the neighboring states and international bodies that will have respect there.

First, Iraqi and US forces are confronting violence perpetrated largely by Sadr's Mahdi Army. Sadr is a puppet of Iran. He uses his militia to incite sectarian violence to further Iran's agenda of destabilizing Iraq. Iran does not want a stable, democratic Iraq, friendly to the West, on its border.

A complicating factor is that Sadr is a major player in the Iraqi government. He claims that the groups causing the violence in Iraq are "rogue elements" but, he doesn't disavow them, he doesn't reign them in, he doesn't identify them. US forces cannot be seen "going after" him in an aggressive way as it would appear too heavy-handed and Imperialistic on our part. Instead, we are tying to use some finesse to, at a minumum, create the perception that Iraqis are taking control of the country and we are merely supporting them.

We seem to be doing this with some success in Pakistan lately:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/south_asia/6097636.stm

While the Pakistanis are taking credit for this strike, the question arises as to whether this may have been conducted by Task Force 145, the U.S. special operations terrorist hunter-killer teams. Task Force 145 was responsible for the April raid in Danda Saidgai on the al-Qaeda's training camp for Osama bin Laden's Black Guard, his elite praetorian guard. Pakistan initially took credit for the Danda Saidgai strikes, but the Washington Post later revealed this was indeed a U.S. mission. Dawn notes the raid occurred “at around 5:00 am,” which means it was conducted in the dark. Pakistani helicopter pilots would need night training in flight and targeting.

http://billroggio.com/archives/2006/10/airstrikes_in_bajaur.php

Despite earlier reports that the missiles had been launched by Pakistani military helicopters, Pakistani intelligence sources now tell ABC News that the missiles were fired from a U.S. Predator drone plane.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/10/zawahiri_was_ta.html

So you see, in spite of the publicly declared Pakistani position that US forces will not operate inside Pakistan...they seem to be doing just that in such a way as not to get too much of a rise out of the Pakistani population.

Second, it's plain that Al Qaeda has as a major goal, the use of a lawless state in the middle east as a base of operations and a training ground and lauching pad for future attacks. They are pursuing this in Iraq. If US forces "withdraw" from Iraq or the entire middle east (gasp)...exactly how would we prevent this?

We cannot rely on other nations or inept International Organizations to provide our nation's defence.

Lancet Revisited

The sineman had a sign up regarding the Lancet study on Iraqi deaths a couple of weeks ago. Today he posted it online.



While it's true that President Bush disputed the study's findings, he was not the only person to do so. After the study was released I expected the sineman to write about this and so I "presponded" after doing a tad of research.

Since that time, further discussion has taken place and other people and insitutions have weighed in. BBC, Huge gaps between Iraq death estimates. BBC, Lancet Iraq survey methodology under fire. Iraq Body Count, Reality checks: some responses to the latest Lancet estimates.

I'm sure the sineman was, perhaps until now, a fan of the IBC group. Their analysis is perhaps the most interesting:

If they were true, they would need to be the result of a combination of the following factors:

• incompetence and/or fraud on a truly massive scale by Iraqi officials in hospitals and ministries, on a local, regional and national level, perfectly coordinated from the moment the occupation began;


• bizarre and self-destructive behaviour on the part of all but a small minority of 800,000 injured, mostly non-combatant, Iraqis;


• the utter failure of local or external agencies to notice and respond to a decimation of the adult male population in key urban areas;


• an abject failure of the media, Iraqi as well as international, to observe that Coalition-caused events of the scale they reported during the three-week invasion in 2003 have been occurring every month for over a year.

Followed by this sober paragraph:

We would hope that, before accepting such extreme notions, serious consideration is given to the possibility that the population estimates derived from the Lancet study are flawed. The most likely source of such a flaw is some bias in the sampling methodology such that violent deaths were vastly over-represented in the sample. The precise potential nature of such bias is not clear at this point (it could, for example, involve problems in the application of a statistical method originally designed for studying the spread of disease in a population to direct and ongoing violence-related phenomena). But to dismiss the possibility of such bias out of hand is surely both irresponsible and unwise.

