The trends of time is running against the US owing to its present direction. Choices have consequences, and neither double-speak nore denial change them.

What is unsustainable does not last indefinitely. Soon, political hubris, acceleratng global warming, the trashing of democracy and the rule of law, inflation and the collapse of the dollar, the emerging coalition under Russia opposing US hegemony, the rise of China as a world power, the growing instability of the ME, the radicalizaton of Latin America, the consequences of neo-liberal economics and political neo-conservativism, along with failed policies in energy, transportation, education, health, and many other areas, and a growing numbr of similar consequences will force a return to reality. It ain't gonna be pretty, but the US may thrash around a bit before losing its place as king of the mountain. But the GOP won't be running the world any more. Hopefully, the US can rise to the occasion, as it has before.

On the positive side, the winding down of the petroleum age, the colonial age of imperialism, the onset of the digital age, an age dominated by scientific breakthroughs in many areas of human concern along with the lessons learned from past failures, promise to transform the globe into a better place, at least to the degree that world can stem the effects of global warming, which is now past the tipping point. Moreover, many spiritual luminaries have been predicting for some time that humanity is now passing through a phase transition to a new Golden Age.

The intertestng thing to me is that the Dem establishment is neither speaking truth to power nor offering any new vision, out-of-the-box thinking, or creative solutions that are required when the ship of state is in extremis. Nor is much of it seen on the liberal blogs either, beyond criticism of the status quo and some patchwork fixes being proposed willy-nilly. As long as the US continues to operate within the current frame, the longer this situation will persist, and the more serious the blowback from reality will be.

Ultimately you cannot govern with illusions and false reality, and the only way to hold on to power for such people is through intimidation and oppression.

that's exactly what I was trying to say. but you put it in partisan terms, whereas I see it as a devious perfection of the "noble lie" and a belief in authoritarianism. nothing has changed in western politics since Plato, really, if you believe Strauss and his thoughts on esoteric writing (and I do). Machiavelli changed nothing, nor Locke, nor Mills, etc; those whose thoughts on the "rights of man" influenced the writing of the US Constitution. The Age of Reason changed nothing, (that's why I capitalize Reason, to designate it as a concept, instead of thinking of it solely as rationality) Only PR tactics changed.
and you leave out the complicity of the Dems. they're no different
than republicans. it is the nature of the beast.
and thanks for taking me seriously; seriously. /insert appropriate smiley

We have had White House administrations like the last one that tried honestly to do the research and look at multiple opinions and options before setting policy. The criticism of Clinton and Gore for doing this was that they were too "wonky", but a lot of people miss those days.

My criticism of the Bush administration is more basic. Take that famous koan of Rumsfeld's: "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." The media took this as some deep and perceptive insight into the problem of Saddam's WMD and congratulated Rumsfeld for his Zen-like wisdom.

This "insight", however, is contrary to fundamental Western rational thought. For 10,000 years of recorded human history mankind has observed that the sun rises in the east. There are therefore over 3,000,000 such observations, against 0 observations that the sun rises in the west. We live our lives on the comfortable assumption that tomorrow the sun will rise in the east. Even the rooster faces east to crow long before the first hint of dawn.

After the CIA identified all the possible Iraqi WMD sites to the UN inspectors, and the inspections on the ground revealed nothing, Rumsfeld and the White House refused to accept a rational conclusion. They wanted a mystical conclusion based on fear; they didn't even want to go to the effort of six more months of really exhaustive searching before going to war.

This mysticism has cost the Iraqis and the Americans very deeply, more so than the mystical Wahaabism of Osama bin Laden.

That's the abandonment of reason I worry about.

...here. My point would be that in such a situation, given current increasingly accepted norms around public / political discourse, it is highly unlikely that any administration is going to be effectively held accountable on the basis of policy. Seems to me that the only effective counter against these sorts of shenanigans is an informed public.

