Dear Uncle No. 1, or Breaking All the Rules

Kelly – Smooth Like Jelly, But Weak, So Weak (When Will You Hear "You’re Fired!")

L.A. Times, 2-7-17:

President Trump's top Homeland Security official took responsibility Tuesday for the haphazard rollout of Trump's restrictions on entry into the U.S., a striking claim because he was largely left out of the crafting of the order.

The confusion surrounding the execution of the order is "all on me,” Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly told the House Homeland Security Committee in his first appearance before Congress since Trump temporarily halted refugees and barred entry for people to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Looking back, Kelly added, "I should have delayed it just a bit" to inform those directly affected by the order as well as members of Congress.

But the writing of the order and planning for its rollout was limited chiefly to a handful of senior White House advisors and agency lawyers, and Kelly found himself in the awkward position of defending the execution of a directive he didn’t see until the week it was issued and wasn’t told was coming until the day before it was signed.

"The thinking was to get it out quick so that people trying to come here to harm us could not take advantage of a period of time to jump on an airplane," he said.

In case your aluminum-foil hat conspiracy-theory knee-jerk reaction is to say, “See! That’s the kind of mainstream media fake news, made up out of whole cloth just to undermine Our Beloved Great and Rich Leader that Our Beloved Great and Rich Leader has warned us against,” I saw the video on C-SPAN (though at the moment I can’t remember which Congressional committee the Secretary was addressing) so you need to expand your conspiracy theory to include an extremely elaborate video deception operation as well.  Maybe the aluminum foil hat needs a lead lining.  Then perhaps you’d have no problem believing the elaborate-video-deception layer of the theory.  Alternatively, you could just call me a liar, too.

Did Kelly perform this noble, though essentially unconvincing, act of throwing himself under the bus without any White House encouragement?  One would tend to doubt it, but with this Administration who would really know?

Without trying to explain this disagreement with his HS Secretary, though, on the 16^th President Donald J. Trump declared that “the travel ban rollout was perfectly smooth.”

Just as a reminder, ICE staffs at the ports of entry – most significantly, at airports – had no warning or direction; they just got the text of the Executive Order the morning it was to go into effect.  At most ports of entry it was interpreted as including lawful permanent residents (almost entirely holders of “green cards”) returning from abroad.  Probably in response to threatened habeas corpus actions, ICE personnel urgently requested clarification from Washington.  The White House said they read it right, continue to detain those green-card re-entrants.  Then about ten hours later the White House said they read it wrong, there was no authority for detaining green-card holders.  Shortly after that, the President said the Exec. Order was perfectly clear, no way could it be read to include green-card holders, but he’d be happy to issue a clarifying statement.  Presumably, by then it was getting back to the White House that government lawyers defending the Exec. Order against the perfectly predictable court challenges were describing its facial applicability to LPRs as its Achilles’ heel.  The E.O. had not been vetted by the President’s Office of Legal Counsel, either.

However, presumably because legal advisors explained that the text of the E.O. could not be fixed, legally, by a mere clarifying statement, no such statement was issued.  Anyway, in addition to the LPR problem, foreigners who had traveled to the U.S. in reliance upon valid visas lawfully obtained from our State Department were being detained and/or summarily deported, creating chaos at major ports of entry.

But now we know that the rollout was perfectly smooth (Because Beloved Great and Rich Leader Hath Spoken It) I suppose Sec’y Kelly’s explanation for its non-smoothness should be overlooked in polite embarrassment, by well-bred persons.  Not being quite so well-bred, I’ll continue to look at it and talk about it (if only because the poor Cabinet Secretary was apparently taking his cue from another of his chief’s Twitter® tweets).  “The thinking was to get it out quick so that people trying to come here to harm us could not take advantage of a period of time to jump on an airplane” makes no sense, unless these bad guys who jump on planes without visas are also planning to slip past ICE when that plane lands in the U.S. – in which case, the “travel ban” would make no difference, anyway.  If you simply decree an immediate halt to the issuance of visas (something the President clearly does have authority to do) you avoid the chaos of detaining and deporting those attempting to enter on valid visas but you would not create a period which “people trying to come here to harm us could take advantage of … to jump on an airplane.”

