War Handwavium

US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, gave a speech at a conference in Jerusalem organised by Shimon Peres, Israel’s president. Rice basically said two things: Isreal must restart real peace talks for a Palestinian state and that anti-Israel “vitriol” at the UN should end.

Ignoring calls for a Palestinian state, Netanyahu instead latched onto the part he wanted to hear and said he supported the US in it’s criticism of the Goldstone report.

Duh.

We call that “cherry picking” over here.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/200910222109748934.html

We are nearing the point where the American war in Afghanistan will be the longest war America has ever fought in its entire history.

Granted, someone else holds the record for “longest war evah”, but do we really want to be in Afghanistan for a hundred years plus one, just to get in Guinness?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/long-war-by-digby-those-of-you-who-are.html

If you hover the mouse over the original cartoon, you get the following tidbit of text: “We live in a world where there are actual fleets of robot assassins patrolling the skies. At some point there, we left the present and entered the future.”

This is one way to sum up what War Handwavium is about in a nice little cartoon.

See the original here: http://www.xkcd.com/652/

Afghanistan will hold a new election between the incumbent president Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah.

An investigation into election fraud threw out enough ballots that Karzai’s share of the votes dropped below 50%.

One of the reasons Afghan people don’t support the central government is because they view it as corrupt. If the new election occurs without the taint of fraud, that might help the central government expand its influence beyond the capital city.

One problem, though, is that winter is coming to Afghanistan and that won’t make it easy for people to vote.

Another problem is that the Taliban has been targeting voters and may target more voters. Given the first vote was tainted with fraud, many Afghan civilians may decide that the whole thing is crooked and decide it isn’t worth risking their lives to vote.

Put simply, the US needs to make sure this election is honest if America wants to see a stable central government in Afghanistan anytime soon.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/10/200910201225598138.html

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/20/terrorism/index.html

A 2004 Department of Defense report on what causes terrorism. Hint, they don’t hate us for our freedom, they hate us for bombing and invading their countries and for supporting Israel no matter what.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/20/terrorism/index.html

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/18/rohde/index.html

A “New York Times” reporter who had been held hostage by the Taliban for seven months reports the source of the Taliban’s hatred for the US. Hint, they don’t hate us for our freedom, they hate us for bombing and invading their countries and for supporting Israel no matter what.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/17/mohamed/index.html

The British High Court ruled that the torture suffered by British citizen Binyam Mohamed at the hands of the CIA are to be publicly disclosed.

Just follow the link.

http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2009/01/20091229274380583.html

The short of it is, it doesn’t look good.

Even if he isn’t there.

The session will begin on Thursday and is expected to last into the following day.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/10/20091013163035586460.html

CNN “fact checks” a Saturday Night Live skit but lets Republicans torture and execute the truth and respond with “We’ll have to leave it there.”

From digby

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/where-do-they-get-their-wack-ideas-part.html

Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) husband is multimillionaire, Richard Blum. Mr. Feinstein owns about 25% of a company called URS. URS does a lot of contracts with the US Military. Contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars a pop.

Charles Lewis, executive of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity watchdog group in Washington, asked “Why hasn’t she expressed outrage about some of the potential conflicts with people in or close to the Bush administration?” Dick Cheney’s connections with Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton, was fodder for outrage over Cheney’s invasion of Iraq. Maybe Misses Feinstein didn’t object to Cheney’s conflict of interest because she had her own conflict of interest.

Glenn Greenwald highlights Feinstein’s voting record. She authorized the Iraq invasion, she funded the Iraq war without a timetable for withdrawal that her fellow Democrats wanted. She supported the Patriot Act. She helped General Hayden get confirmed as CIA director even though he presided over the illegal wiretapping program. The supported Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General even after he refused to answer basic questions about torture. And in October of 2009, she used her position as Chair of the Intelligence Committee to gut most proposed reforms to the Patriot Act.

And now Misses Feinstein is leading the charge to put public pressure on Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. A war that could profit her husband with millions of dollars.

If you are a Democrat and you live in California, I suggest you write your Little Orphan Annie of a Senator and tell her that she should stop working to get her Daddy Warbucks of a husband military contracts and start working to end Bush’s wars and Bush’s Patriot Act and Bush’s wiretapping programs.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/10/13/afghanistan/

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/04/27/BA284459.DTL

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/10/11/afghanistan___the_proxy_war/