CNN: The Complicit News Network

AP reports the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee asked the Pentagon on Friday to remove CNN reporters embedded with U.S. combat troops, saying the network's broadcast of a video showing insurgent snipers targeting U.S. soldiers was tantamount to airing an enemy propaganda film.

The tape, which came to the network through contact with an insurgent leader, was aired Wednesday night on "Anderson Cooper 360" and repeated Thursday.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., wrote: "CNN has now served as the publicist for an enemy propaganda film featuring the killing of an American soldier."

"This is nothing short of a terrorist snuff film," Bilbray said at a press conference held in San Diego.

Media watchers have been long familiar with CNN's ethics. The network has a history of televising news content with a decidedly global, if somewhat anti-American tone. Beginning most notably with CNN's airing of American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu in the Black Hawk Down incident, to the more recent CNN reports from a Hezbollah stronghold in southern Beirut where the terrorist group actually used CNN to broadcast unverifiable anti-Israeli propaganda, there are countless examples of CNN defending their "responsibility is to report the news." However, when recently given a chance to do some responsible unbiased reporting, CNN, ever so conscious of broadcast sensitivity, elected not to air Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad out of "respect for Islam."

The military has a name for the way CNN's brand of globalized reporting impacts the battlefield: it's called the CNN-Effect.

NEWSBYTES
CNN airs footage of Iraq sniper attacks

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Combat Camera: Multi-National Force Search Operation

Iraqi Brig. Gen. Ra'ad, commander of the 6th Brigade, 2nd National Police Division, and U.S. Lt. Col. Gregory Butts, commander of the 101st Infantry Division's 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, examine false identification cards found on an individual carrying a large amount of U.S. dollars, Oct. 16, 2006. The ID cards were replicas of Iraqi Government ID cards that could be used to gain access into secure areas. The suspect was detained for questioning. U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Brent Williams

Iraqi Security Forces and soldiers of the Multi-National Division – Baghdad seized an 82mm mortar tube and tripod, a case of ammunition and several AK-47 assault rifles during a cordon-and-search operation in Baghdad’s Doura neighborhood, Oct. 16, 2006. The Iraqi National Police detained three individuals suspected of hiding the ordnance in a field behind their neighborhood. U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Brent Williams

Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division's Company A, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, order local Iraqi merchants to unload their crop off a truck to search for contraband during a cordon-and-search operation, Oct 16, 2006. Once the vehicle and the crop were searched, the soldiers helped the citizens replace the produce. U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Brent Williams

Iraqi National Police of the 2nd National Police Division's 6th Brigade talk with local Iraqis in the Doura neighborhood in south Baghdad, Oct 16, 2006. Iraqi Security Forces and Multi-National Division – Baghdad soldiers conducted combined security operations near the Doura Power Plant in support of Operation Together Forward. U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Brent Williams

Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division's Company A, 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, accompanied Iraqi National Police from the 2nd National Police Division's 6th Brigade during security operations in Doura, Oct. 16, 2006. The combined forces searched more than 140 houses and a local mosque in search of illegal weapons and contraband. U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Brent Williams

Iraqi Security Forces take the lead during a security operation in Doura, Oct. 8, 2006. U.S. Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, accompanied Iraqi National Police from the 6th Brigade, 2nd National Police Division, during the house-to-house knock and enter mission. The combined forces searched more than 140 houses and a local mosque in search of illegal weapons and contraband. U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Brent Williams

Iraqi policemen of the 6th National Police Division's 2nd Brigade search the rooftop of the Abu Bakr Al Sadeeq Mosque in Baghdad's Doura neighborhood. The search was part of a planned cordon and search operation in southern Baghdad, Oct. 16, 2006. U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Brent Williams

Iraqi National Police summon U.S. soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division's 2nd Battalion, 506th Infantry Regiment, to a small weapons cache hidden in a trash dump behind a neighborhood in Doura, Oct. 16, 2006. The Iraqi police officers routinely accompany the Soldiers during combined patrols and security operations. U.S. Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Brent Williams

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The Decline and Fall of Western Civ for 20 Oct.

