Bush & News Media Rewrite History Before our Eyes

TPM:

Big News Orgs Help Bush Whitewash History Of Iraq War

By Greg Sargent - December 2, 2008, 10:02AM
This really isn't complicated. President Bush was not being "blunt" or showing "candor" when he told ABC News in an interview published yesterday that his biggest regret was the failure of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War.

Rather, he was whitewashing away his own role in the fisaco by promoting the demonstrable falsehood that there was no available evidence or information that argued against war and that he was merely fooled into invading Iraq solely by the bad intel.

The big news orgs seem eager to help Bush do this. Not a single one of their reports on the interview that we can find bothered to tell readers that there was plenty of good intel -- ignored by the Bush administration -- saying that Saddam wasn't the threat Bush was claiming he was. Nor did any of them bother mentioning that the weapons inspectors in Iraq were saying the same thing -- something that also went ignored.

These facts are absolutely central to understanding Bush's efforts to falsify history in yesterday's interview. Yet they went unmentioned in reports by Reuters, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, CNN, and The New York Times.

Worse, at least one news org pretended that Bush was making some kind of admission or concession here. WaPo hailed Bush's "candor" and said he was being "unusually blunt."

Let's go over this very slowly. For Bush to blame the failure of intel for his decision to invade is not a concession at all, and it is not an admission of failure on his part. Rather, it is the opposite of these things. It is an evasion of responsibility for what happened.

Yet the big news orgs seem unable -- or unwilling -- to grasp this simple dynamic or give readers the info they need to understand it, and for some reason are perfectly willing to enable Bush's falsification of history.

Much like the idea that Vietnam was a "mistake" (oops), this will join the ranks of Americans' collective self-deceptions about our imperial history.

Historical fun facts

Even Hitler thought Franco was a dick. After their meeting in 1940, Hitler said he'd rather have several teeth pulled than ever have to spend any more time with Franco.

When the Furhrer decides you're too much of an asshole to ever want to see again, it's time to reassess. Unfortunately, the Generalissimo appears not to have been sufficiently sensitive to have taken the hint.

End of the "Monster years"?

Krugman reflects on the election:

Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.
What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.
And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”
Four years ago it seemed as if the monsters would dominate American politics for a long time to come. But for now, at least, they’ve been banished to the wilderness.

Unfortunately for us, there are 56 million voters out there ready to welcome the monsters into their homes and keep them alive until the next election cycle. Our monsters aren't going away anytime soon.


hat tip: Crooks and Liars

WTF are those people thinking?

Let's recap:

The Republicans have spent the bulk of the last 30 years aggressively redistributing income upwards in favor of the very rich few, deregulating the economy and especially the now precarious financial sector, and putting the country on the brink of an economic crisis of historic proportions. They misled us into a disastrous and unnecessary war of aggression, instituted policies of what amounts to extrajudicial abduction and torture, seriously threatened fundamental freedoms like habeas corpus, and engaged in wholesale warrentless wiretapping. And they ran a transparently fraudulant and mean-spirited campaign which included race-baiting and red-baiting and religion-baiting directly attributable to the campaign and the party apparatus.

All of that and more, and they still get 56 million votes.

Small celebrations of democracy

6:20 this morning, PAF voted for Obama.

More people than I expected at the polling place that early in the morning, many of them visibly happy about voting in this election. One woman ahead of me had her son in the booth with her and emerged grinning at me. She said nothing, but it was clear as day: she was so pleased to give her son the gift of a piece of history by sharing her vote with him.

This is not the rapture and we're not saved.

But it is a sweet moment for a whole bunch of good reasons, and it was great to see fellow citizens so obviously enjoying that feeling.

Yikes!

Atheists!

Piss on my leg and tell me it's raining

Neocon, war booster, and McCain advisor
Robert Kagan wants us to move beyond silly and absurd conspiracy theories about the neocons and the administration deliberately misleading the public to justify the Iraq war.

The only problem with that: They deliberately misled the public to justify the Iraq war.

Yep.
Uh-huh.
Oh yeah.
Not just once, and not by mistake.
Enough evidence yet?
How much more evidence do you need?






The verdict.

Mr Kagan would like us to think that taking seriously all this evidence of calculated deception is roughly equivalent to believing that LBJ shot JFK, or spreading scurrilous stories about Jews secretly plotting to take over the world.

What do you say when somebody repeatedly and deliberately misleads you, and then when you call them on it after you have paid a heavy price for their dishonesty, they insult your intelligence and equate you with loonies and con men?

I'm having trouble finding more than two words for Mr. Kagan.

McCain with George the president

McCain's imperial neocon agenda

Jonathan Landay at McClatchy:

Although he's cultivated a maverick image, McCain's fixation with Iraq, and with regime change more generally, is squarely in step with his party's neoconservatives, many of whom now work for his campaign. Neoconservatives believe that the U.S. must preserve its unchallenged global dominance and military superiority, and reshape the world, by force if necessary.

...While McCain has toned down many of his hard-line pronouncements in this campaign, a McClatchy review of dozens of his speeches, interviews, statements and writings over more than two decades traces an evolution from reluctant warrior to advocate of U.S. military intervention on a global scale.

In speeches and interviews McCain:

Has vowed, since at least 1999, to institute a "rogue state rollback" policy of arming rebel forces to replace regimes in Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea and other nations.
He said such nations were developing weapons of mass destruction, supporting terrorism and threatening "our interests and values."
Has advocated sending the U.S. military to "back up" those rebel forces "when they meet with reversals."
Has said that civilian casualties should be a secondary concern of military operations.
Has invoked a variety of justifications for using force, from defending the nation's security, allies, interests and "principles and values" to halting genocide in places such as Darfur and Kosovo and salvaging U.S. "credibility."
Has called for the creation of a "League of Democracies" to circumvent the U.N. Security Council when Russia and China oppose the use of force, tough sanctions or other actions sought by the U.S.

I'm getting a little tired of the idea that there is no such thing as too much war.

why Al Qaeda might want McCain to win

Because the neocons (including McCain) and al-Qaeda are symbiotic, they need each other to frighten their own followers and legitimate their militant extremism.


Spencer Ackerman:

The case is simple enough. Al Qaeda prefers an indefinite U.S. occupation of Iraq and a bellicose U.S. all across the Muslim world to radicalize Muslims to its terrorist cause and drain the U.S. of its financial wealth — what Osama bin Laden calls his “bleed to bankruptcy” strategy. Hence, the reason why, as the CIA eventually concluded, Bin Laden tried to help George W. Bush’s reelection in 2004 by releasing a late-October tape. McCain pledges basic continuity with Bush on the Iraq war. As Scheunemann put it, “John McCain will spend what it takes to win.”

More from the Washington Post:

Al-Qaeda is watching the U.S. stock market's downward slide with something akin to jubilation, with its leaders hailing the financial crisis as a vindication of its strategy of crippling America's economy through endless, costly foreign wars against Islamist insurgents.

And at least some of its supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to continue that trend.

"Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election," said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the "failing march of his predecessor," President Bush.

The Web commentary was one of several posted by Taliban or al-Qaeda-allied groups in recent days that trumpeted the global financial crisis and predicted further decline for the United States and other Western powers. In language that was by turns mocking and ominous, the newest posting credited al-Qaeda with having lured Washington into a trap that had "exhausted its resources and bankrupted its economy." It further suggested that a terrorist strike might swing the election to McCain and guarantee an expansion of U.S. military commitments in the Islamic world.

"It will push the Americans deliberately to vote for McCain so that he takes revenge for them against al-Qaeda," said the posting, attributed to Muhammad Haafid, a longtime contributor to the password-protected site. "Al-Qaeda then will succeed in exhausting America."

