Iraq, KBR and What Our Tax Dollars Bought

Not heard much of this Stateside and bit surprised that How war is big business has not angered more people:

"American taxpayers footing the $125 billion bill for rebuilding Iraq are understandably shocked by recent revelations that senior military officers are under investigation for alleged bribery and corruption, on the evidence of a US arms dealer shot dead in 2004. In truth, they don’t know the half of it. Much of the rest they can learn from this book.

The US military contractor Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) has just been awarded a $35 million contract for further electrical work in Iraq, despite the fact that it is currently facing allegations of criminal bribery in Nigeria and the wrongful deaths of Americans at sundry overseas bases."

Gee, Corporate Corruption in Iraq?

Does Iraq, Contracting Corruption - Government Inc. really need any commentary?

"More evidence of wartime corruption is emerging, alas.

In exchange for a cash kickbacks and a Harley Davidson motorcycle, a U.S. Army reservist gave a contractor 'sensitive information' and 'fraudulently' awarded a contract to Raman International, a Cypress, Tex.-based firm, the Justice Department said in a statement.

Theresa Jeanne Baker faces a maximum of 30 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines.

In another fraud case, Spartan Motors and its subsidiary, Spartan Chassis, of Charlotte, Mich., recently agreed to pay the United States $6 million in fines and penalties to resolve allegations that it paid kickbacks to an employee of Force Protection to receive a subcontract to make chassis for armored vehicles for the Army, Justice reported."

Frank Rich vents his spleen over at The New York Times with his Eight Years of Madoffs:

What’s most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. When, in 1971, The Times got its hands on the Pentagon Papers, the internal federal history of the Vietnam disaster, the revelations caused a national uproar. But after eight years of battering by Bush, the nation has been rendered half-catatonic. The Iraq Pentagon Papers sank with barely a trace.

After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph Kramden of “The Honeymooners” would dismiss as “a mere bag of shells.” The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials.

The Conservatives staked out themselves as protectors of American virtue from liberals. Now we have seen the truth. I suggest that the reason most people are not more aroused is that we just want the Conservatives to move out of the way. That we choose to ignore them like the intoxicated nutcase rambling and ranting on the street corner in rags and tatters while wondering when the cops will come to take him away. Time will come for retribution - first must come reconstruction.

Iraq and Iran from Scotland

The Sunday Herald published A dilemma … what to do about Iran today and it has some interesting points - things I have not heard mentioned over here:

While the "surge" has not been the overwhelming success claimed by cheerleaders, such as Vice-President Dick Cheney, the policy has at least helped stem the tide of violence, especially in Anbar province where Sunnis are now co-operating in the fighting against al-Qaeda terrorist groups. It has also given US forces on the ground that most useful of military commodities - hope.

In so doing, Petraeus has also torn up the rule book by rewriting the Army Field Manual that controls US military doctrine. It was a seismic shift: out went big armoured operations and in came a new reliance on the dynamics of asymmetrical warfare. Overnight, or so it seems, US commanders found they had to learn the most important message of counter-insurgency warfare: if the government doesn't win, it loses; if the insurgents don't lose, they win.

Okay, we know that the surge has not done what it was supposed to - give the Iraqis a viable government - but the rest of that paragraph contains information not emphasized much over here.

Now for the scary stuff:

The other main issue in his bailiwick will be Iran. Already there are some clues. Petraeus has made no secret of the anger he feels about Iranian complicity in the manufacture of the roadside bombs that have killed so many US and coalition soldiers.

Whenever these lethal weapons have been used, he has been quick to blame the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, the organisation that has been fingered by US intelligence as the main culprit for its role in supplying the technology to Shia insurgency groups.

How to deal with it is another matter. Petraeus and Lieutenant-General Ray Odierno, his new man in Iraq, are too cautious to recommend an invasion or even a nuking, but a surgical strike could be on the cards. Just look at what happened in the Syrian desert last September.