After reading: wash, rinse and repeat.

• Elizabeth Edwards, wife of White House hopeful John Edwards, says her choices in life have made her happier than Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- a possible Edwards' rival for the Democratic nomination, according to AP.
  
  

  "She and I are from the same generation. We both went to law school and married other lawyers, but after that we made other choices. I think my choices have made me happier. I think I'm more joyful than she is," Elizabeth Edwards said Thursday.

• KIRO TV reports investigators said 26-year-old, Michael Patrick McPhail may be the first person to face prosecution in Washington State under a new law protecting animals from sexual abuse. According to charging documents, McPhail’s wife told Pierce County sheriff’s investigators she saw him engage in a sex act with the family pet. Sherriff’s investigators said she took two photographs with a cell phone camera, then contacted police.

• For fans of the fictional Harry Potter, US and British scientists have demonstrated a working "invisibility cloak" that could, in time, make wearers disappear, reports AFP.
  

A photo of the 'metamaterial' cloak, released to Reuters on October 19, 2006, which deflects microwave beams so they flow around a 'hidden' object inside with little distortion, making it appear almost as if nothing were there at all.

• A few days ago I posted that The Washington Post reported on a recent study by epidemiologists (folks who study factors affecting the health and illness of populations) who claim 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred. At the time I said, "Economists joke about conclusions drawn from studies performed in data-free environments." Today, Pajamas Media posted an interview with Gilbert Burnham, one of the authors of the death case study. When asked to respond to critics of the study, Burnham replied:
  
  

  "The numbers are large, and they surprised us. Yet it is only through population-based [questionares] that information such as the impact of conflict can be assessed. From isolated numbers taken from morgues and hospitals one can not arrive at a national figure. Not possible."

  I'll repeat what I said before, "Economists joke about conclusions drawn from studies performed in data-free environments." The number of deaths identified and counted is data. Passing around questionnaires on war deaths to folks who would say just about anything does not not really result in numerical "count" data, unless you are counting questionaires. (If I am not mistaken, I seem to recall some rather controversial misinformation Iraqis passed to U.S. intelligence about WMDs. In fact the U.S. went to war based on that misinformation.) Oh. Yeah, hmmm. Case closed on this study. Period.

• House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month, according to AP.
  
  The unidentified staff member, a Democrat, was suspended this week by Chairman Peter Hoekstra and is being denied access to classified information pending the outcome of a review. In an interview on Friday, Hoekstra said the step was the least aggressive he could take while the committee investigates.

• In more political fallout, tension abounded when Harold Ford Jr. showed up uninvited at a campaign event for rival Republican Bob Corker at a private charter airstrip in Memphis this morning. Corker had scheduled the media event earlier this week, reports WMCTV.
  
  News reporters were surprised when Ford's tour bus pulled up at the event and, apparently staff at Wilson Air were surprised as well, as they tried to steer media inside the property for the Corker news conference. Video.

• AP reports New York City said Friday that it will search parts of the World Trade Center site again for remains of the Sept. 11 dead after several bones were pulled out of an abandoned manhole -- a discovery that renewed anger among victims' families.

• One of Oklahoma's nominees for state superintendent of education has proposed a unique idea for protecting students from outbreaks of violence, reports local6. Bill Crozier, a Union City Republican going against incumbent Democrat Sandy Garrett, said he believes old textbooks could be used to stop bullets shot from weapons wielded by school intruders. If elected, he said he would put thick used textbooks under every desk for students to use in self-defense.

• ROO TV presents News for Blondes video.

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Open Line Friday

Heads up folks, this news rolls downhill.

• When The New York Times runs a story headline, Republican Woes Lead to Feuding by Conservatives, you may think the jig is up for this year's election. However, the conservative core is hard at work countering the effects of leftstream smoke and mirrors.
  
