Running for "velociraptor-in-chief"

Juan Cole in Salon:

The Republicans are competing to see who can wax most bellicose. The two candidates with the greatest need to compensate for their socially liberally pasts, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, have been extra warlike. Giuliani in particular seems to be running for velociraptor-in-chief.

...Among the Republican front-runners, debate about Iran occurs in a dark, upside-down fantasy land, where a weak third-world regime with no air force to speak of plots a military strike on the planet's sole superpower. The third-world regime is led by a genocidal commander-in-chief who serves a global conspiracy; to stop him, the president of the superpower might be compelled, after a quick chat with a lawyer and a few bars of a golden oldie, to launch an aggressive war. (And even the part about a conversation with an attorney is seen by some of the candidates as an abdication of manhood.)

Perhaps because of his chest-thumping contest with Giuliani, Romney especially has shown a talent of late for putting the ignorant in fear-mongering. During the Dearborn debate, Romney alleged that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had "spoken about genocide," and said it was important not to "allow that individual to have the control of launching a nuclear weapon." In an ad released after the debate, in a clear attempt to out-Giuliani Giuliani, Romney declaimed, "It's this century's nightmare, jihadism -- violent, radical Islamic fundamentalism." He told the cameras that the fundamentalists' goal is to establish a "caliphate," and wanted to "collapse" countries such as the United States as part of that goal. "We can and will stop Iran," he added, "from acquiring nuclear weapons."

President Ahmadinejad, whose job is more or less ceremonial, is not the commander-in-chief of the Iranian armed forces. He has never advocated "genocide," and his expressed wish that the "occupation regime over Jerusalem" (i.e., the Israeli government) eventually vanish has been mistranslated.

As for the rest, the candidates simply assume that Iran has a nuclear weapons research program, which has not been proven. It certainly does not have a nuclear weapon at present, and the National Intelligence Estimate indicates that if it were trying to get one, it would take until at least 2016 -- and then only if the international environment were conducive to the needed high-tech imports. (Ahmadinejad, by the way, will not be in power in 2016.) Also, someone really needs to let the Republicans know that Iran is Shiite, meaning it abhors Sunni fundamentalists and rejects the caliphate.

...Of the four senators among the Democratic candidates, only Hillary Clinton voted for the non-binding Kyl-Lieberman resolution on Sept. 26. The Kyl-Lieberman resolution, which passed 76-to-22, with 29 Democrats voting in favor, says, "the United States should designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization ... and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists." Jim Lobe, among the best journalists covering neoconservatism in Washington, wrote that unnamed "Capitol Hill sources" told him that the resolution was crafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh of the New Yorker, interviewed on "Democracy Now," concurred that the amendment was pushed by the Israel lobby.

So Rudy is running as a mad dog -- just what you need when you're already losing two wars and aggravating the terrorist threat in the process -- and Hillary is trying to maintain her toughness cred and her popularity with the Israel lobby. These are our front-runners.

PAF wonders: Is our children learning?

Rudy F. Giuliani's rabid foreign policy advisors

Josh Marshall from TPM media:

Cheney's Law

PBS Frontline:

For three decades Vice President Dick Cheney conducted a secretive, behind-closed-doors campaign to give the president virtually unlimited wartime power. Finally, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Justice Department and the White House made a number of controversial legal decisions. Orchestrated by Cheney and his lawyer David Addington, the department interpreted executive power in an expansive and extraordinary way, granting President George W. Bush the power to detain, interrogate, torture, wiretap and spy -- without congressional approval or judicial review.

Only nine more shopping days until...

Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week

I can barely contain my excitement.

Every sentient being in the galaxy believes that the Neocons have thoroughly discredited themselves...

... except Rudy Fucking Giuliani:

One of the top foreign-policy consultants to the leading GOP candidate is Norman Podhoretz, a founding father of the neocon movement.

Podhoretz is in favor of bombing Iran because of the country's unwillingness to suspend its uranium-enrichment program. He also believes America is engaged in a "world war" with "Islamofascism" and that Giuliani is the only man who can win it. "I decided to join Giuliani's team because his view of the war—what I call World War IV—is very close to my own," Podhoretz tells NEWSWEEK. (World War III, in his view, was the cold war.) "And also because he has the qualities of a wartime leader, including a fighting spirit and a determination to win."

...Among the core consultants surrounding Giuliani: Martin Kramer, who has led an attack on U.S. Middle Eastern scholars since 9/11 for being soft on terrorism; Stephen Rosen, a hawkish professor at Harvard who advocates major new spending on defense and is close to prominent neoconservative Bill Kristol; former Wisconsin senator Bob Kasten, who often sided with the neocons during the Reagan era and was an untiring supporter of aid to Israel, and Daniel Pipes, who has advocated for the racial profiling of Muslim Americans. (He's argued that the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was not the moral offense it's been portrayed as, though he doesn't say Muslims should suffer the same.)

Iraq Occupation: No end in sight

Washington Post:

Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who led U.S. forces in Iraq for a year after the March 2003 invasion, accused the Bush administration yesterday of going to war with a "catastrophically flawed" plan and said the United States is "living a nightmare with no end in sight."

..."From a catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan to the administration's latest surge strategy, this administration has failed to employ and synchronize its political, economic and military power," Sanchez said.

