A Debate In Da House, And Unhinged Resolutions

To be frank, Congress inherently bores the cyclotronic piss out of me. It's about as exciting as a slit wrist in a hot bath. Really. I wouldn't know procedure there if all the Pugs and Dims pulled up their collars, put their ties around their heads, and started singing "I'm a little teapot, short and stout." If the Sergeant-at-Arms fired off a 15-round clip at the gallery for reading manga comics, I'd think, "Mental note: send Japanese porn to Newt Gingrich." The worst thing is, I've taken classes from Congressional staffers about how to write briefs, have had dinner in a notoriously conservative Senator's home (yes, the potted palm still remembers me), and I would've served as an intern if I had only known enough to deal crack to co-staffers to compensate for the crappy pay.

I'm coming clean here. Congress confuses me. I'm not ashamed to admit it. What's to understand? 99.99/100ths of Congressional discourse is fake, endlessly regurgitated, and it's bow-oo-oo-ring. All the juicy stuff goes on behind the scenes. and you can't see it unless you're behind the orgiastic veil. Sure, there are some points when humanity peeks out, like when that new insane Church Lady from Ohio, Mean Jean Schmidt, called out Jack Murtha as a treasonous coward and threatened to singe him with the wrath of Almighty God. That was some plain speaking, finally. (Conveniently, she wore a polyester Old Glory draped over her entire body, so we knew what to think.) But usually, in Congress, the truth is so precious it is protected by a panoply of lies.

It's been a looooong time, even for a neo-fuddy like me, since there was a real debate there. And this week, there was something drawing timidly near to debate, like a dewy fawn-specked Bambi thirstily emerging from the forest to taste a still, clear pond, only to be frightened back into the brush by the "Joust of the Well-Rehearsed Talking Points." The Dims: "We will never, ever cut funding for our beloved troops, but the sinkhole you've created is as deep as your distended rectums." The Pugs: "Halting escalation will blow up Lincoln, Nebraska, and the number of the Beast is six hundred, three score, and six."

The important thing for us is, we saw the fawn of debate. Though startled and justifiably frightened, Bambi still exists. Hope is not lost. Lots of folks fault the Dims for engaging in the talking points, but at least they're being tactically smart. Focusing on a non-binding resolution is focusing on something that can be won. And it's not non-binding. It's on the record. It sets a stake in the ground, and builds on the slimmest basis for impeachment. Do I think such a devoutly wished possibility likely? No. But I shelter the spark of hope, and that can be fanned into flames. Believe me, if I still have hope, the Dims are doing something right.

When a big wheel is rolling down a hill towards you, it's hard to stop. If you stop it, no small feat, the first push back up the hill is the hardest. If the Dims win this resolution, all they establish is stalemate. And stalemate is better than collapse. After this, they can look for the next little skirmishes which can be won, and built upon.

Israel Attack Exercise Violates Greek Airspace, Part II

This incident has garnered no coverage in the Western mainstream media whatsoever, and it deserves some more analysis than time allowed for in my post on it last Thursday, "Israel Attack Exercise Violates Greek Airspace."

Why would 25 Israeli F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers, along with 7 Boeing 703 tankers, have flown in Greek airspace for 20 minutes? The tankers had permission. The fighters most emphatically didn't, and the incursion into the Aegean FIR was taken extremely seriously by Athens, which scrambled fighters. No public acknowledgement or apology has emnated from Tel Aviv, to my knowledge. So maybe Israel is trying to make more friends in the region, and it was their way of saying, "Hello!" But the location is interesting, because Greek and Turkish fighter planes collided over Karpathos last year, according to a Topix.net Forum discussion. Tensions must still be running a little high between Greece and Turkey over that. And that's exactly where the formation was flying.

Obviously, a serious breach of international flight rules of this magnitude would be yet another way to send a message to Iran, which lies outside the range of Israel's fighters; they would need to refuel just as they approached the limits of Iranian radar. Any strike wing sent to attack targets in Iran would need to carefully practice and coordinate with tankers for one or more airborne re-fills. (Tanker and multiple re-fuels would also allow Israel's planes to skirt Iraqi airspace, an important legal technicality regarding Iran's post-strike retaliation rights in Iraq.) I suspect going into the Aegean was a way to get a few missions for the price of one, giving the strike wing practice entering hostile radar and gauging enemy reaction times, gaining coordination in refuels under enemy observation, and doing some saber-rattling against their long-haired Persian bete noire. But there may have been a fourth or fifth bird downed with one stone.

Turkey and Israel have had a de facto alliance since 1996, and Israel has been sharing military technology with Turkey ever since. Turkey has in turn been awarding large military contracts to Israeli firms, amongst other things to modernize and upgrade its 360 F-16s. They have been on many joint training exercises. Whereas Turkey and Greece have a long-ongoing conflict over a partitioned Cyprus. Try going to a fashionable cafe in Athens today and asking for a "Turkish Coffee." You will be lucky to be merely ignored, and not have boiling water spilled into your lap. They don't serve Turkish Coffee. They serve "Greek Coffee."

So, it would seem possible that the Israeli fighters chose to violate Greek airspace at least partially as a favor to Turkey. This is pure speculation, but it adoesn't seem too much of a stretch to think that some of the pilots of the Israeli planes were actually Turkish. Israel and Turkey have common internal problems, and common external enemies, Arabic muslims, Syria, and Iran to name a few examples. Why not throw in an insult to Greece?

