Permanent Bases in Iraq?

Terrence Hunt, AP White House correspondent, reports:

President Bush envisions a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq similar to the one in South Korea where American forces have helped keep an uneasy peace for more than 50 years, the White House said Wednesday.

...Presidential spokesman Tony Snow said Bush has cited the long-term Korea analogy in looking at the U.S. role in Iraq, where American forces are in the fifth year of an unpopular war. Bush's goal is for Iraqi forces to take over the chief security responsibilities, relieving U.S. forces of frontline combat duty, Snow said.

"I think the point he's trying to make is that the situation in Iraq, and indeed, the larger war on terror, are things that are going to take a long time," Snow said. "But it is not always going to require an up-front combat presence."

Instead, he said, U.S. troops would provide "the so-called over-the-horizon support that is necessary from time to time to come to the assistance of the Iraqis. But you do not want the United States forever in the front."

...Asked if U.S. forces would be permanently stationed in Iraq, Snow said, "No, not necessarily." He said that the prospect of permanent U.S. bases in Iraq were "not necessarily the case, either."

Later, Snow said it was impossible to say if U.S. troops would remain in Iraq for some 50 years, as they have in South Korea. "I don't know," he said. "It is an unanswerable question. But I'm not making that suggestion. ... The war on terror is a long war."

More on Permanent Bases here, here, and here..

Fitzgerald points at Cheney

Froomkin in the Washington Post:

Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has made it clearer than ever that he was hot on the trail of a coordinated campaign to out CIA agent Valerie Plame until that line of investigation was cut off by the repeated lies from Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Libby was convicted in March of perjury and obstruction of justice. Fitzgerald filed a memo on Friday asking U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who will sentence Libby next week, to put him in prison for at least two and a half years.

Despite all the public interest in the case, Fitzgerald has repeatedly asserted that grand-jury secrecy rules prohibit him from being more forthcoming about either the course of his investigation or any findings beyond those he disclosed to make the case against Libby. But when his motives have been attacked during court proceedings, Fitzgerald has occasionally shown flashes of anger -- and has hinted that he and his investigative team suspected more malfeasance at higher levels of government than they were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

In Friday's eminently readable court filing, Fitzgerald quotes the Libby defense calling his prosecution "unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics." In responding to that charge, the special counsel evidently felt obliged to put Libby's crime in context. And that context is Dick Cheney.

Libby's lies, Fitzgerald wrote, "made impossible an accurate evaluation of the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of information regarding Ms. Wilson's CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions."

It was established at trial that it was Cheney himself who first told Libby about Plame's identity as a CIA agent, in the course of complaining about criticisms of the administration's run-up to war leveled by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. And, as Fitzgerald notes: "The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment."

The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, "was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President." (Froomkin's italics.)

Not clear on the concept yet? Fitzgerald adds: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President." (Froomkin's italics)

Bacevich is much too hard on himself

in a remarkable, courageous and deeply pained op-ed in the Washington Post.

I know that my son did his best to serve our country. Through my own opposition to a profoundly misguided war, I thought I was doing the same. In fact, while he was giving his all, I was doing nothing. In this way, I failed him.

I think he's wrong about this. Professor Bacevich's work has been admirable and important. I suspect that he has done more to move public opinion against this war than Chomsky and Zinn and all the rest of us lefties combined. Despite the perversity of our political system, which allows this war to continue to claim more lives every day in spite of a clear public consensus against it, Bacevich's work was not been in vain. Teaching is slower and less visible than war, but it is not without its power, and Bacevich's teachings have been powerful indeed. Of course he is entitled to his pain and doubt, but he has also earned our respect.

Memorial day reflection

It strikes me that religion and patriotism are very similar. Both provide a faith-based sense of moral clarity, meaning and identity in a world of ambiguity, fear, and loss. They promise the ultimate redemption of meaning and justice. Both religion and patriotism shield us from confronting the possibility that our lives have no cosmic meaning, that our lives and deaths are shaped, sometimes even determined, by complex and ultimately arbitrary combinations of circumstance, and that our great wars are in the end nothing but the grandest expressions of human tragedy. It helps us to cope with the loss of loved ones if we situate that loss in the context of a story which imbues their lives -- and ours -- with clear moral purpose, nobility, and a kind of transcendent meaning. "Freedom isn't free." On memorial day weekend, I was thinking about this in the context of the "Support the Troops" cultural imperative, and the ways in which the social psychology of loss, and compulsion to maintain faith in some kind of ultimate meaning, justice and redemption seems to predispose us toward further losses.

As much as I hate the way the "Support the Troops" imperative is used to suppress dissent and use past losses to justify even more losses, I do believe that we owe our veterans and their families the best medical and psychological care possible, not because of some fantasy about defending freedom against evil, but because they served. That's all, we owe it to them because they served.

Ron Paul's Cliff Notes for know-nothing pinhead patriot Giuliani

At the Republican debate last week, Rudy Giuliani tried to score cheap points with the lizard-brain base of the party by ridiculing the analysis of terrorism offered by libertarian Republican Ron Paul. As reported by Raw Story, Paul Said:

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They attack us because we're over there.

Giuliani pounced, suggesting that Paul's thesis was beyond absurd, so bizarre that it was unheard of:

I don't think I've heard that before, and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for Sept. 11.

While the lizard-brain base cheered and applauded for Giuliani's militant ingorance, Paul quietly stood his ground and suggested that Giuliani might want to read up a bit before debating again. To help Rudy get up to speed, Paul sent him the following Cliff Notes along with some suggestions for further reading:

"His [bin Laden] rhetoric selectively draws from multiple sources -- Islam, history, and the region's political and economic malaise. He also stresses grievances against the United States widely shared in the Muslim world. He inveighed against the presence of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam's holiest sites. He spoke of the suffering of the Iraqi people as a result of sanctions imposed after the Gulf War..."

-- 9/11 Commission Report, pages 48-49

"There are a lot of things that are different now [after the invasion of Iraq], and one that has gone by almost unnoticed -- but it's huge -- is that by complete mutual agreement between the US and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al-Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so- called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things."

-- Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Vanity Fair, May 2003

"One of the greatest dangers for Americans in deciding how to confront the Islamist threat lies in continuing to believe -- at the urging of senior U.S. leaders -- that Muslims hate and attack us for what we are and think, rather than for what we do. The Islamic world is not so offended by our democratic system of politics, guarantees of personal rights and civil liberties, and separation of church and state that it is willing to wage war against overwhelming odds in order to stop Americans from voting, speaking freely, and praying, or not, as they wish."

-- Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris, page 8

"We assume, moreover, that bin Laden and the Islamists hate us for our liberty, freedoms, and democracy -- not because they and many millions of Muslims believe U.S. foreign policy is an attack on Islam or because the U.S. military now has a ten-year record of smashing people and things in the Islamic world."

-- Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris, page 165

"The U.S. invasion of Iraq is Osama bin Laden's gift from America, one he has long and ardently desired, but never realistically expected."

-- Michael Scheuer, Imperial Hubris, page 213

"Although suicide terrorism is virtually always a response to foreign occupation, only some occupations lead to this result. Suicide terrorism is most likely when the occupying power's religion differs from the religion of the occupied, for three reasons. A conflict across a religious divide increases fears that the enemy will seek to transform the occupied society; makes demonization, and therefore killing, of enemy civilians easier; and makes it easier to use one's own religion to relabel suicides that would otherwise be taboo as martyrdom instead."

-- Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win, page 22

"An attempt to transform Muslim societies through regime change is likely to dramatically increase the threat we face. The root cause of suicide terrorism is foreign occupation and the threat that foreign military presence poses to the local community's way of life. ... Even if our intentions are good, anti-American terrorism would likely grow, and grow rapidly."

-- Robert A. Pape, Dying to Win, page 245

"The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001 did not 'attack America,' as political leaders and news media in the United States have tried to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy. Employing the strategy of the weak, they killed innocent bystanders, whose innocence is, of course, no different from that of the civilians killed by American bombs in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere."

-- Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, page XV

"The term 'blowback,' which officials of the Central Intelligence Agency first invented for their own internal use, is starting to circulate among students of international relations. It refers to the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people. What the daily press reports as the malign acts of 'terrorists' or 'drug lords' or 'rogue states' or 'illegal arms merchants' often turn out to be blowback from earlier American operations."

-- Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, page 8

Good luck on that quiz, Rudy.

Source: Raw Story

Tail-Chaser in Chief

In the Clinton era, this would have an entirely different connotation. But in the Bush White House, tail chasing is all about the circular reasoning and self-reinforcing claims which are patently illogical nonsense but are used by the administration to justify the destruction of human life in Iraq. The Palm Beach Post explains:

See if you can follow this argument: The United States has to be in Iraq to fight the terrorists who are in Iraq because the United States is in Iraq. If you do follow that familiar argument, you're going in a circle. It's familiar because president Bush has argued it many times before, trying to make the case that Iraq is the "central front in the war on terror."

How many times do you go around before you realize that you are chasing your fucking tail, and if you don't stop yourself you're going to continue to expend energy, without getting any closer to your goal, indefinitely. Even dogs and cats give up on this after a short time. Perhaps they should be in charge of our Iraq strategy.

Thanks to Juan Cole for posting a link to this marvelously clear and direct editorial.

The Iraq War is not about al Qaeda

This is worth repeating because it is so central to the administration's case (if you can call it that) for continuing the occupation of Iraq.

Juan Cole:

Bush was out there again on Wednesday trying to link Iraq to al-Qaeda and maintaining that the US was mainly fighting it in that country. In fact, No Mahdi Army Shiites are al-Qaeda. Almost all Sunni Arab guerrilla cells are Baathist or Salafi rather than al-Qaeda. Probably of 100,000 guerrillas fighting in Iraq, perhaps 2% could be categorized in some vague way as "al-Qaeda" if you take that term as referring to a franchise. They are mainly foreign fighters and if the US left Iraq, the local Sunni Arabs would slit their throats. Some slitting is going on even now, and the Bushies celebrate that while not seeming to recognize the implication that "al-Qaeda" doesn't amount to anything as an Iraqi political force.

al Qaeda this and al Qaeda that

At SlateFred Kaplan dissects what remains of Bush's reasons for continuing with this war.

"If we were to fail, they'd come and get us. … If we let up, we'll be attacked. … It's better to fight them there than here."

Clearly, this is nonsense on three levels.

First, the vast majority of the insurgents have nothing to do with al-Qaida or its ideology. They're combatants in a sectarian conflict for power in Iraq, and they have neither the means nor the desire to threaten North America.

Second, to the extent that the true global terrorists could attack us at home, they could do so whether or not U.S. troops stay or win in Iraq. The one issue has nothing to do with the other.

Third, what kind of thing is this to say in front of the allies? If our main goal in bombing, strafing, and stomping through Iraq is to make sure we don't have to do so on our own territory, will any needy nation ever again seek our aid and cover?

But PAF is feeling nostalgic. Remember the good old days not so long after 9-11 when the President was "not that concerned" about bin Laden and Al Qaeda? You know, when he was trying to divert our attention from Afghanistan by downplaying Osama and Al Qaeda because (a) he had just let them escape and (b) he wanted to refocus our attention on Iraq to convince us Saddam was somehow a greater threat?



March 13, 2002. We invaded Iraq one year later. Now, of course, we can't possibly end that senseless war because of, you know, al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

NYT reports:

Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than at any time since the invasion more than four years ago, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Sixty-one percent of Americans say the United States should have stayed out of Iraq and 76 percent say things are going badly there, including 47 percent who say things are going very badly, the poll found.

Still, the majority of Americans support continuing to finance the war as long as the Iraqi government meets specific goals.

...Public support for the war has eroded. In January 2003, 64 percent of Americans said the United States did the right thing in taking military action in Iraq and 28 percent said the United States should have stayed out. The current numbers are nearly reversed, with 35 percent saying the United states did the right thing and 61 percent saying the country should have stayed out. In January of this year, 58 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq and 38 percent said going in was the right thing.

