An Analogy

by folkbum

Hans von Spakovsky : voting :: Laurie Mylroie : Iraq

• von Spakovsky appears deep in this previous post; it's testing time at school again, if you couldn't tell

Cultural Exchange

by 3rd Way

Many of us knew the invasion of Iraq was a mistake from the start, the majority of us now think it was a misguided effort. One of the few positive things to come from this war is an exchange between American and Middle Eastern cultures. I hope some Iraqis have learned something valuable from the Americans working in their country. American journalist could learn a little something about the harsh reality Middle Eastern journalists bring to a press conference. According to the AP the disrespect shown to our president by a journalist during his farewell tour is a customary sign of contempt.

It was at that point the journalist stood up and threw a shoe from about 20 feet away. Bush ducked, and it narrowly missed his head. The second shoe came quickly, and Bush ducked again while several Iraqis grabbed the man and dragged him to the floor.

In Iraqi culture, throwing shoes at someone is a sign of contempt. Iraqis whacked a statue of Saddam with their shoes after U.S. marines toppled it to the ground following the 2003 invasion.

When future American politicians screw up as badly as Bush has and give unsatisfactory evasive answers to journalists questions I hope American journalists learn from their Middle Eastern colleagues and send a size 10 at their head. I just hope they can duck as well as Dubya.

The Troops Don't Support the Troops*

by folkbum

By now you've probably heard this news; US troops deployed overseas have given to Barack Obama's campaign at a rate of about six-to-one over John McCain:

According to an analysis of campaign contributions by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrat Barack Obama has received nearly six times as much money from troops deployed overseas at the time of their contributions than has Republican John McCain, and the fiercely anti-war Ron Paul, though he suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination months ago, has received more than four times McCain's haul.

Despite McCain's status as a decorated veteran and a historically Republican bent among the military, members of the armed services overall--whether stationed overseas or at home--are also favoring Obama with their campaign contributions in 2008, by a $55,000 margin. Although 59 percent of federal contributions by military personnel has gone to Republicans this cycle, of money from the military to the presumed presidential nominees, 57 percent has gone to Obama. [. . .]

In 2000, Republican George W. Bush outraised Democrat Al Gore among military personnel almost 2 to 1. In 2004, with the Iraq war underway, John Kerry closed the gap with President Bush, but Bush still raised $1.50 from the military for every $1 his Democratic opponent collected.

This suggests that more and more of the people on the ground in Iraq, from our own forces to Iraq's own Prime Minister, are endorsing a withdrawal plan. (Ron Paul wanted troops out immediately, Obama says about 16 months, and McCain won't set a timetable.) The Republican ship on Iraq keeps sinking; pretty soon it will be just John McCain and a few blogging dead-enders clinging to scraps of flotsam. The sad thing is, McCain and his ilk have killed more than 4100 Americans and countless Iraqi civilians in their venture.

McCain's reality-denying bluster about the Russia-Georgia conflict (an opinion paid for by lobbyist dollars!) does not lead me to believe that he will care all that much to send another 4000 US troops to satisfy his machismo. The troops know what they're doing.

* I give up on the one-word titles. I couldn't even last a month ...

The continuing Republican war on science

by folkbum

It's not all global warming denial (though that is teh funny) and trying to suck the science out of biology classes.

No, this is maybe worse: The presence of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in a little over a month will shut down the Science Museum of Minnesota for the week. Won't somebody please think of the children?!?

Unrelatedly, as I was up late working, this song ran through my iTunes, and it reminded me of the current debate over how long we should stay in Iraq--the Maliki/ Obama timetable of 16 months or the McCain 5-100 year plan.



Also: I could watch this for hours.

The Look of Leadership

Keith R. Schmitz

Maybe John McCain wishes he could take back his goading of Barack Obama to go to Iraq.

The Illinois Senator is making his way through the world leaders this week, with a lot of press focus on the trip. He could screw up but the odds are not in favor of a miss-step.

In the meantime we have the White House reconfiguring "withdraw" and "time-line" to read "time-horizon." No matter how you slice it, this is means our troops leaving Iraq. In the meantime McCain stutters and stammers that we can't think about dates.

I'm not too confident though that a Republican administration would follow through on a departure. After all, there are those oil contracts to protect, and with the prospect that a Democratic administration could mean a lot of perp-walking for members of the Bush Administration the strategy for the GOP I'll be is promise them anything, but give them the screw.

Then again, McCain is talking redeployment of US troops from Iraq to the unraveling Afghanistan effort -- just as Obama has advocated previously. I'm not wild about the prospects of spending people and money in that country because of what Afghanistan did to Britain over a hundred years ago and the USSR more recently. As much as Reagan worshippers keep droning on about how the Gipper drank the Ruskies under the table, it appears Charlie Wilson's war and the Afghan fighters drained the Evil Empire.

For someone who is being portrayed as a rookie senator, more and more it looks like judgement rather than so-called experience is defining leadership.

Iraqi PM Maliki is an anti-American marxist droolbucket

by folkbum

(Note the UPDATE below--apparently repeated references in the interview cited below to Obama, timetables, and withdrawal were all "mistranslated." Or something.)

Or so it would seem from Nouri al-Maliki's statements:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama's plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded "as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned." He then continued: "US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."

Maliki was careful to back away from outright support for Obama. "Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans' business," he said. But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain's more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: "Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems."

