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What is the United States doing to help Iraqi refugees?

According to several people close to the White House, President Bush has become particularly fascinated with the life and presidency of Harry S. Truman. Apparently, Bush sees in the 33rd president his soul brother-in-chief. It's easy to see why. From Bush's perspective, the two men have a lot in common.

Bush was born in 1946, the second year of Truman's presidency. Both men are regular folk from the so-called heartland of America.

Truman was born and raised in Independence, Mo. When President Bush wasn't at his family's vacation home in Maine or at boarding school in Massachusetts, he was raised in Midland, Texas.

Truman lied to the military about his bad eyesight so that he could enlist and fight in France during World War I. Bush used his family connections to get out of fighting in Vietnam, a former French colony.

Truman was fond of folksy phrases. He had a plaque on his desk that read "the buck stops here." Bush's folksy phrases, such as "I'm the decider" and "I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family," have been printed on countless books, T-shirts and page-a-day calendars.

Truman co-owned a haberdashery that sold men's shirts. Bush wears men's shirts.

The thing Bush seems to like the most about Truman is that he was an unpopular president who has been judged relatively well by history. Loathed when he left office, Truman is now thought of as America's proto-Cold Warrior.

By publicly fetishizing Truman, Bush is saying to the country that he's no longer interested in what the public thinks about the Iraq war. He's saying, 'Screw public opinion, I want to be well-regarderated by historians, not pollsters.'

When it comes to distrusting the whims of the voting public, I'm in complete agreement with the president. I still have trouble understanding how the largest state in the Union has, not once, but twice elected the star of Kindergarten Cop to its highest office.

Nevertheless, it's hard to see how the large majority of Americans who think that Bush is a screw-up are wrong. For example, even if you still believe that invading Iraq was in the best interests of the United States, the administration's mishandling of the war has been so thorough that future historians are likely to be even harder on Bush than today's public.

The American public hasn't even begun to come to grips with the grandness of the disaster caused by Bush's invasion of Iraq.

For example, there has been almost no public discussion or reckoning of the massive number of Iraqis who've been made refugees by the war. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees report published in November, 1.6 million Iraqis have been forced to leave their homes and move elsewhere within Iraq. An additional 1.8 million Iraqis have been forced to leave Iraq altogether, with the majority of them going to neighboring Syria and Jordan.

Those numbers are colossal on their own and mind-blowing when you consider that Iraq's population is only 25 million or so. As a percentage of the population, it's the equivalent of 30 million to 40 million Americans moving to Canada or Mexico.

The report says that 3,000 Iraqis are fleeing to Syria and Jordan every day and that the number is increasing. Iraqis now comprise more than 10 percent of Jordan's population.

The people fleeing aren't terrorists or enemies of the United States. They're regular people ‹ doctors, lawyers, CD-store clerks, etc. ‹ who by virtue of being the wrong religion on the wrong city block had to run for their lives. Many of those fleeing have been targeted for violence because they helped Americans.

What has the Bush administration done to help these refugees fleeing from the chaos we created? Almost nothing. The United States spent nearly $100 billion on the war last year, but only $35 million to help Iraqi refugees. According to The New York Times, the Bush administration has only planned to accept 500 fleeing Iraqis into the United States this year. That's fewer people than fled Iraq in the time it took me to write this column.

I'm not sure how history will vindicate that.

Why did Ethiopia invade Somalia?

If you liked War on Terror™ '06, you're gonna love the '07 model!

Contrary to the advice of nearly everyone who knows anything about Iraq, counterterrorism or the capabilities of the U.S. military, President Bush is set to increase the number of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq.

In the meantime, the Bush administration appears to be prepping for a military strike against Iraq's bigger, more powerful neighbor, Iran.

The American and British navies are positioning additional warships off Iran's southern coast, including a U.S. aircraft carrier capable of launching air strikes against Iranian land targets. The Brits say the buildup is an effort to "maintain familiarity with the challenges of mine hunting in warm water conditions." Of course. And I downed several shots of tequila on New Year's Eve to maintain familiarity with Mexican agribusiness.

The most dramatic new development in the War on Terror™ happened last month, when soldiers from Ethiopia launched a full-on invasion of neighboring Somalia.

For much of 2006, Ethiopian forces have been active in Somalia in support of Somalia's transitional government. Somalia's transitional government is backed by the international community (whatever the hell that is), but it has little support or power to speak of in Somalia.

Ethiopia's opponents in Somalia are an Islamic fundamentalist coalition known as the Union of Islamic Courts.

The UIC was on a bit of a roll for most of 2006. Despite its sadism and flat-out weirdness (among other things, the UIC reportedly executed a man and a small girl last summer for the crime of wanting to watch World Cup soccer on TV), many Somalis view it as the most authentic, patriotic and Islamically correct group vying for power in the country.

The UIC's patriotic street cred was boosted considerably last year by a bungled effort by the CIA.

I know it's hard to believe that an intelligence agency controlled by the Bush administration would screw something up, but it's true. The CIA armed brutal local warlords who opposed the UIC. When word of the CIA's efforts got out, Somali support for the UIC swelled. It seems that many Somalis were impressed with the UIC just because the CIA was trying to stop them. Good work, boys.

Last summer, UIC forces captured Somalia's largest city, Mogadishu. UIC forces also advanced to Baidoa, an inland city where Somalia's transitional government is headquartered and protected by Ethiopian troops.

Throughout the second half of 2006, UIC forces clashed with Ethiopian forces and tensions escalated. Last month, Ethiopian forces invaded Somalia along a 250-mile front. On Dec. 28, Ethiopian forces, along with elements from Somalia's transitional government, took Mogadishu from the fleeing UIC.

So, what does any of that have to do with the War on Terror™? Ethiopia's military is funded and trained by the United States. General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the military's War on Terror™ operations in East Africa, visited Ethiopia's dictator/Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in the weeks preceding the invasion. While denying direct involvement, the U.S. government has already expressed its official approval of the operation.

Why does the United States care what happens in Somalia? Because Somalia is a haven for al-Qaeda operatives operating throughout East Africa ‹ and because Somalia's coastline overlooks the shipping lanes through which much of the Middle East's oil passes.

Ethiopia's government brutalizes its people and spends lavishly on its military while ignoring the needs of its citizens (food and water, for example), but the Bush administration supports it because its interests coincide with ours. We want a Somalia that isn't ruled by the UIC and isn't a haven for Islamic fundamentalists. Ethiopia wants to keep Somalia's Islamists weak so that they cannot foment unrest within Ethiopia or act as a proxy fighting force in Ethiopia's ongoing border dispute with neighboring Eritrea.

The one country that none of the major actors in Somalia's current war care about is Somalia. The United Nations reports the current war has "severely undermined" humanitarian operations helping 2 million Somalis. If Somalis hate us for helping to start this war, who could blame them?

Who is Flynt Leverett?

Because he tends not to display his panty-less cha-cha in the presence of paparazzi, chances are you've never heard of Flynt Leverett. Let me tell you a few important things about him:

1. He has perhaps the most awesomely masculine name ever.

2. He graduated from Texas Christian University in 1978. TCU's mascot is the horned frog. According to TCU's website, "When angered or frightened, horned frogs can squirt a fine, four-foot stream of blood from their eyes."

3. Leverett has worked in government under two Bushes and one Clinton. From February 2002 to March 2003, he worked for the current president as senior director for Middle East Affairs on the National Security Council. March 2003 was when the United States invaded Iraq. Leverett quit the Bush administration because he didn't want to be a part of an administration that was screwing up foreign policy so spectacularly. Leverett put it more politely on the radio program "Democracy Now!" in April 2004: "I disagreed with so many ‹ so many aspects of their whole strategy for approaching this region [the Middle East] and for dealing with the war on terror."

4. Perhaps the most important thing you need to know about Flynt Leverett is that he recently wrote two devastating critiques of the Bush administration's thoroughly counterproductive Iran strategy.

On Dec. 4, public policy think tank the Century Foundation published his 30-page report, titled "Dealing With Tehran: Assessing U.S. Diplomatic Options Toward Iran." In the report, Leverett methodically points out how the Bush administration policy has significantly increased Iran's power in the region, strengthened Iran's most stridently anti-American leaders and accelerated the nuclear weapons development that we're supposedly trying to stop.

The most painful part of the report to read is a review of how the Bush administration started off dealing with Iran from a position of relative power before squandering that power through carelessness and stupidity.

From the weeks following 9/11 through 2003, Iran's government was so scared of ending up on the wrong side of the War on Terror™ that it cooperated with the United States in Afghanistan. Even after Bush called Iran a member of the "Axis of Evil" in January 2002, Iran's government continued to reach out to the United States with regular diplomatic meetings.

In spring 2003, Iran even proposed bilateral talks aimed at resolving all of the major disputes between the United States and Iran, including nuclear weapons. The proposal arrived shortly after the United States toppled Saddam ‹ in other words, it arrived at the peak of U.S. military and diplomatic leverage in the Middle East. The Bush administration rebuffed Iran's offer.

What's happened since then? Iran's top theocrats purged the government of moderates who wanted to engage the United States. In 2005, that led to the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And the United States has gotten bogged down and beaten up in an Iraqi civil war. We still want Iran to give up its nuclear program, but we now have less power to force them to negotiate.

Leverett's second critique of the Bush administration's Iran strategy was a 1,000-word op-ed commissioned by the New York Times.

Based largely on his 30-pager, it was supposed to appear in the Times in early December, but did not. According to Leverett, the White House forced the CIA Publications Review Board to block his essay on the grounds that it revealed classified info. Leverett says that everything he wrote in the essay has been publicly written or spoken about already. It's hard not to believe him. After all, the same board had just OK'd Leverett's 30-page report without changing a word.

Is the White House simply crying "national security" to protect itself from criticism in a wide-circulation publication? I don't know. Is this columnist asking a leading, loaded question to insinuate that this White House is illegally suppressing criticism? I don't know.

Leverett's CIA-edited piece appeared in The New York Times on Dec. 22. The online version includes links to public sources that discuss all of the bits the White House and CIA crossed out..

Flynt Leverett's report, "Dealing With Tehran: Assessing U.S. Diplomatic Options Toward Iran," is available at www.tcf.org/publications/internationalaffairs/leverett_diplomatic.pdf.

Why are Iraq's Kurds upset with the Iraq Study Group report? (Part II)

Last week, I wrote about particular preeminent peeps profoundly peeved with the Iraq Study Group report. I also bought a new thesaurus.

Chief among the peeved are Iraq's Kurds.

On Dec. 10, Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani (a Kurd), told British newspaper the Guardian that the ISG report's recommendations are "dead in the water." The American press didn't report Talabani's objections because, when discussing Iraq, they only understand sand and desert metaphors. If Talabani had said that the ISG had "crossed a line in the sand" or that "James Baker's camel be ridin' dirty," the press would have been all over it.

According to the Guardian, Talabani's primary objection to the ISG report is its recommendation that thousands of U.S. soldiers be embedded within Iraq's security forces. To do so would compromise Iraqi sovereignty, Talabani says.

But for Talabani to claim that the embedding is his main objection to the ISG report is a bit like claiming he watches pornos every night because of the soundtrack.

Simply put, Talabani's real objection to the ISG report is that several of its recommendations (as laid out in last week's column) would reverse Kurdish autonomy and reduce the likelihood of an eventual independent Kurdish state.

To Talabani and Kurds, the ISG report hints that yet another American betrayal of the Kurdish cause could be in the making. "We can smell the attitude of James Baker in 1991 when he liberated Kuwait but left Saddam in power," Talabani told the Guardian, referring to the ISG principal and secretary of state under Bush the elder, James Baker.

The stank attitude to which Talabani refers was the one taken toward the first Gulf War.

Shortly after the United States rescued Kuwait's vast oil reserves from Saddam's clutches, Bush the elder publicly beseeched Iraqis to rise up and overthrow their mustachioed menace. Iraq's Shi'ites (in the south) and Kurds (in the north) obliged, but were slaughtered by Saddam's forces while U.S. forces sat nearby and did nothing. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were forced from their homes before public pressure forced the elder Bush administration to intervene with humanitarian aid and a protective "no-fly zone" to shield Kurds from Saddam's aircraft.

