[Quote:]

US forces have stormed an Iranian consulate in the northern Iraqi town of Irbil and seized six members of staff.

The troops raided the building at about 0300 (0001GMT), taking away computers and papers, according to Kurdish media and senior local officials.

The US military would only confirm the detention of six people around Irbil.

Tehran said the attack violated all international conventions. It has summoned ambassadors from Switzerland, representing US interests, and Iraq.

In international law, this is an act of war, so the US is now officially at war with Iran. But don’t expect the talking heads on TV to tell you this…

[Quote:]

David sez, “Now that habeas corpus has been eliminated there are no traditional means to advocate for the rights of detainees and Guantanamo. Here is a video put together by the public defenders office in Oregon, released on youtube, about their client Adel Hamad, a hospital charity worker and ping pong player who sits in Guantanamo since 2002. The lawyers traveled to Afghanistan and Pakistan to tape video testimony of people who knew and worked with Mr. Hamad. But the U.S. government does not seem interested in this added material. Thus, the website for Project Hamad that has this video was put together by citizens concerned both about the disappearance of habeas corpus (and the lack of media attention this has received) and who are looking for a way on the internet and in the neighborhoods to spread the word, getting people to put Adel Hamad’s face in the window of their houses, cars, local businesses, blogs, websites etc.”

Link

[Quote:]

A report that that some Canadian coins have been compromised by secretly embedded spy transmitters is overblown, according to a U.S. official familiar with the case.

“There is no story there,�? the official, who asked not to be named, told The Globe and Mail.

He said that while some odd-looking Canadian coins briefly triggered suspicions in the United States, he said that the fears proved groundless: “We have no evidence to indicate anything connected with these coins poses a risk or danger.�?

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From Supreme Commander George Milhouse Bush’s speech:

This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

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The US air strikes in Somalia failed to kill any of the three al-Qaeda suspects they targeted, a top US official says.

The three were wanted in connection with the 1998 bombing of US embassies in East Africa and a 2002 attack on Israeli targets in Kenya.

Is there anything they do right? Anything at all?

[Quote:]

I realize that the Bush White House looked at the Iraq Study Group with some disdain. So-called “elder statesman,�? mostly friends of Bush’s dad, weren’t going to come in and tell the president how to wage his war, no siree. Within a few minutes of Bush thanking ISG members for their work, Bush made the panel instantly irrelevant. The report that was going to “change everything�? went from front-of-the-bookstore to remainder-table-discount in a matter of days.

But far more troubling is the notion that the Bush administration has shaped its escalation plan in part to spite the ISG.

Although the president was publicly polite, few of the key Baker-Hamilton recommendations appealed to the administration, which intensified its own deliberations over a new “way forward�? in Iraq. How to look distinctive from the study group became a recurring theme.

As described by participants in the administration review, some staff members on the National Security Council became enamored of the idea of sending more troops to Iraq in part because it was not a key feature of Baker-Hamilton. (emphasis added)

I had to read that a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. The Bush gang decided to change course in Iraq, but went out of their way to “look distinctive�? from the Iraq Study Group? Troop escalation wasn’t in the ISG report, so the Bush gang latched onto the idea because the ISG didn’t endorse it? As if this all some kind of exercise in Oedipal spite?

Exactly what kind of men-children are we dealing with here?

Funniest part of the speech:

[Quote:]

Acting on the good advice of Senator Joe Lieberman and other key members of Congress, we will form a new, bipartisan working group that will help us come together across party lines to win the war on terror.

That’s right, a bipartisan coalition of the Republican Party and the Connecticut for Lieberman Party will form Bush’s new working group.

I guess a trispartisan coalition, with the Democrats involved, is out of the question for now.

Here, just listen to this:

America will provide forces and support necessary for achieving these goals. Our commanders had estimated that a troop level below 115,000 would be sufficient at this point in the conflict. Given the recent increase in violence, we’ll maintain our troop level at the current 138,000 as long as necessary. This has required extended duty for the 1st Armored Division and the 2nd Light Cavalry Regiment — 20,000 men and women who were scheduled to leave Iraq in April. Our nation appreciates their hard work and sacrifice, and they can know that they will be heading home soon.

If that sounds familiar, it should, because Bush made that speech in 2004, and we all know that an increase of 20,000 troops solved all the problems that time.

