Physics and 9/11 truth

``9/11 Truth Movement'' is mostly a sham; excellent antidote at Counterpunch


A sad event featuring 9/11 conspiracy theory sponsored by kpfa and broadcast by C-SPAN 2 over Thanksgiving weekend--and I normally admire both Pacifica and Ray McGovern; David Ray Griffin should be ashamed of his misuse of evidence.

I spend a good bit of time each week teaching introductory physics. Every semester--in the impulse and momentum chapter--I pay special attention to dynamic forces generated by impacts of moving bodies. These are the forces that break things when they fall, contrasted with static conditions where the same objects happily remain intact under the reletively mellow forces due to their own weights. The example I always bring up is how the collapse of the WTC twin towers in New York on 9/11/2001 happened because of the enormous dynamic forces generated once the upper sections began to fall.

Partly I bring up the WTC collapse to counter a load of nonsense on this topic that lives mainly on the Internet, and sometimes on C-SPAN. On many facets of 9/11, a conspiracy industry has emerged to promulgate alternative explanations, calling itself by the misnomer ``9/11 Truth Movement''. It is led by a strange cast of characters also known by the misnomer ``Scholars for 9/11 truth''.

Of the voluminous silliness promulgated by these people, perhaps their lowest appeal to ignorance is their notion that the airplane impacts and subsequent structural weakening did not initiate collapse and bring down the towers. Rather, explosives planted in a government conspiracy did it.

The evidence? None really. There exists no document, no whistle-blower, no witness who has come forward from a diabolical conspiracy that must have involved hundreds of workers to pull off. Oh yes, they have a physicist from BYU, Steve Jones, who has made some unconvincing claims about chemicals that were in the wreckage that suggest explosives were used. But they really go astray when they claim that it is impossible that the towers fell without the help of explosives. Why? Because they fell at ``close to the free-fall time in a vacuum''. Without explosives ``undamaged floors below the impact zone would have offered resistance that is thousands of times greater than air.'' That's the ``proof'' offered.

Now the article at that last link (supplied by Scholars for 9/11 Truth) totally misstates the physics involved in the collapse. Air resistance produces a continuous upward force upon a falling object that increases with velocity until it balances the gravitational force. This is not analogous to what happened during the collapse of the twin towers.

A Tuesday article in Counterpunch by physicist Manuel Garcia supplies the facts to counter this asinine rubbish in a slightly technical but totally coherent explanation of the fall times of the towers. It includes discussion of the disastrous effect of dynamic loading on the structures resulting from rapid momentum changes and stress waves--essential discussion completely left out of ignorant conspiracy literature.

Certainly there are mysteries about 9/11. The relationship of US intelligence and the shadowy networks that are referred to as ``al-Qā`ida'' deserve much more investigation. I would like to be able to appreciate the writing of some of the ``9/11 Scholars'' on these issues. But their embrace of asinine silliness and misuse of physics really taints their work.

I support Alexander Cockburn, Matt Taibbi, Noam Chomsky, and Matt Rothschild in their efforts to expose the intellectual bankruptcy of the ``9/11 Truth Movement''. This bankruptcy is no more well illustrated than in the rabid accusations flung by conspiracy adherents when faced with skepticism about their wild, unsupportable claims. They scream incoherently about ``left gatekeepers'' surpressing their version of the truth.

Like Chomsky has written, ``One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be.'' It's time to focus our attention away from conspiracy mongering and towards building a movement to stop the continuing crimes of state that are costing the lives of tens of thousands of people every week.

US beaten in al-Anbar

Confirmed by the Marine Corps itself

As if the stuff in that last post wasn't enough, there is a follow-up story in the Washington Post today on the US military situation in Iraq's al-Anbar province:

The U.S. military is no longer able to defeat a bloody insurgency in western Iraq or counter al-Qaeda's rising popularity there, according to newly disclosed details from a classified Marine Corps intelligence report that set off debate in recent months about the military's mission in Anbar province.

The Marines recently filed an updated version of that assessment that stood by its conclusions and stated that, as of mid-November, the problems in troubled Anbar province have not improved, a senior U.S. intelligence official said yesterday. "The fundamental questions of lack of control, growth of the insurgency and criminality" remain the same, the official said.

The Marines' August memo, a copy of which was shared with The Washington Post, is far bleaker than some officials suggested when they described it in late summer. The report describes Iraq's Sunni minority as "embroiled in a daily fight for survival," fearful of "pogroms" by the Shiite majority and increasingly dependent on al-Qaeda in Iraq as its only hope against growing Iranian dominance across the capital.

Christ almighty, ``pogroms''!!

``U.S. forces no longer have the option 'for a decapitating strike that would cripple the organization,' the report says.''

All the death and destruction the US has visited on that region over the last three years is a total, colossal failure even on its own merits. See this post for a flavor of how the US has brutalized this area over the years.

``We've destroyed Iraq and we've destroyed the region''

Rosen and Packer--there is nothing that America can do about this anymore

Nir Rosen and George Packer are writers who recently have cast extremely pessimistic assessments on the prospects for Iraq.