Iraq, the Shia and al-Sadr

I find The London Times review of Muqtada al-Sadr and the Fall of Iraq by Patrick Cockburn worth reading. With John McCain not knowing the difference between Shia and Sunni, with all the accusations that the Democrats plan to withdraw equals surrender to al Quaeda, the review raises points that make McCain's ignorance dangerous to us and the accusers plain wrong. Think of the Shia and the Sunnis as being more like the Hatfields and the McCoys than the Red Sox and the Yankees. Then factor in that al-Quaeda are Sunnis.

Patrick Cockburn was among the first journalists to grasp al-Sadr's influence. In this fascinating biography, he neatly punctures the myth that al-Sadr is a crazy gangster who stumbled into leading thousands of disaffected young Shi'ites in armed rebellion. Instead, he draws upon his own reporting and often overlooked aspects of Iraqi history to present a compelling, detail-packed tale of how al-Sadr outflanked everyone from Saddam Hussein to the Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Cockburn spends more than half the book recounting the modern history of Iraq's Shi'ites to make one overriding point: that the first but by no means sole reason for al-Sadr's influence is his lineage. His cousin and father-in-law, the Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, was one of the most senior and respected leaders of Iraq's Shi'ite community. Baqir chafed against the largely secular, Sunni-led tyranny of the Ba'athists and sought to overthrow the regime by endorsing terror attacks against government figures. Saddam eventually ordered him and his sister to be arrested. Sadrists believe Baqir was forced to witness the rape of his sister before he was executed.

***

Cockburn's emphasis on history, though at times tedious, offers some additional lessons, most notably the Sadrists' thirst for revenge spawned by Ba'athist repression, and the animus toward other Shi'ite opposition groups because of their failure to aid the Sadrists in their moments of need. It helps to explain why the Mahdi Army has brutally terrorised the Sunni community, and why al-Sadr, to this day, remains so wary of collaborating with other Shi'ite political leaders.

As American troops converged on Baghdad, Cockburn notes that al-Sadr “moved more quickly than anyone else to organise his supporters”. Within a few days, they had seized control of most schools, mosques and government buildings in Sadr City, the sprawling Shi'ite slum that is home to more than 6m people. I remember visiting the hospital there a few weeks after Saddam was overthrown. The place was under the control of a 31-year-old electronics technician who had not been to medical school. His only claim to power was a one-page edict from al-Sadr's office.

***

“One of the grossest of US errors in Iraq was to try to marginalise him and his movement,” writes Cockburn. “Had he been part of the political process from the beginning then the chances of creating a peaceful, prosperous Iraq would have been greater. In any real accommodation between Shia and Sunni, the Sadrists must play a central part.”

***

This book is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand Iraq today. The recent fighting in Basra and Sadr City has once again demonstrated al-Sadr's cunning and power. American military commanders boasted last year that their troop surge had led al-Sadr to flee to Iran and that his militia was splintering. But he appears to have made another shrewd move. Instead of fighting it out with the Americans, he opted to cut a deal with the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, to stand down the Mahdi Army - for the time being. Nobody knows for sure what al-Sadr's plans are, but it is clear that he and his militia are not a spent force.

After that go read the London Times' Jihadi studies The obstacles to understanding radical Islam and the opportunities to know it better. Just the following paragraph gives me an idea of what has gone wrong is the re-election of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Remember how they laughed at the word nuance? Nuance appears to be something we needed and so instead of using our brains the President used the brawn of our military.

Yet the lack of understanding about the enemy has led to serious inefficiencies and excesses which are starting to become publicly known. An astronomical sum of money has been spent on counter-terrorism and homeland security, much of which has gone to private American consultancies with questionable expertise. Then there is the human cost of the search for enemies. The Kafkaesque conversations between detainees and their accusers at Guantánamo Bay reveal a US military with a chronic lack of accountability and a poor understanding about the Middle East and Islamic activism. The security establishment was not alone in its ignorance about jihadism. Middle East scholars on both sides of the Atlantic had long shunned the study of Islamist militancy for fear of promoting Islamophobia and of being associated with a pro-Israeli political agenda. In these communities, there was a tendency to rely on simple grievance-based explanations of terrorism and to ignore the role of entrepreneurial individuals and organizations in the generation of violence. This is part of the reason why the main contributions to the literature on al-Qaeda in the first few years after 9/11 came from investigative journalists, not academics.

