Bubbarama

Blair announces Iraq withdrawal plan - Yahoo! News

2007-02-21T08:29:00.000-08:00

Bush rat leaves the sinking ship. White House calls it a sign of success. Up is down. War is peace. Hate is love. Blair announces Iraq withdrawal plan - Yahoo! News

Ahem

2007-02-19T06:29:00.000-08:00

Let the record show that when the Republicans filibustered a Democratic initiative again on Saturday, no one in the Democratic leadership suggested abolishing the right to filibuster. The Majority Leader did not launch into a tirade. There was no need for "moderates" like Joe Lieberman and John McCain to strike a compromise to save the right to fillibuster.

Let the record show that much, at least.

The Raw Story | Cheney son-in-law used revolving door to stop chemical security regulations

2007-02-16T08:11:00.000-08:00

Wonderful family.And they've done so much to help make America safe and secure.The Raw Story | Cheney son-in-law used revolving door to stop chemical security regulations

GOP musters its own vets for Iraq debate - CNN.com

2007-02-15T11:46:00.000-08:00

I am a veteran, and I can't begin to tell you how much I detest veterans who think their status as veterans gives them some sort of special wisdom or insight on things like this. GOP musters its own vets for Iraq debate - CNN.com

These guys don't know any more - or any less - than the people across the aisle - including those on the other side who, like them, happen to be vets.
These guys don't own patriotism. They are not "supporting the troops." They're posing atop a growing mountain of casualties, and ignoring a growing mountain of evidence that the politicians whose position they're supporting cooked the intelligence, and lied us into this god-awful war.

Embolden the enemy, my ass.

Vile

2007-02-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

According to the article posted here, the people who planned the war in Iraq (Bush, Rumsfeld, General Tommy Franks) projected there would only be 5,000 American troops left in Iraq by December, 2006.

Stupidity. Arrogance. Hubris.

The same article says that planning for the invasion was under way in December, 2001 (Bush is reported to have asked Rumsfeld about it in November, 2001).

Two months after 9/11, these fools are hard at work, ginning up the wrong war, planning for reconstruction like a bunch of six year-olds clapping for Tinkerbell.

Vile.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB214/index.htm

Regarding Franken

2007-02-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

A thought or two about Al Franken and the race to unseat Norm Coleman.

I wrote advertising for Paul Wellstone in 1990, and again in 1996. I am told that the Wellstones framed the storyboard for one of my commercials – and that they’d hung it in the living room of their Washington apartment. I hope it was so.

I went to the memorial service at Williams Arena when they died, and, in the days that followed, I watched the Republicans, main stream media, and right wing radio butcher the intent of the event and the memory of the Wellstones, their daughter, and the others on the plane. I will never forget (or forgive them for) the way they belittled the genuine agony and tears of a lot of really good people.

For that alone, Coleman, Richard Cheney’s hand-picked candidate, deserves to lose. He also deserves to lose for his votes – hundreds of them – in support of the Bush Administration. Further, he deserves to lose for the disingenuity with which he is now trying to sidle away from his record and distance himself from the albatross that is now and forever will be around his self-saving neck.

But Coleman isn’t going to be easy to beat. If Al Franken is the candidate, the same vicious people and the same millionaire money and the same media outlets that denigrated Wellstone (dead or alive) are going to go all-out to present Franken as nothing more than a second-rate comedian.

They will depict his campaign as being as flukey and far-fetched as Ventura’s. They will scrutinize his every word, looking for chances to tar him with John Kerry-like, out of context misquotes.

They will script the Teflon-esque, blow-combed chameleon Coleman with catch phrases. They will do everything they can strip Franken of gravitas.

And it may well be easy for them to do so.

After all, Franken has been, first and foremost, a comedian. And, while Franken was truly wonderful on Air America Radio, (where he se served up a unique mix of humor, policy wonkage, insight and interviews) the sound byte and catch-phrase nature of main stream media is not going to favor long, insightful answers or more cerebral debate.

Coleman, on the other hand, has made his living off the public’s notoriously short-term memory. He is at his best making preposterous contentions in front of interviewers who are either too shallow or too paid-for to cut off the ring and corner him with follow up questions. He is his own made-for-TV event, complete with an entourage of rich pals and a bunch of dumb middle class guy types who haven’t yet figured out hat they’re going to have to pay for his follies from tax cuts for the wealthy to hockey rinks for the wealthy.

Then there is Franken’s face. He looks as if he is playing for laughs – even when he is deadly serious. Just standing there, listening to Coleman’s inanities, he will look like he’s double-taking the audience. He will be vulnerable to misinterpretation or plain old misrepresentation.

I love Al Franken, and I admire him for wanting to rid us of Norm Coleman. But I am sincerely afraid that, without the proper funding, the right handlers, and the right coaching, he may turn out to be the perfect opponent for an incumbent Senator who never should have gotten to Washington in the first place.

Chrysler to cut 13,000 jobs after�loss there soars - Feb. 14, 2007

2007-02-14T10:03:00.000-08:00

"The economy is strong." - George W. Bush
Chrysler to cut 13,000 jobs after�loss there soars - Feb. 14, 2007

Melinda Henneberger: GOP PR Strategy Blames Dems For "Status Quo" On Iraq | The Huffington Post

2007-02-14T05:33:00.000-08:00

Oh... Now I get it... The Dems are the ones who spent years talking about staying the course...Melinda Henneberger: GOP PR Strategy Blames Dems For "Status Quo" On Iraq | The Huffington Post

Crooks and Liars � “The Republic Party”

2007-02-13T14:41:00.000-08:00

A Democrat grows a pair. Crooks and Liars � “The Republic Party”

Congressman Nadler, D, NY

2007-02-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

Madame Speaker, I rise to support this resolution and to call upon my colleagues to make a commitment to protect our troops and to bring them home as quickly and safely as possible.

The Iraq War is President Bush's war. The President deceived the American people and Members of Congress when he made the case for war. Every reason we were given for invading Iraq was false. Weapons of Mass Destruction? Not there. Saddam Hussein working hand-in-glove with Al Qaeda? Not true. And the more information that leaks out, the more apparent it becomes that these were not mistakes, but deliberate lies.

I ask you: if the President had gone to the American people and said we must invade a country that poses no imminent threat to us, and sacrifice thousands of lives in order to create a democratic government in Iraq, would we have assented? I think not.

And as the President now says to us that we should continue indefinitely to expend American blood and treasure to support one side in a sectarian civil war, should Congress continue to consent? I think not.

We need to say "Enough already!" Enough with the lies, and the deceit and the evasions! Enough with the useless bloodshed. We must protect our troops and ensure their safety while they are in Iraq. But we must not send more troops there to intervene in a civil war whose outcome we cannot determine. And we should set a swift timetable to withdraw our troops from Iraq, and let the contending Iraqi factions know that we will not continue to expend American blood and treasure to referee their civil war. Only if faced with the reality of imminent withdrawal of American troops might the Iraqis strike a deal with each other, and end the civil war.

We know that the Administration has botched the handling of this war; they stood by as Baghdad was looted, they failed to guard ammunition depots, they disbanded the Iraqi army, they crippled the government by firing all the competent civil servants in the name of de-Baathification. And they wasted countless billions of dollars on private contractors and on G-d only-knows-what, with no accounting.

And all this while they continue to deny resources to the real war on the terrorists. They let Osama bin Laden escape. They allowed the Taliban to recover and reconquer. They allow our ports to remain unprotected from uninspected shipping containers. And they let loose nuclear materials remain unaccounted for, waiting to be smuggled to Al Qaeda to be made into nuclear weapons.

And why does the President want more troops in Iraq? To expand our role from fighting Sunni insurgents to fighting the Shiite militias too. Of course, when we attack the Shiite militias, they will respond by shifting their targets from Sunnis to American troops. American casualties will skyrocket, and we will be fighting two insurgencies instead of one.

I believe the President has no real plan other than not to "lose Iraq" on his watch, and to hand over the whole mess to his successor two years from now. He will ignore anything Congress does that doesn't have the force of law.

That is why this resolution must be only the first step.

In the Supplemental Budget we will consider next month, we should exercise the only real power we have - the Congressional power of the purse. We will not cut off the funds, and leave our troops defenseless before the enemy, as the demagogues would imply, but we should limit the use of the funds we provide to protecting the troops while they are in Iraq and to withdrawing them on a timetable mandated in the law. We should provide funds to rebuild the army and to raise our readiness levels, for diplomatic conferences in case there is any possibility of negotiating an end to the Iraqi civil war, and for economic reconstruction assistance, but above all, we must use the power of the purse to mandate a timetable to withdraw our troops from Iraq.

We must use the power the people have entrusted to us. The best way to protect our troops is to withdraw them from the middle of a civil war they cannot win, and that is not our fight.

I know that, if we withdraw the troops, the civil war may continue and could get worse. But this is probably inevitable, no matter how long our troops remain. And if the Iraqis must fight a civil war, I would rather they fight it without 20,000 more Americans dying.

Yes, the blindness of the Administration is largely to blame for starting the civil war in Iraq, but we cannot end it. Only the Iraqis can settle their civil war. We can only make it worse, and waste our blood and treasure pointlessly.

So let us pass this resolution, and then let us lead this country out of the morass in Iraq, so that we can devote our resources to protecting ourselves from the terrorists and to improving the lives of our people.

Think Progress � McCain To Deliver Keynote Speech For Creationists

2007-02-13T12:16:00.000-08:00

Hot damn. A presidential candidate pandering to people who think Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs just like Fred and Barney. Think Progress � McCain To Deliver Keynote Speech For Creationists

The Raw Story | 'Clean as an F'ing whistle:' Expletive-laden audio of CIA leaker released

2007-02-13T03:54:00.000-08:00

Here, for your amusement and edification, are Richard Armitage and Bob Woodward discussing the future of the American people with a callowness and vapidity worthy of a couple of chapter officers at a secnd rate land grant college fraternity.

Like Flounder in Animal House, we fucked up. We trusted them.The Raw Story | 'Clean as an F'ing whistle:' Expletive-laden audio of CIA leaker released

The Libby Trial

2007-02-13T03:44:00.000-08:00

So there they were – Judith Miller and Scooter Libby, and Robert Novak and Richard Armitage and Bob Woodward and Karl Rove and Tim Russert and all the other self-important inside-the-beltway people, discussing Joseph Wilson, his op-ed piece and Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson’s CIA employee wife.

Do you suppose it ever crossed their minds that they were playing fast and loose with the United States of America? Did they think for a moment that maybe they weren’t entitled to do so? Did they stop to think that Wilson, Plame, and their children – or the then-mostly-living 3000-plus Americans who died in Iraq – or the hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis – were real people with real lives, not vague abstractions?

No. They shilled, flacked and worried the Iraq war into existence, (or in Woodward’s case, withheld critical information) in order to advance their own self interest. The Plame-Wilson story was nothing more than a malignant little shuttlecock in a bizarre game of Tim Burton-esque badminton out on the lawn.

Such silly, shallow and vane little people. They are courtiers six ranks back in the throng at King George’s court.

And there they were, fucking America Iraq and the Wilsons over, toying with the lives of others – feeling entitled – even obligated to do so. They are our high school cool kids gone to seed. Vainglorious preening people. Millionaires who’ve allowed – and continue to allow – themselves to be played for fools. Pompous asses who ignored the stink of the Clinton impeachment, stood by for the coup that was Bush vs Gore, allowed – and continue to allow – the conflation of 9/11 and Iraq and parroted the false alarms about WMD’s.

Our national politics are their office politics, nothing more – and certainly nothing personal. God, it’s galling.

Comedian Louie Anderson used to have a bit where he said that he wished somebody would come up with an “asshole bullet” that only killed you for five minutes.

You’d wake up, face down on the sidewalk and realize somebody had killed you for five minutes and you’d sit up and say, “Damn. I must have been a real asshole.”

Where are the asshole bullets when we really need them?

Time for the Senate to grow a pair.

2007-02-12T20:43:00.000-08:00

Bipartisanship is still dead. The question is, do the D's realize it?
Consortiumnews.com

Russert The Hack

2007-02-12T09:12:00.000-08:00

More on Tim Russert as hack and tool. This from today's LA Times:

Russert's fault? A lack of outrage
SCOTT COLLINS
February 12, 2007

THOSE of us who get a kick out of watching Tim Russert every Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" are feeling a little hangdog these days. We always thought Big Russ Jr. was tough on the powerful. Now we learn that to some Washington media types on both the right and the left, he's just a tool for the powerful.

What's occasioned this perceptual turnabout is, of course, the perjury and obstruction trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, where Russert wrapped up two days of testimony last week. Libby says the NBC newsman fed him the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, who is at the center of the trial. Russert says he didn't.

To ordinary viewers, though, whatever transpired during Libby's phone call to Russert back in 2003 couldn't be as jarring as what the trial has unearthed about Washington's deeply cynical attitude toward "Meet the Press," a venerable, 60-year-old staple of network TV and the No. 1-rated Sunday news talk show.

A former Cheney press aide testified last month that she pushed to get the vice president on Russert's show to bat down negative news because it was "our best format," a program where political handlers can "control the message."

Wow. Really? With his Buick-like physique, piercing stare and rumbling baritone — plus his interrogatory style of brandishing incriminating documents and video in front of his guests — Russert sure doesn't look like any flack's patsy.

But to Russert's longtime critics, this was an a-ha! moment. Arianna Huffington, who once penned the critical "RussertWatch" feature for her liberal Huffington Post website, said she attended the Libby trial last week. There she found fresh confirmation for her view of Russert as one of the media handmaidens who carried water for the Bush administration in the run-up to the Iraq war.

"When we started RussertWatch, we didn't know he was on Dick Cheney and [ex-aide] Mary Matalin's list of ways to get their message out," Huffington told me Friday. She also heaped scorn on Russert's testimony that he always assumed his off-camera conversations with government officials were automatically off-the-record, so as "not to blindside anyone."

"That's the exact opposite of how journalists operate," Huffington said. "Russert's responsibility is to the public, unless there's some specific granting of anonymity."

So which is it? Is Russert the lantern-jawed tough guy many of us thought he was, the hard-boiled lawyer-turned-journo who hoists wayward pols on their own rhetorical petards? Or is he really just a Beltway Cowardly Lion who blows hard but allows his prey to wink and nudge their way out of tight spots with the nation's future at stake? (An NBC spokeswoman, citing the sensitive nature of the court testimony, said neither Russert nor network officials would comment.)

Evidence for Russert as a big softie has long existed. In 2004, when it came time to leverage his celebrity into a book-length treatise, he gave us not the standard "how I became an intrepid reporter" odyssey, the broadcast journalists' default choice, but rather "Big Russ and Me," a sentimental memoir of his categorically decent but emotionally withholding Irish-Catholic father.

"Big Russ" may not stack up as great literature, but it became a surprise bestseller and humanized Russert to millions who'd known him simply as a guy who liked to play "gotcha" with elected officials.

But writing a heartwarming book that merchants might file alongside "Tuesdays With Morrie" doesn't help demonstrate journalistic toughness. And watching "Meet the Press" over the last few weeks, I think I can understand why both Cheney's office and critics such as Huffington believe Russert can be readily controlled.

As an interviewer, Russert relies on documentary evidence to ask the pointed questions you want asked and answered. He hardly permits our leaders to slip away freely. Russert aggressively pursued, for example, the U.S. failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq during President Bush's February 2004 appearance on "Meet the Press."

But Russert can seem overly dispassionate, particularly during a time when opinion has increasingly bled into the news. And it's the lack of emotion that can make his approach look, after a while, less like real toughness than a facsimile of it.

