A survey of Iowa voters by Peter Nicholas of the LA Times gave us a clear picture of what a Clinton presidency would probably be like. This was accidental - the article is actually about how she’s not taking questions on the last leg of her whistlestops; a tactic which is, like most of her tactics, bothersome, callous, cynical and probably a great idea for her.

But the real brilliance of the article struck me with revelatory clarity in the form of the bland, oracular words of Mr. Doug Rohde, who described the questionless Clinton appearance thusly:

“I was a little bit underwhelmed,’’ said Doug Rohde, 46, as he left her a rally in a fire station in Denison. “The message was very generic — and no questions.’’

And that, I believe, will sum up any future Clinton years well.

For let’s face facts, people - namely her rhetoric, voting record, personal conduct and extensive history in the public eye. She’s no radical socialist. Sorry, but there’s no tacking the Red Threat on her. I actually don’t think she could even must such starry-eyed idealism. No, looking over Hillarycare, her fluctuating position on the Iraq War, her measures in NYC, her stance on the free market, Whitewater, shady campaign financing and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the picture becomes clear: The woman’s just another mercenary corporate-bought moderate:

Underwhelming. Generic. She’s not going to inject anybody’s kids in the public school with flouridation that’ll make them forget Christ and worship one-world government instead. She’s not exciting enough. She just wants power, and in America, certain power translates into controlled poll numbers - in catering to the lowest common denominator. All she’s going to do is keep things moderately chugging along.

This was a great plan back when the country hadn’t steered into a phenomenal global crisis economically and militarily. Now, it’s not so great. Now, we might want to look to truly fix things, rather than just distract everyone from how broken they are with carefully-calculated entertainment. And as fixing takes honesty and accountability, this brings us to the third and probably worst aspect of a Clinton presidency: There will be no questions allowed.

Considering how White House secrecy and Executive privilege has panned out the last eight years, I’m thinking we could use a change of scenery in that regards too. And considering that Hillary has not been less, but more secretive than W. was when he was campaigning in ‘00, flags should be raising in a major way.

I return to work to find the happy holidays abruptly over. Benazir Bhutto has been killed by a suicidal assassin in Pakistan.

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday by an attacker who shot her after a campaign rally and then blew himself up. Her death stoked new chaos across the nuclear-armed nation, an important U.S. ally in the war on terrorism.

At least 20 others were killed in the attack on the rally for Jan. 8 parliamentary elections where the 54-year-old former prime minister had just spoken.

Everything since has just been chaos and commentary. The chaos is that the Pakistani people are, understandably, distraught. They’re also understandably suspicious of each other - the liberals of the hardliners under Musharraf, and everyone of the militants. The combination of both those things has been rioting.

I’m not sure if most in the West appreciate how grim this is. It makes the capture of Saddam look like Anna Nicole Smith’s demise by comparison. Understanding the gravity of this requires understanding some things about Pakistan. It should become clear that Pakistan is not just “our important ally in the War on Terror”. It is one of the potentially scariest places on earth. And bear in mind as we review this list of qualities and qualms that when I say ‘Pakistan’, I mean the regime in charge - the real power in Pakistan, despite what the ballot boxes suggest, the Pakistani secret services, the ISI.

Pakistan was the father and the cradle of the Taliban. Pakistan has large stretches of its country that it doesn’t directly control, run by warlords. Pakistan is currently in a hot war with India over a little place called Kashmir that few people know anything about beyond that it’s the title of a really, really great Led Zeppelin tune, but that has claimed tens of thousands of lives. Pakistan has a very liberal media, when it’s not being shut down or commandeered by the military junta that runs Pakistan. Pakistan has a very large military, that the US given over $5 billion of military aid and much more other aid to, only to have much of it spent on weapons to fight India or simply stolen. Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

Pakistan has sold those nuclear weapons to our good friends Iran and North Korea, through its “rogue” scientist - and national hero - A. Q. Khan. Pakistan also has most of its 80 to 120 nuclear weapons aimed at India, and whereas the USA and the USSR had about fifteen minutes to confirm the other had fired a nuclear first strike against them, Pakistan has only about thirty seconds - in short, the two nations are rather jumpy. Pakistan has a right to be jumpy in other regards: It borders Afghanistan (a war zone), Western China (a war zone), India (on a war zone) and Iran (not a war zone, but kind of scary).

So Pakistan could use a western-looking leader. Today, she was killed. This practically ensures that the fellow who seized power by military coup a decade ago, has bilked us out of billions and is cozy with all manner of the militants we’re fighting in the GWOT will stay in power.

Happy New Year.

Even after taking a plunge in the primary state polls, Hillary’s juggernaut hardly seemed to have broken a wheel, but a recent salvo in the news items cycle makes it seem like they’re acting as if she’s blown an axle and is skidding wildly. Bill apparently announced at a Hillary event that former President Bush, Sr. would undertake a special junket during her Presidency that would signal to the world that, “America is open for business and cooperation again.”

According to the original statement, made yesterday:

Former President Bill Clinton said Monday that the first thing his wife Hillary will do when she reaches the White House is dispatch him and his predecessor, President George H.W. Bush, on an around-the-world mission to repair the damage done to America’s reputation by the current president — Bush’s son, George W. Bush.

“Well, the first thing she intends to do, because you can do this without passing a bill, the first thing she intends to do is to send me and former President Bush and a number of other people around the world to tell them that America is open for business and cooperation again,” Clinton said in response to a question from a supporter about what his wife’s “number one priority” would be as president.