Why didn't the elder Bush help the Iraqi people? Because he feared that a de-Saddamized Iraq might collapse, thereby upsetting the delicate balance of power in the Middle East (translation: we did it for oil and Israel). Because Baker was secretary of state while it happened, Kurds still look at him and see their blood on his hands.

The year 1991 was not the first time the United States sold out the Kurds for the sake of so-called regional stability. In the early 1970s, the CIA funded and armed Kurdish insurgents fighting for regional autonomy in Iraq. The United States did so at the request of its Iranian super-friend, the Shah of Iran. At the time, the Shah (which means monarch) was trying to gain leverage over Iraq in a dispute about an oil-rich area on the border between the two countries. In 1975, Iraq gave up its claim on the border area in exchange for CIA and Iran halting aid to Iraq's Kurds.

The most iconic betrayal of the Kurds by the United States happened in December 1983. Iraq (controlled at the time by Saddam Hussein) was at war with Iran (controlled by Ayatollah Khomenei). Despite clear evidence that Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons not only on Iranians but on Kurds in his own country, the United States continued to funnel aid to Saddam. To make it clear to Saddam that the United States did not mind if he used chemical weapons, the Reagan administration sent a high-level envoy to Baghdad to meet with Saddam. That envoy was Donald Rumsfeld.

Efforts by Kurdish leaders to meet with U.S. officials during the 1980s were largely rebuffed.

Why are Iraq's Kurds upset with the Iraq Study Group report?

The Iraq Study Group report, which alleges to offer recommendations by which the United States can "de-quagmirify" itself from Iraq, is a bummer. By all means, keep it off your Amazon.com wish list. You'd be better off with a seventh copy of Marley & Me.

It's not the grim assessment of U.S. options in Iraq that gets me down. I saw that coming. What I didn't see coming was the report's painful stupidity.

For example, take this passage: "If the situation continues to deteriorate, the consequences could be severe. A slide toward chaos could trigger the collapse of Iraq's government and a humanitarian catastrophe. Neighboring countries could intervene. Sunni-Shia clashes could spread. Al-Qaeda could win a propaganda victory and expand its base of operations. The global standing of the United States could be diminished. Americans could become more polarized."

Yowza! Did it really take a blue ribbon of former secretaries of state and defense the better part of a year to "warn" us about something that has already happened? This just in: I predict that San Francisco will be leveled by an earthquake in 1906. Report to follow.

As it turns out, I'm not the only person saying "WTF?" to the Iraq Study Group report.

President Bush has signaled to reporters that he's not very keen on the report's recommendations that he pull out the bulk of U.S. troops by 2008 and begin diplomatic negotiations with Syria and Iran ASAP. His nose-thumbing might be real, or it might be a 'stay the course cuz I'm the decider' head fake before he embraces the report's call to cut and run. Did I say cut and run? I meant "phased redeployment." My bad.

Among those most upset about the Iraq Study Group report are Iraq's Kurds.

In a nutshell, Kurds are worried that the ISG's recommendations, if implemented, will screw them over. Say what?

The report makes a big deal about unity, reconciliation and regional cooperation in Iraq.

Americans may like the sound of those words, but to Iraq's Kurds, they're code words implying that Kurds will be asked to give up most, if not all, of what they want.

What is it that Iraq's Kurds want?

They want independence. Not now, but soon. In a non-binding referendum last year, 98.5 percent of Kurds affirmed their preference for an independent Kurdish state. The remaining 1.5 percent inadvertently voted for Pat Buchanan.

The ISG report includes several recommendations that could slow or stop Kurdish independence.

First, the ISG wants to delay a proposed vote that would allow Iraqi Kurds to annex the oil-rich, multiethnic city of Kirkuk to their autonomous region of Iraq. The ISG thinks a vote would lead to increased bloodshed. Kurds believe that Kirkuk is rightfully theirs. It's their Jerusalem, their spiritual, economic and political capital. In their view, Saddam Hussein stole it from them and any effort to stop them from getting it back is an affront.

Secondly, the ISG proposes that Iraq's central government control the country's oil revenues so that they can be shared equally among Iraq's ethnic and religious groups. The Kurds, who live atop a disproportionate share of Iraq's oil, don't want to share oil revenue with anyone, least of all the Sunni Arab Iraqis who oppressed and murdered them so prolifically.

Thirdly, the ISG recommends that neighboring Turkey be invited into regional negotiations about Iraq. Turkey's interest in Iraq is to make sure that Kurds never declare independence. Turkey fears that Kurdish independence from Iraq will spur Turkey's large Kurdish population to try to break off from Turkey and join independent Kurdistan.

Iraq's Kurds heard alarm bells when they saw the ISG request for Turkey to be at the negotiating table. Iraq's Kurds are worried that their interests will be sacrificed for the sake of pleasing Turkey. To some Kurds, the ISG report is a prelude to yet another betrayal by the United States of Kurdish nationalism. I'll talk about that more next week.

How many people have died in the Iraq war?

Since the March 2003 invasion, 2,856 American soldiers have died in Iraq.

More than 2,700 of those soldiers have died since Dubya declared the mission in Iraq "accomplished." More than 1,100 have died since Vice President Cheney said the insurgency was in its "last throes." Between 75 and 100 more American soldiers will likely die in Iraq between now and Dec. 29, the date when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is expected to vacate his Pentagon office. Even though Bush announced the day after the November election that he was dumping Rummy, reports say Bush will let him stay on until the 29th so he can surpass Robert McNamara as the longest-serving secretary of defense in American history. After the 29th, will someone please remind me to add "sucked at his job longer than anyone else" to Rummy's Wikipedia entry?

More than 21,000 American soldiers have been wounded in Iraq. It's not clear how many of those injuries are serious or permanently crippling. The Pentagon doesn't make that information readily available. (I got my numbers from a Brookings Institution graph.) In fact, the Pentagon web site doesn't even list the number of wounded soldiers. It does, however, feature four separate "news" stories about how country star Toby Keith is to perform for soldiers. It's shockin', y'all.

The number of Iraqi civilians who've died violent deaths since the U.S. invasion is the subject of much dispute.

The Pentagon has steadfastly refused to offer any information about the total number of Iraqi civilians who've died since the U.S. invasion. Back in 2003, Gen. Tommy Franks was asked by reporters about Iraqi civilian casualties. "We don't do body counts," he replied. He went to high school with Laura Bush. Isn't that neat?

Franks' five-word "f#!k you" to the Iraqi people is printed in large black letters at the top of iraqbodycount.net, a web site that keeps a running tally of Iraq's war dead. The site estimates that between 49,021 and 54,397 Iraqi civilians have died since the invasion. The web site derives its numbers from news reports. The 5,000-person range in the estimate is due in part to the fact that different news outlets often report different casualty totals for the same event.

The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index (brookings.edu/iraqindex), which blends Iraq Body Count data with United Nations data, estimates that 62,000 Iraqi civilians had died by Aug. 31, 2006.

A study produced by Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University and published by the British medical journal The Lancet indicates that IBC and Brookings are dramatically understating the loss of life in Iraq ‹ by a factor of up to 12.

The Human Cost of the War In Iraq: A Mortality Study, 2002-2006 says that more than 655,000 Iraqis have died in Iraq since the U.S. invasion (web.mit.edu/cis/pdf/Human_Cost_of_War.pdf). Unlike IBC and Brookings, the Johns Hopkins report doesn't just add up publicly reported deaths. It uses a method called cluster sampling. In places such as war zones, where a comprehensive, census-like survey is impossible, cluster sampling is widely considered a practical and accurate alternative.

In a nutshell, the project's researchers went to 1,849 randomly selected Iraqi households. The researchers asked the people if any residents of the house had died and, if so, how. Researchers then extrapolated a figure for the whole country.

Why is their number so much higher than anyone else's? They say it's because other numbers rely almost exclusively on reports by journalists. At great personal risk, the Johns Hopkins researchers went into cities and neighborhoods where Western journalists almost never go.

In keeping with the Bush administration philosophy, which dictates that facts should be dismissed if they do not conform with already-held beliefs, U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. George W. Casey says he doesn't believe the Johns Hopkins report. "That 650,000 number seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen."

President Bush also says he doesn't "consider it a credible report." Then again, he also didn't consider Aug. 6, 2001's "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" to be a credible report, either.

What's next in Iraq?

Lies, incompetence, ignorance and bluster masquerading as strength have all combined to turn Iraq into the worst American foreign policy blunder since Vietnam, or maybe even since 1812, when the United States invaded British colonial Canada, prompting the Brits to invade and burn down Washington, D.C. D'oh, eh!

Simply put, there is no good way forward in Iraq.

If the United States pulls its troops out tomorrow, Islamic militants will continue to transform Iraq into a haven for anti-Western terrorists, while tens of thousands of Iraqis will die in gun battles, car bombings and gruesome ritual murders.

But if U.S. troops stay, well, Islamic militants will still continue to transform Iraq into a haven for anti-Western terrorists and tens of thousands of Iraqis will still die in gun battles, car bombings and gruesome ritual murders.

The Bush administration is no longer looking to turn Iraq into a mini United States in the Middle East. At this point, the United States would settle for a stable Iraq governed by a West-friendly strongman, not entirely unlike what Saddam Hussein was to the United States back in 1983, when Donald Rumsfeld was in Baghdad shaking his hand and giving him a green light to use poison gas on Kurds and Iranians.

In a last-ditch effort to achieve those goals, the Bush administration is expecting to pursue one of, or a combination of, some of the policies outlined below.

Increasing the number of troops in Iraq: Several people, most notably 2008 presidential wannabe Sen. John McCain, have proposed increasing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. Proponents of the "put more troops in" idea want to focus U.S. military power on stabilizing Baghdad. First impose some order in Baghdad, proponents of this idea argue, then work your way out. It's a derivation of the counterinsurgency strategy known as the "oil-spot strategy."

It's a swell idea in theory, but it's not realistic. The Washington Post has reported that the Pentagon has already concluded that there aren't enough U.S. troops or quality Iraqi security forces to make it work. Proponents of the idea know this. They also know that the American people are not willing to stomach an even bigger, open-ended troop commitment.

A cynic might argue that McCain and others who recommend this unrealistic proposal are only doing so to politically position themselves as both critics of the Bush administration and as foreign-policy tough guys (as opposed to antiwar Democrats, who are critics of Bush administration and foreign-policy pussies). It's a good thing I'm not a cynic.

A swift and near complete U.S. pullout: Why not? The U.S. military hasn't brought democracy or peace to Iraq. It has simply replaced Saddam-centric violence with sectarian violence and terrorism (not to the mention the tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of "collateral" deaths resulting from U.S. military operations). Why let another U.S. soldier die for a war that's already lost?

Because, critics of an immediate pullout rightly argue, an immediate pullout will almost certainly accelerate Iraq's death spiral. The United States owes Iraq's fledgling democrats its best effort, even if more Americans die.

Go Long: In D.C.-shorthand, the above plans are known as "Go Big" and "Go Home" respectively. Several newspapers are reporting that a hybrid of the two plans, known as "Go Long," is currently the Pentagon's favored option. It would involve adding 20,000 to 30,000 troops to the current 140,000 in Iraq, followed by a long, slow pullout that would still leave at least 60,000 troops in Iraq.

The pros and cons of this policy? They're summed up in a quotation given by an unnamed U.S. military intelligence official to The Washington Post. Said Mr. Anonymous, "The 'Go Long' approach is one that can work if there is sufficient strategic patience, resources appropriated and [if] leadership executes effectively."

If we had strategic patience, resources appropriated and effective leadership, we wouldn't be in this mess.

Who's fighting in Iraq?

Any day now, the Iraq Study Group is expected to issue its report explaining how the Bush administration should proceed with the thus-far bungled U.S. war in Iraq. The ISG, led by Bush-family right-hand man James Baker, is expected to propose either a partial U.S. military pullout or a redeployment of U.S. forces within Iraq. Also in the cards is a push for some sort of regional diplomacy effort involving Iran and Syria, the aim being to cut off foreign support for insurgent violence. Apparently, we don't negotiate with terrorists, except for when we do.

