Credit Where Credit Is Due

Bush deserves credit for the "victory." Whatever victory may mean in Senator McMaverick's mind.

And so began the latest barrage of anti-Obama rhetoric from the GOP crowd. House Minority Leader John Boehner jumped into the act as well in a prebuttal to President Obama's address to the nation from the Oval Office yesterday regarding the end of combat operations in Iraq.

“Some leaders who opposed, criticized and fought tooth and nail to stop the surge strategy now proudly claim credit for the results,” Boehner will say in remarks prepared for delivery to the American Legion’s 92nd national convention in Milwaukee. “Today we mark not the defeat those voices anticipated — but progress.”

At least Boehner was sober enough to omit the word "win" or "victory" because, really, what did we win?

But hey, if these people want credit, sure, I'll give them credit for the surge working. Who knows if the Sunni Awakening was just convenient timing when the surge took place... well, the Pentagon did pay them to fight Al-Qaeda, but still...

And let's see, why were we in Iraq in the first place? Oh, right, because of a ginned up excuse to retaliate for 9/11, something Iraq had nothing to do with, no matter how much George W. Bush and Dick Cheney lied about it and said the opposite. But then it was about removing that evil dictator Saddam Hussein and stopping him from using weapons of mass destruction that to this day haven't been found. And then when that excuse failed, it was to bring democracy to the Middle East.

But sure, we'll give Bush all the credit in the world for a last ditch effort and getting the surge right after fucking up the first 6½ years of the "war on terror."  We're saving Muslims there to discriminate against them here.  Great job, Republicans.

....Congratulations.

Let's take a look at some of those highlights from BushCo.

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No Nuance

I've been doing a little more reading than writing on the blogs today, when my internet and cable wasn't out (DAMN YOU, TIME WARNER!!!) and it's pretty interesting, the blackness and whiteness of it all. No, I'm not comparing President Obama to the Senate. I'm reading the left ripping their hair out over the fact that they were duped by Mr. Hope and Change and this Afghanistan decision proves it. I'm reading the right throwing their feces at the arrogance of the Manchurian Candidate's timeline that includes a withdrawal date, because the enemy will just wait us out, even though since they live there, there can always wait us out.

Nuance has never been a forte of the far left or right. I had a conversation with someone regarding the President's speech and ultimate decision after almost three months of planning and thought. I expressed how I didn't like the idea, hated that we'd have to stay, how we've done nothing substantial there for eight years but that leaving now would be like the early 80s all over again, when we funded the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in their fight against the Soviets and then cut and ran when we needed to help them rebuild. I thought that a timetable for withdrawal was a good thing, making sure Pakistan's nukes didn't fall into Taliban hands was a good thing, how it's really no surprise as Obama has characterized Afghanistan as "the good war" as opposed to Iraq and how he voiced his opinion while still Senator to expand there.

And the response I got?: "So you're for the expansion of the war then?"

Fuck! No, I'm not for war expansion, who is? But what other choice does President Obama have? Are others privy to information behind closed doors at the White House that I am not, and can make a better decision than the President? I wasn't happy about President Bush's escalation when he decided to surge troops into Iraq either, but it seems to have worked out there and I was wrong. Obviously they know more than we do. And yet I see the left calling Obama a sellout and caving to the Pentagon. The same Obama that rejected every initial plan from the Joint Chiefs and told them to come back when they included an exit strategy.

Were they not paying attention when the President, then Senator, said he would escalate in Afghanistan during his campaign run? Or were they "duped" then too? And anyone supporting the President on this most difficult of decisions is now an Obama apologist, or has drank the Obama Kool-Aid. That seems to me to be the old Bush, "you're either with us or against us" black and white ideology. Has anyone been happy with the policies of a politician they voted for 100% of the time? Can't it be possible to still support a president for the things he's doing right and take a "wait and see" attitude with things on which you disagree?

I read things like, "This is not what I voted for" or "He's supposed to please his base." Well he's not supposed to please anyone, he's supposed to do what he thinks is right and what's best for the nation. It wasn't his base that won him the nomination, it was the independents. His base, who is now calling him worse than Bush and a sellout, were whining back them about how he was blowing the campaign by not addressing Rev. Wright immediately or letting the "pallin' around with terrorists" fester. And he kept showing us that he was smarter than any of us.

The title of David Sirota's column today made me wince. "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a president's political image?" Pretty clever, rephrasing John Kerry's question in front of a Congressional hearing during Vietnam, and in my opinion, pretty shallow to suggest that this decision was made based on Obama's image. But I would submit to Mr. Sirota that the same question could be asked had the President ordered an immediate withdrawal.

