Blog Title: Three Wise Men

A Texas blog with a decidedly liberal bent.

Blackwater Personnel to be Indicted

Given the amount of time that's passed with little news, you might've forgotten the shooting in Nisour square by Blackwater security personnel that resulted in the deaths of seventeen Iraqis. The Washington Post reported Sunday that the Department of Justice hasn't, and is likely to indict several Blackwater contractors for their roles in the incident. Their jurisdiction is premised on the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act and as such is not a foregone conclusion, though that premise may soon be tested in a court of law.

Attacks in Afghanistan

In another sign of the growing power of the resurgent Taliban, militants ambushed French paratroopers just outside of Kabul, killing ten, and attempted to overrun another American military outpost, Camp Salerno, in the province of Khost near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

Russia Squeezes Georgia

Despite a (second) cease-fire agreed to by both Russia and Georgia, Russian troops appear intent on wringing as much life out of Georgia as they possibly can before they withdraw (though who can say at this point when that will be?) Although Russian authorities insist that a withdrawal is underway, Russian troops continue to occupy the Georgian town of Gori, are destroying key parts of the Georgian infrastructure, are blockading Georgia's key east-west highway cutting off parts of Georgia from the capital of Tblisi, and have detained Georgian soldiers in the port city of Poti, which they also have occupied since the outset of the war. Russia is also stationing short-range ballistic missiles in South Ossetia that can hit any critical part of Georgia. It seems that Russia is intent on extracting as much flesh from Georgia as possible, and undermining the nation's ability to govern itself and it's territories, before it will withdraw. Secretary of State Rice is meeting with NATO officials in an emergency session today to formulate some sort of response to the continued Russian occupation of Georgia, though options remain limited. The Bush administration has already abandoned efforts it's long pushed to convince NATO allies to fast-track Georgia for membership, a necessary concession to a new reality. For their part Russia does not appear interested in compromise and has only further been angered by the United States' recent agreement with Poland to station a (completely useless) missile defense system in the country. Though Russia resumed bomber patrols off of Alaska in August 2007, Rice chose yesterday to remind the Russians that such a move was a "dangerous game" and not "cost free" a sign that the Bush administration is also interested in escalating the rhetoric. What effect such comments will have is unknown.

Developments in Diyala

At the end of July, Iraqi security forces mounted an operation to clear Diyala province, north of Baghdad, of the remnants of Al Qaeda and anti-government insurgency forces. The operation has largely been a success, but it now appears that Iraqi forces have expanded their aims and are now moving against some Sunni fighters allied American troops (via Abu Muqawama):

The Shiite-led government is cracking down on U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters in one of Iraq's most turbulent regions, arresting some leaders, disarming dozens of men and banning them from manning checkpoints except alongside official security forces.

The moves in Diyala province reflect mixed views on a movement that began in 2007 among Sunni tribes in western Iraq who revolted against al-Qaida in Iraq and joined the Americans in the fight against the terrorist network.

U.S. officials credit the rise of such groups, known variously as Awakening Councils, Sons of Iraq and Popular Committees, with helping rout al-Qaida.

But Iraq's government is suspicious of such groups, fearing their decision to break with the insurgency was a short-term tactic to gain U.S. money and support. The government fears they will eventually turn their guns against Iraq's majority Shiites.

Although there has been no general crackdown on Sunni volunteers elsewhere, some leaders outside Diyala have been arrested in western Baghdad and south of the capital ? both one-time al-Qaida strongholds.

Government officials would not comment on specific claims about the push in Diyala. But aides close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, said the government was not willing to tolerate the existence of armed groups with "blood on their hands."

"The continuation of the Awakening Councils as they are now is unacceptable," said Ali al-Adeeb, a close al-Maliki aide and a senior member of his Dawa Party

Kahl, who is one of Barack Obama's Iraq advisers, put the blame for the slow pace of political reconciliation on Prime Minster Nouri al-Maliki, as well as on American strategy, which he believes is not properly aimed at using U.S. leverage to push Iraq's leaders toward political accommodation.

For example, Maliki has been "slow-rolling" the integration of the Sunni Sons of Iraq into the Iraqi army and police, according to Kahl. Kahl offered some startling statistics about the lack of progress on this front: Of the more than 100,000 Sunni militiamen that were much of the reason for American success over the last year in combating Al-Qaeda in Iraq, 16,000 are "in the pipeline" for integration into the Iraqi Army and police. Of these 16,000, the Iraqi government has only approved 600.

