Flood

This is the most devastating set of comparison pictures, from April and from August. One quarter of Pakistan has flooded, and people are going to be suffering in slow motion -- lack of potable water, lack of food, crops ruined, mud everywhere. Per Daniyal Mueenuddin in the NY Times:

I found most pitiful a family gathered around a prostrate brown-and-white brindled cow. The father told me that the cow had been lost in the water for four days, and the previous night it had clambered up on another section of the levee, a mile away. The people of this area recognize their cattle as easily as you or I recognize a cousin or neighbor — they sleep with their animals around them at night, and graze them all day; their animals are born and die near them. Someone passing by told the family that their cow had been found, and the father went and got it and led it to their little encampment.

In the early morning the cow had collapsed, and I could see it would soon be dead. Its eyes were beginning to dull, as the owner squatted next to it, sprinkling water into its mouth, as if it were possible to revive it. Its legs were swollen from standing in water, and its chest and torso were covered with deep cuts and scrapes, sheets of raw flesh where branches rushing past must have hit it.

The rest of the family sat nearby on a string bed, resigned, waiting for the end. This was their wealth, but when it died they would tip it into the water and let it float away to the south. Through the past few days they had seen it all, houses collapsed, trees uprooted, grain spoiled, and this was just one more blow.

There's political fear as well:

The state has been criticized for failing to respond quickly enough, and Islamist charities -- at least one of which has alleged links to terrorism -- have been active in the flood-hit areas. There are also concerns the extent of the suffering could stoke social unrest and lead to political instability that may impact Pakistan's fight against the Taliban.

Kerry told reporters "we don't want additional jihadists, extremists coming out of a crisis."

Thanks to Virgin, a list of places to donate here.

WikiLeaks: Afghanistan

I leave it up to Nettertainment's readers to determine for themselves whether this leaking of 90,000 military records regarding Afghanistan to the WikiLeaks site is tantamount to treason or a public service similar to the leaking of The Pentagon Papers by Daniel Ellsberg back when the Vietnam War was being propped up with horrendous lies, but it seems like something of a bombshell being covered by major newspapers as well as throughout the blogosphere. One thing The New York Times focuses on in their lead story is how the documents reveal Pakistan aiding the Afghanistan insurgency:

The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

England's The Guardian is digging deeply into these logs, and their coverage of this hour-by-hour account of the war is accompanied by an explanation of why WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange posted these logs:



Clearly the ability to keep governmental secrets is diminished, if not demolished, in our brave new Internet age. Is the answer greater fortresses of secrecy or, as I suspect will happen, markedly less guile in the future. This can cut both ways, with a country that commits to war doing without apology, damned the torpedoes.

And, of course, these documents are going to force consideration of the key question to it all:

Is it (well-past) time for our United States to get out of Afghanistan?

Military Matters

A tremendously bad day for Pakistan citizens who prefer not to be blown up, with ninety-one confirmed dead and several hundred wounded by a car bomb set off at a crowded market like the very announcement of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's arrival. Assuming this was the Taliban, they also struck in Kabul, Afghanistan, killing five members of the U.N. foreign staff, their goal appearing to be disruption of the upcoming run-off election.

All of this is likely to put pressure on President Obama to send more troops, although rumor has it he won't go as far as General McChrystal wants. It's not a problem solved just with guns, although one wonders if the Taliban are there to stay -- and, if they gain power, suppress freedoms like rights of women, for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the White House did enjoy a victory in paring away wasteful spending in the military appropriations bill it signed today. The President says there's more he's like to see cut and next year with Congressional midterms will be a bigger test, but it's a move in the right direction. For some reason the GOP (and a lot of Dems) love to complain about all pork but the military kind.

The President also took a special midnight trip to honor the return of military dead at Dover Air Force Base. It is heartening, if grim, to know the President is making himself palpably aware of the cost.

Tragic Women

Scoured the news of the day and these two stories stood out above the sordid fray of the U.S. campaigns and the surge failure in Iraq, two women who have made grave decisions gone tragically, horrifically awry.

On one hand you have Marion Jones, once a young American Olympian and hero, a record-breaker, the fastest woman on earth. Now, at age 32 with two young children, she finds herself sentenced to six months in prison for lying to Federal prosecutors (you know, what El Presidente allowed apparatchik Scooter Libby to get out of), in financial ruin as she is stripped of five Olympic medals and all titles after 2000 erased from the record books.