Now, if the President backs off on the withdrawal date, whether the situation on the ground dictates it or not, then I believe he may be in trouble. We might then see a one term President and I'm sure that Obama knows this. The real thorn in Obama's side isn't Afghanistan, but slow job recovery and the economic downturn. If those factors don't turn around by mid to late 2011, it might be one and done.

But there is one thing I can believe: this decision from this President was not made lightly. And I believe he made it because he thinks it's the best decision for the country.

President Obama on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Here's the video of last night's speech, in case you missed it (like I did).

The Problem With Afghanistan

I haven't blogged about this subject because there's really not much to say about it. I can't imagine that anyone is happy that the United States is committing another 30,000 troops to Afghanistan. Anyone sane, that is. I'm not speaking about chickenhawks like Dick Cheney or war profiteers like Halliburton. And it's easy to say "withdraw" when you're not the President of the United States. I personally would like to see a withdrawal from Afghanistan as soon as possible but we know that that isn't going to happen.

And think about the situation the Obama administration finds itself in. Put yourself in the President's place and really think about not just the ideological stance but the political ramifications of this decision. It's damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Either A) Commit more troops and anger the liberal Democrats, although this shouldn't come as a surprise since President Obama did say during his campaign that we took our eye off Afghanistan and that he would finish the job.

B) Decide to withdraw and you're labeled as soft on national security. That combined with the terrorist trials being held in New York City and the "Obama love terrorists" meme continues.

C) Commit less troops than the request of the generals and be ridiculed for not listening to the commanders on the ground; not that former President Bush listened to his commanders when they asked for more troops in Afghanistan as he was playing Stratego™ in Iraq and Osama bin Laden was reenacting The Great Escape in Tora Bora.

But whether we stay in Afghanistan, escalate or withdraw, the real problem is that it only legitimizes Hamid Karzai's tainted election, and a corrupt, drug profiteering government. So no matter what the President announces tonight, and from all indications it looks like an escalation of 30-35,000 troops, there is no upside except for the possibility of outlining a definite exit strategy with a specific timetable. Of course, there will be talk of benchmarks, but with the new administration, I'm expecting said benchmarks to be specific and attainable, as opposed to nebulous and fishy. You can move the goal posts only so many times.

At this point, there really is nothing to do except to hope that the new strategy works, and give President Obama the benefit of the doubt and the time to make it work. Otherwise, we should take to the streets in protest with the same vigor as the wingnut teabag contingent, but I don't see that happening any time soon.

We'll find out tonight.

So Much For The Commanders On The Ground

THINK PROGRESS: Newsweek reported that while Petraeus recognized that al-Qaeda in Iraq has been significantly diminished, he refused to say the terror group had been “defeated.” Moreover, Petraeus acknowledged that the recent successes in Iraq may have been possible without the surge:

Petraeus is careful not to credit all the progress to the surge of U.S. troops in 2007. The sea change came last year from a series of movements now known as the Awakening. […] So would the Sunni Awakening have succeeded without the surge? Possibly, he concedes.

As we all know, McCain insists that the Anbar Awakening was part of the surge (even though it took place months before the surge was even announced) and now we see he disagrees with one of the people he said he would rely heavily on if elected President during the Saddleback forum. Hmmm...

I'll expect the McCain campaign to berate Petraeus for daring to disagree with a former P.O.W. - maybe they'll send Cindy McCain to Iraq to straighten him out.

McCain Gaffes on Surge

***UPDATED BELOW***

In his zeal to show how well the surge has worked in Iraq and to trip up Barack Obama by wagging his finger in disgust to Obama's opposition of the surge last year, John McCain screwed up the timeline on when the Sunni sheiks turned against Al-Qaeda in Anbar province, referred to as the "Anbar Awakening." Whether this was intentional or not to give the surge more credence remains to be seen. But facts are facts, and they are becoming fewer and far between in the McCain campaign.

McCain: "...Colonel MacFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history."

Actual history will prove otherwise, and McCain knows the actual history, or is he getting confused again?

... Spencer Ackerman and Ilan Goldenberg have reported, the record firmly establishes the opposite: instead of being caused by the surge, the key signs of the Anbar Awakening occurred not only before that strategy was implemented, but before it was ever conceived.

...The fact remains, however, that the military official cited by McCain, then-Colonel Sean MacFarland, described the Anbar Awakening in September 2006 -- four months before the "surge" was even announced -- noting that tribal leaders were "stepping forward and cooperating with the Iraqi security forces against Al Qaeda." Moreover, a military review written by MacFarland notes that his unit actually left Anbar before most of the surge troops arrived; his success in the region came between June 2006 and February 2007.

