*ONE IDENTITY RING DOWN: HOW MANY TO GO?

*CNN REVISITS AFGHAN PRISON REVOLT

*FOX ANCHOR HAS PUPPY PROBLEM

An “identity-theft ring” has been busted. So reports USA Today and the New York Times among others: “An identity-theft ring that relied on a low-level employee of a Long Island software company stole the credit histories of more than 30,000 people.”

But what other such rings are still at large? The only ones we hear about are in Iraq where Saddam Hussein reportedly has six or seven look-alike body doubles running around, making a direct hit on his omnipotent self less likely. But here in the USA? Identity-snatching seems to be a variant of body-snatching, which brings me back to that old sci-fi movie.

Could an unelected president be posing as a supreme commander in the Whitest of Houses? Have other identities been stolen? That question came to mind when I watched Clarence Thomas of those other Supremes swear in one Tom Ridge of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as chief of the newly reorganized behemoth agency called Homeland Security. I don’t know if there is a relationship, but major storms are threatening to whiten Pittsburgh tonight as winter chooses its first major target in the East.

VACCINATIONS FOR SALVATION

Speaking of security, its hard to feel very secure when CNN tells us: “President Bush is expected to announce a plan to vaccinate 500,000 health workers for smallpox, followed up by a second wave of vaccinations for 7 million to 10 million medical personnel and “first responders” to protect them against bioterrorism.”

It is also hard to feel secure when that universal doctrine of innocent until proven guilty is compromised as in: “Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix is warning Iraq that it must prove it does not have illegal weapons.”

Yesterday, I said rather categorically that the war on Iraq is already underway. The evidence for this assertion is there for all to see — but many won’t open their eyes, as book editor Tom Englehardt observes:

“It takes a newspaper elsewhere in the world to highlight the slowly escalating Iraqi war that is, while everyone here focuses on the war that may be. [A] piece from the British paper, The Independent, discusses what’s actually been going on in the no-fly zones, where American and British planes turn out to have been anything but reactive, and speculates about what we’ve been doing covertly in the Kurdish territories and even Western Iraq. While ‘incidents’ in the no-fly zones are individually covered here and the raids mentioned below were also in the news, no one bothers to put together these incidents which turn out to be anything but disparate into a war plan.”

BOMBS FOR DISARMAMENT

“British and American warplanes are attacking Iraq’s air defenses almost daily, and making practice runs on other targets. US Special Forces are reported to be on the ground in western and northern Iraq, and military engineers are preparing and upgrading airfields in the Kurdish zone. In many ways, the war on Iraq has already begun.

“This war is a good deal more secret than the very public preparations being made by the US and its allies for an invasion of Iraq. No attempt has been made to conceal the build-up of forces in the region, with the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier battle group in the Gulf and four more groups en route or preparing to sail. ……”

INFORMATION WARFARE TARGETS US PUBLIC

Part of the reason we don’t know all that much is that we are not in the info loop–by design. Or so reports military affairs analyst Bill Arkin in the LA Times:

“In a policy shift that reaches across all the armed services, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his senior aides are revising missions and creating new agencies to make ‘information warfare’ a central element of any U.S. war. Some hope it will eventually rank with bombs and artillery shells as an instrument of destruction.

“What is disturbing about Rumsfeld’s vision of information warfare is that it has a way of folding together two kinds of wartime activity involving communications that have traditionally been separated by a firewall of principle.

“The first is purely military. It includes attacks on the radar, communications and other “information systems” an enemy depends on to guide its war-making capabilities. This category also includes traditional psychological warfare, such as dropping leaflets or broadcasting propaganda to enemy troops.

“The second is not directly military. It is the dissemination of public information that the American people need in order to understand what is happening in a war, and to decide what they think about it. This information is supposed to be true.

“Increasingly, the administration’s new policy — along with the steps senior commanders are taking to implement it — blurs or even erases the boundaries between factual information and news, on the one hand, and public relations, propaganda and psychological warfare, on the other. And, while the policy ostensibly targets foreign enemies, its most likely victim will be the American electorate.”

MILITARY-MEDIA MERGER?

