Iraq

     Thanks to WIIIAI for the link to this former Tory MP opinion peice on Iraq.  It is very good.

     Brookings, who I increasingly distrust as they get more and more connected with AEI, has published 40 pages that they call the Iraq Index. I don't know where they are getting their poll numbers, but at first glance they look good.  Note: The report shows a lot of graphs with the most recent month trending down.  That is, in part, because the most recent month is July, and it is only one fourth over.

Pape Again

     Before, Pape got quickly ignored when he showed that most suicide bombers weren't religious, nor were they criminals.  But the NY Times made up for it a little when they ran an Op/Ed by Pape today.  It includes this quote.

In December 2003, the Norwegian intelligence service found a lengthy Qaeda planning document on a radical Islamic Web site that described a coherent strategy for compelling the United States and its allies to leave Iraq. It made clear that more spectacular attacks against the United States like those of 9/11 would be insufficient, and that it would be more effective to attack America's European allies, thus coercing them to withdraw their forces from Iraq and Afghanistan and increasing the economic and military burdens that the United States would have to bear.

     Pape is not an idiot.

Bullshit Wars of the Past, Supported

     Neo-fascist "John O'Sullivan" says, at the Corner, "In retrospect the Falklands war was a turning point in postwar British history. It restored national self-confidence (hammered after Suez)"  I won't play with such small minds as John O'Sullivans on a regular basis, but I get particularly offended at people hurrah-ing past murderous stupidity.

     Was British self-confidence hurt after Suez?  I have no idea, but I do know that every Franco-British-Israeli axis that tries a Suez in the future deserves destruction, not a loss of self-confidence.  Let's look at brief history

Anthony Eden, the British prime minister, feared that Nasser intended to form an Arab Alliance that would cut off oil supplies to Europe. On 21st October Guy Mollet, Anthony Eden and David Ben-Gurion met in secret to discuss the problem. During these talks it was agreed to make a joint attack on Egypt.
On 29th October 1956, the Israeli Army, led by General Moshe Dayan, invaded Egypt. Two days later British and French bombed Egyptian airfields. British and French troops landed at Port Said at the northern end of the Suez Canal on 5th November. By this time the Israelis had captured the Sinai peninsula.
President Dwight Eisenhower grew increasingly concerned about these developments. On 30th October he decided to take action and announced he was going to suspend aid to Israel in protest against its invasion of Egypt. The following day Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, criticised Britain and France for trying to take the Suez Canal by force.

     Fuck Britain, France and Israel and that war of aggression (and no reader of this blog thinks I don't think Iraq is of the same mold).  And fuck John O'Sullivan for thinking the British people suffered some self-confidence for failing in their aggression.

     President DD Eisenhower wasn't perfect.  But I enjoy, greatly, reading his response to the stupid, fuckheaded plans of Britain, as relayed on Aug 1, 1956

We recognize the transcendent worth of the Canal to the free world and the possibility that eventually the use of force might become necessary in order to protect international rights. But we have been hopeful that through a Conference in which would be represented the signatories to the Convention of 1888, as well as other maritime nations, there would be brought about such pressures on the Egyptian Government that the efficient operation of the Canal could be assured for the future.
For my part, I cannot over-emphasize the strength of my conviction that some such method must be attempted before action such as you contemplate should be undertaken. If unfortunately the situation can finally be resolved only by drastic means, there should be no grounds for belief anywhere that corrective measures were undertaken merely to protect national or individual investors, or the legal rights of a sovereign nation were ruthlessly flouted. A conference, at the very least, should have a great education effort throughout the world. Public opinion here, and I am convinced, in most of the world, would be outraged should there be a failure to make such efforts. Moreover, initial military successes might be easy, but the eventual price might become far too heavy.

     President Eisenhower might not have been a saint, but he knew fucking war, and knew that the British should have been smacked down for their ignorant, militaristic stupidity, recently defended by John O'Sullivan in the blog of the National Review Oncrack.

Galloway on the BBC

     The interviewer was really awful, refusing to concede anything to Galloway, refusing to acknowledge that Bush and Blair attempted to use the deaths in London to further their own political ends.  Galloway handled himself well.

