Sunday, March 30, 2008

On cell phones & brain tumors

Having a background in chemistry & physics, I am very skeptical of the new report that mobile phones cause brain tumors. Being a "good" scientist, though, I am willing to hear the detailed arguments and wait and see what evidence is brought forth to support the hypothesis.

The major cause of my skepticism is that electromagnetic radiation in the radio frequencies used by mobile phones (UHF) has wavelengths of around 10 to 100 cm. These energies are only high enough to cause bond rotation and vibration, not homolysis or ionization. If, on the physical level, this is true...what is the mechanism responsible for purported biological tissue damage? Government experts have agreed with this logic for decades.

Before people look at the UHF radiation, they should consider alternative explanations, nearly all of which could be fixed easily: I know that some heat is generated by the phones, and there can be some constructive interference, as well as issues with the batteries and materials in the phones themselves. If it is the case that cell phones cause health issues, I'll bet the ranch that one of these is chiefly responsible.

On a lighter note, check out this hilarious video about Expelled! It's supposed to poke fun at science & scientists, but as with everything else, it just makes creationists look stupid.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Update on Grassley & ministers investigation

I was reading about additional craziness from John Hagee, and it reminded me of something that I'd written about a while back but forgotten about. First, the article on Hagee divulged much of what I already knew -- that he and his ilk want war with Iran, like, yesterday. Why is it that tying this guy and Parsley around McCain's neck isn't a toxic political millstone? The double standard applied to Rev. Wright and Obama is obvious here.

As I read about Hagee's lavish lifestyle and million-dollar salary, it reminded me of Sen. Grassley's investigation into financial impropriety in "prosperity" churches. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has been leading an investigation by the Senate Finance Committee into the finances of six ministries commonly affiliated with "prosperity preaching" with the aim of updating the tax code to appropriately deal with this malfeasance. I admitted a little skepticism at the utility and motives of this investigation when I first read about it. At the time, I said:
I read this the other day and I'm still scratching my head. I mean, I dislike Benny "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor" Hinn as much as anyone, and I think the whole lot of those six are probably as corrupt and unethical as it gets. However, I just don't understand the legal power that a Congressperson has to audit the finances of these people.

The IRS? Sure! But Congress...!?!? We'll wait and see if this goes anywhere.
It turns out that three of the six ministries are cooperating, and have until March 31st, according to this press release:
Baucus and Grassley lead the committee with exclusive Senate jurisdiction over tax policy; the ministry inquiry that Grassley launched last November is meant to gauge the effectiveness of certain tax-exempt policies.

“This ought to clear up any misunderstanding about our interest and the committee’s role,” Grassley said. “We have an obligation to oversee how the tax laws are working for both tax-exempt organizations and taxpayers. Just like with reviews of other tax-exempt organizations in recent years, I look forward to the cooperation of these ministries in the weeks and months ahead.”

Grassley wrote to six ministries on Nov. 5, 2007, asking a series of questions on the nonprofit organizations’ expenses, treatment of donations and business practices. The questions were based on presentations of material from watchdog groups and whistleblowers and on investigative reports in local media outlets. One of the six ministries – Joyce Meyer Ministries of Fenton, Mo. – has cooperated substantially with his request and provided the requested information. Benny Hinn Ministries of Grapevine, Texas, has indicated a willingness to cooperate and provided answers to
five of the 28 questions so far.

Representatives for Randy and Paula White of Without Walls International Church/Paula White Ministries, Tampa, Fla., verbally have indicated to Finance Committee staff that they will cooperate. Baucus and Grassley wrote to them on March 11 to thank them for the verbal commitment and to reiterate the committee’s role.

The remaining three ministries have not cooperated, citing privacy protections or questioning the committee’s standing to request the information. Baucus and Grassley wrote to them on March 11 to describe the committee’s jurisdiction and role in determining the effectiveness of tax policy developed by the committee, distinct from the Internal Revenue Service’s role, which is to enforce existing law. The three ministries are: Kenneth and Gloria Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries, Newark, Texas; Creflo and Taffi Dollar of World Changers Church International / Creflo Dollar Ministries College Park, Ga.; and Eddie L. Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church/Eddie L. Long Ministries, Lithonia, Ga.

The committee’s jurisdiction includes the federal tax policy governing the billions of dollars donated to and controlled by the nation’s tax-exempt groups. The federal government forgoes the collection of billions of dollars to tax-exempt organizations every year.
It doesn't surprise me much about the Copelands or the Dollars. I don't know anything about Long, but I am quite familiar with Copeland and his reputation. I was pleasantly surprised about Hinn -- I figured him for one of those likeliest to resist, rather than cooperate. Randy and Paula White have faced enough personal problems recently with the divorce, so facing additional (scandalous) financial ones was probably a smart decision they made.

While you can read the pseudo-justifications for refusing to cooperate proffered by Creflo and Ken at their own sites, Eddie offers no such attempt at saving face. A little digging finds that some of these jokers are getting paid over $1M salaries. Fuc*ing absurd. Long's church has a gym inside ("Samson's Gym") that offers memberships and massages (all for a large fee, of course) -- the divisions between business and church blurred for these individuals long ago.

Blackwell on Obama

Knowing that I support Obama, my Dad (a conservative Republican) sent me a hit piece thoughtful critique of him by crook Ken Blackwell. Here is my emailed response:
Dad,

I did my HW on your article, and my analysis follows below (I'll have to post this to my blog!)

Re: Blackwell's comments

To summarize what Blackwell said:

1. We should judge people by the content of their character
2. Obama is really liberal
3. The press has taken it easy on Obama
4. Obama is bad for foreign policy
5. Obama is bad for the economy
6. Obama is bad for Jesus...uh, I mean social issues

On #1 & 2, I agree.

On #3, I disagree. See the constantly-running loops of Jeremiah Wright, for example. The press gives a free pass to Evangelical white Christian preachers who say that 9/11 or Katrina are "God's wrath on America" for our sin, and who smile as John McCain panders to them and says he's "honored" for their endorsement. For some reason, Rev. Wright is different. For example, look at how people like Sean Hannity and Ralph Reed defended Falwell's comments:

Fundamentally, Falwell and Robertson and Dobson and Parsley and their ilk all say "God Damn America" every day multiple times, just in different language. Rod Parsley, whom McCain calls a "spiritual guide", has called the government's support of Planned Parenthood a plan for "Black Genocide" -- why is there such a double standard? The media gives ZERO TV time to that issue.

Also, it is really important to see the full sermon in context -- for example, the "chickens coming home to roost" comment was echoed by Wright from a Reagan administration official. Here is part of the transcript of the sermon, which you won't ever see on Faux News, which makes it clear he is QUOTING from Ambassador Peck during one of the endlessly-looped quotes meant to shock and disgust viewers:
I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see him or hear him, he was on Fox News. This is a white man, and he was upsetting the Fox News commentators to no end. He pointed out, (Did you see him, John?) --a white man-- he pointed out-- an ambassador-- that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, America's chickens are coming home to roost.

We took this country, by terror, away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Arrowak (phonetic) the Comanche, the Arapajo, the Navajo. Terrorism--we took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism. We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians -- babies, non-military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with Stealth Bombers and killed unarmed teenagers, and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working father. [fullest voice] We bombed Khadafi, his home and killed his child. Blessed be they who bash your children's head agains the rocks.

[fullest voice] We bombed Iraq, we killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed the plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy -- killed hundreds of hard working people --mothers and fathers, who left home to go that day, not knowing they'd never get back home. [Even fuller voice] We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye. Kids playing in the playground, mothers picking up children after school -- civilians not soldiers. People just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and South Africa and now we are indignant? Because the stuff we have done overseas is brought back into our own front yard.

America's chickens are coming home, to roost. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred, and terrorism begets terrorism.

[lower voice] A White ambassador said that, y'all, not a black militant. Not a Reverend who preaches about racism, an ambassador whose eyes are wide open, and whose trying to get us to wake up, and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said that the people we have wounded don't have the military capability we have, but they do have individuals who are willing to die and take thousands with them, and we need to come to grips with that.
Isn't it neat how you can cut and clip and spin someone's words to make them look worse than they are? Do you see the media correcting this spin? Nope.

So that whole argument from Blackwell is a load of crap.