The nationwide telephone poll was conducted Friday through Wednesday with 1,125 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

A majority, 76 percent, including 51 percent of Republicans, say additional troops sent to Iraq this year by Mr. Bush either have had no impact or are making things worse. Twenty percent of all respondents say the increase is improving the situation.

Most Americans support a timetable for withdrawal. Sixty-three percent say the United States should set a date for withdrawing troops from Iraq sometime in 2008.

While troops are still in Iraq, Americans overwhelmingly support continuing to finance the war, though most want to do so with conditions. Thirteen percent want Congress to block all money for the war.

Note for NYT: the Iraq war began in March 2003, so the January poll would have been prospective, as in "Would it be the right thing..."

Civilian control

Spencer Ackerman makes a strong case for civilian leadership in matters of politics and strategy which should govern when wars are begun and ended, even when deployed troops may see things differently from their day-to-day more tactically oriented perspective. Since wars are necessarily, inextricably political acts (Clausewitz's thesis), and since we do want to remain a democracy rather than a military dictatorship (don't we?), Ackerman's argument for civilian control strikes me as persuasive and basically right. However, when civilian leaders decide that it's time to end the war but many military people continue to want to fight, the resulting situation will lend itself to "stab in the back" myth-making. Of course, that expectation doesn't excuse the Dems for caving on war funding. On matters of this kind of significance, we should expect our leaders to do what's best for the country even if it means exposing themselves to a right-wing backlash and, perhaps for some, risking their political careers. Feingold and Hagel have been admirably outspoken and clear about this.

Seriously, How fucked up is this?

Post:

Democrats gave up their demand for troop-withdrawal deadlines in an Iraq war spending package yesterday, abandoning their top goal of bringing U.S. troops home and handing President Bush a victory in a debate that has roiled Congress for months. ...Instead of sticking with troop-withdrawal dates, Democrats accepted a GOP plan to establish 18 political and legislative benchmarks for the Iraqi government, with periodic reports from Bush on its progress, starting in late July. If the Iraqis fall short, they could forfeit U.S. reconstruction aid.

NYT:

In backing down on Tuesday, the Democratic leaders accepted an outcome that had appeared increasingly likely for weeks, particularly as Democrats became concerned that their defiance could be portrayed as indifference to the troops.

Representative David R. Obey, Democrat of Wisconsin and chairman of the Appropriations Committee, was reported in the NYT as saying:

“There has never been a chance of a snowball in Hades that Congress would cut off those funds to those troops in the field.”

We kowtow to the culture of compulsory 'patriotism' here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

When a redeployment is not a withdrawal

NPR:

...the Pentagon is considering maintaining a core group of forces in Iraq, possibly for decades. ...A series of military installations could be maintained around Iraq, with a total of total of 30,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops, for a long period of time — maybe a few decades. There are currently about 160,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

The bases would be located in various strategic locations, ones that served by air landing strips, for instance. The bases would be sealed and U.S. forces wouldn't be on patrols as they are now.

Meanwhile, the surge within the surge could effectively double US combat forces in Iraq later this year.

Paradise regained

Juan Cole:

all the activity related to the "surge" seems to have gotten the mayhem nearly back down to what it was in . . . July 2006, that veritable paradise of communal harmony.

What kind of democracy is this?

Andrew Bacevich Sr., retired miltary officer, conservative professor of international relations, and long-time critic of the Iraq war, lost his son Lt. Andrew Bacevich jr., to the war. Lt. Bacevich was killed by a bomb in Balad, Iraq on Mother's Day.

In an NPR interview, Professor Bacevich reflects on the bitter irony of having spoken out against the war, seeming to win a political victory in the form of an antiwar popular mandate, and yet contunuing to suffer profound human losses as the war grinds on. He asks:

What kind of democracy is this, when the people do speak, and the people's voice is unambiguous, but nothing happens?

It is a very good question.

Another Episode of

"What They knew and When They Knew It"

Walter Pincus reports in the Washington Post:

Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials familiar with the prewar studies. ...The assessments were delivered to the White House and to congressional intelligence committees before the war started.

So enough already with the threadbare, lame-ass, not even remotely credible "bad intelligence" excuses. The administration knew that the WMD evidence was dubious, they knew Saddam had no real connections with al Qaeda or 9-11, and they knew the invasion was likely to generate an insurgency and strengthen the jihadist militants; and they told us exactly the opposite on every single count.

Young Yahoos in the heartland

You see, patriotism requires unquestioning support for "the troops" in the name of Freedom, and in its more exuberant forms is spiced with racist calls for mass extermination (i.e., "1 million dead ragheads = priceless"). Young Americans like these are our hope for a better future.

US imperial prerogative questioned by unworthy & ungrateful world

According to the Post:

Advocacy groups and development experts took aim at an unwritten rule that has for six decades governed the financial institutions created in the aftermath of World War II: The U.S. president picks the World Bank chief, and Europe selects the head of its affiliate institution, the International Monetary Fund.

"Paul Wolfowitz's problems at the World Bank stem in part from a widespread perception that he disproportionately represents U.S. interests rather than objectives that command a global consensus," said a letter signed this week by more than 200 people, including heads of aid organizations, and sent to the executive boards of the World Bank and the IMF. The letter called for the traditional arrangement to be "abandoned and replaced with selection procedures that reflect two key principles: transparency of process, and competence of prospective leadership without regard to national origin."

Oh sure, transparency and competence. What kind of veiled anti-Americanism is that? As if anybody believes that Uncle Sam would impose by fiat some unwelcome, antagonistic yahoo on the rest of the world and expect them to like it. It's as if they think Uncle Sam's judgment might be unsound, or not in the best interests of the world as a whole. It's preposterous.





Um, nevermind.