The Iranian Death Merchants

The Lapdog Media is amplifying the idiot-meme that Iran is supplying shaped-charge projectiles to Iraqi militants. As Jeff Bridges said to Julianne Moore in The Big Lebowski: "It's a very complicated case, Maude. Lotta ins, lotta outs." Here's something uncomplicated about it: Iran would never knowingly send weapons to militants in Iraq which could be traced back to them. Money or food, yes. Weapons, no. Iran isn't that stupid. Oddly, the top-ranking US general agrees, and even more oddly, did so in public:

"Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday that he has no information indicating Iran's government is directing the supply of lethal weapons to Shiite insurgent groups in Iraq.

"We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran," Pace told Voice of America during a visit to Australia. "What I would not say is that the Iranian government, per se, knows about this."

"It is clear that Iranians are involved, and it's clear that materials from Iran are involved," he continued, "but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian government clearly knows or is complicit."

The Iranians are surely enjoying the "failed policy" in Iraq and helping it fail faster and harder where they can. But it's far more likely the mullahs have expressly forbidden their military from providing anyone in Iraq, Shia or otherwise, with weapons. Doing so either risks or detracts from their political objectives. The weapons in question may be from Iran, but could've been bought in any number of places, or slipped from one helpful cousin to another.

In plain language: Iran wants the US in Iraq so long as the net effect is bleeding the Sunnis and suppressing their long-time Baathist enemies. They don't want to screw it up yet, because it suits their purposes nicely. That's why Iraq is most stable in the south, where Iran's surrogates are thickest. For now, it wins by waiting, and by grooming and maintaining a credible victim status in preparation for a US/Israeli attack, a policy it is consistently following. The pre-aggrieved victim status is a political necessity, and trumps any tactical military fun to be had at US expense.

I don't think the White House is particularly serious, either, not about inflating these shaped charges into a real casus belli. Focusing on EFPs and shells which are labeled with a Western alphabet and date system, and which were probably bought on the open international weapons market, is appropriately preposterous, true, and fits the distinctive White House style. But there's no harm in a little more tar-slinging, and it opens up a line of defense against actual weapons being sent in the future. The current PR mantra seems pointed less seriously at Iran than at increasing pressure on the most powerful man in Iraq, Moqtada Al-Sadr, to bring him around to a more partition-friendly stance.

Quadrillage & The New "Gated Communities," Pt. III

By announcing Baghdad as the focus of the surge, Bush has given the insurgents ample time to prepare fixed defenses which feature ambush, fluid withdrawal to the next prepared defenses, and then full withdrawal to the countryside. These insurgents also happened to run army units, and their commanders fought the third-bloodiest war in the twentieth century (against Iran, which had about three times the population of Iraq). Their largely Sunni insurgency has demonstrated ongoing cohesion, with the ability to recruit and strike all over central Iraq. Here is all they need to do to defeat the Surge:

1) maintain communication links
2) avoid annihilation or capture
3) inflict casualties on US and Iraqi patrols within "gated communities"
4) sabotage or otherwise disrupt government services financed by the US
5) maintain safe havens outside Baghdad, and continue ambushes there.

One angle on the Surge which might work would be to say to the insurgents, "We don't care about your weapons. Take them. We'll give you safe passage, and find you new housing that's better. But we need you to move out of this area to where your support is." This would be a non-violent ethnic cleansing approach applied to Baghdad with a "Blood Borders" logic behind it (see Ralph Peters, Armed Forces Journal, June 2006 at link) to speed the inevitable partition along. But I doubt such an approach is politically palatable, and thus it's as good as impossible.

The Surge will probably make things look better in the press for a few months. There may well be talk of milestones met and progress made in Baghdad. Meanwhile the insurgency in the country as a whole will likely gather even more centrifugal force, and the atrocities on all sides will become more unforgivable. The Bush Administration's goal is to create a Western-friendly region. (Bush no longer drinks. Notice how he avoids all mention of nitrous oxide?) The Army's goal is to be able to say, "We followed sound strategy, but were saddled with flawed rules of engagement." The MIC's (military-industrial complex) goal is to keep the whole thing going. Two out of three ain't bad.

It is also possible that the Sunnis keenly sense a "Tigris Offensive" in their grasp, with all intentional reference to the Tet Offensive. The insurgents have amply demonstrated their effectiveness and determination, and if they're willing to strap bombs on their bellies, you can guess they're probably willing to blow up an entire building in Baghdad to take out a squad or two of soldiers inside. If they are able to inflict heavy casualties on either the Iraqi Army or US forces, they can break the will not only of Congress, but the Generals running this grisly horror show and the soldiers unlucky enough to act it out. Vietnam wasn't lost because of a sudden realism or humility on the part of US leadership. It was lost because soldiers and their commanders saw no more point to what they were doing. They just started going through the motions. When asked to drive around in Humvees to search the same roads and houses over and over, all the while waiting for an IED to explode next to them, they must be nearing that epiphany in Iraq. Booby-trapping apartment buildings would be technically much easier than booby-trapping roads. It's the sharpening of a decision already made.

The movie "The Battle of Algiers" is the story of quadrillage, and how the French used brutality to quell a stubborn insurgency in the Casbah for a few years. It ends with the insurgent youth Ali La Pointe huddling in the crawlspace of a house with three younger children who trust him. Having learned not to trust the French, they refuse to heed a French colonel's appeals to come out, and soldiers blow the building to the ground. The movie was considered required viewing among the officer elite, presumably for the harsh measures which must be taken to win. They seem to have overlooked a few things: a few years after the events depicted, the insurgents had won and France was putting down a military coup by the officers who ran the counterinsurgency, which claimed upwards of 10% of the population. Decades later, many of the muslim kids burning cars in Paris suburbs were quite literally the children of counterinsurgency, with parents who came from North Africa. They were shouting "Vive Algiers," and writing "Ali La Pointe" on walls. A main street in Algiers is named for a 19-year old girl, Hasiba ben Bouali, who died in the crawlspace with him. A university is also named after her.