Whatever the proposed "solution" or "strategy" in Iraq, it will have to attempt to cope with the fact that Iraq is in the midst of a religious sectarian civil war. Since February, the number of Iraqis killed in violence has never dropped below 2,000 people per month. Iraqi civilians are dying at a faster rate on their own streets than American soldiers did fighting the German and Japanese armies during World War II.

With new reports of mass killings every day, it's easy to lose track of who's killing whom in Iraq. The Brookings Institution's Iraq Index (brookings.edu/iraqindex) estimates that there are more than 20,000 insurgents operating in Iraq. Only about 10 percent of them are thought to be foreigners.

The insurgency originated in 2003 as a violent campaign by Iraq's Sunni Muslim Arabs. Simply put, Sunni Arabs are afraid of living in an Iraq where they are no longer the politically and economically dominant ethnic-religious group. Though a minority, Iraq's Sunni Arabs did relatively well under Saddam Hussein (meaning they were brutalized slightly less and had better economic prospects than their Shi'ite Muslim Arab or ethnic Kurdish countrymen). Sunni Arabs fear democracy in Iraq because they will be outvoted and put upon by Shi'ite Arabs and Kurds.

Remnants of Saddam's police-state machinery fed on and exploited this fear. Saddamites and Sunni Arabs started lashing out in 2003, using weapons left over from Saddam's military. They attacked U.S. troops. They attacked their Shi'ite countrymen. They attacked rebuilding efforts and civil-engineering projects. They attacked fellow Sunni Arabs who participated in rebuilding or cooperated with Americans.

Joining the Saddamite effort to stoke and exploit Sunni Arab fears are groups of Sunni Arab religious fanatics. Most are Iraqi, but some are foreign-born. The most well known Sunni Arab insurgent group is al-Qaeda. Led until his death in June by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda In Iraq is known for beheading hostages on videotape and bombing attacks against Shi'ite Arabs designed to accelerate the cycle of sectarian violence. That said, the United States overstated Zarqawi's influence for two years as a way of linking the Iraq War to the overall War on Terror™ narrative. Al-Qaeda In Iraq announced earlier this year that it was "joining" a coalition of other Sunni insurgents under the umbrella name Mujahideen Shura Council. I bet those meetings are a hoot.

The people fighting on the Shi'ite Arab side of the sectarian divide are often referred to in the press as militias rather than insurgents. The Shi'ite Arab insurgency has become much more active since the February bombing of the much loved Shi'ite shrine in Samarra by Sunni provocateurs.

The two most prominent Shi'ite Arab armed groups are the Mahdi Army, led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the Iranian-trained Badr Brigade, which is the gun-toting faction of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the strongest Shi'ite political party in Iraq. Both groups are heavily represented in Iraq's government, which serves to stoke Sunni Arab fears that Iraq's post-Saddam government is out to get them.

The two largest fighting forces in Iraq are, of course, Iraq's government security forces and the U.S. military. Iraq has approximately 300,000 security personnel, but many, if not most, are active in the same militias whose violence they're supposed to be stopping. To many Sunni Arabs, Iraq's security forces are just another Shi'ite militia.

What's the latest on the military coup in Thailand?

In the summer of 2006, two major news stories originated in Thailand. One of them is still being discussed on news shows and in tabloids. The other disappeared from the American news media faster than you can say Phuket. Guess which is which.

Story No. 1: On Aug. 16, American John Mark Karr was arrested in Thailand after he falsely confessed to killing pageant and cable-news princess JonBenét Ramsey. Being really, really creepy is not actually a crime, so he was eventually released.

Story No. 2: One night in Bangkok (Sept. 19, to be precise), the democratically elected government of Thailand was overthrown by the Thai military.

If "easiest guessing game ever" is a Guinness Book of World Records category, I'm in.

It's unfortunate that the American press chose to underreport the coup story. It's much more important than the arrest of John Mark Karr. After all, shouldn't a country that claims to be sacrificing blood and fortune to "spread democracy" in the Middle East at least feign interest when the elected leader of an ally and major trading partner such as Thailand has its democracy short-circuited by generals and a king? Even if only for the weirdness of the whole thing, it was still a better story than Karr. Here's what happened.

On Sept. 19, Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra was in the United States for the same U.N. conference made memorable by Venezuela's Hugo Chavez with his "it still smells of sulfur" devil speech about President Bush.

Reportedly, Thailand was abuzz all summer with rumors of a possible coup against Thaksin. Though democratically elected in 2001, Thaksin's popularity among Thailand's urban middle and upper class had suffered this year, thanks to allegations of corruption, abuses of power and a sudden parliamentary election he called in April that was boycotted by opposition and ultimately ruled unconstitutional by a Thai court. The ongoing violent Muslim uprising in southern Thailand also took its toll on Thaksin's popularity. He was (and is) still very popular among Thailand's rural poor. He courted them with healthcare spending and debt-relief programs. However, their influence over Thai politics is limited except at the ballot box ‹ mostly because they're rural and poor.

On the night of Sept. 19, coup plotters led by Thai military Gen. Sonthi Boonyaratglin finally struck. Tanks surrounded key government buildings and media outlets. It was possibly the most polite and orderly military overthrow of a democratic government in history. Bangkok families came out to the streets and posed for souvenir snapshots with soldiers and tanks. General Sonthi issued a statement that calmly explained what happened, before adding, "We ask for the cooperation of the public and ask your pardon for the inconvenience." Hey, sorry about voiding the country's constitution and nullifying the will of the people, now watch your step!

The coup plotters, with the support of Thailand's king, have promised to restore democracy as soon as they can get around to it. The coup plotters and the elite who support them plan to rewrite the constitution, but it's unclear (1) when it will be rewritten, and (2) how any sort of democratic system wouldn't just result in Thaksin or someone from his party being returned to political power. Thaksin's wife returned to Thailand recently to ask Prem Tinsulanonda, an adviser to Thailand's king and one of the main coup plotters, whether her husband could return to Thailand. They said no. Thaksin was last spotted waiting things out in China.

Although martial law remains in effect and political activity has been banned, life appears to have quickly returned to normal. The economy is humming along. Tourists are still pouring in. A guy can still get a ladyboy back to his hotel for $40. And a Thai zoo has just announced that it's showing porno to its pandas to teach them to mate. When I said normal, I meant normal by Thai standards..

Why is the Bush administration so worked up about Nicaragua's presidential election?

Tuesday's midterm elections weren't the only elections this week in which the majority of Americans didn't vote.

On Sunday, the people of Nicaragua voted for a new president. According to an early report, voter turnout in the Central American nation was about 70 percent. Confirmed results were not available as of press time, but it looked likely that Daniel Ortega would be the winner, as he was leading four other candidates in early results.

If the name Ortega sounds vaguely familiar to you, it should, and not just because it's the name of a popular brand of Mexican food products.

Back in the 1980s, Daniel Ortega was depicted by the Reagan and Bush administrations as a threat to freedom in the United States. On the American boogeyman scale, he was somewhere between Hugo Chavez and Saddam Hussein.

American officials tried to influence the Nicaraguan election by scaring the Nicaraguan people into voting against Ortega. American officials warned that economic aid and cooperation with Nicaragua might cease if Ortega is elected. U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez referred to Ortega's political alliance as "anti-democratic forces." That may seem like empty tough-talk to American ears, but to Nicaraguans who've had their country trampled on by the United States for 150 years, it's not taken lightly.

Why is Ortega so hated by the Bush administration? First, he's viewed in the United States as an ally of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Chavez recently promised to send boatloads of cheap oil to Nicaragua ‹ an offer viewed by many as a "there's more where that came from" bribe aimed at getting Nicaraguans to vote for Ortega.

Secondly, Ortega is the leader of the Sandinistas, the leftist Nicaraguan political movement that in 1979 overthrew the nasty, corrupt and incompetent U.S.-backed dictator Anastasio Somoza.

The Somoza family had ruled Nicaragua since 1937. The United States supported them because they maintained an economic system that was highly advantageous to wealthy U.S. agricultural interests and because they were seen as an ally against Communist expansion. According to the Houston Chronicle, FDR once said of the first Somoza dictator, "Somoza may be an SOB, but he's our SOB."

Despite the fact that we as a nation continually affirm the sacred right of nations to pick their own SOBs, the United States was shocked, appalled and resentful of the Sandinistas for overthrowing our goon. Annoyance soon became alarm, however, as the Sandinistas started courting good relations with the Soviet Union, Cuba and other leftist movements in Central America.

As this was the 1980s, the Reagan administration chose anti-Communism as its main anti-Sandinista talking point. Reagan said that the Sandinistas intended "to give the Soviet Union a beachhead on the mainland of this continent ‹ only 2,000 miles from the Texas border, a clear national security threat."

To combat the no-doubt-imminent threat of a 2,000-mile Soviet tank advance through the dense jungles and harsh deserts of Central America and Mexico, the Reagan administration helped destroy what was left of post-Somoza Nicaragua by illegally funding the Contra rebel movement's civil war against the Sandinistas. Reagan called the Contras democrats and freedom fighters. Never mind that Ortega had been voted president of Nicaragua in 1984 in elections that international monitors deemed no less free and fair than, oh, presidential elections in Florida.

Approximately 60,000 Nicaraguans died in the fighting. Its population at the time was about 3 million. A similarly deadly war in the United States would leave 6 million Americans dead. But at least Texas was safe.

If Ortega wins, expect Bush and Co. to start talking up the threat he poses to the United States. Hoping to draw more U.S. support, Ortega's main electoral rival called Ortega a "friend" of Osama bin Laden.

Because it may be hard to convince Americans that a Catholic leftist in Central America is friends with an Islamofascist in Central Asia, I expect the White House will take a different approach. Perhaps they'll depict Ortega's control of Nicaragua's banana plantations as a danger to American health. "Daniel Ortega threatens the dietary potassium intake of American children" would not be the dumbest thing a president has ever said about Nicaragua.

What is homeland security and does the government do it well?

Prior to September 2001, Americans were not as familiar with the phrase "homeland security" as they probably are now.

The term had been used for years in government reports, but if you asked me on Sept. 10, 2001 to say what "homeland security" was, I'd have probably guessed that it was a burglar alarm company in Nebraska.

The Department of Homeland Security was created in response to possibly the biggest and deadliest bureaucratic screw-up in American history. The federal government had information that could have allowed law enforcement to prevent the 9/11 attacks. The attack took place anyway, in part because the federal government is vast and uncoordinated. That an FBI office in Phoenix, Ariz., knew a little sumthin-sumthin' doesn't mean a CIA agent in Virginia knew it, too. Dots weren't connected. Puzzle pieces were not assembled. Memos titled "Bin Laden Determined To Attack Inside The United States" were ignored by the White House, etc.

In September 2001, President Bush appointed then-governor of Pennsylvania Tom Ridge to head what was then called the Office of Homeland Security. One year later, it became the Department of Homeland Security. With a budget of $34 billion, DHS is the federal government's largest cabinet-level agency.

What's the agency's mission?

"We will lead the unified national effort to secure America," says the agency's mission statement. "We will prevent and deter terrorist attacks and protect against and respond to threats and hazards to the nation. We will ensure safe and secure borders, welcome lawful immigrants and visitors, and promote the free-flow of commerce."

Has the DHS been successful?

That's hard to say. Al-Qaeda has not attacked a target inside the United States since 9/11. That's a great thing. But is that the result of work by the DHS or some other government agency? Is it luck? Has al-Qaeda made another effort on the scale of 9/11? It's hard to say.

I can't think of any independent observers who rate the DHS's job performance well. In a recent podcast on the Council on Foreign Relations' web site, homeland security analyst Stephen Flynn gave the government's homeland security a terrible report card.

Flynn gives port security a D+. That's up, he says, from an F, because in 2006 the government has finally bothered to development a coherent plan for port security. Chemical-plant security gets a D-/F. According to Flynn, it took the feds five years to pass legislation and provide funding for chemical-plant security; when it did, it only allocated $10 million. That's $667 for each of the 15,000 chemical facilities that need protecting.

