"At the beginning of the 21st century, the typical American suburb is just about the safest place that has ever existed in the history of the world - yet it's full of terrified people.

Statistics have little power in the face of a media environment in which extraordinarily rare events, such as strangers kidnapping children, are presented as commonplace by profit-hungry "news" outlets, for whom the bottom line is that fear sells.

Politicians realize this too. The ongoing overreaction to the 9/11 terrorist attacks is only the most vivid example of how our leaders cynically exploit our fears by making wildly exaggerated claims, such as that Islamic terrorism poses an "existential threat" to America."

Las Vegas ricin update:

Las Vegas police said that firearms, an "anarchist-type textbook" and castor beans, from which ricin is made, were found in the room where the poison was discovered. The book was tabbed at a spot containing information about ricin.

Fuhrman said investigators were still trying to figure out why Von Bergendorff would have ricin but said there was no indication of any terrorist activity.

OK, then.

...has been dialed up in Tennessee. Just in time for Tuesday's primary!

Bush: "Iran Is a Threat to World Peace"

And more saber rattling...

Several whistleblowers have come out lately to describe a much wider effort by the government to eavesdrop on American citizens. Could this have something to do with the alarming amount of people who now find themeselves stuck on the Terrorist Watchlist for reasons they can't comprehend?
Link...
Link...

750,000 people are a lot of suspected terrorists.Ted Kennedy is one of them. So is Rep. John Lewis.

Verizon is taking a lot of heat for disclosing that they released calling records to the government more than 700 times without a warrant.

From what I understand, they are the first phone company to respond to Congressional inquiries. Maybe they are trying to get out in front of a bad story, or maybe they are blowing the whistle on these programs.

I doubt that their stated reason (urgency of national security requests) is the whole story. They're probably more interested in immunity at this point.

I have to agree with Bush on this one...

Because, like, we don't want the terrorists to have access to classified nuclear weapons technology and stuff.

Time to torture some random detainees at Guantanamo and invade Iran. Or maybe New Brunswick, to save on travel expenses. They speak French up there, right?

Hoyt Canady's "Past Tense" column in today's News Sentinel has an interesting tidbit from 25 years ago:

President Reagan called CIA agents the "heroes of a grim twilight struggle" and signed a bill making it a crime to disclose the names of American spies.

It seems as though all the GOP Reagan wannabes running for president are having memory problems of their own, especially Fred Thompson.

In which terrorism is not terrorism but instead simply a law enforcement problem.

In this corner: The NRA. In that corner: The "Screw the Constitution" Republicans. Twelve rounds of pissing match. Intellectual Lightweights. Marquis de O'Reilly rules.

Link

At the sound of the Glock being being cocked, come out fighting. The link wonders where Der Perfessor is on this one. My guess is "Is in Andy Holt Tower. With the Candlestick."

Another sterling performance by U.S. intelligence services analyzing national security threats...

I posted this to Reality Me but it should have been posted here to reach the masses. As a reminder, if you do not have children, this decision by the school board could impact your property value. If you have young children, they will be in high school sooner than you think, and this rezoning will likely be a model for the middle school and elementary rezoning which will follow soon.

On Aug 3 2006, Sam Anderson ran unopposed for the School Board 1st District, Dan Murphy ran unopposed for the School Board 4th District, Thomas A Deakins beat H Lee Martin by 372 votes for the School Board 6th District, Rex Stooksbury ran unopposed for the School Board 7th District, and Robert Bratton ran unopposed for the School Board 9th District. I am not sure about the other districts.

According to two commenters on No Silence Here, at least one school board member's neighborhood seemed to escape rezoning. (can anyone verify this? are there others?)

Isn't it amazing that Karen Carson's neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods are no longer in the rezoning area????????? Hmmmmmmmmmmm. Gee, what a coincidence. [Source]

I noticed that Chairwoman Karen Carson's neighborhood did not get rezoned to either Bearden or Hardin Valley even though the area is sandwiched between those being rezoned. Just curious if any school board members' neighborhoods are being rezoned? [Source]

Are we, the people, being properly represented by our elected officials or have these elected officials found an easy way to serve their own best interests? Seems to me that if I had the foresight to want to greatly influence this rezoning that I should have simply run for the School Board. If the majority of the people do not want this rezoning approved and it happens anyway, then the democratic process is failing and we, the people, need to remove the elected officials from their duties and replace them with officials that will better represent the people's wishes.