Why? According to Kahl, Maliki, overconfident in the capabilities of the Shiite-dominated Iraqi army, believes he would be would be victorious in an inter-sectarian civil war, if it comes to that, and thus has no real interest in integrating these Sunnis into the Iraqi army and police forces.

"Maliki has no interest in integrating these guys -- none," Kahl said. "He thinks they're thugs; he thinks they're hooligans. . . . In fact, there's some evidence that he's trying to pick fights with them, hoping that they will start a fight that he can then turn around and finish them."

How banks convinced people to go broke

I posted recently on the opacity of credit score calculation, and Xanthippas linked to an article refuting the idea that people are mainly to blame for what happened to them as a result of signing up for sub-prime mortgages. None of this is to say that people are not responsible for making their own decisions, but rather that as things currently stand, people do not have the means or information to make truly good decisions. Not only that, but according to this article from the NY Times, the banks deliberately tried to convince people that borrowing on the equity in their homes was a good idea.

?Live Richly.?

That catchy slogan, dreamed up by the Fallon Worldwide advertising agency, was pitched in 1999 to executives at Citicorp who were looking for a way to lure Americans to financial products like home equity loans. But some in the room did not like it. They worried the phrase would encourage people to live exorbitantly, says Stephen A. Cone, a top Citi marketer at the time.

Still, ?Live Richly? won out. The advertising campaign, which cost some $1 billion from 2001 to 2006, urged people to lighten up about money and helped persuade hundreds of thousands of Citi customers to take out home equity loans ? that is, to borrow against their homes. As one of the ads proclaimed: ?There?s got to be at least $25,000 hidden in your house. We can help you find it.?

Not long ago, such loans, which used to be known as second mortgages, were considered the borrowing of last resort, to be avoided by all but people in dire financial straits. Today, these loans have become universally accepted, their image transformed by ubiquitous ad campaigns from banks.

Since the early 1980s, the value of home equity loans outstanding has ballooned to more than $1 trillion from $1 billion, and nearly a quarter of Americans with first mortgages have them. That explosive growth has been a boon for banks. Banks? returns on fixed-rate home equity loans and lines of credit, which are the most popular, are 25 percent to 50 percent higher than returns on consumer loans over all, with much of that premium coming from relatively high fees.

However, what has been a highly lucrative business for banks has become a disaster for many borrowers, who are falling behind on their payments at near record levels and could lose their homes.

The portion of people who have home equity lines more than 30 days past due stands 55 percent above its average since the American Bankers Association began tracking it around 1990; delinquencies on home equity loans are 45 percent higher. Hundreds of thousands are delinquent, owing banks more than $10 billion on these loans, often on top of their first mortgages.

None of this would have been possible without a conscious effort by lenders, who have spent billions of dollars in advertising to change the language of home loans and with it Americans? attitudes toward debt.

Being a Hawk Does Not Mean You're "Experienced"

I really have no patience for the "analysis" of Obama and McCain's statements on the situation in Georgia. I don't really understand why, as a foreign affairs event is breaking that could significantly effect our future foreign policy, pundits in the media immediately being to parse statements made by both candidates...NOT to determine what either of them might actually do once in office, but merely as yet another means to judge horserace between the candidates and make ridiculous and ill-informed comments about whose statement will benefit or hurt them at the polls (honestly, do they really think that what McCain and Obama say about a conflict that 25% of Americans care about in a country that probably only 10% of Americans could find on a map, is really going to have an impact on the outcome of the election?)

Of course, it's not as if the candidates aren't eager to play this game (though they have a better excuse, since their job right now is to get themselves elected.) But unlike idiot pundits whose commentary is worse than useless, we can actually learn something from what the candidates or their proxies say about their own reactions. Here for example, is some of what McCain has had to say about the situation in Georgia:

In often-lengthy remarks about Georgia this week on the campaign trail, McCain repeatedly talked of how many times he had been to the region, let it be known that he had talked daily with Saakashvili since the crisis began and made it clear that there had been times he thought Bush's response could have been stronger.

