Does this make you feel safer?

David Nelson is not an easy name to have these days. Across the country men with this name say they have been pulled off airplanes, questioned by FBI agents and harassed when traveling by air.

The nationwide dragnet for terrorists has caused the name to raise red flags on airline screening software, but some federal officials say the problem is essentially a computer glitch, the Los Angeles Daily News reported Sunday.
. . .
Even the former child star of ABC-TV’s “The adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” was stopped by a ticket agent at John Wayne Airport in December while en route to visit his daughter in Salt Lake City.
. . .
A so-called “no-fly” list was introduced after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and is meant to prevent potential terrorists from boarding planes. The TSA gets names from law enforcement officials and hands the list over to airlines to screen passengers.

In April, Transportation Security Administration spokesman Nico Melendez said those on the no-fly list pose, or are suspected of posing, a threat to civil aviation and national security.

“We do not confirm the presence of a particular name of an individual on a list,” he said. “It’s security information that we just won’t do.”

Melendez told the Daily News that the “David Nelson” problem is due to a name-matching technology used by many airlines. He said it’s not the name but letters in the name that are randomly flagged by the software.

I wonder if David Nelsons are allowed to vote in Florida?

Wow. I need to look around in my “bulk” mail folder more often. I might find more emails like this :

SARS & the Global Economy :
A SIGN OF THE END TIMES?

You’ve asked the questions. Now get answers from a respected, authoritative perspective. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, best-selling authors of the Left Behind series, along with noted Bible historian and end times analyst Mark Hitchcock have teamed up to lead the Left Behind Prophecy Club.
. . .
Subscribe now and find out:

? Is the UN a precursor of the One World government prophesied in the Bible?
? Could the Antichrist be alive now? If so, how can he be identified so he does not deceive us?
? Are ATM’s and other revolutions in global banking foretelling of the Mark of the Beast?

Should I be scared that this dangerously retarded mix of conspiracy theory and religious zealotry is espoused by the authors of one of the most popular books series in the world? Actually, I’m more scared that our leaders (y’know, the ones trying to negotiate peace between Israel and Palestine) believe this shit.

This is the first time I remember Frank Keating saying anything I agreed with :

Former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating’s expected resignation as head of a panel examining sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests was met with disappointment by church critics, while others said it wouldn’t be a fatal setback to the probe.

Keating’s spokesman Dan Mahoney said Sunday that on Monday or Tuesday Keating will send a resignation letter to Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Mahoney said Keating had thought of resigning for several months but criticism of recent remarks he made that likened church leadership to the Mafia “hastened his decision.”

Representatives of abuse victims were dismayed by the development.

“It’s very disturbing that a couple of candid remarks are apparently so upsetting to the bishops,” said David Clohessy, national director of Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
. . .
The resignation follows a Los Angeles Times interview in which Keating said of unnamed church officials: “To act like La Cosa Nostra and hide and suppress, I think, is very unhealthy. Eventually it will all come out.”

Of course Keating’s comparison was a little unfair. Even Mafia guys know raping children is bad.

Seriously though, there does seem to be a trait of Catholicism that allows this kind of thing to flourish that doesn’t seem to exist in Protestantism. Whether celibacy in the priesthood, church secrecy, or something else is to blame for these scandals, it’s clear that this kind of thing doesn’t happen with other religions with any kind of regularity.

What the Catholic church fails to realize is that the coverup is worse than the crime. Priests have been molesting altar boys for a long time, but it wasn’t until recently that people realized the lengths that church officials were willing to go to keep these incidents hidden. The shocking thing wasn’t that priests were molesting boys, but that they were allowed to keep doing it. The Catholic Church’s heirarchy seems to have been united in their attempt to cover up the extent of the problem.

Two of my favorite blogs have new homes today : Dr. Frank has moved to doktorfrank.com and Ezra Klein has moved to notgeniuses.com (which looks great). If you haven’t read either blog, you should definitely check them out. On the homefront, I’ve also taken the first step towards moving out of the Blogger ghetto into my own domain running Moveable Type. Within the next couple weeks, this site will be more stable, have permanent comments, and all sorts of other goodies. If blogging is light, it’s because I’m trying to get the new site set up.

