Another power grab??

Analysis on the $700 billion bailout in The New York Times:

Some are suspicious of Mr. Paulson's characterizations, finding in his warnings and demands for extraordinary powers a parallel with the way the Bush administration gained authority for the war in Iraq. Then, the White House suggested that mushroom clouds could accompany Congress's failure to act. This time, it is financial Armageddon supposedly on the doorstep.

"This is scare tactics to try to do something that's in the private but not the public interest," said Allan Meltzer (above), a former economic adviser to President Reagan, and an expert on monetary policy at the Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business. "It's terrible."

A report that slipped through the cracks

A team of UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) geographers has uncovered fresh evidence from satellite imagery that last year's U.S. troop surge in Iraq may not have been as effective at improving security as some U.S. officials have maintained.

This interesting story appeared for about 5 seconds on Yahoo's front page but then faded into oblivion. It was distrubuted by AIN, Asian International News, which provides multimedia news to China and bureaus in India. The AIN agency covers virtually all of South Asia and claims, on its official website, to be the leading South Asia-wide news agency. Their coverage includes general news, entertainment, lifestyles, business, science, sports and features.

So here are my thoughts and questions regarding the article, in no particular order:

1) How does a report from UCLA geographers end up on AIN distribution but not the AP of Rueters? Why doesn't make its way to the mainstream? 

2) Why don't we here more about the Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq and their assessment of events? This was a bipartisan commission that was headed by Gen. James Jones, and "reported to Congress in September 2007 on the readiness of the Iraqi Security Forces, their capabilities, and how support and training by U.S. forces contributes to the effectiveness of the ISF."

In a report to Congress in September of that year, General David Petraeus claimed that "the military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met."

However, a report the same month by an independent military commission headed by retired U.S. General James Jones attributed the decrease in violence to areas being overrun by either Shiites or Sunnis.

3) What's up with the ethnic cleansing referred to by the UCLA team and Dr. John Agnew, in addition to the September 2007 report?

Night light in neighborhoods populated primarily by embattled Sunni residents declined dramatically just before the February 2007 surge and never returned, suggesting that ethnic cleansing by rival Shiites may have been largely responsible for the decrease in violence for which the U.S. military has claimed credit.

4) This UCLA team is not a group of hacks, if you will, and their research seems easy enough to understand.

Dr. Agnew states that "by the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left."

Baghdad's decreases were centered in the southwestern Sunni strongholds of East and West Rashid, where the light signature dropped 57 percent and 80 percent, respectively, during the same period.

I'm obviously rambling on a bit, but it's stuff like this that confuses me and intrigues me. Will this report make its way to Obama, and if it did, would anyone believe him if he tried to use it to support his position against the surge? Would the general public even be able to understand the significance of something like this? We have to be diligent to seek out and find the truth about what is happening in Iraq. Thanks to Dr. Agnew for his important work.

January 27, 1992 - September 15, 2008

Pascale...



She was cute and did silly, weird things. She liked to meow a lot. She liked to sleep under the covers. She would for no reason suddenly hiss and bite you when you were petting her. She may have been a little mentally retarded (probably, since she rode home in a shoebox with Clay on the back of his motorcycle). She liked to hide in the closet when people came to visit our house. She was suffering from liver failure in the end. She was loved very much and will be missed a lot.

Thank you

for packing my salad in a container
for driving me to the gym
for working on the patio
for being supportive
for remembering "To err is human, to forgive divine"
for making sure Pascale didn't suffer long
for cooking dinner
for planting herbs
for feeding the birds
for going to the flea market
for emailing esurance
for throwing me a nice birthday party
for taking me to Paris
for giving me sessions with Sam
for smiling

Andy Warhol on Eating Alone

Random Thoughts

1) This week I mentioned to a friend that he had grey hair that I hadn't noticed before. Well, for the record, I hope he didn't take it wrong. Grey hair is sexy.

2) I am becoming the person I never knew I could be when I was a young sickly, husky child.

3) I'm reading Foucault again from the later lectures and he is talking about "the care of the self" vis a vis "knowing yourself."