...He told reporters in response to questions that, when he assumed command in Iraq, he realized the situation had come unglued, in large part because there was high-level disregard for addressing what U.S. forces should do after the major combat operations conquered Baghdad. He said the U.S. presence has been an occupation.

No Such Thing

as class in America:

The gap between America’s richest and poorest is at its widest in at least 25 years, with the wealthiest taking home a record share of the nation’s income that exceeds even the previous high in 2000.

According to recent data from the Internal Revenue Service, the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 21.2 percent of all U.S. income earned in 2005. That is a significant increase from 2004 when the top 1 percent earned 19 percent of the nation’s income.

The previous high over the past 25 years, when such data were compiled, was in 2000 when a bull market brought the figure up to 20.81 percent.

of Occupation and Oil

Jim Holt in LRB:

...the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.

Iraq has 115 billion barrels of known oil reserves. That is more than five times the total in the United States. And, because of its long isolation, it is the least explored of the world’s oil-rich nations. A mere two thousand wells have been drilled across the entire country; in Texas alone there are a million. It has been estimated, by the Council on Foreign Relations, that Iraq may have a further 220 billion barrels of undiscovered oil; another study puts the figure at 300 billion. If these estimates are anywhere close to the mark, US forces are now sitting on one quarter of the world’s oil resources. The value of Iraqi oil, largely light crude with low production costs, would be of the order of $30 trillion at today’s prices. For purposes of comparison, the projected total cost of the US invasion/occupation is around $1 trillion.

Who will get Iraq’s oil? One of the Bush administration’s ‘benchmarks’ for the Iraqi government is the passage of a law to distribute oil revenues. The draft law that the US has written for the Iraqi congress would cede nearly all the oil to Western companies. The Iraq National Oil Company would retain control of 17 of Iraq’s 80 existing oilfields, leaving the rest – including all yet to be discovered oil – under foreign corporate control for 30 years.

...How will the US maintain hegemony over Iraqi oil? By establishing permanent military bases in Iraq. Five self-sufficient ‘super-bases’ are in various stages of completion. All are well away from the urban areas where most casualties have occurred. There has been precious little reporting on these bases in the American press, whose dwindling corps of correspondents in Iraq cannot move around freely because of the dangerous conditions. (It takes a brave reporter to leave the Green Zone without a military escort.)

...But will the US be able to maintain an indefinite military presence in Iraq? It will plausibly claim a rationale to stay there for as long as civil conflict simmers, or until every groupuscule that conveniently brands itself as ‘al-Qaida’ is exterminated. The civil war may gradually lose intensity as Shias, Sunnis and Kurds withdraw into separate enclaves, reducing the surface area for sectarian friction, and as warlords consolidate local authority. De facto partition will be the result. But this partition can never become de jure. (An independent Kurdistan in the north might upset Turkey, an independent Shia region in the east might become a satellite of Iran, and an independent Sunni region in the west might harbour al-Qaida.) Presiding over this Balkanised Iraq will be a weak federal government in Baghdad, propped up and overseen by the Pentagon-scale US embassy that has just been constructed – a green zone within the Green Zone. As for the number of US troops permanently stationed in Iraq, the defence secretary, Robert Gates, told Congress at the end of September that ‘in his head’ he saw the long-term force as consisting of five combat brigades, a quarter of the current number, which, with support personnel, would mean 35,000 troops at the very minimum, probably accompanied by an equal number of mercenary contractors. (He may have been erring on the side of modesty, since the five super-bases can accommodate between ten and twenty thousand troops each.) These forces will occasionally leave their bases to tamp down civil skirmishes, at a declining cost in casualties. As a senior Bush administration official told the New York Times in June, the long-term bases ‘are all places we could fly in and out of without putting Americans on every street corner’. But their main day-to-day function will be to protect the oil infrastructure.

Hillary is failing us again

Nancy Kricorian of Code Pink:

On September 26, 2007, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton voted yes on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment that effectively labeled the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a “terrorist organization.” The Revolutionary Guard Corps is the largest branch of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s military. It is unprecedented in American history that the armed forces of a sovereign nation have been named “a terrorist organization.” In response to the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, Iran’s Foreign Ministry and parliament have designated the U.S. Army and CIA as terrorist organizations.

Clinton was the lone Democratic presidential candidate to support this legislation that many view as giving President Bush authority to launch an air war against Iran. Senator Chris Dodd, in explaining his negative vote, said, “We learned in the run up to the Iraq war that seemingly nonbinding language passed by this Senate can have profound consequences. We need the president to use robust diplomacy to address concerns with Iran, not the language in this amendment that the president can point to if he decides to draw this country into another disastrous war of choice.” He added, “We shouldn’t repeat our mistakes and enable this President again.”

In her statement released the same day as the vote, Clinton claimed, “I voted for this resolution in order to apply greater diplomatic pressure on Iran. This resolution in no way authorizes or sanctions military action against Iran and instead seeks to end the Bush Administration’s diplomatic inaction in the region.”

Does this sound familiar? It is an uncanny echo of statements Clinton had made about her 2002 Iraq War authorization vote. At the time she said, “So it is with conviction that I support this resolution as being in the best interests of our nation. A vote for it is not a vote to rush to war; it is a vote that puts awesome responsibility in the hands of our President and we say to him - use these powers wisely and as a last resort. And it is a vote that says clearly to Saddam Hussein - this is your last chance - disarm or be disarmed.”

