Bollettino

We have come to expect the worst from the Bush administration. For months, the British papers have claimed that the hawks around Rumsfeld take seriously the various scenarios of world domination and Middle Eastern conquest promulgated by the likes of Wolfowitz and Donald Feith. These are Kraus's Likudniks -- a group who feels that Israel is America's 51st state. Or 50th -- this group doesn't include liberal Massachussetts in the USA. The claims are proving all too accurate. This weekends salvos with Syria are evidence of more madness. Here's today's report in the NYT:



Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld. had started the war of words on Friday, when he accused Damascus of shipping sensitive military technology to the Iraqi Army, specifically night-vision goggles. These shipments, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "pose a direct threat to coalition forces." He added, "We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government responsible."

The United States military considers its night vision technology to be a major advantage over the Iraqis. But today, a senior American commander serving in the Gulf said he had seen no evidence that the Iraqi Army has obtained night-vision goggles.

"We have not to my knowledge seen any at this point," Brig. Gen. Vincent Brooks said during a news briefing in Qatar."

Another interesting article in the Al Ahram Weekly -- to which we were pointed by Slate --
gives a little photo op of who is dissing whom in the Iraqi opposition. As we've said before, this opposition is spending its credility with the abandon of a junkie with a stolen platinum MasterCard. The most interesting quote comes from "Kamil Al-Mahdi, a professor of Middle East Economics at Exeter Universityand a member of the liberal Iraqi opposition in exile."

"There were those within the ranks of the Iraqi opposition who portrayed this war to be a walk in the park for the allied troops. Hence, Americans were led to believe that the Republican Guard units would soon switch sides and this would be coupled with a Shi'ite uprising in the south against Saddam. But to their surprise, this did not materialise, at least until now."
Al-Mahdi said that the fact that the opposition in exile miscalculated the strength of the Iraqi resistance is strong proof of how they have lost touch with reality in Iraq. "They can no longer claim to say they represent either the interests or the will of the Iraqi people. It will be very difficult to impose them as the new rulers of Iraq after Saddam is gone," Al-Mahdi said."

Kamil Mahdi wrote a prescient article for CounterPunch a month ago. In it, he seems to predict that the US would use an Iraqi mercenary force -- which hasn't happened yet. But the idea that the war would entail high Iraqi casualties seems to be pretty much on target. . About the Iraqi opposition, he wrote this:


Now that the US has a new policy, it intends to implement it rapidly and with all its military might. Despite what Blair claims, this has nothing to do with the interests and rights of the Iraqi people. The regime in Iraq is not invincible, but the objective of the US is to have regime change without the people of Iraq. The use of Iraqi auxiliaries is designed to minimise US and British casualties, and the result may be higher Iraqi casualties and prolonged conflict with predictably disastrous humanitarian consequences. The Bush administration has enlisted a number of Iraqi exiles to provide an excuse for invasion and a political cover for the control of Iraq. People like Ahmad Chalabi and Kanan Makiya have little credibility among Iraqis and they have a career interest in a US invasion. At the same time, the main forces of Kurdish nationalism, by disengaging from Iraqi politics and engaging in internecine conflict, have become highly dependent upon US protection and are not in a position to object to a US military onslaught. The US may enlist domestic and regional partners with varying degrees of pressure.

Post

When this War began, Mr. Limited Inc and Mr. Gadfly had a little discussion about the nature of forecasts. Mr. Limited Inc took exception to Mr. Gadfly's idea that nothing could be known about what the future held. Au contraire mon frere, we said. We know that one thing will happen and then another thing will happen. This might seem like a whole lotta null set, but it is really a whole lotta structure. We reject radical skepticism about the structure of the future. However, to be honest, we are making a point that is besides the point for Mr. Gadfly, who was pointing out something about knowledge. . Nobody in the U.S. knows enough about Iraq, and nobody in Iraq knows enough about the U.S., to make any wise prediction as to the outcome, on a realtime basis, of their encounter. This is actually a very strong point. We even think it is one of the strongest points that can be made.