Now we beg the question, what does the majority want?

No wonder recuriting is down.

UPDATE: Recruiting, too.

Tea Time With Terrorists
By Don Williams

After serving him tea and crumpets, CIA interviewers delicately broached the subject of terror with Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, asking whether he was responsible for all the bad stuff that’s been happening in the world the last quarter-century.

Click here to continue reading...

A Pentagon investigation concludes that "dubious" intelligence was used to justify the war in Iraq. Chris Kromm makes a good point: this is apparently "news" to the media.

Check out what Chris Wage found on his new computer hard drive.

Condoleeza Rice:

"There is no doubt that there could be a very important effect on the entire region if we are able to make progress on Middle East peace."

Brilliant. Has there ever been a more worthless, ineffective cabinet member of any administration?

Even Donald Trump says he would fire her.

Democrats in Congress are making national security one of their first orders of business:

House Democrats announced legislation yesterday aimed at implementing many of the remaining reforms suggested by the Sept. 11 commission, including calls for more thorough cargo screening, better emergency communications and more money for cities at the highest risk of terrorist attack.

It's about time our government got serious about protecting America's ports. Upgraded communications for first responders was one of the top priorities identified just days after the 9/11 attacks, and five years later nothing much has been done. I guess we've focused all our efforts and spending on security for the "green zone" in Iraq.

According to the article, Republican say the 9/11 commission recommendations haven't been implemented because they were blocked by Democrats in Congress. That would be the Republican controlled Congress.

Seriously, don't you think America is on to the "up is down", "war is peace", "suspending the Bill of Rights is liberty" bizzaro-world-speak by now?

The NYT had an interesting series of articles and editorials yesterday regarding the options being discussed for Iraq.

Read more after the jump...

Lest there be any doubt the new Democrat controlled Congress will hit the ground running, check this out:

Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), an outspoken opponent of the Military Commission Act of 2006, today introduced legislation which would amend existing law in order to have an effective process for bringing terrorists to justice. This is currently not the case under the Military Commission Act, which will be the subject of endless legal challenges. As important, the bill would also seek to ensure that U.S. servicemen and women are afforded the maximum protection of a strong international legal framework guaranteed by respect for such provisions as the Geneva Conventions and other international standards, and to restore America’s moral authority as the leader in the world in advancing the rule of law.

[..]

The Effective Terrorists Prosecution Act:

Restores Habeas Corpus protections to detainees

Narrows the definition of unlawful enemy combatant to individuals who directly participate in hostilities against the United States who are not lawful combatants

Bars information gained through coercion from being introduced as evidence in trials

Empowers military judges to exclude hearsay evidence they deem to be unreliable

Authorizes the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to review decisions by the Military commissions

Limits the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and makes that authority subject to congressional and judicial oversight

Provides for expedited judicial review of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to determine the constitutionally of its provisions

If Harold Ford Jr. had proposed something like this instead of voting for the Military Commissions act and against gay marriage, maybe more of the 600,000 Tennessee Democrats who stayed home would have gotten to the polls. Maybe even 50,000 or so of them.

Don't let the GOP rain on our parade.

Read more after the jump...

A "basic guide to building an atom bomb."  Good move, Congress.

Remember folks: vote Republican; help keep America safe. 

In his monthly report for the Southern Poverty Law Center, President Richard Cohen raises the spectre that the US military is training right-wing extremists.  Reduced standards put in place to meet new recruitment goals are causing an increase in the numbers of radical racists in the armed services.

One military investigator is quoted as saying, "Recruiters are knowingly allowing neo-Nazis and white supremacists to join the armed forces, and commanders don't remove them from the military even after we positively identify them as extremists or gang members."  Aryan Nations graffiti is showing up on the walls of Baghdad.

Secretary Rumsfeld was unavailable for comment.

On the other hand, separations for violations of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy are still going strong, including personnel in such critical jobs as linguists.

