war news o'the day. focus on being the media, featuring dominic caraccilo!!!

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not a satire.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3205080.stm

Microsoft launches 'leak-proof' e-mail: The latest version of Microsoft's popular Office software will, the company claims, allow users to send e-mails that will "self-destruct" after a set time. The development is designed to improve security.

...Microsoft says users will also be able to restrict who is allowed to read an e-mail - and prevent recipients from forwarding messages to other users or printing them off. The new software - known as Information Rights Management - could potentially be used by governments and companies to prevent leaks of sensitive information.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A47080-2003Oct18?language=printer

Protesters from more than 135 cities in 38 states are expected to converge on Washington on Saturday, as busloads of antiwar demonstrators return to the capital for the first time since the fall of Baghdad in April... It is the first event of its kind co-sponsored by two major antiwar coalitions, International ANSWER and United for Peace and Justice, both of which coordinated some of the country's biggest peace marches this year. The demonstration will coincide with a rally and march in downtown San Francisco.

...A listing of cities organizing bus and car caravans posted on ANSWER's Web site reads like a map of much of the United States: Wilmington, Del.; Harrisburg, Pa.; Savannah, Ga.; Asheville, N.C.; Kalamazoo, Mich.; Cedar Falls, Iowa; and Milwaukee. New York's union representing 200,000 health and human services employees, 1199 SEIU, is providing free bus transportation to Washington for its members and their families. And ANSWER has reserved 65 buses for the New York area alone.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/20/1066631359740.html

President George Bush tripped up when he said last week that the United States was ready to "go forward with" a new package of military training programs with Indonesia, a White House official has said. Mr Bush, whose speech caught US officials by surprise, said on Indonesian television that new military programs could take place because Indonesia had co-operated in an investigation into the killing of two US citizens last year in the eastern Indonesia province of Papua. But several White House officials say no new programs are planned or have been approved, contrary to what Mr Bush's statement implied.

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http://slate.msn.com/id/2089915/

Bush prefers his news heavily filtered. "I glance at the headlines, just to get kind of a flavor," he told Brit Hume of Fox News last month. But, "I rarely read the stories" because "a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news." Instead, "I get briefed by [White House Chief of Staff] Andy Card and Condi [Rice, the national security adviser] in the morning." The president concluded, "The best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."

...It's an interesting epistemological question how our president knows what he thinks he knows and why he thinks it is less distorted than what the rest of us know or think we know. Every president lives in a cocoon of advisers who filter reality for him, but it's stunning that this president actually seems to prefer getting his take on reality that way.

...And where does the Rice-Card News Service obtain its uncontaminated information? Bush conceded his shocking suspicion that Rice and Card "probably read the news themselves."

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http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/52850/1/.html

TOKYO : US President George W Bush told Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi the United Nations is "old" and its structure should be reformed, according to a senior Japanese foreign ministry official. Bush made the comment after Koizumi asked him to "consider making better use of the United Nations" to spread America's ideals of freedom and democracy, the official told reporters.

"President Bush said 'I can understand that point but the problem is the United Nations is old now and there is a need to reform the UN structure'," said the official, who was giving a briefing on the two leaders' discussions over dinner.

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http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/351524.html

The Knesset House Committee will meet Monday to discuss a proposal to prohibit Knesset members from independently conducting diplomatic negotiations without the government's knowledge, Army Radio reported Sunday.

...The proposal forbidding private negotiations was initiated by National Union MK Uri Ariel. It comes after leftist members of the opposition, led by former justice member Yossi Beilin, formulated an unofficial peace plan known as the Geneva Accord with Palestinian negotiators, headed by former Palestinian minister Yasser Abed Rabbo. The negotiators completed the document at a ceremony in Jordan last weekend, and intend to sign it in Switzerland next month. The plan has invoked the ire of the government.

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http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/351524.html

Israel is involved in frantic diplomatic efforts to foil a move that would have the international court in The Hague decide on the legality of the separation and security fence.