In addition, as Steve Chapman said in the Chicago Tribune, quote,
When Ronald Reagan ran for governor of California in 1966, liberals attacked him for getting support from members of the ultraconservative John Birch Society, which regarded Dwight Eisenhower as a communist agent. Reagan responded: "If anyone chooses to vote for me, they are buying my views. I am not buying theirs."

His career illustrates that political shrewdness often requires attracting not only savory but unsavory people to a cause. When he ran for president, he was criticized for tossing the occasional bone to racist white Southerners by endorsing "states' rights." But by appealing to many of those who had once supported the venomous white supremacist George Wallace, Reagan helped defang those forces, while advancing his own political agenda.

George W. Bush followed a similar route in 2000 by speaking at Bob Jones University, which had lost its federal tax exemption for banning interracial dating and whose president once called Bush's father a "devil." Being politicians, Reagan and Bush found ways to lure in bigots at little cost, while rejecting their most cherished beliefs.
Everyone knows that Obama joined the church originally because it was large and politically-connected. What we've been shown in clips on the news is but a snippet of what the church is about -- AIDS ministry, inner-city youth programs, &c...

Anyway, the NY Times editors took a look at their own coverage of Obama v. Clinton, and here's what they found in their analysis: they've been harder on him than her.

Conservatives make a strong case for Obama on the merit of his policies, so I think it is hardly an issue of "he's just a media darling": Andrew J. Bacevich and Douglas W. Kmiec.

As for #4, McCain will continue Bush's failed policies in the Middle East...Obama won't. Clear (superior) choice in that latter one there. McCain claims he'll follow Bin Laden to the "gates of hell" and everyone claps and cheers. Obama says he'll order the strike even if the Pakistanis don't like it and everyone hisses and boos. Taking nuclear weapons off the table is prudent for "targeted strikes" in other countries for one simple reason: nuclear weapons are not precise (they cause widespread devastation), and striking another country with a nuke should not be done except in retaliation for that country's own usage of WMDs. Consider collateral damage. We've already caused at least (verified numbers) 10x more deaths in Iraq than we suffered on 9/11. Nobody cares. Whatever.

Also, the two things that Petraeus cited as responsible for the "fragile" progress of the surge have been: 1) al-Sadr's ceasfire & 2) the Sunni "awakening". #1 is looking like it's about to dissolve as of this morning. #2 is basically a massive buy-off where we're now bribing and arming our former enemies in order to maintain the semblance of peace. The Rolling Stone has an excellent investigative report on this latter issue.

As for #5, we're now spending $9500 / second in Iraq, using conservative figures based only on what has already been approved for the spending there. (Don't believe me? Take $300 billion and divide it by 365, then by 24, then by 60, then by 60 again.) Some economists have projected that the long-term costs of the war, including especially health care for wounded vets, will top $3 TRILLION. Obama has promised to take that money that we're pissing down the drain in Vietnam II and spend it here at home on infrastructure and new energy projects. For details, see here.

Obama saw the mortgage crisis looming and addressed it long before free market laissez-faire conservatives even saw a problem.

Obama will move the country away from foreign oil, which keeps us locked in a cycle of violence: our billions of $ go to Iran and Venezuela and end up funding terrorists and drug traders. Then, we have to fight drug traders and terrorists with billions more. The cycle is stupid. It's time to get someone in office who can see that and will change it. I'd love to contrast/compare Barack's plans for the economy with McCain's.

As for #6, I don't really care about that. I'm tired of people looking to the federal government to subsidize their religion. I love how Blackwell pulls the classic non sequitur by saying Barack's views are like those of a radical. I'm sure your views on something -- say, gardening or diet -- are like those of Hitler...but how is that relevant? It's a simple (stupid ploy) bait-and-switch.

Re: Ken Blackwell personally

I know he works for the ironically-named "American Family Association" (ironic in the sense that they exist in order to limit and control who can make/have a family), which gives him a veneer of respectability...but, the fact is, he's a crook -- he has been indicted in bribery charges in Ohio and was a part of a voter fraud scheme there in 2004 that may have tipped the election.

So, I did my HW and I come away very unimpressed.

Dan, Something to think about, an article by a black columnist written for a NY newspaper.

Love, Dad

"Beyond Obama's Beauty"
Ken Blackwell - Columnist for the New York Sun
Hope he likes my reply!

Sunday, March 23, 2008

A reminder of the incoherence of the resurrection narratives

Glorious Ishtar! Isn't it lovely how the Christians co-opted all the fun pagan festivals for boring prudish commemorations? Have a wonderful myth day!
  1. Did Jesus Really Rise From The Dead?
  2. Easter: Did Jesus Arise? The Choice is Obvious
  3. Why Wasn't There any Veneration of Jesus' Empty Tomb?
  4. Is There Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus?
  5. The Martyrdom Argument
  6. Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story
  7. The Historicity of Jesus' Resurrection: The Debate between Christians and Skeptics
  8. Misc. others
Since Dan Barker has already invented the wheel, why should I reinvent it? From his article, "Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?" we see the parallel passages from the gospels (and Acts) laid out so as to show us the impossible task of harmonization of the resurrection stories.
What time did the women visit the tomb?

  1. Matthew: "as it began to dawn" (28:1)

  2. Mark "very early in the morning . . . at the rising of the sun" (16:2, KJV); "when the sun had risen" (NRSV); "just after sunrise" (NIV)

  3. Luke: "very early in the morning" (24:1, KJV) "at early dawn" (NRSV)

  4. John: "when it was yet dark" (20:1)


Who were the women?

  1. Matthew: Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (28:1)

  2. Mark: Mary Magdalene, the mother of James, and Salome (16:1)

  3. Luke: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and other women (24:10)

  4. John: Mary Magdalene (20:1)


What was their purpose?

  1. Matthew: to see the tomb (28:1)

  2. Mark: had already seen the tomb (15:47), brought spices (16:1)

  3. Luke: had already seen the tomb (23:55), brought spices (24:1)

  4. John: the body had already been spiced before they arrived (19:39,40)


Was the tomb open when they arrived?

  1. Matthew: No (28:2)

  2. Mark: Yes (16:4)

  3. Luke: Yes (24:2)

  4. John: Yes (20:1)


Who was at the tomb when they arrived?

  1. Matthew: One angel (28:2-7)

  2. Mark: One young man (16:5)

  3. Luke: Two men (24:4)

  4. John: Two angels (20:12)


Where were these messengers situated?

  1. Matthew: Angel sitting on the stone (28:2)

  2. Mark: Young man sitting inside, on the right (16:5)

  3. Luke: Two men standing inside (24:4)

  4. John: Two angels sitting on each end of the bed (20:12)


What did the messenger(s) say?

  1. Matthew: "Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead: and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you." (28:5-7)

  2. Mark: "Be not afrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you." (16:6-7)

  3. Luke: "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again." (24:5-7)

  4. John: "Woman, why weepest thou?" (20:13)


Did the women tell what happened?

  1. Matthew: Yes (28:8)

  2. Mark: No. "Neither said they any thing to any man." (16:8)

  3. Luke: Yes. "And they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest." (24:9, 22-24)

  4. John: Yes (20:18)


When Mary returned from the tomb, did she know Jesus had been resurrected?

  1. Matthew: Yes (28:7-8)

  2. Mark: Yes (16:10,11[23])

  3. Luke: Yes (24:6-9,23)

  4. John: No (20:2)


When did Mary first see Jesus?

  1. Matthew: Before she returned to the disciples (28:9)

  2. Mark: Before she returned to the disciples (16:9,10[23])

  3. John: After she returned to the disciples (20:2,14)


Could Jesus be touched after the resurrection?

  1. Matthew: Yes (28:9)

  2. John: No (20:17), Yes (20:27)


After the women, to whom did Jesus first appear?

  1. Matthew: Eleven disciples (28:16)

  2. Mark: Two disciples in the country, later to eleven (16:12,14[23])

  3. Luke: Two disciples in Emmaus, later to eleven (24:13,36)

  4. John: Ten disciples (Judas and Thomas were absent) (20:19, 24)

  5. Paul: First to Cephas (Peter), then to the twelve. (Twelve? Judas was dead). (I Corinthians 15:5)


Where did Jesus first appear to the disciples?

  1. Matthew: On a mountain in Galilee (60-100 miles away) (28:16-17)

  2. Mark: To two in the country, to eleven "as they sat at meat" (16:12,14[23])

  3. Luke: In Emmaus (about seven miles away) at evening, to the rest in a room in Jerusalem later that night. (24:31, 36)

  4. John: In a room, at evening (20:19)


Did the disciples believe the two men?