A Few Words on Iraq and The Crocker/Petraeus Show

I tried listening to Petraeus and Crocker's testimony - I really did. The television was in the other room while I worked on the computer. Which is why I missed out on who was talking and asking questions. All I heard was a drone of white noise from our top general in Iraq and our ambassador to Iraq.

Since then I have heard and read a bunch of news and commentary on their testimony. I think Dick Cavett nailed the problem with listening to Crocker and Petraeus in his piece Memo to Petraeus & Crocker: More Laughs, Please

It’s like listening to someone speaking a language you only partly know. And who’s being paid by the syllable. You miss a lot. I guess a guy bearing up under such a chestload of hardware — and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors — can’t be expected to speak like ordinary mortals, for example you and me. He should try once saying — instead of “ongoing process of high level engagements” — maybe something in colloquial English? Like: “fights” or “meetings” (or whatever the hell it’s supposed to mean).

David Broder's The Question Petraeus Can't Answer brings in an Indiana connection that keeps me thinking that Petraeus talks a lot but says little (if anything) that makes sense:

According to those premises, Lugar said, the questions before Congress and the country are much different now from those being asked when the surge strategy was launched. "Today," he said, "the questions are whether and how improvements in security can be converted into political gains that can stabilize Iraq, despite the impending drawdown of United States troops.

"Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient. Debate over how much progress we have made and whether we can make more is less illuminating than determining whether the administration has a definable political strategy that recognizes the time limitations that we face and seeks a realistic outcome designed to protect American vital interests."

In response, during the hearings, Petraeus told Lugar, "We've got to continue. We have our teeth into the jugular, and we need to keep it there."

I keep thinking of the story about the monkey who finds a nut in a hole, reaches in to get the nut, but finds he cannot remove his hand and the nut at the same time. For General Petraeus, it is not a nut but a jugular.

I admit to presuming the worst. General Petraeus' job - as with many military men - depends on how he does his job and I think they think their job is beating an intangible movement that is bound together only by their dislike of us. They have the mindset that if we get out, then that is a defeat. He is wrong that it is a defeat - or not an important one. What is the difference between the American surrender of the Philippines and the Japanese signing the treaty on the USS Missouri?

Here is what the American military government cannot do: give Iraq a functioning government. If they could, then withdrawing from Iraq would be a grievous defeat. Other means exist for us to promote an Iraqi government that provides its citizens with the means their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Alas, those other means will not be traveling to Capitol Hill asking for billions of billions in budget requests.

Jim Hoagland's column in today's Washington Post, War at the Pentagon, gives me worries that our Iraq strategy has more to do with the Pentagon's budget strategy.

McCain and Iraq

Considering that John McCain says he wants to continue George W. Bush's Iraq misadventure, I think taking a look at The Center for Public Integrity's Iraq: The War Card is a good idea.

"President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses."

Iraq and the US - The View from Singapore

Lee Kuan Yew wrote an op-ed piece, The Cost Of Retreat In Iraq, awhile ago in The Washington Post. Considering how Iraqis seem to ignore the Prince of Crawford, Texas' pronouncements that things are getting quieter and his surge is working, I think this piece still has something to say.

Iraq is a key issue in the U.S. presidential campaign. Whether to maintain the U.S. presence in Iraq is for Americans to decide. But the general assumption has been that the only question to be resolved is the timing and manner of the withdrawal of American forces.

The costs of leaving Iraq unstable would be high. Jihadists everywhere would be emboldened. I have met many Gulf leaders and know that their deep fear is that a precipitate U.S. withdrawal would gravely jeopardize their security.