...The UN General Assembly is due to meet in emergency session on Monday to debate the fence... However, a vote authorizing the UN to send the issue to The Hague would be a precedent that Israeli diplomats yesterday termed "most dangerous."

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http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DF75.htm

It isn't hard to see why Israel's fence has caused international outrage. It is already 90 miles long, and if the Israeli cabinet gets its way it will eventually stretch to 230 miles, encircling the entire West Bank. Much of the fence is really a huge concrete wall, topped with electrical fencing and barbed wire. There are 15-metre buffer zones - or 'killing zones', as local Palestinians call them - on either side. It cuts through Palestinian towns, dividing families and further restricting Palestinians' freedom of movement. Of all the security measures imposed by Israel on the West Bank, the fence ranks up there with the worst of them.

... Israel's fence is merely a physical, brutal expression of the politics of the peace process... Like other US-sponsored peace processes in the early 1990s, the Middle Eastern process was less about resolving the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, than about stabilising it; less about finding a definitive solution to Israeli/Palestinian differences, than about negotiating those differences and keeping them in check... The peace process represented the defeat of earlier visions of one democratic state shared by Arabs and Jews, in favour of new forms of separation and the 'international management' of the Middle Eastern conflict.

...Today's Roadmap to Peace represents the apex of this divisive vision for the Middle East, calling for a 'permanent' separation of national interests. And Israel's fence, in many ways, is the peace process in action.

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http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/10/19/1066502070378.html

October 20, 2003 - Bangkok: US President George Bush yesterday ruled out a non-aggression treaty with North Korea... "If we think there's an opportunity to move the process forward, we will discuss it with our partners," Mr Bush said. "We will not have a treaty, if that's what you're asking. That's off the table."

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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101031027-524419,00.html

On Oct. 2, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema said prosecutors could not seek the death penalty for Moussaoui and could not even allege that he had a link to the 9/11 conspiracy. She put those shackles on the government's case because it had denied the defendant, on national-security grounds, access to witnesses who were in a position to say whether he was part of the 9/11 gang—Ramzi Binalshibh, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other key al-Qaeda figures the U.S. has captured. Prosecutors are appealing the decision, with their first briefs due this week.

...The question is, How did such a seemingly sure thing go astray? Was it ill conceived from the start or a matter of everything going wrong that could? Was it a mistake not to go to a military court in the first place? [wha--? -mrs. h]

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http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-10-20-box-cutter_x.htm

A college student who told authorities he placed box cutters and other banned items aboard two airliners to test security was charged Monday with taking a dangerous weapon aboard an aircraft... Although Heatwole sent an e-mail to federal authorities saying he had placed the items aboard two specific Southwest Airlines flights, it took authorities nearly five weeks to locate them on the planes... The charge against Heatwole, a junior at Guilford College in Greensboro, N.C., carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

...His bags contained box cutters, modeling clay made to look like plastic explosives, matches and bleach hidden in sunscreen bottles, the affidavit said. Inside were notes with details about when and where the items were carried aboard... On Sept. 15, the Transportation Security Administration received an e-mail from Heatwole saying he had "information regarding six security breaches" at the Raleigh-Durham and Baltimore-Washington airports between Feb. 7 and Sept. 14, the FBI affidavit said... "This is not a good experience. This is a bad experience," [Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge] said during a visit to Duke University.

... The e-mail provided precise details of where the plastic bags were hidden — right down to the exact dates and flight numbers — and even provided Heatwole's name and telephone number... "The e-mail author also stated that he was aware his actions were against the law and that he was aware of the potential consequences for his actions, and that his actions were an 'act of civil disobedience with the aim of improving public safety for the air-traveling public,'" the affidavit said.

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=454795

A public relations consultant responsible for spreading one of the most notorious falsehoods of the first Iraq war is promoting a new account of one of the most controversial episodes of the second.