As we now know, and some of us recognized at the time, there were no weapons of mass destruction. The President used the powers granted to him by Senator Clinton and her colleagues neither wisely nor as a last resort. He instead plunged Iraq and the United States into an illegal and catastrophic war and occupation that has cost, in human terms, over a million Iraqi lives, displaced over four million Iraqi civilians, killed over 3,800 U.S. troops and injured over 26,000 of them.

In December 2006, Hillary Clinton said of the War Authorization vote, “Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn’t have been a vote, and I certainly wouldn’t have voted that way.’” When the bombs start dropping on Teheran, without Congressional authorization, what will Hillary Clinton say then? “That is not what I intended by my vote, that is not what I intended at all. Who knew the President would abuse his power and misread the will of Congress and the people?”

Leading Dems complicit in Fraudulant War

Steven Zunes, who got it right before the war, reminds us that some of the leaders of the "opposition" party not only didn't get it right, but allowed themselves to be used as part of the fraud. Now some of these same people want to make a claim to "leadership".

Last ditch defenders

What does it mean when the more prudent elements of the uniformed military are the last possible brake on the runaway train of the imperial state? Separation of powers; checks and balances; electoral accountability; constitutional protections; peace movement mobilizations; all of that is failing us, putting uniformed military officers in the position of having to resist the will of the executive to prevent another disastrous imperial war. So here we are, hoping that civilian control of the military can be weakened enough to avert an attack on Iran.

Jeeezus.

PAF is old enough to think this is a scream

Meet the Neocons

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for posting this.

What's wrong with this picture?: Reinterpreting the law, in secret, in order to continue to torture detainees

NYT:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.

...the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics.

"Harsh tactics". Makes me feel proud to be an American.

Actually, it makes me want to barf.

And who was behind this abhorrent scam?

Associates at the Justice Department said Mr. Gonzales seldom resisted pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and David S. Addington, Mr. Cheney’s counsel, to endorse policies that they saw as effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and Democrats in Congress.

Gonzales was a tool. Cheney and Addington called the tune.

"Guns don't kill people...

We kill people."

It's a Dick thing

The invaluable Seymour Hersh writing in The New Yorker:

In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and
members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing
degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. ...The
President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in
Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront
the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White
House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the
Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran,
according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

Since the whole "greeted as Liberators; Iraq becomes the 51st state" scenario has unravelled catastrophically, it's quite clear that the Iranians are the main geopolitical beneficiary of the destruction of the Iraqi Baathist regime and the failure of the US occupation. Entirely predictable, of course, for anybody but Cheney's war-bots. So having totally dicked up Iraq in the unsuccessful pursuit of regional military dominance, administration officials are now looking for a reason to knock Iran down a peg in order to restore what they see as the rightful state of the Universe -- Uncle Sam rules; everybody else drools. But attacking Iran could unleash some serious ugliness, and leave Uncle Sam dazed, wounded and drooling. Not to mention, you know, lots of people killed.

We're already losing two wars in the region, killing boatloads of people (many of them non-combatants), alienating great swaths of the Muslim world, and providing the Islamists with the political credibility they would not otherwise have; and attacking Iran would aggravate all these problems even if it did provide a temporary testosterone infusion to administration officials whose martial prowess has not lived up to their hyper-masculine posturing.

No oil in Waziristan

Washington Post:

Pakistan's government is losing its war against emboldened insurgent forces, giving al-Qaeda and the Taliban more territory in which to operate and allowing the groups to plot increasingly ambitious attacks, according to Pakistani and Western security officials.

The depth of the problem has become clear only in recent months, as regional peace deals have collapsed and the government has deferred developing a new strategy to defeat insurgents until Pakistan's leader, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, can resolve a political crisis that threatens his presidency.

Meanwhile, radical Islamic fighters who were evicted from Afghanistan by the 2001 U.S.-led invasion have intensified a ruthless campaign that has consumed Pakistan's tribal areas and now affects its major cities. Military officials say the insurgents have enhanced their ability to threaten not only Pakistan but the United States and Europe as well.

But, you know, we're really not all that concerned about those guys.

Beauty may be only skin deep...

You know, PAF has been called a lot of things, but 'good looking' is not usually one of them. Partly for that reason, and also because it's generally a cheap shot, I tend to avoid making fun of other people's appearance. But when the person in question is a 'responsible' policy maker who is making remarks with genocidal implications, I'm inclined to relax that rule a bit: I'll link to other pages who are happy to make fun of someone's appearance.

Warning:

It might be wise to criss-cross your monitor with masking tape and hang garlic around your neck before you click through.


the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Coalition Affairs

Feeding the Jingoes

NYT on Fredom's Watch,

Freedom’s Watch, a deep-pocketed conservative group led by two former senior White House officials, made an audacious debut in late August when it began a $15 million advertising campaign designed to maintain Congressional support for President Bush’s troop increase in Iraq.

Founded this summer by a dozen wealthy conservatives, the nonprofit group is set apart from most advocacy groups by the immense wealth of its core group of benefactors, its intention to far outspend its rivals and its ambition to pursue a wide-ranging agenda. Its next target: Iran policy.

