Month: September 2010

Iraq Surge Fail Update

PETRAEUSMajidSaeedi:Getty

Surprise! Al Qaeda is alive and well and rapidly gaining strength in Iraq:

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia’s structure has given it the flexibility to make frequent and varied attacks, analysts say. “You don’t need a huge, thriving organization to carry out huge, devastating attacks,” said Matthew Levitt, director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

But Petraeus' failed strategy has brought some Sunnis and Shiites together – just not in quite the way he intended:

Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, an extremist Sunni group that believes Shiites are heretics, has recently begun to partner with Shiites in the county’s south, according to Iraqi officials and Awakening Council leaders who retain ties to the insurgent group. The group has paid Shiites to provide intelligence and to manufacture and plant bombs in areas where a Sunni would most likely attract unwanted attention, said Abdullah Jubouri, an Awakening leader in Salahuddin Province, in northern Iraq … “Shiite civilians are helping Al Qaeda because they need the money,” said a Wasit provincial council member, Shamel Mansour Ayal.

Meanwhile, the elites cannot form a government after seven months.

Since the March 7 election, they have met just once, and that was for less than 19 minutes. In the interim, some have sought out less chaotic places with better weather and less bloodshed, staying in nice hotels or private homes with chlorinated swimming pools in Jordan, Syria, Iran or Dubai.

And now we have the architect of this failure doing more p.r. about Afghanistan, on exactly the same lines as he pulled the war over our eyes, while performing a face-saving, half-assed withdrawal from Iraq.

“We’re on the cusp of beginning, of supporting, the Afghan beginning of reintegration,” General Petraeus said.

Karzai begs to differ:

A spokesman for Mr. Karzai confirmed that there had been contacts with the Taliban at every level, but he cautioned that the contacts could not be characterized as even the beginning of negotiations.

The View From Your Window Contest: Winner #17

Vfyw-contest_9-25

A reader writes:

This photo is packed with clues!  Cars.  Mountains.  Pine trees.  A steeple and a industrial chimney.  A large, odd-shaped, multi-colored building with blue window frames and skylights!  Yes!  A search of Google images should resolve this one in about 5 minutes, right?

Ha. You guys know exactly what you’re doing, because the clues in this photo led nowhere! I searched every possible word combination for just a hint of where this might be.  The best possible clue is the building.  It’s so strange that you’d think someone would have put it on the Internet.  No offense intended to the contributor, but I did a word search for “world’s ugliest buildings” because, come on, this thing is atrocious.  I’m eager to see the answer, if nothing else, just to see what this building houses. My two best guesses are Landstuhl, Germany, and Brasov, Romania, and it’s a toss-up.  I’m going with Brasov.

Another writes:

OK, this week is a bit easier than last week, since the buildings and church steeple combined with that Soviet-looking smokestack just scream “Eastern Europe” to me. The only mountain range in Eastern Europe is the Carpathians, so it’s most likely going to be Slovakia, the Ukraine, or Romania. That church steeple looks Romanian, so let’s see if I can whittle it down from there. I’m going to go with Brasov, Romania, given that it’s nestled in a tight valley (as this city appears to be) and given that Dracula’s castle is nearby, giving Brasov a bit more notoriety than other cities and towns in the Transylvanian Alps.

Another:

Looks like you’ve landed in Switzerland again. The give-aways are the mix of 1950s-style and 1990s-style architecture (at least to me, a non-specialist) in the building in the foreground; the flat, glacial valley with hills and mountains in the distance; the mix of evergreen and deciduous trees. The isolated smokestack is a familiar sign of the industrial activity that dominates many of the Swiss valleys before you get to the tourist areas. And the church steeple makes me think of Chur, which I’ve been through on the train a few times.