But we think our point is also strong. Structure is important because, while it doesn't give us a picture of the substance of future events, it gives us a rule about how they must unfold. Ignoring the "then and then and then" structure puts a plan on a collision course with reality. When a plan violates the principle that the past has already happened (or, in other words, when a plan is premised on an incompletely known past, or a past that has been distorted by the planner in some way), it will fail, even if its outcome, by happy chance, occurs. If I try to burn down a building on a stormy day with wet matches, the building is not going to torch -- but a lightening stroke might do the trick. Plans have a trajectory over time. Planners who aren't sensitive to the temporal nature of the plan's actualization are also in violation of the above rule, although in a subtler sense -- they are adding to the past as they try to control a process that is going on into the future. We have to understand, in other words, how to sum over probabilities, and how to revise ourselves when those probabilities are realized over time.

This is why, so often, business plans go awry. Businessmen are peculiarly prone to becoming prisoners of the superlative. They are addicts of the vision statement, in which �best practices", "superb performance", and the "highest levels of excellence" vie with each other to debauch meaning. They throw around locutions like �"world class," and they are big believers in a crude version of William James' Will to Believe -- they like to think that wishing on a star will make your wish come true, or at least true enough that they can get sell their options on the star before it twinkles out. Ross Perot is the echt businessman. He came dancing out of that culture, he mouthed that culture's platitudes, and he seemed to speak a slightly deranged variant of the English tongue. Bush has the same problem. Language is always such a naysayer. But all too often, the vision statement fails. The dogs won't eat the dogfood. The punchdrunk won't drink the punch. What to do? After all, one has just indulged in an orgy of orgulousness? At this point, you look around for traitors. Failure becomes a question of disloyalty.

This is pertinent: after all, we are being directed in this war by the CEO mindset armed.

This is important if, as we think is the case, we are seeing the war split into two. One is the war against Saddam the Horrific. The other is the war against the post-Saddam guerrilla. The latter has no name, yet; the incipient program is simply, repel the invader. As the invader triumphs, setting up a state run by Rumsfeld's creepy buddy, Jay Garner (who has a first class ticket to Bushs monster ball, being one of the numerous hawks who have day jobs as Perlish vultures), we will have a new war. In this one, the Iraqi state will be our ally against Iraqi "terrorists" -- that is, the people who are firing on American forces and their Iraqi collaborators. In the new war, the goal will be a lot clearer -- it will be to repel the occupiers. As the krewe of Iraqi exiles preferred by the Pentagon are installed (over the resistance of other Iraqis) get set up, the traditional lines of the conflict will become clear a client state, an imperialist sponsor, and the usual poisonous symbiosis between them, with the client depending on the sponsor to sustain it at the same time that that dependence renders it illegitimate.

Slate's Fred Kaplan wrote an interesting report, last week, on how the military gamed its own war game on Iraq. The war game pitted two teams -- the blues, representing true blue America, and the reds, representing red as in blood Saddam H. As soon as the red team started acting in such a fashion as to upset the blue team, the rules were changed, moves were disallowed, and in general the pre-ordained triumph of the blues was vindicated at the expense of the game's realism.


Kaplan restrains himself when it comes to the Strangelovian name of the Red commander Van Riper, one "p" away from Ripper, if you can believe it �Here are three grafs that tell a lot about Bush's War:

For instance -- and here is where he displayed prescience - Van Riper used motorcycle messengers to transmit orders to Red troops, thereby eluding Blue's super-sophisticated eavesdropping technology. He maneuvered Red forces constantly. At one point in the game, when Blue's fleet entered the Persian Gulf, he sank some of the ships with suicide-bombers in speed boats. (At that point, the managers stopped the game, "refloated" the Blue fleet, and resumed play.)

"Robert Oakley, a retired U.S. ambassador who played the Red civilian leader, told the Army Times that Van Riper was "out-thinking" Blue Force from the first day of the exercise.

"Yet, Van Riper said in his e-mail, the game's managers remanded some of his moves as improper and simply blocked others from being carried out. According to the Army Times summary, "Exercise officials denied him the opportunity to use his own tactics and ideas against Blue, and on several occasions directed [Red Force] not to use certain weapons systems against Blue. It even ordered him to reveal the location of Red units."

