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Morning headlines brought to you by Carolyn Kay MakeThemAccountable.com Top StoryThe War as We Saw It
As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day... The claim that we are increasingly in control of the battlefields in Iraq is an assessment arrived at through a flawed, American-centered framework. Yes, we are militarily superior, but our successes are offset by failures elsewhere. What soldiers call the “battle space” remains the same, with changes only at the margins. Steve Bradenton
The WorldMortar attack kills 12 in east Baghdad
BAGHDAD - A mortar barrage slammed into a mainly Shiite east Baghdad neighborhood Sunday, killing 12 and wounding 31, police said.
Mortars, bombs in Iraq's north kill 11
BAGHDAD - Mortar shells slammed into a Shiite enclave north of Baghdad, killing at least seven people on Saturday, police said, while officials in Kirkuk warned that a string of deadly bombings showed that insurgents were finding new ways to thwart security measures.
Military commanders tell Brown to withdraw from Iraq without delay
Senior military commanders have told the Government that Britain can achieve "nothing more" in south-east Iraq, and that the 5,500 British troops still deployed there should move towards withdrawal without further delay… The withdrawal of 500 soldiers has already been announced by the Government. The Army is drawing up plans to "reposture" the 5,000 that will be left at Basra airport, and aims to bring the bulk of them home in the next few months.
British forces useless in Basra, say officials
One US official said that recent US military intelligence reports sent to the White House had concluded that Britain had "lost" Basra, and that Pentagon war games were predicting a virtual civil war in the South once British troops left. He said: "When the White House makes the case for continuing the surge on the Hill they will say: 'Look what happened in Basra when the Brits went back to their barracks. We can't pull out now. Give us more time to get it right'."
Don’t you just love these people? Unless you do what they want you to do, they trash you, and they use your actions to their advantage.—Caro
Al-Maliki encourages Iran's growing presence in Iraq
On the surface, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's visit to Tehran on Aug. 8 to talk with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was another effort to enlist Iran's help in bringing security to Iraq. The real purpose, however, was quite different. Al-Maliki's trip helped smooth the way for the Iranian clerics to install a sister Islamic republic in Iraq.
Way to help Dick Cheney invade Iran, Mr. Prime Minister.—Caro
Why Iraqis oppose U.S.-backed oil law
(The law gives) gives foreign corporations control over exploration and development in one of the world's largest oil reserves, through agreements called "production-sharing" contracts. Such deals are so disadvantageous that they have been rejected by most oil-producing countries… U.S. legislators trying to impose the oil law might note that they are requiring the Iraqi government to betray one of the few reasons Iraqis have for supporting it - its ability to keep oil revenue in public hands.
Proposal: Longer U.N. stay in Lebanon
UNITED NATIONS - France circulated a draft U.N. resolution Friday that would extend the mandate of the 13,600-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon and call for a permanent cease-fire and long-term solution to last summer's Israel-Hezbollah war.
Ahmadinejad: Israel is bearer of Satan
TEHRAN, Iran - Iran's hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that Israel was the standard bearer of Satan and the Jewish state would soon fall apart, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported Saturday.
Suicide blast in Afghanistan kills 15: police
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AFP) - A suicide bomber rammed his explosives laden vehicle into a US convoy in southern Afghanistan on Saturday killing 15 people, including 11 civilians, and wounding 26, police said.
Russian long-range bombers back on patrol
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that he has ordered the resumption of long-range strategic bomber flights, a return to a Cold War-era practice and another sign that the Kremlin is flexing its military might amid a deepening chill in relations with the U.S. The NationU.S. says Iranians train Iraqi insurgents
BAGHDAD - For the first time, the U.S. military said on Sunday that Iranian soldiers are in Iraq training insurgents to attack American forces. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a top U.S. commander who is in charge of a large swath of Iraq south of Baghdad, believes there are about 50 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps in his battlefield area, military spokeswoman Maj. Alayne Conway said.
Analyst: Iranian force gaining power
WASHINGTON - An elite Iranian force likely to be designated a foreign terrorist organization by the Bush administration has close links to Iran's nuclear program and operates most of its surface-to-surface missiles, a leading analyst says.
The two articles above couldn’t possibly be coordinated, could they?—Caro
The Founders Had an Idea for Handling Alberto Gonzales
Impeaching Mr. Gonzales has moved beyond the hypothetical, now that Jay Inslee, Democrat of Washington, and five other prosecutors-turned-representatives have introduced a resolution to conduct an impeachment inquiry… The grounds set out in the Constitution are vague, and the Democrats do not want to be seen as overreaching. Members of Congress should keep in mind, however, that the founders gave them the impeachment power for a reason — and Mr. Gonzales’s malfeasance is just the sort they were worried about.
Concerns Raised on Wider Spying Under New Law
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month … may grant the government the right to collect a range of information on American citizens inside the United States without warrants, as long as the administration asserts that the spying concerns the monitoring of a person believed to be overseas.