A question sineman's readers should be asking themselves at this point is: Why doesn't he present any of this information?

Gateway Pundit: Time Traveling With Today's Democratic Party

I like this guy's style: Gateway Pundit: Time Traveling With Today's Democratic Party

Related posts:
Were They Safe Then

3 Pronged Attack

Today I read three very interesting opinion pieces in three different newspapers. The subject of each piece was the upcoming mid-term election.

First, the Ithaca Journal:

Here is something to think about and give some serious thought! If the terrorists were allowed to vote in the U.S.A, who do you think they would vote for, Republicans or Democrats?

Robert H. Gessner
Trumansburg

Second, the New York Times:

A total withdrawal from Iraq would play into the hands of the jihadist terrorists. As Osama bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, made clear shortly after 9/11 in his book "Knights Under the Prophet’s Banner," Al Qaeda's most important short-term strategic goal is to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world. "Confronting the enemies of Islam and launching jihad against them require a Muslim authority, established on a Muslim land," he wrote. "Without achieving this goal our actions will mean nothing." Such a jihadist state would be the ideal launching pad for future attacks on the West...

...Another problem with a total American withdrawal is that it would fit all too neatly into Osama bin Laden's master narrative about American foreign policy. His theme is that America is a paper tiger that cannot tolerate body bags coming home; to back it up, he cites President Ronald Reagan's 1984 withdrawal of United States troops from Lebanon and President Bill Clinton’s decision nearly a decade later to pull troops from Somalia. A unilateral pullout from Iraq would only confirm this analysis of American weakness among his jihadist allies.

Third, The Washington Times:

If Americans vote for what sounds like sweet reason from the Democrats, bin Laden and company will rejoice. What they will hear is the death knell for any prospect of effective U.S. military resistance to militant Islam. With the Republicans out, the Islamists will be confident that Democrats will deliver the best of both worlds: less emphasis on military force and a rigid maintenance of U.S. foreign policies that are hated with passion and near-unanimity by 1.3 billion Muslims. If Osama approved of music, he would be whistling "Happy Days Are Here Again!"

The first piece is remarkable for the fact that it was published at all in my opinion. I'm stunned that the journal put it in their paper. Or, maybe impressed is a better word? Either way, kudos to Robert!

The second two pieces are remarkable, in my opinion, because of who wrote them. Peter Bergen is CNN's Terrorism Correspondent. I believe he actually interviewed Bin Laden...anyway, I wonder how his career at CNN is going nowadays? I actually haven't seen him on air in a while. Michael Scheuer is a former CIA official. He actually created the Bin Laden unit. He is no fan of Republican or Bush administration strategies or tactics. He wrote a rather controversial book, Imperial Hubris, which is critical of both on several key issues.

The underlying theme in each of these letters, I believe, is that when we confront Radical Islam on the battlefield, we cannot yield.

Developments in Europe

Continuing my theme from a couple of posts ago (More Like France), a couple of new and interesting pieces have come out of European press recently. Neither of these items have received substantial coverage in American media.

First, courtesy LGF, French "Youth": Elect Sarkozy and People Will Die

"Sarko is the provocative element," said Kiko. "And if he is elected next year I warn you: people will be killed."

Nicolas Sarkozy (Sarko), a minister in the current goverment, is planning on running for President. The major issue in his campaign is law and order.

Second, via BBC, France in Rawanda Genocide Probe. To be clear, France is not investigating the genocide in Rawanda. France is being investigated for the role its troops may have played in the genocide.

EU Referendum has some fascinating commentary and a very interesting picture.

Given that the continuous and expanding threads of evidence point to France as a country that has, from Vietnam through Algeria and a succession of African colonies up to and including the Ivory Coast, exercised a wholly malign influence, we really do have to ask ourselves whether this is a country with which we can afford to be associated.

For so long we have heard all manner of jibes and accusations against the United States but, if we are to choose between allies, the murderous history of the French would seem to make them a very poor second-best.

Sadr driving violence in Iraq

Very intelligent, non-political, coverage of Iraq (and other global hot spots) can be found here: The Fourth Rail. His latest post is about Sadr and his latest activity...

