Stuff You Should Know

I am pretty busy today, so I'll just toss out things that you should know..you may know already.

The Independent is reporting that exiled Iraqi Iyad Allawi, picked to be the interim Prime Minister in Iraq has ties to both the CIA and Britain's MI6, as well as being the source for the now discredited '45 minutes' claim.

The Independent report states: "Dr Allawi became a businessman with contacts in Saudi Arabia. He was charming, intelligent and had a gift for impressing Western intelligence agencies.

Sounds eerily like Chalabi, doesn't it? Ties to the CIA, spurious weapons claims..hell, it could be Chalabi.

We'll never learn.

I'll post more later.

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Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman and her journalist brother David have a book out: The Exception To the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media That Love Them.

There is an excerpt from the book on Democracy Now!'s website. If you've been paying very close attention to what's been going on the past three and a half years, there's little new, but it's a good reminder of how we got to this point fighting simultaneous wars in two theatres.

Important: On Wednesday's Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman stated that their Monday(05/31/2004) show is going to dedicated to an airing of a new documentary by Michael Burns titled: Preventive Warriors. The documentary seeks to address some of the potential consequences of the "Bush Doctrine."

Should be interesting.

Can't Get a Break

The UPI is reporting that U.S. soldiers 'escorting' newly released detainees from Abu Ghraib came under fire from snipers as they drove away packed into buses Friday.

It is further reported that hundreds of the detainees' relatives gathered outside Abu Ghraib complex shouting "God is Great"(I suspect it was probably "Allahu Akhbar" that the relatives were shouting), as the buses pulled away form the notorious prison complex.

Brother, some people just can't catch a break.

On that note, I'm going fishing.

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On a happier note, there is a new Get Your War On panel up.

When the Right Attacks

I have read more than a few blog entries from the dark side about a supposed leftist conspiracy to undermine the various U.S. governmental agencies warning about a potential terrorist plot that may take place in the U.S. this summer.

I dunno. I have looked at a lot of opinion on the left concerning this, and I find no evidence of an orchestrated effort underway to undermine Bush, his Administration, or the various agencies responsible for getting the word out to America that something dire may be about to be unleashed.

All I see is healthy skepticism. People wondering what form an attack could take, and questioning our level of preparedness, etc. These are things that all thinking peoples could be reasonably expected to do given the ominous warnings of their government.

I trust that the government does indeed have increased levels of 'chatter' and that the seven individuals wanted for questioning aren't seven unlucky people randomly picked from a database.

My personal view is that I am unlikely to come under terrorist attack. As are you. The chances of dying in a motor vehicle accident are 40,000 times more likely than dying in a domestic terrorist attack.

I still drive. Every day in fact.

I cannot offer any quick-fix advice to those that are so indoctrinated as to see shadowy motives under every rock that they overturn. I can only offer a long term solution to this phenomenon. Certain people - both left and right - are so inured that they only can offer reflexive answers to vexing questions. Questions that require a more nuanced, wide range of thought to properly understand, and then offer answers for them.

Sorry for that bit of digression.

Getting back on course, how do we as responsible citizens start to turn the tide?

Name calling, and other destructive behaviors isn't going to work. There are projects underway that are attempting to reframe issues in a progressive manner, but first finding some commonality would be helpful.

Because reframing issues in a different light can be a rather daunting task, I'll let linguist George Lakoff explain how the issue of taxation can be taken from its commonly framed construct of something almost evil in nature, to something much more positive and instructive.

You've written a lot about "tax relief" as a frame. How does it work?

The phrase "Tax relief" began coming out of the White House starting on the very day of Bush's inauguration. It got picked up by the newspapers as if it were a neutral term, which it is not. First, you have the frame for "relief." For there to be relief, there has to be an affliction, an afflicted party, somebody who administers the relief, and an act in which you are relieved of the affliction. The reliever is the hero, and anybody who tries to stop them is the bad guy intent on keeping the affliction going. So, add "tax" to "relief" and you get a metaphor that taxation is an affliction, and anybody against relieving this affliction is a villain.