...Especially notable is that McCain himself was not always confused as to the start date of the Awakening, and whether or not it was caused by the surge. Fresh off one of his much-touted trips to Iraq, McCain delivered remarks to the conservative American Enterprise Institute on January 5, 2007. Alongside fellow Senator Joe Lieberman, McCain specifically advocated for the newly proposed surge, and cited the already-in-progress turning of Sunni sheiks as a reason to send more troops.

(H/T Seth Colter Walls, HuffPo)


UPDATE (7/24/08 9:20am): It's all semantics according to McCain. The surge was a combination of events including the "Anbar awakening" even though the surge was announced in January 2007 and the Anbar awakening began happening in September 2006.

But if that's really the case, why did CBS decide to cut and paste another answer to the question posed by intrepid anchor Katie Couric? Were they trying to cover McCain's decrepit ass as he stuck his foot in his mouth again? CBS has since put the full transcript and complete video online. Here's a side by side video comparison from the Jed Report.



And yet, the GOP and wingnuts proclaim that Barack Obama is the media darling while McCain gets a bum rap. And yes, I'm taking a shot at Couric, who'll let a bumbling fool like McCain get away with an answer like that, probably because she doesn't know any better and doesn't know the history either, while she belabored the surge question with Obama and overall asked accusatory questions of Obama while asking McCain softball questions about... Obama!

Take a look at these -

Questions asked of Obama:

- You talk about a residual force remaining in Iraq, but you've been hesitant to really give a number … to people. You haven't been specific... Why can't you be more specific as to what you envision?

- Before the surge, as you know, Senator, there were 80 to 100 U.S. casualties a month, the country was rife with sectarian violence, and you raised a lot of eyebrows on this trip saying even knowing what you know now, you still would not have supported the surge. People may be scratching their heads and saying, "Why?"

- ...do you not give the surge any credit for reducing violence in Iraq?

- But talking microcosmically, did the surge, the addition of 30,000 additional troops ... help the situation in Iraq?

- ...I really don't mean to belabor this, Senator, because I'm really, I'm trying … to figure out your position. Do you think the level of security in Iraq... would exist today without the surge?

- If you believe, Senator, Afghanistan is, in fact, the central front in the war on terror, why was this your first trip there? And why didn't you hold a single hearing as chairman of the subcommittee that oversees the fighting force there?

(Senator Obama is the chair of the European subcommittee, Katie. Nice try.)

- You reportedly chaff when your foreign policy expertise is questioned. If foreign policy is not your weakest area of expertise, what is?

Are you fucking kidding?

Now compare them to these -

Questions asked of McCain:

- Senator McCain, Sen. Obama says, while the increased number of U.S. troops contributed to increased security in Iraq, he also credits the Sunni awakening and the Shiite government going after militias. And says that there might have been improved security even without the surge. What's your response to that?

- Sen. Obama also told me, Sen. McCain, that the money spent on those additional troops, on the surge, might have been more effective had it gone to Afghanistan or even to a better energy policy in the United States. What's your response?

- Sen. Obama describes Afghanistan as the central front on the war on terror. That is where, after all, Senator, 9/11 was plotted. And now the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan seems to be a hot bed of al Qaeda activity. Why do you believe Iraq is the central front in the war on terror?

- Do you agree with Sen. Obama's contention that up to three additional brigades should be deployed to Afghanistan?

- Sen. McCain, you sound very frustrated with Sen. Obama's perspective.

- What is your biggest fear about bringing troops home too soon, Senator?

- Finally, Senator, your campaign released a video today complaining about what you call the media's love affair with Sen. Obama. (LAUGHTER) Clearly you believe you're getting unfair coverage. Why do you think that's the case?

The kicker to all of this are the headlines used on the CBS website for each interview.
For Obama's, it's "Obama: Surge Doesn't Meet Long-Term Goals."
For McCain's, it's "McCain: 'We Will Come Home In Victory'."

Give me a fucking break.


(H/T The Jed Report)

UPDATE II (7/24/08, 3:18pm):

I Know How To Win Wars

Taking credit for successes and blaming others for failures is what Republicans do. Over the past couple of days I've been listening to GOP Senators on MSNBC blaming NATO for the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. I suppose "Support The Troops" only means our troops. Fuck the other allies' troops. They can't do anything right, right?

And now McThuselah claims that he "knows how to win wars." Yes, "wars" as in plural. I'm sure he wasn't just thinking of Iraq and Afghanistan as Beach Boys tunes danced in his head.