...the comments summarized what has emerged as a consensus view on extremist sites, said Adam Raisman, a senior analyst for the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamist Web pages. ..."The idea in the jihadist forums is that McCain would be a faithful 'son of Bush' -- someone they see as a jingoist and a war hawk," Raisman said. "They think that, to succeed in a war of attrition, they need a leader in Washington like McCain."

Christian bigotry feeds McCain campaign

Atheists and Muslims are not to be trusted with public responsibility, nor are their sons or daughters. Even christians who don't do it quite right are suspect.

Scary.

Go Big Red(neck)

PAF's heartland alma mater caves to right-wing pressure:

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln rescinded its speaking invitation tonight for 1960s radical-turned-educator William Ayers.

Just 11 days after next month’s election, the University of Illinois-Chicago professor, William Ayers, is scheduled to speak at a student research conference held by the UNL College of Education and Human Science.University officials cited "safety reasons" for canceling Ayers' Nov. 15 appearance.

Spokeswoman Kelly Bartling declined to elaborate on what safety concerns would keep Ayers from addressing a College of Education and Human Sciences event.

Earlier today, Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman strongly condemned the invitation and called on the NU Board of Regents and President J.B. Milliken to block it.

Heineman said through a spokeswoman this evening that he was pleased the university had reconsidered and rescinded the invitation.

An Omaha charitable foundation had announced it was pulling all of its contributions to the university. Several other donors also have indicated to university fundraisers that there could be a financial cost if Ayers speaks.

And Nebraskans by the hundreds continued to register their opposition with university administrators and others, lighting up phone lines and filling e-mail boxes.

Thanks to David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars.

Violent Hate Speech from the "real Americans"

People for the American Way document some of the hate speech directed at liberals, ACORN, and Obama:

"You liberal idiots. Dumb shits. Welfare bums. You guys just fucking come to our country, consume every natural resource there is, and make a lot of babies. That's all you guys do. And then suck up the welfare and expect everyone else to pay for your hospital bills for your kids. I just say let your kids die. That's the best move. Just let your children die. Forget about paying for hospital bills for them. I'm not gonna do it. You guys are lowlifes. And I hope you all die."

“Hi, I was just calling to let you all know that Barack Obama needs to get hung. He's a fucking nigger, and he's a piece of shit. You guys are fraudulent, and you need to go to hell. All the niggers on oak trees. They're gonna get all hung honeys, they're gonna get assassinated, they're gonna get killed.”

The scapegoating and meanness of the McCain campaign -- their narrative about dangerous un-American others (blacks, liberals/socialists, non-christians & baby killers, terrorists) taking over the country -- is bringing the poison to the surface. Of course McCain didn't create this kind of ugliness, but he seems happy to feed the fires of hate if it improves his chances on election day. Country first, don'tchaknow.

h/t Crooks and Liars.

McCain Strategy: Pump up the Racism and Fear

Here's TPM on the McCain strategy:

McCain's final strategy relies on two pillars. The first is aggressively playing to voters' fears of electing a black president. Make no mistake: not just his campaign in a general sense, but McCain himself and his top handful of advisers, are banking on the residual racism in a changing America to get them over the finish line. The second is an aggressive use of innuendo to convince casual voters that Obama is in league with Islamic terrorists bent on killing Americans.

...Ayers is nothing more than a tool that permits McCain, Palin and all their surrogates to use the noun "terrorist" in polite company in the same sentence as "Obama," over and over and over again. It allows them to cobble together a 'respectable' version of those Obama smear emails they can push in commercials and robocalls and surrogate talking points every hour of every day.

Stripped down to its components McCain's message to voters is this: "Don't forget. He's definitely black. And he may be a terrorist." That's the message.

GOP campaign theme: Scary "others" are about to take over the USA

They're not like "us real Americans". They're un-American. They're anti-American. They're liberal-leftist-socialists. They kill babies. Some of them aren't even white people. They might not be christians. They're probably terrorists.

Tell me this isn't thinly veiled racism layered on top of old-fashioned GOP fear-mongering. Or maybe its fear-mongering layered on top of old-fashioned racism. Hardly surprising that some of the GOP base are concluding that some lynchings might be in order. John Lewis was right: they are playing with fire.

Promoting hatred and fear. That's what the Republicans mean when they talk about putting the country first.

It's fraudulant and utterly vile.

Scary: Representative Michelle Bachman equates liberals and leftists with anti-American terrorists, and calls Obama anti-American

They're everywhere, these treacherous anti-Americans.

You know, what this country needs now is a new McCarthyism to keep all those scary anti-American elements in check. Especially now that the GOP has shredded the bill of rights and increased the ability of the national security state to spy on ordinary citizens and people exercising their free speech rights.

Too late for "victory" in Afghanistan?

Nir Rosen travels to Taliban country and lives to tell the tale.

General J.C. Christian presents

Passionately Credulous Bigots for McCain



Thanks to the General.

more ugliness from the GOP base

These folks are from those, you know, pro-American places Sarah likes to visit. Notice that one of these Repugs recites the line that "the only difference between Obama and Osama is BS". Wonder where that came from?

More here on the racism that is surfacing in this election.

In my dreams

If the liberals win the upcoming election, America as we have known it will no
longer exist. This country that we love, founded on Judeo-Christian values, will
cease to exist and will be replaced by a secular state hostile to Christianity.

Reverend Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association


Yeah, baby! Where do I sign up?

Olbermann is pissed off about McCain's poison

"You are not only a fraud, sir, but you are tacitly inciting lunatics to violence."

McMean and the RNC spread the poison

Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC because you need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans. And Democrats will enact an extreme leftist agenda if they take control of Washington. Barack Obama and his Democratic allies lack the judgment to lead our country. This call was paid for by McCain-Palin 2008 and the Republican National Committee at 202-863-8500.

Apparently, robocalls like this have been reported a number of states (including Ohio, where our friends in the video below are). It's not just an accident that the GOP faithful speak from this script.


Thanks to Ben Smith and Daily Kos for posting this.

UPDATE: Audio here; listen for yourself.

More right-wing phantasms of fear here.

McBush

Oh yeah.

Rethugs

This image was posted on the official web site of the Sacramento County Republican Party.

What does the Republican party have to offer America? Character assasination, racism and fear.

And more torture. Did they mention more torture?

and now a word from the GOP base

We may well be about to elect our first black president. And that will indeed be a milestone for this country. But there is a large reservoir of small-minded meanness among us that is not going away, and that will continue to poison our politics for a long, long time. And the GOP is happy to take advantage of that and fan the flames.

Thanks to David Neiwert at Crooks and Liars for posting this.

Department of Undead Horses: "Victory" in Iraq is a delusion

McClatchy reports that a new NIE on Iraq confirms what we've known for some time: underlying political tensions in Iraq remain unresolved and fester just beneath the surface. There isn't going to be any tidy happy ending to the Iraq story where McCain and his neocon pals get to ride off into the sunset like triumphant gunfighters.

A nearly completed high-level U.S. intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year.

...The draft NIE... warns that the improvements in security and political progress, like the recent passage of a provincial election law, are threatened by lingering disputes between the majority Shiite Arabs, Sunni Arabs, Kurds and other minorities, the U.S. officials said.

Sources of tension identified by the NIE, they said, include a struggle between Sunni Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen for control of the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk; and the Shiite-led central government's unfulfilled vows to hire former Sunni insurgents who joined Awakening groups.

McCain and Governor Palin can talk up American victory in Iraq as much as they want, and the brain dead jingos in the GOP base may be eating that up like zombies devoring dead flesh, but what happens in Iraq will will be determined by the Iraqis. Surge or no surge, they still have shit to work out. Until they do that, there will be no stability and no lasting peace.

