WASHINGTON — In a few key areas — electricity, the judicial system and overall security — the Iraq that America handed back to its residents Monday is worse off than before the war began last year, according to calculations in a new General Accounting Office report released yesterday.

The 105-page report by Congress' investigative arm offers a bleak assessment of Iraq after 14 months of U.S. military occupation. Among its findings:

• In 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces, electricity was available fewer hours per day on average last month than before the war. Nearly 20 million of Iraq's 26 million people live in those provinces.

• Only $13.7 billion of the $58 billion pledged and allocated worldwide to rebuild Iraq has been spent, with $10 billion more about to be spent. The biggest chunk of that money has been used to run Iraq's ministry operations.

• The country's court system is more clogged than before the war, and judges are frequent targets of assassination attempts.

• The new Iraqi civil-defense, police and overall security units are suffering from mass desertions, are poorly trained and ill-equipped.

• The number of what the now-disbanded Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) called significant insurgent attacks skyrocketed from 411 in February to 1,169 in May.

The report was released the same day the CPA's inspector general issued three reports that highlighted serious management difficulties at the CPA. The reports found that the CPA wasted millions of dollars at a Hilton resort hotel in Kuwait because it didn't have guidelines for who could stay there, lost track of how many employees it had in Iraq and didn't track reconstruction projects funded by international donors to ensure they didn't duplicate U.S. projects. [link via Atrios]

New York Times:

More than a year into an aid effort that American officials likened to the Marshall Plan, occupation authorities acknowledge that fewer than 140 of 2,300 promised construction projects are under way. Only three months after L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator who departed Monday, pledged that 50,000 Iraqis would find jobs at construction sites before the formal transfer of sovereignty, fewer than 20,000 local workers are employed.

Inside the high-profile Doura plant, American-financed repairs, originally scheduled to be completed by June 1, have dragged into the summer even as the demand for electricity soars and residents suffer through nightly power failures.

At the same time, an economy that is supposed to become a beacon of free enterprise remains warped by central controls and huge subsidies for energy and food, leaving politically explosive policy choices for the fledgling Iraqi government.

While the interim government has formally taken office, the reconstruction effort — involving everything from building electric and sewage plants to training police officers and judges — is only beginning. [link via Daily Kos]

An examination of the Bush military files within the context of US Statutory Law, Department of Defense regulations, and Air Force policies and procedures of that era lead to a single conclusion:  George W. Bush was considered a deserter by the United States Air Force. [link via Atrios]

Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror

By Anonymous. Brassey's.320 pp. $27.50

For those Americans who had begun to doubt whether the Central Intelligence Agency could produce good analysis, Imperial Hubris clearly demonstrates otherwise. It is a powerful, persuasive analysis of the terrorist threat and the Bush administration's failed efforts to fight it. The CIA carefully vetted the book to ensure that no "sources and methods" were exposed, but the anonymous author -- a current CIA official -- draws effectively on the years he's spent carefully studying detailed intelligence reports from several U.S. and many foreign spy agencies. His criticism is damning.

The writer, author of the 2002 book Through Our Enemies' Eyes, declares that the U.S. war on terrorism is a failure. While admitting that President George W. Bush is technically correct when he says that "two-thirds of the known al Qaeda managers have been caught or killed," the author points out that other leaders have emerged to take their place. The president's often-repeated "two thirds" claim is based on an assessment of al Qaeda Shura Council members in September 2001. Some of them, like Muhammad Atef, are dead; he was killed by a CIA-controlled Predator flying over Kabul. Others, like Khalid Sheik Muhammad, are in U.S. custody; he was arrested in Pakistan. Many are under "house arrest" in Iran, in large part because the United States refused to bargain for their handover. Others, notably bin Laden and his deputy, are alive and apparently well, issuing audio tapes to the faithful.

The original al Qaeda, as the author points out, has been overtaken by a series of regionally based, autonomous jihadist terrorist groups, which carried out post-Sept. 11 attacks in Bali, Riyadh, Madrid, Istanbul, Casablanca, Chechnya, the Philippines, Thailand and Iraq. Despite the initial claim of State Department analysts -- in the annual report on terrorism -- that attacks have gone down, this new network of al Qaeda spinoffs has actually staged twice as many attacks since Sept. 11 as al Qaeda had prior to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. (The State Department has now withdrawn its report and corrected its error, admitting that 2003 marked an all-time high for the terrorist incidents.)