I wasn’t surprised by the proposal of sending a former President abroad. I was surprised by the rhetoric. Making such a statement would be a significant betrayal of his son on the part of Bush, Sr. That he would react positively to Bill’s idea would be a real shocker. But after having it as his chief headline for half a day, Drudge could no longer sell that bill of goods because Bush, Sr. ripped them up.

In a statement sent to CNN Tuesday afternoon, former President Bush’s chief of staff Jean Becker said that he “wholeheartedly supports the President of the United States, including his foreign policy. He has never discussed an ‘around-the-world-mission’ with either former President Bill Clinton or Sen. Clinton, nor does he think such a mission is warranted since he is proud of the role America continues to play around the world as the beacon of hope for freedom and democracy.

That’s putting it both nicely and lightly on Senior’s behalf. But the real significance is why the Clinton campaign would make such a statement in the first place? It doesn’t lead to them sounding imperial and unifying, but rather foolish. It sounds, in short, weirdly desperate.

As next year’s spring approaches, there’s another credit bubble that America need to worry about bursting - our military successes abroad - as two wire service reports on the situation in Afghanistan and in Iraq bring to light.

What gains we’ve seen in those “fronts” in the War on Terror have been won because our military has been operating at an exhausting maximum capacity. This has, fortunately, proven enough for tactical successes on the ground. In Afghanistan, we have consistently managed to beat back the al-Qaeda/Taliban incursions of the past years when they flood out of “our ally,” Pakistan, ever tougher than before. In Iraq, Petraeus’ surge deployments and cunning behind-the-scenes - and behind the Iraqi government’s back - diplomacy with our rivals have earned a tentative few months of diminished attacks. But in both these cases, it is due to the excellence of our troops and the awesome resources behind them that the impossible has been made to seem on the horizon. Sadly, it isn’t.

What is on the horizon is the disappearance of the elements that led to those gains.

Troops in both theaters will need to be rotated home after their extended tours elapse. Our military spending, as evidenced by Bush’s recent spending request, is astronomical and only climbing higher. In short, our time with an extra player on the court has run out. This has left our military leadership to take hard looks at how tight our hold on either theater is.

In Afghanistan, the diagnosis is especially bleak. Our insipid strategy of allowing the enemy to reinforce, learn from past battles and return on their own terms from Pakistan effectively unmolested has led to an enemy as strong as when we first met them. Not once or twice but three times they have surged back across the border to tangle with us. This year, their attacks increased in frequency and scope even as we launched an offensive against them. Yet all this is not the worst news. Worst is that our allies in NATO are showing clear signs of drawing down their force complement - and in a theater where their forces comprise around half of troops in country and considerable logistic elements, this is a critical loss to a fragile effort indeed.

Insurgent violence is at its highest level in Afghanistan since U.S.-led forces ousted the Taliban after the September 11, 2001, attacks against the United States. Suicide bombings, for example, have climbed 30 percent in some areas, according to U.S. military officers.

Still, NATO commanders face long-standing shortfalls in troops, equipment and trainers for the Afghan security forces.

The United States has repeatedly urged NATO allies to dedicate more resources to the fight or risk losing gains. The Pentagon has 26,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, with about half of those troops under NATO’s 40,000-strong force.

Last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the United States would take the lead in drafting a three- to five-year plan for Afghanistan outlining how reconstruction and development could be combined with better security

Even we are finding it difficult to run at anything close to an adequate capacity in the region we have committed most: Iraq. The massive shipments of Stryker vehicles and body armor are still in the works, and the Iraqi Army is still a ways from being trained, but the whistle’s almost blown for our men in country.

In order to assess what that means, one has to assess the objective of the surge mission. It was not merely to quell violence; from the beginning, planners suggested that the security it afforded was artificial. Its purpose was to afford the Iraqi government time and practical ability to draft, enact and execute much needed recovery and reconciliation legislation.

And no, loyal reader, it isn’t that you’ve missed an issue of the Foreign Affairs or an episode of Hannity & Colmes - the Iraqi government has really done nothing substantial to advance its crucial needs: Anti-corruption, provincial governments, constitutional drafting or revenue sharing. What progress has been made, has been made on the ground level, from dealings between our forces and the de facto regional powers like the militias - the very same people we’ve spent much of the last five years fighting. It isn’t Maliki and his Dawah party that are opening up shops in Adamiyah - it’s former Sunni insurgents. It isn’t Maliki who’s welcoming home the Sunni refugees into Sadr city’s markets - it’s radical cleric Mukhtada al-Sadr. And it is not Maliki that is instrumental in forging these alliances; if anything, he fears them. It’s Petraeus, getting the job done no matter what.

And now the question remains - when the surge forces leave, and we no longer have a ready reserve to allow us to both lock down key points and react to threats with total annihilation, will those forces of normalcy hold? Or will the jackals - like Iran, the Shiite Hakim who are duking it out with Sadr in the south, and the ubiquitous al-Qaeda - rip it up enough that people will find more profit in conflict than in peace?

…there are now about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, about 30,000 more than in January. Commanders are planning to draw down the number to about 135,000 by July. Although Bush has not committed yet to going lower, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has expressed hope it could drop to 100,000 by next December.

“There is no question in my mind that an immediate pullout too quickly would be a serious threat to stability in Baghdad,” he said.