A friend of mine received an unintentionally hilarious flyer in the mail from the Tennessee GOP today. Here's the cover:

The inside content is after the jump. See how the Dems are preventing the government from intercepting all those calls from Tennessee to Al Qaeda (on rotary phones, no less). It's priceless.

CNN ran a piece on Donald "Dr. Strangefeld" Rumsfeld this weekend called "Man of War". Watching him, one might conclude that the guy is as crazy as an outhouse rat, and it's hard to know which is worse -- having him in charge of the U.S. military or having a President who thinks he's a genius.

One striking thing from the Man of War piece was how quick Rumsfeld is to take credit but how far he tries to distance himself from his miserable failures. He won't take responsibility for anything that goes wrong.

For example, here's Rumsfeld on Abu Ghraib: "What was going on in the midnight shift in Abu Ghraib prison halfway across the world is something that clearly someone in Washington, DC can't manage or deal with."

And here's an interesting exchange with Rumsfeld on troop strength:

SESNO: One of your harshest critics, John Batiste, who commanded the First Infantry Division in Iraq says he asked for more troops while he was there. And he didn't get them. Were you aware that he felt that way or that request was out there?

RUMSFELD: No. I wasn't.

SESNO: Should you have been?

RUMSFELD: Well, I'm certainly aware that in any given location in any part of the world or in any part of that country that at any given moment someone down the line feels they need more of something.

SESNO: Batiste was wasn't just someone down the line. He had 22,000 troops under his command, responsibility for an area the size of West Virginia.

RUMSFELD: I'm also aware that the military commanders that he reported to had exactly the number of troops they asked for and wanted and assured us were appropriate.

SESNO: So when you look back and you think about what's gone right. What's gone wrong. Lesson learned. Troop strength is not something that you think about?

RUMSFELD: It's understandable people have different views on that. So it's that tension that General Abizaid and General Casey have been managing and trying to balance as well as they could and I think they have done a pretty darn good job.

Fascinating.

As you may recall, Rumsfeld has loosely followed a national security and foreign policy strategy laid out by the Project for the New American Century back in September of 2000. It called for, among other things, smaller, lighter forces that could be rapidly deployed to global hotpsots and smaller units that could be used for "constabulary" policing and peacekeeping duties.

By "transforming" (downsizing) the traditional military, the thinking was that more money could be spent on exotic technology such as a missile defense system and space based weapons and new information technology. (It also calls for permanent forward bases in the Persian Gulf, by the way.) And according to the report, the timing was right for all of this because "the United States is the world’s only superpower" and "faces no global rival". In other words, make hay while the sun shines.

Then came the 9/11 attacks.

Which is ironic, because the report actually suggested that the only way the American public would buy in to paying for all this transformation would be a "catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

They got their wish, and their strategies aren't working. It turns out we still need a strong infantry, even to defeat a third-world tinpot dictator like Saddam Hussein and his "dead-enders". Our "constabulary" forces ride around in worn-out equipment with inadequate armor, getting shot at and bombed by insurgents who were supposed to greet us a liberators. There's civil war in Iraq, and Afghanistan is now in danger of falling back under control of the Taliban because we took our eye off the ball. A missile defense shield won't help us much at this point. Nor would ray guns in outer space.

(As a side note, imagine sending 150,000 troops into Texas, which is about the size and population of Iraq. How successful do you think such an invasion and occupation would be? It doesn't take a military genius to figure out that this would be a script for disaster. In fact, that script has already been done. It was called Red Dawn.)

Rumsfeld had to backpedal. As this Washington Post article from back in February notes:

Furthermore, this QDR was the sequel to a blockbuster. In his first effort, Rumsfeld promised futuristic transformation. This one offered a chance to see how Rumsfeld's thinking had been shaped by the dramatic events since September 2001.

The document revealed that Rumsfeld has changed a lot. Four years of war against a highly unconventional enemy have persuaded him to maintain every conventional weapons system in the pipeline. No longer does the secretary talk about canceling major purchases to direct our money to a smaller, lighter, faster high-tech force.

Equally fascinating.

But an article in yesterday's New York Times reveals once again how Rumsfeld never admits mistakes and shifts responsibility whenever and wherever he can:

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld is allowing the Army to approach White House budget officials by itself to argue for substantial increases in resources, a significant divergence from initial plans by Mr. Rumsfeld and his inner circle to cut the Army to pay for new technology and a new way of war.