"Tax relief" has even been picked up by the Democrats. I was asked by the Democratic Caucus in their tax meetings to talk to them, and I told them about the problems of using tax relief. The candidates were on the road. Soon after, Joe Lieberman still used the phrase tax relief in a press conference. You see the Democrats shooting themselves in the foot.

So what should they be calling it?

It's not just about what you call it, if it's the same "it." There's actually a whole other way to think about it. Taxes are what you pay to be an American, to live in a civilized society that is democratic and offers opportunity, and where there's an infrastructure that has been paid for by previous taxpayers. This is a huge infrastructure. The highway system, the Internet, the TV system, the public education system, the power grid, the system for training scientists — vast amounts of infrastructure that we all use, which has to be maintained and paid for. Taxes are your dues — you pay your dues to be an American. In addition, the wealthiest Americans use that infrastructure more than anyone else, and they use parts of it that other people don't. The federal justice system, for example, is nine-tenths devoted to corporate law. The Securities and Exchange Commission and all the apparatus of the Commerce Department are mainly used by the wealthy. And we're all paying for it.

So taxes could be framed as an issue of patriotism.

It is an issue of patriotism! Are you paying your dues, or are you trying to get something for free at the expense of your country? It's about being a member. People pay a membership fee to join a country club, for which they get to use the swimming pool and the golf course. But they didn't pay for them in their membership. They were built and paid for by other people and by this collectivity. It's the same thing with our country — the country as country club, being a member of a remarkable nation. But what would it take to make the discussion about that? Every Democratic senator and all of their aides and every candidate would have to learn how to talk about it that way. There would have to be a manual. Republicans have one. They have a guy named Frank Luntz, who puts out a 500-page manual every year that goes issue by issue on what the logic of the position is from the Republican side, what the other guys' logic is, how to attack it, and what language to use.

As you can see, it's a daunting task to undo decades of conservative newspeak. Before anyone calls me on it, I am aware that this same sort of thing also occurs on the left.

I hope that the above gives you something with which to work. The balance of the above parenthetical remarks and a lot more can be found at the Rockridge Institute.

Disclaimer: I am a semiconductor engineer, so if this post is abjectly lacking in useful material, I can't help it. I'm a geek :)

Sue me :)

I only have one political link to share. It's an important one as it either illustrates just how thoroughly adrift the U.S. policy in Iraq is, or how pragmatic we've become as the due date for 'transfer of authority' nears.

In a move seen by some as capitulation to Iraqi 'insurgents' - in this case to Muktada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army - it appears that the U.S. is withdrawing from Najaf with neither al-Sadr captured nor killed nor the Mehdi Army disbanded.

I think that this is more likely a move that the U.S. hopes is seen as a demonstration that after the 30 June 'transfer of power,' that the Iraqis will have more of a role in determining their future than they would have otherwise thought. Maybe I'm being a bit of a pollyanna, but I am optimistic that the U.S. will at some point begin to do what's right for a sovereign Iraq.

At least the killing has subsided in Najaf. A very welcome development.

Time will tell if this holds.

Sarin Part 10

Okay. The presence of Sarin in the suspected 155mm shell used in an improvised explosive device(IED) has been confirmed.

According to this VOA report, it has been further confirmed that the munition was made prior to the 1991 Gulf War.

I wasn't prepared for this to be revealed, as most of my line of unanswered questions were contingent upon this data being withheld.

My line of questions I feel that need to be answered are now much fewer in number.

What we do know is that it is highly likely that Iraq under Hussein produced the munition with a wink and a nod from Washington under the guise of insecticide production materials which are a series of small steps away from the the production of Sarin(GB), Tabun(GA) and Soman(GD). Hence the term 'dual use technology' often bandied about by the media.

Now that we have the time of production of the binary device, it leaves very few unanswered questions.

We have no independent, seriously considered allegations that Saddam was able to restart his chem./bio./nuclear programs after the 1991 Gulf War. A decade plus of sanctions along with American and British enforced no-fly zones in the north and south of Iraq, along with verifed UNMOVIC destructions of both facilities and munitions served to likely nullify any attempts by Saddam to restart any of Iraq's pre-1991 Gulf War illicit weapons programs. Therefore, a properly skeptical person would have serious doubts that new materials have been produced.