He provided a primer for why Americans should care about the "tiny little democracy" and tried to tie the foreign crisis with a domestic one: oil. Georgia is "part of a strategic energy corridor affecting individual lives far beyond" the region, he said.


"We want to avoid any armed conflict, and we will not have armed conflict," McCain said at a fundraiser yesterday in Edwards, Colo. "That's not the solution to this problem. But we have to stand up for freedom and democracy as we did in the darkest days."

Lieberman, one of McCain's most ardent and vocal supporters, responded by criticizing Obama's more cautious first statement on the Georgia situation an example of "moral neutrality" that showed his "inexperience."

Billions for Home Equity

That is, banks spent billions to convince homeowners to borrow against whatever equity they owned in their homes. But of course the debt crisis can only be the fault of irresponsible borrowers who fraudalently borrowed money they could never repay. That banks wanted them to do this, and spent money to convince them to do it, is completely and utterly irrelevant.

Disgraceful

Were I to treat a dog this way, I would be sent to jail in many states. A person, and I would be guilty of negligent homicide at the last. But when Homeland Security treats an immigrant in this manner, the result is an "internal investigation." Our immigration policies and services in this nation are a disgrace, and it shouldn't take detainees dying in excruciating pain to tell us this.

Georgia-Russia Cease-Fire Tenuous

Although Russia and Georgia agreed to a cease-fire only yesterday (on terms highly favorable to Russia) rumors have swirled regarding Russia's intentions towards Georgia, especially given that Russian troops have yet to withdraw from cities within Georgia's borders and have engaged in provocative maneuvers that appear to be aimed at Tblisi, the capital of Georgia. The Bush administration has responded by ordering American military personnel into the region, though only to support humanitarian efforts, and reissuing demands that Russia cease it's military activities within Georgia. In addition, reports have filtered out of attacks on ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia by separatists allied with Russia, as well as scattered reports of attacks on Georgians in areas around the Georgian town of Gori, which is presently under Russian control. Although there is presently no fighting between Georgian and Russian forces, neither does Russia appear to be that eager to end it's incursion into Georgia, at least not until they feel they have taught the Georgians and the rest of the world a stern enough lesson about the limit's of Russian patience along its borders.

War in Georgia

As you may or may not have heard by now, Russia and the former Soviet republic of Georgia are in a state of de facto war. The conflict is the result of what now appears to be a tremendously fool-hardy decision on the part of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili to re-assert control militarily over the breakaway province of South Ossetia, a region that has enjoyed a measure of autonomy after a war with Georgia that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union (though to be fair, this decision appears to have been provoked in part by artillery attacks by South Ossetian rebels.) The offensive into South Ossetia was suspiciously timed to begin on they day of opening ceremonies for the Olympics, but the Georgians were hoping to catch Russia (or anybody else) unawares they have been proven to be sorely mistaken. Russia has long been on unfriendly terms with Georgia, and especially with its President Saakashvili, who has made overtures to the West and whose nation has been courted by the West as a future member of NATO. Russia-which has maintained "peace-keepers" in South Ossetia since the end of the conflict with Georgia-responded initially with "support" of the South Ossetian rebels, but that quickly blossomed into military activity by Russian armed forces, who moved into South Ossetia to drive Georgian forces out, and whose air forces have wreaked havoc on Georgian cities. And in the last two days, Russian forces have driven into Georgia itself, seizing Georgian towns and giving Georgians reason to fear that a general invasion may be under way that would cost them their independence. The Bush administration and its European allies have called for Russia to cease the escalation of the conflict (and the U.S. military has gone so far as to fly 2,000 Georgian troops home to Georgia from Iraq to boost Georgian combat forces) but Russia continues to resist all calls for a cease-fire, and refuses to indicate at what point they will cease their drive into Georgia. At this point there is simply not telling where this conflict is headed, or what will remain of Georgia when it ends.

