This is not how you make friends and influence people

If you read the nightly news roundups, you know that I have been paying attention to the Sunni militias that have been standing down and abandoning their posts for over a couple of weeks now. If you have read this blog for any length of time, you know that I am no Janie-come-lately on this topic - this is part-and-parcel of a long-running hissy-fit.

Finally the Washington Post is paying attention to the issue...

Nowhere are the tensions more serious than in Diyala, one of the major battlegrounds in the U.S. fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Awakening groups, also known here as Popular Committees, are demanding the resignation of the Shiite provincial police chief, Maj. Gen. Ghanem al-Qureishi. They accuse him of running death squads and torturing Sunnis, allegations that Qureishi denied in an interview. The Awakening leaders are also seeking recognition as an official force.

On Wednesday, they vowed to dissolve the committees if their demands were not met. "In the last 10 months, we haven't received any kind of assistance or help from Americans or Iraqi government," said Abu Talib, a top Awakening leader. "On the contrary, the police started to hunt us down."

Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani said that Qureishi was highly valued and that such "good men" would be protected. "An accusation does not mean the crime actually took place," Bolani said.

The U.S. military acknowledges that it is caught in the middle of a political struggle. "Yes, they are frustrated," said Lt. Col. Ricardo Love, commander of the 1st Battalion, 38th Infantry Regiment, who works in Baqubah, the provincial capital. "They think we can make the government of Iraq do anything. We tell them we don't control the government. But they think we are the mighty power."

"The position of Americans is hesitation," said Abu Imad al-Zuhaidi, another Awakening official in Baqubah. "They don't have any independent opinion, despite the fact they know it is the Awakening who restored order."

U.S. commanders said the Awakening's strike has not affected security, but Love and others are concerned about fighters who may be tempted, or forced, to rejoin the insurgency.

Keep in mind that if they resume their insurgent ways, they will be turning weapons on Americans that were provided by your tax dollars.

Some of the things that made me rant today - Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008

The worst suicide bombing in the history of Afghanistan occurred in Kandahar on Sunday, leaving at least 80 dead and 90 wounded. The attack, blamed on Taliban forces, appeared to target a local tribal leader and police chief who had "declared war" on the them.

The target, along with five of his security detail were killed. The attack occurred at a dogfighting event just outside the city that had drawn entire families of Afghanis from all over Kandahar province. Dogfighting was previously banned when the Taliban ran the country because it involves gambling, an activity that was prohibited under their fundamentalist rule. “This is the action of the enemies of our country,” said the Governor of Kandahar, Asadullah Khaled. “They do not let Afghans enjoy their lives and have a peaceful life.”


How's that Surge™ workin' out for ya? Ethnic Kurdish officials in Irbil are keeping their ethnic Arab residents on a short leash. Every three months, Arab residents have to report to an intelligence agency and bring their papers for proper vetting. So much for the blessings of liberty. I guess all Iraqis are equal, but in the new ethnically divided Iraq, some Iraqis are more equal than others, and how equal one is is determined by who is running things where you live. Great. Welcome to Johannesburg, circa 1978.

Hows that Surge™ workin' out for ya? II The fifth female suicide bomber so far this year blew herself up in an appliance market on Sunday, but this time there was no doubt that she was a willing participant. When wires were spotted under her clothing at a checkpoint she bolted toward the market. It is believed that she intended to target an Iraqi Colonel that was touring the area.

How's that Surge™ workin' out for ya? III - Remember what I told you last night about the 2000 coalition-allied and funded militia members who had abandoned their posts after an incident in which three Sons of Iraq civilian guard corps members were gunned down by American forces? Well, that was the second stand-down. Last night when I was posting, I forgot about this. Babil is the second province in which Sunni militiamen have ceased their cooperation with American forces. It happened in Diyala a week ago.

A military judge has overruled objections by the Government and will allow defense attorneys in the Hamdan case question Khalid Sheik Mohammed and six other alleged senior al Qaeda captives being held in seclusion at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Navy Capt. Keith Allred gave the U.S. government until Tuesday (Monday is a federal holiday) to establish an independent security arrangement to help lawyers representing Salim Hamdan gather evidence they say could exonerate their client. At issue is just how deeply involved the $200 per month driver with the third grade education was involved in the planning and execution of terror attacks. The prosecution maintains that Hamdan need not have belonged to the cells that plotted the attacks to have been part of the conspiracy to kill Americans, he is guilty by association. The defense argues that if Hamdan wasn't part of the plot, he should be found innocent of overarching conspiracy charges.

Hillary Clinton gave the most detailed response to questions posed about last weeks decision by the government to try six Guantánamo detainees in front of military tribunals, and to seek the death penalty for guilty verdicts. She would ask her Justice Department to transfer the detainees to either the civilian courts or regular military court system, instead of the current Kafkaesque "military commissions" that currently governs the fate of the detainees. The civlian court system handled the first World Trade Center attackers quite ably. They are in prison serving life, put there by a previous Clinton Justice Department.

[I haven't officially endorsed anyone since Richardson dropped out, but I will say this. I liked that answer.]

