Sanchez: Iraq war 'a nightmare with no end in sight' - CNN.com

Sanchez: Iraq war 'a nightmare with no end in sight' - CNN.com

Retired General Ricardo Sanchez, Commander of Coalition Ground Forces in Iraq between June 2003 and June 2004, now blasts his civilian leadership for their lust for power, their incompetence and so on with respect to the Iraq war.

Sanchez entered the military in 1973 or 1974. He had been in the military for 30 years, well into retirement eligibility, when he took over in Iraq. He might have retired the instant these insights occurred to him. He could have said what he's saying back when it might have mattered. Seems to me Sanchez is the pot criticizing the kettle.

Sanchez can kiss my ass. His excuse that it was his duty to obey orders and not object publicly when he was on active duty is nothing but lame.

Sanchez rails against partisan politics:

"National efforts to date have been corrupted by partisan politics that have prevented us from devising an effective, executable and supportable strategies," he said. "At times, these partisan struggles have led us to political decisions that endangered the lives of our sons and daughters on the battlefield. The unmistakable message was that political power had greater priority than our national security objectives."

"Overcoming this strategic failure is the first step toward achieving victory in Iraq," he said. "Without bipartisan cooperation, we are doomed to fail. There is nothing going on today in Washington that would give us hope."

A possible Unity08 candidate? What he says above may be true enough, but I sure hope not.

Las Cruces Sun-News - Truck driver gets money back from DEA (6:29 a.m.)

Las Cruces Sun-News - Truck driver gets money back from DEA (6:29 a.m.)

Too bad there couldn't have been major punitive damages.

The ACLU had sued the agency on behalf of Anastasio Prieto of El Paso after the DEA told him he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money and that to get it back, he'd have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.

It was his because he had it, and the burden of proof should have been on the government.

Good for the New Mexico ACLU!

Previous item here.

See? The climate models ARE wrong!

The North Pole Is Melting: Scientific American:

Such precipitous loss of ice cover far outpaces anything climate models or scientists have predicted.
...
"The observed rates of change have far outstripped what we projected."

So, what's next, the thermohaline circulation weakening much faster than projected because of all that freshwater from melted ice? Oh, well... At least there'd be the likely upside that the French wouldn't have to shut down any more nukes due to the water they use for cooling the condensers being too warm.

Rigging a study to make conservatives look stupid. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

Rigging a study to make conservatives look stupid. - By William Saletan - Slate Magazine

I've read a few of the articles Mr. Saletan is reacting to, and I think I agree with him in the sense that I think entirely too much is being made of the study by the press.

I have not read the paper, and I'm not going to, but I think the study authors would agree that too much is being made of an interesting study intended to have a very narrow scientific focus.

Damned good question

Commentary: Where is the outrage when humans are abused? - CNN.com

My own answer is that the Vick case was vastly overblown because of celebrity, while the case of the six cracker assholes received about the right amount of coverage. It was a newsworthy story, as should be the story of their rapid execution, but that's about it.

Come on, though. There are plenty of other things that need coverage, and focusing on one or two of the many, many outrages that occur all the time distracts from the wider picture.

Maybe that's part of the intent. Who knows? My two cents.

Conservatives just can't help themselves

Conservatives just can't help themselves

Amodio says that the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a forebrain region, "serves almost as a barometer for this degree of conflict."

"People who have more sensitive activity in that area,'' he notes, "are more responsive to these cues that say they need to adapt their behavior," reacting more quickly and accurately to the unexpected stimulus. On average, people who described themselves as politically liberal had about 2.5 times the activity in their ACCs and were more sensitive to the "No-Go cue'' than their conservative friends.

"They are more sensitive to the need for change and more sensitive to the need to change their behavior," Amodio says about the politically left-leaning subjects.

In other words, conservatives are just slow.

No, seriously...

I wonder how I'd do on a test like this? Would I come out looking more conservative or liberal? I once took a test that showed me to be pretty close to the center, but I think it was because I harbor some attitudes which right-, and other attitudes which left-wingers, might consider extreme. The scale balanced but the weights were way out there.

There's an old joke about how, if you're conservative when young, it's because you have no heart, but if you're liberal when you're old it's because you have no brain. Well, if it's true that our brains slow down as we age, maybe the slowing affects the ACC. Now we know why older people tend towards conservatism.

Or not.

Interesting stuff. I'll see what a Google Alert on the researcher's name turns up over time.

LA Times has an article on this topic: Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain.

Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at UC Berkeley's Institute of Personality and Social Research who was not connected to the study, said the results "provided an elegant demonstration that individual differences on a conservative-liberal dimension are strongly related to brain activity."

Analyzing the data, Sulloway said liberals were 4.9 times as likely as conservatives to show activity in the brain circuits that deal with conflicts, and 2.2 times as likely to score in the top half of the distribution for accuracy.

Sulloway said the results could explain why President Bush demonstrated a single-minded commitment to the Iraq war and why some people perceived Sen. John F. Kerry, the liberal Massachusetts Democrat who opposed Bush in the 2004 presidential race, as a "flip-flopper" for changing his mind about the conflict.

Caveats abound, of course.

Lead author David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, cautioned that the study looked at a narrow range of human behavior and that it would be a mistake to conclude that one political orientation was better. The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation, he said.

Depending on the situation.

Maybe the world will be a better place when this sort of thing is widely understood and people are sensitized to the limits of their innate thinking style.

Or not.

AFP: Terror groups raise funds through drugs: DEA

AFP: Terror groups raise funds through drugs: DEA:

'We'll have to deal with more and more hybrid' organisations in the future, Braun told the conference in the Tel Aviv suburb of Herzliya.

Of course, because you won't consider addressing the fundamental cause, the thing that makes the trade lucrative.

"When your job takes you to the swamps to hunt snakes, you can end up taking crocs too -- they live in the same place."

Yes, well, sorry about the danger. Don't do it on my account. I'd just as soon you were put to work doing something more worthwhile.

.50 caliber assholes!

Tribal fishermen held after whale killed with machine gun - CNN.com

"We allow native hunts for cultural purposes. However, this does not appear to be of that nature so far," he said.

What do you mean, "so far"? .50 caliber culture?

Q&A: "We're Dealing with a Christian Taliban"

Q&A: "We're Dealing with a Christian Taliban"

...

Let me make this clear. I'm doing this Q&A with you guys today as a man at war with the gun smoke in my face. We are not at war with Christianity or evangelical Christianity. We have many evangelical or non-evangelical Christians who massively support what our organisation, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, is doing. We are at war with a small subset of evangelical Christianity [known as] "Dominionist Christianity" and it represents about 12.6 percent of the American public or about 38 million people.

...

Let me make it clear. We are dealing with a Christian Taliban. They hate when I say that but that's too bad. If you look at Chris Hedges Book "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America" you'll see that the Christian Right is a fascistic organisation. And remember, I'm not a bleeding heart liberal -- not that there's anything wrong with that. I know the Christian Right would love it if I were a tree-hugging, Chardonnay-sipping, Northern California Democrat. I'm not. I come from a conservative military family. My youngest son just graduated three months ago from the Air Force Academy. He's the sixth member of my family to go there including myself. We have three consecutive generations of military academy graduates and over 128 years of combined active duty military service in my immediate family. I spent three and half years in the West Wing of the Reagan White House as one of his lawyers. I've been Ross Perot's general counsel. I didn't want to have to get into this fight. But when I say the Christian Taliban I frickin mean the Christian Taliban.

...

Sylvester and Tweety Bird

Sylvester and Tweety Bird

In a new video, al-Qaeda leader bin Laden again taunts Bush, the United States – and then the Democrats for not forcing an American withdrawal from Iraq, which should help guarantee that the Democrats won’t dare press for a withdrawal from Iraq.

At a summit of Pacific Rim leaders in Sydney, Australia, President Bush then did his part, highlighting bin Laden’s Iraq comments:

“I found it interested that on the tape Iraq was mentioned, which is a reminder that Iraq is part of the war against extremists. If al-Qaeda bothers to mention Iraq, it’s because they want to achieve their objectives in Iraq, which is to drive us out.”

Except that U.S. intelligence has long concluded that al-Qaeda really wants the opposite: to bog the United States down in a hopeless, bloody war in Iraq that has been a boon for recruiting young jihadists, raising money and protecting al-Qaeda’s leadership holed up in base camps inside Pakistan.

...

Now, as Bush faces another Democratic challenge to his plans for continuing the Iraq War, bin Laden shows up again, essentially berating the Democrats for not forcing U.S. troop withdrawals.

...

Fox News commentator Sean Hannity offered a taste of how the new bin Laden tape will be used against both Democrats and the American Left.

“One of the things that also struck me is the language specifically that he [bin Laden] used,” Hannity said. “He seemed to adopt the very same language that is being used by the hard Left in this country, as he describes what’s going on in Iraq as a ‘civil war’; he actually used the word ‘neocons’; he talked about global warming; he denounces capitalism and corporations.”