And frankly, none of that spurred me to write a post on this topic, though I've been following it as closely as I've been able to for the past several days. What spurred me appears to be the reaction by some commentators who aren't quite sure how this mess came about, but are pretty sure that it's the Bush administration's fault. John Cole links to a whole host of them, and concludes in general that Russia is only following the Bush administration's modus operandi when it comes to dealing with smaller countries that we aren't fond of (Cole even links to Putin trying to use our invasion of Iraq to justify his invasion of Georgia, which really is just a silly piece of propaganda even by Putin's standards.) Even Fred Kaplan succumbs to this to some degree, when he writes:

Bush pressed the other NATO powers to place Georgia's application for membership on the fast track. The Europeans rejected the idea, understanding the geo-strategic implications of pushing NATO's boundaries right up to Russia's border. If the Europeans had let Bush have his way, we would now be obligated by treaty to send troops in Georgia's defense. That is to say, we would now be in a shooting war with the Russians. Those who might oppose entering such a war would be accused of "weakening our credibility" and "destroying the unity of the Western alliance."

The shrinking suburbs

I was reading this article on CBSNews.com which is about the "decline of suburbia".

Sixty years ago, cheap gas and new highways helped fuel suburbia's rapid rise, creating a new American utopia. But as CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports, the triple threat of falling home values, empty nesters returning to the city and sky-high gas prices is driving suburbia to the brink.

Some developments are left half built while other homes look abandoned. Demand for suburban housing is dropping so fast that a recent study predicts that by 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes in suburban areas.

Demographic changes in the United States also are working against conventional suburban growth, and are likely to further weaken preferences for car-based suburban living. When the Baby Boomers were young, families with children made up more than half of all households; by 2000, they were only a third of households; and by 2025, they will be closer to a quarter. Young people are starting families later than earlier generations did, and having fewer children. The Boomers themselves are becoming empty-nesters, and many have voiced a preference for urban living. By 2025, the U.S. will contain about as many single-person households as families with children.

The experience of cities during the 1950s through the ?80s suggests that the fate of many single-family homes on the metropolitan fringes will be resale, at rock-bottom prices, to lower-income families?and in all likelihood, eventual conversion to apartments.

Developments in Iraq

Marc Lynch (who-if you claim to have any interest in Iraq-you really should be reading regularly) details the troubling political developments in Iraq, and predicts that events may be coming to a head if the Maliki government continues to resist the integration of members of the Awakenings movement into leadership positions and positions within the national security forces, signs of course of their continuing unwillingness to share power with the Sunni minority. As a resumption of the Iraqi insurgency would completely derail the withdrawal talk on both the part of the Bush administration and the presumptive Presidential candidates, and represent a very serious setback of our strategy in Iraq, then this is something we really need to be paying attention to. Dr. iRack (who you also really, really should be reading) explains some of these developments in more detail, and the portrait he paints in general is not at all reassuring.

UPDATE: The Washington Post is reporting that a deal between the Iraqi and American governments that has American combat troops out by the end of 2010 is nearing completion, and the only hang-up is immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law for American troops. Of course, withdrawal will be hugely complicated by any deterioration in Sunni-Shiite-Kurdish relations. If conflict between Sunni tribes and Awakenings members and the Shiite majority were to slowly break out again, we would again hear all sorts of arguments for why our forces must remain in Iraq. Naturally, a Maliki government that feels capable of dealing with a Sunni insurgency (and any other troublesome actors, like the Mahdi Army) will feel no such compunction, and will remain as eager for our combat forces (but not our money, or our equipment) to leave. And our great adventure in Iraq would have ended in a most distasteful manner, with a Shiite government largely allied with Iran repressing the Sunnis we helped kick out of power.

The Toll

This NY Times article surveys the development of the increasingly deadly insurgency in Afghanistan, and the toll it's taken on American soldiers and their loved ones. With the pace of fatalities in Iraq slowing, and growing awareness of how dire the situation in Afghanistan is, it seems safe to say that the American public is waking up to the need for a serious re-commitment to the war in Afghanistan.

Non-Denial Denials/The FBI's Case

Dan Froomkin, writing in the Washington Post, notes the "weak denials" by the Bush administration regarding Suskind's claim that the White House ordered the forgery of a document to justify the invasion of Iraq. Suskind, in his reubttals, has noted that neither the White House nor
two of his crucial sources have exactly denied what Suskind claims they did or said. I'm sure the Bush administration would love for this story to go away, but with any luck, we won't be hearing the end of this for quite some time.

UPDATE: On another front, Glenn Greenwald provides his analysis of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins, and finds much to be desired. The evidence, at least what's been put forth by the FBI at this point, remains largely circumstantial and not entirely convincing. If they have more, they need to release it now.

