Jumpin' Jehosophat, what happened to the Christmas - New Year gap being slow for news? The world is busy, with the two main memes being Snoopgate and Iraq but with other themes like Republican corruption also popping up.
Buckle your seatbelts and hang on tight...
Big Iraq "oh shit" story - From Knight Ridder: The U.S. plan for leaving Iraq is in trouble, with more than 10,000 Kurds in the Iraqi army prepared to seize control of northern Iraq for an independent state. Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and secure the borders of an independent Kurdistan. They've got their oil deals, they have their army of peshmergas, they have the will and the popular backup for a seperate state. Anyone who thinks this civil war won't spill over into Iran, Syria and NATO member Turkey is smoking something.
More Iraq stuff - Juan Cole has his top ten myths about Iraq. I go the whole hog with him except for the bit about there not being a civil war yet. I think its already a "cold" war with low-level conflict and is due to heat up pretty soon. (See the item above)
Meanwhile, Jazz at Running Scared writes on something I had noticed but hadn't posted on yet. On the day of the Iraqi election there was much astir among the wingnuts over a seeming lack of lefty blogging on the subject. Now though, as hopes for peace and a stable state rapidly disapear, the Right is oddly silent on the subject.
Great work Jazz, another post I don't have to write because its been done better than I could have.
Snoopgate - Firedoglake blog looks at the implications of NSA warrantless spying for the trials of a number of charged and convicted terrorism suspects, citing a report in the NY Times that defense attorneys intend making a stink. He is a former defense prosecutor and should know. His verdict? This "scenario is your worst nightmare" if you're a prosecutor and that "Consequences are a bitch. And they are about the hit the fan". Meanwhile, The Heretik deals with Colin Powell's defense of Bush's snooping, saying "waffle suits the man".
Shakes' Sis has a post about a new House Dem report on failings by the Dept. Of Fear and Insecurity (DHS). "the administration prioritized monitoring radiation levels at Muslim sites over screening for radiation entering the country, and engaged in vast, untargeted data mining operations in the hopes of catching something, while easily identifiable high-risk targets, like, say, a bunker at a chemical engineering firm from which 400 pounds of explosives and 2,500 detonators can be stolen with nothing but a blowtorch, go unprotected. Smashing."
The Washington Post has a look at how the Pentagon is waging an information war to ensure favorable coverage of Iraq by the media and, increasingly, bloggers from the Right.
As a personal aside here, I would like to say that I'm definitely not one of the liberal "in crowd". I rarely get asked to blog releases from lefty groups and when I do I always mention the source as being a direct solicitation. When I link to others who, to my certain knowledge, are using material from political pressure groups and think tanks soliciting a blog post I mention that too. I think that's honest, don't you?
Loaded Mouth's Kryten has a great post on Ambassador Foot-In-Mouth, the Bush cheerleader currently representing US "diplomacy" in Britain. This used car salesman is the usual Bush pick - no qualifications except a big checkbook for donations to BushCo - and has undercut Condi Rice's fairy tales by first denying then admitting admitting illegal renditions to Syria, an "axis of evil" nation that is on the State list as one that tortures. The Murdoch-owned London Times also covers this story (all the UK media did), calling it a "further embarasment" for the ambassador.
TBogg masterfully administers a woodshedding to Rightwing bloggers who love torture, calling them "unsupervised children with sharp sticks" in a post entitled "Little Green Lords of the Flies". A must read that incidentally tackles how the bigwigs at Pajamas Media are getting richer at the expense of their feedstock smaller bloggers.
Regular reader Kirk sent me a link to this report - "Halliburton, other lobbyists stall Pentagon ban on human trafficking." The President and Congress have demanded that government agencies include anti-trafficking provisions (covering forced labor and prostitution) in all overseas company contracts but five lobbying groups - including representatives of Halliburton subsidiary KBR and DynCorp - are stalling Pentagon action. These companies are specifically targeting provisions requiring companies to monitor their overseas contractors for violations. Both KBR and DynCorp have been linked to human trafficking cases in the past. For anyone wondering how this fits into a historical context, I refer you to the history of the British East India Company and its monopoly on repression and colonialism on behalf of the British Empire.
Question of the day - define the Bull Moose. He seems to be having an identity crisis. Is the Moose a DINO, RINO or Hawk? The Bull Moose blog is sponsored by the Democratic Leadership Council so presumably he agrees with the Dem bigwigs. He certainly agrees with bigwig Dem centrists who are saying that attacks on the Bush administration's eavesdropping on suspected terrorist conversations will further weaken the party's credibility on national security. Maybe he's really Chuck Schumer incognito...but one thing is for sure, he's no progressive.
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