Maybe we should rename it the war of terror. If we hadn't already been paying attention, Abu Ghraib deminstrated how much the united states government relies on vilence and terror to subject and attempt to control its newly colonized subjects. As if Abu Ghraib weren't enough (or in fact much more than any body wanted) now we get this noxious revelation: Allawi, the guy we're installing to run the country, IS a terrorist, and an apparently mediocre one at that, with strong ties to the American Central Intelligence Agency. And before he was an expatriate terrorist, he was a state terrorist for the Ba'athists, having spied on students and supervised public hangings. Iraqi Freedom has gone the way of the theoretically upcoming new guns 'n' roses album.

Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990's to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say.



Dr. Allawi's group, the Iraqi National Accord, used car bombs and other explosive devices smuggled into Baghdad from northern Iraq, the officials said. Evaluations of the effectiveness of the bombing campaign varied, although the former officials interviewed agreed that it never threatened Saddam Hussein's rule.



No public records of the bombing campaign exist, and the former officials said their recollections were in many cases sketchy, and in some cases contradictory. They could not even recall exactly when it occurred, though the interviews made it clear it was between 1992 and 1995.



The Iraqi government at the time claimed that the bombs, including one it said exploded in a movie theater, resulted in many civilian casualties. But whether the bombings actually killed any civilians could not be confirmed because, as a former C.I.A. official said, the United States had no significant intelligence sources in Iraq then.



One former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was based in the region, Robert Baer, recalled that a bombing during that period "blew up a school bus; schoolchildren were killed." Mr. Baer, a critic of the Iraq war, said he did not recall which resistance group might have set off that bomb.



Other former intelligence officials said Dr. Allawi's organization was the only resistance group involved in bombings and sabotage at that time.



But one former senior intelligence official recalled that "bombs were going off to no great effect."



"I don't recall very much killing of anyone," the official said.



When Dr. Allawi was picked as interim prime minister last week, he said his first priority would be to improve the security situation by stopping bombings and other insurgent attacks in Iraq — an idea several former officials familiar with his past said they found "ironic."



"Send a thief to catch a thief," said Kenneth Pollack, who was an Iran-Iraq military analyst for the C.I.A. during the early 1990's and recalled the sabotage campaign.



Dr. Allawi declined to respond to repeated requests for comment, made Monday and Tuesday through his Washington representative, Patrick N. Theros. The former intelligence officials, while confirming C.I.A. involvement in the bombing campaign, would not say how, exactly, the agency had supported it.

Would this apply to the military structures of command which made possible Abu Ghraib too?

The rally - commencing the first day of strike activities for the 25,000 some odd home health care workers striking 26 agencies around New York city, was amazing. I joined about fifteen thousand workers, convening in front of the 1199 building and shutting down city blocks as we listened to a crappy speech from howard dean, and better and more inspiring and powerful stuff from the unusually staid Al Franken, Dennis Rivera, Andy Stern and Chuck Schumer (whose entourage inlcuded a guy i know from high school and college and whose spanish is even worse than Dean's.) Rivera announced that one of the employer agencies had just settled - and more would by the end of the day, leaving only 10,000 of the 25-26,000 without a contract. Reading a letter from Mike "it don't matter if i write policies, i write checks" Bloomberg urging workers to return to work, Rivera presented the executive board's proposal - postponing the two more days of the three-day for one month, giving the other agencies one last chance to settle contracts granting workers a minimum of $10 an hour - which 15,000 Home Health Care aides won today. Emphatically, in a process Rivera rightly called "Democracy in Action," the workers, in an open air vote of thousands and thousands of people, rejected the proposal and voted to stay out for the remainder of the three days. After this, which was kind of amazing to watch, as thousands of workers chanted "strike" in unison, we marched down 43rd streed and turned on to ninth avenue, filling half the street (and thus moviing very slowly) down to 26th street, where we turned east, marched over to fifth, and then turned north again to 32nd street, where we heard a few more speakers and a live band playing a customized 1199 version of "aint no stopping us now."



What struck me, as i marched was the energy and feeling of power everyone had. The organizing that went in to this strike must have been pretty incredible, because these workers were out in force and "ready to rumble." And the crowds on the sidewalks and the windows of office buildings and balconies of new-development condos in hell's kitchen were behind the strike 100%.



feel privileged to have been able to stand in solidarity with these workers today and i applaud them for the victories they have won and look forward to those yet to come. You can read more about it here.

I'm heading downtown for the Invisible No More rally for the 23,000 Home Health Care workers poised to strike this week. If you're in New York, yous houdl come to. Contrary to what Josh says, it's right in front of the 1199 Building on 43rd street between 8th and 9th avenues.



Oh yeah, one of the guys from Avenue Q who was on TV last night when he won the tony award lives on the first floor of my parents building. Ah, the upper west side.

Reagan's dead, and the panegyrics are flowing like my freshman year roomate's urine on my dorm room floor. I won't bother linking to them, cause i'm sure youve seen enough already. From naming names to busting strikes to Iran Contra, Reagan proved himself hardly worthy of the veneration he's being granted by the so-called liberal media, and it's pissing me off.



Meanwhile, NYC is facing some strike action, repoprts this alarmist and problematic STeve Greenhouse piece.

A great article in today's times about the Las Vegas Culinary Union, HERE Local 226

While Ghazi al-Yawar criticizes the american military presence in the country of which he's just been selected president, the selection process was contentious and seems to illustrate the power struggle taking place over the state's future.

Late Monday, several members of the governing council said they would continue to hold out for Mr. Yawar, the group's choice



That raised the prospect of an ugly public battle between Mr. Bremer and Mr. Brahimi and the Iraqis on the council. And it suggested the possibility that Mr. Bremer, if he had an interim government in place, might move to dissolve the council himself.



Indeed, the senior administration official said there were expectations that the governing council, an American-appointed board that was created last summer, would dissolve itself shortly after the new government is selected.



"What Bremer and Brahimi are doing is very bad," said Mahmood Othman, a governing council member who was excluded from the negotiations on Monday. "They don't believe in democracy."

And these are the people that the U.S. appointed



Meanwhile,