In other words, any similarity in language between bin Laden and what many Americans say in common conversations will be used to discredit them. They will become bin Laden’s fellow travelers.

All the better to get Bush and bin Laden what they both really want: a prolonged war in Iraq – and possibly a U.S. attack on the Shiite government of Iran.

Brain Teaser for Stress - Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains ����

Brain Teaser for Stress - Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains

Very interesting!

Pandora Dot Com

My friend Ken mentioned Pandora to me the other day, and I'm so glad he did.

Pandora.com is part of a project called the Music Genome Project, which has some 50 musicians working to characterize music according to a large number of criteria. Pandora allows one to create "stations" which you seed with a particular song or artist name. They then stream music that they think will fit a mold conforming to the seed song or artist. Along the way you can give selections "thumbs up" or "thumbs down", or you can add songs or artists to the station in an attempt to teach Pandora what you want in that stream.

It's an interesting idea very well executed.

The service is ad supported, or you can pay a small fee to avoid the adds. The ads aren't bothersome - nothing flashy or too distracting.

and what have you. Apparently some body empowered to collect royalties from music streamers is setting prices based on the number of streams that a They've recently had to limit service to the United States, which they verify by asking for your zip code and checking your IP address. This all has to do with licensing issues. There's some body empowered to collect royalties from webcasters whose rates are currently designed in a way that works against Pandora because every member's individual "stations" are considered distinct streams subject to a minimum stream charge. I hope they resolve the issue and stay in business.

Every time I'm away from Liza, water come to me eye.
Come back Liza, come back girl, wipe the tear from me eye.
Harry Belafonte. Beautiful!

There are some other limitations but nothing too bothersome. You can only thumb-down six times per hour, even if you switch channels, because their purpose is to stream "stations" not serve up custom programs. Has something to do with the licensing business. They explain all this in their FAQ.

I am impressed with the quality of the service, and I'm enjoying it greatly. I seeded my first "station" with "Joan Baez" (one of my favorite voices of all time), and like magic I was listening to a very nice stream of stuff I hadn't heard in ages along with some music new to me. I thumbed a couple of songs down along the way, but the stream has been very nice.

Since then I've made a few other stations seeded with everything from Juan Luis Guerra to Inti-Ilimani to Iron Maiden to Michael Schenker. These stations all work very well, though I have deleted a couple of stations that didn't work out as I'd have liked. Cu Cu Ru Cu Cu Paloma didn't work out. I think that's because the version of the song they were going to start out with was by Harry Belafonte, which seemed to direct the stream to music I'm indifferent to. I love Harry Belafonte but the stream was a little too elevator-music for me. I deleted that station and seeded a new one with "Harry Belafonte", down-thumbed a couple of selections, and I've enjoyed the resulting stream very much.

If a stream delivers a song you want to purchase, you can click on a menu that allows purchasing it from iTunes or Amazon.

Music is encoded at an adequate bit-rate (at least for my dead ears). I think it must be on the order of 128 kbps. Sounds pretty good to me.

My hat is off to the creators of Pandora. I hope they're able to resolve their royalty issues and stay in business.

FOXNews.com - Sex, Drugs & a Federal Prosecution - Opinion

FOXNews.com - Sex, Drugs & a Federal Prosecution - Opinion:

What’s more, the government insisted (and still insists) it needed to show no motive and no criminal intent to convict these doctors of drug dealing. It only needs to show that a given doctor’s prescriptions are outside the course of normal medical practice—a standard to be determined by government drug cops, not medical boards.

...

Not only was the jury not told about these arrangements, it was explicitly told precisely the opposite—that there were no testimony-for-leniency deals.

...

The ex-boyfriend of Jennifer Riggle, the government’s star witness, gave Rottschaefer’s lawyers 183 letters Riggle sent to him while he was in prison. In them, Riggle admits over and over again that she fabricated the sex-for-drugs stories about Dr. Rottschaefer and lied about them in court.

“I think they want to subpened (sic) me to a grand jury about the doctor I was seeing,” Riggle wrote in one letter. “They’re saying he was bribing patients with sex for pills, but that never happened to me. DEA said they will cut me a deal for good testimony.”

Federal prosecutors have never charged Riggle with perjury.

...

Now there’s new evidence undercutting the “legitimate medical purpose” argument, too. All five women who testified against Rottschaefer have sued him in civil court for medical malpractice. So far, none of those suits have been successful—three of eight remain unresolved.