  1. Mark: No (16:13[23])

  2. Luke: Yes (24:34--it is the group speaking here, not the two)


What happened at that first appearance?

  1. Matthew: Disciples worshipped, some doubted, "Go preach." (28:17-20)

  2. Mark: Jesus reprimanded them, said "Go preach" (16:14-19[23])

  3. Luke: Christ incognito, vanishing act, materialized out of thin air, reprimand, supper (24:13-51)

  4. John: Passed through solid door, disciples happy, Jesus blesses them, no reprimand (21:19-23)


Did Jesus stay on earth for more than a day?

  1. Mark: No (16:19[23]) Compare 16:14 with John 20:19 to show that this was all done on Sunday

  2. Luke: No (24:50-52) It all happened on Sunday

  3. John: Yes, at least eight days (20:26, 21:1-22)

  4. Acts: Yes, at least forty days (1:3)


Where did the ascension take place?

  1. Matthew: No ascension. Book ends on mountain in Galilee

  2. Mark: In or near Jerusalem, after supper (16:19[23])

  3. Luke: In Bethany, very close to Jerusalem, after supper (24:50-51)

  4. John: No ascension

  5. Paul: No ascension

  6. Acts: Ascended from Mount of Olives (1:9-12)
He is risen! Not.

Friday, March 14, 2008

A few faith-related notes

More from Mother Jones on the McCain-Hagee-Parsley connections.

A priest-cosmologist won the Templeton Prize. Although it's "faith-based", at least they distance themselves from ID.

Finally, the absurd policies of the Religious Right bear more rotten fruit: 1 in 4 teenage girls who are sexually active have at least one STD. There's also a sad race gap: more than one half of black girls have one, compared to only 20% of whites and Latinos. The teenagers themselves aren't in the least surprised. See an older piece of mine for more stats related to "abstinence only" education and abortions.

UPDATE: See this excellent item on the RR's policies of "marriage promotion" as well.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Wastewater Gumshoes 2, Pharma Water

Popular Science has a great article that forms a natural sequel to an article that I wrote about over two years ago (time flies) in Analytical Chemistry about how investigators are using wastewater (sewage) in measuring the concentrations of pharmaceutical and illegal drug byproducts and metabolites to gauge the drug usage by populations. As expected, the actual rates of drug usage by populations, as confirmed objectively in labs, is much higher than self-reported surveys tell us.

On a related note, CNN has an article about the levels of pharmaceuticals in our municipal drinking water sources. Although the levels of any one drug are very low, I do have to wonder about the multiplier effect and the issue of long-term exposure to human health. You can bet money that no one has ever conducted a study that replicates the cocktail of drugs we're exposed to over long periods of time. Maybe bottled water isn't so bad, after all...

Sunday, March 9, 2008

Academic freedom is for schmucks

Remember Cedarville U.? (Can't bear to call it a genuine "university")

It's in the news again.

On the other side of the irrational-rational divide, a particle physicist just got elected! I happen to think that if we stack Congress with enough Ph.D. scientists, our policies will finally be evidence-based...call me a dreamer!

Saturday, March 8, 2008

Consumer debt

*UPDATE: (6/8) - The breakdown in consumer debt, according to CNBC, is around $957B in "revolving" credit, comprised of credit cards and charge accounts, and $1.608T in "non-revolving" credit, comprised of college loans, car loans, etc. Doing the calcs on credit card debt, then, gives $957B/96M = $9958 per household. The average home having $10k in credit card debt is still rather scary...*

It seems almost incomprehensible that consumers now have $2.52 TRILLION in debt (besides mortgages).

The recent census estimates for the number of households in the US was 111 million in 2006; let's estimate 120 million households right now. Of those, estimate (generously) that 80% of all households have an active credit card, which means 96 million households have credit cards.

Divide $2.52 trillion by 96 million and you get $26,250 in credit card debt per household.

Despite protestations to the contrary, that looks like a lot of damn credit card debt.

I'm pretty worried about the economy. Stephen Roach talks about a "double bubble" that will only be solved by long-term painful re-adjustment of American's consumer spending and debt ratios. His proposed solution is focus on exports and re-investment in infrastructure. Our nation's infrastructure is crumbling, and Barack has a plan to invest the war's capital into exactly this sector, establishing a national infrastructure bank. Nice how that dovetails.

The Myth of the Surge

An excerpt from Rolling Stone's article on the surge:
It’s a cold, gray day in December, and I’m walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city’s no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what “victory” looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash stagnate in the pungent liquid. Most of the windows in the sand-colored homes are broken, and the wind blows through them, whistling eerily. House after house is deserted, bullet holes pockmarking their walls, their doors open and unguarded, many emptied of furniture. What few furnishings remain are covered by a thick layer of the fine dust that invades every space in Iraq. Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush’s much-heralded “surge,” Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood. Apart from our footsteps, there is complete silence.
(HT: C&L)

full-text below:
The Myth of the Surge
Hoping to turn enemies into allies, U.S. forces are arming Iraqis who fought with the insurgents. But it's already starting to backfire. A report from the front lines of the new Iraq
NIR ROSEN
Posted Mar 06, 2008 8:53 AM

It's a cold, gray day in December, and I'm walking down Sixtieth Street in the Dora district of Baghdad, one of the most violent and fearsome of the city's no-go zones. Devastated by five years of clashes between American forces, Shiite militias, Sunni resistance groups and Al Qaeda, much of Dora is now a ghost town. This is what "victory" looks like in a once upscale neighborhood of Iraq: Lakes of mud and sewage fill the streets. Mountains of trash stagnate in the pungent liquid. Most of the windows in the sand-colored homes are broken, and the wind blows through them, whistling eerily. House after house is deserted, bullet holes pockmarking their walls, their doors open and unguarded, many emptied of furniture. What few furnishings remain are covered by a thick layer of the fine dust that invades every space in Iraq. Looming over the homes are twelve-foot-high security walls built by the Americans to separate warring factions and confine people to their own neighborhood. Emptied and destroyed by civil war, walled off by President Bush's much-heralded "surge," Dora feels more like a desolate, post-apocalyptic maze of concrete tunnels than a living, inhabited neighborhood. Apart from our footsteps, there is complete silence.

My guide, a thirty-one-year-old named Osama who grew up in Dora, points to shops he used to go to, now abandoned or destroyed: a barbershop, a hardware store. Since the U.S. occupation began, Osama has watched civil war turn the streets where he grew up into an ethnic killing field. After the fall of Saddam, the Americans allowed looters and gangs to take over the streets, and Iraqi security forces were stripped of their jobs. The Mahdi Army, the powerful Shiite paramilitary force led by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, took advantage of the power shift to retaliate in areas such as Dora, where Shiites had been driven from their homes. Shiite forces tried to cleanse the district of Sunni families like Osama's, burning or confiscating their homes and torturing or killing those who refused to leave.

"The Mahdi Army was killing people here," Osama says, pointing to a now-destroyed Shiite mosque that in earlier times had been a cafe and before that an office for Saddam's Baath Party. Later, driving in the nearby district of Baya, Osama shows me a gas station. "They killed my uncle here. He didn't accept to leave. Twenty guys came to his house, the women were screaming. He ran to the back, but they caught him, tortured him and killed him." Under siege by Shiite militias and the U.S. military, who viewed Sunnis as Saddam supporters, and largely cut out of the Shiite-dominated government, many Sunnis joined the resistance. Others turned to Al Qaeda and other jihadists for protection.

Now, in the midst of the surge, the Bush administration has done an about-face. Having lost the civil war, many Sunnis were suddenly desperate to switch sides — and Gen. David Petraeus was eager to oblige. The U.S. has not only added 30,000 more troops in Iraq — it has essentially bribed the opposition, arming the very Sunni militants who only months ago were waging deadly assaults on American forces. To engineer a fragile peace, the U.S. military has created and backed dozens of new Sunni militias, which now operate beyond the control of Iraq's central government. The Americans call the units by a variety of euphemisms: Iraqi Security Volunteers (ISVs), neighborhood watch groups, Concerned Local Citizens, Critical Infrastructure Security. The militias prefer a simpler and more dramatic name: They call themselves Sahwa, or "the Awakening."