Nir Rosen appeared on Monday's edition of Democracy Now!. He rattled off a very disturbing list of talking points concerning what ``Americans need to know'' about Iraq and the Middle East region:

Shias own Iraq now. Sunnis can never get it back. There's nothing Americans can do about this.

There was no civil war in Iraq until we got there. And there was no civil war in Iraq, until we took certain steps to pit Sunnis against Shias.

As for the Bush and Maliki meeting,... both Bush and Maliki are absolutely irrelevant in Iraq. Neither one of them has any power.

Maliki has no militia to speak of. Bush has militia, the American army, one of the many militias operating in Iraq,... But [the Americans] strike mostly at innocent people,... unable to distinguish between anybody, certainly unable to wield any power, except on the immediate street corner where it's located. So, it just doesn't matter.

We already handed Baghdad over and much of the country to the Shia militias. So there is no strong man solution.

There is this romantic idea lately that you could have a coup and replace the Maliki regime with somebody else,... You could put anybody you wanted in Baghdad, it just wouldn't make a difference outside of Baghdad. And the guy you put in Baghdad would have to have power in Baghdad, which means street power, which means Muqtada al-Sadr.

When you hear about people dressed as police officers, or dressed as security forces, kidnapping somebody, you'’re just hearing about supporters of Muqtada al-Sadr, who are members of the police, kidnapping somebody. He'’s been very anti-American from the beginning, very nationalistic, unlike perhaps, Abdul Aziz Hakim, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution fin Iraq, who was perceived as coming on the back of American tanks.

If there was anything good that the American’s had done it was to unite the Sunnis and Shia’s against them. But that all fell apart by 2005, or by the end of 2004. And since then, Muqtada al-Sadr, his militia, have taken the lead is sectarian attacks.

The crowds just went crazy when they saw [al-Sadr], and afterwards, they all rushed the fence to shout their support for him. He can really get the largest number of Iraqis on the street willing to fight with the snap of his fingers.

It is very popular for us to blame the Iraqi’s for the chaos that we've brought upon them. This will perhaps be something for the cameras in the US, when [Bush meets Maliki in Jordan], to show that he'’s going to make Maliki, seize the reigns of his country, or something absurd like that, because Maliki has no power of his own.

There is a civil war in Iraq.

In Lebanon, concerns are exaggerated. Much has been made of the assassination of Pierre Gemayel last week. And the American media portrait it as if ArchDuke Franz Ferdinand had been killed, or John F. Kennedy, but really this guy was a fairly insignificant politician. And not a vocal anti-Syrian critic. He does come from a party with fascist links that massacred thousands of Palestinians. Which nobody seems to mention... [But] America would like there to be a civil war in Lebanon, I think Isreal would like that. I think they would like to weaken Hezbollah in a way they failed to do during the war, but I don'’t think that its very likely at this very moment.

Iran and Syria have always been concerned about the instability in Iraq. They are the neighbors of Iraq and if anybody can be threatened by the instability, it's them.

In Syria right now you have about 3 or 4 thousand Iraqi refugees crossing the border everyday, that'’s going to destabilize Syria. You already have nearly a million Iraqi refugees in Syria today.

At some point Shias will make a move, a large move against the Sunnis in Baghdad. You'’ll find a day when there are no Sunnis left in Baghdad. Saudi Arabia and Jordan are of course panicking about this, and they are hoping that the US will in some way arm or support Sunni militias.

The civil war will spread and become a regional one. And I think Jordan will cease to exist as it does now. Eventually, because you'll have the Anbar Province of Iraq joining somehow--you already have one million Iraqis in Jordan at least. You walk down the streets of Jordan, you hear Iraqi Arabic as much as any other kind.

Now it is just too late...we are responsible for what'’s happening in Iraq today... There is no solution. We've destroyed Iraq and we've destroyed the region.

We've managed to make Saddam Hussein look good even to Shias at this point.

We've managed...not only destabilize Iraq, but destabilize Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iran. This is going to spread for decades, the region won't recover from this,... for decades. Americans are responsible.

This is a bleak assessment. It's an education for me. I've been arguing with people that the way to make the situation for Iraq better would be too remove American troops as quickly as possible and that as soon as they began to filter out while America took its foot off of Iraq's neck, the situation would calm. I argued this sort of thing in comments just a few posts back: ``As soon as the Americans start to filter out of Iraq, my guess is the whole thing begins to calm down.'' I guess that proposition would be very difficult to support.

In the November 27 issue of the New Yorker, George Packer comments about potential negative consequences of proposals by Congressional Democrats on troop withdrawal. Packer scolds people like me, who have thought a rapid withdrawal of American troops could help Iraq:

PACKER: The argument that Iraq would be better off on its own is a self-serving illusion that seems to offer Americans a win-win solution to a lose-lose problem. Like so much about this war, it has more to do with politics here than reality there. Such wishful thinking (reminiscent of the sweets-and-flowers variety that preceded the war) would have pernicious consequences, as the United States fails to anticipate one disaster after another in the wake of its departure: ethnic cleansing on a large scale, refugees pouring across Iraq'’s borders, incursions by neighboring armies, and the slaughter of Iraqis who had joined the American project.

