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Perle: Rumsfeld Opposed, Powell Wanted Occupation
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

Remember what I said about the original estimate of only 50,000 men to take down Iraq, with the next stop being Damascus? :-) Cheers, RAH ------- <http://newsmax.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=http://newsmax.com/arch…> Reprinted from NewsMax.com Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2004 8:03 a.m. EST Perle: Rumsfeld Opposed, Powell Wanted Occupation Secretary Colin Powell, the State Department and the CIA - not Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld - are responsible for the chaos that has grown out of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, says Richard Perle, the former chairman of Pentagon's Defense Policy Review Board. Appearing on Fox News' "O'Reilly Factor" Monday night, Perle said the U.S. made a most serious mistake after Iraq was liberated and the "keys" were not handed over immediately to Iraqis to run their own country. Thus, the U.S. military became an occupying force - and an increasingly unpopular one. "We didn't hand the keys over to the Iraqis. Instead we embarked on what became an extended occupation. That was fundamentally mistaken - it was politically driven," Perle said. Perle's remarks places significant distance between postwar policies and neo-conservatives like himself who have backed the war and have been championed in the Bush administration by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and Vice President Cheney. Perle told O'Reilly the idea of a military occupation was not the Pentagon's original plan. "It was not Don Rumsfeld's decision," he said. Asked by O'Reilly if handing the keys over to the Iraqis after deposing Saddam would have sparked a civil war between the Sunnis, Kurds and Shiites, Perle said he didn't think so. He noted that there were already groups of anti-Saddam Iraqis in place when the dictator fell. "There was an umbrella group of opposition figures. It included Shia, Sunnis, Kurds and in the end, of course, we did turn to the Iraqis. We asked them to form a governing council, then an interim government, but we made the big mistake of not trusting the Iraqis. "I'm not saying that everything would have worked out, but everything certainly didn't work out the way we did it. My own view is we should have supported a government in exile even before going into Iraq." O'Reilly asked how much responsibility Rumsfeld bears for the current situation in Iraq. "I think the conduct of the war was brilliant," Perle observed. "The campaign will go down in history as one of the greatest military campaigns ever. Saddam was removed and his regime fell within three weeks. "The problems didn't start immediately after Saddam's removal. The problems started when the occupation began to wear on the people, and that was predictable." When O'Reilly cited Colin Powell as a dissenting voice who warned the president that if "you break it [Iraq], you'll own it," Perle said, "the irony is that it was Secretary Powell and some others who wanted the extended occupation. They are the ones who did not want to turn things over to the Iraqis, who feared and distrusted the Iraqis and blocked all efforts to do precisely that." Perle then revealed that even before the war Rumsfeld's Department of Defense had argued that we should train thousands of Iraqis "to go in with us so that we wouldn't be the aggressor, we wouldn't be the occupying power, and those proposals were blocked largely by the State Department and the CIA. Rumsfeld was never able to get approval for the political strategy that might well have saved us from much of the subsequent trouble." Responding to O'Reilly's remark that the we are now seen as the "bad guys," Perle said that the situation in Iraq can be cleaned up. "Remember, we were portrayed as the bad guys when the only policy for dealing with Saddam were sanctions and the argument was that Iraqi babies were dying as result of the sanctions. We're making real progress and the political evolution is critical. There is a desperate effort now to cope with the fact that after these elections the Iraqis will be fully invested in their own future, and I think we've already begun to turn the corner." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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US netizens: white, wealthy and full of it - shock!
by R.A. Hettinga 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

