Month: October 2005

Nice Guys

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by hilzoy

A few notes about my last post (the one on Maureen Dowd): I didn’t mean to suggest that there were any character traits, let alone major virtues, that are the exclusive province of men. I just read the comments Dowd quoted, about men not having any occasion to display their manliness etc., and thought: they seem to have something in mind, and it would be churlish to reply: so I take it you’ve stopped being an exhibitionist? or something like that. What is this something? Apparently, it seems to have to do with things like strength and courage. But why would anyone think that there is no occasion for strength and courage, rightly construed? I was assuming that any decent version of manliness would not actually be defined as “what women are not”, but would involve some positive ideal worth pursuing in itss own right, whether or not women were doing something similar. Debitage suggests that I am wrong:

“The macho impulse is a drive not just to do things that are intrinsically good for men, but to do things that distinguish men from women. This is why so much of machismo is wrapped up in policing border-blurring behavior, such as homosexuality and uppity women. Therefore it’s only manly to have strength if women are typically weak. If women can be strong too, men will have to find a different reason to be strong (and plenty of such reasons exist).”

If so, then I agree that men should give up on this whole set of motivations. No one’s psyche should actually require the weakness of others. I was hoping that there was a better way to respond to the guys Dowd quoted; but if I’m wrong, well then, I’m wrong.

(I also did not mean to suggest that my being single was the result of my not being pert, winsome, etc. (Wouldn’t it be convenient to think so!) I tend to put it down to a combination of My Many Faults and the vagaries of my personal history. I’m just not in a good position to be a counterexample to Dowd’s thesis, is all.) (Also: I should know better than to write posts while I’m rushing around getting ready to catch a train.)

All that said: the comments on that thread have now turned to a discussion of these comments:

(a): “Those of us who aren’t bastards typically find that most women take no romantic interest in us”

(b) “As a lesbian, of course, I have no direct interest in this matter. But I can tell you that the straight women of my acquaintance say the worst turn-off is a man who makes a big point of how much of a nice, non-sexist guy he is, and then expects women to be grateful and appreciative of this. A remarkable number of men don’t seem to have grasped the point that women don’t like to be told, either explicitly or implicitly, that they should be grateful to men for treating them like mature adult human beings.”

My take on this question below the fold.

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Alito

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by Charles CNN reports that Bush has chosen Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court.  Given the nickname of Scalito, this will comfort conservatives and not go over well with many Senate Democrats, and it remains to be seen how the Gang of 14 will decide.  Over the coming days, we’re … Read more

The President’s Foreign Policy Speech

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by Charles

With the Harriet Miers controversy and CIA leak indictments getting the media full-court press, it was easy to miss the fact that the president gave an historic foreign policy speech on Wednesday.  Bringing us back to the days of the Reagan era, he stepped up and proclaimed that one of the country’s most nettlesome nations should no longer exist.  World leaders reacted harshly to this bit of war-mongering.

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Question Of The Day

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by hilzoy Answer: Yes. So why, exactly, did Maureen Dowd need to write an entire book about it? I suppose the answer must be: because she needed to have place to put things like this: “Decades after the feminist movement promised equality with men, it was becoming increasingly apparent that many women would have to … Read more

Patrick Fitzgerald

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by hilzoy “Fontenelle says, “I bow before a great man, but my mind does not bow.” I can add: before a humble common man in whom I perceive uprightness of character in a higher degree than I am conscious of in myself, my mind bows, whether I want it or whether I do not and … Read more

Libby 5; Rove ?

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by Edward The NYT is reporting that Libby’s been indicted on 5 counts: Vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter’ Libby Jr. was indicted Friday on charges of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the CIA leak case. Karl Rove, President Bush’s closest adviser, apparently escaped indictment Friday but remained under investigation, … Read more

“Up or Down” Dead, Dead, Dead

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by Edward

John Cole on RedState tries valiantly to save the GOP’s right to resuscitate the recently departed talking point that all Bush’s nominees deserve an up or down vote in the Senate, but it’s the most faithless sort of wishful thinking and as such deserves debunking. In response to this post by Kos, using the GOP’s own words against them, Cole takes out his hair-splitter and tries to find a difference in how the GOP derailed Harriet’s turn before the Judiciary Committee:

When Republicans and conservatives speak of a desire for an up or down vote for judicial nominees, it is born out of the frustration of the recent past in which nominees were bottled up in committee in perpetuity, were never given hearings, were never given a vote, and simply had their nomination blocked through procedural maneuvering. In fairness, this occurred under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, and in Senates led by Republicans and Democrats.