Maverick, or dangerous asshole?

Tim Dickinson writing in Rolling Stone about McCain's history of recklessness and duplicity.

The myth of John McCain hinges on two transformations — from pampered flyboy to selfless patriot, and from Keating crony to incorruptible reformer — that simply never happened. But there is one serious conversion that has taken root in McCain: his transformation from a cautious realist on foreign policy into a reckless cheerleader of neoconservatism.

"He's going to be Bush on steroids," says Johns, the retired brigadier general who has known McCain since their days at the National War College. "His hawkish views now are very dangerous. He puts military at the top of foreign policy rather than diplomacy, just like George Bush does. He and other neoconservatives are dedicated to converting the world to democracy and free markets, and they want to do it through the barrel of a gun."

...In 1998, he formed a political alliance with William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, who became one of his closest advisers. Randy Scheunemann — a hard-right lobbyist who was promoting Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi — came aboard as McCain's top foreign-policy adviser. Before long, the senator who once cautioned against "trading American blood for Iraqi blood" had been reborn as a fire-breathing neoconservative who believes in using American military might to spread American ideals — a belief he describes as a "sacred duty to suffer hardship and risk danger to protect the values of our civilization and impart them to humanity." By 1999, McCain was championing what he called "rogue state rollback." First on the hit list: Iraq.

Privately, McCain brags that he was the "original neocon." And after 9/11, he took the lead in agitating for war with Iraq, outpacing even Dick Cheney in the dissemination of bogus intelligence about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. "There's other organizations besides Mr. bin Laden who are bent on the destruction of the United States," he warned in an appearance on Hardball on September 12th. "It isn't just Afghanistan. We're talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others." A few days later, he told Jay Leno's audience that "some other countries" — possibly Iraq, Iran and Syria — had aided bin Laden.

...Over the next 15 months leading up to the invasion, McCain continued to lead the rush to war. In November 2002, Scheunemann set up a group called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq at the same address as Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The groups worked in such close concert that at one point they got their Websites crossed. The CLI was established with explicit White House backing to sell the public on the war. The honorary co-chair of the committee: John Sidney McCain III.

In September 2002, McCain assured Americans that the war would be "fairly easy" with an "overwhelming victory in a very short period of time." On the eve of the invasion, Hardball host Chris Matthews asked McCain, "Are you one of those who holds up an optimistic view of the postwar scene? Do you believe that the people of Iraq, or at least a large number of them, will treat us as liberators?"

McCain was emphatic: "Absolutely. Absolutely."

Today, however, McCain insists that he predicted a protracted struggle from the outset. "The American people were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach," he said in August 2006, "which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking." McCain also claims he urged Bush to dump Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "I'm the only one that said that Rumsfeld had to go," he said in a January primary debate. Except that he didn't. Not once. As late as May 2004, in fact, McCain praised Rumsfeld for doing "a fine job."

Indeed, McCain's neocon makeover is so extreme that Republican generals like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have refused to endorse their party's nominee. "The fact of the matter is his judgment about what to do in Iraq was wrong," says Richard Clarke, who served as Bush's counterterrorism czar until 2003. "He hung out with people like Ahmad Chalabi. He said Iraq was going to be easy, and he said we were going to war because of terrorism. We should have been fighting in Afghanistan with more troops to go after Al Qaeda. Instead we're at risk because of the mistaken judgment of people like John McCain."

McCain's a fucking fraud, and a dangerous one.

the Rising

Haven't had much time to post recently. But (as usual) Bruce says most of what needs to be said right now.

Even the spooks are spooked

Laura Rozen reports in Mother Jones:

Many current and former US spies expect a McCain administration guided by neoconservatives to treat them with hostility and mistrust. They also say McCain would likely weaken the CIA by giving broad new spying authorities to the Pentagon, which CIA officials believe is more amenable to giving policymakers the intelligence they want, while being subject to less congressional oversight.

These critics point especially to the McCain campaign's top national security adviser Randy Scheunemann—who ran a front group promoting war with Iraq and the fabrications of controversial Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, and who has lobbied for aggressive NATO expansion. Scheunemann's record, they argue, encapsulates everything wrong with the past eight years of Bush leadership on intelligence issues, from a penchant for foreign policy freelancing and secret contacts with unreliable fabricators, to neoconservatives' disdain for the perceived bureaucratic timidity of the CIA and State Department, to their avowed hostility for diplomacy with adversaries. If McCain wins, "the military has won," says one former senior CIA officer. "We will no longer have a civilian intelligence arm. Yes, we will have analysts. But we won't have any real civilian intelligence capability."

"McCain would be an absolute disaster," says a second recently retired senior US intelligence operations officer.

The Bush Doctrine is The McCain Doctrine

As Glenn Greenwald points out, Sarah Palin might not know what the Bush Doctrine is, but John McCain knows exactly what it means and has embraced it as his own:



McCain believes in waging wars of regime change in cases where no real threat to US security has been shown to exist.

This can't be said often enough, and it's no joke: McCain and his politics are profoundly dangerous.

Sarah and Hillary

This is as good as anything SNL did in the golden years.

No "Victory" in sight

Aaron Glantz:

The calm we are seeing now will not continue indefinitely, and the longer the U.S. military stays in Iraq the more likely the country is to erupt in horrible violence. In his speech Thursday night, John McCain commended the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, General David Petraeus, as "brilliant." Petraeus, McCain said, has "succeeded and rescued us from a defeat that would have demoralized our military, risked a wider war and threatened the security of all Americans."

But on the ground, some of the strategies employed by General Petreaus are beginning to unravel. The Sunni "Awakening" militias he founded, armed and funded have begun fighting with the Shi'a-dominated Iraqi Army, which is also bankrolled by the United States.

"The Shiite-led government has recently stepped up a campaign to arrest leaders of the Awakening and dismantle parts of the program, whose members receive $300 a month from the U.S. military," the Washington Post reported Tuesday. "Many fighters have abandoned their posts and fled their homes to avoid detention, stoking fears that some will rejoin the insurgency." On Wednesday, Iraqi troops raided the offices of the influential Sunni clerical group, the Association of Muslim Scholars. In a statement, the Association "denounced this provocative and unjustifiable attack" and blamed the Iraqi government for any negative consequences that may result.

Soon, the United States military will have to take sides in this fight, and when it does, American soldiers will find themselves in the unenviable position of battling with groups armed with American weaponry. The longer the United States stays in Iraq, the worse off the country will be when we finally leave. Today, "victory in Iraq" is as far away as it's ever been.

Question for Candidate McCain: If the surge is "working," why aren't we safer?

General Patraeus himself admitted in Congressional testimony that he could not make a case that this policy in Iraq will make America safer:

Senator John Warner (R-VA), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former Navy Secretary, asked Gen. Petraeus during testimony in September, “If we continue what you have laid before the Congress ... Does this make America safer?” General Petraeus responded, “Well sir, I don’t know.”

Patraeus quote from here.

Is that because Iraq is not now, and was not before the war, a real threat to the safety of Americans (except the ones we send to Iraq in uniform as occupiers)? Is that because the real threat to the safety of Americans was allowed to escape from Tora Bora, and important military and intelligence resources were prematurely taken out of Afghanistan in order to focus on the needless war in Iraq? Is it because America's ongoing occupation of Iraq has fuleled anti-Americanism and visceral hatred of us around the world, creating new enemies and fostering a supportive political climate for militant Islamists? And by supporting the unnecessary and counter-productive Iraq war as single-mindedly as you have, aren't you partly responsible for the fact that our families remain unsafe? If you are ready to claim credit for the surge, shouldn't you be ready to take credit for the larger consequences of the war you have supported so vehemently?

