Picking sides in Iraq

The LA Times has an interesting article on one approach the administration might take in dealing with the Iraq War. The idea is that we choose a side (presumably the Shiites’) in the Iraqi ethnic war, and begin fighting our war to destroy the Sunnis. This is an interesting idea … if you’re a war criminal.

The Bush Administration started this with their so called “Salvador Option” or their complicity in the creation of the Shiite death squads, and now they are considering flat out taking the Shiite side in the ethnic conflict. Truly ridiculous and appalling at the same time. That this is even being considered is criminal.

Perhaps this is why Saudi Arabia summoned Cheney the other day, because they figured out the Bush Administration was taking this idea seriously, and to let Cheney know that this would force Saudi Arabia to take the Sunni side and start a regional war.

It's unbelievable that the media is even discussing this like it's a viable option.

Anonymous sources

This from the NY Times is one of the arguments for why anonymous sources should not be used by reporters. This administration clearly has an agenda in this propaganda war, and with these claims by an anonymous administration official, the administration is pushing back against some of the likely recommendations of the Iraq Study Group.

A senior American intelligence official said Monday that the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah had been training members of the Mahdi Army, the Iraqi Shiite militia led by Moktada al-Sadr.

The official said that 1,000 to 2,000 fighters from the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias had been trained by Hezbollah in Lebanon. A small number of Hezbollah operatives have also visited Iraq to help with training, the official said.

Iran has facilitated the link between Hezbollah and the Shiite militias in Iraq, the official said. Syrian officials have also cooperated, though there is debate about whether it has the blessing of the senior leaders in Syria.

The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity under rules set by his agency, and discussed Iran’s role in response to questions from a reporter.

The Times is at least skeptical of the claims, and does quote a Mid-East expert:

“That sound to me a little bit strained,” said Flynt Leverett, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a Middle East expert formerly on the National Security Council staff. “I have a hard time thinking it is a really significant piece of what we are seeing play out on the ground with the various Shiite militia forces.”

And as for the claim that the Iranians are helping the Shiite militias . . . of course they are. This is one of those things that Congress at least should have foreseen before they OK’d the war. I mean, why is the media or anyone else surprised at this.

More of the same?

So just out of curiosity, are there any Iraqis on the Iraq Study Group? Obviously a rhetorical question.

According to the Washington Post, of the 40 experts whom the ISG consulted with, two were Mid-East diplomats. At least that’s something, but I wonder if the Iraqis are getting tired of having their future decided for them?

Apparently this article--which is mildly interesting--and the other recent articles are simply to prepare us for a recommendation from the ISG of more of the same from the Bush administration.

Will we finally see some justice?

This article from the NY Times, stating that much of the West Bank settlements are built on private Palestinian land, surprises me about as much as the fact that Saddam Hussein didn’t have weapons of mass destruction. It’s just more lies and propaganda. I mean, of course the settlements are built on private Arab land.

Sure it’s good that some people’s noses are being rubbed in it, but shocking news? Hardly.

The Palestine needs more justice and less talk, investigations and propaganda. But it’s probably a step in the right direction that this story can even be the lead news item on the front page of the Times, and that the Times and this country can maybe start to talk about it.

Reinstate the draft?

It doesn’t seem like Rep. Charles Rangel has put much thought into his call to reinstate the draft.

I think his logic that a draft would have kept us out of the war with Iraq because our leaders’ kids could be drafted to fight in it is flawed, unless he is planning a major overhaul from how it worked in the Vietnam War era.

Since Bush and Cheney and so many other chicken hawks managed to keep themselves out of the draft and out of Vietnam, what makes him think it would be any different today.

Sure African Americans are over-represented in our armed forces as a percentage of our population, but they were during the Vietnam War also; so how is a draft today going to change that? It seems like congressional action would be a better way to change that.

The reason we are waging a war against Iraq is because Congress told the President it was OK. Rangel may not have voted for it, but enough of his Democratic colleagues did to pass it. Why didn’t so many Democrats realize they were being played for suckers? That’s the real question here.

The Bush administration, some conservative “think tanks,” the media and Congress are why we invaded Iraq. Rangel doesn’t need to look so far away to find a guilty party in this; the guilty party is right in his back yard, and really by implication, it is he.

