It looks like I will reach 300,000 hits here by the end of the weekend. I’d written something a little different at first, a reflection back on the past 22 months that I’ve been blogging. How I’ve changed. How the blog has changed. But I think a simple “thank you” to my regular (and irregular) readers will suffice. So 300,000 thanks from me to you.
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On the other hand, lately it seems that the blogger software is getting buggier and buggier. Half the time when I hit the “publish” button, I get a message that there were errors. I go back, “publish” again, no errors, and find that what I just wrote has been posted twice.

Or tonight, the post immediately prior to this, which was “successful” and which shows up in my “edit posts” list, still does not appear when I go to view the page, despite hitting the refresh button several times.

If I don’t see some improvement soon, I may considering moving to a different blogging site.
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In case you haven’t seen it elsewhere, Warner Bros. released the DVD of Superman Returns in China this week. It won’t be available elsewhere (legally) until late November. The DVD should only have a Mandarin-dubbed version, burnt-in subtitles and no bonus features and should be selling for around 15-20 RMB.

Warner has done early releases of other titles in China recently; this is the biggest one to date. (They can be found in shops in Mong Kok and other parts of HK selling for around HK$35.)

Time will tell if this is an effective strategy against the massive piracy in China or not.
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Taipei trip just about over and goals mostly accomplished, including lunch today at Din Tai Fung. Last night I walked over to the Brass Monkey bar. It was ladies night and there was a long line of people waiting to get in. With no one leaving, the line wasn’t moving and I didn’t feel like waiting.

I went back tonight, 11 PM and the joint was, well, half empty. Had one drink, contemplated a taxi over to Carnegies, and instead returned to my room and watched the latest episode of Extras, with guests Daniel (Harry Potter, or is it Billie Piper?) Radcliffe and Diana Rigg. Radcliffe must have enjoyed this role, Stephen Merchant gets more time to get even more insane while Gervais’s Andy Millman continues to sink lower than humanly possible.

Okay, clicking on “publish post” now, fingers crossed (and it’s not easy to move the mouse around with crossed fingers either)(sorry) …

One reason the Republicans keep attacking Clinton’s record is to attempt to divert attention away from their own consistent record of massive failures and lies.

Here’s something Republicans don’t want you to know. An interview with Bob Woodward will appear on 60 Minutes in the U.S. this Sunday:

According to Woodward, insurgent attacks against coalition troops occur, on average, every 15 minutes, a shocking fact the administration has kept secret. “It’s getting to the point now where there are eight-, nine-hundred attacks a week. That’s more than 100 a day. That is four an hour attacking our forces,” says Woodward.

The situation is getting much worse, says Woodward, despite what the White House and the Pentagon are saying in public. “The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going to get worse and, in public, you have the president and you have the Pentagon [saying], ‘Oh, no, things are going to get better,’” he tells Wallace. “Now there’s public, and then there’s private. But what did they do with the private? They stamp it secret. No one is supposed to know,” says Woodward.

In his last two books (Bush At War and Plan of Attack), Bob Woodward often seemed as if he was acting as a mouthpiece for the current fascist administration. His new book, State of Denial, reverses that course.

The NY Daily News reports the following from the book:

The CIA’S top counterterrorism officials felt they could have killed Osama Bin Laden in the months before 9/11, but got the “brushoff” when they went to the Bush White House seeking the money and authorization.

CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism head Cofer Black sought an urgent meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, writes Bob Woodward in his new book “State of Denial.”

They went over top-secret intelligence pointing to an impending attack and “sounded the loudest warning” to the White House of a likely attack on the U.S. by Bin Laden.

Woodward writes that Rice was polite, but, “They felt the brushoff.”

…

Woodward claims the intelligence Tenet and Black shared with Rice included communication intercepts indicating the likelihood of an Al Qaeda attack on U.S. soil.