See, Secretary Kelly, you have not absorbed one of the rules Our Beloved Great and Rich Leader has always lived by (though he has all this time avoided consciously formulating it): Never apologize for a mistake. Instead deny it was a mistake and question the honesty, patriotism, solvency, appearance and/or sanity of anyone daring to suggest you made a mistake.

Kelly, you looked weak.  You were supposed to say, “Rocky rollout!  What rocky rollout? Why, the rollout was perfectly smooth, perfectly smooth! If any of the lame-stream media ‘reported’ anything suggesting less-than-perfect smoothness, it’s just more fake news from the Very Dishonest ‘news’ organizations.  Chaos? There wasn’t even a moment of confusion, about anything whatever. It’s all lies, lies made up just to hurt me but worse than that, made up to hurt Our Beloved Great and Rich Leader.”

Only profoundly disturbed personalities live by such a rule, and usually reality squashes them and they end up as homeless ranters.  But sometimes they start out rich and through luck or bluff or fraud get richer.  And sometimes …

"Take Their Oil" And the Law of War

The question has been posed to me: “Where does it say that while we occupy a nation we are at war with we can't use the natural resources of that occupation?”  “Where” is in what is (for complicated historical reasons) commonly called “the Geneva Convention,” but is more properly designated the

Convention respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land; The Hague, 10/18/1907 (Hague IV)

to which the United States of America and the Ottoman Empire (predecessor, for treaty-obligation purposes, of the Republic of Iraq) were original signatories, and in particular, in the

ANNEX TO THE CONVENTION
REGULATIONS RESPECTING THE LAWS AND CUSTOMS OF WAR ON LAND

SECTION I
ON BELLIGERENTS

Art. 2. The inhabitants of a territory which has not been occupied, who, on the approach of the enemy, spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading troops without having had time to organize themselves in accordance with Article 1, shall be regarded as belligerents if they carry arms openly and if they respect the laws and customs of war.

(I’ve granted myself permission to quote some parts, and make some comments, that are not strictly germane to the “Kick ‘Em in the Ass And Take Their Gas” program the G.W. Bush Administration’s non-adoption of which has been the occasion for our new President’s expressions of wistful regret.)

With customary Oriental torpor, civilian Iraqis failed to take up arms spontaneously upon our approach, doing so only after their territories had (mostly) been occupied.  Whether these facts provide any support for the G.W. Bush Administration’s effort to add the novel classification “enemy combatant,” completely different from the “belligerents” who are subject to and protected by the Convention, may nevertheless be doubted.

Art. 23. In addition to the prohibitions provided by special Conventions, it is especially forbidden –

* * *

(g)       To destroy or seize the enemy’s property, unless such destruction or seizure be imperatively demanded by the necessities of war;

Arguably, though, this applies only to the enemy’s property while it is still in territory which has not been occupied.

Section III: Military Authority Over the Territory of the Hostile State

Art. 43. The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.

If you recall D. Rumsfeld’s gleeful dismissal of all suggestions that we had any responsibility to suppress chaos in occupied Baghdad, you might begin to think that’s where the right-wing attack on the Geneva Conventions began – but I think you really need to look a little farther back.  (But don’t look to A. Hitler. Despite urging by Goebbels in the final months of WW II, Hitler refused to authorize open violation of the Geneva Conventions by the Wehrmacht.)

Art. 46. Family honor and rights, the lives of persons, and private property, as well as religious convictions and practice, must be respected. Private property cannot be confiscated

Art. 47. Pillage is formally forbidden.

Art. 48. If, in the territory occupied, the occupant collects the taxes, dues, and tolls imposed for the benefit of the State, he shall do so, as far as is possible, in accordance with the rules of assessment and incidence in force, and shall in consequence be bound to defray the expenses of the administration of the occupied territory to the same extent as the legitimate Government was so bound.

Art. 49. If, in addition to the taxes mentioned in the above article, the occupant levies other money contributions in the occupied territory, this shall only be for the needs of the army or of the administration of the territory in question.