NYT on Iraq: Still No Exit

While it was itself complicit in helping to launch this stupid war, The New York Times gets this about right. "Victory" and stability are not about to happen because the underlying political issues in Iraq remain unresolved, so for Bush "Mission Accomplished" is when his Iraq quagmire becomes somebody else's problem.

Editorial
Still No Exit

President Bush is nothing if not consistent. In a speech on Tuesday, he made it clear that he has no plan at all for ending the war in Iraq and no serious plan for winning the war in Afghanistan.

Mr. Bush wants to have it both ways — claiming success in tamping down violence in Iraq and yet refusing to make the hard choices that would flow from that.

Speaking at the National Defense University, he said he would withdraw only 8,000 more troops from Iraq by the time he leaves office. That would leave 138,000 troops behind — more than were deployed in Iraq before his January 2007 “surge.”

All of this seems to be driven more by what is happening in American battleground states than any battleground in Iraq.

While Mr. Bush and his party’s nominee, John McCain, both want to stay the course until some undefined “victory” is achieved, American voters have run out of patience. Mr. Bush and his advisers are clearly hoping that this token withdrawal will be enough to keep Iraq out of the news and out of the election debate. (Ironically, Mr. McCain who doesn’t want to withdraw any troops at all, had no choice but to declare his support for the president’s plan.)

Iraq’s leaders have also run out of patience, and they are pushing to have American troops out by 2011. That means the next president — whether it is Mr. McCain or Barack Obama — will have to quickly come up with a plan for a safe and responsible exit.

Like Mr. Bush, Iraq’s leaders want to have it both ways. They want to talk about an American withdrawal, but they are still refusing to make the tough political compromises that are their only hope for keeping things under control once the Americans are gone.

All of these months later, and Iraq’s Parliament has still not adopted an oil revenue-sharing law or a law establishing the rules for provincial elections.

So long as an American president refuses to start seriously planning for a withdrawal, Iraq’s leader will continue on this way.

Mr. Bush was right on one point Tuesday when he said that “Afghanistan’s success is critical to the security of America.”

What he didn’t say is that Washington is in real danger of losing the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda — the war Mr. Bush shortchanged again and again for his misadventure in Iraq.

Meanwhile, in the mountains of Waziristan (or god knows where) Osama bin Laden is laughing his ass off at us.

McCain and the Neocon axis

Remember the neoconservatives, those fine folks who led the way to the Bush Doctrine and the Iraq War? I bet you thought they were discredited, exposed to all the world as dangerous zealots and frauds, morally and intellectually bankrupt, banished to the wilderness where they could bicker amongst themselves but do no more real damage to the human race.

Think again.

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:

If John McCain wins, for all that has happened over the last eight years in Iraq and elsewhere, we would get a new president even more closely tied to the DC neoconservative axis than President Bush has ever been.

You can say that again.

Did I mention that you could say that again?

In fact, this probably can't be said enough. In light of all the damage they've already done, I'm disturbed that McCain's phalanx of neoconservative imperialists is not getting more attention.

Jacob Heilbrunn, writing in The Washington Post, described the neonservatives as "the most feared and reviled intellectual movement in American history." But Heilbrun also noted that the McCain campaign may enable these flesh-eating zombies to rise from the politically dead and wreak further mayhem upon the living:

Now that Robert Kagan, William Kristol ... and a host of other neocons have hitched their fortunes to McCain, the neocons are poised for a fresh comeback.

Heilbrunn, at Huffington Post, on the neocon-McCain symbiosis:

McCain represents for the neocons the ultimate synthesis of war hero and politician. And McCain, in turn, has been increasingly drawn to the neocons' militaristic vision of the U.S. as an empire that can set wrong aright around the globe. ...If McCain becomes president, the neocons will be in charge.

If you liked the Iraq War, you'll love a McCain administration.

Where does this deadly deja vu come from? Why are we susceptible time and again to the siren song of militaristic jingoism? Here's part of the answer.

Jon Stewart on GOP gender hypocrisy

Thanks to my buddy Bag for calling my attention to this priceless video clip.

JFC: Cindy McCain was wearing about $300,000 at the RNC!

From Crooks and Liars:

Cindy McCain(’s first night of Republican National Convention outfit)

Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000-$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

Wow. That’s about 60 times the health care credit McCain proposes to give families for a year. And according to Huffington Post, George W. Bush helped cover the expense:

According to an analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the McCains have received $313,413 thanks to George Bush’s tax cut.

If John McCain were President, she might have been able to add a bracelet to the ensemble. According to the same study under McCain proposed tax cuts they would have received tax breaks of $367,788.

That GOP is the party of the people, all right.

And you know, what this country needs most right now is a national trophy wife. Let's see Mrs Putin pull that off.

McCain campaign is a fraud

This headline from the Christian Science Monitor sums it up:

McCain appeals to moderates with vow to reform GOP
But his policy agenda largely reflects the Bush administration's stands on tax cuts and the Iraq war.

The kind of change the GOP is offering is skin deep: different faces on the same policies of making the rich even richer, and trying to bully the world militarily.

Change, my ass.

Don't look now, [stage whisper] but people are beginning to notice:

Bases?

We don't need no steeenking bases.

But we have em all over the world.

We are an Empire.

God's Own Surge: Sarah Palin proves my point

From Huffington Post:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a "task that is from God."

In an address last June, ...Palin asked the students to pray for the troops in Iraq, and noted that her eldest son, Track, was expected to be deployed there.

"Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God," she said. "That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan."

Now check out the passage I quoted from Walter Hixson in the post right below this one.

from the Introduction to The Myth of American Diplomacy, by historian Walter Hixson

...National identity drives U.S. foreign policy and reinforces domestic hierarchies. Foreign policy flows from cultural hegemony affirming "America" as a manly, racially superior, and providentially destined "beacon of liberty," a country which possesses a special right to exert power in the world. Hegemonic national identity drives a continuous, militant foreign policy, including the regular resort to war.

Having internalized this Myth of America, a majority, or at least a critical mass, of Americans have granted spontaneous consent to foreign policy militancy over the sweep of U.S. history. While specific foreign policies often provoke criticism, to be sure, national identity contains such criticism within secure cultural boundaries.

This is the deep-seated cultural strain that McCain is tapping in to with his macho warrior ethos, triumphalist "victory" talk, and hyper-patriotic posturing. But the implication of Hixson's argument is that we are culturally primed for those kinds of messages, and that's why they resonate with a large chunk of the American public, perhaps enough of us to make an unrepentent neocon militarist our next president.

And even if we don't elect McWar, we'll be receptive to similar messages from other militarist messengers, until we find another way to understand who we are and how we relate to the world. In various ways large and small, each of us should do what we can to challenge the culture of miltarism and compulsory hyper-patriotism.

thoughts prompted by watching the opening ceremony of the republican convention

overt political repression in America

Glenn Greewald on preemptive raids aimed at protesters in Minneapolis:

here we have a massive assault led by Federal Government law enforcement agencies on left-wing dissidents and protesters who have committed no acts of violence or illegality whatsoever, preceded by months-long espionage efforts to track what they do. And as extraordinary as that conduct is, more extraordinary is the fact that they have received virtually no attention from the national media and little outcry from anyone.

More from arrested journalist Amy Goodman.

Obama

This was perhaps the best and most important political speech I've seen in my 51 years on this planet.

I don't agree with all of it, and the Obama-Biden ticket is not the second coming, but I've never seen a candidate I thought was so right for the country and the times. We need him now.