Who will the streets and universities in tomorrow's Iraq be named for? My bet is there won't be a David Petraeus Avenue. Quadrillage isn't a model of what to do in Iraq. Based upon many, many outcomes of history, it's a powerfully proven model of what NOT to do.

Quadrillage & The New "Gated Communities," Pt. II

Remember the Vietnam euphemism "Strategic Hamlet?" It's funny how ideas are recycled in different market-ese. Strategic Hamlets refer to counterinsurgency efforts in South Vietnam which relied on massive population transfers. Peasants were relocated into self-constructed walled forts in order to identify, isolate, and kill Viet Minh insurgents. The program enjoyed considerable initial advantages, including almost unlimited funding and expert leadership under Robert Ker Thompson, who had a record of success against communists in Malaysia and Southeast Asia. 8.5 million peasants were re-housed into more than 7,000 hamlets in 28 months, with CIA-trained death squads killing untold numbers of Viet Minh sympathizers. Except the tried-and-true method didn't work, and Vietnam's President Diem was assassinated in 1963.

So now it's called "Gated Communities." This is a big gamble. If the game were Texas Hold 'Em, it's a bet on drawing an inside straight flush on the last card. Long odds. To recap, the idea behind the "Surge" follows classic counterinsurgency doctrine as re-hashed by the new ground commander in Iraq, the intellectually inclined General David Petraeus, whose name oddly befits a Roman prelate. The idea is to cleanse Baghdad of insurgents by sectioning off its neighborhoods, putting gates around them, then going through them house by house to identify insurgent families. Quadrillage is the term the French used for it in Algiers and early South Vietnam. Insurgents will be isolated, then neutralized by shipping them and their supporters to camps, prisons, or graveyards. A mixed local command is set up of mixed Iraqi troops and police backed by a central core of US forces with responsibility over their gated section. The local command begins to employ people to pick up garbage, make repairs, and put snitches on payroll, in this way winning over the populace, who in turn make the insurgents unwelcome. If anything gets out of control, overwhelming firepower will be called down on the trouble.

In Part I of this post, I promised to explain why quadrillage probably won't work now. It probably would've worked if employed immediately after the invasion, especially if it relied on the Baathists who had run the country for 40 years. At this point, however, it's going up a steep hill, and alerting the insurgents to the strategy 3 months in advance doesn't help. And I said General Petraeus isn't the genius people think he is; for example, he is fond of holding up Tal Afar as a shining example of successful counterinsurgency. Tal Afar was the patrol area of one of the military's leading lights, Colonel H.R. McMaster, who wrote the provocative book "Dereliction of Duty," and is credited for coming up with the template for taming the bad guys. While Petraeus and McMaster are letting people give them attaboys and manly pats on the toosh, here's what Matt Taibbi quotes the mayor of Tal Afar as saying last summer, in his Rolling Stone article, "Waiter, There's A Surge In My Soup" (hat tip to Bruce of The River Blog for surfacing it):

I was in Tal Afar's "genuine success" story over the summer. It was such a success story that the city's neurotic, hand-wringing mayor, Najim Abdullah al-Jubori, actually asked American officials during a meeting I attended if they could tell President Bush to stop calling it a success story. "It just makes the terrorists angry," he said. At the meeting he pointed to a map and indicated the areas where the insurgents held strong positions.

"Here," he said. "Oh, and here. And here. Here also...."

Due to length, I'll follow up with a Part III. Graphic above is of Afrikaner commandos in the Boer War, just as a reminder that not all insurgents are brown-skinned communists.

Wolfowitz Preaches Pearl Harbor--3 Months Before 9/11

Here's a snippet of Paul Wolfowitz's speech to the graduating class at West Point in June of 2001. Kinda sounds like he knows something's up, doesn't it?

Grace

Our task is to make the blind see. It is possible, now as it has ever been. To help in that great task, God made all men and women equal. But don't expect too much right away. Just remember this sweet song:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

The world shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun refuse to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Shall be forever mine.

When we've been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We've no less days to sing God's praise
Than when we'd first begun.

Dick Cheney Threatens CIA Leak Jury

"If you act as enemy combatants, you will be dealt with accordingly. And let me remind you, there is plenty of room left at Guantanamo," the Vice President snarled while directing his steely gaze at the jury. "And I never, never said the Office of the Vice President was above the law. I said we were outside it. Now, who among you is prepared to die?"

OK, that never happened. But it might have, if Libby's defense had foolishly decided to call Cheney, Irving Libby's long-time boss, as a defense witness. Almost everyone accepts that Dick Cheney outed a CIA agent, not because they actually understand a case become more opaque than "Farewell, My Lovely," but because they have begun to sense a nasty, power-mad curmudgeon who cuts up the Constitution for toilet paper after being subjected to six years of his vituperative, dismissive disdain. Some people have even started to think he might've killed thousands of Americans on 9/11 while running something called Operation Vigilant Guardian.

A lot of things happened at the CIA leak trial last week, before the prosecution closed its case. I'll cut to the quick here: no one is bothering to protect Cheney anymore. His former aides were surprisingly direct about where to lay the blame. For example, White House Legal Counsel and long-time Cheney Minion David Addington related this incident:

"Why are you making these statements?" Addington asked White House
communications director Dan Bartlett.

