Where to now?

In the wake of the Petraeus-Crocker testimony Juan Cole offers an analysis of where we are now vis-a-vis Iraq, and what we can expect in the next few years both in Iraq and at home. And it isn't pretty.

Academic Freedom!

Brian Leiter, professor of law at the University of Texas, tells a troubling tale of neo-McCarthyism at UC-Irvine. Apparently to appease conservative donors and the regents of the UC system, the chancellor of UC-Irvine backed out of an agreement to hire Erwin Chemerinsky -- a scholar of substance and standing -- as dean of the new UC-Irvine law school because he was perceived as too controversial by conservatives.

I expect David Horowitz -- that stalwart defender of free speech on campus -- will be coming to Chemerinsky's defense any minute now...

Still waiting David...

David?

Thanks to Eschaton for calling our attention to this.

Classic freudian slip

Watching PBS NewsHour just now: Lehrer asked Petraeus if he was "spinning" in his congressional presentations, and the General replied that he was just "preventing... er, presenting the facts".

Oops.

More loss, more pain

Editor & Publisher:

The Op-Ed by seven active duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq questioning the war drew international attention just three weeks ago. Now two of the seven are dead.

I posted part of their op-ed here. These were thoughtful as well as brave and loyal men. This is just fucking dreadful.

Try to pretend that you're surprised

Washington Post:

Bush to Endorse Petraeus Plan


Wow; can't recall the last time I was so shocked and awed (lemmesee...).

And what's the plan? Draw down the surge just before we run out of troops and then run out the clock until Iraq becomes the next administration's problem and probably even an albatross to try to hang around a Democratic president.

Jeez, you gotta marvel at how the general got Bush to go along with this.

Do I need to say that the Bush administration and the Republican right are spending lives as political currency? Yes, that needs to be said explicitly.

Still more deliberately misleading claims (do we call those 'lies'?) from the Republican battle-bots

Washington Post:

The television commercial is grim and gripping: A soldier who lost both legs in an explosion near Fallujah explains why he thinks U.S. forces need to stay in Iraq.

"They attacked us," he says as the screen turns to an image of the second hijacked airplane heading toward the smoking World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. "And they will again. They won't stop in Iraq."

Every investigation has shown that Iraq did not, in fact, have anything to do with the Sept. 11 attacks. But the ad, part of a new $15 million media blitz launched by an advocacy group allied with the White House, may be the most overt attempt during the current debate in Congress over the war to link the attacks with Iraq.

...Although public support for Bush's handling of terrorism has fallen in his second term -- 46 percent of respondents approved of his handling of the issue in this month's Washington Post-ABC News poll, while 51 percent disapproved -- the White House still views al-Qaeda as its most successful justification for remaining in Iraq. After some critics accused Bush of overstating the connection between bin Laden's group and al-Qaeda in Iraq, the White House quickly arranged a presidential speech to defend and reinforce its assertions.

The reason to emphasize al-Qaeda, aides said, is simple. "People know what that means," said one senior official who spoke about internal strategy on the condition of anonymity. "The average person doesn't understand why the Sunnis and Shia don't like each other. They don't know where the Kurds live. . . . And al-Qaeda is something they know. They're the enemy of the United States."

The new ad campaign drives that home more emotionally than any speech. Sponsored by a group of Bush allies under the name Freedom's Watch, four spots are airing in 60 congressional districts in 20 states. The commercials urge Congress to stick with the president's strategy in Iraq.

Here's the spot in question. Looks like the message didn't get a lot of traction in my district.

The Myth of Al Qaeda in Iraq

Andrew Tilghman writing for Washington Monthly:

The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which arguably has the best track record for producing accurate intelligence assessments, last year estimated that AQI's membership was in a range of "more than 1,000." When compared with the military's estimate for the total size of the insurgency—between 20,000 and 30,000 full-time fighters—this figure puts AQI forces at around 5 percent. When compared with Iraqi intelligence's much larger estimates of the insurgency—200,000 fighters—INR's estimate would put AQI forces at less than 1 percent. This year, the State Department dropped even its base-level estimate, because, as an official explained, "the information is too disparate to come up with a consensus number."