Biden's mixed record controversial among progressives

Stephen Zunes on Biden's pro-war record:

Rather than being a hapless victim of the Bush administration’s lies and manipulation, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of Iraq and making false statements regarding Saddam Hussein’s supposed possession of “weapons of mass destruction” years before President George W. Bush even came to office.

As far back as 1998, Biden was calling for a U.S. invasion of that oil rich country. Even though UN inspectors and the UN-led disarmament process led to the elimination of Iraq’s WMD threat, Biden – in an effort to discredit the world body and make an excuse for war – insisted that UN inspectors could never be trusted to do the job.

...In the face of widespread skepticism over administration claims regarding Iraq’s military capabilities, Biden declared that President Bush was justified in being concerned about Iraq’s alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. Even though Iraq had eliminated its chemical weapons arsenal by the mid-1990s, Biden insisted categorically in the weeks leading up to the Iraq war resolution that Saddam Hussein still had chemical weapons. Even though there is no evidence that Iraq had ever developed deployable biological weapons and its biological weapons program had been eliminated some years earlier, Biden insisted that Saddam had biological weapons, including anthrax and that “he may have a strain” of small pox. And, even though the International Atomic Energy Agency had reported as far back as 1998 that there was no evidence whatsoever that Iraq had any ongoing nuclear program, Biden insisted Saddam was “seeking nuclear weapons.”

Said Biden, “One thing is clear: These weapons must be dislodged from Saddam, or Saddam must be dislodged from power.” He did not believe proof of the existence of any actual weapons to dislodge was necessary, however, insisting that “If we wait for the danger from Saddam to become clear, it could be too late.” He further defended President Bush by falsely claiming that “He did not snub the U.N. or our allies. He did not dismiss a new inspection regime. He did not ignore the Congress. At each pivotal moment, he has chosen a course of moderation and deliberation.”

...Biden even voted against an amendment sponsored by fellow Democratic senator Carl Levin that would have authorized U.S. military action against Iraq if the UN Security Council approved the use of force and instead voted for the Republican-backed resolution authorizing the United States to go to war unilaterally. In effect, Biden has embraced the neo-conservative view that the United States, as the world’s sole remaining superpower, somehow has the right to invade other countries at will, even if they currently pose no strategic threat.

Pretty depressing stuff. On the other hand,Andy Worthington defends Biden's record since the invasion, highlighting Biden's opposition to an open-ended War on Terror, his vote against the Military Comisssions Act of 2006, Biden's call for the closing of the Guantanamo gulag, and his categorical defense of Habeas Corpus. All of these are as admirable as Biden's earlier support for the war was abominable.

If Biden was a presidential candidate in a primary election, his early support for the war would prevent me from voting for him. As the vice-presidential candidate in a general election against McCain and his stable of neocon zombies, I'll hold my nose and vote for Obama-Biden without hesitation.

Victory and stability close in Iraq?

Leila Fadl, at McClatchy News, on the fragile political situation in Iraq:

A key pillar of the U.S. strategy to pacify Iraq is in danger of collapsing because the Iraqi government is failing to absorb tens of thousands of former Sunni Muslim insurgents who'd joined U.S.-allied militia groups into the country's security forces.

American officials have credited the militias, known as the Sons of Iraq or Awakening councils, with undercutting support for the group al Qaida in Iraq and bringing peace to large swaths of the country, including Anbar province and parts of Baghdad. Under the program, the United States pays each militia member a stipend of about $300 a month and promised that they'd get jobs with the Iraqi government.

But the Iraqi government, which is led by Shiite Muslims, has brought only a relative handful of the more than 100,000 militia members into the security forces. Now officials are making it clear that they don't intend to include most of the rest.

"We cannot stand them, and we detained many of them recently," said one senior Iraqi commander in Baghdad, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue. "Many of them were part of al Qaida despite the fact that many of them are helping us to fight al Qaida."

He said the army was considering setting a Nov. 1 deadline for those militia members who hadn't been absorbed into the security forces or given civilian jobs to give up their weapons. After that, they'd be arrested, he said.

Some militia members say that such a move would force them into open warfare with the government again.

"If they disband us now, I will tell you that history will show we will go back to zero," said Mullah Shahab al Aafi, a former emir, or leader, of insurgents in Diyala province who's the acting commander of 24,000 Sons of Iraq there, 11,000 of whom are on the U.S. payroll. "I will not give up my weapons. I will never give them up, and I will carry my weapon again. If it is useless to talk to the government, I will be forced to carry my weapons and my pistol."

The conflict over the militias underscores how little has changed in Iraq in the past year despite the drop in violence, which American politicians often attribute to the temporary increase of U.S. troops in Iraq that ended in July.

McCain is dead wrong on Iraq. As a moving force of the Committee to Liberate Iraq, he's been up to his neck in this since before the war began, so he has an overwhelming stake in telling us happy "victory" stories about Iraq, but that doesn't make it true.

Former career intelligence officer Ray McGovern lays out crucial aspects of Iraqscam

in the form of an open letter to Colin Powell:

...With the help of Allied intelligence services, the CIA recruited your Iraqi counterpart, Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister, Naji Sabri, and Tahir Jalil Habbush, the chief of Iraqi intelligence. They were cajoled into remaining in place while giving us critical intelligence well before the war - actually, well before your speech laying the groundwork for war.

In other words, at a time when Saddam Hussein believed that Sabri and Habbush were working for him, we had “turned” them. They were working for us, and much of the information they provided had been evaluated and verified.

Most important, each independently affirmed that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq...

...In case you [Powell] missed it, we now know from former CIA officials that his [Sabri's] information on the absence of WMD was concealed from Congress, from our senior military, and from intelligence analysts - including those working on the infamous National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1, 2002.

That NIE, titled “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for WMD,” was the one specifically designed to mislead Congress into authorizing the president to make war on Iraq.

...Tyler Drumheller, at the time a division chief in CIA’s clandestine service, was the first to tell the story of Naji Sabri, who is now living a comfortable retirement in Qatar. On CBS’s “60 Minutes” on April 23, 2006, Drumheller disclosed that the CIA had received documentary evidence from Sabri that Iraq had no WMD.

Drumheller added, “We continued to validate him the whole way through.”

Then two other former CIA officers confirmed this account to author Sidney Blumenthal, adding that George Tenet briefed this information to President George W. Bush on Sept. 18, 2002, and that Bush dismissed the information as worthless.

Wait. It gets worse. The two former CIA officers told Blumenthal that someone in the agency rewrote the report from Sabri to indicate that Saddam Hussein was “aggressively and covertly developing” nuclear weapons and already had chemical and biological weapons.

That altered report was shown to the likes of UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was “duped,” according to one of the CIA officers.

...I hope you are sitting down, Colin, because Habbush also told us Iraq had no WMD. One of the helpful insights he passed along to us was that Saddam Hussein had decided that some ambiguity on the WMD issue would help prevent his main enemy, Iran, from thinking of Iraq as a toothless tiger.

Habbush, part of Saddam’s inner circle, had direct access to this kind of information. But when President Bush was first told of Habbush’s report that there were no WMD in Iraq, Suskind’s sources say the president reacted by saying, “Well, why don’t you tell him to give us something we can use to make our case?”

Apparently, Habbush was unable or unwilling to oblige by changing his story.

Nevertheless, later in 2003, when it became clear that he had been telling the unwelcome truth, Habbush was helped to resettle in Jordan and given $5 million to keep his mouth shut.

Suskind also reveals that in the fall of 2003, Habbush was asked to earn his keep by participating in a keystone-cops-type forgery aimed at “proving” that Saddam Hussein did, after all, have a direct hand in the tragedy of 9/11.

