It remains unclear who fabricated the documents. Intelligence officials say most likely it was rogue elements in Sismi who wanted to make money selling them.

Nice try, but absolutely not. First, the documents are on letterhead purportedly stolen from the Niger embassy in Rome which means the creator of the documents needs both forgery and black bag experience. Second, the supposed motive is money, which never changed hands. Who does have the money? The US and the Brits, so this story needs to go there, not to the Italians, and certainly not the Italian press, which gets us to third, taking this to the press kills the money angle. Maybe the press pays you, maybe not, but it doesn't pay as well as the US does.

Bottom line? The case doesn't add up.

How Bogus Letter Became a Case for War - washingtonpost.com

Federal prosecutors and the FBI have significantly overstated the number of terrorism-related investigations and prosecutions they pursue, according to a highly critical report released Tuesday by a Justice Department watchdog.

The study by Inspector General Glenn Fine concluded that the overstatements occurred in large part because authorities count offenses such as document and marriage fraud and immigration violations as terrorism-related even when there was no discernible tie to terror.

Your "War on Terror" inaction.

Report: Feds overstate terrorism cases | Chicago Tribune

It worked. As the plane landed on Gran Canaria, the man was standing in the middle aisle when the pilot carried out his maneuver, and he fell to the floor, dropping one of his two 7mm pistols. Flight attendants then threw boiling water in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.

Why hijacking is no longer a very good idea.

Independent Online Edition - Bumpy landing foils plane hijacke

"Bush suffers from an addictive personality, and was an alcoholic. I don't know his present condition ... but the one who examines his personality finds that he is addicted to two other faults — lying and gambling," al-Zawahri said in the audiotape.

Excuse me for a moment. HAHAHAHAHA!!! There's an old line which says "just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they really aren't out to get you." Well, Zawahri may be a terrorist and sociopathic ass, but that doesn't mean he didn't call this one pretty much right on. For more reference see some old but amusing footage of a drunk W here , commentary on the drunk topic here, commentary on the gambling issue from Maureen Dowd here, and I don't think I need to bother deliniating the Augean stables full of crap he's told us since day one.

Al-Qaida's No. 2 calls Bush an alcoholic - Yahoo! News

The Department of Defense defended its policy shift in a budget document sent to Congress in October: "The DOD position is that detecting drug trafficking is a lower priority than supporting our service members on ongoing combat missions."

At this point it's not detecting drug trafficking I give a damn about. If someone can move a few tons of coke, smack, pot or people, how hard would it be to move a similar quantity of explosives, or other such item, via the same methods?

I don't care about the war on drugs. I care about the "War on Terror" that is not just being lost, it's being fueled beyond any hope of control by the Bushies.

Burdened U.S. military cuts role in drug war - Los Angeles Times

"We have seen huge sums of money spread across the country like peanut butter. If you want to build a honey pot to spread money around the states, around the 50 states, so be it, but call it what it is. Don't call it homeland security."

Nice description by Bloomberg.

wcbstv.com - Bloomberg Furious Over Homeland Security Money

The appointment of Fallon, a former Navy aviator who commanded an air wing during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, is seen as a signal of strength to recalcitrant Iran. While Bush may not intend to go to war with that nation, if he ever did use a military option, it would have to depend largely on carrier-based air attacks commanded by Fallon.

Exactly. This isn't about dealing with the disaster that Iraq is or the horrible mess Afghanistan is becoming, it is about having an air commander to bomb the hell out of Iran. It's not enough that we have to make a total mess of things in the middle east, George Bush wants to push over the final domino that may shove the entire region into total war.

And just so we're clear, total war is a very specific phrase, not a flourish. If this happens the middle east is going to look like the Russian Front, no holds barred, if it moves, kill it, war. Creating one of those gets you sent to hell. Creating one of those deliberately puts you around the top of the "monsters" list.

Iraq: What Bush’s Staff Shakeups Mean - Newsweek The War in Iraq - MSNBC.com

Some experts doubt that the smaller deployment would be sufficient to halt Iraq's escalating civil war between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.

Some experts? Some? Find me a single non-neocon, non-member of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders who thinks this will do anything other than further enrich the target rich environment that is Iraq. At absolute best it means they'll be busy blowing up our guys more than each other for a little longer.

Iraq is turning into an utter bloodbath and a place that will be destabilizing the Middle East for years. Calling this a blunder is wrong. As we've found out, there were people inside State and DoD who studied this and put out a huge report about what would be needed that was not just ignored but deliberately buried. This isn't going to be like Vietnam. Try Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, whole orders of magnitude worse.

McClatchy Washington Bureau | 01/03/2007 | Bush considering smaller-than-expected increase in troops for Iraq

we are leaving ourselves vulnerable to infiltration by those who want to mold the United States into the image of their religion,

What's next? Corruption of our precious bodily fluids?

Virgil Goode is still a moron

George Packer is simply essential. This is a long post because there is no way to boil this down.

"After 9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘The problem is Islam,’ I was thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It's about human social networks and the way that they operate."

That's David Kilcullen, an Australian lieutenant colonel who may just be our last best hope in the long war.

"The Islamic bit is secondary. This is human behavior in an Islamic setting. This is not ‘Islamic behavior.’"

“People don’t get pushed into rebellion by their ideology. They get pulled in by their social networks."

In the 1 December issue of Jane's Intelligence Review, John Horgan writes (sub req'd):

People who leave terrorist groups or move away from violent roles do so for a multitude of reasons. Horgan explains why greater understanding of the motivations behind this so-called 'disengagement' will help in developing successful anti-terrorism initiatives.

The reality is that actual attacks represent only the tip of an iceberg of activity.

Here's the abstract of a recent RAND working paper:

In the battle of ideas that has come to characterize the struggle against jihadist terrorism, a sometimes neglected dimension is the personal motivations of those drawn into the movement. This paper reports the results of a workshop held in September 2005 and sponsored by RAND’s Center for Middle East Public Policy and the Initiative for Middle East Youth. Workshop participants discussed the issue of why young people enter into jihadist groups and what might be done to prevent it or to disengage members of such groups once they have joined.

Now, back to the Packer piece:

The odd inclusion of environmentalist rhetoric, he said, made clear that “this wasn’t a list of genuine grievances. This was an Al Qaeda information strategy." ... “bin Laden’s message was clearly designed to assist the President’s reëlection.” Bin Laden shrewdly created an implicit association between Al Qaeda and the Democratic Party, for he had come to feel that Bush’s strategy in the war on terror was sustaining his own global importance.

You may recall the speculation that Bush would produce bin Laden's head just in time for the last elections. Perhaps the living bin Laden is a more valua... [ Read More (0.6k in body) ]

Knowing the Enemy | George Packer in The New Yorker