dubya's decisions, 7 years later [fatal flaws]

NYT: Bush approved Special Forces missions in Pakistan, without permission
"It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground raids in a friendly country."
BBC: Pakistan's dilemma
"There's no doubt Pakistan is facing a huge problem of Islamic militancy. But many are convinced it can't tackle this if it's seen to be acting at America's behest."
Slate: Woodward's take on the decider's decision-making (as expected, it's a faulty process when undertaken at all)
"[General George] Casey later summarized Bush's approach as: "If you're not out there hooking and jabbing with American forces every day, you're not fighting the right fight."...[Bush would] ask about kills and captures to "find out whether or not we're fighting back. Because the perception is that our guys are dying and [the insurgents are] not. Because we don't put out our numbers. We don't have a tally. … [I]f I'm sitting here watching the casualties come in, I'd at least like to know whether or not our soldiers are fighting."

WP: by that token, Admiral Mullen, US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, might be at odds with the president given his testimony in Congress yesterday on Afghanistan
"Yet even if the Pentagon could achieve a better coordinated regional strategy, Mullen stressed that military forces can do only so much to pacify the area. "No amount of troops in no amount of time can ever achieve all the objectives we seek," he said, adding later: "We can't kill our way to victory."

Greater efforts by U.S. civilian agencies and the international community are essential, he said. For example, he criticized the shortage of civilian personnel in Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan, saying that without more experts in agriculture, education, commerce and jurisprudence, the PRTs "will remain but empty shells."

BBC: this more balanced approach favored by allies like Indonesia
"[Indonesia's head of counter-terrorism] said each country faced a unique situation in its fight against terrorism, and that there was no one-size-fits-all.

But he said that there needed to be a balance between force and negotiation, and that war - as pursued by America in Iraq and Afghanistan - was not an effective strategy against terrorism."

BBC: Petraeus will 'never declare victory' in Iraq; (sv would like to note that Palin ridiculed Obama for the same)

Gdn: female suicide bombing on the rise in Iraq

LAT: as separatist tensions rise in Bolivia, Morales expels US Ambassador
"Violent protests have convulsed Bolivia in recent days. Demonstrators on Tuesday sacked and burned government offices in the city of Santa Cruz, the epicenter of opposition to Morales.

The governors of five of Bolivia's nine states are aligned against Morales and his agenda of nationalization and empowering the poor Indian masses.

Morales has accused the rebellious states of plotting against him with the U.S. ambassador. Goldberg has repeatedly denied any interference in Bolivian affairs."

BBC: Nigeria creates ministry for Niger Delta

LAT: elections in Angola may entrench MPLA
"The MPLA has ruled Angola since independence from Portugal in 1975. President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, whose wife and daughter won seats in parliament, is widely expected to run in presidential elections planned for next year, despite a previous statement that he would not enter the race.

Members of the president's family and top government officials have shares in the country's top oil, diamond, banking and telecommunications firms. No foreign company can do business in Angola unless it teams up with an influential local company."

BBC: Zimbabwe reportedly close to a power-sharing deal

BBC: Cyprus leaders discuss unification

Gdn: Lebanese politician killed in car bomb blast

Econ: people trickle back to Gori

BBC: imprisoned LA gang leader reveals insights into incarceration, violence in US
"Enriquez's rise from low-level street hoodlum to major player in the Mexican Mafia came about as his reputation for violence grew. While doing time in infamous Californian prisons such as San Quentin and Folsom, the young Enriquez impressed mafia bosses.

On their request, he carried out a series of brazen attacks on other inmates, and in 1984, he was secretly inducted into the Mexican Mafia...

In the early 1990s, the Mexican street gangs in Los Angeles were out of control, with daily drive-by shootings between rival gangs bringing unwanted attention from the city's police.

Heavy police surveillance meant it was nigh on impossible for the gangs to carry on with the lucrative drug trade on which they depended.

The Mexican Mafia infiltrated the street gangs, brought some discipline into the organisations and, crucially, began creaming "taxes" from every Mexican gang in LA.