But that is not what happened in the Miers case, and to assert otherwise is to engage in a flight of fancy. A desire for an up or down vote for judicial nominees is in no way anathema to the desire (and, I might add, right) to loudly voice one’s displeasure with a nominee.

Harriet Miers was nominated to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She was given a date for confirmation hearings (they were to begin on November 7th), she had meetings with Senators, she was filling out questionnaires for the Judiciary Committee. She would, one could safely assume, have had a vote in the Judiciary Committee at the commencement of the confirmation hearings, and predicated on the outcome of that vote, a vote would have been held in the Senate at large.

In other words, she was going to get her ‘up or down vote.’ There were no calls to ‘blue slip’ her, there was no move to filibuster her (indeed, the Gang of 14 stated they would break any filibuster attempts), there were no attempts at procedural moves to block her nomination, and she was not going to be bottlenecked in committee forever.

What’s most laughable about this is this bit: "she was going to get her ‘up or down vote.’ " It’s laughable because web site’s had been set up and the call went far and wide that what the base wanted was not an up or down vote but her nomination to be withdrawn. In fact, on the Withdraw Miers website, they list the folks calling for the withdrawal and list the Senators who had expressed "Reservations," long before the hearings had offered Harriet a chance to answer her critics, including

Senator Rick Santorum
Senator Sam Brownback
Senator Trent Lott
Senator George Allen
Senator Lindsey Graham
Senator Jeff Sessions
Senator David Vitter
Senator John Ensign
Senator John Thune

So who exactly is it in the GOP that still believes the President has the right to have his choice, his chosen nominee, receive an up or down vote? Cole would like you to believe they never stopped believing this was the proper process, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

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Well, crap

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by von

First the blog double-posted my bit on Iraq; now it won’t let me delete the second post — leading to this replacement.  Consider this your "well, crap" open thread.

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Yes, Virginia, It’s Turning Around

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by von

LESS THAN TWO WEEKS AGO, I wrote that a successful Constitutional Referendum — whatever its outcome — would start to turn around Iraq, because it would invest the Sunnis in the political process.  Today, we begin to see evidence of exactly that:

NORTH OF BAGHDAD — For weeks before Iraq’s constitutional referendum this month, Iraqi guerrilla Abu Theeb traveled the countryside just north of Baghdad, stopping at as many Sunni Arab houses and villages as he could. Each time, his message to the farmers and tradesmen he met was the same: Members of the disgruntled Sunni minority should register to vote — and vote against the constitution.

"It is a new jihad," said Abu Theeb, a nom de guerre that means "Father of the Wolf," addressing a young nephew one night before the vote. "There is a time for fighting, and a time for politics."

For Abu Theeb and many other Iraqi insurgents, this canvassing marked a fundamental shift in strategy, and one that would separate them from foreign-born fighters such as Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads the group al Qaeda in Iraq.

Two years of boycotting the process had only marginalized Sunnis while Iraqi’s Shiite majority gained power. And Abu Theeb’s entry into politics was born partly of necessity; attacks by Shiite militias, operating inside and outside the government security apparatus, were taking an increasing toll on Sunni lives.

So at 6:30 a.m. on the day of the referendum, Oct. 15, Theeb was already at the polling center in his village, which he had scouted out days in advance. Two of his fighters took up positions. Abu Theeb and the rest of the fighters, more relaxed, propped their Kalashnikov rifles against walls or placed them on tables.

"No one will attack," Abu Theeb assured a reporter. "I made sure some wrongdoers are protecting the school," he said, jokingly referring to al Qaeda loyalists. To head off any violence, he had co-opted the group by enlisting two of its supporters as his polling site guards.

The War in Iraq has been longer, harder, and tougher than it should have been.  There are legitimate grounds to say that it never should have been fought in the first place.  But don’t close your eyes to the fact that — slowly, painfully — we are winning in Iraq.  The Iraqis are winning.  Don’t give up the cause.