Anytime anyone on the American left (or, increasingly, in the American center--for that matter, even on the American center-right) suggests a time-table or a definite date by which US troops should be home safe in their beds instead of being electrocuted by KBR, we get called all kinds of vile names, such as those you see in the title of this post. (I am afraid to look at the conservative blogs for fear of learning that I have inadvertently copied one of them.) We'll see if Our Man in Baghdad suffers the same fate.

What I quoted here is not the worst of it, for McCain:

Maliki has long shown impatience with the open-ended presence of US troops in Iraq. In his conversation with SPIEGEL, he was once again candid about his frustration over the Bush administration's hesitancy about agreeing to a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops. But he did say he was optimistic that such a schedule would be drawn up before Bush leaves the White House next January -- a confidence that appeared justified following Friday's joint announcement in Baghdad and Washington that Bush has now, for the first time, spoken of "a general time horizon" for moving US troops out of Iraq.

"So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat," Maliki told SPIEGEL. "But that isn't the case at all. If we come to an agreement, it is not evidence of a defeat, but of a victory, of a severe blow we have inflicted on al-Qaida and the militias."

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but only one (increasingly small) side in this argument has been saying all along that leaving, or even setting a time to leave, is admitting defeat. I'll probably be told that in comments. I look forward to it, almost.

I predict one or both of the following to happen in the next week: 1) Nouri al-Maliki will suddenly not be the Iraqi Prime Minister any more; and 2) Barack Obama, if he meets with (Obama-supporter-lite) Maliki in Iraq on the trip Obama's currently taking to Europe and the Middle East, will be accused of treason by the right. They will demand, as they did to Nancy Pelosi, that he be arrested for conducting foreign policy without permission from the president.

UPDATE: After a panicky White House accidentally emailed its entire distribution list the text of the Reuters story about Maliki's statements, they must have settled on a strategy: The United States Central Command (CentCom) issued a statement from a Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh saying, "Prime Minister Maliki's statement was 'misunderstood and mistranslated' and 'not conveyed accurately regarding the vision of Senator Barack Obama, U.S. presidential candidate, on the timeframe for U.S. forces withdrawal from Iraq.'"

This is at least the second time in recent weeks that Maliki has explicitly called for a timetable for withdrawal of US troops and the US then walked back his statement:

BAGHDAD July 7, 2008, 11:17 pm ET · Iraq's prime minister said Monday his country wants some type of timetable for a withdrawal of American troops included in the deal the two countries are negotiating. [. . .] The White House said it did not believe al-Maliki was proposing a rigid timeline for U.S. troop withdrawals.

Anyway, I guess we have to believe the new version of the story that Maliki's multiple references to Obama, to "those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq" and so forth in Der Spiegel were "mistranslated."

As Josh Marshall wryly notes (from the second link of the update): "I'm learning that it's very difficult to translate the nuances of the Arabic of Iraqi leaders when they're speaking at variance with the talking points of the Bush White House. Language is a funny thing."

Being Wrong About Iraq was Right, Being Right About Iraq was Being Unserious

by folkbum

There were many winners and losers after the fight over a taxpayer-funded killing game that children as young as 13 could play was shut down at Milwaukee's Summerfest. Among the biggest losers, I think, are the blowhards who spend half their lives yelling at us liberals to shut up, that we do not have any particular right never to be offended by stuff and the other half of the time complaining about the stuff that offends them. Including, apparently, the victory of such groups as Peace Action Wisconsin and Veterans for Peace over bloodlust and poor judgment.

That fight spun off a number of smaller battles across the Cheddarsphere, with many conservatives vowing never to go to Summerfest again and some even arguing, until corrected, that Summerfest had actually kicked the Army off the Summerfest grounds altogether. Affronts to good taste, rules of grammar, and common sense abounded. But one mini-drama stands out, between Mike Mathias and Rick Esenberg. Esenberg started it, followed by Mathias, and then one more round from each (MM, then RE) so far, with a few others joining in the fun, notably James Wigderson.

The Mathias-Esenberg skirmish is, in fact, a microcosm of a larger debate being played out in the national punditocracy. I think it's worth looking at more deeply, because what Esenberg and the like are doing is offering a grotesque version of heads-I-win-tails-you-lose, with the booby prize being the deaths of more than 4000 American men and women, not to mention countless innocent Iraqi civilians.

To illustrate what's wrong with Esenberg et al., I quote first (via tristero) from George Packer, member of the aforementioned national punditocracy, commenting on fellow pundit Christopher Hitchens's years-late epiphany that waterboarding is torture:

“If waterboarding does not constitute torture,” Hitchens concludes when it’s over, citing Lincoln on slavery, “then there is no such thing as torture.” This is powerful testimony, but another writer would have made it his starting point. The fact that waterboarding is torture forces certain questions on anyone who has supported the war on terror as vehemently as Hitchens and who, in the past, has been far quicker to criticize its critics than its excesses. This is the beginning of an argument with himself—not craven self-denunciation, but a genuine effort to draw out and clarify the hard trade-offs and ideological confusions that the past years have forced on all thinking people.

It seems innocent enough, but that last bit contains the nut of everything that is wrong about otherwise-reasonable people who supported the abortion that is the Iraq War. If you are a "thinking" person who supported the war, you did so only with great reservation, and now that you see what a mess it was, is, and will continue to be (whether you still support it or not), you can can admit faults only with the pain of someone wrestling his greatest inner demons. "Hard trade-offs and ideological confusions" are the hallmarks of all "thinking" people's opinions on the Iraq War.

