Flashback

Sadly, the map and the page linked no longer exist...but this is from a post of mine September 22, 2004:

That map is on the USInfo page of the State Department's website. It's titled "Countries Where al Qaeda Has Operated" and is dated November 10, 2001. Notice any pointedly missing country? Here's the accompanying list:

Albania

Algeria

Afghanistan

Azerbaijan

Australia

Austria

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Belgium

Bosnia

Egypt

Eritrea

France

Germany

India

Iran

Ireland

Italy

Jordan

Kenya

Kosovo

Lebanon

Libya

Malaysia

Mauritania

Netherlands

Pakistan

Philippines

Qatar

Russia

Saudi Arabia

Somalia

South Africa

Sudan

Switzerland

Tajikistan

Tanzania

Tunisia

Turkey

Uganda

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

United States

Uzbekistan

Yemen

I'm looking for one that begins with "I" and ends with "Q".

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

No Change Here

Recently I posted on the change in White House council. I didn't spend enough time on it. It seems that the new council, Bob Bauer, can be expected to continue the Bush tradition of politicizing everything and treating legal issues as roadblocks to be circumvented.

The White House dismissed all concerns about Bauer, pointing out that he is well-regarded by Republicans in the tight-knit election law community and that he has worked on issues outside of election law.

“He has represented large institutional clients on major issues like employment and contract, IP [intellectual property], tax and privacy issues,” said an administration official who did not want to be identified talking about Bauer’s qualifications for the post, which the White House said would he would assume by the end of the year

  Politico

WTF? Obama wants a White House lawyer who is well-regarded by Republicans? No, no. That doesn’t surprise me. He seems to be very keen on making Republicans happy for some reason. Nor does this surprise me: Bob Bauer argued that Scooter Libby should be pardoned – for political purposes, never mind he broke the law.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Perspective

GOP House Leader John Boehner, condemning Obama's decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York for trial, yesterday:

The Obama Administration’s irresponsible decision to prosecute the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in New York City puts the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people.

[...]

People in capitals all over the world have hosted trials of high-level terrorist suspects using their normal justice system. They didn't allow fear to drive them to build island-prisons or create special commissions to depart from their rules of justice. Spain held an open trial in Madrid for the individuals accused of that country's 2004 train bombings. The British put those accused of perpetrating the London subway bombings on trial right in their normal courthouse in London. Indonesia gave public trials using standard court procedures to the individuals who bombed a nightclub in Bali. India used a Mumbai courtroom to try the sole surviving terrorist who participated in the 2008 massacre of hundreds of residents.

[...]

[The American] Right's reaction to yesterday's announcement -- we're too afraid to allow trials and due process in our country -- is the textbook definition of "surrendering to terrorists."

[...]

As usual, it's the weakest and most frightened among us who rely on the most flamboyant, theatrical displays of "strength" and "courage" to hide what they really are. Then again, this is the same political movement whose "leaders" -- people like John Cornyn and Pat Roberts -- cowardly insisted that we must ignore the Constitution in order to stay alive: the exact antithesis of the core value on which the nation was founded. Given that, it's hardly surprising that they exude a level of fear of Terrorists that is unmatched virtually anywhere in the world. It is, however, noteworthy that the position they advocate -- it's too scary to have normal trials in our country of Terrorists -- is as pure a surrender to the Terrorists as it gets.

  Glenn Greenwald

Surrender monkeys.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Fallujah's Further Punishment

Doctors in Iraq's war-ravaged enclave of Falluja are dealing with up to 15 times as many chronic deformities in infants and a spike in early life cancers that may be linked to toxic materials left over from the fighting.

[...]

Neurologists and obstetricians in the city interviewed by the Guardian say the rise in birth defects – which include a baby born with two heads, babies with multiple tumours, and others with nervous system problems - are unprecedented and at present unexplainable.

[...]

The rise in frequency is stark – from two admissions a fortnight a year ago to two a day now. "Most are in the head and spinal cord, but there are also many deficiencies in lower limbs," he said. "There is also a very marked increase in the number of cases of less than two years [old] with brain tumours. This is now a focus area of multiple tumours."

[...]

[H]ealth officials are also starting to focus on possible reasons, chief among them potential chemical or radiation poisonings. Abnormal clusters of infant tumours have also been repeatedly cited in Basra and Najaf – areas that have in the past also been intense battle zones where modern munitions have been heavily used.

