http://www.wsmv.com/news/15370841/detail.html?rss=nash&psp=news

Thuggish cops brutalize a cooperating motorist suspect, sic a dog on him, and then plant marijuana in his pocket. It's caught on the cops' own camera, those idiots.

They apparently have a gesture which means, "time to plant the dope."

Fifty years from now, people are going to look back at our police state, especially the drug war, and wonder, "What the heck were the people thinking?

They're going to look at it with the same disdain and distance with which we look at Japanese Internment or slavery.

This thuggery is what war always brings, and is the reason no nation (the people of the nation) has ever 'won' in a war even when is seems like they won.

re: A delicate question

William Timberman,

Remember a few days ago when Glenn summarily deleted one (or, a couple) of proximity warning's comments. I was like you, staring at a comment PW had made, crafting a response on a different tab, and working back and forth between the two. When I refreshed the screen with PW's comment... POOF! it was gone. I thought it was a good call on Glenn's part, and commented in agreement. But I did think it was odd... or, out of character. So often, Glenn has graciously offered people a warning - or, two. Summary dismissal seemed unusual. Not so no more.

Note Joan Walsh's column today, linked at my sig.

Joan Walsh

Wednesday February 27, 2008 15:47 EST

Anonymous no more

I just posted a comment to that thread, right under Bucky's!

I really think it has as much to do the primaries as anything, the recent spate of "spats" at Salon. Digby recently had to shut down the comments, for goodness sake!

Glenn's advocacy of the first amendment and distaste for censorship is unimpeachable. In If anything, he allow things here that others wouldn't, partly because of his dedication to the principle of non-censorship and because moderating is a time consuming hassle. Some people know this and take advantage. There is no first amendment protection here. This ain't the federal government. Some of us will just have to behave!

When I am tipsy, L.W.M., long, nasty, contemptuous screeds about the subhuman nature of Palestinians and their politics is definitely not what I imagine.

Can you imagine what I do imagine?

You're gonna need a couple more characters, I guess, now that the anonymi have been deep-sixed. Why not a contest? You could wind up with a dramatis personae as long as the list printed in the back of my copy of War and Peace. That would be kind of fun, I think -- although not for everyone.

-- William Timberman

When I did post as anonymous, I suppose Paul Dirks could spot some of them. Others, maybe not. But I have never posted anything that was deleted, or needed to be. My kind of hijinks is more like a two year old Till Eulenspiegel.

He's a teutonic analog to Nasruddin, BTW. There are incarnations of this character from northern Europe to the far east.

I already have a bunch of names. Mostly I'm too lazy to be bothered. My greatest sin is baiting Bucky but all one has to do is offer a civil opinion that conflicts with his world view.

I'm finding that this isn't just a problem on the right. Very illuminating.

You'd think the US would be smart enough to secure weapons depots following an invasion, but here we are. I have a fairly low opinion of human intelligence in these matters. There will always be people who will say "if we did it this way, we would of won" as well as people stupid enough to believe them.

There are those who now question if it would have mattered.

As Milt Bearden observed:

But before Americans get sent off to a third war in a Muslim country, it is worth recalling that in the past century, no nation that has started a major war has ended up winning it. Moreover, in the last 50 years, no nationalist-based insurgency against a foreign occupation has lost — a lesson that I learned personally when, beginning in 1986, I found myself in Pakistan, managing the CIA effort to aid Afghan resistance fighters battling Soviet troops.

Besides, the big winner in that war was Syria (contrary to popular belief, there are winners in war, it's usually the country that's bigger at the end). Israel got humiliated, Lebanon got destroyed, and Syria (it's leaders, not it's people who were probably horrified) got to sit back and enjoy the show. Plus, they still get to keep up their proxy war against Israel so they don't have to talk to them about what they have to give up to get the Golan and Sheeba back.

Like Iran was the big winner in our invasion of Iraq, then al-Qaeda? But Iran wasn't involved in Iraq and neither was al-Qaeda, not before we invaded. So you aren't telling me something I don't already know.

Milt Bearden again on proxy wars, same article:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/06/opinion/edbearden.php

Hezbollah has been very specific about what they want from Israel. They want Sheeba Farms. Which is why Syria is arming them. They want Sheeba Farms too, but they want people to pretend it's Lebanon getting it. It'll be just like So. Lebanon. People will call it Lebanon, but it's not like the Lebanese army will be allowed in there.

Pat Lang on Hamas:

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2006/01/the_duck_rule.html

They never listen. I've been reading his posts on the subject going back to 2005. He's usually right and often years ahead.

And when I say Iran wasn't invloved in Iraq, I mean not as a combatant, but there were Iraqi factions that got us into Iraq that were proxies of Iran. People in our intelligence community knew he was a paid Iranian agent.

Pat Lang with Richard Sale and Milt Bearden on Chalabi:

Dear Pat:

I have been busy working on the Balkans, but wanted to provide some data about Chalabi and Iran.

According to more than half a dozen CIA operatives, including former clandestine DO officials, "Agency people became aware that Chalabi had probably been a long-time agent for Iran," in the words of one. These sources, including Whitley Bruner, say that Chalabi was long ago working for Iran in Lebanon, even before the agency recruited him in 1991 and stuck him in as head of the INC. Bruner said of Chalabi: "He never gave the agency any intel on Iran, never submitted to being debriefed.' adding, "He was Iran’s guy."

Bruner and others claim that Chalabi "wanted to start low-intensity war with Iraq. He hoped we would get sucked in." The plan was that the INC would "appeal to US benefactors and we would rescue our proxies."

Former CIA agent, Bob Baer who went into Kurdistan in 1994, said that Chalabi always came into Kurdistan from Iran, where he had a villa. He said Chalabi was very close to Iranians, and covert operators said IRG folk were often at his house in Salauddin.

The INC was totally penetrated by Iranian and Iraqi agents but the CIA didn't care. Chalabi was never entrusted with any secret operations. He was be the day to day manager of INC which was putting out anti-Saddam gray propaganda. We wanted Saddam to know about the INC just to keep the pressure on him.

In 1996, the CIA was trying to organize a serious attempt to overthrow Saddam using the INA, headed by a former Saddam hit man, Iyad Allawi who had broken with Saddam and walked in to work for MI-6 in the late 1970s. The Brits eventually brought him to the CIA in 1992. Allawi had assets inside Saddam's military but Chalabi betrayed the coup out of jealousy. The INA was the preferred CIA instrument, its intelligence was being checked out by technical means, and its success would have meant the end of Chalabi's funding.

In any case, Chalabi got caught fabricating information and the CIA cut him off. He merely went to the Pentagon and the checks kept coming because his fabricated intelligence on Iraq's WMD was so essential to selling the war, this from a man who had already failed four CIA polygraphs so that the agency had issued a "burn" notice on him by the late 1990s.

In 2004, Chalabi betrayed to Iran the fact the NSA was listening to mail belonging to Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS). Milt Bearden called me in real distress the day the Iranian channel went off the air.

But Chalabi's real goal was to get rid of the Baathists in Iraq, and get rid of the army. In spite of promises we had made to senior Iraqi military, some of whom facilitated our entry into Iraq in 2003, Bremer, Wolfowitz and Chalabi broke all those promises and the Iraqis joined the insurgency.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/bearden/index.html

But he told the admin what they wanted to hear. That';s all that mattered.