Here’s the full list of previous escalations and their results. This is the short version:

* (new snappy title to come) (January 2006-? 2007 or 2008) [+ ~20,000]
* “Operation Together Forward” (June-October 2006)[+25,000]
* Elections and Constitutional Referendum (September-December 2005) [+22,000]
* Constitutional Elections and Fallujah (November 2004-March 2005) [+12,000]
* Massive Troop Rotations (December 2003-April 2004) [+15,000]

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The essence of magical thinking is the perceived connection between inner thoughts and emotions, and actual events in the physical physical world:

Egocentric thinking is the normal tendency for a young child to see everything that happens as it relates to him- or herself. This is not selfishness. Young children are unable to understand different points of view. For example, a preschool child might sympathize with his or her father and try to comfort him by offering a favorite toy or stuffed animal, reasoning that what helps the child feel better will also comfort the adult. Egocentric thinking also can cause a young child to feel responsible if something bad happens.

Magical thinking is a child’s belief that what he or she wishes or expects can affect what really happens. For example, if a child wants very much for something to happen, and it does, the child believes he or she caused it to happen. If your daughter is mad at her brother and wants him to leave, and he then gets sick and goes to the hospital, your daughter may think her brother’s illness is her fault.

Or, your child may think that if a very bad Arab man attacked a American city, it must have been because his father did not take out another very bad Arab man who had attacked other Arabs on the other side of the world.

Another hallmark of magical thinking is

interpreting … two closely occurring events as though one caused the other, without any concern for the causal link. For example, if you believe that crossing your fingers brought you good fortune, you have associated the act of finger-crossing with the subsequent welcome event and imputed a causal link between the two…Think of the post hoc fallacy and the gambler’s fallacy. Think of trying to make sense of or give meaning to coincidences.

Hmm, the gambler’s fallacy:

The gambler’s fallacy is a logical fallacy involving the mistaken belief that past events will affect future events when dealing with random activities, such as many gambling games. It can encompass any of the following misconceptions:

A random event is more likely to occur because it has not happened for a period of time;

A random event is less likely to occur because it has not happened for a period of time;

A random event is more likely to occur because it recently happened; and

A random event is less likely to occur because it recently happened.

These are common misunderstandings that arise in everyday reasoning about probabilities, many of which have been studied in great detail. Many people lose money while gambling because this fallacy leads them to misjudge the odds of winning.

Put simply, the chances of something happening the next time are not necessarily related to what has already happened, especially in many gambling games. This is known in probability theory as the memoryless property.

Equally, it is not necessarily true that an idiot, through the law of averages, becomes more likely to play a winning hand as time goes on.  (Or to implement a successful military and diplomatic strategy.)

An especially interesting variant of magical thinking, and one with a direct connection to our present dismal circumstance, is the “optimistic bias and illusion of control.”  In a current article in Foreign Affairs called Why Hawks Win,  the authors consider the question that baffles so many of us: why do people keep listening to neocon hawks?  Quite apart from our long neocon nightmare, why are “hawks” historically considered more trustworthy on national security issues:  

Excessive optimism is one of the most significant biases that psychologists have identified. Psychological research has shown that a large majority of people believe themselves to be smarter, more attractive, and more talented than average, and they commonly overestimate their future success. People are also prone to an “illusion of control”: They consistently exaggerate the amount of control they have over outcomes that are important to them—even when the outcomes are in fact random or determined by other forces. It is not difficult to see that this error may have led American policymakers astray as they laid the groundwork for the ongoing war in Iraq.

Indeed, the optimistic bias and the illusion of control are particularly rampant in the run-up to conflict. A hawk’s preference for military action over diplomatic measures is often built upon the assumption that victory will come easily and swiftly. Predictions that the Iraq war would be a “cakewalk,” offered up by some supporters of that conflict, are just the latest in a long string of bad hawkish predictions. After all, Washington elites treated the first major battle of the Civil War as a social outing, so sure were they that federal troops would rout rebel forces. General Noel de Castelnau, chief of staff for the French Army at the outset of World War I, declared, “Give me 700,000 men and I will conquer Europe.” In fact, almost every decision maker involved in what would become the most destructive war in history up to that point predicted not only victory for his side, but a relatively quick and easy victory. These delusions and exaggerations cannot be explained away as a product of incomplete or incorrect information. Optimistic generals will be found, usually on both sides, before the beginning of every military conflict.