  David Kirkpatrick writes in The Times:
  
  

  With polls showing Republican control of Congress in jeopardy, conservative leaders are pointing fingers at one other in an increasingly testy circle of blame for potential Republican losses this fall.

  “It is one of those rare defeats that will have many fathers,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, expressing the gloomy view of many conservatives about the outcome on Election Day. “And they will all be somebody else.”

  On the other hand, well known voices of conservatives communicate a tone that chides pessimistic Republicans for having a case of "premortum." Limbaugh calls out "Cut and Run Conservatives" who feel a non-vote is a punishment to Republicans who are behave in ways other than the Reagan ideal. Limbaugh says:
  
  

  "Who is the most important, undecided group in this year's election? The terrorists; the Islamofascists. I'm not exaggerating. Al-Qaeda has an interest in the outcome, a life or death interest. Or death and death interest -- however you want to characterize it."

  For the most part, Kirkatrick's article discuses only what voices in the Washington elite are saying; those would be the voices like those of David Frum, Bill Kristol, and Newt Gingrich. To get the real story, you have to look outside the Beltway and probe into the what the elites call the fly-over zone between the coasts. Out in the Red States, regular folks understand Mark Foley is just one man and not the party, terrorism is real, the economy is good and unemployment is low.

• North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed regret about his country's nuclear test to a Chinese delegation and said Pyongyang would return to international nuclear talks if Washington backs off a campaign to financially isolate the country, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday, according to AP.
  
  China gave North Korea "a strong message" that it will implement a tough U.N. Security Council resolution punishing Pyongyang for its nuclear test and that it must return to disarmament talks, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday after meetings with top Chinese leaders, according to The Washington Post.
  
  

  "Let's just watch and see what China will do," Rice said, adding that "no one wants to be on the wrong side of the resolution, letting something slip through."

  Will multilateral pressure work where one-on-one diplomacy failed?

• Charles Hurt, writing in The Washington Times, says Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's prospects for becoming the nation's first female House speaker depend not only on a Democratic victory in November but also on her ability to prevent any Democrats from voting against her -- primarily centrists opposed to her liberal stances.
  
  At least one Democratic House candidate has pledged not to support Mrs. Pelosi, and others in conservative districts have refused to commit their support -- potentially leaving Mrs. Pelosi shy of the 218 votes required for the chamber's top post. At least three other Democrats refused to commit their support to Mrs. Pelosi, whose San Francisco district is far more liberal than the districts that are up for grabs in this election.
  
  However, the other prospect is having one Jack Murtha elected as the speaker.

• House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month, reports AP.

• AP reports a CNN executive said Thursday the network's effort to present the "unvarnished truth" about the Iraq war led it to televise portions of a video that shows insurgent snipers targeting U.S. military personnel.
  
  The tape, which came to the network unexpectedly through contact with an insurgent leader, was aired first Wednesday night on "Anderson Cooper 360" and repeated on Thursday. In one instance, the tape shows a uniformed member of the U.S. military milling in a public area with Iraqis. A shot rings out. CNN fades the screen to black before the result — described as a victim falling forward — is visible.
  
  The graphic video of 10 sniper attacks was obtained by CNN -- through intermediaries -- from the Islamic Army of Iraq, one of the most active insurgent organizations in Iraq. From a distance, possibly hundreds of yards away, a sniper watches for his opportunity to strike as a fellow insurgent operates a camera to capture the video for propaganda purposes.