Outrage is the reporter's ultimate stock in trade, from Oriana Fallaci jabbing Ayatollah Khomeini over Islamic veils to the on-camera meltdowns of Anderson Cooper and Shepard Smith during Hurricane Katrina. But Russert doesn't do outrage. He doesn't pound his desk and tell guests to shut up, like Bill O'Reilly. He doesn't try to pry open subjects by telling them, as Mike Wallace is known to have done, that their story is "pabulum." He's not on the receiving end of angry lectures, like the kind that Bill Clinton gave Chris Wallace, or the kind Dan Rather seemed to get from everyone.

Is there something vaudevillian about all these histrionics? Sure, but that's part of journalism. Maybe not the most handsome part, but a part nonetheless. It's revealing that when Libby rang Russert in 2003, it was to lodge a complaint, not about Russert, but about his high-volume MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews. The "Hardball" host is exactly the kind of outburst-prone broadcaster who can drive handlers up the wall.

On the Feb. 4 show, Russert drilled former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards over his stance on the Iraq war, tracing how the Democratic presidential candidate shifted from support to opposition. Russert asked all the right questions, presented all the right evidence, but there was an emotional element missing. Isn't it at least a little disappointing that a leading voice from the supposed opposition party went along for so long with a war plan that he now tells us, with the benefit of several years' hindsight and when the information is of little use, was grievously flawed?

But because that sense of outrage was missing from the "Meet the Press" host — he asked the questions in the same lawyerly tone of polite urgency and slight incredulousness he always uses — Edwards was basically allowed to shrug: Oh, well. Can't win 'em all.

Russert fans say the host is getting a raw deal. Marvin Kalb, "Meet the Press" host during the 1980s, praises his successor for building the program to its No. 1 status, and said whatever trade-offs Russert lives by were inevitable. "The politician wants exposure, the journalist wants a story," Kalb said. "On 'Meet the Press,' the two attempt to come together with dignity. Most of the time, it works."

It's also probably not a good idea to put too much faith in the proclamations of the pro-Libby folk. "It may be tactically in the interests of the administration to say Russert is easy," noted Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. "Any time a politician plays press critic and tells you who's good, you need to carry a large container of salt."

Even Huffington admits that Russert attracts a lot of attention simply because his Sunday program is No. 1 in the ratings.

Still, it's clear that the ground has shifted beneath Russert's feet. Sixteen years hosting "Meet the Press," and he's suddenly becoming the story. Surely that's not a welcome switch, but Russert's plenty smart enough to know something is going on.

When a Libby attorney, during his cross examination, went over the specifics of a newspaper column critical of Russert and then asked whether it was "one of the more personal attacks you've experienced," Russert replied, "Probably not anymore."

peacetrain

2007-02-07T19:40:00.000-08:00

peacetrain

Lawmaker: U.S. sent giant pallets of cash into Iraq - CNN.com

2007-02-07T02:51:00.000-08:00

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did." Lawmaker: U.S. sent giant pallets of cash into Iraq - CNN.com: "'Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did,' "

David Broder Libels Democrats [Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid]

2007-02-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

As someone who went to Vietnam, as someone who resents every goddaam chicken hawk asshole who never heard a shot fired in anger but has no problem sending your kid or my kid to the shit hole war they started, I can't tell you how much I loathe lying bastards like Broder. David Broder Libels Democrats [Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid]

Republicans block Senate debate on Iraq - Yahoo! News

2007-02-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

Hacks, onne and all. Republicans block Senate debate on Iraq - Yahoo! News

Happy Colin Powel Day

2007-02-05T15:22:00.000-08:00

Atrios comeomorates Poewl's UN appearance. Eschaton

Lawmakers square off on climate report - CNN.com

2007-02-02T16:05:00.000-08:00

Classsic conservative myopia. Loss of jobs in greenhouse gas-intense industries justifies continuing to spew CO2 into the atmosphere. Meanwhile the opportunity to create jobs in clean energy industries goes largely ignored, paid sound bite lipservice in speeches like the State of the Union where the news on Iraq was so dire, Bush had to acknowledge global warming just to fill. Lawmakers square off on climate report - CNN.com

BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia probes smelly orange snow

2007-02-02T13:34:00.000-08:00

Ucky, Mommy. Something about growing up in Omsk, Siberia sounds just plain scarry. Like Zappa said - Don't eaat the yellow snow.
BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia probes smelly orange snow

Debunking David Brooks

2007-02-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

Daavid Brook's latest (Bubba's comments in caps and parentheses)

February 1, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Iraq Syndrome, R.I.P.

By DAVID BROOKS
After Vietnam, Americans turned inward. (WHAT THE HELL DOES "TURN INWARD" MEAN?)Having lost faith in their leadership class (FUNNY-OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY WE HEAR AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT EQUALITY - THERE'S A "LEADERSHIP CLASSES?"), many Americans grew suspicious of power politics and hesitant about projecting American might around the world.(HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH "PROJECTING AMERICAN MIGHT" HAD EVERYTHING TO DO WITH GETTING DOUBLE-CROSSED BY RICHARD NIXON AND FRIENDS - ALSO WITH INFLATION.)

The Vietnam (AND NIXON AND WATERGATE AND INFLATION AND OPEC) syndrome was real. It lasted all of five years — the time between the fall of Saigon and the election of Ronald Reagan (BROOKS IS IMPLYING HERE THAT REAGAN CAME INTO OFFICE AND FIXED EVERYTHING, WHICH IS, OF COURSE, ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT).

Today, Americans are disillusioned with the war in Iraq (HE NEGLECTS TO MENTION THAT MANY AMERICANS ARE ALSO DISILLUSIONED WITH THE BUSH CROWD WHO FOBBED THE WAR OFF ON US), and many around the world predict that an exhausted America will turn inward again (AMERICA HASN'T "TURNED INWARD" SINCE PEARL HARBOR. LET'S SEE BROOKS CITE ONE EXAMPLE OF AMERICA "TURNING INWARD" SINCE DECEMBER 7, 1941). Some see a nation in permanent decline and an end to American hegemony (WE'RE BURNING THROUGH $2 BILLION A WEEK IN IRAQ. WE'RE BORROWING THAT MONEY FROM RED CHINA. DO YOU THINK THAT MIGHT PUT A KINK IN OUR HEGEMONY?). At Davos, some Europeans apparently envisioned a post-American world (SILLY THEM. THEY MUST THINK WE'RE LED BY A BUNCH OF MORONS).

Forget about it. (YOU MEAN ALL THAT STUFF ABOUT HOW PEOPLE ARE TURNING INWARD? THAT STRAW MAN YOU'RE HOLDING UP FOR US TO SEE?)Americans are having a debate about how to proceed in Iraq (ACTUALLY, THE DEBATE IS MORE ABOUT HOW TO EXTRACT OUR TALLAWHACKERS FROM THAT MEATGRINDER THANN HOW TO INSERT OUR TALLAWHACKERS EVEN DEEPER), but we are not having a strategic debate about retracting American power and influence. What’s most important about this debate is what doesn’t need to be said. No major American leader doubts that America must remain, as Dean Acheson put it, the locomotive of the world.(LUCKILY FOR DEAN ACHESON, HE DIDN'T LIVE TO SEE THE DAY WHEN AMERICA DIDN'T MAKE LOCOMOTIVES ANY MORE)

Look at the leaders emerging amid this crisis. The two major Republican presidential contenders are John McCain and Rudy Giuliani (TOOLS), the most aggressive internationalists (AND INTERNATIONALISM IS WORKING SO WELL FOR THE 3 MILLION AMERICANS WHO HAVE LOST THEIR JOBS TO IT) in a party that used to have an isolationist wing (BACK BEFORE PEARL HARBOR).

The Democrats, meanwhile, campaigned for Congress in 2006 by promising to increase the size of the military. The presidential front-runner, Hillary Clinton, is the leader of the party’s hawkish wing and recently called for a surge of U.S. troops into Afghanistan. John Edwards, the most “leftward” major presidential contender, just delivered a bare-knuckled speech in which he castigated the Bush administration for not being tough enough with Iran. “To ensure that Iran never gets nuclear weapons, we need to keep all options on the table,” Edwards warned.(CAMPAIGN-DRIVEN POSITIONS AND RHETORIC IN BOTH CASES.)

This is not a country looking to avoid entangling alliances (NO. WE'VE GOT THAT "COALITION OF THE WILLING" THING GOING FOR US). This is not a country renouncing the threat of force (NO. THE BUSHIES HAVE RENOUNCED DIPLOMACY INSTEAD). This is not a country looking to come home again (70% OF AMERICANS WANT OUR TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ - JUST NOT 70% OF BROOK'S "LEADERSHIP CLASS"). The Iraq syndrome is over before it even had a chance to begin.(?!)

The U.S. has no material need to reconsider its dominant role in the world (A COMMON SENSE NEED MAYBE, BUT CERTAINLY NO MATERIAL NEED). The U.S. military still has no serious rivals, even after the strains of Iraq (JUST ASK THE SOLDIER IN THE WORN OUT, YET-TO-BE-UP-ARMORED HUMVEE). The economy is humming along nicely (IF YOU'RE IN THE "INVESTOR CLASS" SECTION OF BROOKS' "LEADERSHIP CLASS").

The U.S. has no cultural need to retrench (RE-THINKING, HOWEVER, MIGHT BE IN ORDER). Vietnam (NIXON, WATERGATE, RUNAWAY INFLATION) sparked a broad cultural revolution, a shift in values and a loss of confidence. Iraq has not had the same effect (IN THE LEADERSHIP CLASS - 70% of THE REST OF US want out of iraq). Many Americans have lost faith in the Bush administration and in this particular venture,(do ya think?) but there has been no generalized loss of faith in the American system (EXCEPT FOR BUSH VS GORE, 2004 OHIO VOTE TALLEYS, PRESIDENTIAL SIGNING STATEMENTS, THE PATRIOT ACT, EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION, THE LOSS OF HABEUS CORPUS, TORTURE, WARRANTLESS SURVEILANCE...) or in American goodness (EXCEPT FOR BUSH VS GORE, 2004 OHIO VOTE TALLEYS, PRESIDENTIAL SIGNING STATEMENTS, THE PATRIOT ACT, EXTRAORDINARY RENDITION, THE LOSS OF HABEUS CORPUS, TORTURE, WARRANTLESS SURVEILANCE...).

There hasn’t even been a broad political shift in favor of the doves (THANKS FOR THE GRATUITOUS STEREOTYPE.). The most important war critics are military types like Jack Murtha, Chuck Hagel and Jim Webb, who hate this particular war but were superhawks in other circumstances. (YOU MEAN THEY WENT TO WAR AS YOUNG MEN UNLIKE CHICKEN HAWKS BUSH, CHENEY ET AL?)

Finally, there has been no change in America’s essential nature (NOPE. LEADER CLASS ASSHOLES ARE STILL LEADER CLASS ASSHOLES). As Robert Kagan (DESIGNER AND KING-KONG ADVOCATE OF BUSH'S ILL-FATED SURGE) writes in his masterful book “Dangerous Nation,” America has never really been an isolationist or aloof nation. The United States has always exercised as much power as it could. It has always coupled that power with efforts to spread freedom (NOW WHAT THE HELL DOES "SPREAAD FREEDDOM" MEAN? WERE WE SPREADING FREEDOM WHEN WE INSTALLED THE SHAH IN IRAN? WHEN WE TOPPLE ALLENNDE IN CHILE? CHRIST, I LOATHE PLATITUDES LIKE "SPREAD FREEDOM"). And Americans have always fought over how best to fulfill their mission as the vanguard of progress (THAT'S WHY WE DON'T SUPPORT STEM CELL RESEARCH. THAT'S WHY WE REFUSED TO SIGN THE KYOTO ACCORDS REGARDING GLOBAL WARMING).

What’s happening today is just another chapter in that long expansionist story. Today’s debate in the Senate flows seamlessly from the history Kagan describes. Most senators agree that the tactical question of sending 20,000 more troops is not the central issue. Their core concern, they say, is finding a new grand strategy to stabilize the region (PRIMARILY BECAUSE NEOCON PIPE DREAMS, BUSH'S WAR, AND THE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF ANY AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC GRAVITAS HAS DESTABILIZED THE REGION SO PRECIPITOUSLY).

Most senators want a much more aggressive diplomatic effort to go along with the military one (CONDI HAS DONE SO MUCH TO ACHIEVE CREDIBILITY INTHE DIPLOMATIC ARENA). (If President Bush said his surge was part of an effort to establish a regional diplomatic conference, he’d have majority support tomorrow.)(BUT PRESIDENT BUSH IS TOO DAMNED DUMB AND OBSTINATE TO DO SOMETHING AS SMART AS SEEK A DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION) But they don’t question the need for America to play a leading role. They take it for granted that the U.S. is going to be in the Middle East for a long time to come.(BUSH BROKE IT. WE BOUGHT IT.)

When you look further into the future, you see that the next president’s big efforts will not be about retrenchment, but about expansion (HOT DAMN. DEEPER INTO THE QUAGMIRE). They’ll be about expanding the U.S. military, expanding the diplomatic corps (SOMETHING BUSH WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO DO), asking for more shared sacrifice, (FROM THOSE OF US NOT IN THE "LEADERSHIP CLASS" creating new interagency bureaus that will give America more nation-building capacity (AND ISN'T NATION BUILDING WHAT AMERICA IS ALL ABOUT?).

In short, the U.S. has taken its share of blows over the past few years, but the isolationist dog is not barking (INSIDE THE BELTWAY). The hegemon will change (ESPECIALLY WITH ALL THE $$ WE'RE BORROWING FROM CHINA - AND AALL THE CHINESE GOODS WE'RE BUYING AT WALMART). The hegemon will do more negotiating (MOSTLY ABOUT INTEREST RATES). But the hegemon will live (AND AREN'T WE LUCKY DUCKS ON THAT NOTE?).

Germany seeks 13�over CIA 'kidnap' - CNN.com

2007-01-31T11:33:00.000-08:00

Does this sound like the United States of America you grew up in? Is this the same country that held the moral high ground against the Axis and pulled off the Berlin Airlift and rebuilt war-ravaged Europe with the Marshall Plan? I didn't think so. Germany seeks 13�over CIA 'kidnap' - CNN.com

Scooter, Judy and the cool kids.

2007-01-31T07:34:00.000-08:00

So there they were – Judith Miller and Scooter Libby, discussing Joseph Wilson’s op-ed piece and Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson’s CIA employee wife.

Do you suppose it ever crossed their minds that Wilson, Plame and their children were real people with real lives, not some vague abstractions?

Do you think for a moment Libby had other-than-vile intentions in bringing the Plame-Wilsons to Miller’s attention?

Do you think Miller, who perhaps more than any other member of the mainstream media, shilled, flacked and worried the Iraq war into existence, passed up the chance to go with the Plame-Wilson story out of some sense of professional ethics?

Such silly, shallow and vane little people. They are like courtiers six ranks back in the throng at some function at Louis XIV’s court at Versailles.

And there they were, toying with the lives of others – feeling entitled – even obligated to do so.

The days to come at the Libby trial will be full of these high school cool kids gone to seed. People like Robert Novak and Tim Russert. Vainglorious preening people. Millionaires who’ve allowed – and continue to allow – themselves to be played for fools. Pompous asses who ignored the stink of the Clinton impeachment, stood by for the coup that was Bush vs Gore, allowed – and continue to allow – the conflation of 9/11 and Iraq and parroted the false alarms about WMD’s.

Our national politics are their office politics. Nothing more – and certainly nothing personal. God, it’s galling.

Louie Anderson used to have a bit where he said that he wished somebody would come up with an “asshole Bullet” that only killed you for five minutes.

You’d come to, face down on the sidewalk and realize somebody had killed you for five minutes and you’d sit up and say, “Damn. I must have been a real asshole.”

Where are the asshole bullets when we really need them?