"...It is precisely the success of the surge in Iraq that shows us the way to succeed in Afghanistan. It is by applying the tried and true principles of counter-insurgency used in the surge -- which Senator Obama opposed -- that we will win in Afghanistan. With the right strategy and the right forces, we can succeed in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I know how to win wars. And if I'm elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory."

Perhaps McCain's definition of winning a war is getting shot down over enemy territory and being a prisoner of war for over five years. We win.

That the "success in Iraq" is the model McThuselah would use in Afghanistan if he became president is absolutely ludicrous. I would not so kindly ask, "What success would you be talking about?!"

It seems that everyone touting success in Iraq is selectively remembering only the post-surge reduction in violence and not the fact that the whole reason for the surge in the first place was to give the Iraqi government time to get its shit together. That hasn't happened and moving the goalposts from "when they stand up, we'll stand down" to "an acceptable level of violence" won't make the surge a success.

And even if you accept McCain's premise that the model of Iraq is the way we'd do things in Afghanistan, one would have to realize that it's an impossibility to do it the Iraq way with the lack of resources we now face. We don't have the troops to send to Afghanistan unless we pull them out of Iraq!

And this is the man that is lauded by the McCainstream Media as a foreign policy wiz!



Unbelieveable!

McCain: Pre-Surge Levels?

How many times can this guy be wrong on a daily basis? You gotta love the McCainstream Media. What a maverick!

Olbermann: On 5th Year in Iraq

Also, an interview and analysis from Jon Soltz, Chairman of VoteVets.org

Surprise! Surprise!

Petraeus: Iraqis Not Making "Sufficient Progress"

Well slap my ass and call me Sally! More proof that the surge "worked."

Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.

The general's comments appeared to be his sternest to date on Iraqis' failure to achieve political reconciliation...

And before you go making up excuses about reduced violence, blah, blah, blah, let us not forget why we started the surge in the first place.

George W. Bush, January 10th, 2007:

I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people -- and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this. Here is what he told his people just last week: "The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation."

...A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.

Our purpose for the surge was to give the Iraqi government more time to get its shit together. That hasn't even begun to happen. In fact, while our troops were dying over the summer, the Iraqi Parliament took a vacation. A fucking vacation! The surge has not worked. No benchmarks met equals failure.

The Surge Protectors

If I hear one more politician or pundit or wingnut talk show host say the words, "The surge worked," my head is going to explode. It doesn't matter who says it or how many times it is repeated. THE SURGE DID. NOT. WORK. The surge is not working. The surge will never work.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of President Bush's "surge" speech in which he laid out the ground work for troop escalation in Iraq , thinly disguising it by calling it a surge. Do you remember that fateful night? I certainly do. I was sitting on my living room couch, wondering what Raisinbrain was going to say. After all, the Democrats had just taken over in Congress after a stirring election in November of 2006, and it looked like we were turning the tide.

There was President Bush, looking all presidential in his purple polka dot tie, standing in front of a library of books he'd never read, that vacant stare in his eye. And then he said this: "The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people -- and it is unacceptable to me. Our troops in Iraq have fought bravely. They have done everything we have asked them to do. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me."

Whaaaa?! Holy shit! For the first time in six years, the man actually took responsibility for something. On national television. Did some left-wing operative secretly change the script on the teleprompter? Was this a speech, not calling for more of the same, not asking for the American people to continue to trust him, but actually admitting accountability? Could this be the turning point of a bad administration gone mediocre?

Wait, he wasn't finished: "So America will change our strategy to help the Iraqis carry out their campaign to put down sectarian violence and bring security to the people of Baghdad. This will require increasing American force levels. So I've committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq."

What happened next remains a fuzzy mystery. I think I knocked myself out for a few seconds because my jaw hit the floor. Literally. I can still see the indentation of my chin on the living room floor. Ah, memories.

I did wake up just in time to hear this: "I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people..."

Well at least he got something right. Not the "open-ended" thing, the "support" thing. And there was Bush listing the conditions for the Iraqi government to adhere to if they wanted our continued support:

- Iraqi government must establish authority by taking responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November

- pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis

- spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs

- empower local leaders by holding provincial elections later this year

- reform de-Baathification laws and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution

-deploy Iraqi Army and National Police brigades across Baghdad's nine districts for a total of 18 Iraqi Army and National Police brigades

That was one year ago yesterday. Let's see, check, check, check, check, check and... check. In one year, the Iraqi government has accomplished NONE of those benchmarks.

President Bush was basically giving cover to Iraq with our troops. We needed to give them more time to secure Iraq and lead them towards the path of political reconciliation. That has not happened. Therefore, the surge has NOT worked. The surge has FAILED.

