It was almost exactly ten years ago that President Bill Clinton was accused of "wagging the dog".  Two U.S. embassies in Africa, in Nairobi and in Dar Es Salaam were bombed and the attacks were quickly linked to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.  Clinton responded by launching cruise missile attacks against targets in Sudan and Afghanistan.

Of course, this was in the middle of the ludicrous so-called "scandal" about Monica Lewinsky and Clinton was accused of attempting to divert attention from that to a foreign crisis.  When the attacks apparently failed to take out terrorist targets, despite their having been recommended by military experts, the press was giddy with charges of "wag the dog".  There was even a movie that came out later entitled, if I recall correctly, "Wag the Dog".

So what's going on now?  The appearance of foreign crises that maybe are designed to help the GOP candidate.

Yes ...

John McCain's adopted daughter Bridget was born and raised a Muslim in a Muslim country.  This is simply true.

In her recent AlterNet column, Iliana Segura gets a lot right:

If the United States really wants to improve the situation in Afghanistan, it should start by ending the occupation. It should then cough up money for humanitarian aid and reconstruction. (One estimate puts the tab at $10 billion.) This is not just for the sake of Afghanistan, but for the sake of Americans as well, who are no safer today than they were when the planes hit the towers. Ending the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan is the first, crucial step in that elusive goal of "winning hearts and minds" that the United States claims to be so committed to in the region. As Iraq has demonstrated, occupying armies are not a deterrent to terrorism. Occupying armies breed terror.

With less than six months remaining before leaving the White House, the Bush administration, desperate to show it had made inroads into Osama Bin Laden's terrorist network has decided to take a gamble by trying Salim Hamdan.

Hamdan, however, was nothing more than a chauffeur, paid to drive Osama Bin Laden.

Every week I read out of the way, oddly related stories that remind me what an abject barbecue republic America has become under young Mr. Bush's stewardship.  Here are a few of the latest ones.

First up is an item that apparently only James Gordon Meek of the New York Daily News and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann cared enough about to report.  On August 2 Meek wrote "In the immediate aftermath of the 2001 anthrax attacks, White House officials repeatedly pressed FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove it was a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda, but investigators ruled that out."

You may remember my brother the activist.  I keep trying to get him to post, but he's shy and busy.  He sent me this yesterday and I thought I'd share it with you.- ek

What better way to celebrate the 7th anniversary of Ignored "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US" PDB Day than with a conviction in a sham show trial?

Yup, it's been seven years since that infamous daily briefing at the Crawford pig farm ranch, an event which Bush marked by taking the rest of the month off.

The day after he received the memo, "Bush seemed carefree as he spoke about the books he was reading, the work he was doing on his nearby ranch, his love of hot-weather jogging, his golf game and his 55th birthday," the Washington Post noted. Today — 2,557 days later — Bin Laden still remains free and "determined to strike in U.S."

But they got his driver. Sort of.

After closing arguments Monday, Charles D. Swift, a former Navy lawyer who has represented Mr. Hamdan for years, said the two-week proceeding here had been a trial that did not follow the American rule of law and that the defense believed American courts would eventually correct the legal errors here. Mr. Swift called the military commission "a made-up tribunal to try anybody we don’t like."

The not-guilty verdict on the conspiracy charge was a setback for the military prosecutors. The charge had asserted that Mr. Hamdan joined in the conspiracy that included the 2001 and other major terror attacks by helping transport and protect Mr. bin Laden....

Michael J. Berrigan, the deputy chief defense counsel for Guantánamo, said the defense was encouraged by the verdict. "For a team that was expected to strike out at every pitch," he said, "we at least hit a triple."

He described the conspiracy charge that was rejected by the panel as the government’s main charge, and noted that when Mr. Hamdan was originally charged in 2003 the only charge he faced was conspiracy.

So, while they don't have bin Laden, and have no convinctions of anyone involved in that conspiracy, they've got Hamdan on "material support." And, as the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years, points out they've sealed the undermining of long-standing traditions of jurisprudence:

"Hamdan’s trial violated two of the most fundamental criminal justice principles accepted by all developed nations:  the prohibition on the use of coerced evidence and the prohibition on retroactive criminal laws.

The trial will not create finality – the decision to keep these cases out of the ordinary criminal courts will produce years of appeals over novel legal issues raised by the untested military commissions system. Even after those appeals are finished, the process will never be seen as legitimate by the world.  This case was the first trial run of the commissions system, and the decision proves nothing except that the system itself should be scrapped. Terrorism-related crimes should be tried in the time-tested domestic criminal justice system, a system whose rules have been designed over the centuries with one goal: to seek out the truth."

While those years of appeals proceed, the Pentagon intends to detain all of the defendents forever, anyway, even those who are acquitted. As if that will keep the world from noticing that bin Laden is still at large and the "War on Terror" has been a complete debacle.

Saudi Arabia may have recently arrested hundred of activists  to mollify the West over the relatively small increase in oil production granted by the royal family. But these arrests are significant for a different reason: the explanation given for the militant activity was discontent over the failure of the Saudi rulers to share the oil wealth with their citizens.

I have been saying for a long time that all social conflicts are, at bottom, about equity.  Even those of Islamic fundamentalists, and now it’s happening in a country known for the emphatically religious nature of its regime: Wahabbi fundamentalism.   Apparently, Al Qaeda differs with the clerics.  As I wrote in “A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness”:  “All the territorial wars, all the movements for liberation or succession, emanate from the same basic requirement of equity, as humanity evolves from animal, to primitive human, to a scientifically aware polity.”

