Target Centermass

Category: General

  • Bomb Found on Commercial Flight in Iraq

    The terrorists were foiled in another attempt to take down one of their decades-long favorite targets, as a commercial airliner has again escaped their horror in Iraq.

    A homemade bomb was found Monday on a commercial flight inside Iraq, prompting additional screening measures to go into effect at Baghdad International Airport, the U.S. Embassy said.

    No further details were released and the statement did not say whether the affected flight had arrived or was preparing to depart.

    “American citizens are encouraged to review their travel plans to determine whether travel on commercial carriers servicing Iraq is necessary at this time,” the embassy said.

    Commercial flights resumed to and from Baghdad on Nov. 15 after being suspended for a week under a state of emergency declared on the eve of the U.S.-led assault on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

    Aircraft flying into and out of Baghdad have been fired on frequently by insurgents, and planes take a number of precautions to minimize attack.

    On June 27, insurgents fired on an Australian C-130 military transport after takeoff from Baghdad’s airport, killing an American passenger and forcing the aircraft to return.

    To say that Iraq, especially Sunni Iraq, is still a dangerous place is quite the understatement. I contend that it is just as erroneous to say the situation is hopeless.

    And what is it with radical Moslems and airplanes? I know they crave the fiery spectacle like a crackwhore wants the rock, but they soon need to realize any hope they have for success (at least in the short- to mid-term) is to face the American forces and bite the bullet, literally and figuratively. Civilian targets are not helping them with the Iraqi populace.

    Back to the planes thing — I’m just glad their were no Islamists around Kitty Hawk in 1903.

  • Five Dead in Wisc. Hunting Dispute

    I’m not a hunter. I have nothing against it, and many in my family have been hunters. Luckily, none of them have every seen story like this, just another of the kind that drove my creation of a “WTF?!!” category.

    A dispute among deer hunters over a tree stand in northwestern Wisconsin erupted Sunday in a series of shootings that left five people dead and three injured, officials said.

    The alleged gunman, a man from the Twin Cities area, was arrested Sunday afternoon at the line between Rusk and Sawyer counties, according to Sawyer County sheriff’s officials.

    The violence began shortly after a hunting party saw a hunter occupying their tree stand, Sawyer County Chief Deputy Tim Zeigle told KSTP-TV of St. Paul, Minn. A confrontation and shooting followed.

    One of the shooting victims radioed back to the deer shack for help, he said. When more hunters came to the scene, they also were shot, Zeigle said.

    The shootings happened in the town of Meteor in southwestern Sawyer County, County Sheriff James Meier said in a news release. Three people were taken to a local hospital, Meier said.

    The three wounded were taken to hospitals in Marshfield and Rice Lake, where officials said one was in critical condition, one was serious and one was fair.

    Wisconsin’s deer gun hunting season started Saturday and lasts for nine days.

    Bill Wagner, 72, of Oshkosh, was about two miles away near Deer Lake with a party of about 20 other hunters.

    After they got word of a shooting, it took him and others about three hours to round up the rest of their party. He said they heard sirens, planes and helicopters and noticed the surrounding roads blocked off.

    “When you’re hunting you don’t expect somebody to try to shoot you and murder you,” he said. “You have no idea who is coming up to you.”

    The incident won’t stop their hunt, Wagner said.

    “We’re all old, dyed-in-wool hunters,” he said. “We wouldn’t go home because of this but we will keep it in our minds.”

    In other news, there’s still plenty of meat available at my local grocery store.

  • Iraq Elections Set

    After the idea was floated on Friday that elections may be delayed, Iraqi officials are now saying that the current violence will not be allowed to interfere and elections will go on as planned.

    Iraqi authorities set Jan. 30 as the date for the nation’s first election since the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship and pledged that voting would take place throughout the country despite rising violence and calls by Sunni clerics for a boycott.

    Farid Ayar, spokesman of the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said voting would push ahead even in areas still wracked by violence — including Fallujah, Mosul and other parts of the volatile Sunni Triangle.

    The vote for the 275-member National Assembly is seen as a major step toward building democracy after years of Saddam’s tyranny.