The lawsuits did, however, allow Rottschaefer’s lawyers to look at the women’s entire medical histories, not just the portions prosecutors provided at trial. What they found ought to be enough to set Rottschaefer free.

It’s now clear that all five women perjured themselves in Rottschaefer’s criminal trial—both about the bargains they’d struck with federal prosecutors, and about their own medical histories. One failed to inform the jury that she’d been diagnosed with several psychological disorders, allowing the jury to conclude that a breakdown she’d suffered in 2002 was due to the drugs Dr. Rottschaefer had prescribed her, not her underlying medical conditions.

The other four had been or were later treated with medications similar to those Dr. Rottschaefer prescribed, and for the same conditions he had diagnosed. Meaning that not only were Dr. Rottschaefer’s actions not outside the scope of accepted medical practice, they were actually duplicated by other doctors.

...

I have such disrespect...

ACLU sues DEA on behalf of truck whose money was seized | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

ACLU sues DEA on behalf of truck whose money was seized | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Disgusting. This is why I support the ACLU.

I wonder what would have happened had Mr. Prieto declined to consent to a search.

ACLU sues DEA on behalf of truck whose money was seized

© 2007 The Associated Press

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A trucker has sued the Drug Enforcement Administration, seeking to get back nearly $24,000 seized by DEA agents earlier this month at a weigh station on U.S. 54 in New Mexico north of El Paso, Texas.

Anastasio Prieto of El Paso gave a state police officer at the weigh station permission to search the truck to see if it contained "needles or cash in excess of $10,000," according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the federal lawsuit Thursday.

Prieto told the officer he didn't have any needles but did have $23,700.

Officers took the money and turned it over to the DEA. DEA agents photographed and fingerprinted Prieto over his objections, then released him without charging him with anything.

Border Patrol agents searched his truck with drug-sniffing dogs, but found no evidence of illegal substances, the ACLU said.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants violated Prieto's right to be free of unlawful search and seizure by taking his money without probable cause and by fingerprinting and photographing him.

"Mere possession of approximately $23,700 does not establish probable cause for a search or seizure," the lawsuit said.

It said Prieto pulled into the weigh station about 10:30 a.m. Aug. 8 and was let go about 4 p.m.

DEA agents told Prieto he would receive a notice of federal proceedings to permanently forfeit the money within 30 days and that to get it back, he'd have to prove it was his and did not come from illegal drug sales.

They told him the process probably would take a year, the ACLU said.

The ACLU's New Mexico executive director, Peter Simonson, said Prieto needs his money now to pay bills and maintain his truck. The lawsuit said Prieto does not like banks and customarily carries his savings as cash.

"The government took Mr. Prieto's money as surely as if he had been robbed on a street corner at night," Simonson said. "In fact, being robbed might have been better. At least then the police would have treated him as the victim of a crime instead of as a perpetrator."

The DEA did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

Peter Olson, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety, which oversees state police, said he could not comment on pending litigation.

The lawsuit names DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy, DEA task force officer Gary T. Apodaca, DEA agent Joseph Montoya and three state police officers identified only as John or Jane Doe.

No! No and NO!

TNR Online | False Dawn (print)

The right sends troops. The left sends troops.

FUCK!

NO!

The Lost War - washingtonpost.com

The Lost War - washingtonpost.com

Wow! And in the mainstream press, too.

...
Could anything replace the war on drugs? There's no easy answer. In May, the Senlis Council, a group that works on the opium issue in Afghanistan, argued that "current counter-narcotics policies . . . have focused on poppy eradication, without providing farmers with viable alternatives." Instead of eradication, the council, which is made up of senior politicians and law enforcement officials from Canada and Europe, concludes that Afghan farmers should be permitted to grow opium that can then be refined and distributed for medical purposes. (That's not going to happen, as the United States has recently reiterated its commitment to poppy eradication.)

Others argue that the only way to minimize the criminality and social distress that drugs cause is to legalize narcotics so that the state may exert proper control over the industry. It needs to be taxed and controlled, they insist.

In Washington, the war on drugs has been a third-rail issue since its inauguration. It's obvious why -- telling people that their kids can do drugs is the kiss of death at the ballot box. But that was before 9/11. Now the drug war is undermining Western security throughout the world. In one particularly revealing conversation, a senior official at the British Foreign Office told me, "I often think we will look back at the War on Drugs in a hundred years' time and tell the tale of 'The Emperor's New Clothes.' This is so stupid."