  UK Guardian

All Falluja posts

It's Sunday

[The] contemporary Republican Party is a party of medieval romanticism. Its disquisitions on when the human person begins are theological in character and rooted in assumptions even a lot of medievals would have questioned. Its faith that bankers would never steal from us and so do not need to be regulated is a form of mysticism that medievals would have applied to saints. And its fascination with arbitrary arrest and imprisonment and with torture more recalls the star chambers of yore than the deliberations at Philadelphia over 200 years ago.

[...]

The Republican way of dealing with terrorists gave enormous propaganda tools to al-Qaeda.

[In announcing that some top al-Qaeda 9/11 conspirators will be tried by jury in New York,] Obama just took those propaganda tools away from the enemy and began the process of repairing America's reputation and its fidelity to its own ideals.

  Juan Cole

Ah, Yes. The Old "A Pelican Distracted Me" Story

Police on Friday identified a Lufkin man who accidentally drove a $2 million Bugatti Veyron, a rare automobile that is perhaps the world’s fastest, into a saltwater lagoon [off Galveston Island].

Andy Lee House, 34, owner of Performance Auto Sales, told The Daily News on Wednesday that a low-flying pelican distracted him, causing him to jerk the steering wheel a bit — and he then dropped his cell phone.

[...]

The crash, however, was captured by someone filming the car as it traveled on the northbound frontage road of Interstate 45 about 3 p.m. Wednesday.

The man filming was traveling north on I-45. No pelican was visible in the video, which shows the car veering from the road and splashing in the lagoon.

  Galveston County Daily News

Actually, he only mentioned the pelican to the police, not the cell phone.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

No Change Here

And so much for transparency.

Pursuant to new powers delegated to him by Congress, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has executed an order blocking the release of photos depicting the torture of detainees.

  Raw Story

I bet you’re as surprised as I am.

In a new supplemental brief filed with the high court, the administration's attorneys argue that the new law Congress passed to allow Gates this authority effectively exempts the photos from the Freedom of Information Act, therefore invalidating an earlier lawsuit.

Somebody should leak them.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Change Has Come

Indeed, just asking for a plan is a big change.

AP is reporting that President Barack Obama is declining to be rushed into committing to the Afghanistan War as an open-ended project, and wants a timetable for turning security duties over to the Afghanistan National Army.

AP says that the key intervention here came from US ambassador in Kabul, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, who warned that the government of Hamid Karzai is not a reliable partner.

  Juan Cole

So I guess that timetable will be when Hell freezes over?

The BBC says that Eikenberry is against sending thousands of more troops, and he warned of corruption in the Karzai government. Gen. Stanley McChrystal is said to be fuming over the intervention.

Ooops

What a surprise it must have been when Major Nidal Malik Hasan woke up from his coma to find himself not in paradise but in Brooke Army Medical Center, deep in the heart of Texas, under security so tight that there were armed guards patrolling both the intensive-care unit and checkpoints at the nearest freeway off-ramp. This was not the finalÉ he had scripted when he gave away all his earthly goods - his desk lamp and air mattress, his frozen broccoli and spinach, his copies of the Koran. He had told his imam he was planning to visit his parents before deploying to Afghanistan. He did not mention that his parents had been dead for nearly 10 years.

[...]

Even as the President weighs how to fight the wars he inherited, he and the entire U.S. security apparatus will have to figure out how you fight a war against an enemy you can't recognize, much less understand. In that sense, the war on terrorism has left the battlefield and moved to the realm of the mind.

  Yahoo

No. That’s where it always resided. The “WOT” has simply been a pretense for an attempt to control the Middle East.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Another Step in the Right Direction

Self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other Guantanamo Bay detainees will be sent to New York to face trial in a civilian federal court, an Obama administration official said Friday.

  Yahoo

Apparently I've forgotten all I knew about legal proceedings. Why is this in civilian court and not criminal,She? Is there no difference at the federal level?

Revised Estimate

The H1N1 (Hinie) flu has apparently been fatal in a lot more cases than the CDC estimated. (Either that, or they’re playing it up too high now.)

While the official estimates have not yet been released, it appears that the tally of deaths from the novel form of influenza will rise to around 4,000, up from 1,200, as first reported Wednesday by The New York Times.

  ABC

So go out and get your Hinie shot. You can have mine.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Speaking of Alone...

Army officials have said they believe Hasan acted alone when he jumped on a table with two handguns, shouted "Allahu akbar" and opened fire inside a building at Fort Hood.

  Yahoo

Sounds to me like he was in cahoots with God.

[Hasan’s attorney John] Galligan said he wasn't pleased that Hasan was charged in the hospital without his lawyers present.

No, and I don’t suppose he’s going to get a lot of consideration in that regard at any point.