And another thing

2007-01-29T13:30:00.000-08:00

Another observation on the Plame/Wilson/Libby/Cheney trial/story/crapola/thing: The push-back about Mrs. Wilson sending her husband out of nepotism never made much sense. Niger sounds like a truly terrible place – a latter day heart of darkness type place, Haiti on crack.

If you were going to spiff your spouse a company trip, wouldn’t the south of France make more sense? Or Tahiti?

I can’t picture a phone call from your spouse saying, “I put in the high-sign – the company’s sending you to Niger.”

Never heard this addressed.

A question...

2007-01-29T12:47:00.000-08:00

So here’s the question: At what point do you start to question Cheney’s sanity?

Clearly, he’s either lying or delusional about how things are going for the United States of America in Iraq. And, clearly, (as it is coming out at the Libby trial), he is one viciously vindictive son of a bitch.

The American business word is full of viciously vindictive sons, (and daughters), of bitches. Mean-assed, obsessive-compulsive, overly competitive, completely selfish millionaires constitute one of those natural resources that we’ll always have in abundance.

The question is: Is this particular mean-assed son of a bitch crazy? Legitimately, over the top, round the bend nuts?

I say yes. Crazier than Humphrey Bogart as Captain Queeg in “The Caine Mutiny.” Paranoid. Delusional. Not thinking right.

If he were just a rich business guy being crazy would be no problem. But he’s the VP. The question is, can we start making the case for the fact that he’s certifiably nuts?

WorkingForChange-Tomgram: Where do the American dead come from?

2007-01-27T07:31:00.000-08:00

The burden of this war falls unfairly.WorkingForChange-Tomgram: Where do the American dead come from?

The Decision Maker

2007-01-27T07:24:00.000-08:00

Does the Decision Maker have any realization whatsoever that he has yet to make a good decision on anything – any policy, appointment, troop deployment – anything?

Okay. Maybe on one thing. He accepted Rumsfeld’s resignation, but that’s it.

This man has failed at everything he has ever tried. He is batting 0-for-a lifetime.

Why in the name of God should he be given the opportunity to make so much as one more decision – especially when it comes to sending young men and women to the shit hole he created when he decided to occupy Iraq?

Ineptitude in a time of peace would be one thing. If his decisions hadn’t been so tragically bad, if they hadn’t plunged us into that quagmire, if the troops were home where they belong, and the biggest decision he faced was deciding who to appoint as Under Secretary of Agriculture, well okay. Let him be The Decider.

But he is inept in a time of war. His decisions have been unrelentingly, consistently wrong. Nothing about his decision to send even more troops into Iraq would lead anyone to suspect there is reason to hope for a better outcome.

That particular decision flies in the face of the recommendations of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group. It is neither all-in nor all-out, but rather a continuation of an absurd status quo – an occupation – a propping up of an inept government – an opportunity for our enemies to glean training from us – training they will use against us elsewhere in the Decision Maker’s misguided, “War on Terror.”

The burn rate on money expended to support this decision is now more than two billion dollars a month. We’re borrowing that money from the Chinese. It does not appear on the books that the Decision Maker, in the State of the Union Address, so nobly promised to balance by 2012.

The burn rate on our human treasure continues unabated. We lose two or three wonderful selfless young people every day.

As bad as the decisions the man makes, the decisions he doesn’t make are worse. The Decision Maker. My ass.

Dana Milbank - In Ex-Aide's Testimony, A Spin Through VP's PR - washingtonpost.com

2007-01-27T07:23:00.000-08:00

Tim Russert and NBC - tools. Dana Milbank - In Ex-Aide's Testimony, A Spin Through VP's PR - washingtonpost.com

Justices defend Florida recount decision - Yahoo! News

2007-01-25T05:58:00.000-08:00

These smug bastards. They disenfranchised the majority of Americans (remember - Gore won the popular vote) and set up everything that has happened since.

"Get over it."

Get bent, Tony.Justices defend Florida recount decision - Yahoo! News

The Explainer In Chief. In French.

2007-01-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

Aux Barricades!

By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

Being president can be really, really hard.

“Sometimes you’re the commander in chief,” W. explained to Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes.” “Sometimes you’re the educator in chief, and a lot of times you’re both when it comes to war.”

President Bush has been dutifully making the rounds of TV news shows, trying to make the case that victory in Iraq is “doable.” He thinks the public will support the Surge if he can simply illuminate a few things that we may have been too thick to understand. For instance, he says he needs to “explain to people that what happens in the Middle East will affect the future of this country.” Yes, Mr. President, we get it.

He also told Jim Lehrer last night that in 20 years, radical Shiites could be warring with radical Sunnis and Middle Eastern oil could fall into the hands of radicals, who might also get weapons of mass destruction.

So after scaring Americans into backing the Sack of Iraq by warning that radicals could get W.M.D., now he’s trying to scare Americans into supporting the Surge in Iraq by warning that radicals could get W.M.D.

So many deaths, so little progress.

It’s unnerving to be tutored by an educator in chief who is himself being tutored. The president elucidating the Iraqi insurgency for us is learning about the Algerian insurgency from the man who failed to quell the Vietcong insurgency.

During his “60 Minutes” interview, Mr. Bush mentioned that he was reading Alistair Horne’s classic history, “A Savage War of Peace,” about why the French suffered a colonial disaster in a guerrilla war against Muslims in Algiers from 1954 to 1962.

The book was recommended to W. by Henry Kissinger, who is working on an official biography of himself with Mr. Horne.

Mr. Horne recalled that Dr. Kissinger told him: “The president’s one of my best students. He reads all the books I send him.” The author asked the president’s foreign affairs adviser if W. ever wrote any essays on the books. “Henry just laughed,” Mr. Horne said.

It seems far too late for Mr. Bush to begin studying about counterinsurgency now that Iraq has cratered into civil war. Can’t someone get the president a copy of “Gone With the Wind”?

Maybe it was inevitable, once W. started reading Camus’s “L’Etranger,” set in Algeria, that he would move on to Mr. Horne. As The Washington Post military correspondent Tom Ricks wrote in November, the Horne book has been an underground best-seller among U.S. military officers for three years, and “Algeria” has become almost a code word among counterinsurgency specialists for the mess in Iraq. The Pentagon screened the 1966 movie “The Battle of Algiers” in 2003, but the commander in chief must have missed it.

I asked Mr. Horne, who was at his home in a small village outside Oxford, England, what the president could learn from his book.

“The depressing problem of getting entangled in the Muslim world,” he replied. “Algeria was a thoroughly bloodthirsty war that ended horribly and cost the lives of about 20,000 Frenchmen and a million Algerians. There was a terrible civil war. ...De Gaulle ended up giving literally everything away and left without his pants.”

President de Gaulle had all the same misconceptions as W., that his prestige could persuade the Muslims to accept his terms; that the guerrillas would recognize military defeat and accept sensible compromise; and that, as Mr. Horne writes, “time would wait while he found the correct formula and then imposed peace with it.”

Mr. Horne also sees sad parallels in the torture issue: “The French had experience under the Nazis in the occupation and practiced methods the Germans used in Algeria and extracted information that helped them win the Battle of Algiers. But in the long run it lost the war, because it caused such revulsion in France when the news came out, and there was huge opposition to the war from Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.”

In May 2005, Mr. Horne gave a copy of his book to Rummy, with passages about torture underlined. “I got a savage letter back from him,” the author said.

The best thing now, he said, is to try to “get around the mullahs” and “get non-Christian forces in there as quickly as possible, mercenaries. As Henry said the other day, if only we had two brigades of Gurkhas to send to Baghdad.”

Meanwhile, maybe W. should move on to reading Sartre. “No Exit,” perhaps.

Winning friends. Influencing people.

2007-01-16T05:45:00.000-08:00

Nice work, George. Independent Online Edition > Africa

U.N.: 34,000 Iraqis killed last year - Yahoo! News

2007-01-16T05:31:00.000-08:00

Probably low. About 60% of American losses in Vietnam. Nice going, George. U.N.: 34,000 Iraqis killed last year - Yahoo! News

Troops Home Now

2007-01-15T12:29:00.001-08:00

George Bush’s troop surge, plus all of the sacrifice our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are making, combined with the noisy rhetoric (right and left) the rest of us are putting out, is triggering one big Vietnam flashback for me.

That war was unfair. This war is even more so. It is time for our troops to come home.

It is time.

We have deprived them of the comfort and company of their families and friends for too long. We have set their careers back decades. We have given them a vague mission and put them into situations where they can die, but can’t win – all without inconveniencing ourselves in the least.

“They volunteered,” callous, safe and comfortable people say. “They knew what they were getting into.”

To which I would respond, “Fuck you.”

“Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.”

Generation after generation, this country lets a certain kind of people evade going to war. They are richer than average. They display a unique combination of cowardice, selfishness and cunning.

They talk patriotism. They wear flags in their lapels and put their hands over their hearts whenever they hear the national anthem. But when the chips are down, they always find a way to thrust somebody else – or somebody else’s kid – into the front lines.

They don’t do war. Not personally. They’ll shill for war. They’ll back idiot politicians who want to send more troops. But they won’t go – not actually go. Not them.

God they are detestable. They lack the courage (physical or moral) to volunteer for the war they support. They would be afraid to spend even one night in a barracks full of the young black, Hispanic and middle class white American kids they so blithely want to send surging off to Baghdad.

Barracks life or prison life – what’s the difference?

None to them. To them military service is what taxes were to Leona Helmsley – something for “little people.”

No doubt there is an elite corps of military people – a backbone – a group of people who take great (and much deserved) pride in every aspect of their service, their branch of service, and the selfless traditions of our military. No doubt members of that elite corps is more than capable of speaking for themselves about surges, staying the course, the mission – the whole shooting match.

But, God damn it, it’s time. If there is surging to be done, let the selfish assholes back here who think it’s a good idea do it and bring our proud, selfless troops home now.

Troops Home Now

2007-01-15T12:29:00.000-08:00

U.S. and Iraqis Are Wrangling Over War Plans - New York Times

2007-01-15T09:41:00.000-08:00

It's one thing for George Bush to fob this "surge" off on Americans who donn't want it. It's something else aaltogether to get the backing of Iraqi officials who evvidently don't want it either. U.S. and Iraqis Are Wrangling Over War Plans - New York Times

Crooks and Liars � Open Thread

2007-01-15T06:03:00.000-08:00

Reader CH found this. Crooks and Liars � Open Thread

Krugman Rocks

2007-01-15T05:28:00.000-08:00

January 15, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
The Texas Strategy

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces have described President Bush’s decision to escalate the Iraq war as a “Hail Mary pass.”

But that’s the wrong metaphor.

Mr. Bush isn’t Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He’s Charles Keating, using other people’s money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down — and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.

The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.

The “surge” is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time.

Oh, and one of the favorite techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to generate phony profits — it involved making high-interest loans to crooked or flaky real estate developers — came to be known as the “Texas strategy.”

What was the point of the Texas strategy? Bank owners were certainly gambling — with other people’s money, of course — in the hope of a miraculous recovery that would bail out their negative balance sheets.

But the real point of the racket was a form of looting: as long as they could keep reporting high paper profits, S.&L. owners could keep rewarding themselves with salaries, dividends and sweetheart business deals.

Mr. Keating paid himself a million dollars just weeks before his holding company collapsed.

Which brings us to Iraq. The administration has spent the last three years pretending that its splendid little war isn’t a big disaster. There have been the bromides (we’re making “good progress”); the promises (we have a “strategy for victory”); and, as always, attacks on the media for not reporting the good news from Iraq.

Who you gonna believe, the president or your lying eyes?

Now Mr. Bush has grudgingly sort- of admitted that things aren’t going well — but he says his “new way forward” will fix everything.

So it’s still the Texas strategy: the war’s architects are trying to keep their failed venture going as long as possible.

The Hail Mary aspect — the off chance that somehow, things really will turn out all right — is the least of their motivations. The real intent is a form of looting. I’m not talking mainly about old-fashioned war profiteering, although there is no question that profiteering is taking place on an epic scale. No, I’m saying that the hawks want to keep this war going because it’s to their personal and political benefit.

True, Mr. Bush can’t win another election with phony claims of success in Iraq, the way he did in 2004. But escalation buys him another year or two to claim that we’re making progress — and it gives him another chance to prove that he’s the Decider, beyond accountability.

And as for pundits who promoted the war and are now trying to sell the surge: for a little while longer they can be Very Important People who have the president’s ear.

Meanwhile, the nation pays the price. The heaviest burden — in death, shattered bodies, broken families and ruined careers — falls on those who serve. To find the personnel for the Bush escalation, the Pentagon must lengthen deployments in Iraq and shorten training time at home.

And the back-door draft has become a life sentence: there is no limit on the cumulative amount of time citizen-soldiers can be required to serve on active duty. Mama, don’t let your children grow up to be reservists.

The rest of us will pay a financial price for the hundreds of billions squandered in Iraq and, more important, a price in reduced security.

Escalation won’t bring victory in Iraq, but it might bring defeat in Afghanistan, which the administration will continue to neglect. And it has pushed the military to the breaking point.

Mr. Bush calls his critics “irresponsible,” saying that they don’t have an alternative to his strategy. But they do: setting a timetable for withdrawal, so that we can cut our losses, and trying to save what can be saved. It isn’t a strategy for victory because that’s no longer an option. It’s a strategy for acknowledging reality.

The lesson of the savings and loan scandal was that when a bank has failed, you shouldn’t let the owner string you along with promises — you should shut the thing down. We should do the same with Mr. Bush’s failed war.

Cheney to Congress: Can't run Iraq war by committee - CNN.com

2007-01-14T09:47:00.000-08:00

With any luck, we're reacching the end of the era of government by sound byte. Let's hope "You can't run a war by committee" finds all of the traction it deseerves - which is none. No one is trying to run the war by committee. Tehy're trying to do what the Constitution says they are supposed to do: Oversee the people running the war, with the oversight taking place in all the appropriate committees.

The sooner that phrase joins the rest of this administration's platitudes onn the trash heap of history the better.Cheney to Congress: Can't run Iraq war by committee - CNN.com

Withdrawals could start if Iraq plan works: Gates - Yahoo! News

2007-01-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

Yes - and if we all clap reaal hard Tinkerbell won't die.Withdrawals could start if Iraq plan works: Gates - Yahoo! News

Official Attacks Top Law Firms Over Detainees - New York Times

2007-01-13T08:51:00.000-08:00

If corporations boycott lawyers representing detainees, then boycott those corporations. It is unAmerican to deny detainees legal representation. Official Attacks Top Law Firms Over Detainees - New York Times

Bush: If you don't like my Iraq plan, tell me yours - CNN.com

2007-01-13T08:45:00.000-08:00

Why? So you can ignore it like you ignored the Iraq Study Group? You're the decider. You took us to war. You know it's time to get out. Give the orders, take the blame, then get bent. Bush: If you don't like my Iraq plan, tell me yours - CNN.com

The Raw Story | Fox 'bashes' Boxer for 'childless Condi slur;' Snow says 'tacky;' Rice implies feminism set back; Boxer says GOP 'gettin this off' on

2007-01-13T04:03:00.000-08:00

Typical Fox. Typical Murdoch. Typical right wing. The truth is, Ms. Rice does not have family members who will "pay the price" for George Bush's urge to surge. Te bigger truth (buried deep in this story) is that the Bush Administration does not have estimates of the numbers of soldiers who will "pay the price." Every new incident like this simply adds weight to the obvious truth that the people on the right who are trying to frame this dialogue have no sense of decency - and no respect for the men and women actually fighting and dying in this war.The Raw Story | Fox 'bashes' Boxer for 'childless Condi slur;' Snow says 'tacky;' Rice implies feminism set back; Boxer says GOP 'gettin this off' on lie

Federal Way schools restrict Gore film

2007-01-13T03:49:00.000-08:00

"From what I've seen (of the movie) and what my husband has expressed to me, if (the movie) is going to take the approach of 'bad America, bad America,' I don't think it should be shown at all," Gayle Hardison said. "If you're going to come in and just say America is creating the rotten ruin of the world, I don't think the video should be shown."Federal Way schools restrict Gore film:

Pentagon abandons active-duty time limit - Yahoo! News

2007-01-11T22:42:00.000-08:00

This decision is apalling.Pentagon abandons active-duty time limit - Yahoo! News

The Urge To Surge

2007-01-10T12:26:00.000-08:00

This war is falling unnecessarily harshly on a noble and selfless group of young men and women. The rest of us know nothing about the meaning of the word "sacrifice." Charlotte Observer | 01/09/2007 | Military ponders surge

CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker

2007-01-10T12:13:00.000-08:00

If failure is unacceptable, what should we do with those who (so far) have led us to failure? CNN.com - CNN Political Ticker

Whose surge is it anyway?

