Prometheus 6 - War

Sanity gets little exposure so I thought I'd link it

Prometheus 6 — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 08:34:23 -0400

Obviously, the United States will remain strong enough to exercise considerable power for the foreseeable future. In the medium term, however, an America that does not understand — and makes little effort to understand — why it has become so unpopular abroad is almost certain to find itself both disliked and ineffective in many parts of the world. Indeed, just last month, the Pew Global Attitudes Project issued a new survey showing that anti-Americanism, which seemed to be in decline a year ago, is again on the rise. By 41 percent to 34 percent, a plurality of Britons believe that the U.S. military presence in Iraq is a greater danger to world peace than the government of Iran — this in Tony Blair's Britain, supposedly America's staunchest ally. The Bush administration clearly realizes that such findings are not good news and has greatly toned down its earlier unilateralist swagger.
Of course, if unilateralism is a dead end, multilateralism is no panacea — as the current impasse with Iran demonstrates. But we have to start somewhere. Simply to repeat that we live in a post-9/11 world, while the Europeans have not yet heard the bad news — in other words, waiting for our allies to come around to seeing things as we do in the United States — is unlikely to do anything but aggravate the differences that already exist.

The Pentagon's cut and run policy

Prometheus 6 — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 08:05:10 -0400

Quote of note:

"It shouldn't be a political decision, but it is going to be with this administration," Levin said on "Fox News Sunday." "It's as clear as your face, which is mighty clear, that before this election, this November, there's going to be troop reductions in Iraq, and the president will then claim some kind of progress or victory."

Democrats Cite Report On Troop Cuts in Iraq
Pentagon Plan Like Theirs, Senators Say
By Michael Abramowitz and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, June 26, 2006; A01

Senate Democrats reacted angrily yesterday to a report that the U.S. commander in Iraq had privately presented a plan for significant troop reductions in the same week they came under attack by Republicans for trying to set a timetable for withdrawal.

That's pretty interesting

Prometheus 6 — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 10:08:25 -0400

Schwarzenegger Denies Bush Troop Request
Jun 23 9:22 PM US/Eastern
By AARON C. DAVIS & SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press Writers
SACRAMENTO

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week rejected a request from the Bush administration to send an additional 1,500 National Guard troops to the Mexican border, the governor's office confirmed Friday.

The National Guard Bureau, an arm of the Pentagon, asked for the troops to fill shortfalls for the mission in New Mexico and Arizona, two California National Guard officials told The Associated Press on Friday. But Schwarzenegger said the request would stretch the California guard too thin if an emergency or disaster struck.

There is no "if"

Prometheus 6 — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 08:56:37 -0400

[I]f America is going to continue to be America, these efforts need to be done under a clear and coherent set of rules, with the oversight of Congress and the courts.

Following the Money, and the Rules

After the attacks on 9/11, when the terrorist threat seemed equally dangerous and amorphous, one of the few clear strategies for counterattack was to follow the money. Almost everyone, including this page, urged the Bush administration to be aggressive in shutting down the flow of cash to terrorist organizations, and to root out the people who were supplying it.

The administration went to work, and one very useful source of information turned out to be a banking cooperative known as Swift — Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. It routes about $6 trillion a day among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. An article by Eric Lichtblau and James Risen in yesterday's Times — and similar stories in The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times — detailed how investigators have made use of Swift data to track potential terrorist financing. Government officials say the information has helped capture one important Al Qaeda operative abroad, and that it has assisted domestic investigations as well.

About time...several years late, in fact

Prometheus 6 — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 09:24:38 -0400

Iraqi Government Declares State of Emergency
By JOHN F. BURNS and JOHN O'NEIL

The gunmen had released all the workers they believed to be Sunni, along with a number of women and children, and 17 more were rescued by Iraqi police on Thursday on a raid on a farm north of Baghdad. After the five bodies were found today, about 30 people remain missing from the Wednesday incident.

The abduction, involving 40 or 50 gunmen, some wearing police uniforms, represented a sharp intensification of a tactic that has become increasingly common in Iraq.

Sounds familiar.

Some people say...

Prometheus 6 — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:36:46 -0400

The fact is, not "some" polls, but virtually every major poll shows that American have long declared that going to war against Iraq was a mistake.

And far more than "independent voters" are drawn to withdrawal. Every major poll reveals that a majority of Americans advocate withdrawals from Iraq, with large numbers wanting this to be quite speedy, and most wanting a full pullout in a year or so (Kerry's idea) or by the end of next year.

This is hardly a "some" position.

Polls, Pundits and Pols
You'd never know it from some of the reporting and bloviating on the debate over an Iraq withdrawal, but all major polls show that the public favors withdrawals, with strong support for a timeline or total pullout within a year.
By Greg Mitchell

What I know about SWIFT

Prometheus 6 — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 09:09:52 -0400

A Crucial Gatekeeper
Swift's database provides a rich hunting ground for government investigators. Swift is a crucial gatekeeper, providing electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. The cooperative is owned by more than 2,200 organizations, and virtually every major commercial bank, as well as brokerage houses, fund managers and stock exchanges, uses its services. Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.

It's been a long, long time since I was corporate. Back in those days I worked on an interface between SWIFT and the trust and custody operation system, and between SWIFT and the system we received trading instructions from the dreaded home office in Japan.

Can you say "Dubya?" Of course you can...

Prometheus 6 — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 20:44:23 -0400

“This study fits within a relatively new field of research which connects motivations of individual people to their collective behaviour,” says Turchin.

“One wishes that members of the Bush administration had known about this research before they initiated invasion of Iraq three years ago,” he adds. “I think it would be fair to say that the general opinion of political scientists is that the Bush administration was overconfident of victory, and that the Iraq war is a debacle.”

Overconfidence is a disadvantage in war, finds study
00:01 21 June 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Roxanne Khamsi

Overconfident people are more likely to wage war but fare worse in the ensuing battles, a new study suggests. The research on how people approach a computer war game backs up a theory that “positive illusions” may contribute to costly conflicts.

And what will Republican Congressmen be doing when Iran responds?

Prometheus 6 — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 15:41:30 -0400

They'll be running around the country pissing off their constituents over immigration, all the while pretending it wasn't them that delayed dealing with it.

Isn't THAT a lovely thought?

Iran won't respond to offer 'til August
By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jun 21, 9:40 AM ET

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Wednesday that Iran will respond in mid-August to the package of incentives on its nuclear program offered by the West, but President Bush accused Tehran of dragging its feet.

That's all I needed to read

Prometheus 6 — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 07:40:00 -0400

Things I Learned Today
By Matthew Yglesias

According to Bart Gellman's review of Ron Suskind's new book the following things are true:

Al-Qaedist Abu Zubaydah was captured in March 2002.
Zubaydah's captors discovered he was mentally ill and charged with minor logistical matters, such as arranging travel for wives and children.
The President was informed of that judgment by the CIA.
Two weeks later, the President described Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States."
Later, Bush told George Tenet, "I said he was important. You'
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