Tenet said he had hoped the meeting would shock Rice into encouraging the President to take immediate action against Al Qaeda.

Black, looking back at the July 10, 2001, meeting with Rice, concludes, “The only thing we didn’t do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her [Rice's] head.”

Woodward says that Tenet described the meeting as a “tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the 9/11 attacks.”

Tenet also claims that his alarm over Bin Laden was downplayed by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who asked, “Could all this be a grand deception?”

The book claims that two weeks before the July meeting with Rice, Tenet told Richard Clarke, the National Security Council’s counterterrorism director, of his gut feeling about a likely attack.

“It’s my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one,” the book quotes Tenet as telling Clarke.

The NY Times focuses in on other sections of the book:

The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there.

….

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is described as disengaged from the nuts-and-bolts of occupying and reconstructing Iraq — a task that was initially supposed to be under the direction of the Pentagon — and so hostile toward Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, that President Bush had to tell him to return her phone calls. The American commander for the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, is reported to have told visitors to his headquarters in Qatar in the fall of 2005 that “Rumsfeld doesn’t have any credibility anymore” to make a public case for the American strategy for victory in Iraq.

…

The fruitless search for unconventional weapons caused tension between Vice President Cheney’s office, the C.I.A. and officials in Iraq. Mr. Woodward wrote that Mr. Kay, the chief weapons inspector in Iraq, e-mailed top C.I.A. officials directly in the summer of 2003 with his most important early findings.

At one point, when Mr. Kay warned that it was possible the Iraqis might have had the capability to make such weapons but did not actually produce them, waiting instead until they were needed, the book says he was told by John McLaughlin, the C.I.A.’s deputy director: “Don’t tell anyone this. This could be upsetting. Be very careful. We can’t let this out until we’re sure.”

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The Iraq war is now costing US taxpayers $2 billion per week. Afghanistan is costing $370 million per week. Republicans are happy about this because they pay the least amount of taxes and most of the money is going into their pockets.

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And now the Iraqis don’t even want us in Iraq. 71% of Iraqis want the U.S. out within a year. 79% of Iraqis say the US presence is having a negative impact in Iraq. 61% of Iraqis support violent attacks against American troops.

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Republicans just seem fundamentally unable to tell the truth about anything. After claiming that there were very few meetings between criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and White House staff, an investigation has found records of at least 485 meetings between Abramoff, his staff and White House staffers.

September 28, 2006 is a turning point, a day that will live in infamy. The U.S.A. is no longer the U.S.A. We have given up the moral high ground. We have stated that we are no better than the insane terrorists around the world.

Excerpts from two key speeches, full texts here.

Obama:

I may have only been in this body for a short while, but I am not naive to the political considerations that go along with many of the decisions we make here. I realize that soon, we will adjourn for the fall, and the campaigning will begin in earnest. And there will be 30-second attack ads and negative mail pieces, and we will be called everything from cut-and-run quitters to Defeatocrats to people who care more about the rights of terrorists than the protection of Americans. And I know that the vote before us was specifically designed and timed to add more fuel to that fire.

And yet, while I know all of this, I’m still disappointed, and I’m still ashamed. Because what we’re doing here today – a debate over the fundamental human rights of the accused – should be bigger than politics. This is serious.
…
In the five years that the President’s system of military tribunals has existed, not one terrorist has been tried. Not one has been convicted. Not one has been brought to justice. And in the end, the Supreme Court of the United found the whole thing unconstitutional, which is why we’re here today.
…
But politics won today. Politics won. The Administration got its vote, and now it will have its victory lap, and now they will be able to go out on the campaign trail and tell the American people that they were the ones who were tough on the terrorists.

And yet, we have a bill that gives the terrorist mastermind of 9/11 his day in court, but not the innocent people we may have accidentally rounded up and mistaken for terrorists – people who may stay in prison for the rest of their lives.