    But the violence, which has escalated this month with the U.S.-led offensive against Fallujah, has raised fears voting will be nearly impossible in insurgency-torn regions — or that Sunni Arabs, angry at the U.S.-Iraqi crackdown, will reject the election.

    If either takes place, it could undermine the vote’s legitimacy.

    Ayar insisted that “no Iraqi province will be excluded because the law considers Iraq as one constituency, and therefore it is not legal to exclude any province.”

    ….

    The clerical leadership of the country’s Shiite community, believed to comprise about 60 percent of Iraq’s nearly 26 million people, has been clamoring for an election since the April 2003 collapse of the Saddam regime, and voting is expected to go smoothly in northern areas ruled by the Kurds, the most pro-American group.

    However, Sunni Arabs, estimated at about 20 percent of the population, fear domination by the Shiites. Sunni clerics have called for a boycott of the vote because of the Fallujah attack.

    But Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it was important that elections be held as promised.

    “If they are delayed, it would be a sign that the chaos, terror, can succeed in destroying whatever chance we have for democracy in Iraq,” he said.

    The government has launched a campaign against some hardline Sunni clerics accused of fueling the insurgency or allowing weapons to be hidden in their mosques. On Friday, Iraqi and U.S. forces raided Baghdad’s Abu Hanifa mosque — one of the country’s most important Sunni mosques.

    During the January election, Iraqis will choose a National Assembly to draft a new constitution. If the constitution is ratified, another election will be held in December 2005.

    Voters in January also will select 18 provincial councils and in Kurdish-ruled areas a regional assembly. Iraqis living in at least 14 foreign countries also can vote for the National Assembly.

    A stable, legitimate government could enable the United States to begin drawing down its 138,000-strong military presence and gradually hand over security responsibility to Iraqi forces.

    “Having elections in Iraq are very important, and having them on time is also so important for the Iraqi people to have more security in Iraq,” said Salama al-Khafaji, a Shiite member of the interim Iraqi National Council, a government advisory body.

    Ayar, the election commission spokesman, said 122 political parties were registered for the elections. The commission has asked the United Nations to send international monitors, and 35 experts already have arrived.

    I support this decision to proceed as planned. The terrorists cannot be given the idea that they can stand bloodily in the path of progress successfully. Nor can overly much concern be given to the Sunni turnout, as any boycott of a democratic process will be to their own detriment. If they choose to proceed down that path, it will only be a hard-learned lesson in democracy.

  • Iraq’s Iwo Jima Gets Scant Media Respect

    Jack Kelly, national security writer for the Post-Gazette, is dismayed by the recent American action in Fallujah, not just by the rapid and dominating success of the American forces but also by the horrendous media coverage.

    The rule of thumb for the last century or so has been that for a guerrilla force to remain viable, it must inflict seven casualties on the forces of the government it is fighting for each casualty it sustains, says former Canadian army officer John Thompson, managing director of the Mackenzie Institute, a think tank that studies global conflicts.

    By that measure, the resistance in Iraq has had a bad week. American and Iraqi government troops have killed at least 1,200 fighters in Fallujah, and captured 1,100 more. Those numbers will grow as mop-up operations continue.

    These casualties were inflicted at a cost (so far) of 56 Coalition dead (51 Americans), and just over 300 wounded, of whom about a quarter have returned to duty.

    “That kill ratio would be phenomenal in any [kind of] battle, but in an urban environment, it’s revolutionary,” said retired Army Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, perhaps America’s most respected writer on military strategy. “The rule has been that [in urban combat] the attacking force would suffer between a quarter and a third of its strength in casualties.”

    The victory in Fallujah was also remarkable for its speed, Peters said. Speed was necessary, he said, “because you are fighting not just the terrorists, but a hostile global media.”

    I posted columns previously by both Kelly and Peters. The two together are a lethal combination.

    Fallujah ranks up there with Iwo Jima, Inchon and Hue as one of the greatest triumphs of American arms, though you’d have a hard time discerning that from what you read in the newspapers.