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Combat Camera: Thu 19 Oct. 2006

An F/A-18C Hornet aircraft assigned to the Knighthawks of Strike Fighter Squadron One Three Six (VFA-136) tests its flare countermeasure system over the Arabian Sea Oct. 15, 2006, before heading into Afghanistan for a close air support mission. Members of VFA-136, which is part of Carrier Air Wing One, are embarked aboard the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CVN 65) for a scheduled six-month deployment in support of maritime security operations and the war on terror. DoD photo by Lt. Peter Scheu, U.S. Navy. (Released)

A landing craft air cushion from Assault Craft Unit Four conducts a morning demonstration for Iceland's counterterrorism team known as the Viking Squad in Reykjavik, Iceland, Oct. 17, 2006. Members of the ACU 4 visited Iceland after completing a two-month deployment to the Mediterranean Sea with the amphibious assault ship USS Wasp (LHD 1) in support of Joint Task Force Lebanon. DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Zachary L. Borden, U.S. Navy. (Released)

Soldiers from the Sharanna Provincial Reconstruction Team, 10th Mountain Division, provide security during operations in Gomel, Afghanistan. Photo by Cpl. Thomas Childs

A C-2 Greyhound assigned to the “Providers” of Fleet Logistics Combat Support Squadron Three Zero (VRC-30) climbs skyward as ground crews prepare the number one steam-powered catapult for the next launch aboard USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76). Reagan is currently conducting training squadron carrier qualifications in the southern California operating area. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aaron Burden (RELEASED)

An Aviation Boatswain's Mate stands by to guide an F/A-18E/F Super Hornet assigned to the Gladiators of Strike Fighter Squadron One Zero Six (VFA-106) to the catapult after an arrested landing aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71). Roosevelt is currently maintaining qualifications as part of the fleet response plan. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Sheldon Rowley (RELEASED)

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The Decline and Fall of Western Civ for 19 Oct.

After reading: wash, rinse and repeat.

• A federal judge has ordered the Bush administration to release information about who visited Vice President Dick Cheney's office and personal residence, an order that could spark a late election season debate over lobbyists' White House access, according to AP.
  
  The Washington Post asked for two years of White House visitor logs in June but the Secret Service refused to process the request. Government attorneys called it "a fishing expedition into the most sensitive details of the vice presidency."
  
  Clinton appointed U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled Wednesday that, by the end of next week, the Secret Service must produce the records or at least identity them and justify why they are being withheld. Does the story come into clearer focus?

• An elderly priest acknowledged Thursday that he was naked in saunas with Mark Foley decades ago when the former congressman was a boy in Florida, but denied that the two had sex, reports AP.
  
  The Rev. Anthony Mercieca, 72, speaking by telephone from his home on the Maltese island of Gozo, said a report in the Sarasota Herald- Tribune about their encounters was "exaggerated."
  
  The Washington Posts scintillates readers with seedy homoerotic imagery in the headline: Priest Admits Intimate Contact With Mark Foley -- Retired priest acknowledges "light touching," but denies having "sexual intercourse" with Foley during encounters 40 years ago.
  
  You would think a liberal rag like the Post would be more sensitive about gay issues. In a way, the Post amplifies a popular misconception about gays being pedophiles (Recall the stories about Michael Jackson? Too, the press would have us all believe all priests are pedophiles). In any event, Mark Foley, who resigned his congressional seat two weeks ago, is still in the news and the ethics violations of Harry Reid go largely unnoticed. Is that fish I smell?

• Speaking of liberal rags, The New York Times Co. reported Thursday that its third-quarter 2006 profit from continuing operations plunged 39.2% on costs related to its job cuts and a loss on its sale of its 50% stake in the Discovery Times Channel, according to E&P. Perhaps the Times will have to initiate wide scale job cuts like NBC Universal, who today made news by announcing $750M in cuts by reducing staff, scripted shows, and news budget, according to The Canadian Press. If you listen closely you can hear violins playing in the distance. I wonder if Olbermann's job is on the line? It's not like that matters, his ratings are so far off the radar as it is.

• Reuters reports Sting said contemporary rock music is so stagnant that he prefers to sing 16th century English ballads.
  
  

  "Rock music has come to a standstill -- it's not going forward any more, it only bores me," Die Zeit quoted Sting as saying.