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Ah, How It Takes Me Back…

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by hilzoy From Brad DeLong: “When the Fifteen-Year-Old asked, “Why is so much of Africa so poor?” he was not expecting–and did not react well to–a dramatic reading of parts of James Ferguson (1999), Expectations of Modernity: Myths and Meanings of Urban Life on the Zambian Copperbelt (Berkeley: University of California: 0520217020).” Growing up as … Read more

Journalists as Terrorist Targets in Iraq

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by Charles Michael Yon has been doing yeoman’s work with the on-the-ground entries of his experiences in Iraq.  He is highly perceptive and adept at writing what he sees.  In his Embed post, this paragraph leapt out: So there were two tired Danish TV2 journalists, the American TV man, and me, all sleeping on cots … Read more

Rosa Parks

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by hilzoy Rosa Parks died yesterday. We are all in her debt. May she rest in peace. “The only thing that bothered me was that we waited so long to make this protest and to let it be known wherever we go that all of us should be free and equal and have all opportunities … Read more

Cheney: The CIA Needs The Freedom To Abuse Detainees!

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by hilzoy WaPo: “The Bush administration has proposed exempting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency from a legislative measure endorsed earlier this month by 90 members of the Senate that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoners in U.S. custody. The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to … Read more

Late Night Plame-Related Scowling

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by hilzoy

From the NYT:

“I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday. Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war. Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status. It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government’s deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry. (…)

The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program. But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald’s possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson – who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame – from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.

It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House’s full cooperation and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information he sought. The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson’s wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband’s trip.”

A few points:

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Being Gay In Namibia

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by hilzoy

Here’s the sort of story that makes me love the Washington Post, and all other newspapers that have staffs large enough that they can cover interesting topics in obscure places. It’s on gay rights activists in Namibia:

“As a boy of 14, Petrus Gurirab worried that he was gay. Seeking advice from a trustworthy adult, he went to see a teacher who had treated him kindly.

“I have feelings for other boys,” Gurirab recalled telling her. “Like love feelings.” There was a long silence.

“My advice is that it’s not African” to be gay, the teacher replied, using a slur for the term. “Ignore those feelings and try girls.”

She also apparently gossiped with colleagues. Other teachers started teasing Gurirab, asking him why he didn’t play soccer and why he spent so much time around his mother. Then one morning, he said, the gym teacher invited him into his office, locked the door and forced him onto the desk for sex.

“Let’s see how good you are at it,” the teacher said, according to Gurirab, now 25, who recounted the story through tears. The ordeal left his legs and arms with red bruises. The next day, distraught and confused, he had sex with a female classmate.”

I’m sure she had a marvelous time. Back to the story:

“”I wanted to change so badly and not be gay . . . but I couldn’t,” he said. “I knew I liked men. I decided I would kill myself. . . . I was so desperate I called a lifeline in London. They saved my life.”

Un-African. Un-Christian. Anti-family. Witchcraft.

In many African countries, being gay is considered all of those things. It is also illegal in most of them, so taboo that a conviction for homosexual acts may bring more jail time than rape or murder. Only in South Africa is being gay widely accepted and protected by law. From Uganda, where homosexuality is punishable by life imprisonment, to Sierra Leone, where a lesbian activist was raped and stabbed to death at her desk last year, homophobia has long trapped gays in a dangerous, closeted life. With no places to meet openly, no groups to join, it seems sometimes that gay men and lesbians in Africa don’t exist at all.

But in Namibia, a growing national debate about homosexuality has followed a period of harsh condemnation, and gay rights groups now operate openly in the capital, Windhoek. One of them is the Rainbow Project, where Gurirab works as a suicide prevention counselor. The organization has interviewed gay Africans from across the continent, and its leaders say they believe the time is right to challenge prejudices and start a wider discussion on what being gay really means. “The only answer is education,” said Linda Baumann, 21, who grew up in a tribal community and was expelled from it when she revealed she was a lesbian. She now lives in Windhoek and hosts a radio program about gay issues. “We have to have courage and stick up for ourselves.””

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“Moral Values” In Tucson

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by hilzoy Via AmericaBlog, a story in the Arizona Daily Star: “Although it is safe, effective and legal, emergency contraception – the “morning after” pill – can be hard to find in Tucson. After a sexual assault one recent weekend, a young Tucson woman spent three frantic days trying to obtain the drug to prevent … Read more

Bernanke For Fed Chair

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by hilzoy WaPo: “President George W. Bush was expected to announce on Monday that he has picked top economic adviser Ben Bernanke to succeed Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a knowledgeable source said. (…) Bernanke is chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. He served on the Fed’s Board of Governors for nearly three years … Read more

Where Conservatives Should Be

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by Charles

We should be with Tom Coburn and the fourteen other Senators who voted "yes" on his small amendment to control spending (discussed here).  The fiscally responsible Senators:

Tom Coburn (R-OK) Russ Feingold (D-WI) Jon Kyl (R-AZ) Jim DeMint (R-SC) David Vitter (R-LA) Mary Landrieu (D-LA) John Sununu (R-NH) Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Richard Burr (R-NC) Wayne Allard (R-CO) Jeff Sessions (R-AL) Evan Bayh (D-IN) Mike DeWine (R-OH) Kent Conrad (D-ND) George Allen (R-VA)

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Are Perjury Charges Coming?