From the FAS:

Production of the nerve gases tabun (GA) and sarin (GB) started in 1984 and the method of production changed over time in order to resolve stabilization problems. Iraq's latest declarations have reduced the stated amount of tabun produced from 250 tons to 210 tons and of sarin produced from 812 tons to 790 tons.

The tabun produced was poor, being of a maximum purity of 60 per cent. As a result, the agent did not store well and could only be stored for a limited period. Furthermore, Iraq experienced problems in the production of tabun owing to salt blockages forming in pipes during synthesis. Because of these problems, Iraq refocused its nerve agent research, development and production efforts on sarin (GB/GF).

The sarin produced was also of poor quality (maximum purity of 60 per cent when solvent is taken into account) and so too could only be stored for short periods. In order to overcome this problem, Iraq resorted to a binary approach to weaponization: the precursor chemicals for sarin (DF 2/ and the alcohols cyclohexanol and isopropanol) were stored separately for mixing in the munitions immediately prior to use to produce a mixture of two G-series nerve agents, GB and GF. Given that the locally manufactured DF had a purity of more than 95 per cent and the alcohols were imported and of 100 per cent purity, this process could be expected to yield relatively pure sarin.

Over the period from June 1992 to June 1994, the Commission's Chemical Destruction Group destroyed 30 tons of tabun, 70 tons of sarin and 600 tons of mustard agent, stored in bulk and in munitions.

My only question is this: How much of the produced material remains?

Since the numbers aren't in total agreement, this remains an unknown.

The most plausible explanation given thus far seems to be Scott Ritter's. He has stated he believes that the shell was a 'dud,' and almost certainly not part of a chemical weapons cache.

The very subdued responses by the Pentagon and Bush Administration officials would seem to lend credence to this view.

Sorry Faux News, and those still clinging to their pre-war dissonant fantasies. It now appears that this is an anomaly, not part of a much larger illicit cache.

I will maintain this most likely of positions until it can be shown otherwise.

Listen to This!

A must listen. Dr. George Lakoff, professor of linguistics at U.C. Berkeley discusses the Right's use of doublespeak and framing to get people to think the way that the Right wishes. Due to 30 years of indoctrination and framing of the issues, the Right has turned language on its head, to a point where the destruction of forests has become The Healthy Forests Initiative, and rollback of air quality standards has become The Clear Skies Initiative.

This is not coincidental.

Listen here.

Audio link is down as of posting time. Most of what Lakoff says can be read here. I'll look for other Lakoff stuff. Sorry about the RM link being down.

The Rock Ridge Institute to "reframe and rethink public policy" is a good place to learn how to start to reframe vexing issues back toward objective realities, rather than the Right's twisting of reality to suit their agenda. It's not difficult, but in order to undo 30 years of indoctrination, it is going to take some work.

Note: When the White House uses the word "initiative," it's a cue to see who's lifting your wallet, or destroying the environment.

BushSpeak bs Response

pure bs opinion! Not to be confused with fact.

This is my response to Bush's speech of 24 May 2004.

First of all, an apology. I meant to get this entry posted yesterday, but it needed 'polishing.' Enough of my lame excuses. Without further ado:

Bushspeak

On Monday night President Bush initiated a new salvo to convince America, its allies - the coalition of the billing® - and the people of Iraq that he, and his adminstration has a plan, or plans to bring both peace and democracy to Iraq. Bush spoke, as he has as of late, in front of a backdrop calculated to buttress his image of being a strong leader. I remind the reader of Bush's now commonly mocked use of an aircraft carrier to signal Operation Iraqi Freedom, well, over. "Mission Accomplished, " right?

The backdrop for his latest speech was the institution whose name appeared again and again in tiny squares behind the president: "U.S. Army War College." This was an all too obvious ploy to portray Bush as a strong military leader(his missing year in the Guard, and utter discounting of his military's advice about a great many things related to his Exclellent Iraq Adventure® notwithstanding). His mission, in the remaining months before the election, was to convince America that the war in Iraq was, and is still, worth fighting and is winnable on some concrete level.