If you'll indulge me, to take another personal example, last night I finally received and was able to read a copy of Michael Knights' Jane's Intelligence Review article on the use of EFPs in Iraq. This is significant because it was assertions supposedly based on this article that played a large role in supporting the consensus opinion of a vocal political faction vis-a-vis Iranian involvement in Iraq, an opinion that asserts that the view of the situation put forward by CJTF-7 is a lie. When one reads the article, one finds that the conclusions of the author actually support the view put forward by CJTF-7. My reading of the stuff put forward by the blogosphere using this article as evidence isn't comprehensive (and really couldn't be given the volume of it) but it's pretty clear that substantially no one actually bothered to track down what the guy actually said - they were content to accept a mis-statement of the man's views, so long as it appeared to substantiate their perspective. All this in spite of the fact that Michael Knights put out a statement saying that his work had been mis-stated and in spite of the fact that other work of his came out around the same time in a public forum that cast that consensus opinion in doubt. Seems to me that an increasingly significant proportion of the public don't much care about actual reality - they care far more about their mutually negotiated consensus of what reality is.

Long-winded, I know, but I'll be danged if I know what solutions there are. I don't trust pols of any stripe not to do very similar things without oversight, and it would seem to me that such oversight is quite unlikely to be forthcoming.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

what did Michael Knight say? you left out all the qualifiers of who said what on whose side, which I really don't care about, but what did he say?
and I seem to have lost my comment that you need to be writing diaries of what you know, and not just comments. knowledge has responsibilities ya' know. informed public, etc....

...that he believes that there is Iranian involvement with EFP use in Iraq and that this involvement took the form of facilitation of relationships between Shia militias and Hezbollah. He further asserts that key components of the EFPs are coming from outside Iraq (i.e., from Iran). He also properly asserts that all of this is very complicated and defies easy characterization.

I will try to work up a coherent summary of what he said and post it as a diary. I was going to work up something last night but then abandoned the notion because I felt it was likely to attract a lot of politically motivated "discussion". Lots of folks have staked out lots of positions on this one and I'd really rather not be anyone's whipping boy on the issue - I ain't Michael Gordon (and frankly Gordon ain't the Michael Gordon folks like to think he is, near as I can tell).

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

at least from myself - is pushback and refutation of the Administration's attempts to give it precisely such an "easy characterization" - "Iran is the sole supplier of EFPs which are the deadliest weapons we face". I'd never say, nor would I expect, that Iran has no interest in Iraq nor that it has taken no action there.

I think what is truly remarkable, what is truly a significant indicator, is how little action Iran has taken against an enemy force in its neighbour nation.

---

"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Near as I can tell, Iran is the only supplier of critical components for EFPs and they are the deadliest weapons that American forces currently faces.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

the Iraqis have figured it out for themselves yet?

...of knowledge. It isn't - it's also a matter of whether they can produce and maintain an entire production and employment infrastructure to translate that knowledge into action. If it was simply a matter of knowledge, everyone would have them - the concepts are well understood and the Iraqi defense industry was once capable of producing these weapons. If knowledge was the barrier to indigenous production, the groups that one would most expect to be fielding these weapons would be the Sunnis - but they aren't, it's the Shia militias with tiny exceptions that are making use of it. Even though they clearly know of the technology (they, along with Shia militia groups have had access to Hezbollah manuals on the topic) the Sunni haven't been using it. That, along with the fact that the technology sprang forth in a completely developed form and a number of other factors, pretty clearly supports the notion of a non-Iraqi genesis.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

you're talking deadliest tactics to US forces and he's talking strategically, Iran could be doing a lot more to destabilise Iraq, if they wanted to get themselves blown up.
dave, you know if we wanted a stable Iraq we'd be buying off the Iranians, if we could. witness Saudi reaction to the sucker punch we gave them on interest rates. we can't even buy them off anymore.
hell in a handbasket, and everybody lining up to buy odds on more war.

and I wish you all would just eliminate the preview button, since editting is allowed once.

right up until the post is replied to.

---

"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Certainly not enough to buy off the Saudis or anyone else.

Compare that to China's $1.2 trillion of reserves, and you see what damage the current account deficit is doing to the U.S. Of course, we can issue Treasuries, but how many more of these will the Saudis or Iranians want?