A Totally Unusual View

     Via Lenin's Tomb I find the text of the Socialist Worker's response to the bombings in London.  I don't have much to say about these matters.  al-Qaeda, or whomever, are attacking vulnerable points.  Transportation is basically impossible to regulate without uber-fascist police state level control, to the best of my knowledge.  I still think it would be wiser to make some allowance for the religious beliefs of 1 billion Muslims as it respects the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia, and the efficacy of avoiding bullshit wars, like Iraq.  Continued occupation of foreign lands, and support for the occupation of Palestine, are also problematic.  The settlers are being removed from Gaza (although I never have heard mention of post-exit occupation by IDF troops) even as Sharon encourages the wall to go up faster.

     Without further ado, the Socialist Worker...

London is a centre of peace, the most multiracial city in Europe and a global centre of opposition to the war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. A majority of those killed and wounded will have opposed the war in Iraq; some will have joined the huge marches for peace.

These bombings followed the biggest ever protest in Scotland’s history against world poverty. The anti-war message was everywhere on that magnificent march.

These bombings target ordinary people travelling by bus and underground to work and study; people who oppose Tony Blair’s support for George Bush and their occupation of Iraq. They are in no way a blow against imperialism or the G8 leaders, who are ensconced in a luxury hotel 450 miles north of London.

New In Timeless

     I added P.T. Barnum's ART OF MONEY GETTING or, Golden Rules for Making Money to my timeless (timeless) section in my navbar.  Have I ever mentioned that JAPAN'S OTHER EMPEROR: Taoist Politics and the Nancho Resurgence is one of the most, if not the most, interesting story on the entire internet?  It's also in my timeless section.

US Encouraged To Set Date Certain

     Hoping to get America to set a date for withdrawal from Central Asia (Uzbekistan and Afghanistan) are... Democrats? no. Russia, China, and Four out of Five Stans.  Turkmenistan, I jokingly suggest, thinks that the US presence helps their allies in Islamic terrorism in their recruiting efforts.

Rove Named as Criminal

     Might as well link you to this by Lawrence O'Donnell, the guy who leaked the fact that Rove leaked Plame's name.

Innocent Mistake or Academic Fraud

     In the paper "Condom Promotion for AIDS Prevention in the Developing World: Is it Working?" by Norman Hearst, MD, MPH1 and Sanny Chen, MHS1,2, the authors use footnotes fraudulently in an attemp to prove their points.  This paper is available from the pro-abstinence Medical Institute for Sexual Health, in a pdf called "Evidence Monograph."

     First, a little background.  Human Rights Watch has this report which is pretty useful.  Basically, in 1987, Uganda began what it calls the ABC program for fighting HIV/AIDS, then ravaging the country.  This included, but was not limited to, education of primary and secondary school children about HIV/AIDS, condoms, and the value of being abstinent before marriage and faithful after marriage.  Uganda is often considered a success story, which, it turns out, is part of the problem.

     For Christian leaders, like President GW Bush, want to credit abstinence and faithfulness, and others want to credit condoms.  Apparently, some groups are getting rich off condom distribution.  Others want condoms stopped, because it violates their ethical or religious sentiments.

     Let's look at this one paragraph of the "Condom Promotion" paper by Hearst and Chen.

Condoms were not central to the initial (ie, pre-donor) response to the AIDS epidemic in Uganda. Messages focused on delaying sexual debut, abstinence, being faithful to a single partner (called "zero grazing"), and condoms, roughly in that order.41,48 Large- scale condom social marketing did not begin until the arrival of the foreign donors in the mid-1990s.54 In fact, as late as 1995, only 6% of Ugandan women and 16% of Ugandan men had ever used a condom, with consistent use being much lower.48 Although Ugandans now use more condoms, particularly with casual partners, these recent condom use rates cannot be credited for what happened earlier.51

     Powerful facts, if they happened to be true.  Let's look at the footnotes cited.