• File this story under "rock music at a standstill." Geriatric rockers The Who will return with their first album since 1982. AP reports Most of the 24 years since the last time the Who released a new album passed with the group's creative force, guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend, believing there would never be another one.

• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called Israel a "counterfeit and illegitimate regime that cannot survive", in a live broadcast on state television, reports AFP. Additionally, AFP reports Ahmadinejad has reaffirmed in a live broadcast that the country will not back down even "an inch" from its nuclear programme, including enrichment of uranium. David Saperstein once said:
  
  

  "An extremist with a microphone can be dangerous enough; an extremist with nuclear weapons poses a danger to the entire world."

• In more news about nut-jobs with atomic bombs, if President Bush continues to ask North Korea to "kneel," war "will be inevitable," and it would begin on the Korean Peninsula, North Korean Gen. Ri Chan Bok told "Good Morning America" anchor Diane Sawyer, in an exclusive interview inside North Korea.

• And finally, ROO TV treats us to a Send in the Clowns Convention video.

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Flags of our Fathers by James Bradley and Ron Powers

BOOKS IN THE NEWS

Flags of our Fathers by James Bradley and Ron Powers
(From Amazon) -- The Battle of Iwo Jima, fought in the winter of 1945 on a rocky island south of Japan, brought a ferocious slice of hell to earth: in a month's time, more than 22,000 Japanese soldiers would die defending a patch of ground a third the size of Manhattan, while nearly 26,000 Americans fell taking it from them. The battle was a turning point in the war in the Pacific, and it produced one of World War II's enduring images: a photograph of six soldiers raising an American flag on the flank of Mount Suribachi, the island's commanding high point.

One of those young Americans was John Bradley, a Navy corpsman who a few days before had braved enemy mortar and machine-gun fire to administer first aid to a wounded Marine and then drag him to safety. For this act of heroism Bradley would receive the Navy Cross, an award second only to the Medal of Honor.

Bradley, who died in 1994, never mentioned his feat to his family. Only after his death did Bradley's son James begin to piece together the facts of his father's heroism, which was but one of countless acts of sacrifice made by the young men who fought at Iwo Jima. Flags of Our Fathers recounts the sometimes tragic life stories of the six men who raised the flag that February day--one an Arizona Indian who would die following an alcohol-soaked brawl, another a Kentucky hillbilly, still another a Pennsylvania steel-mill worker--and who became reluctant heroes in the bargain. A strongly felt and well-written entry in a spate of recent books on World War II, Flags gives a you-are-there depiction of that conflict's horrible arenas--and a moving homage to the men whom fate brought there.

(From Publishers Weekly) -- Say "Iwo Jima," and what comes to mind? Most likely a famous photograph from 1945: six tired, helmeted Marines, fresh from a long, terrifying and bloody battle, work together to raise the American flag on Mount Suribachi. Bradley's father, John, was one of the six. In this voluminous and memorable work of popular history mixed with memoir, Bradley and Powers (White Town Drowsing) reconstruct those Marines' experiences, and those of their Pacific Theater comrades. The authors begin with the six soldiers' childhoods. Soon enough, bombs have fallen on Pearl Harbor, and by May '43 the young men have become proud leathernecks. Bradley and Powers incorporate accounts of specific battles, like "Hellzapoppin Ridge" (Bougainville, December '43), and pull in corps life and lore, from the tough-minded to the slightly silly, from mandatory penis inspections (medics checking for VD) to life in the pitch-dark of "Tent City No. 1." And they cover the strategy and tactics leading up to the awful battle for the islandAthe navy's disputed plans for offshore bombardment, cut at the last minute from 10 days to three; the 16 miles of Japanese underground tunnels, far more than Allied intelligence expected. A quarter of the book follows the fighting on Iwo Jima, sortie by sortie. The final chapters pursue the veterans' subsequent lives: Bradley and Powers set themselves against often-sanctimonious tradition, retrieving the stories of six more or less troubled individuals from the anonymity of heroic myth. A simple thesis emerges from all the detail worked into this touching group portrait, in a comment by John Bradley: "The heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who didn't come back." No reader will forget the lesson. (May)

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Flags of our Fathers by James Bradley and Ron Powers

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Thursday Morning Open Thread

• The New York Times reports new laws and machines may spell voting woes. As dozens of states are enforcing new voter registration laws and switching to paperless electronic voting systems, officials across the country are bracing for an Election Day with long lines and heightened confusion, followed by an increase in the number of contested results.
  