And yet, we have a report authored by sixteen of our own government’s intelligence agencies, a previous draft of which described, and I quote, “…actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay…”

And yet, we have Al Qaeda and the Taliban regrouping in Afghanistan while we look the other way. We have a war in Iraq that our own government’s intelligence says is serving as Al Qaeda’s best recruitment tool. And we have recommendations from the bipartisan 9/11 commission that we still refuse to implement five years after the fact.
…
And the sad part about all of this is that this betrayal of American values is unnecessary. We could’ve drafted a bipartisan, well-structured bill that provided adequate due process through the military courts, had an effective review process that would’ve prevented frivolous lawsuits being filed and kept lawyers from clogging our courts, but upheld the basic ideals that have made this country great.

Clinton:

Democrats and Republicans alike believe that terrorists must be caught captured and sentenced. I believe that there can be no mercy for those who perpetrated 9/11 and other crimes against humanity. But in the process of accomplishing that I believe we must hold on to our values and set an example we can point to with pride, not shame. Those captured are going nowhere – they are in jail now – so we should follow the duty given us by the Supreme Court and carefully craft the right piece of legislation to try them. The president acted without authority and it is our duty now to be careful in handing this president just the right amount of authority to get the job done and no more.
…..
How would General Washington treat these men? The British had already committed atrocities against Americans, including torture. As David Hackett Fischer describes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Washington’s Crossing,” thousands of American prisoners of war were “treated with extreme cruelty by British captors.” There are accounts of injured soldiers who surrendered being murdered instead of quartered. Countless Americans dying in prison hulks in New York harbor. Starvation and other acts of inhumanity perpetrated against Americans confined to churches in New York City.

The light of our ideals shone dimly in those early dark days, years from an end to the conflict, years before our improbable triumph and the birth of our democracy. General Washington wasn’t that far from where the Continental Congress had met and signed the Declaration of Independence. But it’s easy to imagine how far that must have seemed. General Washington announced a decision unique in human history, sending the following order for handling prisoners: “Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their Treatment of our unfortunate brethren.”
…
For the safety of our soldiers and the reputation of our nation, it is far more important to take the time to do the job right than to do it quickly and badly. There is no reason other than partisanship for not continuing deliberation to find a solution that works to achieve a true consensus based on American values.
…
Mr. President, I would like to submit for the Record letters and statements from former military leaders – including Generals Colin Powell and John Vessey, 9/11 Families, the religious community, retired judges, legal scholars and law professors, all of whom have registered serious concerns with this bill and its provisions.

The bill also makes significant changes to the War Crimes Act. As it is now written, the War Crimes Act makes it a federal crime for any soldier or national of the U.S. to violate, among other things, Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in an armed conflict not of an international character. The administration has voiced concern that Common Article – which prohibits “cruel treatment or torture,” “outrages against human dignity,” and “humiliating and degrading treatment” – sets out an intolerably vague standard on which to base criminal liability, and may expose CIA agents to jail sentences for rough interrogation tactics used in questioning detainees.
…
When our nation seeks to lead the world in service to our interests and our values, will we still be able to lead by example?

Last night, out to dinner with a business associate, in town from another city. Last week, with two guests in town, we had excellent dinners at Lotus and Wooloomooloo. But this guy …

(Hey, if you’re him, and you read the blog (I don’t think you don’t), don’t get me wrong here, you’re a great guy and all but …)

… this guy has to be around 40. He makes a great salary. He’s lived in three major cities around the world and traveled extensively. And I’m not sure he’s ever had a good meal in his life. He thinks that all western food is “a piece of meat on a plate with no sauce.” His utter refusal to go for anything other than Chinese food frustrates my attempts to educate him in this area.

Since we were in Causeway Bay, and since he’ll only go for Chinese (and non-spicy at that), first I tried Skyview, but they couldn’t fit us in before 9:30 and it was 7 and we were hungry. Then I tried suggesting Tack Hsin, Tai Woo, Hoi Tin or Little Sheep. None of them too exciting but all reliable. And since he’s on a business trip and the company would pay for the meal, I figured money wouldn’t matter too much, and these are all moderately priced places anyway (unless you start going for shark fin or abalone).