2007-01-10T10:51:00.000-08:00

As George Bush announces a plan to escalate troop levels in Iraq, let’s all remember who put troops there in the first place – and who put those fools in a position to do so.

George Bush and the neocons launched this war. The Supreme Court of the United States launched George Bush and the neocons.

That aggregation of silly, shallow, thoughtless people – Supreme Court justices, Federalist Society fops, corporate robber barons, corrupt mainstream media flacks, and politicians on the take – stole the nation by stealing an election. Then they took the nation to war – and the world to the highly-profitable brink of World War Three.

These are wide-bottomed rich people. Gated community types. Most have never heard a shot fired in anger. The details of war – the numbers of killed and wounded, the prospect of their children actually having to fight and die in Iraq – don’t affect them or their thinking.

For them, the consequences of war, like Leona Helmsley’s fabled taxes, are for little people. Why should they (to paraphrase Barbara Bush the elder) waste their beautiful minds thinking about real death and suffering?

Better for them to talk in abstract terms and take the macro view. Will a surge of 20,000 troops do it? Or will we need 30,000? Should we plan on it taking a few months? Or is something more permanent in order?

Somewhere in America right now, are high school juniors and seniors who will die in Iraq at some point in the next two years. Future amputees and quadriplegics are hurrying around, being sixteen seventeen and eighteen year-olds.

That’s where this surge is going to come from. That, and troops who have been there through again – and again.

The recruiters are calling the high school kids. They’re using mailing lists that public schools have to provide to send direct mail pieces. They’re looking at their monthly quotas on their charts and wondering where they’ll come up with the bodies.

Meanwhile, the children of the privileged wander the halls of their private schools unphased. They will proceed from high school to college, and from college into some position in the sphere of their parent’s influence, where they will learn to discuss things like troop surges in the abstract, sans bullet holes, blood, quadriplegia, or any other qualm.

They will talk about what “we” ought to do in whatever in whatever situation the country is in then.

They will do so with the same comfortable certitude that their parents currently apply in Iraq:

“’We’ means your kid, not mine. My kid has other priorities.

“That said, don’t you think we ought to try a troop surge? We can’t let the terrorists win.”

Dowd On Our Dysfunctional Relationship With Iraq

2007-01-10T08:46:00.000-08:00

Love Among the Ruins

By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

It isn’t really a romance turned sour, because it was never sweet.

The American military’s cocky heroes were supposed to sweep in and carry off a poor, grateful Iraq to security and bliss, like Richard Gere did Debra Winger in the finale of “An Officer and a Gentleman.” The strategy was: Love lift us up where we belong/Where the eagles cry/On a mountain high.

Didn’t happen. Yet the search goes on, in this country obsessed with hookups and breakups, for the right relationship metaphor to describe our deadly embrace of Iraq.

My colleague Tom Friedman wrote last week: “Whenever I hear this surge idea, I think of a couple who recently got married but the marriage was never very solid. Then one day they say to each other, ‘Hey, let’s have a baby, that will bring us together.’ It never works. If the underlying union is not there, adding a baby won’t help.”

Juan Williams repeated Tom’s metaphor on Fox News, agreeing that “a bad relationship” cannot afford the “pressure” of a newborn.

One reporter who writes about the war told me he thinks of the American entrenchment in Iraq more like a marriage that’s run out of gas, but you decide to stay together because of the kids.

Bill Maher used a bawdier metaphor of a man who promises his date a glorious romp, doesn’t deliver, and then just refuses to admit it and get out.

Some women say that the Surge will not work because it’s like starting over with an old boyfriend: you think you’ve learned the pitfalls and can resume with more success — you can set benchmarks! — but instead you’re swiftly ensnared by the same old failures. And the most maddening romances, of course, are those in which you think you have the power, you should have the power, but somehow in the end, you don’t have the power.

Many Bush officials and lawmakers now talk about the Iraqis with impatience, as though they are deadbeat relatives who have got to stop putting the pinch on us for a billion a week and try harder, in the immortal words of Rummy, “to pull up their socks.”

They may still speak diplomatically, but in body language, Condoleezza Rice and her chosen new deputy, John Negroponte, radiate irritation with the Iraqis, as though they are the most irksome of cousins or in-laws who have long overstayed their welcome, or children who not only don’t thank you for presents but also leave the playroom a mess.

The favorite analogy of Rummy and others who pushed the war was parent-child. “If you never take the training wheels off a kid’s bicycle,” Paul Wolfowitz would say, “he’ll never learn to ride without them.”

But that is too Norman Rockwell for a scene straight out of Hieronymus Bosch.

At times, the American-Iraqi relationship seems so cursed that the most apt metaphor would be a fairy tale like “The Golden Goose” of the Brothers Grimm, in which a girl sees a bling bird that belongs to a despised boy and tries to pluck a feather for herself, but instead her hand gets stuck fast to the goose. Her sister comes along, thinking she can snatch a feather, but she gets stuck as soon as she touches the first girl. Then there’s a Surge, when the third sister rushes to help but ends up stuck in a daisy chain of disaster.

With the Surge, as with the invasion of Iraq, W. is like the presumptuous date “who reserves a hotel room and then asks you to the prom,” as my friend Dana Calvo put it.

Teddy Kennedy gave a speech at the National Press Club yesterday about his new legislation that would require Congressional approval before troop levels can be increased. Afterward, he was asked if he would try to block the escalation with an amendment to an upcoming Iraq spending request.

“The horse will be out of the barn by the time we get there,” Senator Kennedy replied. “The president makes his speech now. We’re going to get the appropriation request probably the end of January, early February.” He said it could take eight more weeks for Congress to act. “By that time, the troops will already be there,” he said. “And then we’ll be asked, are we going to deny the body armor to the young men and women over there?”

In other words, the president will ask us to the prom once he reserves the hotel room.

Bush lifts Alaska oil, gas drilling ban - Yahoo! News

2007-01-09T15:28:00.000-08:00

Why?
Bush lifts Alaska oil, gas drilling ban - Yahoo! News

Army asks dead to sign up for another hitch - CNN.com

2007-01-06T07:10:00.000-08:00

Ooops. Sorry. Army�asks dead to sign up for another hitch - CNN.com

White House visitor records closed - Yahoo! News

2007-01-05T14:48:00.000-08:00

But of course, they have nothing to hide...White House visitor records closed - Yahoo! News

Think Progress � CBS: Military Tells Bush It Has Only 9,000 Troops Available For ‘Surge’

2007-01-05T14:46:00.000-08:00

No doubt there are going to be pro-surge idiots at cocktail parties and get-togethers. Ask them where the troops come from. Think Progress � CBS: Military Tells Bush It Has Only 9,000 Troops Available For ‘Surge’

This Sunday on Meet The Press

2007-01-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

MEET THE PRESS WITH TIM RUSSERT
01/07/07

SEN. JOE BIDEN (D-DE)
Chairman, Foreign Relations Committee

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC)
Armed Services Committee

Could the powers that be please stop trotting Joe Biden out as the token Democrat? He's old. He's irrelevant. He's dellusional. (He actually thinks people will forgive him for his role in the obscene bankruptcy reform legislation he and the Republicans fobbed through for all those Delaware credit card companies a year ago.)

And who can look at Lindsey Graham and not remember him sitting there on the House Judiciary Committee volting to impeach Clinton.A partisan hack - a complete, self righteous partisan hack.

And speaking of partisan hacks,Tim Russert has all the integrity of those other inside-the-beltway millionaires. If he leaaned any further to the right, the booth would havve to tell the camera operator to pan left.

Main stream media with all its hackery can't die soon enough.

These shows used to stand for something. Not any more. All sham and no substance.

Ms Dowd Goes To A Funeral

2007-01-03T05:35:00.000-08:00

Maureen Dowd this morning in the New York Times:

January 3, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Stained Glass and Strained Egos

By MAUREEN DOWD
Washington

It was a scene that Mary McCarthy could have written the devil out of: a funeral for a fine, bland fellow that filled everybody with unfine, unbland thoughts. The formal serenity of the service, disguised, but only barely, the virulent rivalries and envies and grudges and grievances that have roiled this group for many decades.

None of the eulogists noted the irony that the man who ushered out one long national nightmare had ushered in another, the one we’re living in now. It was Gerald Ford, after all, who gave America the gift of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld — the gift that keeps on taking.

The two former Ford officials, who doomed Iraq to civil war and despoiled American values, were honorary pallbearers yesterday, as was that other slippery and solipsistic courtier, Henry Kissinger.

The Group was even more on edge because of a remarkable trellis of peppery opinions that had tumbled out of the man in the coffin, posthumously. The late president, hailed as the most understated and decent guy in the world, had given a series of interviews on the condition they be held until his death — a belated but bracing smackdown of many of his distinguished mourners.

It was impossible not to wonder what the luminaries were truly thinking, as they sat listening to fugues of Bach and Brahms and encomiums to the ordinary-guy leader.

Nancy Reagan’s imperturbable expression behind her big square sunglasses did not disguise the gloating words visible in the bubble over her head: “And they call this a funeral?”

It could not compare, of course, to the incredible Princess of Wales treatment that her husband had for his state funeral. And Nancy, hypersensitive to any slights to her Ronnie, would not have been pleased with Mr. Ford’s interview with Michael Beschloss published in Newsweek, in which he blamed Ronald Reagan for costing him the 1976 election by challenging his nomination and then failing to hit the trail for him.

It was good of Mr. Ford to bring 41 and 43 together in a solemn respite from their uneasy competition over Iraq.

“Told you so, you sons of guns — we were right to stop at Safwan and stay out of Baghdad,” the father’s bubble read, as he watched Rummy and Henry the K, both of whom had treated Poppy with such veiled contempt, as though he were a feather duster. “Those vicious Moktada-loving Shiites dancing around Saddam’s dead body prove that Brent and I were right.”

Lynne Cheney glared at Poppy as he gave his eulogy, knowing that he privately thinks that the vice president has destroyed not only Iraq and American foreign policy, but the Bush family name. Her storm cloud of a bubble is expurgated.

Hillary’s bubble was full of mockery for another New Yorker in the National Cathedral: “You think you’re so smart, Rudy, but you leave your entire presidential battle plan in a hotel room for your rivals to find? The victim role doesn’t suit you.” Condi’s bubble was as opaquely dark as Hillary’s was risibly light — drooping with the inchoate fear that her nearby erstwhile mentor, Brent Scowcroft, had been right about Iraq after all.

As Poppy spoke from the altar, praising Mr. Ford’s generosity, he must have been mulling that his predecessor was ungenerous in spitting on him from the grave. Mr. Ford told Mr. Beschloss that Bush Sr. had sold out the party to the hard right and had taken a phony, pandering position on abortion.

Poppy had to have enjoyed watching Dr. K get up and lavish praise on his old boss, after Mr. Ford had sniggered to Bob Woodward that the “coy” Bavarian diva had “the thinnest skin of any public figure I ever knew.”

W. graciously walked Betty Ford down the aisle, even as he must have curdled inside about her husband’s telling Mr. Woodward that it had been “a big mistake” on the part of W., Dick Cheney and Rummy to justify the Iraq war with nonexistent W.M.D. “I just don’t think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security,” he said.

Ex-presidents weren’t supposed to criticize sitting presidents. Adding insult to injury, Woodward himself was in the cathedral. How did he manage to get all these deathbed confessions, W. had to wonder. “Jeez,” his bubble read, “does he have an interview with my old man in the can?”

Rummy’s pop-up was as cocky as ever: “Golly, I’ve been gone three weeks and things are really looking up in Iraq.”

James Baker’s secret thoughts were as bright as his tie: “I tried to help you out, son, but you’re too dang stubborn. Or ‘resolute.’ Stubolute. A clear case of TMC — too much Cheney.”

Dick Cheney’s bubble was trouble: “I’m surging, I’m surging, I’m surging.”

Protecting Internet Democracy - New York Times

2007-01-03T04:57:00.000-08:00

If big business gets hold of The Internets, it's all over. Protecting Internet Democracy - New York Times

My Way News - FBI Details Possible Detainee Abuse

2007-01-03T04:48:00.000-08:00

More of your government at work?My Way News - FBI Details Possible Detainee Abuse

FBI: Workers saw prisoner abuse at Guantanamo - CNN.com

2007-01-03T04:43:00.000-08:00

Your government at work? FBI: Workers saw prisoner abuse at Guantanamo - CNN.com

Stupid pundits

2006-12-28T10:25:00.000-08:00

Democratic victory in November aaside, we are not out of thh woods yet. The Daily Howler is one of the best sites going when it comes to media criticism. Daily Howler: The Post's Gene Robinson just couldn't wait to mention Obama's middle name

Gerald Ford

2006-12-27T14:18:00.000-08:00

If it were not for a few inconvenient run-ins with history, Gerald Ford would have had a nice little career as a hail fellow well met and a career congressmen. He might have eked out another decade or two in the Republican leadership, then retired to do what he pretty-much did as a retired president.

But as a reliable Republican from Michigan, he was named to sit on the Warren Commission and investigated John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

And ten years later, Richard Nixon appointed him to the Vice Presidency.

And eight months after that, he became President. And a month after that, he pardoned Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed as President.

Then South Vietnam fell. Then he pardoned the draft evaders. Then Ronald Reagan almost won the nomination in 1976 and Jimmy Carter sent Gerald Ford off gently into that good night, where he played a lot of golf with Bob Hope, but nobody ever called to ask him any serious policy questions ever again.

For many of us who lived through those times, there is a great temptation to stereotype Ford as a bumbling, possibly corrupt and complicit party hack.

The Report of the Warren Commission is suspect at best. And, like the Warren Report, Nixon’s pardon left so much unresolved. It taught a generation of politicians – including Ronald Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George H. W. Bush, and others, that it was virtually impossible to be run out of the White House by scandal. Iran Contragate is rooted in Nixon’s pardon.

In retrospect, though – in fairness to Ford – he was dealt an all-but-unplayable hand, and played it with a political competence the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania does not seem to have.

When Ford took office, the fate of South Vietnam was unresolved. The Arab oil embargo had driven gas prices up. Inflation was gathering steam. Ugliest of all, Watergate colored everything early in Ford’s tenure. Far from alleviating the crisis, Nixon’s resignation threatened to keep Watergate center stage – and congress and the White House – paralyzed for years to come.

So Ford did what he had to do. He pardoned Nixon.

He must have known it was political suicide, but he bit the bullet, and signed the pardon. His popularity dropped 20 points overnight. The Republicans lost more than 40 seats in the 1974 midterm elections.

But the country could now begin to deal with the aftermath of Vietnam, the energy crisis, inflation, and societal issues such as equal rights, as well as the post-hippie Baby Boom finally coming of age.

