A senior British officer has criticized the US army for its conduct in Iraq, accusing it of institutional racism, moral righteousness, misplaced optimism, and of being ill-suited to engage in counter-insurgency operations.

from truthout.org

posting annoying e-messages is now against the law

It's no joke. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity.

Take that, anonymous! Big Bro Bush is gonna get you!

Three months ago, I wrote that the war in Iraq was wrecking the U.S. Army, and since then the evidence has only mounted, steeply. Faced with repeated failures to meet its recruitment targets, the Army has had to lower its standards dramatically. First it relaxed restrictions against high-school drop-outs. Then it started letting in more applicants who score in the lowest third on the armed forces aptitude test—a group, known as Category IV recruits, who have been kept to exceedingly small numbers, as a matter of firm policy, for the past 20 years. (There is also a Category V—those who score in the lowest 10th percentile. They have always been ineligible for service in the armed forces and, presumably, always will be.)

The bad news is twofold. First, the number of Category IV recruits is starting to skyrocket. Second, a new study compellingly demonstrates that, in all realms of military activity, intelligence does matter. Smarter soldiers and units perform their tasks better; dumber ones do theirs worse.
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In response to the tightening trends, on Sept. 20, 2005, the Defense Department released DoD Instruction 1145.01, which allows 4 percent of each year's recruits to be Category IV applicants—up from the 2 percent limit that had been in place since the mid-1980s. Even so, in October, the Army had such a hard time filling its slots that the floodgates had to be opened; 12 percent of that month's active-duty recruits were Category IV. November was another disastrous month; Army officials won't even say how many Cat IV applicants they took in, except to acknowledge that the percentage was in "double digits."

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Smarter also turns out to be cheaper. One study examined how many Patriot missiles various Army air-defense units had to fire in order to destroy 10 targets. Units with Category I personnel had to fire 20 missiles. Those with Category II had to fire 21 missiles. Category IIIA: 22. Category IIIB: 23. Category IV: 24 missiles. In other words, to perform the same task, Category IV units chewed up 20 percent more hardware than Category I units. For this particular task, since each Patriot missile costs about $2 million, they also chewed up $8 million more of the Army's procurement budget.

Much much more @ The News Blog

http://www.cspan.org/ - Alito Confirmation Questions

Congressman Charlie Bass is having some town hall meetings this week. He'll be in Littleton on Thursday night, at 5 pm at the Littleton Senior Center, at 77 Riverglen Rd. This is a marvelous chance to hold Charlie accountable for all of his recent chicanery. The House will be voting on the budget on Feb.1. The cuts to student loan programs are deeper than they were the first time. Ask Charlie about that $3,000 a year raise he and his buds gave themselves before Thanksgiving. Ask Charlie why, if he's so concerned about cleaning up the corruption in the House, he hasn't given Tom DeLay's $14,300 in campaign contributions back? Ask him about that sleazy deal he tried to broker to help Big Oil avoid paying to clean up MTBE pollution in NH wells.

I will be there, with black and yellow signs that say things like "Don't cut student loan programs to fund tax cuts for millionares." We need a big crowd - so join us!

The press has spilled plenty of ink writing about Jack Abramoff, the powerful Washington lobbyist at the center of an extensive corruption scandal. But little noticed is that among Mr. Abramoff's many clients was the press itself, at least part of it. In 2000, he represented the Magazine Publishers Association, and it turns out that some of the association's money may have been funneled to Mr. Abramoff's political allies.

In documents last week in which Mr. Abramoff pleaded guilty to mail fraud and conspiracy to bribe public officials, he revealed that he and an unidentified Congressional aide worked to stave off an increase in postal rates - a significant benefit for an industry that depends on the postal service.

from Huffington Post

President Bush's conference with 13 former secretaries of state and secretaries of defense on Iraq. How long was the discussion? About 10 minutes, but it provided this lovely photo opportunity.

It looks increasingly likely that wealthy Connecticut businessman Ned Lamont will give Lieberman a primary challenge.

Lamont has apparently promised to spend over a million dollars of his own money on the race. Lowell Weicker will support his campaign and should be present at the announcement. Kiki Kennedy, Ted's wife, has been promoting Lamont to her personal circle -- the Lamonts and Kennedys apparently have long had a warm relationship. Connecticut Citizen Action Group is apparently aboard.

The big questions are whether DFA and MoveOn get involved as they've been threatening the past couple of months. DFA's Jim Dean is being lobbyied hard by Lieberman on Monday. We'll see how that goes. MoveOn's involvement (which would equal money and boots on the ground) would also be crucial to Lamont's chances.

from daily kos [via the newsblog]

The Guardian is running a story today on a report completed and released by Nobel Prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, and Harvard budget expert, Linda Bilmes, which claims the real cost of the War in iraq is likely to cost between one and two trillion dollars.

If anyone heard last night's town hall with Rep. Moran and Rep. Murtha, you may remember one questioner raising this cost projection and Rep. Moran claiming he had never heard it. (CSPAN has the meeting up)

more at Daily Kos

Fox News has the story.

Tom DeLay said this wasn’t going to happen. From the AP, 10/3/05:

The criminal charges are “so frivolous, so over-the-top, so embarrassing to the judiciary that we ought to be able to get it out of here pretty quickly,” DeLay told “Fox News Sunday.” “It will be over and be over very, very soon. And I think I will go back to be majority leader.”

UPDATE: The AP has more.

UPDATE II: DeLay releases his official resignation letter.

from thinkprogress

No Longer House Leader, but not resigning... yet.

“DeLay told the Chronicle Saturday that in recent days he discussed his situation with GOP leaders, including Hastert, and considered several options, including resigning from Congress. In the end he decided against quitting Congress because ‘I still have a lot to contribute to the Houston-Galveston area.’”

form think progress

A little more than a week ago, the right-wingers heralded the results of a poll that they claimed showed a majority of Americans supporting Bush’s illegal warrantless wiretapping policy. Here’s what that poll found:

Sixty-four percent (64%) of Americans believe the National Security Agency (NSA) should be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States.

Michelle Malkin used the poll results to suggest “America Is OK With NSA.” Redstate and the National Review also celebrated the results.

But there was a big problem with the poll question — it failed to say that President Bush was conducting the wiretapping without a warrant. Today, a new AP poll was released showing what Americans truly think of Bush’s policy:

56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism.

from thinkprogress