...not a tactical one. The single biggest motivator for ending the American presence in Iraq is American KIAs. EFPs have become the single deadliest weapon deployed against US forces - and that's strategically highly significant. As you've stated, in the main Iran doesn't want to destabilize Iraq (past a certain point, at least) - they want America out of Iraq, and that's what this weapon allows them to pursue without destabilizing Iraq past their threshold of instability.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

I hadn't thought of it that way.
so where does that leave the US? a pawn in a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, or a puppetmaster? really, it looks like we're just hired muscle, when all of western civilization, or at least the financial end of it, is betting the wad on us winning this war. and if we don't go massive, I just don't see it. how is the surge working from what you're seeing? are we back to whack-a-mole?
how would our interests in Iraq ever deal w/ Iran as an advesary w/o taking out their regime?

(My dirty little secret is the more I read about these guys, the more I like some of their aspects - I hate the culture war they wage on their remarkable populace and I hate the oppressive tools they use in this end - but give these guys their due; they are tough, capable, learned men and they merit respect from anyone.)

The question of where does that leave the US in the region is an excellent one - I can't say that I know the answer, but it seems to me that Pat Lang (again) has absolutely nailed it:

IMO, the US has refused to accept the idea of sharing power in the Middle East with the Iranians. That lies at the heart of our problem with them. All other issues are more symptom than anything else."

To this I would add the notion that pretty much no one in the policy echelons seems to actually want to know the Iranians for who they are, but would rather cling to their politically safe ideas of who they are. Combine this with an "all or nothing" denialist approach that makes for good, simple political sound bites at the expense of policy, and we are where we are - at least in my opinion.

I think there's significant truth to the notion that the US is viewed as hired muscle. My cynical opinion is that there is a significant polity in Europe that wants the US to "solve" the Iranian nuclear problem, while keeping their hands clean. I don't believe that the US is a Saudi pawn - in fact, I think they are quite fed up with the US approach to things and rather wish that they saw more evidence of adult thinking. I think there might be something to the notion that everyone wishes the hired muscle were a little smarter and more subtle.

As to the surge, yeah I think it is having some effect. That said, I think it's really critical to understand it for what it is - it emphatically isn't a winning strategy, particularly given the force levels that can be sustained and the trajectory leading up to the present. What it could provide support for is a policy of controlled disengagement. I very much hope that that is what General Petraeus is actually aiming at producing - then the US might then be able to wiggle off the meathook that it has placed itself on, without imploding its interests in the region. Key to this is the strategy of empowering the major Iraqi groups so that they can come to an accommodation more acceptable than winner take all.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

This article tries to explain where loyalties lie in Iraq.
I never really realized how tangled Iraq/Iranian relations were. I knew there were many layers but boy is it hard to follow. The article makes me want to make a chart. lol

US backing the wrong Shi'ite horse

If I wasn't late for work again, I'd help you. Post it as a diary, I'm sure there's someone here that's good at that chart stuff, maybe Cernig?

do any of them trust us when we seem to go back and forth in whether we're supporting the Shia this week or the Sunni the next? sometimes I feel like Oceania has always been at war w/ Eastasia, you know?

I hope you're right about controlled disengagement, and I would suspect Petraeus may have thoughts along those lines, but there's still Elliot Abrams and the office of the VP to contend with. It seems they've ruined many a good man's careers. And why should Iran share power w/ us? we are the great Satan, afterall. Long term prospects look dim, the Shah's son is never returning. Rafsanjani may be a rational actor, but I suspect he knows his own interests, as opposed to the seeming irrationality of Ahmedinijad* who plays a mean game of over the top propaganda. Almost as good as Israel's to us, and vice versa.

and didn't the Persians invent chess? perhaps the Chinese game of GO would lend itself to a better strategy, tho it looks like that's what we have by encircling Iran. you know, Stratego and Risk were never my games, Clue was ;>
wouldn't it be nice if we could just make the presidents play Twister instead?

because, setting aside whether I believe that assertion of "critical components" satisfactorily proven, "critical components for EFPs" is not the same assertion as "Iran is supplying EFPs" which was the initial assertion made by the Bush regime through Stenography Team Gordon.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — The most lethal weapon directed against American troops in Iraq is an explosive-packed cylinder that United States intelligence asserts is being supplied by Iran. The assertion of an Iranian role in supplying the device to Shiite militias reflects broad agreement among American intelligence agencies, although officials acknowledge that the picture is not entirely complete.