This generated huge profits for the gang leaders pulling the strings from their prison cells. Cheques and money orders were sent regularly, and Enriquez even began investing in high interest accounts and government bonds.

But this lucrative scheme began to unravel, as greed and paranoia infected the Mexican Mafia leadership, who began to plot against each other. Thye even put hits on their rivals' wives and children - a huge violation of the gang's code.

This erosion of "honour" that had governed the gang had an effect on Enriquez, too, and he began to have doubts about his commitment.

"They call it 'mob fatigue'. Everybody goes through it," he says...

He turned informant and decided to confess to everything...

"I had this surreal experience that I was mourning my own death. That's how I felt. I had depression during the first few weeks, and felt like I was mourning my own death."

**
Slate: the Big Lebowski's Walter and the rise of the neocons

a terrible thing to say

LAT: Sunni militants launch coordinated attacks in Iraq, while fighting in Sadr City continues
WP: Iraqi Christians targeted
"[A reverend in Baghdad] said every Christian business executive he knows has been threatened, kidnapped or attacked. 'The Christian is weak. He has no tribe,' he said."
BBC: doubts over Iraqi security forces' capacity, willingness to fight
"There were also many desertions from the Iraqi security forces. About 1,000 personnel - including a full infantry battalion - refused to fight or joined the militias during last month's offensive.
More than 900 police and soldiers have been sacked in Basra, including nearly 40 senior police officers, where the fiercest clashes took place. A further 400 police officers were dismissed in Kut."

LAT: Afghan insurgents targeting cell phone towers, angering civilians
"For the last two months, Taliban fighters have been blowing up telecommunications towers, with the aim of preventing NATO-led forces from hunting them down via cellphone signals. It could hardly have been a worse public-relations move for the insurgency."

BBC: history of a village destroyed (nearly 60 years ago) in Israel

WP: Uribe's cousin and confidante arrested on charges of collusion with paramilitaries
Also, "With the legitimacy of Congress at rock bottom, lawmakers have been locked in a series of heated debates over how to reform the 268-member body and punish those parties whose members have been linked to paramilitary groups." [32 members have been arrested, 30 others are being investigated, and dozens more implicated, with investigations to begin soon.]

Ind: Cuban authorities break up 'Women in White' protest, calling for release of their imprisoned husbands

NYT: Zimbabwe state newspaper calls for unity gov't
BBC: which may change, now that Mugabe's party is announced winner of first recount
Econ: while repression, violence continue
"Human Rights Watch, an international group, says that ZANU-PF, the ruling party of President Robert Mugabe, has set up torture camps across the country as part of a systematic campaign to intimidate the opposition, which won the parliamentary elections and, it claims, the presidential vote too. Victims are taken to the camps at night and beaten for hours with thick sticks, bars and army batons. Huts and houses have been torched. An unofficial curfew is in force in the poor suburbs of Harare, the capital. The MDC says that ten of its supporters have been killed, some shot dead. The opposition also says that some 3,000 families have had to flee their homes, 500 people have been put in hospital and over 400 opposition activists have been arrested."
Ind: Church leaders call for intervention to "avert genocide"
arms shipment refused in South Africa, then in Mozambique, now in Angola

Gdn: estimate of dead in Darfur reaches 300,000

BBC: Bosnian Serbs convicted of war crimes for massacre in 1992

BBC: unmanned Georgian drone shot down; Russia claims it was work of Abkhaz rebels

BBC: nearly 100 die in Sri Lanka, in battles between the LTTE and gov't forces

LAT: rice prices straining families in the Philippines, largest rice importer in world
"'Rice is something you need every day,' [a resident of Manila] said. 'When it gets to the point that families can't afford to buy 2 kilos a day, that's when people will get really mad.'"

Gdn: Clinton issues threat to Iran
"In an interview with ABC's Good Morning America, she was asked what she would do if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons. She said: 'In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say but those people who run Iran need to understand that because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic.'"

CSM: new organization of former Jihadis to work for tolerance in UK
"The Quilliam Foundation – named for a 19th-century British convert to Islam – aims to propagate a tolerant and pluralistic view of Islam among young Muslims who are the most vulnerable to radicalism."