Art. 52. Requisitions in kind and services shall not be demanded from municipalities or inhabitants except for the needs of the army of occupation. They shall be in proportion to the resources of the country, and of such a nature as not to involve the inhabitants in the obligation of taking part in military operations against their own country.

Such requisitions and services shall only be demanded on the authority of the commander in the locality occupied.

Art. 53. An army of occupation can only take possession of cash, funds, and realizable securities which are strictly the property of the State, depots of arms, means of transport, stores and supplies, and, generally, all movable property belonging to the State which may be used for military operations.

Art. 55. The occupying State shall be regarded only as administrator and usufructuary of public buildings, real estate, forests, and agricultural estates belonging to the hostile State, and situated in the occupied country. It must safeguard the capital of these properties, and administer them in accordance with the rules of usufruct.

OK. Let’s assume the wells in question are not private property but are owned by the Iraqi state.  So is the usufructuary entitled to pump oil out of the wells?  If you think our tax code is right in giving oil companies a “depletion allowance,” then the answer has to be “No.”  If you think of petroleum deposits as eternally self-renewing, like the ever-springing corn, then yes, we should get to harvest it as long as we occupy the territory in which the wells are located.

That the oil once pumped should be used for something other than the needs of the occupying army or the administration of the occupied territory, though, is certainly at odds with the general approach of Section III of the Convention.  The sale of the oil and appropriation of the proceeds for the general enrichment of the occupying power would, in any case, be hard to distinguish from the “formally forbidden” act of pillaging.

The argument that sucking resources out of an occupied country for the general benefit of the occupier is a violation of Section III formed the basis for several of the war crimes charges that we used to convict leading Nazis, and hang some of them, at Nuremburg in 1945-46

Anyway, the prolongation of our occupation for the purpose of pumping and selling more of the oil would have been completely irreconcilable with the noble Liberation of the Iraqi People which the G.W. Bush Administration declared to be our purpose in going to war. It would also have required us to keep our servicemen in harm’s way in order to make more money from the oil we were taking. And how would they, their families or their Congressmen have felt about that?

Davids and Goliaths

Davids and Goliaths

Under Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which the U.S. formally ratified in 1970, the nuclear-weapon States that are parties to the Treaty (U.S., Russia, China, U.K. and France) obligated themselves "to pursue negotiations in good faith on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control."  The non-nuclear-weapon States might possibly be excused for observing that these good-faith negotiations seem to be proceeding rather slowly.

Under Article X of the Treaty, every State-party "shall in exercising its national sovereignty have the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it decides that extraordinary events, related to the subject matter of this Treaty, have jeopardized the supreme interests of its country. It shall give notice of such withdrawal to all other Parties to the Treaty and to the United Nations Security Council three months in advance."

Now, from the point of view of Germany (or Poland or Turkey or any other non-nuclear-weapon State in NATO) mightn't the confluence of (a.) the succession to the U.S. Presidency of a doubter and disparager of NATO; and (b.) the simultaneous declarations of said doubter and the President of Russia of their intentions to enhance their nuclear arsenals, rather than indulge in any disarmament negotiations (in good faith or otherwise) be deemed an "extraordinary event"?

Once the three months had passed, how long would it take Germany to have its own nuclear arsenal?  Wouldn't the governments of Germany, Poland and Turkey be well advised to give this course of action serious consideration?  Otherwise they depend upon Putin to refrain from crushing them by the use or threatened use of his nukes, and upon Trump to deter Putin with his nukes.  And even if both of these worthies might safely be relied upon, they would still be left inhabiting a world made ever more crowded with nuclear weapons over which they have no control.

The NNPT, incidentally, forms the vital nexus of the whole negotiation between nuclear-weapon States (Russia, China, U.S., U.K., France*) on the one hand and Iran (a non-nuclear-weapon State party to the NNPT) on the other, a fact practically never noted in the American media.
* Non-nuclear Germany was also a participant - nuclear vs. non-nuclear status being the reason for the designation of these as the "five plus one" powers.

U.S. Election - al Baghdadi’s to Lose?

U.S. Presidential Election - al Baghdadi’s to Lose?