How big, then, is AQI? The most persuasive estimate I've heard comes from Malcolm Nance, the author of The Terrorists of Iraq and a twenty-year intelligence veteran and Arabic speaker who has worked with military and intelligence units tracking al-Qaeda inside Iraq. He believes AQI includes about 850 full-time fighters, comprising 2 percent to 5 percent of the Sunni insurgency. "Al-Qaeda in Iraq," according to Nance, "is a microscopic terrorist organization."

...no one has more incentive to overstate the threat of AQI than President Bush and those in the administration who argue for keeping a substantial military presence in Iraq. Insistent talk about AQI aims to place the Iraq War in the context of the broader war on terrorism. Pointing to al- Qaeda in Iraq helps the administration leverage Americans' fears about terrorism and residual anger over the attacks of September 11. It is perhaps one of the last rhetorical crutches the president has left to lean on.

PAF hearts

Princess Sparkle Pony

for posting this:



Mitch McConnell musta left his poker face in his other pants. Ahem.

Did Bush lie or did he believe it?

Perhaps the answer is "yes".

Here is further evidence that although there was good intelligence indicating that Saddam had no WMD, and that the President was briefed on this by George Tenet, Bush simply did not want to hear it and so Tenet kept it quiet, instead playing up the scary allegations of a known fabricator -- the infamous Curveball -- and giving the imprimatur of the DCI to Bush's imaginary threat-world.

And here's an account which suggests that as late as April 2006 Bush continued to disbelieve the evidence, all but conclusive after three years of searching, that there was no WMD in Iraq. As of mid-2006, about half of the American public erroneously believed that Iraq had possessed WMD at the time the US attacked:

beliefs about whether the government of Saddam Hussein still had WMD in 2003 were highly related to attitudes about whether going to war in Iraq was justified. Those who believed Saddam Hussein had WMD or an ongoing program to develop such weapons also believed overwhelmingly (85%) that going to war was the right decision. However, those who did not believe the Iraqi dictator had WMD or a major weapons program were overwhelmingly convinced (95%) that the invasion was wrong.

Bush believed what he wanted to believe; he was enabled by toadies, sycophants, neocons and Cheney, who squashed information which did not fit the president's belief-world, exaggerated any information (regardless of quality) that did fit; and then Bush and his administration told us untruths and more untruths which led to war and more war.

Shocked, shocked that there is gambling in Casablanca

Are you sitting down? The Pentagon is not shooting straight with us. Washington Post:

The U.S. military's claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends.

Bullshit in Anbar

Juan Cole on fraudulant claims of progress and calm in Anbar.

David Addington and the Imperial (Vice-)Presidency

Washington Post on Cheney's legal enabler:

Vice President Cheney's top lawyer pushed relentlessly to expand the powers of the executive branch and repeatedly derailed efforts to obtain congressional approval for aggressive anti-terrorism policies for fear that even a Republican majority might say no, according to a new book written by a former senior Justice Department official.

David S. Addington, who is now Cheney's chief of staff, viewed both U.S. lawmakers and overseas allies with "hostility" and repeatedly opposed efforts by other administration lawyers to soften counterterrorism policies or seek outside support, according to Jack L. Goldsmith, who frequently clashed with Addington while serving as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 and 2004.

...he depicted Addington, who served as "Cheney's eyes, ears, and voice" on counterterrorism matters and with whom he was present at roughly 100 meetings on the topic, as having little patience for views contrary to his own.

"After 9/11, they and other top officials in the administration dealt with FISA the way they dealt with other laws they didn't like: they blew through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the operations," Goldsmith wrote, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs spying by U.S. agencies within the United States.

...Addington reacted angrily to many of Goldsmith's legal opinions, telling him in reference to one concerning detainees in Iraq: "The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections. You cannot question his decision," according to the book.

"He and, I presumed, his boss viewed power as the absence of constraint," Goldsmith wrote. "They believed cooperation and compromise signaled weakness and emboldened the enemies of America and the executive branch."

Of course, anyone the executive branch doesn't like is an enemy of America, and we know what can happen to them.