When PBS doesn't love you anymore: Melanie Morgan asked to return Tote Bag

UPDATE: Following her bizarre performance on the PBS News Hour, Melanie Morgan is reportedly unwelcome ever to return. In honor of the event, Crooks and Liars has something of a nostalgic look back at a few of Melanie's career highlights (scroll down).

Academic Brainwashing!

None of that at Regent University, by God.

PAF mourns the passing of Jerry Falwell

Because who else would look at an event like 9-11 and immediately think: it's the gays and secularists and feminists who are responsible.

Ok, ok, there are probably millions of Battle-bots for Jesus who believe stuff like that. But Jerry went on TV and told them what to think while the buildings were still smoldering. Because in the midst of tragedy and despair, when people are searching for hope and meaning, you just can't have enough misogyny, homophobia and bigotry. Yep, Jerry was special.




The San Francisco Chronicle has a retrospective of memorable Falwell quotes, among which one of my favorites is this:

"You know when I see somebody burning the flag, I'm a Baptist preacher I'm not a Mennonite, I feel it's my obligation to whip him. In the name of the Lord, of course. I feel it's my obligation to whip him, and if I can't do it then I look up some of my athletes to help me. But, as long as at 72 I can handle most of the jobs I do it myself, and I don't think it's un-spiritual. When I, when I, when I hear somebody talking about our military and ridiculing and saying terrible things about our President, I'm thinking you know just a little bit of that and I believe the Lord would forgive me if I popped him."

Bullies for Jesus.

Don't let the screen door hit you on the way out

What will Wolfie do with his time now that he has brought democracy and stability to the Middle East and rooted out the global scourge of corruption? He'll find something. He has a killer resume, and friends with connections and deep pockets. To paraphrase something a militaristic old asshole once said, Militaristic old assholes never die, they just become fellows at the American Enterprise Institute. Or perhaps he'll find a home at an academic institution with the high intellectual and moral standards of, say, Georgetown University. Fear not, Wolfie's accomplishments insure that he won't be sleeping on the benches of Dupont Circle among the undeserving riffraff.

Amway Surge to Victory in Iraq: A Modest Proposal

Occasionally, PAF is seized by blinding flashes of insight (or maybe it's some kind of cerebral reflux from the 1970s). It's too early, perhaps, to describe this one as a stroke of strategic genius, so for now we may call it "a modest proposal".

Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese General and ur-strategist famously wrote: "Know thyself, know thine enemy; 100 battles, 100 victories," or some shit like that. The basic idea here being to think through your strengths in relationship to the enemy's vulnerabilities, or some shit like that.

So as I'm putting myself in the shoes (boots? Birkenstocks?) of General Lute, our new war-Tsar, I'm thinking: what Great American Strengths have yet to be deployed in Iraq? For those of you who may be just tuning in, the basic problem is this: applications of military force against civilian populations appear to have antagonized the locals, who failed to perceive in these gestures the magnanimity and greatness of the American people, and so have not yet shown appropriate gratitude by laying down their own arms and declaring us the victors. General Lute would like to involve non-military US officials in winning the friendship of the Iraqis, but these officials are mostly afraid to leave their bunkers and fortified zones because of, you know, the locals. So how to use America's Great Strengths to win over the Iraqis and win the war???

[Jeopardy music]

Movies. Of course, that's it. Everybody loves American movies. We could make movies in which we pretend to achieve victory. Then everyone will see us as victors. Huzzah! Sylvester Stallone's career will enjoy a brief but bloody and glorious renaissance as he stops pretending to kill Vietnamese and begins pretending to kill Iraqis. Unfortunately, however, the traditions of American martial culture prescribe that this collective fantasy organized around the cinematic re-imagining of history should occur after we have actually lost the war in question. So, paradoxically, if we were to use this strategy now to avoid losing, this movie genre would lose its reason for being and cease to exist: poof. Like in one of those weaker Star Trek scripts about time travel. Without defeat, Stallone and most of his triumphal oeuvre would disappear from the face of the earth as if raptured into the arms of Mars. So unfortunately PAF is thinking that movies will have to wait because we can't un-lose until we lose.

So... What other strengths...???

[Jeopardy music]

Excelsior! Ladies and gentlemen, the Great Strength of America yet to be deployed in Iraq is good old-fashioned Salesmanship (and that starts with S, which rhymes with... er, you get the idea). Oh sure, we've tried great massive doses of Haliburton-style venality and corruption in Iraq, but those just haven't produced the results we've been looking for because you can't just throw money at a problem don'tchaknow. So here's the plan: back to basics, with an overwhelming shock-and-awe door-to-door sales campaign of the American Way: trombones and sheet music, Tupperware, vacuum cleaners, encyclopedias, cosmetics, herbal dietary supplements, personal gratification appliances , all marketed by smiling, smarmy, inappropriately friendly and inconveniently persistent American Salespeople. They could swarm over the streets of Falluja, Baquba, and Baghdad in great fleets of hot pink humvees, escorted by Good Humor trucks to entertain the kiddies while mom and dad check out the, um, appliances. Guaranteed the Iraqis will not be expecting this.

So, there you have it. Operation Unwelcome Salespitch. Characteristically American. Element of surprise. Refusing to leave until the sale is made. Overwhelming all resistance. Victory in six months or less. Guaranteed. Or double your money back.

Would we lie to you?

Why torture is helping us lose the war

Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar, two former top military commanders, on the reasons why tolerance for torture is both wrong and counterproductive:

These assertions that "torture works" may reassure a fearful public, but it is a false security. We don't know what's been gained through this fear-driven program. But we do know the consequences.

As has happened with every other nation that has tried to engage in a little bit of torture -- only for the toughest cases, only when nothing else works -- the abuse spread like wildfire, and every captured prisoner became the key to defusing a potential ticking time bomb. Our soldiers in Iraq confront real "ticking time bomb" situations every day, in the form of improvised explosive devices, and any degree of
"flexibility" about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.

To understand the impact this has had on the ground, look at the military's mental health assessment report released earlier this month. The study shows a disturbing level of tolerance for abuse of prisoners in some situations. This underscores what we know as military professionals: Complex situational ethics cannot be applied during the stress of combat. The rules must be firm and absolute; if torture is broached as a possibility, it will become a reality.