Flynn also gives a D to the Homeland Security department's PR operations. He singles out for criticism the DHS's idiotic color-coded threat system ‹ you know, the one that tells you to be scared but doesn't tell you what to be scared of or how to modify behavior to counter the alleged threats.

The bad grades Flynn dishes out are especially disheartening when you look at what he gave better grades to. For example, Flynn gives Air Defense a B. I know little about air defense, but I do know my confidence in U.S. air defense against terrorism was severely shaken after I read an AP story quoting the commander of U.S. Northern Command, Adm. Timothy Keating, admitting that he learned of the small plane crash last month in NYC that killed Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle from TV news. Said the AP story: "Keating said he ordered the fighters to be scrambled immediately after seeing information about the crash on television."

Sadly, the fact that Keating actually watches TV puts him several steps of ahead of other leaders in the homeland security biz. In 2005, the White House and DHS claimed they didn't realize that New Orleans' flood protection was breached after Katrina, even though several news outlets had reported it.

Most of the 1,500 Louisianians who died after Katrina were killed as the result of the federal government's poorly designed and poorly built flood walls. Protecting critical infrastructure from hurricanes and rescuing victims is part of DHS's job. Flynn gives Disaster Response a C-.

Who is James Baker and why should you care?

Not to be confused with televangelist Jim Bakker (ex-husband of Tammy Faye), James A. Baker III has been America's most powerful right-hand man for the past three decades. If America is Montgomery Burns, Baker is our less-gay Smithers.

Baker got the gig as America's most powerful right-hand man nearly four decades ago, when he was fortunate enough to start working for what would eventually become America's most powerful family, the Bush family.

The year was 1970. Baker was a fancy-pants Houston lawyer. George Herbert Walker "Baby Daddy" Bush was a second-term congressman from Texas looking to move up to the Senate.

Baby Daddy tapped Baker to manage his campaign. Baby Daddy lost, but a non-sexual love affair was born. As Bush rose to prominence in the national Republican party, first as U.N. ambassador and chairman of the Republican National Committee under President Nixon, then as head of the CIA under Ford, he brought Baker along for the ride. Baker served as undersecretary of commerce for President Ford, so impressing him that he was tapped to run Ford's quiet 1976 re-election campaign against Carter.

Ford lost. But as we know from the current administration, loyalty is more important than achievement, so Baker stuck around. Bush put Baker in charge of his 1980 presidential campaign. Bush lost to Reagan, but Reagan was so impressed with the Bush-Baker attempt that he made Bush his vice president and Baker his chief of staff and then his treasury secretary. For much of the 1980s, James Baker's signature was on our money.

Baker's superstar moment was his run as secretary of state during Baby Daddy's presidency. He helped make sure that the Soviet Union's collapse didn't kick up any more dust than it needed to. He also assembled the coalition that thumped Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War.

Baker is Baby Daddy's closest political ally and confidant. Baker's relationship with Dubya is much more complicated. Dubya is driven by a primal impulse to correct what he perceives to be Baby Daddy's mistakes. Dubya ignored Baker during his 2000 presidential campaign because he was upset with Baker's less-than-enthused helming of Baby Daddy's failed 1992 re-election campaign against Clinton.

Stiff-arming became a hug, however, the moment Dubya's ambitions got jammed up in a Florida ballot machine. When Dubya needed a ball buster to make sure that the Florida recount stopped, Baker was sent to Tallahassee. Mission Accomplished. The Bush/Baker alliance would continue for another presidential term. Not quite.

Riding high on his post-9/11 approval ratings and the idiotic advice of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, etc., Dubya explicitly rejected the Gulf War I ending so carefully choreographed by Baby Daddy and Baker. Dubya thought he could "correct" his dad's and Baker's "mistake." You know that story.

Here we are in 2006. Mission Not Accomplished. Republican dominance threatened. Who you gonna call?

Baker is in charge of the Iraq Study Group. Formed in March by a Republican Congress that has grown increasingly terrified of the White House's mismanagement of the war, the Iraq Study Group's mission is to make policy recommendations to Congress and the White House about the war.

That's its official task. In reality, with James Baker in charge, the ISG's task is to create political cover for White House and congressional Republicans as they initiate some form of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Such political cover is needed because the White House and congressional Republicans have tarred everyone who wants to withdraw U.S. forces as "cut-and-run" cowards.

Shortly after the November election, Baker's ISG will release its recommendations on Iraq. They will include a repackaging of "cut and run" into something more politically palatable. "Trim and trot." "Slash and dash." "Cleave and leave." Whatever they're labeled, the ISG's recommendations will try to allow Dubya to forsake his pledge to "stay the course" and do it in such to way to minimize domestic political criticism.

Why wait until after the election to make recommendations, even though ISG token Democrat co-chair Lee Hamilton said way back on Sept. 20 that "the next three months [in Iraq] are critical"? Because releasing recommendations might affect "domestic politics," Baker says. I'd laugh if it wasn't so sad.

Did North Korea actually explode a nuke? If so, now what?

"The nuclear test was conducted with indigenous wisdom and technology 100 percent."

The above, eerily Dr. Seuss-like declaration appeared last week on North Korea's English-language propaganda web site. The reliably weird Korean Central News Agency (kcna.co.jp) was announcing that North Korea exploded a nuclear device on Oct. 9. The other big news stories out of North Korea that day? The government issued collectible stamps to honor the 80th anniversary of an organization called the "Down-with-Imperialism Union." Also, North Korea's Dear Leader received not one, but two floral baskets from well-wishers. And who says the media focuses too much on the negative?

Despite KCNA's announcement, not everyone is convinced that North Korea actually exploded a nuke. The main reason for skepticism is the explosion's apparent small size. North Korea allegedly told China that the test was supposed to yield a roughly four-kiloton explosion. In nuke-speak, that means that the force of their nuclear weapon's blast was supposed to be equal to that of 4,000 tons of TNT.

North Korea conducted its test in a cave, so it was difficult for outsiders to measure precisely, but American intelligence officials say North Korea's test yielded a measly 200-ton blast. That's 20 times smaller than the four kilotons they supposedly told the Chinese to expect.

So, what happened? There are three possibilities.

Possibility No. 1: North Korea tried to psyche out the world out by detonating roughly 200 tons of plain ol' TNT in a cave. That's possible, but unlikely ‹ atmospheric radioactivity levels near North Korea indicate that the explosion was nuclear.

Possibility No. 2: North Korea tested a super-sophisticated weapon that intentionally produced a small blast. That doesn't seem likely, either. First of all, why would they tell the Chinese that the blast was supposed to be bigger? Secondly, low-yield nuclear devices are exceedingly difficult to produce. There's little indication that North Korea is capable of such technology.

Possibility No. 3: Most likely is that North Korea's nuclear test was only partially successful. The device could have been poorly designed and/or poorly built, resulting in only partial nuclear chain reaction. Building nuclear (or nucular) weapons ain't easy. Only eight countries before North Korea have managed to do it (United States, Russia, U.K., France, Israel, India, Pakistan, China).

For the sake of wrapping up this column quickly so I can go eat, let's say that No. 3 is true ‹ North Korea has nukes, but that they're poorly built and unreliable. Now what?

The United Nations has already imposed sanctions on North Korea. If the sanctions are going to work, they will have to be enforced largely by China. China is North Korea's primary economic and military patron. China is skittish about pressing North Korea too hard, however, because in the event of war or North Korea's economic or political collapse, China's gonna have hundreds of thousands of hungry, desperate North Korean refugees.

Japan is freaking out right now. Having a nuclear arsenal allows North Korea to puff out its chest and act like a big shot. It's not inconceivable that North Korea would lob some conventional missiles at Japan under the pretense of defending Korean nationalism, knowing full well that Japan (and the United States) now have to think twice before firing back. Japan may now consider acquiring a nuclear deterrent of its own.

What will the Bush administration do? It needs to figure out a way to get international nuclear inspectors back into North Korea. The world can't pry North Korea away from its nukes just yet, but it might be able to keep an eye on the nukes and keep North Korea from selling them to terrorists.

Will the Bush team git-r-done? Don't count on it. From 2001 to 2005, Bush's policy to deal with North Korea's nuclear program was to call its leader a pygmy and invade Iraq. The White House didn't act when North Korea kicked out nuclear inspectors in 2002. It didn't act when North Korea removed fuel rods from its reactors to start making weapons. And it has never sat down with North Korea, one-on-one, to discuss a mutually acceptable compromise.

How has the American mission in Afghanistan fared so far?

Oct. 7 was the fifth anniversary of the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan.

Dubbed Operation Enduring Freedom, it was the first military campaign of President Bush's War On Terror™. When he announced the campaign to the American public, President Bush said the mission's objectives were "to disrupt the use of Afghanistan as a terrorist base of operations, and to attack the military capability of the Taliban regime." In addition, the mission was "designed to clear the way for sustained, comprehensive and relentless operations to drive them out and bring them to justice."

In other words, the United States invaded to crush the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and bring bin Laden and his henchman to justice.

By the beginning of 2002, a third objective was added to the list: nation-building. In the words of the White House web site: "[T]he United States is working to build a safe, stable society that meets the needs of its people and eliminates an environment that breeds terrorism."

Etiquette experts say fifth anniversaries should be celebrated with a gift of wood or silver. Ever the iconoclast, however, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld didn't bother buying us all silver punch bowls, nor did he plant maple trees in any front yards.

Instead, Rummy chose to mark the fifth anniversary by penning an op-ed column for The Washington Post titled "Afghanistan: Five Years Later." The essay bills itself as a no-nonsense look at how Afghans have been enduring their freedom since we got there.

Unfortunately, the essay was short on facts and perspective and long on the vague and upbeat talking points for which the current administration is (in)famous.

If only Rummy had someone in the room with him when he was writing it to talk some truth into him ţ

The misleading starts in the first paragraph, where Rumsfeld ostensibly lists the operation's objectives. The only problem is that he fails to mention that one of them was to catch or kill bin Laden. Perhaps he thought that if he left it out, we'd forget that he and the White House failed to commit enough ground forces to the attack and Tora Bora, allowing bin Laden to escape.

Rummy writes: "Within weeks of our launching combat operations, however, the Taliban regime had been defeated, consigning yet another cruel regime to the dustbin of history."

Well, yeah, we helped force them from power, but someone forgot to tighten the lid on the dustbin. Since 2002, the Taliban has been building strength again. The NATO commander in Afghanistan, British Gen. David Richards, recently warned that most Afghans "could switch sides" and support the Taliban again if conditions in Afghanistan don't improve. Dustbin?

"Not all the news about Afghanistan is encouraging," Rummy wrote. "There is, for example, the legitimate worry that increased poppy production could be a destabilizing factor. And rising violence in southern Afghanistan is real."

The above is a masterpiece of cynical spin. "Not all" the news? How about "hardly any" of the news? "Legitimate worry?" Booming poppy production has been destabilizing Afghanistan since 2002. It's beyond "worry." As for "rising violence" being "real," the fact that he refuses to name the Taliban in that sentence speaks volumes about the administration's chronic unwillingness to level with the American people.

Rummy then goes on to cite Afghanistan's "promising indicators."

He boasts that Afghanistan has 30,000 soldiers and 46,000 police. What he doesn't mention is how tiny those numbers are. Some perspective: Afghanistan is the size of Texas and the NYPD alone has more than 30,000 people.

Rummy boasts that the "size of Afghanistan's economy has tripled in the past five years" and that operating revenue is up to $300 million annually.

Again, some perspective: The city of Atlanta, with fewer than 500,000 residents, has an operating budget more than 20 times Afghanistan's. In the words of NYU Afghanistan scholar and Council on Foreign Relations contributor Barnett R. Rubin, Afghanistan "is so poor that we can't even tell how poor it is."

Promising indicators, my ass. The mission to save us from Afghanistan and Afghanistan from itself is failing.

What does the National Intelligence Estimate say?

On Sept. 24, the New York Times published a front-page story pointing out that America's intelligence establishment believes that the Iraq war has worsened the problem of global terrorism.

