I'll try to find that link on how to add on "panic room" features to the safe room. You can never be to safe;)

Straight from the Crime Doctor http://www.crimedoctor.com/panic_room_1.htm

Abu Musab al Zarqawi is an interesting character. Hated bin Laden, effective trouble causer, and accused in Powell's UN speech of setting up a chemical weapons lab in Iraq. I read where he was trying to organize Sunnis pre invasion; also that he and Hussein were highly incompatible. It must have been nuanced. al Qaeda was not a problem in Iraq, pre invasion and that the invasion created one.

On the 100 operators in Afghanistan, I'm simply suggesting that we get the entire explanation for the expenditure of our efforts and money. The porous border is that with ? Pakistan. (Interesting aside. One of the Pakistan Taliban coalitions mused that they might attack relief workers. Got wide coverage. That's a fatal error for a very unpopular group.)

Obama said: "As our military draws down, our dedicated civilians -- diplomats, aid workers, and advisors (WH typo, yeah!) -- are moving into the lead to support Iraq as it strengthens its government, resolves political disputes, resettles those displaced by war, and builds ties with the region and the world." Was he referencing Xe and the others? If they do more, that's a problem. I don't know but the spigot should be cut off for that stuff.

Also, Obama noted that as the US transitioned from the battlefield to the barracks, the violence in Iraq has reached an all time low. Maybe because: 1) so many were killed and displaced that violence had to go down and 2) maybe, as I herd argued again and again, our presence was a key provocation for ongoing violence (in addition to the outbreak of it in the first place). I believe that the same thing took place when the British pulled back in Bazra (except for violence against the British, who ended up despised).

Who knows? On edit: Susan Lindauer (See American Cassandra, right column)

I wrote about her efforts and struggles, quite an adventure. I contacted her and asked about Zarqawi in Iraq prior to the war. Here's what she said:

You can say that my book, Extreme Prejudice, is coming out next month, and will reveal how a high ranking contact in Saddam's Iraqi Intelligence tried to hand him over to us. Susan Lindauer

...like that. Sorry, but she gets a big E-5 from me on pretty much everything that I've seen attributed to her.

As to Zarqawi, if you want to make sense of the Middle East drop the absolutist morality based (friend / foe, good guy / bad guy) evaluation. Of course those two personalities, unfettered are "incompatible". That's frankly largely irrelevant. The question is whether Zarqawi could have been useful to the Iraqi regime in the situation that existed - pre- and post-invasion. I think about 95% or more of what's said about pre-invasion ties is bullshit, but a few percentage points of it makes sense. Winnow out the basics - the guy is said to have had an unusual degree of freedom of movement within the country pre-invasion for someone who the regime would be bitterly opposed to and between the time the invasion went in and August the guy managed to build a pretty substantial infrastructure that was able to generate significant intelligence and support a fairly sophisticated campaign plan. Me, I think that means he had one hell of a lot of help and that the opening moves that led to that help - opening moves that would be largely informational and/or largely passive rather than active - MHO likely pre-dated the invasion.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

The more I think about it, this was a carefully planned shot at picking five points or so in the 2010 election. Taking the big picture approach, they think that they can do that. Maybe so. But if he fired Geithner and Summers, he'd do a lot better.

I don't expect the truth on Iraq any time soon, not from the top dog, whether it's Obama or anyone else. That's the fatal flaw. The "American Exceptionalism" which is so destructive is really a cya move by anyone in charge to apologize for the craven madness of those who profit so handsomely from war.

Shame really. The vast majority of people, given a fair presentation, would reject this type of disaster outright.

But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch him (her husband, former president George H. W. Bush) suffer?

That she could say this and still show up anywhere without the stigma of such a remark is a comment on any number of decadent features of popular culture. If Marilyn Manson said this, he'd be deported.

1. (referred to in the Guardian's reactions to Blair's book)

I'll remember Blair in one sentence, spoken by an Afghan farmer and reported in the Guardian last September: "I couldn't find my son, so I took a piece of flesh with me home and I called it my son."

Cathal Rabbitte

Switzerland

2.
Obama's speech: a Baghdad family view

"What has my Iraqi family gained? They can criticise the government publicly without fear, but they fear being in public"

_{The origin of the universe has not as yet been shown to be a conspiracy theory}

The one about Blair should be inscribed the official Bush and Blair portraits. They are the world's two leading criminals. Pol Pot is dead so it's just them.