***


"The United States clearly cannot stay in Iraq alone. America needs a coalition. This will require a more multilateral approach, which in turn requires clarity and a close examination of the strategic stakes. The domestic American debate on Iraq affects world public opinion and thus the political viability and sustainability of any multinational coalition."

Another Book on How Bush Screwed Up Iraq

The New York Times reviewed Fred Kaplan'sDaydream Believers:

"What sets Mr. Kaplan’s “Daydream Believers” apart is his emphasis on the Bush administration’s failure to come to terms with a post-cold-war paradigm, which, he argues, left America’s power diminished, rather than enhanced, as former allies, liberated from the specter of the Soviet Union, felt increasingly free to depart from Washington’s directives."

Also illuminating is his close analysis of the impact that the White House’s idées fixes had, not just on the Iraq war but also on other foreign policy problems like North Korea, and his detailed examination of the formative role that the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky played in shaping President Bush’s determination to try to export democracy around the world.

***

Like so many earlier books about the Bush administration and its conduct of the war in Iraq, “Daydream Believers” leaves the reader with a portrait of a White House that circumvented traditional policy-making channels to implement its big ideas, and that often chose willfully to ignore history and the advice of experts — from the Army chief of staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki’s preinvasion recommendation that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure Iraq successfully, to warnings from the State Department that elections in the Middle East “could well be subject to exploitation by anti-American elements,” as they in fact were by Hamas in the Palestinian territories and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Mr. Bush similarly emerges from this book as a naïve, impulsive and stubborn leader, whose moral certitude and penchant for denial have made him more inclined to double down on a bad bet than ever to admit a mistake, a president whose post-9/11 search for a bold new approach to the world made him susceptible to neoconservative ideas of pre-emption and unilateralism that had gained little traction with his father or Bill Clinton.

President Bush’s strategies, Mr. Kaplan writes near the end of this incisive book, failed “because they did not fit the realities of his era”: “They were based not on a grasp of technology, history or foreign cultures but rather on fantasy, faith and willful indifference toward those affected by their consequences.”

Failing to acknowledge the limits of American power, he writes, President Bush and his aides ended up trumpeting the country’s “reduced powers — and, as a result, they weakened their nation further.” They “set forth a new way of fighting battles — but withheld the tools for winning wars. They aimed to topple rogue regimes — with scant knowledge of the local culture and no plan for what to do after the tyrant fell. They dreamed of spreading democracy around the world — but did nothing to help build the democratic institutions without which mere elections were moot or worse. In their best-intentioned moments, they put forth ideas without strategies, policies without process, wishes without means.”

Iraq and Afghanistan, Again

I repeat myself: what are we supposed to win in Iraq? We came not as conquerors but as liberators seeking to root out terrorism and a tyrant. Well, that is my melange of all the shifting and twisting goals espoused by George W. and his Fearless Neo-con Brain Trust.

So reading these paragraphs by Anthony H. Cordesman in Two Winnable Wars leave me wondering if someone is redefining our goals in Iraq and Afghanistan:

What the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan have in common is that it will take a major and consistent U.S. effort throughout the next administration at least to win either war. Any American political debate that ignores or denies the fact that these are long wars is dishonest and will ensure defeat. There are good reasons that the briefing slides in U.S. military and aid presentations for both battlefields don't end in 2008 or with some aid compact that expires in 2009. They go well beyond 2012 and often to 2020.

If the next president, Congress and the American people cannot face this reality, we will lose. Years of false promises about the speed with which we can create effective army, police and criminal justice capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot disguise the fact that mature, effective local forces and structures will not be available until 2012 and probably well beyond. This does not mean that U.S. and allied force levels cannot be cut over time, but a serious military and advisory presence will probably be needed for at least that long, and rushed reductions in forces or providing inadequate forces will lead to a collapse at the military level.

I thought going into Iraq was a mistake. I still think so. I also say those points no longer matter. This country allowed George W. Bush the ability to make a complete screw up of our military and foreign policy. We also have the responsibility to help fix the problems we created and the ones that we exacerbated, but to think our military forces can continue to win tactical battles while losing the strategic war only continues our problems.