<http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/01/us_doc_internet_survey/print.html> The Register Biting the hand that feeds IT US netizens: white, wealthy and full of it - shock! By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco (andrew.orlowski at theregister.co.uk) Published Wednesday 1st December 2004 00:34 GMT "The Internet is becoming more and more widespread and will increasingly represent a scientific random sample of the population," claims (http://joi.ito.com/archives/2004/11/21/poor_librarian_immerses_self_in_iron…) ICANN's newest board member, Joi Ito. Quite what scientific experiments he will wish to perform, once the desired sample size has been reached, remains a mystery. But like many people who spend too long in front of their computers, he's talking about a Platonic ideal rather than the real world. A survey by the US Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration shows that the internet has entrenched the divide between rich and poor, and the races. Statistics reveal an internet that's overwhelmingly white, wealthy and urban. And the net's best days may even be behind it. The pace of internet adoption has tapered off to a trickle, with a substantial part of the population not interested in the internet at any price. (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/12/01/rainbow_nation.jpg) Diversity in action: blogdom's Rainbow Nation Only 13.9 per cent of black households and 12.6 per cent of Hispanic households have an internet connection - and less than a quarter of rural households. The spurt of internet adoption that coincided with the Napster boom - which took penetration over the fifty per cent mark - is now a distant memory. Although 13.1 per cent of the US came online in the year to September 2001, only seven per cent have been added in the subsequent two years. The lack of availability is cited by less than ten per cent of non-wired households. Almost half, or 44.1 per cent, aren't interested at all. 38.9 per cent say it doesn't represent value for money. The boredom is apparent elsewhere in the survey: amazingly, 17.7pc of households have dial-up, but don't use it. Having arrived on the Information Superhighway, they've pulled over into the layby for a snooze. Clearly rural areas can benefit greatly from an information service of some kind. But it's becoming less apparent that the internet in its current shape is the way to deliver such services. Braving this toxic wasteland of spam, viruses and trolls requires a major investment for a low income household, and it isn't clear that the payback is worth it. (Berating them for "Not Getting It" is no longer an option, and illustrates why Professor Fisher's work (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/01/free_legal_downloads/) on a digital pool for music is so important: it would give everyone a good reason for having a computer connection). We may even be approaching the problem from the wrong direction. For a decade governments have tried to cajole the real world into jumping into cyberspace, with grants and promotions to adopt internet adoption. Perhaps what was needed instead was a drive to persuade techno utopian bloggers to join the real world. With a compassionate approach - involving patience, counseling and therapy - there's no reason they can't be fully integrated back into society. At which point we may begin to get computer networks that are really useful to all of us, and not just a technocratic elite. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: geographically removed? eHalal
by Major Variola (ret) 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

At 10:33 PM 11/28/04 -0500, Steve Furlong wrote: >I see that an irrevocable payment system, used by itself, is ripe for >fraud, more so if it's anonymous. But why wouldn't a mature system make >use of trusted intermediaries? The vendors register with the intermedi- >ary *, who takes some pains to verify their identity, trustworthiness, >and so on, and to keep the vendors' identities a secret, if appropriate. Halal was deemed a terrorist weapon, and contrary to the treasury's policies, game over.

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Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report
by John Kelsey 01 Dec '04

01 Dec '04

>From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> >Sent: Nov 22, 2004 11:35 AM >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: Fallujah: Marine Eye-Witness Report ... >I'm pretty heretical about this. I think if we had decapitated Iraq, went >after our military objectives, like securing what was a threat to us, >including Iraq's senior military and political leadership and their weapons >stockpiles, and left political order to emerge there on its own, like we >did in Afghanistan, we could have done it with Rumsfeld's original 50,000 >troop estimate. It seems like there would have to have been someone to take over in a fairly clean way, or we'd have wound up setting off a civil war. Note that in the Kurdish parts of Iraq, there was someone to take over, and those parts are generally not a problem for us. (Once it's not our people getting shot at, we probably don't care that much if it's a pain for someone else to police.) But I think the parts of Iraq that Saddam was still ruling had few high-profile leaders with forces that could have taken over quickly--he wasn't especially fond of potential rivals. Maybe we could have cut a deal with some local strongmen and gotten something stable together with minimal US involvement if we'd done it early, I'm not sure. ... >Cheers, >RAH --John

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RE: Oswald, Atta, Your Name Here
by Major Variola (ret) 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

At 10:08 AM 11/29/04 -0500, Trei, Peter wrote: >Steve Furlong wrote: >> Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> > Bill Stewart wrote: >> > >Slsahdot reports that MSNBC reports >> http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265/ >> > >that there's a new video game "JFK Reloaded" >> > http://www.jfkreloaded.com/start/ >> > >> > I'm waiting for Grand Theft Auto IV, Drunk Over the Bridge With the >> > Secretary variant. Wonder what Teddie will say about that one. >> > >> > Oswald saved the world from nuclear conflict, thank the gods he >> > offed the sex & drug crazed toothy one as soon as he (et al :-) did. >> > >> > And a hell of a shot as well. Gotta respect that, with a >> bolt-action, >> > no less. >> >> A piece-of-shit boltie. I don't believe the official story, myself. > >Hitting at a upper-body sized target at less than 90 yards, >using a scoped rifle, is about as difficult shooting fish in a >barrel. The slow steady movement of the car makes it >slightly more interesting, but hardly challenging to a >decent marksman. True nuff. I recently fired up M$ FS '98, and on my first attempt was able to Atta the WTC in a 747-300, whereas a more nimble plane was too responsive to my commands and stalled, spiralled, etc. And I could cycle my 7.52x54R bolt-action in under a second on my first try, but again, grace under pressure is cool.