Granted, this is from Ted Rall (the king of exaggeration) but this is still a good read :

Calling for a full Congressional investigation, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) of the Armed Services Committee, says: “I think that the nation’s credibility is on the line, as well as Bush’s.” But not even the discovery of a vast WMD arsenal should save Bush now. Assuming that one accepts preemption as a legitimate cause for war–and one ought not–you must possess airtight substantiation that a nation poses an imminent and significant threat before you drop bombs on its cities. Evidence that falls short of 100 percent proof, presented in advance, doesn’t pass the pre-empt test.

Bush claimed to have that proof. He said that Iraq could deploy its biological and chemical weapons with just 45 minutes notice. He painted gruesome pictures of American cities in ruins, their debris irradiated by an Iraqi “dirty bomb.” It was all a bald-faced lie, and lying presidents get impeached.

George W. Bush, like Richard Nixon, “endeavor[ed] to misuse the Central Intelligence Agency (news – web sites).” George W. Bush, like Richard Nixon, “[made] or caus[ed] to be made false or misleading public statements for the purpose of deceiving the people of the United States.” (The legalese comes from the first Article of Impeachment against Nixon, passed by the House Judiciary Committee (news – web sites) on July 27, 1974. Faced with certain impeachment in the House and conviction in the senate, Nixon resigned two weeks later.)

It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t had much time to post. Here’s a picture of George Bush falling off a Segway to tide you over :

“So easy to use, that my seven year old son was able to master it within 5 minutes.”
- segwaychat.com

Spinsanity has a great article about Bush’s tricky use of language :

President Bush’s recent claim that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq highlights two disturbing trends in rhetoric from the White House. The first, as we have pointed out, is the Bush administration’s record of factual misstatements and distortions. The second is the administration’s – and especially President Bush’s – history of strategically ambiguous statements that, while technically or arguably true, imply connections between two things which he cannot directly demonstrate.
. . .
Bush has offered similar rhetorical linkages between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks of September 11th. As we have noted, there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime was involved in those attacks in any way. In an October 7, 2002 speech in Cincinnati, Bush announced that:

We know that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy — the United States of America. We know that Iraq and al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade. Some al Qaeda leaders who fled Afghanistan went to Iraq. These include one very senior al Qaeda leader who received medical treatment in Baghdad this year, and who has been associated with planning for chemical and biological attacks. We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases. And we know that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.

Bush’s statement brackets assertions implying an operational connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda — a connection that is still hotly debated — with vague assertions that because “that Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy” and that “after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein’s regime gleefully celebrated the terrorist attacks,” Iraq is guilty for those attacks by association.
. . .
Bush has become a master of making statements that are factually true but misleading, while escaping criticism for doing so from the press corps. This is partly a result of the deference generally granted to the president. Bush’s reputation for imprecise speech may also make reporters reluctant to criticize his words so closely. And because his claims are often phrased in complicated and confusing ways, they are difficult for the press to directly refute. Nonetheless, the implications of the President’s strategically ambiguous statements must be addressed.

When reading the article (you really should read the whole thing), I couldn’t shake the image of Bush as Kevin Spacey’s character from The Usual Suspects, awkwardly sputtering claims about evildoers while secretly planning his next devious plan (which, apparently, is to completely bankrupt Social Security).

There’s yet another mini-scandal about Boy Scouts banning homosexuals :

Philadelphia’s Boy Scout council, which defied the national organization last month by promising not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, has ousted a Scout for publicly announcing he is gay.

Gregory Lattera, 18, said he learned of the decision on Saturday when he got a letter from the Cradle of Liberty Council, which runs the Boy Scout programs in Philadelphia and two suburban counties.

The same council, the nation’s third largest, voted May 28 to add sexual orientation to its nondiscrimination policy.

Every liberal bone in my body tells me that I should condemn this, but the more I think about it the more I tend to take the Boy Scouts side in this. Although they don’t like to admit it, the Boy scouts are essentially a non-denominational religious youth group. It’s their strong religious ties that make them so insistent on excluding gays :

The ban on gay leaders is based on the last two lines of the Scout Oath (“To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight”). Ironically, the oath is modeled after the mission statement of the YMCA, which does not ban gays. Although the Scouts’ ban has been enforced for decades, a growing segment of the religious organizations that sponsor Scout units now oppose it. And even the most ardent anti-gay denominations have no trouble sponsoring units in other organizations, such as the Girl Scouts, that welcome gay men and lesbians. All this raises a question: how did the Scouts get into this mess in the first place?