One imagines she's nothing but contrite, certainly based on her public statements, and got some breaks for going against her ex-coach in a fraud investigation. It's too sad to imagine, this golden girl of Sydney 2000.

Then there's this account in BagnewsNotes of Condoleezza Rice's personal responsibility for coaxing Benizar Bhutto to return to Pakistan:

For Benazir Bhutto, the decision to return to Pakistan was sealed during a telephone call from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice just a week before Bhutto flew home in October. The call culminated more than a year of secret diplomacy — and came only when it became clear that the heir to Pakistan's most powerful political dynasty was the only one who could bail out Washington's key ally in the battle against terrorism.

...where she was promptly assassinated:

On October 26th, Wolf Blitzer also received a now highly publicized message from Bhutto, via Siegel, to be disclose only upon her death. It detailed the basic security requirements above, and asked that the reporter make it known that the four police vehicles she had requested to surround her vehicle while traveling were never supplied. ...If you haven't seen the video footage of the assassination, by the way, you might notice that not only was there no escort, but three nearby policemen supposedly tasked to protect Bhutto's car at the moment of the attack where simply idling around.

Blood on their hands.

Marion Jones' cheating meant the diminution of the second place athletes, the ones who seem to have played by the rules and had their careers eclipsed by hers. The blood of her reputation as a human being, as a member of society, whether on the national stage or buying groceries in the supermarket.

Condoleezza Rice, trying so obviously to wash the blood of Iraq off her hands (and, to some of us, some stainage from 9/11) with the renewed yet inconclusive Mideast peace initiative and the stabilizing of Pakistan.

She put her faith in another political woman, one who had once run the country to which she was being spurred to return; and then, with whatever degree of culpability, sent her to a swift and violent grave.

Murder Mystery

The Benazir Bhutto assassination is turning into the murder mystery of our young century. The Musharraf government looks like it's been lying, and pressuring others to propagate their lies, but the cookie's crumbling:

In a dramatic U-turn, Pakistan government has "apologised" for claiming that former premier Benazir Bhutto died of a skull fracture after hitting the sunroof of her car during a suicide attack.

Caretaker Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz Khan has asked the media and people to "forgive and ignore" comments made by his ministry's spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema which were slammed by her Pakistan People's Party as "lies" and led to an uproar at home and abroad.

First it was the suicide bomber's explosion, then the skull fracture, then a little something about shrapnel, and now is where it really gets interesting:

Pakistani and Western security experts said the government’s insistence that Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister, was not killed by a bullet was intended to deflect attention from the lack of government security around her. On Sunday, Pakistani newspapers covered their front pages with photographs showing a man apparently pointing a gun at her from just yards away.

Her vehicle came under attack by a gunman and suicide bomber as she left a political rally in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani Army keeps its headquarters, and where the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency has a strong presence.

Crooks and Liars has an riveting video news story covering all the angles.

And, best of all, a credible motive is coming into focus:

The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in rigging the country's upcoming elections, an aide said Monday.

Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the favor of President Pervez Musharraf.

To top it off, we know what's in that document:

A top Bhutto aide who helped write the report showed a copy to CNN.

"Where an opposing candidate is strong in an area, they [supporters of President Pervez Musharraf ] have planned to create a conflict at the polling station, even killing people if necessary, to stop polls at least three to four hours," the document says.

The report also accused the government of planning to tamper with ballots and voter lists, intimidate opposition candidates and misuse U.S.-made equipment to monitor communications of opponents.

"Ninety percent of the equipment that the USA gave the government of Pakistan to fight terrorism is being used to monitor and to keep a check on their political opponents," the report says.

It'll be interesting to see if the document is ever acknowledged the the Pakistan government, or if the contents bear out, but how hard is it to believe that whatever we gave Musharraf was being used for whatever might best keep him in power?

Will Musharraf hold free and clear elections? Will he be overthrown? Will Bhutto's son take the mantle or be assassinated as well?

Will a Democratic President get in soon enough to get sensible with regards to Pakistan before we're completely blown out of the country?

Very Bad News

Nothing to joke about in Pakistan with the horrific assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The country is now officially on the brink of massive upheaval or violent repression. If you want to the get best overall view that I've read so far, Prof. Juan Cole once again makes it understandable, especially the background for what's just come home to roost:

Pakistan is important to US security. It is a nuclear power. Its military fostered, then partially turned on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, which have bases in the lawless tribal areas of the northern part of the country. And Pakistan is key to the future of its neighbor, Afghanistan. Pakistan is also a key transit route for any energy pipelines built between Iran or Central Asia and India, and so central to the energy security of the United States.

