WaPo On The Big Dig Problems

The Washington Post has a story about the problems with the Boston Big Dig project. There has been a long history of warnings about the project. One thing the Post does is extremely dishonest though, they cast blame on "a series of Republican governors". That's really a false assertion, since the Turnpike Authority is an independent organization. Witness the difficulty Mitt Romney is having just getting rid of the current head of the Authority. The Post also gives the legislature a pass, a very disingenuous move.

Yet according to officials, government documents and people who shaped the project over the years, the Big Dig has not gone awry because its flaws were unknown. It has gone awry in spite of repeated warnings about its cost and design.

"It was nothing but problem after problem, and no one was looking, no one cared," said A. Joseph DeNucci, Massachusetts's longtime state auditor, whose office has since 1993 issued 20 critical reports about the Big Dig. "I get sick when I think about it."

In addition to the auditor's work, there were 13 negative reports during the project's first decade by the state inspector general. More recently, there have been hearings in Congress and the state legislature, and financial reviews by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

"This has been the most investigated project in our history," said James A. Aloisi Jr., a former assistant state transportation secretary and general counsel to the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

The warnings were overshadowed, many officials now acknowledge, by zeal among politicians, business leaders, lobbyists and private contractors who had a stake in the project. That eagerness to move forward coincided with a political culture in which a series of Republican governors and the state's independent turnpike authority have trusted a private consultant to shepherd virtually every facet of the project, with relatively little government supervision. "What was missing from the whole project was outside oversight," said Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino (D).

The story details several supposed transgressions by past governors but says nothing whatsoever about the other politicians who also failed to exercise any kind of oversight. And the las part of the article shows what the real problem is:

Gov. Mitt Romney (R), who is trying to force Amorello from his job, portrays him as secretive and uncooperative. "That the largest public works project in the country would have no accountability to any public official is nuts," Romney said in an interview.

Half a dozen state and federal investigations are looking into corruption, costs and construction methods.

Noting those investigations, Bechtel officials declined to comment.

No matter what is found now, Cerasoli, the former inspector general, said: "It'll never be made right. Too much money has been spent, and no one will be able to recapture the life that is lost."

'Authorities' are notoriously hard to control since they operate independently from the elected government. I rather suspect that is the source of the real problem, not the governors. Too bad the Post is playing politics instead of playing it straight on this one.

We Begin To See The Problem Here

First, it would appear that Tehran IS getting a bit nervous over the possibility of a Hezbollah defeat. They are trying to invoke "Muslim Unity" and get other Muslim nations to help stop the fighting. In other words, the original strategy that presumed that the West would rush to stop the fighting fell through.

The silence of the United Nations… and some Western countries' support for Zionist atrocities against defenceless children and women calls for a more active role by Muslim nations to put an end to these attacks," Ahmadinejad said.

The president, a fierce opponent of Israel's existence, also held telephone talks with leaders from Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and called for for an emergency meeting of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

But here is the most stunning thing I have read recently coming from Kofi Annan:

Annan said Friday that Syria and Iran should be involved in resolving the crisis since they "are two friendly countries" that clearly have influence on Hezbollah.

Wow. Just wow. Annan is either a complete fool or a complete tool. Or both. The puppetmasters of the war are "friendly"?

Air Power

The New York Times has a story that explains that Israel wants to continue using it's air power to destroy Hezbollah rather than send in ground troops.

For the last three days, Israel has been telling the residents of southern Lebanon, through leaflets, radio broadcasts, taped telephone messages and conversations with the local authorities, to leave these villages and move north.

But the preparation now seems to be less for a ground invasion than for more punishing airstrikes to try to eliminate Hezbollah military assets and stockpiles, which the Israelis say are distributed and hidden through the civilian population, in houses, garages and apartments.

“We want the freedom to attack these places,” the officer said. “I believe in air power. I believe in our ability to destroy Hezbollah without going into Lebanon again the way we did in 1982. And the only way to do it is to attack any movement we detect, any launch or any activity aimed at hitting Israel — especially from the villages we see.”

The overall aim, Israel says, is to weaken Hezbollah sufficiently so that the international community can help the Lebanese government to carry out United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 and exercise its sovereignty all over Lebanon, expelling any foreign fighters and disarming Hezbollah.