    The swift capture of Fallujah is taxing the imagination of Arab journalists and — sadly — our own. How does one portray a remarkable American victory as if it were of little consequence, or even a defeat? For CNN’s Walter Rodgers, camped out in front the main U.S. military hospital in Germany, you do this by emphasizing American casualties.

    For The New York Times and The Washington Post, you do this by emphasizing conflict elsewhere in Iraq.

    But the news organs that liken temporary terrorist success in Mosul (the police stations they overran were recaptured the next day) with what happened to the terrorists in Fallujah is false equivalence of the worst kind. If I find a quarter in the street, it doesn’t make up for having lost $1,000 in a poker game the night before.

    The resistance has suffered a loss of more than 2,000 combatants, out of a total force estimated by U.S. Central Command at about 5,000 (other estimates are higher) as well as its only secure base in the country. But both the Arab media and ours emphasize that the attack on Fallujah has made a lot of Arabs mad. By this logic, once we’ve killed all the terrorists, they’ll be invincible.

    “The experience of human history has been the more people you kill, the weaker they get,” Thompson noted.

    For the Arab and European media, the old standby is to allege American atrocities. In this they have had invaluable assistance from Kevin Sites, a free lancer working for NBC, who filmed a Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi feigning death in a mosque his squad was clearing. Al Jazeera has been showing the footage around the clock.

    The mutilated body of Margaret Hassan, the aid worker kidnapped in Baghdad last month, has been discovered in Fallujah, as have torture chambers. Residents of Fallujah have been describing a reign of terror by the insurgents. But it is the Marine’s alleged “war crime” that is garnering the most attention.

    The Marine did the right thing. The terrorist he shot was not a prisoner, was not attempting to surrender and was not a lawful combatant under the Geneva Convention. The squad had other rooms to clear, and couldn’t afford to leave an enemy in their rear. The San Jose Mercury News described how Lance Cpl. Jeramy Ailes was shot to death by an Iraqi who was “playing possum.”

    “It’s a safety issue pure and simple,” explained former Navy SEAL Matthew Heidt. “After assaulting through a target, put a security round in everybody’s head.”

    Journalists quick to judge the Marine are more forgiving when it comes to the terrorists. “They’re not bad guys, especially, just people who disagree with us,” said MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.

    And journalists wonder why we are less popular than used car salesmen.

    I do wonder about the relevance of the historical rule of thumb for guerrilla success that Kelly cites. In the conflicts used to establish this 7:1 casualty ratio threshold, has any successful anti-guerrilla campaign ever had to endure a “friendly” media that felt the need to balance or mitigate every success and amplify every setback or sidestep? After all, that is the current behavior of the American and global media, the main conduit of information between our troops on the battlefield and our citizenry here at home.

  • Marine Rushes From Iraq After Wife Shot

    You think there’s random violence in Iraq? Tell that to the Marine who rushed from Fallujah to be with his wife as she fights for her life after a tragic shooting in the good ol’ US of A.

    A Marine serving in a war zone in Iraq rushed back home to be with his pregnant wife Friday after she was wounded in an apparent random shooting in a supermarket parking lot.

    “You can only imagine how it would make me feel, being where I was at,” Lance Cpl. Justin Cook, 23, said.

    The Marine was pulled from his combat unit in Fallujah on Monday, and told his wife Julia, 21, had been shot in the head. She is due to deliver the couple’s son in February.

    Justin Cook said his mind raced at the news — “a whole whirlwind of emotions, from anger (to) fear.”

    After three sleepless nights of travel, the Marine was at his wife’s bedside Friday in the York Hospital intensive-care unit, where a nursing supervisor said she was in serious condition.

    Authorities said Julia Cook, who had been living with her parents in Mannsville, N.Y., while awaiting the birth of her son, was apparently in the wrong place at the wrong time. She was visiting high school friends Sunday night when someone opened fire with a shotgun, then drove away.

    Noel Gomez, 19, arrested six hours later, told detectives he decided ahead of time on a location where he wanted to kill someone, according to his arrest affidavit. He is jailed without bond, charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.

    The York public defender’s office said Friday that Gomez’s lawyer was unavailable for comment.