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Blunkett faces new visa questions
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

Oh, the irony... Cheers, RAH ------- <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/uk_news/politics/4056987.stm> The BBC Tuesday, 30 November, 2004, 22:57 GMT Blunkett faces new visa questions David Blunkett is facing new questions about whether he "fast-tracked" a visa application for his ex-lover's nanny. The Daily Mail is publishing what it says are two Home Office letters to Leoncia Casalme, Kimberly Quinn's nanny The first tells her it could take up to a year to process her visa claim, but another letter 19 days later says she can now stay in the UK indefinitely. But Mr Blunkett's spokesman says he has done nothing wrong and the reported letters change nothing. Letters shift Ex-civil servant Sir Alan Budd has been appointed by the government to review the handling of the visa application and examine all the papers. Mr Blunkett has said he checked Ms Casalme's application for permanent residence was filled in correctly but did not intervene to get it approved. The letters published in the Daily Mail do not mention Mr Blunkett or indicate that he interfered in the process. " There will now be many unanswered questions hanging over the home secretary's head " David Davis BBC political editor Andrew Marr said the letters were only circumstantial evidence but on the face of it were "potentially very damaging". A letter to Miss Casalme on 23 April 2003 says her application cannot be decided immediately. It says: "The waiting period for these cases is about 12 months at the moment... "On current performance, we estimate that your application will be decided by January 2004." But a second letter dated the 12 May tells Miss Casalme: "You can now remain indefinitely in the United Kingdom." Apology Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis said: "If the Daily Mail story is correct, it is very difficult to understand how this can be the normal length of procedure for an application to remain. "Mr Blunkett will have to explain precisely how this rapid processing of the application came about. If he influenced this matter, his position is untenable." The reports emerged after Mr Blunkett said he was repaying #180 to Parliament for the first class train ticket he gave to then lover Mrs Quinn. He apologised for his "genuine mistake". The rail warrants are intended for MPs' spouses and Mr Blunkett's spokesman said he had now realised his error. Mark Leech, editor of the Prison's Handbook, complained about the rail ticket to Parliament's standards watchdog, Sir Philip Mawer. Despite Mr Blunkett's admission, Mr Leech said he still wants an inquiry, saying: "I have come across many cases where prison officers have been made to resign over falsified expense claims. This is no different." Sir Philip says he will look at the evidence behind the complaint before deciding whether to investigate. Mrs Quinn, who is seven months pregnant, was admitted to hospital on Monday night amid the stress caused by the controversy. Her husband, Stephen, said the problems were not serious but he did not know when she would be discharged. Downing Street denies Tory suggestions the scope of that inquiry is too narrow, saying the Home Office would look at less serious issues. Tony Blair's official spokesman also rejected suggestions that the prime minister had prejudged the review when he predicted it would exonerate Mr Blunkett. The spokesman said that by giving Mr Blunkett his public backing, Mr Blair had just been expressing trust and confidence in his home secretary. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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China 'blocks Google news site'
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

