brd update: brd, one of the major concerns that i have had is that the cadministration seems to be able to lead everyone by the nose and to dictate the agenda by generating/managing faux controversies and the democrats/left/antiwar crew get all hot under the collar about the issue dujour (cf condis 911comm testimony) - while missing the forest. a corrolary of that problem is that the antibush crowd continues to get all excited whenever the badmin is apparently under pressure and the consensus seems to become 'thats it, theyve done it this time, they cant survive' - but survive they do. again and again. my premise is that everytime we get surprised by the audacity or stupidity or hypocrisy or wotever, then it is a defacto failure on our part to sufficiently comprehend the problem we are facing. its also my standing hypothesis that the the iraqi invasion simply doesnt make sense as an accidental or isolated venture - and presumably there must be a grand plan. we need to remember that all of the reasons were known to be false *in advance*

to that extent, it seemed to me that what was required was a set of forward-looking internally-consistent hypotheses which conceivably made sense. along the same lines, given that i was sick of everyone 'being surprised' i posed the question 'if we wanted to be say 95% confident that we wouldnt be surprised by the sadmininstration in the next 12 months, what sort of mind-expansion is required today? what sort of things would we need to consider so that we wont be surprised?'

one of the few (only?) writers to even have such a framework is a guy who i call weirdojoe. i dont vouch for anything he says, but i occasionally fwd his stuff just becuase he's about the only one who even has a testable hypothesis. he sounds like a total freak - but at least he's trying...

after that long intro/disclaimer - heres his latest http://joevialls.altermedia.info/myahudi/rape.html

on may5 he wrote about pix of amgrunts raping iraqi women and he suggested that the story that the pix came from a porn website was actually a pre-emptive spook plant to discredit any pix that were subsequently released. the fact that it was wnd who broke the story of the iraqibabes porn site puts some doubt on that story (wnd is christocon heaven).
weirdojoe updated his story on may26 (same link, follow the blue text) - it seems some of his original premise about the raping was somewhat accurate - cf http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,3604,1220673,00.html
"Astonishingly, the secret inquiry launched by the US military in January, headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed that the letter smuggled out of Abu Ghraib by a woman known only as "Noor" was entirely and devastatingly accurate."

amazingly, the boston globe apparently showed the pix, and then withdrew them with an apology the next day
"A Boston city councilor distributed graphic photographs yesterday that he said showed US soldiers raping Iraqi women... Turner and Kambon said they don't know where or when the photos they distributed yesterday were taken. But Turner said they came from a "very legitimate person."

somehow the globe was the only paper to fall for it, and despite the recent fake britpix, and despite the *pre-existing* suspicions about the rape pix, they seemed to rush into publication only to withdraw the story the following day.

i havent got a clue whats going on with this story - but it smells fishy and counterfishy...