[Major General Joseph Fil, commander of Baghdad] said that although al-Qaida fighters “are not controlling any part of Baghdad,” they are still “lurking in the shadows.” Criminal networks also remain “very potent threats.” And coalition forces are still working in the east of the city against “special groups” — Shiite militants backed by Iran.

One thing’s for certain - we have experienced definite benefits from this balancing act. And in our military adventures abroad, as with our budget back home, it is 2008 that will show whether we can pay them forward.

This week’s news was surprisingly pleasant and serious, rather like a holiday should be. I say this because I don’t go in for the Norman Rockwell jolity holidays, with apple-cheeked, ice-skating youngsters falling on their keisters. There should be a fire, some eggnog, and a general sense of extremely static well being, as fixed as the evening star.

The stars in the early primary states were all /but/ fixed this week, though, made me pretty giddy at times.

All indications are that the falling star you see plummeting towards the Tunguska Incident-type impact of January 3rd’s caucus is Hillary Clinton. Hillary is taking a big dive, and the press is alternately fixating on her campaign’s weakness and on how press coverage of her campaign’s weakness is leading to further weakness in her campaign.

This polling data also comes from declared voters. As I’ve noted before, Obama might be even stronger than polls suggest, considering that his support has a large population of undeclared voters, as the article about his rise in New Hampshire notes:

The poll suggests that the Democratic race could hinge on the turnout of undeclared voters, who aren’t registered with either political party. Much of Obama’s backing comes from undeclared voters, while registered Democrats make up the bulk of Clinton’s support. In New Hampshire, undeclared voters can vote in either party primary, giving them sway in both contests.

On the other side of the political spectrum, a baleful star is rising - Mike Huckabee has launched ahead. He, like Obama, has a substantial margin of polling success in Iowa. He also has a lead in South Carolina, according to a CNN poll, and in Florida.

And though I would prefer two viable candidates in the race, considering how lame Giuliani has been on foreign policy - his supposed strong suit - and what a sell-out Romney has been to social conservatist zealots on topics like gay rights and abortion, I now have no problem with Huckabee being the choice of the GOP plurality. After all, it was the Bible-thumping, wet-eyed lot that shoved Bush and his ilk down our throats in 2000, 2002 and 2004, though better Republicans cut of a kind of cloth that would sicken at the thought of moralizing legislation were passed aside. The GOP rose to dominate our divided nation thanks to the bloc that prioritizes the defense of marriage over the defense of our country. If they want to put up the man that exemplifies that kind of empty quality, so be it. It will be the final nail in a coffin that I can’t wait to see go underground.

The press even has a term for it: Huckacide.

Huckacide was coined out of analysis of the “Huckaboom” - the leap in his poll numbers these past two weeks, born of showing commercials that sell him not as the man with the best foreign policy experience or the finest grasp of the economy (he’s proposing doing away with the IRS and replacing it with a 30% sales tax), but as a “Christian Leader”. If that’s all it takes to catapult you to the head of the flock then I’m fine that the religious right street wants to go out with a Huckabang, not with a whimper.

So this was a week of Hillabust and Huckaboom, as the Hillacopter seems likely to crash in a sudden squall of Obamarama.

Amazingly, not a whole lot else is worthy in the headlines.

Bush said that steroids sullied baseball. I would say that they made it kind of interesting again. Tells you my taste. I like technologically-enhanced man bulls shattering homerun records - and Dodger Dogs. Bush likes the other things that make baseball exciting, whatever those are.

There were a new round of suicide bombings in Iraq - some from al-Qaeda most likely, but a few from intra-Shiite brawling. Nobody in the media is quite sure whether they want to ruin a perfectly good news cycles that’s spawning catchy terms ending in “boom”, “bust” and “copter” yet, so they’re being ignored.

And al-Qaeda released a new recording which is, I assure you, far less interesting than Glenn Danzig talking about the contents of his bookshelf.

And, as it bears mentioning every week, Florida still needs a lot of help.

That’s the splendidly static World Wired Week in Review. Happy holidays.

New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist and global resident genius, Thomas Friedman, wrote a recent column detailing what the intercepted National Intelligence Estimate of Iran might look like. While tongue in cheek, the piece has some truly brilliant insights.

“Yes, our last I.N.I.E. in 1990 concluded that after the collapse of communism, America was on track to become the world’s sole superpower and most compelling role model for Muslim youth — including our own. We were wrong. We now have “high confidence” that America is on a path of self-destruction.”

The brilliance of Friedman - for those who haven’t read any of his work to have it summarized for them - is that the man thinks not in political terms, but in the ready, clean machinery of economic terms. There is no notion of the idealistic to his argument; power matters, the market matters, even values only have worth so far as they are a commodity. In fact, his observations on what role “values” - as defined by the political dialogue here in America - have are apt as well:

“…at a time when America’s bridges, roads, airports and Internet bandwidth have fallen behind other industrial powers, including China, we believe that the U.S. opposition to higher taxes — and the fact that the primary campaigns have focused largely on gay marriage, flag-burning and whether the Christian Bible is the literal truth — means it is “highly unlikely” that America will arrest its decline…

Our intel analysts are baffled that the leading Democrat, Mrs. Clinton, no longer believes in globalization and the leading Republican, Mr. Huckabee, never believed in evolution.”