Israel is more interested in having an international force patrol the border than it has been in the past, officials say, especially if the force has rules of engagement that will allow it to ensure that Hezbollah cannot reinfiltrate to the border.

Israel wants “to change the calculus for any future kidnapper,” showing that it will respond in force and that the Israeli population is willing to suffer pain and casualties, undermining the theory of Hezbollah’s leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, that Israeli society is “like a spider’s web,” soft and easily broken.

Hezbollah will not surrender, the officer said. “They won’t come out with a white flag. But at the end they should be beaten and be seen to be beaten. It won’t be a knockout, but what matters is how big the decision is on points.”

Currently, as Israeli troops and armor continue to build on the border and commandos operate secretly and deeper inside Lebanon, Israeli infantry activity has been limited to operations within a mile or two of the border.

One can assume that the Israelis are well aware of the New York Times' penchant for printing secret information. One can also safely assume that the New York Times is read by terrorists and foreign intelligence services. So if one wanted to get some disinformation into print, sending someone to speak "on condition of anonymity" with the Times would be a smart move.

Just speculating.

Is Tehran Worried?

There are indications that Tehran is worried that Hezbollah may lose this fight. Iran is trying to rush additional rockets to Hezbollah via Syria, even though there is not indication that Hezbollah needs them as yet.

Ever since the fighting began, Iran has been transferring rockets and other ammunition to Hezbollah via Syria. The war materiel moves into Lebanon on trucks from Syria, but much of it is being destroyed by the Israel Defense Forces.

The Iranian resupply effort should not be interpreted as stemming from a serious Hezbollah logistical plight. There are no indications that Hezbollah is running out of rockets, though it may need other equipment. It is possible that the supplies are meant to build up Hezbollah s arsenal in case the war turns into one of attrition.

Iran's embassy in Beirut is coordinating Tehran's involvement in the fighting against Israel. The families of the Iranian advisers have been evacuated, but it is unlikely that Israel will take the extreme step of targeting the Iranian embassy. Iran's Revolutionary Guards also provide constant intelligence and logistical report to Hezbollah's foreign operations unit.

The meaning of Tehran's support is that it is very important to Iran that Hezbollah not be crushed during this confrontation. There are signs suggesting that both Tehran and Damascus are worried that Hezbollah will be worn out by the fighting. Therefore, Iran is pressuring Syria not to acquiesce to diplomatic offers that are meant to pressure or influence Hezbollah and Hamas to hold back on their attacks against Israel.

A couple of things come to mind here; Iran could be worried that the smuggling of weapons to Hezbollah may become significantly more difficult if a true multinational force takes over in Southern Lebanon and is trying to get as much material in before that happens. It's also possible that Iran badly miscalculated Israels response and Hezbollah's value as a strategic threat is in jeopardy unless Iran can prop them up. The fact that Hamas may well be folding is probably not exactly making Tehran at all happy at the moment.

Hezbollah Rocketing Continues

Hezbollah continues to launch rockets into civilian areas in Israel, killing two people today.

Two people were killed and several others were wounded as ten Katyusha rockets slammed into Haifa and its suburbs on Sunday morning.

A man was killed in Haifa when rocket shrapnel hit his vehicle while he was driving along a main road in Haifa. A second person was killed when a rocket hit a carpentry shop in a suburb of Haifa.

Eleven others were hurt in the attack on Haifa, one of them seriously, one moderately, and the rest sustained light wounds.

Earlier Sunday, one person was lightly wounded in a Katyusha rocket strike on Carmiel. Three rockets were also fired at the Upper Galilee. Sirens sounded in Acre, and as far south as Zichron Ya'akov and Binyamina, but were later said to be false alarms.

Some 17 people were wounded Saturday, two of them seriously, as waves of Katyusha strikes - more than 160 rockets - struck targets across the north of Israel.

On Saturday evening, a barrage of rockets landed in Safed, wounding four members of the same family, one of them seriously. Also Saturday evening, rockets hit Nahariya and Carmiel, seriously wounding a Carmiel resident. In a rocket strike earlier in the day, two Carmiel residents were hurt, one moderately and the other lightly, in direct hits on their homes.

One person sustained moderate wounds and three others were lightly hurt as 54 Katyusha rockets landed in Nahariya.

The pace of the rocket attacks does not appear to be slowing at this point.