And now, finally, the authors of “Why Hawks Win” come to the military version of the gambler’s fallacy, “doubling down.” And what they say is eerily, achingly familiar:

It is apparent that hawks often have the upper hand as decision makers wrestle with questions of war and peace. And those advantages do not disappear as soon as the first bullets have flown. As the strategic calculus shifts to territory won or lost and casualties suffered, a new idiosyncrasy in human decision making appears: our deep-seated aversion to cutting our losses. Imagine, for example, the choice between:

Option A: A sure loss of $890

Option B: A 90 percent chance to lose $1,000 and a 10 percent chance to lose nothing.

In this situation, a large majority of decision makers will prefer the gamble in Option B, even though the other choice is statistically superior. People prefer to avoid a certain loss in favor of a potential loss, even if they risk losing significantly more. When things are going badly in a conflict, the aversion to cutting one’s losses, often compounded by wishful thinking, is likely to dominate the calculus of the losing side. This brew of psychological factors tends to cause conflicts to endure long beyond the point where a reasonable observer would see the outcome as a near certainty.

Not making your skin crawl quite enough?  Here:

Many other factors pull in the same direction, notably the fact that for the leaders who have led their nation to the brink of defeat, the consequences of giving up will usually not be worse if the conflict is prolonged, even if they are worse for the citizens they lead.

U.S. policymakers faced this dilemma at many points in Vietnam and today in Iraq. To withdraw now is to accept a sure loss, and that option is deeply unattractive. The option of hanging on will therefore be relatively attractive, even if the chances of success are small and the cost of delaying failure is high.

In other words, the consequences to your child — er, your president — of prolonging a disastrous war are not any worse than the consequences of acknowledging loss, even though the consequences of delaying that recognition hit (literally) our troops every day that the war continues.

[Quote:]

Now, first, you have to realize that the truck is facing the wrong way. Look at it.: it’s facing towards where it first crashed.

The truck must have hit a barrier or two, launched itself off of a guard rail, jumped! Jumped a massive storm drain! And either spun or tipped or both, in such a way that it was facing the other way. Somehow it wound up sitting on a ridge, and not at the bottom of whatever that ridge sits on top of…

Which is…

[Quote:]

A scorpion stung David Sullivan on the back of his right leg, just below the knee, then continued up that leg and down the other, he believes, before getting him again in the shin.

It wasn’t what he was expecting on a flight from Chicago to Vermont.

Sullivan, a 46-year-old builder from Stowe, was aboard the United Airlines flight on the second leg of his Jan. 3 trip home from San Francisco, where he and his wife Helena had been visiting their sons. He awoke from a nap shortly before landing and noticed something strange.

“My right leg felt like it was asleep, but that was isolated to one spot, and it felt like it was being jabbed with a sharp piece of plastic or something.”

The second sting came after the plane had landed and the Sullivans were waiting for their bags at the luggage carousel. Sullivan rolled up his cuff to investigate, and the scorpion fell out.

“It felt like a shock, a tingly thing. Someone screamed, ‘It’s a scorpion,’” Sullivan recalled. Another passenger stepped on the two-inch arachnid, and someone suggested Sullivan seek medical help.

He scooped up the scorpion and headed to the hospital in Burlington. His wife stopped at the United counter and was told the plane they were on had flown from Houston to Chicago. The Sullivans surmised the scorpion boarded in Texas.

“The airlines tell you can’t bring water or shampoo on a plane,” Helena Sullivan said. But the scorpion did make it aboard, she said.

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Essex rock band Koopa could become the first unsigned group to land a UK top 40 hit thanks to new chart rules.

Their download-only single Blag, Steal & Borrow is on course to enter Sunday’s top 40, early sales figures suggest.

Chart rules were changed at the start of January to count all digital single sales, even if there is no CD version.

[..]

Record labels have already contacted them on the strength of this week’s chart showing.

“It’s absolutely out of this world and fingers crossed it could be the start of a good career for us,” Murphy said.

“If someone comes along and gives us an offer, we’ll talk to them. ”

“But it depends whether we need it. If we can get enough exposure and get in the top 40 by the end of the week, do we necessarily need a large label?”

No, you don’t.

Half of the record labels’ power comes from making artists believe that they are the only way to make it big. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

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The Defense Department is warning its American contractor employees about a new espionage threat seemingly straight from Hollywood: It discovered Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.

In a U.S. government report, the department said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

The U.S. report does not suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn’t describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them.