Satire is often regarded as the most offensive form of criticism. This is, perhaps, because it is the most unvarnished truth - even the veneer of respect is not afforded to its target. That Mrs. Clinton might run a better “horse race” by dint of her debating tempo or consistency of empty message is not something to be admired, or even considered tolerable; Mr. Huckabee’s mythology is not regarded as quaint. The harm of those attitudes is starkly evident.

As an overall assessment of what the real threats and challenges are, the article is a more clarid assessment than any sober soundbite regurgitated by a network telecast talking head. Here, seen through our enemy’s eyes, the stakes are made clear, the rules defined, and, though a good laugh is the only sure result of reading this article, the call to action is raised loud enough to drown out the sea of useless blathering.

A new development in Jena’s courts aims to balance the scales, if not with legal correction, then with cash.

Scrofulous sage Samuel Johnson remarked that “patriotism is the last bastion of the scoundrel”, and in the case of the Jena Six controversy, this is made abundantly clear. What was, by all indications, an example of an over-zealous and somewhat draconian District Attorney hurling the book at repeat offenders became a tale of misunderstood unfortunates provoked into setting themselves up as targets for tacit modern racism. Through the glinting glass of an American psyche all too ready to prove its vigilance over civil rights was still keen, the obvious was obscured by the political. Politicians in the sunset of their race-based platforms’ power like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton could again look like fresh patriots. And, in due course, the offenders became seen as the victims, and the victim became irrelevant.

Irrelevant, that is, until the victim resorted to the last bastion for victims who politics and media have failed: A civil lawsuit.

JENA, La. — The family of a white student allegedly beaten by six black classmates in rural Louisiana has filed a civil lawsuit against the teens’ parents, the adult teens, an additional student and the local school board.

The suit names the attackers as the “Jena Six” students — Bell, Bryant Purvis, Robert Bailey Jr., Carwin Jones, Theo Shaw and a juvenile — as well as a second juvenile.

Law enforcement officials have not named the second juvenile as one of the attackers.

“Petitioners show that Justin was singled out by Mychal, Bryant, Robert, Carwin, Theodore (and the two juveniles), and that the malicious and willful attack of Justin was of such extreme nature so as to require emergency medical care and treatment for the harm inflicted by the attack, and resulting in extensive and permanently disabling injuries,” the lawsuit states.

The beating was preceded by racial incidents, including three white students hanging nooses from a tree.

The civil suit was filed Thursday. The lawsuit alleges that the LaSalle Parish School Board, through its employees, was not adequately supervising students or maintaining discipline.

That last accusation - against the School Board - is as clear as the swinging nooses earlier referenced.

For those not initiated into the details of the Jena case, the nooses mentioned sparked a series of interracial fights. The LaSalle response was to call in the bombastic District Attorney J. Walter Reed to address the school. Take note of Reed, as if there is any single cause for Jena going from a shrug-worthy story of racial tension to a national incident where the assailants become the martyrs, it’s him.

Reed “addressed” the students by threatening them with vicious legal action. Then followed what the newspapers usually stash down at the end of any article about Jena, if print at all, which was a series of assaults inspired by and involving one of the Jena Six - Robert Bailey, Jr. Eventually Junior’s rascally behavior reached a grim head as he and his five famous cohorts jumped Justin Barker.

It might have all still fizzled away had not Reed made good on his promise. Acting on the vow he made to the assembly at LaSalle’s school, Reed threw the book at the Six. He stuck to his guns despite community protest, keeping the charges harsh - “assault with intent” - and the poor-weather patriots of the burned out civil rights movement smelled blood in the water.

Next thing you know, two of the six kids who ambushed and gang-beat another kid were being honored at the BET awards.

Quite a few aspects of this case are offensive, and not just because it shows how pathetic civil rights activism has become - as ignores issues like the actual epidemic racism of our prison system - but because of the basis of its outrage. If Reed and Reed alone was its target, that would be different. But by making the Six out as pathetic victims worthy of being honored, it accepts the notion that they are so bestial that they can’t be blamed for the most craven violent action - the nooses drove them to it. And to that, I have to wonder, are they serious? We have to hold minorities to a lesser standard of behavior because they can’t control their emotions enough to not break the law?

That’s a long way from the philosophy brilliantly outlined in “Letters From A Birmingham Jail”.

But if emotionalism is going to be the mettle of the day, not high-minded idealism, then Barker’s suit may prove two can play at that game: After all, with a weepy Louisiana jury counting the stitches in his head, punitive damages can climb mighty high.

While we’re raising a hue and cry about one radical, rogue-state Islamist dictator pursuing nukes, the United States has given a nod of approval to the nuclear ambitions of an even scarier radical, rogue-state Islamist dictator. Libya has made arrangements to rake in some serious nuclear technology from their new pal, Sarkozy’s France - which made a deliberate point of leaving its human rights minister at home while visiting Tripoli. And, citing Libya as an example of a nation returning to the fold of the civilized world, the US administration has given its blessing.

“In light of Libya’s historic decision in 2003 to rid itself of its WMD programs, we expect any cooperation with Libya on a peaceful secure and responsible use of nuclear power to be consistent with the highest standard of non-proliferation,” said Kurtis Cooper, a State Department spokesman.

France announced plans to sell nuclear reactors to Libya as well as 10 billion euros of trade deals, as President Nicolas Sarkozy welcomed Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi on Monday for a five-day visit.

The United States announced last year a full normalization of ties, lifting Libya from a State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism and raising diplomatic relations to the level of ambassadors.

