Did I write in earlier, that one of the hidden gems of living in New York is the range of cabbie names you see?

Last night: Islam Mohammed.

Tonight: Amadou Diallo.

In the past, I’ve also gotten rides from John Holmes and a man whose last name was Hitler.

Atrios linked to a post by Jane Hamsher that raises two interesting questions about abortion I’ve never thought about.

First, “if a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic, who do you save — a Petri dish with five blastula or the two year-old child?” If you believe that life begins at conception, is that a hard decision?

Second, knowing “that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in a woman’s normal menstrual cycle in the first 7 days after fertilization,” how would you answer this dilemma:

If the embryo loss that accompanies natural procreation were the moral equivalent of infant death, then pregnancy would have to be regarded as a public health crisis of epidemic proportions: Alleviating natural embryo loss would be a more urgent moral cause than abortion, in vitro fertilization, and stem-cell research combined.

For the devout Christians reading, do they all go to heaven? As Hamsher asks, does that mean that 60-80% of the population in heaven are all blastocytes? It would probably be higher than 80%, as some percentage of the population won’t make it into heaven (all of us heathens, for example). Oh, actually, they have yet to be baptized, so do they all go to hell?

I’m being silly with the last paragraph, of course, but it gets at a serious concern: Do people consider the implications when considering these ethical questions? It often doesn’t seem that way. When I say that these moral decisions are deeply personal and difficult, it’s not because I don’t want to argue the affirmative case for abortion. It’s that I look at the wide array of ethical and moral issues and recognize that different people, even of the same faith, can honestly and truthfully come to different moral conclusions. It is part of recognizing and respecting the faith, morality, and beliefs of those around us. On this particular question, one that depends nearly 100% on morality alone, I don’t have the answer for you. No one can, and no one should try to answer it for me.

People will try to answer it for all of us, though. South Dakota just passed a new abortion law that will set up the perfect test case to go to the new, Big Government Supreme Court of Roberts and Alito.

Full Tilt has a set of pros that play exclusively on their site. Chris “Jesus” Ferguson is one of those guys. Today, he was in a 1800-person freeroll tournament that’s a satellite to a large tournament on Saturday. I was just playing because it’s free and because, well, playing in tournaments is fun. Anyway, I was looking around at the other tables and saw this:

I’m number 9 on the right, circled. Seriously, this will never happen with actual money on the line.

Update: Into round two this weekend. Not sure how I’m going to pull that off during Heidi’s shower…

That’s a far fall from a daily show on ESPN, but I just read that he’s had a pretty tough few years since leaving ESPN. I wasn’t really a fan, but after reading that, I wish him the best.

The former senior analyst of the Middle East Section in the CIA has a long piece in Foreign Affairs describing the way the Bush administration abused the intelligence community in the lead up to the Iraq war. I’m not sure if this is a revelation anymore. We all know that the Bush administration wasn’t entirely truthful or honest in their presentation or application of the work done by the intelligence community or people in the State department.

This piece does have a lot of detail that I never knew and it’s interesting to get a perspective into how the intelligence community works from someone who was a senior member. In case you’re counting, by the way, this makes now the third or fourth senior CIA or NSC official to come out and call out the President and this White House on their complete abuse of our intelligence community: Richard Clarke, Larry Johnson, Rand Beers, and now Paul Pillar.

Some interesting bits (go read the whole thing!):

The Bush administration’s use of intelligence on Iraq … turned the entire model upside down. The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. (The military made extensive use of intelligence in its war planning, although much of it was of a more tactical nature.) Congress, not the administration, asked for the now-infamous October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs, although few members of Congress actually read it. (According to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material, no more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary.) As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community’s assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.

As many people (including me) were saying at the time, going to war was a done deal. The U.N. speech, the stupid Security Council efforts, all of it was a sham.

As to why it’s important that we have an honest accounting of what happened:

The reexamination of prewar public statements is a necessary part of understanding the process that led to the Iraq war. But a narrow focus on rhetorical details tends to overlook more fundamental problems in the intelligence-policy relationship. Any time policymakers, rather than intelligence agencies, take the lead in selecting which bits of raw intelligence to present, there is — regardless of the issue — a bias. The resulting public statements ostensibly reflect intelligence, but they do not reflect intelligence analysis, which is an essential part of determining what the pieces of raw reporting mean. The policymaker acts with an eye not to what is indicative of a larger pattern or underlying truth, but to what supports his case.

A large section of the piece covers how the work of the intelligence community was politicized during the run up to war. Pillar contends that by forcing the intelligence community to keep digging at a particular question, in this case a Saddam-al qaeda connection, it prevented the analysts from following the evidence and instead produced a volume of paperwork and research that made it seem like the intelligence community thought there was a serious and credible link between the two. In fact, the policy makers focused requests distorted the intelligence analysis process.

That is what happened when the Bush administration repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war. The Bush team approached the community again and again and pushed it to look harder at the supposed Saddam-al Qaeda relationship — calling on analysts not only to turn over additional Iraqi rocks, but also to turn over ones already examined and to scratch the dirt to see if there might be something there after all. The result was an intelligence output that — because the question being investigated was never put in context — obscured rather than enhanced understanding of al Qaeda’s actual sources of strength and support.

This process represented a radical departure from the textbook model of the relationship between intelligence and policy, in which an intelligence service responds to policymaker interest in certain subjects (such as “security threats from Iraq” or “al Qaeda’s supporters”) and explores them in whatever direction the evidence leads. The process did not involve intelligence work designed to find dangers not yet discovered or to inform decisions not yet made. Instead, it involved research to find evidence in support of a specific line of argument — that Saddam was cooperating with al Qaeda — which in turn was being used to justify a specific policy decision.

That entire section is worth reading (bottom of page 3 and the beginning of page 4). You’ll understand why Feith was so hated by many outside the core of the White House cabal.

Pillar ends with a list of recommendations to fix the intelligence process. In the end it comes down to maintaining independence between the policy makers and the folks gathering and analyzing intelligence. The oversight ideas are interesting, but the idea of the intelligence community being semi-autonomous like the Federal Reserve is a bit disconcerting. After the NSA wiretapping revelations, though, the current situation isn’t necessarily ideal either.

The Washington Post has an article on Pillar’s piece as well, if you’re interested.

(found via PressThink)

US-Sweden, Women’s ice hockey, semifinal game.

Backstory: In women’s ice hockey, there are two elite teams, Canada and the US. In the last 45 games against teams that are not Canada, the US is 44-0-1, with the tie coming more than five years ago.

The US took a 2-0 lead, but Sweden played great defense and scored both goals on US mistakes. In each case, the US was trying to get out of their defensive zone and Sweden forced a turnover behind the net, leading to a quick pass and Maria Rooth goal. Sweden’s defense shut down the US, including a 2 minute 5-on-3.

Through the third period, both teams were a little tight, trying to score beautiful goals to win the game. Not enough speed, not enough breakaways. A little trapping.
Ten minutes of overtime didn’t decide the game, so they went to a shootout. The top US shooters couldn’t solve the Swedish goalie, and the third Sweden shooter, a 16 year old girl, beat the US goalie. Maria Rooth clinched it on the fourth round, and everyone in blue and yellow went nuts.

This game was great for the sport. Sweden was on the verge of canceling their women’s ice hockey program a few years ago, when it looked like Finland had cemented 3rd-in-world status, and the US and Canada would play in every gold medal game. More good teams make better tournaments.  Here’s hoping more women around the world play ice hockey.