  Conservatives in the media warn that the usually liberal Times is setting up an election losing scenario for Democrats where candidates who lose in tight races will contest the outcome. It shows that the Democrats are not at all confident about winning the November election.

• With congressional elections less than three weeks away, the Republican party's approval ratings are at an all-time low, with approval of the Republican-led Congress at its lowest point in 14 years, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday, reports Reuters.
  
  The story didn't discuss the methodology and demographics for the polls. This information would shed some light on the results. However, the poll of 1,006 registered voters was taken from October 13-16.
  
  NBC said the poll indicates people have been paying attention to the issues they are hearing about -- from Iraq and Bob Woodward's new book on the Bush administration's handling of the war to the unfolding scandal over former Florida Rep. Mark Foley's e-mail messages to teenage congressional aides. In truth it is unclear if Woodward's book has had any impact outside the beltway. The numbers may very well reflect a conservative frustration with Republicans that doesn't necessarily translate into votes for Democrats.

• John Yoo, writing in The Wall Street Journal, says Congress recently sent a message to the courts: Get out of the war on terror. Yoo writes:
  
  

  During the bitter controversy over the military commission bill, which President Bush signed into law on Tuesday, most of the press and the professional punditry missed the big story. In the struggle for power between the three branches of government, it is not the presidency that "won." Instead, it is the judiciary that lost.

  The new law is, above all, a stinging rebuke to the Supreme Court. It strips the courts of jurisdiction to hear any habeas corpus claim filed by any alien enemy combatant anywhere in the world. It was passed in response to the effort by a five-justice majority in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld to take control over terrorism policy. That majority extended judicial review to Guantanamo Bay, threw the Bush military commissions into doubt, and tried to extend the protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions to al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, overturning the traditional understanding that Geneva does not cover terrorists, who are not signatories nor "combatants" in an internal civil war under Article 3.

  Yoo concludes that the message went overlooked during the fight over the bill by the media, which focused on Sens. McCain, Graham and Warner's opposition to the administration's proposals for the use of classified evidence at terrorist trials and permissible interrogation methods. In its eagerness to magnify an intra-GOP squabble, the media mostly ignored the substance of the bill, which gave current and future administrations, whether Democrat or Republican, the powers needed to win this war.

• Donald Lambro, writing in The Washington Times, reminds us that the Democrats' election-year agenda, which says what they will do if the voters put them back in charge of Congress, would seek to overturn or change just about everything President Bush and the Republicans have done since 2001.
  
  

  Democratic leaders call their agenda "A New Direction for America," but much of its details are what Republican leaders call "boilerplate" Democratic dogma that the party has been proposing for years, such as raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25, rolling back the Bush tax cuts, expanding new stem-cell research, raising taxes on oil companies and boosting government spending for college-tuition loans and Pell Grants.

  On the war in Iraq, the Democrats' agenda calls for "a tough, smart plan to transform failed Bush administration policies in Iraq" and for a "phased redeployment of U.S. forces from Iraq."

  To combat terrorism, it proposes to "double the size of Special Forces to destroy Osama bin Laden and the terrorist networks like al Qaeda" and to "rebuild a state-of-the-art military capable of projecting power wherever necessary." Both provisions, national-security analysts say, have been at the heart of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's military reforms ever since the September 11 attacks in 2001.