...With a forceful message and a roster of wealthy benefactors, Freedom’s Watch has quickly emerged from the crowded field of nonprofit advocacy groups as a conservative answer to the nine-year-old liberal MoveOn.org, which vehemently opposes the Iraq war.

The idea for Freedom’s Watch was hatched in March at the winter meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Manalapan, Fla., where Vice President Dick Cheney was the keynote speaker, according to participants. Next week, the group is moving into a 10,000-square-foot office in the Chinatown section of Washington, with plans to employ as many as 50 people by early next year.

One benefactor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the group was hoping to raise as much as $200 million by November 2008. Raising big money “will be easy,” the benefactor said, adding that several of the founders each wrote a check for $1 million. Mr. Blakeman would not confirm or deny whether any donor gave $1 million, or more, to the organization.

Since the group is organized as a tax-exempt organization, it does not have to reveal its donors and it can not engage in certain types of partisan activities that directly support political candidates. It denies coordinating its activities with the White House, although many of its donors and organizers are well connected to the
administration, including Ari Fleischer, the former White House press secretary.
“Ideologically, we are inspired by much of Ronald Reagan’s thinking — peace through strength, protect and defend America, and prosperity through free enterprise,” Mr. Fleischer said.

I don't recall Ronald Reagan doing all that much thinking, but Freedom's Watch is clearly going to pay big bucks to pump Lizard Brain slogans into the Republican Base until they quiver with fear and loathing for Ahmadinijad and are prepared to accept yet another war of aggression against a country with poses no threat to the US.

Antiwar Demo

PAF participated in an anti-war rally yesterday. I'm of two minds about it.

On the one hand, it was great to see everybody, lots of old friends, lots of strangers, by our standards a big crowd of maybe three thousand people: vets, unionists, religious groups, peace and justice groups, students, families, young and old, people in wheelchairs. Gives you that "I am not alone" feeling.

But at the end of the day I don't know if it matters that much that we did this. There are enough lizard-brain jingoes in the electorate -- people who despite all evidence to the contrary continue to believe that Saddam was involved in 9-11 and that Iraq did possess WMD -- to prevent an overwhelming, veto-proof majority in Congress which might actually end this damn war, and the administration clearly could not care less about our demos, rallies, signs, and speeches. Part of me feels disempowered, disenfranchised, held hostage in a republic of idiots.

I think we had to do this demo for us, for ourselves, for each other; but I have little faith that we can end this war, or prevent a future attack on Iran.

A republic, if you can keep it

Washington Post:

A federal judge in Oregon ruled yesterday that two provisions of the USA Patriot Act are unconstitutional, marking the second time in as many weeks that the anti-terrorism law has come under attack in the courts.

In a case brought by a Portland man who was wrongly detained as a terrorism suspect in 2004, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the Patriot Act violates the Constitution because it "permits the executive branch of government to conduct surveillance and searches of American citizens without satisfying the probable cause requirements of the Fourth Amendment."

"For over 200 years, this Nation has adhered to the rule of law -- with unparalleled success," Aiken wrote in a strongly worded 44-page opinion. "A shift to a Nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised."

Academic Freedom for Rumsfeld?

Rumsfeld to join Hoover Institution at Stanford:

Academics and students at California’s prestigious Stanford University have launched a vigorous protest against the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as a visiting fellow to a right-wing campus think-tank, saying the former defence secretary and architect of the Iraq war offends their ideals of truth and tolerance.

Outrageous hypocrisy for defenders of academic freedom to attack Stanford/Hoover for offering Rummy a fellowship?

I don't think so. While he may or may not be guilty of crimes against humanity, there is little doubt that Rumsfeld is directly implicated in a war of aggression built upon lies, and authorized interrogation techniques at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere which approach the threshold of torture. Rumsfeld enjoys the right of free speech along with the rest of us. I would not try to prevent him from speaking on my campus; in fact I would welcome it as an opportunity to express dissenting views in his presence. But a fellowship is not a speech. What does it mean to extend to such a person the privilege (not, let us be clear, the right) of a campus fellowship? It implies welcoming him into the community of knowledge seekers whose highest value is to present reasons and evidence without deliberate distortion, manipulation, or prevarication. But he stands exposed as someone who does not respect the core values of this community he now wishes to join, so that it may shelter him in its fellowship. He does not deserve that privilege.

They will surely be painted by O'Reilly and Horowirtz as left-wing hypocrites, but the Stanford faculty are right not to welcome Rumsfeld into their community. By his own words and actions he has proven that he is not, and cannot be, a member of the academic community, and is not entitled to its privileges.

Song of Anger: Dear Mr. President

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for posting this.

Shooting ourselves in both feet

Peter W. Galbraith offers an excellent overview of the Iran-Iraq nexus, and how Uncle Sam has dicked it up entirely (i'm like, you know, paraphrasing).

in case you just can't get enough irony in your life

Tom Tomorrow.

Another shocker

(stage whisper) The war was about... oil.