Gerald Ford wasn’t the brightest bulb on the string (although he was a Yale Law School graduate). He was, to use a phrase Nixon used in describing George H.W. Bush (for whom Nixon is said to have had little regard), “the kind of man you appoint to a committee…”

But in the wake of Watergate, with Constitutional checks and balances stretched to the breaking point – and congress and the White House reeling and vulnerable – Ford managed to consign the scandal to history – and to get the country focused on the people’s business again.

He leaves us a passel of enigmas as he leaves the stage.

Who knows what he knew about the Kennedy assassination? Who knows what direction a protracted criminal investigation of Richard Nixon might have taken the country?

Who knows whether he did us a great service or set the stage for everything that has happened since?

Latina Lista: Privatized Immigrant Detention Facilities for Families Revealed to be Modern-Day Concentration Camps

2006-12-22T06:33:00.000-08:00

Life in thhese United States...Latina Lista: Privatized Immigrant Detention Facilities for Families Revealed to be Modern-Day Concentration Camps

Here Comes The Draft?

2006-12-22T06:30:00.000-08:00

This is an unhappy but necessary next step. The country has to be ready for what happens when Iraq blows. Ventura County Star: News

Attorney argues FCC rules on profanity unfair - CNN.com

2006-12-20T14:36:00.000-08:00

Frickin' Fox. Home to Homer Simpson and that culture warrior Bill O'Reilley. Part crude, part prude, in court arguing about their right to drop f'bombs on us.Attorney argues FCC rules on profanity unfair - CNN.com

Not winning. Not losing.

2006-12-20T08:42:00.000-08:00

Make no mistake about it. Not winning and not losing – the current administration meme/spin on Iraq – means losing. And repeating and perpetuating the “not winning, not losing” theme only delays the inevitable coming-to-terms with what the fools who launched this unnecessary war have done to the people of this country, the people of Iraq, and the United States military.

For the people of this country, there is the under-reported fact that this war hasn’t simply cost almost 3000 lives, It has cost – and continues to cost – real money. Every man, woman and child is paying for Iraq – and will continue to pay for decades to come.

The people of Iraq pay even more. Upwards of 600,000 have been killed, according to a recent survey published in the British Medical Journal Lancet.

And for the American military, not winning and not losing means they can not advance or retreat. They are bogged down, plain and simple – the same way the Soviet Union was bogged down in Afghanistan, and the same way the United States was bogged down in Vietnam.

For the troops, not winning and not losing must mean days and weeks of mind-numbing monotony, punctuated by moments of action, adrenal surge, shock and frustration – all of it colored by a sense of alienation from everyone and everything that is not military back here in the States.

Not winning and not losing must fog the mission up plenty good. It has to reduce daily life to a spirit sapping, Groundhog Day tedium. The objective becomes getting home in one piece.

And not winning, not losing offers the even more ominous prospect of extended tours of duty in Iraq, followed by second and third tours – even for National Guard and Army Reserve units.

For example, the Pentagon and the Administration are now talking about a “surge” in troop levels – committing more men and women to the war. Those new troops will have to be old troops – a combination of units that have been to Iraq before and extended tours of duty for troops already in country.

Not winning and not losing is Catch 22 revisited. Selfless people who have done more than their share are being asked to sustain their spirits and fight as passionately as ever while the ground shifts beneath them. Absurdity reigns. We’re not winning. We’re not losing. But our men and women are dying.

Nothing says not winning and not losing quite like a video floating around the Internet these days.

In the video, a handful of GI’s lead a group of street corner Iraqi kids in a chant:

“Fuck Iraq! Fuck Iraq! Fuck Iraq!”

Not winning and not losing? Or not facing the facts?

Remorse

2006-12-19T06:31:00.000-08:00

"I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies....' Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."
- Richard Perle, former chair of the Defense Policy Board, and one of the key advocates of the invasion of Iraq. (Source: Vanity Fair)

Planning Redux

2006-12-14T06:36:00.000-08:00

Another example of why we need to begin mega-planning for what might happen when we pull out of Iraq. This one from life for the poorest in post-Katrina Louisiana. Now is the time to plan for thhe worst and hope for the best - to get our act together on a wide variety of issues.

December 14, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Sunrise and Sunset

By BOB HERBERT
Baton Rouge, La.

They look for all the world like internment camps. The long rows of identical white trailers sit on flat, grim, barren expanses of land that are enclosed by metal fences. Armed guards are stationed at the entrances around the clock.

More than a year after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina, thousands of the poorest victims from New Orleans are still living in these trailer parks run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They have ironic names, like Mount Olive Gardens and Renaissance Village. A more accurate name would be Camp Depression, after the state of mind of most of the residents.

The “parks” are nothing more than vast, dusty, gravel-strewn lots filled with trailers that were designed to be hitched to cars for brief vacations or weekend getaways. The trailers, about 200 square feet each, were never meant to serve as homes for entire families. But in these FEMA parks, it’s common for families of five or six, or even more, to be jammed into one trailer.

I stood outside a trailer at the Mount Olive encampment on Monday afternoon, talking with Geraldine Craig and her 21-year-old daughter, Danielle Craig. The women, who have been unable to find jobs, seemed baffled and depleted by their long ordeal. As we talked, Danielle’s 2-year-old son, Javonta, scampered around in the dust and gravel.

Danielle’s daughter, Miracle, was 5 months old when Katrina struck. The baby was ill and receiving oxygen when it became clear that the family had to evacuate. “The doctors were taking care of her and she couldn’t hardly breathe,” Danielle said. “After we left we ended up in a shelter, and I said that my baby needed oxygen but they told us we had to wait.

“They finally sent us to a medical building and they put her on oxygen for about two hours, but the doctor said there was nothing wrong with her.”

Like so many thousands of others left destitute and all but despondent by Katrina, the family moved on — to Texas, back to Louisiana, eventually to Baton Rouge. It was too much for Miracle, who never got the proper medical treatment. She died last March. Her heart disease wasn’t accurately diagnosed until an autopsy was performed.

“I felt like it was my fault,” said Danielle. “I’m still depressed.”

When I asked if she’d been treated for depression, she shook her head.

“That baby was one of the many victims of the storm who were never officially counted as such,” said Dr. Irwin Redlener, president of the Children’s Health Fund, which has been providing medical and mental health services to children in the FEMA parks.

Dr. Redlener, a professor at Columbia University and the author of “Americans at Risk: Why We Are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do,” said he was outraged that so many thousands of the poorest victims of Hurricane Katrina are still stuck in limbo — unable to find jobs or permanent housing, denied adequate medical and educational services and with no idea when, or if, they will be able to return to New Orleans.

“The recovery of this catastrophe in the gulf has been as badly mangled by the government as the initial response,” he said. “Fifteen months have gone by and you still have these thousands of people who in essence are either American refugees living in other states who have no idea what’s going to happen to them, or they are living in these trailer camps, or in isolated trailers on their old property, which has been destroyed. They’re just waiting for something to happen. And the wait is interminable.”

Geraldine Craig said: “We just recently went down to New Orleans and they got nothing going yet, not in our neighborhood. So we’re going to be here for a while.”

The residents of Mount Olive Gardens and the even larger trailer camp at Renaissance Village in nearby Baker, La., face challenges that seem almost insurmountable. Even minimum-wage jobs are very difficult to find and difficult to get to because there is little public transportation. Many of the residents are elderly, or disabled, or illiterate. Some are mentally handicapped.

These are encampments of profound stress and sadness.

As I was telling Geraldine and Danielle Craig goodbye, and wishing them the best for the coming holidays, Danielle shyly handed me a photograph of her daughter. At the top was written, “Miracle Breyonne Craig.” At the bottom: “Sunrise: 3-19-05. Sunset: 3-10-06.”

25,000

2006-12-13T11:18:00.000-08:00

Newsweek reports:

Three years and nine months after the U.S.-led Coalition began its war against Saddam Hussein, researchers have quietly recorded another grim milestone in the cost of the conflict. American military casualties have now exceeded 25,000. Almost 3,000 U.S. soldiers are dead; 22,000 are injured. Some 245 other Coalition soldiers--mostly Brits--have also died, as well as at least 50,000 Iraqi civilians. Glenn Kutler, a researcher for the non-partisan iCasualties.org, has analyzed the patterns behind the numbers--and says he sees a conflict of gruesome logic and distinct phases.

The Saudis weigh in

2006-12-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

Seems like somebody tore Cheney a new one when he was in Saudi Arabia last month. The Saudis. The wide-bottomed,soft-handed,oil-rich, perfumed fucking Saudis.

Wasn't Bin Lauden's beef with us primarily the fact that Bush senior had put American forces into Saudi Arabia after the war? Didn't he attack the World Trade Center in part because American military was on the ground so close to Mecca?

Now the Saudis are threatening to support the Sunnis in Iraq if America pulls out. They'll send money. Lots of money. Who knows - maybe even money you paid at the pump when gas was up there around $3.50 a gallon.

They won't fight themselves. Like the Republicans who fobbed this insane war off on the world, they'll pay other people to fight and die.

This threat to support the Sunnis provides political support for those lunatics who don't want to implement the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group - especially the recommendations pertaining to withdrawing American troops.

"If we leave," they can now say, "the Sunnis will slaughter the Shiites. We have to stay now."

The impetus for changing direcction in Iraq is all sound and fury - no substance as long as our idiot leaders worry about the Saudis.

Screw them all.

More troops?

2006-12-13T06:49:00.000-08:00

Army, Marine Corps To Ask for More Troops
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 13, 2006; A01

The Army and Marine Corps are planning to ask incoming Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Congress to approve permanent increases in personnel, as senior officials in both services assert that the nation's global military strategy has outstripped their resources.

In addition, the Army will press hard for "full access" to the 346,000-strong Army National Guard and the 196,000-strong Army Reserves by asking Gates to take the politically sensitive step of easing the Pentagon restrictions on the frequency and duration of involuntary call-ups for reservists, according to two senior Army officials.

The push for more ground troops comes as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have sharply decreased the readiness of Army and Marine Corps units rotating back to the United States, compromising the ability of U.S. ground forces to respond to other potential conflicts around the world.

"The Army has configured itself to sustain the effort in Iraq and, to a lesser degree, in Afghanistan. Beyond that, you've got some problems," said one of the senior Army officials. "Right now, the strategy exceeds the capability of the Army and Marines." This official and others interviewed for this report spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the matter.

The Army, which has 507,000 active-duty soldiers, wants Congress to fund a permanent "end strength," or manpower, of at least 512,000 soldiers, the Army officials said. The Army wants the additional soldiers to be paid for not through wartime supplemental spending bills but in the defense budget, which now covers only 482,000 soldiers.

The Marine Corps, with 180,000 active-duty Marines, seeks to grow by several thousand, including the likely addition of three new infantry battalions. "We need to be bigger. The question is how big do we need to be and how do we get there," a senior Marine Corps official said.

At least two-thirds of Army units in the United States today are rated as not ready to deploy -- lacking in manpower, training and, most critically, equipment -- according to senior U.S. officials and the Iraq Study Group report. The two ground services estimate that they will need $18 billion a year to repair, replace and upgrade destroyed and worn-out equipment.

If another crisis were to erupt requiring a large number of U.S. ground troops, the Army's plan would be to freeze its forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and divert to the new conflict the U.S.-based combat brigade that is first in line to deploy.

Beyond that, however, the Army would have to cobble together war-depleted units to form complete ones to dispatch to the new conflict -- at the risk of lost time, unit cohesion and preparedness, senior Army officials said. Moreover, the number of Army and Marine combat units available for an emergency would be limited to about half that of four years ago, experts said, unless the difficult decision to pull forces out of Iraq were made.

"We are concerned about gross readiness . . . and ending equipment and personnel shortfalls," said a senior Marine Corps official. The official added that Marine readiness has dropped and that the Corps is unable to fulfill many planned missions for the fight against terrorism.

Senior Pentagon officials stress that the U.S. military has ample air and naval power that could respond immediately to possible contingencies in North Korea, Iran or the Taiwan Strait.

"If you had to go fight another war someplace that somebody sprung upon us, you would keep the people who are currently employed doing what they're doing, and you would use the vast part of the U.S. armed forces that is at home station, to include the enormous strength of our Air Force and our Navy, against the new threat," Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing last month.

But if the conflict were to require a significant number of ground troops -- as in some scenarios such as the disintegration of Pakistan -- Army and Marine Corps officials made clear that they would have to scramble to provide them. "Is it the way we'd want to do it? No. Would it be ugly as hell? Yes," said one of the senior Army officials. "But," he added, "we could get it done."

According to Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East, the Army and Marine Corps today cannot sustain even a modest increase of 20,000 troops in Iraq. U.S. commanders for Afghanistan have asked for more troops but have not received them, noted the Iraq Study Group report, which called it "critical" for the United States to provide more military support for Afghanistan.

"We are facing more operational risk than we have for many, many years," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee. He called it "shocking and scandalous" that two-thirds of Army units are rated "non-deployable." He said the country has not faced such a readiness crisis since the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

The U.S. military has more than 140,000 troops in Iraq and 20,000 in Afghanistan, including 17 of the Army's 36 available active-duty combat brigades. When Army and Marine Corps combat units return from the war zone, they immediately lose large numbers of experienced troops and leaders who either leave the force, go to school or other assignments, or switch to different units.

The depletion of returning units is so severe that the Marines refer to this phase as the "post-deployment death spiral." Army officials describe it as a process of breaking apart units and rebuilding them "just in time" to deploy again.

Training time for active-duty Army and Marine combat units is only half what it should be because they are spending about the same amount of time in war zones as at home -- in contrast to the desired ratio of spending twice as much time at home as on deployment. And the training tends to focus on counterinsurgency skills for Iraq and Afghanistan, causing an erosion in conventional land-warfare capabilities, which could be required for North Korea or Iran, officials say.

If a conflict with North Korea or Iran were to break out and demand a medium to large ground force, the Army would be forced to respond with whatever it had available.

The U.S. military today could cobble together two or three divisions in an emergency -- compared with as many as six in 2001 -- not enough to carry out major operations such as overthrowing the Iranian government. "That's the kind of extreme scenario that could cripple us," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a military expert at the Brookings Institution.

Unable to count on a significant troop withdrawal from Iraq, the Army seeks to ease the manpower strain by accelerating plans to have 70 active-duty and National Guard combat brigades available for rotations by 2011. Next year, for example, the Army intends to bring two brigades on a training mission back into rotation. It is investing $36 billion in Guard equipment in anticipation of heavier use of the Guard.

Time to start planning

2006-12-12T13:26:00.000-08:00

While Washington in all its pomp and punditry postures for or against various reports and suggestions about what the Bush Administration ought to do about its war in Iraq, time is wasting.

Because, no matter which strategy or non-strategy George W. Bush goes with, failure is inevitable. Iraq is going to blow.

There is no cohesive entity capable of establishing or sustaining a government. There are only factions. Factions that lack motivation for hanging together. Factions that are hanging, bombing, shooting, beheading and drill-killing one another.

There is no end in sight – military or political. There is not even a glimmer of a beginning of an end.

There is, however, a small window in time during which sober, far-sighted people (if there are any such people in Washington) can get out ahead of the next stage of the problem.

Iraq is going to blow. When we withdraw our troops, the entire region is going to be dragged into the war. The war will involve nations and religious sects, and political factions and terrorists – everyone.

It is not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when. The entire, horrible, unnecessary thing will almost certainly come to pass.

Realists in Washington (if there are any) must assume that to be the case – and begin to prepare the country accordingly now. It’s a matter of organizing and mobilizing; of preparing the people for something even larger and more resource consuming than Iraq is.

The realists can begin by preparing the people to expect and accept some form of draft. When the going gets tough, an all-volunteer military won’t be able to staff up. The current strategy of supplementing regular units with National Guard units won’t work forever either.