"Your boss is the one who wanted" them, Bartlett replied, referring to
Cheney.

With that, "I shut up," Addington recalled recently for jurors in Libby's CIA
leak trial, which begins its fourth week on Monday with Libby's lawyers calling
their first witnesses.

Irving Libby related Cheney "didn't want to hear it," i.e., that
outing the CIA agent responsible for keeping nukes out of the hands of muslim extremists was illegal. Cheney is the most treasonous snake to ever reside in the Executive Branch.

It would be nice to think that he'll be prosecuted by the proper authorities, and even nice to think that his chief henchman, if convicted, won't get a full pardon. Unlikely, but nice. The chief good to come from this trial will be its utility in the upcoming civil case which the Wilsons (the CIA agent and her family) will file against Cheney and the parties responsible for their craven persecution.

Denial Of Sunni SAM Offensive: SA-18s In Iraq

The Islamic State of Iraq, an Al-Qaeda (Saudi Arabian) connected Sunni group, has posted video of the Marine version of a US Chinook helicopter crashing. It's the fourth time they've posted a helicopter going down from a SAM hit in a week. I've been following these developments closely for a few reasons, two of which this latest video confirms. As usual, it is up on Live Leak.

First, the footage shows the Sunnis to the northwest of Baghdad almost certainly have the latest Russian-designed SA-18 "Grouse" anti-aircraft missiles. The missiles may originate from China, Iran, Venezuela, or Russia itself, but do not necessarily indicate state involvement; generals and arms dealers in any of these places could supply missiles for cash, a wink, and a nod. While state involvement from those above isn't precluded, the real suspect here is Saudi Arabia, Al-Qaeda's primary supporter.

I am not an expert in current SAMs or counter-measures against them, but on the video, it is remarkable that no flares (to confuse the missile's heat-seeking cone) come from the Chinook before it is hit, and the pilot apparently does not take evasive action until the missile was very close. The pilot and crew must have known they were flying through a "hot" area, so were probably vigilant and employing what protections they had. Their lack of reaction strongly indicates electronic counter-measures either malfunctioned or were almost completely defeated. Collectively, the Law of Averages previously quoted by the top US command in these crashes is no longer an adequate explanation for cause. We get it. So should they. Sunni militants possess highly lethal shoulder-fired missiles.

Second, the attacks on the helicopters and the videos from the "Islamic State of Iraq" seem to be part of a carefully branded and well thought-out propaganda campaign which indicates the partitioning of Iraq is quickening, with a new Sunni battle plan. The videos are definitely intended as "viral" messaging which supports strategic insurgency aims, and are likely connected to offers yesterday by Sunni Baathist leadership to negotiate directly with the US government for peace. I don't speak Arabic, but would guess the messaging in the videos is consistent with a "Don't Tread On Us" theme. This is a new level of propaganda sophistication, and combined with the ability to control local airspace, it's going to be difficult to ignore. The primary US strategy for isolating and quelling Sunni insurgency has officially switched to using the Iraqi (Shiite) Army as on-the-ground muscle and backing it with tactical firepower, usually from helicopter gunships. The Sunni SAM offensive amply demonstrates that strategy has a readily exploitable Achilles Heel. Drive off the firepower, and the muscles will flee.

The US, of course, will not officially respond to these videos or peace demands, but there's a David vs. Goliath element to them which undoubtedly plays well across the entire Mid-East, and effectively promotes the Sunni cause. Many analysts have dismissed the ability of the Baathist Sunnis to influence or dictate events, but their good organization, experience, and weapons can compensate for much. With their SAM campaign, they have already achieved stunning tactical victories and have begun to translate them into broader strategic momentum. With funding coming from external sources for the most advanced weapons, their insurgency may be morphing into an irregular army.

The operational ceiling of the SAM-18 is thought to be 6,980 feet. No army in the world can afford to lose a helicopter every two days flying over a hundred-square mile area, and it seems like many families lost loved ones through the sheer denial of their commanders. If the pilot carrying these 7 Marines was ordered to fly at least 8,000 feet over the SAM-infested area, they'd probably all still be alive. Why was that precaution too much to take?

Update: An hour later, there's a General commentingsomething like this:

"I think people are making too much about this," Cody said, while stressing that he personally and the Army as an institution take each loss seriously and are constantly looking for ways to avoid combat losses.

The Army's vice chief of staff went on to say, "I see no change in trends," and, "I see no credibility gaps," regarding the rash of helicopter losses. Are you kidding me? "Making too much of this?" Tell the families of the dead they're making too much of this. Nonsense. Denial. Dereliction of duty. This general is knowingly spouting politically motivated damage control, or is an icompetent. Three of these incidents occurred in a very small area of Iraq last week, with video taken of each. Also, CNN story concurrently linked to by Yahoo says there's no way to verify the claim a Chinook was shot down by insurgents. Then who launched the missile which hit it?

This is outrageous. It's telling the enemy they should invest in a lot more missiles, because they'll reap bloody returns. General Cody and the US command are begging to get these weapons sucked into the Sunni heartland: Anbar Province. But then, maybe I'm making too much of these incidents, and mere civilians like me can't grasp military matters.

Adding CraigBlog

CraigBlog is the personal blog of Craig Newmark, the founder of Craigslist. Craigslist is an extremely successful way of making transactions fast and cheap, connecting buyers and sellers, employers and job seekers, renters and landlords, etc. Usually without a fee. He created it to "give people a break," and Craigslist is the 37th most-trafficked site on the web, and is so efficient that it drives newspapers crazy. Ebay keeps trying to buy it, but they're not selling. Here's an interesting article on him in the WaPo.