More from Ray McGovern.

and George Lakoff adds:

The contracts that the Bush administration has been pushing the Iraqi government to accept are not just about the distribution of oil among the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds. The contracts call for 30-year exclusive rights for British and American oil companies, rights that cannot be revoked by future Iraqi governments. They are called “production sharing agreements” (or “PSA’s”) - a legalistic code word. The Iraqi government would technically own the oil, but could not control it; only the companies could do that. ExxonMobil and others would invest in developing the infrastructure for the oil (drilling, oil rigs, refining) and would get 75% of the “cost oil” profits, until they got their investment back. After that, they would own the infrastructure (paid for by oil profits), and then get 20% of oil profits after that (twice the usual rate). The profits are estimated to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And the Iraqi people would have no democratic control over their own major resource. No other Middle East country has such an arrangement.

Greeted as liberators? Not so much.

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?

You just can't have too many guns

Or can you?

Bush vs Zombie menace

Thanks to Crooks and Liars for highlighting this guy's work.

Salon's Gary Kimiya on the waning power of the War Myth:

Bush's entire presidency has been propped up by the War Myth. By aggressively presenting himself as a war leader, by wrapping himself in the sacred robes of patriotism, the military and national honor, Bush has taken refuge in the holy of holies, the ultimate sanctuary in American life. He has made criticism of his policies tantamount to criticism of the one institution in American life that is untouchable: the military. He uses the almost 4,000 new crosses in military cemeteries as a talisman against his opponents -- notwithstanding the fact that he is wholly responsible for those crosses.

...We are now approaching an endgame in Iraq that has its own inexorable logic, which not even Bush's appeals to the War Myth will be able to stop.

In some part of his brain, Bush knows this -- which explains his other motivation for invoking Vietnam and attacking war critics as defeatists. As a partisan Republican, still dreaming of Karl Rove's permanent Republican majority,he wants to ensure that the Democrats take the blame in the coming argument over "who lost Iraq?" By defiantly insisting, contrary to all evidence, that victory is within grasp, he is planting the seeds of a resentful revisionism, a stab in the back II, which he hopes will come to fruition in the future.

The climax of the slow-motion debate over Iraq is approaching. At some point in the near future, it will become inescapably obvious even to congressional Republicans, who hold the key to the decision to stay or go, that the war cannot be won. Bush will continue to proclaim that victory is within sight and accuse his critics of being defeatists.

But the War Myth cannot save him forever, because he's overused it. It will buy him a few weeks or months of breathing space, but even the talismanic power of the War Myth dissipates if people realize it has been used in a cheap, propagandistic way.

...The president has lived by propaganda. But now that the end is approaching, even propaganda can no longer save him.

Bush's attempt to claim he was stabbed in the back is certain to meet the same fate. That notion will live on only where it always has, in the danker corners of the extreme right wing.

I think Kamiya underestimates the power of these deep-seated popular beliefs in American righteousness and power, the militaristic side of the myth of American exceptionalism. Bush and his minions may have lost credibility among much of the public (I certainly hope so), but that doesn't mean that this bedrock of American political culture has been abandoned or fundamentally revised. "The danker corners of the extreme right wing" serve as a reservoir of these kind of nationalist narratives, but they have a much wider resonance because these beliefs and hopes are widely shared. They are taught in American schools, dramatized in popular media, reinscribed by a recurrent series of public holiday commemorations, and rarely challenged or even questioned. As much as I wish it were so, I doubt very much that Bush's mendacity and ineptitude will have put an end to this powerful, if also destructive, American myth.

The implication here is that the Bush administration is not exclusively responsible for American imperialism. To the extent that Americans accept and propagate mythic narratives of the righteousness of our national power, we will make future Bushes, and future Iraqs, possible. Our responsibility, then, is to question and challenge the myth at every opportunity.

Surrrealist War Stories

As it bleeds into its fifth year, the Iraq war is excelling only in savagery and surrealism. We now have an American President publicly citing the similarities to Vietnam as a reason why the US must not withdraw - and he is merrily quoting Graham Greene’s anti-war masterpiece The Quiet American in his defence. Far from thinking anything has gone wrong, he declares: “The Iraqi people owe the American people a great debt of gratitude. That’s the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.”

Meanwhile, the Iraqi psyche is so wrecked by the 7/7 blasting on to their streets 24/7 that my Iraqi friends report mass hysteria gnawing into the survivors. After a small string of attacks by badgers - you know, the little furry creatures - in Basra, so many people were convinced this was a new weapon of war that UK military spokesman Major Mike Shearer had to announce publicly: “We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area.”

Johann Hari writing for the Independent.

Who's Bad?

Al Qaeda in Iraq? Not so much.

Al Qaeda in Waziristan? You bet.

Weimar President: Opposition to war = betraying the troops

Bush speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars:

There is one group of people who understand the stakes, understand as well as any expert, anybody in America -- those are the men and women in uniform. Through nearly six years of war, they have performed magnificently. (Applause.) Day after day, hour after hour, they keep the pressure on the enemy that would do our citizens harm. They've overthrown two of the most brutal tyrannies of the world, and liberated more than 50 million citizens. (Applause.)

In Iraq, our troops are taking the fight to the extremists and radicals and murderers all throughout the country. Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month since January of this year. (Applause.) We're in the fight. Today our troops are carrying out a surge that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against the extremists and radicals, into the fight against al Qaeda, into the fight against the enemy that would do us harm. They're clearing out the terrorists out of population centers, they're giving families in liberated Iraqi cities a look at a decent and hopeful life.