I suppose what Packer is saying is not too different from what Nir Rosen is saying. Packer concludes, ``We may have to accept that the disintegration of Iraq is irreversible and America's last remaining interest will be to leave. If so, we shouldn'’t deepen the insult by pretending that we'’re doing the Iraqis a favor. Even realism has an obligation to be realistic.''

But Packer leaves out any discussion of the notion that America has caused this disaster in Iraq. Rosen paints a fuller picture of what the American attack and occupation has done to Iraqis and is clearer about the desirability of withdrawal of American troops, even while he too recognizes it as desirable mainly in terms of the interest of the Americans who are ordered to sacrifice for the project.

ROSEN: Troop withdrawal, if I was an American, then I would want troop withdrawal, because why are Americans dying in Iraq? Every single American who dies in Iraq, who is injured in Iraq, dies for nothing. He didn'’t die for freedom, he didn't die to defend his country, he died to occupy Iraq. And if withdrawal the troops you'’ll have less Americans killing Iraqis. Everyday the Americans are there they kill innocent Iraqis, they torture innocent Iraqis, and the occupy Iraqis and terrorize Iraqis. They should leave today.

Despite digesting these extremely pessimistic assessments, I still concur with those who favor rapid withdrawal. We must accept the consequences. These consequences lie squarely on the heads of those like George Packer, a liberal hawk who like so many others, thought a just course of action for America to take was to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein, and that this decision properly could be made in Washington rather than in Iraq.

I enjoy nothing about being right--about seeing years ago, long before the war, that war could not impose a just resolution after years of American support for the despicable Hussein regime followed by more years of devastating sanctions mainly harming the Iraqi people. The war foreseeably has lead to nothing but a bleak quagmire, a shattered Iraqi society, and the possibility of wider conflict.

Was Nelson Mandela prophetic in this January 2003 comment?

What I am condemning is that one power, with a President who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust. I am happy that the people of the world -- especially those of the United States of America -- are standing up and opposing their own President.

That holocaust is knocking at the door. America with it's unthinking president has caused this through its criminal actions. I am torn up inside that we were unable to stop it in 2003, when it really mattered.

Interference in Iraq's affairs

Not just for Iran and Syria to do


Beard (Wolf Blitzer) says ``some are suggesting'' the US ``take out... in other words kill'' Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr; mild-mannered senators unfazed by the suggestion

In the wake of the recent slaying of Christian politician Pierre Gemayel in Lebanon, US officials are up in arms over supposed involvement by Syria and Iran in this and other crimes. In the larger picture including Iraq, President Bush has blamed Iran for its ``efforts to destabilize the Middle East.'' Mr. Bush has reminded Iran about ``the Iraqi position about their interference inside their country.''

And now, desperate ``fresh ideas'' are swirling around some diplomatic efforts, including a trip by Vice President Cheney to Saudi Arabia in order to get the Kingdom's help in ``calming the situation in Iraq'' and to plead with them to `` use their influence with Sunni insurgents in Iraq to halt attacks on the country's Shia majority.''

So in light of all this noble effort by US peacemakers, how would this diplomatic move, about which CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer quizzed Senators Jack Reed (D-RI) and John Cornyn (R-TX), go over in the region?

BLITZER: Do you think -- I want to take a break, Senator Cornyn, but do you think it's enough for the U.S. or the Iraqi government to arrest Muqtada al-Sadr, this young Shiite cleric, or is it time to take him out as some are suggesting? In other words, kill him.

CORNYN: Well, I would say arrest him, and if he's unable to go peacefully, obviously I think he's a danger to the Iraqis and the Iraqi future in the entire Middle East. We need to disarm him and his militias. Arrest them.

Take them out of action whatever way we need to, and to provide basic security to allow the political process that Jack Reed and others have talked about to go forward. It's not going to do that in a period of such chaos and violence as we're seeing right now.

BLITZER: Senator Reed, kill him if necessary?

REED: I think what you -- that's a decision I think that the Iraqi government would make. But I think if he's -- an arrest warrant is authorized and they go after him, he resists, he becomes a combatant. I would hope we could get him off the scene without making him a martyr.

BLITZER: All right. Gentlemen...

In other words, give al-Sadr the Uday-Qusay-Zarqawi treatment and raise cheers in the quarters of domestic jingoism. But that accomplishes nothing good in Iraq, where al-Sadr has a hell of a lot more followers than does George W. Bush.

Think what you will of al-Sadr. I certainly would not want his militias running my neighborhood. But don't these guys see that assassination for US benefit is going to demonstrate yet again that it is a savage, criminal state that has occupied and continues to interfere in Iraq's business for its own purposes?

Friday Garden Blogging

Mellow Thanksgiving


Note the long shadows and still-green grass


Ground is not frozen yet; last scarlet nantes carrots--very tasty

What a difference a week makes. Thanksgiving was dry, with a warming trend on the way.

The Angerson quagmire

Brilliance from Conan O'Brien



This was from the Monday Nov. 20 show. I especially liked the ``search'' for comedy in the sketch.

Friday Garden Blogging

Soggy


Daily drenchings since Sunday have kept the sump running hard

One to two inches of rain has fallen several times since last Saturday leaving everything saturated.

