The difference between a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ president

President Bush, center, played host to Presidents Pervez Musharraf, left, and Hamid Karzai, right, after the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan had traded barbed remarks while visiting America. Sept. 30th, 2006. New York Times

Yitzhak Rabin, Bill Clinton, and Yasser Arafat during the Oslo Accords on September 13, 1993. Wikipedia

Son completes unfinished Tolkien

He did a pretty good job on posthumously releasing most of the appendices, so this better be good:

An unfinished book by JRR Tolkien has been edited into a completed work by his son for publication next year.
Christopher Tolkien has spent 30 years working on The Children of Hurin, which The Lord of the Rings author started in 1918 and later abandoned. BBC

Bush: Capturing Bin Laden Is Not A Top Priority Use of American Resources

Thinkprogress taped something interesting on FOX “News”:

Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes appeared on Fox this morning to discuss his recent meeting with President Bush in the Oval Office. The key takeaway for Barnes was that “bin Laden doesn’t fit with the administration’s strategy for combating terrorism.” Barnes said that Bush told him capturing bin Laden is “not a top priority use of American resources.” Watch it. Think Progress

International Space Station successfully unfurls new solar panels

In the category totally cool: The International Space Station now has an even bigger solar panel:

The International Space Station continued to grow Thursday when the STS-115 crew unfurled a new set of solar arrays to a total length of 240 feet. (73 meters) NASA

Spain admits possible CIA flights

Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has admitted Spain may have been a stopover for secret CIA flights. BBC

All your base are belong to us!

I am absolutely in love with all the new things Apple released yesterday, especially the games you can now buy for your 5G video iPod for $5 a pop (the equivalent of two coffees at Starbucks). But it seems that the really neat game Zuma (US iTunes store link) has some translation issues:

Bush’ did not admit Saddam-9/11 link was wrong

I almost got excited when I saw that The Guardian is running a front page story with the headline “Bush: Saddam was not responsible for 9/11“. I am not sure why they did so, but in the speech Bush gave last night and they are referencing he did no such thing. He even yet again tried to tie 9/11 to Saddam by association:

On September the 11th, we learned that America must confront threats before they reach our shores, whether those threats come from terrorist networks or terrorist states. I’m often asked why we’re in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was not responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The answer is that the regime of Saddam Hussein was a clear threat. My administration, the Congress, and the United Nations saw the threat — and after 9/11, Saddam’s regime posed a risk that the world could not afford to take. The world is safer because Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.And now the challenge is to help the Iraqi people build a democracy that fulfills the dreams of the nearly 12 million Iraqis who came out to vote in free elections last December. White House

That’s what is called a non-denial denial. A clever one, but one nevertheless. He doesn’t admit anything because he only says “people ask me” about the lack of the link, but doesn’t say that there is no link. There’s a difference and Bush is treading that line quite carefully.

Kicking the flag

How better to commemorate those who died on 9/11 than to tread on a flag? Or is this image meant as a summarization of Bush’s presidency? After all, 9/11 was his springboard to just about everything.

Rumsfeld “forbade” post-war planning for Iraq

It’s one thing to be incompetent. But to not even try?

Long before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists to develop plans for securing a postwar Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.

In fact, said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid, Rumsfeld said “he would fire the next person” who talked about the need for a postwar plan.
Rumsfeld did replace Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff in 2003, after Shinseki told Congress that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to secure postwar Iraq. Daily Press

Echoes of 9/11 Define Life 5 Years Later

The New York Times has opened a part of their Web site to comments from the public on how their lives have changed since the attacks. I find accounts such as this quite disturbing:

I do everything differently. I don’t like to be in crowds, I don’t ride elevators, I work from home. I don’t trust anyone at all. I shop and run errands as late as possible. I don’t travel on bridges or in tunnels. I feel trapped, held hostage by my fears. I don’t smile and laugh anymore. I have dark negative thoughts about the world events and people and have lost all faith and hope due to 9/11. I’ve become a hermit, a recluse. I’m thinking of leaving and moving to the mountains in NC. Imagine that, a catholic Yankee in the buckle of the bible belt. New York Times

Terrorism tries to instill fear. Nevermind that the US government seems to be rather happy having a comfortably-fearfull electorate, if accounts like this are as prevalent in real life as they are on the NYT Web site, we are in even more trouble than we thought.

It’s official: ‘No Saddam link to Iraq al-Qaeda’

Try not to be too shocked:

There is no evidence of formal links between Iraqi ex-leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq prior to the 2003 war, a US Senate report says.
The finding is contained in a 2005 CIA report released by the Senate’s Intelligence Committee on Friday.BBC

If only we had known this. Well… Hindsight is 20/20, isn’t it? Or is it more like 2,899/19,688 (dead/wounded US soldiers)?

Now all we have to wait for is someone like Cheney to jump up and say “I never said that.” Then we’re exactly where we were 2 years ago when Bush was facing an increasingly upset electorate.

SciFi?!?

Man am I pissed at the SciFi Channel. One bright point of my weekly routine is (soon was) watching Stargate-SG1 on the SciFi Channel but SciFi (the people who also cancelled Farscape) cancelled that show and refuse to give any other network the rights to continue producing the show.

So today, on Star Trek’s 40th anniversary, what does SciFi have on? Ripley’s Believe it or Not! I also hear they have wresting shows.

UPN was bad, but the so called “SciFi” Channel has lost any sense of direction. They should know better.

GOP Senators’ Bid to Confirm Bolton Is Called Off

Wow:

Republican efforts to formally confirm John R. Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations hit an unexpected snag yesterday when a Republican senator in a tough reelection bid said he could not support the diplomat until the Bush administration answers his questions on Middle East policy. Washington Post

Thanks for bringing a little sunshine to an otherwise rainy day.

Admission of prisons a new low for Bush

The head of Europe’s human rights watchdog yesterday called for monitoring of CIA agents operating in Britain and other European countries, after President George Bush’s admission that the US had detained terrorist suspects in secret prisons. Guardian Unlimited

Bush must have really believed the secret prisons were necessary, otherwise he would never have allowed them. But now he sells both them and international standing just to score some favor points with his “base” at home.

Boy that’s low.

Complications

In case you are wondering why the clear cut “us against them” Bush-propaganda doesn’t work:

The video also showed Muhammad Atef, the group’s commander until he was killed by a US air strike in Afghanistan in 2001; and Ramzi Binal-shibh, allegedly one of the September 11 planners who was captured in Pakistan four years ago and is one of the captives George Bush said would be transferred to Guantánamo Bay from secret prisons abroad. Guardian Unlimited

It’s because it’s too complicated.

Staying the Course to Nowhere

Brilliant News Analysis via the BBC:

Professor Michael Clarke of King’s College, London, is gloomy in the short term at least.

“If I was Osama Bin Laden sitting in my cave, I would think I was winning,” he said.

“I would consider that I am still at large, I have a global movement, I strike a chord with young Muslims everywhere, I am an inspiration not a planner and I have lured the US into wars in Afghanistan and Iraq of my choosing and of my way of fighting.

“Nor is the West countering the easy narrative offered by the jihadis. They are, and I agree with the Bush language on this, Islamic fascists, but we are not engaging enough in the war of ideas and are instead dwelling on their actions. They can counter that by dwelling on ours, in a game of moral equivalence.”

(…) The extent to which Iraq has influenced events can be seen by looking at the language used by President Bush before and after the invasion.

On 31 August this year he told the American Legion in Salt Lake City: “This war will be long… but it’s a war we must wage, and a war we will win…The war we fight today is more than a military conflict; it is the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century.”

For many around the world, sympathy for the United States has changed into suspicion and, for some, even into hatred

His use of the future tense in “We will win” contrasts with what he said before the invasion. On 26 February 2003, he declared in a speech in Washington: “We have arrested, or otherwise dealt with, many key commanders of al-Qaeda. Across the world, we are hunting down the killers one by one. We are winning.”

The change of tense shows how far any expectation of victory has been put off. BBC

40th

Star Trek is turning 40 today. Seems to me we could all need a bit IDIC.

Merkel rules out military option for dealing with Iran

BERLIN - German Chancellor Angela Merkel has underlined there can be “no military option” for dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme, a spokesman said Monday.