And now John "100 Years in Iraq" McCain and Holy Joe "Bomb Iran" LIEberman write an op-ed piece in the Murdoch Street Journal titled... wait for it... "The Surge Worked." (Boom!)

Here are a couple of tidbits from that stellar article:

"...conditions in that country have been utterly transformed from those of a year ago, as a consequence of the surge."
Well, how the hell can you argue with that?

"...Sunni Arabs who once constituted the insurgency's core of support in Iraq have been empowered to rise up against the suicide bombers and fanatics in their midst..."
Could that be because we're paying them?

"...violence across the country has dropped dramatically..."
Well, when there's no one left to kill due to ethnic cleansing and with over 4 million Iraqi refugees since the war started, it's not a surprise that violence has dropped. And let's not get carried away with that drop. As Thomas Ricks stated on Countdown with Keith Olbermann last night, "I think Iraqis recognize that large parts of Baghdad are more peaceful than they were, but violence is basically back to 2005 levels. And that was no picnic, 2005; it's just that 2006 was pure hell."

"As the surge should have taught us by now, troop numbers matter in Iraq."
We knew that from the beginning. So did Generals Shinseki and Zinni. Remember General Shinseki? He was forced to resign after disagreements with the greatest defense secretary ever, Donald Rumsfeld.

So the next time someone tells you "the surge worked," maybe you could explain to them that the whole point of the ESCALATION was to give the Iraqi puppet government time to get its shit together, which hasn't happened, and will never happen while we are still there. Use the list of unattained benchmarks above as talking points. Help them understand that a falsehood repeated over an over doesn't make it true.

Or better yet, just punch them in the mouth and walk away. You'll probably feel better.

Oh, and by the way Wall Street Fucking Journal: stop calling LIEberman and "Independent Democrat." There's no such thing. Either you are a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, a Libertarian, a Constitutionalist, a Green, a Socialist, a Communist, etc. There is no "Independent Democrat" Party. It doesn't fucking exist! And if it did, LIEberman would be kicked out of that one too!

If At First You Don't Succeed, Lower Your Standards

WASHINGTON, Nov. 24— With American military successes outpacing political gains in Iraq, the Bush administration has lowered its expectation of quickly achieving major steps toward unifying the country, including passage of a long-stymied plan to share oil revenues and holding regional elections.

Instead, administration officials say they are focusing their immediate efforts on several more limited but achievable goals in the hope of convincing Iraqis, foreign governments and Americans that progress is being made toward the political breakthroughs that the military campaign of the past 10 months was supposed to promote.

Great. Mission accomplished. Now, let's get the hell out of there.

Iraqi Ministry and the Black Market Weapons Deal

It seems that this little story was mostly ignored by the mainstream media. Do you remember hearing of the $40 million black market arms deal between Iraqi and Italian partners for over 100,000 weapons? I'm sure the Fox News conservative pundits covered this, no?

Associated Press:

The Associated Press has learned that Iraqi government officials were involved in the deal, apparently without the knowledge of the U.S. Baghdad command — a departure from the usual pattern of U.S.-overseen arms purchases.

Why these officials resorted to "black" channels and where the weapons were headed is unclear.

The purchase would merely have been the most spectacular example of how Iraq has become a magnet for arms traffickers and a place of vanishing weapons stockpiles and uncontrolled gun markets since the 2003 U.S. invasion and the onset of civil war.

Some guns the U.S. bought for Iraq's police and army are unaccounted for, possibly fallen into the hands of insurgents or sectarian militias.

Some guns? SOME GUNS?! I don't think 190,000 missing assault rifles and pistols qualifies as "some". In my book, that qualifies as a "shitload".

"They really have no idea where they are," Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Centre for Defence Information, told the Washington Post, which reported the GAO's findings. "It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors."

Bad actors? Does that mean we'll see Steven Sagal or David Caruso roaming the streets of Baghdad with an AK-47 in their hands? I think you should replace "bad actors" with "the fucking insurgency", Ms. Stohl.

Here's the kicker: "...weapons distribution was rushed and failed to follow established procedures, particularly in 2004 and 2005. During that period, security training was led by General David Petraeus, now the top US commander in Iraq. "

And Petraeus, our fearless leader, the man who wrote the book on counterinsurgency, the savior of Iraq who'll give his long-awaited assessment of the results of the surge in September (which will be written by the White House), blames the missing weapons on a clerical error.

"Some percentage" of weapons the U.S. military provided to the Iraqi army and Iraqi police units were not tracked by serial number because there were no procedures in place to do so within the Iraqi units, Petraeus said in an interview broadcast [August 7th] on Fox News Radio's "Alan Colmes Show."