Everything in Iraq is a skeptic's banquet, and while Bush's speech conveyed both resolve and hope, it lacked the specifics that distinguish fairy tale thinking from a real plan to achieve his stated goals.

Bush laid out a five-point plan to bring peace, stability and democracy to Iraq. Since his stated plan was essentially a recitation of measures already under way, it was his newspeak way of saying "stay the course." This has come to mean death and despair to Iraqis and 'coalition forces' alike.

In the face of a growing body of evidence and mass public acknowledgement, Bush leveled with us and warned that the attacks on coalition forces and Iraqis who work with them would continue after the planned June 30 transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi interim provisional government. He also said - and I found this refreshingly frank, if a bit fear-mongering - that an Iraq that was allowed to collapse into chaos would endanger the world.

Yet Bush offered precious little explaining how to prevent a collapse from occurring if American troops pulled out. We'll be there for a long time.

We are stuck in Iraq(nah. no 'Q' word). Dissociating America while giving the Iraqis some hope to avoid civil war will take the help of other nations, including those with at least some degree of Islamic government. Bush has asked for that help, but he did not say what would induce the allies he ignored in the run-up to war to commit troops to Iraq now.

We know what works in these situations. Unfortunately, the governmental coffers are empty, and we seem less than freely willing to share lucrative reconstruction contracts with companies in countries whose help we not only need, but are likely to be essential for anything remotely resembling 'success' in Iraq.

Bush spoke of a turnover to an Iraqi government that does not yet exist. That government is to be assembled by one man, Lakhdar Brahimi, acting under the aegis of the U.N., an organization Bush scorned when it declined to sanction the invasion of Iraq. On 22 Oct. 2002 in the push to war, Bush urged the UN to be more than just a debating society, and on 12 Sept. 2002 Bush said the UN risked becoming "irrevelant" unless the UN rubber-stamped his personal war. These statements about the UN, and others concerning "old Europe" were echoed without modification by Bush Administration officials. Hardly diplomatic.

Bush spoke of giving that - as yet to be defined - government sovereignty over Iraq. But the militias of Iraq's many factions remain armed and in place. Since the new government will have no real ability to protect itself, Iraqi sovereignty will be symbolic at best. Indeed, the U.S. military will remain outside of the jurisdiction of any Iraqi government for an indeterminate time. I think we know where the real power in Iraq will be.

Throughout his speech Bush referred to all who attack coalition forces as terrorists - in an apparent attempt to justify launching a war of choice. The shell game of the casus belli remains elusive. There are terrorists in Iraq, not only likely more than when the invasion began, but perhaps terrorists with a trans-oceanic reach. This was not the case before the invasion. Coalition forces are also fighting Saddam loyalists, religious extremists and ordinary Iraqis who have taken up arms to avenge the death of a family member, or members, and those angry at the occupation of their nation and the deaths of innocent citizens. From foreign press accounts, the number of foreign fighters is far less than claimed by the U.S. I don't know where the truth is.

Bush also sent conflicting messages to America's troops, at a time when clarity and candor are warranted. At one point in the speech, after thanking them for their extended service in Iraq, he promised they would be home soon. But then, he said that depending on events, tours of duty may be further extended, and that more troops would be sent if America's commanders asked for them. He did not mention that the next day would bring news that Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, was being replaced. Ahem. Moving right along.

Noteworthy by admission, was Ahmed Chalabi, the thoroughly discredited Iraqi/Jordanian exile, neocon shill, and convicted embezzler, who, perhaps more than anyone else, sold the war to Americans through the dissemination of information about WMD which he later said: "As far as we're concerned we've been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important." Unfortunately, the "what was said before" was the faux WMD information used to sell the product known as Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Bush was also mute on that Osama bin Laden fellow. It is likely that Mr. Bush gave bin Laden a great recruiting tool with the invasion of Iraq. The al-Qaeda network may have as many as 18,000 terrorists that have infiltrated perhaps 60 nations.

This Bush speech on Iraq was the first in a series. He pledged to update the country weekly about the course of the occupation in Iraq. Talk is cheap. It will take more than euphony and a patriotic backdrop to prove that the Administration that started the war is capable of ending it.