Finally, Van Riper quit the game in protest, so as not to be associated with what would be misleading results.��

The blue game is the one they are reporting 24/7 in the American news media. We wonder how long it is going to take before the Red game is reported. Iraq, as we keep reminding our loyal band of readers, is not Afghanistan - or not, at least, the Afghanistan of our dream war. In reality, Afghanistan is heating up again -- we simply aren't paying attention to it. As why should we - we aren't planning on making Afghanistan an American protectorate. That cow doesnt milk, as we say in Texas. Or is it that cow doesn't hunt dogs? We always mix up our folksy phrases.

Bollettino

After the pointless maundering in the pre-war period, the mainstream press is beginning to get what LI, with our lack of knowledge of battlefields and Iraqi culture, has been harping on for months: just because the media has decided that the war will end with the end of Saddam H. doesn't mean the War has decided the same thing. The reports of the first suicide bombing draw us ever nearer to a world in which we Our Palestinians have to be controlled, through increasing use of our soldiers, and to the detriment of our moral character, our economy, and our security.

The NYT gets it, almost. Here's a think piece that could of been ripped out of this weblog over the past two months. Well, no, it isn't as stylishly written.

Other reports corroborate the direction that the war, as well as its aftermath, promises to take: Iraqi militiamen, in civilian clothes, firing weapons and disappearing inside the anonymity of the local populace. So-called civilians riding in buses to move toward contact. Enemy combatants mixing among women and children. Children firing weapons. Families threatened with death if a soldier does not fight. A wounded American soldier commenting, "If they're dressed as civilians, you don't know who is the enemy anymore."

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/30/weekinreview/30WEBB.html

Bollettino

In the buildup to the war, the tipping point, for most Americans, was the idea that Al qaeda and Saddam H. were joined at the hip. In the 48 hour ultimatum speech, Bush must have repeated this charge ten times � or was that in the �your 48 hour ultimatum is pre-approved!� speech? I get them all confused. In any case, whenever Bush insistently repeats a fact, you know that it is spurious. It is almost a 100% proof. Any antiwar activist can tell you that the Al Qaeda link has been laughably tenuous.

What hasn�t been asked, however, is why. Why shouldn�t Saddam have supported Al-q.?
The usual answer is that Osama bin and Saddam H. have a Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan relationship. In the one corner is the ugly infidel, in the other corner the minion of Saudi irredentism.

That doesn�t convince LI. Middle Eastern politics is a patchwork of alliances between people who would like nothing better than to stick the steak knife into each others backs. The most notorious example is Israel and Iran in 1980. There was no love lost between the countries, but since countries don�t exchange bodily fluids, merely goods, that was no problem. As we all know, Ayatollah Homeinii got his arms from Israel.

The weird thing about Iraq in 98 and 99 is that it seems to have gone out of its way to avoid Osama bin. If Atta did meet with an Iraqi diplomat in Prague in April, 2001, as has been endlessly speculated, we shouldn�t assume that the momentum was all with Iraq � it might have been Atta who was making an ouverture.

We have a theory.

Our theory is that the nineties anti-terrorist strategy worked. Or at least it mostly worked. The strategy posited making state�s pay for sponsoring terrorism. How? By squeezing them. The Economist, in its May 26, 2001 issue, had a little article about the Bush administration�s tweaking of sanctions.

�Ever since the UN's weapons inspectors were expelled from Iraq two and a half years ago, sanctions have lost their original purpose of ensuring that the country was declawed of its weapons of mass destruction (see article). They now merely help to devastate Iraq's economy and bolster its cruel dictatorship. A change is called for.
America and Britain think they have found the right one. They are hoping this week to persuade not just the other three permanent Security Council members, Russia, China and France, but also Iraq's neighbours, that there are more effective ways of squeezing Mr Hussein's regime. And they hope to do this before the current oil-for-food protocol, with its crude and leaky web of rules, exceptions, bribes and cudgels, comes up for its six-monthly renewal on June 4th. America and Britain hope the changes will shift the blame for Iraqi deprivation

Basically the new smart sanctions are a more flexible and, it has to be presumed, more efficient version of the oil-for-food arrangement which allows Iraq to import food and medicine and some humanitarian goods in exchange for its oil. Under the new proposals, Iraq would be able to import all the goods it wants, except for weapons and dual-use stuff.�

That was the state of play pre 9.11. There were two triumphs for the sanctionists in the nineties: Libya and South Africa. Libya is the relevant case. Libya basically caved, in order to avoid the Iran-Libya sanctions act, and the EU equivalents.

