Newshog 13-02-2005

Welcome to Sunday's news briefs. Have an opinion? Then post a comment.

• Well, it looks like the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shia coalition assembled by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has won the Iraqi elections, taking over 4 million votes, or about 48 percent of the ballots cast. It remains to be seen how Islamic the new government will turn out to be.
  
  
• Rummie travels to Germany after all - and does a flip-flop on "Old Europe" while he is there. The really interesting part is what the German minister said.
  
  
• And here is another German saying it again. The German Chancellor, has soured carefully choreographed efforts to heal transatlantic wounds by calling for a drastic overhaul of Nato and a bigger voice for Europe, just as George Bush prepares to visit Brussels.
  
  
• Training of Iraq's security forces, crucial to any exit strategy for Britain and the US, is going so badly that the Pentagon has stopped giving figures for the number of combat-ready indigenous troops. No exit in sight yet, then.
  
  
• The CNN's chief news executive Eason Jordan has resigned amid controversy over the death of journalists in Iraq. Much of the fury has been from right-wing pundits in a sort of "see you a Talongate and raise you a Ward Churchill and a CNN boss" episode.
  
  
• A strain of HIV that is highly resistant to almost all anti-retroviral drugs and which leads to the rapid onset of Aids has been detected in New York. I find myself cynically wondering whether the germ-war conspiracy theorists will beat the "punishment for sins" crowd to the soapbox on this one.
  
  
• Bush’s dream of a weak federal workforce is to take a leap forward as the Pentagon introduces new rules eviscerating the rights of more than 750,000 civilian employees, both in the workplace and at the bargaining table.
  
  
• In an interview with 'Editor and Publisher', "Talongate's" Jeff Gannon revealed that, contrary to many media reports, he has not been subpoenaed in the Valerie Plame/CIA case.
  
  
• Foreign Policy in Focus looks at North Korea and concludes the US' most likely strategy will be a continuation of the previous Bush policy: half-hearted negotiations with North Korea, persistent faith that the regime in Pyongyang will collapse, and a program to hasten that end through covert and non-governmental means.
  
  
• Howard Dean could do well to turn toward Tennessee as Democrats back an anti-gay marriage bill.
  
  
• Mexican and U.S. officials are probing reports that a group of Mexican army deserters who work for the violent Gulf drug cartel may have acquired two anti-aircraft missiles that could be used to assassinate President Vicente Fox.
  
  
• Security grant changes in Bush budget disturb port officials who say ports are not sufficiently secure against terrorists.
  
  
• Condoleezza Rice is setting GOP hearts aflutter in the wake of her first foreign trip. Already, many are starting to dream of a Condi Rice-Hillary Clinton smackdown in `08.
  
  
• The WP agrees with me! For the senators and governors already jockeying to succeed Bush, the numbers released in recent days add up to a budgetary landmine that could blow up just as the next president moves into the Oval Office. Bush obviously doesn't care whether it's a GOP or Democrat incumbent.
  
  
• Ever wonder what outside financial interests a legislator in your state might have? Now you can find out with a couple of clicks of your mouse. Putting the country's government ethics laws to work, the Center for Public Integrity has made thousands of state legislators' outside interest disclosure filings available to online users.
  

Quote of the Day:

Convince an enemy, convince him that he's wrong. To win a bloodless battle, the victory is long. A simple act of faith, reason over might. To blow up his children would only prove him right.
Gordon Sumner