BBC: the noble donkey, Facebook unite Cypriots

the Basra bungle

NYT: confusion reigns over what happened in Basra, starting with Maliki's orders to launch assault...
"But the Iraqi operation was not what the United States expected. Instead of methodically building up their combat power and gradually stepping up operations against renegade militias, Mr. Maliki’s forces lunged into the city, attacking before all of the Iraqi reinforcements had even arrived. By the following Tuesday, a major fight was on.
'The sense we had was that this would be a long-term effort: increased pressure gradually squeezing the Special Groups,' Mr. Crocker said in an interview, using the American term for Iranian-backed militias. 'That is not what kind of emerged.'
'Nothing was in place from our side,' he added. 'It all had to be put together.' "
NYT: ...and continuing with how many Iraqis deserted during the fight. NYT combines police and army, cites an estimate at 4%
"The crisis created by the desertions and other problems with the Basra operation was serious enough that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki hastily began funneling some 10,000 recruits from local Shiite tribes into his armed forces. That move has already generated anger among Sunni tribesmen whom Mr. Maliki has been much less eager to recruit despite their cooperation with the government in its fight against Sunni insurgents and criminal gangs."
WP: meanwhile, the Post cites an Iraqi source who says 30% left. the estimate for total fighters involved was about half of NYT's. maybe they didn't include the police?
LAT: then there's this evaluation of the police from yesterday's LAT
"'Police work where they live and are inherently influenced by the politics of their community,' said a Western security official, who estimated police desertions at more than 50% in Mahdi Army strongholds such as Baghdad's Sadr City and parts of Basra...
Like many soldiers in this area, Hussein has friends and relatives in Shula who faced repercussions if the military confronted the militias there.
'People were calling me on my cellphone, threatening to kill my kids,' said Hussein, a husky man with a gray-flecked mustache and a red beret perched on his head. He commands the 4th Battalion of the 22nd Brigade in the Iraqi army's 6th Division."
USAT: Ambassador Cocker says "Thousands of tribesmen in the southern city of Basra have volunteered to join Iraqi security forces since al-Sadr agreed to a cease-fire on Sunday."
NYT: (op-ed) the US should train more military advisers for Iraq and Afghanistan
NYT: rumor has it that the NIE's report is rosy, but critics of the classified doc say it reads like a summary of press reports. this installment has no public version, which some Dems are criticizing.
IHT: no wonder the humor is black

Slate: a photo-journalist's view of war in Chechnya and Iraq

NYT: rising star of Al-Qaeda

WP: the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan complicates US operations
Ind: warlords funneling cash from heroin sales into weapons acquisition

WP: former KLA commander, former prime minister of Kosovo, acquitted of war crimes

WP: still unclear what Mugabe will do; "inner circle" appears to be fracturing
Gdn: he may step down in exchange for immunity from prosecution for past crimes

Gdn: Kenyan officials reach deal, will announce 40-member cabinet Sunday

Gdn: Sarkozy will travel to Colombia to receive Betancourt if released; France will take in freed FARC prisoners

WP: Uighurs protested during Tibet crackdown
"Like the Tibetans, Xinjiang's approximately 16 million Uighur Muslims speak their own language, have their own customs and, at one point in history, set up their own government. They have long chafed under the Han Chinese-dominated government in Beijing and in the 1990s mounted a series of attacks against Chinese officials and institutions during which Beijing says more than 150 people died."