I hope I'm wrong, but my political radar is telling me that D.J. Trump’s latest absurdity will, once again, boost his poll numbers. I expect that by now he has engaged the services of some high-grade (if politically amoral) pollsters. My hunch is that he will find the “Keep Muslims Out” slogan has not only improved his numbers with likely Republican primary voters (unsurprisingly) but that it has attracted the favorable attention of the coveted “Reagan Democrats.”


And if I’m not wrong, if his pollsters study their focus group results closely enough they will find that shameless fear-mongering is the ultimate key to winning the women’s vote. Once persuaded that their young are endangered, females in general become deaf to all appeals to rational policy, while the suggestion that any value should be superordinate to immediate and absolute safety will be furiously rejected by them.


Trump has now so positioned himself that a few incidents of jihadist terrorism in the U.S. – of the right kind and at the right times – could sweep him to nomination and then into the Oval Office. He certainly understands this.


But does al Baghdadi? It can scarcely be doubted that Trump is the candidate ISIS would most gladly see elected. Do the jihadist terror groups have assets in this country that would enable them to put their man in the White House? I doubt it very seriously. But I suppose we shall see.

I Said It In April, 2004

In 2004 I was posting to a History Channel discussion group devoted to the US invasion of Iraq. I accidentally came across several page I had printed out back then. 11 years later, everybody's saying what I was saying then.

Da Feet of Which Tribe?
(Reply to "More Defeatist Diatribe" by DBWriter)
BStanley

marcusLC:
Anyone have an exit strategy for Iraq? Since Bush doesn't seem to.

BKS:

April 26, 2004
[US policy in Iraq has been set by] the White House, secretively consulting with some of the civilian leadership at the Pentagon and the Israeli government, and not consulting, in advance of or during decision-making with anybody else nor even, after decisions are made, letting anybody know what they are, with any concreteness or detail, until after it has attempted to implement them. The only likely explanation for this bizarre conduct is Ariel Sharon's Svengali-like control over GWB on this subject matter, and Sharon's understandable fear that any other approach …would soon lead to the dissipation of that control.

MarcusLC:
I supported … Afghanistan as necessary but I have never understood this entire Iraq thing and now there seems to be no way out.

justaguy:
The short, simple answer is that there is no 'exit strategy' from Iraq. Never has been.

SHAQ:
We were lied to.

Mushashi:
The Iraq war has been full of questions with either late, inadequate, or flat out wrong answers. The costs, the objectives, the reasons, the justifications, the duration, the necessity, all have become multiple choice questions because the Bush administration hasn't been up-front with us about anything.

BKS:
That the Administration has never identified the objective of our warfare against Iraq clearly and concretely, or, if any of the objectives the Administration has disclosed could be so described, it didn't remain the stated objective for more than a few weeks, is the one theme restated, in various ways, by nearly all the postings in this thread. I have no idea which of these postings DBWriter meant to denounce as a "defeatist diatribe." Perhaps it was just their common note of skepticism.

"Defeatism" entered the political vocabulary as a term used by French Right and Center politicians to denounce the anti-war stance of the International (i.e., anti-war) Left parties in France and other Allied states during the First World War. It was soon taken up for the same purpose by the Social Patriotic (pro-war; in Russia, after February 1917, "revolutionary defensist") Left. In the politics of the Central and Allied powers (except for the US, where fear of Allied "defeat," after America joined the Allies, never really existed, and such terms as "Reds" and "Hun-Lovers" were more suited to the general level of political discourse) it became the favorite epithet used to dismiss any questions or collywobbles about pouring everything into pursuit of the vital (and, of course, inevitable) Total Victory. Its real sting lay in its invariably being coupled with more or less explicit accusations that the "defeatists" were not really just weak-kneed or war-weary fellow countrymen but in fact spies or traitors working for the Total Victory of the crafty and perfidious Foe. In France, this general line derived initial plausibility (or at least, resonance) from the circumstances of the defeat France had suffered in the Franco-Prussian war (and urgency from her very near approach to military collapse during the Great -- and greatly hushed-up -- Mutiny of 1917, in which German agents indeed played a role, though it was trifling compared to that of the French generals). Its German version, post-defeat, grew into the Dolchstosse credo recapitulated in the latter chapters of Mein Kampf.