From a practical standpoint, Petraeus added, it was more important to get the weapons to the Iraqis as they started to enter the fight against a strong insurgency than it was to keep meticulous records.

Sure, why do we need to keep track of 190,000 weapons with silly little things like serial numbers? That's just a little technicality, right? I mean, why bother writing stuff like that down? There's no possible way that if you give an Iraqi officer or policeman a weapon, that he'll just turn around and sell it to the nearest local militia warlord to whom he's more loyal, right? That just doesn't happen, does it?

190,000 missing weapons chalked up to bookkeeping deficiencies... unbelieveable. Were these the same accountants in charge of the $9 billion missing in Iraq back in 2005 that's still unaccounted for?

What a bunch of clowns.

The War As They Saw It

This was in the New York Times Op-Ed this past Sunday and I failed to mention it earlier.
Written by seven members of the US Army 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad, it does nothing but tell us the truth and shows us the reality on the ground in Iraq. Please do yourself a favor and read the whole piece (linked above).

Here's an excerpt:

A few nights ago, for example, we witnessed the death of one American soldier and the critical wounding of two others when a lethal armor-piercing explosive was detonated between an Iraqi Army checkpoint and a police one. Local Iraqis readily testified to American investigators that Iraqi police and Army officers escorted the triggermen and helped plant the bomb. These civilians highlighted their own predicament: had they informed the Americans of the bomb before the incident, the Iraqi Army, the police or the local Shiite militia would have killed their families.

As many grunts will tell you, this is a near-routine event. Reports that a majority of Iraqi Army commanders are now reliable partners can be considered only misleading rhetoric. The truth is that battalion commanders, even if well meaning, have little to no influence over the thousands of obstinate men under them, in an incoherent chain of command, who are really loyal only to their militias.

I wonder how soon it'll be before the warmongers start swiftboating these seven brave soldiers?

UPDATE: It didn't take long for me to find Tucker Carlson's take on this op-ed. The piece, by the way, was a response to assessments made in a previous op-ed by Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack; and when [Carlson] interviewed Pollack, he did not challenge Pollack's opinions on whether progress is being made in Iraq, but he readily distrusts what actual military on the ground have to say.

Who are you going to believe? O'Hanlon and Pollack, or your lying eyes?

Petraeus Schmetraeus

LA TIMES: Administration and military officials acknowledge that the September report will not show any significant progress on the political benchmarks laid out by Congress. How to deal in the report with the lack of national reconciliation between Iraq's warring sects has created some tension within the White House.

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

So much for the decisions being made by "commanders on the ground, not by political figures in Washington, DC"... but at this point, didn't we all see this coming a mile away? You didn't expect Bush to keep his word, did you?

Bill Kristol on The Daily Show

Bill Kristol, Editor of The Weekly Standard, advocate of the War in Iraq, who was once quoted as saying, "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular"... yes, that Bill Kristol, was Jon Stewart's guest on The Daily Show Monday night.

He's just come back from 8 days in Iraq, and he reports that it's all going... wait for it... "well."

Stewart asks Kristol to help him understand the vitriol cast upon those who oppose the war.

Stewart: "I obviously have been against the war from the start, didn't think it was a good idea. Here's what I don't understand: how, if it doesn't go well, if it continues to go badly, how will that be my fault?"

Kristol: "It will be your fault if we pull the plug on a strategy that is now working..."

So here is where this game of chess has progressed. If it goes well, we congratulate Bush and the Republicans, if it goes badly, it's the anti-war groups and the soft-on-defense Democrats who are to blame. Which scenario do you think is more likely to happen? Check. It's a "can't lose" situation in their eyes.

Stewart backs Kristol against the wall by succinctly outlining what went wrong and how a true leader would admit those mistakes and bring the country together and not dismiss those who disagree with him. Kristol sidesteps it with a Jew joke.

Other infamous quotes and predictions by Kristol:

April 28, 2003: "The battles of Afghanistan and Iraq have been won decisively and honorably."

July 26, 2004: "...what so many reporters seem to have trouble understanding--is that Iraq and al Qaeda had a relationship that, by its very existence, posed a potential threat to the United States."

March 7, 2005: "Just four weeks after the Iraqi election of January 30, 2005, it seems increasingly likely that that date will turn out to have been a genuine turning point."

Read the full Glenn Greenwald blog, Bill Kristol: Pundit Superstar, and then wonder why anyone still listens to Kristol or how he even continues to get work.