Craig Newmark just joined the board of the Sunlight Foundation, one of the more interesting projects for promoting transparency, good governance, and democracy in the United States. Esther Dyson, one of the most influential, smart, and socially conscious venture capitalists who walk the earth, is the head of the Sunlight Foundation.

Update: No, Esther Dyson is not head of the Sunlight Foundation. She's just the richest person on the board. Ellen Miller, who is the Executive Director of the Sunlight Foundation, wrote me to correct my error, and provide me with the link to their org chart. I asked her how much money I needed to give to atone for my stupid, lazy mistake. Feeling like an ass never felt so good. Long live the 'net.

Pentagon Announces New COIN Weapons Program

Having cancelled its two-decade old $29 Billion Comanche helicopter development program, the Army announced a revolutionary design shift in accord with its need for rapid-response, terrain-appropriate weapons systems optimized for counter-insurgency operations. One of the first weapons slated for prototyping and development is the LOADD-3, Light Operational Active Deployment Designate, better known as a "TransDonk," or weaponized donkey. Litton, General Dynamics, and Boeing are already involved in the development process and are expected to formally submit early prototypes for testing.

The potential for operational advantages provided by the new animals is high, as they are pre-armed with an intelligent avoidance system and a generally superior field profile over other options, as stated in the Counter-Insurgency Field Manual FM 3-05.213:

Mules are intelligent and possess a strong sense of self-preservation. A packer cannot make a mule do something if the mule thinks it will get hurt, no matter how much persuasion is used…. many people confuse this trait with stubbornness. ... Elephants are considered an endangered species and as such should not be used by U.S. military personnel… Elephants are not the easygoing, kind, loving creatures that people believe them to be. They are, of course, not evil either.

"With the proper genetic modifications and enhanced tractile prosthethics, we foresee a unit able to carry at least 175 lbs. over 20-25 miles of rough terrain per day, coming on line sometime before 2012," a Boeing spokesman said. While declining to discuss specific estimates or the new weapon's more classified performance capabilities, the Pentagon is hoping to keep procurement costs below $2.5 million per unit.

Booker T. & The MGs: Green Onions

To quote John Lee Hooker: "And Papa said to Mama...'Let that boy boogie-woogie.'"

Israel Attack Exercise Violates Greek Airspace

A Russian web site reports another sign of impending attack on Iran:

According to exclusive information of "Diplomatia", shock, awe, and panic gripped the Headquarters of the Greek Air Force on February 5, 2007, when radar detected a large formation of military aircraft flying inside the FIR of Athens, heading from Israel to Carpathos (a Greek island south-west of Rhodes, cm). Immediately two pairs of F-16s of the Greek Air Force scrambled from Crete to identify the invaders. They were a formation of military aircraft of Israel consisting of 7 Boeing 703 (refurbished Boeing 707) tankers, 1 Gulfstream electronic warfare aircraft, and 25 F-15 Strike Eagle and F-16 fighters, flying at altitudes of 22-44,000 feet. The Israeli formation turned and departed towards Israel 12 miles southeast of Carpathos, after having flown for 20 minutes inside the FIR of Athens. According to information received, this was a refueling exercise of the Israeli air force. The same sources report that flight plans had been filed with the Nicosia and Athens FIRs for the 7 Boeing 703 only, and not for the 25 fighters and the electronic warfare aircraft, resulting in a serious breach of international flight rules. As a result of this violation, panic gripped the National Center of Operations at the military headquarters.

Greece is a member of NATO. It was apparently not notified that 25 Israeli fighters would penetrate its airspace for 20 minutes. Its air defenses are a useful stand-in for Iran, as is its topography. Bloody hell. Not good.

(Note, I'm not absolutely certain of this material's veracity because I don't speak or read Greek, and time in Athens did not inspire me to do so. This story surfaced via American Samizdat, an otherwise reliable, keen, and quick information-hound.)

Sniglets & Nerdlets Form Unity Government

Actually, it's Palestine's Hamas and Fatah parties who did so. Many non-Palestinians have trouble telling them apart. The main difference seems to be that the US likes Hamas, and gives money to it. This was fine until Palestine held democratic elections, whereupon they promptly elected Fatah, which the US won't give money to and calls very bad names. Yet both of them hate the US and Israel. Complicated? You bet. Why am I making fun of them? Because it's very, very complicated. And yes, I know those are Smurfs dancing over at the right. Sniglets and Nerdlets do not exist, except in my mind. They happen to share many attributes with Smurfs.

Geopolitically, however, this is interesting. Sick of not getting money and exchanging gunfire in the streets, the two parties got King Abdullah to host them in Mecca, where today they signed an agreement to share power. Essentially, the agreement says they're not going to follow the script and have a civil war, and that it's ok to start sending money. We'll see if the Israel Lobby likes this enough to allow their blue-eyed slaves to let the UN cash start flowing again. (Doubtful.)

Update: Sheesh! That didn't take long. It's 3AM in Israel. I can only wish I had their PR department:

"Israel expects a new Palestinian government to respect and accept all three of the international community principles," (Israeli government spokeswoman) Eisin told The Associated Press after the accord was announced.

At stake is roughly $1 billion a year in frozen aid from foreign donors in addition to approximately $500 million in withheld tax revenues collected by Israel on behalf of the Palestinians.

Palestinians also hope the agreement will avert an outright civil war. Clashes between Hamas and Fatah gunmen have killed 130 Palestinians since May, and cease-fires have repeatedly broken down. The latest fragile truce came Sunday, after four days of fighting killed 30 people.