Even today (or as recently as 1997, anyway) "the kind of defeatism ... characteristic of those who came to accept, rather than reject, the occupation of France [during WW II]" is an indirect way of describing a thesis and/or its proponent as Fascist or crypto-Fascist. (See
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/french_theory_and_criticism-_5.html_.) It is true there were fascist groupings in France, and also true that, before 1939, Hitler was reported to have boasted to his inner circle that he would form and foment such elements and use them to ensure Germany's victory when war came, but it is highly doubtful that French Fascism had any substantial role in France's actual defeat. (Dealing with the consequences of defeat was another matter.)

I don't know whether DBWriter actually meant to suggest that the previous posters (or the diatribist among them, whichever he was) is a secret agent of the enemy. I don't even know whom he takes "the enemy" to be, at this juncture. (Apart from Massachusetts, which he names.)

Indeed, I don't see how anybody's notion of what would constitute "defeat" can be much more clear or specific than his definition of "victory."

DBWriter:
> Exit strategy? How about, we leave after we win?

BKS:
Funny. That's exactly what I was saying while everybody was jumping about the flight deck hugging one another, admiring the President's flight suit, and shouting, 'We won!"

DBWriter:
> What is a win?

BKS:
Surely this calls for a drum-roll!
But, with no disrespect to DBWriter, shouldn't it have been our President who laid out for the people before he committed the nation to war what he would consider a "win"?

DBW:
>A government in Iraq that is independent of the
> surrounding dictatorships,

BKS:
Golly. I would have thought the government Iraq had before we invaded (or even ultimated) would have been satisfactory on this count. Syria is the only "surrounding dictatorship" Saddam hadn't actually made war on, and the sister Ba'ath Parties had become estranged, to put it mildly.

But I'm not exactly sure why the fierce independence of Iraq from its neighbors should be a major desideratum to America. I can't say that I would feel personally aggrieved if, for example, the line between Syria and Iraq were peacefully erased (whatever name might be given the consolidated state). If anybody is to have people dying in bloody combat to preserve an arbitrary line that the people living on either side are content to have erased, just because Winston Churchill is supposed to have drawn the line, I say let the Brits do it.

DBW:
> and not conducive to civil
> war among the 3 basic sects that comprise the
> population of Iraq .

BKS:
Again, whatever his faults may have been, you could hardly say that Saddam was such a weak ruler that the country was threatening to spin apart as if nobody was wielding power at the center-- could you?

So if an independent and unitary Iraq, just as first drawn by Winnie and blessed by the League of Nations, of blessed memory (both), were what we really wanted to continue to see, why the heck didn't we just send S.H. a quiet little note saying "Thanks for a job well done!" (Kinda like GHWB did, literally or figuratively, at least twice.)

And anyway, I can't say it matters a great deal to me whether Iraq remains one state or becomes twenty-seven. I realize that GWB, without consulting anybody in this country outside his own office, or even very effectively canvassing authorities in Istanbul and Teheran, purported to promise Turkey and Iran that we would on no account permit our invasion to lead to the break-up of the Iraqi state as defined, territorially, by the League of Nations. But everybody knows George will say anything if his wind is up and there's no responsible adult around to stop him. Besides, these two ancient states undoubtedly have learned how to handle minor disappointments in foreign policy, as, indeed, each has, in the not too distant past, helped to school the still young United States on the handling of foreign disappointments small and not so small.

And if you asked my personal preferences, I'd say: Up Kurdistan! (On both moral and material grounds, why shouldn't the Turkic peoples be forced to recognize that demanding national self-determination for themselves while denying it to others is not ... well ... kosher?)

DBW:
> This means a form of democracy,
> and disallows theocracies.

BKS:
I guess I must have missed the news about the discovery of the previously lost books of the Politics of Aristotle explaining this. History is replete with democracies, timocracies, aristocracies, oligarchies, monarchies and dictatorships (tyrannies, to Aristotle) which remained independent of their neighbors and did not split up -- for lesser and greater periods of time. But one of Telli's conclusions was that democracy is generally the least stable of all systems. "Theocracy" is not an Aristotelian word, and I'm sure he would have deplored the impiety of equating the rulership of priests with the rulership of God.