Notes

Today the high in the DFW area is projected to reach "only" 92 degrees, which means that for the first time in a few weeks I won't feel uncomfortably close to the Thanksgiving turkey whenever I get in my car after work or, with highs of 105-107, walking to my car. Also, the Mavericks have released their 2008-2009 season schedule. They'll face Houston on October 30th, a team featuring Ron Artest, another player the Mavs somehow managed not to get their hands on in the off-season.

"Boonedoggle"

Earlier, I warned you that if T. Boone Pickens is now a huge believer in wind power as an alternative energy source, it's only because he stands to make a buck off of it. Kevin Drum is now kind enough to explain exactly what T. Boone stands to gain from Texas wind power:

Well, as near as I can tell, here's the story. Pickens wants to build his electricity transmission facilities on a strip of land 250 feet wide and 250 miles long that starts at his farm in Roberts County, Texas, and terminates in Dallas. Why that particular strip? Because Pickens has been buying up massive water rights from the Ogallala Aquifer and he wants to pipe that water to Dallas at huge profit. Unfortunately, pipeline right-of-way is pretty hard to acquire, so Pickens figured out a way to get some help: he formed a little water district headed by his wife and a friend and then convinced the Texas legislature that water plus wind electricity was a good reason to use its power of eminent domain to hand over the land to him for a song. Wind power wasn't really the motivation for this land snatch, it was just a sweetener for a water deal.

Clever ? and typically Texan, no? Still, why not just sell the electricity? Why the natural gas switcheroo? Turns out Pickens has a vested interest there too:

Along with being the country's biggest wind power developer, Pickens owns Clean Energy Fuels Corp., a natural gas fueling station company that is the sole backer of the stealthy Proposition 10 on California's November ballot.

....But a closer read finds a laundry list of cash grabs ? from $200 million for a liquefied natural gas terminal to $2.5 billion for rebates of up to $50,000 for each natural gas vehicle. Much of the measure's billions could benefit Pickens' company to the exclusion of almost all other clean-vehicle fuels and technology.

So the windmills are an excuse to condemn land for a water pipeline, and the natural gas piece of the plan benefits Pickens' NG fueling station company. And while natural gas burns cleaner than oil, it's still a fossil fuel that's found mostly in Russia and the Middle East. Increasing our dependence on gas does little in the long term to promote energy independence.

Can You Say...Fraud?

Harry Sargant III, a "bundler" for the McCain campaign, has managed to scare up money for his candidate from the most unlikeliest of places:

Harry Sargeant III, a former naval officer and the owner of an oil-trading company that recently inked defense contracts potentially worth more than $1 billion, is the archetype of a modern presidential money man. The law forbids high-level supporters from writing huge checks, but with help from friends in the Middle East and the former chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit -- who now serves as a consultant to his company -- Sargeant has raised more than $100,000 for three presidential candidates from a collection of ordinary people, several of whom professed little interest in the outcome of the election.

Some of the most prolific givers in Sargeant's network live in modest homes in Southern California's Inland Empire. Most had never given a political contribution before being contacted by Sargeant or his associates. Most said they have never voiced much interest in politics. And in several instances, they had never registered to vote. And yet, records show, some families have ponied up as much as $18,400 for various candidates between December and March.

Both Sargeant and the donors were vague when asked to explain how Sargeant persuaded them to give away so much money.

"I have a lot of Arab business partners. I do a lot of business in the Middle East. I've got a lot of friends," Sargeant said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I ask my friends to support candidates that I think are worthy of supporting. They usually come through for me."

Sargeant said the same people who have helped him build relationships around the world also helped him create a vast network. In recruiting some donors, he confirmed he had help from a business associate who formerly was a top counterterrorism official in the CIA.

A review of state and federal campaign finance records found that this collection of donors has been activated four times. Their names -- confirmed by Sargeant -- first appeared in finance records on June 19, 2006, when about 50 of them each donated $500 to Crist's gubernatorial campaign. Sargeant helped lead fundraising for Crist that year.

Thirteen of the donors resurfaced on Dec. 13, 2007, sending a combined $29,200 to Giuliani's campaign at a time when Sargeant was heading up fundraising efforts in Florida for the former mayor. Seventeen of them sent the maximum allowed, $2,300, to Clinton's presidential campaign on Dec. 24. And a dozen of them returned in March to write checks to McCain totaling $50,600.