Sadr continues to maintain he is against the sectarian violence, and the media has been complicit in providing him cover by claiming the violence conducted by the Mahdi Army is due to rogue elements outside his control...

His followers are complicit in numerous incidents of sectarian murders,and yet Sadr has yet to denounce a single incident. As we noted on October 20th, "He has not identified these out of control militias, closed offices or denounced them specifically. Sadr is playing a double game of maintaining his militia against the law while pretending to be a responsible member of government."

When reading this article and considering events you should keep in mind that Sadr is at least supported by Iran. It would be guesswork on my part to discuss the degree to which he was directly controlled from Iran but, recall the Cox and Forkum cartoon on the subject...

More Like France

We should be more like the Europeans I hear people say frequently. France is often cited as an example of a progressive nation, with reasonable policies, well respected, blah blah blah.

Interesting to compare casualty figures from Iraq vs. those of the French Police:



3,000 police officers wounded (so far). Apparently an average of 112 cars burned per day. Quite a set of policies they have at work 'over there'.

http://news.yahoo...france_suburban_violence_4

EPINAY-SUR-SEINE, France - On a routine call, three unwitting police officers fell into a trap. A car darted out to block their path, and dozens of hooded youths surged out of the darkness to attack them with stones, bats and tear gas before fleeing. One officer was hospitalized.

The recent ambush was emblematic of what some officers say has become a near-perpetual and increasingly violent conflict between police and gangs in tough, largely immigrant French neighborhoods that were the scene of a three-week paroxysm of rioting last year.

One small police union claims officers are facing a "permanent intifada." Police injuries have risen in the year since the wave of violence.

National police reported 2,458 cases of violence against officers in the first six months of the year, on pace to top the 4,246 cases recorded for all of 2005 and the 3,842 in 2004. Firefighters and rescue workers have also been targeted — and some now receive police escorts in such areas.

On Sunday, a band of about 30 youths, some wearing masks, forced passengers out of a bus in a southern Paris suburb in broad daylight Sunday, set it on fire, then stoned firefighters who came to the rescue, police said. No one was injured. Two people were arrested, one of them a 13-year-old, according to LCI television.

More broadly, worsening violence in France testifies to Europe's growing struggle to integrate its ethnic minorities. Some mainstream European politicians - adopting positions previously confined largely to far-right fringes - are suggesting that the minorities themselves are not doing enough to adapt to European mores.

Bill Clinton on "Torture"

This is very interesting for a couple of reasons. Most of all, for how little attention the comments received.

From a NY Sun article by Alan Dershowitz titled "Clinton and I":

Mr. Clinton was asked, as someone "who's been there," whether the president needs "the option of authorizing torture in an extreme case."

Look, if the president needed an option, there's all sorts of things they can do.Let's take the best case, OK.You picked up someone you know is the No. 2 aide to Osama bin Laden. And you know they have an operation planned for the United States or some European capital in the next three days. And you know this guy knows it. Right, that's the clearest example. And you think you can only get it out of this guy by shooting him full of some drugs or water-boarding him or otherwise working him over. If they really believed that that scenario is likely to occur, let them come forward with an alternate proposal.

We have a system of laws here where nobody should be above the law, and you don't need blanket advance approval for blanket torture.They can draw a statute much more narrowly, which would permit the president to make a finding in a case like I just outlined, and then that finding could be submitted even if after the fact to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

This is basically what I wrote here on Sept 17th. In just about every respect.

I'm not trying to toot my horn. I'm trying to highlight two things: 1) the validity of my idea 2) the potential for agreement between two people of different political underpinings on important issues.