Anonymous writes that the conduct of U.S. military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan has left both countries "seething with anti-U.S. sentiment, fertile grounds for the expansion of al Qaeda and kindred groups." This CIA officer believes the U.S. invasion of Iraq was exactly what bin Laden and his associates had hoped would happen -- a belief that many counterterroism experts privately share. The Iraq invasion gave a new cause to the jihadists and new evidence to Arab militants that Americans are the "new crusaders" -- i.e., foreign infidels bent on conquest. The result has been more recruits, more suicide bombers and more money to the jihadists.

Anonymous underlines a central point: The United States must realize who the enemy is. "The one thing accomplished by refusing to admit a war exists with an enemy of immense durability, manpower, and resources is to delay design of a strategy for victory."

Anonymous has painted a detailed picture of that enemy -- and, despite the administration's ubiquitous phrase, it is not "terrorism," faceless and abstract. Terrorism is a tactic. The enemy is "an Islamic insurgency," a multinational movement to replace governments in the Islamic world with fundamentalist theocracies. Jihadist leaders believe they must eliminate the American presence in the region and U.S. support for existing governments there so that they can seize power. Later, some of them may fight to establish Islamist governments in Europe and America. For now, their combat against the "far enemy" (i.e., us) is designed merely to kick out the struts supporting the "near enemy" (governments in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan and elsewhere). Like President Bush, Anonymous argues that we have made the mistake in the past of thinking about these enemies as criminals. But unlike Bush, Anonymous argues that having thus isolated the threat as an Islamic insurgency, the appropriate response is to fight not just with bullets and warrants, but also with ideas -- politically and socially. [link via Pandagon]

[T]he reason Michael Moore's movie is so popular is mostly because he's presenting a certain point of view which is almost entirely missing from mainstream media. Basically, it's 3 things - 1) Bush isn't such a great leader, 2) It's fair to question Bush's motives, and 3) The Iraq war was a really bad idea. Now, whatever the rightness or wrongness of those perspectives, they aren't being articulated in the mainstream.

I thought Fahrenheit 9/11 was a bit mediocre even as polemic, but the thing that really struck me about the film was the almost poetic parallellism between its own slanders and cheap shots and the slanders and cheap shots of pro-war supporters themselves over the past couple of years. If Moore had done this deliberately, it would have been worthy of Henry James.

Take the first half hour of the film, in which Moore exposes the close relationship between the Bush family and the House of Saud. Sure, it relies mostly on innuendo and imagery, but then again, he never really makes the case anyway. He never flat out says that the Bush family is on the Saudi payroll. Rather, he simply includes "9/11," "Bush," and "Saudi Arabia" in as many sentences as possible, thus leaving the distinct impression that George Bush is a bought and paid for subsidiary of the Saudi royal family.

Which is all remarkably similar to the tactic Bush himself used to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11. He never flat out blamed Saddam, but rather made sure to include the words "9/11," "Saddam Hussein," and "al-Qaeda" in as many sentences as possible, thus leaving the distinct impression that Saddam had something to do with it.

Or take Afghanistan. In a lengthy and nearly unreadable screed in Slate, Christopher Hitchens takes Moore to task for arguing in 2002 that the war in Afghanistan was unjust but then arguing in the film that Iraq was a distraction from the real war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Surely I'm not the only one who's reminded by this of the ever shifting rationales for war from the Bush administration itself? In 2002 it was mostly about WMD. But there was no WMD. So then it became al-Qaeda. But there were no serious al-Qaeda ties. How about liberation? Maybe, except the Iraqis don't seem especially happy with their liberators. Democracy? Stay tuned.

Finally, the last half hour of the film includes a piece of street theater in which Moore accosts congressmen on Capitol Hill and asks if they'll try to get their sons and daughters to enlist in the military. It's a brutally unfair question, but one that echoes a standard debating point of Hitchens and others: "Would you prefer that Saddam Hussein was still in power?" It's a question that's unanswerable in 10 words or less, and about as meaningful as Moore's ambush interviews with congressmen.

So is Fahrenheit 9/11 unfair, full of innuendo and cheap shots, and guilty of specious arguments? Sure. But that just makes it the perfect complement to the arguments of many in the pro-war crowd itself. Perhaps the reason they're so mad is that they see more than a little of themselves in it.