Empire of Stupidity

In the wake of September 11, 2001, these fundamentalist believers in the power of One to twist all other arms on the planet managed to add a second Defense Department -- the Department of Homeland Security (with its own "-industrial complex") -- to the American agenda; they passed ever more draconian laws curtailing American rights in the name of "homeland security"; they went remarkably far in turning what was already an imperial presidency into something like a Caesarian commander-in-chief presidency; they presided over a far more politicized Defense Department (whose commanders today speak out, while in uniform, on what once would have been civilian political matters); they initiated far more sweeping means of government surveillance at home; they opened offshore prisons, giving their covert intelligence operatives the possibility of disappearing just about any human being they cared to target and their interrogators permission to use the most sophisticated kinds of torture. In short, they presided over a striking increase in the state's coercive powers, as embodied in a single, theoretically unrestrained commander-in-chief presidency and the first imperial vice-presidency in American history. (Of course, from the Reagan "revolution" on, the American conservative movement that first took power over a quarter of a century ago never meant to throttle the state, only the capacity of the state to deliver any services except "security" to its citizenry.)

...They truly believed that when you wrapped the flag of American exceptionalism, of American goodness, around the U.S. military, you would have the greatest force for liberation on the planet. Of course, they defined "liberation" in a way that coincided exactly with their desires for remaking the world. Hence, whenever democratic elections didn't produce the results they wanted, they simply rejected the results. In the bargain, they were convinced that, wielding that "greatest force," they could reshape the Middle East to their specifications, establish an unassailably dominant position at the heart of the oil heartlands of the planet, roll back the Russians even further, cow the Chinese, and create a Pax Americana planet.

...As David Walker, U.S. Comptroller and head of the nonpartisan Government Accounting Office, pointed out recently, the American government has also, in a remarkably short period of time, taken on the look of a faltering imperial Rome with "an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government." And imagine -- it was only a few years ago that neocon pundits were hailing the U.S. as a power "more dominant than any since Rome." Think instead: The Roman Empire on crack cocaine.

Tom Engelhardt

Put the pressure on Bush Dog Dems

What is a Bush Dog Democrat?

Airwar surge felt by Iraqi civilians

Conn Hallinan writing for Foreign Policy In Focus:

These assaults are part of what may be the best kept secret of the Iraq-Afghanistan conflicts: an enormous intensification of US bombardments in these and other countries in the region, the increasing number of civilian casualties such a strategy entails, and the growing role of pilot less killers in the conflict.

According to Associated Press, there has been a five-fold increase in the number of bombs dropped on Iraq during the first six months of 2007 over the same period in 2006. More than 30 tons of those have been cluster weapons, which take an especially heavy toll on civilians.

...The result of the stepped up air war, according to the London-based organization Iraq Body Count, is an increase in civilian casualties. A Lancet study of “excess deaths” caused by the Iraq war found that air attacks were responsible for 13% of the deaths - 76,000 as of June 2006 - and that 50% of the deaths of children under 15 were caused by air strikes.

Superb analysis of Iraq War by conservative scholar

Robert Higgs of The Independent Institute responds to the news headline “Citing Vietnam, Bush Warns of Carnage if U.S. Leaves Iraq”:

what does he [President Bush] suppose will happen if U.S. forces do not leave Iraq? Surely the answer must be: carnage on a vast scale, carnage with no end in sight. Regardless of how deeply the president may immerse himself in wishful thinking, no other outcome may reasonably be expected.

Bush reminded the listeners of his “carnage warning” speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City that when U.S. forces pulled out of Vietnam, “the price of America’s withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens.” So it was. Yet, once the U.S. forces had done what they had done prior to 1973, what would have happened had they remained in Vietnam, continuing to carry on their war business as usual? The only reasonable answer is: more of the same, on a vast scale-carnage that would have continued as long as U.S. forces remained in the country.

In Iraq, as in Vietnam earlier, we must expect that if U.S. forces were to leave, more carnage would occur. It is conceivable that the Iraqis would devise a way to settle their differences without enormous violence, but the odds now seem greatly against their doing so. Ultimately, of course, they would find a way; no society can persist forever in a state of civil war on the scale that now prevails in Iraq. Yet many more people are almost certain to die and to suffer wounds and the destruction of property before a peaceful resolution is effected. And that resolution itself may be dreadful in other regards. The United States, however, cannot prevent this distressing outcome. Indeed, its invasion and occupation have created conditions that make such an outcome virtually unavoidable. In short, the U.S. adventure in Iraq cannot have a happy ending. Just because the president unleashed the demons now raging across Iraq does not mean that he or anyone else can chain them now.