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Combat Camera: Iraqi Soldiers Return to Duty

U.S. Marine Corps Col. Juan Ayala, senior advisor to the 1st Iraqi Army Division, speaks with Maj. Gen. Tariq Abdul Wahab Jasim, commanding general of the 1st Iraqi Army Division, at Camp Habbaniyah, Iraq, Oct. 7. Tariq realized a troop shortage in the Iraqi Army and requested help from the government. The defense ministry responded by offering dispensation to those who went absent without leave, attracting entire families back to the fighting forces. U.S. Marine Corps photo

More than 1,500 Iraqi soldiers who were absent without leave return to duty after reporting to Camp Habbaniyah between Sept. 20 and Oct. 1. The Iraqi defense ministry offered dispensation to those who went AWOL, attracting entire families back to the fighting forces. U.S. Marine Corps photo

U.S. Marine Corps Col. Juan Ayala, senior advisor to the 1st Iraqi Army Division, listens to a brief at Camp Habbaniyah as several hundred Iraqi soldiers return to duty. More than 1,500 Iraqi soldiers who were absent without leave returned to duty by reporting here between Sept. 20 and Oct. 1. U.S. Marine Corps photo

Maj. Gen. Tariq Abdul Wahab Jasim, commanding general of the 1st Iraqi Army Division, speaks with Iraqi soldiers at Camp Habbaniyah upon their return to duty. The defense ministry offered dispensation to those who went AWOL, attracting entire families back to the fighting forces. “The fact that they came back on their own volition shows that they want to serve,” said Col. Juan Ayala, senior advisor to the 1st Iraqi Army Division. “It’s going to give this division a much needed influx of soldiers.” U.S. Marine Corps photo

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The Decline and Fall of Western Civ for 18 Oct.

After reading: wash, rinse and repeat.

• ABC wastes no time in spinning President Bush's interview with George Stephanopoulos. Bush often warns reporters about taking things out of context but that warning has yet to stop the spin. Stephanopoulos asked whether the president agreed with the opinion of columnist Tom Friedman, who wrote in The New York Times today that the situation in Iraq may be equivalent to the Tet offensive in Vietnam almost 40 years ago.
  
  

  "He could be right," the president said, before adding, "There's certainly a stepped-up level of violence, and we're heading into an election."

  The statement, to ABC News reporter Ed O'Keefe, means Bush accepts the premise that Iraq and Vietnam are comparable conflicts. To unbiased folks it means Bush neither confirmed nor denied the notion. If liberal bias isn't prevalent in the press it must mean we simply need reporters who are smart enough to pay attention.

• According to Reuters, Arizona Sen. John McCain, a likely Republican presidential contender in 2008, joked on Wednesday he would "commit suicide" if Democrats win the Senate in November.
  
  

  "I think I'd just commit suicide," McCain told reporters, to accompanying laughter from Republicans standing with him. "I don't want to face that eventuality because I don't think it's going to happen."

• AP reports former President Clinton bemoaned ideologues who describe opponents as "running for office on his or her way to hell" and urged Democrats not to shy from fighting back.
  
  Clinton, criticizing Republicans weeks before the midterm elections, told an audience at Georgetown University on Wednesday that intellectual debate should trump partisan rancor and either-or choices are false. In other words, Clinton,was speaking to Democrats as a party who still has no real plan and are counting on what they perceive as conservative frustration with Republicans as the key to winning elections.

• Drudge reports The New York Times is covering a developing a story about the coming chaos on election day. With an unusually large number of tight races and dozens of states shifting to new electronic voting systems, election officials across the country are bracing for long lines and heightened confusion at the polls on Election Day, Nov. 7, the NEW YORK TIMES will front on Thursday.

• A website is claiming that seven NFL football stadiums will be hit with radiological dirty bombs this weekend, but the government on Wednesday expressed doubts about the threat according to CBS 13.
  
