vive le resistance

* "Although the Bush administration has vowed repeatedly to confront the PKK, as the guerrilla force is known, its fighters have not only continued to enjoy a haven in Iraq, they have begun returning in force to Turkey. And with them come reminders of a conflict that people here, after almost five years of peace, had begun to believe was over... Analysts estimate that 6,000 PKK guerrillas remain in Iraq, while their numbers inside Turkey have swelled to 2,000." LINK

* "Ahmad Chalabi, Iraq's new deputy prime minister, claims he is to be exonerated for his conviction for a fraud which almost caused Jordan's banking system to collapse... Jordanian officials, however, dismissed talk of an exoneration as "wishful thinking" on Mr Chalabi's part." LINK

* hersh: "(King Abdullah of Jordan) was seeing (blinky). The President said “I have a favor.” He said, “Of course, anything.” “I want you to pardon Chalabi.” And he was stunned, because, you know, how can he pardon Chalabi after what he had done. " LINK

* " The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says... The level is raised if a majority on the President's Homeland Security Advisory Council favors it and President Bush concurs. Among those on the council with Ridge were Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI chief Robert Mueller, CIA director George Tenet, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell." LINK

* "Steve Rosen, recently terminated as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s policy director in the wake of an FBI investigation, expects to be indicted as soon as June... Rosen has said he was under FBI surveillance for three years before the 2003 exchange with Franklin monitored in the restaurant." LINK

* syhersh on demnow - watch as always - there a 30 min speech from yesterday, and then 15 mins with amy
he laughs at the nyt for using the word 'insurgents' - remember that time i spotted the nyt calling them 'the resistance'? i wonder how that got through the vetting process...

* " Lima Company's Marines searched each house they passed. They turned up weapons cache after weapons cache: bombs made to be dropped from airplanes, a bicycle with a seat made of explosives and an antenna for remote-control triggering, a vest rigged with explosives, a car rigged with bombs, mortar tubes, rocket launchers with new backpacks full of rockets, artillery shells.
The costly equipment, as well as body armor later recovered from the bodies of dead insurgents, suggested that the fighters were foreigners, the military said." LINK
this shit drives me insane. the equipment was costly, therefore they are foreigners. does anyone remember alqaqaa et al??? if it was cheap stuff, they'd say 'the cheap equipment means the insurgents are foreigners.'
" From inside, a foreign fighter fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the door." please fuck off. "The Marines found the last foreign fighters there, dead." please fuck off.

* "Reluctantly, Marines called in an F/A-18 attack plane, which dropped two bombs at midnight. One failed to explode. The second missed the house." LINK
operation matador is going really really badly.

* "They found a house where insurgents were crouching in the basement, firing upward through slits hacked at ankle height in the ground-floor walls, aiming at spots that the Marines' body armor did not cover." LINK
neddo!!!

* "Though military commanders in Baghdad announced that 100 insurgent fighters were killed in the early fighting, along with the three Marines, Davis' figures were lower. He said "a couple of dozen" insurgents had been killed in Obeidi, about 10 at another river crossing near Qaim, and several in airstrikes north of the river.
Other commanders said they had recovered few bodies but had seen blood trails that suggested insurgents were dragging away wounded or dead fighters" LINK
i scoffed at the dead 100 yesterday... these people make it so easy...

* "But more surprising, he said, was the insurgents' preparation and tactical prowess, a development that he said reinforced intelligence that many of the insurgents have been trained outside Iraq." LINK
these people are trained, therefore they are foreigners...