Ind: (Raul) Castro increasing Cubans' freedoms: now they can watch Seinfeld re-runs

Gdn: Cyprus removes barriers between Greek and Turkish sides, compares coffee

Slate: accountability for the lawyers who gave the green light? nah.
"Lawfare was described by Air Force Brig. Gen. Charles Dunlap as 'the strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective.' Ordinary acts of foreign policy become bogged down in a maze of after-the-fact legal consequences. Donald Rumsfeld saw this form of warfare as a limit on American military authority. He was determined to find a solution to what he called 'the judicialization of international politics.'...As we are beginning to learn, the growing tendency to conduct wars in the courtroom hasn't actually constrained anyone at all over the past seven years. The expanded role of all these laws and lawyers in the war on terror has had the opposite effect: The Bush administration has proven time and again that the Rule of Law is only as definitive as its most inventive lawyers.
In short, the Bush solution to the paralysis of lawfare seems to be to hire lawyers who don't believe in the law. "

LAT: arithmetic of Aztec land surveys finally understood

the Root: daily drug war dose: 5 things to know about crack

resurrections

NYT: local-level governance in Iraq, captain by (retiring) captain
"During the war in Iraq, young Army and Marine captains have become American viceroys, officers with large sectors to run and near-autonomy to do it. In military parlance, they are the “ground-owners.” In practice, they are power brokers. 'They give us a chunk of land and say, ‘Fix it,’ ' said Capt. Rich Thompson, 36, who controls an area east of Baghdad."
LAT: in some areas of Iraq, US trying to transition militia members into alternative sectors
LAT: Fallujah repopulated, "alive again"; but article fails to describe how it's been rebuilt
"To ensure continued security progress, Marines conduct late-night raids several times a week after picking up intelligence about possible insurgent activities. The troops also have sought to provide employment to young Falloujans to help win their loyalty."
Gdn: letters responding to article on Iraq fatality estimates

CSM: Herat strike for more security against criminal gangs
"Doctors, nurses, and other health providers walked out on their jobs to protest what they say are the government's half-hearted attempts to address a growing security problem. Shopkeepers, judges, and the city's main trade union soon joined them, prompting the closure of close to 250 factories.
The strike, which ended earlier this week, highlights widespread dissatisfaction with government efforts to provide security and illustrates the extent to which criminal gangs – not the Taliban – are seen as the biggest security threat in Afghanistan's major cities."

LAT: in Colombia, army units accused of increasingly killing civilians, labeling them as guerrillas
"Ramiro Orjuela Aguilar, a Bogota human rights attorney representing 20 families of suspected 'false positive' victims in Meta, blamed the military's use of paid informants or demobilized guerrillas for many of the killings.
'They have an incentive to name people as rebels because they are paid for information whether it's correct or not,' Orjuela said.
Several of the Meta victims last year were youths living in and around Granada, the hub of a cattle and farming region that has been fiercely contested in recent years by leftist guerrillas, the armed forces and right-wing paramilitary troops. It is also home to the army's 12th Mobile Brigade, a unit that Orjuela says is implicated in many of the killings.
Orjuela alleges that the army is engaging in 'social cleansing' in Meta, home to four of the five municipalities that made up the so-called neutral zone occupied by Colombian guerrillas from 1998 to 2002. Killings and mass displacements of residents here are efforts to deprive guerrillas of sympathizers, Orjuela said.
'They are trying to deprive the fish of its water,' he said."

NYT: violence between Tibetans and the Chinese state may influence voting in Taiwan

BBC: veterans of Bangladesh's 1971 independence war want collaborators of Pakistan tried for war crimes

BBC: Cyprus peace talks on again

BBC: Liberia launches its first census since 1984; pop song translated into 16 languages plays daily urging citizens to stay home to be counted

Slate: how early Christians understood resurrection
"The ancient Jewish and early Christian idea of personal resurrection represented a new emphasis on individuals and the importance of embodied existence beyond the mere survival or enhancement of the soul, although there was debate about the precise nature of the post-resurrection body...In the earliest expressions of their faith that we have, Christians claimed that Jesus' resurrection showed that God singled out Jesus ahead of the future resurrection of the dead to show him uniquely worthy to be lord of all the elect...In Christianity's first few centuries, when believers often suffered severe persecution and even the threat of death, those who believed in Jesus' bodily resurrection found it particularly meaningful for their own circumstances. Jesus had been put to death in grisly fashion, but God had overturned Jesus' execution and, indeed, had given him a new and glorious body. So, they believed that they could face their own deaths as well as those of their loved ones in the firm hope that God would be faithful to them as well."