Urge To Kill Rising

Conditions: Overcast-y

The Old Barn Door.

In a flurry of righteousness amid the "current" revelations that the Iraqi spy known as Curveball, whom everyone in the entire world knew to be lying back in 2003, was actually lying back in 2003 in order to get Saddam Hussein toppled, disgraced former secretary of state Colin Powell has asked for an explanation. What, now?

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein's bio-weapons capability.

Responding to the Guardian's revelation that the source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or "Curveball" as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq's secret biological weapons programme, Powell said that questions should be put to the US agencies involved in compiling the case for war.

In particular he singled out the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency – the Pentagon's military intelligence arm. Janabi, an Iraqi defector, was used as the primary source by the Bush administration to justify invading Iraq in March 2003. Doubts about his credibility circulated before the war and have been confirmed by his admission this week that he lied.

Powell said that the CIA and DIA should face questions about why they failed to sound the alarm about Janabi. He demanded to know why it had not been made clear to him that Curveball was totally unreliable before false information was put into the key intelligence assessment, or NIE, put before Congress, into the president's state of the union address two months before the war and into his own speech to the UN.

You know, politicians sicken me. Yet another whiff of that sense that it's more important to them to be seen doing what everyone wants them to do, rather than the pesky task of figuring out the right thing to do. At the time Powell crumbled in the face of righteous patriotic fervor and heartily toed the party line, accusing Saddam of having chemical weapons and being a direct threat to America in a famous address to the U.N. And now he's acting the part of the righteous innocent, all "who, me?" in the face of the tepid backlash that's been far too long and ineffective in coming.

Then then-head of the CIA, George Tenet, is another one scuttling away from the light as fast as his little legs will take him. As Powell tries to deflect in his direction, Tenet is ready and waiting

George Tenet, then head of the CIA, is particularly in the firing line. He failed to pass on warnings from German intelligence about Curveball's reliability.

Tenet put out a statement on his website in response to Curveball's admission. He said: "The handling of this matter is certainly a textbook case of how not to deal with defector provided material. But the latest reporting of the subject repeats and amplifies a great deal of misinformation."

Tenet refers to his own 2007 memoir on the war, At the Centre of the Storm, in which he insists that the first he heard about Curveball's unreliability was two years after the invasion – "too late to do a damn thing about it".

- guardian.co.uk/

A claim which has already been dis-proven and denied by the Germans, whose intelligence agency said they told the CIA how unreliable Curveball was right from the start. Will it make a difference now? Will justice be found? Of course bloody not, they've been very careful in letting it all wash over before allowing the backlash to rise up.



Film Review: Fair Game.

Well here we are again. Every now and then yet another film comes out that touches on the Iraq war, and here's the latest. This time it's directed by Doug Liman and it focuses on the Valerie Plame saga, the CIA operative who was outed by the Vice President after her husband denounced the President's lies about Iraq purchasing YellowCake Uranium in Niger. Sean Penn plays Joe Wilson, Valerie's husband, and Naomi Watts plays Valerie. Together they make a totally believable and dramatic portrayal of a couple caught up in an enormous mess, and how they deal with it and each other. In short, her career is ruined, his career is ruined, and their marriage takes a hell of a beating. Also, the truth that both of them, in different ways, were trying to drag into the light about the Iraq war is overshadowed by the scandal brewed up by the white house regarding her to get him to bring back lies from Africa, because he hates America. We get to relive the specter of the white house cherry picking CIA data and using unfounded claims to push for war.

These kind of movies make me angry. It's almost as if this is how America has decided to deal with the fact that the powerful men who run the country created an illegal war that cost god knows how many hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi lives, in order to be seen to be "doing something" in the wake of 9/11. They're not actually going be arrested, or even questioned. And of course they will never, ever be brought to justice, we have resigned ourselves to this now. And so, as if in some kind of last desperate hopeless gesture, the occasional book or film will come out that rehashes it all over again, from this perspective or that perspective, it doesn't really matter. And no matter the specifics it always ends the same way, with some kind of noble clarion call to the masses that the truth must come out, that the truth will somehow win through, and eventually justice will be done.