And really I should add that this is just a distraction from what the Democratic Congress should be focusing on, and probably the bigger picture of racial equality should be part of that.

Divided Democrats?

There appears to be a lot in the news recently about how divided the Democrats are. Perhaps this will be the media narrative and a tool to keep them from working effectively and from expanding on their gains two years from now. Who should get the credit for the victory? This is a completely ridiculous question, as is, who stood in the way of making even bigger gains?

This is just a transparent media strategy of divide and conquer. I mean, why isn’t the GOP’s “recriminations, finger-pointing and infighting” getting the same scrutiny? I mean, Trent Lott? It’s actually hilarious that this racist is the man they want to have as the public face of their party.

The NY Times quotes: “I would describe his leadership as Rumsfeldian in its incompetence,” one strategist, James Carville, said of Mr. Dean.

And as we have known for some time, James Carville is an ass and a Republican operative. He needs to be marginalized.

But at least there are a couple of decent quotes in there, like:

“Asking Dean to step down now, after last week, is equivalent to asking Eisenhower to resign after the Normandy invasion,” Mr. Fowler said. “It’s just nonsense.

“Carville and Greenberg — those people are my friends — they are just dead wrong. They wanted all that money to go to Washington consultants and speechwriters and pollsters. This kind of nonsense is destructive of the party.”

But really, the Democrats need to help the media move on from this story line.

Jim Webb

I don’t know much about Jim Webb. Over on the West Coast, I think we heard more about his opponent, George Allen’s gaffs and racism, than what Webb actually stood for. But so far, I like what he has to say in this op-ed piece from the Wall Street Journal. Maybe he can start the ball rolling trying to correct what I agree is one of the most important issues facing this country today. Definitely a must read.

The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

. . .

This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries. A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris. When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an overt lack of concern for those who are falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation's most fortunate. Some shrug off large-scale economic and social dislocations as the inevitable byproducts of the "rough road of capitalism." Others claim that it's the fault of the worker or the public education system, that the average American is simply not up to the international challenge, that our education system fails us, or that our workers have become spoiled by old notions of corporate paternalism.

Still others have gone so far as to argue that these divisions are the natural results of a competitive society. Furthermore, an unspoken insinuation seems to be inundating our national debate: Certain immigrant groups have the "right genetics" and thus are natural entrants to the "overclass," while others, as well as those who come from stock that has been here for 200 years and have not made it to the top, simply don't possess the necessary attributes.

And this seems to be a warning to that elite class of what may come, if this situation isn’t dealt with:

More troubling is this: If it remains unchecked, this bifurcation of opportunities and advantages along class lines has the potential to bring a period of political unrest. Up to now, most American workers have simply been worried about their job prospects. Once they understand that there are (and were) clear alternatives to the policies that have dislocated careers and altered futures, they will demand more accountability from the leaders who have failed to protect their interests. The "Wal-Marting" of cheap consumer products brought in from places like China, and the easy money from low-interest home mortgage refinancing, have softened the blows in recent years. But the balance point is tipping in both cases, away from the consumer and away from our national interest.

The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life. Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of "God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag" while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet. But this election cycle showed an electorate that intends to hold government leaders accountable for allowing every American a fair opportunity to succeed.

This is becoming a middle class issue, not a poor issue, and I think appealing to it, and showing how it is effecting the middle class, is a winning strategy for the Democrats

Hat tip: Tapped

Partisanship?

Again, the Democrats need to stop listening to what the conservative press is telling them.

Democrats preparing to take control of Congress for the first time in over a decade are looking to the Republican takeover in 1995 as an object lesson of what to emulate and what to avoid. They hope to match the legislative energy of the Newt Gingrich era while avoiding at all costs the partisan pitfalls that eventually soured voters on the GOP.

It wasn’t just partisanship that soured the voters on the Republicans. What soured them is doing things that the public didn't want them to do, like lying to them, taking the country to war, cutting taxes for the super rich, allowing jobs to go overseas, colluding with the oil companies to illegally increase profits, illegal domestic wiretapping, the Medicare prescription drug law . . . do I need to go on? That's what soured the American public--passing laws counter to the wishes of the public--and in this case, that was different than simple partisanship. If they were doing something partisan that the voters wanted them to do, I don't believe the voters would have had a problem with it. The difference was that the opinion polls were showing them that they were doing things contrary to what the public wanted, yet they did it anyway. That’s what got them voted out of power.

