Main Site Down

Our main website, allspinzone.com, is currently down (7/14/06, 7:30PM EST) due to a power outage at the host provider. Hopefully, they'll have things back up shortly.

Admin Note - Site Location Moved

Just a reminder, All Spin Zone has moved to its new cyberlocation - http://allspinzone.com/blog. We will discontinue crossposting to the Blogger site (where you're at right now) as of Sunday, 4/17/05.

Please update your bookmarks. And, if your blog / website has ASZ linked and blogrolled, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, for Technorati's sake, change your link to the new site.

We thank you!!

Iraq Quagmire Continues

There's still a war going on in Iraq. I know, I know, that's sooooo 2004. It's still a quagmire, though. You just don't hear too much about it much on this side of the Atlantic ocean because journo's have gotten the hint - if you ain't an embed, you could be dead.

So, here's a few top stories from today:

A mass hostage taking was reported yesterday in the town of Madain. The situation is apparently very fluid and confusing, particularly when the only available information is coming out of the Green Zone in Baghdad. The Associated Press stenographer in Baghdad stated that "Sunni militants were holding dozens of Shiite Muslims hostage and threatening to kill them..."; Al Jazeera says "a senior Shia official in Baghdad said up to 150 hostages were being held, including women and children..."; AFP is reporting "Sunni militants had seized up to 80 hostages and threatened to kill them unless all Shiites left". And apparently, a rescue operation has now been undertaken - which is apparently equally as confusing - is it Iraq police or U.S. forces that are conducting the mission? Pick your news source; take your chances.

In other news (again, pick your news source), 3 U.S. soldiers were killed overnight in a drive by mortaring of Camp Ramadi, with up to a dozen more being injured. An Iraqi "commando force" officer and a police director were assassinated in separate incidents, and two of the police director's family members were also killed in the hit.

What else has been happening? Oh, there was a riot in the prison at Camp Bucca after a detainee was apparently murdered. Several detainees escaped in the subsequent confusion; most were apparently recaptured. Seven Iraqis, including three policemen, were killed in an explosion at a restaurant in the town of Baquba, north of Baghdad...

Yep. Just another weekend in paradise. Oh, and those elections that took place back in January? There still isn't a functional government in Iraq, nearly three months after the elections.

Let's tie all of this up with a quick observation. A common thread running through nearly every report coming out of Iraq these days is that Iraqi "forces" (whatever they are) are responding to events. For example, in the sketchy reports on the three U.S. soldiers being killed in Ramadi:

...Seven servicemen were also wounded in the attack, three of them seriously, the military said in a statement. The attackers were believed to have fled into a nearby mosque. But when Iraqi security forces searched it, they found no insurgents.

Again, this is not an exception - nearly all of the news articles linked in this post have the same flavor when describing military responses to the event. What this is telling me is two things: U.S. casualties are down because soldiers are venturing less and less beyond the operational wall of fortified compounds, and relying on Iraqi first responders to chase the bad guys after a firefight. Second, the focus of press releases from the Green Zone are subtly changing to support the U.S. exit strategy - a major reduction of U.S. forces if U.S. casualties decrease and Iraqi security forces take over.

This slog is a loooooong way from over. For an Iraqi insider's view, check out Riverbend's most recent posting, if you haven't already.

Heat Grows on DeLay

And the chorus grows...

WASHINGTON - One of Congress' most conservative members on Friday became the second House Republican to urge Majority Leader Tom DeLay to step aside because of the ethics scrutiny he's facing...

When the conservative newspaper in my own neck of the woods calls for The Bugman to wave bye-bye, when (for goodness sakes) hyper-conservative Senator Rick Santorum (ethically-challenged in his own right) says he should go, when a 100% rated neocon congressman opines that it's time for door to hit DeLay's ass on the way out...

I'd call that a trend.

It will be interesting to see how Bugman's continuing problems play on the Sunday talk shows tomorrow.

Bill Frist's Hustle

Definition: Hustle

Synonyms: action, ante, bet, challenge, chunk, fifty-fifty, fighting chance, flier, gamble, handle, hazard, hedge, hunch, long shot, odds on, outside chance, parlay, play, pledge, plunge, pot, risk, snowball chance, stake, toss-up, venture
Senate Majority Leader Dr. Bill Frist is playing with fire. Let's stipulate one thing right up front - this guy isn't stupid. Maybe deluded or deranged, but not stupid.

Why on God's green earth would Bill Frist, one of the most powerful men in America, align himself with a Reich wing fundamentalist telethon that's the broadcast equivalent of American Taliban Wankfest 2005? I just don't get it. The guy is supposed to be, above and beyond everything else, a politician. And I don't think anyone could argue that he's not going to be making a lot of new friends with his participation in the "Justice Sunday" gig. That he would align himself with someone as far on the fringe as Tony Perkins speaks volumes more than I or anyone could possibly write.

Chuck Currie, a progressive Christian blogger, takes on the entire concept of Frist's sellout (or buy-in, as the case may be) better than almost all of the outraged words I've read in the Left Blogzome this evening. I encourage you to click through to Currie's article, and offer your support. Here's a teaser:

...This purely political event disguised as a religious event is the most obscene use of religion in a political context since the Republicans declared last fall that Democrats planned to ban the Bible...

...Don’t be fooled into thinking Bill Frist or his right-wing allies represent Christianity. What they truly represent are political hacks willing to misuse Christian tradition for their own political agenda...

I'm very pleased to see mainstream Christians like Currie speaking up. We can only hope that in the coming few days, Dr. Bill Frist will have a Tom DeLay moment - and decide that discretion is the better part of political valor. We call on him to disavow this divisive (and unnecessary) use of a religious "event" to further the reich wing agenda. That Frist (or any Republican) would use the currently hypercharged political environment for their own ill-gotten gains is beyond the pale.

But not entirely unexpected.