fundi rice

WAR
* "Iraq's most wanted man, the fugitive Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been planning a chemical weapons attack in Europe, a German magazine said on Wednesday, citing intelligence sources." LINK
i wonder what the security is like at the vatican. all those christian folk and the media watching would have to be a delicious clash-of-civilisations target. or holy war. or something. i keep forgetting, do they hate us cos of our religion? or cos of our freedom?

* "THE Israeli army uses ambulances to move troops and weapons in operations against Palestinians, a violation of the Geneva Conventions, according to a private television station." LINK

* georgia10 reminds us of the warcrime of cutting of water and food to the city of fallujah. and the schiavo connection. LINK

* "the U.S. went to war with Iraq because of some asshole named "Curveball"? ...Curveball was an Iraqi chemical engineer who was sent to American intelligence through a "foreign liaison." But, in a way that wouldn't be admissible in any court of law because we'd call it "hearsay," the U.S. didn't formally interview the obliging Curveball because, it seems, Mr. Ball wouldn't speak to Americans and, besides, it was claimed, Curveball didn't speak English. "That liaison service debriefed Curveball and then shared the debriefing results with the United States. The foreign liaison service would not, however, provide the United States with direct access to Curveball. Instead, information about Curveball was passed from the liaison service to DIA’s Defense HUMINT Service, which in turn disseminated information about Curveball throughout the Intelligence Community."" LINK
heres the thing about these creeps, they actually get a perverse kick out of seeing what they can get away with. for most criminally insane people, it would be presumably be sufficient that they could lie their way to war and kill lots of people, and steal lots of munny. you'd think that would be enough huh? not for these folk - theyve gotta have their little cherry on top by calling their sole-source 'curveball'.

* in that context, consider the latest attack on Arkin with forged documents, where they slip in the french word for hoax. hubris like that is sposed to get your ass burned at some point. unfortunately/amazingly, not yet for these people. LINK

* xymphora also points to the arkin issue and the analogues with the nigeranium debacle and the anthrax letters (and others) - altho with the conclusion that they all "bear the odd similarity of being both sophisticated and incompetent at the same time" - then saying " I can just imagine the neocons standing around the water cooler concocting schemes and sending some intern off to cobble together some document to use to attack their enemies." ive gotta say, that guess/interpretation seems a bit tenuous - i really cant imagine cheney and feith and luti leaving themselves so exposed. anyone working for them who was such a risk would deservedly be shot on the spot. loose lips sink ships and all that. and yet we see the pattern repeated again and again. if the discipline was so slack, they'd have all been in jail a long time ago. it seems to me more likely that they are intentionally bad for some reason - either the hubris is at the top, or they are sending a signal for some reason - maybe that they can get away with anything? im reminded of the time that blinky made the much heralded trip to baghdad for thnxgiving (03?) and they made up that story about the BA pilot seeing airforce1 - at the time, i couldnt believe it and speculated that they were just testing to see what they could get away with - either that or they just make easy-to-disprove stuff up for fun - but the latter is suppposed to be dangerous. apparently not.

* anyways if u have 40mins, check out this demnow interview with arkin, and u can see why they need to attack him.

* Robin Cook (hero): "Why American neocons are out for Kofi Annan's blood" LINK

* "The eccentric selection of John Bolton as Bush's ambassador to the UN is consistent with such a strategy of sabotage rather than reform. His hostility to any constraint on US unilateralism is so deep, (and his life so sad), that he described his "happiest moment" signing the letter to Kofi Annan telling him that the US would have nothing to do with the international criminal court. His relish in the gesture is all the more revealing as the issue was not within the remit of his job, and he pleaded to be allowed to sign as a special favour."
hahahahahahaha - i dint know that last bit. what a fucking creep! stopbolton stopbolton stopbolton stopbolton stopbolton stopbolton stopbolton stopbolton stopbolton stopbolton

* "So, if our intelligence was DEAD WRONG, that means Hans Blix was DEAD RIGHT. Scott Ritter was DEAD RIGHT. The "focus groups" comprised of millions of people protesting the war across the globe were DEAD RIGHT.
And the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis and 1,710 coalition soldiers? DEAD." LINK

* "Rice, who was in Pakistan last week, requested direct American access to Khan "so that the US intelligence community could ask him about his nuclear handiwork in Iran."LINK
i hate this fucking woman. listen hunny, if you werent such a fucking whore, you'd ask to see mr khan so that you could find out who he sold his stuff to, not whether he'd sold it to iran. these people drive me bananas.
"The Washington Times said that both the US and Israel "have contingency plans to launch air strikes against Iran's 12 to 15 nuclear sites, most of them underground.""
i missed this - *both*! cf raymcgovern and ritters comments that i mentioned the other day... and it would be remiss of me not to point out the uncertainty around the '12 or 15' - which seems to indicate that we really dont know how many there are - which leads to at least 2 probs. if 'we' go in there and miss some, then we've got a problem, and if 'we' dont wanna miss some, then we go overboard and hit all the 'maybes' - which means theres a whole bunch of unnecessary colateral damage - nee murdered civilians.