This has had disastrous consequences. Revelations of abuse feed what the Army's new counterinsurgency manual, which was drafted under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, calls the "recuperative power" of the terrorist enemy. Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld once wondered aloud whether we were creating more terrorists than we were killing. In counterinsurgency doctrine, that is precisely the right question. Victory in this kind of war comes when the enemy loses legitimacy in the society from which it seeks recruits and thus loses its "recuperative
power."

The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it.

This kind of reasoning is entirely lost on the Republican base, who applaud and cheer when their primary candidates avow an intention to torture and seem to believe that America can do no wrong so if we do it, it can't be wrong. And that's the more charitable interpretation: the other possibility is that they are simply bloodthirsty and brutal.

UPDATE: My friend RO reminds me of this article from the New Yorker about Jack Bauer and the tortured politics of 24.

Chasing our Tails in Iraq

This morning's Washington Post on General Lute and his strategy:

As operations director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lute was a leading skeptic of the troop increase during the review that led to Bush's new strategy in January, according to some sources close to the process, but he reflected a consensus among senior officers that it would produce a temporary benefit, at best. "Almost across the board, almost all the chiefs, certainly the Army chief, the Centcom commander, Doug Lute, the in-country commander, none of them wanted to do the surge," said retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey. "Everybody told the president, 'Don't do it.' "

Even now, insiders said, Lute remains dubious -- not of the military's ability to perform but because the requisite political reforms and economic development in Iraq have not happened. One priority in his new assignment, they said, will be to hammer away at civilian agencies, particularly the State Department, to do more to revitalize the Iraqi economy, provide jobs, demobilize militias and give Iraqis hope for the future.

Ok, so finally we have someone in charge who understands that a political strategy must be about more than military coercion. Leaving aside for the moment the immoral, mendacious, and legally dubious invasion which got us into this situation, General Lute's multi-pronged political strategy might have been a viable approach to stabilizing Iraq, say, four years ago. But that ship has sailed, Elvis has left the building, the horse is gone and it's a little late to think about how to get the State Department involved in trying to close the barn door. Most Iraqis now support attacks on Americans and want us out, which means that the occupation authorities will not be able to provide security for these civilian agencies as they try to win back some Iraqi hearts and minds. Hell, they can't even provide security for the troops who are supposed to be providing security.

So here is Uncle Sam at this late date chasing his tail in Iraq, hoping to gain greater security by winning hearts and minds; when in actuality he won't be able to win hearts and minds without greater security, and that's not happening because we're four years into this debacle, we've callously and stupidly inflicted enormous suffering upon these people, and as a direct result we've long since lost their hearts and minds. But, maybe if we just chase that tail one more time around...

It's cute when kittens and puppies do it, it's something else altogether when people are losing their lives every day we delay ending the occupation.

UPDATE:
Juan Cole links to this McClatchy (formerly Knight-Ridder) report on the acute safety fears of civilian embassy staffers even inside the fortified Green Zone. Perhaps General Lute will organize motivational seminars to persuade them of the importance of venturing outside the fortress to shake hands, kiss babies, and impress upon the Iraqis their great good fortune at being the beneficiaries of Uncle Sam's goodwill.

A Tsar is born

General Lute, meet the Iraqis; Iraqis, Lute.

Is this a dream job, or what?? Let's ponder the job description: this person will be responsible for mediating between two intractable clusterfucks: On one side, the Iraq occupation/insurgency/civil war; on the other,the Bush-Cheney White House.

Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, [describes General Lute's new Tsardom as being] "a coordinator who works for a White House that has no long-term plan or strategy."

That was the reason given by other generals who turned down the job, including retired Marine Gen. John J. "Jack" Sheehan. "I wish the guy luck," Sheehan said of Lute yesterday. "He's got his work cut out for him."

Clusterfucks to the right of him, clusterfucks to the left, into the mouth of hell rode the commander of the Light Brigade .

(PAF offers insincere apologies to any poetry lovers who might stumble across this benighted and largely illiterate little blog. Maybe this will make amends).

What makes an atheist get out of bed in the morning?

um... life?

Daniel Lazare's answer is a bit longer than mine.

Deadeye Dick eyes Iran

Matthew Rothschild writing for The Progressive:

Even as the State Department and the National Security Council are at least exploring the possibility of talking with Tehran, the Vice President of the United States, in typical fashion, is sabotaging that effort.
On Friday, aboard an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, Cheney rattled a saber at Ahmedinejad. Cheney said: “With two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we’re sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike.” In case anyone missed what he was referring to, Cheney spelled it out: “We’ll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.”

While Deadeye Dick and the Israeli right might find the prospect of a nuclear Iran intolerable, it is not at all clear to me why Iran is so extraordinarily threatening as to warrant immediate confrontation and potential war. Just as before the Iraq war "realist" analysts argued that Saddam could be contained and deterred from using any WMD he might acquire, it seems to me that Iran would be deterrable in just the same way. A war to disarm Iran would be just as unnecessary, and just as tragically counterproductive, as was the attack on Iraq.

There are hopeful signs that some in the uniformed military agree that Iran does not pose a threat sufficient to justify military action, and are prepared to risk their careers to avoid such a calamity.

Tragic

Although I do not know him, I have read and admired Professor Bacevich's writings, and I am saddened to hear of his son's loss in Iraq.

Of course, every single soldier and civilian killed is a tragedy, but this story has such a bitter irony about it, it brings home to me the utter stupidity and terrible waste of Bush's war.

I am sincerely sorry for the Bacevich family's loss, and for all of our losses.

More here.

Compulsory 'patriotism' in the heartland

Reported by Matthew Rothschild of The Progressive:

Michael Baker worked for the Lincoln, Nebraska, public schools since 1981. But after he showed the documentary “Baghdad ER” to his geography class on April 18, his career there was over. This, despite the fact that in 2006, Baker was one of only 47 teachers in the state to win National Board Certification, according to the Lincoln Journal Star, which broke the story. “The morning after I showed the documentary ‘Baghdad ER’ was my last day in class.”