With either Democratic candidate, we face the chance of ending the Bush/Republican monomania that we need no help in rebuilding Iraq and that Afghanistan has no place in the war on terror.

Presidential Candidates and Iraq

Jim Hoagland wrote in the Washington Post that all the presidential candidates have an Iraq problem:

"Surviving Republican candidates overshoot the runway in the other direction, attributing to recent U.S. gains a permanence that has still to be established. The Democrats clearly will not repeat that mistake. They must also reject Bush's habit of ignoring Iraqi realities and responsibilities and pretending that the United States alone has the power to impose its will as the end point of this conflict."

Promises They Can't Keep. All these years the President has been talking about a victory without ever explaining what it was we were to win. Now McCain wants to follow blithely down that same path. Clinton or Obama will get us out because we neither had business invading nor did we do anything but bungle our way throughout Iraq. However, if anyone thinks it will be done easily, that we will extricate ourselves from Bush's bog without bruising ourselves, then they are fools.

Does this sound familiar? Terrorists Fighting an Occupation

No likes soldiers in their country - even if the occupied belong nominally to the same country. That came back to me while reading A Long Surrender: The Guerrilla War After the Civil War. I ought to mention something about Gore Vidal writing about America's historical amnesia but I am thinking amnesia does not truly describe our current leadership. Between Bush and the neo-cons, it seems not so much as amnesia but more of a willing delusion that there is no such thing as history. Maybe I have become obsessed with the problem of Iraq but read this review and see if you do not think of Iraq, too.

Media Coverage of Iraq

From the New York Review of Books comes As Iraqis See It. I do not think we are getting this sort of information:
The question on everyone's mind, of course, is whether the Americans should stay or go. On this, Leila Fadel told me, her Iraqi staff is divided. Some of them think the Americans should leave at once. While withdrawal would probably result in a bloodletting among Iraqis, they believe the country would be better off if this happened sooner rather than later, thus avoiding the effects of a prolonged occupation. Others think the Americans should stay and fix all the destruction they've caused over the last four and a half years. But, she adds, the staff's views on this keep shifting: "They're at war within themselves—on whether they want the Americans to stay or not, and whether they think that staying would make things any better. It's something they go back and forth on."

Whichever side they come down on, however, there is one feeling that predominates: humiliation. "They remind me of this constantly," Fadel says. "Americans believe their soldiers are working for the greater good. The Iraqis don't see that. They see people who are here for their own self-interest—who drive the wrong way on roads, who stop traffic whenever they want to, who they have to be careful not to get too close to so that they won't be shot." When one of her staff members wrote the post about the student who threw a rock at a US soldier, Fadel says, she asked him, "Why did this kid throw a rock at a man with a weapon, a helmet, and a vest? What was he thinking?" "These are foreign soldiers," he replied. "This is an occupation." That, Fadel notes, is a very common feeling among Iraqis. "Everybody I speak to thinks this. They don't have power in their own country."

Not a good thing - making the natives feel this way.

From that same article I got the lead to this blog: Inside Iraq.

E. J. Dionne Jr. - Billions for Guns, Vetoes for Butter - washingtonpost.com

I am learning to like E. J. Dionne Jr.'s writing. From Billions for Guns, Vetoes for Butter:

"From Thomas E. Ricks, The Post's military correspondent, comes a disturbing answer. Ricks reported yesterday that our commanders in the field 'now portray the intransigence of Iraq's Shiite-dominated government as the key threat facing the U.S. effort in Iraq, rather than al-Qaeda terrorists, Sunni insurgents or Iranian-backed militias.'"

***

Ricks quotes Army Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno on what it would mean if Iraq's leaders fail to use this moment of reduced violence to arrive at new power-sharing arrangements. "If that doesn't happen," Odierno said, "we're going to have to review our strategy."

Odierno's candid remarks should unleash a clamor for the administration to explain where its policy is taking us -- and whether the continuing sacrifice in Iraq is achieving more than just temporary tactical victories. We can trust our military commanders on tactics. Experience teaches us to be skeptical of the administration on strategy.