At least 80,000 men across Iraq are now employed by the Americans as ISVs. Nearly all are Sunnis, with the exception of a few thousand Shiites. Operating as a contractor, Osama runs 300 of these new militiamen, former resistance fighters whom the U.S. now counts as allies because they are cashing our checks. The Americans pay Osama once a month; he in turn provides his men with uniforms and pays them ten dollars a day to man checkpoints in the Dora district — a paltry sum even by Iraqi standards. A former contractor for KBR, Osama is now running an armed network on behalf of the United States government. "We use our own guns," he tells me, expressing regret that his units have not been able to obtain the heavy-caliber machine guns brandished by other Sunni militias.

The American forces responsible for overseeing "volunteer" militias like Osama's have no illusions about their loyalty. "The only reason anything works or anybody deals with us is because we give them money," says a young Army intelligence officer. The 2nd Squadron, 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, which patrols Osama's territory, is handing out $32 million to Iraqis in the district, including $6 million to build the towering walls that, in the words of one U.S. officer, serve only to "make Iraqis more divided than they already are." In districts like Dora, the strategy of the surge seems simple: to buy off every Iraqi in sight. All told, the U.S. is now backing more than 600,000 Iraqi men in the security sector — more than half the number Saddam had at the height of his power. With the ISVs in place, the Americans are now arming both sides in the civil war. "Iraqi solutions for Iraqi problems," as U.S. strategists like to say. David Kilcullen, the counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. Petraeus, calls it "balancing competing armed interest groups."

But loyalty that can be purchased is by its very nature fickle. Only months ago, members of the Awakening were planting IEDs and ambushing U.S. soldiers. They were snipers and assassins, singing songs in honor of Fallujah and fighting what they viewed as a war of national liberation against the foreign occupiers. These are men the Americans described as terrorists, Saddam loyalists, dead-enders, evildoers, Baathists, insurgents. There is little doubt what will happen when the massive influx of American money stops: Unless the new Iraqi state continues to operate as a vast bribing machine, the insurgent Sunnis who have joined the new militias will likely revert to fighting the ruling Shiites, who still refuse to share power.

"We are essentially supporting a quasi-feudal devolution of authority to armed enclaves, which exist at the expense of central government authority," says Chas Freeman, who served as ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush. "Those we are arming and training are arming and training themselves not to facilitate our objectives but to pursue their own objectives vis-a-vis other Iraqis. It means that the sectarian and ethnic conflicts that are now suppressed are likely to burst out with even greater ferocity in the future."

Maj. Pat Garrett, who works with the 2-2 Stryker Cavalry Regiment, is already having trouble figuring out what to do with all the new militiamen in his district. There are too few openings in the Iraqi security forces to absorb them all, even if the Shiite-dominated government agreed to integrate them. Garrett is placing his hopes on vocational-training centers that offer instruction in auto repair, carpentry, blacksmithing and English. "At the end of the day, they want a legitimate living," Garrett says. "That's why they're joining the ISVs."

But men who have taken up arms to defend themselves against both the Shiites and the Americans won't be easily persuaded to abandon their weapons in return for a socket wrench. After meeting recently in Baghdad, U.S. officials concluded in an internal report, "Most young Concerned Local Citizens would probably not agree to transition from armed defenders of their communities to the local garbage men or rubble cleanup crew working under the gaze of U.S. soldiers and their own families." The new militias have given members of the Awakening their first official foothold in occupied Iraq. They are not likely to surrender that position without a fight. The Shiite government is doing little to find jobs for them, because it doesn't want them back, and violence in Iraq is already starting to escalate. By funding the ISVs and rearming the Sunnis who were stripped of their weapons at the start of the occupation, America has created a vast, uncoordinated security establishment. If the Shiite government of Iraq does not allow Sunnis in the new militias to join the country's security forces, warns one leader of the Awakening, "It will be worse than before."

Osama, for his part, seems like everything that American forces would want in a Sunni militiaman. He speaks fluent English, wears jeans and baseball caps, and is well-connected from his days with KBR. Before the ISVs were set up, Osama and a dozen of his original men were known to U.S. troops as "the Heroes" for their work in pointing out Al Qaeda suspects and uncovering improvised explosive devices in Dora. Osama's men helped find at least sixty of these deadly bombs. In today's Baghdad, the trust of the American overlords is a valuable commodity. Osama's power stems almost entirely from his access to U.S. contracts.

As a result, members of the Awakening who had previously attacked Americans and Shiites are now collaborating with Osama. "To a large extent they are former insurgents," says Capt. Travis Cox of the 2-2 Stryker Cavalry Regiment. Most of Osama's men had belonged to Sunni resistance groups such as the Army of the Mujahedeen, the Islamic Army and the 1920 Revolution Brigades, named for the uprising against the British occupation that year. Even Osama admits that some of his men's loyalty is questionable. "Yesterday we arrested three guys as Al Qaeda infiltrators," he tells me. "They thought that they were powerful because they are ISV, so no one will touch them. You got to watch them every day."

Osama himself makes no secret of his hatred for the Shiite government and its security forces. As we walk by a checkpoint manned by the Iraqi National Police, which is comprised almost entirely of Shiites, Osama looks at the uniformed officers in disgust. "I want to kill them," he tells me, "but the Americans make us work together."

Although Osama insists that he has no connections to Al Qaeda or other jihadists, his fellow leaders of the ISVs in Dora are directly tied to the Sunni resistance. Since the Americans often require that each mahala, or neighborhood, have two ISV bosses, Osama has given half of his 300 men to Abu Salih, a man with dark reddish skin, a sharp nose and small piercing eyes. "We know Abu Salih is former Al Qaeda of Iraq," a U.S. Army officer from the area tells me. In fact, when I meet with him, Abu Salih freely admits that some of his men belonged to Al Qaeda. They joined the American-sponsored militias, he says, so they could have an identity card as protection should they get arrested.

The other leader working with Osama is Abu Yasser, a handsome and jovial man who wears a matching green sweatshirt and sweatpants, with a pistol in a shoulder holster. "Abu Yasser is the real boss," says an American intelligence officer. "That guy's an animal — he's crazy." A former member of Saddam's General Security Service, Abu Yasser had joined the Army of the Mujahedeen, a resistance organization that fought the U.S. occupation in Mosul and south Baghdad. He still has scars on his arms from the battles, and he put my hand on his forearm to feel the shrapnel embedded within. Like Osama and Abu Salih, he views the Shiite-led government as the real enemy. "There is no difference between the Mahdi Army and Iran," he tells me. Now that he is working for the Americans, he has no intention of laying down his arms. "If the government doesn't let us join the police," he says, "we'll stay here protecting our area."

To watch the ISVs in action, I accompany U.S. soldiers from the 2-2 Stryker Cavalry Regiment on a mission in the neighborhood. After meeting up with Osama, Abu Salih and Abu Yasser at a police checkpoint, we walk down Sixtieth Street to the Tawhid Mosque, followed by Stryker armored vehicles from the 2-2 SCR. First Lt. Shawn Spainhour, a contracting officer with the unit, asks the sheik at the mosque what help he needs. The mosque's generator has been shot up by armed Shiites, and the sheik requests $3,000 to fix it. Spainhour takes notes. "I probably can do that," he says.

The sheik also asks for a Neighborhood Advisory Council to be set up in his area "so it will see our problems." The NACs, as they're known, are being created and funded by the Americans to give power to Sunnis cut out of the political process. As with the ISVs, however, the councils effectively operate as independent institutions that do not answer to the central Iraqi government. Many Shiites in the Iraqi National Police consider the NACs as little more than a front for insurgents: One top-ranking officer accused the leader of a council in Dora of being an Al Qaeda terrorist. "I have an order from the Ministry of Interior to arrest him," the officer told me.

As Spainhour talks to the sheik at the mosque, two bearded, middle-aged men in sweaters suddenly walk up to the Americans with a tip. Two men down the street, they insist, are members of the Mahdi Army. The soldiers quickly get back into the Strykers, as do Osama and his men, and they all race to Mahala 830. There they find a group of young men stringing electrical cables across the street. Some of the men manage to run off, but the eleven who remain are forced into a courtyard and made to squat facing the walls. They all wear flip-flops. Soldiers from the unit take their pictures one by one. The grunts are frustrated: For most of them, this is as close to combat as they have gotten, and they're eager for action.

"Somebody move!" shouts one soldier. "I'm in the mood to hit somebody!"

