or, chugging the Neocon lemonade.

Fred Kagan, one of the original neocon Iraqi war pimps, who also had a hand in the current “surge” strategy, writes an op-ed, What The NIE Really Says on the National Intelligence Estimate. The NIE was widely reported to show grave concerns about the viability of Iraq’s government headed by Nouri al Maliki, and hence the viability of a strategy which expends American lives for a marginal improvement in Iraq’s security in the hopes that Iraq’s government would make progress in solving the ethnic, sectarian, and tribal divisions which contribute to the massive violence and lack of unity in the country. Kagan chides the media for its putative willingness to “quote selectively” in order to show that the surge’s incremental security improvements are accompanied only by political failures:

It claimed that, “Implicitly, at least, the report questioned whether Mr. Maliki is willing or able to help the new Iraq become a fully functioning country.” There is actually no basis in the declassified report for this statement.

Kagan, while ironically complaining that the Librul Media was selectively quoting the NIE, argues that the document only mentions “mentions Maliki in four places” none of which support the proposition that Maliki is willing to take the steps necessary to achieve any meaningful political progress which would justify the loss of American lives Kagan is so willing to spend. Yet Kagan ignores multiple statements which expand upon the reluctance or resistance of Maliki’s Shia-led government to the steps needed to move toward political reconciliation needed to make Iraq a functioning country:

The IC assesses that the emergence of “bottom-up” security initiatives, principally among Sunni Arabs and focused on combating AQI, represent the best prospect for improved security over the next six to 12 months, but we judge these initiatives will only translate into widespread political accommodation and enduring stability if the Iraqi Government accepts and supports them. . . . We also assess that under some conditions “bottom-up initiatives” could pose risks to the Iraqi Government.

Get that? The “best prospect” for improved security won’t contribute to enduring stability unless the Iraqi Government — that is, Maliki’s government — will accept and support the initiative, which involves arming and empowering his Sunni enemies.

Yet in the mind of the increasingly desperate Neocon, there is nothing in the NIE to indicate that Maliki might be unwilling or unable to take the steps which the NIE believes are necessary to achieve security or reconciliation.

One of the references in the NIE is described by Kagan as “‘divisions between Maliki and the Sadrists have increased’ (which is a good thing, by the way)” but Kagan disingenuously reduces the substance of this reference, which is far more comprehensive and significant, and includes not just the Sadrists but all the significant players in Maliki’s increasingly moribund coalition:

The IC assesses that the Iraqi Government will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months because of criticism by other members of the major Shia coalition (the
Unified Iraqi Alliance, UIA), Grand Ayatollah Sistani, and other Sunni and Kurdish parties. Divisions between Maliki and the Sadrists have increased, and Shia factions have explored alternative coalitions aimed at constraining Maliki.

It’s not just the Sadrists, but also Sistani’s movement, which is the largest in the country, and the UIA, the largest secular party, and Kurdish parties. Our bloated neocon’s attempt to minimize this reference to a mere split between Maliki and Sadr is dishonest and asinine. One doesn’t need to refer to the NIE to know that Maliki’s government is splintered. One just has to read the paper:

3 Secular Iraqis in Cabinet to Formally Resign

Escalating a political crisis that has paralyzed the Iraqi government, three secular cabinet members will formally resign Saturday, according to a senior member of the group.

The Iraqi National List, an umbrella group of several political parties composed of secular Sunnis and Shiites, had boycotted cabinet meetings since Aug. 7 because of frustrations with what they saw as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s divisive leadership style. The party, headed by former prime minister Ayad Allawi, will now submit the official resignations, National List member Iyad Jamal al-Deen said.

Sunni ministers resign from Iraq Cabinet

Baghdad shook with bombings and political upheaval Wednesday as the largest Sunni Arab bloc quit the government and a suicide attacker blew up his fuel tanker in one of several attacks that claimed 142 lives nationwide.

The Iraqi Accordance Front’s withdrawal from the Cabinet leaves only two Sunnis in the 40-member body, undermining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s efforts to pull together rival factions and pass reconciliation laws the U.S. considers benchmarks that could lead to sectarian reconciliation.

If anyone is reading the NIE selectively to support his position — and the surge is his position ab initio — it is Kagan. But he is just following a family tradition in being wrong and disingenuous on IIraq. His brother, Robert, is one of the leading lights dim bulbs in the Project for a New American Century, the leading booster for the invade-Iraq-and-be-greeted-as-liberators school of Foreign Policy/Fantasy Fiction. He is currently insisting that the “surge” is working because he is one of the authors of the miserably failing strategy. But, as Bill Kristol proves, insisting that failure is success is one of the hallmarks of PNAC/AEI argumentation. These are the people, after all, who lauded Ahmed Chalabi as the future George Washington of Iraq, and praised the value of the “false and in some cases deliberately misleading” (Colin Powell’s words, not mine) intelligence fabricated by Chalabi’s organization which the PNAC and the other war pimps used to push the invasion of Iraq in the first place.