More than any other factor, the close relationship between the BSA and religious organizations like the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) — the Mormons — explains why the BSA pursued its anti-gay policy all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. It also explains why the BSA stands alone among Boy Scout organizations around the world, and among other youth-serving organizations including the Girl Scouts, the Big Brothers/Big Sisters Association, and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (see “Gay Friendly,” below), in barring homosexuals.
. . .
Over the years, Scouting became the official youth-ministry program for Mormon boys. In a 1990 LDS newsletter, Apostle Thomas S. Monson said the Church and its troops “serve together; they work together.” He added: “Every program I’ve seen from Scouting complements the objectives we are attempting to achieve in the lives of our young men, helping them strive for exaltation.” Today the LDS Church sponsors 31,000 Scout units, more than any other group — although United Methodist-chartered units account for slightly more Scouts (424,000).

Sixty-five percent of all Scout units are sponsored by religious organizations, according to the BSA. And Mike Montalvo, a Dallas researcher who has examined the Boy Scouts, says 55 percent of all Boy Scouts come from religious organizations. The rest of the Scout units are sponsored by government organizations (such as police departments), educational associations (such as schools), and civic organizations (such as Lions Clubs).

Regardless of the precise numbers, religious-organization influence on Scouting cannot be overstated. Officials from various denominations — including Mormon, Catholic, Methodist, Lutheran, and Presbyterian — sit on the BSA executive board and its advisory council. Most of the churches have organizations dedicated to Scouting, such as the Lutheran Association for Scouters, formed to “encourage Lutheran congregations to use the programs and resources of the Boy Scouts of America as a means of extending their ministry to children, youth, and families.” The BSA has a Religious Relations Subcommittee. And the BSA has sanctioned badges for churches to award their Scouts for accomplishments tied to religious education: the “God and Country” badge for Baptists, for instance, and the “Religion in Life” badge for Unitarians.

Personally, I think it’s repellent that the BSA is controlled by homophobes, but as a private organization, the Boy Scouts should be as free to exclude gays as the KKK is free to exclude Jews or the GOP is free to exclude more than one of each minority. People who are strongly against the Boy Scouts exclusion of homosexuals would be better off seeking to end government sponsorship of Scouting altogether. As long as they don’t get any tax money and don’t get sponsorship from public schools, police and fire departments, or any other government entity, they should be allowed to associate with anyone they want.

For those of us who still cling to the hope that WMDs will be found in Iraq, here’s some news for you (courtesy of Bob Harris) :

U.S. military units assigned to track down Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have run out of places to look and are getting time off or being assigned to other duties, even as pressure mounts on President Bush to explain why no banned arms have been found.

After nearly three months of fruitless searches, weapons hunters say they are now waiting for a large team of Pentagon intelligence experts to take over the effort, relying more on leads from interviews and documents.

“It doesn’t appear there are any more targets at this time,” said Lt. Col. Keith Harrington, whose team has been cut by more than 30 percent. “We’re hanging around with no missions in the foreseeable future.”

Over the past week, his and several other teams have been taken off assignment completely. Rather than visit suspected weapons sites, they are brushing up on target practice and catching up on letters home.

I’m sure eventually they’ll find a dirty petri dish somewhere and try to convince us that that was what they meant when Bush said “500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent”.

The U.S. was just granted temporary immunity from prosecution for war crimes :

The U.N. Security Council on Thursday approved another one-year exemption for American peacekeepers from prosecution by the new international war crimes tribunal, but it faced opposition from France, Germany and Syria.
. . .
Then President Bill Clinton’s administration signed the 1988 Rome treaty setting up the court, but the Bush administration has rescinded the U.S. signature.

President Bush contends that Americans could be subject to the court’s jurisdiction even if it is not a party to the pact. Washington argues that the court could be used for frivolous or politically motivated prosecutions of American troops. In addition to the exemption, it also has signed bilateral agreements with 37 countries not to prosecute American officials ? and is seeking more.

How the hell can they justify this? Does the war on terrorism require the occasional genocide? The fact that the Bush administration rescinded the U.S. signature on the treaty just proves even more how immoral those sons-of-bitches are. This is yet another reason why the world sees Americans as arrogant, selfish, and brutal assholes who are willing to kill anyone and destroy any cultures that get between us and what we want.

Well there’s some bad news …

Congressional Republicans on Wednesday rejected senate calls for a formal investigation into intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs, contending that such a probe could harm intelligence agencies’ work.

The majority Republicans said routine oversight by Congress’ Intelligence and Armed Services committees will be adequate to evaluate intelligence findings that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Those findings served as the basis for the war on Iraq, but no such weapons have been found.