Our troops are seeing this progress that is being made on the ground. And as they take the initiative from the enemy, they have a question: Will their elected leaders in Washington pull the rug out from under them just as they're gaining momentum and changing the dynamic on the ground in Iraq? Here's my answer is clear: We'll support our troops, we'll support our commanders, and we will give them everything they need to succeed. (Applause.) .

The administration's repeated invocation of proto-fascist "stab-in-the-back" mythology is getting increased attention.

Here's conservative writer Andrew Sullivan on the Atlantic's web site, and Scott Horton at Harper's.

The myth of the successful US surge in Anbar

Kevin Drum:

The Sunni tribes began turning against AQI nearly a year ago. They did it on their own, not as part of any American military plan. They did it before the surge started. They did it before Gen. Petraeus was even a gleam in George Bush's eye. Here's the truth:

The turnabout began last September, when a federation of tribes in the Ramadi area came together as the Anbar Salvation Council to oppose the fundamentalist militants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
....The council sought financial and military support from the Iraqi and American governments. In return the sheiks volunteered hundreds of tribesmen for duty as police officers and agreed to allow the construction of joint American-Iraqi police and military outposts throughout their tribal territories.
....Beginning last summer and continuing through March, the American-led joint forces pressed into the city, block by block, and swept the farmlands on its outskirts. In many places the troops met fierce resistance. Scores of American and Iraqi security troops were killed or wounded.
....The fact that Anbar is almost entirely Sunni and not riven by the same sectarian feuds as other violent places, like Baghdad and Diyala Province, has helped to establish order. Elsewhere, security forces are largely Shiite and are perceived by many Sunnis as part of the problem. In Anbar, however, the new police force reflects the homogeneous face of the province and appears to enjoy the support of the people.

The Anbar Awakening is genuinely good news, but (a) it had nothing to do with the surge, (b) it's happening only in homogeneous Sunni areas, and (c) it involves arming
and training Sunni forces who are almost certain to turn against both us and the Shiite central government as soon as they've finished off AQI. Pretending otherwise is simply fraudulent.

This is the "military progress" the administration is going to use to try and sell us on continuing the occupation. Drum has other surge-related evidence here . And then there's this, and this. And this:

I don't see any progress. Just us getting killed.

There are a lot of words to describe whast the US is doing to Iraq, but "progress" is not one of them.

Thanks to Crooks and Liars and Rising Hegemon for calling our attention to Drum's arguments.

Freedom's Watch

I caught one of these ads on my local TV station the other night.



Emotionally effective, if fundamentally misleading in all kinds of ways -- not least of which is suggesting the the Iraq War is all about fighting the people who attacked us on 9-11.

The ad's message "It's no time to quit; It's no time for politics" is especially ironic since this video campaign was produced and funded by Republican operatives and targeted on the districts of wavering and vulnerable Republican legislators, with the clear purpose of putting political pressure on them to continue backing the President's war.

Joe Conason, writing at Slate:

Unlike VoteVets.org, the organization founded by Iraq and Afghanistan veterans that has emerged as one of the most effective critics of the war, Freedom's Watch uses killed and wounded veterans and their families in its advertising, but is not operated or supported by actual veterans. Instead, the founders of Freedom's Watch include notable Republican fundraisers such as Melvin Sembler, the shopping mall magnate whose rewards have included ambassadorial posts in Australia and most recently in Italy; Anthony Gioia, a Buffalo, N.Y., macaroni manufacturer who served as ambassador to Malta; Howard Leach, a wealthy California grocery distributor who served as ambassador to France; and Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who is among the richest men in the world. The supporters listed in Freedom's Watch's first press release also include at least eight more major Republican donors.

But all those generous gentlemen are probably just providing the money for the national advertising rollout. The brains behind this operation are former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who spent many hours on the press podium repeating the same misleading messages now promoted by Freedom's Watch, and Brad Blakeman, a former White House and campaign scheduling director for President Bush who frequently appears on cable TV to advocate administration policy as a "Republican strategist." Executing their strategy are the sharp public relations consultants at Jamestown Associates, a nationally known Republican firm whose clients have included dozens of GOP officeholders, a variety of conservative organizations and fronts, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Someone with the nom-de-web EnricoFermiTheThird posted a brilliant response on YouTube suggesting (without saying a word) that the Freedom's Watch campaign is a last-gasp propaganda effort by an immoral regime about to lose a major war.



The comparison is apt in another way. The Freedom's Watch campaign clearly suggests that if the US loses in Iraq, it will be because anti-war forces, lefties, Democrats and other weak and disloyal elements sold out American troops and betrayed their sacrifices. This is the core story-line of the classic fascist propaganda weapon, the "stab-in-the-back" myth and a central part of the Republicans' proto-fascist political strategy.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan sees similar tendencies in the President's recent VFW speech.

Friedman: another enabler of this vile war

Check out the revolting video interview over at Eschaton.

Three Pulitzers: this is considered exceptionally thoughtful commentary in the universe of mainstream American journalism.

America to the Rescue

A brilliant bit by Jon Stewart: watch the video hosted by Crooks and Liars.

Bloodthirsty FOX

Here is a link to the study referred to in the film which documents that FOX news viewers were much more likely to believe the administration's falsehoods about Iraq, and therefore more likely to support the war.

Fox was a willing accomplice to a fraudulant war. Now they're enabling another.

UPDATE: Bernie Sanders on Fox's war propaganda.

