Dig up stupid!

In my morning survey of news sources in the internet, I found that the LA Times has two stories today that deserve attention. And neither of them is about Kobe Bryant or Michael Jackson!

The first presents pretty strong evidence that the Marines have essentially turned Fallujah over to the insurgents. This was sold to the public as a transfer to a neutral Iraqi force that could establish order. The LA Times interviewed a member of the new Iraqi force that has been given control of the city by the Marines. This Iraqi guy says that he was an insurgent a week ago and considers his stint in the American sanctioned "Fallujah Brigade" as a pause in his fight against the Americans. This brigade is supplied with weapons by the US. So basically, the US forces attacked the city, failed to take it, then delivered a supply of arms and ammunition to the people who just fought the Marines to a stand still.

The second story speaks to the White House claim that they were kept in the dark about the torture in Iraq by Rumsfeld. This story quotes the Operations Director of the International Committee of the Red Cross as saying that his organization reported torture by American soldiers in Iraq and that these reports were repeatedly brought to the attention of Coalition authorities in Iraq "throughout 2003." What is more damning for the White House is the assertion by the Washington Delegation of the ICRC that they had face to face meetings with officials at the US Dept. of Defense, Dept. of State AND THE WHITE HOUSE about problems with torture by US and coalition forces in Iraq. This directly contradicts the White House version of events that puts it all on Rumsfeld's failure to bring the story to the President. The President knew all about this from the ICRC, what Rumsfeld sat on was the fact that CBS was about to break the story on national TV. I'm convinced that for this administration 90% of the problem with this situation is that there are photos. If it were just a story about torture but without photos, they wouldn't (and didn't) take it seriously. This leads me to believe that root of the problem will continue to fester and there is a good chance torture will continue and sooner or later new photos will come out taken since April of this year.

The solutions to both Fallujah situation and the torture scandal remind of the Simpsons episode where Mayor Quimby, Chief Wiggum, Homer, and Otto have dug a deep hole and can't get out.

"Quimby: I guess we're not going to find anything.
Otto: Um, how are we going to get out of here?
Homer: We'll dig our way out!
Wiggum: No, dig _up_, stupid."