The flipside, of course, is that if you opposed this war from the start, recognized that it would be bungled and mismanaged, knew that Dick Cheney was lying to you (his mouth was moving, after all), you could not have been a thinking person. Thinking people had to weigh the implications long and hard and make the difficult to decision to support invading Iraq.

In other words, if you were wrong about Iraq, you were right, because clearly you were a serious person and you made difficult sacrifices in deciding to support the war. And if you were right about Iraq all along, you were wrong, because you were too stupid to have been right.

Think I'm doing a disservice to Esenberg? I'm not:

[W]e need to persuade people that, while war is hell, those who serve are doing something that is not only necessary, but that can be done with integrity and in a way that fulfills the human need for accomplishment.

The critics don't believe that. War, to them, is just undifferentiated killing. There is nothing about what we fight for and how we fight that is distinctive. But, in a world where evil exists--where there are Nazi Germanys, Soviet Russias and Al Qaeda--that leads to the charnel house just as certainly as a mindless celebration of conquest.

That's from his shock-and-awe opening salvo. Clearly, Esenberg suggests, anyone who opposes war is unthinking, uncaring, unfeeling. He clarifies in his comments to Mathias's first post: "[P]eace activists did not understand the situation in Iraq," he writes. Esenberg's second post is a longer argument for the idea that people opposing the war just didn't get it (titled, even, "Being serious about Iraq"!), and includes an eerie, likely unknowing paraphrase of Packer:

I don't cite Herman's piece as necessarily establishing that the Iraq war was the right decision. I remember, at the time, being very uncertain about whether it was. But it--along with so many other post war reviews--reminds us that the demonization of Bush reflects, at best, a refusal to face difficult facts and, at worst, a cynical manipulation of a complicated issue.

The issue was "complicated," Esenberg says, and those of us who were thinking people were "very uncertain" about whether invading Iraq was "the right decision." (I would also note that Esenberg dives into non-sequitur: not one word of either of Mathias's posts contains anything like "demonization of Bush"--Mathias's first post doesn't even say the man's name, and his second only notes that Bush ignored both protesters and prominent opponents of going to war.)

Wigderson makes it worse, by asking what peace activists would have done in Iraq if not go to war. Mathias eviscerates him:

James asks: “What would they have done?” And the response is: About what?

Hussein was at the front of no invading army. He was launching no missiles against his neighbors. His support for terrorism seemed limited to sending funds to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The price that has been paid in lives and treasure for such an affront seems wildly disproportionate.

But of course, to the Esenbergs, Packers, and Wigdersons of the world, to do nothing was the unthinking response. To do nothing did not carefully measure out the "complicated" issue or "clarify the hard trade-offs and ideological confusions" of thinking people like them. To do nothing in Iraq, though the right thing, was wrong because there was no thought behind it.

This is simply not true. Saddam Hussein posed no threat to us, but al Qaeda did. That was my reason for opposing the war in Iraq, and I defy anyone to tell me how a) there is no thought behind it or b) it is wrong.

This graph, from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, via chart-master Kevin Drum, explains quite neatly why, in fact, I'm right; it's of US casualties in Afghanistan:


Is it any wonder that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spent the whole of the recent NATO summit begging for help in Afghanistan?

***
Esenberg and Packer at least seem to want to live in the same reality as those of us who opposed the war; even though they will not acknowledge that such opposition was possible from anyone with a brain, their protestations over how "very uncertain" they were about the war allows that such opposition was at least a viable option. But there are some dead-enders who remain on another planet entirely, and they were brought out in the last few days by news that 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium was moved from Iraq to Canada. Cheddarsphere ex-pat Sean Hackbarth, for example, veers off to write,

We now know Saddam had 550 tons of the stuff [. . .].That, my friends, is a nuclear weapons program. It’s not a stretch to assume that a dictator who had a history of using WMDs and had tons of material that could be processed into a nuclear or dirty bomb would want more. It’s not a stretch to make a big deal out of this [. . .]. If it weren’t for President Bush’s invasion Saddam might well be on his way processing that 550 tons of yellowcake.

We now know? We've known about this yellowcake since 1981, at least, when Israel bombed Iraq's nuclear program to smithereens (a program never restarted). Heck, given that we were allies with Iraq in 1981, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out we gave him the stuff. We knew about this yellowcake in 1991, when the International Atomic Energy Agency locked it up and threw away the key. We knew about it through 1998 when IAEA inspectors made regular checks on it. We knew about it again in 2002 when the UN inspectors noted that it hadn't been touched. We knew about it in 2003 when US troops found it--still sealed. We've known about it every 18 months or so since then when some mention of it made the news. Now we know? That is a nuclear weapons progam? A different reality.

Perhaps Amy P., commenter on this news at Dad29's alternate-reality paradise, sums up this worldview in support of the war and against anyone suggesting it was a mistake:

No doubt Barack "Uniter" Obama will simply raise the white flag and we'll all find the peace that comes through submission under shari'a law.

There are so many things wrong with that--from the notion that Saddam Hussein, secular dictator, would have subjected us to religious law to the idea that Barack Obama will not defend the country if elected.

It leads me to ask this: Who, pray tell, are the real unthinking, unserious ones? Who are those who refuse to acknowledge reality and instead accept an immature, naïve world view? It is certainly not those of us who opposed the war from day one. It is not those involved in Wisconsin Peace Action or Veterans for Peace who oppose convincing 13-year-olds that going to Iraq will be fun and worthwhile. I think it would behoove the Esenbergs and Packers of the world to note the difference, and save their disdain for those who deserve it.