FLOOD ADVISORY
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE CARIBOU, ME
214 PM EST FRI NOV 17 2006

...THE FLOOD ADVISORY CONTINUES FOR THE PENOBSCOT RIVER...MATTAWAMKEAG RIVER...PISCATAQUIS RIVER...

.HEAVY RAINFALL TODAY WILL CAUSE CONTINUED RAPID RISES ON RIVERS ACROSS CENTRAL AND DOWNEAST MAINE. THE PISCATAQUIS...MATTAWAMKEAG AND LOWER PENOBSCOT RIVERS ARE EXPECTED TO RISE NEAR BANKFULL.

THE FLOOD ADVISORY CONTINUES FOR THE MATTAWAMKEAG RIVER AT MATTAWAMKEAG
* FROM MSG UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
* UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE
* AT 01PM FRIDAY THE STAGE WAS 12.7 FEET
* FLOOD STAGE IS 13.0 FEET
* FORECAST...THE RIVER WILL RISE TO NEAR 12.7 FEET TOMORROW MORNING

On Thursday when I crossed the Stillwater River in Orono, I noted that the water was lapping up quite high on the banks. It's probably way up after today's wind-driven rainstorm.

The storm came in at about 5am this morning, waking me up with lots of odd pounding on the house and an eerie, lonely howl. It was carrying the spirits of those it took when it spawned tornadoes in North Carolina a couple of days ago.

But remarkably, despite over 32 mm of rain today (1 1/4 in.), the basement offices of Deep Blade Journal did not get wet, as they did during the 45 mm rain on Tuesday.

Let bygones be bygones?

Not

Not, according to Dennis Kucinich anyway. Via A Tiny Revolution, here is a post-election interview with Rep. Kucinich. In comments about the falsehoods leading to the Iraq war, Dennis says clearly what I have felt for a long time, ``...we cannot heal America if we continue with policies that are based on lies.''

Dennis calls for what would be a Truth Commission: ``We need to have hearings on Iraq again. We need to go over again why we went there.... We'’ll never be able to bring closure to this Iraq matter unless we tell the truth about what happened.''

It is impossible to have a meaningful discourse on Iraq if nobody wants to look back on how we got there. Without a basis in truth, we're forced into accepting Bush's outrageous conception of a noble project that is making us safer and leading to ``freedom'' for the Iraqis.

No help in this direction will come from the Democrats, not without a lot of public pressure anyway. Impeachment is ``off the table'' according to Nancy Pelosi. Other top Democrats, like Harry Reid, Dick Durbin and Chuck Shumer, are getting well-practiced saying things like we need to be ``moving forward on an agenda, finding things that we can agree on to start off on the right foot'', and, ``The only way to move forward is with bipartisanship and openness, and to get some results....and that's what we're going to do'', and, ``If we are seen as just blocking the president, it will not serve us well in 2008.''

Fine, if all we expect is business as usual with a slight adjustment in who is holding the gavel. But business as usual is not enough any more. What has happened in Iraq is a really, really big transgression, of global-historical scale, committed by corrupt and morally bankrupt American leaders guilty of the supreme crime--a Crime Against Peace. This enterprise will bankrupt all of our souls if we let the Democrats keep the door open for the president's agenda without examining this hard truth.

Marine General Pace: ``You have to define 'winning.'''

Depends on what is is

Via Harry Shearer's Le Show for November 12, I'm alerted to comments by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, included in this November 11 story, ``Pentagon to Reevaluate Strategy and Goals in Iraq'' in the Washington Post:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, initiated the review this fall after starkly deteriorating security in Baghdad led commanders there to rule out any significant cut this year in the level of U.S. troops in Iraq -- now at about 145,000 -- according to senior defense officials and sources.

Still, sources said that Pace's review marks a more fundamental and open-ended look for possible solutions in Iraq than the military has undertaken to date, growing out of a realization that Iraq could descend into chaos and that the current strategy is inadequate.

"The collapse of the strategy in Baghdad . . . caused a very deep introspection by the military," said a source connected to the Pentagon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic.

Asked by one interviewer whether the United States is winning the war in Iraq, Pace replied: "You have to define 'winning.' I don't mean to be glib about that.

"Winning, to me, is simply having each of the nations that we're trying to help have a secure environment inside of which their government and people can function," he said, in remarks that seemed to depart from the administration's more ambitious stated goal of building a democracy in Iraq.

"You are not going to do away with terrorism," Pace continued. "But you can provide governments in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere with enough security capacity to keep the acts below a level at which their governments can function," he said.

Pace's comments also could foreshadow a reassertion of influence by senior officers in the wake of this week's resignation by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to military officers and analysts. Moreover, some military officers have voiced concern in recent days that if they do not assert a greater role in formulating a future course in Iraq, that course will be defined for them by the resurgence of congressional Democrats, many of whom favor a withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Yet another example of officials, both civilian and military, preparing for diminished notions of ``democracy'' in the definition of ``victory'' in Iraq. Pace also clearly undermines any argument for US troops to stay in Iraq in order to limit ``chaos''. With or without a specific timetable for withdrawal, opponents of the US in Iraq evidently are willing to wait and grind down the US military no matter how long it takes. Chaos is already there. Pace tells us that even if the US somehow decides it ``won'', the Iraqis will face a future of extreme violence for the foreseeable future.