Donors reached by phone or interviewed in person declined to explain who asked them to make the contributions.

Ibrahim Marabeh, who is listed in public records as a Rite Aid manager, at first denied that he wrote any political checks. He then said he was asked by "a local person. But I would like not to talk about it anymore." Neither he nor his wife is registered to vote, but the two donated $4,600 to Clinton and $4,600 to Giuliani in December.

At the Twilight Hookah Lounge, owned by Nadia and Shawn Abdalla, patrons smoke tobacco flavored with honey and fruit from a menu that includes the strawberry-flavored Sex on the Beach and the strong, orange-flavored Fuzzy Navel.

The Abdallas, who are not registered to vote, said in an interview that they recalled writing a check to an organization in Miami, because a person with that organization was a friend of their mother's. They said they could not remember his name.

Nader, 39, and Sahar Alhawash, 28, of Colton, Calif, who at one point ran the Avon Village Liquor store, donated a total of $18,400 to Giuliani, Clinton and McCain between December and March. About 80 people in the country made such large contributions to all three, and most were wealthy business executives, such as Donald Trump. The Alhawashes declined to comment about the donations. Abdullah Abdullah, a supervisor at several Taco Bell restaurants in the Riverside area, and his wife have donated $9,200 to McCain.

Reached at work, Abdullah said he knows little about the campaign. "I have no idea. I'll be honest with you," he said. "I'm involved in the restaurant business. My brother Faisel recommended John McCain. Whenever he makes a recommendation, we do it."

Faisal Abdullah, 49, said he helped organize all of the contributions from members of his family. When he was asked who solicited the contributions from him, he said: "Why does it matter who? I'm telling you we made the contribution. We funneled it through the channel in Florida because that's the contact we had. I was responsible for collecting it."

Alice Rocchio is an office manager at the New York headquarters of the Hess Corp., drives a 1993 Chevy Cavalier and lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., with her husband, Pasquale, an Amtrak foreman.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain's presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain's decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

At a June fundraiser, the Rocchios joined top executives at Hess Corp. ? Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hess, his wife, Susan, his mother, Norma Hess, and six other officials in giving a total of $313,500 to a joint McCain-RNC fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records show.

The donations, first traced by Campaign Money Watch last week, were part of $1.2 million in oil industry contributions to McCain's Victory '08 Committee, 73 percent coming after McCain reversed his long-held opposition to offshore oil drilling. The non-partisan watchdog group said oil executives and their spouses from Colorado, Mississippi, Louisiana, California, Indiana, New Jersey and Florida also donated.

Hess, among the nation's five biggest oil companies, conducts deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico as well as off the coasts of Europe, Africa and Asia.

The Rocchios donated $4,600 to McCain's campaign in February and another $57,000 at the June fundraiser.

Alice Rocchio, reached at the office, confirmed that she registered her '93 Chevy in February, but said that she "absolutely'' used her own money to make the donations.

Moments later, she asked a reporter: "Are you done with your questions?''

It's Not That Bad

If you're like me and read political news online way too much, you might've gotten the impression that Obama is withering under attacks by McCain and his mouthpieces in the media and the blogosphere. But as Kevin Drum reminds us, it's important to step back and take a look at the bigger picture, and the bigger picture has Obama-absent a massive collapse-trouncing McCain in November:

I just now got an email from Sam Wang announcing the re-launch of his Meta-Analysis of State Polls for 2008, an automated compilation of state-level polls from around the country. Read here to understand how his methodology differs from Nate Silver's of fivethirtyeight.com fame. A pay-per-view cage match is expected shortly.

So what's his bottom line? Simple: as of noon today, he predicts that Obama wins 306 electoral votes to McCain's 232 [if the election were held today at noon]. As you can see by eyeballing the chart on the right, he basically projects about a 99% chance of Obama winning the presidency, and that's after McCain's recent minor climb in a few of the national polls. It's not over til it's over, but the numbers still heavily favor Obama.

Where Did the Bentonite Claim Come From?