We must continue to feed the meat grinder because we are grinding meat

Attaturk at Rising Hegemon on the administration's case for perpetuating the occupation of Vietnam-Iraq:

... this argument couldn't be made, just like Vietnam, if the original fuck up based on deception hadn't been made in the first place. The argument of we cannot end this fuck up because we fucked it up and the only way to minimize the fuck up is by telling America troops, "you're fucked" is not exactly the strongest argument ever made.

bel·lig·er·ent

John Fucking Bolton hopes for a US attack on Iran within the next six months. "Absolutely".

I don’t think there’s any doubt, based on the information we have, that Iran is interfering in Iraq and is posing a direct threat to our troops.

So I think if President Bush as commander in chief believes that information is accurate, he is fully entitled to take defensive measures, which could include going after the Revolutionary Guards inside Iran.

Bolton and his fellow war-mongers are trying to manufacture a case for a "defensive" US attack on a country which poses no real threat to US security, just as they did for Iraq. I don't know how these guys can sleep at night.

No such thing

as class in America:

The growth in total incomes was concentrated among those making more than $1 million. The number of such taxpayers grew by more than 26 percent, to 303,817 in 2005, from 239,685 in 2000.

These individuals, who constitute less than a quarter of 1 percent of all taxpayers, reaped almost 47 percent of the total income gains in 2005, compared with 2000. People with incomes of more than a million dollars also received 62 percent of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends that President Bush signed into law in 2003, according to a separate analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, a group that points out policies that it says favor the rich.

The group’s calculations showed that 28 percent of the investment tax cut savings went to just 11,433 of the 134 million taxpayers, those who made $10 million or more, saving them almost $1.9 million each. Over all, this small number of wealthy Americans saved $21.7 billion in taxes on their investment income as a result of the tax-cut law.

The nearly 90 percent of Americans who make less than $100,000 a year saved on average $318 each on their investments. They collected 5.3 percent of the total savings from reduced tax rates on investment income.

NYT.

trag·e·dy

Painful photos of wounded soldiers taken by Nina Berman.

Shout out to loyal reader

Thanks Jamie.

Pondering the possibility of a political Perfect Storm

What if the Peak Oil thesis is right, or close enough to being right that we face severe shortfalls of petroleum supply relative to burgeoning global demand, such that the hydrocarbon era enters its final stages in the next decade or so? What if global climate change disrupts established patterns of social reproduction around the world, creating knife-edge conditions of survival in large areas and destabilizing political orders world-wide? What if, on top of these changes, US imperial policy and conspicuous consumption by our ruling class so infuriates the rest of the world that the only thing not in short supply world-wide is people willing to engage in terrorist attacks against the US? Can our republic (such as it is) survive in that kind of world? -- a world which is, ironically, substantially of our own making rather than a calamity which befalls us out of the blue. In that kind of context, I find it especially chilling to ponder the Bush-Cheney aggrandizement of executive power and open contempt for checks and balances, habeas corpus and civil rights, and public information with even a semblance of truth content. They may have extended executive power in ways which will make it easier for future administrations to do likewise, or to go farther still in the name of some all-too-readily imaginable national emergency.

Naming this blog Premature Anti-Fascist is only half in jest, and sometimes when I think about this it's no joke at all.

Juan Cole on the fundamental dumbness of the administration's campaign to blame Iran for Uncle Sam's failures in Iraq

Informed Comment (scroll down):

The US military hasn't found any Iranian trainers in Iraq or any training camps, but like Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, that you can't find them doesn't mean they are not there. What I cannot understand is why the Pentagon needs Iranians in Iraq as a plot device. The Iraqi Badr Corps, tens of thousands strong, was trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and it has been alleged that some Badr corpsmen are still on the Iranian payroll. It is the paramilitary of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, America's chief ally in Iraq. What would the IRGC know that Badr does not? Why bother to send revolutionary guardsmen when the country is thick with Badr fighters anyway (who have all the same training)? I think the US is just embarrassed because Badr is its major ally in Iraq, and Pentagon spokesmen are over-compensating by imagining Iranian training camps inside Iraq. What an idea. I mean, don't we have, like, satellites that would see them? Wouldn't they be visible on google earth? Every day the Pentagon b.s. about Iran gets more fantastic and frantic. Methinks some people, like Patton, are upset that the politicians always pull them back and leave them one more war to fight.

The incomparable Juan Cole on the execrable Karl Rove

Juan Cole writing for Salon:

On Fox News Sunday morning, Karl Rove played the victim. He told host Chris Wallace that in the wake of his resignation as White House deputy chief of staff, his enemies were on the hunt. Rove compared himself to a legendary monster whom the ancient Anglo-Saxon hero Beowulf sought to slay. "I mean, I'm a myth, and they're ... You know, I'm Grendel ... They're after me."

But Rove, who pursued his Democratic foes with a relentless repertoire of dirty tricks, smears and outright lies, won't win many sympathizers by depicting himself as unfairly maligned. He is likely to be remembered above all for his own expertise at demonization, specifically for his ability to paint his political opponents as unreliable partners in the "war on terror" -- as traitors to the United States. A master propagandist, he portrayed his rivals as fellow travelers with Osama bin Laden, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. Like Cain, from whom Grendel was said to be descended, Rove was more interested in fratricide than in the welfare of his people.

