Dump Duhbya

Missing: 110,000 AK-47s and 80,000 pistols — oops!

Weapons Given to Iraq Are Missing – washingtonpost.com
GAO Estimates 30% of Arms Are Unaccounted For
By Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer

The Pentagon has lost track of about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005, according to a new government report, raising fears that some of those weapons have fallen into the hands of insurgents fighting U.S. forces in Iraq.

The author of the report from the Government Accountability Office says U.S. military officials do not know what happened to 30 percent of the weapons the United States distributed to Iraqi forces from 2004 through early this year as part of an effort to train and equip the troops. The highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000, in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. [mjh: So the real number is 13 times as many as guessed before last Fall’s election. Oh, well.] …

The Pentagon did not dispute the GAO findings, saying it has launched its own investigation and indicating it is working to improve tracking. Although controls have been tightened since 2005, the inability of the United States to track weapons with tools such as serial numbers makes it nearly impossible for the U.S. military to know whether it is battling an enemy equipped by American taxpayers. …

[T]he Bush administration frequently complains that Iran and Syria are supplying insurgents but has paid little attention to whether U.S. military errors inadvertently play a role. “We know there is seepage and very little is being done to address the problem,” she said. …

In an unusual move, the train-and-equip program for Iraqi forces is being managed by the Pentagon. Normally, the traditional security assistance programs are operated by the State Department, the GAO reported. The Defense Department said this change permitted greater flexibility, but as of last month it was unable to tell the GAO what accountability procedures, if any, apply to arms distributed to Iraqi forces, the report said. …

Much of the equipment provided to Iraqi troops, including the AK-47s, originates from countries in the former Soviet bloc. In a report last year, Amnesty International said that in 2004 and 2005 more than 350,000 AK-47 rifles and similar weapons were taken out of Bosnia and Serbia, for use in Iraq, by private contractors working for the Pentagon and with the approval of NATO and European security forces in Bosnia.

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The Confederacy of Dunces

Democrats Targeted In GOP Debate – washingtonpost.com, By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post Staff Writer

DES MOINES, Aug. 5 — The Republican candidates for president used a nationally televised morning debate to mock Democrats on foreign policy, taxes and health care while sparring with each other over abortion and the administration’s anti-terrorism efforts.

From a stage in Iowa, the state where the nation’s first voting will begin in five months, the GOP candidates said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that their Democratic rivals support plans for “socialized” medicine and predicted that taxes would be raised if a Democrat returns to the White House. …

Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani sparked loud applause when he declared that “the knee-jerk liberal Democratic reaction — raise taxes to get money — very often is a very big mistake.” …

“We are winning. We must win. And we will not set a date for surrender, as the Democrats want us to do,” McCain said.

Echoing him, Giuliani said: “The reality is that you do not achieve peace through weakness and appeasement. . . . We should seek a victory in Iraq and in Baghdad, and we should define the victory.”

The lone voice in continued opposition to the war, Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), was again outspoken about America’s involvement. …

A new Washington Post poll of voters in Iowa indicates that the Republican race remains muddled. Romney is leading the race here but his support remains soft. Only 19 percent of Republicans likely to vote in the state’s caucuses say they are very satisfied with their choices. …

Rep. Tom Tancredo (Colo.) defended his recent comments that he would deter terrorist attacks by threatening to bomb Mecca and Medina, two important holy cities in Islam.

“The State Department called that ‘reprehensible’ and ‘absolutely crazy,’ ” Stephanopoulos said.

“Yes,” Tancredo answered. “The State Department — boy, when they start complaining about things I say, I feel a lot better about the things I say, I’ll tell you right now.” [mjh: Yup, when competent professionals say I’m crazy, I feel validated.]

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The Lopsided Blogosphere

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A Diversity of Opinion, if Not Opinionators – washingtonpost.com

Walking around [the major conference for progressive bloggers] during the weekend, it became clear that only a handful of the 1,500 conventioneers — bloggers, policy experts, party activists — are African American, Latino or Asian. Of about 100 scheduled panels and workshops, less than a half-dozen dealt directly with women or minority issues. …

“It’s mostly white. More male than female,” says the former high school math and science teacher turned activist. “It’s not very diverse.”

There goes the open secret of the netroots, or those who make up the community of the Internet grass-roots movement. …

Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, who is part Latina, … said one reason she came to Yearly Kos was to get an answer to this question: “Why is the blogosphere, which is supposed to be more democratic, reinforcing the same white male power structure that exists?”

Dump Duhbya

Obeisance to King George

Warrantless Surrender – washingtonpost.com

Congress is stampeded into another compromise of Americans’ rights.