That sure doesn’t look like Ranger Smith … and it’s not! Check out this perv spying on babes in the woods! But wait, it gets better: three campers, well, here’s the story (hey Tura, were you camping?)

Clackamas County deputies said Richard Berkey, 63, was spotted by campers in a latrine area at the Big Fan Campground near Bagby Hot Springs in Estacada.

After he was seen hiding in dense foliage, Berkey was chased down and tackled by Jason Dugan, who was camping with friends, according to deputies.

PERV!

He didn’t say anything and I caught a side profile and I just knew. I took off up the hill and I yelled for one of my friends,” said Dugan.

Three men then took Berkey to their campsite and tied him to a tree while another camper left in search of authorities.

Before sheriff’s deputies responded to arrest Berkey, the campers said Berkey admitted engaging in similar activities for the past 15 years.

… and on that note, I’m off on vacation for a week. Boys, don’t wreck the house when I’m gone!

RodMe: Memories of a past friendship could cause you to crave spicy food. Remember your tums and plan accordingly. An x-ray technician may ask you for spare change on the subway. Go to Duane Reade instead of Rite Aid. Your lucky numbers: 2,897,74856 and 3.

Alex: Don’t go to a garage - that muffled banging in your trunk is your date from last week. Let her out and leave the scene. The stars are favorable for nickel-slot gambling at Indian casinos. Avoid lychees. Your lucky liquids are alcohol, and alcohol.

Paul: You may cause a child to cry by sitting on their birthday cake box. Avoid this by RSVPing “no” to any family events. A rousing game of lawn darts or croquet can help soothe frazzled nerves. Your lucky colors are puce, chartreuse, and lime.

Donna Lethal: You spend more time on beauty rituals than with loved ones - try and compromise. A close encounter at the donut shop may cause you to forego chocolate frosted for good. Your lucky television shows are Wild Wild West and Emergency (the Bobby Sherman guest episodes only.)

Reader horoscope: Actor212 is on vacation.

Bush’s commander in Iraq, Rick Lynch backs up Commander Guy:

“If coalition soldiers were to leave, having fought hard for that terrain, having denied the enemy their sanctuaries, what’d happen is the enemy would come back,” said Lynch.

“He’d start building the bombs again, he’d start attacking the locals again and he’d start exporting that violence into Baghdad and we would take a giant step backward,” Lynch told Pentagon reporters in a video conference from Iraq.

He said that recent gains resulted from the buildup of troops in Iraq and that he needs all the forces he has until Iraqis are able to step up and take over, perhaps some time next year.

We’ve been hearing about the Iraqis stepping up and taking over for over three years now.

We’ve trained Iraqi security forces and army units, but they are infiltrated with militias and prone to ethnic, regional, sectarian and tribal loyalties overriding any thin allegiance to the dysfunctional central government.

Bush ran his ‘04 campaign on the whole “as Iraqis stand up, we will stand down” shibboleth and all it got is was this “surge” three years later, three years during which we ostensibly were training Iraqi troops and security forces to stand up so we could stand down.

Perhaps next year. . . it’s a tired, old, and overused refrain when it comes to Iraq. The fact that the Joint Chiefs are saying one thing, and Commander Guy’s commanders in Iraq are saying another points to how politicized and divided command has become.

Damn. My style icon, Aunty Margaret, took the train to Filene’s Basement every Saturday until she was too old to do so. Now it’s closing.

Sylvia Amenta, a Filenes Basement employee for more than 60 years, received a standing ovation. She began as a cashier in 1946, worked her way up to manager, and now does shipping and customer service.

“I’m going to miss it,” she said, her voice quavering, then trailing off as she broke down in tears.

Many of the employees clutched mementos from happier days, when the store’s future had seemed assured. One keepsake, a World War II-era brochure, touted the Basement’s “remarkable blend of utility and oddity” and compared the “merchandising Mecca” to a combination of “a county carnival, a church strawberry social, and a giant treasure hunt.”

Edward A. Filene founded Filene’s Basement in 1908 as a way to sell excess merchandise from his father’s department store upstairs. The Basement now operates as a separate company.

There’s something about the name “Flesh Club” that makes it sound more horror-movie than house of ill repute.

The 12-year battle to shut a notorious strip joint in San Bernardino got a major boost Thursday when a judge issued a tentative order closing the Flesh Club and fining the owner $25,000.

“Lewdness is lewdness, and covering it with a patina of ‘free expression’ is a fiction which the law will not tolerate,” San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Donald Alvarez wrote in a 15-page statement that detailed sexual activity at the club.

Wondering where the Flesh Club is located?

The club has been especially annoying to local leaders not just for allegations of prostitution but also because it sits on Hospitality Lane, the one thriving district of hotels and restaurants in a struggling city.