Surrender to Reality -- McCain's Profile in Cluelessness

By Keith Schmitz

As Gen. Patraeus prepares to go up before Congress this morning MSNBC was playing quotes from the presidential candidates from the last hearing in September.

Help me out with this.

They run one from John McCain where he is not using his time for question but for coddling, and where he is equating withdrawal with surrender.

Putting on my business hat. Who trusts an operation that does not set conditions for terminating a project, unless of course someone wants a perpetual job and wants to endlessly spend money.

What's wrong with this picture? The presumption that to work towards withdrawal is to result in defeat somehow is evidence of totally uncreative thinking, or a big broad hint that McCain does not ever want to leave Iraq.

Voters have to look at this unsustainable perscription. Being in Iraq forever is not equatable to our troops being in Germany or Korea. Germany probably doesn't make sense since the cold war is over. But on the other hand certain regions of Duestchland are economically dependent on our bases. I happen to know people who live near the Reinstadt Air Force base and hold the dread that this thing might be closed down.

As for Korea, we have a definable line of demarcation. We know at all times where the North Koreans are -- in North Korea. And for the most part, the South Koreans want us there.

In Iraq, not only are we surrounded by people hostile to us as the mortar shells being lobbed into the Green Zone prove, but most of the Iraqis would like to see us out. Any thinking person knows that the occupation, what it is, is pure catnip not only to extreme Muslims but even the fence sitters.

So what is the problem of running this thing like a business? What's wrong with defining "victory," setting milestones towards that end, and keeping us informed with how we are doing in achieving these milestones. Does this imply that the Bush administration does not want to define victory? You can add your favorite reasons why not.

Looking at the mess we made in Iraq, most of us are resigned to the notion that an immediate yank of troops out of Iraq would not be a good idea. But most of us are recognizing that we have to look at good sense way to wrap up our involvement in Iraq.

Wise minds are out there that could come up with a solution that is satisfactory to reality. With us spending $12 B a week we cannot go on like this. And with every week seeing injured and rattled soldiers coming home and representing a lifetime responsibility for the country that sent them there, we have a growing economic challenge.

Voters have to demand a solution out of McCain and not bromides, or anyone else who grooves on this war, or we'd better be prepared for a crash of both our economy and of our military.

Iraq -- 5 Years Past and Still Clueless

By Keith Schmitz

We beat Germany and Japan, two of the world's greatest powers in three years and eight months.

We have been at it in Iraq for five years with no end in sight.

So riddle me this. George Bush keeps talking about victory in Iraq. John McCain is running on victory in Iraq (my friends).

My question is, has victory ever been defined? Don't you think that with all of the money that has been stuffed down that rat hole and all of the lives wasted of our soldiers and their families and of the the people in Iraq, shouldn't there be some definition of what in the world victory is?

And I'm not talking about some vague generalities but a hard, take it to the bank definition.

Or is it Bush (make that Cheney) really don't want us out of Iraq kind of like the endless war in 1984, but are banking on the blind support of their followers not to beg the question.

UPDATE -- Ten hours later and none of the best and brightest in the rightwing cheddarsphere have stepped up with a definition of victory in Iraq.

John McCain, Fear and Lying

via MAL Contends

Update: McCain buddy Bush picks up the lying talking point.
BUSH: It's an interesting comment. 'If Al Qaida is securing an Al Qaida base'?Yes, well, that's exactly what they've been trying to do for the past four years. That's — their stated intention was to create enough chaos and disorder to establish a base from which to either launch attacks or spread a caliphate.

From the inception of the Bush presidency which effectively began on September 12, 2001, the war paradigm and fear have been its trademarks.

In policy and politics, Bush and neocons have transformed this country into a permanent culture of fear while claiming to be the sole instrument to provide security.John McCain has picked up the torch, and is now lying, howler after howler, on the campaign trail with impunity.

The question is: Will the media that credulously reported the weapons-of-mass-destruction and al-Qaeda/Saddam lies [“allowed to stand unchallenged,” it was later reported with regret] continue to let John McCain lie with the newest iteration of the al-Qaeda will strike us from Iraq fable?“(Al-Qaeda in Iraq) if we left, they wouldn’t be establishing a base. They’d be taking a country, and I’m not going to allow that to happen,” John McCain tells us.Ludicrous.

As Juan Cole writes:

The allegation that (McCain) makes about there being ‘al-Qaeda in Iraq' that could well take over the country is part lie and part insanity. ... The idea that this small minority of violent Muslim fundamentalists could take over Iraq is completely crazy. They haven't even been able to keep their toehold in Baghdad-- the Sunnis have been largely ethnically cleansed from the capital by Shiite militias.

In GOP political rhetoric, al Qaeda has become inclusively the Islamofascists—the coming caliphate composed of everyone in Iraq and the Middle East who raises a gun or thought against foreign invaders, though Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (and assorted other authoritarian states) remain our steadfast, democratic friends.

And McCain is taking his fear show on the road as he looks to the general election, blasting Barack Obama for answering Tim Russert’s hypothetical question about reinvading Iraq should America withdraw in the future.

Asked Russert: ". . . do you reserve a right as American president to go back into Iraq, once you have withdrawn, with sizable troops in order to quell any kind of insurrection or civil war?"

Obama: . . . Now, I always reserve the right for the president -- as commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al Qaeda is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad.

That’s just too much for McCain.