THE DEMOCRATIC-led Congress, more concerned with protecting its political backside than with safeguarding the privacy of American citizens, left town early yesterday after caving in to administration demands that it allow warrantless surveillance of the phone calls and e-mails of American citizens, with scant judicial supervision and no reporting to Congress about how many communications are being intercepted. To call this legislation ill-considered is to give it too much credit: It was scarcely considered at all. Instead, it was strong-armed through both chambers by an administration that seized the opportunity to write its warrantless wiretapping program into law — or, more precisely, to write it out from under any real legal restrictions.
– – – – –

National Security: Congressional Capitulation On Spying

Since March, the Bush administration has been building a case for its FISA legislation. But it wasn’t clear until last week why it was pushing so urgently. On Tuesday, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) revealed on Fox News that earlier this year, a judge issued a secret ruling concluding “that the government had overstepped its authority in attempting to broadly surveil communications between two locations overseas that are passed through routing stations in the United States.” Boehner noted that this court order made “a key element of the Bush administration’s wiretapping efforts illegal,” a fact the White House has attempted to conceal from the public and many in Congress. “It clearly shows that Congress has been playing with half a deck,” said Jim Dempsey, policy director for the Center for Democracy and Technology. “The administration is asking lawmakers to vote on a very important piece of legislation based upon selective declassification of intelligence.”

Letters-to-the-Editor

never again

Today is the 62nd anniversary of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Remember it well and say, “never again.” Say there is a limit, there is a proper place to draw the line. Say that justifications cannot excuse the inexcusable. It would be evil madness to ever, ever, ever use that power again to fry the living.

And yet, Democrats and Republicans alike attacked Barack Obama for expressing a much more dilute sentiment. The insane scream that all cards are on the table, no options are inconceivable. I hope that somewhere in the chain of command there is someone with enough humanity to say, “NEVER AGAIN.”

Oh, well, look around. We’re vile. We’re going to destroy ourselves and the world one way or another. Might as well get it over with in a flash. mjh

PS: I hope you saw Masters of Science Fiction on Saturday. I assume the conservative bloggers are howling for blood.

Twisted, sightless wrecks of men
go groping on their knees
and cry in pain
now the sun has come to earth
— Paul Simon

Letters-to-the-Editor

Hug a Hippy Today

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This morning, Robert J. Samuelson starts his political column with this:

My younger son calls the Toyota Prius a “hippie car.” Not that Prius drivers are “hippies.” Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are college graduates. But like hippies, they’re making a loud lifestyle statement: We’re saving the planet; what are you doing?

Isn’t it amazing that nearly 40 years later, people still use hippy as a slur? It says volumes about Samuelson’s character that his younger son uses it that way. Bigotry is hereditary. Worse, it is deliberately passed on to the young, so, it may be more like child abuse. Samuelson and son are bigots.

Moreover, what does Samuelson think became of hippies? Surely some of them finished college and got good jobs. Those that lived would be in their 50’s and older. Does that escape Samuelson?

Say what you will about hippies — though if you’ve never met one, you don’t know what you’re talking about, like a bigot — their core beliefs were that the people can change the nation and that peace and love are more important than war. No wonder conservatives still hate them. mjh

PS: I wonder what Samuelson & Son think about Humvies and the loud lifestyle statement their drivers make. “Good conservative values,” no doubt.

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Feed a Fever

I read an interesting article today — interesting in its own right, but more so because I first read about the subject, Coley’s Toxins, nearly 25 years ago and I last thought about that almost 23 years ago when my Mom was diagnosed with cancer.

I’ve long had a broad interest in science. I contemplated majors in oceanography, chemistry and linguistics; I enjoyed math (except for geometry) in school. After school, I subscribed to various science and health magazines. (This was long before Tim Berners-Lee birthed the Web. Ask your grandparents what it was like.) So, there’s nothing odd about me reading about obscure cancer treatments long before it had any relevance in my life. I’ll let you inform yourself about Dr. Coley and his cancer discoveries by reading the same article I just did (link at end of this entry).

It was a year or two later, 23 years ago this very month, that information about cancer took on new urgency. My Mom was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (or non-non, whichever is considered less likely fatal — ironically). After I recovered from utter despair, I recalled the article I had read about this little-known treatment. I thought it might be called Coxey’s Toxins (one of the endlessly amusing effects of my dyslexia). I scoured the library’s periodicals. Imagine going to an old building and leafing through huge books with article titles to find a reference, then taking that to a librarian who would find the actual magazine somewhere in the dark stacks. No, that isn’t a metaphor: that’s what happened, once I found Coley instead of Coxey.

I reread that article and confirmed the hope it offered: cancer cells are weak and succumb to fever. Induce fever in a cancer patient and the cancer may die. (The new article offers other possible explanations for the effect.) Armed with a photocopy, I approached my Mother’s doctor and asked, “what about this?” Well, our cancer specialist was a busy man, to be sure, and educated beyond the likes of a distraught son with an article from a popular digest. No doubt my Mom had more faith in me, but she took her conventional chemo like a good patient. Was the mainstream cure really worse than the disease? Given how sick and weak it made her and that it was no cure at all, probably. mjh

Damn Interesting » Coley’s Cancer-Killing Concoction

Coley’s Cancer-Killing Concoction

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams