US death toll in Iraq for October tops 100

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The U.S. military death toll in Iraq for October climbed to 100 on Monday, a week before U.S. elections in which President George W. Bush’s Republicans could lose control of Congress over his policies in Iraq. link

Claim: Saddam accepted US demands, Bush didn’t accept

A few years ago I was taking photos of a TV screen showing Saddam Hussein for the next morning’s front page. Saddam was responding to a speech by George W. Bush earlier that night that had issued an ultimatum. Back then I wondered out loud, so if Saddam says “we open our borders and I am leaving as dictator” this whole war is off?

Bearing that question in mind I’ll hand this on as is:

A former political adviser to Saddam Hussein’s son said today that Saddam was willing to yield to all American demands before the U.S. invasion of Iraq — but that the Bush administration refused his offers.

The disclosure was made by Hossam Shaltout, a Canadian aerospace engineer, former American pilot, and founder of the peace organization Rights and Freedom International (http://www.rightsandfreedom.com), who said that war could have been averted, but Bush aides blocked his efforts to announce Saddam’s decision.

“Saddam was willing to yield to all American demands, announced and unannounced, to reach peaceful resolution,” said Shaltout, “but the Bush administration, including Elizabeth Cheney, undersecretary of State, David Welch, the U.S. ambassador in Egypt, and Gene Cretz, his political attache, did not respond to his offers.” Yahoo

Rove

Wondering what White House chief-strategist Karl Rove is up to in order to cling to power? The LA Times has an extensive account here.

Guardian spells out what Cheney said

I’ve often said you can learn more about what’s going on in the US by means of foreign media rather than local media. For example the way UK-paper The Guardian reported on Vice President Dick Cheney telling reporters he was cool with at least some forms of torture:

The use of a form of torture known as waterboarding to gain information is a “no-brainer”, the US vice-president, Dick Cheney, told a radio interviewer, it was reported today. Guardian

You’d never read it worded like that in an American mainstream paper. Let alone under the headline The Guardian published the article under on their front page: Cheney endorses simulated drowning

It’s only the truth. So why not say it?

Because the I.R.S. works for the White House

The recent tool in a row of desperate moves (see below) to retain Republican control of Congress are tax collectors:

The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered his agency to delay collecting back taxes from Hurricane Katrina victims until after the Nov. 7 elections and the holiday season, saying he did so in part to avoid negative publicity.

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election snapshot

Today’s front front page of the New York Times gives a nice snapshot of where the election is heading.

First of for the members of the “reality based community” and also a reason why Republicans are panicky:

The economy grew more slowly in the third quarter than at any time since early 2003, held back by a deflating housing market.

The Commerce Department reported this morning that the nation’s total output of goods and services expanded at an annual rate of just 1.6 percent in the three months ended Sept. 30. That preliminary estimate compares with a revised rate of 2.6 percent in the second quarter and the robust 5.6 percent rate recorded in the first. The figures are seasonally adjusted. New York Times

And now The Issue™ that Republican strategists hope will scare voters into the election booth:

The divisive debate over gay marriage, which played a prominent role in 2004 campaigns but this year largely faded from view, erupted anew on Thursday as President Bush and Republicans across the country tried to use a court ruling in New Jersey to rally dispirited conservatives to the polls.

Wednesday’s ruling, in which the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that gay couples are entitled to the same legal rights and financial benefits as heterosexual couples, had immediate ripple effects, especially in Senate races in some of the eight states where voters are considering constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage.
New York Times

The only way Republicans can win this thing is to distract voters from story A by gay bashing enough to make voters focus on story B. Rinse. Repeat. (Story B is non-story really. In what other western country would a ruling that essentially says “gays are humans too” cause such a stink?)

Ronald D. Moore interview

Back when I was opinion editor/columnist I wrote a column about how relevant the commentary of the new Battletar Galactica is (link), a view that’s only re-affiremed by an interview show-maker Ronald D. Moore gave a few days ago. Some excerpts:

Q: The parallels to the Iraqi war I think are very clear. Did the parallel come from you or some sci-fi executive?

Moore: Fundamentally it came from me and I felt okay from that first weekend of thinking about it, okay this is going to deal with 9/11 and it’s going to deal with a lot of things that we’re going through in this society at that moment. It was just part of the premise. It was always going to be in the show and once you were on that path it just felt like we’re just going to keep doing this.

We’re going to deal with things that happened in our contemporary reality, but just you go through a different prison. The show would never be a direct allegory. Laura Roslin is not going to be George W. Bush. The Cylons are not going to be al-Qaeda, but they were going to have elements of it and part of the opportunity of the show was to move pieces around the game board a little bit. Say, okay well we’ve all experienced this set of events, this set of emotions. What if I move this piece over here and what if I put you over there? How do you feel about it then?…One of the foundational elements of the show is the religious conflict between the two civilizations. The monotheism of the Cylons. The polytheism of the Colonies. You know what is God? What is human? What does it mean to be alive? commingsoon.net

Read the full interview here.

Paging The Doctor

This is a Doctor Who episode waiting to happen.

CIA tried to silence EU on torture flights

Un-fucking-believable:

The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the human rights record of one of America’s key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal.