“Al Qaeda is there now,” Mr. McCain said today in Houston, with a tone of belittlement in his voice. “So to state that somehow if Al Qaeda were there that he would consider going back militarily is really a remarkable comment, and I don’t think displays an understanding of the size of the threat and what’s at stake in Iraq.” (Bosman, NYT)

But as Juan Cole points out: “Note that Obama was simply responding to Russert's hypothetical, which assumed that the US was already out of Iraq but that in the aftermath, there was ‘insurrection’ or ‘civil war.’ The world that Russert imagined was presumably one in which Iraq had firmed up enough for the US to get out ... "

There are two blatant lies that McCain peddling:

- That Al Qaeda, such as is, can take over Iraq and pose a danger to the United States

- McCain's failure to acknowledge that Obama’s statement to which McCain has now spent two days misrepresenting was based on Russert’s hypothetical question

There is nothing “remarkable” about Obama’s comment, except in the disingenuous manner that McCain, Mr. straight talker, is presenting it.

But McCain’s blatant lying is remarkable and ought to be challenged by someone besides Juan Cole.

John McCain’s character, specifically his willingness to lie, is on display, and every journalist ought to be reporting on what is happening.

Instead, the newest media narrative, as I write, is: Can Obama withstand this McCain attack, and is he seasoned enough on military and foreign policy?

Let's hope that the media will heed the lesson of its admitted failure before the Iraq invasion.

From The Times and Iraq (New York Times, May 26, 2004):"We have studied the allegations of official gullibility and hype. It is past time we turned the same light on ourselves."

Good idea.

White House -- Home of the Whoppers

By Keith Schmitz

Often times when people accuse Bush of lying us into Iraq the right wing howls to the moon that we all are simply "obsessed" over this and we should just get over it.

Well, maybe over a couple or even a dozen lies, but 935?

According to two non-profit groups:

(T)he Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003," reads an overview of the examination, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

According to the study, Bush and seven top officials -- including Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice -- made 935 false statements about Iraq during those two years.

The study was based on a searchable database compiled of primary sources, such as official government transcripts and speeches, and secondary sources -- mainly quotes from major media organizations.

935 mis-statements? Okay boys. Defend this one.

TeamBush might have believed what they were ladling out to the American public, to be extremely charitable. But to drive us into this swamp and then go on to incompetently and corruptly run this operation would for other governments that have a level of class and character lead to resignation out of shame.

Not this gang.

S-Chip off the Old Block

By Keith Schmitz

Bet a good number of the kids that would be covered by the expanded S-Chip health care program for children would be the sons and daughters of soldiers deployed in Iraq.

Points To Ponder

by capper

Bush and his conservative allies were so dead set against the expansion of SCHIP, that they went to the level of maligning a brain-injured twelve year old boy and his family, even though the allegations were untrue. Bush vetoed the bill, saying that it was a "budget buster". But now we see Bush coming out and asking for another $46 billion (yes, billion, with a B) for the Iraq war. This is on top of the $150+ billion he has already asked for. When can we expect AFP (Agents for Profiteers) to organize a protest rally outside of the White House?

Speaking of AFP, the Recess Supervisor has an interesting post on AFP's latest stunt, giving stuffed pig dolls to state legislators. What really is interesting are the comments to the post, which indicate that the dolls were hand-delivered, by AFP personnel, in U.S. Post Office Envelopes, thereby wasting tax dollars. (Word of warning: I expect St. Fred to come and offer his "real debate" and "civility" in the comments. Do be careful not to get any of his mouth foam on your monitor.)

Remember when France elected Nicolas Sarkozy. The conservatives were dancing in the streets feeling as if this was validation of Bush and his wrong-headed foreign policy. I thought at the time it was just the usual hyperbole and desperate attempts at self-validation the right often exhibits. I was wrong. The guy really is like American conservatives, right down to his family values.

If ethanol gas is so much more expensive to make than ethanol-free gas, why is that gasoline up north, the kind without ethanol, is 15 cents more per gallon?

Anti-Militarist Giants Cohn and Hilberg Die Within a Week

Via MAL Contends - Norman Rufus Colin Cohn (January 12, 1915 – July 31, 2007) and Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 - August 4, 2007) died within a week of each other this summer.

I intend no meaning in noting the proximity of their deaths, other than to state that these men shared a common disdain for the power of the state aligned with the indifference of its citizens to inflict genocidal catastrophes upon humanity.

And their lives and work ought to live on as a furious reproach to contemporary Americans who passively watch the destruction of over one million Iraqis as demagogic figures in American popular culture vilify anyone (achieving a certain level of celebrity) daring to point out the crimes against humanity that war inflicts.

Cohn’s most influential works are The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (1957) and Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1970).

Hilberg wrote The Destruction of the European Jews (1961), regarded as the seminal study of the Holocaust killing of millions of Jews, and millions of other victims.

Both men were historians believing in precision free of ideology in depicting the facts of past occurrence without apology to contemporary political motivations.

Cohn and Hilberg’s eloquence and precision inspired generations of humanists.

Reading Noam Chomsky’s The Culture of Terrorism (1988), Cohn’s words ring out.

All the NAZIs required of the population is a “mood of passive compliance” as Hitler’s Holocaust coursed through Europe as he promised a return to “traditional values” and security for good German families, cites Chomsky.

Passive compliance; that phrase should become an imprecation, a curse reserved for the most despicable of acts.

Norman Finkelstein, a child of concentration camp survivors and a furious critic of violence, writes of Hilberg after his death:

Hilberg famously used the triad Perpetrators-Victims-Bystanders to catalogue the main protagonists in the Nazi holocaust. It is notable that he didn't include a category for givers of succor, presumably because they were so few in number. Judging by the life he lived, my guess is that, had the tables been turned, Hilberg would have been among those few.