Lauri Fitz-Pegado, a former US official, is helping to publicise a newly published book by Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, an Iraqi lawyer who provided information to US forces searching for prisoner of war Jessica Lynch... She has previously been involved in another high-profile PR campaign involving Iraq. In 1990... she was a senior executive with the PR firm Hill & Knowlton, which was hired by the Kuwaiti royal family for almost $12m to run a campaign to pressure the US government into acting against Iraq.

One of the key elements of the campaign focused on allegations that Iraqi soldiers had thrown Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators and taken the machines back to Baghdad. One of the most powerful pieces of evidence was the testimony of a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, "Nayirah", who told a Congressional hearing: "I volunteered at al-Addan hospital. While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the babies on the cold floor to die."

It later emerged that the allegations were entirely false. Nayirah was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and had been coached on what to say by Ms Fitz-Pegado. She later told the author of a book about media censorship and the Gulf war: "Come on. Who gives a shit whether there were six babies or two? I believed her."

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http://ridiculopathy.com/news_detail.php?id=925

Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman took the fight directly to the President on Monday... Lieberman called for an end to Bush's $8 trillion in tax cuts, saying that Bush "lacked the honor" to admit that his policies, only slightly divergent from Lieberman's own, were dead wrong.

"George Bush is taking this country in entirely the wrong direction," said Lieberman. "The President wants to mortgage our children's future on a risky tax cut for the extremely wealthy. On the other hand, I support trillions of dollars in tax relief for the merely moderately wealthy."

Campaign manager Craig Smith further laid out the differences between his candidate and the current Commander in Chief. "Unlike George W. Bush Joe Lieberman is a man of values, solid Republican values."

..."The Bush administration's foreign policy initiatives have been an abject failure. Few outside the White House would openly dispute that. My approach to these issues would be drastically different and, I think, far improved." While the President continues to support Israel's rough handling of the Palestinian situation and recent raids into Syria, Lieberman says he would openly laud Israel's rough handling of the Palestinian situation and offer military assistance for future incursions into sovereign neighbors.

"The President sent thousands of American troops into Iraq with no international support or evidence to back up his claims. I think we can all agree that was a huge mistake. Personally, I would have sent at least ten times as many soldiers."

...The Connecticut Senator also complained about the lack of coverage of his campaign, reminding all in attendance that more information could be found on his web site or in his new book I Ran Also: The Life and Times of Joe Lieberman, currently number three on this week's Democratic Presidential Candidate Best Seller List.

[okay,that was a satire.]

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http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_10_19_atrios_archive.html#106665510170117880

I wrote to the BBC Online asking why they were reporting casualties as killed rather than killed/wounded/captured - why the word is not being used as in the English language. Attached is their response...

Begin forwarded message:

From: "NewsOnline" Date: Mon Oct 20, 2003. Subject: RE: Factual Error report.

Dear Sir/Madam: Thank you for your email. We use US Central Command's definition of casualties in the war in Iraq, which only refers to those who have been killed. Thank you for your interest in the BBC News website.

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more from the beeb

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/10/19/nbeeb19.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/10/19/ixportaltop.html

Filed: 19/10/2003 - The BBC last night tried to play down claims that its presenter John Humphrys threatened to quit the Today programme after the corporation cut a dramatic section of his interview with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams.

...The BBC edited out a section of the Humphrys interview in which he asked Dr Williams about the morality of the Iraq war. The missing section contained a 12-second pause from the Archbishop when he was asked for a second time by Humphrys: "Was it immoral?"

Such a long hesitation would, BBC sources said, have had a huge impact if broadcast. "In radio terms, it's an eternity," one BBC source said.

Humphrys began by telling the Archbishop: "Before you were enthroned, you signed a statement published in the Tablet [a Roman Catholic magazine] that said the war was immoral. Is that still your view?" When challenged by Humphrys about his hesitation, the Archbishop replied: "Immoral is a very short word for a very, very long discussion."

...The interview with Dr Williams was broadcast immediately after the news bulletin, but with the war section edited out.

