McClatchy has started a series today on our 'War on Terror'.

McClatchy tracked down 66 men released from Guantanamo in the most systematic survey to date of prisoners held there. Many had no connection to terrorism, but their experience turned them against America.

There's a reason I use the breakin line to Greg Mitchells book So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits--and the President--Failed on Iraq.

Part of that reason is an article printed in the Asian Times, I just finished reading.

intriguing stuff --cho

Several apparently diverse elements from the news this morning all point to an agenda on the part of Bush Administration, but getting a clear picture of just what that overall agenda is, and what the goals might indicate, can be mind boggling.

Anyone want to see if there are some common threads here...?

1. UBS to Write Down Another $19 Billion

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   The planned capital increase would come on top of a $13 billion infusion UBS received from the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation and an unidentified Middle Eastern investor this year.

   UBS’s problems of the last year are a stunning reversal for an institution long known for its staid, conservative style. Beginning in 2005, UBS made a huge bet on mortgage securities, seeking the higher yields they offered and trusting that the AAA ratings they bore would protect the bank from outsize losses.

   Eventually, UBS’s mortgage portfolio topped $100 billion.

   “The losses at UBS are staggering,” Ms. Whitney of Oppenheimer said. “It’s hard to fathom another quarter of $18 billion or $19 billion write-downs, but this isn’t the end of their problems.”
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   That bit about the unidentified Middle Eastern investor (emphasis mine) caught my eye.

"Isn't it odd that after a terrorist attack that relied on $2 box-cutters, we are redoubling our pursuit of fantastical weaponry?" — Robert Scheer

Someday we Americans will look back on our Global War on Terror and ask ourselves what the hell we thought we were doing. Here’s one of our latest shenanigans.

In case you hadn't noticed, we're using nuclear submarines to assassinate terrorists these days. That’s not the most efficient way to assassinate terrorists, but it’s the most expensive, so it has that going for it.

Even assassinating terrorists with B-2 stealth bombers wouldn’t be as expensive as doing it with nuclear submarines. B-2s cost a ridiculous amount of money, all right, but not as much as the subs. The subs carry a lot more people and take a lot longer to get where they’re going, so the people in them have to eat and sleep and so forth. The two pilots in a B-2 eat box lunches and can go to the bathroom without getting up from their seats. And then there are those expensive nuclear reactors, which nuclear submarines have and B-2s don’t.

And as ridiculous as the cost of an F-22 air-to-air stealth fighter is, it’s less ridiculous than the cost of a B-2 stealth bomber, and there are other drawbacks to using an F-22 to assassinate terrorists as well.