    Gomez’s relatives told the York Daily Record he had been exhibiting unusual behavior for the past five years.

    “I feel sorry for him, I really do,” Justin Cook said.

    The Marine said his wife had one operation and more are expected. They have been married almost two years, and have picked out a name for their son — Calvin.

    “She is quite the feisty fighter, and she doesn’t let anything get her down,” Cook said.

    If there’s anything tougher than a US Marine, it just might be a Marine’s wife. My best wishes and hopes go out to Lance Cpl. Cook, his wife Julia and their family.

  • Iraqi Unrest May Delay Elections

    Iraqi and American officials have now stated that terrorist activity is endangering the Iraqi election timeline.

    Elections in Iraq scheduled to take place by Jan. 31 may be postponed because of continued widespread violence or a coordinated boycott by Sunni Muslims, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

    “I believe we have a good chance of still meeting the target,” Iraqi Ambassador Samir Shakir Mahmood Sumaidaie said at the United Nations. “If, however, at the time it is determined that we need a bit more time, then that situation will be reviewed” by policy makers.

    Under Iraq’s interim constitution, voters would cast ballots by the end of January for a national legislature, which would form a permanent government and write a lasting charter.

    President George W. Bush said Nov. 13 that successful elections in Iraq would be “a crushing blow” to terrorists, and “inspire” democratic change throughout the Middle East, ultimately making the U.S. more secure.

    Security has worsened in Baghdad and the Sunni Triangle up to the northwestern city of Mosul, one U.S. official said.

    “We’re worried that in some areas — again, not all, in some areas — it would now be difficult to have elections,” said Bill Taylor, director of the Iraq Reconstruction Management Office. “And it’s that kind of work that we need to do between now and January so that we can have elections in the entire country.”

    Asked about the threat by Sunnis in central Iraq to boycott the election of a 275-member national assembly, Sumaidaie said there might be a delay “if all the Sunnis act as a group.” He added that such unity is “unlikely” because the Sunni leaders who have threatened the boycott don’t represent the entire religious minority of Iraq.

    Unrest spread just after U.S. and Iraqi forces attacked the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah on Nov. 8.

    Air Force Lieutenant General Lance Smith, deputy commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, today disputed a statement by Marines Lieutenant General John Sattler that the Fallujah siege had “broken the back” of the insurgency, saying it was too early to tell.

    ….

    Sumaidaie said his confidence that elections can be held in January grew after the U.S.-led incursion into insurgent-held Fallujah. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s decision to increase the number of the election advisers in Iraq also was a good sign, he said.

    “The position of the Iraqi government is that we should plan on holding the elections on time,” he said. “We accept that there continues to be violence in different parts of the country, but the outcome of the recent military operation in Fallujah has been very positive. We clearly have reduced the terrorists’ ability to launch an organized campaign. What happens in the next weeks will be important.”

    Sumaidaie said the UN is about to increase its staff in Iraq to about 60 workers, double the number there now. That should be enough, he said, for the UN to play an important “supervisory” role in the elections.

    UN spokesman Fred Eckhard said that, while Annan is deploying more people to Iraq, he was “not aware of any decision by the secretary-general to raise the ceiling further.”

    Sumaidaie said he is confident that next week’s international conference on Iraq in Egypt would also improve the security situation by producing new commitments from Iran and Syria to secure their borders to prevent terrorists from entering.

    This ain’t good news. That delays at this point in the ballgame are even being considered can only come across as weakness to both the terrorists and the Iraqi people. The gloves are slowly coming off, with the taking of Fallujah and today’s raid on a Mosul mosque. However, the Iraqi government better be willing to shift into ruthless mode pretty damn quick.

    To further counter the instability and danger presented by the terrorists, the US is likely to up the number of American boots on the ground as the elections near.

    Commanders in Iraq probably will expand their troops by several thousand as the January elections approach, the No 2 commander of US forces in the Middle East said yesterday.

    Lt Gen Lance L Smith told a Pentagon news conference that no final decisions have been made and that the size of the troop increase will depend in part on whether the insurgency grows or weakens in the aftermath of the Fallujah offensive, which he called a major success.