...In sum, the CIA had both the Iraqi foreign minister and the Iraqi intelligence chief “turned” and reporting to us in the months before the war (in Naji Sabri’s case) and the weeks before your U.N. speech (in the case of Tahir Jalil Habbush).

Both were part of Saddam Hussein’s inner circle; both reported that there were no weapons of mass destruction.

But this was not what the president wanted to hear, so Tenet put the kibosh on Habbush and put Sabri on a cutter to Qatar.

The article by Sidney Blumenthal to which McGovern refers above is here.

McWar

NYT:

Mr. McCain began making his case for invading Iraq to the public more than six months before the White House began to do the same. He drew on principles he learned growing up in a military family and on conclusions he formed as a prisoner in North Vietnam. He also returned to a conviction about “the common identity” of dangerous autocracies as far-flung as Serbia and North Korea that he had developed consulting with hawkish foreign policy thinkers to help sharpen the themes of his 2000 presidential campaign.

While pushing to take on Saddam Hussein, Mr. McCain also made arguments and statements that he may no longer wish to recall. He lauded the war planners he would later criticize, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney. (Mr. McCain even volunteered that he would have given the same job to Mr. Cheney.) He urged support for the later-discredited Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi’s opposition group, the Iraqi National Congress, and echoed some of its suspect accusations in the national media. And he advanced misleading assertions not only about Mr. Hussein’s supposed weapons programs but also about his possible ties to international terrorists, Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 attacks.

...He has made the principle that the exercise of military power sets the bargaining table for international relations a consistent theme of his career ever since, and in his 2002 memoir he wrote that one of his lifelong convictions was “the imperative that American power never retreat in response to an inferior adversary’s provocation.”

Writing in The Nation Robert Dreyfuss offers a scary view of McCain's neoconservative foreign policy proclivities:

To combat what he likes to call "the transcendent challenge [of] radical Islamic extremism," McCain is drawing up plans for a new set of global institutions, from a potent covert operations unit to a "League of Democracies" that can bypass the balky United Nations, from an expanded NATO that will bump up against Russian interests in Central Asia and the Caucasus to a revived US unilateralism that will engage in "rogue state rollback" against his version of the "axis of evil." In all, it's a new apparatus designed to carry the "war on terror" deep into the twenty-first century.

"We created a number of institutions in the wake of World War II to deal with the situation," says Randy Scheunemann, McCain's top adviser on foreign policy. "And what Senator McCain wants to begin a dialogue about is, Do we need new structures and new institutions, both internally, in the US government, and externally, to recognize that the situation we face now is very, very different than the one we faced during the cold war?" Joining Scheunemann, a veteran neoconservative strategist and one of the chief architects of the Iraq War, are a panoply of like-minded neocons who've gathered to advise McCain, including Bill Kristol, James Woolsey, Robert Kagan, Max Boot, Gary Schmitt and Maj. Ralph Peters. "There are some who've moved into his camp who scare me," Wilkerson says. "Scare me."

In that last sentence, Dreyfuss is quoting Larry Wilkerson, a retired army colonel who was former Secretary of State Colin Powell's top aide.


So McCain combines a simple-minded good guy / bad guy view of the world + an instinctual militarism + neocon foreign policy advisors = a propensity for war and more war. Hey, but at least he tells us those exciting stories about "victory" being just around the corner.

Sometimes I think what Americans most want in political learership is someone who will tell them reaffirming stories about themselves. McCain wants to re-identify Americans as defenders of the free world. Been there, done that.

Either we stop the Rooskies in Georgia or...

According to Peter Hart and Jim Naureckas of the media watchdog FAIR, US mainstream media seem to accept this familiar, and overly simple, Cold War story line without much questioning:

U.S. corporate media frequently evoked the Cold War as a key to understanding the conflict between Russia and Georgia over South Ossetia. This was certainly true of the media themselves, which generally placed black hats or white hats on the actors involved depending on whether they were allied with Moscow or Washington.

On August 11, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams referred to “what’s being called the Russian blitz of the nation of Georgia, former Soviet republic that split away and is now threatening to split apart from within.” NBC reporter Jim Maceda followed up: “The powerful Russian war machine is moving ever deeper into Georgia, and teaching all of us really a lesson about what makes Russia tick.”

Scary Russians. Let's all be scared.

PAF says: We've seen that movie, and it was really dumb the first time, and the second, and it's still dumb.

How US policy helped set the stage for the Russia-Georgia crisis

Stephen Zunes :

A number of misguided U.S. policies appear to have played an important role in encouraging Georgia to launch its August 6 assault on South Ossetia.

The first had to do with the U.S.-led militarization of Georgia, which likely emboldened Saakashvili to try to resolve the conflict over South Ossetia by military means. Just last month, the United States held a military exercise in Georgia with more than 1,000 American troops while the Bush administration, according to The New York Times, was “loudly proclaiming its support for Georgia’s territorial integrity in the battle with Russia over Georgia’s separatist enclaves.” As the situation was deteriorating last month, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made a high-profile visit to Saakashvili in Tbilisi, where she reiterated the strong strategic relationship between the two countries.

Radio Liberty speculates that Saakashvili “may have felt that his military, after several years of U.S.-sponsored training and rearmament, was now capable of routing the Ossetian separatists (”bandits,” in the official parlance) and neutralizing the Russian peacekeepers.” Furthermore, Saakashvili apparently hoped that the anticipated Russian reaction would “immediately transform the conflict into a direct confrontation between a democratic David and an autocratic Goliath, making sure the sympathy of the Western world would be mobilized for Georgia.”

According to Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations, the United States may have caused Saakashvili to “miscalculate” and “overreach” by making him feel that “at the end of the day that the West would come to his assistance if he got into trouble.”

Another factor undoubtedly involved the U.S. push for Georgia to join NATO. The efforts by some prominent Kremlin lawmakers for formal recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia coincided with the escalated efforts for NATO’s inclusion of Georgia this spring, as well as an awareness that any potential Russian military move against Georgia would need to come sooner rather than later.

And, as a number of us predicted last March, Western support for the unilateral declaration of independence by the autonomous Serbian region of Kosovo emboldened nationalist leaders in the autonomous Georgian regions, along with their Russian supporters, to press for the independence of these nations as well. Despite the pro-American sympathies of many in that country, Georgians were notably alarmed by the quick and precedent-setting U.S. recognition of Kosovo.

Supporting the Troops means Rethinking US global strategy

Andrew Bacevich:

The four lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan boil down to this: Events have exposed as illusory American pretensions to having mastered war. Even today, war is hardly more subject to human control than the tides or the weather. Simply trying harder -- investing ever larger sums in even more advanced technology, devising novel techniques, or even improving the quality of American generalship -- will not enable the United States to evade that reality.

As measured by results achieved, the performance of the military since the end of the Cold War and especially since 9/11 has been unimpressive. This indifferent record of success leads some observers to argue that we need a bigger army or a different army.

But the problem lies less with the army that we have -- a very fine one, which every citizen should wish to preserve -- than with the requirements that we have imposed on our soldiers. Rather than expanding or reconfiguring that army, we need to treat it with the respect that it deserves. That means protecting it from further abuse of the sort that it has endured since 2001.

America doesn't need a bigger army. It needs a smaller -- that is, more modest -- foreign policy, one that assigns soldiers missions that are consistent with their capabilities. Modesty implies giving up on the illusions of grandeur to which the end of the Cold War and then 9/11 gave rise. It also means reining in the imperial presidents who expect the army to make good on those illusions. When it comes to supporting the troops, here lies the essence of a citizen's obligation.