  The warning, posted Oct. 12, was part of an ongoing Internet conversation titled "New Attack on America Be Afraid." It mentioned NFL stadiums in New York, Miami, Atlanta, Seattle, Houston, Oakland and Cleveland, where games are scheduled to be held this weekend.
  
  

  "While the credibility of the threat is questionable, we have passed the information on because it has been carried in some open source reporting," said FBI spokesman Richard Kolko. He said the FBI was discussing the threat with the NFL as "part of our routine discussions this week."

• WCBS reports airport workers are finding themselves subject to surprise screenings as the government issues new security tactics at airports nationwide. The changes are a direct response to this year's foiled plot to blow-up America-bound airplanes.

• Eight soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were ordered Wednesday to be court-martialed on murder charges stemming from their service in Iraq, and two could get the death penalty for allegedly raping a 14-year-old and killing her and her family, according to AP.

• AP reports the fountain of youth apparently does not yet come in a pill. Widely used DHEA supplements and testosterone patches failed to deliver their touted anti-aging benefits in one of the first rigorous studies to test such claims in older men and women.

• A study released by the Center for Media and Public Affairs on Wednesday found that the network evening-news programs are covering this year's midterm election campaign three times as heavily as they did in 2002, reports AP.

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Wednesday News Open Thread

• Having worked as a tech writer for the world's largest online service during the dot-com boom years, I am here to tell you that Internet providers have been collecting the data on subscribers for a long, long time. Every click is recorded, e-mail and instant messages are archived, and a database is built. It comes as no surprise that the Fed wants to write that activity into law. FBI Director Robert Mueller on Tuesday called on Internet service providers to record their customers' online activities, a move that anticipates a fierce debate over privacy and law enforcement in Washington next year, reports CNET.
  
  

  "Terrorists coordinate their plans cloaked in the anonymity of the Internet, as do violent sexual predators prowling chat rooms," Mueller said in a speech at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Boston.

• In other Internet related news, Iran's Internet service providers (ISPs) have started reducing the speed of Internet access to homes and cafes based on new government-imposed limits, a move critics said appeared to be part of a clampdown on the media, according to Reuters.

• Reuters adds that Internet users in southwest China who spread malicious rumors online face fines of up to 5,000 yuan ($630) and possible detention, state media reported on Wednesday in the latest crackdown on dissent.

• The North Korean military has informed China that it plans to conduct a series of underground nuclear tests, NBC News reported, citing unnamed US officials, reports AFP. AP reports North Korea has informed China that it is prepared to conduct "as many as three additional tests" following the first nuclear experiment Oct. 9, CNN television reported Wednesday.

• Under the heading of damned if you do, damned if you don't, billionaire investor George Soros today blamed U.S. President George W. Bush for escalating tensions with North Korea, which last week tested a nuclear bomb for the first time, reports Bloomberg.
  
  Soros is a long-standing critic of the Bush administration and spent $27.5 million trying to defeat the president in the 2004 election. Recently Soros's Open Society Institute, or OSI, gave $20,000 in September 2002 to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee. Lynne Stewart last week was found guilty of giving aid to Islamic terrorists.

• Brian Ross at ABC reports after interviewing some 40 former congressional pages, FBI agents have yet to turn up any evidence of direct sexual contact between underage pages and former Congressman Mark Foley. The already played-out Foley story is still alive an well in the legacy media ... long past a story's average life span in the news cycle. However, FOX News asks "Is the mainstream media is ignoring questions about the Harry Reid land deal [and misuse of campaign funds]?" It seems like a double standard unless you consider that bias is involved.

• CNN reports a ranking Democrat in the House of Representative is apologizing for saying an African-American Senate candidate "slavishly" supported the Republican Party.
  
  House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said he meant no offense when he made the remark about Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, the GOP nominee for the seat being vacated by longtime Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes.

• Seven funeral home directors linked to a scheme to plunder corpses and sell the body parts for transplants have secretly pleaded guilty to undisclosed charges, prosecutors announced Wednesday according to AP.

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