Why are we holding Kurdistan?

Nation building anyone? More to come.

"Not all of Iraq is like Baghdad" -- Zalmay Khalilzad

Sanandaj

I am, as an Irishman and as a logician, not in favor of partitioning countries to cover up bad nation building or failed imperialism, but I have to wonder why the US is allowing Kurdistan to be held in to the current abortive version of iraq-oidia. Are we doing favors for our lukewarm ally, Turkey? Are we using kurds for bait in the "democratization" of iraq? Are we using kurds as a human shield until we can set up permanent bases in their confines? Have we promised their oil to some other faction? Have we promised their oil to some cronies of bushco?

Here's a link to Kurdistani news. Here's a link to blogs on Kurdistan.

Which way to the front?

Cunning Realist nails it again. When will our-war-prez and our-war-prez-wannabee be able to answer this simple question?

Coincidentally, I am reading The Assassin's Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer. Dubya and straight-talk are excused somewhat since apparently no one has known the answer during the period from March 2003 to the present. Dick cheney has known an answer at various times, but there seems to be no correlation to the facts on the ground.

High Tech at Homeland Security

Are these guys bozos or what? Soundex, technically explained here, a 90+ year old approach to dealing (crudely, at a time when illiteracy was the norm) with misspelling, is being used to manage the terrorist watch list! Holy crap! This is even more on-the-cheap than rummie's approach to war.

James Moore does a nice job of explaining what's wrong with that.

War on terror? We have no serious plans for stopping terror, other than to convince voters that we do have plans. The post-luddite federal government view of technology is frightening. If they had a clue, we could really start to worry about our freedoms.

Where in the World?

WaPo: Intelligence Officials Offer Grim Assessment of Security

The new national intell guy, john mcconnell (any relation to mitch?) gave the nat intell estimate today on c-span in front of the levin-warner committee of the senate.

It sounded like a very negative scorecard in the WOT, comparing 2005 to 2006, and projecting 2007.

So I wanted to think about a more detailed breakdown -- see the list of sovereign nations at the link below, and tell us which ones you believe were better off in 2006 than 2005, and which will be better off in 2007.
Link: Wikipedia's List of Countries

Here's the only one I could extract, north korea (and maybe not even them).

Gallows humorously, the part of mexico that is here, is doing better every year.