Court Weighs Making Public Rulings on U.S. Wiretapping
(The) Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court … reviews and approves requests by the government for wiretaps in national security cases, operating in near-total secrecy… The American Civil Liberties Union filed a motion with the intelligence court last week asking it to make public its recent, classified rulings on the scope of the government’s wiretapping powers. On Thursday, the court said it would consider the request.
The lost Padilla verdict
(Jose) Padilla's military detention and his treatment while detained may in fact have been unlawful. The Bush administration's real victory (in obtaining Padilla’s conviction) was in preventing the courts from saying so.
Backlash against illegal immigration grows
Scores of organizations, ranging from mainstream to fringe groups, are marshalling forces… against illegal immigration… While most of the groups register legitimate, widespread concerns about the impact of illegal immigration on jobs, social services and national security, the intense rhetoric is generating fears of an emerging dark side, evident in growing discrimination against Hispanics and a surge of xenophobia unseen since the last big wave of immigration in the early 20th century.
Only then it was the Irish and Italians who were discriminated against. Now, their children and grandchildren are discriminating against newer groups. Can we never break this cycle?—Caro
Handling of mine disaster questioned
WASHINGTON - The government agency overseeing coal mine safety was supposed to have changed its ways after West Virginia's deadly Sago Mine disaster. Its handling of the cave-ins at Utah's Crandall Canyon Mine have some worried that the changes didn't go far enough.
Katrina goat puts bad days behind
WASHINGTON - Nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina overwhelmed New Orleans, Michael Brown, who bore the brunt of the criticism for the federal response to the storm, has moved into a career promoting disaster-response and data-mining technology for government agencies and private customers… (S)ome of his critics wonder how a former federal official who came to symbolize inept emergency response can be selling disaster relief products to the government.
How Rove Directed Federal Assets for GOP Gains
Thirteen months before President Bush was reelected (sic), chief strategist Karl Rove (ordered that t)he staging of official announcements, high-visibility trips and declarations of federal grants had to be carefully coordinated with the White House political affairs office to ensure the maximum promotion of Bush's reelection agenda and the Republicans in Congress who supported him, according to documents and some of those involved in the effort.
How Missed Signs Contributed to a Mortgage Meltdown
(T)he cast of characters who missed signals like the rise of delinquencies and foreclosures is becoming easier to identify. They include investment banks happy to sell risky but lucrative mortgage debt to hedge funds hungry for high interest payments, bond rating agencies willing to hope for the best in the housing market and provide sterling credit appraisals to debt issuers, and subprime mortgage brokers addicted to high sales volumes. MediaPermanent link to MTA daily media news
The Grown-Ups Of the 82nd (by Digby)
(Will the Sunday op-ed by the seven non-coms deployed in Iraq) get the kind of wall-to-wall coverage that the O'Pollack piece did a week or so ago, at the clear behest of the right wing who were pimping them like hookers to any TV John who would have them… My feeling is that they will not get the coverage for a couple of reasons. The first is that … the Dems don't seem to have any kind of apparatus to "catapault the propaganda" (or seemingly any desire to have one) and the second is because I think the right will go into overdrive to present these guys as good and decent patriotic non-coms (who-aren't-all-that-bright-if-you-know-what-I-mean-shhhh.) (Emphasis added.)
As I’ve said for years, progressives need a comprehensive media strategy. The 2006 election didn’t change that. Is anybody listening?—Caro
Mythbuster: US Tags Iran for Casualties from Its Own Attacks
WASHINGTON - When a top U.S. commander in Iraq reported last week that attacks by Shiite militias with links to Iran had risen to 73 percent of all July attacks … because of an effort by Iran to oust the United States from Iraq, referring to “intelligence reports” of a “surge” in Iranian assistance. But the obvious reason for the rise in Shiite-related U.S. casualties … is that the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr was defending itself against a rising tempo of attacks by U.S. forces at the same time attacks by al-Qaeda forces had fallen.
FAIR Action Alert: USA Today's Iraq Progress
Government efforts to portray progress in the Iraq War were boosted by USA Today's August 13 front page story, "Major attacks decline in Iraq." The paper's report relied entirely on current and former military officials, with the key claim being that "large al-Qaeda-style attacks in Iraq have declined nearly 50% since the United States started increasing troop levels in Iraq about six months ago."… This claim deserved some serious scrutiny, but USA Today unfortunately provided none.
Mythbuster: Rumsfeld's Mysterious Resignation
The touchy secret about (Donald) Rumsfeld’s departure seems to have been that Bush didn’t want the American people to know that one of the chief Iraq War architects had turned against the idea of an open-ended military commitment – and that Bush had found himself with no choice but to oust Rumsfeld for his loss of faith in the neoconservative cause.