On the geopolitics of Oil in the Russia-Georgia crisis

Michael Klare:

In commenting on the war in the Caucasus, most American analysts have tended to see it as a throwback to the past: as a continuation of a centuries-old blood feud between Russians and Georgians, or, at best, as part of the unfinished business of the Cold War. Many have spoken of Russia’s desire to erase the national “humiliation” it experienced with the collapse of the Soviet Union 16 years ago, or to restore its historic “sphere of influence” over the lands to its South. But the conflict is more about the future than the past. It stems from an intense geopolitical contest over the flow of Caspian Sea energy to markets in the West.

This struggle commenced during the Clinton administration when the former Soviet republics of the Caspian Sea basin became independent and began seeking Western customers for their oil and natural gas resources. Western oil companies eagerly sought production deals with the governments of the new republics, but faced a critical obstacle in exporting the resulting output. Because the Caspian itself is landlocked, any energy exiting the region has to travel by pipeline - and, at that time, Russia controlled all of the available pipeline capacity. To avoid exclusive reliance on Russian conduits, President Clinton sponsored the construction of an alternative pipeline from Baku in Azerbaijan to Tbilisi in Georgia and then onward to Ceyhan on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast — the BTC pipeline, as it is known today.

The BTC pipeline, which began operation in 2006, passes some of the most unsettled areas of the world, including Chechnya and Georgia’s two breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. With this in mind, the Clinton and Bush administrations provided Georgia with hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, making it the leading recipient of U.S. arms and equipment in the former Soviet space. President Bush has also lobbied U.S. allies in Europe to “fast track” Georgia’s application for membership in NATO.

All of this, needless to say, was viewed in Moscow with immense resentment. Not only was the United States helping to create a new security risk on its southern borders, but, more importantly, was frustrating its drive to secure control over the transportation of Caspian energy to Europe. Ever since Vladimir Putin assumed the presidency in 2000, Moscow has sought to use its pivotal role in the supply of oil and natural gas to Western Europe and the former Soviet republics as a source both of financial wealth and political advantage. It mainly relies on Russia’s own energy resources for this purpose, but also seeks to dominate the delivery of oil and gas from the Caspian states to the West.

Russia-Georgia crisis highlights moral bankruptcy of Uncle Sam's global militarism

Juan Cole:

The run-up to the current chaos in the Caucasus should look quite familiar: Russia acted unilaterally rather than going through the U.N. Security Council. It used massive force against a small, weak adversary. It called for regime change in a country that had defied Moscow. It championed a separatist movement as a way of asserting dominance in a region it coveted.

Indeed, despite George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's howls of outrage at Russian aggression in Georgia and the disputed province of South Ossetia, the Bush administration set a deep precedent for Moscow's actions -- with its own systematic assault on international law over the past seven years. Now, the administration's condemnations of Russia ring hollow.

Andrew Bacevich:

In the wake of 9/11, these puerile expectations -- that armed force wielded by a strong-willed chief executive could do just about anything -- reached an apotheosis of sorts. Having manifestly failed to anticipate or prevent a devastating attack on American soil, President Bush proceeded to use his ensuing global war on terror as a pretext for advancing grandiose new military ambitions married to claims of unbounded executive authority -- all under the guise of keeping Americans "safe."

With the president denying any connection between the events of Sept. 11 and past U.S. policies, his declaration of a global war nipped in the bud whatever inclination the public might have entertained to reconsider those policies. In essence, Bush counted on war both to concentrate greater power in his own hands and to divert attention from the political, economic and cultural bind in which the United States found itself as a result of its own past behavior.

So we have pissed away Uncle Sam's moral-diplomatic "soft power" at the same time as we have overcommitted and effectivly broken America's military "hard power," and seriously weakened the republic by allowing an enormous expansion of unaccountable executive power.

Time to re-think? Or do we double down with the neocons?

Who is Randy Scheunemann?

McCain's top foreign policy advisor was a paid lobbyist of the government of Georgia even as he advised McCain on critical foreign policy issues involving the US, Russia and Georgia -- advocating policies which could drag the US into another Cold War.

Can you say "apparent conflict of interest layered on top of geopolitical clusterfuck"? I thought you could.

But Mr. Scheunemann is remarkably accomplished in a number of ways. As former head of the Project for a New American Century and the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, he was a central player in the neoconservative faction which was one of the major driving forces behind the unneccessary, counterproductive and murderous US invasion of Iraq.

To all of which McCain apparently says: Heckuvajob Scheuney!

But, you know, in a mavericky, straight-talker sort of way.

Obama's challenge

Andrew Bacevich:

The challenge facing Obama is clear: he must go beyond merely pointing out the folly of the Iraq war; he must demonstrate that Iraq represents the truest manifestation of an approach to national security that is fundamentally flawed, thereby helping Americans discern the correct lessons of that misbegotten conflict.

By showing that Bush has put the country on a path pointing to permanent war, ever increasing debt and dependency, and further abuses of executive authority, Obama can transform the election into a referendum on the current administration's entire national security legacy. By articulating a set of principles that will safeguard the country's vital interests, both today and in the long run, at a price we can afford while preserving rather than distorting the Constitution, Obama can persuade Americans to repudiate the Bush legacy and to choose another course.

This is a stiff test, not the work of a speech or two, but of an entire campaign. Whether or not Obama passes the test will determine his fitness for the presidency.

More

on Ron Susskind's allegations that the administration forged a WMD document as part of its campaign to mislead the country into Iraq: here, and here .

Uncomfortable coincidences

Robert Scheer on the McCain campaign's neoconservative, anti-Russian hard-line, and a close campaign advisor's connections to the Saakashvili regime in Georgia.

US policy toward Russia and Georgia helped to set the stage for this war, and McCain and his obnoxious pals are happy to exploit this tragedy for their own ends. Would a President McCain lead us unnecessarily into a new Cold War? Robert Scheer :

There is every indication that the candidate’s demonization of Russian leader Putin is an even grander plan than the previous use of Saddam to fuel American militarism with the fearsome enemy that it desperately needs.

McCain gets to look tough with a new Cold War to fight while Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, scrambling to make sense of a more measured foreign policy posture, will seem weak in comparison. Meanwhile, the dire consequences of the Bush legacy that McCain has inherited, from the disaster of Iraq to the economic meltdown, conveniently will be ignored. But the military-industrial complex, which has helped bankroll the neoconservatives, will be provided with an excuse for ramping up a military budget that is already bigger than that of the rest of the world combined.

What is at work here is a neoconservative, self-fulfilling prophecy in which Russia is turned into an enemy that expands its largely reduced military, and Putin is cast as the new Josef Stalin bogeyman, evoking images of the old Soviet Union.

more on the limits of the Surge

from Steve Simon, writing in Foreign Affairs:

The Bush administration's new strategy in Iraq has helped reduce violence. But the surge is not linked to any sustainable plan for building a viable Iraqi state and may even have made such an outcome less likely -- by stoking the revanchist fantasies of Sunni tribes and pitting them against the central government. The recent short-term gains have thus come at the expense of the long-term goal of a stable, unitary Iraq.

This thesis is also supported by the analysis of Lawrence Korb and his co-authors at the Center for American Progress, here. They argue that political reconciliation has not occurred, and is not ocurring, in Iraq and that the fundamental grounds for further conflict remain:

All major ethno-sectarian groups in Iraq still have their own (sometimes very different)vision of what Iraq is and should be. Kurds see a highly federalized Iraq, with a significant degree of autonomy for their own region that includes the capacity to sign oil exploration and production contracts. Shi’a Arabs generally agree on using their electoral supremacy to ensure security for their long-oppressed group, but the two main parties—the Sadrists and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, or ISCI, led by al Sadr rival Abdul Aziz al Hakim—have strong disagreements over the meaning of federalism. ISCI is a strong proponent of highly autonomous super-regions, while the Sadrists favor a unified Iraqi state with a strong central government. Sunni Arabs are even more fractured. The local tribes in the Sunni regions of the country want to contest the forthcoming provincial elections, want money from the central government, and continue to receive support from the United States, while the Sunni insurgency seeks the return of a Sunni-dominated national
political system.