• 41: Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Thailand Epidemiological Fact Sheets on HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Infections (2002 Update). Geneva: UNAIDS; 2002. Link (pdf)
• 48: Kilmarx PH, Palanuvej T, Limpakarnjanarat K, Chitvarakorn A, St. Louis ME, Mastro TD. Seroprevalence of HIV among female sex workers in Bangkok: evidence of ongoing infection risk after the "100% condom program" was implemented. Journal Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome 1999; 21(4):313-316. Link(abstract)
• 51: Stoneburner R, Carballo M, Bernstein R, Saidel T. Simulation of HIV incidence dynamics in the Rakai population-based cohort, Uganda. AIDS 1998; 12(2):226-228. Link(pay subscribers only)
• 54: Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. Commercial market strategies, Uganda report; 2001 Link(pdf)

     First, link 51 isn't an article, it is a letter, and as such didn't meet the same scrutiny requirements of other material.  Second, link 54 has a chart (PDF page 11, numberered page 7) which says "socially marketed condoms" were trivial in amount before 1991, but this doesn't mention that "socially marketed" condoms are a special type of sale, defined by the UN as "For example, social marketing programs offer condoms for sale at lower prices and at many non-traditional outlets, like markets, hotels and bars." Socially marketed condoms make up what % of total condom sales?  No information is presented.  Link 51 also says "The decline in incidence and prevalence [of HIV/AIDS] are complex and not yet completely understood. This is especially true regarding the earlier years (i.e., there is little HIV-related Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data prior to 1995)."  Link 41 and 48 don't mention Uganda at all, so we are left wondering "where do Hearst and Chen get the idea that only 16% of Ugandans have ever tried a condom?"  Well, in the paper HIV incidence and sexually transmitted disease prevalence associated with condom use: a population study in Rakai, Uganda they do provide that number, limiting it only to one, rural province in Uganda.

     I believe the explicit STD, sexual health and HIV/AIDS education provided to primary and secondary school children, now being removed by President Museveni, probably had the largest impact.  That education stressed A, B and C, but now C is being removed from the picture by a christian revivalist movement.

     Whatever the truth turns out to be, nothing in Hearst and Chen's paragraph above is supported by the footnotes provided, although one (link 54) does provide some indirect evidence.

     This reminds me too much of Dr. Page, Bush's choice for Secretary of Education, and the way Houston School District numbers were rigged to make them far better than they really were (by throwing kids out of school who weren't testing better).  A complete lack of suspiciion of voices on their own side.

---

CORRECTION: The Evidence Monograph containing this paper also contains a paper by Dr. Green of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.  I didn't notice the pdf contained two papers, and originally, mistakenly, connected Dr. Green with the fraudulent footnotes.

Ray Takeyh on the recent elections in Iran

     People often define Iran's government as a despotic regime.  Takeyh quote clearly says that the Guardian Council had a candidate in the elections, and their guy didn't even get to the second round of the elections.  Talk about a flawed tyranny, they can't even get their favored candidate elected!  Takeyh describes the new President of Iran as critical of the self-serving economic actions of the old Guard.  He says young conservatives like him, but the old conservatives don't.  This talk was given at the Nixon Center and was hosted by Robert McFarlane (National Security Advisor to President Reagan).  Hardly some left-wing ideologue.

Boring, Boring Politics, Absent Breaking Kneecaps

     I like C-SPAN.  Last night the 25+ year President and CEO of C-SPAN, B Lamb, was interviewing two contest-winning teachers, both teachers of government.  One taught it as an elective, and her students were very interested.  The other taught it as a required course, and she said they were about as distinterested as could be imagined.  Lamb asked "Why?" and the teacher responded "Because they've watched C-SPAN and they think government is boring."  I thought it was hilarious.

     Doesn't this guy sound like he knows what he is talking about?  It's all about int'l trade.

By offering candy, the Administration has picked up:
Sen. Chambliss, after agreeing to buy up excess sugar imports beyond a certain point and make the surplus available for ethanol production.

Author Edwin Black, "Banking on Baghdad: 7,000 Year History of Iraq

     It's not a 7,000 year history, it's mostly a story of the persecution of Jews of Iraq, a story leading up to the "Farhud"(sp?), the dispossession the Jews of Baghdad after WWII.  This guy is obviously an anti-Arab bigot.  Someone in the Ottoman Empire came up with a very modern Constitution, so his Pasha had him killed, according to Mr. Black.  It would have been more democratic than American in the 1780s, he says.  He calls it "the first, best and last hope" for democracy in the Middle East.  Edwin Black is a racist peice of crap, who should be rejected by C-SPAN, who is, instead, giving him a forum.  If this is any indication, he presents the "Golden Square" Iraqi coup of 1941 incorrectly.  He suggests that the Nazis sent crack air force to fight at Habbaniyah (the RAF base near Basra).  The other article suggests that the Nazis were quite late in providing any assistance, although it doesn't discuss the quality of the pilots provided by the Nazis during this period.  He's a bad historian.  This is an RAF report from 1941, including this paragraph, which shows that the Germans were neutralized by the mostly trainee-level British troops...