According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and “avert pressure from EU” over human rights abuses in the north African country. The report describes Morocco as a “valuable partner in the fight against terrorism”. Guardian

Translation: We let you see one of your citizens if you shut up about us illegally detaining and torturing him, and countless others.

Pigeon v. Pelican

About ten years ago I sat in a park in London and wondered out loud if the pelicans ever eat any of the pidgeons that kept pestering them. Today I read this on the BBC Web site:

Pelican swallows pigeon in park (article includes picture)

One more mystery solved.

Ninjas

A regular day in Tampa.

Four ninjas steal ATM
Tampa, Florida - It’s not quite Halloween, but that didn’t stop some costumed bandits from making off with a gas station’s ATM.

Tampa Police say four men dressed in ninja outfits slammed a white Ford pickup truck into the Sunoco gas station at MacDill and Azeele on Monday morning.

The suspects picked up the automatic teller machine and drove off. They then went to Riverfront Park, took the money out and drove the truck with the ATM into the Hillsborough River and fled on foot.

The robbery was reported just after 5 AM. The truck was reported stolen and the gas station was not open to the public at the time because it is undergoing renovation.

There has been no sign of the ninjas. WTSB Tampa

12,953

For the record, I just deleted 12,953 versions of this on this site:

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The spam bots have been fornicating quite incessantly this month. That’s also while the comments are down for the time being. Just send me a mail instead.

Five years ago

Five years ago today the world got its first peek at the iPod. Has it really been five years? (Must have been… the Apple Store in Tampa opened on the Thursday after a certain Tuesday: 9/11/01. The iPod came out a few weeks later and I was second in line to buy one that morning. Geesh, time flies when you’re having fun.)

Watch the original introduction by Sir Steve Himself here. That was the prettiest brick I’ve ever had the fortune of lugging around. Best. Product. Ever. Truly Insanely Great™.

If you’ll excuse me now, I have some “Lost” podcasts to catch up with while playing poker on my iPod. (insert geeky giggles here)

US State department official: US ‘cannot stay course’ in Iraq

The US is not winning in Iraq and will not be able to stay the course in the long-term, a US state department insider has said.

Former intelligence official Wayne White told the BBC that violence in Iraq was “getting worse”.

A senior US state department official earlier said that the US has shown “arrogance and stupidity” in Iraq.

(…)”The effort can’t be sustained over the long haul, and so we can’t stay a course, I think, that requires years and years more.”

He said: “We’re not winning. It’s apparent.

“I checked with almost a dozen sources in Baghdad in just the last 24 hours,” Mr White said. “Every single one of them answered the question as to whether the violence was lessening, or getting worse, with - ‘worse’.”
BBC

Many thanks to the soon to be ex-state department official Wayne White. Join the Ellsberg club.

new US policy: space travel only by our rules

The nonsensical “with us or against us”-Bush doctrine now extends into space:

President Bush has signed a new National Space Policy that rejects future arms-control agreements that might limit U.S. flexibility in space and asserts a right to deny access to space to anyone “hostile to U.S. interests.”

The document, the first full revision of overall space policy in 10 years, emphasizes security issues, encourages private enterprise in space, and characterizes the role of U.S. space diplomacy largely in terms of persuading other nations to support U.S. policy.

“Freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power,” the policy asserts in its introduction. Washington Post

In other words: The only way into space is past us.

Iraq’s President Talabani backs ‘Iran-Syria plan’ to give them more influence in Iraq

Ever since former Secretary of State James Baker showed up on the Daily Show last week (watch the excellent interview here.) I have been wondering what those “alternatives” are he is supposedly is coming up with for the Bush administration to fix Iraq. And why is his groups paper coming out AFTER the election? Are the things they are dreaming up to “fix” Iraq really that extrodinary/extreme/scary?

The BBC has some insight:

Violence in Iraq could end “within months” if Iran and Syria joined efforts to stabilise the country, says Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

He told the BBC the move would “be the beginning of the end of terrorism”.

The idea for the US to open talks with Iran and Syria over Iraq is said to be under consideration by a panel of experts examining US policy on Iraq.

The panel, led by a former US secretary of state, is also said to think that “staying the course” is untenable. BBC

Gives a new meaning to the popular GOP-propaganda line “when they stand up, we stand down” doesn’t it? Handing Iraq over to Iran… and I thought I had heard it all.

For all the wrong reasons

Don’t get me wrong, I am seriously excited and relieved Americans are finally waking up and are becoming increasingly pissed at the GOP for all its lying and power grabbing. But why did we need a sex scandal for that to happen? After Katrina, Iraq, 9/11 (no relation to Iraq) and Afghanistan it took was a SEX scandal? Seriously?

Numbers looking good though. Via the NY Times:

Story here.

Musharraf v. Bush

I finally got around to watching The Daily Show from Sept. 26 with Pakistan’s Musharraf as guest. I am still not sure what to make of Musharraf’s motives, but let me say this: It’s outright embarassing that Musharraf is explanining a situation American politician talk about daily in a more coherent, logical and careful of long term implications than any American politician.

Wach the interview after the jump.
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