You probably already knew this, but sometimes it's nice to get affirmation that yeah, you were right.  A recently released study by the non-partisan Rand Corporation titled How Terrorist Groups End shows that young Mr. Bush's anti-terror strategy hasn't significantly undermined al Qaeda's capabilities.  

As news goes, that's hardly shock or awe, is it?

The NGO network in Afghanistan (Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief – ACBAR) reports that the number of civilian casualties caused by all sides has "surged" and that insecurity has spread to previously stable areas.

The number of insurgent attacks for each of the months of May (463), June (569) and July is greater than the number of such attacks in any other months since the end of major hostilities following the international intervention in 2001...

July was reportedly the worst month for Afghan civilians in the past six years, with 260 civilian casualties recorded...

Now, due primarily to a stepped up air operations, Afghanistan, "the good war" is turning bad.

The title above comes from a new Rand Corporation Report

After 7 years of conflict and occupations, with 893 coalition deaths -- 556 Americans, in Afghanistan and increasing, and 4,438 coalition deaths -- 4,124 Americans in Iraq and increasing, with tens of thousands of injured and maimed, physically and mentally, and millions of innocents in both countries killed, maimed, living as refugee's, fighting each other in sectarian civil wars, living in ethnically cleansed neighborhoods and area's in Iraq behind huge concrete blast walls, this "Think Tank?" comes out and says:

U.S. Should Rethink "War On Terrorism" Strategy to Deal with Resurgent Al Qaida

Current U.S. strategy against terrorist organization al Qaida has not been successful at limiting the group's capabilities. Since Sept. 11, 2001, al Qaida has been involved in more terrorist attacks than ever before and over an increasingly broader range of targets.

This weekend, John McCain launched an all-out war against Barack Obama's fitness to be commander-in-chief.  In Denver on Friday, McCain claimed that in supporting the January 2007 surge in Iraq, he passed "a real-time test for a future commander-in-chief" his Democratic rival supposedly failed.  That same day, McCain insisted to CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "I know how to win wars."  And on ABC This Week on Sunday, McCain ridiculed over and over Barack Obama's "total lack of understanding" of the realities - and stakes - in Iraq.

It's been nearly two years since I first posted my series, The Usual Suspects I, II, III, IV, and V, but a recent diary by lukery has inspired me to revisit this subject.  New info has come forth that demands examination.  Is the White House involved in heroin trafficking?  Are The Usual Suspects up to more than just what they've put forth in the PNAC?  The evidence seems to say so.  The evidence seems to put The Usual Suspects right at the heart of a drug smuggling operation that supplies 93% of the worlds heroin and funnels money right to Al Queda.

It appears that John McCain would rather lose his reputation for foreign policy expertise than lose the election.  Unfortunately, on Iraq, John McCain is losing on both counts, demonstrating on numerous occasions that he doesn't know anything about Iraq.  

John McCain is now a joke, even to usually reliable Republican media proxies like David Gergen.  

Perhaps, in stressing Iraq, McCain's campaign was trying to follow the alleged Rovian maxim:  first, take away your opponent's strength.  Being right on Iraq from the beginning was Obama's strength during the primaries.  And, for a time, when you'd asking McCain about anything, say the economy, McCain would change the subject back to Islamic extremists.  McCain would balance the budget by means of a victory he somehow still can't define.  

Following what has been going on in Iraq and trying to follow Afghanistan, with the little, until recently, we get about that theater, I've had a growing uneasy feeling.

We all know that the bush doctrine has been a total failure and I need not go into the whole extreme mess these power hungry idiots have made. There is one thing I do see they succeeded in, creating an enemy and building that into a fear for Perpetual Conflict, replacing the Cold War Mentality to justify Huge Defense Contracts, Huge Profits, and the needed fear factor in the populace of not only the U.S. but the western world, the rest already have their problems from the wests continuing failed policies towards them, of which helped create this enemy.

It's has been rather hard to follow the news on Afghanistan, but it can be done if following overseas reporting.

Than this tragedy happened:

Yesterday, while standing in line at my bank (to get some quarters, because, well, why else would I actually need to consult a bank teller?), I heard the familiar & eerie voice of the presumptive Republican nominee. The voice was coming from the two televisions above the bank windows, which are constantly tuned to CNN, & from that voice I heard something like this:

"I would rather lose an election & win a war ... Barack Obama would rather win an election & lose a war ..."

(The statement was followed, of course, by that creepy smile, which flashes as embarrassingly as an "applause" sign above a studio audience.)

As the focus of the "War on Terror" gradually shifts back to Afghanistan, there needs to be a serious, sustained discussion of how to "win" against the newly resurgent Taliban and other terrorist elements there. I think the quagmire we've had to deal with in Iraq suggests that any nation-building type approach, focused on repairing the Afghan society and government as a whole, is going to cost a full pantload of money, military resources, and American lives. In fact, I would argue that Afghanistan, much moreso than Iraq, is a country almost designed to suck resources from global powers who get militarily bogged down there. Corruption is pervasive, and the tribal mindset that dominates the culture and government (or lack thereof) means that any occupying power has to deal with hundreds of small, antagonistic factions rather than a unified, legitimate regime. If the U.S. bases its standard of victory on some sort of overwhelming democratic change taking place in Afghanistan, I predict we'll have a much longer and harder fight on our hands than we had in Iraq.

Neocon godfather Irving Kristol once famously said that "a neoconservative is a liberal who's been mugged by reality."  By that standard, the political right will need to coin an altogether new term to describe John McCain in the wake of the beating he has taken over the past several days.  In the span of just two weeks, McCain has seen Barack Obama's call for a strategic refocus from Iraq to Afghanistan validated by the Pentagon and in Baghdad.  And now, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has come out in favor of Obama's approach to drawing down U.S. forces in his country.