The operations of the German Air Force, to whose neutralisation so much attention had been paid, consisted for the most part of bombing and machine gun attacks on the hangars and dispersed aircraft at Habbaniya together with occasional low flying attacks on our troops in the Habbaniya area and on Army convoys approaching this area from the West. The scale of the attacks was never heavy and on the whole the damage done and casualties inflicted by the German aircraft were not serious. In one bombing attack, it is true, the ERRS of the Aircraft Depot was destroyed and in another a hangar containing 6 aircraft was burnt out, but apart from this and a few other less noteworthy incidents the German bombs did surprisingly little material damage. The low flying attacks of the Me110s were carried out with very little apparent plan, the pilots appearing content on many occasions to spray the whole Cantonment Area with cannon shells and bullets without any definite objective. It is true they made occasional attacks on aircraft around the aerodrome, but by making full use of dispersal and using dummy aircraft damage was reduced to a minimum. On the other hand the moral effect produced by the German attacks was considerable and was due more to their frequency than their accuracy.

Today I'm...

     I'm listening to the committee meeting on the ~1.5 billion in unexpected funding needed by the Veteran's Administration for medical care.  You should, in part, blame my former bosses at the Boston Development Center(now Allocation Resource Center) in Braintree, Mass.  They had spent 60-120K on a peice of software to help them draft their budgets.  It went through the millions of lines of database records they had and produced an annual report on overall usage of the VA hospital system.  In my spare time, in a few weeks, I rewrote the whole thing and added tons of functionality.  My version allowed looking at subsets of the hospital system, and months, or quarters, instead of the whole year.  I was fired soon after I showed it to them.  Interestingly, the program they had paid for only ever worked once (for one year), and we were three months behind producing the 2nd report the day I was hired, and I never heard about it until almost three months later.

     CONCLUSION? No one missed any health care service, and only a portion of the 1.5 billion is associated with Iraq.  Sadly, the cost of prosthetics made available to veterans through the health agency will increased, from 05 to 06, from 900,000,000 to 1,200,000,000, an increase of 33%.

     I'm also reading this report from Human Rights Watch, DRC: The Curse of Gold.

     CONCLUSION? The Second Congo War was, in large degree, ignored by the US media.  It pitted the Lake Victoria bordering Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi vs the Congo-Kinshasa government, Namibia, Angola and Zimbabwe.  Uganda, Rwanada and Zimbabwe were all, it seems, involved in illegally funding their armies via local Congolese gold.  Now, things are less international in scope, and much gold from the northeast of the Congo leaves into Uganda, where it is laundered into the global gold market.

Belated Notice

     Thanks to a link at Crytome (offsite section, dated July 1st) I've received about 500 hits to this post I did back in August, 2003.

     I pay attention _real_ good, sometimes.  It costs, though, and I'm no longer in the position I was then.

Link-A-Mania

     I know a lot of you were saying to yourselves "The internet is empty, I'm done reading the whole thing."  Well, I found some stuff you may not have seen yet.

• Some on the right (no links) are all atwitter re: this Times of London interview with His Infallability, GW Bush.  Included is this quote, reminding me mostly of SH al-Tikriti and other lunatics of war-mongering history "And he remains messianic about his ambition of promoting democracy around the world — not only in the Middle East, but in Africa and Europe."
• Via Cursor, I learn of this Princeton University Press work , Choosing Your Battles about the splits between people with, and without, military experience and the decision to use force.  Not amusingly, the page I linked to has a link to the first chapter of the book, but the link is (intentionally?) wrong.  The correct link to the first chapter of the anti-chickenhawk work is here.
• Ever wonder where the media markets are?  Project Lydia is producing heatmaps (good sample page) for news.  The heatmap shows where the news is getting.  Also available is a complete word-to-word correlation engine called TextMap.