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http://www.msnbc.com/news/982193.asp?cp1=1

In Baghdad, official control over the news is getting tighter. Journalists used to walk freely into the city’s hospitals and the morgue to keep count of the day’s dead and wounded. Now the hospitals have been declared off-limits and morgue officials turn away reporters who aren’t accompanied by a Coalition escort. Iraqi police refer reporters’ questions to American forces; the Americans refer them back to the Iraqis.

...But the news coverage of the messy, ongoing conflict in Iraq has worsened the already tense relationship between the press and the administration. American officials accuse reporters of indulging in a morbid obsession with death and destruction, and ignoring how Iraq has improved since Saddam Hussein was toppled. Reporters grumble that the secretive White House and Pentagon hold back just how grim and chaotic the situation really is.

...The White House is hoping to boost public support by convincing Americans that the cynical national press is getting the story wrong. Last week President George W. Bush himself complained about the national media’s fixation on bad news, and made a show of going around them by granting interviews with local TV reporters... Bush isn’t the first president to try sidestepping the national press in favor of local reporters, who tend to be gentler questioners than the reporters who cover him every day. Bill Clinton did it when he thought the White House press corps was treating him harshly. So did the first President Bush.

News management is at the heart of the administration’s shake-up of Iraq policy. The National Security Council recently created four new committees to handle the situation in Iraq. One is devoted entirely to media coordination—stopping the bad news from overwhelming the good. Yet White House officials insist their agenda for Iraq is not driven by the need to generate positive campaign coverage.

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http://64.224.42.246/weblog/dannylog.cfm

Imagine the following scenario: Federal agents arrest a Muslim man, a member of a radical sect, living in Michigan on gun and drug charges. When they search his home, they discover a bunker containing a cache of weapons and explosives worthy of an army: an anti-aircraft gun capable of firing 550 rounds per minute up to four miles away, machine guns, explosives, thousands of rounds of ammunition, and booby traps. Investigators also find pictures of President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with scope cross-hairs drawn over them.

How do you suppose the media would handle that story? My guess that if it didn't lead the evening news, it would be reported on it. It would at least be above the fold in many newspapers, and almost certainly would be a hot topic of conversation among the nation's radio talk-show hosts. Michael Savage would have a field day.

But what happens when, instead, the circumstances are identical, and the suspect is a white man associated with a militia unit? It gets buried in the Grand Rapids Press (www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1066402152183970.xml). And that's about it.

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from that very story

www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1066402152183970.xml

Friday, October 17, 2003 - After the peaceful arrest of a Cadillac-area man, authorities who searched his 40-acre compound discovered a stunning collection of firepower, including an anti-aircraft gun capable of firing 550 rounds per minute up to four miles away... Norman Somerville, 43, was arrested last week on federal gun and drug charges as he shopped at Home Depot in Cadillac... Details of the search were disclosed in a court document filed Thursday in federal court in Grand Rapids, four days before a judge will decide whether Somerville should remain in jail while his case is pending.

...Two years ago, Somerville moved to Wexford County from elsewhere in northern Michigan. He served in the Army from 1978 to 1984 and was trained as an intelligence analyst assigned to the elite Special Forces.

...In Antioch Township, five miles outside Mesick, neighbors said he is not the type to share a cup of sugar.

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http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/8E8EA580-943C-4FBF-9ABD-21B47627FECD.htm

Saturday 18 October - Usama bin Ladin has issued a message to the American people, broadcast on Saturday on Aljazeera television. A full [excerpted by mrs. henry] and exclusive translation follows:

"Oppression will only go against the oppressors. This is a message from Usama bin Muhammad bin Ladin to the American people regarding your aggression in Iraq. Peace be upon those who follow the righteous path.

"Some have the impression that you are a reasonable people. But the majority of you are vulgar and without sound ethics or good manners. You elect the evil from among you, the greatest liars and the least decent and you are enslaved by your richest and the most influential among you, especially the Jews, who lead you using the lie of democracy to support the Israelis and their schemes and in complete antagonism towards our religion (Islam).