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No, it’s not who you think.  It seems that Michael Brown, the disgraced former head of FEMA, has more ‘splainin to do. The core function of government is competence; the core requirement of government service is honesty.  This is not a political issue.

Priorities

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by hilzoy

I never did write more about bird flu. (Short version: the person in charge of the federal response is unqualified; despite the fact that the GAO has been urging (pdf) the government to finish its response plan since 2000, it still isn’t finished; and the NYT, which has seen a copy of the latest version of the plan, reports that it “shows that the United States is woefully unprepared for what could become the worst disaster in the nation’s history”, as well as failing to address such crucial questions as who would be in charge. Great.)

Tonight, I want to write about an important background issue: public health spending. Via Effect Measure, here’s an article in Government Health IT:

“As state and local health departments gear up to battle a possible avian flu outbreak, they face a sharp cut in funding from the Department of Health and Human Services. However, the loss could be fixed through funds intended to cover the costs of controlling a pandemic, added as an amendment to the 2006 Defense Department Appropriations bill.

“Critical funding is shrinking just as public health agencies are being required to expand their work in pandemic influenza preparation and response,” said Dr. Rex Archer, health director of Kansas City, Mo., and president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).

The Bush administration, in its proposed 2006 HHS budget, slashed funding for public health preparedness by $129 million — from $926 million in 2005 to $797 million. The House version of the 2006 HHS bill appropriates $853 million while the Senate bill sticks with the$797 million requested by the administration.

Donna Brown, government affairs counsel at NACCHO, said those state and local preparedness funds provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an HHS agency, are used for a wide range of activities by local health departments, including information technology and disease surveillance systems.

“We need robust electronic information systems to detect disease outbreaks,” Brown said, including surveillance systems that can alert local public health officials to potential flu symptoms. Those would be critical to helping combat a pandemic.

Congress should not be cutting preparedness funds as “we face a potential health emergency,” Brown said. He believes Congress should reverse any cuts proposed by the administration. The Senate and House HHS bills are still in conference and need to be passed by Nov. 15, when a continuing resolution to fund government operations in fiscal 2006 expires.”

Well, no, of course it shouldn’t. But, also of course, it is.

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NY Daily News: Bush Knew

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by hilzoy Honest to God, I don’t want to keep writing about the Plame investigation. I wish Patrick Fitzgerald would just announce its results already, and put us out of our misery. However, every time I say: enough, I want to write about something else, some new piece of information comes along that I can’t … Read more

Great Books

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by hilzoy Time has posted a list of the top 100 novels written in English since 1923. (Why 1923? Apparently, it’s when Time started publishing. Who knew?) It’s a really strange list, even granting what seems to be their rule of not naming more than one book by any author. I mean: why would anyone … Read more

More New Orleans Revelations

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–Sebastian This story is old news by the standards of the current news cycle but is well worth looking into as the investigation continues (from the LATimes): The levee breaches along two major canals that flooded New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina resulted from massive soil failures under concrete storm walls, not from hurricane surges that … Read more

Tierney: Wrong Again

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by hilzoy

Since, for reasons I do not fully understand, I still have access to TimesSelect, here’s an excerpt from John Tierney’s column today:

“This case, if you can remember that far back, began with accusations that White House officials violated a law protecting undercover agents who could be harmed or killed if their identities were revealed. But it now seems doubtful that there was a violation of that law, much less any danger to the outed agent, Valerie Wilson.

The case originally aroused indignation because the White House appeared to be outing Wilson as part of a campaign to unfairly discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of ignoring his 2002 report debunking evidence that Iraq was trying to acquire material for nuclear weapons. But a Senate investigation found that his report not only failed to reach the White House but also failed to debunk the nuclear-material evidence – in fact, most analysts concluded the report added to the evidence.