He paused in front of Steak Expert. He knows it as the place where Bus Uncle worked for two weeks. I know it as the place that I tried once, ordered the rib eye steak, and found that 6 ounces of my ten ounce steak were fat and gristle.

Eventually he picked Tsui Wah. What the Cantonese refer to, I believe, as a cha chan teng. It’s open 24 hours, has branches all around town, it’s cheap and the menu is huge. Despite being on a busy street and having an English menu, the staff does not speak English.

There were four of us, and here’s what we had:

Singapore noodle with sweet and sour prawn – nice fresh prawns, dried fried noodles with almost no sauce (actually not a bad thing because what little sauce they had was sickenly sweet, the “sour” provided by the presence of four uncooked sichuan peppers on the plate).

Lamb chop curry – an almost sweet curry (probably from a powder mix) with three lamb chops that were almost all fat and gristle, served with an attempt at roti and a lump of really scary looking mashed potato. (And while we were provided with forks and knives for that dish, we were only given tiny rice bowls. You try cutting up a lamb chop in a rice bowl with a butter knife.)

Spaghetti with seafood – a meager amount of tomato sauce (from a tin) with some dried out bits of fish, clam, squid, etc.

Fish ball soup – the least horrible dish.

T kept leaning over and whispering in my ear to ask if I hated the food as much as she did. I was thinking I would have been better off just ordering the ham sandwich.

I would so love to take this guy to a good place but he just never gives me the chance.

Back home, where T provided further torture by immediately putting on the Asian Food Channel and we looked at all the stuff we didn’t come close to having, first on the Go! Hokkaido show and then Gordon Ramsay’s F Word.

Well, I’m off to Taipei in a short while and I know the friend I’m meeting for dinner will choose something better.

Excerpts from an AP story on Yahoo news:

The Bush administration has blocked release of a report that suggests global warming is contributing to the frequency and strength of hurricanes, the journal Nature reported Tuesday.
….
In the new case, Nature said weather experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, part of the Commerce Department, in February set up a seven-member panel to prepare a consensus report on the views of agency scientists about global warming and hurricanes.

According to Nature, a draft of the statement said that warming may be having an effect.
…
The report drew a prompt response from Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, D-N.J., who charged that “the administration has effectively declared war on science and truth to advance its anti-environment agenda … the Bush administration continues to censor scientists who have documented the current impacts of global warming.”
…
A series of studies over the past year or so have shown an increase in the power of hurricanes in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, a strengthening that many storm experts say is tied to rising sea-surface temperatures.

Just two weeks ago, researchers said that most of the increase in ocean temperature that feeds more intense hurricanes is a result of human-induced global warming, a study one researcher said “closes the loop” between climate change and powerful storms like Katrina.

The RepubliCANTs will never allow debate on facts because the facts aren’t on their side.

Lots of noise about Clinton’s appearance on Fox. Ostensibly on the program to talk about the work of the Clinton Foundation and the tens of millions of dollars being spent to combat poverty, AIDS, and other global issues. (Compare this work to anything done by a Republican ex-president. You can’t because none of them have done anything after leaving office.)

Wallace asked Clinton about his record with Bin Laden, repeating the lies that Clinton didn’t do anything to defend the country. Clinton defended himself, listed the actions taken and accepted blame for not being able to get Bin Laden while he was President. Click this link to get a link to two clips of Clinton’s appearance, as well as Daily Show commentary the next day.

Neocon monkey commentators have not been able to refute anything that Clinton said on that show, so instead they are attacking him for how he said it. It’s a further example of how Republicans use the concept of the Big Lie. Ignore the truth and shout your lies often enough and loud enough and some people will believe it.