I think Kevin is being a little too harsh. Contrary to the Bushies' insinuations, there is no connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, and no meaningful connection between Saddam and al Qaeda. By contrast, there really is an extraordinarily close relationship between the Bushes and the Saudis, one that raises a lot of questions given that Bush 43 is President of the United States, and Bush 41 used to be. And Dubya has given exceptional treatment to Saudi Arabia in various ways, including flying 140 or so Saudis out of the United States immediately after September 11, and redacting 27 pages of the 9/11 report (purportedly on grounds of national security) that apparently pertained to Saudi Arabia. But I agree that Moore ought to more explicitly state his claim instead of relying on innuendo.

Moore failed to score some points that he should have. His footage of Bush reading to the schoolchildren for seven minutes after he knew that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center is shocking, but could have been even more effective. As Randi Rhodes has said on Air America, Moore could have used a split screen to show what was going on (1) after he entered the classroom knowing that the first plane had crashed into the WTC and (2) after he continued to read to the kids, knowing that the second plane had crashed. Moore never makes the key point that Bush never ordered the remaining planes shot down, and that it was Cheney who did so -- after all four of them had crashed. Bush froze like a deer caught in the headlights, while a leader would have acted, and possibly saved hundreds of lives and one of the Twin Towers.

This story is well known to those of us in the left blogosphere, but the media have inexcusably ignored it. So did the Democratic leadership, as far as I know. If President Gore or President Clinton had done this (especially after spending the previous month on vacation, despite having been told that there was a high likelihood of an imminent terrorist attack in the United States), Republicans would have been howling and rightly demanding his impeachment.

Link:

WASHINGTON — The government needs to establish guidelines for canceling or rescheduling elections if terrorists strike the United States again, says the chairman of a new federal voting commission.

Such guidelines do not currently exist, said DeForest B. Soaries, head of the voting panel.

Soaries was appointed to the federal Election Assistance Commission last year by President Bush.

"Canceling elections"? I can conceive of circumstances where rescheduling elections might be appropriate, but what legitimate reason would there be for canceling them?

White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales assembled reporters in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building last week for what has become an administration ritual: disavowing the conclusions of official documents.

Administration memos -- some of which appeared to sanction torture of prisoners -- were "unnecessary, over-broad discussions" and "not relied upon" by policymakers, Gonzales said. "In reality, they do not reflect the policies that the administration ultimately adopted."

A week earlier, it was Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's turn to step away from an official document, this one State's "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report, which showed the number of terrorist incidents worldwide falling to the lowest level in more than three decades. "Unfortunately, the data that is within the report, the actual numbers of incidents, is off, it's wrong," Powell said. "And I am regretful that this has happened." A revised report showed that 625 people died in terrorist attacks in 2003, not 307 as first reported.

Before that, the administration publicly disavowed -- or at least tiptoed away from -- a budget memo calling for spending cuts next year, unrealistically upbeat reports about job growth, Medicare prescription costs and minority health care, and optimistic assumptions in a proposed regulation governing mercury emissions.

Democrats say this is no accident. "It's either political manipulation or incompetence," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), a former top aide to President Bill Clinton. "I know it's not incompetence." [link via Tristero]

Dana Milbank deserves a Pulitzer. Time and again, he has documented the lies of the Bush regime (which early on tried to get him fired for not being a compliant media whore, like 99% of "journalists").

Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor. 

LOS ANGELES, June 27 — Michael Moore's anti-Bush "Fahrenheit 9/11" became the highest-grossing documentary of all time on its first weekend in release, taking in $21.8 million as it packed theaters across the country this weekend.

The movie, mocking President Bush and criticizing his decision to go to war in Iraq, was No. 1 at the box office, beating out the popular comedies "White Chicks" and "DodgeBall," which were playing on almost triple the number of screens.

Theater owners in large cities and smaller towns reported sellout crowds over the weekend, with numerous theaters declaring house records.

The phenomenal opening represented a decisive victory for Mr. Moore and for the Miramax movie executives Harvey and Bob Weinstein, who released the film independently after it was rejected by Miramax's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company, as too political.

"We sold out in Fayetteville, home of Fort Bragg," in North Carolina, Mr. Moore said on Sunday. "We sold out in Army-base towns. We set house records in some of these places. We set single-day records in a number of theaters. We got standing ovations in Greensboro, N.C.