Iraq�s was the secret surrender that seemed to make sanctions do-able. Given the precarious flow of money into Iraq, Saddam H. had every reason to keep Osama bin at arm�s length.

Now, here�s where strategy meets reality. Affecting a disconnect between the state and paramilitary groups sets those groups free. They are no longer limited, in their ambitions, by the caution of tyrants. The refusal to do anything to benefit the Middle East � and this scales up to sucking money from Gulf state treasuries for unnecessary arms to refusing to protect the Palestinians � preserved the angry, and oh so recruitable context of hostility. Hence, migration to semi-states, like Afghanistan and Sudan, on the part of Osama bin. Hence, the build up of cells in South East Asia. One of those stories that is being overshadowed by the War is a thoughtful piece by AP journalist John Solomon
claiming that al-q. was recentering its operations in Southeast Asia in 2001. The graf is buried in an article about Moussaoui and the possibility that the hijacker team was planning a second wave of attacks.

�Some of that same evidence, gathered during raids and arrests in Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines, also has led authorities to suspect al-Qaida's financing and operational planning has been shifting from Afghanistan and the Middle East to southeast Asia.�
LI�s theory would posit that the paramilitary network would use second line government officials and sympathizers in countries like Malaysia to design their campaign. This doesn�t mean we should attack Malaysia, by the way � we�ve already tried Southeast Asia, and though the beaches are a lot better than Iraq�s, the people can be a bitch when you are relocating them to safe villages. It does indicate that squeezing a state that has surrendered, like Iraq, sends a signal that sanctions are simply the prelude to greater degrees of violence.
The omni-menace coming out of the White House has surely speeded up the building of missiles in N. Korea, and the attempt to make atom bombs in Iran, while the invasion of Iraq has simply sanctified the disconnect between paramilitary groups and states. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, we are being led by a crew of idiots!
Excuse me. So sorry about that. Remove the man shouting from the mezzanine. Where was I? Oh yes. The problem with our theory is pretty clear. We cannot, Perle like, make any money out of it. Life really is a bummer.

Bollettino

"cacerolada"

We had a friend who used to get so wrapped up in soap operas that she would write to them, adumbrating her own original views of the ongoing dilemmas agonizing the characters. It was as if she considered these characters real in the sense that they could benefit from her advice. In a way, LI thinks that we are engaged in a similar bout of unfettered fantasy. All we do on this site, lately, is ruminate endlessly about a war we are powerless to change.

So -- we recognize we are demented. Okay? Sometimes, common sense dictates that fantasy overwhelm common sense.

So let's zip around to interesting stories. The NYT has a small piece about a Spanish protest that seems much more clever than lying down in the streets. Banging pots. We always love pot banging. Pot banging doesn't have an ideology. They banged pots against Allende in Chili. I'm sure there was some pot banging in Venezuala last year. Surely this goes way back. In Piero di Cosimo's The Discovery of Honey, circa 1499, Satyrs bang pots to drive bees to a tree. I wonder if the custom of banging those pots is related to this obvious folk custom? Of course, in the Allende case, it was supposed to represent the empty pots of the middle class.

In any case... now they are banging pots against our intrepid coalition ally, Aznar, the man whose support for Bush has resulted in Spain sending a battalion of spirtual troops to accompany our boys. Yes, the ghosts of Cortez and Franco have been dispatched, post haste, to Kuwait --- that'll put the fear of God into em!


Here are the intro grafs:

"ADRID, March 27 � The lights in Madrid and Barcelona went off tonight and the kitchenware came out, as thousands of people responding to a call for an antiwar blackout banged pots and pans together in a noisy protest against the war in Iraq. An environmental group urged citizens to join in a noise-making "cacerolada" in Madrid's Plaza Mayor at 10 p.m., to coincide with another call to turn out the lights.