For those not up to speed on the dealings of autocratic third world thugs, Libya is hardly the developing nation equivalent of a hardened con who finds Christ behind bars and goes on to rehabilitate inner city youth. When we needed to talk with Filipino Islamists back in 2002, we called Libya up as the interlocutor. Libya is prominent in the human trafficking trade. Its human rights record is rated absolute lowest, with torture and indefinite detentions not infrequent.

So why is the Bush administration letting this deal go through - even condoning it - while saying in the same breath of similarly savage Iran:

“Iran is dangerous, and they’ll be even more dangerous if they learn how to enrich uranium,” Bush said. “So I look forward to working with the president,” Bush said, referring to Napolitano, the Italian leader, “to explain our strategy and to figure out ways we can work together to prevent this from happening for the sake of world peace.”

Bush’s comments amounted to a renewed effort to keep pressure on Iran after the release of last week’s National Intelligence Estimate. That report found that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program four years ago, and administration officials worry it could weaken their ability to build global pressure on Tehran to stop its uranium enrichment program.

Here we have two “rogue nations” with similar draconian means of maintaining power. Both leaders say offensive and threatening things. Both nations are seeking nuclear technology, and both halted their nuclear weapons programs around the same time - though both have reason, means and tendency to conceal such programs. Why favor one over the other?

The answer is purely regional - a pattern simple and inevitable as a chessboard. In the case of Iran, its location next to Iraq and near Saudi Arabia, destines it to be our rival in the Middle East. In the case of Libya, it is relatively unopposed in North Africa: It is an economic powerhouse compared to overpopulated and underdeveloped Egypt, and rolls in resources and swanky geography compared to Morocco or Algeria. Iran has U.S. bases on its border to contend with. Libya is isolated in a sea of nations putatively neutral to the States. Iran is in a hot war with us. Libya just fences WMD and intelligence for terrorists.

So now, when you’re wondering why some in our political dialogue are gnashing their teeth over Ahmadinjad’s nuclear schemes - I even saw a comparison to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which an NIE in ‘62 failed to predict - but ignoring or just shrugging at Khadafi’s, you know why. It’s not the stability of the leader. It’s not affection for America or our values. It certainly isn’t morality.

It’s who we can do business with, and who we need to put out of business.

Not to be outdone by comparison to the Hussein regime in /any/ category, the US in Iraq has shown that it will even give a college try at matching the infamous rape rooms - as the abduction, drugging, gang-rape and sex-slavery of a young Texas woman by Americans in Iraq demonstrated this week.

The culprits in this case were American Private Military Contractors - that esteemed slice of our private sector that’s been making so many headlines lately - employed by former Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a “construction firm”. According to the victim, her family and her concerned Congressman:

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.

“Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,” Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

Finally, Jones says, she convinced a sympathetic guard to loan her a cell phone so she could call her father in Texas.

“I said, ‘Dad, I’ve been raped. I don’t know what to do. I’m in this container, and I’m not able to leave,’” she said. Her father called their congressman, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas.

Poe says his office contacted the State Department, which quickly dispatched agents from the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to Jones’ camp, where they rescued her from the container.

According to her lawsuit, Jones was raped by “several attackers who first drugged her, then repeatedly raped and injured her, both physically and emotionally.”

KBR, champion of many a non-competitive bidding war for defense work and darling of many a Texas politician, has quite a few controveries under its belt - ranging from overcharging for food they failed to deliver our troops, to the violation-ridden “Restore Iraqi Oil” project. Now they’ve kicked it up a notch.

That it was an American woman, and a KBR employee, was the real nail in this case’s coffin. There’s no real telling if any Iraqi women are suffering the same fate - only that prostitution is so endemic in Iraq since the war that, according to CNN, the price of a woman is a steal at only $8. Of course, in the case of Ms. Leigh, KBR decided she would literally be a steal, simply paying for the shipping and handling of getting her out to Baghdad before subjecting her to drugging, imprisonment, isolation and abuse. Additionally shocking is that they thought they’d get away with it.

I can do you a better shock - they did!

Just like in the shooting incident where over a dozen Iraqi civilians were gunned down by Blackwater, but a Blackwater-run investigation resulted in no grounds for charges and a promise of legal immunity from the State Department, KBR found no evidence when it was hired to investigate KBR:

Jones told ABCNews.com that an examination by Army doctors showed she had been raped “both vaginally and anally,” but that the rape kit disappeared after it was handed over to KBR security officers. [ed. note: Emphasis mine]

Oopsie! Funny how rape kits just kind of disappear when you put them in the hands of the party who’s going to be held legally punishable by their findings. And just as much a head-scratcher is why on earth the administration that’s been pouring taxpayer money down KBR’s throats regardless of whether it vanishes, and protects them at all costs, wouldn’t rush to investigate this clear cover-up.

Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.

Legal experts say Jones’ alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.

“It’s very troubling,” said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. “The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don’t have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice.”

Congressman Poe says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones investigation.

“There are several, I think, their excuses, why the perpetrators haven’t been prosecuted,” Poe told ABC News. “But I think it is the responsibility of our government, the Justice Department and the State Department, when crimes occur against American citizens overseas in Iraq, contractors that are paid by the American public, that we pursue the criminal cases as best as we possibly can and that people are prosecuted.”