Some argue otherwise. Some still think a draft is unnecessary. They are either myopic or suffering from an acute case of, “Not-my-kid” syndrome.

OK. Fine. But at the very least, let’s plan for the worst case and hope for the best. Implementing a draft will take months – if not years. Let’s plan now. Let’s have the machinery well-oiled and ready, and not get caught flat-footed when Iraq blows.

The realists can also start shoring up our economic and energy resource deficiencies.

For example, the Bush Administration and Congress are funding our folly in Iraq with borrowed money. When Iraq blows, it will almost-certainly affect the global economy. We will want to be on the best possible footing, with our debt under control and a healthy domestic economy based on good jobs in the manufacturing sector – not just the service sector.

And as for energy, we’re not going to explore and drill our way out of this mess. We need plans and contingencies for rationing oil. And we need technologies and industries that will wean us off oil. Not because it’s green and the right thing to do (although it’s green and the right thing to do). Because when Iraq blows, there are going to be major changes in the amount of oil we have and the price we’ll pay for it.

When Iraq blows, a Prius is going to look like a Hummer at the pumps.

Time is wasting. We’ve got military, economic and energy problems to overcome. There are contingencies to develop. There is a people to mobilize.

It’s Christmastime in Washington. The beautiful, powerful, and influential are busy hobnobbing with the lunatics and lame ducks. One can only hope that somehow, somewhere, somebody gets each them all a big box of foresight (ribbon and bow optional) for the holidays this year.

Sad Sack, Chritmas and Iraq

2006-12-08T10:17:00.000-08:00

The recently-released Iraq Study Group report may or may not mark a change of direction for the United States. For the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan this Holiday season, the report does not change a thing.

Sad Sack’s grandsons and granddaughters, they remain at war half way around the world. It’s Christmas (or insert the holiday of your choice). Our troops are waiting for the politicians who sent them there to figure out how to bring them home.

Sad Sack was a World War Two cartoon character – a citizen soldier – a draftee dogface who reflected all things GI back to the troops, and to people reading the funny pages back home.

Chow. Training films. Latrine duty. Combat. Sad Sack endured it all with a certain Buster Keaton-esque nobility. Especially the risk and indignity born of bad policies and half-witted decisions made by higher ups.

Sad Sack lived on as a comic strip and comic book character after the war. The character and the attitude were there throughout Vietnam.

“There it is,” we used to say when we witnessed some especially egregious example of government and political numbskullery.

Henry Kissenger spent months debating the shape of the table before the Paris peace talks got serious. There it is.

It’s 110 degrees outside and they’re serving liver in the mess hall. There it is.

But the essence of Sad Sackhood has been lost on the general public in this war. We have an all-volunteer military now. We no longer share the GI experience or perspective. Our war-weary media doesn’t show us much of every day life at the front.

We should, however, understand how it feels to be an American soldier at war at this time of year. We should take time. We should stop shopping and just sit there and think about them.

I’d suggest this:

1. Go find two songs: “White Christmas,” and “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.”
2. Find some way to play them back-to-back a few times.
3. Sit there. Listen. Picture yourself Sad Sacking it over there.

There are GI’s over there who are on their third or fourth tours. They have families back here who are on their third or fourth tours too. The Iraq Study Group report says maybe 2008…

Friedman on ISG

2006-12-08T07:41:00.000-08:00

Set a Date and Buy Some Leverage

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
The brutally honest Baker-Hamilton assessment of the Iraq morass implies that we need to leave Iraq if the factions there don’t get their act together, but it also urges a last-ditch effort to enlist the help of Syria and Iran to salvage something decent. Both are good suggestions, but they will only have a chance of being effective if we go one notch further and set a fixed date — now — for America to leave Iraq.

The only hope of moving the factions inside Iraq, not to mention Syria and Iran, toward reconciliation is if we have leverage over them, which we now lack. The currency of Middle East politics is pain. And right now, all the pain is being inflicted on us and on Iraqi civilians. Only if we tell all the players that we are leaving might we create a different balance of pain and therefore some hope for a diplomatic deal. Trying to do diplomacy without the threat of pain is like trying to play baseball without a bat.

Yes, yes, I know, the conventional wisdom is that if the U.S. sets a date to leave Iraq the whole Middle East will explode in a Shiite-Sunni war. Maybe, but maybe not.

Let’s play this out. What happens if we set a date to leave? The war in Iraq will get worse, but for how long? Right now our troops are providing a floor under the civil war that allows some parties to behave outrageously or make impossible demands — because they know that we won’t let things spin totally out of control. Would they behave more cautiously if they knew they had to pay retail for their madness? I’d like to find out.

Moreover, while our presence in Iraq helps control the situation, it also aggravates it. For many Sunnis, and a growing number of Shiites, we’ve become “occupiers” to be resisted. Our leaving will both unleash violence and eliminate violence.

As for the neighbors, well, right now Iran, Syria and some other Arab states look at Iraq and clearly believe that the controlled chaos there is their friend. For Arab autocrats, chaos is their friend because a burning Iraq on Al Jazeera sends a message to their own people: “This is what happens to those who try democracy.” And for Iran and Syria, anything that frustrates the U.S. in Iraq and keeps America bleeding weakens its ability to confront Tehran.

The minute we leave, chaos in Iraq is not their friend anymore. First of all, if there is a full-fledged civil war, Syria, a largely Sunni country, will have to support the Iraqi Sunnis. Shiite Iran will have to support the Iraqi Shiites. That would mean Iran and Syria, now allies, will be on opposite sides of the Iraqi civil war. That will leave them with the choice of either indirectly fighting each other or working to settle the war.

Moreover, right now we are “Mr. Big” in Iraq, soaking up all the popular anger. But the minute we’re gone, Iran becomes “Mr. Big” and the age-old tensions between Iraqi Arab Shiites and Iranian Persian Shiites will surface. Iran and Moktada al-Sadr will be at each other’s throats.

Also, as long as our troops are in Iraq, we are pinned down and an easy target for Iran to hit, should we ever want to strike its nuclear facilities. Once we are out, we will have much more room to maneuver. I’m not saying we should attack Iran, but I am saying Iran will be much more worried that we will.

As for the Arab states, they’ve done little to promote peace in Iraq. They’ve basically said to America: “You can’t leave and we won’t help.” O.K., we’re leaving. You still don’t want to help? The only thing the Arab regimes fear more than democracy is fragmentation.

As I’ve written before, our real choices in Iraq are 10 months or 10 years. Either we commit the resources to entirely rebuild the place over a decade, for which there is little support, or we tell everyone that we will be out within 10 months, or sooner, and we’ll deal with the consequences from afar. We need to start the timer — today, now.

As long as we’re in Iraq, Iraq implodes, and we absorb a lot of the pain. The minute we leave, Iraq explodes — or at least no one can be sure it won’t — and that is a real threat to the Iraqi factions and neighbors. Even facing that reality might not knock enough sense into them to compromise, but at least then they’ll have their medieval religious war without us.

Only that threat will give us leverage. Yes, it would be a sad end to our involvement there. But everything Iraq’s leaders have done so far suggests that a united, democratic and pluralistic Iraq is their second choice. Tribal politics is still their first choice. We can’t go on having our first-choice kids dying for their second choice.

Krugman on ISG

2006-12-08T07:38:00.000-08:00

They Told You So

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Shortly after U.S. forces marched into Baghdad in 2003, The Weekly Standard published a jeering article titled, “The Cassandra Chronicles: The stupidity of the antiwar doomsayers.” Among those the article mocked was a “war novelist” named James Webb, who is now the senator-elect from Virginia.

The article’s title was more revealing than its authors knew. People forget the nature of Cassandra’s curse: although nobody would believe her, all her prophecies came true.

And so it was with those who warned against invading Iraq. At best, they were ignored. A recent article in The Washington Post ruefully conceded that the paper’s account of the debate in the House of Representatives over the resolution authorizing the Iraq war — a resolution opposed by a majority of the Democrats — gave no coverage at all to those antiwar arguments that now seem prescient.

At worst, those who were skeptical about the case for war had their patriotism and/or their sanity questioned. The New Republic now says that it “deeply regrets its early support for this war.” Does it also deeply regret accusing those who opposed rushing into war of “abject pacifism?”

Now, only a few neocon dead-enders still believe that this war was anything but a vast exercise in folly. And those who braved political pressure and ridicule to oppose what Al Gore has rightly called “the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States” deserve some credit.

Unlike The Weekly Standard, which singled out those it thought had been proved wrong, I’d like to offer some praise to those who got it right. Here’s a partial honor roll:

Former President George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, explaining in 1998 why they didn’t go on to Baghdad in 1991: “Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

Representative Ike Skelton, September 2002: “I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq’s forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it.”

Al Gore, September 2002: “I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.”

Barack Obama, now a United States senator, September 2002: “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”

Representative John Spratt, October 2002: “The outcome after the conflict is actually going to be the hardest part, and it is far less certain.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi, now the House speaker-elect, October 2002: “When we go in, the occupation, which is now being called the liberation, could be interminable and the amount of money it costs could be unlimited.”

Senator Russ Feingold, October 2002: “I am increasingly troubled by the seemingly shifting justifications for an invasion at this time. ... When the administration moves back and forth from one argument to another, I think it undercuts the credibility of the case and the belief in its urgency. I believe that this practice of shifting justifications has much to do with the troubling phenomenon of many Americans questioning the administration’s motives.”

Howard Dean, then a candidate for president and now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, February 2003: “I firmly believe that the president is focusing our diplomats, our military, our intelligence agencies, and even our people on the wrong war, at the wrong time. ... Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.”

We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage. We should also ask why anyone who didn’t raise questions about the war — or, at any rate, anyone who acted as a cheerleader for this march of folly — should be taken seriously when he or she talks about matters of national security.

Welcome to Pottersville: PAUL KRUGMAN: Two More Years

2006-12-05T05:40:00.000-08:00

An accurate assesssment of the politics of Bush's Iraq: Welcome to Pottersville: PAUL KRUGMAN: Two More Years

More fools

2006-11-29T11:58:00.000-08:00

Well somebody else down south has gone and put six tons of Ten Commandments on the courthouse steps.

I got nothing against the Ten Commandments, although with one or two exceptions, I've probably broke every one of them. I just don't understand why southern Christian fundamentalists keep trying to make a legal suppository out of them.

It's a safe bet that these are the same type of people who, only this week, ran some Evangelical minister out of office as the head of the Christian Coalition because the man had the audacity to want to expand the Coalition's agenda to include issues like poverty and the environment.

I really, really hope there's a rapture. I hope all us sinners get swept away and their Jesus comes back to live happily with them forever and ever.

Because living forever with people like that would be 100% pure hell.

Mission evidently not accomplished yet.

2006-11-28T12:39:00.000-08:00

The fool who started this catastrophe says we won't leave Iraq until we achieve victory.

If victory means a solid, functioning government in Iraq, take a seat. This is going to take awhile. The Hatfields and McCoys of the Middle East aren't done shooting. After all, it's only been a thousand years. They're just getting started.

The fool who started this catastrophe doesn't seem to feel any sense of urgency. The civilians getting kidnapped, tortured and executed aren't his family. Neither are the Americans who are actually on the scene.

More than 600,000 dead Iraqis according to the medical journal "Lancet." Nearly 2900 dead Americans.More than 20,000 American wounded. The fool who started this catastrophe still wants victory.

The Economy Is Strong

2006-11-28T08:59:00.000-08:00

Well, here you go. More of those glowing economic numbers for middleclass America. Has there ever been a better time to be blue collar?

The George W. Bush Presidential Library

2006-11-27T08:32:00.000-08:00

He wants a $500 million legacy. Thousands of dead Americans and hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis aren't enough.

War and Christmas Shopping

2006-11-27T04:17:00.000-08:00

While Iraq Burns

By BOB HERBERT
Americans are shopping while Iraq burns.

The competing television news images on the morning after Thanksgiving were of the unspeakable carnage in Sadr City — where more than 200 Iraqi civilians were killed by a series of coordinated car bombs — and the long lines of cars filled with holiday shopping zealots that jammed the highway approaches to American malls that had opened for business at midnight.

A Wal-Mart in Union, N.J., was besieged by customers even before it opened its doors at 5 a.m. on Friday. “All I can tell you,” said a Wal-Mart employee, “is that they were fired up and ready to spend money.”

There is something terribly wrong with this juxtaposition of gleeful Americans with fistfuls of dollars storming the department store barricades and the slaughter by the thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including old people, children and babies. The war was started by the U.S., but most Americans feel absolutely no sense of personal responsibility for it.

Representative Charles Rangel recently proposed that the draft be reinstated, suggesting that politicians would be more reluctant to take the country to war if they understood that their constituents might be called up to fight. What struck me was not the uniform opposition to the congressman’s proposal — it has long been clear that there is zero sentiment in favor of a draft in the U.S. — but the fact that it never provoked even the briefest discussion of the responsibilities and obligations of ordinary Americans in a time of war.

With no obvious personal stake in the war in Iraq, most Americans are indifferent to its consequences. In an interview last week, Alex Racheotes, a 19-year-old history major at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, said: “I definitely don’t know anyone who would want to fight in Iraq. But beyond that, I get the feeling that most people at school don’t even think about the war. They’re more concerned with what grade they got on yesterday’s test.”

His thoughts were echoed by other students, including John Cafarelli, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of New Hampshire, who was asked if he had any friends who would be willing to join the Army. “No, definitely not,” he said. “None of my friends even really care about what’s going on in Iraq.”

This indifference is widespread. It enables most Americans to go about their daily lives completely unconcerned about the atrocities resulting from a war being waged in their name. While shoppers here are scrambling to put the perfect touch to their holidays with the purchase of a giant flat-screen TV or a PlayStation 3, the news out of Baghdad is of a society in the midst of a meltdown.

According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad, a staggering figure.

In a demoralizing reprise of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, the U.N. reported that in Iraq: “The situation of women has continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of women were recorded to be either victims of religious extremists or ‘honor killings.’ Some non-Muslim women are forced to wear a headscarf and to be accompanied by spouses or male relatives.”

Journalists in Iraq are being “assassinated with utmost impunity,” the U.N. report said, with 18 murdered in the last two months.

Iraq burns. We shop. The Americans dying in Iraq are barely mentioned in the press anymore. They warrant maybe one sentence in a long roundup article out of Baghdad, or a passing reference — no longer than a few seconds — in a television news account of the latest political ditherings.

Since the vast majority of Americans do not want anything to do with the military or the war, the burden of fighting has fallen on a small cadre of volunteers who are being sent into the war zone again and again. Nearly 3,000 have been killed, and many thousands more have been maimed.

The war has now lasted as long as the American involvement in World War II. But there is no sense of collective sacrifice in this war, no shared burden of responsibility. The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying in a war in which there are no clear objectives and no end in sight, and which a majority of Americans do not support.

They are dying anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop.

Swell... Just stinking swell...

2006-11-26T06:57:00.000-08:00

This from the New York Times.

November 26, 2006
U.S. Finds Iraq Insurgency Has Funds to Sustain Itself

By JOHN F. BURNS and KIRK SEMPLE
BAGHDAD, Nov. 25 — The insurgency in Iraq is now self-sustaining financially, raising tens of millions of dollars a year from oil smuggling, kidnapping, counterfeiting, connivance by corrupt Islamic charities and other crimes that the Iraqi government and its American patrons have been largely unable to prevent, a classified United States government report has concluded.

The report, obtained by The New York Times, estimates that groups responsible for many insurgent and terrorist attacks are raising $70 million to $200 million a year from illegal activities. It says $25 million to $100 million of that comes from oil smuggling and other criminal activity involving the state-owned oil industry, aided by “corrupt and complicit” Iraqi officials.