Bush's approach to Iraq is the classic case of a politician arguing that a problem will be solved if only we keep throwing large sums of money at it.

***

In the way that he's managing the Iraq and budget debates, the president is trying to evade the essential questions. By focusing on the surge, Bush avoids responsibility for explaining where we might be in Iraq at the end of his term. And by picking symbolic budget fights, he never has to explain how his own policies -- his ludicrous initial assumptions about the costs of the war, his refusal to ask for the taxes to fund it -- have created the fiscal mess he now decries.

By the way, do remember that our own Mitch Daniels helped with those "ludicrous initial assumptions about the costs of the war."

America's Strategic Drift

Nothing shows the wrongness of the Bush/neo-con policies more than Iraq. John Podesta, Lawrence J. Korb and Brian Katulis published Strategic Drift in The Washington Post earlier this week. Reading this article along with the news that the Army has too few troops and The Senate Republicans refused to put strings on money for Iraq just reinforces my feeling that Bush has left us on the brink of disaster.

"Rather than push for a realistic end to U.S. engagement, the Bush administration claims doomsday scenarios would become reality if a phased U.S. withdrawal began. Iraq, it says, would become a terrorist sanctuary, incite regional war or be the scene of sectarian genocide. These arguments are as faulty as those that led us into Iraq, and progressive leaders must push back. Strategic drift only forestalls the hard work needed to avoid these dangers."

The real security problem in Iraq is a vicious power struggle among competing militias and factions. Foreign terrorists are mainly Sunni and represent only a small percentage of the problem. The Sunni foreign terrorists united with Sunni Iraqis are strongly opposed by Iraq's Shiites and Kurds. And in Anbar province, Sunni tribal leaders rose up against the pro-al-Qaeda Sunni elements well before the surge began. Drifting along the current path actually enhances the al-Qaeda narrative of America as an occupier of Muslim nations.

Similarly, the presence of a large U.S. combat force contributes to regional instability. Since the surge began, the number of internally displaced Iraqis has more than doubled. The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has said that more than 2 million Iraqis have left the country, and tens of thousands flee every day, often to squalid camps in Syria and Jordan.

As long as U.S. forces remain in Iraq in significant numbers, regional powers feel free to meddle, knowing that America must bear the consequences. If we clearly state our intent to leave, these states will have incentive to intervene constructively; it would endanger their own security if Iraq were to become a failed state or a launching pad for international terrorism. Even Shiite-dominated Iran, which has become the region's largest power as a result of the war, would not want an Iraqi haven for Sunni-controlled al-Qaeda.

Senate blocks bills to pay for Iraq, Afghanistan

I am sure everyone has heard this news-Senate blocks bills to pay for Iraq, Afghanistan. The following is from the Boston Globe:

"Four Republicans joined Democrats in voting for the measure: Sens. Gordon Smith of Oregon, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Susan Collins of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska."

***

Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., was the lone Democrat opposing it because he said it did not go far enough to end the war.

The Republican proposal to pay for the Iraq war with no strings attached failed by a vote of 45-53, which was 15 short of the number needed to go forward.

Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said this week that if Congress cannot pass legislation that ties war money to troop withdrawals, they would not send President Bush a bill this year.

Don't blame the Dems, blame the fact we do not have enough of them in the Senate.

Better days ahead?

That seems to be the hope held out by the New York Times reviewer of The Second Civil War:

"Most evidence suggests that a majority of Americans remain relatively moderate and pragmatic. But many have lost interest, and confidence, in the political system and the government, leaving the most fervent party loyalists with greatly increased influence on the choice of candidates and policies."

***

...Only under George W. Bush — through a combination of his control of both houses of Congress, his own inflexibility and the post-9/11 climate — did extreme partisanship manage to dominate the agenda. Given the apparent failure of this project, it seems unlikely that a new president, whether Democrat or Republican, will be able to recreate the dispiriting political world of the last seven years.