…and some good news (via Tom Tomorrow)

Intelligence officers are holding a “smoking gun” which proves that they were subjected to a series of demands by Tony Blair’s staff in the run-up to the Iraq war.

The officers are furious about the accusation levelled by the Leader of the Commons, John Reid, that “rogue elements” are at work in the security services. They fear they are being lined up to take the blame for faulty intelligence used to justify the Iraq war.

The intelligence services were so concerned about demands made by Downing Street for evidence to use against Iraq that extensive files have been built up detailing communications with Mr Blair’s staff.
. . .
“A smoking gun may well exist over WMDs, but it may not be to the Government’s liking,” said one senior source. “Minuted details will show exactly what went on. Because of the frequency and, at times, unusual nature of the demands from Downing Street, people have made sure records were kept. There is a certain amount of self-preservation in this, of course.”

So it looks like the Republicans are going to try to sweep this under the rug, but the Brits aren’t nearly as forgiving. If Tony Blair ends up losing his job over this, then there’s a damn good chance that there will be some serious political fallout for the Bush Adminstration as well (provided that the Democrats actually grow a spine).

These days, everybody is peering into their crystal balls trying to predict the result of the 2004 election. The responses have ranged from scary as hell…

In crafting its agenda for economic reform, the Bush administration has the luxury of being able to think and plan over a full eight years. This is because the 2002 redistricting gave Republicans a lock on the House of Representatives until 2012 and the Founding Fathers gerrymandered the senate for Republican control. In the 50-50 election that was 2000, Bush carried 30 states and Al Gore 20. Over time, a reasonably competent Republican Party will tend to 60 Republicans in the senate. This guarantee of united Republican government has allowed the Bush administration to work and think long-term.
. . .
The Pentagon used to debate whether we had enough strength to fight two wars at the same time. The Bush administration is demonstrating that it can operate successfully on two fronts, fighting the war on terrorism and at the same time embarking on fundamental economic reform.

…to cautioned but optimistic.

A sitting president is always beatable. You just cannot assume anything in American politics a year and a half ahead of an election. I think Bush is most vulnerable now on two counts. One is the economy; if there’s a kind of continuing deflation — which the economists are worried about now — if there is a recession that enters into the picture, I think it’s going to remind people a lot of his father.
. . .
I think he’s also potentially vulnerable on this issue of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — if they’re not found and there’s a continuing drumbeat about the idea that he pushed us into this war without really having authoritative information.

Personally, I think Bush has been a big enough failure on foreign policy, the economy, the budget, homeland security funding, veterans affairs, and civil liberties that his odds of being reelected are about 50-50. Of course, the more Bush screws up, the more the 2004 election reminds me of this 50-50 scenario :

The demise of civilization has been predicted since it began, but the odds of keeping Planet Earth alive and well are getting worse amid a breakneck pace of scientific advances, according to Martin Rees, Britain’s honorary astronomer royal.

Rees calculates that the odds of an apocalyptic disaster striking Earth have risen to about 50 percent from 20 percent a hundred years ago.
. . .
He lists as mankind’s biggest threats: nuclear terrorism, deadly engineered viruses, rogue machines and genetic engineering that could alter human character. All of those could result from innocent error or the action of a single malevolent individual.

Why isn’t this front page news?

At least 3,240 civilians died across Iraq during a month of war, including 1,896 in Baghdad, according to a five-week Associated Press investigation.

The count is still fragmentary, and the complete toll ? if it is ever tallied ? is sure to be significantly higher.
. . .
The AP count was based on records from 60 of Iraq’s 124 hospitals ? including almost all of the large ones ? and covers the period between March 20, when the war began, and April 20, when fighting was dying down and coalition forces announced they would soon declare major combat over. AP journalists traveled to all of these hospitals, studying their logs, examining death certificates where available and interviewing officials about what they witnessed.

The AP’s numbers only cover deaths reported by half of Iraq’s hospitals during a one month span. Considering the fact that Iraq was littered with cluster bombs that are still killing people, there are still serious infrastructure problems that need to be fixed, and Iraq has been in complete chaos since the war started, I think their numbers are very low.

A more authoritative source is Iraq Body Count, who currently puts the number of civilian dead between 5531 and 7203. Considering that their numbers are based on deaths reported by various media sources, even those numbers seem a little low since they would overlook the deaths of anyone civilians who weren’t “fortunate” enough to have their deaths noticed by an embeded journalist.

