Month: August 2007

One reason the surge is "working" in bringing some peace to some areas in Iraq: there’s a truce between Shia soldiers who have infiltrated the Iraq military under US command and the Shia militias. Duh. Totten sees beneath the spin here:

I went inside the Tactical Operations Center and spoke to the Public Affairs Officer. "What can I help you with, Mike?" he said. "I want an on-the-record interview with Military Intelligence," I said. "Why?" he said. I told him what I had heard. "I can print rumor or fact," I said. He got me the interview.

Master Sergeant Jeffrey K. Tyler met with me privately. "It’s true," he said. "Many of the Iraqi Army soldiers here are supporters of JAM.” JAM is military shorthand for Jaysh al Mahdi, or Moqtada al Sadr’s radical Shia Mahdi Army militia.

"They aren’t in JAM cells necessarily, but they are sympathizers. They may let JAM guys through checkpoints, for example. They aren’t out kidnapping Sunnis or anything like that. They are sympathizers, not direct actors. Almost all the Iraqi Army soldiers here are Shias."

"Is their presence here the reason we aren’t getting mortared?" I said. "Because the Mahdi Army doesn’t want to blow up their own people?"

"We think that’s probably so," he said and nodded with confidence.

I didn’t hear that in the briefing when I first got there.

     

I bet he didn’t. Michael’s conclusion:

Nothing makes me more pessimistic about Iraq’s future prospects than this. The Mahdi Army is Iran’s major proxy in Iraq. It is, in effect, the Iraqi branch of Hezbollah.

And we’re training them.

An Indian child holds the Indian national flag on a beach in Mumbai, 15 August 2007, as India marks 60 years of Independence. India is celebrating its 60th anniversary of Independence from British rule. By Sajjad Hussain/AFP/Getty.

"I’ve never paid for private healthcare because I’m a socialist. Now I find you can get tummy tucks and cosmetic surgery on the NHS but not the drugs I need to stay alive. It is a scandal," – socialized medicine patient Tony Wilson. Hey: the drug was expensive.

Ambers sums it up:

Hillary Clinton reads recent political history materially; The country’s political cleavages are not artificial or contrived; they’re cut from basic differences in how to organize society. Democrats want to be proud of their identity as Democrats again; the central animating principle of her candidacy is that the country sufffers; that President Bush and the Republicans are to blame; that Hillary Clinton is the solution. Americans don’t hate government; they just hate when government doesn’t work. The Clintons know how to make government work; as president Hillary Clinton will recertify government. How does Clinton win news cycles?   When she’s attacked by Republicans or President Bush.

Obama wants to remind Democrats of the feeling they get when they’re at a ball game and the national anthem is played — a post (or pre) partisan, transhistorical patriotism that is then channeled into the political system as the ultimate expression of Democratic ideals. It’s a complex argument, easily and reductively characterized as "Obama versus the System." In the context of the primary, Obama is simultaneously addressing the Clinton dynastic ambition, the allure of a post-Clinton era for Democratic political elite and the nagging sense for many Democrats that the Clintons contributed to and were in some ways responsible for the downturn in Democratic fortunes after Bush v. Gore. How does Obama win news cycles? When everyone notices there is daylight between him and Clinton.

"But then I think we have to, with some degree of wisdom, come to the following perspective. We’re never, ever going to be able to totally control immigration to a country that is as large as ours, that has borders that are as diverse as the borders of the United States, and as a society that wants to be a country that values freedom — that values freedom of movement, freedom to do business.

If you were to totally control immigration into the United States, if you were to totally control the flow of people in the United States, you might very well destroy the economy of the United States because you’d have to inspect everything and everyone in every way possible. I don’t know that there’s any technological way to totally control it. There’s no doubt much better ways to get more of a reasonable degree of assurance about who’s coming in, to get more control over it, you’re never totally going to control it. So we just have to accept that if we want to be the kind of country that we are," – Rudy Giuliani, a decade ago.

"You expect me to talk?" Goldfinger.

Some people seem to think that because gay couples have the right in a free country to live together, the legal protections of civil marriage are unnecessary. They don’t understand the legal power that homophobic families can have over sons and daughters – even adult ones in long-standing relationships. In Indiana, a couple who lived together for 25 years saw their lives turned upside down when one of them had an aneurysm and a stroke. His parents, who disapproved of his relationship, swooped in and barred his spouse from custody. The story is here. Money quote:

Conrad traveled to the Atlanta hospital to be with Atkins but was soon denied access by the family. Hospital staff defied the family’s wishes and let Conrad visit Atkins during off-hours.
Atkins eventually was moved to a nursing facility in Carmel, where Conrad would arrive after regular visiting hours so the Atkinses would not see him.

He filed his guardianship request in June 2005. That November, the Atkinses moved Patrick into their home and have since refused to let Conrad visit. They also have refused his phone calls.

Atkins is in no mental state to defy his own parents. The law is on their side. Without marriage, it always will be. If a heterosexual who had lived with her spouse for two and half decades was barred from even seeing her husband after a stroke, no one would doubt the law needed to be changed. It is just as evil when it is done to a gay couple. Yes, there are some contracts that can be drawn up to provide more protection than Conrad is getting. But in states which have passed marriage and civil union bans for gay couples, those protections are vulnerable to legal challenge from other kin. Gay couples are human beings. To have our families ripped apart and have no legal recourse is institutionalized cruelty – designed for no other purpose than to stigmatize and marginalize a small minority. We need and deserve full equality now. Nothing short of civil marriage will ever suffice.

Here’s a BBC news report from last night that bears a somewhat uncanny resemblance to a Monty Python sketch. Alas, the Beeb does not seem to be in on the joke.

Fab, innit? James explains some of the features here. Mad props to E. Reed and Ben Bradley who sweated bullets to get the transition flawless. Thanks. The blogs are under the "Voices" button on the toolbar. Don’t forget the World Through Your Windows.