Did I Say September? I Meant November

Remember that troop surge that Chimpy announced in January which started in February and decreased violence in Baghdad in March but increased sectarian strife everywhere else in April to the point of making the "Green Zone" not so green in May and got congressmen on both sides of the aisle to voice their disappointment in June but W. wouldn't budge in July until General David Petraeus made his assessment in September because Bush insisted that the war should be run by the commanders on the ground, not the politicians in Washington? Yeah, that surge.

All we heard was September September September September September. Well, the old September is the new November.

CNN- Thursday, July 19th: "In order to do a good assessment I need at least until November," said Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, a deputy to Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq.

But on Friday, Odierno clarified his statements.

"There is no intention to push our reporting requirement beyond September,"he said. "Nothing I said yesterday should be interpreted to suggest otherwise. My reference to November was simply suggesting that as we go forward beyond September, we will gain more understanding of trends.

In other words, if they are looking at November, September means nothing. Let's all take a vacation in August while more soldiers and civilians die in Iraq.

The September Surprise

They’ll Break the Bad News on 9/11
Frank Rich - New York Times

BY this late date we should know the fix is in when the White House's top factotums fan out on the Sunday morning talk shows singing the same lyrics, often verbatim, from the same hymnal of spin. The pattern was set way back on Sept. 8, 2002, when in simultaneous appearances three cabinet members and the vice president warned darkly of Saddam's aluminum tubes. "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," said Condi Rice, in a scripted line. The hard sell of the war in Iraq — the hyping of a (fictional) nuclear threat to America — had officially begun.

America wasn't paying close enough attention then. We can't afford to repeat that blunder now. Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.

The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the "surge" was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have "a pretty good feel" whether his policy "made sense." On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a "snapshot" of progress in Iraq. "Snapshot," of course, means "Never mind!"

The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called "the consequences" and General Petraeus "the implications" of any alternative "courses of action" to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September "snapshot" of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that "the consequences" of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).

General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker wouldn't be sounding like the Bobbsey Twins and laying out this coordinated rhetorical groundwork were they not already anticipating the surge's failure. Both spoke on Sunday of how (in General Petraeus's variation on the theme) they had to "show that the Baghdad clock can indeed move a bit faster, so that you can put a bit of time back on the Washington clock." The very premise is nonsense. Yes, there is a Washington clock, tied to Republicans' desire to avoid another Democratic surge on Election Day 2008. But there is no Baghdad clock. It was blown up long ago and is being no more successfully reconstructed than anything else in Iraq.

When Mr. Bush announced his "new way forward" in January, he offered a bouquet of promises, all unfulfilled today. "Let the Iraqis lead" was the policy's first bullet point, but in the initial assault on insurgents now playing out so lethally in Diyala Province, Iraqi forces were kept out of the fighting altogether. They were added on Thursday: 500 Iraqis, following 2,500 Americans. The notion that these Shiite troops might "hold" this Sunni area once the Americans leave is an opium dream. We're already back fighting in Maysan, a province whose security was officially turned over to Iraqi authorities in April.

In his January prime-time speech announcing the surge, Mr. Bush also said that "America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced." More fiction. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's own political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, says it would take "a miracle" to pass the legislation America wants. Asked on Monday whether the Iraqi Parliament would stay in Baghdad this summer rather than hightail it to vacation, Tony Snow was stumped.

Like Mr. Crocker and General Petraeus, Mr. Snow is on script for trivializing September as judgment day for the surge, saying that by then we'll only "have a little bit of metric" to measure success. This administration has a peculiar metric system. On Thursday, Peter Pace, the departing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the spike in American troop deaths last week the "wrong metric" for assessing the surge's progress. No doubt other metrics in official reports this month are worthless too, as far as the non-reality-based White House is concerned. The civilian casualty rate is at an all-time high; the April-May American death toll is a new two-month record; overall violence in Iraq is up; only 146 out of 457 Baghdad neighborhoods are secure; the number of internally displaced Iraqis has quadrupled since January.

Last week Iraq rose to No. 2 in Foreign Policy magazine's Failed State Index, barely nosing out Sudan. It might have made No. 1 if the Iraqi health ministry had not stopped providing a count of civilian casualties. Or if the Pentagon were not withholding statistics on the increase of attacks on the Green Zone. Apparently the White House is working overtime to ensure that the September "snapshot" of Iraq will be an underexposed blur. David Carr of The Times discovered that the severe Pentagon blackout on images of casualties now extends to memorials for the fallen in Iraq, even when a unit invites press coverage.

Americans and Iraqis know the truth anyway. The question now is: What will be the new new way forward? For the administration, the way forward will include, as always, attacks on its critics' patriotism. We got a particularly absurd taste of that this month when Harry Reid was slammed for calling General Pace incompetent and accusing General Petraeus of exaggerating progress on the ground.

