Blessings on you, Dan K.

Posted at June 25, 2008 4:04 PM in response to "I know I'm not part of this, but it kind of makes you feel like you are."

Readers of this post might be interested to read a critical review of the author's book on his experiences at Ketziot, Prisoners: A Muslim & A Jew Across The Middle East Divide.

Posted at June 24, 2008 10:16 PM in response to How Ketziot Never Could Have Prepared Me for Abu Ghraib

More travesty of a mockery of a sham.

In September 2007, the massacre in Nisour Square was only the largest and latest in a string of killings and other crimes by Blackwater.

The next administration needs to dry up the funding from all branches of the federal government to this private army.

Posted at May 9, 2008 6:01 PM in response to Feds Unlikely to Charge Blackwater for Baghdad Shootings

Imagine our ruling clique had decided to go with existing law and due process, and not to try to expand unchecked executive power to functional dictatorship levels. And that they'd imprisoned captured al-Qaeda suspects in federal prisons or at least brigs in the U.S., acknowledged in word and practice the prisoners' rights under the Geneva Conventions, and never gone near torture. {Admittedly, at this point it's a real test of one's imagination, they've taken us so far down the road of the national security state.}

We'd probably have had a good half-dozen convictions by the time of the 2004 elections, on top of which we'd know one hell of a lot more about the scope of the actual threat that faced us. But that last part's the heart of the matter -- exactly what the Cheney-Bush "administration" didn't want the U.S. public to understand. They needed the threat to be unknowable, huge, looming, able to be called on whenever the next looting or shooting opportunity arose.

Posted at May 6, 2008 8:34 PM in response to Today's Must Read

Man, does McCain look old and doddering in that ad.

Maybe that has something to do with why the Republicans are so up in arms about it, compared with their reaction to the economy-focused ad.

Posted at April 27, 2008 6:19 PM in response to DNC Launches New Ad Against McCain On Iraq -- RNC Says It's Illegal

A combination of

- outrage fatigue,

- hopelessness (Dems for sale in election year, particularly the presidential candidates who could make the most difference on this issue),

- the media and activist obsession with the primaries and election (which has muted response to torture-from-the top revelations, escalation in Iraq, etc.)

- concern that failure to bail out will lead to a bigger collapse (not claiming this is well-founded concern, but given the low level of understanding of what's going on, there's little effective challenge to this where it would matter, in Congress).

But thanks for setting down a marker. Who would it be worth pushing in Congress?

Posted at April 21, 2008 1:24 PM in response to George Will Moves to the Left of the Democrats

M.J.: Spencer Ackerman, Ari Berman, Max Blumenthal, Ezra Klein, Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Matt Yglesias (just to name the most prominent bloggers) have been posting about the J Street Project. Never heard of these writers? Google them some time and you'll see literally millions of "hits" referring to them, their opinions, their analyses, their take on events.

Is this post going to be republished somewhere else, or a reposting of something originally posted elsewhere?

Because it's pretty odd to consider these names are unfamiliar to readers of TPM -- Josh Marshall's own site.

Posted at April 20, 2008 2:58 PM in response to Caging Congressional Pander Bears: Why J Street in Necessary

Barksdale was expecting the missiles. They were expecting that they'd all be equipped with the dummy warheads. The surprise was to find that six of them were armed with the nuclear warheads -- something not apparent until they were seen up close.

Posted at September 26, 2007 9:06 PM in response to Simple Error My Ass

"everyone down the line becomes blind to the different color and weight of these nuclear weapons. Weight is a huge consideration for pilots. Barksdale? Why the staging area for Iraq to "decommision" nukes?"

1. The missiles are the same color; the warheads inside (visible only through a stamp-sized window) are silver if nuclear, painted if dummy.

The article makes reference to the fact that the nuclear missiles should have been marked red, but weren't.

2. The dummy warheads are the same weight (or close to it) as the nuclear ones; that's the sole reason for their existence inside the missiles -- so that test flights with them are the same as real flights.

3. Barksdale is not "the staging area for Iraq." It is the home of the 2nd Bomb Wing, as Minot is home of the 5th Bomb Wing. B-52s are based there, and I assume there are also missiles, nuclear-armed and not, stored there too. Which makes it a sensilble place for decommissioning. The missiles in question have been in the process of being decommissioned there for over a year.

Those determined to see the worst have to discount inconvenient facts and twist neutral ones into sinister harbingers. If anyone's wondering how the neocons convince themselves and the gullible of the reality of nonexistent threats, the process is on display in this post and this thread.

Posted at September 25, 2007 8:16 AM in response to Simple Error My Ass

This is simply the reverse of the truth. Pincus was one of the only reporters to pass along skeptical analysis of the administration's case for a weapons threat from Iraq in 2002 and 2003, and his stories were buried deep in the paper while the Post put prowar articles on page one and cheerled the invasion on the editorial page.

Walter Pincus is one of the best reporters in the business.

The author of this post and several of the commenters are putting dents in their own credibility here. Disappointing.

Posted at September 25, 2007 7:58 AM in response to Simple Error My Ass