Midday News Roundup (13 July)

Things are a little late (and a little more compact) today, as I was enjoying my 15 seconds of fame this morning, taping a PSA for the West Seattle Garden Tour (of which I'm the publicity chair) on the afternoon gabfest, Northwest Afternoon, from our local ABC affiliate. It will be shown around 3:55pm tomorrow in the Seattle area on channel 4. And if you're in the Seattle area, come on over to West Seattle on Sunday and take a look at some fantastic gardens. Tickets are $15, which goes to benefit the ArtsWest theater as well as several local horticultural projects (including Seattle Youth Garden Works, which teaches young adults farming techniques).

• So how's that roadmap for victory going? Salon's War Room takes a look at a scathing GAO report:
  

  In a new report (available in pdf), the Government Accountability Office says the president's national strategy fails to provide "a clear roadmap for achieving victory in Iraq." The core problem identified by the GAO: bad assumptions by the Bush administration.
  
  "First, the original plan assumed a permissive security environment, which never materialized," the GAO says. "An active and increasingly lethal insurgency undermined the development of effective Iraqi governmental institutions and delayed plans for an early transfer of security responsibilities to the Iraqis."
  
  "Second," the GAO continues, "the United States assumed that its U.S.-funded reconstruction activities would help restore Iraq's essential services -- oil production, electricity generation, and water treatment -- to prewar levels. However, U.S. efforts to achieve this goal have been hindered by security, management and maintenance challenges that undermine efforts to improve the lives of the Iraqi people ..."
  
  "Third, the strategy assumes that the Iraqi government and international community will help finance Iraq's development needs. However, Iraq has limited resources to contribute to its own reconstruction, and while the international community has offered some assistance, Iraq's estimated reconstruction needs vastly exceed what has been offered to date."

  
  
• The Sepiamutiny blog wonders why the blogosphere as a whole has been so "deafeningly" quiet on the Mumbai bombings. Blogger Ennis offers three angles that might help bloggers with their posts:
  

  1. India and Pakistan are now nuclear armed states. This sort of attack, if it ends up being traced to Pakistan could have very serious consequences. Couple that with the recent resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and British frustrations there, and an argument might be made that Pakistan is engaging in serious destabalization of its neighbors.
     
     Of course, this is all speculation but Indian security sources indicate that they suspect Pakistan had a hand in these events. If that suspicion becomes widespread, won’t there be an outcry for retaliation? If so, will Bush be able (or willing) to protect Pakistan again? Musharaff prepped nukes for use during Kargill (according to Nawaz Sharif), this could get very ugly.
     
     
  2. On the other hand, if the bombings were actually committed by a new group connected to Al-Qaeda, this marks the opening of a significant new front in the “Global War on Terror”. Al-Qaeda activities are of clear importance to America.
  3. 
     
     
  4. These events are pertinent to the domestic fight on anti-terrorism funding. Another mass transit bombing gives credence to Schumer’s argument that DHS is giving too little money to New York. In other words, recent events in India undermine the argument for protecting targets in Indiana.

  
  
• One day after the mass transit rail bombings in India, the U.S. Senate was asked to increase funding for rail security in this country. The majority said no. The vote was 50-50, one vote shy of providing extra money to beef up security on U.S. railroads. [ABCNews]
  
  
• Oil prices settled at a record above $76 a barrel Thursday in a market agitated by escalating violence in the Middle East and the threat of supply disruptions there and beyond. [WaPo]
  
  
• U.S. stocks fell on Thursday as violence in the Middle East drove investors into safe-haven Treasuries and gold and helped to catapult the oil price to a record, reviving fears of higher inflation and slowing profit growth. A brokerage downgrade of retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT.N), caused in part by steep energy prices, sent retail sector stocks lower. [WaPo]
  
  
• At Muqdadiyah, a mixed Sunni-Shiite town north of Baghdad, guerrillas came to a bus station, separated out 24 or more Shiites from the other passengers, and took them to a nearby village where they killed most of them (al-Zaman says they murdered 22). The massacre is a continuation of the tit for tat "identity killings" that began last Sunday when Shiite militiamen massacred Sunnis in al-Jihad district of Baghdad. This tactic has brought the low-intensity civil war in Iraq to the boiling point. [Juan Cole's Informed Comment]