General Pace's record speaks for itself; the administration declined to go to the mat in the Senate for his reappointment. As for General Petraeus, who recently spoke of "astonishing signs of normalcy" in Baghdad, he is nothing if not consistent. He first hyped "optimism" and "momentum" in Iraq in an op-ed article in September 2004.

Come September 2007, Mr. Bush will offer his usual false choices. We must either stay his disastrous course in eternal pursuit of "victory" or retreat to the apocalypse of "precipitous withdrawal." But by the latest of the president's ever-shifting definitions of victory, we've already lost. "Victory will come," he says, when Iraq "is stable enough to be able to be an ally in the war on terror and to govern itself and defend itself." The surge, which he advertised as providing "breathing space" for the Iraqi "unity" government to get its act together, is tipping that government into collapse. As Vali Nasr, author of "The Shia Revival," has said, the new American strategy of arming Sunni tribes is tantamount to saying the Iraqi government is irrelevant.

For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become "anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat," said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost.

Precipitous withdrawal is also a chimera, since American manpower, materiel and bases, not to mention our new Vatican City-sized embassy, can't be drawn down overnight. The only real choice, as everyone knows, is an orderly plan for withdrawal that will best serve American interests. The real debate must be over what that plan is. That debate can't happen as long as the White House gets away with falsifying reality, sliming its opponents and sowing hyped fears of Armageddon. The threat that terrorists in civil-war-torn Iraq will follow us home if we leave is as bogus as Saddam's mushroom clouds. The Qaeda that actually attacked us on 9/11 still remains under the tacit protection of our ally, Pakistan.

As General Odom says, the endgame will start "when a senior senator from the president's party says no," much as William Fulbright did to L.B.J. during Vietnam. That's why in Washington this fall, eyes will turn once again to John Warner, the senior Republican with the clout to give political cover to other members of his party who want to leave Iraq before they're forced to evacuate Congress. In September, it will be nearly a year since Mr. Warner said that Iraq was "drifting sideways" and that action would have to be taken "if this level of violence is not under control and this government able to function."

Mr. Warner has also signaled his regret that he was not more outspoken during Vietnam. "We kept surging in those years," he told The Washington Post in January, as the Iraq surge began. "It didn't work." Surely he must recognize that his moment for speaking out about this war is overdue. Without him, the Democrats don't have the votes to force the president's hand. With him, it's a slam dunk. The best way to honor the sixth anniversary of 9/11 will be to at last disarm a president who continues to squander countless lives in the names of those voiceless American dead.

Surge Smurge

David Cloud and Damien Cave's NY Times article reveals that the "surge" isn't working at the rate the military would have hoped for by this point. This is partly due to the fact that they are relying on Iraqi Security Forces (an oxymoron if ever there was one) to do their part.

In an interview, [Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the deputy commander of the First Cavalry Division,] said that while military planners had expected to make greater gains by now, that has not been possible in large part because Iraqi police and army units, which were expected to handle basic security tasks, like manning checkpoints and conducting patrols, have not provided all the forces promised, and in some cases have performed poorly.

...When planners devised the Baghdad security plan late last year, they had assumed most Baghdad neighborhoods would be under control around July, according to a senior American military officer, so the emphasis could shift into restoring services and rebuilding the neighborhoods as the summer progressed.

“We were way too optimistic,” said the officer, adding that September is now the goal for establishing basic security in most neighborhoods, the same month that Bush administration officials have said they plan to review the progress of the plan.

At this point, only about one-third of Iraqi neighborhoods are under American and Iraqi control, because troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face resistance in the remaining 311 out of 457 neighborhoods.

You know what that means: come September, when General Petraeus delivers his assessment, and when the revolting Republicans (take that meaning either way) had said that September was their deadline for their support, Chimpy will once again demand more time... and in all probability will get it from Congressional Republican sheep and spineless Democrats.

If At First Your Surge Doesn't Succeed...

The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

..."It doesn't surprise me that they're not talking about it," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William Nash, a former U.S. commander of NATO troops in Bosnia, referring to the Bush administration. "I think they would be very happy not to have any more attention paid to this."

Lawrence Korb, an assistant defense secretary for manpower during the Reagan administration, said... "The administration is giving itself the capability to increase the number of troops in Iraq,"... "It remains to be seen whether they actually choose to do that."

Well let's see, if you weren't planning on increasing troop levels, why would you send them there? If you really are preparing the troops, just in case, isn't that the definition of a surge? Evil bastards...