Troop withdrawal from Iraq

What we all want

Spurred by a clear message from voters, key Democrats are indeed using their new-found power to push an agenda of troop withdrawal from Iraq. It's a tough sell to the pigheads in the White House, of course. And there is absolutely no admission from anyone of what the war really is--a neocolonial project. But I do see a ray of hope.

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the presumptive incoming Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee gave the Sunday bobblehead audience the meatiest quotes, as reported along with follow-up comments in the New York Times:

``We need to begin a phased redeployment of forces from Iraq in four to six months,'' Mr. Levin said in an appearance on the ABC News program ``This Week.'' In a telephone interview later, Mr. Levin added, ``The point of this is to signal to the Iraqis that the open-ended commitment is over and that they are going to have to solve their own problems.... ``The people have spoken in a very, very strong way that they don'’t buy the administration policy.''

Josh Bolton from the White House seemed slightly less dismissive than you might expect, now siganling a willingness to accept ``fresh ideas''. They're still allergic to a timetable. But the James Baker Iraq Study Group and other recently-empowered old guard realist adults from the Daddy Bush years, including creepy Pentagon designate Robert Gates, are expected to come up with a way to turn the war we started over to the Iraqis.

A theme is emerging from the Democrats, Republicans, and corporate media commentators in their talk of ``commitment'' being thrust upon the Iraqis. Here's another example from the CNN This Week at War show today:

JOHN ROBERTS: And Barbara Starr, without a firm commitment from the Iraqi government to move forward in a unified way, can the U.S. military hope to prevail here?

STARR: Oh, absolutely not, John, because right now given the election results, it's all about bringing the troops home. That is, you know, before the election it was Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. Now it's bring the troops home. That's what the Democrats want. And the way to make that happen is to get the Iraqi government to sign up to cracking down on the militias, turning over the provinces where there isn't so much violence to Iraqi controlled under some sort of deadline process. And really, as they say, holding their feet to the fire. That's the way to reduce the need for more U.S. troops many commanders believe and that's the option that they want to pursue.

This is code for realization of the fact that the US has gotten its butt kicked in Iraq, and now that the Democrats have won something, the Administration is going to figure out a way to pin the loss on them.

Veterans day

My father

If you did not when I posted it last year, please go into the Deep Blade archives and read my late father's 1946 account of his Atlantic crossing during WWII entitled Troopship.

The tide was rapidly coming in and the liner was rising above the pier, making the gangplank a miniature problem in mountain climbing. A wool uniform and boots did not help one to forget that it was August. Here is a partial inventory of the items with which I was to ``pass quickly'', as the announcer so blithely informed us, up that incline: one caliber 45 sub-machine gun, seventeen thirty-round clips for same, field pack complete with entrenching tools, gas-mask, and steel helmet, all draped around the neck and each in a competition to close the normal channels of air. Perched above all, one balanced his duffel bag containing extra uniforms, gas-resistant clothing, more boots and an array of personal effects.

``Is this trip necessary?'' quirked a voice. We made the grade....

My dad returned from the war with his body in tact, but his being was changed forever. They used to call it shell shock, now it's better known as PTSD. As a result of growing up with this great and gentle man as my father, I have felt from a very young age that there is always a better way than war to solve political problems. Nothing makes me angrier than to hear a White House chickenhawk like Dick Cheney try to tell me otherwise.

Friday Garden Blogging

Bare


Lonely leaf on the maple tree

During this week, it did not seem very much like winter was on the way. The temperatures stayed up in the ten degree neighborhood most of the time, even at night. Still, the leaves are down and the wind has a bit of a bite today.

New US direction on Iraq

De-democrify, re-Baathify

We will not set an artificial timetable for leaving Iraq, because that would embolden the terrorists and make them believe they can wait us out. We are in Iraq to achieve a result: A country that is democratic, representative of all its people, at peace with its neighbors, and able to defend itself. And when that result is achieved, our men and women serving in Iraq will return home with the honor they have earned.

President George W. Bush

State of the Union Address
February 2, 2005

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Does the departure of Don Rumsfeld signal a new direction in Iraq? A solid majority of Americans said yesterday that they wanted some American troops, if not all, withdrawn from Iraq. Did you hear that call, and will you heed it?

THE PRESIDENT: Terry, I'd like our troops to come home, too, but I want them to come home with victory, and that is a country that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And I can understand Americans saying, come home. But I don't know if they said come home and leave behind an Iraq that could end up being a safe haven for al Qaeda. I don't believe they said that. And so, I'm committed to victory. I'm committed to helping this country so that we can come home.

President George W. Bush

Press Conference
November 8, 2006

Maureen Dowd has it about right:

W. has stopped talking about democracy as a standard of success in Iraq; yesterday, he said that Iraq had to ``govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself.''

Joe Klein generally is pretty moronic. Still, an interview with Klein on the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 program Thursday night amplified Dowd's point and peaked my interest. He claimed good sources were giving him the jist of the ``new'' post-Rumsfeld, Democrat-Congress-era Iraq policy:

COOPER: Yes, Joe, what are you hearing? Is there room for compromise on Iraq?