And in the end it's all just more and more effort for less and less outcome. Every time the topic rears up it requires more effort to revisit. Stoke the fires back up, get everyone back on that old song again. I don't hold much hope for this film. At this point I severely doubt enough people are going to care enough to buy tickets to go see something they've already put to bed long ago. And that's sad. This is actually a pretty good film, except for the terrible shaky-cam effects that Doug's unfortunately picked up from somewhere. But the actors are doing a fine job, and it's an interesting story. Just too little, far too late. Three and a half lies out of five.


- Peace out

Gonna Cut You Down

Conditions: Warmish

Democracy and How it Benefits America.

Of course it's a brilliant thing that the long time Egyptian Dictator, or President, Mubarak has finally left the office for good. It might be better if he had left due to an election rather than being forced out, but whatever. The Egyptian people are eying the ideal of democracy. And in the home of democracy, such a movement is lauded as a good thing. But there are of course grave concerns. Mubarak, among other things, was a staunch ally of America and Israel in the effort of keeping an eye on terrorist groups in the middle east. With him out, is that approach what the democratic people of Egypt want?

Moreover, the Muslim Brotherhood is likely to gain influence if free and fair elections are held, analysts say. The Islamist group has renounced violence but is openly hostile to Israel and may call for more independence from U.S. policies.

"How will cooperation with the United States on counterterrorism develop in the view of these new constraints? I would argue the space will contract," said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East expert at the State Department who is now at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Some U.S. officials and analysts say they are not overly worried, noting the continued strong role of the Egyptian military and the fact that the United States gives Egypt more than $1.3 billion a year in military aid. Robert Grenier, the former head of the CIA's counterterrorism center, said "the Egyptians have as much interest in protecting themselves from violent extremism as everyone else."

- washingtonpost.com/

Money and common sense are all very good reasons, but the concern is that uprisings tend to lead to more uprisings, so let's hope Egypt settles down into a nice stable democracy as quickly as possible.


Film Review: True Grit

Having never seen the previous version of True Grit that starred John Wayne, nor read the book, I can not really state if this version is more accurate, or if Wayne's interpretation of Rooster Cogburn is less edgy or offensive than Jeff Bridges' version. What I can say is that this is a lively if simplistic western tale about a young girl going about getting revenge for the murder of her father. She hires a U.S Marshal (Bridges) and heads off into the wilderness with a Texas Ranger in tow (Matt Damon) (!). Naturally it turns out the business of tracking down desperadoes is a harsh and cruel experience for a fourteen year old, but after a bit of luck she finally gets the confrontation she was after, and pays the price. This is a real adventure story, with unpredictable events and bittersweet outcomes.

It is shot very well by directors Joel and Ethan Coen, who really make the experience come alive in a natural and well-paced manner. Westerns always come across as a little awkward given that the people dress weird, talk funny, and there's lots of horses around, and this one suffers a little more from having a protagonist who is so young and, well, forthright and downright bossy in her manner. Hailee Steinfeld does a brilliant job with the character of Mattie Ross, it's an odd character, no fear or shyness at all at the enormity of the task ahead. If there is any criticism of the film, I suppose it would lie in how little we really end up finding out about this character, who she really is and what she's really feeling. It seems like eventually she is in over her head, but there really is not a lot of character development in a genre which has in the recent years become one that's all about character development.

Matt Damon too acquits himself well as a talkative Texas Ranger who in a way is the most level headed of the group. But it's Jeff Bridges who really dominates as Cogburn, the marshal. A hard-living old-school lawman, who squints through his one eye and mumbles almost every line. He energizes the film, gives it character and depth. An unlikable character, but one you respect and even trust. That performance helps the film along. It's not a gripping western in the way of Unforgiven, perhaps because the bookendings leave us assured that Mattie will survive to the end of the film, but it is a solid tale of the west, very well told. Three and a half spurs out of Five.


- Peace out