I can’t help but think that Hilberg and Cohn went to their deaths disappointed and saddened as the idiocies of the Bushes, Cheneys, Powells, and Rices go unchallenged by far too many Americans.

However, millions of Americans have come to the conclusion that halting and reversing the obscenity that we as a country inflict upon the people of Iraq ought to become the deciding factor in whom we elect as the next president. And millions have acted to stop the war.

And that conclusion owes nothing to Hilberg and Cohn, but rather is the result of independent, free thinking.

Hilberg and Cohn, as great intellects, would have smiled and saluted that.

###

Excuse me? What did you just say?

by folkbum

I'm about to quote one of those AP articles that, at the drop of a hat, can change and update and may, by the time you read this, not even say what it does right now. But when I awoke this morning, here's what I saw (my emphasis):

Democrats failing to pass anti-war bill
Democrats are unable to pass legislation that would challenge President Bush on the Iraq war, despite public opinion polls that show the war remains deeply unpopular with voters.

Failing to muster the support, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the war now belonged to Republicans and vowed they would have to go on record again and again as siding with President Bush. He scheduled a vote Friday on legislation by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., that would order combat troops home in nine months.

"Back home they assert their independence, but in Washington they walk in lockstep with the president and continue to support his failed policies," said Reid, D-Nev.

Friday's vote caps off a week of disappointing roll calls for the Democrats, who had hoped that more Republicans would have jumped on board by now. [. . .] On Wednesday, the Senate blocked legislation by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., that would have guaranteed troops more time at home; it fell by a 56-44 vote with 60 votes needed to advance. [. . .] Levin's bill too was expected to fall short of the 60 votes required, with Republicans saying they still oppose setting a firm deadline on the war.

Democrats are failing, failing to muster support? Look, every single Democrat supported the Webb amendment. Even Joe "I can't wait to attack Iran" Lieberman (technically an independent, I guess) supported it.

Do you know what, this time last year, the press used to call it when every member of the majority party in the Senate voted for a bill but the bill didn't pass? A FILIBUSTER. This writer says that "60 votes [are] required." That's crap. It takes 51 votes to pass a bill in the Senate. It takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. The Republicans are filibustering!

This is the same press that, not that long ago, called Democrats obstructionist for filibustering--warned us how Republicans would have to invoke the "nuclear option" to eliminate the possibility of filibusters so that the holy and sanctified upperdownvote could happen on important matters.

Right now, the Republicans are refusing to grant the same sacred upperdownvote on matters that have overwhelming support among the American people. And who, according to the AP, is "failing" the American people? Democrats, the ones who had the 51 votes needed to pass the bills. As often as Democrats took the heat the last six years for filibustering anything, the Republicans are doing it three times as often and are getting away with it in the press!

The Republicans clearly don't want President Bush to be in the position of having to either sign or veto a piece of legislation like the Webb amendment. I do not know why they would want to protect a man with a 26% approval rating. Let him fall on his own damned grenades for a while. If he doesn't want to sign the bill, then let him veto it.

But more galling than the idea that popular Republicans would protect their unpopular president is the way that, in the press, the filibuster has apparently moved from earth-shattering, public will-obstructing evil to just the routine way of doing business. The way that the press is blaming Democrats for the failure of Republicans to get their heads out of their rears. The way the press seems to want to lay the continued deaths of American servicemen and women at the feet of Harry Reid.

Well, I suppose the media has blood on its own hands it may now be trying to get rid of, too.

Chart by McClatchy, via Kevin Drum.

It's because there are more important things

by folkbum

Michael "Elliot Stearns" Caughill, referencing this very blog, opines,

What cracks me up most about the Left's continuing and urgent desire to abandon Iraq is that if the Bush Administration actually brought all the troops home tomorrow, the Democrats' chances of winning the White House in 2008 would drop from virtually certain to just so-so.

Leaving aside the laughable fantasy that Bush would do such a thing, this isn't about him or about the White House. It's about not another American dying in Bush's war.

I would trade that for the White House in 2008, easy. In a heartbeat.

The Unreliable General

by folkbum

Yesterday, Bert pointed out that General David Petraeus, despite how chiseled his jaw or how nice a guy he may seem, ought to be approached with a deserved skepticism. It's the job of the Congress to be adversarial--not in the sense of immediately disagreeing with anyone before them, but in the sense of testing what those people have to say to find if they are trustworthy and, ultimately, truthful. This is ultimately also the job of the media; Bert pointed to Jon Stewart's examination of Petraeus, and it kind of makes me sad the the best adversarial journalism is being done right now by a fake news show.

So it's no surprise that erstwhile media figure and current journalism instructor Jessica McBride is so willing to roll over and abdicate the role of media adversary. This goes back to the "A Challenge for Liberals" post that I mentioned earlier this week. Read the comments following her post, as they are perhaps one of the most concise demonstrations of just how far divorced from reality--and how unwilling to test for the truth--conservatives have become.