As much as $36 million a year comes from ransoms paid for hundreds of kidnap victims, the report says. It estimates that unnamed foreign governments — previously identified by American officials as including France and Italy — paid $30 million in ransom last year.

A copy of the seven-page report was made available to The Times by American officials who said the findings could improve understanding of the challenges the United States faces in Iraq.

The report offers little hope that much can be done, at least soon, to choke off insurgent revenues. For one thing, it acknowledges how little the American authorities in Iraq know — three and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein — about crucial aspects of insurgent operations. For another, it paints an almost despairing picture of the Iraqi government’s ability, or willingness, to take steps to tamp down the insurgency’s financing.

“If accurate,” the report says, its estimates indicate that these “sources of terrorist and insurgent finance within Iraq — independent of foreign sources — are currently sufficient to sustain the groups’ existence and operation.” To this, it adds what may be its most surprising conclusion: “In fact, if recent revenue and expense estimates are correct, terrorist and insurgent groups in Iraq may have surplus funds with which to support other terrorist organizations outside of Iraq.”

Some terrorism experts outside the government who were given an outline of the report by The Times criticized it as imprecise and speculative. Completed in June, the report was compiled by an interagency working group investigating the financing of militant groups in Iraq.

A Bush administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the group’s existence. He said it was led by Juan Zarate, deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism, and was made up of about a dozen people, drawn from the C.I.A., the F.B.I., the Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department, the Treasury Department and the United States Central Command.

The group’s estimate of the financing for the insurgency, even taking the higher figure of $200 million, underscores the David and Goliath nature of the war. American, Iraqi and other coalition forces are fighting an array of shadowy Sunni and Shiite groups that can draw on huge armories left over from Mr. Hussein’s days, and benefit from the willingness of many insurgents to fight with little or no pay. If the $200 million a year estimate is close to the mark, it amounts to less than what it costs the Pentagon, with an $8 billion monthly budget for Iraq, to sustain the American war effort here for a single day.

But other estimates suggest the sums involved could be far higher. The oil ministry in Baghdad, for example, estimated earlier this year that 10 percent to 30 percent of the $4 billion to $5 billion in fuel imported for public consumption in 2005 was smuggled back out of the country for resale. At that time, the finance minister estimated that close to half of all smuggling profits was going to insurgents. If true, that would be $200 million or more from fuel smuggling alone.

For Washington, the report’s most dismaying finding may be that the insurgency now survives off money generated from activities inside Iraq, and no longer depends on sums Mr. Hussein and his associates seized as his government collapsed. American officials said that as American troops entered Baghdad, Mr. Hussein’s oldest son, Qusay, took more than $1 billion in cash from the Central Bank of Iraq and stashed it in steel trunks aboard a flatbed truck. Large sums of cash were found in Mr. Hussein’s briefcase when he was captured in December 2003.

But the report says Mr. Hussein’s loyalists “are no longer a major source of funding for terrorist or insurgent groups in Iraq.” Part of the reason, the report says, is that an American-led international effort has frozen $3.6 billion in “former regime assets.” Another reason, it says, is that Mr. Hussein’s erstwhile loyalists, realizing that “it is increasingly obvious that a Baathist regime will not regain power in Iraq,” have turned increasingly to spending the money on their own living expenses. The trail to these assets “has grown cold,” the report adds.

The document says the pattern of insurgent financing changed after the first 18 months of the war, from the Hussein loyalists who financed it in 2003 to “foreign fighters and couriers” smuggling cash in bulk across Iraq’s porous borders in 2004, to the present reliance on a complex array of indigenous sources. “Currently, we assess that these groups garner most of their funding from petroleum-related criminal activity, kidnapping and other criminal pursuits within Iraq,” the report concludes.

One section of the report is dedicated to the role played by “sympathetic donors,” including Islamic charities and nongovernmental organizations. It says that “intelligence reporting” indicates that only 10 to 15 of the 4,000 nongovernmental groups support terrorist and insurgent groups, but that those few take advantage of lax Iraqi regulation to divert funds to insurgent and other armed groups and, in some cases, “to provide cover for insurgent recruitment and the transport of weapons and personnel.”

The possibility that Iraq-based terrorist groups could finance attacks outside Iraq appeared to echo Bush administration assertions that prevailing in the war here is essential to preventing Iraq from becoming a terrorist haven, as Afghanistan became under the Taliban. But that suggestion was one of several aspects of the report that drew criticism from Western terrorism and counterinsurgency experts working outside the government who were given the outline of the findings.

While noting that the report appeared to reflect a major effort by the administration to learn more about the murky world of insurgent financing in Iraq, the experts said the seven-page document appeared to be speculative, at least in its estimates of the funds available to the insurgent and terror groups. They noted the wide spread of the estimates, particularly the $70 million to $200 million figure for overall financing, the report’s failure to specify which groups the estimates covered and the absence of documentation of how authors had arrived at their estimates.

While such data may have been omitted to protect the group’s clandestine sources and methods — the document has a bold heading on the front page saying “secret” and a warning that it is not to be shared with foreign governments — several security and intelligence consultants said in telephone interviews that the vagueness of the estimates reflected how little American intelligence agencies knew about the opaque and complex world of Iraq’s militant groups.

“They’re just guessing,” said W. Patrick Lang, a former chief of Middle East intelligence at the Defense Intelligence Agency, who now runs a security and intelligence consultancy. “They really have no idea.” He added, “They’ve been very unsuccessful in penetrating these organizations.” He said he was equally skeptical about the report’s assertion that the insurgent and militant groups may have surpluses to finance terrorism outside Iraq. “That’s another guess,” he said.

“A judgment like that, coming from an N.S.C.-generated document,” he said, is not an analytical assessment as much as it is a political statement to support the administration’s contention that Iraq is a central front in the war on terrorism. “It’s a statement put in there to support a policy judgment,” he said.

Several analysts said that, except for the possibility that Al Qaeda of Mesopotamia might be transferring money to Qaeda factions elsewhere, the assertion that insurgent money might be flowing out of the country was doubtful considering the single-minded regional focus of most of the militants operating here.

Dr. Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish National Defense College, an author of extensive studies of the Iraqi insurgency, said he doubted Iraqi groups were ready to finance terrorism outside the country. “There’s very little evidence that they’re preparing to export terrorism from Iraq to the West,” he said. “I think it’s much too early for that.”

The document tracing the money flows acknowledges that investigators have had limited success in penetrating or choking off terrorist financing networks. The report says American efforts to follow the financing trails have been hamstrung by several factors. They include a weak Iraqi government and its nascent intelligence agencies; a lack of communication between American agencies, and between the Americans and the Iraqis; and the nature of the insurgent economy itself, primarily sustained by couriers carrying cash rather than more easily traceable means involving banks and the hawala money transfer networks traditional in the Middle East.

“Efforts to identify key financial facilitators, funding sources and transfer mechanisms are yielding some results, but we need to improve our understanding of how terrorist and insurgent cells interact, how their financial networks vary from province to province or city to city and how they use their funds,” the report says. It also says the United States must help the Iraqi government “to excise corrupt officials from its law enforcement and security services and its ministries” and “to prevent smuggled Iraqi oil from being sold within their borders.”

Another challenge for the United States, the report says, was to persuade foreign governments to “stop paying ransoms.” It gives no details, but American officials have said previously that France paid a multimillion-dollar ransom for the release in December 2004 of two French reporters held hostage by an insurgent group. Italy, these officials have said, paid ransoms on at least two occasions, in September 2004 for the release of two women, both aid workers, and in March 2005, a reported $5 million for the release of Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist for the Rome newspaper Il Manifesto.

Several American security consultants, all former members of government intelligence agencies that deal with terrorism, said in interviews that the ineffectiveness of efforts to impede the revenues to the insurgents was reflected in the continuing, if not growing, strength of Iraq’s militants. “You have to look at what the insurgency is doing,” Mr. Lang said. “Are they hampered by a lack of funds? I see no evidence that they are.”

Jeffrey White, a defense fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also a former Middle East analyst with the Defense Intelligence Agency, agreed. “We’ve had some tactical successes where we’ve picked off a financier or whatever, but we haven’t been able to unravel a major component of the system,” he said. “I’ve never seen any indication that they’re strapped for cash, never seen any indication that they were short on weapons.”

He said the insurgency had demonstrated tremendous regenerative properties. “The networks fix themselves, they heal themselves,” he said. He pointed to the success of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in withstanding the loss of hundreds of combatants and dozens of major leaders. “They keep coming back,” he said, “and I think the same thing has happened to the financial system.”

Electronic voting machines

2006-11-24T07:02:00.000-08:00

An Electronic Canary
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, November 24, 2006; A41

Americans can be grateful that Sarasota County is in Florida and not in Montana or Virginia.

There's nothing wrong with Sarasota, a lovely place. But if the voting snafus in the contest for Florida's 13th District had hung up either of this year's two closest Senate races, we still would not know which party had won control of the Senate.

Supporters of new voting technologies have been patting themselves on the back, saying there were no big voting problems this year. Let them go to Sarasota.

Here's the story so far: The official vote count in the battle for -- you won't believe this -- Katherine Harris's seat put Republican Vern Buchanan 369 votes ahead of Democrat Christine Jennings out of roughly 238,000 votes cast.

But in Sarasota County, there was an "undervote" of more than 18,000 -- meaning that those voters supposedly didn't choose to record votes in the Buchanan-Jennings race. Jennings carried the county 53 percent to 47 percent.

The Sarasota undervote in the congressional race amounted to nearly 15 percent. Kendall Coffey, Jennings's lawyer, has pointed out that in the other four counties in the district, the undervote ranged from 2.2 to 5.3 percent. Put another way, roughly 18,000 of the 21,000 undervotes in the contest came from Sarasota County.

It's hard to believe that Sarasota's voters had a different view of the race than voters everywhere else in the district, considering that the undervote on the county's absentee ballots, cast on paper, was only 2.5 percent. The upshot: Any reasonable statistical analysis suggests that only 3,000 to 5,000 of Sarasota's undervotes were intentional, meaning that 13,000 to 15,000 votes were probably not counted.

If you believe that these machines operated properly, then you must also believe that I missed my true vocation as an NBA center.

Imagine if 18,000 votes had just disappeared in either of the key Senate races. Or imagine a presidential election in which the electoral votes of Florida were decisive and the state was hanging in the balance by -- to pick a number that comes to mind -- 537 votes. And, by the way, in 2000 we could at least see those hanging and dimpled chads. In this case the votes have -- poof! -- simply disappeared.

Despite the Sarasota problem, the state Elections Canvassing Commission certified Buchanan's "victory." Jennings has gone to court to demand a new election.

But there is good news here: This is a problem in just one congressional district. Control of the House does not depend on how this race turns out. It is therefore in the interest of both parties, not to mention the country, to be simultaneously aggressive and judicious in figuring out what went wrong in Sarasota and to use that knowledge to fix the nation's voting system before a major disaster strikes. Sarasota is the canary in the electronic coal mine.

On Tuesday, Judge William L. Gary decided not to move the case along quite as fast as Jennings had requested. That will prove to be an excellent decision if the delay is part of an effort to collect every bit of information we can on Sarasota's machines.

Jennings's lawyers have asked the judge to give her campaign full access to at least eight of the voting machines and their software -- a fair request. If the taxpayer-supported companies that sell this equipment are not willing to be 100 percent open about how their machines and their programming work, they should not be allowed to record and count the people's votes.

And if anyone still needs evidence that all electronic systems should provide verifiable paper trails so real ballots are available in the event of a recount, let them go to Sarasota.

If the courts punt, Congress, which has a right to judge the credentials of its members, should get to the bottom of this. It may be asking the impossible, but Democrats and Republicans should not make this a fight about which party picks up one more seat. Instead, they should conduct a joint inquest into this contest to provide a basis for bipartisan legislation creating national standards for improving our voting systems.

The U.S. Supreme Court has insisted that "[h]aving once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person's vote over that of another." Thousands of voters in the 13th District have an interest in demanding that the system live up to those words, which came from the decision in a little case in 2000 called Bush v. Gore.

Delay Screws Texas One More Time

2006-11-22T14:05:00.000-08:00

When Congress convenes in January, Texas will find itself out of power, thanks to Tom Delay's off-year gerrymandering a few years back.

Boo-hoo-hoo-hoo.

"The economy is strong." - G.W. Bush

2006-11-21T12:13:00.000-08:00

Meanwhile, back in the real world, the pre-election optimism is beginning to moderate. The economy sucks for the middle class, which means the economy sucks for everyone except bigtime stockholders and the inside the beltway idiots, whose jobs depend on telling Wonder Boy the economy is strong.

Somebody needs to get the point across to those people - If you aren't rich in America right now, you're worried about your job and your future. If you're worried about your job and your future, you're not in the market for a new car or a new home - or for a lot of Christmas presents either, for that matter. If you're not in the market for something new, then the people who make whatever-that-something-new is have good reason to be more worried about their jobs and their futures, and everything gets that much tighter.

The future of this economy depends on what the new congress can do to control corporate tax breaks, restore fiscal discipline and shore up programs that secure the middle class.

Olbemann on Bush in Vietnam

2006-11-21T06:26:00.000-08:00

Go here.

Message from voters may not have been heard clearly.

2006-11-21T06:14:00.000-08:00

November 21, 2006
Guest Columnist
Same Old Party

By THOMAS B. EDSALL
Washington

Last Friday, the Republicans gave the Democrats a gift that will keep on giving: Roy Blunt of Missouri.

After an election repudiating the politics of Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, Republicans elevated Blunt from the number three spot in the leadership to number two.

Roy Blunt embodies the insidious, half-legal corruption that has permeated the G.O.P. majority since 1995. Blunt’s election as minority whip, by a 137-to-57 margin, was a defiant Republican rejection of calls to clean up their act. Warnings by Blunt’s challenger, John Shadegg of Arizona — “We ceded our reform-minded principles in exchange for a ...tighter grip on power” — went unheeded.

In 1998, DeLay put Blunt on the leadership ladder, making him chief deputy whip. Blunt modeled himself on DeLay, creating an identical network of state and federal political committees that raised money from the same lobbyists, corporations and trade associations that financed what became known as DeLay Inc.

If one political operation captured the essence of DeLay’s leadership, it was the Republican takeover of Washington’s influence-peddling industry. This industry, grossing $2.36 billion last year alone, eagerly accommodated DeLay’s demands to replace Democratic lobbyists and association executives with Republicans. In a mutually rewarding relationship, lobbyists who financed DeLay Inc. wrote amendments and bills, while DeLay received a flood of cash to build a multimillion-dollar network of PACs. These committees lavished contributions, corporate jets and year-round entertainment on Republican House members, ensuring their loyalty, and channeled cash into local political parties, helping to win control of state legislatures that, in turn, gerrymandered districts to implement a long-term strategy of larger G.O.P. Congressional majorities.

In 2003, after DeLay moved up to majority leader and turned the so-called K Street Project over to him, Blunt promptly converted a legion of Republican lobbyists into an arm of the House whip operation. Lobbyists have always been close to Congress, under rule by either party. What DeLay and Blunt did was to sacralize this relationship. In doing so, they transferred a chunk of power from Capitol Hill to business interests.

This unholy alliance was a crucial factor in transforming the G.O.P. into an army of spenders whose earmarks, appropriations and tax cuts rivaled the government largess of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

In 2004, Blunt turned his lobbyist team loose to win passage of a bill eliminating a $50 billion corporate tax break that the World Trade Organization had ruled in violation of international agreements. These lobbyists inserted $143 billion worth of new corporate tax breaks, turning the bill into a Fortune 500 Christmas tree.

Blunt is not the easy target DeLay was. DeLay, a born-again Southern Baptist, by his own account had battled demon rum and the playboy life. Once he started down the path of righteousness, moralizing and sermonizing, he made enemies, painting a bull’s-eye on his back.