One example from Paul Vann of the World Socialist website: “In the rash of articles that spread across the front pages of virtually every major newspaper earlier this week detailing U.S. plans for the invasion of Iraq, information was attributed to unnamed “military sources,” “senior administration officials” or “Pentagon analysts.”

“An article appearing in the November 10 Washington Post, however, went further, providing its readers with a fleeting insight into the real relations that exist between the supposedly independent media and Washington’s war machine.

“This article was discussed extensively in recent days with several senior civilian and military Defense Department officials,” the Post reported. “At their request, several aspects of the plan are being withheld from publication. Those aspects include the timing of certain military actions, the trigger points for other moves, some of the tactics being contemplated and the units that would execute some of the tactics.”

MEMORIES OF MAZAR

How much reporting have we seen on the muzzling of the media in the media? Sometimes the truth on important stories trickles out months, and even years after the fact. Readers of this weblog, and my new book Media Wars, may remember an early incident in the Afghan War — the prison revolt at Mazar-I-Sharif. That was the event that gave us John Walker Lindh, the now convicted “American Taliban.” At the time the US press was haling as its latest “hero,” CIA agent Mike Spann who was killed there. At the time, the British press, as I reported, was charging war crimes, an allegation that was buried here the way the 600 men who died in the massacre were buried there. The every vigilant Adam McConnel was watching CNN International the other day in his home in Turkey., a CNN channel shown overseas but NOT in the USA. His report:

“There was a fantastic report by Allessio Vinci, et al. on CNN INTERNATIONAL about what happened in Mezar-i-Sharif last November. It aired last night on their ‘Perspectives’ show with Jon Mann. The report shows how the ‘revolt’ (or mutiny or uprising or whatever it is labeled) happened, the arrogance and the seeming lack of preparedness for or underestimating of the Taliban prisoners (which included Lindh) by the CIA guys that got one of them killed, and other essential facts that have, I assume, never been aired inside of the US. I sent a request to CNN urging them to show it in the US.” Others are not requesting but protesting. The Committee for Legitimate Government Reports: “Protesters criticize CNN coverage of Iraq –More than 80 demonstrators picketed outside CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta Sunday afternoon, saying the network lacks anti-war perspectives in its coverage of the U.S. confrontation with Iraq.” I don’t think Connie Chung or Larry King had them in for an interview.

PRIVATIZATION OF SECURITY

In Afghanistan today, US troops are being phased out of certain risky jobs and being replaced by Rent A Cops, a sign of the privatization of the terror war. Alternet.org reports:

“The special forces bodyguards who saved Karzai’s life earlier this year have been replaced by Uncle Sam’s favorite rent-a-thug: DynCorp. DynCorp employees are best known for running a sex ring while on duty for the United Nations in Bosnia. According to a lawsuit filed by one of their own, ‘(Ben) Johnston witnessed coworkers and supervisors literally buying and selling women for their own personal enjoyment, and employees would brag about the various ages and talents of the individual slaves they had purchased.’ Some of the employees videotaped the rapes, which sometimes involved girls as young as twelve.

“DynCorp was also one of Dubya’s biggest campaign donors in the 2000 elections. The company was recently awarded a $31 million contract by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to help halt the spread of weapons of mass destruction.)…”

POLLS: PEOPLE LIKE PREZ, NOT POLICIES

As you read my or other critical comments, please bear in mind that we are not alone — the American people are not in headlong rush to support the Administration’s policies even as they say they like Bush, according to recent polls reported on the wires:

“Nearly two-thirds of Americans approve of the job done by President Bush, say new polls, but their enthusiasm doesn’t extend to many parts of his agenda. CBS-New York Times and CNN-USA Today-Gallup polls released Monday found Bush’s job approval at 65 percent.

“But that support for the president does not extend to several of his priorities…..People didn’t expect that Republican control of Congress would significantly improve the economy - with almost three in 10 saying the economy would get better and two in 10 saying it would get worse. The rest said it would stay about the same.”

SPRING TIME OR HITLER? NOT!