Well, it breaks my heart to tell you, Mr. Poe, but I would not hold my breath. And for those of you who think this KBR thing is a fluke or isolated incident, I’m sad to say I’m going to have to burst your bubble too. For a few years ago in another stretch of bad country notorious for its sex abuses - the Balkans - America’s Private Military Contractors got involved in a big way in the sex slave trade. And not just any Private Military Contractor. Yes, you guessed it, conspiracy buffs: It was a Halliburton subsidiary - in this case, “construction firm” DynCorp.

At least 13 DynCorp employees have been sent home from Bosnia — and at least seven of them fired — for purchasing women or participating in other prostitution-related activities. But despite large amounts of evidence in some cases, none of the DynCorp employees sent home have faced criminal prosecution.

Because of a combination of international treaties, jurisdictional loopholes and bureaucratic confusion, employees of private military companies such as DynCorp can escape prosecution for crimes they commit overseas. Most common crimes committed outside the United States are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, and the burgeoning local law enforcement systems in war-torn regions such as Bosnia are often insufficient or unwilling to police U.S. contractors. [ed. note: Again, emphasis mine]

I would be painting with a broad brush if I closely identified the DynCorp case with KBR, but the similar quality in both cases is the significant one: That in both cases, American Private Military personnel knowingly and extensively involved themselves with the long-term sex abuse of women, and were in no way suffered legal consequences.

If we are to make any claim of morality from here on, we best start holding ourselves accountable. Otherwise, the deeds of violence we commit in order to prevent the atrocities of others will be no more than atrocities themselves. And, at least in the case of KBR, the nation’s vision for Iraq will be little better than what its worst critics claim it to be - a rapine exercise by lying, exploitative profiteers who care so little about the law that they act above it and do nothing to give their subjects its luxury of safety and recourse.

_________________________

Further Reading:

For those of you who want to read more about the landmark, nuanced and thoroughly tragic “Johnston” case, involving DynCorp in the Balkans, check out Robert Capp’s extraordinary Salon.com expose’: Outside the Law

Jun 26, 2002 | Ben Johnston recoiled in horror when he heard one of his fellow helicopter mechanics at a U.S. Army base near Tuzla, Bosnia, brag one day in early 2000: “My girl’s not a day over 12.”

The man who uttered the statement — a man in his 60s, by Johnston’s estimate — was not talking fondly about his granddaughter or daughter or another relative. He was bragging about the preteen he had purchased from a local brothel…

In International Law and Defense classes in years to come, this will most definitely be among the most photocopied of reports.

Out of popular demand, consideration for my own convenience and a nod to weekly recap news shows everywhere, I’m now establishing a tradition of reviewing the news of the week in a Friday post - the Wired World Week In Review.

This sardonic scan of events will cover a broad range of topics. I’ll get you the most significant political stories, the most outlandish news items on the wire and a few selections that balance social relevance with sheer oddity. You’ll get the coups and the crackpots, the debates and the Darwin Awards, each with a quick synopsis that gets right past of the meat of the matter and hits the sweet marrow.

So, without further ado, here’s the review:

First, the most important news: The Second Coming has occurred. As most anyone would have predicted, it happened in Florida. But in a way few expected, the Lord returned in some fellow’s ribcage. To this, I have but two things to note: First, that I always thought Quatto from “Total Recall” had a messianic quality about him. And secondly, “You go, Florida. Keep ‘em coming; things would be so boring without you.” Bless your heart, you might say.

The patient recently went to a hospital in Homestead and complained of chest pains.

The doctor ordered an X-ray, and when technicians put the film up to the light, the silhouette of what some said resembled Jesus Christ appeared.

Now, two news items that should interest Conservatives:

In one, a man with a gun protected himself and his family from an armed robber.

Investigators said the Johnson family was returning home from a school event when three people came up to their car. Randall Johnson, 36, pulled out a gun and shot one of the suspects, killing him.

I know - amazing, hm? Things actually work out sometimes.

And yet, not every American who describes themselves as a Conservative will be united in political vindication on this story - wherein a Developmental Biologist was fired from teaching Developmental Biology because he didn’t believe in developmental biology, he believed in Creationism.

In a 2004 letter to Abraham, his boss, Woods Hole senior scien tist Mark E. Hahn, wrote that Abraham said he did not want to work on “evolutionary aspects” of the National Institutes of Health grant for which he was hired, even though the project clearly required scientists to use the principles of evolution in their analyses and writing.

On this matter, I would imagine many Conservatives would be aghast that religious beliefs would even be a factor in the workplace, while many others will simply be shocked by the absurdity of it all.

More absurdity abounds in the usually so reserved and sober state of Syria. The government has apparently blocked access to the online social network, Facebook, allegedly due to suspicions of Israeli infiltration.

Lebanon’s daily As-Safir reported that Facebook was blocked on Nov. 18. It said the authorities took the step because Israelis have been entering Syria-based groups.

One can only imagine the thinking behind this. Was Syria perhaps afraid that it would suffer from a “Friends List” gap? That animated gif pictures of spinning dradels will sway its young Muslims away from the path of the prophet? Or is it the more obvious answer - that Facebook is all a North Korean intelligence mining operation, and that the Israelis were getting to close to figure it out by giving seemingly-benign Syrian pages a hard look?

Infiltration is on John McEnroe’s mind too, as the tennis star claims that organized crime is infiltrating the sport. Talk about moving up in the world - rigged boxing matches have a certain garish glamor, but I can’t think of a sport more pinkies up than tennis.