Reminds me of Imperial Russia's railroad gauge, which was different from the rest of Europe's, maybe the whole world's, on purpose, to prevent attacks. Common trick, lots of countries did it, though it impedes lots of progress at the border besides military progress toward your capital. You have to offload *all* the freight, both ways, and put it onto new trains, for instance. Way worse than going from diesel to electric, like they did at New Haven, for instance, where you used to just change engines. More of a symptom than a cause, of course. Anyone want to take bets on China, though? I think the "Great Firewall" will choke, or more be likely ignored, long before China will block all truth at its border, instead of mere efficient transit prices for foreign trade. But then I was a "Polly" during the Y2K thing, too. Oh. Wait... (Yeah, I know, I was *dead* wrong about Jim Bell getting a guilty verdict. Surest way to be wrong is to make a prediction, and all that...) Cheers, RAH Oddly enough, the Aussies had exactly this railroad gauge problem about half way across their southern coast. I think they've fixed it since, though I'm not sure. -------- <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/4056255.stm> The BBC Tuesday, 30 November, 2004, 16:39 GMT China 'blocks Google news site' China has been accused of blocking access to Google News by the media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders. The Paris-based pressure group said the English-language news site had been unavailable for the past 10 days. It said the aim was to force people to use a Chinese edition of the site which, according to the watchdog, does not include critical reports. Google told the BBC News website it was aware of the problems and was investigating the causes. Chinese firewall China is believed to extend greater censorship over the net than any other country in the world. " China is censuring Google News to force internet users to use the Chinese version of the site which has been purged of the most critical news reports " Reporters Without Borders A net police force monitors websites and e-mails, and controls on gateways connecting the country to the global internet are designed to prevent access to critical information. Popular Chinese portals such as Sina.com and Sohu.com maintain a close eye on content and delete politically sensitive comments. And all 110,000 net cafes in the country have to use software to control access to websites considered harmful or subversive. Local versions "China is censuring Google News to force internet users to use the Chinese version of the site which has been purged of the most critical news reports," said the group in a statement. "By agreeing to launch a news service that excludes publications disliked by the government, Google has let itself be used by Beijing," it said. For its part, the search giant said it was looking into the issue. "It appears that many users in China are having difficulty accessing Google News sites in China and we are working to understand and resolve the issue," said a Google spokesperson. Google News gathers information from some 4,500 news sources. Headlines are selected for display entirely by a computer algorithm, with no human editorial intervention. It offers 15 editions of the service, including one tailored for China and one for Hong Kong. Google launched a version in simplified Chinese in September. The site does not filter news results to remove politically sensitive information. But Google does not link to news sources which are inaccessible from within China as this would result in broken links. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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It's "America" Not "Amerika"
by R.A. Hettinga 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

<http://www.techcentralstation.com/113004G.html> Tech Central Station It's "America" Not "Amerika" By Pejman Yousefzadeh Published 11/30/2004 Let's put a silly myth to bed, shall we? Contrary to what some believe, American politics is not devolving into a state of fascism. We read and hear warning cries alerting us to the supposed incipient fascist threat quite often nowadays. Many of these "alerts" inform us that our freedoms and liberties are at risk, that the American democratic-republic is gradually giving way to an authoritarian or totalitarian establishment, and that our leaders are reminiscent of Nazis. Thus we have Internet threads comparing George W. Bush with Hitler, or at the very least, with Mussolini or Leonid Brezhnev. By extension of the Hitler analogy, America may be like Germany in 1939 -- on the cusp of embracing fascism if it hasn't completely done so yet. You might shrug off this kind of rhetoric by saying that it is confined to crank quarters of the punditocracy, and to be sure, those who argue that America is sliding into fascism are ripe for ridicule. But the argument -- while wrong -- has the virtue of being simple and simplistic, meaning that it has the potential to be spread rather easily. (This is most interesting -- usually it is the fascists who have the simplistic arguments on their side. In this debate, however, it is the supposed anti-fascists who are trying to win converts to their argument with simplistic cries about fascism being in the ascendant in the United States.) Because the argument of "America as the Fascist State" can be so easily spread through simplistic arguments, it is high time to fight the demagoguery with a little perspective. A key component of the fascist state is the presence of authoritarian or totalitarian laws that clamp down on civil liberties. Those who decry the supposed onset of fascism in the United States like to claim that the Patriot Act is the instrument by which our rights and liberties is being curtailed. Putting aside the fact that many of the Patriot Act's critics haven't even carefully read the Act and its provisions, many of the arguments made against the Act are just plain wrong. Myth-busting articles and blog posts on the Internet setting the record straight regarding the Patriot Act -- like this one, for example -- are quite plentiful because there is a market for them thanks to blatant misreadings of the Patriot Act that are all too common in news and punditry circles. Many of the supposed totalitarian aspects of the Patriot Act were already in existence when the Act was passed, and as of July of this year, out of the nearly 1300 alleged abuses of the Patriot Act that were forwarded to the Inspector General of the Justice Department, the Inspector General found that none of those complaints had any merit whatsoever. (Surely, we will be told that the Inspector General is simply covering up the abuses of the crypto-fascist state, but there does come a point where such circular arguments are no longer worthy of any attention whatsoever.) The supposed loss of civil liberties and the onset of fascism were key components of the argument made to elect John Kerry as President. Kerry himself spoke to this issue when he promised in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention that he would "appoint an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of the United States." Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to political rhetoric over the past four years knows that John Ashcroft is closely connected with the supposed rise of American fascism, and politically, it was quite convenient for Kerry to pose as the remedy to the fascist Ashcroftian annihilation of American civil liberties. But when one compares the civil liberties voting records of Senator Kerry and former Senator Ashcroft, Ashcroft plainly comes out ahead as the more capable and ardent defender of civil liberties. And Ashcroft is not alone as the miscast Republican fascist. When the Clinton Justice Department was working on the development of "Carnivore" -- a cyber-surveillance tool -- it was former Republican congressman and House Majority Leader Dick Armey who campaigned against Carnivore as a threat against civil rights and civil liberties. Indeed, Armey pressed both Attorney General Janet Reno and Ashcroft on the issue of Carnivore -- strange behavior, to be sure, from the former leader of the House contingent of America's supposed fascist party. Strangely enough, those loudest in denouncing the incipient rise of American fascism ignored and ignore all of this. Of course, it isn't just Americans who are claiming the onset of fascism in the United States. In Europe, comparisons between the Bush Administration and fascist elements like the Nazis have also been plentiful. This is peculiar because the state of civil liberties in Europe is far more parlous than it is in America, and if the state of civil liberties in America actually descended to the European level, warnings regarding the incipient rise of fascism might actually have some merit. In his recent Thanksgiving holiday blog post, law professor Orin Kerr gave thanks for the fact that we live in a country that respects civil liberties a great deal more than they are respected in Europe. His remarks are well taken, but I wonder why we haven't heard alarm bells ringing regarding the rise of European fascism from the same quarters that like to claim American fascism is a threat to be taken seriously. None of this is to say that when it comes to fascism, "It Can't Happen Here." But those who make the claim that America is becoming a fascist state have an obligation to be responsible with the facts, lest others stop taking them seriously. Ironically enough, fascism has its best chance when those who line up to denounce it discredit themselves with one too many false alarms. The next time they sound the alarm, they may have reason to. But few people will be inclined to listen if those who make the claims have proven themselves to be untrustworthy demagogues in the past. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Tin Foil Passports, Al foil diplomas
by Major Variola (ret) 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