    Smith estimated that commanders would ask for about a brigade’s worth of extra troops, which would be roughly 5,000. He said that probably would be achieved by keeping some units that were scheduled to serve 10 months in Iraq for an extra two months. He did not name the units.

    There now are about 138,000 US troops in Iraq, he said.

    “We will make a further assessment as we get a little bit closer” to the elections scheduled for late January, “and as we understand what the impact of Fallujah is on the entire country,” he said.

    Smith said he believed that terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was still in Iraq but that the US-Iraqi offensive this past week had eliminated Fallujah as a Zarqawi base of operations.

    Any substantial delay in the elections must absolutely be avoided. The Iraqi people need to feel the government is their own.

  • Study Claims E-Voting Irregularities in Florida

    Hey, guess what? Are you sitting down? Good. It seems some folks at UC-Berkeley apparently have issues with the presidential election results.

    Voting irregularities in three Florida counties that used electronic voting machines in this month’s election may have awarded as many as 260,000 votes more to President George W. Bush than were expected, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

    The Berkeley researchers claimed on Thursday that their findings raise questions about the accuracy of voting results in Broward, Palm Beach, and Miami-Dade counties, all of which have more voters registered as Democrats than Republicans. According to statistical models, voters in those three counties delivered between 130,000 and 260,000 more votes to Bush than were expected by a post-election analysis, the researchers maintain.

    “Something went awry with electronic voting in Florida,” says Michael Hout, a sociology professor, who led the research effort.

    Hout says that the odds of the Florida irregularities happening by chance were less than 1 in 1000, and he calls for an examination of the results. “It’s like a smoke alarm and it’s beeping,” he says. “We call upon the voting officials in Florida to determine whether there’s a fire.”

    The irregularities do not account for enough votes to give the state to Democratic challenger John F. Kerry, who lost to Bush in Florida by more than 377,000 votes.

    The possibility of problems with e-voting was a topic much discussed before the November 2 election.

    To obtain their results, the Berkeley researchers analyzed publicly available voting data from all of Florida’s counties using a technique called multiple-regression analysis, which accurately identified butterfly ballot problems in Palm Beach County during the 2000 election, Hout says.

    The technique involves building a statistical model to predict voting patterns based on a number of factors, including history of voting, median family income, age, and race. Hout’s team conducted its study using data compiled from the November 2 election.

    “We noticed that three counties stood out from those expectations,” Hout says. “These were counties that had a significant departure from what we would expect, statistically, given the patterns in all those other counties.”

    Using their statistical model, Hout’s team forecast that Bush should have received 28,000 fewer votes in Broward County than he received there in 2000. However, Bush received 51,000 more votes than he did four years ago. In Palm Beach County, where Bush gained 41,000 votes, the Berkeley research suggested a loss of 8900 votes. For Miami-Dade County the research showed Bush should have gained 18,400 votes. In fact, he gained 37,000 votes.

    The counties in question used e-voting machines manufactured by Election Systems & Software and Sequoia Voting Systems.

    It seems that the factors the study was based on left out a series of intangibles that the Berkeleyites either couldn’t measure or didn’t want to face, such as 9/11 and Bush’s steady leadership since in the war against Islamist terror, an inept campaign by an irresolute Democratic candidate, and all-too-transparent media hatchet jobs, for starters.

    Would their models have me, an atheist who voted for the Libertarian candidate in each of the four general elections I’ve previously been of age to vote in, now casting a ballot for President Bush? I doubt it, and it seems I’m not the only one with questions about this academic piece of work.

    A spokesperson for the Information Technology Association of America, an IT vendor group, dismissed the Berkeley results, saying that the study appeared to ignore the political, social, and economic factors that affected the vote. “It is unclear to us that the technology, which is the one factor the authors appear to have focused on for this study, should be viewed as causal above the many other factors that could affect a voter’s decision,” said Charles Greenwald, an ITAA spokesperson, in an e-mail interview.

    Greenwald also criticized the study for not being peer reviewed.