KLEIN: Well, there are big changes coming down the pike on Iraq.

I think that naming Bob Gates is -- is just the -- the tip of the iceberg. What I am hearing from military and intelligence people is that there is -- that there is a desire to move away from democracy, from emphasizing democracy, to emphasizing stability.

One very high-ranking Bush administration official in the national security area said to me today, it's a Mick Jagger moment. You can't always get what you want. The question is whether we can get what we need.

Now, we don't -- we don't need...

COOPER: Did he actually put it in those terms?

KLEIN: Absolutely.

(LAUGHTER)

...

COOPER: But what does it mean, move away from democracy, move towards stability?

KLEIN: Well, I think that, you know, the -- the current government in -- in Iraq is next thing to a joke.

I mean, right now, Maliki's main source of support is the radical cleric...

COOPER: Right, Muqtada al-Sadr.

KLEIN: ... Muqtada al-Sadr.

And the big question our government has to face now in Iraq is whether we want Muqtada al-Sadr to be the de facto leader of Arab Iraq, non-Kurdish Iraq, or do we want to have someone more amenable to our point of view, someone who might unite the -- the -- the Iraqi military? There is some talk of bringing back a lot of the Baathists who we dispersed -- you know, who we dispersed, when we dispersed the army. That was the...

COOPER: Sort of re-Baathify the country.

KLEIN: Right. Right.

Thomas Friedman said some years ago (just after the first Glf War) that what was needed in Iraq was a dictator who ruled just like Saddam but was not Saddam. With the old daddy-Bush era people coming back, looks like that policy preference may be coming back too. Meanwhile, the Democrats seem to hate the notion that anti-war sentiment had anything to do with putting them back in control of Congress, so they won't be much of a brake on what the President wants to do.

We may soon witness the end of the purple finger project in Iraq.

Pressure the Democrats--now!

Bruce Gagnon is a smart man

While Rahm Emanuel tries to dig its grave with a backhoe, Gagnon asks rhetorically,

So what does the peace movement do now?

We must continue to call for immediate withdrawal from Iraq. We must call for a 50% cut in military spending and conversion of the military industrial complex. We must call for an end to Star Wars research and development funding which now stands at about $10 billion a year.

We must also call for investigations of Bush-Cheney for impeachable offenses. We must call for repeal of the Patriot Act and the recent Military Commissions Act - the torture bill.

We have to call out loudly and strongly for universal national health care and for new federal election laws that sets one national standard to ensure fair voting.

There are many more things that must now be advanced by the peace, justice, environmental, labor, and women's movements. And we must be impatient with the Democrats.

Otherwise, it'll take no time at all for the Democrats to play directly into Bush's bloody hands.

In fact, it's already happening under the sleazy guidance of Emanuel and Nancy Pelosi. Firedoglake describes how Emanuel is busy ``blanketing the establishment media to argue yesterday's election results were a victory for conservative `blue dog' Dems, and emphatically not representative of any growing progressive movement.''

See Rabid Lambs, Not Blue Dogs, Won the Election for a good reader explaining exactly why Emanuel and Pelosi are wrong.

Depletion of Nova Scotia gas

Neighborhood future?



This story from The Oil Drum is very interesting to me because natural gas from the Sable Island fields flows through a pipeline less than one mile from our home. It's used at a pretty new power plant just down the road from here.

Measures presently being taken to keep up the flow of gas will only speed the rate of depletion, as the piece explains.

The curious thing about this diagram is the use of a new colour to show the effect of compression. No new field is involved, so all that compression should do is increase deliverablity, at the expense of more rapid depletion of the reservoirs. It cannot delay output decline indefinitely, and the diagram shows beginnings of decline in late 2008. One would expect that the total output (over all time) would scarcely be affected by compression, so a very rapid decline would be expected after 2008. It is difficult to see how a decline of the output to a very low level can be avoided by the end of the decade or shortly after.

Will there be enough LNG injected in this system by ten years from now to make up the losses from depletion?

Election eve

Epitome of bad politics

Wolf Blitzer on CNN tonight rambled on about the obvious--the US military disaster in Iraq is the dominant issue in the 2006 mid-term Congressional campaign. This is as it should be. President Bush has led us into a brutal occupation of a weak, battered Middle Eastern country, in the process causing hundreds of thousands of deaths including those of nearly 3000 US military personnel. The Bush Iraq project is an ongoing travesty of death with no end in sight because Bush and his pigheaded administration can't afford to admit the truth about the disaster, and they refuse to even think about backing away from their neocolonial ambitions.

So, the public doesn't like what is happening in Iraq and may turn one or both houses of Congress over to the Democrats as a result. But it'll be a lot closer than it ought to be, probably a nail biter 24 hours from now.

How could the Congressional election be this close given the total mendacity of the Republicans? Even the 2002 war-drum-beating New York Times now explains,

Congress, in particular the House, has failed to ask probing questions about the war in Iraq or hold the president accountable for his catastrophic bungling of the occupation. It also has allowed Mr. Bush to avoid answering any questions about whether his administration cooked the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Then, it quietly agreed to close down the one agency that has been riding herd on crooked and inept American contractors who have botched everything from construction work to the security of weapons.