HBO, which aired “Baghdad ER,” describes it this way: “2-time Emmy Award winner producer/director Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill capture the humanity, hardships and heroism of the US Military and medical personnel of the 86th Combat Support Hospital, the Army’s premier medical facility in Iraq. Sometimes graphic in its depiction of combat-related wounds, Baghdad ER offers an unflinching and honest account of the realities of war.”

Well, we certainly can't have that. Not when there's a war on. Teaching honestly about war when there's a war on could undermine morale and support for the president and stuff. No teacher should be allowed to teach about war when there's a war on.

“Baker is an anti-American socialist who has been using his classes to attack capitalism and democracy,” an e-mailer named Craig wrote. “There are many students who were unhappy with him. . . . This is a teacher who should have been fired a long time ago. This is a good day for Lincoln.”

The last thing you want in your educational system is to have your children exposed to other viewpoints (especially if the teacher is good). Anybody who would question capitalism, or democracy the way we practice it in the land of the free, should be blacklisted. Otherwise, freedom could be endangered by thinking. When teachers teach, the terrorists win.



Disclaimer: PAF is a former Lincoln resident. It was a good day for Lincoln when I left.

men·da·cious

Cheney to U.S. soldiers at a base near Tikrit :

"We are here, above all, because the terrorists who have declared war on America and other free nations have made Iraq the central front in that war".

Actually, Mr. Vice President, that was your doing.

Exhibit A.

Exhibit B.

Cheney continues to piss on our leg and then tell us it's raining.

Iraqi Parliament: "It's been real..."

Washington Post reports:

A majority of members of Iraq's parliament have signed a draft bill that would require a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. soldiers from Iraq and freeze current troop levels. The development was a sign of a growing division between Iraq's
legislators and prime minister that mirrors the widening gulf between the Bush administration and its critics in Congress. The draft bill proposes a timeline for a gradual departure, much like what some U.S. Democratic lawmakers have demanded, and would require the Iraqi government to secure parliament's approval before any further extensions of the U.N. mandate for foreign troops in Iraq, which expires at the end of 2007.

Cliff's Notes: Cheney v. Tenet

Tenet:
The administration, and especially Cheney, were eager to attack Iraq from very early on and did not seriously discuss whether or not Iraq represented any kind of real threat, or what the likely consequences of toppling Saddam might be.


Cheney:
We did too talk about Iraq, but the head of US intelligence wasn't invited.

Not very reassuring, Mr. Vice President.

Haditha

AFP reports on the Testimony of a Marine sergeant who both witnessed and participated in Haditha massacres:

[The sergeant testified that]...five Iraqi men were shot dead as they held up their hands to US forces in Haditha in November 2005. ...Prosecutors allege the Marines went on a killing spree in Haditha, a town in the heart of the Sunni triangle, shooting unarmed men, women and children after a comrade was killed by a roadside bomb while on patrol.

Sadly, Haditha is not an isolasted instance, but more like the tip of an iceberg.

Gifts

My co-workers, with whom I have been team-teaching for several years, today gave me a very nice bottle of single malt and a beautiful card with an old painting of Edinburgh on one side and some fine comradely sentiments on the other. Sipping the scotch and re-reading the card a few times, the overall effect is a lovely feeling of warmth, satisfaction at having done a job well enough to earn the appreciation of my comrades, and gratitude at having had the opportunity to work with such a fine crew as this. What a lucky man I am to have worked with the likes of them.

In lieu of actual blog posting

A fine old anti-Franco poster.

Yikes

I don't generally go looking for zany right-wing battle-bots to ridicule, but sometimes you just can't avoid them. I just saw Melanie Morgan on the PBS News Hour and, whoa, what a scary, hysterical and incoherent performance that was. Ms. Morgan, representing Move America Forward, berated VoteVets.org as defeatist tools of al Qaeda -- objectively anti-troop dontchaknow (despite the fact that their members are, um, troops) -- and, apparently even worse, in league with the ultra-sinister George Soros:

...if we don't win in Iraq, we are going to lose America. It's that simple.
And let me also say that I certainly would hope that the Democrats, if they're planning their strategy meetings with people like Mr. Soltz [of VoteVets.org] and MoveOn.org, others who are meeting daily in telephone conference calls, which we are not, by the way, on our side, that al-Qaida is listening to their results, as well.
And I would really hope that they could put that energy into defeating the enemy rather than to accommodate some sort of political score, some sort of game to them to win elections in '08. And that's what we are doing.
We are doing rallies, e-mails. We have a complete strategy in place. And we will fight organizations like VoteVet.org and MoveOn.org. We don't have the millions of dollars in funding that George Soros has given them, but we have the hearts and will of American people.

This was just breathtakingly over the top in all kinds of ways: our choices are either total victory in Iraq or death for America (to achieve this "victory," Ms. Morgan has called for a World War II style "blitz" in Iraq unconstrained by wimpish fears of "collateral damage"); Democrats are eager to surrender the country (because the only alternative to exterminating all the brutes in a "blitz" is to throw open the gates and bow down before Osama and his hordes); peace activists are in conference calls with Osama (Move America Forward apparently avoids conference calls in order to keep Osama in the dark); George Soros is paying the phone bills for all this presumably hoping that more conference calls will lead to incorporation of America into a jihadist super-caliphate (no Mary Poppins jokes, please; PAF is on a roll here); Melanie and her fellow battle-bots have "a complete strategy" for fighting VoteVets and MoveOn and the conference call menace, but not a clue about how to minimize the senseless killing in Iraq, attain regional stability, or politically isolate and disempower al Qaeda and the militant jihadis, all of which she is happy to leave up to the commanders, whose track record to date she apparently finds confidence-inspiring; and all the while, she somehow believes, "the hearts and will of American people" are still bravely supporting the president's war.

WTF???


If PBS has to look this hard to find believers, this war has jumped the shark.