"The biggest news to me this morning is this is a red-state movie," he said, referring to the state whose residents voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. "Republican states are embracing the movie, and it's sold out in Republican strongholds all over the country."

Harvey Weinstein said: "It's beyond anybody's expectations. I'd have to say the sky's the limit on this movie. Who knows what territory we're in."

Mr. Moore's 2002 film, "Bowling for Columbine," had held the record for the highest-earning documentary until this weekend, taking in $21.6 million in its domestic run.

Market research leading up to the weekend had shown that the documentary would rank second or third at the box office after the two mainstream comedies. But "White Chicks" took in $19.6 million for the weekend on 2,726 screens, while "DodgeBall" took in $18.5 million on 3,020. "Fahrenheit 9/11," rated R, was released on 868 screens.

The author of the article does display a touch of innumeracy in claiming that 2,726 and 3,020 (the number of screens "White Chicks" and "Dodge Ball" are playing on) are "almost triple" 868. Thrice 868 is 2,604.

In Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 9/11, we are treated to . . . videotaped footage of George W. Bush taken on September 11, 2001. In this sequence, Bush, having just been told that a passenger plane struck one of the World Trade Center towers, enters a Florida classroom and begins reading "My Pet Goat" with a group of kids. At this point, you've got to be struck by the fact that, having been informed of an incident that at the very least involves the deaths of hundreds of airline passengers and tower employees, Bush decides to proceed with a cheap photo op staged to convince America that he's interested in education. But the kicker . . . comes a few minutes later. One of Bush's aides walks into the room and whispers to our fearless leader that a second plane has hit the other tower. At this instant, there is no doubt that America is under a large, coordinated terrorist attack. So what bold, decisive action does Bush take? None. He just sits there like a dumb sh*t. And he does so for almost seven minutes before he finally leaves the room.

Now, Bush is spending $200 million to convince Americans that he's a leader. That he's decisive. That he can and will take bold action in the face of a crisis. But thanks to the videotape shot on September 11, we know it's a lie. Fahrenheit 9/11 shows us what all the misleading advertising in the world couldn't cover up: When faced with a real emergency, George W. Bush, with nobody to tell him what to say or how to act, simply froze. For almost seven minutes on September 11, America was paying a $400,000 yearly salary to an ice sculpture. I dare any pundit, any handler, anybody who supports this loser to explain this away.

The game is up. In an era when this administration's policies have made America the most hated country on the planet, our very survival requires that we have a strong leader at the bridge. And Americans now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that George W. Bush is no leader. We have the videotape to prove it.

There were an array of opinions from the bench in the detention cases today. By far, the most striking and passionate were those of Justice Scalia concurring in Hamdi and Justice Stevens dissenting in Padilla. Justice Scalia argued forcefully that the government must charge Hamdi with treason in court, and the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus has a vital tradition and could be suspended only by Congress through democratic means. Justice Stevens, using exceptionally strong rhetoric, argued that the detention of Padilla incommunicado amounted to the “tools of a tyrant.” 

The CIA has suspended the use of extraordinary interrogation techniques approved by the White House pending a review by Justice Department and other administration lawyers, intelligence officials said.

The "enhanced interrogation techniques," as the CIA calls them, include feigned drowning and refusal of pain medication for injuries. The tactics have been used to elicit intelligence from al Qaeda leaders such as Abu Zubaida and Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Current and former CIA officers aware of the recent decision said the suspension reflects the CIA's fears of being accused of unsanctioned and illegal activities, as it was in the 1970s. The decision applies to CIA detention facilities, such as those around the world where the agency is interrogating al Qaeda leaders and their supporters, but not military prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and elsewhere.

"Everything's on hold," said a former senior CIA official aware of the agency's decision. "The whole thing has been stopped until we sort out whether we are sure we're on legal ground." A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the issue.

CIA interrogations will continue but without the suspended techniques, which include feigning suffocation, "stress positions," light and noise bombardment, sleep deprivation, and making captives think they are being interrogated by another government.

The suspension is the latest fallout from the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and is related to the White House decision, announced Tuesday, to review and rewrite sections of an Aug. 1, 2002, Justice Department opinion on interrogations that said torture might be justified in some cases.

Although the White House repudiated the memo Tuesday as the work of a small group of lawyers at the Justice Department, administration officials now confirm it was vetted by a larger number of officials, including lawyers at the National Security Council, the White House counsel's office and Vice President Cheney's office.