De-linking FDL

It's time to remove Jane Hamsher's FireDogLake ("FDL") blog from the Real Stream Media list. For any of you unfamiliar with FDL, it's an activist web site for liberal progressives started by the movie producer who got Oliver Stone's "Natural Born Killers" made. I thought about doing this for quite some time, and it gave opportunity to think a little more about the future and effectiveness of blog activism. After deciding to de-link it, today I looked FDL up on Alexa, and found that while its traffic rank is still 28,000th or so, its daily reach has fallen by roughly 5o% over the past six months. Huh.

FDL was one of the first blogs which attracted me, the first one which moved me to be a regular commenter, and the first one I donated to. The activism there continues to be vibrant, the community is thoughtful and colorful, and they've been involved in some great progressive causes, such as Act Blue, Ned Lamont's campaign against Joe Lieberman, and their original, nonpareil coverage of the Valerie Plame affair. In fact they're doing live coverage of the Libby treason trial right now, the only blog to gain a press pass to the court-room.

FDL got me involved in blogging from a nap-of-the-earth perspective. Until Hurricane Katrina hit, I had viewed blogs from a technologist's top-down, cool-but-let's-not-get-too-messy-here viewpoint. FDL got me hip-deep in the swamp muck and then I took the plunge right into the slime. (Come on in, the 'gators are fine.) It was a great place to vent and share information in real time, but as guest bloggers became more numerous and toadyish, the environment started to morph into one which doesn't appeal to me. So FDL, like the punk rock movement it compares itself to, was inspirational, brave, raw, and important. Then, when they started to increasingly act a bit like profane, drug-addled punk rockers with bleary-eyed groupies, a little distance from the scene freed my time up enough to, presto, start a blog.

I asked Hopespringsaturtle over at Deep Confusion for her perspective, as she was one of many smart progressives who stopped frequenting there. She was the right person to ask, and helped me sort it out. At issue was the overt misogyny and/or racism of some posts by FDL columnists and moderators, who refused to modulate or apologize for what they wrote, and who then were backed by the blog owners. Soon, there were instances of asking for donations in inappropriate ways for inappropriate things, even donations for one columnist's dental work. All of this triggered an impressive amount of debate within the blogsphere, with a good one-stop synopsis residing here.

Much of my embryonic activism I owe to FDL, and it's a powerful template for an activist blog. We need powerful templates, and much of my free-noodling daydreams float around the beneficial transformations and unintended consequences blogs may wreak on sclerotic politics. Yet I suspect FDL's direct involvement in the Lamont campaign was ultimately harmful, and this begs a question. Is activism most effective when it's Johnny Rotten: angry, in-your-face, defies convention, and is foul-mouthed, tells fibs, and fights dirty? After all, "God save the Queen, she's not a human been," that's a catchy message. And hate-mongers like Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, and Anne Coulter are still given prized space in the Main Streem Media despite their every sordid misdeed, half-chewed vituperative spew, and outright felony. Or is activism most effective when it's delivered by Guy Lombardo: polite, showing calm even when not feeling it, attentive to organization, and striving all the while to stay on the right notes? Say what you want about him, but Lawrence Welk was around quite a while, and he ran good shows. These are honest questions.

While I don't really know which path is better, I hope the best bet for the future of progressive politics, and what this nation needs, is to find and support strictly ethical, inclusive behavior. It's how I try to live my life when I'm not beating up disabled men in public parks, and it's the type of environment I'd like to live in. There are even a couple of Presidential candidates at this time who can take us in that direction, in the forms of Dennis Kucinich (money spent on Presidential Campaign in 2006: $386.02) or Barack Obama (chomping on Nicorette gum now, because smoking as President would set a bad example).

The time for inclusive, open-minded politics may be past, and this country may well be sliding inexorably further into the politics of Homeland, to violence in the streets, various types of entrenched separatism, and the civil wars they eventually lead to. You can feel that slide right now, like a house floor gone too far un-level. But I'd like to give polite standards and the presumptions of equality a chance. Maybe we can point up this old Republic yet. Otherwise we may as well sit around like many already do, oiling up their cherished lethal weapons, relishing thoughts of shooting Ayrabic Lesbian Libruls when they finally attack.

Now, I'm not exactly in any danger of being interviewed by NPR for my blogging influence anytime soon, but I do take the links at the right very seriously. They're like recommendations, and I can no longer recommend FDL. I hope as a group they rein in some of their less admirable impulses, and don't become a mirror of what they abhor. Feeding trolls is bad. Feeding toadies is far worse.

Catholica Persica

Iran's government is fairly opaque to Westerners, including me. It's a study in contradictions. It's modernized, yet people can be buried in the ground up to their necks for adultery and stoned to death. (Whereas the West devised a more diabolical, far more prolonged method called divorce court.) Iran is a parliamentary democracy, yet its presses tend to be instruments of state propaganda and people can be jailed for saying the wrong thing. (Ummm...oh, never mind.) I'm no Iran-hand, but a statement came from there yesterday, which, considering its source was the Ayatollah Khameini rather than President Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, is worth noting:

"The enemies know well that any aggression will lead to a reaction from all sides."

Hmm. The word "Ayatollah" means "emblem of God." Khameini is an ayatollah who is also the Supreme Leader of Iran, and the closest meaningful translation for his position is "Pope." He's the real moral power, and he interprets and administers the law, whereas Ahmadenijad is merely an elected politician and former mayor of Tehran. So here we have a Pope saying, "Mess with us, and it's going to hurt you bad. And we'll win anyway." Khameini makes statements carefully, and is not given to jollies.

