Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm.

Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net.

Holmquist's full archives are listed here.

Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)

Aljazeera.Net English
AlterNet (War on Iraq)
Alternative Press Review
Always Low Prices -- Always
Another Irani online
antiwar.com (blog)
Asia Times Online
Axis of Logic
Baghdad Burning (riverbend)
BBC News
blogdex.net ("track this weblog")
bobanddavid.com
BuzzFlash
The Christian Science Monitor (Daily Update)
Common Dreams
Cryptome
Cursor
Daily Rotten
DefenseLINK
Democracy Now
The Drudge Report
Eat the Press (Harry Shearer, The Huffington Post)
Empire Notes (Rahul Mahajan)
frontpagemag.com (HorowitzWatch)
globalsecurity.org
greenandwhite.com
Guardian Unlimited
Haaretz
The Independent
Information Clearing House
Informed Comment (Juan Cole)
Iranians for Peace

Iraq Dispatches (Dahr Jamail)
Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation
Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report (Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice)
MetaFilter
MLive
Mr. Show and Other Comedy
The Narco News Bulletin (blog)
NEWSMAKINGNEWS
The New York Times
Occupation Watch
Political Theory Daily Review
Press Action
Project Syndicate
Raed in the Middle (Raed Jarrar)
random-abstract.com
Reuters
Salon
The Simpsons Archive
Simpsons Collector Sector
Slate
Sploid
Technorati ("search for mth.blogspot.com")
thi3rdeye
United States Central Command
U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Iraq
venezuelanalysis.com
War Report (Project on Defense Alternatives)
The Washington Post
Wildfire (Jo Wilding)
wood s lot
www.mnftiu.cc (David Rees)

Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development)

Thivai Abhor
As'ad AbuKhalil
Ken Adrian
Christopher Allbritton
Alli
Douglas Anders
Mark W. Anderson
Aziz Ansari
Atomic Archive
Bagatellen
James Benjamin
Elton Beard
Charlie Bertsch
alister black
Blame India Watch
Blixa
Blog Left: Critical Interventions Warblog / war blog
Igor Boog
Martin Butler
Chris Campbell
James M. Capozzola
Avedon Carol
Elaine Cassel
cats blog
Jeff Chang
Margaret Cho
Citizens Of Upright Moral Character
Louis CK
Les Dabney
Dack
Natalie Davis
Scoobie Davis
The Day Job
Jodi Dean
Dominic Duval
Steve Earle
Eli
Daniel Ellsberg
Tom Engelhardt
Lisa English
Faramin
Barbara Flaska
Brian Flemming
Joe Foster
Yoshie Furuhashi
Al Giordano
Glovefox
Rob Goodspeed
Grand Puba
Guardian Unlimited Weblog
Pete Guither
The Hairy Eyeball
Ray Hanania
Mark Hand
harveypekar.com
Hector Rottweiller Jr's Web Log Jim Henley Arvin Hill Hit & Run (Reason) Hugo Clark Humphrey Indri The Iraqi Agora Dru Oja Jay Jeff Lynne d Johnson Dallas Jones Julia Kane Blues Benjamin Kepple Ken Layne Phil Leggiere Brian Linse Adam Magazine Majority Report Radio Marc Maron Josh Marshall Jeralyn Merritt J.R. Mooneyham Michael Scott Moore Bob Morris Bob Mould Mr. Show and Tell Muslims For Nader/Camejo David Neiwert NewPages Weblog Aimee Nezhukumatathil Sean O'Brien Patton Oswalt The Panda's Thumb Randy Paul Rodger A. Payne Ian Penman politx Neal Pollack Greg Proops Pro-War.com Pure Polemics Seyed Razavi Rayne Simon Reynolds richardpryor.com Clay Richards Mike Rogers Yuval Rubinstein
Steven Rubio
Saragon Noah Shachtman Court Schuett The Simpsons Archive Amardeep Singh Sam Smith Soundbitten Jack Sparks Ian Spiers Morgan Spurlock Stand Down: The Left-Right Blog Opposing an Invasion of Iraq Aaron Stark Morgaine Swann Tapped (The American Prospect) tex Matthew Tobey Annie Tomlin Tom Tomorrow The University Without Condition Jesse Walker Warblogger Watch Diane Warth The Watchful Babbler The Weblog we have brains Matt Welch
Alex Whalen
Jon Wiener
Lizz Winstead
James Wolcott
Wooster Collective
Mickey Z

 
There's a lot I feel like I should write about or at least make mention of, but, due to time constraints, I will limit it to four items...

-In an AP story published today, Robert Tanner writes about the investigation into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners:

WHO: Several military intelligence officers already are under scrutiny. The original Army report that led to the arrests of the seven reservists stationed at Abu Ghraib laid a large share of the blame on Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, and Lt. Col. Steve L. Jordan, former director of the Joint Interrogation and Debriefing Center at the prison.

Pappas and Jordan, according to the conclusion of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba's report, "were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuses," along with two civilian contractors.

WHERE: Questions about Wood have broadened the look at abuses beyond Iraq, with possible links to interrogations in Afghanistan. Wood and her unit participated in questioning in 2002 at the detention center at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul, according to military officials. Two prisoners died there.

Wood brought interrogation techniques from Afghanistan to Abu Ghraib, The New York Times reported. Military defense lawyer Capt. Robert Shuck said Wood was "involved in intensive interrogations of detainees, condoned some of the activities and stressed that that was standard procedure." And, in recent weeks, attention has turned to the other major detention center for the larger war on terror -- at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

Navy Vice Adm. Albert T. Church, the Navy inspector general who visited Guantanamo in May, said he found conditions to be humane but told Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that more study was needed.

HOW: The search for answers about the extent of prisoner abuse, in various places, leads to the larger question of how the abuses in Iraq came to happen. Were they an outcome of overall U.S. policy in the war on terror that was carried out by military intelligence?

The strategic importance to the U.S. military of learning about the insurgency in Iraq -- and the worldwide terrorist threat -- is clear.

During a surge of guerrilla attacks in Iraq in late November, the same month some of the abuses at Abu Ghraib occurred, Defense Department intelligence chief Stephen Cambone bemoaned the lack of intelligence specialists and Arabic translators.

Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said at the time: "No commander on the ground has enough actionable intelligence." Now, instead of complaints about lack of intelligence, the criticism is over whether the military went too far to get what it needed.

Great reporting (assuming it is true) but notice how it assumes that the occupation is a just cause.

-"A Discussion with a Kerry Supporter" is my latest Press Action piece and perhaps one of the better ones I've done.

On the humor tip, here's Adam Kotsko:

I am tired of hearing liberal hawks talk about how great an idea the Iraq War was and lamenting that the execution was bad. Yes, the idea of toppling an evil dictator and building a society with liberty and justice for all is appealling. So is the idea of owning a Green Lantern power ring.

LOL

-Kim Sengupta of The Independent reports on the war of Afghanistan (May 25)

-More Iraqi liberation.

-"The choice of Iyad Allawi, closely linked to the CIA and formerly to MI6, as the Prime Minister of Iraq from 30 June will make it difficult for the US and Britain to persuade the rest of the world that he is capable of leading an independent government," Patrick Cockburn writes in today's Independent. "He is the person through whom the controversial claim was channelled that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be operational in 45 minutes."

I suspect Fred Barnes can't wait to start criticizing this guy.

-The U.S. gets its ass out of dodge!
posted by micah holmquist at 5/29/2004 09:39:00 PM