The former world number one believes that threats to tennis players or their families could be forcing them into throwing matches.

“The thing that worries me is that mafia types, like the Russian mafia, could be involved. That’s potentially pretty dark and scary,” McEnroe told The Daily Telegraph.

As McEnroe says, it is indeed scary. Russian mobsters tend not to be particularly constrained in their targets. If tennis tried to resist their influence, we could be looking at the bloodiest and most extensive purge of British gentry since Oliver Cromwell and his tea-sipping Taliban, the Puritans, were in charge. Ha ha! Reformation humor.

At the very least, it would make “Eastern Promises” seem prophetic - and thus achieve the impossible by making it even cooler than it is now.

Otherwise, loyal readers, not a whole lot else happened in this first torpid week of December. People killed other people. A guy was jailed for not taking his tuberculosis medicine in what I hope is a crackdown that will lead to people who cough in the theater being subjected to public flogging. Politicians traded jabs - with Edwards’ campaign saying that Oprah didn’t care about black people, Cheney saying something vaguely lewd about Congress, and Clinton alternately puling about being attacked and attacking back - in other words, the usual.

My favorite headline about that whole rigamarole was today on Drudge, and read:

Dukakis Says Obama Not Capitalizing On Grassroots; baffled…

Which instantly made me think, “Funk Wonders Why Obama Should EVER Listen To Dukakis; baffled…”

It was that kind of week. Peaceful. Overinflated. Surreal. I almost felt I was back in the 90s again.

A story bringing to national attention the obnoxious smear job that casts Barack Obama as a Wahabbi sleeper agent has finally hit the wires. Someone finally traced one of the names on a recent dispatch of this rumor, back to a Clinton staffer. Shocker there. She resigned, Hillary denied any knowledge, and it was portrayed as a one time thing - a lark, a phenomena.

Except that it wasn’t - it’s been going around for some time. I was first introduced to the “Obama/Osama” concern by someone of considerable intelligence and influence, a woman who had heard it buzzing around some particularly important Jewish groups. Though she had some significant doubts as to its veracity, to be sure, she still couldn’t dismiss the worry out of hand.

I confirmed it was a lie, but despaired somewhat that telling one person wasn’t going to shift the opinions of an entire lobby, political action group or organization of concerned citizens. This expose’ on the rumor’s origin should turn up the volume.

A volunteer Iowa county coordinator for Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign has resigned after forwarding a chain e-mail that suggests Barack Obama is a Muslim who wants to destroy the United States by being elected to its highest office.

Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ and has never been a Muslim.

A hoax e-mail that has been widely circulated suggests Obama is some sort of Manchurian candidate for Muslims.

Judy Rose, a Clinton coordinator and Democratic Party official in Jones County, Iowa, forwarded it without comment to eight people on Nov. 21. Rose referred requests for comment to one of the recipients, Grace Zimmerman, who serves with her on the Jones County Democratic Central Committee.

Now, naturally, Rose and Zimmerman are trying to weasel out of this. Zimmerman claimed it was just meant as a lesson in how dirty politics could be. I suppose, in a way, she’s right.

__________________________________________

For those of you who want a quick history of the Manchurian-Muslim hoax, check out CNN’s report on it.

And for those of you who appreciate a more thorough dissection, and don’t mind batting away hordes of pop-up ads, check out snopes.com’s treatment of it.

It’s not the helm that decides the course of our lives, but the sea, wind and wood. We lose sight of this sometimes, as effort and routine struggle to establish some semblance of identity. In the end result though, our lives are not in our control. We decide our actions, but it’s fate, chaos, divinity or sheer weirdness that determines the result.

The result is a flawed program, at least by ordered, human standards. And any aggregate of action - any organization, any cause, any strategem - is, therefore, only an aggregate of flaws.

A rather brilliant episode of “This American Life“, a weekly radio show broadcast on NPR and hosted online, brought this into acute clarity for me.

“The Arms Trader” deals with one of the few prominent federal terror investigations during the War on Terror. It’s a diagram for deception, disaster and, above all, dumb old human frailty. It is not, however, the kind of story of that sort you’d expect.

9/11 was, for many, a reminder that rules can be broken at any time. A time of prosperous doldrums can become a time of immediate, alarming global conflict. The invincible can be made into the most vulnerable. Box cutters, sleepy security and airplanes can be mixed into weapons of mass destruction.

But in the subsequent months, the government was resolute in trying to project an opposite image - to cast a projection of order, right and absolute action onto the smoke and madness the world had been revealed to be. There was good, it insisted, and evil. Good would, through strength, prevail, and evil would be held to task. And our strength would be clear, mighty and unrelenting.

Things did not quite turn out that way. The reason why transcends the mere trope that any martial conflict is a managed disaster. The reason why is because the vulnerability, fragility, confusion of September 11th is the reality - not some apocalyptic, incidental reality, but the consistent, moment-by-moment reality of our lives. For, on a personal level, a world does not require 19 men, four planes, years of malicious planning to destroy. A car crash can destroy a world. A cancer. A call for help unheard.

We inhabit a universe not of promises and justice, but of embolisms and Sudden Infant Death syndrome. Our entire existence balances on an axis that may, at any time, for any reason, snap. And the cosmos of human relations, for all its lofty achievements and vast, solar-system stretching expansion, is never more solid than that brittle foundation.