In my post below, I link to Kevin Drum, who links to a NY Daily News story demonstrating the Bush administration's eagerness to link the 2001 Anthrax attacks to Al Qaeda (as if 9/11 alone wasn't pretext enough for war, but whatever.) Of course, the Anthrax attacks are in the news lately, what with the suicide of Bruce Ivins, a government scientist at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Derick who had become the FBI's prime suspect in the attacks. Although his suicide presents circumstantial evidence of a guilty conscience, there exist considerable doubts as to whether or not he was behind the attacks. Glenn Greenwald does a good job of documenting those doubts, but another story that's receiving more attention involves a news item that ABC reported in the wake of the attacks, the claim peddled to ABC News by "well-placed sources" that the anthrax used in the attacks was marked by the chemical bentonite, a marker used exclusively in anthrax produced by Saddam Hussein's bio-weapons facilities. The problem with that claim, as Greenwald demonstrates, is that there never was any indication that the anthrax contained bentonite, and the White House denied the claim repeatedly (though of course there were those who were gleeful at the prospect of a link to Hussein.) This claim was reported repeatedly by ABC News for days, and has never been officially retracted (though it's been long discredited, as Greenwald explained in a post he wrote in early 2007.) It's been assumed that ABC's "well-placed" sources were government scientists at USAMRIID investigating that attacks, a suspicion that the original reporter on the story, Brian Ross, confirmed over the weekend. So...it's now apparent that ABC News' sources for the story were scientists working at the very facility that Ivins' worked at as well who, despite the fact that no testing ever revealed the presence of bentonite, peddled that claim to ABC News, who in turn trumpeted it daily, cementing in the minds of many Americans (conveniently for the Bush administration) that Saddam Hussein had something to do with the attacks. Consequently Greenwald, and others, are calling for ABC News to reveal who their sources were and thus unmask the peddlers of blatantly false claims. I strongly support such a call. Greenwald goes to great length to demonstrate the state of fear that the anthrax attacks put Americans in, coming as they did on the heels of the horrific attacks on 9/11. He also demonstrates how the attacks have largely dropped down a memory hole, with many even forgetting the crucial role they played in exaggerating the case for war in Iraq. I have to admit that I'm one of those who has largely forgotten the dread the attacks caused for many. This is in all likelihood because I always assumed the attacks were the result of a lone nut, and being something of a skeptic I never quite accepted initial claims that any nation or entity was behind the attacks. But important people thought otherwise, and said so repeatedly on the news night after night, convincing many Americans of the threat of Hussein and laying the ground work for the even more fabulous WMD claims used to justify the war. In light of the grave consequences of such lies, it is simply inexcusable that ABC News continues to protect sources who peddled manifestly false claims, whatever their purpose was. Kevin Drum explains why he thinks ABC News should reveal the sources:

In practice, most journalists refuse to identify their sources under any circumstances at all, even when it's clear that those sources deliberately lied to them. But should that be the standard? Or is the profession ? and the rest of us ? better off if sources know that they run the risk of being unmasked if their mendacity is egregious enough to become newsworthy in its own right? I'd say the latter.

Suskind: White House Forged Document to Justify War

This claim is so outlandish that it hardly seems plausible:

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in ?The Way of the World,? to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery ? adamantly denied by the White House ? was designed to portray a false link between Hussein?s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

According to Suskind, the administration had been in contact with the director of the Iraqi intelligence service in the last years of Hussein?s regime, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti.

?The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,? Suskind writes. ?It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq ? thus showing, finally, that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President?s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.?

Capitol Hill Update XII

The Senate passed legislation to let the State Department settle all remaining lawsuits against Libya by U.S. terror victims but remained deadlocked over legislation to rein in excessive energy speculation (which also failed in the House).

The House passed several bills including one to help protect college students against lending abuses, enforce pay equity, require the FDA regulate tobacco, and boost veterans spending. The House Judiciary Committee also voted to cite Karl Rove for contempt of Congress.

No They Are Not the Same

Thomas Friedman, out of that strange desire some members of the media have to appear "neutral" by attacking both Democrats and Republicans, chides Democrats-and Obama in particular-for their focus on Afghanistan and equates it with the Republican obsession with more drilling to solve the energy crisis. Here's an excerpt:

Republicans, by mindlessly repeating their offshore-drilling mantra, focusing on a 19th-century fuel, remind me of someone back in 1980 arguing that we should be putting all our money into making more and cheaper IBM Selectric typewriters ? and forget about these things called the ?PC? and ?the Internet.? It is a strategy for making America a second-rate power and economy.