"...Bush and his gang, with their heavy sticks and hard hearts, are an evil to all humankind. They have stabbed into the truth, until they have killed it altogether in the eyes of the world... The blood of the children of Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq is still dripping from their teeth. They have fooled you and deceived you into invading Iraq a second time. And they have lied to you and the whole world.

"...To the American soldiers in Iraq I say, now that all the lies have been exposed and the greatest liar has been revealed, your stay on Iraq’s land is compounding the oppression and is a great folly. It shows you are selling your lives for the lives of others. And you are spilling your blood to swell the bank accounts of the White House gang and their fellow arms dealers and the proprietors of great companies. And the greatest folly in life is to sell your life for the lives of others.

"In conclusion, I say to the American people we will continue to fight you and continue to conduct martyrdom operations inside and outside the United States until you depart from your oppressive course and abandon your follies and rein in your fools. You have to know that we are counting our dead... May our mothers become childless if we leave any of you alive on our soil."

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http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/A3BAAADE-2A12-4F4C-A8B6-BB616AF33F30.htm

Friday 17 October 2003 - A secretly taken picture of an American soldier frisking an Afghan child has shocked human rights campaigners across the world... Taken by a strategically placed camera, and using a telephoto lens, the undercover photographer snapped a four-year-old child having his clothing searched by a heavily armed US soldier. [see photo at original site.]

The child and his friends were playing in the village of Zermit in Paktika when American soldiers, hunting for Taliban fighters, arrived. "Those children could have been carrying explosives," said an unapologetic US Major Peter Mitchell who was shown the picture by Aljazeera.net. Major Mitchell, a US marine and spokesman for US Central Command, added: "The troops on the ground in Afghanistan will respond accordingly to whatever threat in that environment exists."

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adventures in being the media

http://www.thememoryhole.org/media/ap-witness-carbomb.htm

On 12 October 2003, two suicide bombers drove cars packed with explosives toward the Baghdad Hotel. Iraqi and US personnel fired on them, causing them to crash into a concrete barrier, where their cars exploded. Eight people were killed, including the drivers, and 32 were injured.

The Associated Press filed several versions of this story... The first version of the article, "Deadly Bomb Explodes Near Baghdad Hotel," was filed on 12 Oct 2003 at 8:01 AM. [and said:]

"Sabah Ghulam, 37, was in a car right behind the one that exploded. "I was in my car and the car in front of us, a 1990 Toyota Corolla, suddenly turned into the hotel. I saw the driver. He was not an Iraqi, he had a lighter complexion. He did not have a beard and was wearing a hat. We were protected by the wall. A policeman shot at him four times, and then there was the explosion." He said the windows in his car were shattered."

Just seventeen minutes later, the AP released another version of the story onto the newswire. Now titled "Deadly Car Bomb Rocks Central Baghdad," this 8:18 AM version had some new details--and a gutted witness statement:

"Another witness, Sabah Ghulam, 37, was in a car right behind the one that exploded. "The car in front of us, a 1990 Toyota Corolla, suddenly turned into the hotel ... A policeman shot at him four times, and then there was the explosion." He said the windows in his car were shattered."

The AP used the ellipsis (...) to delete Ghulam's description of the driver as a light-skinned non-Iraqi.

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one of mrs. henry's heroes in the news!

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-ortiz17.html

Fourteen years after she was brutally tortured and raped by members of the Guatemalan security forces, Roman Catholic Sister Dianna Ortiz spoke of th need to recognize torture as "the plague of the 21st century."

"In 1989, when I was tortured, approximately 80 governments were engaged in torture; today there are more than 150 governments. Torture, whether we like it or not, is the plague of the 21st century and it is not going to go away," Ortiz told a group of Chicagoans on Thursday night. "Torture is a form of terrorism."