Another soldier pushes a suspect against the wall. "You know Abu Ghraib?" he taunts.

The Iraqis do not resist — they are accustomed to such treatment. Raids by U.S. forces have become part of the daily routine in Iraq, a systematic form of violence imposed on an entire nation. A foreign military occupation is, by its very nature, a terrifying and brutal thing, and even the most innocuous American patrols inevitably involve terrorizing innocent Iraqi civilians. Every man in a market is rounded up and searched at gunpoint. Soldiers, their faces barely visible behind helmets and goggles, burst into a home late at night, rip the place apart looking for weapons, blindfold and handcuff the men as the children look on, whimpering and traumatized. U.S. soldiers are the only law in Iraq, and you are at their whim. Raids like this one are scenes in a long-running drama, and by now everyone knows their part by heart. "I bet there's an Iraqi rap song about being arrested by us," an American soldier jokes to me at one point.

As the soldiers storm into nearby homes, the two men who had tipped off the Americans come up to me, thinking I am a military translator. They look bemused. The Americans, they tell me in Arabic, have got the wrong men. The eleven squatting in the courtyard are all Sunnis, not Shiites; some are even members of the Awakening and had helped identify the Mahdi Army suspects.

I try to tell the soldiers they've made a mistake — it looks like the Iraqis had been trying to connect a house to a generator — but the Americans don't listen. All they see are the wires on the ground: To them, that means the Iraqis must have been trying to lay an improvised explosive device. "If an IED is on the ground," one tells me, "we arrest everybody in a 100-meter radius." As the soldiers blindfold and handcuff the eleven Iraqis, the two tipsters look on, puzzled to see U.S. troops arresting their own allies.

In a nearby house, the soldiers find Mahdi Army "propaganda" and arrest several men, including one called Sabrin al-Haqir, or Sabrin "the mean," an alleged leader of the Mahdi Army. The Strykers transport the prisoners, including the men from the courtyard, to Combat Outpost Blackfoot. Inside, Osama and Abu Salih drink sodas and eat muffins and thank the Americans for arresting Sabrin. Everyone agrees that the mission was a great success — the kind of street-to-street collaboration that the ISVs were designed to encourage.

The Sunnis from the first house the Americans raided are released, the plastic cuffs that have been digging into their wrists cut off, and three of them are taken to sign sworn statements implicating Sabrin. An American captain instructs them to list who did what, where, when and how. Abu Salih, the militia leader, walks by and tells the men in Arabic to implicate Sabrin in an attack. They dutifully obey, telling the Americans what they want to hear so they will be released.

Osama, meanwhile, uses the opportunity to lobby the Americans for more weapons. Meeting with a sergeant from the unit, he asks if he can have a PKC, or heavy-caliber machine gun, to put on top of his pickup truck.

"No," the sergeant says.

"But we can hide it," Osama pleads.

After processing, Sabrin is moved to a "detainee holding facility" at Forward Operating Base Prosperity. At least 25,000 Iraqis are now in such U.S. facilities — up from 16,000 only a year ago. "We were able to confirm through independent reporting that he was a bad guy" from the Mahdi Army, a U.S. intelligence officer tells me. "He was involved in EJKs" — extrajudicial killings, a military euphemism for murders.

To the Americans, the Awakening represents a grand process of reconciliation, a way to draw more Sunnis into the fold. But whatever reconciliation the ISVs offer lies between the Americans and the Iraqis, not among Iraqis themselves. Most Shiites I speak with believe that the same Sunnis who have been slaughtering Shiites throughout Iraq are now being empowered and legitimized by the Americans as members of the ISVs. On one raid with U.S. troops, I see children chasing after the soldiers, asking them for candy. But when they learn I speak Arabic, they tell me how much they like the Mahdi Army and Muqtada al-Sadr. "The Americans are donkeys," one boy says. "When they are here we say, 'I love you,' but when they leave we say, 'Fuck you.'"

In an ominous sign for the future, some of the Iraqis who are angriest about the new militias are those who are supposed to bring peace and security to the country: the Iraqi National Police. More paramilitary force than street cops, the INP resembles the National Guard in the U.S. Along with the local Iraqi police and the Iraqi army, the INP is populated mainly by members and supporters of the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias. The police had fought in the civil war, often targeting Sunni civilians and cleansing Sunni areas. One morning I accompany Lt. Col. Myron Reineke of the 2-2 SCR to a meeting at the headquarters of the 7th Brigade of the Iraqi National Police. The brigade is housed in a former home of Ali Hassan al-Majid, the notorious "Chemical Ali." Now called a JSS, or joint security station, it is particularly feared by Sunnis, who were frequently kidnapped by the National Police and released for ransom, if they were lucky. The station is also rumored to have been used as a base by Shiite militias for torturing Sunnis.

Reineke finds the brigade's commander, Brig. Gen. Abdul Karim Abud, sitting behind a large wooden desk surrounded by plastic flowers. Behind him is a photograph of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. To his side is a shotgun. Five or six of his officers, all Shiites, surround him. Karim and his men greet the delegation of Americans warmly — but then, the Americans are greeted warmly wherever they go. They assume that this means they are liked, but Iraqis have nothing to lose — and everything to gain — by pretending to be their friends.

Karim begins the meeting by accusing the Awakening of being a front for terrorists. "We have information that the Baath Party and Al Qaeda have infiltrated Sahwa," he tells Reineke. "It's very dangerous. Sahwa is killing people in Seidiya."

A few days later, I return to meet with Karim without the Americans present. I find him talking to several high-ranking Shiite officers in the Iraqi army about members of the Awakening, who have been taking over homes in Dora that once belonged to Shiites. "We need to bring back the Shiites, but the Sunnis are in the houses," one colonel tells Karim. "This battle is bigger than the other battles — this is the battle of the displaced." To these men, the Awakening is reviled: Eavesdropping on their Arabic conversation, I hear him angrily condemn "killers, terrorists, ugly pigs!"

Karim's phone rings, and he begins talking with a superior officer about a clash the previous day between the Awakening and armed Shiite militias. The ISVs had battled the Mahdi Army, but Karim blames U.S. troops for establishing an ISV unit in the area. "American officers took Sahwa men to a sector where they shouldn't be," he says. "Residents saw armed men not in uniforms and shot at them from buildings. Four Sahwa were injured. My battalion was called in to help." After listening for a moment, he agrees with his superior officer on a solution: Members of the Awakening must be forced out. "Yes, sir," he says. "Sahwa will withdraw from that area. They started the problem."

Away from the Americans, Karim and his men make no secret of their hatred for the Awakening. One of the most frequent visitors to Karim's headquarters is a stern and thuggish man named Abu Jaafar. A Shiite known to the Americans as Sheik Ali, Abu Jaafar has his own ISV unit of 100 men in the Saha neighborhood of Dora. "He may not be JAM," an American major tells me, using the common shorthand for the Mahdi Army, "but he has a lot of JAM friends."

The Awakening, Abu Jaafar tells me, is full of men who once belonged not just to the 1920 Revolution Brigades and the Army of the Mujahedeen but also to Al Qaeda. He pulls out a list of forty-six people from the neighborhood. "Criminals in Sahwa," he says. He points to two names. "The Americans told me, 'If you see these two men, you can kill them or bring them to us.' Now they are wearing the Sahwa uniform. They say they have reconciled."

Abu Jaafar looks at me and smiles. Shiites, he says, do not need the Awakening. "We are already awake," he says. "Our eyes are open. We know everything. We're just waiting."

U.S. troops who work with the Iraqi National Police realize that beyond their gaze, the country's security forces do not act anything like police. "The INPs here are almost all Shiites," says Maj. Jeffrey Gottlieb, a lanky tank officer who oversees a unit charged with training Iraqi police. "Orders from their chain of command are usually to arrest Sunnis, not Shiites." The police have also been conducting what Gottlieb calls "United Van Lines missions" — resettling displaced Shiite families in homes abandoned by Sunnis. "The National Police ask, 'Can you help us move a family's furniture?' We don't know if the people coming back were even from here originally." Gottlieb shrugs. "We don't know as much as we could, because we don't know Arabic," he says.

Gottlieb had recently conducted an inventory of the weapons assigned to the 172 INP — short for 1st Battalion, 7th Brigade, 2nd Division. There were 550 weapons missing, including pistols, rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers. "Guys take weapons when they go AWOL," he says. The police were also reporting fake engagements and then transferring to Shiite militias the ammunition they had supposedly fired. "It was funny how they always expended 400 rounds of ammunition," Gottlieb says.