The military government of Pervez Musharraf was shaken by two big crises in 2007, one urban and one rural. The urban crisis was his interference in the rule of law and his dismissal of the supreme court chief justice...Last June 50,000 protesters came out to defend the supreme court, even though the military had banned rallies.

The rural crisis was the attempt of a Neo-Deobandi cult made up of Pushtuns and Baluch from the north to establish themselves in the heart of the capital, Islamabad, at the Red Mosque seminary. They then attempted to impose rural, puritan values on the cosmopolitan city dwellers. When they kidnapped Chinese acupuncturists, accusing them of prostitution, they went too far....Musharraf ham-fistedly had the military mount a frontal assault on the Red Mosque and its seminary, leaving many dead and his legitimacy in shreds.

U.S.-Pakistan diplomacy now in shambles?

Will President Dick make us invade?

Moron

Wondering about the quality of the news you're receiving, maybe even the news with which you start your day?

Think it might be o.k.?

Then tell me how a so-called professional anchor woman, Hannah Storm can focus her interview with the wife of a major party Presidential nomination candidate on the "get" of getting his wife to stick out her tongue?

Meanwhile there's wild repression by our supposed #1 ally in the so-called "War on Terror", a conviction in a huge Congressional Republican corruption case linked to the Department of Defense, and our nation facing “the worst potential financial crisis since the Depression.”

Party on, Hannah. And show us your piercings.

Emergency Powers

Our primo ally in the War on Terror/Islamofascism/Radical Islam/Talaban/Whatever just declared martial law:

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf suspended Pakistan's constitution and deployed troops in the capital Saturday, declaring that rising Islamic extremism had forced him to take emergency measures. He also replaced the chief justice and blacked out the independent media that refused to support him.

Authorities began rounding up opposition politicians, cut phone lines in Islamabad and took all but state television off air, defying calls from Washington and other Western allies not to take authoritarian measures.

While there have been several suicide bombings in the past few months, some wonder if Musharraf has other reasons for taking such actions:

Musharraf's leadership is threatened by an increasingly defiant Supreme Court, the reemergence of political rival and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto and an Islamic movement that has spread to the capital. The Supreme Court was expected to rule soon on the validity of Musharraf's contentious re-election last month.

He's going right ahead with arresting a key political enemy:

Pakistani authorities on Saturday arrested the main lawyer who has been arguing in favour of challenges to President Pervez Musharraf's re-election, private television reported.

Geo television reported that police had detained Aitzaz Ahsan after Musharraf imposed emergency rule on Saturday, just days before the Supreme Court was due to rule on the legality of the October 6 vote.

Ahsan, a former cabinet minister, also successfully defended chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry after Musharraf tried to sack him earlier this year.

Ah, but don't worry. I'm sure the Cheney/Bush Administration will take decisive, moral action.

Or maybe not:

For more than five months the United States has been trying to orchestrate a political transition in Pakistan that would manage to somehow keep Gen. Pervez Musharraf in power without making a mockery of President Bush’s promotion of democracy in the Muslim world.

On Saturday, those carefully laid plans fell apart spectacularly. Now the White House is stuck in wait-and-see mode, with limited options and a lack of clarity about the way forward.

General Musharraf’s move to seize emergency powers and abandon the Constitution left Bush administration officials close to their nightmare: an American-backed military dictator who is risking civil instability in a country with nuclear weapons and an increasingly alienated public.

Darn it.

Look, I have no idea if Musharraf is in some way justified, that Pakistan was/is about to tip into the Taliban zone, with all those other Constitutionally vested folks -- judges, lawyers, lawmakers -- poised to deliver the country to the most radical elements. It just stands to reason that fascism is fascism and there's a thick line there.

We have, of course, seen the erosion of this line in our country under President Cheney, who is still surely planning to bomb Iran and expects to somehow get away with it. (He might, we won't.) So how ironic that Musharraf should quote one of our most revered Presidents in suspending his country's rule of law:

Just after midnight, General Musharraf appeared on state-run television. In a 45-minute speech, he said he had declared the emergency to limit terrorist attacks and “preserve the democratic transition that I initiated eight years back.”

He gave no firm date for nationwide elections that had been scheduled for January and said his current Parliament, which he dominates, would remain in place. He did not say how long the state of emergency would be maintained.