That conclusion wasn't especially newsworthy. More analysts and experts than I can count have reached similar conclusions over the past couple of years. The newsiest part of the story was its source. The story's primary source is the so-called National Intelligence Estimate, a classified government report completed in April that represents the consensus view of 16 U.S. spy agencies. The NIE's analysis was OK'd by Bush-appointed Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte. The New York Times story was in essence saying that the White House's public talk about how the war in Iraq is making us and the world safer from terrorism doesn't jibe with its own internal analysis.

In response to the report, the administration didn't 'fess up to how it was misleading the American people about the lack of progress in the War On Terror™. It instead went into damage-control spin mode.

On Sept. 26, Dubya said this of the leaker(s): "[T]here's a leak out of our government, coming right down the stretch in this campaign ‹ to create confusion in the minds of the American people, in my judgment, is why they leaked it."

Creating "confusion in the minds of the American people" for the purpose of scoring politically is a bad thing. No arguments there.

Strange then that the president would choose the very same Q&A session with reporters to create some politically calibrated confusion of his own.

Moments before besmirching the NIE's leaker(s), President Bush fired off the following: "I, of course, read the key judgments on the NIE. I agree with their conclusion that because of our successes against the leadership of al-Qaeda, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent."

How's that confusing? It's confusing because the NIE's "Key Judgements" section, as eventually made public by the White House later that week, includes no such conclusion.

The NIE indeed says that the global jihadist movement is increasingly diffuse, but it cites this diffuseness as an obstacle to U.S. victory, not a marker of U.S. success. Says the NIE:

"We assess that the global jihadist movement is decentralized, lacks a coherent global strategy, and is becoming more diffuse. New jihadist networks and cells, with anti-American agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge. The confluence of shared purpose and dispersed actors will make it harder to find and undermine jihadist groups."

Does anything in there sound like "our successes"? The way the president spins the report, "more diffuse" means that jihadist terrorists are being forced to scatter. A cursory read of the NIE's key judgments, however, makes it crystal clear that "diffuse" is meant in the report to mean that jihadist terrorists are more active in more places.

A few paragraphs later, the NIE explains: "Four underlying factors are fueling the spread of the jihadist movement. (1) Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation and a sense of powerlessness; (2) the Iraq 'jihad' (3) the slow pace of real and sustained economic, social, and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations; and (4) pervasive anti-U.S. sentiment among most Muslims ‹ all of which jihadists exploit."

And what did President "Quit confusing the American people" Bush say again? "I, of course, read the key judgments on the NIE. I agree with their conclusion that because of our successes against the leadership of al-Qaeda, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent."

Um, OK.

Lest you think that the president's words were anything less than an effort to sow "confusion in the minds of the American people," note that one of his official spokespersons offered the same mischaracterization of the NIE to reporters the next day. Said White House spokesperson Dana Perino: "It does not come as a surprise to [President Bush] that the terrorists, once they were hit hard in Afghanistan and are hit hard in other places around the world as we work in cooperation with our allies, that they disperse and become more diffuse."

You can read the clearly written NIE yourself at www.dni.gov/press_releases/Declassified_NIE_Key_Judgments.pdf.

What is Ramadan?

Ramadan is the name of the ninth month of the 12-month Muslim calendar. There are several reasons that you've probably heard the name Ramadan, but not, say Muharram or Rajab (the first and seventh months respectively).

Reason No. 1: Ramadan is the holiest month of the Muslim calendar. Muslims believe that it was during Ramadan that the Quran (Islam's holy book) was revealed to the Prophet Muhammed. To understand the significance of Ramadan to Muslims, imagine a Christmas that lasts 29 days (minus the ham and egg nog of course).

Reason No. 2: American politicians mention Ramadan relatively frequently. As in previous years, President Bush issued a Ramadan greeting Sept. 22 to America's 7 million Muslims. "Laura and I send our best wishes for a blessed Ramadan."

You may also remember back in 1998, President Clinton arguing that the bombing campaign he launched against Iraq was timed to avoid Ramadan: "For us to initiate military action during Ramadan would be profoundly offensive to the Muslim world and therefore would damage our relations with Arab countries and the progress we have made in the Middle East." You know, because it's totally inoffensive to get bombed on non-holidays.

Reason No. 3: Ramadan is increasingly popular among young people because it has spawned so many catchy songs. "On the fourth day of Ramadan, my Imam gave to me, four funny fatwas, three jumping jihads, two happy hijabs and a bag filled with halal meats."

Reason No. 4: Ramadan's practices are quite intriguing to the 290-plus million Americans who are not Muslim.

Tops on the intrigue list is the Muslim practice of not eating or drinking in the daytime during Ramadan. That's a hard one for Americans to figure out. That there are non-actresses/models in this country who go out of their way to not eat is a profound challenge to American ways of thinking. American holidays (religious and civic) revolve around binge eating. "Please use a clean plate for each trip to the buffet ‹ thank you," might as well be in the Constitution.

Why do Muslims fast during Ramadan? Fasting is one of the five pillars of the Muslim faith (the others are acknowledging that there's one God and that Muhammad was his final and awesomest prophet, praying five times daily, giving alms, and going on the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca). The point of fasting is to temporarily defer physical gratification, which is supposed to instill discipline, help Muslims understand the plight of the needy and bring them closer to God.

During Ramadan, Muslims eat a meal shortly before sunrise and another shortly after. Before the evening meal, however, it is traditional (though not required) to break the fast with a snack of dates and water. Yum.

Food isn't the only thing you're supposed give up in the daytime during Ramadan. The rules of Ramadan say ixnay on the uckingfay while you're fasting. You can still get busy at night though, after you've eaten.

If a Muslim unintentionally breaks the fast during the daytime (which I can totally understand ‹ just the other day I mindlessly downed an entire bag of Chips Ahoy while reading a Vanity Fair on my couch), it's not a huge deal. Just wipe away the crumbs, feel remorseful and pick up where you left off.

If, however, a Muslim breaks the fast intentionally, he/she must make up the day and also pay a penalty. Possible "fines" include 60 days of additional fasting, feeding 60 meals to the poor or freeing a slave. That's why I'm never gonna be a Muslim. Damned if I'm gonna risk getting rid of my slaves (or, as we call them in the newspaper biz, interns).

The month that follows Ramadan is called Shawwal. On the first day of Shawwal, Muslims let loose with a holiday called Eid al-Fitr. Eid al-Fitr is merrier than Ramadan. People dress up, exchange gifts and eat a lot. If you hear your Muslim neighbors throwing down around Oct. 24, they're celebrating Eid al-Fitr. If you like them, wish them a Happy Eid.

What ever happened to Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani?

America's favorite ayatollah is bowing out of politics."Pat Robertson is retiring?" you ask.

No. I'm talking about America's other favorite ayatollah, Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

On Sept. 3, London's Sunday Telegraph reported that he's giving up trying to influence Iraqi politics. "I will not be a political leader any more," is what the Telegraph reports he told his aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."

The announcement, assuming it's true, is a terrible blow to anyone holding out hope that Iraq's current low-to-medium-intensity civil war might not escalate into a full-scale one. Sistani is Iraq's preeminent Shi'ite religious leader. Since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Sistani has been the loudest and most effective Iraqi voice for moderation.

In American news articles, "moderate" is typically just a code word that means "dictator who relies on U.S. support to stay in power." For example, the dictators who (mis)rule Egypt and Saudi Arabia are regularly referred to in the American news media as moderates, despite the fact that they regularly torture and kill their opponents. Ditto Pakistan. The U.S. government and news media insist on referring to Pakistan's military dictator Pervez Musharraf as a "moderate" even though his government shelters al-Qaeda, assisted the Taliban even after 9/11, supports anti-Indian terrorists and sold nuclear weapons technology to two of our worst enemies.

Sistani, however, has been a moderate in at least three genuine, meaningful ways.

(1) He's been a voice of calm. When the Sunni insurgency formed and began targeting Iraqi Shi'ites with the express intent of fomenting civil war, Sistani urged Shi'ites not to retaliate. As long as I'm writing about news media clichés, here's another: cycle of violence. If Sistani withdraws from politics, Iraq is losing its loudest anti-cycling advocate. Sistani believes that Shi'ites need to sit tight, be patient and wait for democracy to put them in charge of Iraq's government.

(2) Though Sistani wants Iraqi law and government to be consistent with his interpretation of Islam, he does not want Iraq to become an Iranian-style theocracy. Iran is ruled by a council of Shi'ite clerics who decide, among other things, who can and cannot run for political office. Sistani, who was born in Iran, is opposed to that sort of setup.

(3) Sistani has been, by Iraqi standards anyway, a democrat. When the Bush administration pushed for a plan to have Iraq's first post-invasion government formed using what the Council on Foreign Relations describes as a "complex system of regional caucuses," Sistani called it bull-poop and demanded instead a one-man-one-vote system of direct elections. Sistani was concerned that a caucus system would lessen the voting power of Iraqi Shi'ites, who comprise 60 percent of Iraq's population. So one-man-one-vote obviously works in favor of Shi'ites.

According to the Telegraph story, Sistani is giving up on politics because Iraqis are becoming increasingly resistant to his requests for calm. Heeding Sistani's requests to not retaliate has not stopped the violence in Iraq, so people have stopped heeding. Sistani is apparently worried that continuing as a "failed" political leader will diminish his influence as a religious leader as well.

Sistani's sayonara leaves the younger and much more radical Moqtada al-Sadr as the most powerful Shi'ite leader in Iraq. Sadr is less influential as a cleric, but his willingness to use violence against Iraqi Sunnis and vocal opposition to the U.S. military is much more in line with the feelings of everyday Iraqis and he's therefore a much more popular and powerful political leader than Sistani. Sadr also commands a very powerful militia (the so-called Mahdi Army), which helps with the whole political power thingy.

Sistani's withdrawal from politics is a terrible omen, but something good might come of it. Sistani might have more free time to spend on his endlessly fascinating web site, sistani.org.

Sistani.org is a flash-driven, multilingual web site that hosts many of the grand ayatollah's writings. The site's best feature is the online forum on which Sistani answers his followers' most profound religious questions. For example, "Question: When I am unable to do Muta'h [temporary marriage], am I allowed to masturbate? Answer: Masturbation is not permissible under any circumstances."

And, no, I didn't make that up.

What does the recently declassified report about links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda say?

Last week, American television and feminism reached an important milestone together.

Katie Couric, America's favorite morning telepromptrix, proved to all those sexists out there that attractive, telegenic, blonde women are every bit as capable of reading teleprompters at night as they are in the morning.

Not once during her debut week did Ms. Couric giggle inappropriately, flirt, talk about how she'd rather be at the mall or cry during a news report because she was PMS-ing. She is woman. Hear her roar!

To make sure as many people as possible tuned in during her first week, Couric nabbed some big-shot guests. President Clinton, Rush Limbaugh and Walter Cronkite all made appearances. If stingrays could talk, she would have gotten him, too.

Couric's biggest "get" was President Bush, who invited her to the White House for a pleasant chat. It was during that chat that President Bush rattled off the following sentence-like string of words: "There ‹ it's ‹ you know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."

Funny he mentioned it because, last Friday, the U.S. Senate declassified a report on that very subject.

The report confirms that, despite countless Bush administration assertions and insinuations to the contrary, there were no meaningful links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The report makes it clear that the Bush Administration was willfully misleading the American people when it sold the Iraq war by linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda, 9/11 and Islamic extremists.

The Republican Senate released the report on a Friday afternoon so that fewer people would hear or read about it. To make matters worse, they released it in an unsearchable PDF file format, so that readers who want to jump to specific parts of the 151-page report can't simply skip right to the parts they're looking for.

Public service-oriented fellow that I am, I skimmed part of the report and re-typed a few of the passages that stood out to me:

‹ "In contrast to the traditional patron-client relationship Iraq enjoys with secular Palestinian groups, the ties between Saddam and bin Ladin appear much like those between rival intelligence services, with each trying to exploit the other for its own benefit."