So the Democrats don't simply need to be bipartisan for the sake of being bipartisan and working together in harmony with the Republicans. They need to do what the American public, and especially that part of the American public that elected them, wants them to do. If that includes working with the Republicans on a specific issue then fine, but they don't need to compromise on John Bolton or privatizing Social Security. That's not what the people who elected them--progressives and democrats--want them to do. And we need to keep on top of them to remind them why they are there and what our priorities are.

Oh, and the Washington Post needs to stop trying to project their opinions on the Democrats and tell them what to do--and the Democrats had better not be listening.

Bipartisanship?

The Democrats need to take the administration’s talk of bipartisanship for what it is: Bullshit.

But Mr. Bolton is keen to stay at the helm of the American team at the United Nations, administration officials say, and White House officials, including Mr. Bush’s counsel, Harriet E. Miers, have been looking into whether the president can somehow bypass the Senate and keep him there. Administration officials said Vice President Dick Cheney was backing exploration of such a move.

Mr. Bolton “could be named acting permanent representative or deputy U.N. ambassador or something else that doesn’t require confirmation,” a senior administration official said.

Obviously, doing that will anger Democrats, the official said. “But we’ll see.”

When senators blocked Mr. Bolton’s confirmation last year, Mr. Bush gave him a recess appointment, which expires when this Congress adjourns. Mr. Bush could give Mr. Bolton a second recess appointment as the United Nations ambassador, but under the law he could not be paid for his work.

White House officials are looking into whether he can be paid by some other entity and still serve as ambassador, or whether a de facto position could be created in which Mr. Bolton served as ambassador for all intents and purposes, but not in name.

Such a move would almost certainly enflame relations between the White House and the ascendant Democrats and would probably kill any further talk about bipartisan cooperation.

It’s truly ridiculous, the administration’s quest for power: ignoring the Constitution, trying to bypass the Senate.

Bush knows that John Bolton is not the kind of person the Democrats or the American people want at the UN, but rather than try to appoint someone else who is, he is once again looking for some way to shove Bolton down their throats.

The Democrats need to finally come to the realization that this is who Bush and his administration are. They need to call bullshit on all of the administration and the GOP’s talk of bipartisanship. The GOP doesn’t want bipartisanship: their actions betray them. In the last six years, the GOP hasn’t been bipartisan once, and they expect the Democrats to believe them now? I guess well have our chance in the next two years to see how stupid the Democrats are. The Democrats need to call this what it is--over and over again--in the media. And then they need to go about some partisanship of their own.

Bolton doesn’t have the votes in the Senate, so both sides need to move on. I really am sick of hearing this jackass Bolton’s name.

Stop spinning the lies

When are the media and the pundits going to stop spinning and get it right on Iraq. Foreign Policy has this interview with David Gergen.

Foreign Policy: After 9/11, many people said the “Vietnam Syndrome” was dead—that Americans were now willing to accept large numbers of casualties in prolonged interventions overseas. Does this election prove that wrong?

David Gergen: What we are seeing in Iraq is not a replay of the Vietnam Syndrome. Rather, it’s a sense that we are engaged in a conflict without an obvious end in sight and [that] things are getting worse. The Vietnam Syndrome argued that we should not commit force again unless our vital interests are clearly at stake. But in Iraq, we did commit our troops to conflict without a clear national interest at stake. It was a war of discretion and yet, the American people supported it. So, I don’t think the Vietnam Syndrome is what our problem is here. Rather, it is that the war has been so incompetently managed that the people have lost faith in the capacity of those running it.

So here a two pronged test is proposed, but Gergen’s comments are wrong on both of those tests. First, the media and the administration convinced the majority of the country that war in Iraq was in our vital national interest because Saddam was funding Al Qaeda, and because Iraq possessed WMDs. And second, we were told over and over that Iraq was going to be a cake walk, and there would be few casualties. So what the hell is he talking about? I mean, if I didn’t know better, I’d think he was talking about a different war than our current fiasco in Iraq.