DBW's contribution seems to be developing into a highly original exploration of the sunny side of Saddam Hussein. One of the few (other) good things one might say about this state prisoner (but of what state, come 7/1 ?) is that he managed on the whole to preserve the pristine Ba'athist secularism, without being noticeably nastier to religious persons and/or institutions, per se, than he was to just about everybody.

Anyway, if the U.S. is now to embark upon a crusade for the universal elevation of the secular state and state secularism, shouldn't GWB warn his buddies down South to run like heck from that bizarre granite block inscribed, on five surfaces, with an odd miscellany of Bible verses? The one they're all wailing over because it stands no longer in the Temple of Mammon? Our cruise missiles have a pretty large radius of destruction, despite their precision.

What if we have to take drastic measures lest the forces of obscurantism and black reaction seek to sully some otherwise suitable document of the new Iraqi state with some prejudicial reference to "one nation under Allah ," or the like, while Bush's Solicitor General is still insisting to the Supreme Court that "one nation, under God," in our Pledge has nothing to do with religion? Won't people be confused?

And then there's the problem of all of the theocratic measures the Likud has been pleased to impose in Israel, as demanded by Shaz (the only political party in the world which literally and seriously claims to be the one true earthly voice of God) as the price of that modern-State-of-lsrael-hating party's vital participation in the ruling ultrartight coalition. Before we start the bombing to wipe out Shaz, shouldn't we prepare for retaliation in the form of another wave of JDL terrorism in this country? (If the IDF itself doesn't just send Apache 'copters to "return" some of our own missiles, this time.)

As for the Vatican, certain Italian parties have long been clamoring for its dissolution. All we've go to do is get one of them in power.

Gee, now to name our new war (spin is everything, you know). The War To Abolish Priest-Craft? The War To Prohibit The Opiate Of The Masses? The War Of Reason Against Superstition? Gosh, I feel like such a revolutionaire! Bishops to the lamposts!

Maybe we can name one of our aircraft carriers (or better, a "boomer") "The Atheist"!

DBW:
> To win this Arab war against America

BKS:
The first necessity was to create it. GWB has done so, as instructed by Sharon.

Of course, it was and is Sharon's war against the Arabs, and he thinks the US should go anywhere, bear any burden, pay any price, to fight it for him.

As for Dubya, his minister told him one time that if the US does everything just like Ariel Sharon the Man of Peace says, the great war of Armaggedon will come real soon and destroy one-third of the earth but him 'n Laura won't be in no danger 'cause they'll have been taken right up on a cloud of rapture, just as pure and white and pearly as a Senator's new teeth, and then there'll be six white horses-- or was it a bay, a roan, and some other critter that won't never pollute the pure internal-combustion economy of W's "ranch?"

Not 'till after W's been taken up in a cloud o' glory so's the Lord Jesus can have his personal access time, leastways.

Somebody'll have to be ranchin' some neat animals somewhere, though, 'cause them Jews is gonna have to start slaughterin' cattle twicet a day in that there Holy Temple, so the Anti-Christ and his False Prophet can come and get 'em in his pocket and lead them all straight to Hell where they belong, 'cept for a few who'll get struck blind on the way to Damascus, covered with boils, starved near to death, take the Swamp Fever and Whooping Cough together, watch their kinfolk git burnt alive, and just at the last minute before their justly deserved years of earthly suffering end in a justly deserved Eternity of Torment in HELLFIRE, a lay sister of the Crawford Baptist Church will be dropped in by helicopter right beside that death-pallet of filthy straw and by a Holy Miracle of God that Baptist will be miraculously converted to Pentacostalism, so she'll know that Tongues Is Not Of The Devil and she'II "Let go, sister" in the very nick of time so's she can reel off the Six Steps To Salvation (For Predestinated Eyes Only) in perfect Modern Hebrew, even though the good sister (God bless her, Lord knows!) hasn't ever been real good with honest white Texican and that poor dying Jew will accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his/her personal Lord and Savior and be the very last and lowest person let into Heaven, just to give Eternal Proof that the Lord Jehovah can save anybody if He wants to bad enough. Praise the Lord! Glory!