I know you are but what am I?

Feith on Tenet:

...the problem with George Tenet is that he doesn't seem to care to get his facts straight. He is not meticulous. He is willing to make up stories that suit his purposes and to suppress information that does not.

No.

You don't say.

Or don't you?

Wolfowitz sucks wind

The New York Times:

A committee of World Bank directors has formally notified Paul D. Wolfowitz that they found him to be guilty of a conflict of interest in arranging for a pay raise and promotion for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, in 2005. The findings stepped up the pressure on Mr. Wolfowitz to resign.

Sayonara sucker.

The dueling douchebags of Georgetown University

It's a titanic struggle between the slam dunk $4 million book deal cash-it-in kid (left) and "the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth " (right). Hurry, students, seats are limited.

In a Washington Post article, one student who is simultaneously enrolled in courses taught by Feith and Tenet reports that:

...neither professor used the class to defend his record. "They stood on their principles but acknowledged where things went wrong," he said. They also blamed one another, with Feith noting the faulty CIA intelligence on Iraq's weapons program and Tenet lashing out at the Pentagon for questioning CIA analysts' work.

"There was definitely some tension over DOD's work where Tenet really resented the fact, and he made it clear, that DOD was challenging the CIA's assessments," [the student] recalled. "And Feith on so many occasions really was challenging the CIA's assessment, and he insisted that his office was not doing alternative intelligence work, but doing policy work."

So both stood on principle and neither defended his record, but each blamed the other for mendacious policy failures in which both had important roles.

Further:

Each professor asks his students to play the role he gave up in 2004. Assignments include briefing the president on threats and preparing plans for war.

So the central theme of each professor's course is "You pretend to be me as I help mislead the country into war and I'll grade you on how well you do it". That's gotta lead to some serious critical analysis.

What a priceless educational experience this must have been.

You know, I like to think that one of the virtues of a life's work in academia is that on the worst day you ever had, you never killed anyone. But these guys, they've done it all.

I really hope he's wrong

Michael Klare, professor of peace studies at Hampshire College, is worried about the administration's "diplomatic" bullying of Iran and the ominous accumulation of US military force near the Persian Gulf.

The United States has made vague promises of improved relations if and when Iran terminates its nuclear program, but the full burden of making initial concessions falls on Tehran. ...President Bush keeps insisting that he would like to see these "diplomatic” endeavors — as he describes them — succeed, but he has yet to bring up a single proposal or incentive that might offer any realistic prospect of eliciting a positive Iranian response. And so, knowing that his “diplomatic” efforts are almost certain to fail, Bush may simply be waiting for the day when he can announce to the American people that he has “tried everything”; that “his patience has run out”; and that he can “no longer risk the security of the American people” by “indulging in further fruitless negotiations,” thereby allowing the Iranians “to proceed farther down the path of nuclear bomb-making,” and so has taken the perilous but necessary step of ordering American forces to conduct air and missile strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities. At that point, the 80 planes aboard the Nimitz — and those on the Eisenhower and the Stennis as well — will be on their way to targets in Iran, along with hundreds of TLAMs [Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles] and a host of other weapons now being assembled in the Gulf.

Seymour Hersh has been warning of this for some time.

Tom Englehardt summarizes likely consequences of a US attack on Iran here.

...to anyone not delusional -- which leaves out you-know-who and his Vice President -- a massive air assault on Iran, surely involving bunker-busting missiles with staggering explosive power, would seem to be an act of madness. It would be immensely destructive to Iran (and yet almost surely a rallying point for its fundamentalist regime); bloody in its repercussions for the U.S. (especially our troops in Iraq); imperiling to U.S, allies in the region; and, for the global economy, a potential energy catastrophe. A series of explosive events -- some thoroughly unexpected and so never war-gamed by U.S. military strategists -- could unravel the oil heartlands of the planet, making the administration's last several years in Iraq little more than an hors d'oeuvre before a banquet of catastrophe. The decision to attack Iran would be the equivalent of setting off an advanced IED directly under the main highway of what's left of global order.

God in my classroom?

Washington Post reports that Evangelical Christians often feel that their beliefs are not respected or validated in academia, and that this constitutes discrimination. Evidence of discrimination is largely anecdotal, but there has been a survey of professors' attitudes towards adherents of various religions:

[The] survey, by the San Francisco-based Institute for Jewish and Community Research... found what the institute's director and chief pollster, Gary A. Tobin, called an "explosive" statistic: 53 percent of its sample of 1,200 college and university faculty members said they have "unfavorable" feelings toward evangelical Christians.

Tobin asked professors at all kinds of colleges -- public and private, secular and religious, two-year and four-year -- to rate their feelings toward various religious groups, from very warm or favorable to very cool or unfavorable. He said he designed the question primarily to gauge anti-Semitism but found that professors expressed positive feelings toward Jews, Buddhists, Roman Catholics and most other religious groups.

The only groups that elicited highly negative responses were evangelical Christians and Mormons.

I can't say that this surprises me, but I certainly don't see it as evidence of discrimination. Rather, I think it is evidence of a wariness among professors toward religious groups who are perceived to be militantly anti-intellectual and whose standard of fairness often demands that their religious beliefs be accorded a privileged status as unquestionable truth claims. Academia is about the critical and rigorous evaluation of all truth claims - this is the single unifying commitment of the academic community across all fields and schools. For Evangelicals to expect their religiously-based truth claims to be accepted at face value is, in effect, to demand special treatment for those claims.

You may believe anything you like in your spiritual life, but if you bring it in to the classroom and offer it as a truth claim which has consequences for the rest of us, there is no reason to expect a special dispensation for those claims because you believe them to be divinely sanctioned. The instructor is not obligated to accept a student's religiously-based claims as true or valid simply because a student makes them out of a sense of religious commitment. Singling out students for ridicule on the basis of their religious beliefs is unethical and unacceptable, but that does not mean that professors cannot critically evaluate religiously based claims. Indeed it is their duty to their profession and their students that they do so.