(Tip o' the hat to Larisa Alexandrovna for surfacing this story via At Largely.)

Chinook Downed Northwest Of Baghdad (Video Above)

The map below shows the location of the three helicopters have been shot down in near Taji, a Sunni suburb northwest of Baghdad, in the last two weeks.

An insurgent group which calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq has claimed responsibility for the three attacks, all of which involved shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles. The group is said to have Al-Qaeda links. The number of people involved in these incidents is probably quite small. The US military's state of denial over these crashes is really disturbing:

But a senior American military official said the crash appeared to have been caused by mechanical problems. Other Marine aircraft were close enough to see the Sea Knight when it crashed, the official said.Whichever proves to be the cause, American officials have grown concerned that helicopters may now be much more vulnerable to insurgents, even when the insurgents are not armed with the kinds of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles used against military aircraft in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The other four American helicopters shot down in recent weeks were felled by small-arms fire, not by missiles, according to Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Now contrast the General Thinking with what eyewitnesses reported:

“I looked at the sky and saw this big helicopter with double rotors, and it was hit in its tail and burning,” said the witness, who declined to give his name. He said another helicopter with a single rotor was flying just behind the stricken one.

Who do you believe? Including the Blackhawk which was shot down in Diyala, at least 21 people, amongst them two colonels, one major, one captain, two regimental first sergeants, the Army's first female command sergeant major, and the chief medical surgeon for all of Iraq were lost. Effective leadership would admit there's a problem with SAMs in the area and either secure it, fly high over it, or around it. This would better prepare air mobile personnel in Iraq when and if Iran retaliates by giving SA-18 SAMs to Shiite militias and Iraqi army units.

Fartacus Loses Financial Times

The FT, an inherently conservative daily paper read by the world's wealthy elite, ran an op-ed of no small significance yesterday, clearly titled "The Imperial Mr. Bush." Here are a couple of excerpts:

The past few weeks have been one long power play by Mr Bush: on everything from the Iraq war to the firing of federal prosecutors and the wiretapping of American telephones, the White House has been both aggressive and defiant. Last week, the combative president even tried to launch a stealth takeover of the US regulatory system, putting a White House commissar into regulatory bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency – and increasing the risk that such expert agencies will set policy by the dictates of politics rather than science.

And closes with something I'd like to read in the Wall Street Journal soon:

The founding fathers knew the dangers of an imperial presidency, so they gave Congress the job of reining him in. Now is the time for the legislators to start doing that job in earnest.

The emperor is starkers.

US Military Admits: Helicopters Downed By Iraq Ground-Fire

An Apache AH-64D gunship was shot down by a man-portable SAM last Friday (February 2nd, 2007) near Taji. But it was hit by something else first, a single shot from some type of large-caliber weapon. It must be something new, as the insurgents have claimed. The raw footage was packaged in jihadist propaganda, so I won't embed it here, having heard enough cries of Allahuh Akhbar for a while. If you wish to view it, it's searchable on Live Leak via the terms "helicopter, iraq, downing." I viewed it very closely to try and analyze what happened. While the incidence of helicopter crashes is still very low, the threats posed by weapons must be respected. There are probably not many SA-18 SAMs in Iraq, and the existence of a super-rifle is unconfirmed, but pilots will probably be directed to maintain much higher altitudes while traveling, to stand off from positions offering obvious ground cover, to avoid travel routines, and to not be as aggressive in investigating fire sources in the absence of ground support. They need to give themselves more time to detect and evade.

The insurgents in the video, of whom there were at least 4, deployed themselves line abreast in a ditch. Of the three visible, one was wearing a light robe and turban, and sat upright. Odd behavior, given the optics and firepower of the gunships--he stuck out like a sore thumb. The others wore dark green fatigues and black ski masks, and lay prone. They appear to have set up at dusk to ambush the helicopters, and one began to remove parts for assembly from a long green box which was new or very well-preserved. Another prepared the ground in front of him, clearing it for some kind of attachment. I have not seen these shipping crates before, but the color and shape of the main rectangular body of the device protruding from it was consistent with pictures and video of other SA-series missiles.

Two Apaches on patrol crossed left-to-right in front of these insurgents approximately 2 kilometers away, after heading north-west. (If it was at dawn, their bearing would've been approximately 135 degrees, or south-east.) Because of the way the video sequence was edited, the light conditions, and withdrawal vectors taken by the pilots, I assume the incident occurred at dusk. As the Apaches drew out of range, they suddenly circled over each other's flight path, and the trail helicopter apparently, but by no means certainly, withdrew.

After its turn, the lead helicopter bore directly toward the insurgent position, but turned to its left after drawing fairly close. It flew roughly parallel to powerlines at low altitude; the insurgents waited until it passed directly in front, less than a hundred meters above ground and probably no more than 400 meters away. There is the report of a single shot at 1:24 into the video, and an impact flash on the right side of the helicopter's fuselage on or near the engine nacelle, at 1:25. This hit is followed by cheers.

Shortly thereafter, automatic small arms fire opens up, and the helicopter withdraws north. It's impossible to tell it's the same helicopter all the way through because there seems to be an edit cut in the video, and visual contact is broken because of trees, but it seems likely. At 1:38-1:39 there is a glimpse of a man holding a tube on his shoulder and pointing in its general direction. At 1:52 there's the distinctive sound of a SAM launch, and at 1:54 there's the sound of an impact and a large flash which half-fills the screen. The Apache immediately begins to retrace its route north-west, on fire and trailing a line of smoke. At 1:59 there is a secondary explosion, and it loses power suddenly and crashes not far from where the two aircraft originally broke formation.