That's way too much drivel. Sorry :)

Three things for Today

I hope to make three entries today.

1)a critique of Bush's Iraq speech(sort of a speech, I guess)

2)the questions we should ask about the 155mm Sarin shell

3)a potpourri of political links without comment..well, maybe a bit.

One news item from The Independednt Kerry surges ahead in 12 crucial swing states as Bush poll ratings plummet. In politics, as in all things, the trends in place are likely to remain in place unless there is an incident of enough import to disrupt the trend.

Think of it as the political analogue of Newton's First Law. Paraphasing: "bodies in motion tend to stay in motion."

A VERY basic explanation of Newton's three laws of motion can be found here.

Sarin Part 9

Various sources are reporting that The U.S. Military is reporting that the nefarious 155mm shell did indeed contain Sarin(GB).

I have no reason to doubt and some reason to believe the military. However, a third party confirmation is really required.

To further the discussion, I'll grant that this is confirmation.

In Part 10 of the series, I'll try to raise some questions that might be of some import to the skeptical observer.

Check Your Facts!

Annenberg gives us a double.

The Bush team falls under their watchful gaze this time around.

New Bush ad quotes negative comments from newspapers, but fails to mention that "they are editorial expressions of opinion."

The comments are mostly accurate, but offers a few distortions, as well as misleading the viewer that opinions are facts. Of course this is wrong.

Next up, another Bush ad falsely claims that Kerry would "Repeal Wiretaps of Terrorists."

A Bush ad released May 25 accuses Kerry of "playing politics with national security" and implies he would repeal "wiretaps, subpoena powers and surveillance" against terrorists under the USA Patriot Act. The wording of the ad could leave some viewers with the impression that Kerry opposes wiretapping suspected terrorists at all, which is false. In reality, Kerry's advocates stronger oversight by judges.

The Bush ad says Kerry changed his position on the Patriot act after being "pressured by liberals." But some conservative Republicans make the same criticisms of the act that Kerry does, and five Republicans are co-sponsoring legislation with him to amend the Patriot Act. Even Bush campaign chairman Marc Racicot conceded last year that the act could use "refinement . . . so that it does not end up invading the civil rights of any American."

More color concerning both ads at provided links.

They distort, we put right®.

Just another crazy day on the campaign trail. Sad, don't you think?

Bush Outsources Campaign

I was trying to find another source for this before commenting, but I cannot find one.

Hence, I'll simply offer you two links, and let you make up your own mind(s).

MoveOn's Misleader.org - hardly an unbiased source - reports that while the Republican party "was playing up patriotism, its fund-raising and vote-seeking campaign was performed in part by two call centers located in India."

The data comes from a few sources, the primary one being The Hindustan Times.

We always encourage independent inquiry here at pure bs. Always

Sarin Parts 7 & 8

Still no confirmation of Sarin?

This is starting to smell. Badly.

Did somebody just cut the yellow-cake?

The Silly Season

Annenberg's Fact Check corrects the League of Conservation Voters. At issue is the League's claims about the distance of Bush's proposals for offshore drilling.

Annenberg sets the record straight.

Fact Check engages in some speculation. Namely that this current ad is payback for Gov. Jeb Bush distorting Kerry's position on offshore drilling last month.

The voters deserve better.

Bush's environmental is nothing short of abysmal. There is no need for distortions.

Sarin Part 6

Another day with no confirmation of Sarin.

Why not? It should have been confirmed or not by now. The Right has been accusing the Left of 'defeatism.'

The Left, and anyone that wants the truth, is properly waiting for the the forensics to flesh out.

The Right, in their rush to call this "the smoking gun" that Saddam had WMD merely weakens their position by showing their overt partisanship, while the rational commentator awaits confirmation that will not come from the fertile imaginations of Right wing political pundits, but by the cool unbiased tools of science.

I know that I'm getting a lot of play off this issue. It is because I want the truth - as best as can be determined - about the infamous alleged Sarin 155mm round.

With every passing day, the rational person's skepticism grows.

If this does turn out to be Sarin, it is my hope that this is, as Scott Ritter has speculated, a 'dud' left over from the time when Saddam was experimenting with binary weapons, and not part of any stockpile.