QuentinCompson @ 105

sweetp @ 61

Bummer. Please thank your son for me for his service to country. My son is a recon corpsman and since he returned from Eyerack he spends a lot of his time trying to be sure his wounded of all kinds in various locales are properly looked after.

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Thanks to your son as well.

It is probably too late to thank Raven and QuentinCompson in these comments, but I do thank you. And I will convey your thanks to my so. He was in the Marines and 2 weeks from getting out when he deployed to Iraq in the first wave. He is now attending AA (thanks Jane for suggesting it), private counseling and has gone back to college. He came home alive with all of his limbs, but still anxious, sometimes depressed and short tempered. Thank goodness not binge drinking any more and has met a wonderful woman.

Some more reasons for Iran to be involved in Iraq:

Iraq once started a war with them.

Iraq has Kurds, too, and an independent Kurdistan in the former Northern Iraq will be a lit fuse for Iran, Turkey, and Syria. A Kurdish Northwest could become Iranian in name only, like the Pakistani Tribal Areas.

Iran has a massive oil problem. The southwest part of the country is where all the oil is, and it is the Arab minority part of the country. There is a big wall of mountains between it and the rest of Persian Iran. Arabs consider themselves to be “first-class” Muslims and the rest of the world “second-class”. In fact Shiite holy sites are in Iraq, not Saudi Arabia.

So, Iran is in terrible danger of losing its oil territories to a Southern Iraq-based Shia splinter state. This alone is a fine reason why Iran needs alternative energy sources like nuclear power. And also a fine reason to dominate the resurgent Iraqi Shia.

scarebaby @ 63

At this point, every move has to be considered in relation to the jury and what the jury thinks. What would be the impact on the jury of going back into the deliberation room, down one member? What would be the impact of the “loss” of this particular person, in terms of the group dynamic?

11 is divisible only by itself and 1. 12 is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and itself. So what, you ask? 12 is a sacred number that enhances communication and agreement. Eleven does not.

Wow! That is really good!

I think not.

Cheney’s daughter Elizbeth was once employed by Armitage’s company.

In today’s Times, there is an article entitled “U.S. Says Raid in Iraq Supports Claim on Iran” by James Glanz and Richard Oppel with Michael Gordon and Scott Shane contributing. The Times has been sensitive to criticisms on this issue. This article shows that the authors have tried to address some of the concerns raised while at the same time continuing in many ways to miss the forest for the trees.

The title is less inflammatory by not appearing to state an assertion as a fact but it remains misleading. The “US” in question is not the President, the Vice President, or the Secretaries of State and Defense, it is a single military weapons expert Major Marty Weber. Now it is nice that the Times has actually named him instead of referring to him as an anonymous source but if we are to go to war with Iran I would like it to be on something more than his say so. The “Iran” in the title is equally nebulous. Are we talking the Supreme leader Khamenei, President Ahmadinejad, al Quds, some other governmental entity, or does it mean simply a smuggling conduit?

Now to be fair to the authors some of this is addressed in their opening paragraph.

A raid on a Shiite weapons cache in the southern city of Hilla one week ago is providing what American officials call the best evidence yet that the deadliest roadside bombs in Iraq are manufactured in Iran, but critics contend that the forensic case remains circumstantial and inferential.

So it is manufacture of EFPs (explosively formed projectiles), a more lethal type of IED used by some Shia militias against armored Humvees that we are talking about. Moreover, in a new attempt at balance, the Times immediately adds the caveat “but critics contend that the forensic case remains circumstantial and inferential.” Seriously though, does the Times really need critics to assess whether evidence is circumstantial or not? Isn’t this a job that, oh say, its own reporters could and should perform?

This gets back to my central criticism of the Times coverage of the whole Iran-Iraq connection: it lacks critical thinking and investigation by Times reporters. For many reasons, Iran is involved in Iraq. Yet the nature of that involvement is seldom explored by the Times and its reporters, and no attempt is made to integrate such an understanding into an article like this one. The Iranians wish to ensure that Iraq’s majority Shia prevail in the ongoing civil war and that they will have influence over whichever Shia group eventually dominates. The Iranians also seek to weaken American influence there and generally, both militarily and diplomatically. As to this second point, most of it is being accomplished by wrongheaded Bush policies and the Sunni insurgency. They don’t need to get involved in it. Some level of Iranian military aid and expertise to Shia groups on the other hand to prevent us from dominating them is not only likely it is predictable. It is also a fairly easy way for them to establish cred among Iraqi Shia and their leaders. That it creates a certain amount of pain for us is simply a bonus.

If you look at things this way, it helps explain why the Iranians are doing what they are doing and why they are doing it the way they are. They are not interested in turning Iraq into a surrogate military conflict with us or stabbing us in the back. They are pursuing their own policy objective which is to increase their influence in a troubled neighbor with a Shia majority and vast oil reserves.

The real story here, however, is not Iran but the Bush Administration. This is the story that the Times doesn’t cover and, by not doing so, all of its stories have an air of bias and incompleteness about them. For instance, the Times article fails to note that the evidence presented did nothing to bolster recent claims by the Bush White House of an al Quds involvement. As it has from the beginning, the Times continues to ignore the relative importance of the EFP issue which has accounted for less than 8% of American deaths in Iraq in the last 2 1/2 years (if you believe the government’s figures). For myself, I would be a lot more concerned about the other 92% but that is just me. Finally, there is the question of timing. The Times has occasionally mentioned that there has been a recent increase in EFP attacks (again the numbers are dubious) and it has, as it does in this article, mention the charge by critics that this is part of a build up in tensions in order to justify possible military strikes against Iran. Yet as I pointed out above this is a situation that has been known about for 2 1/2 years. The Times may not have the answers but its reporters should be asking the questions and they should not be taking the first simplistic response they get at gospel. That’s where critical thinking and investigation come in, two qualities which sad to say remain absent in the Times coverage of this issue.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02…..ref=slogin

Dulles is both closer and has more flight options from DTW than BWI. It is also more expensive.

The problem with BWI is that it is really Baltimore’s airport so the cab fare to DC will be more expensive. Typically, if you’re staying in DC, from BWI its cheapest and most convenient to jump on the Metroliner into Union Station, if you can arrange your travel schedule accordingly. I wouldn’t recommend BWI if you’re taking the last flight in at night.