Good thing America is up to the task of keeping Iraq strictly secular.

DBWriter:
> we must do one of two things:

BKS:
Sure, David Bernstein, would it be? But who's "we"? Ya got a mouse in your pocket?

DBWriter:
> ONE: Physically annihilate all current opposition,

BKS:
Are you sure you don't mean "population"? If you say you are, please tell us what makes you so sure?

DBWriter:
> and convert the surviving population to the benefits
> of being civilized and getting along with the modern
> world (i.e. they must be convinced that terrorism is
>very bad for them.)

BKS:
Yeah, but--
> Annihilate all supporters of the current government of Israel
> and convert the surviving population there to the benefits
> of being civilized and getting along with the modern
> world (i.e. they must be convinced that territorial aggrandizement
> through military conquest and ethnic cleansing will not be
> tolerated by the international community)

BKS:
Would be just as moral, much easier to accomplish technically, and actually win us friends instead of enemies.

DBWriter:
>Or;

> TWO: Be patient enough, and dedicated enough, to
>nurture the development of a modern democracy Iraq ,
> and help the Iraqi people build a national pride
> based on the ability of Iraq to be part of the modern
>world.

BKS:
OK, but, if we make it happen, the Baghdad-based Arab Renaissance will guarantee the early liquidation of the Zionist entity.

DBWriter:
> This doesn't mean being a satellite state of the US.

BKS:
No, but of Israel.

DBW:
> But, you can bet that we will never even consider
> allowing anything even remotely related to any
> terrorist nation or state (I think Massachusetts
>could be included here,) to influence the
>development of the new government in Iraq.

BKS:
How's your mouse/tapeworm, Da'ud?

Around here (Arizona, the other United States and overseas possessions including American Samoa) "we" will always be more than remotely related to Massachusetts and Massachusetts will always have an equal voice in the U.S. Senate and thus an assured influence on the development of every aspect of America's foreign policy (in the long run). And someday soon, unless Divine Providence no longer favors the prosperity and advancing influence of this Republic, loyal American states and loyal Americans -- that is to say, those whose first and wholly undivided loyalty is to America, only, and who would die before they would intentionally help make her the cat's paw or dupe of any alien power-- will recover control of all aspects of America's foreign policy.

Interrogating Benghazi

Petraeus' girlfriend let the cat out of the bag quite a while ago: the CIA had a little prison in (actually, near) the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.  Persons thought to pose too great a threat to the political settlement in Libya the CIA has been promoting were scooped up and confined there, sometimes "interrogated harshly," sometimes moved on to larger detention facilities and sometimes ... ?

Some actors on the Libyan political scene resented this, and in particular the Ansar al Sharia militia resented - can you imagine such wickedness? - the detention there of 2 or 3 of its officers. It calculated (perhaps, not without assistance) that by a local concentration of military power it could take the prison/consulate and free these prisoners, and it did so, other things made possible by the overthrow of consulate security also being done at the same time.

Since it was in a public speech that the Ms. Broadwell announced this bit of news, the CIA had to issue a public denial (surprise, surprise). (Article)

Sen. McCain's sources, one assumes, are at least as good as Ms. Broadwell's.  So whether it was Broadwell's speech that tipped them off or they already knew, McCain and his Washington collaborators were fully aware, well before their recent spate of denunciations targeting Susan Rice, that the CIA had something in Benghazi it had to cover up.  The "Innocence of Muslims" film, or rather its sudden and thus far unexplained discovery by Muslims worldwide, might almost seem to have been ready-made cover. Almost, but for the fact that the "Innocence" agitation was already underway when the consulate attack occurred.

One might address this temporal difficulty by supposing that the entity responsible for causing "Innocence" to be publicized in far-flung Islamist circles also had a hand in instigating the attack on the consulate.  Then the picture changes from one of temporal inconsistency to one of almost-perfect timing.  But why should "the entity" want to see its own prison overrun? (It will be noted that while, over at the consulate, the ambassador and his bodyguards were killed, all the CIA personnel got away from the prison safely.)