The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted from Abraham Lincoln, citing the former president’s suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for his own state of emergency.

Our next move?

Do we even have one?

Danger

Thursday the Bush Administration, with the help of Joe Lieberdouche -co-sponsored bill, has for the first time in U.S. history designated a foreign nation's army as a "terrorist group" and announced a number of unilateral steps (just like with the Iraq War build-up) to ratchet up the pressure on Iran and, as many believe, purposely move us closer to war with that country, which has never attacked us.

I'd like to believe that the sanctions will work, Iran will stop enriching uranium, Ahmadinejad will stop threatening Israel, and no blood -- Persian or American -- will be spilt.

But I don't.

Here's Condi announcing it on TV -- wearing black, as for a funeral. She claims she's talk to the Iranian government anytime about anything, as long as they cease processing uranium, which of course is the deal-killing precondition. Maybe she believes her own bullshit, but when she speaks "directly to the Iranian people" at the end, it's Pollyannic at best, disingenuous at worst, probably somewhere in-between in a limp zone.

Just about the only thing that might keep Cheney from getting this war, too, is pressure from other countries due to the massive oil market shortfalls that would erupt once he started us bombing, and the Iranian government struck back. This is where I can see us getting the suitcase bomb in a big city.

But, of course, this is exactly what his oil buddies want. Oil at $200 per barrel. Nothing raises a price like scarcity.

Spread the chaos. Maybe get Rudy "Waterboarding" Giuliani elected with the renewed fearscape, or saddle a Democratic President with the draft.

One wonders if the twin Cheney/Bush foreign policy disasters between Turkey and the Kurds, and in Pakistan are going to slow their shot at a U.S.-Iran war, or maybe accelerate it. (Yes, spread the chaos.) For those still rational among us, it is as Juan Cole concludes in a brilliant Salon summary/essay:

Like a drunken millionaire gambling away a fortune at a Las Vegas casino, the Bush administration squandered all the assets it began with by invading Iraq and unleashing chaos in the Gulf. The secular Baath Party in Iraq was replaced by Shiite fundamentalists, Sunni Salafi fundamentalists and Kurdish separatists. The pressure the Bush administration put on the Pakistani military government to combat Muslim militants in that country weakened the legitimacy of Musharraf, whom the Pakistani public increasingly viewed as an oppressive American puppet. Iraqi Kurdistan's willingness to give safe haven to the PKK alienated Turkey from both the new Iraqi government and its American patrons. Search-and-destroy missions in Afghanistan have predictably turned increasing numbers of Pushtun villagers against the United States, NATO and Karzai. The thunder of the bomb in Karachi and the Turkish shells in Iraqi Kurdistan may well be the sound of Bush losing his "war on terror."

Please, Lord, don't let them take us all down with them.

Brave Ones

Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) seemed like the only principled Democratic Senator today, vowing to filibuster the cave-in FISA bill that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) want to push through. For Rockefeller, the grant of retroactive immunity to telecom companies for agreeing to break the law for the Bush Administration appears tied to a sharp increase in campaign contributions by said companies this year. And I used to like that guy.

It's behavior like that which leads to editorials -- accurately representing Democratic rank and file sentiment -- like this:

It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues.

By the end of the day fellow candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE), had stepped up to say he'd join a filibuster against the bill.

Now where are supposed "leaders" Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Barack Obama (D-IL) on this?

Why haven't we heard yet?

Props to Dodd for acting like a frontrunner more than the frontrunners. Leading is about protecting us first, that America outside the beltway. Getting out in front of issues rather than seeming like reactants. Contribute here.

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, where there a chance of another female restoration at the top of the government, that woman is risking life and limb, as are her supporters:

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto said on Friday she would carry on her struggle for democracy, despite an attack on her motorcade that killed 133 people as she returned home after eight years of exile.

"We are prepared to risk our lives. We're prepared to risk our liberty. But we're not prepared to surrender this great nation to militants," Bhutto, wearing a black armband, told a news conference at the home of her parents-in-law in Karachi.

"The attack was on what I represent. The attack was on democracy and the very unity and integrity of Pakistan."

I have no idea what's the truth over there in Pakistan's politics, whether Bhutto is saint or not, but it sure looks like she's the one alternative to the current President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, per the rules of their democracy, and there's no denying the risk she's taken in returning to her country.

With her own and other actual lives on the line, sure, Bhutto's courage may be greater than Dodd's. But we need courage like Dodd's to try and prevent threats to our own democracy.

Threats from within.