In short, promises of imminent "victory" and stability in Iraq are almost certainly illusory.

the limits of the "surge" and the case for withdrawal

are persuasively set forth by Charles Knight:

It is a very good thing that fewer are dying in Iraq, but that improvement alone is far from sufficient evidence from which to conclude that US policy is now on the right track.

And how did the reduction in violence come about? Not principally by the application of increased US military power or by adopting new counter-insurgency doctrine, but by accommodating and supporting the desire of Sunnis for local control and by “coming to terms” with Moqtada al-Sadr and by his decision, encouraged by Iran, to stand-down his armed contest with the Badr brigades.

As we assess the so-called “surge strategy,” it is important to note its limits:

* The surge has reduced violence by leveraging and reinforcing the inter-communal and intra-communal divisions that plague Iraq — think of the walls American soldiers have built to separate Sunni and Shia enclaves in Baghdad; And,

* The fact remains that none of the powerful Iraqi groups or leaders with whom the US is currently allied share the American vision or purpose — not even the Kurds. US alliances inside Iraq are marriages of convenience — and shaky ones at that.

Indeed, the surge marks the limit of what the United States might accomplish in Iraq by military means. Now the task is to bring into the political process most of the remaining rejectionists and to catalyze the type of international support that will facilitate this inclusion and a national accord. And this requires US military withdrawal.

Some proponents of staying warn us about backsliding if the US leaves, including the specter of a failed state wherein al Qaeda will thrive. This warning displays a basic misunderstanding of al Qaeda in Mesopotamia which was founded as a reaction to the US invasion. When the US leaves Iraq it looses its primary motivation for its adherents and rather than thrive, it is very likely to fade.

In addition, political instability does not equal a failed state — there are many ways of avoiding that outcome that do not involve keeping US troops there indefinitely. Iraq is a traumatized society and that condition is a major contributing factor to why Iraq will be politically volatile for a long time to come. But seeking to shape or control Iraqi politics with Army brigades is to perpetuate the use of a blunt and inappropriate tool that does at least as much harm as it does good. Staying means staying for a very long time! US presence is one cause of the violence — its troops will always be seen as a foreign invader to be resisted.

Knight is co-author of a report by the Task Force for a Responsible Withdrawal from Iraq, available here.

Knight references a Pentagon study of Iraqi opinion conducted in November 2007, and reported in the Washington Post:

Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of "occupying forces" as the key to national reconciliation, according to focus groups conducted for the U.S. military...Outside of the military, some of the most widespread polling in Iraq has been done by D3 Systems, a Virginia-based company that maintains offices in each of Iraq's 18 provinces. Its most recent publicly released surveys, conducted in September for several news media organizations, showed the same widespread Iraqi belief voiced by the military's focus groups: that a U.S. departure will make things better. A State Department poll in September 2006 reported a similar finding.

more on Tenet's role in Iraqscam

from Gareth Porter:

The disappearance of all that credible evidence reflected a deliberate decision by Tenet. The White House Iraq Group had just rolled out its new campaign to create a political climate supporting war in early September, and Tenet knew what was expected of him. As an analyst who worked on the NIE told Bob Drogin of the Los Angeles Times, ‘The going-in assumption was that we were going to war, so this NIE was to be written with that in mind.’ That means Tenet’s account of the CIA’s role in the WMD issue in his 2007 memoirs completely ignored the credible evidence from Habbush, Sabri and the former Iraqi specialists that there was no active program, as well as his own role in suppressing it.

Tenet even brazenly claimed that a ‘very sensitive, highly placed source in Iraq’ about whom ‘little has been publicly said’ had ‘reported that production of chemical and biological weapons was taking place’. The reporting from the source, continuing through the NIE and beyond, ‘gave those of us at the most senior level further confidence that our information about Saddam’s WMD programmes was correct.’

Tenet was clearly referring to the reporting coming from the Sabri debriefings, but his description of them was a prevarication. As Blumenthal reported, they had written a report on Sabri’s intelligence spelling out his view that there was no active WMD programme, but they later discovered that it had been rewritten and given an entirely new preamble asserting that Saddam already possessed chemical and biological weapons and was ‘aggressively and covertly developing’ nuclear weapons.

Tenet — who was a political operator rather than an intelligence professional — had betrayed the CIA’s mission of providing objective analysis, instead choosing to serve the interests of the Bush administration in preparing the way for war. It is not difficult to imagine how he would have meekly carried out whatever was asked of him by the White House — even forging a document and leaking it to the media, to buttress the administration’s case for war.

some of what the Pentagon doesn't want you to see, or think too much about

in this NYT photo essay.

Be warned: these are hard images.

The accompanying NYT article is here.

Locked into a downward spiral?

political scientist Paul Rogers writing at Open Democracy:

US army and air-force plans for operations in Iraq each imply that Washington intends to establish a near-permanent presence that will remain almost independent of the wishes of any future administration; most analysts believe that even if the violence does continue to decline, the Pentagon envisages a total US military presence of around 50,000 for many years to come, backed up by many thousands more across the border in Kuwait as well as other forces in Qatar and Oman (see "The Iraq project", 30 January 2008).

In itself this forward planning is hardly a surprise, given the long-term strategic significance of the region - and especially its oil reserves - to the United States. The country's need and vulnerability in this regard are highlighted by the steep oil-price rises and the intense competition for resources at a time of breakneck economic development. But a determined focus by Washington on the pursuit of its own perceived interests in Iraq - especially in the context of its close relationship with Israel - will also create further antagonism to the American presence in Iraq and the wider region.

More on preparations for long-term US bases in Iraq here.

Elsewhere, Rogers is clear and explicit about the likely political consequences of prolonged US military presence in the Middle East:

...the United States authorities responsible seem to lack any idea of the impact even of these potential deployments. They appear to be trapped in a remarkable conviction that the US can maintain an extensive arsenal of military power - up to 50,000 troops in Iraq, many thousands elsewhere in the Gulf region, aircraft-carriers in the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, and bombers and strike-aircraft at bases across the region - in a way that can find acceptability in the Arab and Muslim worlds.

There is a real lack of understanding and imagination here, of just how valuable this scenario is to the radical, jihadi movement. For Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and other al-Qaida leaders and strategists, the prospect of a US presence heavily entrenched for at least a decade in the heart of "their" world is a gift. Moreover, in the process of attempting to establish this position, the US will offer numerous (and perhaps expanding) opportunities for militant target-practice.

The key point is that the very best outcome from a US military perspective - a declining insurgency but a long-term military presence in Iraq - is still very good news indeed for al-Qaida. That alone is a predicament for the United States, one far beyond its current official mindset. This is indeed shaping up to be a long war.

This is not a strategy to keep us safe.

General Patraeus himself admitted in Congressional testimony that he could not make a case that this policy in Iraq will make America safer:

Senator John Warner (R-VA), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and former Navy Secretary, asked Gen. Petraeus during testimony in Sep tember, “If we continue what you have laid before the Congress ... Does this make America safer?” General Petraeus responded, “Well sir, I don’t know.”

Patraeus quote from here.

PAF concludes: America's Iraq policy is not driven by concern for safety or security; it's about long-term bases, geo-strategic dominance, and oil.