["The most lethal weapon... is being supplied by". "The device"]

Any assertion of an Iranian contribution to attacks on Americans in Iraq is both politically and diplomatically volatile.

[No shit. It's a good thing you're doing such a great job on the reporting then, Gordon.]

( ... Link ... )

This - as of my last reading - is still being bleated repeatedly by the Administration's propaganda channels - see Gordon blurring and glossing this distinction here:

BAGHDAD, Aug. 7 — Attacks on American-led forces using a lethal type of roadside bomb said to be supplied by Iran reached a new high in July, according to the American military.

Such bombs, which fire a semi-molten copper slug that can penetrate the armor on a Humvee and are among the deadliest weapons used against American forces, are used almost exclusively by Shiite militants. American intelligence officials have presented evidence that the weapons come from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran

No. They have not. They have provided inferential evidence that the components may come from Iran. The devices are at least in part assembled in Iraq, by Iraqis, in Iraqi workshops.

But there is no trace of that nuance in this article.

And then predictably a flawed, demonstrably false assertion in these articles becomes an article of established fact.

The Afghan official declined to comment on the origin of the bomb or on when exactly it had been found. Roadside bombs of the E.F.P. type have been frequently used in Iraq, and military officials there have said the sophisticated bombs have their origin in neighboring Iran

Wherever their components originated, it has not been established that Iran is supplying the devices.

So no, it is not me reducing a more complex nuanced situation to a simple lockstep bleat. It is Gordon. And we have been down this road before.

( ... Link ... )

I am saying, and I have said repeatedly, that the claim that Iran is supplying EFPs is at least in large part false. They are by your own assertion accused at most of supplying components which are then assembled in Iraqi workshops. I'd submit with respect that due to the demonstrable falseness of the accompanying claims even that claim has to be reviewed critically.

And still the reporting continues, now using the lie as a foundation for further assertions.

Note the significant difference between what articles one and two asserted in August:

NATO officials say they don't know where the bomb came from. "The kind that we're talking about is machined. It has to be fabricated to pretty certain specifications ... by somebody who knows what he's doing," Thomas said. "The next question is how similar is it to those made in Iraq, and the answer is considerably similar." Thomas said there was no evidence to suspect a certain manufacturer, nation or even region as the source. He said Iran or al-Qaida elements in Iraq or Pakistan were all possibilities.

The NATO quote seems to contain different assertions than this -

Roadside bombs of the E.F.P. type have been frequently used in Iraq, and military officials there have said the sophisticated bombs have their origin in neighboring Iran.

Funny that.

---

"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

- eom

---

"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If you wish to make everything into a politicized battle then have fun with it. Don't expect me to fight through that shitstorm to offer an informed opinion - you seem quite content with the one you have.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

That's a bit uncalled for. You seem to have perceived a disrespect in that comment that I didn't intend - I simply strongly disagree with you, but was closing off jocularly. Anyway, if you perceived anything directed at you personally, I apologize.

[edited to add: if it was this -

"I'd submit with respect that due to the demonstrable falseness of the accompanying claims even that claim has to be reviewed critically." - I'd like to hasten to clarify that it is not your claims that I was directing that towards.]

---

"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

...as being sarcastically dismissive when that was not what you intended. I shall try to curb myself in the future.

I would, however, ask you to look at it from my perspective for a moment. I do not care about the politics of the situation, nor do I care why folks have a hate on for Michael Gordon. What he reports or what the administration pushes as part of their anti-Iran IO campaign has no bearing on the essential issue at hand - whether Iran is involved in the production and use of EFPs. I believe a dispassionate reading of the evidence clearly supports this notion. If you wish to disagree or have a discussion of what that means and how it should be interpreted then I am all ears, but essential to any productive discussion is becoming versed in the material - and that notably means more than revisiting which words Michael Gordon uses to describe the phenomena. It means acknowledging that the story is dynamic, that it has changed a number of times, that straight lines drawn from Iraq to Afghanistan don't necessarily mean a whole lot, what reporters other than Michael Gordon have reported, and what CJTF-7 rather than just "the administration" has said. I can live with honest disagreement - what I find vexing is people disagreeing without actually taking into account the totality of the evidence.