After the revelations about the abuse, torture and illegal detentions in Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Congress shielded the Pentagon from any responsibility for the atrocities its policies allowed to happen....

The answer to the question of why the Republicans are not being swept into oblivion rests on the notion that most Democrats and a large swath of the public at large still seem to think waging aggressive war is a legitimate policy. Mass destruction of civilians and infrastructure hardly registers with Americans who exhibit aggressively pro-war attitudes.

Disenchantment with the war is based to a greater degree on the appearance that America has ``botched'' a rightful ass kicking of some sort of semi-mythic terrorist force now centered in Iraq than on the horror of endless killing. President Bush has been remarkably successful in implanting erroneous conceptions of what is happening in Iraq than many of us in the peace movement wish to believe. People may not like how things are going with the war and may blame the president. But most Americans accept the president's description of what the war is. Any discussion of the true picture--that the US has taken and dominated Iraq politically while appropriating control of its economy and resources in a manner that amounts to all-out war against the entire Iraqi population--is entirely off the table.

Home-grown Iraqi resistance has been the deadly wrench dropped into the American war machine. Despite the obvious resulting quagmire, the Republican campaign has been designed to make themselves look like the ones who can lead the homeland to victory over terrorists now emanating from Iraq. The Democrats are accused of surrender for even hinting at ``redeployment.''

To accomplish this discourse control, a Rovian dose of un-reality is peddled in Republican campaigns, painting an Iraq story to voters heavy on jingoism and neocolonial conceits.

President Bush hammers away in unreality, painting a world where the last line of protection against hords of maurading terrorists is being held by the US military in Iraq, as he does in this campaign speech.

PRESIDENT BUSH: And Iraq is the central front in this war to protect you. Oh, I've heard them in Washington. I know you have, as well. They say, well, Iraq is just a distraction, Iraq is not a part of the war. Well, I don't believe that, our troops don't believe that, and Osama bin Laden doesn't believe that. (Laughter.) He has called the fight in Iraq the third world war. He has said that victory for the terrorists in Iraq will mean America's defeat and disgrace forever. We need to take his words seriously. It doesn't matter what party you're in, you need to listen to the enemy.

There's people in Washington who believe that when we fight for Iraqi democracy, and when we fight to adhere to the policy, "defeat them there so we don't have to face them here," it creates terrorists. In other words, it makes the world more dangerous. But I want to remind you that the reason we're at war with the terrorists is not because of Iraq. See, we weren't in Iraq when they bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. We weren't in Iraq when they bombed our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. We weren't in Iraq when they bombed the USS Cole. And we were not in Iraq on the September the 11th, 2001, when they killed nearly 3,000 of our citizens. (Applause.)

Of course if we back one foot out of Iraq, Osama will be unleashed all over America, that's so obvious To Mr. Bush. On the other hand, surely it cannot be imagined that the extreme civilian death caused by the US occupation is a possible terrorist inspiration. Oh, and history began on 9/11/2001.

In Mr. Bush's favor, I will say that he is not entirely living in fantasy on this. Doesn't he have a sophisticated geostrategic rationale for insisting that America must own and dominate the Middle East, its people, and its resources, for our protection?

PRESIDENT BUSH: The enemy has made it abundantly clear that they want us to retreat so they can have, one, safe haven from which to launch further attacks -- safe havens similar to that safe haven they had in Afghanistan. Secondly, they want us to retreat so they can topple moderate governments. They want to be able to spread their ideology as far and wide as possible, and they understand our presence prevents them from doing so.

Thirdly, they would like to control energy resources. Imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals, bound together by a hateful ideology, was able to say to the West, to the United States, for example, if you do not abandon your alliances, if you do not withdraw, we will run the price of oil up to the point that chokes your economy. You can imagine somebody saying, abandon Israel, or we will bring you to you knees. Or, get out of our way, or we'll bring you to your knees. And couple that with a country which doesn't like us with a nuclear weapon, and people will look back at this period of time, and say, what happened to them in 2006? How come they couldn't see the danger? What clouded their vision? Well, I want you to know I clearly see the danger. That is why we will fight in Iraq and win in Iraq. (Applause.)

Man, if you let them have their own oil, the next thing that will happen is they'll rip a page out of an old Soviet playbook and they'll be running the world through nuclear blackmail! I take back the notion that this is some sort of likely geostrategic reality. It is neocolonial conceit of the worst kind, bordering on racism.

Most Americans know few of the details of what the war has brought. What's behind those high pole numbers on war disapproval then? I'm now convinced it's a mistake to read those numbers as a concensus for peace. The American public--in abstration--is as bloodthirsty as ever. That cuts across red states, blue states, liberal and conservative. No, the way I read much of the disapproval is that a lot of Americans want a better war. It's about a perception that we are not kicking their butts. This is revealed when there is a spasm of gleeful reaction to extrajudicial assassination of Zarqawi and the death sentence--illegal under international law--put on Saddam. It is a relentless ``we got him'' mentality.