But Democrats have their analog. For many Democrats, Afghanistan was always the ?good war,? as opposed to Iraq. I think Barack Obama needs to ask himself honestly: ?Am I for sending more troops to Afghanistan because I really think we can win there, because I really think that that will bring an end to terrorism, or am I just doing it because to get elected in America, post-9/11, I have to be for winning some war??

The truth is that Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Pakistan are just different fronts in the same war. The core problem is that the Arab-Muslim world in too many places has been failing at modernity, and were it not for $120-a-barrel oil, that failure would be even more obvious. For far too long, this region has been dominated by authoritarian politics, massive youth unemployment, outdated education systems, a religious establishment resisting reform and now a death cult that glorifies young people committing suicide, often against other Muslims.

The humiliation this cocktail produces is the real source of terrorism. Saddam exploited it. Al Qaeda exploits it. Pakistan?s intelligence services exploit it. Hezbollah exploits it. The Taliban exploit it.

The only way to address it is by changing the politics. Producing islands of decent and consensual government in Baghdad or Kabul or Islamabad would be a much more meaningful and lasting contribution to the war on terrorism than even killing bin Laden in his cave. But it needs local partners. The reason the surge helped in Iraq is because Iraqis took the lead in confronting their own extremists ? the Shiites in their areas, the Sunnis in theirs. That is very good news ? although it is still not clear that they can come together in a single functioning government.

The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want.

Didn't Happen Quite That Way

McCain plays so loose with the facts that even the Washington Post is forced to call him out on it. This is apparently part of McCain's new strategy of "going negative" on Obama, which apparently consists mostly of lying about what Obama is doing and impugning his patriotism. But apparently his tendency to spout complete nonsense gets him expensive airtime for free.

Alaska Republican Senator Ted Stevens indicted for accepting money

Mr. Stevens declared his innocence and his intention to fight the charges against him in a statement posted on his Web site. ?I am innocent of these charges and intend to prove that,? he said.

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia charged Mr. Stevens, who is 84 and the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, with failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts, including extensive renovations to his house in Alaska, a Land Rover and home furnishings on financial disclosure forms that he filed from 1999 to 2006.

The Professor

The NY Times has an interesting article about Obama the Professor, and the time he spent as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School. It's an interesting read mostly thanks to the anecdotes about Obama, and it's fairly even-handed, but it's also full of a lot of speculation about Obama's motivations that I find to be...well, speculative at best. Here's one section that I think legitimately tells us something about Obama the candidate now:

Liberals flocked to his classes, seeking refuge. After all, the professor was a progressive politician who backed child care subsidies and laws against racial profiling, and in a 1996 interview with the school newspaper sounded skeptical of President Bill Clinton?s efforts to reach across the aisle.

?On the national level, bipartisanship usually means Democrats ignore the needs of the poor and abandon the idea that government can play a role in issues of poverty, race discrimination, sex discrimination or environmental protection,? Mr. Obama said.

But the liberal students did not necessarily find reassurance. ?For people who thought they were getting a doctrinal, rah-rah experience, it wasn?t that kind of class,? said D. Daniel Sokol, a former student who now teaches law at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

For one thing, Mr. Obama?s courses chronicled the failure of liberal policies and court-led efforts at social change: the Reconstruction-era amendments that were rendered meaningless by a century of resistance, the way the triumph of Brown gave way to fights over busing, the voting rights laws that crowded blacks into as few districts as possible. He was wary of noble theories, students say; instead, they call Mr. Obama a contextualist, willing to look past legal niceties to get results.

?I don?t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,? said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. ?His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he?s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he?s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.?

Several colleagues say Mr. Obama was surely influenced by the ideas swirling around the law school campus: the prevailing market-friendliness, or economic analysis of the impact of laws. But none could say how. ?I?m not sure we changed him,? Mr. Baird said.

Because he never fully engaged, Mr. Obama ?doesn?t have the slightest sense of where folks like me are coming from,? Mr. Epstein said. ?He was a successful teacher and an absentee tenant on the other issues.?

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