Cooper Contradicts Rove: He’s ‘Dissembling’ With ‘Nonsense’ About The Plame Leak
Appearing on Meet The Press (Sunday), Matthew Cooper, one of the reporters to whom (Karl) Rove spoke about Plame, said … “To imply that he didn’t know about (Plame’s identity), or that he heard it in some rumor out in the hallways, is nonsense.” Cooper also contradicted Rove’s characterization of their conversation…: “I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD.“
Annals of Reporting (by Josh Marshall)
(Sunday) morning I was alerted to an opinion column in the Los Angeles Times by Michael Skube, a journalism professor at Elon University. The sum of the piece is that the blogosphere is as rife with disputation as it is thin on information, or more specifically, reporting, writing that demands "time, thorough fact-checking and verification and, most of all, perseverance."… I sent Skube an email telling him that I found it hard to believe he was very familiar with TPM… Not long after I wrote I got a reply: "I didn't put your name into the piece and haven't spent any time on your site…. Your name was inserted late by an editor who perhaps thought I needed to cite more examples ... " And this is from someone who teaches journalism?
If not for the Talking Points Memo group of websites, we might never have known about the U.S. attorney firings for political reasons.—Caro
ROFLMAO (by John Amato)
Jane has some observations about Mark Williams. “Hamsher: So let me do the dirty work and mention what the wonks won’t — this guy has a perfectly frozen forehead. Per. fect. ly. Watch the clip at Media Matters and look betwen his eyes and at his eyebrows. Absolutely immobile. No lift, no scrunch. Nobody of Williams’ age has that little movement without being shot to shit with Botox unless they’ve got some sort of neurological disorder. Watch him. He’s a preening.”
My comment: Shame on you, John, for posting a link to such trash. Who cares whether the guy botoxes his forehead, for God's sake? This is the kind of meaningless drivel that we criticize in the mainstream media.—Caro
The Battle for Eyeballs
(One thing) that probably led to the smaller growth percentage among the political blogs--especially the highly partisan ones the study looks at--as compared to big newspapers, is that the sample set has probably come pretty close to maxing out on its potential audience. There are only so many hardcore political junkies out there on either side who want to read what these outlets have to say. It's by definition a niche audience, and as such its growth, if it happens at all, will probably be slower than that of a general-interest newspaper.
And the silliness above is one of the best examples of why liberal blogs aren’t adding readership as fast as the large newspaper websites.—Caro Technology & ScienceSkype Comes Back, Do You Still Trust It?
Skype was back up and running on Saturday, but the question remains if this week’s outage will have a lasting effect on the confidence people place in the service. Will anyone feel comfortable using Skype as their primary voice communications tool if a multi-day outage is possible?
Phony Ad On Job Sites Leads To 100,000 Stolen Identities
The Trojan stealing the data was hidden in a fraudulent advertisement on online job sites like Monster.com.
Coloring Compound in Fruits, Veggies May Cut Colon Cancer Risk
Lab tests show altering anthocyanin molecules could lead to new treatments, study says
Breast cancer vaccine looks safe, study shows
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A vaccine designed to treat breast cancer appeared to be safe in women with advanced disease and showed signs of actually slowing down tumors, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.
Scientists around world in race to create artificial life
WASHINGTON: Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer… (S)everal scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.
Greatest Mysteries: Where is the Rest of the Universe?
Scientists trying to create a detailed inventory of all the matter and energy in the cosmos run into a curious problem—the vast majority of it is missing… In fact, only 4 percent of the matter and energy in the universe has been found. The other 96 percent remains elusive, but scientists are looking in the farthest reaches of space and deepest depths of Earth to solve the two dark riddles. EnvironmentNASA Data Goof Fuels Global Warming Skepticism
The discrepancy occurred because the source of U.S. temperature data was changed between 1999 and 2000. It was thought that the data were matched across the two sources, but there turned out to be a very subtle mismatch between the temperature records… To fix the mismatch after McIntyre brought it to light, the NASA scientists took an area where the two records overlapped and adjusted one to match the other. The adjustments that were made to the data were fairly small… However, some blogging skeptics now claim that these adjustments cast doubt on the conclusions of warming temperatures.
Warmer Ocean Fuels Hurricane Dean
A new NASA animation shows the rise in sea surface temperatures that helped to spawn Hurricane Dean in the central Atlantic and Tropical Storm Erin in the Gulf of Mexico this week.
Eco-Mil0 Milionaires See Boom Times Ahead
Mankind's response to climate change will shift how the world gets its energy and is already making "green barons" out of early investors in renewable energy, clean technologies and carbon trading. Reuters spoke to four entrepreneurs who are cashing in on the energy revolution and who say there is more money to be made.
Want the next big energy source? Dig in the weeds
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Plants that can be grown for fuel are often touted as a vast, clean energy source -- except by those who say precious food is being diverted into gas tanks, and that biofuel crops are using up dwindling land and water. For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com. |
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