Because Bush was briefed about the Cole and about Bin Laden and chose to ignore it. Bush is the one who did nothing.

BLITZER: So you the asked the president in the Oval Office — and the vice president — why didn’t you go after the Taliban in those eight months before 9/11 after he was president. What did he say?

BEN-VENISTE: Well, now that it was established that al Qaeda was responsible for the Cole bombing and the president was briefed in January of 2001, soon after he took office, by George Tenet, head of the CIA, telling him of the finding that al Qaeda was responsible, and I said, “Well, why wouldn’t you go after the Taliban in order to get them to kick bin Laden out of Afghanistan?”

Maybe, just maybe, who knows — we don’t know the answer to that question — but maybe that could have affected the 9/11 plot.

BLITZER: What did he say?

BEN-VENISTE: He said that no one had told him that we had made that threat. And I found that very discouraging and surprising.

The Republicans will never address this issue in any speech or debate because they have no defense. Transcript of Olbermann on MSNBC, here’s an excerpt:

Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is — not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it!

The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.

It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired — but a propagandist, promoted:

Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.

And don’t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for “e-mailing” you the question.

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Mr. Bush…

You did not act to prevent 9/11.

We do not know what you have done, to prevent another 9/11.

You have failed us — then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.

You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.

And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.

And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture — which doesn’t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.And there it is, sir:

Are yours the actions of a true American?

Just like Bush’s statement about the national intelligence assessment leaked yesterday. ”Some people have guessed what’s in the report and concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree.”

He’s so stupid he’s smart. Al-Qaeda hated Saddam as much as the Bush family. In Bin Laden’s eyes, Saddam was an apostate and deserved only death. It’s not that we went to war in Iraq, it’s what we did once we got there – torture, abuse, detaining prisoners in secret prisons scattered around the world without benefit of trial – that have proven potent propaganda for militant Islamic recruiting. This has been their way since 1948 in Egypt. But Bush can’t address that, so he lies, knowing that most people will just go, “duh, yeah, war good.”

Bush sees the death of tens of thousands of people due to his ineptitude as trivial:

Wolf Blitzer: …We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation….

Bush: …I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy….

It ain’t just Bush who is morally corrupt and without shame. Major General John Baptiste on Donald Rumsfeld:

The detailed deliberate planning to finish the job in Iraq was not considered as Secretary Rumsfeld forbade military planners from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq. At one point, he threatened to fire the next person who talked about the need for a post-war plan. Our country and incredible military were not set up for success.

The Republicans do not address statements like that because they can’t. So they use cheap tricks to attempt to distract people from the real issues. Like why we went to war in the first place. Why they didn’t attempt to do anything about Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. Why Bush sat in a classroom staring at a childrens picture book for 7 minutes. Why we didn’t properly equip our military. Why we didn’t plan to win the peace as well as the war. Why reconstruction contracts were awarded to Friends of Bush & Cheney without competitive bidding. Why the price of oil is in the stratosphere. Why we torture. Why we illegally wiretap. Why we put people into secret prisons in foreign countries. Why we have not captured Bin Laden. Why Afganistan is being allowed to slide back into the hands of the Taliban. Why we attacked Iraq for not having weapons of mass destruction but are leaving Iran alone despite proof of them building nuclear weapons.

Incidentally, those who have been most vocal in their opposition to the recent coup in Thailand have been spokespeople in the U.S. State Department. What would their motivation be?

Hmmmm, a leader whom some say rigged an election, who enjoys his greatest support amongst illiterates in rural areas, who used his position to line the pockets of himself and his friends, who totally mishandled a situation with Muslim extremists … are we describing Thaksin … or Bush?

Woke up, stomach bad, blogging while waiting for the immodium to take effect.

T has started moving her stuff over to my place. Things are mostly good. I know she’s feeling tremendously insecure about making such major lifestyle changes, trying to cut her a lot of slack and be patient and that’s kind of telling me how I feel about the whole thing, that I’m doing that. Longtime readers of this blog may recall how quickly I’ve bolted from others for far less reasons.