Three Videos

This is really a bit twisted (hat tip: The Coalition of the Swilling)

First, from the BBC, an interview with a teaching assistant who was placed on leave for refusing to remove her veil at school. Watch the entire interview, you'll see that she's really nothing but a trouble-maker.

http://news.bbc.co.uk...asx (Windows Media)

Terrorism has no religion

This group has apparently managed to get these ads on air in the middle east. It's unclear who's behind them. Hopefully, our government is and it's only the beginning. (hat tip: LFG)

• Suicidal Terror: http://www.noterror.info/STL-High.wmv (11+ MB, Windows Media)


• Routine: http://www.noterror.info/Routine-45sec-High.wmv (8+ MB, Windows Media)

Check out the entire website here: http://www.noterror.info

Newsweek Hatchet-job

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15239205/site/newsweek

In this Newsweek article by Lisa Miller And Matthew Philips the issue of a new, greater Caliphate, or Islamic State, gets a perfect whitewash and Pres. Bush gets a dose of moral equivalency via OBL.

Is there any bias in the article? Well, try the first sentence:

When President George W. Bush starts using fifty-cent words in press conferences, one has to wonder why, and on Wednesday, during his Rose Garden appearance, he used the word "caliphate" four times.

A fifty cent word? Four times? Something is definitely afoot. In the same opening paragraph, we get the whitewash:

Caliphate? Really? Many people live long, fruitful lives without once using the word caliphate. Almost no one, with the exception of our president and some of his advisers, uses it as a pejorative.

Pejorative? Wow. A seventy five cent word? But, only used once...

The article continues on and the authors explain how nobody knows what a caliphate is. So, they look up "caliph" not "caliphate" in an online dictionary..."blah blah blah" and proceed to equate Pres. Bush with OBL:

Bush isn't the first person in recent history to appropriate the word caliphate and use it as a weapon. Osama bin Laden did it himself, most notably three years ago...

The esteemed authors never bother to say exactly what the caliphate is. Some [high school level] research on Wikipedia yields the following:

• Caliphate:
  

  "[T]he caliphate means to cause the masses to act as required by religious insight into their interests in the other world as well as in this world. (The worldly interests) have bearing upon (the interests in the other world), since according to the Lawgiver (Muhammad), all worldly conditions are to be considered in their relation to their value for the other world. Thus, (the caliphate) in reality substitutes for the Lawgiver (Muhammad), in as much as it serves, like him, to protect the religion and to exercise (political) leadership of the world."

  
  


• Islamic State:
  

  An Islamic State is referred to a state which is governed by the Sharia. That is, all the laws are developed using Quran, Hadith and Sunnah. Such a state is governed by a Caliph and is for whole Muslim Ummah (instead for a specific group).

  
  

Sharia Law? Leadership of the world? Sound pleasant to you?

Having omitted this bit the authors couldn't possibly mention that it would extend from North Africa through the Middle East to South East Asia and require the overthrow of moderate goverments like those of Egypt, Jordan, and Turkey. Nor could they possibly be bothered to mention the potential impact of this on world events.

Perhaps worst of all, the authors never consider just who is actually seeking to establish this new and greater caliphate. Afterall, it's just in "Bush's" imagination right? Well, no, not exactly (Muslim Brotherhood via wikipedia). And of course, nobody really dangerous belongs or has ever belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood (BBC).

So, rather than tackle an important issue with even a sophomoric degree of journalism, Newsweek has opted to take the opporunity to slam Pres. Bush during an election year. Journalism?

Outrage of the Year

Regarding the recently release study indicating that 600,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S led invasion...I'm going to call this the Outrage of the Year.

I'll begin on a personal note: I work 5 days a week with scientists in multiple fields; Material science, biodiversity, finance and economics, bioinformatics, astronomy, and various social sciences. I am not a scientist but, I am familiar with many of the basic principles of science and its methods. This study is not science. It's trash. But don't take my word alone, here's some of the methods used:

For Burnham's study, researchers gathered data from a sample of 1,849 Iraqi households with a total of 12,801 residents from late May to early July. That sample was used to extrapolate the total figure. The estimate deals with deaths up to July.

1,850 households with 12,800 residents. No information on the demographics of the residents (for example, were 18% adults who considered themselves "head of household"?). How many were over 18 yrs of age? under? HOW MANY WERE INTERVIEWED? DOESN'T SAY!!!

