PROFESSOR PLUM DID IT IN THE LIBRARY WITH THE CANDELSTICK

Instant Man comments on this story:

Mystery group wage war on Sadr's militia

FOR the past month they have been the rude young pretenders, a rag-tag slum army ruffling the quiet dignity of Iraq’s holiest city.

For every day that the United States army fails to act on its threat to crush them, the Shiite militiamen of the radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr have grown in confidence in their stronghold in Najaf.

Now, however, a shadowy resistance movement within might be about to succeed where the 2,500 US marines outside the city have failed.

In a deadly expression of feelings that until now were kept quiet, a group representing local residents is said to have killed at least five militiamen in the last four days.

The story goes on to reveal that the group has named itself after a two bladed sword used by a medieval imam and that practically nothing beyond its name is known about it. General Kimmit, when asked, said, "I am not aware of [the group's] existence, although we have had some reports of that nature from the city." The reporter then speculates who might be behind it.

First, since the reports are most generously described as sketchy, I'm not sure that even the basic story is true. I don't doubt that the reporter was told what he reported. I just don't know whether what he was told has any basis in fact.

That said, if the group does exist and is in fact doing what it is reported to be doing, who do you think it might be? Remember Clue? The game was (and is) an exercise in deduction. You win by eliminating all of the other possibilities. So let's play.

In the tradition of all good conspiracy theories, the first question to ask is who benefits from the existence and actions of such a group. Taking Sadr out (or even just taking him down a peg or two) clearly benefits the Coalition. It also benefits other camps in the fragmented world of Iraq's religious society (such as al Sistani and his followers, Sadr's rival for power, not to mention the now leaderless followers of Abdel-Majid Khoei, the guy Sadr is accused of having had murdered in Najaf on April 10, 2003), as well as the secular proto-government now being formed. Did I leave anyone out? Undoubtedly.

The next question to ask is who has the capacity to do it? This would seem to rule out the Iraqi governing council (at least as anything other than a surrogate for the Coalition) since they have little authority and no money except that provided by the Coalition. I don't know about the Sistani or Khoei factions, but clearly the Coalition has the ability to do what is supposedly being done.

A related question is who has the capacity to do it when and where it was being done. The shadow army made its appearance about three weeks after Sadr "occupied" Najaf. This doesn't seem to rule anyone out, but I would imagine that it would be harder for the Coalition to infitrate Najaf in order to accomplish its goals than it would be for a domestic operator. Harder, but nowhere near impossible. So the list of "possibles" remains the same, except that a little emphasis is placed on the domestic players as compared to the Coalition.

But the thing that really excites my paranoia is this: Sadr announces his armed opposition to the Coalition and the planned Iraqi government, and promptly holes up in a place where it is politically unnacceptable for us to go after him conventionally. Three weeks later, after we have announced that we will take Sadr, an unconventional force appears with the apparent goal of doing what we cannot: force Sadr out of Najaf and/or diminish or demoraize his forces. Such coincidences are, at the very least, suspicious.

And this group takes as its name a double edged sword, which could be an allusion:

A. to the fact that Sadr's military occupation of holy sites may temporarily protect him from our conventional forces but is likely to hurt him with the people who worship at those sites in the long run; or

B. to the fact that, if this really is us, this strategy could have negative long term consequences (see our support for the Taliban in its early opposition to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan).

In other words, regardless of who is behind the strategy, it can cut both ways.

That's all I have based on the facts available.

Well, what did you expect? I was never all that good at playing Clue, either.

 
PIMPS GET A BAD RAP

Cap'n Clueless has long been really really pissed at the French, and with good reason. One thing that was, relatively speaking, a mere annoyance, was the behavior of reporters for Paris Match, a popular French magazine. They observed, photographed and publicized an attack by people they described as "Iraqi guerrillas" on a DHL jet in flight using a shoulder launched SAM. That was in November, 2003 (see this post on Clueless).

Another Paris Match reporter recently found the post and decided to upbraid the Captain. DenBeste's response is a classic, and you should read the whole thing. For purposes of this post, it suffices to say that den Beste finishes with "Your magazine has the ethical standards of a pimp."

Frankly, I think the ethical standards of a pimp are far superior to those of reporters from a (nominally) allied country who support the other side in a war, or at least in this war.

Make no mistake, that's what they intended to do and that's what they were doing. Reporters cannot fail to know what the goals are of the people whose actions they are publicizing. Reporters cannot fail to know that cameras attract terrorists like honey attracts flies. Reporters cannot fail to know that the very fact of their presence will induce the acts that are being reported. Given that, and in light of the atrocities being perpetrated in Iraq by the "guerillas", why do they do it?

Because that's the easy way to make your reputation in that "profession".

Obviously, this does not apply to anywhere near all reporters. Just those who, for purposes of self aggrandizement, romanticize, glorify and publicize attempts to kill us and our friends.

Such as the Paris Match reporters in question. I think the ethical standards of such reporters are, on balance, lower than the ethical standards of those they support. And given a choice beween a pimp and a terrorist, I'll chose the pimp any day.