The above is from page 64 of the report, quoting a June 2002 CIA assessment of Saddam's ties to bin Laden. Note the date ‹ June 2002 was nine months before the invasion. Nine months before the invasion, the CIA knew that Saddam and Osama were not in cahoots.

‹ "Saddam did not trust al-Qa'ida or any other radical Islamist group and did not want to cooperate with them."

‹ "[W]hen the Iraqi regime started to see evidence that Wahabists had come to Iraq, 'the Iraqi regime issued a decree aggressively outlawing Wahabism in Iraq and threatening offenders with execution.'"

From page 67, the above snippets come from post-war interviews with Saddam deputy Tariq Aziz.

And on the question of Saddam's pre-war relationship with terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: "In 2005, the CIA assessed that prior to the war, the regime did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward al-Zarqawi and his associates."

You may recall that Secretary of State Colin Powell stated, during his now infamous Power Point presentation to the United Nations, that Iraq and al-Qaeda were BFF because Saddam was harboring al-Zarqawi.

‹ "The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that the CIA 'reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship.'"

The above is from page 70. If scattered contacts with no formal relationship constitutes harboring al-Qaeda, the Bush Administration might as well bomb Florida. After all, several of the 9/11 hijackers were "harbored" and trained there.

Perhaps the president finds connecting Iraq to the war on terror such hard work because, prior to his invasion, there was no connection.

Can you update us on Israel's war in Gaza?

The war in Lebanon has pushed several important news stories out of the headlines this summer.

For example, I didn't find out until today that July 31 was the 40th birthday of Lois & Clark hunk Dean Cain. America's fifth-most popular Superman of all time hits the big 4-0 and I miss it! Screw you, mainstream media!

The war also pre-empted what certainly would have been 24-7 CNN coverage of the 82nd NCAA Philippines basketball championship tournament. If you ask me, the story of this year's tournament is the success of the San Beda Red Lions, who continue to advance toward the title despite the fact that their coach, Koy Banal, briefly ditched them so he could sit on the bench with his pro team, the Purefoods Chunkee Giants. Good thing no one asked me.

In the rush to cover the goings-on in Lebanon, the American press also pretty much forgot that Israel was fighting a simultaneous war in the Gaza Strip.

Dubbed "Operation Summer Rains" by someone from the Israeli military's Bureau For Making Bloodshed Sound Oddly Pleasant, the mini-war in Gaza started June 28 in the wake of two kidnappings.

Israel says that war is a response to the June 25 kidnapping of an Israeli soldier named Gilad Shalit. Shalit was at an Israeli army post near the Gaza border when militants who entered Israel via a secret tunnel captured him and took him to Gaza.

Palestinians say the war's inaugural kidnapping happened the day before, when Israeli forces snatched brothers Osama and Mustafa Muamar from their Gaza village. Israel says the men were Hamas militants prepared to carry out an attack on Israel. The pair are sons of Hamas activist Ali Muamar, but Hamas denies the duo themselves are Hamas. It was Israel's first raid in Gaza since last summer's pullout.

Argue if you wish about the war's trigger event, but there's no dispute that on June 28, Israel started pounding Gaza from the air with tanks and artillery. More than 200 Palestinians, more than 40 of them children, have been killed in Gaza since Operation Summer Rains began. Electricity and fresh water are scarce because Israel has targeted Gaza's public works. And Gaza's never-actually-very-strong economy is in ruins, thanks to an Israeli blockade.

Like the war in Lebanon, the war in Gaza is about more than the kidnappings that triggered them. As it did with Hezbollah, Israel raided Gaza with the intention of taking out Hamas' rocket force. Hamas has a much smaller, weaker rocket arsenal than Hezbollah, but it's enough to scare, anger, frustrate and occasionally kill Israelis. Hamas rockets have little-to-no military value, but they do have enormous political value. Let me 'splain.

With the backing of the Bush Administration, Israel has largely abandoned the idea of negotiating a peace settlement with Palestinians. Instead, it has adopted a policy of drawing a border of its choosing and protecting it with a giant, concrete wall.

Last summer, Ariel Sharon pulled Israeli settlements out of Gaza. He planned to do the same in the West Bank but was felled by a stroke earlier this year. His deputy, Ehud Olmert, took up Sharon's plan and won Israel's election on the promise that he would carry out the plan.

Palestinians don't like the Israeli plan, in large part because they don't like where the wall goes. A lot of the land Palestinians want for their eventual Palestinian state is on the Israeli side of the wall. Hamas rockets from Gaza are a message. The message: You're not going to have peace unless you negotiate a settlement.

Israel's war with Hezbollah reinforced the same point. Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon in 2000. Instead of leading to peace, it allowed Hezbollah to build up its rocket force along Lebanon's border with Israel. Thanks to Hamas and Hezbollah, Israelis no longer see withdrawal as a prelude to peace. They see it as the creation of a military vacuum that will be filled by militants.

Olmert has, for now at least, halted the planned unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank. Whether the next step is renewed peace talks or just more war remains to be seen.

So, was Abu Musab Zarqawi's death a turning point in the war in Iraq?

Nearly three months ago, on June 7, the U.S. military managed to locate and kill Abu Musab Zarqawi. Zarqawi was the leader of Iraq's al-Qaeda, a terrorist gang that is both associated with and a rival of Bin Laden's al-Qaeda mothership.

Zarqawi was responsible for numerous bombings, kidnappings, beheadings and, last spring, the only militant jihadi promotional video in memory to feature a supposed terrorist mastermind wearing white New Balance sneakers.

When the Sunni insurgency began in 2003, we were told that Saddam Hussein and his sons were leading it and that, once they were dead or in custody, the insurgency would taper off. By December 2003, Saddam was de-spiderholed and his sons were de-lifed, yet the insurgency continued. It was around then that the Bush spin machine began to latch on to Zarqawi.

Like many of its predecessors, the Bush administration likes to personalize complex international military and political issues. It helps to establish a good vs. evil narrative that plays "real good" with voters.

Zarqawi was the Bush administration's swarthy, bearded face of evil in Iraq. Rather than fess up to how badly the United States was botching the Iraq occupation, the White House-Pentagon-Fox News-RNC-Limbaugh message machine made sure that as much attention as possible was focused on Zarqawi. It's part of the boogeyman theory of foreign policy. The theory states that every minute spent discussing some swarthy evil guy with facial hair is a minute spent not talking about how incompetent the Bush administration is.

Zarqawi, we were told over and over again, was the leader of the Sunni insurgency. He was Bin Laden's man in Iraq and proof that the White House was correct to expand the War on Terror™ to Iraq. In April 2006, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, said that Zarqawi was responsible for 90 percent of the suicide attacks in Iraq. In the same statement, Lynch went out of his way to pooh-pooh any suggestion that the United States was intentionally exaggerating Zarqawi's influence. "Nothing could be further from the truth," he said.

On June 7, the U.S. military killed Zarqawi. The White House-Pentagon-Fox News-RNC-Limbaugh spin machine immediately went into high gear. President Bush said the killing could "turn the tide" in the war, after which he flew to Iraq for a smiley photo op with its elected leaders.

The Fox News-RNC-Limbaugh portion of the operation talked up the importance of Zarqawi's death and impugned the patriotism of anyone who talked down Zarqawi's importance. Fox News host John Gibson went so far as to describe critics of the Bush administration as "demoralized" by Zarqawi's death.

It's been nearly three months since Zarqawi's death. Was it indeed a turning point in the war, or just a talking point?

If Zarqawi was responsible for 90 percent of the suicide bombings in Iraq, and if Zarqawi was, as President Bush described him June 8, the "operational commander of the terrorist movement in Iraq," then his death would have precipitated a noticeable drop-off in the violence in Iraq, don'cha think?

Sadly, it did not.

Violence in Iraq has increased since Zarqawi's death. In June, 3,149 civilians died in the violence there. That was the highest civilian death toll recorded in Iraq until, unfortunately, the following month, when 3,438 civilians died.

In July, 2,625 roadside improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, were found in Iraq, the highest monthly total yet recorded.

Although the Bush administration remains optimistic and boosterish in public, in private it is apparently starting to grasp the magnitude of Iraq's collapse. An Aug. 17 New York Times story quotes a military affairs expert who was briefed by the White House as saying that top administration officials are preparing for the demise of Iraq's democratically elected government. "Alternatives other than democracy" is the phrase the person used.

Is that the turning point they were talking about?

Who won the war between Israel and Hezbollah?

The war isn't really over yet. A cease-fire took effect on Aug. 14, but it might not hold. It's possible the war will pick up again. If that happens, some of what I have written below might no longer apply. If that happens, I promise to come to your house and correct your printed copy of this column in pen.*

With that caveat in mind, the winners and losers of this war are still fairly obvious.

The biggest loser is Lebanon. Approximately 1,300 Lebanese ‹ the overwhelming majority of them civilians ‹ died before the cease-fire. More than 4,000 people were wounded, and approximately 900,000 were displaced. Tens of thousands of the country's wealthiest, most well-educated citizens fled. Some will likely never return. Hezbo-in-Chief Hassan Nasrallah said in a recent speech that 15,000 homes were destroyed. Keep in mind, Lebanon has fewer than 4 million people.

Lebanon's economy and physical infrastructure were devastated during the past month. Damage to Lebanon's transportation, electrical and public works (including water and sewer) are estimated at $3.5 billion. Unemployment during the conflict was estimated by the Associated Press to be around 75 percent. Lebanon's lucrative tourist industry suffered hundreds of millions in lost revenue, and a large oil spill triggered by an Israeli air strike on a Lebanese power plant has so far damaged more than 85 miles of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline. It continues to spread, threatening Lebanon's tourism industry for years to come.

Israel is also a big loser. In the war's opening hours, Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz said that Israel "would turn back Lebanon's clock 20 years." Sadly, that was the only war objective Israel seems to have achieved.

The two Israeli soldiers whose kidnapping by Hezbollah triggered the war have not been released.

And though Israel was reportedly able to destroy 80 percent of Hezbo's medium- and long-range missile stock, which might have saved Tel Aviv from attack, the group's ability to strike northern Israel with short-range Katyusha rockets appears undiminished. Destroying Hezbo's ability to strike at northern Israel ‹ the most important long-term strategic goal of the war for Israel ‹ was not achieved. The Hezbos launched nearly 4,000 rockets at Israel, killing 39 Israeli civilians, wounding several hundred and displacing 300,000.

The Israeli public's confidence in its military and political leadership has been severely shaken. Though Israelis overwhelmingly supported their government's decision to go to war, the same public largely disapproves of its government's handling of the war. The Israeli government overestimated its ability to damage the Hezbos and underestimated its ability to return fire.

The winner of the war is, of course, Hezbollah. By responding against the whole of Lebanon to a kidnapping committed by Hezbollah, Israel was hoping to drive a wedge between Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanon's population. The opposite happened. Many non-Shi'ite Lebanese rallied around Hezbollah and focused their hostility on Israel for dropping the bombs and the United States for enabling them.

Any chance that Lebanon's Christian, Sunni and Druze communities would dare try to rein in or disarm Hezbollah has, for the time-being, vanished. All Lebanon's mixed-religion government can do is sit tight for now and hope Hezbollah doesn't attempt to formally hijack the whole government, a move that would probably start another vicious, sectarian civil war like the one fought from 1975 to 1990 that left 100,000 dead.

According to a recent poll (conducted in Arabic but mentioned in English on angryarab.blogspot.com), Hezbo's Nasrallah is now the most popular political leader in the Arab world. No. 2 is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Hezbollah's chief benefactor, which is stunning because Iranians aren't even Arabs.

If you have any doubt that Hezbollah emerged from this war triumphant, you need only heed the words of President Bush. On Aug. 14, speaking at the State Department, Dubya declared, "Hezbollah suffered a defeat in this crisis."

When the administration that brought you "Mission Accomplished" and "Last Throes" says you've been defeated, you know you've won.

The Lebanon war will profoundly affect the U.S.-Iran nuclear standoff and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I'll address those at a later date.

*Not a sincere promise

Are the combatants in the war between Israel and Hezbollah targeting civilians?

Yes.

Between July 12, when the current war started, and Aug. 11, Hezbollah fired approximately 3,500 rockets at Israel.

Hezbollah's rocket arsenal is overwhelmingly composed of unguided Katyusha rockets. Katyushas are point-and-shoot weapons with no on-board guidance system. They are essentially self-propelled artillery shells. The reason they have a Russian name is that they're based on the widely copied World War II-era Soviet design.

The Soviets used Katyushas in bulk, firing hundreds at a time at Nazi tank and infantry concentrations. Katyushas are imprecise. They aren't aimed at such individual targets as tanks or cars. They are instead pointed in the general direction of such targets and fired in bulk. Kinda like carpet-bombing with artillery.

Though the Hezbos claim that some of the rockets they fire at Israel are aimed at military targets, that claim is complete and utter Hezbolls#!t. When Hezbos fire Katyushas, they point them at northern Israeli towns from launchers positioned six to 15 miles away in Lebanon. The Hezbos who launch them can't see the towns at which they're aiming the rockets. Even if they could see the towns, the Hezbos could not effectively adjust their aim. As I said, these weapons aren't aimed, they're pointed.

Therefore, a Katyusha pointed anywhere near civilians is a Katyusha pointed at civilians. Hezbollah rockets aimed at Israel have hit people walking down the street. They've hit homes, schools and hospitals. According to an Aug. 10 report by Human Rights Watch, Hezbollah has launched several rockets armed with flesh-shredding shrapnel warheads at densely populated Israeli cities.

The purpose of the Katyusha is to kill as many Israeli civilians as possible and terrorize the rest; 38 Israeli civilians have been killed by Hezbollah rockets.

Israel has also targeted civilians.

More than 1,000 Lebanese civilians have been killed by Israeli attacks so far. Israel claims that it never deliberately targets civilians, but that Hezbollah puts Lebanese civilians in harm's way by operating near them.

Human Rights Watch, among others, asserts otherwise. In the same Aug. 10 report that damns Hezbollah for terrorizing Israeli civilians, HRW damns Israel for "consistently failing to distinguish between combatants and civilians" during dozens of attacks between July 12 and July 27 on areas with "no apparent military target."

The most well known such incident was the July 30 air attack on a house in the Lebanese village of Qana that killed at least 28 people, 16 of whom were children.

At first, Israel claimed Hezbollah had been launching rockets from near the house. HRW interviewed civilian witnesses ‹ as well aid and rescue workers ‹ none of whom saw or found any evidence of Hezbollah rocket activity. On Aug. 2, an Israeli military spokesman recanted the claim that rockets were launched nearby.

The deadliest attack of the war on civilians was on the evening of Aug. 7, when Israeli jets hit some apartment buildings in Beirut. A six-story apartment building was flattened in the attack, and 40 people were killed.

Prior to the attack, and prior to several other attacks that targeted civilian areas, Israeli planes dropped leaflets warning the residents of the neighborhoods that they should flee before they were bombed. Fleeing is more easily said than done. Lebanon is not the United States: It doesn't have more cars than people. Besides, among the first things Israel bombed when this war started were the key roads and bridges via which people could flee. Israel has also blockaded Lebanese ports, making vehicle fuel rare and expensive.

Fleeing has been no guarantee of safety, either. Several cars filled with fleeing families have been hit by Israeli aircraft. Last Friday night, a convoy of cars ‹ escorted by the Lebanese military and the Red Cross ‹ was hit by Israeli aircraft. Six people were killed and 30 wounded. Israel acknowledged that the convoy requested safe passage, but said permission was denied.

The United Nations' human rights commissioner has warned Israel and Hezbollah that they can be prosecuted for war crimes. Yeah, right.

Is the U.S.-Pakistani alliance falling apart?

Like Mel Gibson's chances of landing the starring role in a Steven Spielberg remake of Fiddler on The Roof, Pakistan's relationship with the United States has worsened in recent weeks.

The first noticeable outward sign of growing animosity between the Bush administration and the Pakistani military dictatorship it refers to as a "long-term strategic partner" and "vital ally in the War on Terror" came in March during President Bush's South Asian tour.

Annoyed that President Bush had offered Pakistan's arch-rival, India, an unprecedented civilian nuclear technology trade deal just days before his arrival in Pakistan, Pakistan's military dictator President Pervez "The Perv" Musharraf responded by throwing the diplomatic protocol equivalent of a temper tantrum: He failed to greet President Bush at the airport.

In his place, The Perv didn't send his prime minister or even his foreign minister. The Perv sent his daughter. Though Bush is hardly the world's most savvy diplomat, the father of Jenna is no doubt aware that sending your daughter to do a president's job was a slap in the face.

The face-slapping apparently continued during the visit. According to reports, Bush upset the The Pervman ‹ and, by extension, the Pakistani military ‹ by criticizing him for not doing enough to stop Taliban forces from using Pakistan as a recruiting area and safe-haven from which it launches increasingly deadly attacks against Afghan, U.S. and more recently NATO forces in southern Afghanistan.

It may indeed have ticked The Pervster off, but Bush's frustration with him is justified. Although The Perv is quick to point out that 800 Pakistani soldiers have lost their lives fighting the War on Terror along the Afghan border, those losses have been largely the result of fighting al-Qaeda operating in Pakistan's Waziristan province. Taliban forces operating in Pakistan's Baluchistan province have been left largely unopposed by Pakistani forces.

El Perveroni is reluctant to take the Taliban on, partly because sending forces into Baluchistan province might topple his government (which increasingly relies on the support of Islamists sympathetic to the Taliban), and partly because Pakistan is hoping to maintain good relations with the Taliban in the increasingly likely event they reassert at least partial rule in neighboring Afghanistan.

The Bush Administration is also hugely frustrated with The Musharraf-of-Not-Eating-Ham's stridently unhelpful stance on nuclear weapons. In June, Pakistan announced that its investigation into A.Q. Khan's dealings was closed and that, under no circumstances, would U.S. investigators be allowed to question Khan. If The Perv sending his daughter was a slap to the face, that announcement was a kick to the 'nads.

Khan is a nuclear scientist and the so-called father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. In 2004, the world discovered that Khan was also the secret baby daddy of North Korea's, Iran's and Libya's (now-defunct) nuclear programs. He even tried to sell weapons to Iraq, but Saddam Hussein turned him down.

American investigators want to interview Khan because they're hoping he can provide critical intelligence for the U.S.-E.U. effort to stop Iran from building nukes. For example, if we knew what kinds of centrifuge plans Khan sold to Iran, we might have a better idea of when Iran might have enough nuclear materials to build a bomb.

The most recent blow to the U.S.-Pakistan relationship came last month, when the Institute for Science and International Security reported that Pakistan is building a large, new plutonium nuclear reactor.

According to the report, which features several Google Earth-like satellite photos, the plant will be capable of producing 1,000 megawatts of electricity and 200 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium annually, enough to make 40 to 50 nuclear weapons.

Will Pakistan use the plant to build up its nuclear arsenal? Will it sell weapons-grade plutonium to other countries? Will it do both? Who knows?

The White House is downplaying the news by telling reporters that it knew about the reactor long before the report and by stating, "We discourage military use of the facility."

How reassuring.

What's happening in Somalia these days?

What's happening in Somalia these days is that fundamentalist Islamic militants are about to take over and perhaps trigger a regional war in the process.

Don't feel too badly if you didn't know that.

Between all of the recent shocking celebrity news (Mel Gibson doesn't keep a chauffeur?? Lance Bass is a singer??) and the, oh, 15 or so humanity-threatening major crises around the world right now, poor Somalia is easy for the public to ignore.

Though Somalia isn't an "A-list" White House worry like Iraq, gay baiting or flag protection, you can rest assured that the White House is indeed paying attention.

U.S. policymakers have long feared that Somalia could turn into an African version of Afghanistan, i.e., an incubator for militant Islamic terrorists, including al-Qaeda. The United States even went so far as to set up a military base in neighboring Djibouti in 2002. After we whacked the Taliban in late 2001, Somalia was actually on many a Bushie's "To Invade" list for 2002.

There are several reasons Somalia is worrisome to policymakers.

The country is strategically located. It sits atop that pointy part of East Africa that sticks out into the Indian Ocean. It's a short boat ride from the Arabian Peninsula and most of the world's oil.

Somalia is unstable, and I'm talking banana-peel-on-a-greasy-floor unstable. The country hasn't had a working central government since 1991, when socialist strongman Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown. It has since endured a combination of war, extreme poverty, anarchy and famine that we in the West can hardly imagine. When Henry David Thoreau said, "That government is best which governs least," he was not thinking of Somalia.

The other factor that makes Somalia so worrisome is Islam. Somalis are Muslim, and militant fundamentalist Muslim groups thrive in violent, chaotic, poor Muslim societies like Somalia.

Somalia's so-called capital, Mogadishu, was recently taken over by an Islamic militia run the Union of Islamic Courts. Despite the UIC's brutality and heavy-handedness (recent UIC "law enforcement" efforts include shooting dead a man and child for expressing their wish to watch the World Cup semifinal, and breaking up a wedding reception because music was being played), many in Mogadishu are happy with their new rulers. After 15 years of chaotic brutality, predictable brutality has a certain charm.

Somalia isn't really an incubator for terrorists yet, but it is already a safe haven. According to the International Crisis Group, an al-Qaeda cell comprised of about half a dozen "ranking" operatives calls Somalia home. They're believed to be (ir)responsible for the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Kenya (which borders Somalia to the south), as well as near simultaneous attacks in 2002 on a Kenyan hotel and an Israeli passenger jet leaving Kenya.

That Mogadishu has fallen to Islamic militants is not a guarantee that al-Qaeda's presence in the country will increase, but it's certainly not something we should be blasé about. The United States actually tried to prevent the Muslim takeover from happening, using the CIA station in Kenya to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to Somali warlords who were fighting the Islamic takeover.

Critics of the administration ‹ including State Department officials, at least one former Clinton administration official, the International Crisis Group, and the kinda-sorta president of Somalia's internationally recognized pseudo government, Abdullahi Yusuf ‹ have criticized the administration's funding of unpopular secular warlords, noting correctly that it only seems to energize the Muslim militias and win them the support of patriotic, American-not-liking Muslim Somalis.

The United States isn't the only foreign country tactlessly meddling in Somalia. Rival neighbors Ethiopia and Eritrea are fighting a proxy war in Somalia. Eritrea is funding the Muslim militants while Ethiopia has actually moved its troops to the Somali city of Baidoa, home of Yusuf's government.

Somalia watchers fear that a clash between UIC forces and the Ethiopian forces backing Yusuf's Baidoa-based pseudo-government could draw Eritrean forces into the war directly, or restart the Eritrean-Ethiopian border war that, between 1998 and 2000, killed tens of thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

It's no Iraq, but it's worth keeping an eye on.

What are some of the hidden motives behind the war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon?

Two Sundays ago, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich went on Meet the Press and described the current war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon as "World War III."

Just as one might expect from a man who waged a "family values" crusade against Bill Clinton while simultaneously carrying on an extramarital affair with a female co-worker, Gingrich's words don't really match reality.

Except for the funny hats and creepy facial hair, the war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon is nothing at all like the world wars. The past conflict to which it is most analogous is, in fact, the Cold War.

During the Cold War, the United States and Soviet Union constantly used other people's wars as a way of vicariously inflicting harm on one another without actually going head-to-head on a battlefield. The hep kids on the street refer to this phenomenon as a "proxy war."

The Korean and Vietnam wars were United States vs. Soviet Union proxy wars. The war in Afghanistan in the 1980s was a United States vs. Soviet Union proxy war. Ditto the Angolan and Nicaraguan civil wars. You get the gist.

The war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon is a "real" war, in the sense that Israel genuinely wants to eliminate or at least reduce the threat posed to northern Israel by Hezbollah fighters. But it's also very much a Cold War-style proxy war. Iran, the United States, Syria and Israel are playing geopolitical Twister ‹ and using poor Lebanon as the game board.

"Left foot on Beirut."

Through its funding, arming and training of Hezbollah, Iran is using this war to warn the United States that any effort to force Iran to give up its nuclear program will have violent consequences.