Then there is the problem of "ghost police." Although 542 men officially belong to the 172 INP on paper, only 200 or so show up at any given time. Some are on leave, but many simply do not exist, their salaries pocketed by officers. "Officers get a certain number of ghosts," Gottlieb tells me. He looks at a passing American soldier. "I need some ghosts," he jokes. "How much are you making?"

When I go to visit the 172 INP, American officers from the 2-2 SCR admonish me to wear my body armor — to protect myself from accidental discharges by the Iraqi police. "I did convoy security in the Sunni Triangle and was hit by numerous IEDs, complex attacks, small arms," Capt. Cox tells me. "But I never felt closer to death than when I was working with Iraqi security forces."

The night I arrive, thirty-five members of the Iraqi National Police are going out on a joint raid with Americans from the National Police Training Team. The raid is being led by Capt. Arkan Hashim Ali, a trim thirty-year-old Iraqi with a shaved head and a sharp gaze. Because seventy-five percent of all officer positions in the INP are vacant, officers like Arkan often end up assuming many roles at once. Arkan gathers his men in an empty room for a mission briefing. Cardboard and Styrofoam models have been arranged to replicate the Humvees and pickup trucks they will be using. The men all wear the same blue uniforms, but they sport a hodgepodge of helmets, flak jackets and boots.

"Today we have an operation in Mahala 830," Arkan announces. "Do you know it? Our target is an Al Qaeda guy." Salah and Muhamad, two brothers suspected of working with Al Qaeda, would be visiting their brother Falah's home that night. Falah was known as Falah al-Awar, or "the one-eyed," because he had lost one of his eyes. Arrested two weeks earlier by the Americans, he had revealed under interrogation that his brothers were involved in attacking and kidnapping Americans. "He dimed his brothers out," an American officer tells me.

The briefing over, Arkan asks his men to repeat his instructions, ordering them to shout the answers. Then they head out on the raid.

At Falah's house, the INPs move quickly, climbing over the wall and breaking the main gate. Bursting into the house, they herd the women and children into the living room while they bind Muhamad's hands with strips of cloth. Muhamad begins to cry. "My father is dead," he sobs. Arkan reassures him but also controls him, holding the top of Muhamad's head with his hand, as if he were palming a basketball. The women in the house ask how long the two brothers will be taken for. Arkan tells them they are being held for questioning and describes where his base is. Then the INPs speed off in their pickup trucks, causing the Americans to smile at their rush to get away.

"We just picked up some Sunnis," jokes an American sergeant. "We're getting the fuck outta here."

The next day, Sunni leaders from the area meet with the American soldiers. The two brothers, they claim, are innocent. Before the 2-2 SCR arrived, the 172 INP had a history of going on forays into Sunni neighborhoods just to punish civilians. Fearing for their safety, the Sunni leaders ask if the two brothers can be transferred to American custody.

The Americans know that the entire raid may have been simply another witch hunt, a way for the Shiite police to intimidate Sunni civilians. The INP, U.S. officers concede, use Al Qaeda as a "scare word" to describe all Sunni suspects.

"Yeah, the moral ambiguity of what we do is not lost on me," Maj. Gottlieb tells me. "We have no way of knowing if those guys did what they say they did."

With American forces now arming both sides in the civil war, the violence in Iraq has once again started to escalate. In January, some 100 members of the new Sunni militias — whom the Americans have now taken to calling "the Sons of Iraq" — were assassinated in Baghdad and other urban areas. In one attack, a teenage bomber blew himself up at a meeting of Awakening leaders in Anbar Province, killing several members of the group. Most of the attacks came from Al Qaeda and other Sunni factions, some of whom are fighting for positions of power in the new militias.

One day in early February, I accompany several of the ISV leaders from Dora to the Sahwa Council, the Awakening's headquarters in Ramadi. They are hoping to translate their local military gains into a political advantage by gaining the council's stamp of approval. On the way, Abu Salih admires a pickup truck outfitted with a Dushka, a large Russian anti-aircraft gun. "Now that's Sahwa," Abu Salih says, gazing wistfully at the weapon. Then he spots more Sahwa men driving Humvees armed with belt-fed machine guns. "Ooh," he murmurs, "look at that PKC."

At Sahwa headquarters, in an opulent guest hall, Abu Salih meets Sheik Ahmed Abu Risha, brother of the slain founder of the movement, who sits on an ornate, thronelike chair. "How is Dora?" he asks Abu Salih, sounding like a king inquiring about his subject's estate. Then he leads us into a smaller office, where three of Abu Salih's rivals from Dora are gathered. All of the men refer to Abu Risha with deference, calling him "our older brother" and "our father." It is a strange reversal of past roles: urban Sunnis from Baghdad pledging their allegiance to a desert tribal leader, looking to the periphery for protection and political representation. But the Americans have empowered Abu Risha, and Baghdad's Sunni militiamen hope to unite with him to fight their Shiite rivals.

It doesn't take long, however, for the meeting to devolve into open hostility. One of the rivals dismisses Abu Salih and his men as mere guards, not true Sahwa. "You are military, and we are political," he jeers, accusing Abu Salih of having been a member of Al Qaeda. Abu Salih turns red and waves his arms over his head. "Nobody lies about Abu Salih!" he shouts.

Abu Risha's political adviser attempts to calm the men. "Are we in the time of Saddam Hussein?" he asks. The rivals should hold elections in Dora, he suggests, to decide who will represent the Awakening there. In the end, though, Abu Salih emerges from the meeting with official recognition from the council. All of the men speak with respect for the resistance and jihad. To them, the Awakening is merely a hudna, or cease-fire, with the American occupation. The real goal is their common enemy: Iraq's Shiites.

Some of the escalating violence in recent weeks is the work of the Mahdi Army and other Shiite paramilitary forces to intimidate Sunnis like Abu Salih and prevent members of the Awakening from cooperating with the Americans. Even members of the Iraqi National Police who refuse to take sides in the bloody rivalry are being targeted. Capt. Arkan, the Iraqi who led the raid for the 172 INP, has tried to remain nonsectarian in the midst of the bitter new divisiveness that is tearing Iraq apart. Like others who served in the Iraqi army before the U.S. occupation, he sees himself as a soldier first and foremost. "Most of the officers that came back to the police are former army officers," he says. "Their loyalty is to their country." His father is Shiite, but Arkan was forced to leave his home in the majority-Shiite district of Shaab after he was threatened by the Mahdi Army, who demanded that he obtain weapons for them. He had paid a standard $600 bribe to join the police, but he was denied the job until a friend intervened.

"Before the war, it was just one party," Arkan tells me. "Now we have 100,000 parties. I have Sunni officer friends, but nobody lets them get back into service. First they take money, then they ask if you are Sunni or Shiite. If you are Shiite, good." He dreams of returning to the days when the Iraqi army served the entire country. "In Saddam's time, nobody knew what is Sunni and what is Shiite," he says. The Bush administration based its strategy in Iraq on the mistaken notion that, under Saddam, the Sunni minority ruled the Shiite majority. In fact, Iraq had no history of serious sectarian violence or civil war between the two groups until the Americans invaded. Most Iraqis viewed themselves as Iraqis first, with their religious sects having only personal importance. Intermarriage was widespread, and many Iraqi tribes included both Sunnis and Shiites. Under Saddam, both the ruling Baath Party and the Iraqi army were majority Shiite.

Arkan, in a sense, is a man in the middle. He believes that members of the Awakening have the right to join the Iraqi security forces, but he also knows that their ranks are filled with Al Qaeda and other insurgents. "Sahwa is the same people who used to be attacking us," he says. Yet he does not trust his own men in the INP.

"Three-fourths of them are Mahdi Army," he tells me, locking his door before speaking. His own men pass information on him to the Shiite forces, which have threatened him for cooperating with the new Sunni militias. One day, Arkan was summoned to meet with the commander of his brigade's intelligence sector. When he arrived, he found a leader of the Mahdi Army named Wujud waiting for him.

"Arkan, be careful — we will kill you," Wujud told him. "I know where you live. My guys will put you in the trunk of a car."

I ask Arkan why he had not arrested Wujud. "They know us," he says. "I'm not scared for myself. I've had thirty-eight IEDs go off next to me. But I'm scared for my family."