I say that depends on us. I say conservatism depends on fear: fear of change, fear of women being treated equally, fear of people from different religions or skin color. So long as we allow ourselves to be cowed, then the political operatives like Karl Rove will do what they have done - divide us up amongst ourselves for the political gain of their masters like George W. Bush.

Yesterday, I actually found myself liking a Robert Novak column. I am not sure what that means but my impression is that Novak has lost any enthusiasm for the Republican President:

For an hour on Tuesday, the Iraqi lawyers presented their pleas to Flood, who made no comment. Flood assured them that Fielding, but not necessarily the president, would see the letter. They then returned to the bus, which transported them to the Supreme Court. There, much to the Iraqis' surprise, they were given 45 minutes by Chief Justice John Roberts for a substantive discussion. "This was much better than the White House," exclaimed an Iraqi lawyer, who can only hope that President Bush gets interested in building the rule of law in Iraq.

How quaint: some people believeing that George W. Bush has an interest in the rule of law!

Yesterday, listening to the news on NPR, I heard the Army needs more troops. General Casey needs more troops because we do not have enough to cover any other military emergency that might crop up. Iraq and Afghanistan have swallowed our Army.

Last night, I caught Hardball and Tucker on MSNBC. Both shows emphasized the Congressional Democrats tying funds on Iraq to a withdrawal date and Bush thundering against any such limits on his playing warrior. The Republicans already started with their cliched chorus of any limits on the President means abandoning the troops. Bush abandoned our soldiers by dropping them into a fight with no goal, no strategy, no purpose other than his own self-aggrandizement. Bringing the American military does not mean that the troops have failed but will certainly spotlight the failure of George W. Bush both as President and as a man.

Charles Kauthammer uses the phrase rout in describing what he sees the result of the Democratic position. Pfui. Our fight was never in Iraq. Iraq was of George W. Bush's choosing, it was his fight. Our fight remains in Afghanistan. No one talks of leaving Afghanistan where Osama bin Laden looms over the border from Pakistan. No Democratic politician speaks of leaving off the hunt for bin Laden. Only George W. Bush lacks the attention span to hunt bin Laden. For Bush, bin Laden exists as a tool to scare us.

Bush wishes to pummel us with fear. Time for us to stop and move boldly forward with our better selves leading the way.

Was Syria playing with nukes?

Take a look at How close were we to a third world war? from The Sunday Herald.

Though officially carrying a cargo of cement, according to intelligence sources quoted in the Washington Post newspaper, the Israelis believed that on board the ship was a consignment of nuclear material or equipment.

On September 15, Washington Post reporter Glenn Kessler wrote that "an Israeli official provided the US with evidence of Syrian-North Korean co-operation on a nuclear facility".

Many veteran Middle East intelligence hands believe this to be plausible explanation. Among them is Ray Close, a former CIA analyst in the Near East Division and former station chief in Saudi Arabia, who served for 27 years as an "Arabist" for the agency.

According to what Close himself admits is a "speculative" analysis, he believes that: "The Israelis offered us the US intelligence that Syria is beginning to develop a nuclear capability based on North Korean technology and urged the US to co-operate with them in mounting a military attack to destroy the Syrian site."

So is our government getting confused again about the real Middle East danger? Why are we seeing these kind of headlines: Cheney: Iran faces 'serious consequences' over nuclear drive?

Weimar Germany and Iraq

Anyone who has read this blog for any time ought to know that I have utter contempt for the neo-conservatives and I think our adventuring into Iraq was wrong. If you have not been reading all that long, then look down the right hand side for the topical archive and go to Iraq or use the search box at the top of the page to find these articles.

Democratic government is a grand thing. However, I think the neo-cons spent too much time in political theory class and not enough in history class. Which brings to mind Gore Vidal's lament that Americans have historical amnesia but that is no excuse. The neo-cons do not understand how long and difficult was it to make our own government democratic. I would say that did not happen until passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

What got me thinking about this was the New York Times' review of Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy :

"Democracy is a fragile flower, as we learn again and again. Among the many failed democracies of the past century, few held more promise than Germany’s Weimar Republic, and none collapsed into greater horror. Its story can be told in two ways: as a drama of decadent excess and tragic flaws, or as an elegy recalling noble promises betrayed by treacherous enemies. Eric D. Weitz’s “Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy” falls squarely into the second category."