Unless the U.S. forces leave, however, their containment will never really get started, because aside from a small group of collaborators and puppet officials, all Iraqis agree on the desirability of getting U.S. and other foreign forces out of the country.

Jimmy Breslin has had enough

I have here in front of me a large number of pages that I keep for their significance. They are from a United States Senate hearing and are titled, “In Re Impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.”

He was only the 42nd person in our nation to make the commitment to “faithfully execute” the Office of the President and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

He was being impeached over lying about girls.

Bush the President is our 43rd. He lied to the nation to get us into a war in Iraq that is without end. Every young person who has died leaves drops of blood on Bush’s hands and those of everyone around him. He lied to the nation and daily he tries every greasy way to undermine the Constitution he is sworn to uphold. Thus making his oath false.

Clinton’s charges seem frivolous. But Bush appears to have committed high crimes and misdemeanors and must be thrown out of office in the disgrace that he is.

Jimmy Breslin

IAEA: Iran No Nuclear Threat

Contrary to Bush administration scare tactics, a report of the the International Atomic Energy Agency obtained byReuters suggests that Iran is not hell-bent on producing nuclear weapons:

Iran’s uranium enrichment program is operating well below capacity and is far from producing nuclear fuel in significant amounts, according to a confidential U.N. nuclear watchdog report obtained by Reuters.

If there is a confrontation, it will be because our leaders see Iran as an obstacle to US domination of the Middle East, not because Iran poses any kind of even remotely plausible nuclear threat.

Coming soon to a Campus near you

it's ...
[drumroll]...

Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week

No fooling.

According to A Student's Guide to Hosting Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week:

During the week of October 22-26, 2007, the nation will be rocked by the biggest conservative campus protest ever – Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, a wake-up call for Americans on 200 university and college campuses.

Wow. We'll be rocked. Woken up even. It'll be, like, a Million Mook March.

And the truth will finally be told on campus:

In the face of the greatest danger Americans have ever confronted, the academic left has mobilized to create sympathy for the enemy and to fight anyone who rallies Americans to defend themselves. According to the academic left, anyone who links Islamic radicalism to the war on terror is an "Islamophobe." According to the academic left, the Islamo-fascists hate us not because we are tolerant and free, but because we are "oppressors." Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is a national effort to oppose these lies and to rally American students to defend their country.

And guess who's organizing that? That political entrepreneur and champion of religious, intellectual, and every other kind of tolerance and freedom, David Horowitz:

Horowitz, president of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (previously the Center for the Study of Popular Culture) editor-in-chief of FrontPageMag.com, and founder of Students for Academic Freedom, is, of course, a former leading New Leftist who has found fame and fortune – he made $352,647 in 2005, according to tax records – on the extreme right and has done particularly well since 9/11 when he got in on the “Islamo-fascist” ground floor.

...According to tax records obtained through the Foundation Center, Horowitz has been the beneficiary in recent years of a number of far-right foundations, including the Allegheny ($575,000 since 2001), Carthage ($125,000) and Sarah Scaife Foundations ($800,000) – all three are part of Richard Scaife’s empire and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation (nearly $1.3 million). The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation ($475,000) also contributed nearly $500,000 to Horowitz’s enterprises over the same period.

More on Horowitz and his lucrative pursuit of Truth, Justice and The American Way here. And an essay on why Horowitz is (both literally and figuratively) such a tool.

This would also seem an opportune moment to recall Operation Yellow Elephant in case any of the patriotic young anti-Islamo-fascists might want to, you know, enlist or something.

These dang wars just keep happening to us

Bush to American Legion:

Once again, America finds itself a nation at war.

Hm. Wonder how that happened. It's not like anybody really wanted it to happen. Yet, here we find ourselves, at war.

Kinda puzzling.

Wonder if it could happen again. Who would want that?