Later I accompany Arkan to his home. As we approach an INP checkpoint, he grows nervous. Even though he is an INP officer, he does not want the police to know who he is, lest his own men inform the Mahdi Army about his attitude and the local INPs, who are loyal to the Mahdi Army, target him and his family. At his home, his two boys are watching television in the small living room. "I've decided to leave my job," Arkan tells me. "No one supports us." The Americans are threatening him if he doesn't pursue the Mahdi Army more aggressively, while his own superiors are seeking to fire him for the feeble attempts he has made to target the Mahdi Army.

On my final visit with Arkan, he picks me up in his van. For lack of anywhere safe to talk, we sit in the front seat as he nervously scans every man who walks by. He is not optimistic for the future. Arkan knows that the U.S. "surge" has succeeded only in exacerbating the tension among Iraq's warring parties and bickering politicians. The Iraqi government is still nonexistent outside the Green Zone. While U.S.-built walls have sealed off neighborhoods in Baghdad, Shiite militias are battling one another in the south over oil and control of the lucrative pilgrimage industry. Anbar Province is in the hands of Sunni militias who battle each other, and the north is the scene of a nascent civil war between Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen. The jobs promised to members of the Awakening have not materialized: An internal U.S. report concludes that "there is no coherent plan at this time" to employ them, and the U.S. Agency for International Development "is reluctant to accept any responsibility" for the jobs program because it has a "high likelihood of failure." Sunnis and even some Shiites have quit the government, which is unable to provide any services, and the prime minister has circumvented parliament to issue decrees and sign agreements with the Americans that parliament would have opposed.

But such political maneuvers don't really matter in Iraq. Here, street politics trump any illusory laws passed in the safety of the Green Zone. As the Awakening gains power, Al Qaeda lies dormant throughout Baghdad, the Mahdi Army and other Shiite forces prepare for the next battle, and political assassinations and suicide bombings are an almost daily occurrence. The violence, Arkan says, is getting worse again.

"The situation won't get better," he says softly. An officer of the Iraqi National Police, a man charged with bringing peace to his country, he has been reduced to hiding in his van, unable to speak openly in the very neighborhood he patrols. Thanks to the surge, both the Shiites and the Sunnis now have weapons and legitimacy. And what can come of that, Arkan asks, except more fighting?

"Many people in Sahwa work for Al Qaeda," he says. "The national police are all loyal to the Mahdi Army." He shakes his head. "You work hard to build a house, and somebody blows up your house. Will they accept Sunnis back to Shiite areas and Shiites back to Sunni areas? If someone kills your brother, can you forget his killer?"
And this is the clusterf&*k that is Vietraq: an endless spiral of violence.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

A few politics notes

W on climate change: Dumb president, or the dumbest president? We all know it's the latter.

It looks like the war's cost will continue to be stealing from our nation's crumbling infrastructure, until the failed occupation comes to an end. Barack has a plan to invest the war's capital into exactly this sector, establishing a national infrastructure bank.

One of the far-right's favorite hangouts, Town Hall, gets absurd (as usual) with "Would Jesus Carry Concealed?". Jesus' General has an intellectually-on-par response: of course! As I've pointed out before, "The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated?" (1 Cor. 6:7 NIV) and Jesus said, "And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well." (Matt. 5:40, NIV). Jesus also talked about turning the other cheek, walking an additional mile...&c. How different religious ideals seem from their practice in reality.

Tangentially, this article reviewing the first four presidents' views on church-state separation is great:
I've pointed out many times the basic split among the first four presidents on such matters. Washington and Adams were what might be called non-coercive accommodationists, while Jefferson and Madison were strict separationists. Washington and Adams believed that the government should provide a general and rhetorical support to religion through proclamations of days of thanksgiving and prayer, but only if those proclamations were kept non-coercive (that is, no one was required to follow them) and they were worded very broadly so as to encompass almost any religious belief, not merely Christianity.

As the general election looms, hanging Bush around McCain's neck is quite easily done. See the new ad, "McSame as Bush":

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Of flag lapel pins and shallow "patriotic" nonsense

Read Frank Rich...I do!
What repeatedly goes unrecognized by all of Mr. Obama’s opponents is that his political Kryptonite is the patriotism he offers in lieu of theirs. His upbeat notion of a yes-we-can national mobilization for the common good, however saccharine, speaks to the pride and idealism of Americans who are bone-weary of a patriotism defined exclusively by flag lapel pins, the fear of terrorism and the prospect of perpetual war.
Reminds me of the quote oft-attributed to Sinclair Lewis (erroneously, it appears):
"When fascism comes to America it will come wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross."
My take: the sorts of people who work to convince you of their patriotism and their love of God are those you should be most afraid of.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

The black hole of $ that is Vietraq

*UPDATE: See Herbert's column on the possibility of this being a $3 TRILLION war. More from Bilmes and Stiglitz.*

The Chicago Tribune has a new investigative report on the fleecing of American tax dollars by W's corporate supporters. $45 / can of soda is a pretty nice profit margin for KBR - Halliburton, huh? (full-text below)

But that's only the tip of the iceberg -- consider the billions and billions we've "lost" or had stolen since this war began. The true costs of these wars will not be known for years.

This adds to the war oil profiteering on the part of American and European energy companies.


LINK
chicagotribune.com
TRIBUNE INVESTIGATION
Inside the world of war profiteers
From prostitutes to Super bowl tickets, a federal probe reveals how contractors in Iraq cheated the U.S.

By David Jackson and Jason Grotto

Tribune reporters

February 21, 2008

ROCK ISLAND, Ill.—Inside the stout federal courthouse of this Mississippi River town, the dirty secrets of Iraq war profiteering keep pouring out.

Hundreds of pages of recently unsealed court records detail how kickbacks shaped the war's largest troop support contract months before the first wave of U.S. soldiers plunged their boots into Iraqi sand.

The graft continued well beyond the 2004 congressional hearings that first called attention to it. And the massive fraud endangered the health of American soldiers even as it lined contractors' pockets, records show.

Federal prosecutors in Rock Island have indicted four former supervisors from KBR, the giant defense firm that holds the contract, along with a decorated Army officer and five executives from KBR subcontractors based in the U.S. or the Middle East. Those defendants, along with two other KBR employees who have pleaded guilty in Virginia, account for a third of the 36 people indicted to date on Iraq war-contract crimes, Justice Department records show.

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Rock Island sentenced the Army official, Chief Warrant Officer Peleti "Pete" Peleti Jr., to 28 months in prison for taking bribes. One Middle Eastern subcontractor treated him to a trip to the 2006 Super Bowl, a defense investigator said.

Prosecutors would not confirm or deny ongoing grand jury activity. But court records identify a dozen FBI, IRS and military investigative agents who have been assigned to the case. Interviews as well as testimony at the sentencing for Peleti, who has cooperated with authorities, suggest an active probe.

Rock Island serves as a center for the probe of war profiteering because Army brass at the arsenal here administer KBR's so-called LOGCAP III contract to feed, shelter and support U.S. soldiers, and to help restore Iraq's oil infrastructure.

In one case, a freight-shipping subcontractor confessed to giving $25,000 in illegal gratuities to five unnamed KBR employees "to build relationships to get additional business," according to the man's December 2007 statement to a federal judge in the Rock Island court. Separately, Peleti named five military colleagues who allegedly accepted bribes. Prosecutors also have identified three senior KBR executives who allegedly approved inflated bids. None of those 13 people has been charged.

A common thread runs through these cases and other KBR scandals in Iraq, from allegations the firm failed to protect employees sexually assaulted by co-workers to findings that it charged $45 per can of soda: The Pentagon has outsourced crucial troop support jobs while slashing the number of government contract watchdogs.

The dollar value of Army contracts quadrupled from $23.3 billion in 1992 to $100.6 billion in 2006, according to a recent report by a Pentagon panel. But the number of Army contract supervisors was cut from 10,000 in 1990 to 5,500 currently.

Last week, the Army pledged to add 1,400 positions to its contracting command. But even those embroiled in the frauds acknowledge the impact of so much war privatization.

"I think we downsized past the point of general competency," said subcontractor Christopher Cahill, who for a decade prepared military supply depots under LOGCAP. Now serving 30 months in federal prison for fraud, Cahill added: "The point of a standing army is to have them equipped."