But the protest seemed to spread spontaneously across the city, with many neighborhoods resounding to the sound of banging metal. Adding to the cacophony in Catalonia, drivers honked their horns, while fire-stations sounded their sirens."


Krugman bangs his usual pot in his op ed today. It makes a beautiful sound; but, of course, it could be one hand clapping for all the attention it will get. He points out that Cheney's energy commission, convened during the California brown outs, was thoroughly misguided, mistaking a problem that resulted from industry-wide collusion for one that was caused by too much environmentalism. As Krugman also points out, since Cheney conferred almost solely with the colluders, it isn't surprising that he pooh-poohed the communist, or at least Democrat, idea of corporate manipulation. Who, us manipulate? That view is now the official view of Bush's own FERC. As a final kicker, we won't know whether Cheney's friends profited themselves, or how clued in he was to the reality of the situation, since access to the records of his meetings have been completely blocked.

And finally -- Richard Perle, that patriot of patriots, has reluctantly put personal profit over officially sanctioned warmongering and resigned his semi-official position with the Bush administration. The story here has been building for the last two weeks, ever since Perle stupidly denounced an article by Sy Hersch in the New Yorker by saying that Hersch was a 'terrorist'. Since then, Perle's finances have been investigated by the Times. He's responded not by keeping quiet, but by stirring up the rightwing troops. Here's a bit of the interview he gave NewsMax:

According to a recent editorial by New York Times columnist and full-time Bush-hater Maureen Dowd, Perle may have a conflict of interest in that he is a member of the Pentagon�s Defense Advisory Board. Perle called Dowd�s claims a fabrication. "Absolutely, categorically untrue," he said."Maureen Dowd's view of this is very misleading. Ms. Dowd's recent editorial suggested that I was retained to 'help overcome Pentagon resistance' to the proposed sale of Global Crossing to Hutcheson Whampoa. That is not why I was retained," Perle asserted."I have not been retained by Hutcheson Whampoa, nor have I been retained by Global Crossing to represent them in any way with the U.S. government. I have been retained by Global Crossing to help them put together a security arrangement that is acceptable to the U.S. government."

Which, of course, isn't true. This story burned Perle because the rightwing campers aren't about to get all soft and mushy about Global Crossing. They hate Global Crossing. They hate the idea of Global Crossing going communist. Wierdly enough, the same NewsMax people who are putting Perle under 24 hour protection against the wild Bush haters out there in the spreading darkness published a three parter just last month that could have been entitled, how do I hate thee, Global Crossing? Let me count the ways...

First two grafs went:


"Li Ka Shing has lost the first round in his effort to take over Global Crossing. Li's bid for the defunct telecommunications giant failed before a U.S. national security committee charged with oversight.
"The credit for causing Li's failure must be distributed evenly to both NewsMax and our readers for passing so many valuable tips about the reclusive billionaire to the FBI. In the end, Li had to withdraw his offer to buy Global Crossing because he knew it would fail."

There are certain rules that apply even to the aberrant right. One of them is that your readers can't be passing many valuable tips to the FBI, on the one hand, and then be expected to admire a man hired by the group the FBI is supposed to be suppressing, on the other.

However, this does say something about Perle's hubris. Did he really expect to get away with getting more than a half mill from Global Crossing? He might as well have contracted to do PR work for Saddam Hussein. The man is obviously a little ... shall we say, vain?

The Bush haters (otherwise known as the NYT) had the satisfaction of reporting that Perle has resigned:

"WASHINGTON, March 27 � Richard N. Perle resigned today as chairman of an influential Pentagon advisory board in the wake of disclosures that his business dealings included a recent meeting with a Saudi arms dealer and a contract to advise a communications company that is seeking permission from the Defense Department to be sold to Chinese investors."

However, the letter of the victory is less than the spirit. He is still a member of the damn board. His contract with Global Crossing is premised on him making 600,000 dollars if he gets results. I'd still bet on him making his 600 grand.