The memorandum was drafted by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to help the CIA determine how aggressive its interrogators could be during sessions with suspected al Qaeda members. The legal opinion was signed by Jay S. Bybee, then head of the office and now a federal judge. The office consists mainly of political appointees and is considered the executive branch agencies' legal adviser. Memos signed by the head of the office are given the weight of a binding legal opinion.

A Justice Department official said Tuesday at a briefing that the office went "beyond what was asked for," but other lawyers and administration officials said the memo was approved by the department's criminal division and by the office of Attorney General John D. Ashcroft.

In addition, Timothy E. Flanigan -- then deputy White House counsel -- discussed a draft of the document with lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel before it was finalized, the officials said. David S. Addington, Cheney's counsel, also weighed in with remarks during at least one meeting he held with Justice lawyers involved with writing the opinion. He was particularly concerned, sources said, that the opinion include a clear-cut section on the president's authority.

Professor Froomkin says that there are so many scoops in this story that "there's a danger some may get lost." He cites (1) the CIA's cessation for the time being of "extraordinary interrogation techniques" (whatever that term means); (2) the August 1, 2003 opinion was approved at the highest levels of government; (3) the "royalist" notion that the president has the right to violate laws and treaties, and to empower others to do so, was not only approved, but requested, at the top; (4) in practice, the government has approved actions that must be called torture, including "selective" administration of painkillers to a prisoner who had been shot in the groin in order to induce his cooperation; and (5) despite what ex-administration people say, the government lawyers' actions don't strike Froomkin as "scholarly" or "lawyerlike."

Froomkin (who has become a real "one-stop shop" for analysis of torture memoranda) also directs us to this New York Times article that notes that, "Legal scholars asked to assess the recently released Justice Department memorandums concerning torture all but unanimously agreed that the quality of the legal work in them is poor." I heard incoming Yale Law School dean Harold Hongju Koh, one of the legal scholars cited in the article, and others savage the torture memoranda at the American Constitution Society National Convention last weekend. The ACS says at its site that it will be posting streaming video and transcripts from the conference. I'll let you know if they post the video and/or transcript of the remarks of Dean Koh and others.

I'm going to go out on a limb and declare my homosexual union to be morally superior to a lot of heterosexual marriages. My boyfriend and I have been together 10 years and, unlike Mr. Limbaugh and his three lucky exes, we're still going strong. If longevity is any measure of a relationship's success--and it is, according to religious conservatives who insist that gay men aren't fit for marriage due to the alleged instability of our relationships--our homosexual union is not only morally superior to Limbaugh's three failed marriages but to all of J.Lo's marriages combined.

One could also mention Jack Ryan, who divorced Jeri Ryan after eight years of marriage. Ironically, Ryan opposes gay marriage, civil unions, and even registries, which he suggests somehow undermine the institution of marriage:

I believe that marriage can only be defined as that union between one man and one woman. I am opposed to same-sex marriages, civil unions, and registries.

I believe that we are all equal before God and should be before the law. Homosexuals deserve the same constitutional protections, safeguards, and human dignity as every American, but they should not be entitled to special rights based on their sexual behavior.

The breakdown of the family over the past 35 years is one of the root causes of some of our society’s most intractable social problems-criminal activity, illegitimacy, and the cyclical nature of poverty.

One would have thought that Jack would have learned to construct better arguments than this when he went to Harvard Law School. If homosexuals deserve the same "constitutional protections, safeguards, and human dignity" as other Americans, doesn't that mean that they should be allowed to marry?

Jack's further statement that gays "should not be entitled to special rights based on their sexual behavior" also does not assist his position. Gays are not asking for "special rights," but for the same right to marry that straight couples enjoy. And as far as I know, a couple's sexual behavior plays no role in their right to a marriage license. As long as they meet the age, residence, waiting period, and other requirements for marriage, what sex act(s), if any, they prefer is irrelevant. For example, Jack's alleged desire to screw his wife in front of other people neither entitles him to a marriage license nor disqualifies him from one.

Jack's decrying of "[t]he breakdown of the family over the past 35 years" is a nonsequitur, since he makes no attempt to tie that alleged phenomenon to gay marriages, civil unions, or registries. Is he suggesting that his divorce was somehow caused by gay marriages and/or civil union and/or registries? My wife and I will celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary next month. The recent availability of gay marriage has not tempted us to divorce or otherwise undermined our marriage.