KBR, a former subsidiary of Halliburton Co., says it has been paid $28 billion under LOGCAP III. The firm says it quickly reports all instances of suspected fraud and has repaid the Defense Department more than $1 million for questionable invoices.

In a statement, KBR said its roughly 20,000 employees and 40,000 subcontractors have performed laudably in a war zone where Army demands shift rapidly and local suppliers don't always maintain ledger books. Spokeswoman Heather Browne wrote: "Ethics and integrity are core values for KBR."

But a wiretapped transcript recently released in Rock Island underscores the brazen nature of the exceptions.

In October 2005, with federal agents tailing them, three war contractors slipped through London's posh Cumberland hotel before meeting in a quiet lounge. For the rest of that afternoon, the men sipped cognac and whiskey and discussed the bribes that had greased contracts to supply U.S. troops in Iraq.

Former KBR procurement manager Stephen Seamans, who was wearing a wire strapped on by a Rock Island agent, wondered aloud whether to return $65,000 in kickbacks he got from his two companions, executives from the Saudi conglomerate Tamimi Global Co.

One of the men, Tamimi operations director Shabbir Khan, urged him to hide the money by concocting phony business records.

"Just do the paperwork," Khan said.

Party houses, prostitutes
In October 2002, five months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, Khan threw a birthday party for Seamans at a Tamimi "party house" near the Kuwait base known as Camp Arifjan. Khan "provided Seamans with a prostitute as a present," Rock Island prosecutors wrote in court papers. Driving Seamans back to his quarters, Khan offered kickbacks that would total $130,000.

Five days later, with Seamans and Khan hammering out the fine print, KBR awarded Tamimi the war's first $14.4 million mess hall subcontract, court records show.

In April 2003, as American troops poured into Iraq, Seamans gave Khan inside information that enabled Tamimi to secure a $2 million KBR subcontract to establish a mess hall at a Baghdad palace. Seamans submitted change orders that inflated that subcontract to $7.4 million.

By June, Seamans and fellow KBR procurement manager Jeff Mazon, a Country Club Hills resident, had executed subcontracts worth $321 million. At least one deal put U.S. soldiers at risk.

The Army LOGCAP contract required KBR to medically screen the thousands of kitchen workers that subcontractors like Tamimi imported from impoverished villages in Nepal, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

But when Pentagon officials asked for medical records in March 2004, Khan presented "bogus" files for 550 Tamimi workers, Assistant U.S. Atty. Jeffrey Lang said in a court hearing last year.

KBR retested those 550 workers at a Kuwait City clinic and found 172 positive for exposure to hepatitis A, Lang told the judge. Khan tried to suppress those findings, warning the clinic director that Tamimi would do no more business with his medical office if he "told KBR about these results," Lang said in court. The infectious virus can cause fatigue and other symptoms that arise weeks after contact.

Retesting of the 172 found that none had contagious hepatitis A, Lang said, and Khan's attorneys said in court that no soldiers caught diseases from the workers or from meals they prepared. It remains unclear if that is because the workers were treated or because they did not remain infectious after the onset of symptoms.

Still, the incident shows how even mundane meal contracts can put troops at risk. Similar disease-testing breaches cropped up at cafeterias outsourced to firms besides Tamimi, former KBR Area Supervisor Rene Robinson said in a Tribune interview.

"That was an ongoing problem," Robinson said. "When the military asked for paperwork, it was spotty." KBR was forced to begin vaccinating the employees at their work sites, he added.

Tamimi and its U.S. lawyers did not respond to requests for comment. The company has said it is cooperating with federal authorities.

By July 2005, Tamimi had secured some 30 KBR troop feeding subcontracts worth $793.5 million, records show. Khan continued to negotiate Iraq war subcontracts for Tamimi until shortly before he was arrested in Rock Island in March 2006.

He is now serving a 51-month prison sentence for lying to federal agents about the kickbacks he wired to Seamans, who pleaded guilty and served a year and a day in prison. Both declined to comment.

Seamans, a 46-year-old Air Force veteran, once taught ethics to junior KBR employees. At his December 2006 sentencing hearing, he expressed remorse for taking the kickbacks, telling the judge: "It is not the way that Americans do business."

It was another repentant LOGCAP veteran standing before a Rock Island judge on Wednesday. Peleti, formerly the military's top food service adviser for the Middle East, wept as he admitted taking bribes from Tamimi and three other subcontractors between 2003 and early 2006.

Ribbons and badges glittered across Peleti's pressed green Army shirt. "I stand here before you today to convey my remorse and sincere regret," he said, then broke down.

One subcontractor, Public Warehousing Co., took Peleti and another top Army official to the Super Bowl, a defense investigator said in court Wednesday. The firm has denied wrongdoing. Khan also bribed Peleti to influence LOGCAP contracts with cash. Peleti was arrested in 2006 while re-entering the U.S. at Dover Air Force Base with a duffel bag stuffed with watches and jewelry as well as about $40,000 concealed in his clothing.

While prosecutors documented kickbacks in only the first two of Tamimi's mess hall subcontracts, they contend that the tone was set to corrupt the system.

"Tamimi and Mr. Khan have their hooks into Mr. Seamans, they have their hooks into KBR," Lang said in court last year. "It is difficult to assess the kind of damage that did to the integrity of the subcontracting process when the first two subcontracts are corrupted."

Auditors in the basement


Military auditors say they closely monitor the layers of KBR subcontractors who actually perform most of the LOGCAP work, stationing teams in Iraq. But one Rock Island search warrant said auditors working back in the U.S. could manage only limited reviews of the cascade of deals.

In the basement of one of KBR's Houston office buildings, a 25-member team from the Defense Contract Audit Agency had "no communications" with "personnel on the ground," so they could not confirm whether goods and services actually were delivered, the search warrant application said.

In the absence of oversight, some Middle Eastern businessmen would offer "Rolex watches, leather jackets, prostitutes, and the KBR guys weren't shy about bragging about the fact that they were being treated to all that stuff," said Paul Morrell, whose firm The Event Source ran several mess halls as a KBR subcontractor.

Such questionable relationships continued long after early procurement managers like Seamans had been rooted out. Early subcontractors such as Tamimi became almost indispensable in part by outfitting Army cafeterias with expensive power generators and refrigeration systems, records and interviews show.

"If you ever gave Tamimi a hard time, you'd get a call," former KBR subcontract manager Harry DeWolf told the Tribune.

When subcontracts came up for renegotiation, DeWolf said, companies like Tamimi "would say, 'Fine, we're going to pull out all of our people and equipment.' They really had KBR and the government over the barrel."

Complicating the investigation of war-contract crimes, the government of Kuwait has denied a U.S. request to extradite two Middle Eastern businessmen accused of LOGCAP fraud. The country's ambassador last year sent letters to the Justice Department asking the U.S. to drop its case against one of them, arguing that international agreements forbid U.S. prosecution of Kuwaiti residents for crimes allegedly committed on Kuwaiti soil. Prosecutors disagree, but a judge is considering Kuwait's assertion.

Investigators also have faced challenges in dealing with KBR. The company has withheld some internal company documents relating to Mazon, Seaman's fellow KBR procurement manager, the firm's attorneys wrote in court filings.

In response to one subpoena, the firm gave agents about 2,760 of Mazon's computer files but withheld 398 others, saying they were covered by attorney-client privilege or other protections.

Federal prosecutors say they have given KBR no special treatment and that the company has legal rights afforded to all firms whose employees have been charged with wrongdoing. "We did withhold some documents as being privileged," a KBR spokeswoman wrote, but added that the company has provided statements and grand jury testimony.

Mazon has pleaded not guilty to charges that he inflated a fuel contract. His attorneys say the fuel subcontract was accidentally inflated when figures were converted from U.S. dollars to Kuwaiti dinars then back again. At least 22 KBR troop support subcontracts were inflated through similar errors, Mazon's attorney J. Scott Arthur wrote in papers filed in Rock Island.

KBR attorneys said the company informed federal officials of three similar "double conversions" on other subcontracts. But KBR said it "has not undertaken an exhaustive search of its millions of pages of procurement documents" to determine whether other such errors exist.

dyjackson@tribune.com

jgrotto@tribune.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune
The black hole of American dollars, ever-increasing civilian casualties -- a bona fide fiasco with no end in sight. Just try not to think about the clusterfu^k that is Iraq, and you don't get as physically ill.