If you recall, that post simply asked Democrats to explain how they feel about what she saw as an equivalence between us and Osama bin Laden. The next-to-last comment is McBride's final attempt at a rebuttal to me; it is an all-caps whine-fest. There is a lot of insanity in it, as well, but I want to highlight just a couple of the all-caps pieces.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY USE SUCH HATED, VICIOUS RHETORIC AGAINST BUSH, ARGUING REPEATEDLY, FOR EXAMPLE, THAT HE LIED US INTO WAR. PROVE IT. HE RELIED ON FAULTY INTELLIGENCE THAT THE DEMOCRATS AND OTHER WORLD LEADERS ALSO BELIEVED.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY DEMOCRATS WOULD TRASH THE REPUTATION OF A MAN LIKE GENERAL PETRAEUS.

The reason, of course, is that in an adversarial system, be it a courtroom, a two-party system of government, or the fourth estate versus the second, that's the other side's job: Test, and if the opposition is found lacking, point it out.

Why would we say that Bush lied? Because, you know, he did. We have known for years, for example, that the intelligence he passed on to the Congress about Iraq in 2002 was incomplete, lacking the dissenting evidence that he and only he saw (i.e., it was collected after 2001 when Clinton left office). That intelligence suggested, in fact, that the public evidence pimped by Cheney, Rice, and Powell was inaccurate and based on unreliable sources. Bush knew that at the time. But he did not tell Congress. Or the American people.

More recent revelations have made it that much more clear. Bush was briefed "on top-secret intelligence that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction." That intel never made it to the Congress, never made it outside of the US intel community. Bush knew. Tenet knew. Cheney almost certainly knew. They knew about the tubes. They knew about "Curveball." But he did not tell Congress. And he certainly wasn't going to tell France.

It is entriely possible, in the most generous interpretation of what happened, that Bush was dissuaded from believing the contrary evidence by strong forces in the White House. Perhaps it was Dick Cheney, who overruled Bush's own orders on at least one, and probably more than one, occasion in this war. (So much for Bush being "the decider.") But to suggest that Bush's picture of the intelligence was the same as everyone else's is just plain false. And I cannot believe that even Jessica McBride would continue to hold such a patently false and easily disprovable belief about the matter.

Why would we say things about "a man like General Petraeus"? It's because, for one, we knew that any written report he submitted would be written by the White House, not Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. And then after that news broke, of course, the White House elected not to issue a report at all. We also saw--watch Jon Stewart above--that despite his claims to have written his own testimony, his talking points were straight from Bush's mouth. We also knew that Petraeus's selective use of statistics (civilian deaths are up, but since they're not "sectarian," the surge is a success!) was ridiculous. The U.S. doubled troop strength in Baghdad, for example, for a minimal change in violence. That, and we know that he obfuscated in an op-ed just before the 2004 election to suggest that the Iraqi troops he was training were stepping up--troops that, three years later, haven't stepped anywhere near "up." We know that Petraeus's immediate boss called the General "an ass-kissing little chicken[something]"--and that "something" isn't "hawk."

We've watched the goalposts move so many times it's hard to see them in the distance any more:

White House press secretary Tony Snow, May 10, 2007: "Keep in mind, benchmarks ... are not new. The president talked about them in [the] State of the Union. We talked about them in Amman in November. Secretary Rice put a list of 17 together in a letter to Sen. Levin. So you do need to have metrics."

White House press secretary Tony Snow, Sept. 12, 2007: "No, benchmarks were something that Congress wanted to use as a metric. And we're going to produce a report. But the fact is that the situation is bigger and more complex, and you need to look at the whole picture."

It is simply stupid--the sign of nothing but pure unthinking vapidity--to accept anything this administration or anyone attached to it says uncritically, passively, without an adversarial mindset. There is a history with Bush, the administration, and everything they say that demands skepticism. (Just this week, the new Director of National Intelligence admitted he just made stuff up in sworn testimony to Congress.)

Last night's speech from Bush is a prime example. You can remind yourself of what the surge was supposed to do; have we made it? But perhaps most upsetting is the plan to bring troop levels in Iraq back to pre-"surge" levels by next July. Bush (and Petraeus) say that's because the surge worked. But the fact is the surge could not have lasted any longer if we'd wanted it to:

[S]enior military leaders -- including Adm. Michael Mullen, incoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- have acknowledged that the "surge" effectively will end in April because there are no fresh replacements.

Reminds me of earlier this year when Bush wanted to blame his decision to extend troop deployments by three months on Democrats.

Why do we call him a liar? Because he lies. Why don't we trust Petraeus? Because he hasn't earned it. This is not complicated.

Paul Ryan, you rolled craps.

by Ben Masel

Back on Feb. 22, returning from his first trip to Iraq, 1st District Republican Congressman Paul Ryan told the Journal/Sentinal's Craig Gilbert

"it is our last chance to get this right" before going to "Plan B" and starting to withdraw troops.

"This whole thing is a big gamble, but it's probably the best gamble to take before throwing in the towel... "I personally give this three to six months to find out."...
"In six months, if it's getting worse, then I don't think the plan will succeed, and we'll start talking seriously about pulling back our forces."

Wednesday will be six months. Call, or even better, drop by his offices, and call in the bet.

DC: (202) 225-3031

20 South Main Street, Suite 10
Janesville, WI 53545
Phone: (608) 752-4050

5712 7th Avenue
Kenosha, WI 53140
Phone: (262) 654-1901

216 6th Street
Racine, WI 53403
Phone: (262) 637-0510

McBride Math, again

by folkbum

I have generally left Jessica McBride alone since The Unpleasantness, as I do kind of feel sorry for how she was treated by WTMJ-AM. I never asked for or expected he to be fired, and I think TMJ could have done a much better job handling the situation. But sometimes she makes it too easy, and I just can't stop myself.