Despite some recent organizing success within the peace movement, we are mostly invisible and mostly ignored in Congress. I'm not hopeful that the American people can be educated and re-oriented. We'd really have to be losing for that to happen--real widespread pain of a kind very few of us yet have had over this war. I'm not trying to suggest 25,000 casualties (US deaths and injuries from the war) is anything but a major sacrifice for those who have had to suffer the losses while the administration fails to care. But, statistically it's noise.

Will some kind of wave of conscience to come over us in order enable genuine political pressure. So far, the little waves that have happened, like Cindy Sheehan, have been Swiftboated away. In no small measure this is because of hostility from the Democratic and liberal side.

The neoliberal economic program is advancing capped by a ``hydrocarbon law'' that will ensure decades of concessions to the international oil companies. Total corruption under the occupation government will not be penalized. The entire Development Fund for Iraq vanished, maybe $20 billion. There does not appear to be an authority powerful enough to pursue justice on that one. Meanwhile, the FOXies still hype WMD and Oil-for-Food. It's grotesque.

Our Mandarins in the White House have great taste for killing. They thought it could work for them in Iraq. They had a plan--raise Iraq's puppet army, smash Ramadi as was done to Fallujah, punish mercilessly every area with concentrated support for resistance until they say uncle, then intimidate them so they cower in a broken society for the rest of their lives. That looked like the plan anyway, with very few contrary bleats from Democrats.

The Democrats may have a slightly better sense of reality, but they're very limited. Last year, the Democratic establishment failed to support Congressman John Murtha's withdrawl call immediately and forcefully. It is shameful that the eventual ``timetable'' Senator John Kerry came up last summer with could only find 13 Senate Ds.

If the Democrats take any control in Congress tomorrow, a big if, I will not hold my breath waiting for change.

No longer a cakewalk

``The greatest strategic disaster in American history''

Despite the efforts of his slippery mouthpiece Tony Snow, President Bush is losing even Kenneth ``Cakewalk'' Adelman and Richard ``Darth Vader'' Perle on Iraq:

Neo Culpa
As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself.

ADELMAN: I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional.

PERLE: The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity....[Bush] did not make decisions, in part because the machinery of government that he nominally ran was actually running him.

Perle also worries about ``total defeat'' and America leaving Iraq a ``failed state.'' Good Lord, if Bush has lost these guys...

Note: This post sat in draft purgatory for a couple of days.

Friday Garden Blogging

Hard frost


Leaves ready for pick-up by the town vacuum cleaner


Last broccoli shoot

This morning was our first trip of the season below -5 degrees Celsius. The leaves were well stripped by a frenetic storm that rolled through last Saturday.

Tidal wave?

Doubting that Democrats will win


Signs in my old neighborhood--Wetterling is a Democrat who forever lost a young son after a bizarre 1989 abduction incident. Bachmann is a scary wingnut Republican who said, ``God called me to run for the United States Congress''

A friend from way back in the day from my old home town in Minnesota wrote yesterday,

I saw that Wetterling was up 8 points about two weeks ago and now she's down 10 points. What the hell is going on in St. Cloud? Is she really fading or is this just bad polling? Some pollsters are now saying that the tide turned over the weekend and we may see a pretty substantial shift toward the Democrats on Tuesday. Somehow Wetterling can't seem to ride the wave.

Actually, the detailed map and nationwide summary of polling data at Majority Watch shows Wetterling and Bachmann in a dead heat. (In another much-watched Minnesota contest Republican incumbant Gil Gutknecht is up by 3 over his challenger.)

However, even if the Ds lose these races, the interesting thing from this map is w/o election fraud on a truly massive scale, the Republicans are DEAD in the House. They are 21 seats down before you even get to the contested races. Of the 60 contested, the Ds would break 33-27, even giving the Rs the ties, all the weak Rs and half the weak Ds (sorry Patty, Minnesota is a pretty damn red state outside the central Twin Cities). That looks like about a 25-seat majority for the Democrats. I guess you'd call that a tidal wave.

But I worry about election fraud--mainly extreme, massive voter suppression and ballot non-counting in many of these races. Will that be what saves Karl Rove and his boys? Rove has said that he has figures that ``add up to a Republican Senate and a Republican House'' and that he is ``entitled to the math''. What does Rove know that the rest of us don't?

Meanwhile, here's one race I really like: OH 15th: Kilroy (D-challenger) 53%, Pryce (R-incumbent in R leadership) 41%. This woman Deborah Pryce is a piece of work, ick! I wrote about her insane remarks on Iraq back in June. She is one of many, many Republicans who richly deserve defeat at the ballot box. If she pulls out a remarkable victory in this Ohio district, red flags of fraud will be waving.

Is this a war?

Of course it is, or not, Bush says so

I'm a great admirer of Jonathan Schwarz, who writes the blog A Tiny Revolution. He has a new piece on Schrödinger's Cat War published in Mother Jones.

...Why was Gonzales so eager to point out the difference between declaring war outright and authorizing the use of military force? The answers to these questions reveal the Bush administration at its most nakedly, hilariously duplicitous—inventing an entirely new and logic-defying state of being for America, something no one has opposed because no one realized it could exist in the first place.

So, we can be both at war, and not at war at the same time, or we can both authorize and reject torture at the same time. It's the new quantum of existence for America.