“The Arms Trader” reminds us of this. I strong suggest any who have an interest in global affairs, military affairs - or even just human affairs - give it a listen.

Happy Holidays - I’ve returned after my long hiatus of backbreaking labor, moving and general disaffection with the world at large. And I should note that the world didn’t help me with any of those concerns this sluggish, cyclical November. The news was as drab and empty as my new apartment. But lo, a new month has begun, and with it, some signs that things worth writing about are happening to occupy the increasingly ample writing time of my days.

So here we have it, loyal readers - A “How De Do” list of headlines that keep me warm at night during those cold Southern California nights:

First and foremost, there’s now a Web site devoted to holding Hilary accountable for her feeble jabs at fellow Democrats. Barack Obama is graciously hosting it, as he’s the one most of the lunges are aimed at. This record of ripostes has among its entries her griping about Iran, gay rights and, of course, the all-time classic accusation that Obama was calculating his Presidential bid as a cold-blooded kindergartener.

You know Christmas is coming when you get the gift of fruit cake, I tell you.

Yes, the news media seems to have become serious about shoving Hilary in front of its bus’ newscycles. After extolling her bravery and acumen for emotional manipulation lost its luster with the press-purchasing public, they actually began commenting on the inaccuracies, grim implications and general blandness of her statements as a candidate. Then came the record of coercion of the press, ruthless control of her records and surprisingly sloppy oversight of her donors. Next thing you know, the blood is in the water.

It is surely too late to pop the champagne. A lot of people want Hillary to win, and the media has yet to decide what story it wants to tell - the one where the charismatic Kennedy-come-lately Obama rises above the establishment wreck of the Clinton campaign while the media sings “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead”, or the one where the media-money darling, Hillary takes her rivals’ best shots and still wins out because despite an abyssmal voting record, she’s got moxie and knows how to win hearts. Yet I reserve the right to have some glimmer of hope for the political process, and right now, that hope is leading in Iowa.

And speaking of Hope, Mike Huckabee is also leading in Iowa, suggesting this race may get a /whole/ lot more interesting than I could’ve expected. Nothing will chase the mid-election season clouds away like a bass-playing wiseacre with Nanny State politics and fundamentalist beliefs!

And, speaking of the apocalypse…

Our second joyful holiday news item is that someone finally wrenched the mike away from the White House long enough to give it to the CIA and US intelligence community. For months, we’ve been drinking a witches’ brew of paranoia and dark portent from our ever-vigilant Commander-in-Chief about Iran’s nuclear program, as all the while the fine print on the articles noted that his intelligence personnel were telling him to settle down. At last, the National Intelligence Estimate rolled off the presses and stated definitively that Iran is /not/ an immediate threat, and that all indications are that it’s been largely on the up-and-up about the civilian application of its program.

“…in a finding likely to surprise U.S. friends and foes alike, the latest NIE concluded: “We do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.”

That marked a sharp contrast to an intelligence report two years ago that stated Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons.”

That having been said, Iran is still proceeding to acquire and implement nuclear technology, and whether those technologies have immediate military applications or not, they are still steps along the path to nuclear armament. The question then becomes whether they’re illegal or not, and whether Iran has any real incentive to use them to threaten the US. At least, for now, the mushroom cloud has been crammed back into the smoking gun, the bogeyman back into the closet, and Dick Cheney’s opinions back into the padded cell and out of the public square.

If anything, this report indicates that sanctions do indeed work. The NIE, after all, switched dramatically over the time period of the internationally-backed sanctions we initiated. All indications are that we did something good, and it worked.

And as a fringe benefit, it seems only Bush and conservatives in Israel - the two parties in the globe that need as much ammunition against Iran as they can get - remain convinced that Iran is going full throttle for a nuclear nightmare. One hopes this will further damage the credibility of the Israeli intelligence services. Then, maybe, our media will start listening to the Knessetand Haaretz, rather than whatever reactionary, uniformed flavor of the month the conservative Israeli Defense Force stands behind a microphone in order to justify our unconditional support and billions of military aid for his country.

And, finally, the Teddy Bear Terror is over.

Yes, the latest installment of the increasingly assinine and alarming outrages in the Muslim world has run its course. The British teacher who thought it would be kosher for a kid to name his stuffed bear after himself - Mohammed - only to find it led to roaring throngs demanding her death by beheading is home safe.

After a reunion with her children John and Jessica at Heathrow, the 54-year-old teacher spoke of her shock and terror after being arrested and accused of insulting Islam for allowing her pupils to call a teddy bear Mohammed.

But despite her ordeal, Mrs Gibbons praised the people of Sudan, stressing that no one should be put off working there.

She even pointed out there was a vacancy for a teacher in her old job.

“I am very sorry to leave,” she said.

And yet I, Mrs. Gibbons, am rapidly running out of patience with Sudan. Darfur is bad enough. But legal action that makes the reaction over the Danish cartoons of the prophet look rational, even right, by comparison? It may be a straw compared to hundreds of thousands dead and raped by government-backed Islamic militias, but it could be a final straw all the same.

But in the spirit of the holidays, it seems like everyone - from the government in Khartoum, to the western press, to kindly Mrs. Gibbons and innocent little Mohammed - are letting this one blow over. So it will be back to business: Our slowly trudging towards a modicum of security for the agonized millions in Sudan while China grips the whole region like a pearl in its dragon claws.

Xin Nian Kuai Le, everybody! It’s good to be back!