At a time when three of the ten Republican candidates for President of the United States can assert along with many Evangelicals that they do not believe in evolution -- let's remind ourselves that we are talking about an enormously powerful and robust scientific theory which has withstood over a century and a half of critical intellectual scrutiny -- there is legitmate concern for a religiously-based anti-intellectualism abroad in the land. Converting our colleges and universities from centers of critical intellectual discourse into madrassas run according to the standards of the Christian Taliban would be a social and cultural catastrophe.

Losing Hearts and Minds - on all sides

Washington Post reports the results of a survey of US troops in Iraq shows widespread willingness to tolerate or commit abuses:

More than one-third of U.S. soldiers in Iraq surveyed by the Army said they believe torture should be allowed if it helps gather important information about insurgents, the Pentagon disclosed yesterday. Four in 10 said they approve of such illegal abuse if it would save the life of a fellow soldier.

In addition, about two-thirds of Marines and half the Army troops surveyed said they would not report a team member for mistreating a civilian or for destroying civilian property unnecessarily. "Less than half of Soldiers and Marines believed that non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect," the Army report stated.

About 10 percent of the 1,767 troops in the official survey -- conducted in Iraq last fall -- reported that they had mistreated civilians in Iraq, such as kicking them or needlessly damaging their possessions.

And we're not just talking about the grunts. See evidence of the systematic discounting of Iraqi lives and basic human rights at the command level here. Can you say "Downward Spiral," boys and girls?

Shhh: Commander guy is listening

James Risen in the New York Times:

Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.

Rather, they argued that the president had the constitutional authority to decide for himself whether to conduct surveillance without warrants.

Torturer guy

Andrew Cockburn's book, Rumsfeld, excerpted at Counterpunch:

Sometime in mid-August 2003, Rumsfeld took action to deal with the question of "insurgency" in Iraq once and for all. During an intelligence briefing in his office he reportedly expressed outrage at the quality of intelligence he was receiving from Iraq, which he loudly and angrily referred to as "shit", banging the table with his fist "so hard we thought he might break it",according to one report. His principal complaint was that the reports were failing to confirm what he knew to be true ­ that hostile acts against U.S. forces in Iraq were entirely the work of FSLs ["Former Saddam Loyalists"] and dead-enders. Scathingly, he compared the quality of the Iraqi material with the excellent intelligence that was now, in his view, being extracted from the prisoners at Guantanamo, or "Gitmo," as the military termed it, under the able supervision of prison commander Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller. Rumsfeld concluded his diatribe with a forthright instruction to Stephen Cambone [under-secretary of defense for intel]ligence] that Miller be ordered immediately to the Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, where the unfortunate PUCs [Persons Under Confinement] were ending up, and "Gitmoise it." Cambone in turn dispatched the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a fervent Christian fundamentalist given to deriding the Muslims' Allah as "an idol," to Cuba to brief Miller on his mission.

Boykin must have given Miller careful instruction, for he arrived in Iraq fully prepared, bringing with him experts such as the female interrogator who favored the technique of sexually taunting prisoners, as well as useful tips on the use of dogs as a means of intimidating interviewees. First on his list of appointments was Lt. Ricardo Sanchez, who had succeeded McKiernan as the commander of all U.S. forces in Iraq. It must have been an instructive conversation, since within 36 hours Sanchez issued instructions on detainee interrogation that mirrored those authorized by Rumsfeld for use at Guantanamo in December the previous year that gave cover to techniques including hooding, nudity, stress positions, "fear of dogs," and "mild" physical contact with prisoners. There were some innovations in Sanchez' instructions however, such as sleep and dietary manipulation. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the overall commander of the U.S. military prison system in Iraq at that time, later insisted that she did not know what was being done to the prisoners at Abu Gharib, though she did recall Miller remarking that "at Guantanamo Bay we learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing that they have" and "if you allow them to believe at any point that they are more than a dog, then you've lost control of them".

The techniques were apparently fully absorbed by the Abu Ghraib interrogators and attendant military police, as became apparent when photographs snapped by the MPs finally began to surface, initially on CBS News' 60 Minutes in late April 2004. When Rumsfeld first learned that there were pictures extant of naked, humiliated and terrified prisoners being abused by cheerful, he said, according to an aide who was present, "I didn't know you were allowed to bring cameras into a prison."

...The army's criminal investigation division began a probe on January16, 2004, after Joseph Darby, a soldier not involved in the abuse, slipped the investigators a CD carrying some of the photos. As the CID investigation set to work, Karpinski, according to her later testimony, asked a sergeant at the prison, "What's this about photographs?" The sergeant replied, "Ma'am, we've heard something about photographs, but I have no idea. Nobody has any details, and Ma'am, if anybody knows, nobody is talking." When she asked to see the logbooks kept by the military intelligence personnel, she was told that the CID had cleared up everything. However, when she went to look for herself, she found they had missed something, a piece of paper stuck on a pole outside a little office used by the interrogators. "It was a memorandum signed by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, authorizing a short list, maybe 6 or 8 techniques: use of dogs; stress positions; loud music; deprivation of food; keeping the lights on, those kinds of things," Karpinski said. Over to the side of the paper was a line of handwriting, which to her appeared to be in the same hand and with the same ink as the signature. The line read: "Make sure this happens!!"

Self-Parody-er in Chief

From the New York Times:

In a speech to a construction industry trade group in Washington, Mr. Bush ...continued to criticize Congress for trying to use the bill to dictate timelines for withdrawal.

“The question is, ‘Who ought to make that decision, the Congress or the commanders?’ ” Mr. Bush said. “As you know, my position is clear — I’m the commander guy.”

Taps

Although he wasn't killed in combat, my father died while on active duty. The army honored him with a memorial service where a soldier played taps on a bugle. I thought I knew what to expect, but it surprised me with its breathtaking emotional power. It was much slower than I expected, and so piercingly mournful, it connected so directly with our pain and sorrow, I will never forget it. I think a lot of military ritual is bullshit, but taps is beautiful and terrible and necessary.

Happy 4th Anniversary