At 08:02 PM 11/29/04 +0000, Justin wrote: >On 2004-11-27T06:36:24-0800, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> At 09:13 AM 11/27/04 +0100, Eugen Leitl wrote: >> >Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/27/0026222 >> >Posted by: michael, on 2004-11-27 05:05:00 >> > low-cost solution: '[I]incorporate a layer of metal foil into the >> > cover of the passport so it could be read only when opened.' Don't >> > they know that the whole tinfoil hat thing is supposed to be a >> > joke?" >> >> What is most poignant about this post is the lack of education of /. >> authors. Don't they teach Maxwell any more? Is Faraday just the guy >> who said ... > >Standardized education. We can't have anyone teaching to the 50th >percentile, even assuming the median teen-citizen can handle basic >calculus and E&M. Teachers must teach one or two sigmas below that >level, and anyone who gets hyperactive in such an inane educational >environment is malfunctioning and requires medication. Today I heard a guy at work describe the Turkish empire to another. Their plan was to eliminate foreign schools for ca. 300 years so the conquered would be lame. No Canticle For Liebowitz for the conquered. I refrained from expressing the parallels I perceived, camoflage is best some times. Got IED?

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Re: geographically removed?
by Major Variola (ret) 30 Nov '04

30 Nov '04

At 06:44 PM 11/28/04 -0800, James A. Donald wrote: > -- >On 27 Nov 2004 at 6:43, Major Variola (ret) wrote: >> Internal resistance mediated by cypherpunkly tech can always >> be defeated by cranking up the police state a notch. > >You assume the police state is competent, technically skilled, >determined, disciplined, and united. Observed police states >are incompetent, indecisive, and quarrelsome. > >> This is eg why e-cash systems have anonymity problems. > >The problem is that any genuinely irrevocable payment system >gets swarmed by conmen and fraudsters. We have a long way to >go before police states are the problem. Call me pessimistic, but you seem optimistic to me. At least we're moderately back on topic :-)

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