I'm a big Fox critic (there are so many more people scrutinizing the New York Times than Fox) but credit where credit is due. This is an important story.

In a rush of pre-election business, Congress gave the Alaska pipeline fresh momentum by promising loan guarantees for 80 percent of the pipeline's cost, and gave developers other tax breaks as well as promises of less burdensome permitting requirements.

"After working for more than 20 years ... we have finally taken steps to make the Alaska natural gas pipeline happen," Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said after Congress agreed to the incentive package.

The incentives were touted as a major breakthrough by Alaska's other senator, Lisa Murkowski (search), but quickly became fodder in her closely contested election race. Her opponent, Democratic former Gov. Tony Knowles (search), criticized her for failing to get a better incentive package, including gas price supports, to further ease pipeline developers' concerns.

Tax credits if Alaska gas fell below a certain price had been sought by the Alaska senators and some of the potential pipeline investors, but were strongly opposed by the Bush administration as being unfair to gas producers in the lower 48 states.

The companies that own the Alaska gas -- ExxonMobil Corp., ConocoPhillips and BP PLC -- have praised Congress' action, but remain reluctant to push headlong into a $20 billion investment. They are seeking more advantages and security from the state to mitigate their risk in what has been described as the largest private construction project ever in North America. If given the go-ahead the pipeline would take 10 years to plan and construct.

Two parties competing to see which one can offer more subsidies. The fossil fuel companies are nervous about the risks - but politicians are pushing the project. Limits on corporate welfare are imposed more by concerns of competing corporations than concern for the taxpayer.

Ambush Kills 50 Iraq Soldiers Execution Style

The NY Times has revised the headline - presumably before the print edition was printed. Pretty quick work on their part, the meaning is clearer now.

Usually I consider the critics of the New York Times to be excessively one sided, but in this case all the howls about the word 'executed' will be deserved.

Rebels Mount Grisly Ambush, Executing 49 Iraqi Soldiers
By EDWARD WONG

Published: October 24, 2004


AGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 - In the single deadliest ambush of the insurgency, guerrillas dressed as police officers executed 46 freshly trained Iraqi soldiers and three civilian drivers in remote eastern Iraq as the unarmed men were going home on leave Saturday evening, Iraqi officials said today.

If murdered is too judgemental, how about slaughtered? Even killed would be better. I have heard the phrases 'mob execution' for the Mafia or 'gang style execution' for other gangs, but there's no call for using it in this context.

What do we do about this? It would be easy to go along, since we are worried about Iran interfering in Iraq. If we ignore any questions about evidence and due process and the Brigadier General, it will make it much harder to ask them later when he does something we don't like - or that moves constitutional democracy further away.


Neo-Baath v. the Shiites

Brig. Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, the head of the Iraqi secret police, has charged 27 employees in the Iranian embassy in Baghdad with espionage and sabotage. He blames them for the assassination of over a dozen members of the Iraqi secret police in the past month. He claims to have seized from "safehouses" Persian documents that show that the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its militia, the Badr Corps, served as Iranian agents in helping with the assassinations.

SCIRI is represented in the caretaker government by Adil Abdul Mahdi, the Defense Minister, and the party has been an ally of convenience of the US against the Sadr Movement. The party was formed in Tehran by Iraqi exiles in 1982 and was close to Iranian hardliners. SCIRI officials vigorously denied Shahwani's charges on Thursday. They said that the neo-Baath network in the Allawi government is seeking to discredit Iraqis who fought against Saddam from Iran in the 1980s.


...

The two ex-Baath officials had reportedly ordered the secret police to raid "the office of Hizb Allah Movement in Baghdad and arrested some members, including the movement's general-secretary Hassan Al Sari, without any arrest warrant." [Thanks to Nicholas Blanford for information about HMI].

Complaints began surfacing about Shahwani in August. Iraqi Shiite leaders visiting London this summer contacted the Deccan Herald, a south Indian newspaper, among others, to express concern about the secret police chief:



' Despite earlier promises that no one in Iraq would be arrested without due process, Shahwani’s critics say he is using ex-criminals to round up suspects and hold them without charge in secret prisons.

“On the day the National Assembly was appointed three members were arrested, along with another 57 others, all this on the orders of Shahwani,” one prominent Iraqi visitor told Deccan Herald on condition he was not quoted by name.

What do we do about this? It would be easy to go along, since we are worried about Iran interfering in Iraq. If we ignore any questions about evidence and due process and the Brigadier General, it will make it much harder to ask them later when he does something we don't like - or that moves constitutional democracy further away.


Neo-Baath v. the Shiites

Brig. Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, the head of the Iraqi secret police, has charged 27 employees in the Iranian embassy in Baghdad with espionage and sabotage. He blames them for the assassination of over a dozen members of the Iraqi secret police in the past month. He claims to have seized from "safehouses" Persian documents that show that the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its militia, the Badr Corps, served as Iranian agents in helping with the assassinations.