Source

Just days after FauxNews triumphantly declared, “Sens. Warner and Levin Travel to Iraq, Praise Surge Results” Senator Warner called for the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq to push the failing Iraqi government towards greater efforts at national reconciliation.

Returning from a visit to Iraq, Warner urged Bush to announce next month “the first step in a withdrawal,” bringing perhaps 5,000 of the nearly 162,000 troops home by Christmas. Warner, a veteran and former Navy secretary, said it was important to show the Iraqi government “that we mean business” and that the U.S. military commitment is not open-ended.

“We simply cannot as a nation stand and put our troops at continuous risk of loss of life and limb without beginning to take some decisive action which will get everybody’s attention,” Warner said at a Capitol Hill news conference.

It was also reported that General Peter Pace, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, will separately urge Shrub to drastically reduce US force levels, in order to alleviate the strain on our overstretched military:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is expected to advise President Bush to reduce the U.S. force in Iraq next year by almost half, potentially creating a rift with top White House officials and other military commanders over the course of the war.

Administration and military officials say Marine Gen. Peter Pace is likely to convey concerns by the Joint Chiefs that keeping well in excess of 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2008 will severely strain the military. This assessment could collide with one being prepared by the U.S. commander in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, calling for the U.S. to maintain higher troop levels for 2008 and beyond.

My guess is that this will severely test Bush’s putative commitment to be a “Commander Guy” and listen to his generals rather than have politicians make military decisions. In the past, when the commanders have given advice he didn’t want to hear, the Decider decided not to listen.

Finally, a National Intelligence Estimate, portions of which were released yesterday, underscored the fundamental flaw in the “surge” strategy — any temporary reduction in the level of civil violence (from obscene to merely horrendous) has been unaccompanied by any progress in resolving the political problems contributing to the civil war in Iraq.

The assessment, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, casts strong doubts on the viability of the Bush administration strategy in Iraq. It gives a dim prognosis on the likelihood that Iraqi politicians can heal deep sectarian rifts before next spring, when American military commanders have said that a crunch on available troops will require reducing the United States’ presence in Iraq.

Bush, meanwhile, is engaging in revisionism over the Vietnam War. The problem, he says, wasn’t our costly 20 year commitment to unpopular and unviable regimes in that country, but rather that we left after hundreds of thousands of casualties and emptying our treasury. In theory, we (or rather “they” since Bush assiduously avoided combat in Vietnam thru deferments and the Air National Guard) should still be there, maintaining a civil conflict that already stretched from 1946 to 1974 without any hope of ending by foreign intervention.

In October, 2004, nearly three years ago as he stood for reelection, Bush described his Iraq policy in these simple terms:

We’ll help Iraq get on the path to stability and democracy as quickly as possible, and then our troops will come home with the honor they have earned.

Now, three years after vowing to leave Iraq “as quickly as possible,” Bush is saying the lesson to be learned from America’s longest war is that we didn’t prolong our involvement and make the war last even longer, past the 8 (or 12 or 20, depending on you reckon things) years of war which divided our nation, destroyed a popular president, and took such a terrible toll on America’s youth — the callow, rich, alcoholic, coke-snorting sons and grandsons of Congressmen and oilmen excepted.

UPDATE Bill Kristol, whose misjudgment on Iraq is unparalleled, is in favor of fucking stretching our troops since “the surge clearly is working” even though in the absence of any progress stabilizing the Iraqi Polity our loss of lives and the sacrifices of our troops mean not a fucking thing.

Paranormal? Supernatural? Drugs? Meditation? Naaah. Out of body experiences in the lab:

The technique, which uses a virtual-reality-style set up of cameras linked to a head-mounted video display, will help researchers understand how the brain assimilates sensory information to determine the position of its body.

The technique could also improve virtual reality games and remote surgery by creating the illusion that a person is somewhere other than in their own body.

Out-of-body experiences are defined as those where a person who is awake sees their own body from somewhere outside themselves. The experiences have been reported in situations where brain function has been damaged through a stroke, epilepsy or drug abuse. The most common cases occur in traumatic situations such as car accidents or on operating tables.

“Out-of body-experiences have fascinated mankind for millennia - their existence has raised fundamental questions about the relationship between human consciousness and the body, and has been much discussed in theology, philosophy and psychology,” said Henrik Ehrsson, who carried out his experiments at University College London and is now based at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

It’s all so Vincent Price to me!

I didn’t know Grace Paley had died. A brief story:

On an assignment, I went to a restaurant in Tribeca to cover a party. I got there early, so for a while it was only me and an elderly couple. Because they were so quiet & inconspicuous, I figured they were tourists.

When the old man went to the can, I went over and said, “I’m [insert name of devastatingly handsome man here]. I’ll be your reporter and waiter tonight. Can I get you anything?”

“Oh, that’s very sweet of you,” she said. She gave me a drink order. “Nice to meet you. I’m Grace Paley.”

I kept my cool and wet her whistle.