Pilots in Iraq were generally not concerned about missiles until recently. Their use there is still rare, but military spokesmen were quoted as saying that tactics will change appropriately. The Russian SA-18 would appear to be a prime suspect here in defeating formerly effective countermeasures, and Russia has licensed its production of to a number of countries including Venezuela, Iran, and China. But what's really puzzling is the single shot which hit the helicopter prior to the SAM. No weapon I know could do that, unless it was an extremely lucky hit with an anti-tank rifle or a .50-cal sniper rifle. Neither weapon seems capable of hitting a helicopter mid-ship in its engine bay while moving obliquely at close to 100 mph. Not with a single shot. The pilot of the Apache which was shot down broke formation and headed directly for the insurgents, so may have received fire from that area or was lured there by other means. If they had not gotten so close, the crew probably would have made it back.

Harper's Weekly Review

We subscribe to Harper's. It is the magazine I'm most likely to read, and they have a weekly news roundup they send by e-mail. There are always a bunch of fun and leading-indicator items I've missed, such as Al Gore being considered for the Nobel Peace Prize and diners at a restaurant in Illinois who were not interested in talking to Preznit Bush:

The U.S. director of national intelligence released a
declassified version of a new National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq; the report found that "the term 'civil
war' accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi
conflict" and that "widespread fighting could produce de
facto partition." Iraqi refugees were flooding Syria and
Jordan, where they now account for 5 and 12 percent of
those countries' total populations, and a massive bombing
in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad killed 130 people,
making the attack the second deadliest in the country
since the March 2003 invasion. In Hillah, where a further
45 people were killed, a police officer attempted to
smother the blast from a suicide bomber. "He hugged him"
said a witness, "and the explosives tore apart both
bodies." The U.S. military announced that insurgents had
shot down four helicopters in the past two weeks in Iraq,
former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski
warned that the White House was looking for an excuse to
attack Iran, and President George W. Bush asked for an
additional $100 billion to fund the United States's wars
through the end of the current fiscal year. Detainees at
Guantánamo Bay complained of "infinite tedium and
loneliness," and a German court issued an arrest warrant
for 13 CIA operatives involved in the abduction and
torture of a German citizen. Former U.S. Vice President Al
Gore was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. "Al Gore,"
said a Norwegian lawmaker, "has made a difference."
President Bush staged an impromptu visit to the Sterling
Family Restaurant in Peoria, Illinois, but few of the
diners wanted to talk to him. "Sorry to interrupt you,"
said Bush. "How's the service?"

Taliban forces were on the rise in Afghanistan, Maoist
rebels were taking over coffee plantations near Ooty,
India, and Moro rebels in Jolo captured a number of senior
Philippine military officers including General Dolorfino,
Colonel Ramon, and Colonel Baboon. Delaware Senator Joseph
Biden praised Illinois Senator Barack Obama. "I mean, you
got the first mainstream African American who is
articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,"
said Biden. "I mean, that's a storybook, man." The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that
global warming was expected to heat up the atmosphere by 4
to 7 degrees within the next century, and the Bush
Administration suggested that scientists find ways to
counteract greenhouse-gas emissions by blocking out the
sun. "Possible techniques include putting a giant screen
into orbit," suggested the White House. "[Or] thousands of
tiny, shiny balloons." "Hot" patients who had recently
received medical treatment using radioisotopes were
setting off Homeland Security radiation detectors, and the
U.S. market for female-arousal liquids continued to
grow. A mob of Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem overpowered
policemen and stole a woman's corpse to prevent an autopsy
but later gave it back. Japanese Health Minister Hakuo
Yanagisawa apologized for calling women "birth-giving
machines," hospital staff in Yekaterinburg, Russia, were
gagging crying babies, and in Cambodia a Briton named
Bowel Anpaul was arrested on charges of pedophilia. Rubber
genitals were stolen from the set of the new "Hannibal"
movie, an Argentine soccer fan who asked for a tattoo of
his team's logo received instead a tattoo of a large
penis, and a Chinese man whose genitals were eaten by a
dog when he was a child was said to be happy with a new
penis built from his chest muscles and hip bones. Wang
You-theng, a fugitive Taiwanese tycoon, was seized by
U.S. immigration officials. HIV, said scientists, can
avoid destruction by hiding out in the testicles.

Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan was awarded France's
highest civilian honor, the Legion d'Honneur, and was
kicked in the head by a camel. Terri Irwin, the widow of
Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin, urged her late husband's
fans to respect stingrays, which she described as "cute
little pancakes in the ocean." Britain's top female
paraglider was mauled by eagles. "Eagles," said a
colleague, "are the sharks of the air." The Indian Army
was preparing to hunt down man-eating leopards in Kashmir,
and elephants in Thailand were head-butting and robbing
trucks. New Jersey warned its residents against eating
heavy metal-contaminated squirrels, roboticists announced
the creation of a teddy-bear robot that will help men meet
women, and an Australian man sold his life on eBay. New
York Governor Eliot Spitzer told Republican Assemblyman
James Tedisco, "I am a fucking steamroller and I'll roll
over you or anybody else," and James Taylor was about to
go on tour. After it ransacked House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi's Washington, D.C., residence, a small black bird
was captured in a brown bag and released. "She kept
thinking to herself," said a spokesman, "'Quoth the Raven,
"Nevermore."'"

-- News Round-up by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi