Today the US military announced: "A Multi-National Division – Center Soldier died of non-combat related injuries in Baghdad Sept. 5." The announcement brings the number of US service members killed in Iraq since the start of the illegal war to 4155.
In today's New York Times, Stephen Farrell offers "U.S. Spied On Maliki, Book Says, Upsetting Iraq" (A8) which is about the advance publicity for Bob Woodward's new book (released this coming Monday) and the puppet of the occupation, Nouri al-Maliki, pretending to be surprised and outraged. Though not the US asset Chalabi was, al-Maliki is hardly clean and it's hilarious to watch his surrogates feign shock over this. Farrell quotes a number of them. The audience they are aiming for is not the US, they're trying to create an outrage in Iraq that will transfer into support for the puppet. Their weak ass statements thus far indicate the puppet doesn't even know how to handle that correctly. Farrell ignores Robert Wood's statement at the US State Dept yesterday and instead goes with Dana Perino's comments at the White House press briefing. That's an interesting choice.
We went with Wood's comments in yesterday's snapshot. Both press briefings are online now click here for text of Wood at the State Dept, here for video of the briefing, and here for Perino at the White House. And note that if you're going to quote Perino, you need to include the only real news in her comments (pay attention to her second sentence in the quote): "Okay. I haven't -- I don't have a copy of the book yet. We did receive one or two at the White House late yesterday evening, and they are working through it. So all I know is the coverage of the book that I've seen, and that I've read in news reports of it. " Did you catch it? The book comes out on Monday. Someone's decided to give the White House advance copies.
Really interesting when consider the attacks on The Price of Loyalty and how Woodward's book is allegedly critical of the White House. That's the only news in Perino's press briefing and Farrell, quoting from that briefing, can't even find it.
The paper also can't find the space to even note the assassination attempt on Chalabi yesterday. It's a curious form of 'reporting.' Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports on some of today's violence 2 corpses discovered in Baghdad, a Baghdad mortar attack that left two people wounded, a Nineveh Province car bombing that claimed the lives of 6 bystanders and left thirty-two more wounded and a Baghdad assassination attempt on Lt Col Fasieh Ziboun (Ministry of Justice "commander") via car bombing that left Ziboun wounded.
No reduction in US forces in Iraq expected for the remainder of the year. Ann Scott Tyson and Karen DeYoung report in "Compromise Led to Iraq Troop Plan" (Washington Post) that Bully Boy is expected to announce the news on Tuesday and they report:
Senior military officials said the "consensus" proposal incorporated the final recommendation of Petraeus. He called for withdrawing 7,500 to 8,000 troops from Iraq by the end of January, including an 1,100-man Marine Corps battalion and a Marine aviation squadron of several hundred strong to depart this fall, an Army combat brigade of up to 4,000 soldiers to depart in mid-January, and more than 1,000 support troops, such as logisticians and forces, assigned to handle detainees.
The Pentagon plan also calls for bolstering the U.S. force in Afghanistan to counter a growing insurgency, deploying a Marine battalion there in November to replace one that is departing, and sending an Army brigade of 3,500 to 4,000 troops there early next year.
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Elaine's Like Maria Said Paz;
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An e-mail to the public account asks . . . I don't know what. The heading is about Steve Featherstone's article in Harper's this month. The e-mail text didn't go through. If I can figure out where that issue is (we quoted it from it about three weeks ago for another article), I'll try to note something from the article. I will not be going online and reading the article online. Harper's really isn't online. They have blogs and that's it unless you're a subscriber. If you're a subscriber you can log in and read anything in the current issue or in past issues going back to the start of the magazine. There is no cost for their archives -- you subscribe, you can go through them and read. The way it goes here is the either Jess grabs it when it arrives in the mail or Ava and I do in which case we take it on the road and read it with Kat. When we get back, if Jess hasn't seen it already, we pass it over to him. If he has seen it, it may be passed on while we're on the road. I don't remember what happened with that issue (whether we got it first or second). Jess isn't remembering the article and I know I didn't read it. I did fax a copy to Elaine because it's the sort of topic she would cover at her site. If the person wants to e-mail an excerpt, we'll note it here. Otherwise, you're dependent upon my finding the issue and I've already looked everywhere I could think of. (And did find Kat's stash she hid in one of my backpacks last month. I'm not joking but, to clarify, Kat's stash is Hostess Ding Dongs. She was having sugar cravings as she was about to get her period and bought enough Ding Dongs for a first grade class. That's noted with Kat's permission and at her request because when she got here tonight I handed her the boxes and boxes of Ding Dongs. I carry two backpacks on the road and rotate out between ten backpacks and I'm not seeing the issue. It's not in the library and Jess doesn't have it so I have no idea where it was but it could have hit the recycle pile by accident. If that happened, it's gone. Jim does read online and he may read the article and find a section to note but I never read articles online at Harper's because I'm not big on staring at a screen when I've got paper. The articles are scanned in, by the way, so they are on PDF form. That's my plug for Harper's.) [I don't have it. Elaine was faxed a copy. That's because of the article on Jewish writers. We had mentioned it in one group we were speaking to and a student wanted to read the article. I went to the photo copier and copied Featherstone's article, handed the magazine to the student and had the hotel fax the copy to Elaine later that night. The issue was passed on. So the person e-mailing either needs to provide an excerpt to note or you're hoping Jim will go on at some point and read the article online.) [Added: Beau e-mailed to note the article is here. He's going to read it and pull a quote. We'll note it in tomorrow's "And the war drags on . . ."]
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