And now a word from the troops

in a remarkable NYT op-ed, seven soldiers reflect on the Iraq War:

VIEWED from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal. Counterinsurgency is, by definition, a competition between insurgents and counterinsurgents for the control and support of a population. To believe that Americans, with an occupying force that long ago outlived its reluctant welcome, can win over a recalcitrant local population and win this counterinsurgency is far-fetched. As responsible infantrymen and noncommissioned officers with the 82nd Airborne Division soon heading back home, we are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day.

Guiliani poses as a deep political thinker

and fails.

Fred Kaplan:

Rudy Giuliani's essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, laying out his ideas for a new U.S. foreign policy, is one of the shallowest articles of its kind I've ever read. Had it been written for a freshman course on international relations, it would deserve at best a C-minus (with a concerned note to come see the professor as soon as possible). That it was written by a man who wants to be president—and who recently said that he understands the terrorist threat "better than anyone else running"—is either the stuff of high satire or cause to consider moving to, or out of, the country.

...He doesn't seem to know what he's talking about at all. Two months ago, when Giuliani issued some of his first pronouncements on foreign policy, I wrote that he is "that most dangerous would-be world leader: a man who doesn't seem to know how much he doesn't know." Judging from his Foreign Affairs article, the breadth and depth of his cluelessness are vaster than even I had imagined.

Recall the early debate among Republican candidates where Ron Paul quietly pointed how little understanding Guiliani has of the political context of terrorism. Looks like that's just the tip of Rudy's Iceberg of Cluelesness.

President Guiliani would provide lots of red-meat entertainment worthy of professional wrestling fans and the lizard brains of the Republican base, but his foreign policy would be a trainwreck waiting to happen.

More on Karl Rove's dark legacy

In a powerful essay, David Michael Green argues that Rove's reputation as a dark political genius is only half right: he's plenty dark.

Rove is often described as a genius, but the record emphatically demonstrates just the opposite. He destroyed everything in sight, including the political party for whose would-be fortunes he willingly sacrificed all else, not least the things that matter most - peace, truth, democracy, integrity, decency, lives.

No, this was no genius, except in the most nefarious sense. The real genius was of the American Founders, who - with just this scenario in mind - built a political infrastructure that could hope to prevent Karl Roves from happening.

As it was, nearly every intended bulwark in that system, nearly every check and balance both inside and outside the government, failed to perform its intended function these last years, and Karl Rove - the smallest amongst us - ran wild for the better part of a decade, cutting a swath of enormous destruction in his path.

Green assesses Rove and the administration he drove as "an abject failure, a flaming disaster". Green tallies their accomplishments thus:

Turning a record surplus into a record deficit. Failing to defend the country against the 9/11 attacks. Failing to crush or apprehend the alleged perpetrators of that attack. Failing to win a war in Afghanistan. Launching a completely needless war in Iraq. Failing to win the war in Iraq. Destroying the American military. Failing to rescue an entire American city from destruction. The first president since Hoover to lose jobs on his watch. Wages stagnant. Gas prices doubled. Exacerbating global warming, the worst environmental crisis in human history, and undermining attempts by others to deal with it. Undercutting environmental standards on clean air and water. Leaving the Middle East in shambles. Shredding relations with historical allies. Producing the greatest trade deficit in history. Offering tax credits to corporations assisting them in exporting American jobs. Destroying legal and constitutional doctrines dating back as far as seven centuries. Allowing the assault rifle ban to lapse. Standing by while North Korea went nuclear. Tearing up treaties that have kept the peace for half a century. Undermining international institutions. And more, and more, and more. This is an astonishing, jaw-dropping record of disaster.

Finally, in addition to fucking up our country, RoveCo's crash-and-burn exploits may have done enduring damage to the only thing he ever really cared about - Republican Party dominance. If there is any semblance of reason, justice, or sanity in the political universe (and PAF is not entirely sure that any such semblance exists), Rove's party will face the supremely ironic worst-case scenario Green imagines for them: "It is by no means unimaginable that the GOP could now enter into a tailspin of mortal collapse over the coming years, ultimately joining the Federalists and the Whigs on the ash heap of American political party history."

Blaming Iran for the (predictable) consequences of US strategy

Gareth Porter:

In short, the rise in deaths of U.S. troops in Baghdad in July reflected the increased pace of U.S. operations against the Mahdi Army and the Mahdi Army’s military response. ...Thus it requires no Iranian hand to explain the escalation of the conflict between the Mahdi Army and the U.S. military that accounts for the changing pattern of U.S. casualties in Baghdad.

So if Iran isn't actually responsible for US casualties in Iraq, why push this story so hard? And who's doing the pushing?

Hillary the hawk

Robert Scheer:

...forget the hope that a woman president might prove to be more enlightened than macho men in the matter of peacemaking, and instead rest assured that Hillary would have the cojones to “push the button” that would kill us all.

PAF's hypothesis: Hillary has fully bought into the bipartisan-establishment consensus that the US must pursue an imperial global policy -- including a substantial permanent military presence in the Persian Gulf region -- which enables use of military force as a routine tool of US foreign policy. Of course, she's also under pressure from a gendered culture of hyper-patriotic militarism, but if her core commitments were to a post-imperial foreign policy she would respond differently to those pressures.