Even the NYT interviews Robert Blendon, director of the Harvard Program on Public Opinion and Health and Social Policy who says:

the number of deaths in the families interviewed — 547 in the post-invasion period versus 82 in a similar period before the invasion — was too few to extrapolate up to more than 600,000 deaths across the country

And later,

Donald Berry, chairman of biostatistics at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, was even more troubled by the study, which he said had "a tone of accuracy that is just inappropriate."

Another interesting point which isn't intended to minimize the importance of a single death but, merely marginalize the value of this study (courtesy Gateway Pundit):

• The AP reported that 2,660 people were killed this month in Iraq


• But, according to this study, you'd expect 22,800

Finally, you shouldn't discount the fact that the same group released a similar study just before the 2004 elections in which it claimed 100,000 Iraqi deaths. It was roundly criticized (even by Slate!). Now, is it any surprise they release a study just before the 2006 elections!?

Indictment of Gadahn

On Saturday Sept, 2 2006 in a post titled Al-Qaeda and 1984, in reference a recently release video featuring Adam Gadahn, I wrote:

if ever there was evidence that laws against sedition and treason should be enforced, for the benefit of all, this joker's video is it.

Today it was announced: US Files First Treason Charges in 50 Years Against Accused al-Qaida Member

Here's a copy of the indictment: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/documents/adam_indictment.pdf

The goal should be to put him on trial, for all to see, to show-case his twisted worldview and disconnected logic. To allow everyone to see the world as he would have it.

Let's Read the Law

The sineman has written extensively on the subject of detainees, their rights, and prosecution in a post titled Constitution Bushwhacked.




He writes that the legislation (as he understands it) does the following:

It establishes military commissions to try the so-called “enemy combatants,” based on evidence that can be obtained without search warrants and that does not have to be revealed to the person charged in order to be rebutted.

And:

It eliminates the right of habeus corpus so people can be imprisoned indefinitely without charge with no recourse to any court and not knowing, even, the reason that they are being held.

First of all, you may want to read the legislation for yourself. The sineman neglects to point out that the legislation explicitly applies to what it defines as unlawful combatants only. That definition is in 100% compliance with International Law.

I wrote about this extensively a couple of weeks ago. Let me be clear, I do not want to "torture" people. My writing is an exercise in research and critical thinking that seeks to facilitate decision making with respect to the issue as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction. In one of my very first posts, I advocated public trials for terrorist detainess.

First, in The Spirit and The Letter, I write about the specifics of the Geneva Convention as I see them. It is my opinion that some (many? most? all?) of the people we're discussing are not protected by the conventions (as POWs or otherwise), in part, due to their failure to properly distinguish themselves from civilians and, are indeed guilty of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and should be tried on those as well.

In the same piece, I recognize that many people will not accept a legal "loophole" as some will call it as justification for harsh interrogation. With that in mind, I briefly examine the origins of the Geneva Conventions and address the issue of The Spirit of the Law (as the title suggests).

In another writing, I discuss the very real possibility that other very unpopular programs may very well preclude the need for harsh interrogation.

The sineman also writes:

It was made retroactive to a convenient time to avoid complication with the scandals of our earlier treatment of detainees

Why is the legislation made retroactive? To avoid scandal or so that it will apply to detainees currently in custody? If it wasn't made retroactive....it would only apply to detainess captured after the bill was passed.

There are other critical sections of the law that are omitted. For example:

§ 948s. Service of charges
The trial counsel assigned to a case before a military commission
under this chapter shall cause to be served upon the accused
and military defense counsel a copy of the charges upon which
trial is to be had. Such charges shall be served in English and,
if appropriate, in another language that the accused understands.
Such service shall be made sufficiently in advance of trial to prepare
a defense.

If I list them all, nobody will read this. You need to read the document for yourself.

I guess I could sum my thinking up like this: In previous conflicts our predecessors sacrificed in significant ways to achieve victory. I see that in this case, we have a choice, we can sacrifice some of our rights, or some of our sense of holding the moral high ground. In reality, I don't think it's that bad. I think we need to hope for the best and plan for the worst.

Keep in mind the nature of sacrifices others have made throughout history...Which would you choose?