    The Berkeley research has already been informally reviewed by academics at Harvard University, and will no doubt be scrutinized now that the results are posted on Berkeley’s Web site, Hout says. He declines to provide the names of researchers outside of Berkeley who are familiar with the results, saying they asked not to be identified.

    Because there is no paper audit trail for the e-voting machines used in Florida, it may be difficult to ultimately explain the irregularities. “Our statistical approach is just about the only way we have to uncover what went on in Florida or in any other state that uses e-voting as it exists today, except Nevada where there is a paper trail,” Hout says.

    The model found an even larger discrepancy when certain factors weighing the data in Bush’s favor were removed, bringing the total possible discrepancy to 260,000 votes, Hout says.

    The team did not, however, find this level of irregularity in 12 other Florida counties that used e-voting machines, he says.

    Hout is unable to explain why some e-voting counties would experience irregularities while others did not, but he says that the irregularities were more likely to occur in counties that voted for Democratic candidate Al Gore in 2000. “This becomes an important clue that investigators who know something about both the software and the hardware can use,” he says.

    Hmmmmm … can’t explain why Bush made gains in Democratic areas? See my above comment.

    The Berkeley study also appeared to debunk speculation about voting irregularities in several heavily Democratic counties that voted Republican in the 2004 election. After applying the statistical model to Dixie County and Baker County, both of which bucked party affiliations and voted overwhelmingly for Bush, Hout’s team found nothing amiss. These counties, which used paper ballots that were optically scanned, have historically voted Republican in national elections, Hout says.

    Hout’s researchers also examined the election results in the hotly contested state of Ohio and found no irregularities there. “Our results do indicate that Ohio probably did get it right,” Hout says.

    Look, they can’t argue the state was stolen, as their study’s questionable numbers are insufficient to alter the Florida vote. They can’t support previous allegations in Ohio. They have no evidence other than their own projections and expectations. In short, they ain’t got diddley.

    This is just only another in a series of attempts to try to create an air of illegitimacy over the election, the sanctity of our republic be damned.

  • Iraqi Militant Group Threatens Election

    I blogged last night that the pending elections have the terrorists fighting not only the American and Iraqi forces but also the clock in Iraq. Today, the terrorists made it quite obvious that they know and fear this.

    An Islamic militant group in Iraq warned Muslims to skip the country’s coming elections, and said anyone who runs for office would be branded an infidel and “punished in the name of God.”

    ….

    The militant group, Ansar al-Sunna, said in a statement published on its Web site: “We ask all Muslims to respond to God’s calling and avoid showing up at the election posts.”

    The group warned that voting sites would be targeted “because they are infidel posts.”

    Iraq’s interim government plans to hold elections for a transitional parliament in January, and the offensive against insurgents in Falluja was meant to restore interim government control over that area ahead of the vote.

    “We warn everyone who will run in this election that by doing so, he chose to be an infidel and that he will be punished in the name of God,” Ansar al-Sunna said. “The same will go to the American crusaders and their allies, their collaborators who support these elections.”

    The group claimed responsibility for the October killing of a Kurdish police chief in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, calling it a warning to Kurdistan Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani. The militants consider Kurdish leaders traitors for cooperating with U.S.-led forces in the invasion of Iraq.

    It also claimed responsibility for the killings of three KDP members in September and 12 Nepalese contractors in August.

    The group said elections were meant “to deceive the people that they are free and that they can elect their own president and government in a democratic and free approach.” It also denounced efforts to bring democracy to Iraq as an “infidel curriculum.”

    The statement said Muslims had a duty to fight U.S. troops and “to work on establishing the rule of God in our country.”

    These are not hollow threats, as the terrorists in Iraq are more capable and more internationally supported than their counterparts who could not affect the Afghan elections in October. It should be noted, though, that every suicide attack, every dead terrorist, every bit of arms seized between now and the election is a hit on the impact the Islamists and Saddamists can have immediately prior to and on election day. However, to lay low, bide their time and conserve their assets would be counterproductive to their need to maintain an atmosphere of terror and lawlessness. The coalition’s efforts are against them, time is against them, and the Iraqi people are not for them.