Germans still aren’t laughing when it comes to spoofs of Nazis. I am not sure how Mel Brooks “The Producers” was or was not received there. But Tony Czuczka of AP reports:

“Germany’s first home-grown satirical film on the Nazis left critics turning thumbs down and attracted a relatively small audience. “Goebbels and Geduldig,'’ shown on national television in prime time last week, is a comedy of errors built on the idea that Joseph Goebbels had a Jewish double, Harry Geduldig.

“But reviewers complained that it lacked the wit, daring and depth of satires such as Charlie Chaplin’s 1940 classic The Great Dictator, which poked fun at Adolf Hitler’s plans for world domination, and Roberto Benini’s Life Is Beautiful, a Holocaust fable that won three Academy Awards in 1999, including best foreign film. Some 2.4 million viewers watched the film Wednesday, but a Germany-Netherlands soccer game at the same time drew more than 11 million.”

IN THE HALLS OF JUSTICE

There is TV dispute in the US that made page one of the Times today:

“Two weeks ago, a trial judge in Houston said he would allow a PBS documentary series to film the jury’s deliberations in a death-penalty case” but now his ruling has been chalenged. At issue is FRONTLINE which wants to see how jurors handle a capital case. Prosecutors ware challenging media access….In another capital case, this time in Britain, the government is being sued in connection with war plans in Iraq., George Monbiot reports in the Guardian today:”Parliament might have been denied its debate and the Cabinet might have been silenced, but there are other means of holding the government to account. If, by 4pm today, his lawyers have failed to agree that he will not attack Iraq without a new UN resolution, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament will take the Prime Minister to court. For the first time in history, the British government may be forced to defend the legality of its war plans in front of a judge….” Will Court TV be covering these trials?

INCOMING

In our email this morning, Vin Carreo writes:

“Hello Mr. Dissector,

“I love your blog. I’ve found some articles here you might find interesting. (He included several items of interest some I had seen elsewhere. This is one I hadn’t.

Daniel Ellsberg on Sharon

“According to Ellsberg, Ariel Sharon’s war-on-terror policy is costing the lives of more Israelis than it is saving, and his opinion has significant backing from among the upper echelons of the Israeli establishment. … [T]here are [Israeli] experts who are saying things and even writing papers indicating that top-level political and military officials are knowingly feeding the public with falsehoods. In their assessments of the current situation, no inkling of a basis can be found for the promise that Palestinian terror can be stopped without Israel putting an end to the occupation.

“In off-the-record talks, senior sources in the defense establishment say that the chances “of wiping out the terror infrastructure” are tantamount to those of drying out the Mediterranean Sea. Occupying ourselves with the terrorists and those who send them out on their missions, explosives laboratories and the deportation of Yasser Arafat is diverting attention from the real danger: Hundreds of gangs of armed young men who answer to no one are threatening to turn the territories into a second Vietnam. They do not need an organization and it is almost impossible to garner intelligence (”warnings”) about their plans.

“Defense Ministry officials are whispering that the political echelon (with the help of the media) is selling the public the delusion that the separation fence is about to become a reality; these officials know that in the coming years, the state coffers will be unable to bear the burden of the ongoing war for the safety of the settlements together with the investment of billions of shekels in the seam-line area.”

Thanks again for all your hard work.”

ANCHOR REVEALS DOGGY DOO

Finally, this “breaking news” from one of the most opinionated and empty-headed personalities on TV, Fox News’s ED, the blonde bombshell (is that too warlike a reference?) who strikes me as a cross member of the Young Amercans for Freedom alumni society and the Dallas Cowboys cheerleading squad. (And lest you think me sexist, I have stronger feelings about the weatherman and sports guy who share equal billing on a team modeled after “morning zoo” squads on radio stations. After spending an hour trashing Iraq and calling for an end to all immigration “until we know who is here” she revealed that she is packing up her bags to go home to Fort Worth for Thanksgiving. “But every time I go upstairs to pack the bags, my dog goes downstairs and poops.” I will leave you to ponder this revelation.

I hope to get to the Committee to Protect Journalists dinner at the Waldorf tonight and Rory Kennedy’ screening of her new film on AIDS at the UN. Someone might snatch my identity to allow me to be in two places at once. Thanks to all who write and to those who volunteer to help Mediachannel. Keep your emails coming. Write: Dissector@medichannel.org