So yes, Americans are unwilling to accept high numbers of casualties for a meaningless foray; so we are in fact seeing the "Vietnam Syndrome," that Syndrome still holds, and 9/11 never put an end to it.

This calls into question every statement Gergen makes in the interview, and reveals much of it as probably flawed.

The media needs to stop enabling these revisionists’ lies.

Definitely a good day

Don’t let the media twist this. Yesterday was definitely a big win for Democrats. Even if we don’t take the Montana and Virginia Senate seats, which it looks like we will. Winning 4 seats in the Senate and 30 some seats in the House and taking it over is a huge win. And yes, some of these new Congressmen are conservative . . . for Democrats, but some of them are quite progressive too, the way the party always has been. Anyway, it doesn't really matter since we're now the majority party--that's what's important.

The American people have spoken clearly; they want the bums out. That's the clear message in this.

And I’m sure that after ramming legislation down the Democrats’ throats for the last 4 years, the Republicans are now going to be talking about bipartisanship. The Democrats need to tell them to screw, right from the start.

Oh, and I guess Rummy doesn’t think it was a bad day for Democrats. With the prospect of Congressional investigations, he resigned today.

Bush lavished praise on Rumsfeld, who has spent six stormy years at his post. The president disclosed he met with Gates last Sunday, two days before the elections in which Democrats swept to control of the House and possibly the Senate.

Last week, as he campaigned to save the Republican majority, Bush declared that Rumsfeld would remain at the Pentagon through the end of his term.

Oh, and Bush was lying when he said Rummy would stick out the last two years of his term. What I want to know is what else has he been lying about?

And on a personal note, I don’t know about your office today, but in mine, all the Republicans are moping around being sore losers. Ha ha.

Neo-confusion

Or maybe I should title this neo-crimes against humanity

Anyway, this is hilarious, or it would be if 650,000 people--give or take 100,000--hadn't died.

So now the neocons are trying to save their reputations by saying that Iraq was all Bush's fault, that he bungled the execution of a good idea and they had nothing to do with it. And now they are lying about it, some even insisting that they never supported the war.

The neocons are the ones who said it would be easy, that we wouldn't need that many men, that we'd be greeted as liberators, that the WMD did exist, etc., etc. And now that they have been proven wrong on every point, they are doing the only thing they know to do: lie and blame everyone but themselves.

"Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform," [Richard Perle] said. "It won't be Westminster overnight, but the great democracies of the world didn't achieve the full, rich structure of democratic governance overnight. The Iraqis have a decent chance of succeeding."

Iraq was never a good candidate for a democracy, and the real Mid-East experts knew it.

"The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says now, adding that total defeat—an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"—is not yet inevitable but is becoming more likely. "And then," says Perle, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating."

So Richard Perle rallied for war, and then was surprised when . . . a war broke out.

What I want to know is what is their agenda. Are they just covering their ass by throwing Bush under a bus, or is it something more insidious?

The problem with these guys is that it is all a game to them, but it never was in the real world. This is about real lives, both American and Iraqi and countless other nationalities, and the blood is on their hands. That and the trillion plus dollars this war will cost us and our children.

War destroys countries, kills people and costs money, and that's the incompetence: to think that a major war won't kill people or that it doesn’t matter. It wasn't just that it was conducted poorly. Sure, not as many people had to die, but starting this kind of war and even doing it as competently as is possible is still going to kill many people.

The author states:

Having spoken with Perle, I wonder: What do the rest of the pro-war neoconservatives think? If the much caricatured "Prince of Darkness" is now plagued with doubt, how do his comrades-in-arms feel?I am particularly interested in finding out because I interviewed many neocons before the invasion and, like many people, found much to admire in their vision of spreading democracy in the Middle East.

This was never about democracy. It was about controlling Mid-East oil. In fact, democracy was never really a driving justification before the war, the justification initially was WMD and terrorism.

Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong neocon activist and Pentagon insider who served on the Defense Policy Board until 2005, wrote a famous op-ed article in The Washington Post in February 2002, arguing: "I believe demolishing Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk." Now he says, "I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national-security team since Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era. Not only did each of them, individually, have enormous flaws, but together they were deadly, dysfunctional."
Truly despicable. It wasn’t just failed execution; it was failed policy. Didn't Korea or Vietnam teach them anything? Aren't these people supposed to be "students of history" or something? They were just pushing a policy, their unilateral right to wage war for anything they consider the national interest, in this case oil, at any cost.

So these people want a do-over now? They're saying we made a mistake, but we should still keep our jobs and our reputations. Bullshit is what I say, but I'm sure two years from now they'll still be on The Today Show and Meet the Press. They'll just have moved on to Venezuela and Iran spouting the same tired lies.

I truly can't contain my hatred for these evil people, pushing our nation into a policy and a war that the public never wanted.


Hat tip: Think Progress

Chavez playing a dangerous game

I think I understand some of what Chavez is trying to do, and I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate the U.S. government trying to overthrow him and the Venezuelan state oil company.

Today, Chavez threatened to stop supplying oil to the U.S. if the Bush administration doesn't stop interfering with Venezuela's internal affairs. I’ve been worried an escalation like this might occur, and I think he’s making a mistake.

If he is really going to try to take Bush head on, he should look at what happened to Iraq a little more closely and consider the consequences of these threats. We get a lot of oil from Venezuela, and I’m sure Bush is fully prepared to keep that oil flowing at whatever the cost. This does not bode well.

Me thinks she protests too much

I've seen this report being made a big deal of, but since reconstruction has ceased, maybe we just need a Congressional investigation or Special Prosecutor looking into the problems. I mean, certainly it is typical stuff coming from this Congress, but really what is needed is a larger investigation with a broader and more profound mission anyway, and without this bureaucratic auditor, maybe a broader investigation with real consequences to the Bush administration will be set in motion by the next Congress.

Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who followed the bill closely as chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, says that she still does not know how the provision made its way into what is called the conference report, which reconciles differences between House and Senate versions of a bill.

Neither the House nor the Senate version contained such a termination clause before the conference, all involved agree.

“It’s truly a mystery to me,” Ms. Collins said. “I looked at what I thought was the final version of the conference report and that provision was not in at that time.”

She didn’t know what was in the bill even though she wrote and signed it? She is either very stupid, or she thinks we are stupid enough to believe her denials. I mean really, we aren't all as stupid as the NY Times apparently is.

More Rove shenanigans

This goes along with my Karl Rove post a few days ago. Bush is sending federal disaster aid to Missouri for storms that occurred in July? This has Karl Rove written all over it. (And Congressional investigation written all over it with the new Democratic majority in next year's House.)

Hat tip: FP Passport.

Yes, he swore to uphold the Constitution

Umm . . . if you are born in the United States, you are a U.S. citizen according to the Constitution, so once again, the Bush administration is attempting to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution. When are Congress, the courts, the media, the states and the citizenry going to tell them how it works.

Hopefully these elections will set the matter straight on a number of grounds, including habeas corpus, separation of powers, etc.

Fire Cheney?

What the hell is Bush talking about?

President Bush said Wednesday he wants Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to remain with him until the end of his presidency, extending a job guarantee to two of the most-vilified members of his administration.

Presidents can’t just replace Vice Presidents at their whim. As much as I’d like to see Cheney resign or be impeached, Vice Presidents are elected. Bush can’t just fire him.

And who’s talking about Cheney resigning anyway, not the media, no one seriously has since he shot his lawyer in the face. So now Bush is bringing it up? Is he trying to telegraph something here? Does he want this to be a topic of discussion and inquiry now? Has Bush ever read our Constitution?

Maybe I’m overreacting, but really, I’m shocked at this statement out of the blue.

And another howler came out of this session, “[Bush] refused to say whether he could work effectively with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi or Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid if Democrats won either the House or Senate, or both.”

He really is just clueless. It isn’t up to him who the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader are. If Bush can’t work with them, there is a simple remedy: let him pack his bags and go back to his ranch in Texas or Peru or wherever. I mean, the job of President is to work with Congress. It’s beyond me why more people aren’t laughing at him constantly. I mean how can any intelligent, self-respecting journalist keep a straight face at a press session like this. But I guess intelligence and self-respect aren’t job requirements. They’re just ass-kissing weasels.