We’ll probably never know the exact numbers, but it’s safe to assume the number of dead equals at least two World Trade Centers. Considering that more and more evidence points to the fact that the Bush Administration skewed information to get into this war, I’m starting to rethink my opposition to using the “I-word”.

Here’s a look into how the Bush Administration turns their bullshit into “facts” (via Atrios) :

Take the case of staff reporter Judith Miller, who covers the atomic bomb/chemical-weapons-fear beat, and hasn’t heard a scare story about Iraq that she didn’t believe, especially if leaked by her White House friends. On Sept. 8, 2002, Ms. Miller and her colleague Michael Gordon helped co-launch the Bush II sales campaign for Saddam-change with a front page story about unsuccessful Iraqi efforts to purchase 81-mm aluminum tubes, allegedly destined for a revived nuclear weapons program.

Pitched to a 9/11-spooked public and a gullible, cowardly U.S. congress, the aluminum tubes plant was a big component of the “weapons of mass destruction” canard, which resulted in hasty House and senate war authorization on Oct. 11.

Months later, when the tubes connection was thoroughly discredited (UN weapons inspectors past and present said the tubes were intended for conventional rocket production), the Times did not think it necessary to run a clarification. Nor was Ms. Miller disciplined for shoddy work; on the contrary, when the A-bomb threat had faded, the Bush administration astutely shifted the media’s focus to chemical and biological weapons — and Ms. Miller fell into line with the program.
. . .
When officials leak a “fact” to Ms. Miller, they then can cite her subsequent stenography in the Times as corroboration of their own propaganda, as though the Times had conducted its own independent investigation. On Sept. 8, Dick Cheney cited the Times’s aluminum tubes nonsense on Meet the Press to buttress his casus belli.

More recently, on May 23, former CIA director and Bush apologist James Woolsey was challenged by CNN International’s Daljit Dhaliwal in very un-Timesian fashion about the absence of weapons and the world’s resulting skepticism. Mr. Woolsey replied, “Well, I think the key thing on that is the very fine reporting that’s been done by Judith Miller of The New York Times.”

So it works like this :

(1) The Administration has a theory that lacks sufficient evidence (ie. Iraq’s aluminum tubes) and leaks whatever shoddy intelligence they have to the media

(2) The media obediently presents the leaks as facts without ever doing any independent research or fact checking

(3) When presenting to Congress, the U.N., and the American people, the Administration cites the press releases credible news reports that are based on their trumped up evidence as facts

In Andrew Sullivan’s latest column, he demands a correction from the Bush Administration critics issue corrections for reporting the story of the looted Iraqi museum. It seems that the Iraqi museum director’s initial estimate of 170,000 was almost completely false. Since the actual number of missing artifacts was around 3000 and only 33 of those are “priceless artifacts”, Sullivan figures that Bush is owed an apology.

But museums weren’t the only places looted in Iraq. The military also failed to guard Iraq’s largest nuclear site :

Thousands of villagers raided the nuclear site, which contains low-grade or natural uranium, immediately after the fall of Saddam’s regime.

Local scientists warn the site, outside Baghdad, is badly damaged, with looters having spilled radioactive material and leaving behind piles of uranium, The Associated Press said.

For an Administration that’s been going on and on about weapons falling into the “wrong hands”, you’d think they’d do jack shit when they got to Iraq. If Bush’s claim that Iraq was crawling with al Qaeda agents, doesn’t it make this scenario much, much more likely?

the United States said it believes that despite recent setbacks, “al-Qaida maintains the ability to inflict significant casualties in the United States with little or no warning.”

“The al-Qaida network will remain for the foreseeable future the most immediate and serious terrorism threat facing the United States,” the report said. “Al-Qaida will continue to favor spectacular attacks but also may seek softer targets of opportunity, such as banks, shopping malls, supermarkets, and places of recreation and entertainment.”

The report said the terrorist organization “will continue its efforts to acquire and develop biological, chemical, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) weapons.”
. . .
A radiological weapon is a so-called “dirty bomb,” which uses traditional explosives to disperse radioactivity. Such bombs could use lower-grade radioactive material which can be more easily produced or obtained than the high-grade uranium and plutonium used for nuclear weapons.

Does anyone feel safer now that we’ve gone into Iraq? Andrew Sullivan may think that Bush’s critics owe him an apology, but he way I see it, George Bush owes us all an apology for either lying about the risk that Iraq posed to us and their links to al Qaeda or completely failing to protect our safety.