One suspects that Ansar al Sharia wanted its officers back more than the CIA really wanted to hold them, but the pressing question is:  Who wanted to kill Chris Stevens?

Did Stevens know about the CIA torture facility in the Benghazi consulate, and if so, did he approve?  It seems doubtful he could have been without knowledge, and certain he could not have approved.  One supposes (one hopes, at least) that the same could be said of the State Department itself, and one doubts that conditions in our Libyan facilities were or are unique.

Since writing the preceding paragraph I have had second thoughts. I suspect that the "highest levels" of the State Department were (the plural number here being a mere conventional fig-leaf) not so unsympathetic toward the use of American diplomatic facilities for illegal imprisonment and torture as I had hoped. This would mean that suspicions regarding the Secretary's reactions to unfolding events may have been as better founded as I tended to think.

The prospect for a truly Watergate-scale investigation and scandal is suddenly clear (or it would be in an era unlike this post-9/11 one, when leadership at every point of the political compass only competes to cry "By jingo!" the loudest).  If this agitation continues, even given Washington's "know no evil" attitude toward our own "security" operatons, can it fail to bring the CIA abuse of American diplomatic facilities in the Middle East -- and perhaps even more nefarious activities of the American "intelligence" apparatus -- under the glare of international floodlights?  But then why is an arch-neocons Senator vigorously and unflaggingly attacking a State spokesperson for her faithful promotion of the CIA cover story?

The likes of McCain and Graham, of course, can only be dupes in such a deep and devious game.  But who is pulling their strings?  And to what end?

Little-Known Law Could Erase National Debt!

31 U.S.C. § 3108: An obligation issued under sections 3102–3104(a)(1) [Treasury bonds, notes and bills] and 3105–3107 [savings bonds] of this title may not bear the circulation privilege.


This law has been on the books long enough to control all outstanding Treasury debt instruments.

The “circulation privilege”? Yep, it means what any trader in U.S. debt securities would insist it cannot possibly mean: that the issuer may refuse to redeem the instrument if presented by any but the original obligee. See Hitner v. Lederer, 14 F.2D 991, 993 (E.D.Pa. 1926) (provision that bonds “shall not bear the circulation privilege” means that such bonds “are not a medium of exchange recognized by law”). What else could it mean?

Who might be the original obligee of an instrument issued in bearer form is an interesting question, but in recent time the vast majority of U.S. debt instruments have been issued in registered form. What about the Treasury practice of “registering” assignments of instruments? In the first place, administrative practices of the Treasury cannot alter the law, and 31 U.S.C. § 3108 is law. Secondly, the fact that the issuer may refuse to redeem upon presentment by someone other than the original obligee doesn’t mean that it must so refuse. And however consistently it does not, in practice, refuse, in principle its right to refuse remains unaffected.

How the nowadays vast and ever-churning market in Treasury debt securities came to operate in blithe disregard of this law is no doubt an interesting piece of history. One surmises that at a certain point, after the Treasury had disregarded § 3108 for a period of time, “the market” assured itself that the Government could not possibly risk crashing the financial system, and thus the economy, by all at once invoking it.

But now Messrs. Boehner and McConnell are promising to crash the financial system, and after that the question will be, “What can the U.S Treasury do to pick up the pieces?” In this light, the sudden discovery that by virtue of § 3108 very few holders of U.S. debt are in a position to make legal demand for payment might acquire new and previously unsuspected utility. The Treasury could announce a drastic restructuring (exempting such debt as is shown to be held by the original obligee) without triggering a “debt incident.” The rating agencies would no doubt come forward explaining that of course they had only meant their AAA rating to apply to U.S. debt instruments that had not been circulated in disregard of the law.

Treasury could then without qualm cover the costs of keeping the power on at the National Archives (thus saving the Declaration of Independence from crumbling into dust overnight), maintaining such vital services such as those provided by Blackwater USA and the like – oh, and even continuing to issue the Social Security checks.