Bought the car today. 2004 Lexus IS 200. Assuming loan is approved, I’ll be back on the road (and terrorizing Fumier) by Sunday or Monday. The Porsche just wasn’t a practical purchase for me right now. Plus the Lexus has more buttons on the dashboard and more things that light up. And a much louder stereo (or a much quieter engine). Need to buy iPod FM transmitter for car. And maybe a subwoofer.

Watching the new US teevee shows:

* Studio 60 premiere was fabulous, classic Aaron Sorkin. A large cast, good set-up, but wondering where he plans to take it from here. Most TV shows set backstage of TV shows have not lasted, either too meta or the public is just not that interested.

* Jericho will be this year’s Lost. Huge cast, lots of mysteries that I think they intend to let stay mysterious for awhile. Did that black guy escape from the prison bus? I don’t think so. I think he’s from another planet/dimension/time.

* Kidnapped is another 24/Prison Break kinda show with a strong cast and good production values but it came in third in its time slot. I kinda liked it.

Have been told to look out for Heroes, some sort of nerds-turn-super-heroes comedy thing?

Quick trip to Taipei later this week, two nights, several should-be-easy meetings, Din Tai Fung and (if seriously bored) Hooters.

Short playlist on iPod – “Drone” – featuring (so far):

• Love is the New Feel Awful by Dandy Warhols
• Spectral Mornings by Cornershop
• Pass the Hatchet I Think I’m Goodkind by Yo La Tengo.

Currently reading in the toilet:
Everyone on Amazon hates this book. Fucking nitwits taking it seriously, getting insulted when he disses their cribs. It’s a joke fer crissakes. This on the food in Liverpool:

Liverpudlians love the outdoors and are often to be found chatting merrily on park benches, guardedly clutching cans of industrial-strength lager – even in midwinter. Not surprisingly eating is an informal affair and the average meal tends to be deep fried, eaten with the hands and found in a litterbin.

Or this on the city of my birth:

New York winters have been killing people since the Pilgrim Fathers first pitched camp, but they are still preferable to summers in this sweatbox of a city, making it a place with a climate that’s tolerable for about two weeks of the year, one in April and one in October.

Yeah, I know, the Pilgrims went to Massachusetts. Doesn’t make it any less true.

Jackie Chan confesses to doing porn early in his career. It’s been listed on IMDB forever with the “trivia” that it’s Chan’s only sex scene; hardly news but I guess the Sun ran out of pictures of Posh and Becks that day. Haven’t seen the movie but I suspect that what he refers to as porn would be equivalent to a soft R in the US.

Fucking iTunes 7. Just docked the iPod, the Mac sees it but iTunes doesn’t until I kill iTunes and restart it. Apple stuff always used to work so well.

Pills are now taking effect. Gotta be up in three hours for a conference call. I’m super, thanks for asking.

I think the second episode of Extras was the best so far, Gervais has topped himself yet again. And some kind soul has posted the David Bowie cameo and song to YouTube – the entire scene so that you get the set-up as it descends into an astonishing bit of humiliation for our hero. If you haven’t seen Extras yet, click the link and watch this classic moment.

Excerpts from an article in the NY Times. I can’t imagine that anyone would be surprised by this.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 — A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The classified National Intelligence Estimate attributes a more direct role to the Iraq war in fueling radicalism than that presented either in recent White House documents or in a report released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee, according to several officials in Washington involved in preparing the assessment or who have read the final document.

The intelligence estimate, completed in April, is the first formal appraisal of global terrorism by United States intelligence agencies since the Iraq war began, and represents a consensus view of the 16 disparate spy services inside government. Titled “Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States,’’ it asserts that Islamic radicalism, rather than being in retreat, has metastasized and spread across the globe.