Another:

Looks like central Europe to me, based on the steeple. The other spire looks like a commie era TV tower.  No particular reason to think it’s Hungary, but that’s the memory file the picture flips open for me. (Madeleine, anyone?)  These TV towers are tourist attractions in provincial Hungary, so I’ve seen several. I’m going for the one near Pécs, as the one shown isn’t at the highest elevation like the tower at Kékestet?.  The building would be unusual in a village like Hosszúhetény, but at least the church looks right, and the general area looks rather rural.

Another:

Tough one!  Anywhere mountainey, Europe. I’m thinking foothills of the Alps.  Some small industrial town, wealthy enough for nice cars. Germany:  Bavaria:  Ichhabekeineahnungburg

Rough translation: Ihavenoclueburg. Another:

The tall, thin tree on the far right side of the picture really confused me with this one. It appears to be a black spruce (or even a white spruce), but both are native only to North America. There’s another conifer sticking out on the left side of the picture from among the deciduous trees. But everything else in the picture, building, steeple, what appears to be a radio tower, all speaks so European. So I guess it must be a Norway Spruce, and since there appear to be so many deciduous trees around as well, we aren’t exactly in the taiga.

So taking the range of the Norway Spruce and these low mountains, there are only a few places it could be. After eliminating several mountainous areas, I settled on the southern Rhine Valley. Although I wasn’t able to locate the exact location, I’m going with Lahr/Schwarzwald, Germany.

Another:

I searched far and wide for the right hospital/rehab/sanitarium, assuming that’s whatScreen shot 2010-09-28 at 11.09.54 AM this building is. Couldn’t find the place is Austria or Switzerland, but found some  excellent candidates in Germany near the Swiss or Austrian or French borders. Like this one. No, it doesn’t look exactly the same, but it’s awfully close. Since I don’t have time to search the rest of the Schwarzwald for clinics, that’s my guess. The shot must be from your submitter’s hospital room.

Another:

I think this is somewhere in Finland. The church tower looks Finnish. The other tower looks like it’s from an oil refinery. It’s oil country. Buildings also make me think that it’s quite far north. Why else would you compromise the architectural aesthetic so much unless you needed to survive some horrible winter? My bet is that it’s some kind of research facility in a University town (or just outside). I’m going with Kuopio, Finland.

Another:

Smokestack is retrofitted for pollution control. So rule out all of eastern Europe where they couldn’t care less about such niceties. Rule out Italy too – same reason. Rule out Scandinavia. Building has air conditioning units on roof; the frugal (cheap) Swedes aren’t going to install air conditioning which isn’t even needed 11 months per year. Also, the building is multi-color. Scandinavians prefer gray. Rule out Switzerland – mountains not high enough. Buildings not chi-chi enough I’m going with somewhere on the outskirts of the Alps – Grenoble, France. (Picture lacks signs of meaningful commercial activity or economic buzz, has that sleepy lazy French feel)

Another:

Tbilisi, Georgia? This is a completely unscientific guess based purely on instinct and memory.

Another:

I am a geography-hound and this image screamed the Balkans or Switzerland to me, though I’ve been to neither.  My ultimate guess – Budweis, Southern Bohemia, Czech Republic – is based on Googling (web, images, and maps) “black tower,” “smokestack,” and “pastel colored buildings,” which led to Slovenia, Bulgaria, the Black Forest area in Germany, then Bohemia in the Czech Republic. On someone’s blog of their visit to Budweis I saw (in separate images) a black tower somewhat similar in style to the one in the photograph, hills, a single smokestack, and pastel-colored buildings. My only hesitation comes from the building in the foreground of the photograph looking recently-built and reflecting civic affluence, which could lead back to Germany.  Perhaps Budweis is booming these days.

Another:

I’ve only seen ice cream colored buildings in Prague, and Curacao, but those aren’t Curacao license plates so I’m going for Prague.

Another:

The siding-less buildings, moderately sized cars, black roofs and industrial chimney all scream Eastern Europe to me, and it reminds me of a city I visited on a family trip as a kid. So, my guess is: Kosice, Slovakia.