Look folks, disagree with what the evidence indicates, by all means, but give some indication of having read the evidence cited on many previous occasions and having at least considered it - contrary to what Ian believes below my considerable effort expended gathering as complete a picture of the issue as I can is emphatically not an aspect of my professional work. It is something that I carve out of the time otherwise devoted to other pursuits, such as sleep and time with my family.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

but you must realize that by setting the bar so high for people to acceptably disagree with you, you will end up having no one here qualified to disagree with you but yourself, an unhappy circumstance for all of us here.

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

says. Is he believable? (He may well be, I don't know. Of course, Petraeus cooked his books, and the entire Iraq war was sold on lies, so, y'know).

Here's the deal Dave. Let me tell you how ordinary people, even ordinary smart people who don't have a job that gets them to spend a year reading the scholarly literature think:

"Party X has lied to me before in order achieve end Y. Not only that, but I know they have done so repeatedly. Therefore the odds of them lying on this particular issue are quite high."

Credibility matters, and the Bush administration has none because they lied the US into a major war. After that everything they say is assumed to be a lie unless proven otherwise. The burden of proof is not on doubters to prove they lied, the burden is to prove they aren't lying.

Now, as it happens I think your personal credibility is high, and so I'm willing to take your word that probably Iran is supplying key components. To which, you won't be surprised, my response is "who cares? Should the USSR have nuked the US for supplying the Afghani Mujahideen?" While I think attacking Iran would be morally wrong, my argument against doing so is more simple - it's worse than morally wrong, it's a strategic blunder and a big one.

I would add that I don't think it's in Canada's interest either, though I certainly could make an argument that the US getting its ass handed to it might do us some good in the medium to long run.

The problem in US discourse is pretty deep. As you know the majority of Americans thought that Iraq was behind 9/11. The number is still very high. Americans live in a world where they are constantly fed incorrect information. The very human response to that is to stop believing what you're being told.

The time that I devote to this is time that I take away from other things I could be doing. When I build bibliographies, it's because I want to access the full range of literature available, when I read, it's because I want a perspective on events that has more time depth and analytical power than is available in the media, and when I study Persian, it's because I want to be able to access (in time) what the Iranians say and think more directly. I do this in part because it's marginally less self-destructive than intravenous drugs, and in part because it's one of the things that I am suited to do as a citizen.

I don't find your reasoning around deceit on the part of politicians to be a great basis for figuring out what's going on. You're taking a political judgment and attempting to apply it universally to reality - I've spent enough time around the margins of the policy world to think that's a real bad idea. Skepticism's great, but there comes a point when dogmatic application trends more towards flat-earthism than is good for the folks on the receiving end of policy. Policy : Politics - they're related, but mixing them uncritically can be really hard on the folks both are supposed to serve.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

most people don't have time to do detailed analysis on issues. Most people are not going to do all the work you do. Including people like me, who do read a fair bit and do do number chewing (you should see my collection of spreadsheets.)

What I am telling you is this: this is how people think. It's a rule of thumb - when you don't have time to analyze every single issue you take a person's credibility into account. That's why credibility or matters.) Despite your unwillingness to admit it (which I find mystifying) the Bush administration lied the US to war - lied on the most fundamental issue of the time. The butcher's bill is hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million. That has consequences for their credibility.

And it should.

...lie to get folks into the war? There was clearly lots of lying going on at a variety of levels - lots of folks convinced themselves they knew what the reality was behind the int and shaped the product to hell and gone (and sent the IC on many a fishing expedition) and a lot of folks hoped like hell the lies advanced were going to pan out in the event.