Ortiz was in Chicago to accept the 2003 U.S. Catholic Award for Furthering the Cause of Women in the Church at Loyola University.

...On Thursday she stood before a group of 200 people at Loyola's downtown campus and confessed that she was still haunted by the ghosts of torture... Through that experience, she wants to "pay special attention to the women who have suffered a fate similar to mine, women impregnated with the seed of their torturers,'' said Ortiz... "You must know there are many women of faith who, like myself, carry feelings of shame and constant fear of condemnation, of being told we are unworthy of being part of the faith community and sharing the Eucharist," she continued.

An Ursuline nun, Ortiz is now executive director of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International. The organization based in Washington, D.C., and founded by torture survivors seeks the abolition of torture worldwide.

...Her case was investigated by the U.S. Justice Department, an investigation that Ortiz described as "dehumanizing and reminiscent of my experience in Guatemala." Ortiz... is also the recipient of the Pax Christi National Peacemaker Award and the Annual Human Rights Award of the Los Angeles-based Office of the Americas. [three cheers for survival.]

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support the troops, please. i mean now. you know what i'm sayin.

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20031017-024617-1418r

FORT STEWART, Ga., Oct. 17 (UPI) -- Hundreds of sick and wounded U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are languishing in hot cement barracks here while they wait -- sometimes for months -- to see doctors. The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document shown to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are available from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11 -- Veterans Day.

...One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart -- home of the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses. The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls "medical hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they are and what benefits -- if any -- they should get as a result.

..."It is not an Army of One. It is the Army of two -- Army and Reserves," said one soldier who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, during which she developed a serious heart condition and strange skin ailment... Soldiers here estimate that nearly 40 percent of the personnel now in medical hold were deployed to Iraq. Of those who went, many described clusters of strange ailments, like heart and lung problems, among previously healthy troops. They said the Army has tried to refuse them benefits, claiming the injuries and illnesses were due to a "pre-existing condition," prior to military service.

Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack. Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet paper. They said the conditions are fine for training, but not for sick people.

"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq and asked that his name not be used. That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably. He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax shots the Army gave him. "They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said. "I did not have a problem until I got those shots."

...The Pentagon is reportedly drawing up plans to call up more reserves. In an Oct. 9 speech to National Guard and reserve troops in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Bush said the soldiers had become part of the backbone of the military. "Citizen-soldiers are serving in every front on the war on terror," Bush said. "And you're making your state and your country proud."

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yay, team

http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/deserters/navy-deserters.htm

Under the Freedom of Information Act, I requested the number of people who had deserted the United States Navy over the past few years... The official numbers by year:

2000: 3,317; 2001: 3,319; 2002: 2,770; 2003 (through end of July): 1,281

TOTAL: 10,687

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troop support gone wild!

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j101703.html

As we pull, and tug at the spam propaganda story – those fake "good news" letters from Iraq sent out to 500 newspapers, signed by different soldiers – the whole fabric of this odd little episode begins to come apart... [Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo]stepped forward and claimed credit... The letter, he declared, "perfectly reflects what each of these brave soldiers has and continues to accomplish on the ground. With the current and ongoing media focus on casualties and terrorist attacks, we thought it equally important to share with the American public, and especially the folks from our soldier's hometowns, the good news associated with our work in Kirkuk."

...There are currently no plans to discipline Caraccilo. But there should be, and not just for sending out fake letters... He is not only a published author and editor, but is also, perhaps, the single most cited soldier in press accounts of the war, as a Google search reveals. Wherever there is a question to be answered, a rationale to articulate, a "good news" perspective to be given on some unfolding disaster, Lt. Col. Caraccilo is at the media's service [TONS OF LINKS provided in original, but here are just a few excerpts].

Early in the war, before the myth of Iraqi WMD had been discredited, Caraccilo was touting one of the first of many false alarms: several barrels of a mysterious substance (that turned out not to be biological or chemical weapons): 'The weapons inspectors never would have found this stuff,' said Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, the battalion commander who led the team to the sites. 'It would have taken 40 years.'