How right he is.

Michael Hawkins: Pure Democracy and the Moral Bankruptcy of the War On Drugs

Jury duty...

...
As for the moral bankruptcy of the War On Drugs, I have only this to say: it is abundantly clear -- and I'm not the only jury member to give voice to this insight -- that the government had held this trial over the head of the defendant's brother in order to put pressure on him to give up the names of his suppliers -- the Columbian drug lords. There was never a case, and this poor hispanic construction worker is now $22,000 in the hole for legal expenses. His young wife and son have been put through Hell, and up to a couple days ago were faced with the very real possibility that their working-class husband/father would spend 20 years in prison. The three multi-time felons who testified against the defendant -- who were each caught lying over and over and over again -- may or may not be given a break on their sentences, for having given the government "substantial assistance" in seeking a conviction in this case.

Meanwhile, coke and meth continue to flood the streets, much of it "allowed" into the States by the very government that plays this nasty game with peoples' lives. Prisons are filled with drug players from all levels of participation. Violence showers down on the streets of America because drugs continue to be illegal, and hardly anything is done to address the addiction problem at the root of the War. The Drug War validates the careers of many cops, prosecutors, investigators and lawmakers, so we can't count on any of them to put a crimp in their gig. It's all about Black Hats vs. White Hats for these people -- and they seem to sleep at night just fine, no matter how many lives they ruin in the process.

Do drug dealers ruin lives? You bet -- they create more addicts to keep the game going.

People are addicted to drugs.

Cops are addicted to both addicts and their addictors.

And the world spins on its axis, infinitely patient with the insanity of its human inhabitants.

Hat tip to Pete Guither.

The First Unity08 Vote

Unity08 sent their membership a request for survey participation. I'm tagging along with Unity08 this election cycle and I'd like to see them succeed, so I gave it the 20 minutes or so that it took.

I suppose any survey will leave the interviewee dissatisfied in one way or another. I am disappointed, for example, that national drug policy was not listed among the various issues to be ranked as crucial or not. It would not have made it into my "crucial" list, but it's certainly more important than a lot of other stuff that was listed. How could something that sends tens of billions of dollars down the drain every year (not to mention the many other undesirable side effects of national drug policy) not be important enough to include in the ranking?

I didn't care for the fact that when immigration was listed, it was "illegal immigration" not "immigration". Illegal immigration is just part of the problem.

Enough quibbling. Overall, I thought the survey was probably useful.

They have a version of the survey for people who have not yet joined Unity08. I'd urge my fellow citizens who happen to read these lines to take the survey, which is said to include information about Unity08 and what they're trying to do. If you like what you read, think about signing up. Maybe even send them a few dollars.

Another Prohibition Success Story

Afghanistan | Under fire | Economist.com

Continuing news of Prohibition success:

And the Taliban has funds. The UN will soon announce that this year’s opium crop in Afghanistan, in which the militants have a stake, pipped last year’s record crop. That amounted to 6,100 tonnes, about 92% of the world’s total. Despite around to $1 billion devoted to the task, America and its European allies have come up with no effective way to reduce the blight.

Well, if $1 billion hasn't been enough, how about $2 billion, or $3 billion? That ought to do the trick, don't you think? After all, consider how well the Strategy of More Billions has worked throughout Latin America.

Drug Gangs Use Violence to Sway Guatemala Vote - New York Times

Drug Gangs Use Violence to Sway Guatemala Vote - New York Times

The most popular trafficking routes shift constantly to stay one step ahead of law enforcement efforts, the officials say. “If you attack the cockroach in one corner, the son of a gun shows up in another,” said a senior American counternarcotics official in the region, who spoke on background to avoid compromising future investigations.

And this has been going on for how long, despite more and ever more Plan Colombia this and DEA that?

Never a peep, though, about addressing the root cause: Prohibition.

As a symbol of the peace he wants, Mr. Colom, who is in his third bid for the presidency, threw a dove in the air at a recent campaign rally. It went up for a moment, its wings flapping furiously, then quickly plummeted to the ground.

The situation down there is hopeless and depressing, but also infuriating. The American counternarcotics official's cockroaches are doing what cockroaches do, just as they did during our previous experiment in Prohibition. Just as last time, the cockroaches will continue to do what cockroaches do until Prohibition and the War on Some Drugs are ended, which will probably never happen because of the political power of the constituencies Prohibition serves in the United States.

Oh, well...