This is not the right answer. Knowing that, I write more with a simple request: publish stories of how in the name of God people who haven’t actually lived in these neighbourhoods or proposed to their wives there go about figuring these things out. Even if Kosice were the right answer, I’m almost 100% sure I could never get the address, let alone the floor, apartment number, or viewing angle. Is there any way we can set your blog’s readers on finding bin Laden? They seem way better at this than the CIA.

Another:

Google Maps doesn’t seem to support my claim, but this scene reminds me of Levoca, Slovakia, a town I visited 25 years ago.  The tower is familiar and the High Tatras mountains are in the background.   It’s probably not Levoca exactly, but I bet it is in the general neighborhood – maybe across the Tatras in Southern Poland.

Definitely in the right neighborhood. Another:

Poprad, Slovakia?  (By the way, there should be an alternate speed contest – you have to submit within 5 minutes or something – for people who aren’t going to surf, survey, triangulate, and order soil samples. Just sayin’ …)

Poprad is closer. Another:

Bojnice, Slovakia?

So close. Another:

Ruzomberok, Slovakia?

Not quite, but close enough for a win!  The exact location is Martin, Slovakia, which is 42 kilometers west of Ruzomberok. The reader who submitted the photo writes:

Well, since you have been kind enough to pick this picture for this week’s contest, here Screen shot 2010-09-28 at 11.33.36 AM are a few more details.  The view is from the Hotel Turiec looking southwest. The steeple is from the Church of St. Martin (click here for a better view).  The high hills in the background are part of the Tatra range of the Carpathian Mountains. The steeple is should be a major clue.  That specific shape and other variations are evident in the western part of Slovakia.  The other clue is the tall, single smokestack in white with reddish stripes.  Saw a number of those in the industrial bits of Slovakia.  Can’t recall ever seeing that specific variety of smokestack before.

I’d say that this might prove a difficult view to pin down, but Dish Readers have extraordinary powers.  We encountered tourists in Bratislava but only locals in Martin.  Nonetheless must have been a least one intrepid Dish Reader to have stopped in this odd corner of central Europe.

Even Dish readers have their limits.

Screen shot 2010-09-28 at 12.57.25 PM

Obama: Fight The Election On The GOP’s Fiscal Fraudulence

He seems to be getting the message:

Now what [the Republicans will] also say is, "We're going to control spending." But of course, when you say you're going to borrow $700 billion to give an average $100,000-a-year tax break to people making a million dollars a year, or more, and you're not going to pay for it; when Mitch McConnell's overall tax package that he just announced recently was priced at about $4 trillion; when you, as a caucus, reject a bipartisan idea for a fiscal commission that originated from Judd Gregg, Republican budget chair, and Kent Conrad, Democratic budget chair, so that I had to end up putting the thing together administratively because we couldn't get any support — you don't get a sense that they're actually serious on the deficit side.

As the Dish has argued consistently, Obama needs to focus the entire fall campaign on how the GOP will explode the debt and potentially force American into default. He needs a major stump speech on fiscal responsibility. That should be his core message this fall. He can cite the last few decades, embrace Clinton's record, and excoriate the second Bush's. He should praise the first president Bush – and he should move aggressively to the fiscal right of the GOP. That's how to appeal to the minority of tea-partiers who are genuinely and rightly concerned about the debt.

And if he doesn't run ads showing John Boehner's staggering statement,

Let's not talk about potential solutions

for cutting the debt, he's crazy. The GOP have just given him a sword. Use it. Deploy conservative statements and editorials bemoaning the fiscal recklessness of the "Pledge To America." Unmask their cynicism. Exploit the tea-party's suspicion of these tanned fiscal frauds.

More, Mr President. More loudly. More consistently. Promise a long-term balanced budget in your next two years. And add passion. Remind people what's at stake. Especially use this argument to rally younger voters, who will have to foot the bill the Bush-Boehner Republicans have handed to them.