    If you’ve ever wondered how Denzel Washington’s character in the movie Fallen felt as the evil spirit Azazel hopped from person to person, each in turn hauntingly serenading Denzel with the Stones’ Time Is On My Side, ask one of the Islamists in Iraq. (Great, now that song’s stuck in my head. Damn you, Azazel!)

  • North Korea Drops Use of Most Laudatory Kim Title

    Kim Jong-il, doomed to be a nut from day one, has either chosen or been forced to have his public image presented in a more subdued manner.

    North Korean media have dropped most laudatory references to leader Kim Jong-il, just days after reports that his portrait had been removed from some public places, an analyst at Radiopress, a Japanese news agency that monitors North Korean media, said on Wednesday.

    Instead of being referred to as “dear leader of our party and our people” as had been customary, Kim has been merely called by his job titles, said Noriyuki Suzuki, chief analyst at Radiopress.

    The omission, in both radio and print media, was especially glaring in a report on Wednesday by the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Kim’s visit to a military unit.

    Kim was referred to by his three main job titles — Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, General Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and Chairman of the National Defense Commission.

    The change comes amid reports that portraits of Kim Jong-il, ubiquitous in homes, offices and public buildings across North Korea, had been removed from some public meeting halls.

    “It’s still hard to say, but taken in context with the reports about the portraits, this dropping of the most laudatory title may be an attempt by Kim to play down his cult of personality,” Suzuki said.

    He added, however, that the apparent curtailment of Kim’s personality cult did not suggest anything major had changed in the power structure of the reclusive communist state.

    Hmmm. Laying low for diplomatic reasons or fear of becoming a non-person? I think he’s just ronery and blame Team America.

  • Probe of Marine’s Disappearance Re-opened

    I refrained from posting on the swarm of allegations around the disappearance and subsequent resurfacing of US Marine Hassoun when the story originally was made known. Now, in the wake of the Fallujah campaign, there’s this news.

    Military investigators have re-opened the case of U.S. Marine Corps Cpl. Wassef Hassoun after several personal items — including his military ID and civilian passport — were found in Falluja, the city where he disappeared in June.

    Hassoun reappeared July 7 in Lebanon, where he was born and has relatives.

    What happened to Hassoun during that time has been a mystery to military investigators who recently closed two separate investigations into the disappearance.

    Because of the new evidence, the case of Hassoun’s disappearance is unexpectedly open again. Investigators are assessing the evidence found in Falluja.

    After the initial report that Hassoun was missing, military officials assumed he had walked away from camp. He was listed as a deserter.

    His status was changed to captured after the release of a videotape that showed him blindfolded with a sword suspended over his head. A few days later, a posting to three Islamist Web sites claimed Hassoun had been beheaded.

    Hassoun denied being a deserter and staging his own kidnapping.

    A Marine Corps official said representatives of the Naval Criminal Investigative Services did not interview Hassoun until after he completed his 30-day home leave, following his repatriation back to the United States.

    Hassoun may now be interviewed again, the official said.

    Hassoun’s civilian passport, military identification card and his military uniform were all found, sources said.

    The uniform was described by those familiar with the case as being in “remarkably good shape.”

    Other items with Hassoun’s name on them, but which the sources declined to describe, were also found. It appeared that some items of identification were altered, the sources said.

    Hassoun’s personal weapon disappeared from the camp just outside Falluja at the same time he did. It was never recovered.

    Also, an amount of cash he had has not been found, sources said.

    Two weeks ago, the NCIS presented its findings on two ongoing investigations into Hassoun’s disappearance.

    One investigation was a missing-person case. The other was a criminal probe into whether there was a breach of national security or classified information.

    Marine Corps officials would not say what those findings were. The findings were presented to the top commander of the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade at Camp Lejeune, Hassoun’s unit.

    While not restraining from posting it, I will continue to refrain from commenting on it and will advise others to do the same. There is so little publicly known at this time that an innocent Marine may be harmed or an Islamist investigation may be impaired. No prediction. No guessing. No opinion. At this time.