McBride posted this pithy item last night:

Liberal logic
When Al-Qaida wasn't in Iraq, most Democrats in Washington wanted to invade it.

Now that Al-Qaida is in Iraq, most Democrats in Washington want to leave.

Who's taking their eye off the ball?

Question: How many of you think that McBride believed, in 2002, that there was no al Qaeda in Iraq? How many of you think that McBride listened to those opposing the invasion when they warned that creating chaos in Iraq would draw al Qaeda in? Anyone? Anyone? I thought so.

But this is not about McBride's past; it's about her math. We've talked about McBride's math before. A year ago, in response to overwhelming votes across the state in referenda to start withdrawing troops from Iraq, McBride decided to re-write the lede: "More voters in 30 Wisconsin communities voted Tuesday to stay the course in Iraq than wanted the troops to withdraw," she wrote. "It was purely a symbolic message, but a heartfelt one." See, that's funny, because there were 33 referenda that day, not 30. She decided to leave out the votes from Madison, Shorewood, and LaCrosse in order to get a majority of voters that day selecting "stay the course." (Even then, 22 of her 30 communities voted for withdrawal.)

Her selective math shows in the current questionable post: When she says that "most Democrats in Washington wanted to invade" Iraq, she's just wrong. If you look at the roll call, you'll note that 81 House Democrats voted for the Iraq War Resolution, and 126 voted against it. Twenty-nine Democratic Senators voted for it, and 21 against. (These totals do not include Vermont independents Rep. Bernie Sanders or Sen. Jim Jeffords, who both caucused with the Democrats and who both voted against the resolution).

That makes a majority (147 to 110) of Democrats in Washington who voted against giving the presidsent the authority to invade Iraq.

That's still a relatively close vote, sure; but even many of those who voted in the affirmative on that resolution made it clear, unlike the way McBride phrases it, that they did not "want[] to invade" Iraq. Many of the Senators voting yes, for example, reviewed the provisions of the resolution that required President Bush to certify all kinds of things (things left uncertified when the bombing started) and hoping that war could be avoided. Few Democrats--maybe the Lieberman variety--approached war with Iraq as a positive development.

So McBride tries vainly to understand "liberal logic," as she calls it. The answer, of course, is that it's only hard to understand if you use McBride Math first.

Aggression Not Standing

- via MAL Contends

In a clear-eyed piece in Salon, Peter Galbraith argues convincingly that the Iraq war is “lost.”

But Galbraith’s piece also reveals the extent to which American imperial assumptions underlie liberal criticism (to say nothing of neocon praise) of the Iraq invasion and occupation.

Galbraith quotes approvingly Senator Richard Lugar, a respected Republican voice on foreign affairs in Congress, from his politically important and what was regarded as an impertinent (to President Bush) speech on June 25, in which Lugar says that we must “refocus our policy in Iraq on realistic assessments of what can be achieved, and on a sober review of our vital interests in the Middle East.”

Writes Galbraith: “After four years of a war driven more by wishful thinking than strategy, (Lugar’s) is hardly a radical idea, but it has produced a barrage of covert criticism of Lugar from the administration and overt attack from the neo conservatives.”

But the term “our vital interests in the Middle East” need not be accepted at face value.

What about Middle Eastern nations’ (say the Arab League and Iran, for example) vital interests in America, an aggressive superpower supportive of authoritarian regimes, including two nations in the region with nuclear weapons of mass destruction?

America is nearing pariah status in most of the world for its aggression and disregard of international law.

Were the nations of the Middle East to adopt the imperial logic of the Bush administration that American natural resources, America’ military capacity, and past military aggression form a gathering danger to their security, and then declare onto their nations a self-defense right to invade America, what do you suppose would be the reaction here?

Outrage, of course. And rightfully so. But the same logic works both ways.

Consider Thomas Friedman, the quintessential liberal foreign policy analyst.

In yesterday’s New York Times (July 18) (registration required), Friedman writes:

I can’t imagine how I’d feel if I were the parent of a soldier in Iraq and I had just read that the Iraqi Parliament had decided to go on vacation for August, because, as the White House spokesman, Tony Snow, explained, it’s really hot in Baghdad then — ‘130 degrees.’

I’ve been in Baghdad in the summer and it is really hot. But you know what? It is a lot hotter when you’re in a U.S. military uniform, carrying a rifle and a backpack, sweltering under a steel helmet and worrying that a bomb can be thrown at you from any direction. One soldier told me he lost six pounds in one day. I’m sure the Iraqi Parliament is air-conditioned.

So let’s get this straight: Iraqi parliamentarians, at least those not already boycotting the Parliament, will be on vacation in August so they can be cool, while young American men and women, and Iraqi Army soldiers, will be fighting in the heat in order to create a proper security environment in which Iraqi politicians can come back in September and continue squabbling while their country burns.

Here is what I think of that: I think it’s a travesty — and for the Bush White House to excuse it with a Baghdad weather report shows just how much it has become a hostage to Iraq.

A "hostage" in Iraq, against its will?

No, an-imperial-minded aggressor sowing death and destruction (and denying that it’s occurring), and then shamefully neglecting the troops who fight the war.

A hostage? Despite what the pathological liars Cheney, Bush, and Rice tell the American people, no one is holding a gun to our heads.

An alternative: US foreign policy dedicated to international law and human rights, abiding by and championing the Geneva Convention and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for a start.

Calling for a regional conference to implement mutual security and liberty of all parties in the region would be nice too, and if Israel balks, cut them off.

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