Bollettino

Are we so obvious? You know, we thought it was a good gag, pretending that Tony Blair was being played by a double. We thought it rather magnificently parodied the misinformation coming out of the Pentagon, and made a little poison point. But alas, our little jest seems to have been independently discovered by loads of other people. For the funniest double joke, read the Guardian article about the Dubya double.
We admit, these grafs are good:

"Most of those who regularly monitor Mr Bush's speech patterns believe that it was the genuine article who spoke at Central Command HQ in Florida yesterday, pointing to a characteristic tendency toward quasi-biblical phrasing - "There will be a day of reckoning for the Iraqi regime, and that day is drawing in near" - and an almost total absence of words of more than three syllables.

Other experts disagree, pointing out that these consistencies originate with speech writers rather then the president himself, and that Bush's main vocal technique - the bewildered pause - is only too easy to imitate."

Which reminds us -- we heard the Bush-Blair press conference this morning, and the leader of the free world was cruising in his retarded frat boy mode. Bush is obviously petrified by the prospect of getting asked questions by journalists. It tortures him. When asked about the absense of a coalition in this war, Bush responded -- this is from memory: "We got allies. We got allies and allies and allies." He was obviously trying to remember the name of one. Too bad he didn't come up with Cameroon -- just to see how he'd pronounce it. Blair eventually interjected himself, in a fatherly way, and the question was diverted Blairishly, which is almost as good as being answered.

Bollettino

There's a funny article in Slate today going after Johnny Apple, the NYT's instant theory man. Apple's had the black mark on his forehead ever since Bush called him an asshole in a public forum, and was overheard, and was embarrassed. It's an indirect form of lese majeste, but Apple must suffer for it. Jack Shafer, who is doing his duty to guard his country, makes the point that Apple was exaggeratedly negative about our great adventure in Afghanistan -- which is turning, in the light of our current war, into the pundit's golden age. Weren't we the boys back then!

Apple apparently once wrote a piece saying we risked getting into a quagmire in Afghanistan. Look what happened: we toppled the Taliban toute suite! Now Apple writes a piece that we risk getting into a quagmire in Iraq; thus, by the rule of substitution, Saddam Hussein must be in the bag.

This is an excellent example of the reasoning power of those journalists who are embedded in that most dangerous front-line city, D.C. In fact, Shafer seems so emboldened by Apple's piss poor forecasting record that he allows himself a funny:

"Apple's fear that dropping bombs on civilians wouldn't "win Afghan 'hearts and minds' " and that the country would prove ungovernable even if the United States won turned out to be unfounded. Two weeks after his comparison of Afghanistan to Vietnam, the allies liberated Kabul, and 16 months later the place is at least as governable as San Francisco."

Which goes to show that Shafer must explore much rougher sections of San Francisco than are advised even by the most hardcore S/M guides. For the latest on the governability of Afghanistan, here's an excerpt from a recent Boston Globe article:


"KABUL -- US forces have clashed with fighters loyal to an Afghan warlord in an incident that could turn the renegade commander, a former US ally, against the Americans and undermine the shaky peace in a sensitive border area, Afghan officials said yesterday.

There were differing accounts of the fighting, which may have killed as many as 13 of the warlord's men, including his eldest son."

Hmm. I don't remember Willie Brown, the mayor of S.F., experiencing the loss of his son to a firefight with the U.S. army, but I guess we can take Shafer's word that the S.F. and Afghanistan are mirror images of each other. Perhaps Slate, as an experiment, ougt to unscrew the guy from his D.C. desk and lauch him into the streets of Gardez to experience the wonders of the order the contemptible Mr. Apple predicted would be difficult to establish. Here's what is happening there:

"Khan Zadran alienated both the Afghan government and the Americans by rocketing cities to wrest power from his rivals, including a notorious attack on Gardez in which 13 locals were killed. His brutal methods raised questions about the US military's judgment in choosing Afghan allies; he was dropped from the coalition last fall. But his militia fighters still operate roadblocks where local people complain of harassment, extortion, and kidnapping."

The wonders of the democracy that we have unleashed on these people, like the ways of a man with a woman, and the ways of the fish undersea, make me praise the almighty. In fact, it makes me feel all Hitchenish all over!