“The door for negotiations remains open,” said chief German government spokesman Ulrich Wilhelm.

Wilhelm added: “The chancellor has expressed the view that there is no military option.”

US President George W. Bush has repeatedly said he does not rule out any option for dealing with Iran’s nuclear programme, which is widely believed to be aimed at building nuclear weapons. DPA

Danke! (This time for real.)

Resolution to oust Rumsfeld mulled in Congress

Good idea:

A resolution demanding the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after he compared Iraq war critics to Nazi appeasers has strong support among U.S. Senate Democrats, a senior Democrat said on Sunday.

A resolution against Rumsfeld, long a lightning rod for criticism of the Iraq war, would struggle to be passed by the Republican-controlled Senate and would anyway not be binding on the administration of President George W. Bush.

But Democrats, who have a strong chance to win back control of at least one chamber of Congress in November mid-term elections, will use it to send a message that the administration’s policies in Iraq are failing, New York Sen. Charles Schumer said. Reuters

Worldandnation: Pursuit is ‘like chasing ghosts’

Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the most publicized manhunt in history has drawn a blank. The CIA has reorganized agents searching for the al-Qaida leaders in the face of the evolving nature of the terrorist threat. And the American military’s once-singular focus is diffused by the need for reconstruction and a growing fight against the Taliban, the resurgent Afghan Islamic movement that once hosted bin Laden. SP Times

I take it that’s Clinton’s fault too?

Israel prepping war with Iran?

Threatened by a potentially nuclear-armed Tehran, Israel is preparing for a possible war with both Iran and Syria, according to Israeli political and military sources.

The conflict with Hezbollah has led to a strategic rethink in Israel. A key conclusion is that too much attention has been paid to Palestinian militants in Gaza and the West Bank instead of the two biggest state sponsors of terrorism in the region, who pose a far greater danger to Israel’s existence, defence insiders say.

The challenge from Iran and Syria is now top of the Israeli defence agenda, higher than the Palestinian one,” said an Israeli defence source. (…)

The Israeli defence establishment believes that Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear programme means war is likely to become unavoidable.

“In the past we prepared for a possible military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities,” said one insider, “but Iran’s growing confidence after the war in Lebanon means we have to prepare for a full-scale war, in which Syria will be an important player.” Sunday Times

The important word here is “possible” war. Israel, like any modern country including the U.S., always has contingency plans (Or should I say, should? The U.S. plans apparently stink.). Israel therefore has to plan accordingly. And in most cases leaking information about the existence of such plans makes the plans as much a weapon as the armies that would have the execute it.

But for the love of the god of your choice: Not another war. Please?

“I no longer have power to save Iraq from civil war,” warns Shia leader

He may have his own motives, but this statement from one of Iraq’s most influential individuals should still trouble:

The most influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war.

Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.

“I will not be a political leader any more,” he told aides. “I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters.” Telegraph

Don’t don’t worry. “We” just captured one al-Quaeda operative. So that’s one down, several thousand to go…

One step closer to defeat

The “Iraqi forces” (yeah right, international troops had nothing to do with this.) have allegedly captured a high ranking al-Qaeda member:

The Iraqi authorities have announced the arrest of a man they say is the second-in-command of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Iraq’s national security adviser, Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, told a news conference the man, Hamad Jama al-Saedi, was detained a few days ago. BBC

Good job at finding and apprehending him. But the real question remains: Are terrorists™ recruiting new members faster than “we” kill them?

Nope, we are actually helping them recruit new members by playing right into the propaganda the terrorists™ use. This is like giving a band-aid to a leper.

God Bless the BBC

A seasoned reporter after 40 years at the BBC:

Over 40 years I myself have made many mistakes, every single one of which I feel badly about.

But, like my colleagues, I can honestly say I have never broadcast anything I did not believe to be correct. The culture of telling the truth for its own sake is as deeply embedded in the BBC in 2006 as it was in 1966.

It’s a funny old outfit: slow, cumbersome, and sometimes intensely irritating. But it still does its level best to be honest and unbiased.

For that I remain profoundly grateful. BBC