If as cultured a nation as Germany found democracy tricky, how will any country lacking even the rudiments of a democratic culture? I guess Iraq gives us the answer to that question.

War and Deliverance

From Newsweek.com comes the movie Deliverance as an analogy for Iraq War. Written by James Dickey's son. Ordinarily, I would call this kind of exercise a stretch (hmmm, Dick Cheney yelling sooeee while the country plays Ned Beatty?). Instead, we get a subtly written piece about character and characters. Something the writer does not point is that Cheney and Rumsfeld are of an age with the characters in Deliverance. Here is an excerpt I liked from War and Deliverance:

"Normally, the role of government—of civilization—is to curb our sense of personal license when civilized society is under pressure from anger and fear. Government is supposed to put a brake on cynical, self-serving calculation, especially at times of great danger and confusion. Nobody knows that better than professional soldiers, who are trained to understand the laws of society and of war. But the core coterie around Bush and Cheney, who never were soldiers, pushed for war with Iraq at all costs and as an end to almost all constraints."

As much as I like that quote and the article from whence it came, I suggest reading this post on Masson's Blog: Cheney’s Law.

Last night I watched the Frontline story entitled Cheney’s Law. If half of that is true, any real patriot would be pissed off at the monstrous power grab Dick Cheney, David Addington, and John Yoo have tried to execute on behalf of the executive. I paraphrase, but essentially what these chowderheads are arguing is that the President gets to be a king and there’s not a damn thing Congress can do about it so long as the President mutters the terms “commander-in-chief” or “war” every so often. It’s been dressed up under the moniker “unitary executive theory” but I don’t see any practical limitations that distinguish it from monarchy.

Please, read it all.

Fight Against Alqaeda Unites Shia And Sunni Groups In Lebanon (from Sunday Herald)

For those of you still thinking that al Quaeda and Iran have united against us, for those who think that all Islamic terrorists are the same, read Fight Against Alqaeda Unites Shia And Sunni Groups In Lebanon from Scotland's Sunday Herald.

"HEZBOLLAH, THE Iranian-backed Lebanese Shia militant group, is arming, training and financing a Palestinian Sunni militia inside Lebanon's most violent refugee camp, tasked with controlling the rise of al-Qaeda fighters, many of them veterans of the sectarian war in Iraq.

In an interview with the Sunday Herald inside Ain al-Hilweh camp near the southern port city of Sidon, Sheikh Abu Ayoub, a commander of Ansar Allah (Followers of God), said his Palestinian group was leading a security force to expel foreign jihadis and prevent a repeat of the devastating summer conflict between Sunni extremists and the Lebanese army in the northern Nahr al-Bared refugee camp.

'Lebanon is now the new front for al-Qaeda,' said Ayoub. 'Al-Qaeda sees Lebanon as weak because of the split in decision-making, and weak security. Over the past year there were many foreigners in the camp. They spoke about wanting to get back into Iraq. There were Saudis among them and they were closely monitored before being expelled. They all moved to Nahr al-Bared.'

Read the whole article. Hezbollah are anything but saints. Quite a few things comes to mind after reading the article:

1. Under Bush's logic, we need to invade Lebanon now.
2. We are not getting the proper information so that we can judge our government's actions and the politician's talk.
3. The whole Islamic terrorist-Iraq-Iran-Shia-Sunni thing is a mess that our leaders do not seem to understand very well and certainly are not explaining to us in a sensible manner.
4. That whenever a mess is ungodly complicated, then subtleness and nuance are very good methods rather than jumping with both feet. Jumping in does work if you are, say, Alexander the Great (see Gordian Knot). On the other hand, I think Alexander was probably a psychopath.