...Caraccilo showed up again at the scene of another attempt to somehow rationalize the invasion, touting the capture of "Al Qaeda suspects" in Kirkuk... [from the washington post:] "At the Kirkuk air base, headquarters for the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry, U.S. Army Col. Dominic Caraccilo weighed his options." ...Citing an anonymous Army officer who questions "how seriously to take reports of Al Qaeda activity," the Post reports "Caraccilo decided the new information seemed solid and potentially important." Yeah, just in time for the reporters – and the photographers. This guy is forever schmoozing with the media, so much so that it almost seems as if that's his primary job.

...Here he is again, this time handling the squabbling Kurdish factions with admirable aplomb. And yet again, this time in the midst of adoring Iraqis: "The reconnaissance mission, led by Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, rolled out from Bashur Airfield at dawn yesterday in a convoy of humvees. The paratroopers drew smiles, waves and cheers as they drove through villages in this semiautonomous Kurdish enclave. "'I love you,' one young girl yelled in English at the soldiers."

...Wherever there's good news, there is Caraccilo, a one-man harbinger of hope. If the story of the Iraqi invasion is a narrative of liberation and steady success, then he is its central hero, the character through whose eyes we see this war as not only necessary but also kinda fun: "'Nobody wants war,' said Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, commander of the Second Battalion, 503d Airborne Infantry, one of the brigade's two infantry battalions. 'But this is a paratrooper's dream.'"

...Caraccilo is a major journalistic prop of this administration's Iraqi Potemkin Village, with the work his unit is doing in Kirkuk held up as exemplary by the military-media complex, as in this Knight-Ridder piece headlined "In Kirkuk, troops see less violence, fewer attacks": "...The risk brings rewards, said Lt. Col. Dominic Caraccilo, who commands the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry, which lives in the city. Soldiers know their neighborhoods intimately and regularly get good tips about potential problems. On Monday, one such tip led to the arrest of some weapons dealers. 'I just don't understand how you could hold yourself out as doing nation-building and not live among the people,' Caraccilo said.'"

Instructing us in the glories of "nation-building," while schooling the Kurds in the intricacies of democracy, Caraccilo is a shepherd tending two flocks. In sending those letters out – at taxpayers' expense – Caraccilo was merely playing, on the home front, the same role he has so consistently played abroad as a propagandist for the U.S. war effort.

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chaos, just like mother used to make.

http://www.harpers.org/weekly-review/

President George W. Bush traveled to Asia and gave a speech in Manila comparing Iraq to the Philippines, a former U.S. colony that was "liberated" from Spain in 1898 and occupied for 48 years.

...George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate in economics, described the Bush Administration's budget policies as "a form of looting."

..."The person who is in charge is me," President Bush declared when asked about the factional intrigues among his advisers; the president went on to say that he was making "very good progress about the establishment of a free Iraq."

...Dr. Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, said that Americans should remember that terrorists can "have serious moral goals." He said that "it is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue an aim that is shared by those who would not dream of acting in the same way, an aim that is intelligible or desirable." Dr. Williams also warned America not to become "trapped in a self-referential morality."

...Thai protesters captured the soul of George W. Bush, imprisoned it in a clay pot, and then drowned it in the Ping River.

...The Supreme Court let a ruling stand that the federal government may not prevent doctors from recommending marijuana as a pain reliever.

...In France, a judge was caught masturbating in court. A penal inquiry was underway. Clint Eastwood gave up acting, and the pope beatified Mother Teresa. In Kentucky, a ten-year-old boy found a snake with heads at both ends. New Zealand abandoned its proposal to tax flatulent livestock, and a genomic survey of human feces found it inhabited by 1,200 viruses, about half of which were previously unknown to science. A deer invaded a clothing store in Linden, New Jersey, and a bear barged into a hospital in Japan. Australian doctors warned people not to eat slugs.

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