The current fighting demonstrates how, with a nod, a wink and some Iranian-made missiles, Iran can use a relatively small Lebanese militia to push the Middle East to the brink of a full-scale regional war. A full-on, Middle East war could severely, if not fatally, undermine the United States' key regional allies (Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia), cripple the world economy with sky-higher oil prices, and put the 130,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq at risk of being attacked by Iraqi Shi'ite militias allied with Iran. By giving Hezbollah medium-range missiles and the green light to use them on big cities like Haifa, Iran is attempting to warn Israel off launching air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities. By hitting Hezbollah and Lebanon so hard, Israel is communicating to Iran that even smallish attacks on Israel will be met with massive counterattacks.

"Right hand on democracy."

By supporting such a forceful Israeli attack on Lebanon, the United States is staring Iran in the eye and saying, "Iran, we're not afraid of your threats and we're willing to sit by and let Israel destroy Lebanon if that's what it takes to destroy your buddy Hezbollah and show you that we, too, mean business."

"Left foot on sovereignty."

Last week, an open microphone at the G-8 conference picked up President Bush saying that Syria could force Hezbollah to "stop this s#!t." Bush was right. Syria can force Hezbollah to "stop this s#!t," but at a price. The price will be that Syria doesn't want the United States to meddle with its efforts to meddle with Lebanon. One year after the U.S.-backed Lebanese "Cedar Revolution" forced Syria to loosen its grip on Lebanese politics, Syria's grip has once again tightened.

"Right foot on Palestine."

This war is an expansion of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Iran, which is not an Arab country, is attempting to show up so-called moderate Arab countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan by being the only major regional player willing to fight Israel on behalf of Palestinians. Never mind that Iran's actions don't actually help Palestinians. And never mind that innocent Lebanese civilians are this war's main victims. Acting tough by acting out can make political leaders popular in the short term, even if the long-term consequences are disastrous. Just ask President Bush.

What is Hezbollah?

"Hot Hezbo Action," the newest chapter in the long-running Arab-Israeli War, began July 12.

That morning, a group of Hezbollah fighters snuck across Lebanon's border into northern Israel. Armed with explosives and anti-tank missiles, they attacked a group of Israeli soldiers patrolling the border in two armored jeeps. Three of the Israeli soldiers in the patrol were killed, three were wounded, and two were kidnapped and taken back across the border into Lebanon. Since the initial border raid, Hezbollah has also launched several hundred rockets and missiles into Israel. As of July 17, 24 Israelis have been killed in the attacks, including 12 civilians.

Israel has responded on a large scale. In an effort to keep Hezbollah from moving the captured Israeli soldiers around or out of Lebanon, Israel has destroyed several key Lebanese roads and bridges. The runways and fuel depot at Lebanon's airport in Beirut have been destroyed, and its coastline blockaded. Israel has attacked Lebanon's power grid, leaving the southern half of the country (the part of Lebanon that borders Israel) without electricity. Additionally, Israeli jets have attacked numerous targets that they categorize as Hezbollah-related, including homes, offices and media outlets belonging to Hezbollah forces. In the attacks, nearly 200 Lebanese have been killed, most of whom were civilians.

What is Hezbollah?

Hezbollah is a religious and nationalist movement founded in Lebanon shortly after Israel invaded the country in 1982. Israel invaded to stop Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization he led at the time from using Lebanon as the base for its operations against Israel.

At the time, Lebanon was also mired in a brutal, sectarian civil war of its own, fought mainly between Christians, Shi'ite Muslims, Sunni Muslims and Druze (a millennium-old offshoot of Islam).

Hezbollah was formed by Shi'ite Lebanese in southern Lebanon. The name Hezbollah means "Party of God" in Arabic.

Early Hezbians professed several goals. First, they wanted to kick out Israelis and other foreign invaders from Lebanon. They wanted to destroy Israel on behalf of Palestinians (who, by the way, are predominantly Sunni and Christian). And they wanted to establish a Shi'ite Islamic Republic in Lebanon, much like the one established a couple of years earlier in Iran by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

With the help of advisers and buckets of cash from Iran's government, Hezbollah quickly became an effective and feared militia, capable of mounting deadly attacks on Israeli forces and rival Lebanese militias.

Hezbollah also became a feared terrorist organization. The group is blamed for the October 1983 suicide bombings on American and French barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American servicemen and 58 French paratroopers. The Americans and French were part of a U.N. peacekeeping team.

Hezbo attacks on Israel followed by Israeli military offensives are nothing new. In 1993, Israel launched Operation Accountability, an air and naval bombardment of Lebanon in response to rocket attacks. In 1996, Israel responded to Hezbollah rocket attacks with Operation Grapes of Wrath. Though both attacks dealt tactical blows to Hezbollah, they amounted to little more than temporary setbacks.

The Hezbians count as their greatest victory Israel's complete withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000. Since 1978, Israel had occupied a buffer zone inside the Lebanese border to prevent cross-border attacks. Since then, Hezbollah has moved its operations right up to the Israeli border, as well as more closely allying itself with Hamas and other militants in Gaza and West Bank.

Will the current Israeli offensive destroy Hezbollah's fighting ability? Probably not. Israeli occupation of Lebanon didn't stop Hezbollah from forming in the first place. It's idiotic to think that another occupation will destroy it. Hezbollah will no doubt take a nasty beating, but as long as its ideologies (militant Islam and Arab nationalism), foreign backers (Iran and Syria) and archenemy (an Israel that occupies West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem) remain, it will fight on.

What's the status of the Taliban?

Like it still is for pimps, it used to be hard out there for a Taliban.

After the United States' Operation Enduring Freedom drove them from power in Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban appeared to be a spent force. Much of their leadership was killed or captured, while most of the rest were forced into hiding. Within a few weeks, the Taliban had gone from rulers of a country that's bigger than Iraq to rulers of some rocks barely bigger than a ruler.

In December 2001, Afghan leaders meeting in Germany signed the Bonn Agreement, a loose framework via which Afghanistan's long-warring ethnic and tribal groups agreed to work with the international community to transform Afghanistan into a constitutional democracy. The Taliban were not a party to the agreement.

By 2002, the United States was describing its military work in Afghanistan against the Taliban as mere mopping-up actions. Although the Taliban's nominal leader, Mullah Omar, had not been captured, the Taliban were nevertheless weak. Depending on the reports, the number of men that the Taliban could put into battle at any given time was somewhere between a few dozen and a few hundred. The Taliban weren't dead, but they were close.

Now, fast-forward to 2006.

During the spring, the Taliban mounted their largest military offensive since they were booted from power. The group can now field between 6,000 and 12,000 fighters, and can apparently recruit with ease. British Defense Minister Des Browne has just described the Taliban as energized. Ahmed Rashid, the brilliant Pakistani journalist whose book Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia warned the world about the danger of the Taliban a full year-and-a-half before 9/11, recently wrote that the Taliban were a revived movement "that has made a third of the country [Afghanistan] ungovernable."

What happened to allow the Taliban to arise from the almost-dead?

Nothing happened.

That's the problem ‹ nothing happened.

The same Afghan leaders and international community members who promised to hold Afghanistan's hand and help it rebuild never actually did what they said they would do.

Barnett R. Rubin's March 2006 report for the Council on Foreign Relations titled "Afghanistan's Uncertain Transition from Turmoil to Normalcy" explains what hasn't happened:

€ The United States has failed to commit military forces adequate for rebuilding and stabilizing Afghanistan. Afghanistan's weak central government has also failed. The result: The Taliban movement was able to re-incubate in the same parts of southern Afghanistan from which it originally emerged.

€ The international community has failed to halt Afghanistan's opium production. Opium now accounts for roughly half of Afghanistan's GDP. Money from the opium trade not only funds Taliban fighters, but it has fueled high-level corruption in Afghanistan's government.

Efforts to eradicate opium production by interdiction or destroying crops in the fields have only inspired more dislike for Afghanistan's government and Western forces. In much of rural Afghanistan, growing opium is the only way people can make a living. Taking away their living without giving them anything in return pisses them off and drives them into the arms of the Taliban.

€ Iraq. Iraq drew away some, if not most, of the United States' counterinsurgency capability from Afghanistan. Iraq also has become a training ground for Taliban. Al-Qaeda has helped connect Taliban fighters with veterans of Iraq's insurgency. Their evil synergy has expressed itself most forcefully in the form of suicide bombings. There have been 40 suicide bombings in Afghanistan in the past four months. There were five in the preceding five years. Overall, insurgent attacks have quadrupled since 2002.

€ Afghanistan's government is weak and corrupt. While many in the new government have conspicuously enriched themselves, life for everyday Afghans hasn't much improved. Five years after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is still, by objective, internationally accepted measurements, among the most miserable places on Earth to live.

The Taliban are resurgent, in large part, because as awful as they are, for many they'd be an improvement.

What do foreigners think of America these days?

The Pew Global Attitudes Project is an ongoing series of worldwide public opinion surveys designed to help Americans understand what the rest of the world is thinking about important issues. The project is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, founded in 1948 either by Pepé Le Pew or the family of the late Sunoco oil baron Joseph N. Pew. I forget which.

Last month, Pew released the results of its most widely discussed survey. The survey asked 16,000 people in 15 countries what they think about several important political issues. Most important to us, the poll asked what people think about us.

So, on the occasion of America's 230th birthday (I don't think we look a day over 220!), sit back and enjoy the bad news: The world doesn't like us.

In the 14 foreign countries surveyed this year (plus the United States), only four had majorities who say they have a favorable opinion of the United States.

The United States' worst favorability ratings come from the Muslim countries in the survey. Only 30 percent of Indonesians and Egyptians view America favorably. In Pakistan, it's 27 percent; in Jordan, 15 percent; and in Turkey, only 12 percent of the people polled said they have a favorable opinion of the United States. Those numbers are especially disturbing when you consider that those countries are all considered friends of the United States. And Turkey is not only a democracy, it's a member of NATO. If that's what our Muslim friends think of us, imagine what our Muslim enemies must think.

The only country with a large Muslim population whose citizens view the United States favorably is Nigeria. Don't cheer just yet, though. When Pew divided the Nigerian respondents into Muslims and Christians, they found that just 32 percent of Nigerian Muslims like us. Nigeria's overall pro-America numbers were so high, it turns out, because an astonishing 89 percent of Nigerian Christians like us. According to Pew, more Nigerian Christians view the United States favorably than Americans do.

The other stunner from the "how they like us now" survey is the sharp decline of the United States' favorability rating in Spain. Only 23 percent of Spaniards view America favorably this year, down from 41 percent last year. Remember, they're not only an ally, but they actually sent troops to Iraq when we asked.

Why is the United States so unpopular? Two words: Bush and Iraq. I know that's actually three words, but you're not supposed to count the "and".

Of the other 14 countries surveyed, only two have majorities who say they have some or a lot of confidence in Bush's international leadership. Those two countries: Nigeria and India.

In Great Britain, our greatest ally that isn't bordering us, 30 percent of those surveyed said they have at least some confidence in Bush's international leadership. In France, that number dips to 15 percent; in Spain, 7 percent; and in Turkey, just 3 percent of those surveyed said they have at least some confidence in Bush's international leadership. Three percent! That's one out of every 33 people. It makes me wonder if the people who said they have confidence in Bush even heard the question correctly.

Incidentally, the country whose population registered the steepest decline in confidence in President Bush's leadership since the last poll ‹ that'd be the United States.

Support for the U.S.-led War On TerrorTM continues to slip, not just among Muslim countries, but also among our European allies. Majorities in Britain, France, Germany and Spain do not support the War On TerrorTM. Majorities in 10 of the 15 countries surveyed believe the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place.

The war in Iraq actually is cited more often as a danger to world peace than the prospect of Iran getting nuclear weapons. That's not to say the world wants Iran to get nukes. On the contrary, the vast majority of those polled are against it. They just think we're scarier.

Amusingly, the only country polled with a majority in favor of Iran acquiring nukes is Pakistan. Perhaps not coincidentally, Pakistan is the country that sold Iran many of the key components of its nuclear program.

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