With its troops and equipment worn down by years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army appears likely to receive a significant spike in its share of the Pentagon’s budget request when it goes to Congress early next year. Significantly, increases to the size of the Army made by Congress since 2001, amounting to 30,000 troops, have become a permanent fixture of the force, military and Congressional officials say.

Beyond that, the Army is discussing internally whether it should expand by tens of thousands more, as some in Congress have long advocated. This time, Mr. Rumsfeld is not standing in the way. His original vision for a transformed military called for leaner, more agile forces capitalizing on the latest technological innovations.

Mr. Rumsfeld’s current acquiescence is viewed within the Pentagon as reflecting both the reality of the Army’s needs to increase its size and repair or replace current equipment and a decision not to cross swords with the service — or with the Army’s staunchest supporters in Congress. Some of them are sharply critical of the defense secretary’s management of the war effort and have called for him to step aside.

But Mr. Rumsfeld is requiring the Army to make its own case. The defense secretary has broken Pentagon precedent by allowing the Army to make its financial case directly to the president’s Office of Management and Budget, a task normally managed by the defense secretary and his staff rather than by the individual military services. The Air Force and the Navy also asked to present their budgets directly to the budget agency and the requests were granted.

So Rumsfeld is distancing himself from visions of transformation, and doesn't even have the guts to go before Congress and the White House to admit he was wrong and make a case for getting our military what it needs to conduct a war cooked up by the Bush administration and their neocon pals, including Rumsfeld. That's a hell of a way to support the troops. Heckuva job there Rummy.

America ought to be less concerned about imaginary WMDs and sexual predators in Congress and gay marriage, and more concerned about incompetents occupying the the Pentagon and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Come November, we can only hope voters will realize that the only way to fix this disaster is to elect a Democratic majority to Congress so they can exercise their role of oversight and get the Bush administration under control.

Dear Congressman Ford,

Thank you for your vote for H. R. 6166 (alternatively known, in the words of R. Neal, as "this piece of shit.")

It's refreshing to see our new generation of leaders showing such backbone. 

Sincerely,

A Tennessee Voter Who Supports the United States Constitution 

In Jorge Luis Borges' Funes, the Memorious, a young boy aquires the ability to remember everything he experiences - sights, sounds, books, languages...even the shapes of clouds - after a fall from a horse.  But in trade for this amazing talent, he loses the ability to make abstractions, form concepts and recognize patterns...to think. His world becomes a meaningless blur of details.

The Bushies and their supporters are the antithesis of young Funes. Traumatized by September 11, they seem to remember nothing else. But the consequences are identical. Once buttressed by ideals of tradition and continuity, the "conservative" brand has become contingent on, and relative to, daily events. Postmodern, even.

Michael Silences has this front page report in today's Knoxville News Sentinel about the Nuclear Regulatory Commission being unable to contact the TVA Sequoyah nuclear plant via the agency's Emergency Notification System hotline for two hours Sunday morning. Do you feel safer?

Sec. of Defense Rumsfeld is meeting today with officials of Montenegro to discuss the possibility of them providing troops to help in the Global War on Terror in Iraq.

Montenegro only became a country in June. According to the CIA Factbook, they have a population of only 630,000, and a GDP of only $2.4 billion, which is about how much the U.S. spends on the Global War on Terror in Iraq every week.

One possible obstacle to Rumsfeld's plan is that Montenegro currently has no standing army. They are in negotiations with Serbia on dividing up military assets, and plan to sell off most of the Serbian hardware still within their borders. Going forward, their plan is to establish a professional army of about 2500 troops, manned by 19 to 21 year old draftees who will serve for six months.

Washington Post:

A 30-page National Intelligence Estimate completed in April cites the "centrality" of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the insurgency that has followed, as the leading inspiration for new Islamic extremist networks and cells that are united by little more than an anti-Western agenda. It concludes that, rather than contributing to eventual victory in the global counterterrorism struggle, the situation in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position, according to officials familiar with the classified document.

See also the NY Times article.

Undoubtedly this comes as a huge surprise to everyone.  And by "everyone," I mean those who believe the Bush administration.