SCIRI is represented in the caretaker government by Adil Abdul Mahdi, the Defense Minister, and the party has been an ally of convenience of the US against the Sadr Movement. The party was formed in Tehran by Iraqi exiles in 1982 and was close to Iranian hardliners. SCIRI officials vigorously denied Shahwani's charges on Thursday. They said that the neo-Baath network in the Allawi government is seeking to discredit Iraqis who fought against Saddam from Iran in the 1980s.


...

The two ex-Baath officials had reportedly ordered the secret police to raid "the office of Hizb Allah Movement in Baghdad and arrested some members, including the movement's general-secretary Hassan Al Sari, without any arrest warrant." [Thanks to Nicholas Blanford for information about HMI].

Complaints began surfacing about Shahwani in August. Iraqi Shiite leaders visiting London this summer contacted the Deccan Herald, a south Indian newspaper, among others, to express concern about the secret police chief:



' Despite earlier promises that no one in Iraq would be arrested without due process, Shahwani’s critics say he is using ex-criminals to round up suspects and hold them without charge in secret prisons.

“On the day the National Assembly was appointed three members were arrested, along with another 57 others, all this on the orders of Shahwani,” one prominent Iraqi visitor told Deccan Herald on condition he was not quoted by name.

I confess! I'm not a television watcher, and I'm probably the only member of the blogosphere who failed to watch the debate for reasons other than appalling political apathy. I'd rather read about it than watch it - I'm sure many people are better than be at reading body langauge and other cues, and television is my medium of last choice for the text itself.

Avedon Carol's roundup on The Sideshow is all great news - not just the post I linked to, scroll down. Right after the debate she said, "But, as Kos says, by telling such a barrel full of whoppers, Cheney did force Edwards to waste a lot of time correcting the record instead of being able to spend it all giving direct answers to Gwen Ifill's questions."

As it turns out he may have won the battle but lost the war. Factcheck.org contradicts him on the very points he asked them to confirm. Rove has won spin battles after debates before - but Cheney has given him the toughest possible fighting conditions.

Finally, it may not be long before we can realistically set our goals. The coming elections and the battles for the cities will either put Iraq on a path to normalcy or introduce us to some new hell. Yesterday, Rumsfeld said Iraq had "a crack" at being a success. At least he's not overhyping.

I could say the same for David Brooks that he says for Rumsfeld. In each case, all that's missing is some contemplation of what was said about occupying Iraq before the war and what those words tell us about the people who said them, and the speaker could be said to be in touch with reality, ready to think honestly about the various sets of emotional blinders that prevent fruitful discussion of Iraq.

Who is crazy here? Is it just me, or is she a maniac too?

WASHINGTON: Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan has been punished by being nationally humiliated, said Condoleezza Rice, the US national security counsellor, on Sunday.

...

Khan is “a national hero, a figure of Pakistani lore, and Musharraf has dealt with what is a very difficult situation” by “making certain that he’s out of business,” said Rice.

Khan has lost privileges “to travel and the like,” said Rice, and “a number of countries are pursuing prosecutions” of network members, she added, mentioning South Africa and at least one unnamed European country.

“AQ Khan, in a sense, has been brought to justice because he is out of the business that he loved most,” said Rice. “And if you don’t think that his national humiliation is justice for what he did, I think it is.” afp

He has been punished by being humiliated, but he can't be punished because he is so widely respected in Pakistan. Huh?

This is the last person I would have expected to admit that Fox television celebrities are not journalists!

Mistah Kurtz--He Lives.
Howard Kurtz says we're entering the age of "red" media and "blue" media.

Journalists hate that idea, because it means that we no longer live in an era of "blue" media and "blue" media.

If you click through to the original post and again to the Howard Kurtz article, you'll see Fox is the network referred to as red state media. Unless he considers Fox blue state media because they have a headquarters in New York - which is fair enough, if Jason makes it clearer that he's critisizing Fox for resenting genuine red state media from displacing them from their faux red state niche.

Little George may look out of place in Baghdad, but it’s where he belongs — for the time being.

The wooden polar bear (sportily donning sunglasses against Iraq’s bright days) arrived with his 10th Mountain Division unit, the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, and sits next to the office of the battalion commander, Lt. Col. John Spiszer.

But the bear isn’t just cute or a handy place to hang sunglasses. There is history there, Spiszer explained.

Between 1918 and 1920, the regiment — then in the Philippines — was sent to defend the Trans-Siberian Highway from Russian revolutionaries, bandits and other nations. It was there the regiment earned the polar bear moniker.

The nickname stuck, and the polar bear is even part of the regiment’s flag and insignia.