The War In Pakistan

The Kenyan anti-colonialist is at it again:

The C.I.A. has drastically increased its bombing campaign in the mountains of Pakistan in recent weeks, American officials said. The strikes are part of an effort by military and intelligence operatives to try to cripple the Taliban in a stronghold being used to plan attacks against American troops in Afghanistan.

The Foundation Obama Has Already Quietly Built, Ctd

David Hume, from the right, agrees with Andrew Sprung that president Obama has already won regardless of what happens in November:

After the likely losses in the fall the pundits will talk about what Obama needs to do to win back the nation, etc. But the fact is that he’s already changed the nation, by shifting healthcare policy in a direction broadly consonant with liberal Democratic values. That’s really what matters, and what will echo down through the generations. The Democratic victories of 2006 will be forgotten very soon, and to some extent those of 2008 will be too. But the policies enacted by the Congress of 2008 will impact us in our day to day lives for generations. They already are.

I don’t begrudge the Republicans their exultation after their likely victory in November. But this isn’t professional sports, it’s more than just a game, and it’s even more than just an avenue for professional advancement and self-glorification. Winning isn’t everything; it’s just a vanity which appeals to our baser animal instincts.

That's ignoring financial re-regulation, the isolation of Iran, and the social revolutions on marijuana and marriage equality that have accelerated under his watch. I think the debt commission may be the next substantive, long-term victory (I certainly hope so). Then there is the way in which GOP victories will come at the expense of profound alienation by Latinos, and the abandonment of the GOP by the professional elites, recoiling from the party of Palin, Beck and O'Donnell.

A TV Commercial In Spanish?

Just listen to Limbaugh free-associate about Latinos in America:

I ought to do a monologue about this. I think this is symptomatic of a whole bunch of things that are happening on our culture, the feminization of our culture. I see it in 2085 male, liberal sportswriters. I see how they’ve been feminized. I see how they have been feminist-ized. Our culture is more concerned with not offending our enemies today. We have a culture, if somebody attacks us, a growing percentage of our country wants to ask, “What did we do to cause this? It’s our fault.” Somehow they’ve been told and they’ve bought into the notion that America is hated deservedly.

So this Spanish stuff that you see in this ad, this is just an outgrowth of America thinking it’s guilty of being so big and such a superpower that we have to reach out, we have to be nice to the people that we’ve oppressed or made angry. That’s one of the ways Obama got where he is, and I think it’s facilitating the total degradation of what used to be the American culture, because there was a distinct American culture. It’s under assault now from within.

I mean seriously. Latino = Gay = Un-American = Obama.

The ad in Spanish might have been designed to appeal to an audience attracted to the first NFL Hispanic quarterback – the kind of capitalist marketing you'd think a conservative might find unsurprising. David Sessions:

Anyone who insists the Tea Party is not animated by a distinctively white unrest should read that whole thing three times slowly.

Note also the classic McCarthyite tone of "assault now from within." Not from illegal Latino immigrants, but legal ones. Full Limbaugh rant here.

“Civilian Afghan Body Parts As Souvenirs”

A dispatch from the first public hearing. For some reason, the NYT did not detail the actual drug that the soldiers were allegedly using. It was hashish. The details are harrowing, but what’s notable is how one soldier’s parents have said the military tried to cover it all up, for fear of endangering their son’s life at the hand of his fellow soldiers if he reported the war crimes:

After the incident, another soldier in the unit, Spc. Adam Winfield, sent his family a frantic message for help via Facebook. In a later telephone conversation, he told them, “Someone is getting away with murder,” his mother, Emma Winfield, said in a telephone interview. Winfield said he was fearful of Gibbs and had been threatened against speaking out. Winfield’s father, a former Marine, called the Army’s internal investigations unit to report the killing. But he has said publicly that he was rebuffed and told that his son’s best chance at surviving was to stay quiet until he returned to the U.S.

Vietnam, anyone?