Reason number...hell, I've lost count why I eat a largely locally-grown diet, and sure as hell don't buy mass-produced ground anything. If it doesn't come from a steer we buy directly from a farmer or Four H member after the county fair season, or a deer we harvested; that we then have processed at a locker in a small town - we don't eat it. (Well, unless it's buffalo from McGonigles.) A meat-packing plant in southern California has been shut down, and a recall issued on 140 million pounds of beef, because the plant was processing "downer cows" that the USDA has deemed unfit for human consumption. It is believed that most of the meat has already been consumed, but hey, no worries! Most of it went to school lunch programs!

[Can we get a USDA inspector back in every meat processing plant please? Good grief.]

Researchers at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill have released a study that assesses human impact on the oceans and the results are chilling. The research was conducted by a team of researchers from the US, Canada and Great Britain. In all seventeen areas across which data was collected and analyzed,the human impact was obvious, and in many areas the threats to the oceanic ecosystems overlaps and the impact is compound. "The big picture looks much worse than I imagine most people expected," said lead scientist Ben Halpern at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Two days in a row, an organization of lawyers has made me swear I will continue my moratorium on attorney jokes. The National Association of Attorneys General has taken the position that the Earth is warming, the climate is changing, the ice caps are melting, and states attorney's general need to educate themselves about it. A vast majority of climate scientists believe that energy is the biggest contributor to global greenhouse gasses, and invariably, as the effects set in, the lawyers will be involved. As the attorneys that represent the citizens of their states, it stands to reason that state AG's should be able to adequately represent the citizens of their states when the torts hit the fan.

Goodnight all - consider this an open thread and I'll see you in the morning.

There are some things I want to blog about before we all die at midnight

The National Lawyers Guild has rebuked Justice Antonin Scalia for remarks he made in an interview with the BBC in which he excused torture as acceptable and perhaps even Constitutional in some instances.

[Get this -the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment does not apply when torture is used as an interrogation technique, because that isn't technically punishment. Seriously. This is why people hate lawyers.]

They have called on him to recuse himself from any and all cases that might come before the court involving interrogation techniques and the application of torture to extract intelligence information. “The Guild is appalled that a sitting Justice of the United States Supreme Court has ventured in a public forum his belief that it is justifiable to attempt to extract information from persons in custody by the use of torture. A justice of the highest court in the land, sworn to uphold the Constitution, whose views so undermine the fundamental right of security of the person guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, is unfit to sit on that Court,” said Marjorie Cohn, President of the Guild.

[Way to go Marjorie, and the rest of the NLG! This is why most people are like me - I get really damned defensive and ready to come to blows when someone says anything negative about my lawyer, who happens to be a pillar of virtue and integrity and a veritable scion of Adams.]

Hows that Surge™ workin' out for ya? Coalition -allied civilian guards announced Saturday that they were abandoning their posts in a volatile area south of Baghdad to protest the killing of at least 12 civilians over the last month by American airstrikes. The proverbial straw that broke the camels back came Friday when three members of the Sons of Iraq were gunned down by American forces who appeared to target them. The Sons of Iraq are largely credited with the reduction in violence throughout the country, especially in area that lack adequate police forces. Members receive about ten dollars a day in compensation and are given vests to make them readily identifiable to coalition forces. A tribal leader who has worked with the American forces said that the helicopter landed, the soldiers debarked, and deliberately fired on the Iraqi guards. "When we signed the contract with the U.S. forces, it was dependent on working jointly with them," the tribal leader said. "If they want us to come back, we will, but we need to make another contract that will guarantee our rights and prevent a repeat of such mistakes." By Saturday night 2000 had stood down and abandoned their checkpoints in the area where the shootings took place.

Oopsie! The FBI is blaming an "apparent miscommunication" with an as-yet-unnamed internet service provider that, instead of delivering the emails of a single individual named in a FISA warrant; delivered all of the emails that were sent to or from a small domain name. This is akin to a resident of your apartment complex being named in a warrant and the rental office turning over the keys to all 100 units. Marcia Hofmann, an attorney for the Electronic Freedom Foundation said it raised troubling questions about what happens when technology collides with civil liberties. “How do we know what the F.B.I. does with all these documents when a problem like this comes up?” Ms. Hofmann asked.

Tonight I nod respectfully to all those who served in the Balkans, especially Kosovo. The declaration of independence and the resulting celebrations are providing a few people around me with a feeling of quiet gratification tonight. Well done, Soldiers. Well done, Airmen. You saw your mission through, you halted a genocide, and you brought your men and women home alive, each and every one. Enjoy watching the payoff on cable over the next couple of days as the Kosovar Albanians you saved from genocide revel in the independence you made possible.

Well, that's a wrap - it's midnight-thirty in DC, and I'm still alive in KC. No one in my house has spontaneously succumbed to terrorism, at least not at this point.

If my luck holds out, I'll see you in the morning. If I wander into something interesting in the meantime, I'll update. Now, consider this an open thread and a communications hub. We're all in peril, you know, so let us know you're okay in comments, lest we fear the worst...