General MisConduct

WAR STUFF
* "The Pentagon notified congress on Friday of a proposed sale to Pakistan of 40 air-launched and 20 ground-launched Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles and related materials valued at up to $180 million" LINK

* "It is almost universally believed among Shia leaders that their majority in the 30 January election was massaged downwards by electoral officials in order to increase the share of the vote of Iyad Allawi, the secular candidate and US-supported prime minister, from 7 to 8 per cent, up to 14 per cent. That was to keep the United Iraqi Alliance, the Shia coalition, from getting close to the two-thirds majority that would have given it the ability to form a government alone.
The announcement of the result of the election was delayed for two weeks." LINK

* juancole on the memo LINK
i dont really know what else to say about the memo - everyones aghast. but yet we all knew. we have the smoking gun, but its somehow not smoking. its simultaneously real and surreal and unreal. when/if the ampress discuss it, it 'reflects badly on bliar'. we could probably uncover the diebold memo and it would be a 'corporate scandal'. fyi - heres a conyers audio on the matter
and heres CNN saying that the memo was published by a 'london tabloid'

* iraq is such a fucking mess i can hardly keep up with the stories - or the dead. so i just throw this comment in every few days to remind you.

* everyones aghast at the fact that theres $100m missing in iraq. jeebus, people. wakeup. $100m is just a tip.

* "BLITZER: You think that Koreans in taking all the steps -- and "The New York Times" goes into great detail, as you know today, in describing the development of a building of a tunnel, they're filling it up. They even have a reviewing stand to invite foreign dignitaries to come observe. Do you think it's possible they simply might be bluffing to squeeze the U.S., South Korea, Japan, others into make more, economic concessions, to them?
IGNATIUS: Yes, I think in the short run it's entirely possible that these observable maneuvers, which were easily caught by our overhead reconnaissance, may be just that. They may be an effort to force further concessions, an effort to frighten people. The notion of building a reviewing stand for a nuclear weapons test strikes me as absurd, I don't know about you." LINK
bingo. except its more than that - the idea of a viewing stand cant be a part of a nthkorean ruse - it wouldnt make any sense - which means the americans are simply making it up - which strikes me that they are most likely making everything up.

* what sort of trouble is blinky trying to get into in the former ussr? man o man!

* "The U.S. military is beefing up its military capabilities in the Pacific by deploying high-tech aircraft and Navy vessels amid worsening assessments of the prospects of an early solution of the North Korean nuclear standoff." LINK

* btw - we have been seeing things all week like "250 Iraqis killed in the last week." - that of course is not true - the 250 refers merely to those killed in mass attacks.

* " According to European intelligence experts, however, Abu Faraj al-Libbi was not the terrorists’ third in command, as claimed, but a middle-ranker derided by one source as “among the flotsam and jetsam” of the organisation.... One American official tried to explain the absence of al-Libbi’s name on the wanted list by saying: “We did not want him to know he was wanted.”" LINK

* the other day i scoffed at Sanger's article about nthkorea's new nuke news. it turns out that sanger is a part of a triumvirate with bumiller in what CI calls 'the EliteFluffBrigade' - which either explains the article, or raises more questions.

* so you know the headlines about karpinksi getting demoted for abug? it seems they were a bit misleading. its hard to sort the spin from the shite - but she was apparently demoted for 'general misconduct' - including a shoplifting charge from years ago. the purpose appears to be to get the headline that someone bore the responsibility and was punished, but avoiding any precedent. truly craven. LINK