An opening section of the report, “Indicators of the Spread of the Global Jihadist Movement,” cites the Iraq war as a reason for the diffusion of jihad ideology.

The report “says that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse,” said one American intelligence official.

==================
Previous drafts described actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement, like the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, and some policy makers argued that the intelligence estimate should be more focused on specific steps to mitigate the terror threat. It is unclear whether the final draft of the intelligence estimate criticizes individual policies of the United States, but intelligence officials involved in preparing the document said its conclusions were not softened or massaged for political purposes.

==================

On Wednesday, the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee released a more ominous report about the terrorist threat. That assessment, based entirely on unclassified documents, details a growing jihad movement and says, “Al Qaeda leaders wait patiently for the right opportunity to attack.”

======================

The estimate concludes that the radical Islamic movement has expanded from a core of Qaeda operatives and affiliated groups to include a new class of “self-generating” cells inspired by Al Qaeda’s leadership but without any direct connection to Osama bin Laden or his top lieutenants.

It also examines how the Internet has helped spread jihadist ideology, and how cyberspace has become a haven for terrorist operatives who no longer have geographical refuges in countries like Afghanistan.

In early 2005, the National Intelligence Council released a study concluding that Iraq had become the primary training ground for the next generation of terrorists, and that veterans of the Iraq war might ultimately overtake Al Qaeda’s current leadership in the constellation of the global jihad leadership.

But the new intelligence estimate is the first report since the war began to present a comprehensive picture about the trends in global terrorism.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I haven’t stopped blogging. It’s just been a busier-than-usual week. Lots of things to get caught up with in the office after returning from Sydney and prior to heading to Taipei in a few days, plus a few emergencies in the office and some out of town visitors whom I had to watch over and take sightseeing and shopping, not to mention another column for BC that I’ve started and abandoned four times so far.

I’ve had some really good meals this week at Lotus and Wooloomooloo, done some drinking and general hanging out at Bar 109 (they had their first foam party last night, looks like this will be an every-Saturday-night thing) and Maya in Wanchai and several bars in LKF.

I also finally managed to find a cheap pocket flask at Stanley Market, so that I can commence upon my idea of making my job more interesting by drinking in the office. I’ve always wanted to be Ed Asner as Lou Grant on the Mary Tyler Moore show, a bottle of scotch in my desk, someone comes in with a problem, I tell them to close the door, reach into a drawer, slam a bottle and two glasses on the desk and get down to it. Some times when I think about how disfunctional my company can be, it seems as if a shot of Jack Daniels may be the most rational solution.

I did a bit of car shopping yesterday and will be doing some more today. I want to take the dogs up to the New Territories for some hikes and that’s just easier with a car than looking for a taxi driver who’ll take two big dogs (even though he can charge an extra $10 for that). Plus I will have to move in a few months, so I’m going to start scouting out new locations up in New Territories as I don’t think I’m going to remain in Mid Levels and am thinking about getting a house again.

The problem is trying to not get carried away with choices. I need something that seats four – me, the gf, and the two dogs. I’ve got the idea that I should spend less than $100,000, which means a car at least 5 or 6 years old, and was leaning towards older BMW 3 series, Audi A4, VW Passat, one or two others. Cars tend to have low mileage here and owners usually maintain them pretty well, so a 5 to 10 year old car can be in relatively decent condition.

Then yesterday I spotted a couple of Porsches. Each is 15 years old, which would account for their $200,000 asking price. Double the budget I’ve set for myself, it would be a stretch. But they’re Porsches. One was a C2, the other a 964, both convertibles. I’ve never owned a Porsche, and deep into my 27th mid life crisis, it’s difficult to say no.

But it is double the budget that I arbitrarily set. Annual registration will cost more, insurance will cost more, gas will undoubtedly cost more.

Of course, it is a Porsche. And no one has ever accused me of being sensible. No one that lived, anyway ….