So now the original justifications for the investigation have vanished, which is why I think of this as the Nadagate scandal. But the prosecutor has kept at it for two years. Besides switching to the vague law against disclosing classified information, he might indict Libby or Rove for perjury or obstruction of justice – crimes that occurred only because of the investigation.”

Wrong, Tierney. This case did not begin because of accusations that anyone had violated a specific law. It began with accusations that someone in the administration had outed an undercover CIA agent. Those accusations were true. The case aroused indignation not just, or even primarily, because the White House outed Plame to discredit Wilson, which is also true, whatever his report did or did not say. It aroused indignation because outing undercover CIA agents is wrong under any circumstances, and it’s especially wrong when it’s done not for some reason connected to the national interest, but for political gain. This justification has not “vanished”; it’s still in force, and it is why I have said that whether or not indictments are handed down, this administration acted contemptibly in outing Valerie Plame.

Do apologists for this administration really want to take the line that exposing intelligence assets for political gain is just one of those things that everyone in Washington does; that it’s no big deal? Do they really want to say that what the Republican party stands for is not restoring honor and integrity to the White House, not doing what it takes to keep America safe, not the sort of basic decency that would lead them to stick by people who put their lives on the line for their country, but this? Do they really want to try to rally people behind the slogan, “Compromising national security: everyone does it!” — ? (And for the record, everyone doesn’t. Just try thinking back to the last time an administration outed one of its own agents.)

The reasons why leaking Plame’s identity was wrong are not rocket science. They are obvious, at least if you understand basic moral values like loyalty, decency, and honor. And no party that claims to honor moral values should pretend that outing an undercover CIA agent is just business as usual.

Below the fold, I’m appending a long excerpt from a Stratfor report cited on dKos (h/t rilkefan), just in case Tierney or Richard Cohen or anyone like them should happen by and wonder what the big deal is. (It’s a long excerpt because the original is behind a wall.) It makes the issues very clear.

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Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow

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Via Harley on Tacitus US News and World Report is either desperate to scoop the rest of the MSM or being somewhat coy about what they know, but either way, apparently it’s time to buckle your seat belts: Sparked by today’s Washington Post story that suggests Vice President Cheney’s office is involved in the Plame-CIA … Read more

Plame Again

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by hilzoy The Washington Post is running a story headlined: Cheney’s Office Is Focus In Leak Investigation. It begins: “As the investigation into the leak of a CIA agent’s name hurtles to an apparent conclusion, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has zeroed in on the role of Vice President Cheney’s office, according to lawyers familiar … Read more

Boortz’s Choice

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Well the argument has now surpassed farce and entered a realm so surreal we’ll need poets to make sense of it all for us. In a nation built on two important premises—1) that all people are created equal and 2) that all people share the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness—it’s now become acceptable to say that our government (one of, for, and by these same equal people) should give advance warning of a terrorist strike to our wealthy citizens before our other citizens. Wealth is now openly discussed as a justifiable criteria for putting citizens at head of the queue for the lifeboats. Wealth alone.

This my friends is FUBAR.

Media Matters reprints the text of a program by right-wing radio host Neal Boortz. Here is the bulk of it:

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Nudge Nudge; Wink Wink

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by hilzoy John Fund explains how Karl Rove made sure that religious conservatives knew more about Harriet Miers than the rest of us were supposed to: “On Oct. 3, the day the Miers nomination was announced, Mr. Dobson and other religious conservatives held a conference call to discuss the nomination. One of the people on … Read more

Judy Tells All

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With so many qualifiers she might as well be von [ 😉 ], Judith Miller recounts her interviews with Scotter Libby as told to Pat Fitzgerald in the NYT. It’s a longish read, but essentially Judy has enough criticism to go around that few escape some degree of scorn (even her employer, which reportedly isn’t … Read more

Give Me A Break

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by hilzoy Bill Kristol wonders what accounts for the fact that Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Tom DeLay, and Bill Frist (along with Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, various members of the Republican party in Ohio and Kentucky, and others he didn’t see fit to mention) are all the subjects of criminal investigation: “Why are conservative Republicans, … Read more

The Better World

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It’s early, but this seems like good news:  BAGHDAD, Oct. 15 — Millions of voters in Iraq ignored the threat of attack and cast ballots Saturday in a constitutional referendum that was remarkably calm, with isolated insurgent attacks on polling stations and sporadic clashes with U.S. Marines west of Baghdad, but no major bombings or … Read more