 
DEPARTMENT OF STRATEGERY

Once again, strategic misspellings rescue this blog from the unread. I have received a number of hits from various search engines where the searcher is looking for Jaime Gorelick, as opposed to Jamie Gorelick.

In fact, Cognocentric is the number one (!) Google result for "jaime gorelick 911 commission".

See, it's all part of my master plan.

 
911 COMMISSION

Let's see. Henry Kissinger, refused to name the clients of his consulting firrm, so he was hounded off the 911 commission for "conflicts of interest":

"Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has resigned as chairman of a commission investigating events leading up to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States. Mr Kissinger, who had been in the job for just 16 days, had been criticised for refusing to release the names of clients at his consulting firm. ... The BBC's Tom Carver in Washington says the episode is enormously embarrassing for Mr Bush, adding questions will be asked about why possible conflicts of interest were not raised before Mr Kissinger's appointment."

BBC Online, 14 December 2002

Naming Kissinger might even have been a political ploy by Bush to "contain" the commission:

"In naming Henry Kissinger to direct a comprehensive examination of the government's failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush has selected a consummate Washington insider....his affinity for power and the commercial interests he has cultivated since leaving government may make him less than the staunchly independent figure that is needed for this critical post. Indeed, it is tempting to wonder if the choice of Mr. Kissinger is not a clever maneuver by the White House to contain an investigation it long opposed."

New York Times, 29 Nov 2002

Kissinger's own statement that he resigned to "remove any questions about even the appearance of a conflict of interest regarding his ties to several organizations and public figures" is all but lost in the noise. (From CNN, emphasis added.)

Now comes Jaime Gorelick, who was instrumental in codifying the virtual "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence and is named to the commission. Here's her memo (in PDF format), which states that it goes "beyond what is legally required ... [in order to] ... prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorizes more snooping on spies than is generally permitted against mere criminals] is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation." In English: The Department of Justice prevented the FBI from fully disclosing to the CIA what it found in a domestic counter intelligence investigation. This is not an unreasonable position to take pre-911. But clearly, allowing the FBI to disclose to the CIA (and vice versa) everything it knew or thought it knew about al Qaeda cells in the US prior to 911 might have led to the discovery of the plot in time to derail it. That's what the 911 commission is supposed to be investigating.

But wait, there's more!. Ms. Gorelick is a litigation partner in Wilmer Cutler and Pickering. That's one of the big time DC lawfirms. According to Newsweek, that firm has agreed to defend Prince Mohammed al Faisal against legal claims by the 9/11 families that al Faisal has legal responsibility for the 9/11 attacks. (From PLA Blog via InstantMan.)

Is there not an actual conflict of interest (as opposed to a mere appearance of a conflict) here? Might not Gorelick be more interested in protecting her reputation and career in light of her actions at the Department of Justice rather than a coldly logical look at what could have been done or done better to avoid the attack? Might she be more interested in benefiting one of her firms wealthiest and most important clients than in finding structural or procedural flaws in our intelligence and counter intelligence systems? Surely there is as much or more of a conflict of interest here than there was in Kissinger's case.

When will the New York Times editorial page speculate as to whether this was a ploy by the Democrats to divert the commission from its bipartisan "what do we need to fix and how do we fix it" mandate into a political tool in an election year?

 
INCOMING! OR NOT.

From Strategy Page, via Best of the Web (twelfth item down):

The last of the Minuteman III missiles will receive their new motors by 2008. It costs about $5.2 million to replace the rockets on each missile. The new rocket motors, which have to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) rules, will have a shorter range than the original motors.

We must really be the only superpower left on earth: The engines on our doomsday weapons have to comply with EPA standards.

The EPA is concerned with the pollution caused by launching our ICBMs, which, of course, would amount to a really really tiny fraction of the pollution caused by the detonations of a counterstrike. So I have to conclude that the EPA does not believe that there will be a counterstrike. That's the only scenario in which reducing the pollution caused by an ICBM launch makes even a little sense.

 
WWJB?

From Fox:

A gaggle of ministries have taken their biblical messages down unconventional paths to appeal to 20- and 30-somethings.

Using Web sites, multi-media, pop culture and edgy language, organizations like www.relevantmagazine.com and Fireproof Ministries (and its anti-pornography Web site www.XXXchurch.com) are reaching out to young Christians in more modern ways than established organized religion ever has.

...

"I really think that if Jesus were around today, he would have a blog."

What would Jesus blog?

 
REMIND ME NEVER EVER TO PISS THIS LADY OFF

From Reuters, via Rand Simberg:

A woman in Mexico gave birth to a healthy baby boy after performing a Caesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife, doctors said Tuesday.

“She took three small glasses of hard liquor and, using a kitchen knife, sliced her abdomen in three attempts ... and delivered a male infant that breathed immediately and cried,” said Dr R.F. Valle, of the Dr. Manuel Velasco Suarez Hospital in San Pablo, Mexico.

Before losing consciousness, the woman told one of her children to call a local nurse for help. After the nurse stitched the wound with a sewing needle and cotton thread, the mother and baby were transferred and treated by Valle and his colleagues at the nearest hospital.

Damn!