Blunt, by contrast, is bland, unctuous and adept at keeping a low profile. But there is plenty to see. After divorcing his wife of 35 years to marry a tobacco lobbyist, Abigail Perlman, he cleared his second marriage with the House Ethics Committee to get “a waiver of the limitations of the gift rule to allow me to accept gifts in connection with my wedding.”

Blunt unblushingly told the Heritage Foundation this month that Republicans “have allowed our efforts to defend traditional values to be defined as little more than a politically driven effort to appease ‘family groups.’ ”

For Blunt, the blurring of boundaries is a family tradition. His son Matt is the governor of Missouri. Another son, Andrew, is one of the state’s top lobbyists. Almost all Altria subsidiaries — Kraft, Miller Brewing, Philip Morris (remember Abigail Perlman) — hired Andy Blunt, along with other financial backers of Roy Blunt.

In Blunt, House Republicans have kept on display a top official reminding voters why they cast ballots for Democrats on Nov. 7. After winning the post of minority whip last week, Blunt declared that the Republicans had “come together ... frankly, to get rid of the bad habits that we may have developed in 12 years in the majority.” This is precisely the opposite of what they actually did, which was to affirm their bad habits. The burden on the Democrats will be to make the elusive Blunt a nationally recognized figure.

Thomas B. Edsall holds the Pulitzer-Moore Chair at Columbia University. He is a guest columnist this month.

U.S. housing starts plunge to six-year low in October - MarketWatch

2006-11-17T09:34:00.000-08:00

"The economy is strong."U.S. housing starts plunge to six-year low in October - MarketWatch

2006-11-17T05:47:00.000-08:00

I have such very low food security I could eat a horse

Bush in Vietnam

2006-11-17T05:34:00.000-08:00

Well, he finally got there.

He says the lesson of Vietnam is that we should not quit in Iraq. I say the lesson of Vietnam - the lesson I took away when I left there three decades ago - was that if you're not connected like George Bush was back then, the government can - and will - fuck with you whenever and however it wants.

Easy for him to send kids back to his quagmire three and four times. His life isn't on hold. It wasn't on hold back then.He was not inconvenienced then. He is not inconvenienceed now.

In two years, he will amble off into the sunset, leaving his mess to someone else. What a sadd, shallow, empty little man.

Rummy may be gone, but that doesn't mean we can't expect more of the same.

2006-11-17T03:10:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush may have thrown Rummy overboard, but he's not exaactly bringing in new blood. William Rivers Pitt lays out the connnection between W's White House, alumni of his father's administration (including his nominee to replace Rummy) and the Carlysle Group. Turns out we've seen it all before.

More on the moron economy

2006-11-17T02:57:00.000-08:00

Finally, something on the Wall Street Journal editorial page a regular Joe caan agree with. Without a vibrant, growing middle class - a middle class that understands they have an opportunity to do better in the future, the economy isn't strong. It's a house of cards.

STFU

2006-11-15T14:10:00.000-08:00

I've gotten this email from a bunch of leties, and (in spite of my rant about Trent Lottbelow) it seems to me to be exactly the kind of thing we don't need right now. It sounds simpy, and catty - the kind of thing a 13 year-old "mean girl" might say. It doesn't advance the national cause one iota and gives anyone who is not rabidly lefty one more reason to hate.

We don't have the luxury of crap like this. There's too much to doand too many people to enfranchise in the job.

So let's all please not do this kind of stuff.

From Michael Moore:

A Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives

November 14th, 2006

To My Conservative Brothers and Sisters,

I know you are dismayed and disheartened at the results of last week's election. You're worried that the country is heading toward a very bad place you don't want it to go. Your 12-year Republican Revolution has ended with so much yet to do, so many promises left unfulfilled. You are in a funk, and I understand.

Well, cheer up, my friends! Do not despair. I have good news for you. I, and the millions of others who are now in charge with our Democratic Congress, have a pledge we would like to make to you, a list of promises that we offer you because we value you as our fellow Americans. You deserve to know what we plan to do with our newfound power -- and, to be specific, what we will do to you and for you.

Thus, here is our Liberal's Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives:

Dear Conservatives and Republicans,

I, and my fellow signatories, hereby make these promises to you:

1. We will always respect you for your conservative beliefs. We will never, ever, call you "unpatriotic" simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.

2. We will let you marry whomever you want, even when some of us consider your behavior to be "different" or "immoral." Who you marry is none of our business. Love and be in love -- it's a wonderful gift.

3. We will not spend your grandchildren's money on our personal whims or to enrich our friends. It's your checkbook, too, and we will balance it for you.

4. When we soon bring our sons and daughters home from Iraq, we will bring your sons and daughters home, too. They deserve to live. We promise never to send your kids off to war based on either a mistake or a lie.

5. When we make America the last Western democracy to have universal health coverage, and all Americans are able to get help when they fall ill, we promise that you, too, will be able to see a doctor, regardless of your ability to pay. And when stem cell research delivers treatments and cures for diseases that affect you and your loved ones, we'll make sure those advances are available to you and your family, too.

6. Even though you have opposed environmental regulation, when we clean up our air and water, we, the Democratic majority, will let you, too, breathe the cleaner air and drink the purer water.

7. Should a mass murderer ever kill 3,000 people on our soil, we will devote every single resource to tracking him down and bringing him to justice. Immediately. We will protect you.

8. We will never stick our nose in your bedroom or your womb. What you do there as consenting adults is your business. We will continue to count your age from the moment you were born, not the moment you were conceived.

9. We will not take away your hunting guns. If you need an automatic weapon or a handgun to kill a bird or a deer, then you really aren't much of a hunter and you should, perhaps, pick up another sport. We will make our streets and schools as free as we can from these weapons and we will protect your children just as we would protect ours.

10. When we raise the minimum wage, we will pay you -- and your employees -- that new wage, too. When women are finally paid what men make, we will pay conservative women that wage, too.

11. We will respect your religious beliefs, even when you don't put those beliefs into practice. In fact, we will actively seek to promote your most radical religious beliefs ("Blessed are the poor," "Blessed are the peacemakers," "Love your enemies," "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God," and "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."). We will let people in other countries know that God doesn't just bless America, he blesses everyone. We will discourage religious intolerance and fanaticism -- starting with the fanaticism here at home, thus setting a good example for the rest of the world.

12. We will not tolerate politicians who are corrupt and who are bought and paid for by the rich. We will go after any elected leader who puts him or herself ahead of the people. And we promise you we will go after the corrupt politicians on our side FIRST. If we fail to do this, we need you to call us on it. Simply because we are in power does not give us the right to turn our heads the other way when our party goes astray. Please perform this important duty as the loyal opposition.

I promise all of the above to you because this is your country, too. You are every bit as American as we are. We are all in this together. We sink or swim as one. Thank you for your years of service to this country and for giving us the opportunity to see if we can make things a bit better for our 300 million fellow Americans -- and for the rest of the world.

Signed,

Michael Moore
mmflint@aol.com
(Click here to sign the pledge)
www.michaelmoore.com

P.S. Please feel free to pass this on.

Further proof of how out of touch the R's are

2006-11-15T08:42:00.000-08:00

Hot damn. He's baack...

Nothing reaches out to minorities quite like naming a man who lauded known racist Strom Thurmond's 1948 white supremecist run for the presidency to be second in command in the Senate.

Former Republican Congressman J.C. Watts' father, a black man, said it best: A black voting for a Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

Regardless of race, who can ever forget (or forgive) the sight of Trent Lott, Senate Majority Leader, honchoing Bill Clinton's Senate trial after the silly-assed impeachment?

The idiots presently ensconced in the Executive Branch lied us into a war, drove the middle class into the ditch and mortgaged the future of the country with snakey-sneaky accounting and tax breaks for the obscenely wealthy. The idiot in the White House should - but won't be - impeached.

This same pack of idiots now have the gaul to put this simple, foolish, shallow, hack back up there for all of us to look at and remember what they did.

They are fools.

Interesting post-election poll

2006-11-15T03:50:00.000-08:00

An interesting piece of post-election polling by the AFL?CIO here. Clearly the United States of America where working people live feels differently about the economy than does the United States of America where the shareholders live.

"The economy is strong." - G.W. Bush

2006-11-14T13:46:00.000-08:00

For those of us living in the United States of America on planet Earth, it is good to see our leader emerge from "les nuages" and hold a meeting like this.The American auto industry is more than just stagnant. It is dead. There is not one make or model that can compete - genuinely compete - for a share of the consumer market here in America, let alone globally.

Our mileage sucks. Our designs are generic and bland. Our warranties are barely adequate. And even if you were to get 100,000 trouble-free miles, they would be 100,000 of the dullest, most mediocre miles you ever experienced.

American auto workers are among the best automakers in the world. There's nothing they can not or will not do to build those cars and trucks right - and take real pride in their work. But, thanks to crappy design and bottom-line management and globalization, American auto workers are damned near an extinct species. And so are the American workers who used to make all the parts and components that went into American cars.

Right up through the election, Bush and his people were touting the strong economy. They talked up all the jobs they were creating.

The jobs are for shit. People who used to make light trucks but got laid off and found work making lattes. Luckily, they took time off and went to the polls and voted their own interests.

And now the president is holding meetings. Not making promises, mind you, but holding meetings.

Maybe, with the help of a Democratic congress, he'll figure out that the economy is as much about Main Street as it is about Wall Street.

Waiting for the Commission Report

2006-11-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

You haven’t lived until you’ve found yourself stuck in a war zone and getting shot at while the people in Washington diddle-dork and dawdle with formalities and wait for commission reports. Weeks and months go by. Real men, women and children die.

The people in power, being out of the line of fire, don’t care. They’ve got a process, and we all know that a process can take time.

They’re saying that the report by the Baker-Hamilton Commission may not be done until the end of the year. George W. Bush says he is looking forward to reading it.

Assuming two casualties a day for 45 days, that’s 90 more dead soldiers – men and women who are alive and walking around and who hope to come home to their families – who’ll die while the Baker-Hamilton Commission does whatever the hell it is that they’re going to do.

And, assuming 30 dead Iraqis a day for 45 days, that’s 1,350 more dead civilians.

Thanksgiving will come and go. Greedy retailers will bombard you with Christmas shopping commercials. Everybody will work themselves up to a frenzy of peace on earth and good will towards men. But the killing won’t stop. It won’t even slow down.

There should be some sense of urgency to all this. There isn’t. There never is. Urgency is a sign of weakness, I guess; a tool to be used against you in negotiations.

But there should be. Somewhere in Iraq tonight roughly 1,440 dead men, women and children are walking around, hoping for the best, unaware they are about to become statistics – blips and ticks on some cosmic meter – while people in Washington diddle-dork and dawdle.

What hath we wrought?

2006-11-12T06:15:00.000-08:00

There’s always a bit of political postpartum in the days and weeks after a big election. The people have spoken, albeit along gerrymandered lines, and now the nation must sit down and parse whatever the hell it was that the people said.

All too quickly, reality sets in. That which, only the other day, looked like a brave new world reveals itself to be more of the same old crap.

To the victors belong the spoils. Only the spoils don’t go directly to the victors. They go to central committees, where tin-eared party bosses divide and distribute them along lines that strengthen their own power bases.

Idealists, losers and swing voters are left to contemplate what might have been if the election had gone the other way.

What might have been, of course, is that the bosses on the other side would have been doing the dividing, distributing and power base building. But that reality is lost upon idealists and party loyalists who really believed.

Meanwhile swing voters, stung to witness the winning party bosses taking care of their own people first, are stunned at the new reality they helped bring about.

All this in gray, dismal November. November, birthplace of seasonal affective disorder. The days are shorter. Lame duckery saturates the political soul. The scoundrels on the way out pack up like light-fingered hotel guests grabbing everything they can get away with – soap, shampoo, sewing kits, towels, ashtrays, last minute legislation and appointment approvals – everything.

January can’t get here quickly enough. The pale sunlight will be getting a little stronger every day, and the newly-elected scoundrels, having raised their right hands and taken the oath of office, will be able to get to work on the business of selling influence, corrupting themselves and fleecing the rest of us in the process.

Did Republican happy-talk about the economy cost them the election?

2006-11-11T05:56:00.000-08:00

As the Republicans look at the election results and try to figure out what went wrong, they would do well to examine what they said about the economy – and how they said it.

“The economy is strong,” didn’t ring true. Not even with the Dow Jones soaring.

Evidently, the route from Wall Street to the kitchen table was a bit too surreptitious and serpentine for Joe and Mona Minivan to follow. The record earnings on the Big Board never showed up in the paycheck. The real money got siphoned off before it could trickle down.

Adding insult and a bigger co-pay to injury, employers (most of whom are perceived to be Republican) shifted a bigger share of rising healthcare costs onto employees already feeling the effects of static wages.

Globalization, union busting, huge corporate bankruptcies, and a pro-business Federal court added to uncertainty, forcing wage concessions from loyal long-term blocks of employees, shutting down manufacturing plants.

Entire pension plans disappeared down the rapacious maws of unregulated, engulf-and-devour businesses like Enron. Other companies dumped their pension plan liabilities onto the Federal government. The Republicans responded by proposing to privatize Social Security.

When campaigning Republicans cited jobs growth, Joe and Mona weren’t so sure. The new jobs they see cropping up – the jobs their kids are taking – don’t come with benefits or a sense of a secure future. They are hourly wage, strip mall and office park jobs tied a bit too closely to a tentative, consumer-driven economy. They are jobs to get by on, not jobs to get rich on – and certainly not jobs to retire from.

When campaigning Republicans cited tax cuts, Joe and Mona didn’t buy it. Their property taxes have gone up to offset the flim-flam of unfunded mandates, funding cuts and what-have-you at every level of government between Washington and their little house on the cul-de-sac.

Speaking of their little house, they’re busting their butts to hold onto it – even as the “For Sale” signs crop up and the market goes soft. Their home is their nest egg. Their biggest investment. It’s not increasing in value like it used to.

Across the board, Joe and Mona have visceral feeling that things aren’t going well. And who are they going to believe? A Department of Commerce quarterly report or their day-to-day experience trying to make ends meet?

To say that the economy is strong is to say that you don’t understand what Joe and Mona are up against. It is to say you don’t share their perspective or their experience.

In an election year, it is the same as saying “Don’t vote for me. I work for the other side.”

Which, in fact, most of the Republicans who lost bids for reelection did.

Corruption is always just around the corner.

2006-11-10T13:31:00.000-08:00

Just in case you thought the Democrats were above reproach, click here. The District of Columbia will never be rid of influence peddlers.

You would think, though, that the party that just rode a wave of anti-corruption sentiment into office would not get both front trotters back in the slop trough right away. It just doesn't look good.

How soon will we'll see a Democratic Abramoff? A Democratic DeLay or Ney?

One thing the election didn't change.

2006-11-10T12:04:00.000-08:00

BAGHDAD (CNN) -- Three U.S. soldiers and two Marines died in Iraq in the past two days, the U.S. military announced Friday.

One Marine died Thursday from wounds sustained due to "enemy action" during operations in Anbar province, the military said. The Marine was assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5. A second Marine assigned to Regimental Combat Team 7 died Friday from "non-hostile causes" while operating in Anbar province, the military said.

Two soldiers were killed and a third was wounded Thursday when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb west of Baghdad, the military said Friday. All were assigned to 89th Military Police Brigade.

Also Thursday, one soldier assigned to the 13th Sustainment Command was killed and another was wounded during a patrol when their truck was hit by a roadside bomb west of Haditha, the military said.

With the deaths, 2,844 U.S. military personnel have died in the Iraq war. Twenty-six military personnel have died in November as of Friday's announcements, bringing total U.S. military deaths in Iraq during 2006 to 664. (Posted 1:58 p.m.)