Where I draw the distinction is that I think many at the policy echelon actually did believe the int advanced because they simply didn't know any better. (Which is more likely - George W Bush actually knowing the truth [presumably because someone explained it to him using very small, simple words] and then lying coherently over an extended period, or folks simply telling him the lie? If I'm the guy in charge of selling the lie, I know what I'd do - and Shrub ain't the dumbest of this group of scholars, incredible as that might seem.) When a tiny minority of policy makers know the difference between Sunni and Shia, this is quite possible. When the intellectual "brain trust" of the administration actually believes that they're going to ring in democracy in Iraq at gunpoint, it's alarmingly possible.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

you are as presuppositionless and clear as I have ever read.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

But I agree with your meaning.

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}

'Clear'?

Google

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

I confess that, although I read your site regularly, pheonemology is so far over my tiny little brain as to leave a contrail....

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}

let you in on a little secret. It was over the heads of those who wrote it.

http://mauberly.blogspot.com/

Whether the lie is one of commission as Ian suggests, or emerges from the sort of willful stupidity that you describe matters little in how we are to appraise the integrity of statements that emerge from this administration.

It does make some difference in appraising how we address them, people who knowingly lie are at least susceptible to reason, people who are willfully stupid cannot be reasoned with. I'd rather deal with the former than the latter.

The one about an explosion in Syria of a chemical weapons plant, killing dozens of Iranian scientists and destroying vehicles that were rigged as car bombs to be used in Iraq.

Pretty provocative stuff. I wonder if this is really what Jane's is reporting, and how accurate their sources are.

How Gulf Times reported the explosion:

http://agonist.org/20070726/hot_weather_triggers_blast_in_syria

and the sunday times(salt included):

September 20, 2007
Blast at secret Syrian missile site kills dozens

...though I've seen secondary coverage of the Jane's report of an explosion at a special weapons plant. I don't know the truth of the report (though I'd note that Pat Lang has apparently expressed skepticism and his name carries weight with me). From a broader perspective, I don't know that it matters - Syria's been assessed as possessing chemically tipped Scuds for many, many years.

"Ambiguously loose statements on the one hand, and euphemisms that link terrorism and fascism to Islam on the other, have created confusion and resentment on all sides." ~ Fariborz Mokhtari

Not The Times in London. It was a later report, maybe the NY Times or CNN?

that does espouse "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", and other red herrings of reason such as "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action". It's called the world of "intelligence" - and no matter how much it claims otherwise - no matter how it claims to contain the truest "realists" - Its core contains a rejection of conventional views of empiricism and evidence.

It can be a factory for the subtly insane.

At least part of what you're dealing with is people whose thinking has been so contaminated by spook thought that they can't use real thought any more. They just can't see reality for all the mirrors.

---

"The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential."

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

When the live broadcasting to the World Trade Centers come over the computer monitor, two thoughts crossed my mind, how are we going to pay for this new war, and now that the borders into the U.S. are going to be tightened down, how will that effect the price of imported illegal drugs.

That day I was working on my thesis proposal and questioned my advisor on changing paths a bit and using the price of drugs pre-911 and post-911 spatially correlated regions in the 50 States. My advisor convinced me to drop using drug prices pre and post 911 as a data set, due to the difficulty of obtaining reliable pricing data from both the black market and law enforcement. One thread of the conversation ran into if the attacks on 9-11 came out of Afghanistan and the U.S. retaliated and seized control, what would happen to the poppy crop and proposed oil pipe lines. My advisor made two very sage observations: As with the war in Central America, Cocaine flooded the streets in the form of Crack Cocaine, and now with all probability with U.S. about to take control of Afghanistan if the attacks did come from there, with a Bush White House, look to a massive increase in poppy cultivation. The second observation being that the coming War would not be paid for by selling War Bonds or increasing taxes to the public, but rather financed with debt loading to soak up the excess oil profits that would start with the oil twins in the White House.

Thus, the beginning of the unhinging of reality, once the freaks got away with the first heist on Election Day in 2000 the coast was clear for the crime spree to begin.

We all know what is going on; we just do not know how the piper is going to be paid.

"There are two types of folk music:
quiet folk music and loud folk music.
I play both."

Dave Alvin