Sibel Edmonds: Corrupt DOD, State Dept. officials sold passes into nuke labs for Turkish, Pakistani moles

Ok, as weird as it all is, it just got weirder. The London Sunday Times reports (via Bradblog):

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, … described how foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Immaculate election

Clive Thompson, NYT Magazine, has a meaty article about how electronic voting machines fail (via BradBlog). Some highlights:

Michael Shamos, a computer scientist at Carnegie Mellon University who has examined voting-machine systems for more than 25 years, estimates that about 10 percent of the touch-screen machines “fail” in each election. “In general, those failures result in the loss of zero or one vote,” he told me….

We are now at war in Pakistan

Steven Lee Meyers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt in the NYT (via t/o), rearranged and edited to deliver the facts in a coherent and linear fashion:

The United States now has about 50 soldiers in Pakistan. …

President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan. …

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal…

[O]fficials see an opportunity …to advocate for the expanded authority in Pakistan…

Even now, officials say, some in the State Department argue that American-led military operations on the Pakistani side of the border with Afghanistan could result in a tremendous backlash and ultimately do more harm than good. …

[T]he Pakistanis are still years away from fielding an effective counterinsurgency force…

(emphasis added)

So, there you have it. The assassination of Bhutto presented an opportunity to expand the mission.

Analysis of the Republican Debate

You won’t find a more informative or insightful analysis of the latest Republican debate than these notes taken by a 9-year-old viewer and posted in Daily Kos by 8ackgr0und N015e.

They are rude
Interrupt alot 
 

[…]
 
 
No candidate likes Obama.
Republicans don’t think he’ll be a good president.
Obama gonna win.

A little child shall lead them.

(H/T Mrs. Monsky of Salon’s Table Talk)

Mexico, January 6th 2008

One of the few independent journalists in Mexico, Carmen Aristegui, has been silenced by the right. Lopez Obrador has stated that Grupo Prisa has reached an arrangement with FeCal to limit freedom of expression in Mexican media. They declined to renew Aristegui’s contract, citing “editorial differences.”